by Vivek Ahuja
He looked around to see the faces of the massed media personnel and cameras pointed to him and hoped that his body language was convincing. It had to be. Any indication of doubt on such a stage would take a life of their own. He did not want to get into a shouting contest with Pakistan with accusations and counter-accusations in spite of the facts.
“Yes.” He pointed to a raised hand from the journalists. It was one of the western correspondents.
“Can you comment on the rumors that India has carried out this nuclear attack in response to the massive resistance its forces have been encountering from the jihadists and the Pakistani army inside Lahore?”
Ravoof shook his head and tried to control his anger. Some in the western media were running with Islamabad’s version of events. “I have no comments on the military situation in Lahore. I doubt our military press conference in an hour will have anything else to add either. But as far as India is concerned, I should remind you that we have taken casualties in this explosion. The numbers are still rolling in and the list is long. So while self-infliction of wounds might be a strategy that Islamabad allows, we don’t do that. If this had been our handiwork, it would have been far more surgical, I assure you!”
Ravoof chided himself internally for that last remark. His tongue had slipped due to anger bubbling inside. Some in the media were out like ravenous wolves looking to implicate the “big-bad-neighbor” India. The Pakistanis were masters of lying through their teeth on the world stage. India wasn’t nearly as good as them. The smile at the corner of the western correspondent confirmed to Ravoof that his mistake had been caught…
“Next question.” Ravoof said, trying to move on. But the damage was done. The hands in the room raised in a flurry. He picked one at random. An Indian journalist this time: “what is the Indian government’s stand on withdrawing its forces back across the border, as Islamabad has demanded?”
“We will not respond to threats!” Ravoof stated flatly. “Our objectives are clear. The Pakistani military under the leadership of General Hussein has taken the onus of harboring and protecting the terrorists who struck Mumbai. They armed them with nuclear weapons to wreak carnage on a civilian population. They will be made to regret this decision. Our forces will destroy Pakistan’s ability to harbor terrorists as instruments of state policy. We are not after land or territorial gains here. But we will destroy Pakistan’s military threat. If the Pakistanis want to prevent this, they need to hand over the remaining survivors of the group that planned and executed the attack on Mumbai. We know the senior ISI commanders who were involved. Unless they are handed over to face trials for nuclear-terrorism and murder of innocent civilians, there is nothing left to say to us that will get us to back off from achieving our objectives our own way.”
──── 40 ────
“Rhino-alpha tanks! We are pushing on, on my mark!”
Kulkarni changed comms to his own tank: “ready?”
The driver chimed back: “ready, sir.”
“Then push on!”
The Arjun jerked and moved out of its position by the side of the road. It pitched up as it crushed over some abandoned civilian cars and then landed back on the road. Kulkarni was holding on to the rails through all this. Once they stabilized, he pulled up rhino comms again: “rhino-alpha tanks: execute! Bash on to the highway!”
He checked his sights and rotated it a full circle to see other tanks behind him taking position in the convoy on the road, merging in one behind the other to form a long line of tanks and other vehicles, moving west like a snake.
Kulkarni would have liked to spread the tanks out over a wider front than this road, but in this urban environment, the terrain prevented it. One thing was sure: they could not wait for the battle in Rahim Yar Khan to end before pushing on to the N5 highway, west of the town.
They were out of time.
The nuclear threat had materialized on the Punjab front with the detonation in Lahore. It was only a matter of time before it might happen here. And Kulkarni wanted to reach his pre-war objectives before the Pakistanis sapped his strength with nuclear weapons. He wanted his tanks straddling the highway to remind the enemy that this strategic lifeline had been cut by the Indians.
Kulkarni and Sudarshan also hoped that keeping the residual enemy forces inside the town in close proximity would force the enemy to refrain from nuclear warheads. Pak army units inside the town could not challenge Kulkarni’s heavy armor west of it, but they served as useful hostages to help prevent any nuclear strikes on rhino and trishul.
In theory. Kulkarni reminded himself.
His tanks were now operating in NBC conditions. The tank’s crew compartments were sealed and all radiological and chemical sensors were active and running. The turret was also now operating at a positive air pressure to prevent outside particulates from entering. His turret would remain closed now until the war was over.
A loud, cyclic whump noises overhead increased and then decreased. Kulkarni peered through his sights to see three air-force Apaches flying past them as they swept ahead of his columns. These would act both as recon as well as anti-armor assets in the battles to come.
“Those air-force boys are having a fine day!” His gunner responded. Kulkarni could make out a tint of jealousy in the man’s voice. That brought an increasingly-rare smile on his face, but he kept his peace. So the gunner continued for the benefit of the other crewmembers: “they take out the fun targets and leave us to sort through the shit for nuggets!”
Kulkarni knew this to be partly true. The Apaches had gone hunting for enemy T-80s inside Rahim Yar Khan. They had encountered severe anti-air gunfire and two Apaches had been destroyed. So now the air-force had changed tactics. The Apaches were streaming far and wide over the open terrain west, north and south of the town, striking enemy rear columns and inbound convoys while the air-force’s strike aircraft went above the town looking for hiding enemy tanks.
“I can’t complain,” the loader added sheepishly. Kulkarni thought his voice had an innocent honesty to it.
The gunner conceded: “neither can I.”
And neither could Kulkarni. As overall rhino commander, he appreciated any help that was given to him by sister units and services. Even the air-force, he admitted to himself, as though the impossible had happened. But now that his own tanks were depleted from combat attrition and half his remaining force was bogged down besieging the town, the actual force he was leading to the highway numbered no more than twenty tanks and about two dozen supporting vehicles from trishul…
He realized if someone had offered him this force strength to hold the strategic target prior to the war, he would have questioned the competency of the officer involved. But here he was, trying to pull it off. Of course!
“Approaching the objective!” The driver said.
Kulkarni spotted it through his sights almost at the same time as they cleared around some mud houses and headed to the highway.
The gunner’s response was instantaneous: “shit!”
Kulkarni had to agree. The highway was clogged with civilian vehicles and massive numbers of civilians, making their way away from approaching Indian forces…
The civilians saw the approaching Indian tanks at about the same time and a panic spread through the crowd. Rumors had been spread by the jihadists that the Indians were massacring civilians and that nobody was safe. Kulkarni had heard this report from military-intelligence folks an hour ago. It was a recruiting tool for the jihadists, plain and simple. The Jihadists -and the Pak army- were saying to the able-bodied men and women in the town to join the jihad to protect their families from certain death.
The net result of that was massive chaos and panic all along the highway as Kulkarni’s tank convoy began spreading out on their approach. The tank turrets were sweeping left and right for possible targets in the mass of people in front of them. He saw as people abandoned their belongings and vehicles on the jammed highway and ran. He also saw what looked like tel
evision media vehicles parked a kilometer north on the highway, stuck in traffic…
“All Rhino-alpha tanks,” Kulkarni keyed his comms, “watch for enemy combatants within the crowds here. Destroy what targets present themselves, but for god’s sake don’t shoot civilians. The media is filming the whole thing!”
His tank shuddered to a halt about thirty meters from the concrete of the highway.
“Driver, why are we halted?”
“Sir the road is clogged with vehicles.”
Kulkarni cocked an eyebrow: “so? Crush them! No better way to block this road than to have crushed vehicles and a sixty-ton tank sitting on them!”
“Uh…copy! Hang on.”
The vehicle rumbled forward and accelerated towards the empty cars on the highway. The tank pitched up and then landed on the roof of a car with a massive crash, smashing the small sedan to pieces under its treads. Pieces of the car flew in all directions as the Arjun accelerated over it to the next vehicle. Kulkarni could only imagine the smile on the driver’s face up front. It was not every day that he got to do what he was doing now and had probably wanted to do for a long time.
Kulkarni rotated his sights north and saw civilians running away. He even saw what looked like some soldiers removing their uniforms near a bus and changing into civilian clothes while being jeered by civilians nearby. Many youngsters were busy taking pictures on their cell phones as other Arjun tanks followed Kulkarni’s lead and smashed and crashed their way on to the highway. Kulkarni’s own tank rumbled to the other side of the highway and jerked to a stop. The gunner swiveled the turrets to look for Pak army or jihadist targets but found none.
“Rhino-actual to steel-central. Over.”
“Steel-central copies, Rhino-actual. Send traffic. Over.”
“We are at waypoint red and have secured it. We are holding. Over.” Kulkarni was surprised at how anti-climactic this whole thing was. He might as well have been radioing in his food and water requirements…
“Good job, rhino-actual. Steel-actual sends his regards. Secure objective and standby for further orders. Out.”.
“What do we do now, sir?” The gunner asked casually.
“Good question,” Kulkarni muttered. “I guess we hold this place until told otherwise. If you see any targets, you light them up, of course!”
“Of course.”
Kulkarni swiveled his sights and saw the other tanks also doing the same over a one-kilometer stretch of the highway. He pressed buttons on the ABAMS screen to pass movement orders to his commanders. He wanted to orient part of his force north and south, facing down the length of the highway while his platoon of tanks faced west into the desert, towards the Indus river. He saw the Apaches as they flew past the highway heading east. And to the north, the flash and rumble of artillery reached him. Sudarshan was busy hammering targets north and south of where rhino was.
That made for a lonely and boring afternoon. This was bad for many reasons. Not least of which was that it gave the initiative to the enemy. It pushed rhino from being an initiator to a responder. It also strained his crews, who were wound up like a spring, ready to uncoil on the enemy. Now they had to sit and wait. And that could cause them to break.
As the Tunguska anti-air vehicles moved into position around the highway, assorted engineering and recon troops began pulling up. Kulkarni saw explosions rocking the center of the town, behind him. He could hear the crackle of machine gun fire punctuating the air and tank rounds leaving their barrels. Swiveling his sights north, he caught sight of the media, two-kilometers away, talking in front of cameras pointed towards his tanks. He knew the Pak army commanders would be seeing all this. And the media would be reporting in short order that Indian armor forces had penetrated deep inside Pakistani territory and cut off the strategic N5 highway, splitting the defenses along the border into two. These two segments could no longer communicate physically along this north-south highway. They would either have to fight through rhino or maneuver further west of the Indus river and skirt around this blockade, adding to already over-blocked roads and highways. The ball was now neatly in the other court. And the reality of it all would settle into the Pakistani minds soon enough.
──── 41 ────
The Gulfstream-III aircraft landed gingerly on the concrete runway, creating puffs of smoke from the landing gear tires. As the nose wheel pitched down and touched the runway, the two engines roared and the aircraft slowed. Within seconds it had rotated off the busy runway and moved on to the taxiway which would take it to the tarmac meant for aircraft operated by the RAW under the ludicrously generic title “Aviation Research Centre”, or ARC.
This particular aircraft specialized in signals-intelligence or SIGINT. As such, the aircraft was outfitted with a mass of specialized electronic signals collection and processing equipment. The aircraft was flown by former air-force pilots, but during wartime, all ARC aircraft were integrated into the air-force surveillance network. Nobody operated alone on the modern battlefield. The days of daring and freelancing ARC missions were long over.
Even so, the ARC maintained a remarkable amount of independence and flexibility. This aircraft was no different. While official military-intelligence units were collaborating resources on collecting data on the enemy, this aircraft and its crew were on a different and secretive tasking. All that the pilot of this aircraft had said to the airborne-radar operators was their operational and flight requirements. The air-force crews on the AWACS hadn’t asked any more questions; they were ordered not to. And that had preceded yet another six-hour mission monitoring enemy signals whilst flying over enemy airspace. It takes special courage to fly unarmed, modified business jets over enemy airspace during wartime. But the ARC crews were no novices. Both pilots on this aircraft were former wing-commanders in the air-force with thousands of hours of military flying experience between them.
As they switched off equipment on board and the engines wound down, the crew in the cabin behind them were rubbing their eyes and stretching their arms and legs. These long missions could take their toll and fatigue level was high. The ARC didn’t have dual crews for each surveillance aircraft like the air-force. After all, the ARC was not the air-force. It wasn’t meant to fly continuous combat missions. But as with each war in history, this one was different. And they had been requisitioned.
A small, gray van, painted to look like a standard air-force crew-transport vehicle, pulled up alongside the aircraft just as the crew began walking out in their green overalls and small personal bags. The tiredness in their eyes was apparent. They wouldn’t be flying again for the rest of the day today, they hoped.
Other vehicles were already pulling up to refuel the aircraft, remove the massive amount of data onboard and take it to the ARC data-processing center. While the crew went to bed, the RAW data-analysts would get to work. And their work would lead to a new mission later that night.
The departing crew noticed the speed with which their data was being collected by the analysts. Well, that made sense…they reasoned. After all, their aircraft had been airborne south of Lahore just before the nuclear explosion.
But what the crews didn’t know was that their data was being used to determine the whereabouts of someone very special to RAW. And if that someone had gotten on the Pak army communication networks during the time this aircraft had been aloft, his whereabouts might just be hidden in the data. Like a needle in the proverbial haystack…
Ansari followed his civilian escort as they made their way through the building to the underground floors. This section of the RAW operations-center was almost always hidden from the outside world. Ansari momentarily paused to look over the sudden change in the architecture in this section of the building. The interiors in here were far more modern and contrasted heavily with the colonial design of government buildings just one floor above. The lighting changed to slight blue-white, hidden in the ceilings. Sliding glass-doors designed for acoustic and electronic signal suppression replaced
the wooden doors. And centralized air conditioning compensated for lack of windows.
Ansari was led by the civilian escort so that Basu could meet him in here rather than in his office upstairs. That office is all that Ansari had seen in this building during the secretive Tibetan operations. He hadn’t seen this even in the weeks past when he had been running mayhem against the jihadists in Kashmir. He could only imagine what other secrets Basu kept close to his chest.
“Here we are.” His escort turned a corner and reached a frosted-glass door that had the word ‘operations’ engraved on it. There were two heavily-armed police guards outside, standing on each side of the door. Another man sat behind a desk, waiting to grant them access. As Ansari handed his ID papers to the officer behind the desk, he glanced at the two armed guards. Not military, he surmised. Police or para-military personnel or simply RAW’s own security force?
“You are cleared,” the man behind the desk said. The two doors parted aside. Ansari took his papers and entered.
The internal room was much larger than the corridors had suggested. There were large screens on the walls and a large conference room segregated by the rest of the room through glass doors. A couple-dozen people were moving back and forth between the conference room and the row of secure comms and other computer equipment. Ansari stood there, admiring the impressive setup. He was the only one in army fatigues here…
“Ansari, over here!”
Ansari turned to see Basu waving him into the conference room. He walked over to find the diminutive RAW man in a brown suit standing near the table as younger members of his team leaned over maps and paper printouts of what looked like transcripts. Ansari smiled: RAW doing what it did best.
“You made it,” Basu offered his hand, “good.”