by Vivek Ahuja
“Quite a setup you have here,” Ansari exhaled. The RAW man smiled in that typical schoolmaster way of his. It irritated Ansari to no end.
“All new, my friend.” Basu replied, still shaking Ansari’s hand. “They gave us all this last year. The government felt we needed to have a more centralized setup for us to work smoother and more efficiently. But for old-timers like me, this is over the top. These younger men here,” he gestured to his staff, “they will be able to make far better use of all this when I am retired…or dead.” He winked.
“So, why am I here?” Ansari couldn’t hold his curiosity any longer. It wasn’t every day that Basu had him flown to this holiest-of-holy places for an idle chit-chat. Especially not when a war was raging outside.
Basu waved the man over and pointed to the map on the table centralized around Lahore: “we have a possible location for you.”
“Haider?” Ansari asked as he leaned over the maps.
“Haider.” Basu nodded. “Our aircraft intercepted chatter from what we believe is his current headquarters, north of Lahore. Near this place called Muridke.”
“The bastard escaped before he nuked the city, didn’t he?” Ansari asked, his voice teeming in contempt. He had read the file on Haider many times.
Basu nodded. “Indeed he did. True to his character. And now he has made his way here,” Basu pointed to the location marked Muridke. “Northwest of Lahore but well outside of the blast radius.”
“What is he doing?” Ansari glanced at the transcripts.
“We don’t know,” Basu conceded. “His conversations suggest that he might be trying to marshal his remaining jihadist forces. Or he might simply be waiting for orders from Hussein. Perhaps even waiting to wrangle some excuse to head west before we all start nuking each other.”
“That bad, eh?” Ansari asked. He had seen the news on his way here.
Basu crossed his arms: “we may only have hours before Hussein feels he cannot hold off a defeat. Our ground forces have secured large tracts of Pakistani land in the desert and near Punjab and have cut off the strategic highway in the desert. It is all over local Pakistani media and panic is everywhere. Their cities are on the verge of breakdown with no power, jihadist rallies in the streets and our jets thundering in the skies above. The navy has cut off all sea access and Hussein knows this. They nuked Lahore as a backhanded way to get us to back off…and also as a way to cry victim.”
“But why Lahore?” Ansari asked. “The city’s value to the Paki Punjabis is immense, symbolically and otherwise. Why not lash out in the desert somewhere? Or in Kashmir?”
“Because it had to be a city,” Basu noted. “With the rapid successes of our military forces on all fronts except for Lahore, there would be no way to sell this as an Indian strike to the world. No one would buy it. It would make no sense. But Lahore, a city held stubbornly and bitterly by jihadists and Pak forces? An Indian strike to break that resistance makes sense. Couple that with the equality that our own people impose between us and the Pakistanis, and the world is able to believe that we struck Lahore as retaliation for Mumbai. Only later will the contents of the nuclear explosion reveal their source. But the Pakistanis will make sure no one gets any access over there. Ever.”
“And even if they do,” Ansari said as he tossed the papers on to the table, “it will be far too late by then.”
“Exactly.”
“So we are still going after Haider?” Ansari asked.
“We are.” Basu replied. “If we can take him alive, we can put that bastard on trial. Maybe even get him to confess everything.”
“Will he?” Ansari asked dubiously.
“He is intelligent. He knows when his cards are gone. He will fold to prevent himself any harm.”
“And what if we can’t take him alive?”
Basu’s face turned grim: “then he will answer to Allah, and we will take him off our target list and move on to the next one above him.”
Ansari unbuckled his seatbelt and got up just as the other passengers did the same. The whining noise from the four turboprop engines outside became visibly lower and changed pitch as they wound down. The air-force warrant-officer walked past them wearing his headphone. Towards the rear of the cabin he activated the controls and the hydraulics went into action, lowering the ramp. Ansari was the first one outside as he jumped off and hoisted his personal baggage over the shoulders.
He smiled as he saw Gephel walking over from his parked Axe vehicle: “how long have you been waiting?”
He had to shout over the noise of the C-130J. The background chaos of Chandigarh airbase didn’t help either. All aircraft were flying without their navigation lights. The airbase was shrouded in darkness except for whatever lights the ground vehicles had on.
“Not long,” Gephel shouted just as an IL-76 lifted off the runway and disappeared into the darkness. “we arrived an hour back. The other birds landed fifteen minutes ago and are being offloaded. We should be ready to leave in another half-hour.”
“Excellent.” Ansari replied as Gephel waved him to the parked vehicle. “I want us up and away as soon as we can arrange it. We are extremely time critical on this one.” He hoisted his baggage into the vehicle and jumped in the rear. Gephel took the seat next to the driver, who took the cue and drove on.
“Where are we going?” Ansari asked.
“Other end of the airbase, next to those C-17s over there,” Gephel pointed. Ansari looked through the front glass and saw two parked C-17s with a lot of activity around them. He made out the silhouettes of two LCH gunships being offloaded. Two other helicopters were parked behind the aircraft and ground crews were busy installing their main rotor blades and stub wings. Ansari also saw several parked Dhruv utility helicopters in the grass beyond the tarmac.
“Those are our guys?” Ansari pointed at the choppers.
Gephel nodded: “Jagat and his panther boys. Our ride from here back to our forward operations center.”
“Who’s leading the gunships?”
“Our old friends,” Gephel smiled. “Group-captain Dutt. They just got airlifted in from Leh.”
“What?” Ansari blurted out as the driver brought the vehicle to a stop some distance away from the nearest C-17. “Why are they being airlifted in? Aren’t they needed for Ladakh? What if the Chinese step in?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Gephel asked as they disembarked the vehicle. “Our boys are clobbering the Pakis on the Siachen glacier. They always held dominant positions there and don’t need much help. The reasoning is that if the Chinese do step in, Dutt and his crews will get airlifted back. The twenty-odd Apaches and the two-dozen LCHs we have are stretched far too thin. This was the only way.”
Ansari was not satisfied, but nodded anyway. Wartime decision-making was always ad-hoc. The Indian military was just not prepared to fight intensive wars on two fronts simultaneously. One front had to be cannibalized to beef up the other. Just the nature of things.
The two men walked over to where Dutt and Jagat were conferring with maps. They turned to see the two special-forces guys approaching but otherwise kept going. Ansari shared a look with Gephel and spotted what he thought was a brief smile. All services of the armed forces share a common trait: the shared mistrust of the black-ops guys…
“Gentlemen, how’s it looking?” Ansari asked the pilots.
“Proceeding.” Dutt said flatly. “We will be dusting off within minutes. My boys and I are just making sure we know precisely where we need to be. Jagat and his pilots are far more acquainted with the geography here than we are.”
“Good.” Ansari replied and turned to Jagat: “are we flying with you?”
Jagat nodded and gestured to the parked Dhruv nearest to them: “right. That bird there. We are fueled and ready to leave just as soon Dutt and his pilots are briefed and their choppers loaded with fuel and weapons.”
Dutt folded the maps and shook his head: “no. We are all set. Don’t wait up for us. Considering the conditions o
f this war, it is not safe for all of us to be sitting here, clustered like this. I suggest you get your birds in the air. We will depart soon enough behind you. The C-130 airdrops for the FARP will go ahead as planned, so we will bring our own gear.”
“Fair enough,” Jagat replied with a single nod and then began walking to his parked helicopters. His crews saw him coming and he rotated his lead finger in the sign of start-them-up. The pilots and crews dispersed. Ansari and Gephel followed behind Jagat. Ansari saw that the other two Dhruv helicopters were loaded with what looked like Nag anti-tank missiles and crates of equipment. He could only surmise how much the Indian government had staked on this operation. Basu and SOCOM had pulled out all the stops.
Several minutes later, Jagat’s Dhruv lifted off the grassy field and dove to the southwest, flying fast and low over the airbase. The other two helicopters took position behind Jagat. The three helicopters disappeared into the darkness within moments, but left the lingering rotor noise echoing at the airbase. Dutt crossed his arms as he and his pilots watched the last of the four LCHs being offloaded on to the tarmac.
──── 42 ────
Haider looked at the sky above to see white contrails of jet fighters. The rumble of their engines was all around. Two black columns of smoke to the west indicated some Al-Khalid tanks from the 6TH Armored Division that had just been struck by bombs dropped by these aircraft. He turned to see the swishing trail of a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile as it leapt into the sky. It would never get that far up. Haider interpreted it as a sign of frustration by the anti-air troops. Having struck down the long-range missile batteries with Brahmos missiles, the high-flying Indian fighters and bombers were under no real threat from below. The days of flying low with unguided munitions were long past. Even helicopters these days had the range and common sense to stay away and launch attacks using guided-missiles. Both the sides of this war were learning this the hard way…
“How far out are the Indians?” Haider pulled up his binoculars and looked east. They were standing atop one of the buildings serving as a field-hospital for the battered defenders of Lahore.
“About twelve kilometers, due east,” Akram said without looking away from his own optics. “The 6TH Armored is putting up a stiff fight. The Indian armored columns are taking losses.”
“Hardly surprising,” Haider said as he lowered his binoculars and rested them on the sidewall. “We knew the strengths of their Russian-supplied tanks and other vehicles for a long time now. The 6TH Armored is almost equally powerful to any of its Indian counterparts. And our artillery is superior. But the Indians have more men and tanks.”
“And control of the skies,” Akram noted sourly.
Haider shook his head as though it was unbelievable how this had come to pass: “yes, it appears that they have. And so our men will eventually be overrun and defeated. But it was inevitable and we have known this for years. Which is why we have nuclear weapons. What I cannot understand, however, is the rapid reversals in the desert. How are the Indians penetrating so far and wide out there?”
“No idea, sir.” Akram said. “The Indian forces there are using Arjun tanks and their crews are all battle-hardened veterans of the China war. Compared to our inexperienced crews, I believe the Indians in the Rahim Yar Khan front have a crucial advantage.”
“Perhaps,” Haider conceded. What he really wanted to know was how Hussein would respond. But cut off from the happenings in Rawalpindi, he could only speculate.
“We will strike with nuclear warheads, won’t we, sir?” Akram asked in a whisper. He knew the operational plans for the Pak army for such dire conditions. He never did get a response from his commanding general. Haider simply picked up his optics and hung it around his neck.
A thundering crash to the north caused everyone to jerk their heads in that direction. They turned just in time to see several black balls of smoke rising into the sky, several kilometers away. Licks of yellow-orange flames appeared within the smoke before they rose into thick black columns. From the northeast, Akram spotted two black spots heading towards them…
“Sir, look out!” Akram leapt and tackled Haider to the floor just as the air around them was torn apart by fast-moving flashes of sparks and fire. Two Indian Jaguar strike-aircraft flashed overhead, being chased by massive amounts of small-arms fire from the streets below. The two aircraft flying at treetop level passed south without too much ado. The strafing attack was over just as abruptly and violently as it had started. The small-arms fire stopped and shouts and screams filled the air.
Akram rolled over on his back, shearing off chunks of concrete from the walls that had fallen all around them. The smell of spent gunpowder was in the air. He checked to see if all of his limbs were still attached and was relieved when they were. He turned to the side and watched Haider doing the same. That led to another relieved exhale and a small laugh brought on by the adrenaline in his body.
That was when the moaning from behind reached his ears. He turned around to see Saadat squirming on the floor, his left wrist missing from his arm. Clumps of blood were everywhere where his hand should have been. Two other soldiers behind him had been shorn in pieces by the cannon rounds. The rooftop was spattered in blood and body parts.
“Saadat!” Akram leapt to his feet and slid next to the wounded man as medics ran up to the roof.
Haider was still gathering his bearings. He walked over to the sidewall of the roof and saw that it now had large holes punched into it. He looked at the streets below and saw soldiers running around with stretchers. An ambulance was ablaze. He could also see another ambulance with the windshield shattered and the driver’s compartment splattered red. He winced and turned away. His own rooftop was a bloody mess. He saw Akram and two medics trying to calm down a rabid Saadat who could see his wrist missing and was reacting in horror…
“So the gloves are off,” Haider muttered. He realized that the strike on Lahore had cost the Indian military a lot of lives. And they were out for revenge. Their own government would not allow them to strike first with nuclear weapons. So they were out seeking revenge the old fashioned way. Even field hospitals were not secure anymore. It never crossed Haider’s mind that he himself was using this military hospital as a shield. Hypocrisy ran deep in his psyche to a point where he never even recognized it anymore…
“Sir!” One of his radiomen ran up the stairs to the rooftop and looked around. He glanced at the blood and shattered bodies and was instantly silenced by the gore.
“Well?” Akram asked from where he was, holding Saadat down. “Speak, boy!”
The radioman tried to speak but instead just vomited and fell on his knees.
“Goddamn it!” Akram got up on his feet and walked over, grabbing the radioman by his shoulder harness and pulling him on his feet. “What was your message? Is this how you contribute to this jihad? By vomiting at the first sight of blood? Call yourself an Islamic warrior?!”
Haider sighed and raised his hand: “major, please. Let the boy speak.”
The two officers looked at the radioman who was clearly overwhelmed. He closed his eyes and tried to recollect his thoughts: “sir, I…we just lost contact with the 6TH Division headquarters. We are hearing complete chaos between the field units. What should we do?”
Haider gritted his teeth and turned to Akram: “those explosions we saw before the Indians strafed us. That must have been the divisional headquarters. The Indians decapitated that division just as it was moving into battle!”
“Sir, what are your orders?” Akram asked as he released his grip on the radioman, who fell again on his knees and vomited some more.
Haider shook his head as he considered his options.
“Major, get your comms people together and send the word out for any surviving 6TH Division staff and logistical columns to make their way to Muridke. We are establishing an ad-hoc command center here. And inform them that Lt-general Haider is taking command for this front. It’s time we put a
stop to this rout!”
──── 43 ────
“Sir! Warning message from Mongol-three. We have inbounds heading towards rhino!”
Sudarshan and his senior staff looked up from the map table to see the projected map on the digital screen showing vectors provided by the Phalcon airborne-radar aircraft controlling this sector. The vectors had speeds and altitude provided, and they were inbound and converging on the section of the highway controlled by Kulkarni’s tanks. The vector also showed what they thought these contacts were: AH-1 Cobra gunships of the Pak army. Further west, another eight vectors were overtaking the slow-moving choppers. These the computer identified as Babur cruise-missiles launched from Quetta, in western Pakistan. Sudarshan knew this for what it was: a strike to weaken his defenses. This corroborated well with what his long-range unmanned drones were already showing: two columns of T-80 tanks, one heading north and the other south and both converging on Rahim Yar Khan.
All in all, a formidable Pakistani counterattack.
But one that was hardly surprising to him. He knew what his armored taskforces had taken from the Pakistanis. He knew they would try to take it back. He also knew that the quashed resistance by the Pakistani forces inside Rahim Yar Khan would have reminded the Pakistani commanders that time was running out. The question had been when and how. Both answers were right here on the screen in front of him.
He turned to the staff around him: “all right gents, here comes the counterattack. We have prepared for this. Make the bastards pay!” He pounded the table with his fist for emphasis. The staff ran in different directions as though struck by lightning. He walked over to the comms personnel: “get me Lt-colonel Kulkarni out at waypoint red.”
“Steel-central to rhino-actual, over.”
After three seconds of static: “rhino-actual here. Send traffic. Over.”
One of the comms officers handed Sudarshan a speaker: “this is steel-actual. Be advised, we are detecting massed enemy movements towards you. You have inbound cruise-missiles and enemy attack choppers. And we are detecting mechanized columns of T-80s heading out to you from north and south.” He paused for that to sink in.