Line of Control- A Thriller on the Coming War in Asia

by Mainak Dhar

  Joshi walked in first, and saw the crestfallen look on Khosla’s face.

  `Sir, it my fault. The Patriot failed to give us warning.’

  A sad smile crossed Khosla’s face.

  `No, Joshi. Such things happen in war. We now just need to run the contingency plan. It’s a long shot, but its the best we have.’

  By now the Service Chiefs had all entered. Sen, who might have been expected to be happy at the terrible losses inflicted in the air, looked as morose as the others. The fact was that the PAF had prevented his fighters from helping out in the ground battle. Talking of kill to loss ratios was meaningless unless broader goals were attained. Singh wore a grim expression. He knew the Pakistanis had outmaneuvered him in the field.

  `Sir, I need your permission to activate the contingency plan. An armored spearhead of the XIIth Corps will make a northwards run to attack Kasur from the south. At the same time, the XIth will push ahead. With this dual attack, we should take the town.’

  Sen did not look too hopeful as he spoke, `Its a two hundred kilometer run-and they’ll be fighting a running battle. I’ll give all the air support I can, but it will be a tough ask.’

  Singh was silent, but Khosla spoke up, `Guys, its the only chance we have. Let’s do it.’

  ***

  Karim was sitting at home. He had called Arif over, and was waiting for him. Meher had not seen him this upset for a long time, and reluctantly went out to a friend’s house.

  Arif walked into the living room whistling an old tune, but stopped when he saw the look on Karim’s face.

  `Karim, what’s up?’

  `Sit.’

  Arif sat down on the couch facing Karim, and watched him, waiting for him to say something.

  When he did, the words seemed to barely come out of his mouth.

  `Arif, I have blood on my hands.’

  Now there were tears streaming down Karim’s cheeks, as he wept freely before his friend.

  Arif caught Karim’s shoulders and straightened him up.

  `Karim, what are you saying?’, his voice was soft, almost inaudible.

  `The fucking famous victory at Kasur. I ordered those boys to fight to the death-and they did. For what? So that Illahi can gloat over it-so that this madness can continue?’

  Arif could see that his friend was almost broken in spirit. He had to handle things carefully.

  `Karim, you did what a good soldier is expected to do. Those young men died for their country-and for you.’

  Karim looked up into his friend’s eyes, as Arif continued.

  `Karim, you should not hold yourself responsible for the deaths of those young men-if anyone is responsible, it is Illahi. He has brought our country to the brink of a great disaster. If you want to ensure that the deaths of those young men do not go in vain, you need to put an end to this.’

  Karim wiped the tears from his eyes. The sadness had been replaced by a look of firm determination.

  ***

  `This is Pooja Bhatnagar in an Arjun tank now racing northwards.’

  With the tank running at close to fifty kilometers per hour, Rahul found it tough to keep his balance while he shot Pooja standing inside Chauhan’s tank. With the two civilians, it was a tight fit, but none of the soldiers seemed to mind. They had just received orders that had electrified them. The news of the XIth Corps’ defeat had come as a shock, but this was followed by the order that the Vth tank regiment was to spearhead a new thrust towards Lahore, from the south.

  After the first encounter with the Type 59s, Chauhan’s regiment had had a fairly uneventful war, the only other contact with the enemy being two M-113s that had stumbled into their path, and had been destroyed within seconds. Now was their chance to get a share of the glory.

  At Pooja’s sign, Rahul shut off the camera. When the tanks stopped again, he would move to another tank to get another view of the advance. As usual, they would keep the tape in a special pouch which was picked up by helicopter whenever practicable.

  Chauhan seemed completely engrossed in his sights. Pooja found it hard to understand why, because there was nothing to be seen for miles around.

  Chauhan knew better. There was no way the Pakistanis were going to let them stroll into Lahore.

  ***

  EIGHTEEN

  I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do.

  - Eleanor Roosevelt

  Chauhan’s tanks had crossed over a hundred kilometers the previous day. The Pakistanis, expecting the XIIth Corps to push towards Multan had withdrawn after suffering in the initial battles. Thus, when Chauhan’s regiment and supporting units began racing northwards, they were forced to give chase. Chauhan’s tanks had withstood the ordeal quite well, though three had broken down and had to be abandoned. So far they had not faced very serious opposition. Most Pakistani forces in the Punjab had concentrated near Lahore, and though they had held the Indians, they had taken crippling losses themselves. Also with the air threat largely removed, Chauhan and his men were having fairly uninterrupted progress so far. They had come to accept Indian MiG-27s and Jaguars hovering overhead as constant companions. Chauhan had so far needed their assistance only once so far, when six Pakistani TOW equipped M-113s had engaged his tanks. He had lost two tanks, before the Jaguars swept down and destroyed four of the M-113s with rockets. His tanks had disposed off the remaining two without any further losses.

  Pooja was in Chauhan’s tank, trying eagerly to understand what was going on. Rahul was in the tank right next to Chauhan’s command tank. Neither journalist had yet really got over the adrenaline rush of combat.

  Chauhan was listening intently to the information being passed on by the AWACS and Searchers ahead of his regiment. So far there had been no news of a substantial Pakistani force, but he knew that the closer they got to Lahore, the higher were the chances that the Pakistanis would throw whatever they could muster in his way. He had run his tanks and men mercilessly, which he realized, was both a good and a bad thing. Good because his tanks had made amazing progress and were now within three hours of Lahore, and bad because he had gone far ahead of the rest of the force, and if any serious opposition came up, he would have to take the brunt of it.

  `Guys, we’ll have some company soon.’

  Chauhan did not move an inch as he spoke, his eyes remaining glued to his periscope, his radio handset at his ears.

  Pooja peered over Ram’s shoulders to look at the sights.

  Nothing.

  Yet Chauhan had clearly picked something up, and by the edge in his voice, it was something to be worried about.

  `Wolf Pack, I have a full regiment of Type 59s headed our way. Enemy now seven kilometers to the north. Repeat, regiment of Type 59s. Expect friendly air support, but execute offensive formation on my command.’

  Pooja noted that the tank had not slowed down a bit.

  `Hey, so we just charge…..’

  Chauhan didn’t let her continue, barking into the radio.

  `NOW!’

  To the airborne observer, it would look like a macabre ballet as the big tanks maneuvered in the desert. Against the Type 59, the Arjun had a significant range advantage and Chauhan wanted to maximize it. He knew he was slightly outnumbered-there would probably be 55 enemy tanks to his forty. So he had to make the first shot count.

  `Enemy at 5000 yards. Hold fire till my command.’

  The Indian tanks were now racing across the desert, forming a line nearly a kilometer across.

  `Friendly air coming in.’

  Four Hinds swept in over the Indian tanks towards the oncoming Type 59s. After the crippling losses suffered over Kasur the PAF was conserving its resources and Indian attack planes and helicopters had a relatively free play over the battlefield.

  As the Hinds picked up their targets, the Pakistanis began firing from their tank mounted anti-aircraft guns. They did not cause any damage, but distracted the Hinds enough for their accuracy to suffer. This combined with the fact that the
Type 59s were running at full tilt and maneuvering hard meant that of the sixteen missiles launched by the Hinds, only eight found their targets.

  Chauhan listened to the news on his radio.

  He turned to Pooja with a grim expression on his face.

  `Okay, this is it.’

  Then he spoke into his radio to his men.

  `Wolf Pack. Enemy at 3500 yards. Fire at will. There are forty-seven of them. Make each shot count. Good luck.’

  ***

  `What do you mean?’

  Illahi was glowering at Shamsher. He had never been a man who had been tolerant of bad news, and over the last couple of days, that was all he seemed to be getting.

  `Sir, we are very thin. I doubt whether we can hold the Indian thrust upwards towards Lahore. We’re outnumbered over two to one, and if they break through-there’s little we can do but retreat into the city and try and hold them in house to house fighting.’

  `Well then, that’s what we’ll do.’

  Karim, who had been listening quietly till now spoke up.

  `Sir, we’re nearing a critical stage everywhere. In the air, the only way we can still do anything is a last ditch, almost suicidal attempt. The defense of Kasur ripped the heart out of our frontline squadrons. Asking our young men to go up again will mean condemning them to death.’

  Illahi looked at Tariq.

  `Well, Tariq, what do you say?’

  Shamsher and Karim exchanged glances. Tariq and his men had taken no part in the fighting so far, and in their view, Tariq was little more than a thug to execute Illahis’s whims, not a professional soldier.

  `Sir, I feel we are giving up too easily.’

  Tariq spoke in his usual, heavy voice. As he spoke, his nervous twitch was obvious. He had a long, jagged scar running along the side of his right eye. He had received the wound from an American shell in Afghanistan. Though it had been several years, a deep scar remained, and damage to some nerves had left him with the twitch.

  Shamsher was not going to brook any advice from the thug.

  `Tariq, what would you know about what’s going on in the war. There’s no glory in fighting to the death. Not when we can still pull back to sanity.’

  `Sanity or cowardice, Ahmed.’

  Abdul had just walked in, his flowing robe blowing in the wind. Before Shamsher could respond to his comment, he went up to Illahi and spoke in hushed tones.

  `Illahi, his Holiness wishes to talk to you. He will call again in one hour. He wishes to give his perspective on the direction we need to take.’

  Illahi turned to his Chiefs of Staff and dismissed them. As Shamsher and Karim walked out, they knew that what they felt or said would have very little bearing on how things were going to pan out.

  ***

  `Target at 2800 yards.’

  Even before Chauhan could finish his sentence, Ram had got a fix on the Type 59 and fired. The tank lurched from the recoil as the main gun fired. They were still running at close to forty kilometers per hour, and had not slowed a bit when they engaged the enemy. One of the Arjun’s quirks was that unlike most tanks, it was more accurate when firing on the move. This had been a major problem in its initial developmental years, when stationary accuracy had been quite low. In later years, this problem was rectified, primarily by the development of a more accurate fire control system, but it’s accuracy on the move remained higher than when it fired on the move. Chauhan was exploiting this very quirk.

  The tanks he faced would, on a tank-to-tank basis, never match up to the Arjun. The Type 59 was a Chinese reverse engineered version of the 1960s vintage Soviet T-55. Though upgraded in Pakistani service, it was a generation behind the Arjun in technology. This was all that the Pakistanis, however, could muster to counter the surprise northwards thrust. More than half the T-80s were employed further to the north, protecting Lahore, while the others were to the south, guarding against the thrust towards Multan that never came.

  There was little Pooja could hear as nearly thirty tanks fired within seconds of each other. They were firing at the outer limits of the Arjun’s main gun range, but they wanted to maximize the first shot advantage they would get over the older Pakistani tanks.

  The Pakistani commander had got intelligence of a much smaller enemy force, and he was expecting a small, forward force, not a full regiment of Arjuns. That unpleasant reality came home to him when a dozen of his tanks exploded in the first Indian salvo. Without the air support and reconnaissance the Indians had, he realized he had blundered into a situation he was unprepared for. Well, there was no turning back now. He ordered his tanks to go ahead and engage the Indians.

  By the time the Type 59s got off their first shot, the Arjuns had fired again, knocking out six more tanks. By now, it was a close quarters battle, and it all came down to the skill of individual tank commanders. By now the Indians outnumbered the Pakistanis by almost two to one, and such short ranges, the Indians had to be careful that they did not hit one of their own. To some extent, the tactical initiative shifted to the Pakistanis, who could maneuver and fire much more freely.

  Chauhan’s tank had so far claimed three kills and he was about to engage another, when a shell hit his tank. It was a glancing blow, and the shell bounced off the sloping hull of the Arjun. Had the shell been one of the modern reinforced shells fired by tanks like the T-80, Chauhan and his crew would have been dead.

  Chauhan grabbed on the side for support as the big tank shuddered. Pooja was thrown back, and hit her head on the floor of the tank.

  `Dammit! How bad is it, Pratap?’

  The driver was ashen-faced, relieved at this narrow escape, and managed to reply with a strong effort of will.

  `Sir, we’re okay. Hydraulics seems to be damaged a bit, but no fire. I don’t think she’ll lose more than five kmph.’

  `Good. Ram, next target.’

  Pooja watched amazed, as she rubbed her hand over the sore spot on the back of her head. She was amazed at still being alive, while Chauhan was coolly looking for another target.

  `Fire!’

  The tank shook as the big gun fired, and the target exploded at a range of less than a thousand yards.

  Then as suddenly as it had begun, the firing stopped.

  Chauhan took off his cap. He was perspiring heavily.

  `God. I think that’s it.’

  He opened the turret and got out. Pooja followed soon after. She saw what was by now a familiar sight-the aftermath of an armored battle. As far as she could see, there were burning tanks all around.

  Chauhan jumped off and looked around, amazed at the tactics of the Pakistanis. They had literally fought to the last tank and man. Normally, after a fighting unit loses more than 50% of its strength, it is expected that it retreats or at least falls back for reinforcements. But the Pakistanis here had charged on. One had even rammed an Arjun, destroying itself and the Indian tank. Chauhan had heard of the desperate air battle at Kasur, and he wondered just how desperate the Pakistanis were. And also just how far India should really push them. With the nuclear sword hanging over the heads of both countries, it was only a matter of time before such desperation on the battlefield gave way to recourse to nuclear weapons. He took out his binoculars to take stock of his losses. He counted fifteen Arjuns destroyed or damaged. The Pakistanis seemed to have lost close to forty tanks. Add the losses inflicted by the Hinds, and the whole regiment seemed to have been decimated.

  Pooja looked to her left and saw Rahul at the turret of a tank, his camera running. He motioned to her to come over, but she had taken only a couple of steps when out when the soldiers to her right began to shout.

  A Type 59 had suddenly emerged from the right, and was raking the Indian tanks with its machine gun. The Pakistani tank was on fire and was moving slowly and unsteadily but was bearing down on the tank Rahul was perched on. As Rahul saw the advancing Pakistani tank, he was pulled inside by the tank commander.

  Chauhan watched helplessly as the Pakistani tank fired, a shell rammin
g into the side of the Indian tank. A second later, three Arjuns fired at the Type 59, and it exploded in a huge fireball.

  Pooja screamed as she saw Rahul’s tank get hit. For a second, all was obscured in smoke, and when that cleared the Indian tank was on fire.

  The shell had hit the Arjun on its tracks. If it had hit the main body, the resultant explosion would have killed everyone inside instantly, but this still gave those inside a chance.

  Pooja was frozen with fear. A couple of soldiers were running towards the Arjun, fire extinguishers in hand. She thought she heard someone say, `There can’t be anyone alive now.’

  Chauhan looked on at the burning tank. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He tried to call out to his men, but found himself incapable of saying anything. An old fear-a paralyzing, mind-numbing fear was back to haunt him. For a moment, reality blurred with the memories in his head, as he thought he heard someone scream, he thought he was on top of the burning tank, running from the flames.

  Without his even realizing it, Pooja had gripped his hand tightly. She was saying something, but nothing seemed to register. He thought bitterly-so this is where it had to end-the same nightmare comes back in real life and exposes me for the coward I am.

  He heard one of his men shout out that someone was alive inside, and he thought he heard a voice-he could have sworn it was Pooja’s voice saying, you have to face your fear. Suddenly everything became very clear. The fear was still there, but it had been blanketed with something much more powerful, a fierce determination not to let it happen again. A determination to finally clear his head of the demons inside.

  Pooja started in surprise as Chauhan let go of her hand and ran towards the burning tank. He brushed aside two soldiers trying to stop him, and was soon lost in the thick smoke.

  Pooja stumbled ahead, her mind spinning-Rahul, Chauhan, all gone? She found it difficult to think clearly. Her eyes were now clouded by the smoke and tears that were now flowing freely as she approached the burning wreck.

  ***

  Shamsher was unusually quiet. The war effort had taken a big toll on him, and the big soldier somehow seemed to have almost shrunk physically. The Service Chiefs had just returned from their daily briefings to Illahi, and were unwinding at the Officer’s Club.