by Vivek Ahuja
Come on! Just a little further…
Tikkar willed mentally as his aircraft streaked over Thimpu at full supersonic speeds, shattering glass panes all over the city. His eyes were looking up in the sky above.
There!
“This is Bull-rider-Actual! Tally-ho!”
Tikkar pulled his aircraft up, bringing the view from his HUD to cover what his eyeballs had already detected: four dark specks against the darkening night sky to the north. The infrared optics of the R-60 had already locked on their prey as the Mig-21 cleared the peaks. Since he came up against the terrain, he had gone undetected. Till now.
The J-10s began breaking formation. They had seen the lone Indian pilot climbing up to them from below.
Tikkar fired off his two R-60s one after another towards two different targets. With these kinetics on the missile and its prey, he could hardly miss. The two thin white trails of the R-60s slammed into their targets within seconds of each other, ripping through two brand new Chinese J-10Bs…
“Splash one! And Splash two! You are not taking down Bull-rider that easy today, reds!” Tikkar exclaimed over the radio. His comms heard all the way to the AEW crew over southern Sikkim.
With his Mig-21 still at positive pitch and climbing, he cleared the target azimuth and began maneuvering to merge with the J-10s in a turning fight in the horizontal plane just as a third fireball erupted behind another J-10, sending licks of flame coming out of the fuselage of that aircraft. A moment later the cockpit canopy blew out and the pilot ejected…
“Bull-rider-Three, at your service, Leader!”
“Damn good to hear from you, boy! Do you have visual on the other buggers? I don’t ha...”
A streak of yellow tracer rounds flew past his cockpit glass. Tikkar flipped his aircraft instinctively to the side to evade. A large blur passed by the side of his glass in the darkness. The surviving Su-30 was back!
Holy crap!
“Bull-rider-Actual, you got a Flanker right within you guys!” the AEW operator warned.
“No shit! Bull-rider-Three: go after the other Juliet birds! I will take the Flanker!”
“Roger! Tally-ho!”
Tikkar had seen the Chinese Su-30 maneuvering below him. In the suddenness of the merge, the latter pilot had not been able to release missiles. But now they had recovered orientation and situational-awareness.
The Flanker began to maneuver. Hard!
On board his Mig-21, all that remained were cannon rounds. Tikkar knew that fuel would be turning critical as well. But at the moment the large monster of a Su-30 positioning itself for an infrared missile shot at point blank range was the greater worry.
This is not a fight he relished.
As he slashed across the Sukhoi, firing a burst of cannon rounds, the obviously experienced enemy pilot simply pulled away, utilizing its superior thrust-weight ratios and was now quickly behind the Mig-21. Just like that Tikkar was caught in a tail chase as he was headed straight down into the valleys below. He looked around the cockpit:
Fuel low. Weapons gone. A Flanker on his tail.
There was no escape to the mathematics of it all…
He flipped the aircraft to the side, pulled it in a steep turn that squeezed his body against the seat and managed to pull above the valley walls while turning a full 180 degrees. He only got halfway there. The Chinese pilot saw, anticipated and used his superior maneuverability to momentarily pitch the aircraft up and yaw it to the side to lace the front of turning Mig-21 with a long burst of cannon rounds, riddling the aircraft from nose to tail.
As the large Su-30 recovered from its pitch-up and pulled into the skies above Thimpu, Tikkar’s Mig-21 smashed into one of the peaks west of the city and disappeared into a ball of fire. On board the AEW aircraft to the south, Bull-rider-Actual disappeared from radar and comms.
With the skies swept clear over western Bhutan, the four remaining J-10s heading south towards Paru airport, while the Su-30 finished off the last Indian Mig-21. There were no more Indian defenses between the Chinese pilots and their target…
PARU AIRPORT
BHUTAN
DAY 6 + 1935 HRS
There were no klaxons at the airport. It was not a military base. It had been a civilian airport until a day ago. The black smoke spewing into the air at the southern edge of the airbase perimeter marked the location where one of the Bull-rider Mig-21s had gone down. It had been witnessed by the entire Para contingent securing the airbase as well as the air-force crew offloading the Mi-26 on the tarmac.
Squadron-Leader Saxena shouted for everybody to get the hell away from the airport and find cover. As the paratroopers ran to cover, a single two-man team manning an Igla shoulder launched missile got into position. They represented the only air-cover for Paru now.
“Here they come!” Saxena’s other two FACs shouted from the roof of the terminal building as he saw the J-10s diving into the valley from the west. He looked around and saw that a good bit of logistical equipment and supplies were spread out on the tarmac. There had simply been no time to get them out.
No time now!
“Everybody get into cover! Now!” Saxena shouted as he picked up his INSAS rifle and ran from the tarmac towards the terminal building. Everybody else was doing the same around him. He was shouting orders as he ran through the terminal’s main doors:
“Go! Go! Don’t stop! Get out of the terminal building to the other side! Abandon the O-P on the roof now! Move!”
On the roof, the other two air-force NCOs had already grabbed their rifles and equipment and were rappelling down the ropes on the other side of the building…
In the skies above, the four J-10s armed with iron-bombs had broken formation as they began their approach over the airbase. The Igla missile team at the airport had already seen the black specks approaching. Now they were looking for a lock using the infrared seekers. But range and terrain was against them from the start…
A few moments later the Chinese aircraft flew over the airport and the Paras on the perimeter returned fire from their LMGs.
But it didn’t matter.
The first J-10 flew over the tarmac where the Mi-26 was parked and released his entire load of bombs as it streaked past. The series of thunderous blasts ripped through the tarmac area, shredding the Mi-26 into smithereens and consuming the stored ordinance in its developing fireball.
The shockwave smashed through the terminal and the control tower, gutting the side of the buildings facing the tarmac…
It seemed like an eternity had passed when Saxena opened his eyes. Smoke and dust filled his lungs. Broken glass and pieces of debris covered every inch of the ground, and large chunks of the building were collapsing around him. All of it was strangely quiet and it took him a second to realize that all he heard was painful ringing in his ears. He brought his hands up to his face to see the blood coming out of some minor wounds and a whole bunch of other scratches, but felt no pain. His brain was still catching up with the suddenness of the impact the body had taken. He got up to see his uniform covered in dust and small pieces of burning debris, which he shook off as he began to look around and see where he was.
Another member of his controller team ran up beside him and was literally dragging him away. Saxena’s mind had still not caught up to the events after the powerful blast had knocked him out.
Right now, all he could see was that his dust covered rifle was left behind where he had fallen. He could see his legs making their drag path through the dust covered floor while his colleague was pulling him away.
“My weapon! Damn you! It’s over there! My weapon’s on the ground over there! Don’t leave it there!”
His colleague however, had other things in mind as he heard the enemy jet engine noises overhead:
“Leave it! We have to get out of this building now! It’s going to get hit any second!”
“We are at the front, soldier! I need that rifle! I…” Saxena’s thoughts finally began catching up to him as the
two men reached the other end of the building:
“…are they still overhead? Wait: what about the others? Wait!”
Before his colleague could respond, another jet screamed overhead and a series of blasts destroyed the area the two men had been just a minute ago. This time they were far closer to the explosions. The powerful shockwave swept like a moving wall of bricks through the entrance of the terminal building on the other side and sent both men and two of the Paratroopers flying into the air amidst a cloud of debris and dust. They fell close to each other on the road outside, about ten meters away, rolling into the road filled with overturned and burning cars…
It took several seconds of coughing before Saxena rolled over his back and used the open door of a nearby abandoned army truck to stand up, leaning on the vehicle as he did. He had been shielded by his colleague, who now lay on the ground motionless, a pool of blood nearby. Gupta saw another dust covered soldier also staggering over to his colleague, and several other air-force ground-crewmen rushing over to help him and the others screaming from pain. When he finally turned to face the airport, he could only watch in horror.
There was a massive gaping hole where the main terminal building had been. A pillar of black smoke was gushing into the air from it. The control tower was a pillar of blazing fire now. When he turned his head upwards at the sound of jet engines, he could only hear unfriendly ones. Two or three black specks were still flying over Paru against the starlit night sky, seemingly picking targets on the airbase below.
A shriek of pain from someone nearby brought focus to his brain despite the shock. He began getting his motor skills back in action and staggered over to the open ground where he saw some soldiers staggering away clumsily, their uniforms covered with dust. Saxena grabbed one of them by the shoulder:
“Don’t stay in the open, damn it! Get on the other side of the road and into cover! Go!”
He then ran over to a bleeding army radioman who had managed to escape the nightmarish cauldron inside the building and grabbed him by his radio harness:
“Look at me! Is your CNR working?” Saxena shouted.
He struggled to comprehend the question. The man was more shell-shocked than it appeared at first to Saxena. Saxena waved over a warrant-officer.
“Help me get this CNR set off this soldier! I need to get in touch with warlord-central!”
While both men removed the harness, Saxena continued talking: “Have you seen the other forward controllers? I cannot see them!”
“No sir! We lost sight of everybody right before the attack, I...” the warrant officer’s sentence was broken mid-sentence as another thunderous explosion rocked the airport perimeter to the west. Both men looked up to see a J-10 streak by in a blur. Soon the radio was back in Saxena’s hands. He turned to the airman:
“Okay, get him behind cover and keep him there. Go!”
He then switched the radio on as the other two men staggered away from the road and into cover. But as he attempted to figure out why the set was not working, a sudden explosion in the sky above caused him to jerk his head up…
A small fireball had just turned into smoke above the airport and an aircraft began falling out of the sky. The burning wreckage of what had been a Chinese J-10 smashed into the peaks north of the airbase...
As the stunned Indian survivors at the airport looked up, wondering what had happened, a gray-painted canard-equipped fighter streaked overhead on full afterburner.
“Yeah! That was an MKI!” Saxena turned around to face the wounded soldiers nearby: “That was one of ours! Our boys are here!!”
ABOVE PARU AIRPORT
BHUTAN
DAY 6 + 1955 HRS
“Juliet-Tenner at your three!”
“Roger. I have him. He’s not going anywhere.”
The two Indian Su-30 crews to enter southern Bhutan had caught the Chinese pilots at a disadvantage. Instead of waiting for a clean beyond-visual-range annihilation of the J-10s as they climbed out of the valley, the Su-30 flight-leader had decided to mix it up with them at low altitude in order to break their attack runs. The airport below was already ablaze and flames were lighting up the valley in an orange glow. Within the thin walls of the valley, the J-10 had serious limitations in maneuverability. Not so for the Su-30MKIs which were far better suited for this job…
The flight leader had already dispatched one J-10 and its unfortunate pilot within seconds of entering the fray.
The Chinese pilot never knew what hit him. And as the flaming debris of that aircraft hit the ground, the two Su-30s had swept over the airport and were already mixing it with other three J-10s. Their attack on Paru had been halted. Their struggle to make it home alive had begun.
The Su-30 flight-leader flipped his aircraft to the starboard, pulled back on the stick and switching to guns, laced the sky ahead of him with cannon rounds. Most of these found their mark and another J-10’s engine smoked out and the aircraft flew into the valley north of Paru, a dead man’s control on the hands.
“Smack-down!” the flight-leader sent out over the comms as he saw his prey exploding into a fireball within the alpine trees below.
“Two down! Two-to-go! Do you have a visual?”
“Uh, roger that, leader,” his wingman replied. “I see two bandits bugging out to the north and gaining altitude!”
“Huge mistake! Wouldn’t you agree?” the flight-leader concluded.
There was a slight chuckle over the radio.
“Roger that boss! I have visual. I have acquisition,” the wingman depressed the launch button and felt the R-77s falling away, “and I have engaged!”
The two R-77s streaked away trailing a smoke exhaust, tail-chasing the two J-10s on afterburner at ten kilometers…
The results were predictable. Favorable kinetics was available to the Indian attacker. Two near-simultaneous fireballs announced the destruction of the two fleeing Chinese aircraft. The flight-leader was not impressed with the PLAAF pilots and their poor visual-combat skills.
Amateurs!
“Okay. White-Knight-Leader declares the skies over southern Bhutan as all clear. Now let’s go find ourselves that lone Sierra-Uniform bird to the north!”
The two aircraft punched afterburners and accelerating north just as four No. 7 Squadron Mirage-2000s established DCA patrol over Paru. The gap in Indian air-defenses over Bhutan had now been closed. But with heavy losses in aircraft, personnel and facilities, the damage was done.
PARU AIRPORT
BHUTAN
DAY 6 + 2115 HRS
He had been lucky.
Saxena realized that this was the gist of it. It had taken quite some time before the pain in his ears had subsided. Blood had poured out of one ear due to shrapnel wounds. Scratches and burns were everywhere on his body. He had even vomited after the pressure waves from numerous explosions had ripped through the body. He was still somewhat nauseous from it.
And yet, he was luckier than most around him…
Saxena sat on an abandoned ammunition crate near the main terminal entrance of the airport. What was left of the terminal, that is. An army corpsman was tending to his shrapnel wound near the ear.
Other soldiers had arrived from Haa-Dzong and were laying the dead bodies on the side of the road, waiting for the trucks to take them south. As he sat there, he watched the seventeenth body being brought out and laid in a line. Some more were even worse off: their bodies not being recoverable from the debris just yet.
He sighed and looked back up at the smoking wreckage that was Paru airport at the moment. The fires had died away because of the cold and the lack of combustibles left untouched. But the debris was still spewing smoke all around.
“That should do it for now,” the corpsman said.
Saxena nodded to him in silence and the army medic walked away towards the stretchers laid out nearby where another wounded paratrooper had been laid down, one of his legs blown away and the blanket laid over him red with blood near the knees. He was dosed
with painkillers and couldn’t feel anything. Saxena looked at him, squinted and then looked back again at the smoldering remains of the terminal building.
Time to get back to work…
He stood up, walking past the road now crowded with army soldiers. There were no soldiers inside the airport though. They had been ordered to stay away until the ordinance disposal teams had swept it. They had been working on for an hour now and were almost done.
“Heck of a mess, old boy!” a voice said from behind.
Saxena turned to back to see an army Lieutenant-Colonel accompanied by two fully armed soldiers walking up to him, leaving their AXE utility vehicle by the road. The officer was wearing his standard army disruptive-pattern camouflage uniform. His name tag said: ‘Fernandez’. Saxena snapped off a salute, jerking loose some of the dust off his uniform with the sudden motion.
“Sir!”
“Easy there, son!” Fernandez said. He glanced at the collapsed terminal and the smoking wreck that was the control tower. He whistled softly.
“Hell of a bombardment you guys went through. Casualties?”
Saxena looked around at the screams and the mumbled pain of the soldiers all around.
“Considerable, sir. We…uh, lost a lot of the air-force personnel trying to evacuate as much of the supplies and logistical equipment on the tarmac as we could before the attack. My F-A-C team has suffered near total fatalities,” Saxena choked as he completed that last bit.
Fernandez patted the young officer on his back.
“Nasty business, son! But this is our job! Your team members did their job as they were trained to do. You did the same,” he said and continued:
“For now, let’s get this business straight. You haven’t met me before. I am the commander of a Pinaka M-B-R-L battery northeast of here. We saw the attack on the airport from our locations. I suggested to General Potgam that I head over here to assess the damage since I was the closest senior officer here at the time. When someone higher up comes along, I will be on my merry way. In the meantime, I am in command. Understood?”