Chimera

by Vivek Ahuja

  And that meant only one thing…

  He saw the first Indian Mi-17V5 helicopter appear as it cleared the ridgeline behind and above him to the east and flared for a landing a few hundred meters away. Followed by more.

  He looked around for his personal sidearm and didn’t find it anywhere in the snow. He did see the body of his radioman lying in a pool of red blood soaking into the powdery white snow a few meters away. He dived towards the man and took his QBZ-95 assault-rifle, checking its ammo clip.

  By this time the first gunfire noises were filling the air. He saw soldiers and surviving officers from his headquarters grabbing their rifles and ordering men to head east and create a line of defense against the attacking Indian paratroopers…

  He tucked the rifle into his shoulder and checked the sights. They were operational. He then turned the body of his radioman over to see a horrid scene. The man’s chest was ripped open by rocket shrapnel and still smoldering from it. He winced and checked the soldier’s harness for ammunition clips. He found two.

  That will have to do!

  He forced himself to his feet just as the Indian Mi-17s began lifting off from the east and were climbing back up the slope. They were trying to get out of the line of fire as quickly as they could. And sure enough, they were taking fire as yellow flashes of tracers were flying into the air around them, some hitting the gray painted fuselages with distinct snags. He threw out an expletive, brought up his rifle to shoulder level, tugged it in and fired three-round bursts at the closest of the departing helicopters. He aimed for the cockpit and kept firing bursts until he saw the starboard cockpit glass of the helicopter shatter into pieces. His rifle chamber clacked metal on metal, telling him that he was out of rounds in that clip…

  To his satisfaction he saw the helicopter veering west towards him. The sunlight shined across the shattered cockpit glass, now smattered red with blood from one of the crew members slumped in his seat. The PLA Major-General realized he must have hit the co-pilot and perhaps even the pilot. The helicopter leapt above his head a few seconds later amidst a roar of its blades and its shadow went over him.

  He slapped a second clip into his rifle and dropped the first in the snow near his feet, keeping his eyes fixed on the Indian helicopter west of him now.

  But he flinched from the flash of light as a surface-to-air missile streaked up from the valley below and slammed into the port engine of the Mi-17. The jarring explosion ripped the engine section apart and the main rotors immediately lost power. The front of the helicopter slammed into the snow covered rocks and fell down on the slope with a thud. It shook violently amongst the rocks and then flipped over. The Highland Division commander smiled as he saw the helicopter wreck rolling down the slope towards the village of Barshong below.

  A small victory in all this mess!

  Two of his soldiers ran up to him and knelt beside him, covering him with their rifles. He looked around and tried to make sense of the ground battle now taking place to his east between the survivors of his headquarters and the Indian paratroopers. But it was a lost battle and he realized it. His experienced ears picked up the course of the battle from the gunfire noises. He ordered his men to move out towards it.

  They ran down the slope past the blazing tree trunks and smoldering black craters dug out of the snow by the rockets. He saw about two dozen or so scattered PLA soldiers from his unit fighting in twos and threes behind rocks near the destroyed headquarter bunkers. To the east he saw dozens of Indian paratroopers advancing tactically as they eliminated the still-dazed PLA opposition on the hilltop.

  He was about to shout his first orders when one of the soldiers next to him shrieked and fell forward into the snow. The General saw a bullet hole ripped into his back as blood poured out. He turned around and saw what looked like ten men or so moving down the ridge from the west, silhouetted by the setting sun behind them. One of the men’s optics glinted in the light and the General realized they were taking fire from their rear.

  He brought up his rifle to aim but an enemy bullet ripped through his arm. Other rifle sounds from the nine enemy soldiers filled the air and threw up snow all around him. He turned and saw his arm bleeding profusely as the pain shot up to his head. He cursed and that turned out to be his last breath as another bullet caught him in the neck and exited from the back. His body slumped into the snow with a thud…

  …Tarun lowered his Dragunov sniper rifle and looked above its optics to see the two bodies in the snow, a few hundred meters east.

  “Looks like I got myself somebody important!” he exclaimed over the gunfire as Spear team got into the assault on Barshong.

  “No shit! You want to keep firing though!” Vikram shouted from a dozen meters away as he took cover behind a boulder and removed another clip from his harness chest pocket after dropping the first one from his Tavor rifle.

  “Spear! Keep up the advance!” Pathanya shouted over the team’s comms and ran a few dozen feet down the slope to another rocky cover position. A handful of PLA survivors near the headquarters started returning fire and bullets began ricocheting around nearby rocks.

  The Indian paratroopers of the 11TH Para-SF Battalion under Colonel Misra had landed behind enemy ridgeline defenses east of Barshong on air-force Mi-17s. They had arrived just behind the rocket artillery barrage from Lieutenant-Colonel Fernandez’s Pinaka unit at Paru. That barrage had eliminated a good portion of the PLA Highland Division headquarters seconds before the assault.

  But now they had to move fast and secure Barshong before the three hundred PLA soldiers on the eastern ridges realized that they had been bypassed and began arriving in force here…

  Pathanya looked up and saw the sunlight from the west glinting off the Searcher-II UAV overhead in the blue sky. He removed the SATCOM radio speaker from his chest harness and pushed it under his boonie-hat to his ears:

  “Warlord, this is Spear-One! Do you copy? Over?”

  “Roger, Spear. We copy all.” Joint-Force-Bhutan headquarters chimed back on the radio.

  “Spear has successfully bypassed enemy defenses and is at objective Bravo! Main force has arrived and is rolling in. We confirm loss of one of our birds. We need you to initiate bombardment of eastern ridge and suppress enemy positions! Over!”

  Pathanya put the speaker back into its slot in the harness and looked around. Vikram, Tarun, Sarvanan, Ravi and the others were already past his position and were advancing under steadily reducing fire from the PLA positions. He saw the paratroopers overrunning the enemy headquarters and taking no prisoners. Soon the sounds of Chinese QBZ-95 rifles were subsiding…

  He jerked his head up as the sky filled with the screech of diving supersonic rockets and the PLA positions east of Barshong disappeared in a line of smoke filled explosions. A cloud of brown dust rose into the sky for hundreds of feet. The rumble from the explosions passed through his feet several seconds later.

  Pathanya got on his feet and advanced down the slope to catch up with his men. He saw Vikram and Tarun walking cautiously towards the three dead bodies lying some distance away. Vikram slung his rifle on the chest and pulled out his thigh-holstered sidearm as they slowly approached the bodies. Tarun looked over to Vikram who nodded. So he lowered his Dragunov rifle and knelt beside the center body and turned him over. It was an old man with white hair and a black star on his digital-camo uniform. Tarun whistled and stood up on his feet.

  “What is it?” Pathanya said as he jogged over.

  “The Highland Division commander,” Vikram said soberly.

  Pathanya looked over the grimaced face of the dead Chinese officer and sighed. He looked around as the hills to the east rumbled again as a second salvo from Hotel-Six ripped the PLA positions there to shreds even as more Mi-17 noises filled the air from the south.

  “Okay. You two,” Pathanya pointed to Vikram and Tarun, “make sure to check all of his pockets for papers and anything else you can find. The intelligence boys will be very interested in knowing what
this man carried with him. If possible, we will get his body out on one of the outgoing birds, so mark the position. I am taking the rest of Spear and meeting up with the Paras in the village so that they know we are still alive. Understood?”

  Pathanya received nods from the two men so he trudged off in the snow down the slope. He walked past the burnt tree trunks spewing smoke and past the bullet riddled bodies of the dead PLA soldiers. He saw Indian paratroopers in the ruins of Barshong as they pursued the last enemy survivors retreating west towards Mount Chomolhari, leaving the Highland Division staging area in northern Bhutan to the Indians…

  THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

  DAY 13 + 1600 HRS

  “Tally ho!”

  The two air-to-air armed Indian Su-30s in the strike force of six banked away in unison as they spotted two patrolling PLAAF Su-27s fifty kilometers north. The two Chinese pilots were surprised at the sudden radar emissions south of them that showed Indian Su-30s. The PLAAF and the PLAN had not been expecting anything to happen so far east near their home waters between Vietnam and Hainan.

  Least of all from the Indians.

  The PLAAF 2ND Fighter Division tasked with the defense of Hainan island airbases from any threat had spent the past two weeks conducting uneventful patrols. The only action this unit had seen was when they had sent two of their Su-27s on a deep strike mission with H-6 tanker support against the Indian Navy aircraft in the Malacca Strait last week. Those two fighters had not returned, but they had shot down an Indian Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft before losing their lives to naval Mig-29Ks.

  Inaction since that time had bred complacency within the 2ND Fighter Division and which had extended to the defensive patrols over Hainan…

  The two Su-27s broke formation and dived as they saw the two Su-30s getting into position for beyond-visual-range missile shots. They threw off chaff clouds and pulled up at lower altitude before spreading out. Their on-board RWRs were screeching now in their ears as they lined up for their own shots and realized that the Indians had fired two R-77s at them. Seconds later they responded with a volley of four PJ-12s and broke formation again to evade.

  On the other side, the Indian pilots did the same and deployed effective ECMs and chaff clouds. Three of the four PJ-12s flew off erratically as the ECMs cluttered up their picture. The Indian R-77s had similar trouble, but one of them connected and exploded above the cockpit of the closest Su-27, detonating in a fireball that shredded the cockpit and killed the pilot while severing the two vertical stabilizers. The aircraft yawed and spiraled into the waters below.

  As the other Su-27 closed within visual range, the two Su-30s dived in after him and ensured he stayed away and unable to interfere with the real mission…

  The four other Su-30s from the ‘Flying Bullets’ Squadron was still at high altitude and began spreading out east of Vietnamese waters. They carried only two R-77s each for self-defense. But on their centerline they carried the last of the Brahmos ALCMs left in the Indian arsenals.

  All four aircraft dropped their deadly centerline cargo two-hundred kilometers off the southern coast of Hainan and banked away while the missiles sped off and dropped to lower altitudes. Several hundred kilometers south of them, the two Il-78 tankers were orbiting east of the Vietnamese coast and well within range of their long-range surveillance radars. The Vietnamese air-force personnel had been briefed on this issue and so they continued to observe and ignore whatever they saw the Indians doing…

  On the southern coast of Hainan were Sanya and Lingshui airbases. Both were part of the PLAN 9TH Fighter Division which operated J-8 and JH-7 aircraft in naval-support role alongside the PLAAF 2ND Fighter Division forces. Both airbases were close to the coastline and much more open and exposed than the super-hardened airbase at Ledong in central Hainan. This latter airbase was not on the target listing because of the small number of ALCMs available and the hardened nature of the base. But Sanya and Lingshui were not that lucky…

  Chinese long-range surveillance radar on the mountains of central Hainan spotted the four supersonic blips on their screens as they split into two groups. The warning went out quickly to all airbases on Hainan. On Sanya and Lingshui, personnel abandoned their parked J-8s and JH-7s on the concrete tarmac as the missiles appeared over the horizon.

  Sanya was the first to be hit with the single Brahmos missile aimed for it. It flew over the waves of the beach and dived into open tarmac at Sanya amidst the parked JH-7s. It penetrated a dozen feet into the concrete and then exploded, ripping out the concrete in a one-hundred meter radius behind the pressure wave and demolished the line of parked JH-7s in split-seconds. The expanding pressure waves also ripped into the airbase facilities and shredded the terminal buildings at Sanya along with two parked airliners further down. The thunder from the explosion was heard all over the city and people there could plainly see the black column of smoke rising into the sky from the airport.

  And then they heard three more distant rumbles from Lingshui…

  By the time the six Su-30s began topping off their tanks from the Il-78s on their way south, the 2ND Fighter Division and the 9TH PLAN Fighter Divisions were scrambling fighters all over Hainan. But with a clear lead of more than a thousand kilometers on them and increasing, the Indians were too far out for any hope of intercept.

  So instead the fighters were deployed defensively over Hainan to safeguard against further attacks. As the fighters began orbiting over the island, they could clearly see the columns of smoke and dust rising into the sky from the two airbases on the southern coast.

  KOLKATA

  INDIA

  DAY 13 + 1700 HRS

  “Time to move to the final phase here,” General Yadav said as he threw the satellite images back on to Lieutenant-General Suman’s table. The latter was still in his office chair behind the desk. Suman nodded but remained in thought as he picked up one of the images from the table.

  Operation Chimera had been a qualified success. His eastern army’s XXXIII Corps had moved against the two PLA Divisions in the Chumbi valley with all three of its organic Divisions and Suman had also added the 23RD Infantry Division to that list. With this last Division, the 2ND, 5TH and 71ST Mountain Divisions had rolled into Chumbi valley with enough force to deplete the Chinese 55TH and 11TH Divisions as well as all of the Border Guards Regiments there in the past ten days of combat.

  The satellite images showed Suman and Yadav what they had wanted to see. Both Chinese Divisions were now slowly pulling back to the north, leaving rear guard units which were either being pushed back or decimated by the advancing Indian forces. The slow retreat of these two Divisions across the valley was also being subjected to heavy aerial bombardment by the IAF. Under all these circumstances, Suman was not sure why they were pulling out their prepared positions, but perhaps they had finally broken the Chinese back.

  Maybe…It was one theory. Suman leaned back in his chair.

  “What’s the matter?” Yadav asked as he gazed at his army commander.

  “Chimera has been a success. That’s for sure. But why would they withdraw? Why now?” Suman added.

  “Because we pushed them out,” Yadav added. “No?”

  Suman shook his head and let out a deep breath.

  “Maybe,” he said after several seconds. “Maybe the fact that Potgam has finally pushed the Highland Division out of northern Bhutan has something to do with this. They know now that their left flank in the valley is gone and we have them by the balls on the right and center.”

  “And?” Yadav quizzed.

  “You know what they say about an attack that is progressing too well, right?”

  Yadav thought about Suman’s words and picked up the images again from the table.

  “You think they are luring us north?” he said. “But they have no units there to attack us with. And their 15TH Corps has not arrived yet. And it won’t either if the air-force has anything to say about it. And these two Divisions are in no condition to fight us anymore. Don’t overth
ink it. It’s about time we took the initiative. Your other forces north of Tawang got hung up on account of that missile attack on Tawang. God only knows when that mess will be cleared enough to allow us to resume our offensive in that sector. So let’s take this opportunity here while it exists. It’s time to kill those two Divisions before they escape the Chumbi valley!”

  “Yes sir,” Suman said and then leaned forward to pick the phone.

  NORTH OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY

  DAY 13 + 1830 HRS

  The constant rumble of the aircraft engines, the vibrations of the fuselage as the winds outside buffeted it and the smell of fuselage metal were all familiar to him. He had done this his entire life. He took a deep breath to inhale the smell of the fuselage in as he removed the maps from his chest pocket and unfolded them on his lap. He removed a small flashlight and lit up the portion of the map he wanted to see one final time. He held the flashlight in his mouth as he studied the maps and all of the red and blue markings he had done on them a few hours before.

  It all looked good.

  He folded the map back together into neat square folds, stuffed them back in his pocket, sealed the zipper tight, and removed the flashlight from his mouth and flicked it off. He looked up and saw the other paratroopers sitting across from him staring at him in silence. Their faces were covered with streaks of brown and white face-paint and their rifles were tucked into their harnesses. He knew they depended on him staying calm, composed and organized in the middle of all this.

  So he nodded slightly and then looked to his left at the hundred other paratroopers also in their seats further up the fuselage cabin. He was sitting very close to the rear ramp and saw the two air-force jumpmasters standing by in their green overalls near the closed ramp doors. Their ears were covered by the earphones as they spoke something inaudible into its mouthpiece.

  Colonel Thomas wondered yet again whether he was leading his men to disaster as the time for the jump approached.