Chimera

by Vivek Ahuja

  But as the radar imagery continued to update on the wall-mounted screens in front of him, Air-Vice-Marshal Malhotra put his hands behind his head and let out a long breath…

  NEW-DELHI

  DAY 15 + 1200 HRS

  “You want to strike them inside Tibet?” Chakri asked as Iyer finished outlining his nuclear counter-strike.

  “Wait a minute here!” Ravoof added as he understood what Chakri was talking about as well.

  “There is no other choice!” Iyer replied. “If you want to stop the 15TH Corps dead in its tracks, then you have to hit them where they are! And they are in Tibet right now; just south of Gyantse, as a matter of fact.”

  “We can’t do that!” the PM said as he dismissed Iyer’s assessment. “We will end up killing thousands of Tibetan civilians and undoing everything that has existed between India and Tibet! They will not forgive us for this for generations!”

  “If Beijing allows that many Tibetan generations to survive their genocidal activities there to start with,” Chakri added quietly.

  “That is not the point!” the NSA retorted. “If you want to strike them, do it over Chinese soil! The 15TH Corps can be handled by conventional means. We have enough forces in the valley under General Suman now that the two enemy Divisions there have collapsed.”

  “I don’t want to use our nuclear weapons at all!” the PM said. It got him a frown from all others in the conversation except Ravoof.

  “We have already been struck!” Chakri said forcefully. “Bhutan is our responsibility and our paratroopers have died there in the hundreds thanks to the Chinese nuclear strike! General Potgam just lost two Para battalions along with hundreds of regular army and air-force personnel. Our men! Tens of thousands of Bhutanese civilians are dead as well! And had we not detected those launchers in time we would not even be alive! Beijing deserves everything we can throw at them at this point!”

  “And then they will respond to our strikes with strikes of their own,” Ravoof replied. “And then we will do it again to them and the cycle goes on! Where does it stop? When both India and China have lost all of their major cities and millions of their citizens? There has to be another way here, Chakri! Striking military targets inside China with nuclear weapons is one thing. But become too successful at it and they will respond against our cities?”

  “We cannot not respond to the Chinese attack!” Chakri shouted.

  “No,” the PM said, “what we can’t afford is to throw away the conventional victory in Tibet for our lust for Chinese blood. The whole reason they attacked us with nuclear weapons was to force us to do the same and help them dilute the sharp nature of their defeat in Tibet. This is why they didn’t go after our cities. This is also why there were no more launches from them in the last few hours. It was a lure to drag us into a fight we cannot win and away from a fight we did win! We need to look past that lure and see what we have accomplished. Now that their launchers in Tibet are destroyed and their forces in the Chumbi valley and Bhutan are defeated, we have the upper hand. Especially after the hit on their command center. That constitutes an advantage I am willing to use!”

  “Do we even know who’s in charge in Beijing now?” Ravoof asked.

  “Hard to say,” the NSA added, “but probably somebody from the military. We will know more soon enough. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on their DF-31 missiles. Movement on those units will mean a follow up strike against our cities is in play, and that will be the point at which we will launch our counter-response.”

  “So what is our response in the meantime?” Iyer asked.

  KORLA

  NORTHWESTERN CHINA

  DAY 15 + 1310 HRS

  “Confirm, Korla-tower. We are beginning approach in one minute.”

  “Pattern is clear.” The radio squawked.

  The Lieutenant-Colonel piloting the aircraft had his right hand on the throttle as the engine whine decreased slightly. His left hand was on the controls as he and his co-pilot brought the KJ-2000 down below the gray cloud cover over Korla. The view from the cockpit was negligible as they broke through the clouds. After a few seconds the aircraft cleared under them and the partially snow covered ground around Korla was visible.

  The co-pilot pressed the button for lowering the undercarriage. The aircraft shuddered discernably as the large wheels of the modified Il-76 lowered themselves and locked into position. The pilot also lowered the huge wing flaps. The flaps lowered with a constant humming noise.

  “You see it?” the pilot asked as he looked out from the cockpit glass.

  “To your left, twenty kilometers,” the co-pilot replied as he spotted the concrete runway at Korla.

  “I have it.”

  This aircraft was one of the last pair of KJ-2000s in the PLAAF that had survived the two weeks of war with the IAF. Both sides had taken hits to their airborne-radar force. The Indians had lost a CABS AEW and all of its crew over northern Bhutan less than two days before. Most of its eastern aerostats were down as well.

  On the Chinese side, the 26TH Air Division had paid a heavy price. At the start of the war this Division controlled the special-mission support aircraft for the PLAAF and as such had been in the IAF cross-hairs right from the start. The Division had lost a Tu-154 electronic-warfare aircraft north of Arunachal-Pradesh early in the war, but its KJ-2000s and KJ-200s had been luckier until a week ago.

  The Lieutenant-Colonel brought his aircraft into a large radius turn and aligned himself with the runway just as the escorting pair of J-11s broke formation and climbed back into the cloud cover above.

  As the aircraft altitude reduced and the experienced Lieutenant-Colonel gingerly adjusted the approach, the screen from the cockpit glass suddenly disappeared in a brilliant flash of light. Both men instantly brought their arms up to cover their eyes as the light dissipated somewhat and revealed a small yellow ball of flame rising above the ground north of them.

  “What was that!?” the co-pilot shouted as he leaned through the right side of the cockpit glass to see the fire ball going up inside a mushroom shaped smoke cloud…

  “It was a nuclear detonation! We just lost Uxxaktal airbase!” the Lieutenant-Colonel shouted. “We need to get out of here! Now!”

  He immediately pushed his right hand on the throttle controls all the way forward. The whine from the engines outside instantly increased and the aircraft shuddered. The engines were soon groaning at maximum throttle settings. He pushed the radio frequency on the comms for Korla.

  “Tower! We just lost Uxxaktal to a nuclear detonation! It must be the…Korla tower?” he said and then checked his frequencies. They had been correct the first time, but he had set them wrong in his urgency. He corrected that back again:

  “Korla tower, this is…” he began to speak as their front view disappeared in another flash of white light. This time the light was over Korla and much brighter than before.

  He and his co-pilot pulled the control sticks back even as they shielded their eyes using their shoulders and shouted in pain. The aircraft pulled up immediately and the fuselage strained and groaned under the intense stress.

  By the time the flash of light subsided, they were already at a very high pitch-up attitude, which for an aircraft the size of an Il-76, was extremely stressful. Both pilots realized this and instantly pushed the sticks back and the aircraft began leveling out, climbing above the ball of pure yellow fire now taking shape over the airbase. Of course, they had been heading straight for it and the pressure waves expand in three-dimensional space…

  It hit the aircraft a few moments later just as they pulled level.

  The sudden bang instantly eliminated all aircraft controls and the engine whine died as the aircraft began diving. The pressure wave had ripped three of the four engines right off their pylons under the wings along with most of the control surfaces. They were close enough to the explosion that they saw the floor of smoke and dust that had enveloped the ground in a circular pattern around the detonation point. The
ground now completely filled the view from the cockpit as they both attempted to pull level with whatever controls they had left.

  They managed to do that and the aircraft pulled level just as it passed into the smoke floor on the ground and made a belly landing on the frozen paddy fields a few kilometers south of the runway. The aircraft broke into several pieces and flipped and rolled into the muddy waters. There was only a small fire, given that they had been very low on fuel at arrival to Korla.

  But there was no question of survivors from such a violent crash and as the center fuselage barrel of the KJ-2000 covered in slushy mud rolled to a halt next to a demolished farmhouse, a massive black smoke-filled cloud was rising through the large hole in the gray cloud cover above created by the nuclear detonation…

  BARSHONG

  NORTHERN BHUTAN

  DAY 15 + 1320 HRS

  “No…no!” Vikram said as he ran over.

  He landed on the ground next to Pathanya, who was laying on his back, covered in dust and his body covered in bruises. He was bleeding out of the corner of his mouth as a trail of blood rolled down his cheeks. His leg was crushed under a rock that had landed on it.

  “Look at me, boss! Sir! Look. At. Me!” he shouted as he moved Pathanya’s head over with his hands.

  Pathanya’s eyes moved slightly as he coughed up some more blood trying to speak.

  Okay…he’s alive. For now!

  Vikram looked at Pathanya’s leg and tried moving the rock away, but he didn’t have the strength. He looked around for something to use as leverage and looked east. He froze in his actions as he watched a large, brown cloud of dust rising into the blue sunny sky above, drifting east. It was drifting away from them. He looked down and saw that the valley was filled with the smoke and dust like water filling up the cracks…

  Barshong was gone.

  And so were the 11TH Para Battalion soldiers deployed there after they had overrun the Highland Division headquarters earlier.

  Vikram was still staring at the rising cloud when he heard rustling behind him and turned to see Tarun straggling over. He patted Vikram on the back and a mound of dust fell off his uniform from it. Vikram pointed to the rock on Pathanya’s leg and together they pushed it aside, relieving the pressure on the leg. Instantly Pathanya cried in agony as his body felt the severed leg once again…

  “We need to get him out of here!” Tarun said quietly as he saw the broken leg under the rock.

  “Where’s your backpack?” Vikram asked.

  “Heaven knows! I don’t even have my weapon anymore!” he replied, kneeling beside the Captain.

  “Shit!” Vikram looked around and saw a radio lying half-buried in gravel a few meters away. He got up on his feet and ran to it, sliding in the gravel as he grabbed the speaker and brought it his ear.

  “This is Spear-Two to any Juliet-Foxtrot-Bravo units! We are in need of immediate medical assistance west of Barshong! We have a man in critical condition! Does anybody read? Over!”

  He waited for several seconds but got no reply except static.

  “Damn this thing!” he said to himself as he reached for the set, pulled it out of the gravel and dusted it off. He realized it had been knocked out by the explosion. Tarun ran over.

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “No joy!” Vikram replied. “We are on our own. Get the Captain ready to move. Use whatever you can find to patch his leg up. Seen any of the others?”

  Tarun shook his head and pointed some distance away where Ravi lay motionless under a tree-trunk that had fallen on top of him.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Vikram replied, clearing the lump in his throat. “We have to move right now!”

  “Where are we going?” Tarun asked as Vikram got up, dusted his uniform and then walked over to pick up a Tavor rifle from the ground nearby, checking its sights to see if everything worked.

  “South,” Vikram replied. “We have to get to Thimpu or Dotanang. Or even some village that has a working telephone.”

  Tarun glanced at the rising dust cloud thousands of feet in the air.

  “If Thimpu still exists anymore.”

  NEW-DELHI

  INDIA

  DAY 15 + 1400 HRS

  “Is it done?” the PM asked with his fingers rubbing his forehead.

  “It’s done.” Iyer’s voice came over the phone seconds later.

  “And?” Chakri asked, probing for more details.

  “And both airbases are destroyed. Confirmed smoking craters where the bases were supposed to be.”

  “Casualties?” the PM asked, bracing himself.

  “Korla,” Iyer replied with deliberate carefulness, “had been pretty much abandoned except for military personnel for the last few weeks. So it is going to be in the ballpark of the low thousands from both detonations combined. And most of them will be PLAAF personnel. The 26TH Air Division forward operations center has been destroyed as well as one of the two KJ-2000 AWACS. The last aircraft of the type has been pulled further north to Wulumuqi. We believe the 55TH Fighter Regiment Su-27s are also destroyed except for four which were in the air at the time.”

  The PM was not interested in these minute military details, however.

  “Yes, yes! I get it!” he replied with obvious irritation in his voice. Chakri and Iyer both backed off and held their temper. Ravoof did the same, although he didn’t like the way the PM spoke with Iyer now that he had been forced to do something against his wishes. Chakri noticed the look on Ravoof’s face but did nothing. He agreed with the man, after all. The PM continued: “Has the point been made or not?”

  “We sent the message to their foreign office via Bogdanov in Moscow as planned,” Ravoof said. “Whoever is in command over in Beijing would have got it by now. Hopefully they will understand the rules of this deadly game.”

  “Or we will get another round of missiles thrown at us!” the PM retorted and then turned to the NSA, sitting across the room: “When are we departing to Palam?”

  “Within a few minutes sir.” The NSA replied. “The aircraft is ready and we are awaiting the helicopter.”

  “Good,” the PM replied as he got up from his seat. He did not fancy having done to him what they had done to the Chinese CMC a few hours before…

  “Sir, what are my orders?” Iyer asked from the other end of the line.

  “Be prepared for anything,” the PM replied, “but for god’s sake do not lob any more nukes at them or else you will take all of us down as well. We have enough to soothe the public anger in the coming days, but right now we need to diffuse the situation quickly.”

  “Yes sir.” The line clicked off.

  “You might want to know,” Chakri replied as he too got up from his seat and joined the PM, “that the second Chinese Division up in the Chumbi valley surrendered to us an hour ago. General Suman has accepted their terms for surrender. The valley is ours.”

  “Chakri,” the PM said as he looked up to the roof at the sound of incoming helicopters, “do you honestly think any of that matter now in the slightest? Bhutan has been nuked and thousands of our soldiers are dead. We have retaliated and killed thousands of theirs and destroyed two relevant airbases. The fallout from Bhutan is already drifting southwest. We will be forced to evacuate dozens of villages in Bhutan as well as Assam and maybe even Sikkim.

  “And in retaliating the way we have done, you all have made me do something I wish I would never have to do. This conventional victory of yours has been sullied by this huge nuclear mess. Nobody in this country is going to remember what we had almost achieved. But what they will remember is the nuclear fallout and the explosions. I just hope that whoever is in command in Beijing at the moment will have a bit of sanity left. For our sake as well as theirs!”

  NEW CHINA NEWS AGENCY

  DAY 15 + 1420 HRS

  “Rumors speculating of changes in the upper echelons of the Central Military Commission and the Politburo were strongly denied by the committee representative, Lieutenant-General Che
n. He explained that given the serious nature of the war, the committee had moved to its wartime locations as per protocol and will remain there until the blatant Indian nuclear aggression against the Chinese people and the peace loving people of the Kingdom of Bhutan is not silenced. General Chen notified the media that General Liu and President Peng was not available for answering questions at the time.

  “General Chen also denounced Indian use of nuclear weapons and explained that the explosions in Bhutan were Indian nuclear warheads detonated by retreating Indian forces as our courageous soldiers advanced to rid the decades old Indian hegemony over the Bhutanese people. General Chen confirmed that thousands of Bhutanese civilians and hundreds of PLA soldiers from the elite high-altitude mountain troops were killed in these explosions. In spite of such losses, the People’s Army stands ready to offer help to the Bhutanese people in this time of distress.

  “Earlier this morning, the Indians also attempted to disarm our missile forces by preemptively attacking locations in northern Tibet. This blatant aggression will not go unanswered! The people of China have a right to live in peace without fear of nuclear aggression and the Indian usage of nuclear weapons will not go unpunished. With Russia and the United States of America once again vetoing China’s demands in the UN Security Council yesterday for immediate sanctions against India, China must control the threat on its southern borders on its own. China has demanded an unconditional Indian termination of hostilities or India will find itself soaked in an ocean of blood of its own citizens!”

  JUNWEI-KONGJUN

  BEIJING

  DAY 15 + 1410 HRS

  “Those bastards!” Wencang threw the phone speaker back to the wall mounted phone, causing everybody in the operations center to jerk their heads behind at the large bang noise behind them. Wencang had a menacing look on his face as he watched them staring at him in silence.