by Vivek Ahuja
Pathanya instantly motioned for Sarvanan to get the rest of the men together and to move out up the slope before they were faced with enemy forces from the west, north and south.
“Wilco! Spear is disengaging! We are bugging out!”
Further south, the surviving pair of BMP-IIs rushed down the road as they advanced north, cutting across the trees and vegetation with their auto-cannons while the Paras ran alongside to keep up…
The PLA defenses between Dotanang and Barshong had been broken, and what had emerged was a bitter running firefight between the last surviving forces of the Chinese Highland Brigade and the 11TH Indian Para-SF Battalion for control of northern Bhutan.
BEIJING CAPITAL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
CHINA
DAY 9 + 1400 HRS
The honor-guard snapped to attention as Chen stepped out of the cabin doors of the Tu-154 and walked down the staircase to the concrete tarmac. Feng followed behind along with several other officers. It was bitterly cold and it had rained that morning, leaving the tarmac wet and covered with puddles of water.
A convoy of three black staff cars had come over to the tarmac to pick the officers and take them to the Junwei-Kongjun, the PLAAF central headquarters.
Chen saw that Wencang was there to meet them on the tarmac near the parked cards. He shook hands with Chen and returned the salute from Feng before waving them to the cars. Chen and Wencang got into the middle car while Feng walked back to the third one. As the small convoy of cars drove off the tarmac, Chen turned to his old comrade:
“So? What really happened to Jinping?”
Wencang shook his head and looked at the rainwater dripping down the outer side of the window glass as he spoke.
“What do you think? Between Jinping and Zhigao, we have lost control of the skies over most of south-western China and Tibet. You didn’t really expect the CMC to look the other way on something like this, did you? There were going to be consequences. Jinping and Zhigao were the first to go. There are others who will go soon enough.”
“And am I next to be put up against the wall?” Chen asked dispassionately. “Is that why they pulled me from my command in the middle of a war?”
Wencang turned to face Chen directly now.
“Let me just put it this way. If that was to be your fate, I wouldn’t have been at the airport to greet you. It took a lot of convincing on my part to convince Peng and Liu that you were not to blame for what has happened in the air war. And Feng’s operational successes against Indian airbases and other targets spoke for itself,” Wencang concluded.
“Despite his propensity to throw our pilot’s lives and precious airframes at the Indians to achieve those goals?” Chen asked neutrally.
“You know very well what I think about Feng’s tactics. But they do get results and meets expectations. And instead of scrutinizing him, maybe it’s time you and I looked at ourselves and our own ability to do what it takes. Maybe Feng is not the problem,” Wencang noted coldly. Chen was visibly irate at the insinuations his comrade was making.
“If Feng represents the future of this nation’s air-force, then there is indeed no place in it for both of us!” Chen threw back.
“You do know he looks up to you, right? He always has,” Wencang said with a raised eyebrow. He wondered exactly what all had gone on in the unified MRAF headquarters between these two men for the last week.
“He does and I know it,” Chen sighed. “It’s just that I underestimated his ruthlessness under desperate and stressful situations. He is a dedicated, intelligent and ruthless field commander. And an operational and planning genius. We need him regardless.”
“Exactly,” Wencang concluded. “That is the bottom line on that. In any case, I need you both here in Beijing for the time being. We have a crisis on our hands. I need to know from you exactly what our aerial war-fighting potential is against the Indians. Can we take back control or not?”
“We can,” Chen said.
“But?” Wencang led him on.
“But not without massive reinforcements. We have lost upwards of four Fighter Divisions in combat and I have only received a Division and a half as replacements so far. I need more! A lot more. Empty out the northern areas and send those units to me and I can win. The Indians cannot be strong everywhere and they have taken casualties as well. If we keep pushing them they will break!” Chen replied.
Wencang shook his head in dismissal.
“The party will not agree to this. We cannot vacate forces on the eastern coastline against the nationalists nor can we afford to be seen weak. They will not bend on this. What other options do we have?”
“You have to be joking! What threat do the Japanese present? Same for the Americans! Neither of them will support the Indians in this war by spilling their own blood! As for the Nationalists, we have enough missiles to sink their cursed island into the sea if they attempt anything! If we don’t move now, the air-war against the Indians will be lost completely!” Chen said and then checked his voice.
Wencang may be his colleague from the past, but he did outrank him. The latter now leaned back into his seat.
“That will take too much time, Chen. And time is something we no longer have. Perhaps if the ground war had gone according to plan we could have bought more time for your plans to succeed. As it stands, we need results quickly before the progress of the ground war completely reverses on us and the Indians take the offensive into Tibet. We are putting together some plans with Liu’s men from the 2ND Artillery Corps. When the time comes we will rain a shower of steel and fire on Indian airbases and take away their air-superiority in a single clean stroke!”
EAST OF BARSHONG
NORTHERN BHUTAN
DAY 9 + 1940 HRS
The small dusty clearing was covered in a small cloud of dust and loose grass as the Dhruv helicopter flared for a landing. The skids touched down, displaced some loose rocks and settled.
The sliding doors opened and Colonel Misra stepped off, running to the edge of the makeshift helipad. The Major leading his battalion’s advance forces and Pathanya were standing there, their rifles slung over their chests and their faces covered in grime. All three men had replaced their helmets with the red berets worn by all paratroopers. It was not so much a head cover as a badge of honor.
Misra walked past them and they followed him away from the noise of the helicopter. They walked a few dozen feet away and watched as medical personnel carried the wounded Paras on stretchers to the open doors of the helicopter.
“What’s the deal? Why are we stopped?” Misra said finally. They still had to yell over the rotor noise, but it was now bearable.
“The Chinese reinforced battalion at Barshong is putting up a hell of a fight, sir,” the Major said. “We broke through their lines north of Dotanang and swept past their defenses all the way here. Pathanya and his men killed about twenty or so of their soldiers and my men must have killed about fifty. So they still have quite a few men at Barshong. Now they have withdrawn somewhere on those ridges,” he pointed his arm to the series of ridges to the west. “I don’t have the manpower to flush them out in frontal attacks on each successive ridge all the way into Barshong.”
“I would not recommend that either,” Misra agreed. “That PLA General commanding the Highland Division is playing hard to get with his remaining troops. He is forcing us to fight him for every ridge and in each case he will fight, inflict casualties and then pull back to the next ridge, wearing us down piece by piece until we get to Barshong while he pulls his men closer to their Division headquarters. That’s unacceptable, gentlemen. I need Barshong! It’s the only foothold the Chinese have left!”
The peaks of the Himalayas that formed the side walls enveloping the Chumbi were massive and jutted far above the base of the valley. Within the valley, the PLA supply routes were located on very flat terrain that allowed them to bring in reinforcements from Gyantse.
In the initial days of the war, the neutrality of the airspace
above and the presence of the S-300 surface-to-air missiles below had allowed the PLA to bring in their Highland Division into northwestern Bhutan via helicopter airlift and ground infiltration from the three-lake region to Barshong. Barshong then became the staging area from where they had launched their assault to the south towards Thimpu. The initial airlifts to Barshong was the reason the PLA assault on Thimpu had been so slow, allowing General Potgam to do his own airlifts into Bhutan via Paru. And Paru was much better equipped for airlifts than Barshong could ever hope to be, even after the brutal PLAAF attacks…
Logistics won the battles on the modern battlefields. And this war had not been an exception!
Now that the PLA Highland Division was on its knees, the threat to Thimpu was gone. But Barshong still remained in PLA hands. And it had to be retaken to remove Beijing’s hopes of threatening Thimpu…
“If we can dislodge the Chinese from Barshong,” Misra continued, “we can remove the staging area for their reinforcements. We simply cannot allow them to hold on to that place!” Misra said forcefully.
He didn’t have to, though. They knew much of this beforehand and were familiar with the terrain. More so for Pathanya than the Major but that was because he had been in country longer and before the 11TH Para and her sister battalions had arrived in theater.
“Understood sir!” the Major said. “But we still cannot take those ridges in between here and Barshong. I need more men.”
“Or different tactics,” Misra retorted. “Gentlemen, how about we stop acting like frontline infantry and start thinking like paratroopers are supposed to do!”
day 10
OPERATIONS CENTER
STRATEGIC FORCES COMMAND
INDIA
DAY 10 + 0700 HRS
Air-Marshal Iyer walked into the underground planning center at SFC headquarters. The large room was populated with a large conference table and a variety of different ranking officers from all three services plus several officers from RAW and the other intelligence agencies. The table had chairs along its edges but they were all pushed in since nobody was sitting down when Iyer entered. Two opposite walls had large digital displays of all territories currently of interest to the SFC and the table was strewn with loads of papers, satellite imagery and an assortment of maps. It was, quite visibly, Iyer’s “thinking room”, as his staff called it.
“Okay gentlemen, let’s have the latest,” Iyer ordered politely as he walked around the table to the wall map of Tibet showing dispositions of the various brigades of the Chinese 2ND Artillery Corps.
“Not much has changed since yesterday,” an army Brigadier said. These morning meetings were being held every six hours on Iyer’s orders for the last ten days. They were on the verge of being monotonous…
“As per our last count,” the Brigadier continued, “we have over three hundred missiles of all types in northern Tibet right now. Heavily guarded but not yet deployed.”
“Composition?” Iyer asked blandly and without looking at the Brigadier as he went over the latest situation reports in his hands. The routine was the same for every meeting.
“Mostly DF-11s, DF-15s and DF-21s. Several DF-31 launchers in the mainland displaying higher levels of activity than last week but not deployed yet. However, we are keeping an eye on that.”
“They are not going to touch those unless they are deciding to go after our southern cities,” Iyer said as he finally looked up from the papers in his hands. DF-31s were ICBMs, and activity on that front was always worthy of attention. He glanced at the other wall screen showing the location of the DF-31 unit. “Activating those DF-31s will actually reduce their options instead of increasing them. Keep an eye on them as you said, but expect the first shots to be fired by the Tibet based launchers.”
“Are they nuclear tipped?” Vice-Admiral Valhotra, the SFC second-in-command, asked the Brigadier, referring to the Tibet based units.
“Hard to be sure which ones are and which ones are not when you consider that all we have is overhead satellite intel,” the Brigadier said and walked over to the wall map. He pressed some buttons and pulled up the imagery over one of the DF-21 batteries and another of the DF-11 and put them side by side. The images were in gray-coloration and showed a good resolution of the launchers and the security around the battery vehicles by PLA infantry and light-armor units. “But you can make out from the level of forces guarding a given battery here whether its nuclear tipped or not. Those that are very heavily guarded are likely nuclear-tipped. Others are conventional.”
“That’s one hell of an assumption there,” Iyer noted as he faced the map from where he stood. “Have you considered that they might try to fool us on exactly that issue by either giving all of their launchers the same security or messing with our heads by giving higher security to conventional launchers as well?”
“Yes it is an assumption and potentially a deadly one,” Valhotra agreed and looked back Iyer: “But not much we can do outside of that. Besides, if Beijing wants to use conventional ballistic-missiles in the war, they will want to ensure that there is no confusion on our side on the escalation.”
“You assume that they don’t want nuclear war with us,” Iyer cautioned his colleague and continued: “I cannot make that assumption. We need better intel and a clearer analysis on their motives and unit deployments. Such a simplistic argument cannot hold water in this room. I know that we have been doing this for quite some time even before the war started. But now that the war is on, peacetime computations cannot be applied. We have to be more careful and must take into consideration outside factors such as the state of the war and its effect on the enemy deployments. Understood?”
Iyer looked around to see everybody nodding. He turned back to the Brigadier: “So what’s the count based on the current estimates?”
“About seventy-five nuclear-tipped launchers in northern Tibet as of right now.”
“God! Seventy-Five?” Valhotra blurted out.
“Yes sir,” the Brigadier added. “Mostly deployed on DF-21s. That’s almost their entire DF-21 force and also a good chunk of their overall nuclear warheads.”
“Think they are sending us a message?” Iyer asked Valhotra.
“If they are, they sure as hell not pussyfooting it,” Valhotra responded.
“I agree,” Iyer noted as he crossed his arms. “From where they are deployed, the DF-21s will cover most of northern India and all of the battlefields. We will have more warning with the DF-11s and the DF-15s because they will have to be moved south and on roads that we currently dominate. That makes the shorter range missiles iffy to use and very risky from their operational standpoint. So my gut feeling is that they will stick with the DF-21s as their preferred choice for the nuclear delivery role. They might even use the DF-31s to knock out our cities in central and southern India in conjunction with the DF-21s if the shit hits the fan.”
Iyer took a deep breath as he considered his words. It was not the first time he found it hard to remain objective at his job.
“Looks like it,” Valhotra added. “I expect their shorter range missiles to be used first in the conventional role. Perhaps against Arunachal Pradesh or some such target. They will attempt to force the outcome of this war using those first.”
“Yup. That’s true,” Iyer agreed. “The problem is, if we mistake a nuclear-tipped missile as a conventional type, it will be disaster for us. We need to be damned sure whether these DF-11s and DF-15s are nuclear-tipped or not.”
“Of course,” Valhotra said and then walked over to the table to pick up the latest information on the 2ND Artillery Corps ORBAT.
“But look at the numbers,” he continued. “They only have about two hundred-fifty warheads to begin with. They need a certain portion of that in reserve and another portion armed for threatening the US and Japan. Once you remove these from their total inventory, these numbers in Tibet start making sense. Also the DF-11s and the DF-15s really don’t give them the bang for the buck in terms of range and
options. I think they have concentrated their nuclear-tipped missiles amidst the DF-21s for a reason: they want us to know which is which!”
“But those missiles are still in northern Tibet,” Iyer said. “As I said before, they will need to be moved south first and we can take them out in transit since we control the skies over southern Tibet now. We will know when Beijing is thinking dirty because they will have to move these missiles on the roads to the south. We will have a large warning window!”
GOLMUD
NORTHERN TIBET
DAY 10 + 0800 HRS
The soldiers wearing the shaded-brown digital camouflage uniforms squinted under the bright morning sun low on the horizon to the east, silhouetting the three Il-76 transports on the tarmac.
As they watched, the vehicles in spotless new green-brown paint rolled off the cargo cabin on the aircraft via the lowered ramps on to the concrete tarmac. As they rolled out of the shadows of the aircraft that had delivered them here, the three vehicle drivers now stepped on the accelerators and sped off towards their marshaling point at the western edge of the airbase. The soldiers waiting for their precious cargo hopped on to the empty chassis of the vehicle behind the driver’s cabin while their officers got into their multi-terrain vehicles, knock-offs of the US HMMWV vehicle, and left the parked Il-76s behind to join their unit.
Further down the tarmac, two Y-8 turboprop transports were offloading the ready-to-use CJ-10 GLCMs for the three launch vehicles delivered by the Il-76s. This unit had relocated within a day to northern Tibet under orders from Colonel-General Liu at the 2ND Artillery Corps headquarters north of Beijing.
Liu had been convinced by Wencang, the acting commander of the PLAAF, to release three launchers from the reserve force of the 821ST Brigade at Guangxi in south-eastern China to the PLAAF. Chen had arranged for the strategic transports to fly the small detachment to Golmud.
The 821ST Brigade had detachments already in northern Tibet and had in fact taken part in the initial cruise-missile strikes at the start of the war ten days ago. But those launchers were now back into the fold of the 2ND Artillery Corps and part of their strategic deterrent force. The 821ST Brigade did have a small force in south-eastern China for use against the Taiwanese and this force had now been withdrawn to the Tibet Theater for use by the PLAAF.
