Chimera (2 page)

Map-7: Western Bhutan

Map-8: Paro airport, Bhutan

Map-9: Northwestern Bhutan

PROLOGUE

THE AKSAI-CHIN

MARCH 23, 2335 HRS

“Pathfinder-Two to -One. Target sighted. Inbound and Jolly. Over”

“Pathfinder-One copies all. Stand-by.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Gephel switched off his UHF radio and slowly put it on the ground, avoiding any sudden movements to alert the enemy. Then he pulled up his binoculars to observe the terrain in front of him. The distant manmade dust cloud was clearly visible now, behind the peaks around which the road took a bend. It was a good distance away, so that even via binoculars it was a small sight. But it
was
there, and it was coming this way. This one was a big target, and something for which Gephel’s team of five were cooperating with a sister team in the region. It was to be the most audacious attack so far and would take place right under the enemy’s nose. To complicate matters, this wasn’t exactly the ideal terrain for this kind of job. The luckier teams had their areas of operations assigned where there was cover and where they were happily playing merry hell for their opponents. But that was why Gephel had volunteered for commanding this team. The other teams had younger officers of the rank of Captain and below leading them in action. But the two teams here had the most difficult of tasks, and that was why the two senior officers of this unit were leading them forward.

Gephel was a lot younger than his peers. Even so, he was a lot older than his junior officers. But that was why he insisted on every man in his unit, young and old, to be as fit as humanly possible. As his men had come to realize, the limit of ‘Humanly Possible’ as interpreted by their CO was very much higher than what they would have imagined. The dropout rate for this unit during training was very high. This meant that by the time a soldier passed into this unit, he was already far ahead than his peers in other units. Many had questioned the need for such a regimen during the time when the unit was brought up to strength, but all those doubts had been thrown out by the unit soon after they had arrived here. It was all paying off, and Lieutenant-Colonel and Lieutenant alike, were keeping pace. They had to.

Their geographic location demanded the best of men even under normal circumstances, and it only got worse under combat conditions. The biggest enemy here was the weather, followed by the terrain. With the amount of killing potential within between two enemies, the real human enemy didn’t even come into the picture. But it did not make them any less dangerous, as the men of this unit had come to realize.

Five teams were currently operating in the Tibetan mountains. Almost all had walked here on long, arduous treks through snow-covered mountain passes. They had lost several men to the dangerous crevasses hidden to snow and avalanches. But once inside their area of operations, they were independent and had so far been free of casualties. Their only limitation was the requirement to frequently stock up on equipment and ammunition via specially arranged supply missions. And they frequently had to do these, because as Gephel had noted to his sister team’s commander, “Business was good!”  

Tonight, the skies were clear and the air severely cold. There was snow around and it would be there for several more weeks, if the forecast was accurate. At night it became colder than an arctic winter. But that was why this unit had been raised in the first place. They were unique for the region, in training, composition and most importantly,
motivations
.

Motivation was the key
…Gephel thought as he observed the approaching dust cloud.

Hell, why else would any of these men be here, doing what they are? Are we exploiting their motivations to our purpose? And if so, was that not my job as their commanding officer?

Gephel stowed his ever increasing self-doubts and lowered his helmet-mounted night-vision goggles. They switched on with slight humming noise and turned the moonlit dark terrain into a bright green horizon. During night-time operations, which was about the only time the teams moved around anyway, the low-light intensification goggles were working wonders, allowing them to see the ground in front of them before they stepped on it. But for long-range vision, the moonlight was sufficient. Besides, Gephel preferred as less a dependency on technology as possible. He saw them as one more possible weakness that could fail at any time. The mark-I human eyeball, however, rarely did…

The moon was partially out tonight, and it allowed both teams to see the dust cloud even in the night-time and from extreme distances. The dust cloud was much closer now, and the first signs of smaller dust clouds within the single larger one were becoming visible, allowing the two teams to identify the number of vehicles on the convoy. The noise of their engines could now be heard over the desert winds.

Okay, that’s four…no…five vehicles…and the first one looks like the newer APC model. Well, let’s see what it can withstand. Should gain some good intel from this…

He removed his goggles and rubbed his eyes again.

We have been out here for too long. In danger of becoming complacent. Must stay alert at all times, Damn it!

The teams had been out here long enough, he reckoned. They had hit a few targets worth mentioning in the time, and that was more than what the second team commanded by Major Ngawang, his second-in-command, or 2IC, had achieved. Gephel’s targets had included an isolated military checkpoint on the highway through this region manned by a squad of troops. His men had raided this post in the dark of the night with noise-suppressed weapons and killed all of the soldiers there in under a minute. His men had taken no prisoners and shown no remorse, but they
had
taken all the documents present inside the office of the dead enemy lieutenant.

The documents had shown them all they had needed to know about the convoys expected to cross this section of the highway in the next few days. Now one of those convoys was within his sights. The raid on the outpost had been clean and efficient. The bodies had been removed and all signs of combat cleared over. The team had made sure that the now dead lieutenant did not make his last desperate radio call to issue a warning.

Not that he hadn’t tried.
.. Gephel recalled.

When Gephel had slammed open the door of the lieutenant’s office during the raid, he had found him reaching for the radio. He never got there. Three bursts of automatic fire had sent him reeling and crashing down to the floor under the impact. Another burst had punched five holes on the radio sets and made them unusable. And that was that. No more radio calls, no extra convoy escorts and no enemy troops beating the bush trying to locate Gephel’s men. 

Of course, by the time this attack was over, the enemy’s entire Internal Security Force and the local army infantry division garrisoning the region would be out of their bases and looking for the culprits, but that couldn’t be helped. In any case, one of the first attacks conducted by the teams had been far to the north, and it had been a spectacular one at that. The target had been an enemy communications center on a hilltop. It had been catering to both the local civilian and military communication needs. Since it had been the first target on the list for his team, the enemy hadn’t been expecting them. They had hit it during the night and caught the guards outside relaxed and flat footed. With them taken care of, Gephel and his men had burst into the building and neutralized all resistance as they went down floor by floor, making sure that the military equipment was left untouched. This had allowed Gephel’s comms-specialist to determine what all he needed to know about enemy communications before they had left, leaving the system working, the place booby-trapped, the bodies cleared up and
after
sending a distress call. Within hours the reinforcements had arrived via Mi-17 helicopters and Gephel and his men had the satisfaction of hearing the large thunder and an orange-black fireball rising to the sky as the trap had gone off. As that fireball had gone up into the sky, turning into a black pillar of smoke, all enemy forces in the region had instantly mobilized, and had begun searching for the perpetrators. But by that time Gephel and his men had travelled far to the south...   

“Pathfinder-One to all Pathfinder elements, Thirty seconds. Stand by,” he spoke softly into his comms mouthpiece attached to the helmet. His eyes never left the road and the convoy approaching that one special spot along the highway. The response was a whisper:

“Copy.”

And then there was the silence. The calm before the storm…

Gephel reflected on where he was and what he was doing as he waited for the exact time to act. He realized that this was probably the first time in half a century that someone from his side had managed to be where his men were now, much less doing what he was about to do. It was just too bad that he couldn’t talk about it to anyone afterwards. Assuming he survived to talk about it in the first place.

The unsuspecting convoy finally reached that one spot on the road.

“This is it! Light it up! Now!”

The explosives-specialist in each team reached for the cover of their firing triggers, flipped it open with their thumbs and then depressed the button all the way in…

There was a split-second delay that caused Gephel’s heart to skip a beat…and then there was a massive flash in the darkness that overpowered the dim light of the moon.

Then another.

And then another, after which the flashes became almost continuous. The shockwaves followed up along the ground and the thundering noise reached their ears. The original white flash was followed by large orange-yellow balls of fire rising into the sky one behind the other along a stretch of the road occupied by the enemy vehicle convoy only seconds ago. The clean painted military vehicles were now, burning pyres and hulks. Just as soon as the fireballs emerged, they also vanished, leaving behind a drifting cloud of smoke and dust, and five fiercely burning vehicles…

The debris had been thrown all around. To Gephel’s amazement, a crewmember from the leading armored-personnel-carrier at the front of the convoy stumbled out, obviously hurt, and fell on the ground next to his vehicle. As his attackers watched from long distance, the injured survivor began to drag himself away from the burning hulk of his APC and move back along the road, hoping to meet friendly forces up on the road to the north. That the nearest friendly forces were at least a dozen kilometers away was not a concern to the desperate soldier.

It was almost sad, Gephel thought.
Almost.

He picked up his rifle and fitted the magnification scope. Raising it up and tugging it into his chest, he took aim. It took him a couple seconds to adjust his sights for the wind and the ballistic drop. He was about to depress the trigger when his target collapsed on the road and stopped moving. Gephel lowered his rifle and looked at the small dark speck lying on the gravel filled plains, backlit by the flames of the burning vehicles. He then removed the scope and tucked it away. His team began to pack up and prepared to move out. Nobody spoke a word. There was no time. A lot of people had probably seen the explosion in the surrounding hills. This was now an unhealthy place to be.