Chimera (22 page)

He realized that his force was beating the Chinese back, but was also getting mauled in the process.

We cannot keep taking these losses without reinforcements...

Adesara climbed out from his trench and walked westwards towards the second defensive line as his soldiers grabbed their equipment and began doing the same. They were now moving close to the airstrip perimeter.

Adesara realized that if critical reinforcements and air-support did not arrive soon, Indian control of DBO and the Karakoram pass could be lost.

KASHGAR AIRBASE

SINKIANG AUTONOMOUS REGION

CHINA

DAY 2 + 0900 HRS

The airbase was alive with the thunder of jets arriving and departing into the clear blue morning skies. The smell of aviation fuel was in the air and men were running about…

As they should. There is a war on!

Feng stood calmly in his winter uniform overcoat on the tarmac in front of the main terminal building as the cold winds swept the base. Despite the morning sun, it was freezing cold out here. He kept moving his gloved fingers to maintain circulation. His gold braided shoulder-boards of a Senior-Colonel glistened in the sunlight. In terms of rank, Feng was the Chinese equivalent of a Brigadier-General of the air-force. And he enjoyed the power that came with it. He had more say in the way things were done and there were now lesser people above him who had the authority to overrule. If he played his cards correctly in this war, he might very well be in line for many higher ranks in his future. And he knew it.

But the war. Yes. It was not going well at the moment out here.

His current commander, Major-General Zhigao had bungled his tasks. An incompetent man Feng could deal with. But an incompetent senior officer unaware of his incompetence was deadly for the pilots Feng saw around him. And that was why he found himself standing on the tarmac this cold winter morning…

As the Tu-154M rolled on to the main tarmac and came to a stop at the signal from the ground controllers, Feng took a deep breath. The aircraft’s engines began spooling down and the engine noise started winding down as well. An honor guard of soldiers ran over in formation and took position near the base of the staircase that was being moved into position. A small square piece of red carpet was also laid out at the base of the staircase. Just as the doors opened, the honor guard snapped to attention with their rifles.

Colonel-General Wencang and Lieutenant-General Chen walked down the stairs as they talked amongst themselves. Wencang put on his gloves and returned the salute from the honor-guard Captain before walking towards Feng and the parked military utility vehicles that would take them to the base operations center.

Feng walked over and saluted the two senior Generals approaching him. The salutes were returned and Chen put out his hand to Feng, who took it.

“Welcome to Kashgar, sir,” Feng was interrupted by the roar of two Su-27s that thundered overhead, maintaining security over the base while the Deputy-Commander of the PLAAF and the unified-MRAF commander were on the ground below.

“Indeed, Feng! Shall we?” Wencang said politely and Feng took the cue. He pointed the Generals to the waiting vehicles and climbed in behind them.

“We have problems,” Feng said as the vehicles moved out.

“More like you have
a
problem that did you in.” Wencang grunted.

Feng did not reply to that. It was not his place to do so. Wencang continued:

“You need not say it, Senior-Colonel. I have not flown a thousand kilometers for nothing. This is important. Our entire air war in Ladakh depends on good leadership and aggression backed with intellect. The days of the people’s army marching on slogans and blind aggression are over. We need thinking men in thinking positions to fight a digitized war. I am here to take care of your problem. Then I want you and Chen to take care of mine: the Indian air-forces in Ladakh.”

LEH

LADAKH

DAY 2 + 1055 HRS

“Ladakh is on fire, gentlemen,” Lieutenant-General Ritesh Gupta, commander of the Leh based XIV Corps, noted to his staff in the operations center. “So. What’s the latest estimate?”

“Initial estimates are still forming up, sir. But based on what we know the Chinese have opened up four major avenues of attack into Ladakh. The northernmost sector is near Daulat-beg-oldi. Here the Chinese are moving along the northern banks of the Chip-Chap river bank and their threat axis is heading towards our airstrip there. Brigadier Adesara is attempting to hold the Chinese advance with a reinforced Brigade and some armor in that sector,” Gupta’s operations chief said and then shrugged before continuing: “but he is heavily outnumbered. We figure he’s facing down at least a division worth of Chinese assault forces, heavy on tanks.” 

“What support do we have for Adesara out there?” Gupta asked.

“We are working on that right now. Most of his reinforcements are moving along the Shyok river banks heading north towards the Galwan river sector and then northwards to DBO from there. But they have been bogged down by Chinese artillery and long-range rocket strikes along the MSR. They are taking losses in the open terrain against these strikes. We are knocking out the Chinese artillery using our counter-battery systems but it takes time. Their gun batteries are not proving a problem given their immobility. But their long-range MBRLs are proving a nightmare to find and destroy, since they are shoot-and-scoot systems much like our own.  The airstrip at DBO has been utterly destroyed based on overhead imagery. The only other option is air and artillery support but these are already committed to all the raging battles along the entire front. What few systems are available are being dispatched to assist Brigadier Adesara’s forces.”

Gupta leaned back and rubbed his eyes and silently cursed the situation. But he knew that everything that could be done
was
being done, so he nodded to the Major-General to continue.

“In the central sector the Chinese have opened up the front along the Galwan river valley and attempting to move east to cut off the only land supply route to DBO. We have another Infantry Brigade deployed between the Galwan and Hacho rivers tasked with keeping this land route open.

“Then further south the Chinese are attacking the Brigades deployed along the Chang-Chenmo River between Kongka-La and our critically vital logistical node at Shyok. It is pretty clear that they are trying to take Shyok to sever the supply route to the Galwan and Karakoram Brigades north from there.

“Finally, further to the south, XV Corps Brigades are fighting it out with a Chinese Group Army between Chushul, Rezang-La and Demchok. The idea here, we believe is to drive upwards from the Demchok region and roll up our defenses at Rezang-La and then Chushul to the north.”

Gupta’s operations chief turned to face his Corps commander.

“All in all, very predictable and exactly according to our pre-war expectations,” he concluded.

“But?” Gupta asked suspiciously. He knew the ‘but’ was in there somewhere…

“But…” the Major-General continued with a raised eyebrow, “our pre-war allocations of ammunition usage are not holding up. We are burning through our supplies of shells, rockets and missiles at a much higher rate than we had anticipated. We are going to run into supply problems pretty soon if we don’t get more stuff for our boys to shoot at the Chinese.”

“Dear god in heaven,” Gupta said as he rubbed his eyes again.

Somebody had said at some point that battle-plans never survive actual contact with the enemy…

Damn prophetic, wasn’t he?

Gupta looked up and faced his operations staff.

“Okay, people. Listen up. Here’s what we are going to do. Divert any available air and ground support to Adesara that we can lay our hands on to help him wither the Chinese assaults and hold Daulat-beg-oldi. Tell the Galwan and Kongka-La Brigade commanders that there is to be no retreats. They will stand and fight and keep our supply lines to northern Ladakh open. If any one of these sectors falls, the entire line will get rolled up or starved for supplies and then overrun. We are not letting a repeat of 1962 happen on my watch. Is that understood?”

He looked around at his staff and noticed no questions. So he turned to his operations chief again.

“Contact the air-force and tell them to allocate as high a concentration of their strike aircraft as they can to the DBO sector. At least that’s one mistake we won’t carry over from the last war.”

EAST OF DAULAT BEG OLDI

LADAKH

DAY 2 + 1120 HRS

“Here they come!”

Sudarshan lowered his binoculars as he stood on top of the turret of his lead BMP. He looked around. The eight BMP-IIs under his command were still there, still in loose formation. They were parked amongst the now vacant defensive positions of a Chinese Border Guards company headquarters.

Most of the Chinese soldiers from this position were still in their trenches or the open ground nearby, lying in their pools of blood or shredded to bits by the auto-cannon rounds…

Sudarshan’s light armor force had just completed their diversionary movement. This had covered the deployment and subsequent attack by the NAMICA platoon against the Chinese armor columns to the northwest, behind them. That attack had been successful, as Sudarshan could now tell based on the dozens of thick black smoke columns rising into the gray winter sky.

But that battle had cost him all of his T-72Ms…

In the meantime the Chinese second wave was skirting around the burning hulks of their assault force from the
north
, instead of the south. Sudarshan smiled as he thought about that.

They know the severe anti-tank threat that exists south of the Chip-Chap River.

My boys, to be exact!

But Sudarshan was not exactly having a free reign to the south. His force was now about to be engaged by the scattered groups of Chinese ZBDs that had made up the Chinese third line of armor.

And there are a lot of them for our comfort...

To that end he had ordered a stop to his south-eastern advance into Chinese held territory after they had smashed the thin line of Red Border Guards units in the sector. They had slid into this southern flank like a knife entering the Chinese gut. His force had mauled its way past the LAC and was now standing beyond it.

Not for long though…

The approaching dust clouds were now less than four kilometers away and were splashing across the frozen Chip-Chap River much in the same way his own force had done not so long ago.

Sudarshan brought up his helmet mounted comms mouthpiece and ordered his driver and gunner to get ready. He jumped back down the hatch into the commander’s position and closed the hatch behind him. The other seven vehicle commanders did the same.

With a large rumble of their diesel engines, the entire force executed a reverse move up the small wall like mound that the Chinese here had been using as cover. Once back on the reverse slope to the west, they stopped with a jerk and moved ever so slightly until each vehicle was in a hull down position. The soviet designers of the BMP had placed a lot of attention to making the vehicle low profile, even at the cost of top-plate armor protection. And while the BMPs were extremely unfit to take on the role of direct attack against enemy armor, its light weight and high mobility gave it a lot of advantages. The NAMICA variant of this basic chassis was one technological solution around this vehicle.

Even at the tactics level, it offered some advantages.

If the commanders chose to see it, that is.

But stealth was not one of the advantages Sudarshan had. The snow all around them was contrasting around their hot vehicle engines and burning hot auto-cannon barrels. The Indian vehicle crews also knew that the Chinese had their own UAVs overhead and had probably detected their entire force via thermal optics. In fact, the movement of the twelve ZBDs maneuvering east of them showed clearly that the Chinese commanders knew
exactly
where Sudarshan and his advance element were. But they could only see
where
he was, not
what
he was doing…

Within fifteen minutes the ZBDs had spread out in a loose line-abreast formation and had begun advancing his force.

Sudarshan watched and waited.

He wondered whether it was his destiny to be here today. Had it not been for the fact that had this particular vehicle’s commander hadn’t fallen sick with pulmonary edema a day before, he might have been watching this particular battle alongside Adesara from a forward headquarters.

As command expects me to do.

Damn that to hell. This is where I belong!

He peered through the commander-sights on the vehicle and saw the first clear feature of the ZBD approaching range.

“Gunner, target ZBD! Left! Three kilometers!”

The cannon turret moved slightly to the left and then stabilized before the gunner shouted out:

“Target identified!”

“Fire!”