Chimera (80 page)

WEST OF BEIJING

CHINA

DAY 15 + 0655 HRS

The surprise was total. But then again, it was meant to.

The RISAT-1 satellite had confirmed to Malhotra and Iyer that members of the CMC were still arriving at the helipads near the underground complex used as their national command center. The satellite had shown Mi-17s parked on the ground and other Z-8s and Z-9s arriving from Beijing.

The window was short, but usable.

The massive two-thousand kilogram high-explosive unitary warhead of the Agni-III dived past the stunned ground-radar crews around Beijing and exploded directly above the helipads. It caught several of the helicopters on the ground and others in the air as spherical pressure wave smashed them aside along with the parked vehicles. A massive shockwave expanded on the ground in a circle and flattened all of the trees in the forests near the helipads while a smoke filled mushroom cloud rose into the air…       

THIMPU

DAY 15 + 0830 HRS

//BRITISH JOURNALIST//BBC //IAN SHARP //PHONE INTERCEPT //THIMPU // BEGIN TRANSCRIPT//

“…something has happened! … No, we saw
two
flashes! … I haven’t seen anything like it in my life. One was definitely over Paru. The other was to the north somewhere! We have heard from the Indian soldiers here that all communication with Paru
has
been lost. … Thimpu?
Utter
confusion here. No idea if I will be able to call you chaps back or not. In any… Hello? Can you hear me? Ah, okay. Yes, two definite nuclear detonations over Bhutan. That’s all I can confirm for now! I … Yes, the King is still here last time we checked. God knows what’s happening now. Look, I have to go. Will try and call later. Tell my…”

//HOST SIGNAL LOST//RECONSTRUCTION TERMINATED

//END TRANSCRIPT

WEST OF BEIJING

CHINA

DAY 15 + 0900 HRS

The view went from black to blurry as Colonel Dianrong regained consciousness. He instantly coughed and found himself lying on his side. The cables and harness attached inside the helicopter were dangling down from above while dust swept through the open sides of the cabin with the wind.

He tried to push himself away from his seat but realized he was still strapped to it. He also had an immense headache and felt blood dripping over his eyelids. A check with his hand showed he
was
bleeding from some gash above his eyes. His hands were covered in dust and he saw broken branches and leaves strewn inside the cabin.

As his vision cleared, he saw the smashed cockpit glass up front and the two dead pilots, still strapped in their seats with blood splattered over the instruments and the glass. As his sense of smell started returning, he thought he smelled cordite. He coughed some more as he heard the distant yelling of orders…

The sounds kept becoming louder and louder until he heard boots trampling through the broken tree branches and frantic orders yelled by a young voice. PLA soldiers ran over and started checking inside the cabin. Two of them saw Dianrong alive as the fuselage of the Z-9 rested on its side. They banged on the side-door glass, slid it open and clambered inside before beginning to open Dianrong’s seat harness.

“Sir, we will get you out of here. Don’t worry.” the young PLA Lieutenant said. Dianrong coughed heavily but nodded as the soldiers lifted him and handed his body to other soldiers outside the cabin. They pushed Dianrong out and two of the soldiers helped him walk away from the small ditch inside the flattened forest a few hundred meters from the helipads.

Dianrong saw the dozen Z-9 and Mi-17 helicopters flying overhead now, their whipping noises parting the still lingering cloud of dust that was giving the morning sun a dull-red haze. The air was filled with noises as hundreds of soldiers were running about trying to check for survivors from other helicopters as well.

The two soldiers brought him close to an opening in the forest where he saw a camouflage-painted Z-9 helicopter parked on the grass. He also saw a PLA Major there, organizing the search-and-rescue effort. The Major saw Dianrong being brought to the helicopter and saluted.  

“Where’s General Liu?” Dianrong managed to speak as soldiers lowered him on the grass while PLA doctors began checking his wounds. The Major was too busy giving orders and didn’t hear him over the noise.

“Where
is
he?” Dianrong said again and grabbed the Major by his arm to make him look.

“Who, sir?” the Major asked.

“General Liu.”

The Major was silent for several seconds and then shook his head. The medical officer began cleaning his forehead wound with cotton-padding as Dianrong grasped the news. He turned to the Major again.

“And comrade chairman?” he asked worriedly.

“We haven’t found the comrade chairman’s helicopter yet,” the Major said soberly. “We are looking now. It took us this long just to find you and General Liu out here! Some of the C-M-C members are alive, but in critical condition. We have taken them to the hospital inside the center.”

“How
did
they know? What
happened?
” Dianrong said to himself.

“Sir?” the Major asked as he bent down to the Colonel. Dianrong just shook his head as soldiers brought out bodies of the two pilots and General Liu from the crashed Z-9. Liu’s body was riddled with wounds from the crash and his uniform coat made dark by the blood. The Major sighed as they laid his body on the grass near the parked helicopter and then turned to Dianrong sitting now on the floor of the helicopter’s cabin.

“You were extremely lucky to have made it alive, Colonel.”

Dianrong grunted and then nodded. “
This
is the kind of luck we can all do without, Major. Keep looking for the chairman. And get me back to the center right away. I need to help figure out who is in charge of this country’s military before the Indians hit us with nuclear warheads!”

“
What?
” the Major said in utter surprise. He hadn’t been told yet about the planned DF-21 strikes when the Indian pre-emptive strike had happened. But Dianrong had put together the pieces to understand that if the Indians had struck here, they must have struck the launch sites as well. There was no way to know for sure if any of the DF-21 missiles had made their way to the targets until he got back at the center. Dianrong realized the Major was still waiting for an answer so he turned to face the surprised look on the young officer’s face.

“Haven’t you heard, Major? This war went nuclear an hour ago.”

JUNWEI KONGJUN

BEIJING

DAY 15 + 0930 HRS

The chaos within the government and military headquarters in Beijing was high. One of the problems with having such a highly focused decision-making body for a nation was that when it was suddenly taken out of the equation, the rest of the structure had no clear area where to go. To make matters worse, the military knew what had just happened to the missile brigades in northern Tibet. 

Most of the CMC members were dead. The survivors were in critical condition made worse by their old age. For all intents and purposes they were incapacitated and would probably die despite the efforts of military doctors. The Chinese military had lost a lot of their four-star general rank officers within the CMC and that was causing trouble at the moment…

The problem for Colonel-General Wencang was that there were a lot of other Colonel-Generals in the other services who were trying to do what he was doing right now: get an idea of who’s in charge. The only difference between him and the other officers, however, was that he had been elevated to CMC member when General Jinping had been dismissed as PLAAF commander more than a week ago. The PLA commander, General Yongju, and his deputy were both missing in the aftermath of the missile strike at the NCC. Admiral Huaqing had been executed on orders from Peng for his actions in the Indian Ocean and his successor had not yet been named. That had left the naval forces in a limbo as well. So it wasn’t a surprise to Wencang when he got a call from the National Command Center.

“Wencang here,” he said as he picked up the phone.

“Sir, this is Colonel Dianrong.”

“Colonel,
what
is going on out there?” Wencang said urgently.   

“Generals Yongju and Liu are confirmed dead, sir. So are most of the party officials. The PLA deputy-commander has been killed as well. We still haven’t found the chairman’s helicopter but I have organized a massive search effort. We will find him soon. The vice-chairman is alive but in critical condition at the hospital here!”

Wencang ran his hands over his head in frustration as he listened.

“So why are you calling me, Colonel? Don’t you have your bosses in Qinghe to report to?” He said pointedly. He knew how the deputy-commander for the 2
ND
Artillery Corps would respond when he was told that Liu was dead and so were the bulk of his DF-21 launchers…

“Sir, you are
still
the commander-designate of the air-force and still officially on the committee. That puts
you
above the other deputy-commanders, including the 2
ND
Artillery Corps,” Dianrong replied plainly.

“Does it now?” Wencang said as he realized the full importance of what that meant.

“Yes sir!” Dianrong continued. “And time is very critical. The Indians are
bound
to retaliate now that the detonations have taken place in Bhutan!”

“Colonel, the Indians are not the only ones we should be worried about,” Wencang replied bluntly. “Do you understand the full importance of what has happened?
We
have struck Bhutan with
nuclear
weapons! How do you think the
world
will respond to this when the news reaches out?”

There was silence on the other side so Wencang let out a long breath and continued: “Your former commander and the party have opened the flood gates, Colonel. We will be
lucky
if China survives as a nation, let alone the war in Tibet. Anyway, I want you to inform all other service branches that
I
am in charge from now till the end of hostilities. I want no more talk about who’s in charge and all military decisions are to be passed through my office. Understand?”

“Yes sir. May I prepare your evacuation from Beijing to the N-C-C?” Dianrong asked calmly.

“No. I am staying here.” Wencang ordered. “The last thing that needs to happen now is for our citizens to see their senior Generals running into underground bunkers. I will stay in Beijing. For now anyway. But keep the center up and running in case we do need it. Anything else?”

“No sir.”

“Good. Get everything set up at your end. I am going to get Lieutenant-General Chen and some others up here to Beijing to help me navigate this country out of the mess we have created!”

BANGALORE

INDIA

DAY 15 + 1130 HRS

The Indian RISAT-1 satellite passed over the Tibetan plateau on yet another pass. The brown-white terrain below was being mapped by its synthetic-aperture-radar as it went over Bhutan along the northeast-southwest orbital path.

It saw the pair of nuclear detonation smoke clouds dissipating away in the direction of the winds over Bhutan. Paru valley was covered with smoke and it was moving southwest from there. The explosion over Barshong was doing something similar and had spread the smoke within the valley but away from the Chomolhari peak and the Chumbi valley thanks to local easterly winds.

The satellite also picked up dozens of large smoke clouds west of Golmud that had almost dissipated away, allowing for effective battle-damage-assessment of the Chinese missile brigades. The imagery was processed and investigated at the Aerospace Command by the attached DIPAC officers.

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 15
TH
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!”