He jerked his head up as the sky filled with the screech of diving supersonic rockets and the PLA positions east of Barshong disappeared in a line of smoke filled explosions. A cloud of brown dust rose into the sky for hundreds of feet. The rumble from the explosions passed through his feet several seconds later.
Pathanya got on his feet and advanced down the slope to catch up with his men. He saw Vikram and Tarun walking cautiously towards the three dead bodies lying some distance away. Vikram slung his rifle on the chest and pulled out his thigh-holstered sidearm as they slowly approached the bodies. Tarun looked over to Vikram who nodded. So he lowered his Dragunov rifle and knelt beside the center body and turned him over. It was an old man with white hair and a black star on his digital-camo uniform. Tarun whistled and stood up on his feet.
“What is it?” Pathanya said as he jogged over.
“The Highland Division commander,” Vikram said soberly.
Pathanya looked over the grimaced face of the dead Chinese officer and sighed. He looked around as the hills to the east rumbled again as a second salvo from Hotel-Six ripped the PLA positions there to shreds even as more Mi-17 noises filled the air from the south.
“Okay. You two,” Pathanya pointed to Vikram and Tarun, “make sure to check all of his pockets for papers and anything else you can find. The intelligence boys will be very interested in knowing what this man carried with him. If possible, we will get his body out on one of the outgoing birds, so mark the position. I am taking the rest of Spear and meeting up with the Paras in the village so that they know we are still alive. Understood?”
Pathanya received nods from the two men so he trudged off in the snow down the slope. He walked past the burnt tree trunks spewing smoke and past the bullet riddled bodies of the dead PLA soldiers. He saw Indian paratroopers in the ruins of Barshong as they pursued the last enemy survivors retreating west towards Mount Chomolhari, leaving the Highland Division staging area in northern Bhutan to the Indians…
“Tally ho!”
The two air-to-air armed Indian Su-30s in the strike force of six banked away in unison as they spotted two patrolling PLAAF Su-27s fifty kilometers north. The two Chinese pilots were surprised at the sudden radar emissions south of them that showed Indian Su-30s. The PLAAF and the PLAN had not been expecting anything to happen so far east near their home waters between Vietnam and Hainan.
Least of all from the Indians.
The PLAAF 2ND Fighter Division tasked with the defense of Hainan island airbases from any threat had spent the past two weeks conducting uneventful patrols. The only action this unit had seen was when they had sent two of their Su-27s on a deep strike mission with H-6 tanker support against the Indian Navy aircraft in the Malacca Strait last week. Those two fighters had not returned, but they had shot down an Indian Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft before losing their lives to naval Mig-29Ks.
Inaction since that time had bred complacency within the 2ND Fighter Division and which had extended to the defensive patrols over Hainan…
The two Su-27s broke formation and dived as they saw the two Su-30s getting into position for beyond-visual-range missile shots. They threw off chaff clouds and pulled up at lower altitude before spreading out. Their on-board RWRs were screeching now in their ears as they lined up for their own shots and realized that the Indians had fired two R-77s at them. Seconds later they responded with a volley of four PJ-12s and broke formation again to evade.
On the other side, the Indian pilots did the same and deployed effective ECMs and chaff clouds. Three of the four PJ-12s flew off erratically as the ECMs cluttered up their picture. The Indian R-77s had similar trouble, but one of them connected and exploded above the cockpit of the closest Su-27, detonating in a fireball that shredded the cockpit and killed the pilot while severing the two vertical stabilizers. The aircraft yawed and spiraled into the waters below.
As the other Su-27 closed within visual range, the two Su-30s dived in after him and ensured he stayed away and unable to interfere with the real mission…
The four other Su-30s from the ‘Flying Bullets’ Squadron was still at high altitude and began spreading out east of Vietnamese waters. They carried only two R-77s each for self-defense. But on their centerline they carried the last of the Brahmos ALCMs left in the Indian arsenals.
All four aircraft dropped their deadly centerline cargo two-hundred kilometers off the southern coast of Hainan and banked away while the missiles sped off and dropped to lower altitudes. Several hundred kilometers south of them, the two Il-78 tankers were orbiting east of the Vietnamese coast and well within range of their long-range surveillance radars. The Vietnamese air-force personnel had been briefed on this issue and so they continued to observe and ignore whatever they saw the Indians doing…
On the southern coast of Hainan were Sanya and Lingshui airbases. Both were part of the PLAN 9TH Fighter Division which operated J-8 and JH-7 aircraft in naval-support role alongside the PLAAF 2ND Fighter Division forces. Both airbases were close to the coastline and much more open and exposed than the super-hardened airbase at Ledong in central Hainan. This latter airbase was not on the target listing because of the small number of ALCMs available and the hardened nature of the base. But Sanya and Lingshui were not that lucky…
Chinese long-range surveillance radar on the mountains of central Hainan spotted the four supersonic blips on their screens as they split into two groups. The warning went out quickly to all airbases on Hainan. On Sanya and Lingshui, personnel abandoned their parked J-8s and JH-7s on the concrete tarmac as the missiles appeared over the horizon.
Sanya was the first to be hit with the single Brahmos missile aimed for it. It flew over the waves of the beach and dived into open tarmac at Sanya amidst the parked JH-7s. It penetrated a dozen feet into the concrete and then exploded, ripping out the concrete in a one-hundred meter radius behind the pressure wave and demolished the line of parked JH-7s in split-seconds. The expanding pressure waves also ripped into the airbase facilities and shredded the terminal buildings at Sanya along with two parked airliners further down. The thunder from the explosion was heard all over the city and people there could plainly see the black column of smoke rising into the sky from the airport.
And then they heard three more distant rumbles from Lingshui…
By the time the six Su-30s began topping off their tanks from the Il-78s on their way south, the 2ND Fighter Division and the 9TH PLAN Fighter Divisions were scrambling fighters all over Hainan. But with a clear lead of more than a thousand kilometers on them and increasing, the Indians were too far out for any hope of intercept.
So instead the fighters were deployed defensively over Hainan to safeguard against further attacks. As the fighters began orbiting over the island, they could clearly see the columns of smoke and dust rising into the sky from the two airbases on the southern coast.
“Time to move to the final phase here,” General Yadav said as he threw the satellite images back on to Lieutenant-General Suman’s table. The latter was still in his office chair behind the desk. Suman nodded but remained in thought as he picked up one of the images from the table.