“That is not the point!” the NSA retorted. “If you want to strike them, do it over Chinese soil! The 15TH Corps can be handled by conventional means. We have enough forces in the valley under General Suman now that the two enemy Divisions there have collapsed.”
“I don’t want to use our nuclear weapons at all!” the PM said. It got him a frown from all others in the conversation except Ravoof.
“We have already been struck!” Chakri said forcefully. “Bhutan is our responsibility and our paratroopers have died there in the hundreds thanks to the Chinese nuclear strike! General Potgam just lost two Para battalions along with hundreds of regular army and air-force personnel. Our men! Tens of thousands of Bhutanese civilians are dead as well! And had we not detected those launchers in time we would not even be alive! Beijing deserves everything we can throw at them at this point!”
“And then they will respond to our strikes with strikes of their own,” Ravoof replied. “And then we will do it again to them and the cycle goes on! Where does it stop? When both India and China have lost all of their major cities and millions of their citizens? There has to be another way here, Chakri! Striking military targets inside China with nuclear weapons is one thing. But become too successful at it and they will respond against our cities?”
“We cannot not respond to the Chinese attack!” Chakri shouted.
“No,” the PM said, “what we can’t afford is to throw away the conventional victory in Tibet for our lust for Chinese blood. The whole reason they attacked us with nuclear weapons was to force us to do the same and help them dilute the sharp nature of their defeat in Tibet. This is why they didn’t go after our cities. This is also why there were no more launches from them in the last few hours. It was a lure to drag us into a fight we cannot win and away from a fight we did win! We need to look past that lure and see what we have accomplished. Now that their launchers in Tibet are destroyed and their forces in the Chumbi valley and Bhutan are defeated, we have the upper hand. Especially after the hit on their command center. That constitutes an advantage I am willing to use!”
“Do we even know who’s in charge in Beijing now?” Ravoof asked.
“Hard to say,” the NSA added, “but probably somebody from the military. We will know more soon enough. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on their DF-31 missiles. Movement on those units will mean a follow up strike against our cities is in play, and that will be the point at which we will launch our counter-response.”
“So what is our response in the meantime?” Iyer asked.
“Confirm, Korla-tower. We are beginning approach in one minute.”
“Pattern is clear.” The radio squawked.
The Lieutenant-Colonel piloting the aircraft had his right hand on the throttle as the engine whine decreased slightly. His left hand was on the controls as he and his co-pilot brought the KJ-2000 down below the gray cloud cover over Korla. The view from the cockpit was negligible as they broke through the clouds. After a few seconds the aircraft cleared under them and the partially snow covered ground around Korla was visible.
The co-pilot pressed the button for lowering the undercarriage. The aircraft shuddered discernably as the large wheels of the modified Il-76 lowered themselves and locked into position. The pilot also lowered the huge wing flaps. The flaps lowered with a constant humming noise.
“You see it?” the pilot asked as he looked out from the cockpit glass.
“To your left, twenty kilometers,” the co-pilot replied as he spotted the concrete runway at Korla.
“I have it.”
This aircraft was one of the last pair of KJ-2000s in the PLAAF that had survived the two weeks of war with the IAF. Both sides had taken hits to their airborne-radar force. The Indians had lost a CABS AEW and all of its crew over northern Bhutan less than two days before. Most of its eastern aerostats were down as well.
On the Chinese side, the 26TH Air Division had paid a heavy price. At the start of the war this Division controlled the special-mission support aircraft for the PLAAF and as such had been in the IAF cross-hairs right from the start. The Division had lost a Tu-154 electronic-warfare aircraft north of Arunachal-Pradesh early in the war, but its KJ-2000s and KJ-200s had been luckier until a week ago.
The Lieutenant-Colonel brought his aircraft into a large radius turn and aligned himself with the runway just as the escorting pair of J-11s broke formation and climbed back into the cloud cover above.
As the aircraft altitude reduced and the experienced Lieutenant-Colonel gingerly adjusted the approach, the screen from the cockpit glass suddenly disappeared in a brilliant flash of light. Both men instantly brought their arms up to cover their eyes as the light dissipated somewhat and revealed a small yellow ball of flame rising above the ground north of them.
“What was that!?” the co-pilot shouted as he leaned through the right side of the cockpit glass to see the fire ball going up inside a mushroom shaped smoke cloud…
“It was a nuclear detonation! We just lost Uxxaktal airbase!” the Lieutenant-Colonel shouted. “We need to get out of here! Now!”
He immediately pushed his right hand on the throttle controls all the way forward. The whine from the engines outside instantly increased and the aircraft shuddered. The engines were soon groaning at maximum throttle settings. He pushed the radio frequency on the comms for Korla.
“Tower! We just lost Uxxaktal to a nuclear detonation! It must be the… Korla tower?” he said and then checked his frequencies. They had been correct the first time, but he had set them wrong in his urgency. He corrected that back again:
“Korla tower, this is…” he began to speak as their front view disappeared in another flash of white light. This time the light was over Korla and much brighter than before.
He and his co-pilot pulled the control sticks back even as they shielded their eyes using their shoulders and shouted in pain. The aircraft pulled up immediately and the fuselage strained and groaned under the intense stress.
By the time the flash of light subsided, they were already at a very high pitch-up attitude, which for an aircraft the size of an Il-76, was extremely stressful. Both pilots realized this and instantly pushed the sticks back and the aircraft began leveling out, climbing above the ball of pure yellow fire now taking shape over the airbase. Of course, they had been heading straight for it and the pressure waves expand in three-dimensional space…
It hit the aircraft a few moments later just as they pulled level.
The sudden bang instantly eliminated all aircraft controls and the engine whine died as the aircraft began diving. The pressure wave had ripped three of the four engines right off their pylons under the wings along with most of the control surfaces. They were close enough to the explosion that they saw the floor of smoke and dust that had enveloped the ground in a circular pattern around the detonation point. The ground now completely filled the view from the cockpit as they both attempted to pull level with whatever controls they had left.