“Are they launching nuclear weapons?” the PM asked him, not realizing that the SPG team-leader was not privy to those details beyond what his immediate orders were. The latter man realized that panic had gripped the man in his charge. He forced himself to remain calm.
“We don’t know, sir. That’s why it is extremely important to get you out of here, right now.”
“How much time do we have before the warheads hit Delhi?” the PM continued. Before he could get a response, the AW-101 helicopter was on the ground and the doors had been opened. He pushed the Prime-Minister along and ran over to the open doors of the helicopter. The PM and his family were bundled aboard and the SPG group got in behind them, leaving a contingent around the perimeter to maintain security of the residence. As the air-force sergeant closed the door of the helicopter, the pilot of the helicopter looked back and saw the crucial people on board. He nodded and spoke into his comms mouthpiece as the helicopter lifted off the ground and headed towards Palam airport, gathering speed quickly. The SPG team-leader looked at his watch and nodded. They had just enough time to get the PM out.
Probably… he corrected himself.
The Chinese had achieved initiative, but had lost surprise. When the Indian Aerospace Command had detected the launches, everybody in that command down from AVM Malhotra knew just how lucky it had been for them to have detected the launches in time. Had they not re-adjusted that satellite’s orbit just a few hours before, they would have completely missed the Chinese launches until after it was too late. The Chinese had timed the launches to correspond to the black-out period of the Indian satellite coverage along orbit paths that they had been using for the last two months. But they hadn’t counted on a change to that path within hours of their planned attack.
So luck had sided with the Indians on that one. But the missiles were still flying their way south…
The klaxons were sounding off on all Indian airbases in the Eastern, Central and Western Air-Commands of the Indian Air-Force. The Chinese cruise-missile tally had been done by the various ISR systems. The final number of detected launches was a staggering one-hundred-seventy-five, including both the Long-Sword missiles and the YJ-62s. The expended Long-Sword TEL vehicles were dispersing already, having no reloads to fire. However the YJ-62 TEL vehicles were moving for a second reload…
For the IAF, the threat was different than the Army. The Chinese cruise-missiles had been launched far to the north of the border with India and this meant that even with the Long-Swords in the mix, chances of hitting southern Indian airbases was low. But preserving aircraft was not the whole picture. An air-force is measured as a system including infrastructure, weapons, aircraft, personnel and morale rather than just aircraft alone. If the northern airbases were lost, the ability of the IAF to preserve aerial density over the battlefield would dissipate down to the level of the PLAAF over Tibet, and that was bad news.
The only thing standing between that and the Chinese missiles was the IAF’s integrated Air-Defense-Ground-Environment-system or ADGES, which was now swinging into action. Surface-to-air missile launchers were now adjusting azimuth towards the likely ingress areas for the Chinese cruise-missiles. Tracking and guidance radars were coming online from Ladakh to Arunachal-Pradesh. Soon enough, they were primed and ready as they looked towards the Himalayan peaks to the north for the threat to pop up into view.
Above New-Delhi, a single Phalcon AWACS continued to climb above the clouds to reach its patrol height while the airborne radar went active. On the ground at Agra, another Phalcon flight-crew from the No. 50 Squadron spooled up the engines of their aircraft for immediate departure. At Kalaikunda airbase far to the east, another No. 50 Squadron Phalcon detachment also took up position at the end of the runway for immediate departure while one indigenous CABS AEW aircraft from the newly organized No. 51 Squadron took to the air in front of them…
“Awfully quiet,” Colonel Malik said. The peace and serenity in the hills was momentarily broken as two Dhruv helicopters flew overhead and disappeared into the darkness of the valley to the south.
“Yes sir, it is,” Krishnan said as he lowered his binoculars after scanning the peaks to the north. No activity there…
Krishnan looked at his palm and moved his fingers to maintain circulation in the freezing cold weather.
He remembered the day two months ago when he had ambushed the Chinese squad not too far from where he was now. With the warning order having come through a few minutes before, he wondered if today was the day the Chinese would come after his blood. He wondered whether his actions had precipitated the flow of history in any way similar to the way the Chinese ambush of the Indian policemen near Kongka-La in Ladakh, 1959. That event laid the path for a war three years later. Now he wondered if the same was happening again…
The last two months had been filled with vitriolic conversations between Beijing and New-Delhi in light of several border air and ground skirmishes. Tibet was still burning under the armed revolts that Beijing was convinced were being launched from India with tacit support. Krishnan and his men could not tell whether this was true or not. Not that they cared if it was true. Posted to this region, they had seen firsthand the suffering of the Tibetan people under Beijing’s oppressive rule. They had heard the firsthand reports of torture and genocide being perpetrated in and around Lhasa as the PLA attempted to regain control.
And now the Indian military had been put on full alert in the last half hour…
This is exactly what makes their silence so scary.
More so than their guns, as a matter of fact. What the hell are they thinking?”
Krishnan collected his thoughts and turned to his CO:
“Sir, what do you think is going on?” Malik grunted.
“Whatever it is Krishnan, we can be sure of one thing: we won’t like it. All I know is that Division HQ is scrambling to find out what’s going on with New-Delhi. Somebody must know what’s going on, but we sure as hell don’t. I was told by our air-force liaison that they are withdrawing our UAV support for right now because that squadron has to be relocated immediately. That sounds downright ominous to me. Division commander thinks so as well. This is why I want you to cover all the approaches to Walong. If the Chinese move a muscle, I want to know it. In the meantime I will try and figure out what on earth is happening,” Malik said as he wore his gloves back on.
Colonel Malik commanded a reinforced Battalion within the 2ND Mountain Division (MD), responsible for the defense of Walong. It was a large sector, but the 2ND MD was a large force with lot of independent firepower under its direct command.
It had taken a humiliating defeat fifty years ago at the hands of the Chinese during the cold winter of 1962-63 to hammer home the lesson on the need for flexible defense and dedicated Mountain Divisions. Napoleon had once asked his commanders if his army units spread evenly along the border were meant for defending against smugglers, for that was exactly what the result was. A military force however large, if dissipated along the border, ceases to be a coherent force. This was especially true in mountainous terrain of the Himalayas.