A Chinese WZ 551 armoured personnel carrier drove straight towards the SFF mortar position. Its 25mm cannon was silent, but the 7.62mm heavy machine gun cut a swathe of destruction through the small guerrilla unit. The last commando fell as the fourth mortar round was let off. Then two Chinese Z-9 helicopters, based on the French-built Eurocopter SA 365 Dauphin, were in the air with searchlights. Crews of other Chinese helicopters, including three Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawks, were being called in, and this was just what Choedrak had planned for.
With its camouflage colours and Chinese markings, Choedrak’s lumbering Indian Mi-26 helicopter flew into the Plain of Lhasa north across the tributaries of the Kyichu. It was over the city, on schedule, fifteen minutes after the fighting began. Choedrak could see crowds gathered around the Jokhang, fires burning in the police stations and the muzzle flashes of gunfire. Special Chinese army units were closing in on the narrow streets of the old city, moving cautiously, knowing they were entering a nightmare of close-combat urban warfare. More troops were pouring in along the Ngachen Lam from the PLA’s main Tibetan headquarters just to the east of Lhasa.
Seconds later, the helicopter was over Drapchi prison, which seemed quiet, with light morning traffic. Looking north towards the mountains it was as if nothing untoward was happening at all. By now there were other helicopters in the skies, but there was too much confusion for the Mi-26 to be noticed. Choedrak listened for the AN-32.
‘Keep flying,’ he ordered.
The pilot held a northerly course to Sera monastery in the foothills of the Gyaltsen Mountain, then turned west-south-west down to the Kyichu, making a circle of Lhasa so that he would come back to Drapchi from the east. The SFF infiltration force was in action throughout the southern sector of Lhasa, with up to sixty men engaged in combat. Forty remained in reserve, retaining their disguises, to stagger deployment over the next thirty minutes between the breakout at Drapchi and the escape.
‘There he is,’ said the pilot. ‘Two o’clock and coming down fast.’
‘Thank God,’ said Choedrak.
Choedrak saw the Antonov’s silhouette plunging out of the morning darkness. He recognized the distinctive turboprop engine casings above the wings. It came down in a spiral to avoid anti-aircraft fire, and just when it seemed certain the plane would not be able to pull out, the nose levelled and the rear ramp came down. The wings tipped and paratroopers tumbled out, their chutes opening straight away, the men identifying their positions in the prison compound, concentrating hard with only fifteen seconds between the jump and the landfall.
The sudden roar of aircraft and the mushrooming of white chutes were followed by the crackle of small-arms fire as half the paratroopers landed inside the camp, their job to hold down the Chinese troops for the few minutes of the operation and blow the two gates leading to the prison compound.
The two gunners on the Mi-26 shot out each of the watchtowers. Already, men lay dead and wounded on the frozen ground of the military camp. But enough were engaging the Chinese in a fierce firefight to hold the gate leading from the camp to the prison.
Other paratroopers made it into the prison itself. Ten men took cover between the clinic and the wall of the women’s prison, setting up a lethal field of fire along the main road running through the compound. Five men set up a position between the fence and the First Division building, laying down covering fire for another four who were working on explosives on the prison gate.
The helicopter came in due south over the Sera Lam road into the city, the pilot skimming the traffic and bringing the aircraft to hover a few feet off the ground opposite the shabby main prison entrance. It led into a military camp. The second gate went into a sort of antechamber to the prison, then there was the prison gate itself. Each section was protected by three layers of electrified fencing and the compound was overlooked by six watch-towers, each manned by two guards with searchlights and heavy machine guns. Division Five, where Togden was held, was the furthest point from the prison entrance, sealed off in its own compound with its own gate.
Choedrak was the first out.
A searing explosion ripped away the main gate, hurling debris into the air, and the men from the SFF ran through the flames into the chaos of the military camp. Their firing was controlled and highly skilled, hitting the Chinese, identifying their own and shouting commands in Tibetan, using their own language in their own country for the first time.
The second gate was shattered with plastic explosives, then the gate to the prison compound itself was destroyed and the men ran in, relieving those who had been holding the ground. Each had an intricate knowledge of the prison from the diagrams they had studied, each four-man unit responsible for a specific task. The aim of the operation was to free as many prisoners as quickly as possible onto the streets of Lhasa, destroy the prison and deliver Lhundrub Togden to India or Nepal.
The Antonov was on a course due south, flying at the dangerously low level of 300 feet to avoid Chinese radar and air defences, which would now be on high alert. For the next twenty minutes, the pilot was relying on luck to reach the border with Bhutan, 200 kilometres away, before the Chinese air defences brought him down.
A squadron of six fighters scrambled from the Chinese air-force base just north of Lhasa. They were Shenyang-12 or J-12 fighters, Chinese-built, but based on the Russian-designed SU-27, more than enough to take on the lightly armed Antonov-32 and Mi-26.
Seven more Chinese helicopters were in the sky, but, amazingly, the Mi-26 was still flying undetected. When the alert at Drapchi was sounded the Armed Police Headquarters and Tibet Military Area command headquarters were themselves under attack from SFF units. The message came through not that there was an attack on Drapchi, but that there was a riot. Then the radio operators were killed and their equipment smashed.
As soon as the last paratrooper was out, seconds after the main gate was blown, the pilot took the Mi-26 up again, flying south towards the Kuru Sampa, the main southerly bridge across the Kyichu River. Chinese reinforcements from the east were entering the city, but the area around the bridge was still clear. The pilot brought the helicopter down on the northern banks of the Kyichu, dropped off twenty commandos and delivered another twelve to the southern edge of the bridge at the beginning of the Tibet— Sichuan Highway. Looming above them was the Bhumpa Mountain, where they were to flee once the helicopter was out of action.
1,500 metres to the south-west armoured vehicles came out of the PLA’s main depot south of the river, heading towards the bridge. Tibetan fighters saw them, melted into the rocky terrain and watched them pass.
It would only be minutes before the helicopter was identified as an enemy aircraft. The pilot’s most dangerous task now was retracing the flight path to Drapchi. He flew low over the Jokhang, now an orange glow of burning buildings and street-fighting. Then it fell quieter below him until suddenly he was above the flames curling up from the prison compound itself.
The first burst of tracer anti-aircraft fire cut a line of speckled yellow and white in front of the cockpit. The gunners returned with a long burst of theirs and the pilot brought the helicopter down into a hover above the prison compound.
SFF units had taken high positions in the prison buildings and watchtowers. The winchman released the ladder from the helicopter, and the pilot identified Choedrak, running through the smoke, with the prisoner, Lhundrub Togden.
The Mi-26 was not designed for such elaborate work and the pilot had difficulty keeping her steady. Togden was on the ladder first, as commandos set up fields of fire in protective layers around him. The Drapchi prisoners formed a human barrier at the gates of the prison, where Chinese troops were now trying to get in. As Togden was on the ladder the first Chinese mortar landed in the prison compound with a ferocity which caused panic among the prisoners. The Chinese later admitted that twenty-nine were killed or wounded with that one mortar shell.