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  “Pike leader, you all right?” His wingman asked as he pulled level to his portside. Oberoi didn’t respond. His heart was pounding in his chest and he swore that if he relaxed his hands from the stick and throttle, they would start shaking uncontrollably. So instead he grabbed them even stronger.

  “Roger, pike-two. All clear. Some dings and scratches but otherwise clean. Wouldn’t want to do that again, though. Where’s the other bugger?”

  “No V-I-D on the second bandit, leader. Mongol-two speculates he was shot down by our long-range volley.”

  “Right. Our losses? Who hasn’t checked in?”

  “Pike-three is down. Took a direct hit from one of the AMRAAMs. Pike-five is trailing smoke and bugging south with pike-six as escort.”

  Oberoi looked around and saw the other four Fulcrums apart accounted for. He switched comms to Verma: “this is pike-leader. Skies are clear of the two bandits. We are bingo fuel and egressing south. Over.”

  “Mongol-two copies all. Good work. Scabbard is on station and will reinforce. Pike is cleared to egress. Out.”

  Oberoi switched off the comms and flipped the aircraft to the side as the five Mig-29s of his flight headed south in an arrow formation. As they cleared the line-of-control, they saw an entire line of flashes on the peaks and tracers and explosions moving back and forth. The muffled thunder from the explosions could be heard even above the rumble of the two engines inside his cockpit.

  “You seeing this?” Oberoi asked his wingman and waved down with his hand. The wingman nodded from his cockpit but otherwise said nothing.

  Oberoi turned his attention forward and allowed himself to relax his grip as scabbard flight and its massive force of sixteen Su-30s streaked to their side, heading north into Pakistani-occupied-Kashmir.

  The realization struck Oberoi yet again: it had begun.

  ──── 12 ────

  The six army pilots looked up as the two-truck convoy roared on to the tarmac and accelerated towards them. Lt-colonel Jagat flicked the small red flashlight off and folded the maps. As the heavily armed soldiers began offloading from the back of the two trucks, Jagat stuffed the maps into his chest pocket and zipped up the leather flight jacket.

  “Here we go, boys.” He nodded to the other five pilots. They saluted and walked off, leaving Jagat and his co-pilot near the open cockpit of the Dhruv helicopter. Jagat noticed the leader of the special-warfare team heading towards him, with his team in tow. The click-snap noise of the crew-chief checking the side-door mounted machine-gun caused them to jerk their head. Jagat checked his wristwatch and looked at the crew-chief: “Start pre-flight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The co-pilot walked away and opened the side-door of glass cockpit and clambered aboard. Jagat saw Pathanya walk up to him.

  “Major Pathanya, reporting as ordered, sir.” Jagat sized the man up. He had never met him before and had never heard about his specific deeds in Bhutan. For Jagat, this young major was like so many others he had taken on dangerous heliborne operations in the Kashmir valley. He conceded that today’s mission was right up “insane creek”, as he liked to call it. And certainly these men in front of him with their faces painted in winter highland camo weren’t his regular customers. But hell, when the mission demanded a quick and dirty airborne insertion, they called on him. This major and his team were just along for the ride.

  “Very good, major,” Jagat said as he returned Pathanya’s salute. “Right on time. Get your men and equipment onboard this helicopter and the two others you see there.” He motioned to the two other Dhruv helicopters parked nearby, their fuselages visible only against the bluish moonlight and the main rotor blades oscillating slightly in the chilly winds at Leh.

  “Yes, sir.” Pathanya looked back at his team who immediately split into three groups and began carrying their backpacks and personal weapons to the respective birds. Pathanya would fly with Jagat. He walked over and slung his backpack on to the floor of the helicopter as his other team-mates entered through the rear cargo entrance. The distant thunder on the horizon caught his attention. He stepped back from the door and heard the rumble coming from the northwest…

  “They have opened up on both sides,” Jagat noted as he walked around the cockpit to the other side. “The line-of-control is lit up nice and heavy by artillery from both sides.”

  “It’s all good, though.” Jagat’s co-pilot offered as he put on his flight-helmet and lowered the night-vision goggles. “For us, anyway. Provides a nice little distraction on the frontlines for us to sneak through.”

  Pathanya shook his head. It was always the same. Everybody had their own little corner of the war to handle. So it was here. He could only imagine what the soldiers underneath that bombardment were facing. After all, he had endured the same during the battle of Wang-Chu bridge in Bhutan. Was Pakistani artillery any better or heavier than what the Chinese division had thrown at him and his team? He was certainly under no rush to find out! Of course, there was nothing like being knocked over by the shockwave from a nuclear blast…

  The pain in his thigh shot up as though to remind him that this was no game. As if he needed any such reminders. There was a small glow of orange to the northeast that silhouetted the Ladakh mountains for a few seconds before the inky black night took over again. The muffled rumbling followed several seconds later. He could feel the first signs of fear somewhere in his otherwise hard outer core. It had to be suppressed if he was going to be effective tonight.

  “Sir, what’s our flight look like?” He asked Jagat as the latter flicked on his night-vision goggles. A small green glow reflected back on the visor of his helmet. Pathanya noticed the cockpit was all darkened. There were no lights inside the helicopter except for extremely dimmed ones in the cockpit designed for use with low-light helmet optics. It was certainly eerie to him to see the helicopter turbines coming to life but nothing in the cockpit lighting up to accompany that operation. This was not a cockpit for the uninitiated…

  “Standard S-H-B-O, major.” Jagat noted without turning away from his tasks. “We are leaving Leh in a few minutes and will be heading to our FARP, west of Kargil. We will refuel there, meet with our escorts and fly you and your team into the A-O. Once there, we will hold position and let you and your boys do your thing. After that we are to pick you up and be back to our jump-off point within an hour.”

  The co-pilot turned back to face Pathanya: “We will be going in hard and fast. Low-level nap-of-the-earth flight in the mountains with only low-light optics and no visual landmarks other than our trusty nav system here.” Pathanya could make out the shining white teeth of the grinning co-pilot underneath the helmet and the visor.

  Damned SOCOM pilots! Pathanya moved back into the cockpit and grabbed his backpack and rifle as the turbines spooled up and the rotors were spinning at full RPM. He looked at the three other team-members inside the cabin: “Hold on to your seats, men. And I do mean hold hard! We have some real aggressive pilots up front!”

  One of the Lieutenants tucked his backpack closer to his chest: “aggressive special-forces pilots? Oh good god! That’s all we needed!”

  Pathanya smiled and pulled his backpack into his chest just as the helicopter leapt off the ground like a panther leaping on its prey. An apt analogy considering Jagat was always assigned the call-sign “panther” by the operations people. Something to do with his past, if the rumors were to be believed. And with what Pathanya had seen of the man so far, he was ready to believe anything the rumors said.

  The crew-chief on board made sure their passengers were still there after the violent lift-off and then went back to manning the machine-gun. Pathanya saw him speaking something into his helmet comms mouthpiece but it was inaudible over the rumble of the engines. But he did see a smile on the NCO’s face as he got the response from the cockpit. Probably Jagat had wanted to make sure his passengers were still on board after that liftoff.

  Yeah, this flight was going to be real fun…Pathanya
put his head back on the metal skin of the helicopter and let the vibrations relax him. Through the open side door of the helicopter, he could see over the shoulder of the crew-chief and saw the Leh valley falling behind as the three helicopters of Panther flight climbed to the northwest.

  The blades of the Mi-17 helicopter threw up a cloud of snow and water droplets as it touched down on the forward helipad. The undercarriage tires pressed against the gravel and compressed as the engine power was reduced and the mass of the helicopter bore down on them. The crew-chief got off the rear ramp and confirmed solid contact with terra-firma. Gephel walked off the ramp and headed towards the camouflaged command trailers a few hundred feet away. He had to hold on to his beret for the first dozen feet for fear of it being ripped off his head by the main rotor blades whipping above his head. He was met by one of Ansari’s operations officers who saluted and hurriedly pointed towards the left-most of the command trailers. Gephel nodded and followed the man.

  It was hard to see the ground under his feet out here. The loose gravel and the slushy-wet snow felt like it would give way on the very next step. Gephel frowned as his boots sank into the slush. Leh had been clear with only partly clouds. But out here, the weather had become worse. He frowned as his minds ran over possible implications of continued bad weather. Would they have to hold off? Did they even have that option anymore?

  “In here, sir.” The captain escorting Gephel said as they reached the closed door of the command trailer. He grabbed the handle and unlocked it just as a series of light flashes to the north silhouetted the valley. He realized the proximity of their location to the line-of-control a few kilometers north. The artillery duel between the two armies was not far off. In fact, he could see the flashes of friendly heavy tube-artillery firing away to the west…

  Gephel opened the door before stepping inside. He saw the small operation room occupied by six men, Ansari included. Three of them were NCOs manning the radios and battlefield computers. Ansari and a couple of his operations people were leaning over the map table. Ansari was on the phone but waved Gephel inside. Gephel walked over and saw that one of the screens inside the trailer showed the black-white feed from one of the air force’s Searcher-II unmanned-aerial-vehicles. The top-left screen data showed Gephel that this was “cougar-two” orbiting above Deosai…Inside Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.

  “The air-force is running SEAD missions along our ingress corridor,” Ansari noted as he put the phone back in its position on the side comms panel. “Their Jaguar strike aircraft just snuffed out a few of the enemy anti-air positions along our path. So now they are backing that up with aerial drones. Cougar-two is one of two high-altitude drones over Pak territory at the moment. And it will be our eyes for the next two hours.”

  “And then they want their drone back?” Gephel asked.

  Ansari nodded and pointed to the digital map on the table in front of them: “It should be sufficient for our purposes. Panther is in the air and leopard will rendezvous with them at the refueling point.”

  Gephel crossed his arms. So far everything was on schedule. But going by past experience, how long would that good luck last?

  ──── 13 ────

  As the white flashes erupted to the south, the two pilots inside the cockpit of the PAF kilo-echo airborne-radar aircraft reflexively looked up. The small white flashes were magnified by several orders of magnitude in their low-light goggles. As they watched, the flashes broke into hundreds of smaller fragments of trailing comets. The intensity of their light dissipated away as these fragments went earthwards on projectile paths…

  The commander of the aircraft immediately pushed the throttles on all four engines and brought the aircraft to a diving bank. He realized that they had just witnessed the decimation of their two F-16 close-escorts to the south and he wasn’t about to wait to find out why or how. All he knew was that it was his responsibility to protect one of the crown jewels of the Pakistani air-force from destruction. Whoever had destroyed their two escorts was surely after them. And he had to get this aircraft away as far north as possible.

  The destruction of the runway at Skardu had trapped eight of the twelve Block-52 F-16s on the ground. These were now at the mercy of the Indian strike jets. The other two on patrol over Skardu had met their fate at the hands of the swarm of Indian Fulcrums. And now the last two F-16s in occupied Kashmir had been literally swatted from the sky with a sickle of death by a massive force of sixteen Indian Flankers charging north into this airspace. As the wreckage of these last two friendly aircraft in the southern skies fell to the earth, the crew of the kilo-echo knew that there were now no more defenses between them and the Indian Flankers.

  The sudden abrupt motion of the aircraft caught the radar crew in the cabin by surprise and jerked them within their seats as the aircraft banked and lost altitude. Their radar picture immediately became gibberish. The crew shut down all systems to prevent further damage as the aircraft took drastic evasive maneuvers and egressed north into Chinese airspace. The flight crew knew that the Indians would not dare pursue the aircraft into Chinese territory for fear of triggering a massive Chinese military response…

  “Kilo-echo bird has stopped radiating.” The EW operator added over the comms. Verma took a deep breath and nodded. The Su-30 Flankers of scabbard flight had successfully cleared the airspace over Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir in a deadly swipe. Two more F-16s had been shot down for zero losses and now the sole Pakistani airborne radar aircraft was scampering north in all due haste. He couldn’t order its pursuit despite the pleas of the Flanker pilots. No, the kilo-echo was out of the fight. It wasn’t dead, but the net effect was the same. For now, he needed Scabbard flight to reorient itself and face the incoming threats from the west as Pakistan recovered from the initial element of surprise and began sending up waves of fighters to try and take back control of the skies.

  It would have been nice to take out some more airbases in mainland Pakistan. But that was an escalation that was off the cards for the Indian forces. New-Delhi wanted this done surgically and fast. But because they had given away the game before it could begin, Bhosale and Verma had been forced to take out the Pakistani air threat that had been deployed to deter the strikes. But the Pakistani military was not one to take a humiliation of this kind laying down. Now they were scrambling fighters across the board to take back control of lost airspace. Commanders such as Verma at the sharp end of the sword were left to wonder whether that thin red line between strikes against terrorist targets and all-out war with Pakistan had already been crossed when the first Brahmos missiles had disabled Skardu airbase…

  Any such distinction, of course, was purely for political reasoning only. As far as those in uniform were concerned, the balloon had gone up. If New-Delhi chose to cover its eyes and ears and allege otherwise, it was because of its own inability to see the adapting situation in front of them. Verma and Bhosale had known for the last week that things would unfold this way and had prepared for it. The prime-minister and his cabinet were probably being briefed at this very instant.

  They will realize the truth soon enough…Verma crossed his arms and saw the comms chatter between the Flanker flight leaders and his operators directing them towards two flights of obsolescent Pakistani Mirage-IIIs and another flight of JF-17 fighters scrambling out of Sargodha airbase in Pakistan.

  “Are there any other Pak birds over occupied Kashmir apart from the egressing kilo-echo bird?” Verma asked the operators in front of him. He got several negatives in response.

  Good. Kashmir airspace is ours.

  For now, anyway…he corrected himself.

  “This is mongol-two-actual to overlord: the window is pried open! I say again, the window is pried open. It won’t stay that way for too long. So make it count and give them hell!”

  ──── 14 ────

  The Dhruv helicopters flared for landing on the gravel. Jagat powered down the helicopter as he and his co-pilot looked outside for signs of l
ife. The swirling dust obscured the view and the wartime blackout conditions didn’t help. It was several seconds before they could make out soldiers running to them across the landing ground. One of the officers wearing military a woodland camo uniform and a contrasting white winter smock ran over to the side of the cockpit, holding his cap with one hand. Jagat opened up the cockpit door.

  “How long do you need?” Jagat asked. His crew-chief was already on the ground and helping the soldiers to refuel the helicopter.

  “Ten minutes!” The lieutenant shouted his response over the sounds of the roaring trucks and other military vehicles heading down the highway further away.

  “Make it fast, son! The meter is running!” Jagat said and then lowered his comms mouthpiece as the lieutenant ran off to supervise the refueling.

  “Panther-two, -three: do you guys see our escorts anywhere? I do not see them from where I am parked.” Jagat looked to see his co-pilot who shrugged his shoulders.

  “Uh…that’s a big negative, panther-actual,” one of the other two pilots reported. “I got nothing over here. Just some parked vehicles and trailers.”

  “Panther-three here: I got negative V-I-D on leopard birds, parked or otherwise.”

  “Shit!” Jagat switched comms to get in touch with command. Pathanya moved up behind the co-pilot as he listened in on the chatter.

  “What’s the problem?” He asked in a whisper as Jagat began spewing expletives on the comms while the ops people at Ansari’s HQ tried to find out what was going on.

  “Leopard flight was supposed to rendezvous with us here.” The co-pilot replied. “But we have no comms with them and don’t see them around. Somebody fucked things up at command or leopard got stuck in bad weather en-route and had to put down somewhere.”