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  “Shit!” Pathanya blurted out. The co-pilot grunted.

  “Yeah. Join the cursing club.”

  A sudden burst of rotor noise caught all of them by surprise and Pathanya jerked as four thin, sleek helicopters flew overhead at high speed. Jagat and his co-pilot stretched forward to see the new visitors here as they banked to the south, one kilometer to the west…

  “Scratch that request, viper-actual,” Jagat said matter-of-factly, “I think leopard just showed up!” He flicked the comms off and then changed VHF frequencies to match leopard comms: “If you gentlemen are done goofing around, I would like to get this job over with!”

  Pathanya saw the four helicopters now returning back to the FARP at much lower speeds and spreading out in a finger-four formation as they flared for landing. Only when they touched down did he see that these were four LCH gunships. All four choppers carried a two-man crew consisting of a weapons-system-operator, or WSO, and a pilot. He also saw the protruding cannons underneath the chin of the helicopters as well as rocket pods and quad pylons for a total of eight Nag anti-tank missiles per bird. This was serious firepower on hand…

  “If only we had these in Bhutan when we needed them,” Pathanya blurted out and then stopped himself. The co-pilot heard him but chose not to say anything.

  The radio squawked: “apologies for the delay, panther! Give us a few minutes to fuel up and we will be good to go.”

  “Roger,” Jagat checked his wristwatch. “Make it snappy, if you would.” They were getting behind schedule already. Jagat looked out the cockpit glass and swore. Pathanya glanced at the co-pilot and then moved back into the cabin to check on his team.

  “What’s going on up there?” One of his men asked as settled down next to his backpack and pulled out the maps and images for a final mental dry run. Pathanya looked at the soldier as he removed his small flashlight. “Usual errors in getting the right people at the right place at the right time under combat conditions. Don’t worry about it though. It’s under control.”

  Pathanya turned his eyes to the maps spread out on his lap. One of the pictures he pulled out was a copy of the file picture RAW had of Muzammil and his chief operatives in the LET. Each of his team members had a copy of the picture to allow them to positively ID the man amongst all of his bearded cohorts. Pathanya looked at the picture of the man with long, flowing beard and reminded himself that this was the man responsible for the strike on Mumbai. And since then he had been stretching his vocal cords spewing religious hatred and promising renewed jihad against Indian forces in Kashmir and elsewhere. Pathanya heard metallic clanks suggesting that their refueling was complete and that the ground crews were preparing the helicopter for dust-off. Looking at the vast military operation currently in play to punish these militant outfits, it was now anybody’s guess as to what it meant to capture this one man when so much else was going on. Would the capture of this perpetrator even matter anymore as the two nations slugged it out? Was that what this man and the Pakistani Generals had wanted?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Pathanya tucked the picture inside his chest pocket as he heard the turbines of the helicopter spooling up. He heard Jagat talking to his pilots up front:

  “Panther-actual to leopard. You have the lead, we have the tail. Take us to the A-O. Over.”

  “Wilco, panther. Leopard-two, -three, -four. You know the drill. Protect panther from all threats, ground and air. Use deadly force as required. Advise corrections to waypoints as necessary. All right, gentlemen, here we go!”

  Pathanya saw through the front cockpit glass as the four gunships leapt off the snowy-gravel and over climbed out of view. Jagat turned back to face Pathanya and his men: “Hold on gentlemen. Here we go!”

  A few seconds later the helicopter lifted off the ground in rapid acceleration that left Pathanya holding tight. He saw two of the LCH gunships move up front from above and take up escort position as the seven helicopters dusted off the FARP. The flashes of artillery fire were now directly visible to the north from the cockpit glass. Pathanya grabbed his rifle and backpack and lofted it behind his back as his men did the same. He heard the last of the radio messages and recognized Ansari’s voice straight away:

  “Viper-actual here. Confirmed target package within A-O and have eyes on you via cougar-two! Good hunting out there!”

  The three Pinaka launcher trucks swerved off the road, one behind the other, on to the patch of even terrain nearby. Once off the road, the two vehicles in the back of the convoy drove off on either side of the lead vehicle so that they were all in abreast formation when they jerked to a stop. The crews of all three vehicles noticed that the ground shook beneath their feet as explosions erupted on the ground they had just been on to the east. The dust cloud from the explosions was now rising into the black sky above…

  But that was what the Pinaka multi-rocket launchers were designed for. Much like their bigger Brahmos brethren, the Pinaka launchers were autonomous. They could fire and move to a new location to deny the enemy a chance to counter-bombard them. In the age of weapons-locating-radars, such autonomy and precision meant the difference between life and death. And it had already proven lethal to a lot of men tonight as both sides rolled fire into each other’s fixed tube-artillery positions in the mountains. Unlike the all-terrain trucks on which the Pinaka system was mounted, the long-range guns of the Indian and Pakistani armies were not nearly as mobile. And over the years both sides had meticulously marked out each other’s guns to painful detail. At the moment, the two sides were thrashing each other out. And a lot of the gun crews were having to make their escape from counter-battery fire by the seat-of-their pants.

  By comparison, the Pinaka crews were in the very lap of luxury. Sitting inside a protected cabin and having the ability to control most operations via automation, they were extremely quick and highly precise over long ranges. And as Pakistani artillery crews had found to their frustration, extremely hard to pin down…

  In these mountains, the range of the Pinaka system was enhanced by reduced density-altitude conditions such that a nominal range of fifty kilometers was achievable. Consequently, the three Pinaka batteries in this sector were laying waste to Pakistani fixed artillery positions, command-and-control centers and logistics. Each new target was handed down via the army’s artillery-combat-command-system. This system networked with the airborne sensors in the form of unmanned drones and manned stand-off sensor systems to find target locations, which were then passed along with other strike information down to the individual Pinaka autonomous groups. The system had worked well during the war with China. And like that war with China, most of the Pinaka crews were spending time taking out the opposing artillery forces during these initial stages.

  But these vehicles were an exception to that mission.

  The three vehicles shuddered as the launch tubes emptied with the large warhead rockets leaping off their tubes in ripple-fire mode. The vehicles were instantly backlit with the orange-yellow glow of the rocket exhaust before disappearing under their smoke. All three vehicles were engulfed in the back-blast of the rocket exhaust. As the last of the rockets leapt of the tubes, the lead vehicle rumbled to life. It was followed by the other two vehicles as they reformed into a convoy and swerved back on to the road. Two kilometers west, they would meet up with their rearming vehicles and drop the spent tubes and pick up new ones. By the time the Pakistani radars back-calculated their now-deserted launch position and responded in kind, the three vehicles would already be rolling further down the highway, delivering death at every turn.

  Every long-range strike needs damage-assessment to determine its fruitfulness. On the line of control, this was often provided by the eyes of the friendly infantry hunkered down in their bunkers. When possible, the eyes were above the targets via unmanned-aerial-drones.

  This one was somewhere in between.

  “Kaboom!”

  Jagat noted with a wicked smile as they watched the shared forwa
rd-looking-infrared, or FLIR, feed from Dutt’s LCH “leopard-one”, hovering further up the ridgeline. The TV view was silent, but they heard the sounds soon enough as the shockwaves rolled down to them.

  “Shit!” The radio squawked. Jagat recognized the voice of the crew on “leopard-two”, assisting Dutt’s helicopter on the ridgeline.

  “You okay, -two?” Dutt chimed in, voice laced with concern.

  “All green, leader. Um…the smoke just ate up my visibility, though. Have to readjust position. Standby.”

  “Don’t stray too far.”

  “Wilco.”

  Jagat ignored the chatter between the two air-force crews, focusing instead on the steady video feed from Dutt while the other LCH maneuvered to a better vantage point. The black-and-white infrared TV showed them what the FLIR sensor on the LCH hovering a half-kilometer ahead was seeing to the north. Such sharing of sensors between cockpits was a result of sensor-fusion enhancements to the LCH and Dhruv helicopter fleets. It was extremely useful for special operations. The LCH being a gunship was much thinner, smaller, more agile and well-designed for an observation platform for friendly artillery units. Up in these mountains where most helicopters struggled to hover or climb gently, the LCH had the horsepower and light-weight design to allow it to climb at rates far in excess of what was needed to avoid enemy detection or fire. It’s thin-frontal cross section and composites cover made it impossible to detect on radar amongst the rocky terrain behind it. And it’s pixilated, digital camo made it very difficult to detect on infrared scanners. If one of these birds-of-prey happened to be looking at you when you spotted it visually, chances were that you were already dead but just didn’t know it yet…

  “What do you see, -two?” Dutt’s voice chimed in again.

  “Strike highly effective, leader. I see one, maybe two, bunker positions still untouched, though.”

  Jagat shared a look at his co-pilot: “Is leopard-two sharing his feed?” The co-pilot nodded and changed the knob setting to a different position. The display shifted from leopard-one to leopard-two and showed the FLIR zoomed in on what looked like an inactive Pakistani bunker on the line-of-control. It was hard to determine whether it was still occupied just by looking at the infrared view. That was the problem: the rockets had lit up the entire southern side of the Pakistani controlled ridgeline. Everything was showing up on thermals! But they had to fly past it into Pakistani territory, so it couldn’t be ignored…

  “Is it operational, -two?” Dutt asked.

  “Can’t say, leader.”

  “We can’t take the risk,” Jagat finally joined the conversation. “Take it out! And make it quick! We are burning precious fuel here!”

  “Wilco, panther-actual,” Dutt replied. “Leopard-two, you have the ball. One Nag should do the trick. Aim for the bunker entrance.”

  “Roger!”

  Jagat saw the view angle of the bunker seen on the FLIR of leopard-two move to the right as the helicopter maneuvered into a proper position. A couple seconds later the view shuddered slightly and Jagat jerked his head up to see a speck of rocket exhaust go up from the otherwise complete dark visibility to his northeast. The radio chimed in for everybody’s benefit:

  “Missile is away,” the calm voice noted. “Impact now…now…now!”

  The silent display showed the Nag anti-tank missile as it slammed into one of the slit-entrance of the bunker. The explosive warhead detonated in a flash of white-black on the screen and enveloped all of the interior. Flames leapt out of the supposed firing positions within the bunker a split second before the roof flew off underneath an inverted cloud of concrete and dust. The crackling explosion echoed through the valley.

  “Good kill, leopard-two,” Jagat said as the FLIR view backed out of zoom. “Leopard-actual, are we clear?”

  “Roger, panther. Leopard-three and –four will cover our rear and suppress what we missed. I suggest we go.”

  Jagat looked to his copilot and nodded as he lowered his night-vision goggles and brought the helicopter out of hover. The other two Dhruvs did the same.

  “Leopard-one, I have you at my eleven position at one kilometer,” Jagat saw the rotating blades and dark silhouette of the LCH near the top of the ridgeline against the greenish sky of his optics. The last thing he needed now was a mid-air collision…

  “Leopard copies. We will keep our distance, panther.”

  Jagat saw the LCH rise from its pop-up position and pitch down as it disappeared on the other side of the ridge. A few seconds later the three Panther choppers were also doing the same. Jagat felt the weightlessness as the helicopter crested the top of the ridgeline and dived on the other side. They were now directly facing the Pakistani positions on the other ridgeline to the north. But these were now dead. Smoke was bellowing in thick plumes from the bunker complex that leopard-two had hit with a Nag missile. Other positions had dust clouds hovering above them as the seven Indian helicopters flew past.

  The radio chimed in Jagat’s ears: “We got runners on the ground below us! Engaging!”

  A flash of explosions ripped apart a cluster of trees to Jagat’s left. He turned his head to see the trees burning furiously as leopard-three fired several unguided rockets into them and banked away. Jagat thought he saw several Pakistani soldiers running back to the west, away from the ingress path of the Indian helicopters. Leopard-three’s gunner kept them occupied with bursts of cannon fire, to which they responded with inaccurate small arms fire. Jagat saw the tracers heading into the sky in completely wrong directions…

  “Looks like they are thoroughly confused!” Jagat’s co-pilot noted as they crested the ridge past the Pakistani frontlines.

  “But it won’t last,” Jagat said as they dived past the ridges and into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. “We hit them with superior firepower and a larger force. They are still in shock at the hole we hammered past their positions. Once they figure things out, we will run into organized and heavy resistance. Let’s just hope we can get out before that happens.” He looked at the moving-map-display and the old-fashioned paper maps fitted into the translucent cover pocket on his thigh. “What’s our E-T-A to the D-Z?”

  “Um…approximately ten minutes.”

  “Good. Spread the word to our operators in the back.” Jagat realized that he had not heard any chatter from any of the four air-force LCH crews or his other two panther crews.

  Good…he thought. Panther and leopard were now running radio-silent and didn’t need to be reminded of it. Jagat could see only the faint outlines of the two LCHs to his front, two kilometers down the valley. He had to assume that the others behind him were keeping eyes on him and maintaining distance as well. As they flew into the valleys of occupied Kashmir on their way to Deosai, Jagat looked to the side and saw only the ghostly black silhouettes of the mountains against the greenish skies above…

  “Drop zone in the next valley at two-o-clock, three kilometers,” his co-pilot noted, breaking the silence in the cockpit. Jagat transmitted the only VHF comms from the seven helicopters to be picked up by the orbiting Indian unmanned-aerial-vehicle over the Deosai valley:

  “Panther is entering the A-O. Out.”

  ──── 15 ────

  The splattering of sparks on the ridgeline caused Muzammil and his lieutenants to look up just as the Indian Jaguar strike aircraft dashed out of the valley. The thunderclap from the explosion ripped past Muzammil and his men and left the trees swaying under its force…

  One of his lieutenants exclaimed in Pashtu. Muzammil realized he had never gotten used to the language of his afghan veterans despite the years they had been with him. He kept his peace as the other afghan mujahedeen in his group spoke excitedly with each other. Secondary explosions lit up the sky from the Pakistani army ammo dump that had just been destroyed. Tracers were still flying into the sky as the rumble of aircraft echoed through the valleys long after the actual aircraft had left.

  “Shut up!” Muzammil thundered, bringing silence withi
n the excited men around him. “Go see to your men!”

  “The Indians have taken over the skies!” Muzammil’s aide noted as he made sense of the dozens of back-and-forth conversations over his radio. “We cannot get our men to move on the roads to the border!”

  Muzammil frowned. This was the day they had planned for years. Open jihad in Kashmir. And yet, the infidels had seized the initiative and were laying waste to all logistics behind the Pakistani lines. Indian artillery rockets were pummeling prepared positions. And they had decimated Pakistani aircraft stationed in the Kashmir mountains. All in all, it was a staggering escalation of events that neither Muzammil nor the Generals in Rawalpindi had anticipated. The net result of it all was that the attacks were choking the movement of the thousands of gathered jihadists.

  “If only we could get to the frontlines, we could overwhelm them!” Muzammil muttered as he unrolled the paper map on the hood of the Toyota truck, parked by the roadside. He unshouldered his Kalashnikov rifle and put it on the hood while his commanders gathered around him. He looked at them: “We must find a way to move forward, despite the cursed enemy aircraft and artillery! We will disperse and move on foot if we have to. They cannot catch us when we are off the roads.”

  “It worked in Afghanistan and it will work here,” his Afghan commander noted. Muzammil liked this man. He had had led his cadres alongside the Pashtuns when they had overwhelmed Kabul’s forces along the Afghan-Pakistan border, two years ago. And Muzammil had seen for himself the massacre of those Afghan army soldiers who had the misfortune to being taken alive by these men. It had made Muzammil shudder. And that was saying something, considering the blood on his hands. Muzammil had long since decided to listen to this man for military advice…

  “How long you imagine before the men can move through the forests to the Indian positions?” Muzammil said as both men peered at the maps. The maps had been provided to them by their contacts in the Pakistani army, and it showed all Indian military positions and strengths along the border. His commander stared intently at the map and then nodded as he stroked his beard: “I anticipate two days f…”