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  Thus constituted the “ferrite” battery that was tasked to cover both the breach point near the Islamgarh road as well as the advancing columns of rhino. Once rhino moved further west, vehicle pairs from ferrite would leap-frog along with the trishul combat-engineers to extend the bubble of radar detection. In theory, at least.

  Subramanian trudged through the soft, hot sand on the way to his command tent. He had thought about the battle plan for his battery long enough…and had convinced himself that it sounded good in theory. In practice, a thousand details could go wrong. A simple communications breakdown between units in this delicate structure would render the plan ineffective. And the Indian soldiers currently inside Pakistan would pay the price…

  He pushed the flaps of the tent aside and noticed that his drivers were busy digging air-raid trenches nearby. The one thing that bothered him most was the air-defense coverage of his units inside Pakistan. If –when– the Pakistani commanders realized the severity of this Indian offensive, the Islamgarh breach point would become their focal point for air and missile attacks. Subramanian was under no illusions as to where his own unit ranked within the enemy’s priority lists.

  He walked into the tent, lowering the flap of the tent behind him. The tent was a cacophony of voices as his men got into the process of bringing ferrite online. The tables in here were lined with the kind of displays and radio packs that were needed for complete remote operations of the radar units. They had already hooked up generators outside and Subramanian noted the cables laid out all over the place connecting comms, power and displays into a cohesive set.

  So far so good.

  He appreciated the shade inside the tent and removed his sunglasses before turning to his comms officer: “get steel-central on the comms. Advise them that ferrite is booting up and that we need a status report from bushfire-actual.”

  “Yes sir.” The lieutenant got to work.

  “Now,” Subramanian walked up behind his second-in-command sitting on a chair behind the remote-display-monitor, “let’s see what the electronic battlespace looks like.”

  “Light it up?”

  “Light it up.”

  The captain brought up the phone-like comms speaker connecting his vehicles: “ferrite-C-two to ferrite-rovers. Send traffic, over.”

  The screen in front them lit up with incoming feed from all three radar deployments. The captain switched on the terrain and map overlay with two buttons and it showed them the circular instrumented and priority-coverage zones in white and red colors. Positions of ferrite vehicles were shown as was the ABAMS tracker feed showing rhino forces west and north, deep inside Pakistan. Also lit up were the inbound threat plots of artillery fire that was rocking rhino…

  “Sir, I have bushfire-actual on the comms.”

  Subramanian turned to face his comms officer and then walked over, taking the speaker: “ferrite-actual here. We are op-con ready. What’s your status. Over?”

  “Bushfire has been op-con fucking ready for two hours, ferrite! Steel-central advises me that we are now passed to you. Call the shots, son. Over.”

  “Roger, bushfire.-actual. Stand by for targets. Out.” Subramanian handed the speaker back to the lieutenant and then turned to his staff: “okay, just tell me you have some juicy targets for bushfire-actual!”

  The captain nodded: “I have targets. Enemy 155 millimeter battery, twenty kilometers northwest. We are resolving now but these are the guys that have been buzzing rhino from the moment they stepped on to Paki soil. My bet is a battery of M109s. Any possibility to confirm?”

  “Visually?” Subramanian asked. “Not a chance. Not right now, anyway. Steel-central has other targets to keep an eye on. We will prosecute this one electronically only. Let’s not let the enemy know that we are tracking their every shell from inside their own territory!” Subramanian smiled. “Pass what you have to bushfire-actual immediately. High priority target. Prosecute and destroy!”

  The boxy launcher on the back of the Tatra heavy-duty truck lifted off its bed and rotated up on the force of its hydraulic arms. The six square-shaped doors on the front and back of the launcher remained closed to prevent sand and dust from entering the launch tubes. Four of these vehicles were deployed in a cusp-shape around the breach point being exploited for entry into Pakistan.

  This Prahaar ballistic-missile battery was part of the overall counter-artillery forces under the Bushfire codename. Specifically, this was bushfire-three. Bushfire-one and –two were two Pinaka MLRS batteries that would be moving closer behind the advancing forces given their relatively smaller range. Whatever was outside of the range of bushfire-one and –two fell into the range and jurisdiction of bushfire-three. Anything that bushfire-three couldn’t handle, would fall to bushfire-zulu, which was a coded tag for the corps-level Brahmos cruise-missile unit. Bushfire-zulu was not under Sudarshan and reported to the corps commander.

  As things stood, the two Pinaka batteries were in transit mode through the breach point into Pakistan and were not available to deploy. That put bushfire-three on call…

  The launch-tube doors opened on the front and back of the launcher with snaps. Thirty seconds later the first Prahaar missile thundered from within the launcher, engulfing the launch vehicle in an expanding cloud of brown dust and sand before streaking vertically into the blue skies above. The second launch tube opened with a snap and the next missile followed close behind. Two other launch vehicles to the north, joined the fray as well…

  The rumble of jet engines in the skies above was consistent. But the crews of the twelve Pakistani M109 self-propelled-artillery vehicles were busy mobilizing to move. As the villagers in the nearby fields and on the rooftops watched eagerly, the barrels of the howitzers were lowered and locked into place while soldiers ran about gathering up anything that was left. The diesel engines rumbled as anxious drivers waited impatiently. The smoke and dirt from the last set of artillery shots fired had still not drifted away. Nor had the cheers of the nearby civilian mobs who had come to see their armed forces in action. Under other circumstances the battery commander and the military-police would have kept the civilians away. But today there was no time.

  Within seconds the lead M109 had rumbled over its muddy defilade and rolled over to the dilapidated tar road that ran east to the border. As it lined up behind the convoy of resupply trucks, other vehicles were moving into positions as well. Within two minutes this location would be nothing but a chewed up farmland area covered with dirt tracks and expended artillery shells. The media crews from one of the local Pakistani TV channels were here as well. But they were parked much further away. They knew more than to join the mob of crazed youngsters shouting jihad.

  The first Prahaar missile streaked in abruptly and detonated above the farmland, exploding in a whitish fireball before being engulfed into a mushroom dust cloud. The other missiles slapped into the area in quick successions of thunderclaps. The dust cloud blotted out the sun and replaced it with a searing red haze. The strike had destroyed the farms and the road and replaced them with large shallow craters of sand. The craters were lined with the blackened and blazing hulls of the M109s…

  When the thunder died, there was an eerie silence except for the winds, blowing the dust into the stem of the dissipating mushroom cloud. The mud and cement houses nearby had been obliterated…and so had the crowds of young men.

  The Pakistani cameraman got up from the ground and saw blood coming from his nose and ears. He could not hear anything. His equipment was smashed and their vehicle was lying to its side on the road. As his hearing recovered, he heard the first screams of men and women as they ran to the demolished houses. All there was to see now was this light-brown dust cloud quietly dissipating away into the skies above. It was not a nuclear blast, but it certainly looked like one. He got up on his feet in panic and ran away from his car, stumbling past the crowds of people. He had to get to a phone, he reasoned. He had to report the indiscriminate use of Indian nuclear weapons against civilian
s…

  The respite from enemy artillery fire could not have come at a better time for Kulkarni and the rest of rhino.

  “Rhino-actual to all elements,” Kulkarni spoke into his speaker as he swiveled the ABAMS screen in front of him, “looks like our arty friends have just joined the war! Steel-central tells me that the disruption in enemy indirect fire is not temporary! Best damn news I have heard today! Rhino will continue the charge. Update estimate contact to five minutes. Rhino-actual, out.”

  They were now close enough to the Pakistani armor force that he was forced to zoom in further on the ABAMS screen to separate his forces from the enemy. Blue markers showed his force advancing roughly north. The opposing green markers were moving south-east. Kulkarni could see that the Pakistani commanders intended to overrun rhino and make a break to the border to reclaim the enlarging chunk of land that had now fallen under the Indian control. And ABAMS showed him that should they succeed in overrunning Rhino, there was not much to prevent the enemy from achieving that goal. Trishul would not survive a frontal attack by heavy tanks…

  Kulkarni swiveled the ABAMS screen out of his way and peered into his commander sights: “rhino-actual to all elements: imminent enemy contact! Fix bayonets and prepare for a knife fight! Out.”

  “Targets?” He asked his gunner as the tank rumbled over yet another sand dune. He could see Arjun tanks on either side of him doing the same. The way rhino-one and rhino-three were staggered, rhino-three was to his south and was his “right hook”, which would swing down from the east on the enemy’s left flank if such an opportunity presented itself. Of course, if his own rhino-one took excessive casualties, rhino-three was also positioned to provide the second layer of tanks to reinforce his line. It was all about the commander’s options. He wanted to have as many of them as he could when the battle shaped itself…

  “Just a mass of dust clouds to the north,” the gunner replied without looking away from his optics. “Our friends are still rolling south.”

  “Keep our welcome presents hot and ready!” Kulkarni noted to his loader, who was sweating profusely and showing visible signs of nervousness. Kulkarni worried about his driver and loader more than his gunner. His gunner seemed to thrive on the chaos of combat and had ice water in his veins and had seen armor combat alongside Kulkarni in Ladakh. His other crew members were raw and had no prior combat experience. This would be their first battle.

  Their baptism by fire.

  “Contact! I have contact! Three kilometers at twelve-o-clock!” the gunner shouted, causing the loader to jerk.

  Kulkarni calmly peered through his optics: “wait for a clear shot! Rhino-actual to all elements: contact! contact! Maneuver offset by forty degrees east! Take your shots!”

  On that command, the twenty-three Rhino-one tanks swiveled by forty degrees to east, but kept their turrets aimed north on independent stabilization. This presented the enemy with a sideways moving force which was harder to adjust for in the fire-control than a head-on target. To further complicate matters, Kulkarni had his force follow a zig-zag maneuver where enemy gunners could not apply a constant lead on the sideways motion when aiming. For its part, the advanced fire-control computers on the Arjun compensated for the motion, stabilized the turret and evaluated the motion leads without too much hassle for the gunner. It wasn’t as easy as point-n-shoot, but it was close…

  Kulkarni felt his tank shudder and the turret filled up with slight smoke as the main gun recoiled and dumped an empty shell casing inside.

  “Shot away!” The gunner shouted.

  Kulkarni watched the round rip up the sandy terrain as it flew horizontal and low and went into the front glacis armor of the incoming Pakistani Al-khalid tank. The shot splattered into a fireball of sparks and smoke and then dissipated. The enemy tank shuddered to a halt. Moments later the engine compartment of that tank started spewing smoke.

  “On target! Move-on!” Kulkarni confirmed. The turret was already swiveling to the left. His optics flared white as the next shot shook the tank and went on its way. It missed its intended foe and flew over the latter’s turret.

  “Too high! Compensating!”

  Kulkarni turned his attention to other matters. He swiveled his optics left and right and saw that a massive tank battle was now underway. Both sides were trading shots and the cohesiveness of rhino-one was dissipating. As expected under the conditions…

  “Hold on,” the driver interrupted. “We are going over a dune!”

  Kulkarni and three Arjun tanks to his side went over the dunes almost in formation. As they came over the dunes and went down the other side, the gunners got back into action again. The Arjun tank furthest to the north exploded in a fireball. Its debris flew radially in all directions.

  “Oh god! Rhino-one-ten is gone! I say again, one-ten is burning up!”

  The comms were instantly alive with the shocked voices of novice tankers. The hardened veterans just kept their heads down.

  Kulkarni turned his optics north just as his tank shuddered again. The smoke and smell inside his turret was becoming unbearable. But what he saw outside was even worse. There were now seventeen pillars of black smoke from burning tanks rising into the blue skies. Dust was everywhere and the ground was a churned mush of tank treads. Visibility was fast diminishing amidst the smoke and dust and his initial initiative was giving way to a chaotic melee. He swiped the sweat dripping into his eyes.

  As he watched, a Pakistani Al-Khalid tank rumbled around the burning chassis of another burning Pakistani tank and made its way past of the bellowing smoke…straight in front of Kulkarni’s tank and another to his right. Kulkarni’s gunner was aiming the other way to engage some other target…

  Kulkarni shouted the warning: “Gunner! Enemy armor contact point-blank! Twelve-o-clo…!” The sentence was killed midsentence by the fire of the main gun on the Pakistani tank. A split second later the forward chassis of the Arjun tank on Kulkarni’s right exploded into pieces and showered the entire area with debris. The burning Arjun tank shuddered to a halt with the main gun bent at an awkward angle.

  Kulkarni turned in horror to see the Pakistani gunner swivel the main gun on their tank to point at his tank. His gunner did the same around the same time. He expected death to come instantly. The turret shuddered and the Al-khalid tank fell backwards against the momentum of the point-blank sabot round. A second later it exploded from the bottom up and the turret fell to the side amidst a tower of flame…

  “Target destroyed!”

  Kulkarni allowed himself to breathe again and could see his heart pounding against his ribcage. That was too close!

  He turned his optics right and saw that they were now leaving rhino-one-five burning behind them. The two enemy tanks three-hundred meters north were burning into blackened hulls as well. But the smoke from these tanks and all others was obscuring visibility. A brown haze had now replaced the blue skies. The scenery reminded Kulkarni of the Kuwaiti battlefields from the first Gulf war. The only light that seemed to enter this haze was from the flashes of main tank guns.

  That was where ABAMS came into its own. Kulkarni could see all of his tanks against a terrain overlay. Those that were alive, anyway. The Pakistanis had no such capability. This allowed Kulkarni to maneuver his force regardless of outside visibility, detrimental as it was to his gunners. He could, if he wished, extricate his force from chaos and regroup further away.

  Had that moment arrived?

  That was the key question. And Kulkarni couldn’t say one way or the other. He had lost six tanks so far, based on their absence from ABAMS. Four others were mobility-killed and were fighting as standing-pillboxes. Three others were reporting minor damage.

  The enemy was doing much worse. One of the features in ABAMS was the ability for each crew to mark targets for the others. That way, all tanks connected to the net could coordinate target strikes. Right now the ABAMS screen was only showing a handful of enemy targets marked. Could it be that in the heat of battle, his tan
ks were not updating the net?

  Kulkarni opened comms: “rhino-actual to all rhino-one tanks: mark targets and status! Out.”

  He turned back to the screen and saw that the status was reiterated as before, but of the five remaining enemy tanks, only three got marked. It was clear as day now: they had destroyed this enemy armor force.

  There was another battalion of the 1ST Pakistani Armored Division to his east. And they had no clue what had knifed through their sister battalion on their left flank. Could he now dig into this second enemy battalion from their rear by cutting north? Maybe. But first, he needed to extricate rhino-one from this mess.

  “Driver, traverse north. Get us out of here!”

  He felt his tank shudder to a halt and then swivel north, raking up sand all around. He switched comms: “rhino-actual to all rhino-one tanks: follow my lead. Those that are mobility-killed will hold positions. All others, form up! Rhino-three: bring yourself up. Rhino-actual is taking over –one and –three. Over.”

  “Rhino-three copies all, leader. All yours.”

  ──── 25 ────

  Ravoof muttered an expletive as he watched the video feed from the Pakistani news channels showing massive clouds of dust rising from Indian missile strikes near Rahim Yar Khan and other places near Lahore. The Indian military was at work dismantling the Pakistani armed forces…

  The one thing that was always a card with the Pakistanis was the nuclear one. If nuclear weapons would be used was not really a question. When and how will they be used? The how was not on Ravoof’s mind. The when was.

  What would be the trigger? The threshold? The invisible line in the sand beyond which there was no turning back?

  Could this be one? He thought as he watched the Pakistani media channels fixated on the largish mushroom clouds that had flattened the outskirts of a village east of Rahim Yar Khan. Some of his army contacts had confirmed these as tactical missile strikes inside Pakistan by forces in Rajasthan. But that was the point. They were large conventional tactical missiles. Not nuclear ones. The Pakistani news channels, however, were whipping up a frenzy calling these as nuclear detonations…