Chimera (65 page)

“That’s one
hell
of an assumption there,” Iyer noted as he faced the map from where he stood. “Have you considered that they might try to fool us on exactly that issue by either giving all of their launchers the same security or messing with our heads by giving higher security to conventional launchers as well?”

“Yes it is an assumption and potentially a deadly one,” Valhotra agreed and looked back Iyer: “But not much we can do outside of that. Besides, if Beijing wants to use conventional ballistic-missiles in the war, they will want to ensure that there is no confusion on our side on the escalation.”

“You assume that they
don’t
want nuclear war with us,” Iyer cautioned his colleague and continued: “I cannot make that assumption. We need better intel and a clearer analysis on their motives and unit deployments. Such a simplistic argument cannot hold water in this room. I know that we have been doing this for quite some time even before the war started. But now that the war is on, peacetime computations cannot be applied. We have to be more careful and must take into consideration outside factors such as the state of the war and its effect on the enemy deployments. Understood?”

Iyer looked around to see everybody nodding. He turned back to the Brigadier: “So what’s the count based on the current estimates?”  

“About seventy-five nuclear-tipped launchers in northern Tibet as of right now.”

“
God!
Seventy-Five?” Valhotra blurted out.

“Yes sir,” the Brigadier added. “Mostly deployed on DF-21s. That’s almost their entire DF-21 force and also a good chunk of their overall nuclear warheads.”

“Think they are sending us a message?” Iyer asked Valhotra.

“If they
are
, they sure as
hell
not pussyfooting it,” Valhotra responded.

“I agree,” Iyer noted as he crossed his arms. “From where they are deployed, the DF-21s will cover most of northern India and all of the battlefields. We will have more warning with the DF-11s and the DF-15s because they will have to be moved south and on roads that we currently dominate. That makes the shorter range missiles iffy to use and very risky from their operational standpoint. So my gut feeling is that they will stick with the DF-21s as their preferred choice for the nuclear delivery role. They might even use the DF-31s to knock out our cities in central and southern India in conjunction with the DF-21s if the shit hits the fan.”

Iyer took a deep breath as he considered his words. It was not the first time he found it
hard
to remain objective at his job.

“Looks like it,” Valhotra added. “I expect their shorter range missiles to be used first in the conventional role. Perhaps against Arunachal Pradesh or some such target. They will attempt to force the outcome of this war using those first.”

“Yup. That’s true,” Iyer agreed. “The problem is, if we mistake a nuclear-tipped missile as a conventional type, it will be disaster for us. We need to be damned sure whether these DF-11s and DF-15s are nuclear-tipped or not.” 

“Of course,” Valhotra said and then walked over to the table to pick up the latest information on the 2
ND
Artillery Corps ORBAT.

“But look at the numbers,” he continued. “They only have about two hundred-fifty warheads to begin with. They need a certain portion of that in reserve and another portion armed for threatening the US and Japan. Once you remove these from their total inventory, these numbers in Tibet start making sense. Also the DF-11s and the DF-15s really don’t give them the bang for the buck in terms of range and options. I think they have concentrated their nuclear-tipped missiles amidst the DF-21s for a reason: they
want
us to know which is which!”

“But those missiles are still in northern Tibet,” Iyer said. “As I said before, they will need to be moved south first and we can take them out in transit since we control the skies over southern Tibet now. We will
know
when Beijing is thinking dirty because they will have to move these missiles on the roads to the south. We
will
have a large warning window!”

GOLMUD

NORTHERN TIBET

DAY 10 + 0800 HRS

The soldiers wearing the shaded-brown digital camouflage uniforms squinted under the bright morning sun low on the horizon to the east, silhouetting the three Il-76 transports on the tarmac. 

As they watched, the vehicles in spotless new green-brown paint rolled off the cargo cabin on the aircraft via the lowered ramps on to the concrete tarmac. As they rolled out of the shadows of the aircraft that had delivered them here, the three vehicle drivers now stepped on the accelerators and sped off towards their marshaling point at the western edge of the airbase. The soldiers waiting for their precious cargo hopped on to the empty chassis of the vehicle behind the driver’s cabin while their officers got into their multi-terrain vehicles, knock-offs of the US HMMWV vehicle, and left the parked Il-76s behind to join their unit.

Further down the tarmac, two Y-8 turboprop transports were offloading the ready-to-use CJ-10 GLCMs for the three launch vehicles delivered by the Il-76s. This unit had relocated within a day to northern Tibet under orders from Colonel-General Liu at the 2
ND
 Artillery Corps headquarters north of Beijing.

Liu had been convinced by Wencang, the acting commander of the PLAAF, to release three launchers from the reserve force of the 821
ST
 Brigade at Guangxi in south-eastern China to the PLAAF. Chen had arranged for the strategic transports to fly the small detachment to Golmud. 

The 821
ST
 Brigade had detachments already in northern Tibet and had in fact taken part in the initial cruise-missile strikes at the start of the war ten days ago. But those launchers were now back into the fold of the 2
ND
Artillery Corps and part of their strategic deterrent force. The 821
ST
Brigade did have a small force in south-eastern China for use against the Taiwanese and this force had now been withdrawn to the Tibet Theater for use by the PLAAF.

The CJ-10 Long-Sword GLCMs had very long-range and could, in theory, be launched directly from the 821
ST
 Brigade holding areas in Guangxi against Indian targets. But that entailed flying over Myanmar airspace. Further, the missile range of nine-hundred nautical miles at subsonic speeds meant that if launched from Guangxi, they could only reach perhaps as far as Chabua in India. Not particularly useful, from Wencang and Chen’s point of view.

But from Golmud, a lot more juicy Indian targets were reachable.

The detachment that had landed at Golmud was under the operational control of Feng at the Junwei-Kongjun.

Golmud airbase was not deserted, however. Aircraft from the 26
TH
 Air Division continued to operate from there along with a detachment of J-11 air-superiority fighters on airbase defense duty. Golmud now represented one of the last untouched PLAAF airbases in Tibet on account of its long distance away from the Indian border. No other airbase south of Golmud was now accessible to the Chinese.  Lhasa and Shigatse were included in the no-go list as an indicator of how desperate the situation was for the PLAAF over Tibet.   

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And scorched-earth policy was now in play…

Within thirty minutes, the three launch vehicles rolled off the tarmac on to the gravel and drove off to a clearing near the end of the runway, a kilometer from the base of the snow-capped mountains around them.

Once there, the TELs lowered their hydraulic supports and elevated the vehicle so that the entire chassis was stabilized. Minutes of silence passed before the three-tube launcher bases rotated to their sides and locked into position.

When the commanding officer of the 821
ST
Brigade confirmed his detachment’s readiness to Feng, he ordered the launch.

The Golmud valley reverberated as a barrage of nine CJ-10 GLCMs headed into the blue morning sky above. The trails of smoke extended in near parabolic trajectories to the south before fading away.  

AIRSPACE OVER SOUTHERN TIBET

DAY 10 + 0930 HRS

The nine cruise-missiles stabilized in forward flight soon after clearing the peaks and lowered to terrain-mapping mode.

Unlike the vast majority of the other Chinese cruise-missiles, ground or air-launched, the Long-Swords were state-of-the-art. They were very new and very limited in quantity given the recent initiation of full scale production. Currently only the 821
ST
Brigade was armed with these missiles. They represented the next generation of Chinese cruise-missile technology. Carrying a significant payload over very long distances, the Long-Sword was in essence the counterpart to the decommissioned strategic versions of the US Tomahawk missiles. They also carried the very best navigation and guidance technology that China had to offer. It allowed these missiles to fly close to the ground and reach their targets under the enemy’s radar coverage.

The terrain against which they masked themselves was jagged, wavy and difficult to spot on. The missiles were not flying high above the ground and not in a straight line either. With shorter physical range to their target, the missiles could also take a convoluted approach to their targets.

As such they escaped Indian detection all the way until they climbed to altitude above the Greater Himalayan Range south of the destroyed Chinese airbase at Nyingchi Kang Ko on the Arunachal Pradesh border. The only warning for the Indians came from the sole surviving aerostat tethered-radar system near Chabua airbase when the missiles flew south-west before crossing into Assam. As the first Indian Su-30s dived to engage, the missiles were already on final approach to their targets…

The first CJ-10 detonated a thousand-pound warhead five-hundred feet above the runway at Tezpur airbase. It sent out a massive ball of expanding shock-waves that hit the ground below and dug deep into it as a crater of mud erupted. The reflected shockwaves collided before sweeping over the tarmac.

Another two missiles detonated in the air directly above the entrance to a pair of hardened aircraft shelters, utterly demolishing them into the ground in a wall of mud, concrete and fire along with three Su-30s inside. The shockwaves travelled as they became weaker but still rippled through all of the base buildings as well as shattering all windows within a kilometer radius around the base. When the thunderous roars subsided, the craters were surrounded by columns of thick black smoke rising into the skies above.

Similar hits were absorbed by Jorhat airbase to the east.

The Su-30s on patrol that had dived to intercept managed to destroy two of the remaining three missiles over Arunachal Pradesh as they headed towards the Se-La. The last surviving missiles dived into the center of Tawang and detonated a thousand-pound unitary warhead directly above the town made up of ramshackle civilian houses and old Buddhist monasteries… 

Two hours later, Feng was shown the latest satellite images of the decimated Indian airfields at Tezpur and Jorhat. He finally smiled and glanced at the officers of the PLAAF around him:

“Gentlemen, our comrades at Kashgar have been avenged!”

TAWANG

WESTERN ARUNACHAL PRADESH

INDIA

DAY 10 + 1700 HRS

The western slopes of the Himalayas were illuminated in the reddish sunset as yet another day in the war ended.

But for the people of Tawang, the ordeals knew no end.

When the Long-Sword cruise-missile had detonated over the town several hours ago, it almost felt as though there were two suns in the sky. The manmade one in the pair had a rapidly expanding radius that had absorbed a chunk of the city within it until the bright flash of light was accompanied by a wall of flame as it swept everything before it. The white snow above the city had flashed away instantly. Then thunderclap had reverberated through the region and a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust had arisen above the sky. It had been several hours since that event, and the mushroom cloud had lost its shape, but the dust still rose high in the sky above…

On the ground, fires were still blazing away within the town and were now spreading to the outskirts in a blazing firestorm, a result of closely structured wooden homes. The town’s firefighting capabilities were primitive even under peacetime conditions and right now there was no hope of combating this tidal wave of fire, gutting the town.

The center of the city was a smoldering crater of charred black husks over a kilometer wide but of asymmetric shape. The hilly terrain over which the city was built had protected some areas from the blast but had shunted the blast waves more strongly over others like a massive nozzle.

As the fires raged and threatened to burn down what remained of the town, the evacuation of surviving citizens was underway. Those who could be moved were being sent at least as far as Se-La and if transport and logistics allowed, all the way to Tezpur to avoid congesting the only lines of supply the army had in the region. The government couldn’t simply leave these civilians in the open against the harsh Himalayan winter.