Chimera (8 page)

“So much for our chances of coordination and control. Their poor tactics are taking them towards self-destruction. This insurgency is going to be over before we can even make the Chinese bleed enough to care!” Basu said from where he sat.

“What about Gephel and his teams?” Chakri asked Ansari, ignoring Basu’s defeatist attitude for the moment.

“He and his men were down there in these hills you see on the top-left corner of the screen. Our UAV was to the south of the village while the team was northeast. They made good on their escape. All intercepts of Chinese comms revealed no suspicion of the team’s existence. But for all intents and purposes their mission was over before it began.”

“True. Damn
idiots
, those Tibetans. Couldn’t they have held off the temptation to attack that police convoy for just this
once
? Now what?”

“We wait until we hear from the Tibetan resistance again on a new contact place,” Basu said as he leaned forward and sat upright on the sofa.

“If they haven’t been compromised by the Chinese already! We could just evac Gephel and his teams out entirely given the haphazard and uncoordinated way the Tibetans are running this thing. Last thing we want to do is get ourselves implicated in all this if they get caught. Especially considering what happened yesterday night in the skies above Ladakh,” the SOCOM officer offered. Chakri shook his head in dismissal:

“No. The Chinese are feeling the pain from the actions being taken by Gephel and his boys. They are motivated and determined to fight for their country under Beijing’s oppression. Let them fight some more. As far as reinforcement and supplies go, get them away from this sector if it’s proving difficult. Have them meet you someplace else. Near Nepal perhaps? Or Sikkim? You decide. I don’t particularly care. All I want is for these men to continue to prove a thorn embedded under Beijing’s feet. The more destabilized Tibet is, the more controllable the Chinese are and the weaker their position is in front of the world. Continue it long enough and they will be forced to negotiate with the Tibetans and us on resolving border issues just to make this whole painful affair stop. At the very least I want them to lose hundreds, if not thousands of their men to these Tibetan rebels. The Dalai Lama is on his way out and the only way the Tibetans will survive Beijing’s genocide against their culture is to fight back against them. If along the way they bring China to its knees with our support…well, then we might have just avenged the dishonor of what happened during the winter of 1962, won’t we?”

Ansari did not answer but instead walked over and shut down the video on the screen and removed the tape. He looked at the tape in his hand and then looked back at the Defense-Minister:

“Yes, we would have.”

LEH AIRBASE

INDIA

MAY 16, 0900 HRS

The three blue-painted ambassador cars pulled up in front of the entrance for the hardened aircraft shelters at one corner of the airbase. A flurry of officers got out of the cars along with Air-Marshal Bhosale. He returned the salutes to the young squadron pilots standing in flight-suits covered with leather jackets to protect from the cold weather of Ladakh. Bhosale walked inside the hardened shelter along with his entourage a few moments later. Once there, he found himself staring at the shredded remains of the port wing of one of the Mig-29s from the previous night. The maintenance crews were attempting to remove sections of the aircraft for transport on board one of the IAF C-17s from Leh to Bangalore for repair.

Bhosale was shown the damaged underside of the aircraft by one of the Sergeants supervising the disassembly operations. It had been a miracle that the aircraft undercarriage had opened properly, allowing the pilot to make an emergency landing that saved the aircraft from total loss. A minute later Khurana walked over and saluted. Bhosale returned the salute.

“Hell of a night, son. Nice work out there preventing this thing from snowballing out of control. You and your men all right?”

“Yes sir. Some minor injuries to the pilot of this aircraft from shrapnel to the cockpit glass. Nothing serious though. He will make it.”

The Air-Marshal nodded as we walked around the crippled Mig-29 with the base commander in tow.

“So what do you make of our Chinese buddies and their intentions?”

“Sir, they are testing our response times, endurance limits and evaluating the overall threat we present to them,” Khurana replied.

“Which is of course in stark contrast to their activities in eastern Tibet. We know they cannot threaten us in this region from the air. Their ground based surface-to-air batteries are a different matter though,” Bhosale said as he walked near the damaged port engine exhaust and checked the deepness of the slash that a shrapnel piece had made into the fuselage paneling. It brought a frown to his face. He turned to face Khurana.

“You did good work out there to control the situation. I know how easy it must have been to let go and take down the bugger who did this. But as it happens, we are operating under a policy of restraint from New-Delhi. The idea is to not provoke a war right now. Unfortunately, events such as this one will change the rules. I will make sure of it. We will not sit by and accept losses in men and material simply to avoid provocation. I am headed to Delhi after this. Let’s see if I can get you boys the freedom of action you need to ensure this never happens again,” Bhosale nodded to Khurana as he walked away from the hanger with the base commander and his entourage.

Once outside and seeing the brown mountains of Leh and a gray overcast sky above, he turned to the base commander even as he entered the back of his car:

“The gloves will come off sooner rather than later the way the mess in Tibet is spiraling out of control. And Beijing is going to lash out once they get pushed beyond a certain limit. What happened yesterday night might just be a precursor of things to come. Samik, get your boys ready. For anything.”

THE JUNWEI-KONG-JUN

BEIJING, CHINA

MAY 25, 0900 HRS

The walk through the corridors of power was not a relaxed one for Feng. Neither was the thought of standing in front of some of the most powerful men in the Chinese military. He had been having a very busy month, and this visit was just another in a series of visits to this very building and to meet the very same people. And despite that he had not gotten used to it. He was more at home at his base on the fringes of China rather than at the heart of it. But this visit had not been his doing.

He walked with Lieutenant-General Chen into the office of Colonel-General Wencang. His personal assistant stood up and saluted from his desk outside Wencang’s office when he saw the two senior officers walking up. They paused and returned the young Lieutenant’s salute and then Chen signed in his entry on the receptions register while the young man opened the door for the two men into the office. As they walked in, they saw Wencang sitting behind his desk reading through some papers. He stopped that work as Chen and Feng walked up to his large wooden desk. Feng noticed the engraved symbol of the PLAAF on the wooden sides of the desk and smiled.

Privileges of rank…

“So gentlemen, what do you have for me?” Wencang asked as he put down his papers and removed his reading glasses. He motioned both men to sit down. Chen decided to walk over to a rack and hang his uniform coat. He and Wencang went back many years and there was little in terms of formality between them.

“What I have, Wencang, is a big administrative mess inside a potential warzone that needs clearing up,” Chen said.

“So I hear. I have asked General Jinping to consider your recommendations for merging the operational region Air-Force units under a single commander. I added a side note that
you
should be it’s commander when the time comes,” Wencang said as he leaned back into his leather seat behind the desk. Chen walked back from the coat rack and pulled a seat from the front of the desk and casually sat down. 

“Good,” he said finally with a smile.

Wencang folded his hands and swiveled his chair towards the tall windows on the side of his office.

“There are other considerations as well. The rebels in Tibet grow more audacious each day. Our intelligence believes the Indians are actively assisting them,” he said neutrally.

Chen shared a look with Feng in silence. This was new to them. The PLA and its handling of the Tibetan population in the TAR were usually not their areas of responsibility and were usually far outside the loop of information. But the look on Wencang’s face said it all for them. Beijing was considering a response
if
they could confirm their speculations about Indian involvement…

“Of course, the Indians deny any and all involvement,” Wencang continued. “And if doesn’t stop, we will be tasked to go on the offensive in punitive retaliations.”

“Wencang, are you
serious
?
Why
weren’t we told about this?” Chen said in shock. Wencang grunted in half-amusement, half-disappointment.

“You weren’t told because even
I
found out about this only yesterday. Only General Jinping was aware, based on briefings at the CMC. He chose to keep it with him until he was sure of what was happening. That changed yesterday. The Chairman asked for military options in case we cannot get India to back off support for the Tibetan rebels. We are now authorized to bring up our defensive readiness levels in Lanzhou and Chengdu MRAFs. As you can imagine, there are no dates for this yet because of the fluid nature of events. General Jinping seemed worried about it when I met with him yesterday. Which is why he will approve whatever is needed now to ensure the Air-Force does not fail him and the C-M-C when the time comes.”

Wencang looked back from the windows and the blue skies outside to face the two men sitting across from him.

“So he will approve the unified MRAF requirement and you will be tasked to unite the two headquarter staffs under your command. All Air-Force Divisions under these two regions will now be under your field command. Expect a lot of resistance from people who will find themselves subordinated to your region from Chengdu. But exert
total
control and get them working together. You will have three full Fighter Divisions under your control with one more in reserve and several independent units and support Divisions. That’s close to five hundred frontline fighters, tankers and airborne-radar aircraft under direct command not counting reserves and transport Divisions.”

Chen leaned back in his chair on hearing all of this. He then remembered something and looked at Feng. Wencang took the cue and looked over to Feng as well. 

“You have something to add, Senior-Colonel?”

“Yes sir, I do. With all the Fighter Divisions you will hand us to fight the Indians, we will be quickly limited by our ability to base them near regions of interest,” Feng added and opened his briefcase to remove his recommendations. Wencang took the papers from him and looked around for his reading glasses under the bundle of papers on his desk.

“Airbases?” he asked as he opened the spectacles.

“Yes sir. We don’t have enough airbases near the Indian border to concentrate all of these forces. This means that the cheaper, second line units could perhaps be based on airfields in the TAR so that they can reach the combat zone without requiring tanker support. The more precious heavy fighters should be based in bases in upper Tibet and Lanzhou region airbases along with all special mission aircraft. However, what this means is that despite our numerical superiority, we will not be able to exert the same presence over the battlefields as the Indians would be able to given the close proximity of their permanent airbases near the border.”

Wencang read through the recommendations on the papers Feng gave him, nodded on some and frowned on others.

“That’s a lot of hardware in here, Feng,” he said finally as he put down the papers. Before Feng could answer, Chen spoke up.

“Sir, it is what will be needed to keep the Indians at bay and to secure our ground forces on the battlefields. So far these units have been kept back at mainland bases. I need them moved to the Tibet area right away so that Feng can figure out how best to deploy them in combat alongside our fighters.”

Wencang removed his reading glasses and frowned, lost in thought. He then nodded in silence and looked back to Chen and Feng.

“I will see what I can do. In the meantime, get back to your commands and begin the task of integrating the regional units into a single unified command. I will be visiting in a few weeks to see the nature of the preparations along with General Jinping. Do not let me down on this. Understood?”

“Sir!”

Wencang got up behind his desk and Chen and Feng did the same. Chen walked over to the coat-rack and picked up his coat. As he buttoned it, Feng snapped his briefcase shut and pushed his chair back into place as he walked around it.

“One other thing. Keep this under wraps for now. If we are lucky, cooler heads will prevail in a few weeks and this whole incident will be behind us. If not, prepare yourself mentally for a bitter struggle, gentlemen. Find ways for us to prevail in a fight with the Indians. Despite all the propaganda out there, we all in this room understand the ground realities. I will do my best to handle Beijing and get you what you need. You figure out how to defeat the Indians by capitalizing their weaknesses and expanding on our strengths.”