Fenix (22 page)

──── 23
────

H
aider patted the shoulder of the driver sitting next to him, gesturing him to stop. The vehicle, and three others behind them, came to a skidding stop on the tar road heading into Lahore. He opened the door and stomped out, angrily slamming the door behind him. His adjutant, Major Akram, and other soldiers from his security detail looked at each other for a brief second and then jumped out from either side of the vehicles, running after their General.

Haider walked up to a soldier walking to him, silhouetted against the blazing orange-yellow fires in the fields behind. As Haider approached the soldier, he noticed the man’s uniforms were in rags, and blood splattered over his arms. The man walked as though in a daze.

“Good god!” Haider said as the man collapsed in front of him. He ran over and helped the wounded soldier to sit up. Akram ran over and knelt beside the soldier as Haider tried to get the soldier to spit out the blood in his mouth and try to breathe. “What’s your name? What unit do you belong to?
Speak up!
”

The man mumbled something incoherent before slipping away in his hands. His body had given in. Haider lowered the body on the road and stood up, straightening his digital-camo uniform and sidearm holster. He looked at the blazing tower of flames and smoke to the east. He could make out the charred wreckage of what looked like command trailers and trucks…

“Akram!” Haider thundered. “Find out what unit this man belonged to. And find out what unit that command center belonged to. Looks like a Brigade
H-Q
based on the type of vehicles, doesn’t it?”

Akram walked over to Haider’s side and saw the blazing fires. He noticed the nearly circular line of fires in the cultivated fields around the vehicles. There was no doubt in his head what had happened here.

“Cruise-missile strike, sir. The Indians decimated this brigade command post. We should report this!”

“Get to it!” Haider ordered.

“Yes sir.” Akram ran back to the parked vehicles. One of the other soldiers walked over to Haider with something in his hands. Haider took what turned out to an identification card from the soldier who had died in his arms. The papers had his current unit information on it.

11
TH
Infantry Division…
Haider went through the papers. The division was part of the corps in charge of defending Lahore and surrounding areas. They were all part of a command whose job it was to prevent the Indians from breaking through whilst allowing other forces to maneuver and strike into Indian territory. In theory.

“They won’t be holding anything when they are
fucking
dead!
” Haider threw the identification paper into the bushes past the road. The soldier who had brought it to him watched the papers of the dead soldier flying off into the bushes. He continued to stand next to Haider, who caught the gesture and looked at him in the eyes: “
Yes?
Anything else?”

“I…uh, what about the body?” The soldier gestured to the road where the body lay.

Haider looked at the soldier: “we don’t have the space in the vehicles. Push it to the side of the road so the poor man doesn’t get run over by a tank.”              

That answer caught the soldier by surprise. His mouth opened to say something about the ignominy of the deceased man who had just died fighting for his country. Haider turned to face him and the other soldiers: “did I not make myself
clear?
Get rid of the body! I will not be bothered with burials when a jihad is waging all around us.” He pointed to the body on the road: “This man should simply be happy that he fought and died for this country.” His voice then trailed off as he watched the eastern skies lit up by tracers and flashes of explosions.

“
Sir!
Over
here!
” Akram shouted from where he stood near the hood of the truck in Haider’s convoy. Haider walked over as the other soldiers picked up the body of the dead soldier by his limbs and carried him past the road and into the bushes. Haider saw that Akram had set up the radio on the hood of the truck. The vehicle’s engine was rumbling away on idle.

“Well?” Haider asked in obvious irritation.

“Command net is going haywire with
all
sorts of traffic. The Indians struck hard against the 10
TH
and 11
TH
Infantry Divisions east of here. I am hearing back and forth chatter filled with chaos and confusion. Supposedly somebody up the line issued orders for the 3
RD
Armored Brigade to advance to contact in anticipation of Indian forces preparing to cross over on to our territory.”

Haider banged the hood of the truck with his fist: “who passed that order?
Find out!
Don’t they
know
what is happening here? The Indians are striking hard against
all
openly exposed forces. When those tanks move past  the outskirts of the city and on to the roads and fields, they will be destroyed
before
they even get a chance to fire their main guns! The Indians are
already
taking control of the air!” Haider unstrapped the chin-strap of his helmet before removing and placing it on top of the hood. He ran his hand over the sweating head. It was time to consider options.

“Akram,” he noted after a full minute of consideration, “We need to marshal the irregulars under our control and keep them at bay
inside
the city. Hussein is either clearly deluded or completely out of touch with what is happening out here. The Indians are going to break through the lines of the 10
TH
and 11
TH
Divisions. If not today, then tomorrow or the day after. Let the army bleed the Indians as much as they can,
while
they can.
We
need to stay out of it until it is the right time. That will come when the Indians reach the outskirts of Lahore, tired and depleted, hoping for a respite.
That
is when we will release the wave of Islamic warriors like a tidal wave of death!”

              Akram smiled cruelly: “I understand, sir!” Then the smile went away: “but it will be difficult to hold the jihadists at bay, sir. They will not want to wait around in the city while the jihad against the Hindus is waging just kilometers east of them. They are not disciplined soldiers.”

              “Valid point, major.” Haider nodded. “But we
must
convince them somehow. If they charge into the open in front of Indian forces, they
will
die like flies to little gain!”

              “They won’t see it that way.” Akram replied. He knew most of the jihadists would happily charge into Indian armored vehicles with a bomb strapped to their chests. Their only driving concern would be to get to heaven where the promised female companions awaited them. Military gains on the ground and combat strategy were nuisances to them. Mere hindrances on their path to Allah. And certainly they were not going to take orders from the Pakistani Punjabis from the army!

              “Akram,” Haider said finally, “we need to head back to the city and speak with the commanders of the irregulars. They
must
be made to see the flaw in their plans! Else we stand to lose this city!” Haider turned to see the fires in the charred remains of the commander center east of the road. “But if we succeed, then we will fertilize these very fields and roads with the blood of the Indian soldiers! Inshallah.”

──── 24
────

“A
ll section leaders on rhino net, this is rhino-actual.” Kulkarni said as he adjusted his helmet. “Give me op-con status. Over.”

              As the various commanders in the armored task-force chimed in, Kulkarni pressed the power button on the small screen installed next to his commander-sights. This was the new Arjun-Battlefield-Management-System, or
ABAMS
, as his people called it. It was the next-generation force-multiplier that increased the lethality of the Arjun tank beyond its own sixty-ton mass. The
ABAMS
allowed better command-and-control of friendly tanks from within the commander’s vehicle. Kulkarni had used an earlier version of the same system during the battles in Ladakh. He knew the technology worked. But this would be the first time he would be using it to command a force
far
larger than any he had commanded.

              Kulkarni noticed that the last of the section leaders had chimed in and reported full readiness. Time to change frequencies and call Sudarshan’s people: “steel-central, this is rhino-one. We are
green
across the board, over!”

“Steel-central copies all, rhino. Jump off as planned. Out.” Kulkarni pulled his overall’s shoulder sleeves back and checked his wristwatch despite having a digital readout on the optics in front of him. Old habits.

Okay. Two minutes to Zulu time.     

              He grabbed his binoculars, opened the turret hatch above him and pushed himself out. He surprised his loader who was sitting behind his turret machine-gun  mount, looking for targets via his night-vision goggles. Powering on the night-scopes of the binoculars, Kulkarni looked into the pitch-black darkness on either side of him to see dozens of Arjun tanks lined up through the vast expanse of the desert.

              Kulkarni lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes to allow him to adjust to the darkness. After a few seconds his pupils dilated and he saw more of the surroundings. To his east, he thought he saw the first dull-red lines of morning. The timing of the offensive was by no means random. The tanks of his rhino force would assault into Pakistan with the early morning sun riding low behind them. That would enhance the sights on the Indian side and blind the Pakistani defenders facing them.

              Hopefully we would be hunkered down at our objectives before the reverse happens to us at sunset…
Kulkarni checked his watch again. It was time. He lowered himself back down the hatch just as his loader did the same.

The gunner looked at the two men entering the turret: “Zulu time, sir?”

              Kulkarni smiled faintly: “Zulu time.”

              As the driver up front brought the rumble of the diesel engines to a roar, Kulkarni plugged into his radio once again: “all rhino elements, this is Rhino-one.
Advance! Advance!
”

“I see flashes on the horizon!” The gunner shouted over the tank comms. “Twenty degrees positive, off axis.”

              Kulkarni looked away from the
ABAMS
scope and instead looked through his own external optics. He swiveled the sights to the right and saw the whitish flares erupting on the horizon against a jet-black night. They were still too far west for any noise to be heard over the constant rumble of the tank’s diesel engines. 

              “Ours?” The gunner asked.

              Kulkarni backed away from the eyepiece of his optics and looked at his watch. “Can’t be ours. We are still off by five minutes.”

              “Well, somebody is lighting up the morning sky out there.”

              “I see that.” Kulkarni noted off-handedly as he switched comms for Sudarshan: “steel-central, this is rhino-one. I see explosions to my west; heavy tube-arty. Over.”

              As he waited for the reply, Kulkarni peered through his sights and saw the target of the attack, whatever it was, being hammered mercilessly. He moved the optics to the side to see the dozens of other Arjun tanks  menacingly silhouetted against the reddish skies of the morning. All vehicles were rumbling in unison towards the Pakistani border…

              “Steel-central here. Uh…that’s not ours, rhino. Looks like the border posts are being hammered by Pakistani arty from the west.”

             
Shit
. Kulkarni depressed his transmit button: “rhino-one copies. Those guns need to be silenced, steel-central. They are
hammering
our border posts into oblivion!” As if to prove a point, there was a massive lightning to the west visible on his thermal sights. It flared and then disappeared as smaller balls of white light fell across the night sky away from the point of impact. This one made its way to the tanks and Kulkarni felt the rumble.
Something got hit hard…

              “Steel-central copies. Head to
L-O-D
as planned. Over.”

              “Advance to
L-O-D
. Wilco. Out.” Kulkarni swiveled his
ABAMS
screen back in front and pressed the zoom button to identify who was on his north-west flank at the border. The blue markers showed up
BSF
posts, regular army infantry units and others spread along the border in staggered layers…a defense in depth. There were other screen markers as well. To his west were inverted triangles showing rhino’s advance line to the jump-off point, called the line-of-departure or
LOD. T
he screen also showed combat-engineers deployed there. These units would be responsible for creating a safe passage through any enemy minefields. Aside from the elite recon troops, these combat-engineers were the most valued infantry forces as far as Kulkarni was concerned. They would be moving with his force in mechanized columns consisting of
BMP-II
armored vehicles, bridge-layer tanks, repair vehicles and mine-clearing equipment. Kulkarni had some tanks in each Arjun tank company equipped with mine-ploughs in case they ever had to make their own paths through minefields while under fire. But these were less reliable, slower and hence more dangerous. The explosives-based techniques employed by the combat-engineers to make passages for his tanks were much faster and reliable. The last thing he wanted was to lose tanks to broken treads…

              The small blue text on the screen next to the engineers unit was “trishul”. The trishul task-force would be moving alongside rhino. And Kulkarni was glad to have them on board. By the looks of things, trishul was already deployed on the
LOD
. At their current rolling speed, his tanks would reach trishul in about fifteen minutes.

             
Good.
He noted and pulled out his folded paper maps from his overall pockets. It was already heavily marked with pencils. He could never bring himself to trust the electronics all around him. Old habits die hard.

              “Rhino-two here. We are bypassing explosions on our right flank, rhino-one. Does
not
look pretty!”

              “Roger, -two. Command says to ignore it and move on. So we are ignoring it and moving on. Over.”

              “Rhino-two copies all. Keeping our eyes and ears peeled for enemy action. Out.” The line chimed off.

              As the tank rolled over the sand dunes, Kulkarni had a moment to consider the
ABAMS
screen yet again. The enemy arty concerned him more than he let on to his subordinates. Unlike the Indian army, the Pakistanis had invested heavily in tube artillery. And what heavy guns the Indian army had were available were earmarked for the offensive in Punjab. Kulkarni
did
have some heavy-rocket units covering his force, but these were marked for taking out enemy guns and batteries, not providing his own force with non-line-of-sight fire.
That
represented the biggest weakness in the plans. His force lacked the big teeth of tube artillery that the Pakistanis possessed. If those enemy guns weren’t taken out of the equation soon, they could jeopardize the entire schedule and perhaps even the end result. The border security troops were already suffering under this murderous enemy fire.
ABAMS
showed several border posts to his north having been removed from the roster as units there pulled back to avoid destruction. Kulkarni hoped that was true and that these units
had
pulled back and
not
been destroyed. From inside the congested confines of his tank, he could not be sure.

              West of the border, inside Pakistan,
ABAMS
showed units in green coloration and text: the Pakistanis. Command had added an apt color to match this particular enemy, Kulkarni thought. Somebody up the chain of command had an incisive line of thought.

              The biggest threat for Kulkarni’s force emanated from the Pakistani 1
ST
Armored Division, staggered in a southerly axis from Bahawalpur, south of Multan. That put this enemy force roughly northwest of Kulkarni. It was also his first target of elimination. The Pakistani 1
ST
Armored was an elite force and manned and equipped with the best tanks and tankers that country had to offer. They would put up a stiff fight for their home turf. Kulkarni found it hard to underestimate their determination and capability. That precision artillery hammering the border only added to his concern. 

Most of that threat came from their heavy compliment of Al-Khalid and T-80 tanks. It wasn’t hard for Kulkarni to see why his force was being committed to battle here. These Pakistani tank forces were part of the reserves that the Pakistani high command intended to preserve for counterattacks in Punjab. If they could be destroyed in battle here, they would cease to pose a threat further north. At the
very
least, threatening the Pakistani southern front would bog down these units and prevent them from moving anywhere, effectively taking them off the table. These tanks within their forces were the
only
ones capable of surviving on the modern battlefield. Remove them from the list of options and suddenly the Indian armored forces would have a serious advantage on the ground.

             
Kulkarni looked away from the screen. He saw the face of the loader as the latter stared at him in silence, his face covered with grease and sweat. Kulkarni smiled: “we will be fine.”

              The radio squawked: “Rhino-four here. I have several
BMP-II
s at two kilometers. I also make out several dozen other trucks and what look like engineering vehicles. Over.”

              “Roger,” Kulkarni peered through his own sights. “That will be trishul on the
LOD
. Weapons
on hold
. We are passing through friendly lines. Prepare to enter marked lanes. Let’s make this quick. I don’t want to be stuck in single-file columns exposed to the enemy any longer than I have to.”

              “Trishul-one to rhino-one,” a grizzly older voice on the comms chimed in. “We see your columns to our rear. Request weapons stowed. We are in your line-of-fire. Over.”   

              “Rhino-one here. We see you. Weapons
are
on hold. Requesting sit-rep. Over.”

              “Mines, rhino-one. Lots of them. Anti-personnel
and
anti-tank. Three-hundred meter depth to our north and south. The Pakis went overboard on this one. Almost as if they were
expecting
us! My boys have secured four lanes through the field and have established a small bridgehead beyond. You are good to go. Over.”

              “Rhino copies and sends thanks. We are rolling. Out.”

              Kulkarni’s tank jerked to the side as the driver aligned the vehicle axis to match the cleared lanes. The lanes were wide enough to allow one Arjun tank to pass through with ease. Kulkarni swiveled his sights back to see dozens of Arjun tanks lining up by sub-units and columns to pass the border minefields. With four lanes and one tank passing through every minute on each lane, a force of one hundred tanks would need about thirty minutes to clear the minefield. The engineers and other columns coming up behind them meant that they would still be clearing this position an
hour
from now.

              Not good.

              Kulkarni chimed into the rhino net: “all elements: let’s make this as quick and painless as we can! I want to be clear of this obstacle and on to the Islamgarh road within thirty minutes! Out.”

              Kulkarni noted that his tank was the amongst the first four tanks making their way past the minefield. It took his driver exactly two minutes to clear the path and enter on the other side. As the tank made it past the end of the lane and past the standing combat-engineers, he noted the two
BMP-II
s of trishul force parked on the southern embankment of the tar road heading west. The map on
ABAMS
confirmed it: Islamgarh road.

              They had entered Pakistani territory.