Fenix (25 page)

The
ABAMS
screen showed him what he needed to see. Green markers put there by steel-central showed the inbound Pakistani armored battalion north of him. His other tank commanders were seeing what he saw. And that made it easier for him to swivel his entire force without massive chaos within his formations. On cue, he felt the chassis of the tank swiveling north even though the gunner kept the turret aligned with his targets to the west. That was the power of the Arjun fire-control over all of other Russian designed tanks in the Indian arsenal. The driver, gunner and tank commander were operating independently within the same turret without creating difficulties for one another. Under fire, this fluidity meant the difference between life and death.

Forty-eight Arjun tanks turned north and accelerated across the desert, adding to the already massive dust cloud that was enveloping the sector in addition to the columns of black smoke. The other tanks continued to rampage past the Pakistani survivors. Within a few minutes the Arjuns heading north had aligned their turrets to match the direction and were looking for enemy tanks…

“All right, gentlemen. This is where metal meets metal!” Kulkarni said over the comms. “So far, we have crushed and rolled over
all
enemy defenses on the border. I
guarantee
that the Pakistani high command is shaking in their boots on what is happening out here. On what
we
represent! So they are sending in their best. Makes no difference to me. We will crush them all! Take no prisoners! Rhino-actual out!”

Kulkarni looked away from his sights to see the soot covered faces of his loader and gunner smiling at him. The gunner turned back to see through his sights. The loader didn’t need a cue. He pulled out an anti-armor sabot round from the onboard storage and slid it into the main-gun breech. It loaded with a metallic
clang
.   

T
he hydraulic arms swung into action and pushed the square-paneled radar off the roof of the truck, tilting it to nearly sixty degrees off the base. The motors mounted on the truck rotated this radar unit by thirty degrees in the azimuth plane and then stopped with a jerk.

              “Okay, let’s go.” Subramanian said as he uncrossed his arms and waved at the soldiers standing nearby with the desert camouflage netting. The netting consisted of sand-colored webbing laced with shrubs uprooted from locations nearby. The soldiers were already clambering on the trucks and spreading the netting over the vehicles. Once completed, the brown-painted vehicles would be damn-near impossible to spot visually from the air.

              Subramanian watched and then blinked his eyes as sweat rolled into them from his forehead. His hands instinctively reached his eyes to rub them clear. 

              Damn heat!

He glanced at the blazing sun. The desert was
already
turning into a furnace. Well, that was life out here. He sighed and walked back to the command tent, one-hundred meters away. He noticed the buried cables crisscrossing the sand between the different vehicles.

The cables connected the different vehicles. Each
welar
truck consisted of its own self-contained crew, but drew its power from a different vehicle. Three such pairs of radar and power vehicles were deployed in an arc spread over a kilometer. The idea was to provide high resolution data on inbound projectiles. All of these connected to the tent that Subramanian was walking to. That tent was where the remote display monitors were hooked up and where he would coordinate the operations of the individual crews and Brigadier Sudarshan. The latter would then connect him to any counter-battery systems in the area.

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!”

T
he 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…

T
he 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 civilians…

T
he 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…