Fenix (28 page)

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T
he thunderclap rippled through the room. Grewal and his pilots instinctively looked up to see mounds of cement dust fall off the roof. 

“What the hell was
that?
” One of his pilots asked the group. Grewal didn’t have time to answer. The klaxons were already whining away on the airbase.

“We are under attack!” He grabbed his papers and maps. The other pilots saw their leader in action and sprang to it as well. Grewal turned to his pilots: “stay here! If we are
indeed
under attack, I don’t want you all running into the open and getting fragged! Ramesh, you are with me. We need to find out what’s going on. Let’s go!”

The corridors outside were abuzz with ground-control officers and
NCO
s rushing past each other. Two more loud booms rippled through the underground center. Grewal looked to see if he could grab someone who he might know what was happening. But his squadron was only a temporary guest at this base. He didn’t know enough people here…

Oh to hell with it!
He grabbed the nearest squadron-leader who was rushing past him. Before the man could utter a word, Grewal was in his face: “what’s the word? Who’s attacking us?”

“We are getting hit with cruise-missiles. The base is taking severe damage! Sir, I
need
to go!” The man resisted the arm grab that Grewal had placed on him. He was on his way somewhere within the base-operations facility, but Grewal needed information too.

“Hold
on!
” Grewal responded angrily, “any news on damage topside?”

“Two hardened shelters have taken hits. The control tower is destroyed. And we have
more
inbound missiles!”

“All right.
Go!
” Grewal released his hold and the man ran off. Grewal turned to Ramesh: “we need to find out if any of our birds were burned and if the runway is still operational. We need to get the hell off this airbase before it is completely wrecked! The bastards will have us by the balls if the runway is destroyed and we are stuck on the ground. Those Jag boys are going to get stuck deep inside enemy territory with no friendly air-cover!” He looked at his wristwatch. “We are
already
getting late! Let’s go!”

They ran through the corridors, bypassing various people heading the other way. They turned and entered a narrow corridor that led to the nearest of the two hardened aircraft shelters. It was a claustrophobic place to be especially with the threat of imminent collapse. A few moments later they emerged on the other side where the frigid air blew through the domed concrete shelters housing two
LCA
s. Grewal recognized his bird and saw his ground crewmen running about. He ran and squatted underneath the delta wing to see the drop tanks, Astra missiles and the R-73s already mounted. His bird was also outfitted with a low-optics designator on an offset pylon next to the centerline fuel tank.

This
LCA
was ready for war.

He and Ramesh walked past the aircraft and headed to the taxiway that led past the concrete protection walls for the shelter. The open view from there revealed that Ambala airbase was ablaze.               Fires were roaring where the control tower used to be. All he could make out was a blackened carcass of the building amidst the licks of flame. Further east he could see fires within the bellowing smoke from a destroyed aircraft shelter. That section of the base was occupied by a gaggle of Jaguars from the No. 5 “Tuskers” Squadron. Unless they were out somewhere on a mission, they had just been dealt a body blow.

The sounds of jet engines overhead caused Grewal to look up. There was nothing to see in the darkness except for small clouds silhouetted against the moonlight. The corner of his eye caught a flash and he instinctively turned away just as another Babur cruise-missile detonated above the end of the runway. The spherical flash of white light turned yellow, then orange and then disappeared behind a mushroom shaped dust cloud. The shockwave swept over the curved tops of the hardened shelter and ricocheted off the protection walls. A wall of dust and the smell of petroleum swept past him. Grewal spat out the dust on his tongue.

“Okay,” he said as he shook Ramesh and the latter got up from his prone position on the concrete, “we need to get out of here. Our birds are fine. Get the rest of the boys moving. I am going to spool up and get base operations to get us permission to leave.” He saw Ramesh still a bit shaken from the rapidity of the strikes taking place. Grewal shook Ramesh by his flight-suit: “
Hey!
You
listening?
”

“Yeah. I got you. Get the boys, get the planes. Leaving this place
ASAP
! I
heard
you!”

“Then move!” Grewal released his hold on his flight-suit as Ramesh got up and ran back towards the tunnel.

Grewal turned to see a warrant-officer waiting with his helmet that had fallen on the floor: “ready, sir?”

The senior
NCO
had white hair and a smile. Grewal returned it as he took the helmet: “yes, warrant-officer. Time for us to go do our job. I see
you
have already done yours!”

The two men walked up to the parked aircraft as Grewal fitted the helmet on his head. A ladder wasn’t necessary. Grewal simply hoisted himself up the side and into the cockpit. Despite his seniority, he made sure he retained his fitness. He looked around the cockpit. This was his aircraft for the moment. His earlier one had been damaged on the first night of the war.

Oh yes…
he remembered and looked at his boots to see the scarred leather from the shrapnel that had missed him. A reminder to be careful and aware at all times, for death was
always
just one mistake away.

Time to get to business.

He went through the spool up of the systems. Within a minute the tiny aircraft’s engine turbines were rotating, making a gradually increasing whine. He turned his head on either side to see the ground crewmen pushing aside all equipment. Another of his pilots rushed past the entrance to the shelter on his way to the second aircraft. So Ramesh
had
passed on the word and his pilots were moving.

He plugged in his oxygen mask and took a deep breath to ensure it was working. Then the night-optics, which he lowered from their mount on the helmet and locked it in front of his eyes. The green-light of the sights reflected off his visor. The engines were already making a din. Finally the comms: before he could leave, he had to make sure that their original mission had not been scrubbed by recent events. The complex operation needed the closest of coordination. Failure of one element might have ripple effects elsewhere…

“Dagger-actual to mongol-two: dagger is preparing to depart. Requesting sit-rep, over.”

There was static on the comms for several seconds during which Grewal all sorts of doubts raced through his head. Was mongol-two still alive? Given the savage attack dealt here, had other airbases suffered a similar fate?

“Mongol-two here. We copy, dagger. Understand you are in the hot seat at the moment. Confirm status. Over.”

“Dagger is
fully
operational, mongol-two,” Grewal said whilst nodding to the warrant-officer outside. The latter gave him a thumbs up gesture. “We are preparing to roll. The tower is out, so we are switching control, pending departure.”

The comms were again filled with static for several seconds. Grewal was convinced that Verma would be getting confirmation from Ambala operations center that the runway was still operational. The latter would probably have some guys on a vantage point with some thermal optics to survey the damage…

“Roger, dagger. We have you
cleared
to depart. Get yourselves up here and report to
I-P
Satin as per original flight plans. Out.”

Okay.
Grewal realized he had already told Verma that his flight was operational
before
having actually checked to make sure. He just didn’t want to provide any excuse for getting themselves fragged from the current operation. He could always make up a story about engine problems if any of his boys failed to depart…

Thankfully, the other seven pilots chimed in and were ready to roll. Grewal changed frequencies: “dagger-actual here. We are rolling for
immediate
departure. Over.”

“Roger…dagger-actual. You are cleared. Watch for debris and damage to primary runway. If in doubt, abort departure and return to shelters immediately. Over.”

Like hell!
“Dagger-actual copies all.”

He powered up the engine and released the brakes. The
LCA
’s nose emerged from inside the shelter to find the airbase in complete blackout conditions. The moonlight was reflecting off the concrete. As he cleared past the shelter walls, he could see the full scope of the damage. It made him feel somewhat vulnerable inside the cockpit. The sooner he was off the ground, the better he would feel. To his side he saw the other
LCA
s moving out of their shelter. The flames from the tower were beginning to die down. His enhanced night-optics vision also showed him the black silhouettes of point-defense Mig-21s flying overhead.

As he reached the runway and began to align the nose of the aircraft with the centerline on the concrete, a brilliant flash of light erupted over the main tarmac.

He had to close his eyes because the flash was enhanced a hundred-fold in his optics. Bringing his shoulder in front of his eyes as a shield was instinctive. The
LCA
began to roll to the side and he corrected it before the aircraft drifted off the concrete and into the adjoining grass!

His comms came alive: “the bastards are trying to nail us on the ground! They won’t get us
so
easy!”

Grewal kept his peace. Ramesh was correct, though. The Pakistanis
were
launching strikes in staggered times so that the defenders could be lulled into thinking the strike was over, step outside and then get hammered when they were most vulnerable. There was a reason, after all, why this last explosion had smashed the apron that would normally be used to house aircraft if the shelters were full. Now that apron was a smoldering crater, but the strike had failed to knock out aircraft on the ground.

Grewal’s LCA began rolling down the tarmac. The
LCA
had good short-field launch capability. It allowed the pilot to take off from small stretches of the runway that were intact. It was being put to the test tonight. Grewal powered up the afterburners, released the brakes and the aircraft ran down the length of the runway. The aircraft lifted into the air much before it reached the crater on the runway. He smiled at that and got down to business.

T
he international border was visible even at night. Both Amritsar and Lahore were dark, but the former was dark because of mandatory lights-out conditions. Lahore didn’t have a choice. Its power supply sources had been hammered into oblivion the previous day. But the battles raging in and around the city were visible like a thousand fires.

Grewal looked to the side of his cockpit and down and saw the green-black landscape of the city and the surrounding countryside peppered with white balls of light that flickered in and out. Verma had given Grewal and his pilots a clear berth from the artillery trajectories mapped out by the Indian army for targets in Lahore…

“You seeing this?” Ramesh’s voice crackled on comms.

“Yeah,” Grewal noted. “Lots of our boys won’t see the sunrise tomorrow down there. Perspective, daggers. It’s
all
above perspective.”

Did that even make sense?
Probably not.
The others weren’t privy to his thought process. They would probably just put it down to “one of the old man’s musings” and let it be. The radio crackled again: “mongol-two to dagger-actual.”

Grewal flicked comms: “dagger-actual here.”

“Dagger, we copy you approaching
I-P
Satin. Hold there while warhawk arrives. Airspace west is under enemy ground-to-air control and should
not
be ventured into for now. Will advise. Over.”

“Dagger copies all. Holding until you say otherwise.”

Grewal looked to the side and saw his other
LCA
s staggered in two “finger-four” formations. Ramesh’s flight was northeast. They were currently northeast of Lahore and continuing west, deeper into Pakistani airspace. Operation
Starlight
was aptly named by the air-force. Once it was done, astro-luminance would be
all
that the Pakistanis would have at night.
Starlight
’s objective was the decimation of Pakistan’s power and energy facilities. The strike on Chushma Nuclear Complex was Grewal’s little piece of that pie.