Fenix (38 page)

The explosion also lit up the sky. The flickering shadows of the rotating blades instantly became visible. Three of the Mig-27s dived from high altitude and followed their tracer fire into their targets, their rounds impacting the helicopters on the top. It was a deadly place to get hit because that was where all the cockpit glass was. Two more helicopters lost control as the blood-splattered bodies of their crews coated the glass. They flew into the trees east of the river. The fourth helicopter detonated under the impacts and disappeared into a fireball amidst some houses nearby.

By the time the four Mig-27s recovered at higher altitude, two of them were already dangerously low on fuel. The other two pilots went to work protecting their downed comrade like hawks until a Garud search-and-rescue team made its way there. The surviving cobra pilot made good his escape and lived to fight another day, flying west at so low an altitude so as to shear treetop branches with his skids…     

T
welve Apache gunships flew over the desert bushes and dunes. The
Gladiators
, as the unit was called, were out on a hunt tonight.

Painted almost jet black, the two-man crews of the deadly attack helicopters were doing exactly what the cobra pilots had been trying to do to the Indian presence on the highway. But the Apaches didn’t have to fear any enemy aerial interference. The skies above them were under dominance of the Indian Su-30s.

Their target was the northbound convoy of Pakistani armor, heading towards Rahim Yar Khan. It represented the southern jaw of a north-south pincer maneuver that the Pakistanis hoped would break the Indian chokehold on the highway. There were forty-five T-80s in this force and twice that number of mechanized personnel carriers, ferrying infantry to the battle. A smaller force of T-80s was inbound from the north of Rahim Yar Khan. Against all this were just twenty Arjun tanks and a gaggle of infantry units holding the blockade on the highway. The Pakistanis were throwing in everything they had.

But the gladiators were out here to lend a hand to the Kulkarni’s tank crews. The helicopters each carried sixteen
hellfire
missiles. For twelve birds, that made for more missiles than there were targets. Unlike the
TOW
missile carried by the cobras, the hellfire missiles were modern, fire-and-forget designs that did not require the Apache crews to expose themselves. The missile would guide itself to the target after launch.      

The only real threat that the gladiators faced out here was not the enemy anti-air capabilities, but rather the low-visibility telephone and power cables that crisscrossed the villages and towns. These were extremely had to detect when flying at high-speed, at low-altitude, and during daytime. At
night
, it got even worse with the limited field of vision of the helmet night-vision optics. Of course, pay too much attention to these and you might miss something important, such as a silently waiting anti-air gun mounted on some rooftop, or a perimeter shoulder-fired missile crew…

The twelve Apaches caught up with the enemy convoy a few kilometers south of Rahim Yar Khan. They flew in from the east and caught the entire convoy trying to move north along the highway. The urban environment had the same funneling effects on these T-80s as it had on Kulkarni’s columns. Both sides were forced on to the roads. And
that
made for neatly lined targets for the Apache gunners.

Within seconds, they began launching hellfire missiles in a free-for-all target environment. The gunners simply moved the target-tracker boxes from one tank to the other as they ripple-fired their missiles…

T
he explosions showed up on Kulkarni’s optics as white flashes of light against a green-black horizon. They couldn’t see the enemy tanks just yet, but the enormous volume of light flashes and the deep thunder under their feet was clear enough.

He considered his plans. Sudarshan had kept his word and had brought in
every
available combat element to bear against this enemy counterattack. But Kulkarni had to deal with whatever made survived this aerial onslaught and reached his tanks.

He moved his sights around and saw the flickering of light and white-grey columns of smoke rising into the sky from the town to his east. Further southeast, a thick column of smoke rose into the night sky where a Babur missile had struck the Indian “Ferrite” counter-battery radar unit. It was now permanently offline. Luckily for Kulkarni, the other missiles had been intercepted by the air-force. He also thanked his stars that the enemy attack helicopters that had been stopped and turned back. And to his north, Indian Jaguar strike-aircraft were busy hitting the southbound column of enemy armor. 

There
would
be survivors from both these columns. And they would be looking for a fight when they got here.

Kulkarni knew this. But he had to make up his mind. Should he go after the northern column, since they were far more likely to survive the Jaguar strikes? Or should he wait here for them to come to him? The southern column was another story. He hoped that the Apaches would lay waste to that column so much that they would be delayed in their coordinated attack with the northern column and at best, realize the hopelessness of the cause and retreat further south before the Apaches returned with more missiles to finish them off.

              He brought up the comms: “all rhino-alpha elements, this is rhino-actual. We are moving to contact against the northern column of enemy armor. Alpha-three will hang back and hold the line against anything that the Apache drivers miss to the south.
Hold your ground
until we return. Everyone else, prepare to move in five minutes. Out.”

              He looked at his crew: “questions?”

              The gunner and the loader shared a look and then shook their heads. The silence from the driver’s seat was his answer. Kulkarni nodded and muttered an “okay” to himself before bringing the
ABAMS
screen around: “driver,
we
will lead the charge. Bring us out of this defilade and on the west side of the highway, facing north. We will lash out to the northwest towards the Indus river and then swing back east, hitting the enemy column on his right flank. Hopefully they will be expecting an attack on the left flank and
that
will buy us some tactical surprise.”

              “Understood, sir. Ready when you are.” The turret vibrated as the engine came alive. The loader removed a sabot round from the storage and pushed it into the gun breech. The latter closed with the
clang
.

              Kulkarni looked at his loader: “how’s our supply?”

              “We have enough for this battle, sir. But after that we have to rearm.”

              Kulkarni made a mental note of that and went back to his sights. They had been using up their high-explosive rounds at a much higher rate in this urban terrain than they had accounted for. Sabot rounds were well within pre-calculated usage predictions. As always, the army had been caught preparing for the last war. The urban combat being encountered by Indian tanks all along the border from Punjab to Rajasthan was soaking up the resupply logistics…

              “Rhino-alpha, move out! Rhino-actual has the lead!”

              The tank lurched forward and pitched up as it climbed over the sand embankment created by the trishul combat-engineers and then down the other side. As they became horizontal, the gunner moved the main gun to auto-stabilization. Kulkarni went to his sights, rotating it around to see fifteen other tanks following him. At the moment all of his tanks were staggered randomly. He would have to change that to create
some
sense of unit cohesion. He pushed some commands on the
ABAMS
screen to indicate to platoon commanders where he wanted them to be, relative to his own tank. Within minutes, he saw the other tanks making abrupt changes in their motion…

              “Steel-central to rhino-actual, over.”

              “Rhino-actual, receiving five-by-five. Send traffic.”

              “Rhino-actual, this is steel-actual,” Sudarshan’s voice replaced the earlier one. “Care to explain
what
you are doing?” Kulkarni noted the irritated tone in his commander’s voice and internally muttered an “uh oh”.

              “Steel-actual,” he shouted over the increased rumble of the tank engines, “we are moving to contact, sir. Rhino will
not
sit idly and wait for the enemy to attack. We have the advantage of fighting on the move better than the enemy and have the tactical surprise. And we intend to us it! Over!”

              “I hope you know what you are doing, son,” Sudarshan noted. But he understood, being a former tank commander himself. In Kulkarni’s shoes he would have done the same. And that was all there was to it. Sudarshan was not one to second-guess his field commanders in the midst of combat… 

              “Roger, steel-actual. Rhino will engage surviving elements of the enemy column. Suggest you pass the word to the air-force. Rhino is moving to infrared beacons for
I-F-F
.”

              “Right. Good luck. We have you on our view. Out.”

The comms link chimed off. 

Okay…
Kulkarni exhaled and relaxed his mind. The infrared beacons on top of the Arjun tanks would ensure that friendly fighter-bombers above would be able to tell the difference between friend and foe tanks. Hopefully. If the Pakistanis switched on their beacons too, it would be chaos and the bombers would have to abort their attacks and leave the fight to rhino to finish.

“Flashes,” the gunner announced, “to the north.”

Kulkarni brought his sights around. He had noticed during his talk with Sudarshan that the gunner had rotated the turret off axis and was now pointed seventy degrees off to the right of the chassis. The driver was leading the tank to the northwest, and the gunner was facing north.

“Range?” Kulkarni asked.

“Hard to tell, sir,” the gunner replied, “too much obstruction from houses and trees.”

“And zero depth-perception on the optics,” Kulkarni added. His own sights were having the same problem. He saw the flashes on the horizon just as the gunner had indicated. It was clear that the air-force Jaguars were busy causing mayhem and carnage. Kulkarni hoped that Sudarshan had managed to warn those pilots about the sixteen rhino tanks.

Kulkarni checked his
ABAMS
screen with its moving-map display and brought up his comms mouthpiece: “driver, enough westward motion. Bring us due north for roughly two kilometers. Then we turn east and will take positions.”

“Roger.”

As the differential track motion of the tank caused everyone inside to hold on, the gunner brought the turret in alignment with the front of the chassis. The flashes on the horizon were now to their northeast…and subsiding in frequency.

“The Jaguars are leaving,” the gunner remarked.

“We must be closing in on the enemy,” Kulkarni added and then corrected his assumptions: “
or
they are leaving to rearm and refuel. Can’t tell just from the flashes.” He then looked at his paper maps to see where a good place might be for them to turn east and wait for the enemy. What he needed was a good line-of-sight for his tanks. Something to open the volley with. After that, they would move to contact and engage the enemy at close range…

There…
he found what looked like enough of a gap between the nearest clumps of houses and tree clusters to allow at least ten of his tanks to fit in, facing east. He then looked up at the
ABAMS
screen and pushed in the coordinates of the grid so that it would show up as a marker on the respective screens of all of his tanks as a rally point. He knew his platoon leaders were smart enough to see what their commander’s intent was without him having to spell it out.

He then checked his own tank’s position relative to the position he had marked: “driver, keep moving for another two-hundred meters. Then traverse right and bring us facing east in that clearing.”

“Roger, sir.”

Kulkarni liked the fact that his crew operated with the bare minimal of doubts or questions. It was like they were of the same mind. Either that or they just mindlessly trusted him. Either way, their lives rested on his conscience.

And on my decisions…
he folded the paper map back into neat squares. He then pushed it back into his overall’s zipper pocket. He won’t be needing this map now.

The vehicle jerked to a halt and then turned right, bringing the turret to face straight through the opening Kulkarni had intended. He rotated his sights to see other tanks also moving into position in a line. Nine of his tanks took up position as the first line, followed by the remaining seven in the line behind them. The formation was spread over three-hundred meters, north to south.

It represented a firing squad.

Kulkarni smiled at that realization and gripped the sights close to his eyes. His tank was the northernmost tank in the formation. His gunner was already swiveling the turret to the northeast as they waited for enemy movement. Kulkarni flicked on the thermal view on his sights. The view instantly changed from the green-black to a white-grey-black monochrome. The thermals registered on his sights as black. And cold objects were being rendered white. That was his personal preference setting. This view instantly showed him the black-grey columns of smoke from the Jaguar strikes, one kilometer northeast of them…