Desperate times call for desperate measures. And scorched-earth policy was now in play…
Within thirty minutes, the three launch vehicles rolled off the tarmac on to the gravel and drove off to a clearing near the end of the runway, a kilometer from the base of the snow-capped mountains around them.
Once there, the TELs lowered their hydraulic supports and elevated the vehicle so that the entire chassis was stabilized. Minutes of silence passed before the three-tube launcher bases rotated to their sides and locked into position.
When the commanding officer of the 821ST Brigade confirmed his detachment’s readiness to Feng, he ordered the launch.
The Golmud valley reverberated as a barrage of nine CJ-10 GLCMs headed into the blue morning sky above. The trails of smoke extended in near parabolic trajectories to the south before fading away.
The nine cruise-missiles stabilized in forward flight soon after clearing the peaks and lowered to terrain-mapping mode.
Unlike the vast majority of the other Chinese cruise-missiles, ground or air-launched, the Long-Swords were state-of-the-art. They were very new and very limited in quantity given the recent initiation of full scale production. Currently only the 821ST Brigade was armed with these missiles. They represented the next generation of Chinese cruise-missile technology. Carrying a significant payload over very long distances, the Long-Sword was in essence the counterpart to the decommissioned strategic versions of the US Tomahawk missiles. They also carried the very best navigation and guidance technology that China had to offer. It allowed these missiles to fly close to the ground and reach their targets under the enemy’s radar coverage.
The terrain against which they masked themselves was jagged, wavy and difficult to spot on. The missiles were not flying high above the ground and not in a straight line either. With shorter physical range to their target, the missiles could also take a convoluted approach to their targets.
As such they escaped Indian detection all the way until they climbed to altitude above the Greater Himalayan Range south of the destroyed Chinese airbase at Nyingchi Kang Ko on the Arunachal Pradesh border. The only warning for the Indians came from the sole surviving aerostat tethered-radar system near Chabua airbase when the missiles flew south-west before crossing into Assam. As the first Indian Su-30s dived to engage, the missiles were already on final approach to their targets…
The first CJ-10 detonated a thousand-pound warhead five-hundred feet above the runway at Tezpur airbase. It sent out a massive ball of expanding shock-waves that hit the ground below and dug deep into it as a crater of mud erupted. The reflected shockwaves collided before sweeping over the tarmac.
Another two missiles detonated in the air directly above the entrance to a pair of hardened aircraft shelters, utterly demolishing them into the ground in a wall of mud, concrete and fire along with three Su-30s inside. The shockwaves travelled as they became weaker but still rippled through all of the base buildings as well as shattering all windows within a kilometer radius around the base. When the thunderous roars subsided, the craters were surrounded by columns of thick black smoke rising into the skies above.
Similar hits were absorbed by Jorhat airbase to the east.
The Su-30s on patrol that had dived to intercept managed to destroy two of the remaining three missiles over Arunachal Pradesh as they headed towards the Se-La. The last surviving missiles dived into the center of Tawang and detonated a thousand-pound unitary warhead directly above the town made up of ramshackle civilian houses and old Buddhist monasteries…
Two hours later, Feng was shown the latest satellite images of the decimated Indian airfields at Tezpur and Jorhat. He finally smiled and glanced at the officers of the PLAAF around him:
“Gentlemen, our comrades at Kashgar have been avenged!”
The western slopes of the Himalayas were illuminated in the reddish sunset as yet another day in the war ended.
But for the people of Tawang, the ordeals knew no end.
When the Long-Sword cruise-missile had detonated over the town several hours ago, it almost felt as though there were two suns in the sky. The manmade one in the pair had a rapidly expanding radius that had absorbed a chunk of the city within it until the bright flash of light was accompanied by a wall of flame as it swept everything before it. The white snow above the city had flashed away instantly. Then thunderclap had reverberated through the region and a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust had arisen above the sky. It had been several hours since that event, and the mushroom cloud had lost its shape, but the dust still rose high in the sky above…
On the ground, fires were still blazing away within the town and were now spreading to the outskirts in a blazing firestorm, a result of closely structured wooden homes. The town’s firefighting capabilities were primitive even under peacetime conditions and right now there was no hope of combating this tidal wave of fire, gutting the town.
The center of the city was a smoldering crater of charred black husks over a kilometer wide but of asymmetric shape. The hilly terrain over which the city was built had protected some areas from the blast but had shunted the blast waves more strongly over others like a massive nozzle.
As the fires raged and threatened to burn down what remained of the town, the evacuation of surviving citizens was underway. Those who could be moved were being sent at least as far as Se-La and if transport and logistics allowed, all the way to Tezpur to avoid congesting the only lines of supply the army had in the region. The government couldn’t simply leave these civilians in the open against the harsh Himalayan winter.
Many had already left before the war had started, but the surprise start of the war had caught the local populace by surprise. And once the fighting had started, the army had put a stop to the exodus of civilians because it was choking the only logistical artery that existed to the Divisions fending off the PLA 13TH Group Army attack on Tawang.
But now they could hardly hold back the tide of panicked and shocked people trying to get their families out of the area before the Chinese missiles struck their town again. The army now had to task crucial personnel from its logistical units to help evacuate the people of Tawang.
In a way Beijing had achieved military goals in such a brutal attack against an unarmed civilian population. By forcing the Indians to deal with this massive exodus of civilians across hundreds of kilometers of mountainous terrain, they had relieved pressure from themselves along sectors of Bum-La. Here the Indian army had been preparing for a series of local counter-offensives now that the 13TH Group Army had been mauled after ten days of combat. This Indian counterattack now had to put on hold until the supply lines behind could be cleared.
Indian morale had taken a beating as well.
Several media reporters had based themselves in Tawang when the war had started, providing the same feel of war to each and every home in India as the Kargil war had done. But when the missile struck the town, it also took the lives of a good portion of these journalists.
In the immediate aftermath of the strike, most news channels instantly lost all contact with their field teams at Tawang. Many were knocked off the air the instant the warhead exploded above the city and had not been heard off since. Chaos and confusion followed soon afterwards as news channels attempted to explain what had happened. It added to the fear and fed it to turn it into something worse. The ripple effect of such an event spread quickly through the country and across the world. But what scared New-Delhi and the military commanders was the fact for several hours the Indian people were almost led to believe by the media that perhaps Tawang had been nuked by China.