“And we appreciate their effort, Ansari. But it is time to get them out,” the unnamed RAW man said from the comfort of the sofa. Ansari walked over, sat down in his chair, leaned back and faced the two RAW men in the room:
“Can I ask you something?”
The two intelligence officers looked at each other.
“Ask away,” Basu said finally.
“What the hell did this whole program achieve over the last year?” Ansari said and then noticed the quizzical looks on the faces of the two RAW covert operations specialists, so he continued:
“I mean we trained and let loose highly motivated Tibetans as part of teams into Tibet to kill Chinese soldiers. And they did. Very successfully, I might add. The cover of the Tibetan revolt was particularly effective in disguising their actions. And so now hundreds of Chinese soldiers are dead because of us and we have deep Intel on Chinese military capabilities, combat tactics, equipment, radio frequencies and the list goes on. We made the Chinese lose their grip on southern Tibet. And some would argue that we gave the Tibetan people some hope. And yet here we are today, fighting a war with communist China again, more than fifty years after the last one.”
“Your point, Colonel?” the older RAW man retorted.
“Did we start this war?” Ansari blurted it out.
“Colonel, everything you said is true. All of it. And everything we learnt about how the Chinese fight, their equipment and tactics are being used against them at this very moment to defeat them in battle. If our actions precipitated this war and also gave us the knowledge with which to defeat the Chinese then isn’t that what we proposed to do when we started this business more than two years ago?” Basu said finally.
Ansari sighed and leaned back in his seat. The other old RAW officer leaned forward in his seat as he faced Ansari:
“You see Colonel, Beijing will give up Tibet but they will not let their major cities be nuked. Tibet will not be worth it to them. And once we defeat them on the borders, they will have no choice. Granted that this event transpired quicker than we had anticipated with the Dalai Lama’s failing health and the possibility of his replacement coming up sooner than expected. But life does not always give us everything. We improvised and adapted. Now we have to ensure that we defeat the Chinese at the battlefields and reclaim the honor we lost fifty two years ago.”
“We are playing with the destiny of nations here. I hope you two understand that,” Ansari said as he swallowed the lump in his throat.
Part of him wondered why he was so terrified now that the Chinese had started shooting back as opposed to when they were getting a beating handed to them by Gephel and his teams. The old RAW officer leaned back into his chair and smiled.
“Welcome to the big league, Colonel.”
The port engine rotors sprang to life and started rotating as puffs of smoke left the exhausts. The ground handler standing in front of the aircraft and visible to the flight-crew began moving his right hand index finger in a circle to inform the pilots to start the starboard engine. Moments later the second engine sprang to life and the noise started picking up. The pilot and the co-pilot of the An-32 looked from either sides of their cockpit to see the propellers rotating at idle RPM. The ground-crewmen gave the thumbs-up to indicate a trouble free startup of the two engines before saluting off and moving away. The aircraft now began rolling towards the end of the runway to conduct an immediate takeoff.
The aircraft cabin was mostly empty except for the three wounded Jawans lying on stretchers with attending medics. The An-32 was conducting a flight in the darkness mostly because of the extreme nature of the requirement. The pilots were wearing night-vision goggles inside the cockpit and the runway was marked with infrared strobes that would be shut down and removed afterwards lest they be used by the Chinese for target identification and bracketing.
The Chinese were very much within artillery range of the airstrip where the An-32 was now attempting its take-off. Down to the east, along the Chip-Chap River, the enemy was within sight of Indian troops. With the Chinese forces poised to launch their attacks, the atmosphere on the ground was tense.
As the An-32 conducted a turnabout to align itself with the runway, the two pilots looked instinctively to the side of the cockpit towards the east where the dark peaks were silhouetted against the starlit night sky. They could not see anything. But they had been told by the local army personnel that there was at least one Division, if not more, worth of Chinese troops in that area…
Waiting to strike.
A few minutes later Brigadier Adesara and his staff officers watched the last An-32 to leave DBO lift off the dirt strip into the darkness of the night. Minutes later all strobe lights were switched off just as the first hint of reddish skies began to appear over the eastern ridgelines. Daylight was approaching.
The radio crackled to life: “Movement on Hill-two-four-three!”
Small puffs of smoke flew sideways as the large undercarriage tires of the B-737 Boeing Business Jet touched the concrete runway. As the aircraft carrying the Indian high command rolled down the runway, the escorting Mirage-2000 fighters streaked overhead and banked away in the early morning skies. All five aircraft had been airborne for hours now, and could have stayed aloft longer. But unlike the American version of the VC-25 Airborne-Command-Post which was capable of aerial refueling and therefore potentially unlimited flight, the Indian counterpart was based around a smaller airframe and was not equipped accordingly. It did share similar defensive mechanisms and all the communication equipment required for long endurance C3I operations. A war could be run from the aircraft for stretches of time, but not on a near continuous basis.
Nagpur airbase was far enough south that it was considered safe from a renewed round of Chinese cruise-missile attacks. Besides, the airbase was deep enough inside Indian Territory that any enemy missile would have to penetrate large tracts of Indian airspace and defenses, and so the possibility of a cruise-missile breaking through was very low…
The B-737 rolled off the runway with a group of air-force police vehicles driving alongside. The airbase perimeter was currently being guarded by assault-rifle toting soldiers as well as guard-dogs. In the skies around the airbase, an air-force Dhruv helicopter was patrolling with snipers on board as they kept a sharp eye for potential threats. The B-737 finally rolled on to the main tarmac area on the base and halted alongside a parked C-17 heavy-transport aircraft.
There were a large number of people waiting outside on the tarmac area just as the morning sunlight started piercing through the low hanging mist around the base. As the engines of the B-737 spooled down, refueling tankers were already rushing for the aircraft while ground crewmen got to work. The doors were opened and people began pouring out. The PM was one of the first people to step out of the aircraft and he was whisked away by his SPG team towards the waiting convoy of three black bulletproof SUVs. Other military and civilian officials including the Home-Minister, Chakri, General Yadav and his other staff officers followed close behind.
Chakri put on his sunglasses even as the first rays of sunlight glistened off the white colored airframe of the B-737. The smell of aviation fuel was in the air and a cacophony of voices engulfed him. As he walked down the stairs on to the concrete, he turned to face General Yadav walking down behind him.