What can you say about the state of the war where generals and senior officers talk about whiskey rather than logistics?
A burst of laughter from Chen caused Feng to turn around.
“What’s so funny?” Feng asked.
“Just that you are so predictable, Feng! So very predictable!”
The laugh continued some more, and Feng brought himself to smile, remove his coat and hang it on a stand before gently tossing his cap on the sofa. He took his seat opposite Chen.
Time was short, and certainly there was no time for this. But Feng understood that this was not a social get-together. Despite the drink, Chen’s mind was as sharp right now as the first day a young Major Feng had seen him while he was a Colonel at Lanzhou airbase so many years ago. Chen liked to drink, but it never dulled his mind.
Feng could not say that about himself, however.
He picked up his small glass of rum and brought it forward for a toast. Chen did the same. Both men had not rested for five days now. And it was beginning to show around their eyes. The power of the drinks however brought momentary freshness and both men shook it off, Feng struggling more than his boss. The table between them was littered with reports, maps, charts and markers among a bunch of other personal items, including Chen’s fur cap and his personal sidearm holster. On the side lay his personal identification data cards. Feng surveyed the table and waited impatiently for the general to say something.
Time is of the essence!
“So Feng,” Chen said, leaning back into his leather chair, “would you say that we have accomplished what the Army and the CMC had asked of us when this madness began five days ago?”
Feng considered his response. Chen was known to bait his people in such conversations, sometimes humorously and other times not. Of course the victim never knew it. But Feng had known him long enough. He and Chen were alone and the senior Political Commissar was not here. So this conversation, lubricated by drinks was intended to be frank and honest.
Good. We can use the honesty!
Feng put his glass back on the table.
“No we have not.”
“No?” Chen asked with a raised eyebrow.
“The ground war has not gone as expected. The army is stuck only a few kilometres inside Indian Territory and in other areas has actually lost territory to Indian offensives! The original plans called for us to defeat the Indian forces within the first week of the war and then consolidate our gains over the next two. And in the skies we have failed to defeat the Indians. They technology and terrain advantage allows them to defeat our attacks continuously and at far lesser losses. We have failed to…”
Chen stopped Feng with a raised hand.
“We have not failed, Feng. Not yet, at any rate. We cannot fail!”
Feng could feel the sudden chill in the room as Chen’s tone changed:
“But we do have to adapt.”
Chen picked up his glass and poured in some water as he spoke:
“I have given it some more thought. It was not entirely Zhigao’s fault. None of us fully appreciated the vast gap in technology between us and the Indians and for that we are all to blame: you, me, Wencang and everybody within the PLAAF planning staff!”
Chen paused and drank the contents of his glass. Feng had heard what happened to Major-General Zhigao after his arrest…
Poor bastard.
Chen leaned forward and rested his arms on the table.
“Feng, we need a new game plan. Options?”
“Few,” Feng conceded with a dismissive shake of his head.
“In that case we have to go defensive for a while,” Chen concluded.
The silence was hypnotic.
The gray skies above never looked better to Captain Kongara as he lay on his back, dazed and hazy. There was no cold or hot that he could feel. Kongara felt as if he was somewhere else.
So peaceful…
He turned to his side and saw his hand was for some reason covered in what seemed like his own blood.
Why…
It didn’t make sense to him. He stared at it in confusion as the blood slowly poured out. He stared at the hand for several seconds and then tried getting up. That was when the biting pain sliced through his senses…
The sky above was now darker and he saw what looked like lines of tracers slicing across it. The distant crackle of rifle and cannon fire reached his ears.
He rolled on his side and saw his left thigh bleeding profusely and he couldn’t move. As his senses started coming back he realized that his hands were touching cold rocks as he sat upright. There was no snow where he was but the peaks around him were still covered with it. It was then that he looked clearly and focused and through the haze in front of his eyes he began to see what appeared to be his BMP-II burning ferociously. The tracks had been blown off. There was dust and bullets flying everywhere.
He looked around now to see where his crew was and saw his gunner right there on the ground, next to the vehicle. His body was torn to pieces. His chest surrounded by a darkened pool of blood.
No!
He tried dragging himself closer to the mutilated body of his gunner but the blinding pain in his legs didn’t let him…
Ahhh!
He shouted in pain at his helplessness. Just then he saw a section of Sikh soldiers running by, a few dozen meters away. As he watched them run, a line of tracers sliced through them and several of the soldiers were struck, the bullets tearing through their bodies in muffled thumps. Those that got hit instantly died and fell into the gravel below.
Then there were other sounds and for the first time Kongara looked to his other side and saw a couple of BMP-IIs moving back to the south in tactical progression. They were reversing, but engaging some Chinese targets to the north as they did.
The flash-boom sequence of the auto-cannons on the two vehicles was hypnotizing. The Chinese were taking casualties, but were not pinned down. As the two Indian vehicles moved and fired, tank shells were exploding around them. One of the two vehicles finally took a jarring hit on the underside of its sloped forward glacis and the turret flew off underneath an orange fireball. Steel and aluminum fragments from the chassis flew off in all directions and Kongara ducked for cover, screeching with pain as the pain in his leg intensified. He heard the metallic pings of steel hitting steel as some of the fragments hit his burning vehicle…
The other surviving Indian vehicle spent no time deploying smoke and disappearing behind it.
Kongara looked around and could see no other friendly forces now other than a few crew members from another vehicle straggling back to the south on their feet. That was when the seriousness of the situation came to him and he started to get back on his feet with no small amount of struggle and pain.
I have to get out of here!
A new sound reached his ear and he recognized the diesel engines. As he faced north, he saw two familiar vehicles coming out of the smoke cloud the retreating Indian vehicles had deployed. He watched in fascination as he saw the bright red star emblazoned on the turret of the two T-99s that had now come to a halt a few hundred meters away from him, their turrets searching for Indian vehicles.
Kongara tore off a piece of his uniform and tied a makeshift bandage around his leg wound and his hand. But the two tanks now to his east would see him as soon as he stepped away from his destroyed vehicle.