But Paru airport was the prize that Potgam wanted and he was currently making sure that he had it.
Fernandez walked back to his AXE utility vehicle at the head of the convoy after finishing his talk with Potgam. He looked back to see a good eighteen plus heavy vehicles from his battery including the launchers, replenishment, radar and command vehicles all stacked up in a column.
A flight of three Dhruv helicopters and the one Lancer at the golf-course lifted into the air, flying low and fast. Fernandez got into the front side seat and took the radio from his radioman in the back seat as the driver revved up the engines.
“Hotel-Six-Actual to all Hotel-Six elements! Move out!”
The four Indian helicopters cleared Chele-La within minutes of take-off. The Lancer was the last in the group, trailing the three transport helicopters and looking for trouble to pop up.
In the Paru valley, the town was visible to the northwest along the axis of the valley. The airport concrete glistening in the afternoon sunlight was also visible to the east. The four helicopter crews dove down to a few meters altitude above the treetops as they headed for the airport.
Inside the three Dhruv helicopters, the small team of Indian paratroopers checked their weapons, equipment and comms. Most were covered with camouflage face-paint to merge into the heavy foliage of Bhutan…
“Hauler-Flight: thirty seconds!”
The army-aviation Major commanding the flight said over the intercom. The airport was becoming larger and larger from the cockpit glass with the civilian terminal in clear view now. Hauler-Three broke formation as they approached the airport perimeter and headed for the hangers north from the terminal buildings and near the end of the runway.
Hauler-Two flared and lost the bulk of its forward velocity just inside the airport perimeter where the runway began. A few seconds later the helicopter touched down on the hard tarmac of the runway and the heavily armed paratroopers jumped out from the open sides.
“Hauler-Two is clear!”
The pilot said over the radio as the helicopter dusted off the runway.
Hauler-One flared directly on the roof of the main terminal building with some of the paratroopers heading straight for the control tower building. They burst into the main control room on the top of the tower to find it deserted. The Bhutanese controllers there had left their positions in panic. Same went for the main terminal building which, although deserted, was also ransacked. When the paratroopers moved to the main entrance they saw large number of people, most of them tourists and their families, waiting to find some transportation out of Bhutan.
There was panic amongst the crowd as they saw the soldiers bursting out of the terminal building with heavy assault gear and camouflaged faces. The Indian commander did not bother trying to control the crowd since it was a wasted effort in his view.
Hauler-One came to hover a few dozen feet above the terminal building a few seconds later, and the Major piloting it also saw the panicking crowds from the air. The paratrooper team leader switched on his UHF comms as he looked up at Hauler-One hovering above:
“What do you want to do about this?” he asked the pilot.
“Heck if I know!” the Major replied. “I am calling warlord-central to see if they can arrange for these civvies to be taken away from here. The R-P-Vs should have seen these crowds during their recon. Why the hell nobody told us about them? This place was supposed to be deserted!”
The Para commander grunted.
“Yeah. The place has been ransacked. Control tower is still fully ops and so is the runway. Send that back to warlord as well. I am going to set up a perimeter around this place until the ground convoy catches up.”
Several seconds later the paratrooper Major was walking out of the terminal onto the tarmac and saw the three Dhruv helicopters flaring and touching down in unison. He ran up to Hauler-One’s cockpit as the loadmaster jumped out to secure the landing. The paratrooper waited for the aviation Major to remove his helmet while the Shakti turbines spooled down. Soon the only noise to be heard was that of the Lancer hovering to the northeast as the paratroopers fanned out. The Paratrooper Major walked over to his aviation counterpart.
“Let me guess: warlord wants us to evacuate the civvies out?”
“You bet! Indian citizens first. We are to take as many of them in this flight as we can to the southern border crossing into India and then head back to Haa-Dzong. I thought my pilots and I can lend a hand organizing the civvies,” the pilot replied.
“Thanks a bunch. My men are spread thin trying to secure this place. I can spare a few men to you to help out. Can you handle it?”
The Major nodded once again as they began walking back to the terminal. Then the Major abruptly turned and ran back to the cockpit. He returned with his personal INSAS Carbine. A sidearm would not do if they got shot down behind enemy lines. The Para-CO smiled seeing the weapon in the pilot’s hands:
“Never forget your weapon! Don’t they teach you fly-boys anything before they send you off to war?” he chuckled.
“Hey man, I just flew you over here at a hundred-fifty clicks-an-hour brushing the trees. You want to spare me the attitude?” the Major said as they both walked back to the terminal.
On the other side, the crowd had figured out that the soldiers were Indians and were now jostling to get in and get ahead in line to leave Bhutan. The aviation Major and the Para-CO watched from inside the glass entrance door.
“We only have about thirty minutes to organize and take those who we can, out of here. Warlord does not want to spend a second more than he has to dealing with civvies,” the pilot said.
“When do the first convoys get here?”
“Within the hour. First Mi-26 lands here in about forty minutes with more paratroopers to secure the airport. The air-force has deployed some air-cover above us. That should keep you guys safe,” the pilot added.
The Chinese satellite went over Bhutan, taking high definition imagery of everything that was happening in the small Himalayan kingdom. One of several areas heavily focused on by the satellite included Thimpu, Paru and Haa-Dzong. When those images processed in Beijing and given to Colonel-General Wencang by the PLA commander, a call went from his office to Lieutenant-General Chen at Kashgar…
The Mi-26 is a heavy lifting helicopter. But it lifts even more when it pretends as if it were a transport aircraft. When it makes a rolling lift-off as opposed to a hover, it can carry a heavier payload. Only the American CH-53 helicopter comes close, and even that isn’t very close at all…
The runway at Paru was very crucial to Lieutenant-General Potgam and Joint-Force-Bhutan as a logistical heart. Bhutan is critically short of flat terrain suited for use as helipads or airstrips. Getting stuff into Bhutan by air was a nightmare. Thimpu had some helipads and to the east near Lhuntse, where Major-General Dhillon was assessing and stabilizing the battered RBA, there were a couple of landing areas to be had. But Paru had a fully functioning airport with a concrete runway and hangers.
And it was valuable as hell right now.
It was also to be his AFARP for Fernandez and the Hotel-Six battery. Haa-Dzong would continue to be JFB command center, since it was already set up for handling this task and also because it had its own secure operations center.
The other major problem was firepower. Potgam only had small paratrooper and special-forces detachments at the moment, not counting Fernandez and his unit or the Searcher-II UAV squadron. He had already deployed most of these units on various critical missions such as reconnaissance and protection of assets.