The ten-man special-forces team under Captain Pathanya was already deployed north of Thimpu overlooking the approaches into the city. The other detachment of paratroopers was now at Paru airport, defending the weak perimeter from Chinese special-forces teams also known to be operating in Bhutan right now. In fact, Haa-Dzong was vulnerable as well with only the handful of remaining paratroopers deployed around the golf-course. He desperately needed more men on the ground…
“Heavy-Hauler-One is inbound on finals!”
Squadron-Leader Saxena lowered his binoculars and walked out on the ledge of the control tower. His other two colleagues from the air-force forward-air-control team were manning the radios and other equipment inside. Three An-32s were already approaching from Baghdogra airbase, ferrying more Paras.
“Roger that!” Saxena said as he spotted the heavy bird approaching from the east.
He turned around and saw the two-man sniper team lying prone on their stomach on the roof of the tower. They had set up their long-barrelled Dragunov sniper rifles and were aiming north, past the runway perimeter. They were expecting danger, and that made Saxena concerned. He was not exactly trained to fight off a Chinese special-forces team. He looked at his own Tavor assault-rifle lying on top of the equipment dashboards inside.
“You really ought to see this. Not too many sights like this around!” he shouted to the two snipers on the roof above. They didn’t look away from their scopes but the observer dismissed the offer.
“What’s the big deal, sir? We jump out of perfectly good airplanes for no reason on a daily basis! I think we have seen our fair share of these birds.”
“Yeah? Well watch this!” Saxena said just as the Mi-26 descended on a rolling approach past the control tower.
The massive blades and the huge downwash swept up a massive dirt and dead grass maelstrom slashing through the tower building. It was enough to make Saxena hold on the rails and had the two snipers grasping the digital camo blankets they had laid over themselves. The Mi-26 thumped down on the runway and its engines groaned as the pilots struggled to slow it down.
“Oh shit! What the hell was that!” the sniper shouted as both men attempted to grasp what had happened. Saxena and his colleagues were laughing at their expense. A few seconds later Saxena responded:
“That, my friend, was air-force power! Get used to it: there’s going to be a lot more in the next few hours!”
“Heavy-Hauler-Two is inbound in fifteen minutes. Baghdogra birds have entered Bhutanese airspace. ETA imminent!” Saxena’ intercom squawked just as the Mi-26 rolled on to the tarmac nearby. Saxena walked over to the other side of the tower ledge to see more clearly. Paru was a small airport, and when there was a massive Mi-26 parked on its main tarmac, it occupied a large part of it. The three Dhruv helicopters had flown off earlier with three dozen civilians to the Indian border. After that they had returned to Haa-Dzong. All smaller and mid-sized helicopters would continue to operate from that austere facility so that the tarmac at Paru was open to the larger helicopters and the fixed wing aircraft. But the space was still small and not enough to sustain a large influx of aircraft at any given time. Saxena and his team knew this just by a quick glance of the airport facilities…
“We need to get these birds moving in and out quickly,” Saxena noted over the intercom as the Paratroopers began offloading from the Mi-26 below. “Otherwise we are going to end up choking ourselves logistically. Call up warlord and ask if he will allow us to bring more air-force personnel for these operations.”
“He’s not going to like that, sir,” his colleague inside the tower replied. “You know he wants us to bring in only the bare minimum IAF crews on his supply flights.”
Saxena sighed.
“No choice! Tell him either they allow us to bring in more men to offload these birds or his men will have to wait longer while we slow down the inbound flights. That’s his call! Paru is already getting choked and it’s only going to get worse from here on…”
Fernandez had never seen a Mi-26 making such a scary landing either. And his men were still choking from the dust cloud that the beast had created as it had flown overhead a few minutes earlier. He turned around in the front-seat of his AXE utility vehicle to see the rest of the convoy parked on the road behind. The men were taking a break while he conferred with his officers.
Hotel-Six had been designated by General Potgam for deployment near Paru. The reasons were numerous. But mainly it would reduce the logistical strain if it was close to Paru. Along with the airport, it was also on one of the two roads coming up from the Indian border. One of these went to Thimpu, bypassing Paru to the west. The other road came to Paru. These roads were the lifeline to Bhutan’s survival right now. It was the supply route over which he would get the rockets for his hungry Pinaka launchers. Stuff like that was always more efficiently brought in by ground.
But the location was far from ideal for a MBRL deployment. The only flat area in the valley had been taken up by the airport. He had a couple of good locations near the perimeter where he could deploy, but with inbound flights coming in every other minute, he could not afford to be launching rocket salvos through the same airspace. It was just far too dangerous. A dozen other locations were available, but were too small for the entire unit to deploy…
As his officers walked up to him, he opened up the paper map and spread it out on the hood of his vehicle. He looking around to see all of his officers assembled and then gestured to the mountains:
“Not good, gentlemen! Not good! Can’t see one location worth a damn for us to deploy on. Options?”
“Sir, we could go into autonomous mode,” his second-in-command suggested. “There’s enough locations within this valley for that.”
Fernandez shook his head in dismissal.
“Can’t do that. You see this valley around you? It’s thoroughly populated with Bhutanese civilians. If we start conducting shoot-and-scoot operations around here, and the Chinese start bombarding this place because of it, the civvies are going to get hit heavy!”
“So we get them out! Order an evacuation perhaps?” the Major said.
“And that will choke up our one single M-S-R with columns of refugees,” Fernandez responded. He had already considered these options himself. But he liked an open discussion between his officers. From time to time they would feed him ideas that he might never have come up with otherwise. But time for discussion right now was short…
“All right gentlemen. Here’s what we will do. There is this location north of Paru that is reached by this road,” he pointed to the road crossing in front of them. “This moves west and then north into this valley. That would put us roughly north of the town and southwest of Thimpu. Questions?”
As his officers leaned over to see the map location where he had jabbed his finger, they shared silent looks. Fernandez caught on to it.
“What?” he thundered. The Major looked around and spoke for the group:
“Sir, that location is pretty exposed out there. We… um… we don’t know if it’s secure or not at this time.”
“Warlord had one of his RPVs recon the area an hour ago,” Fernandez replied as he pulled out a new cigar and put it in his mouth without lighting it. “It’s a good spot. Granted that it’s vulnerable, but warlord has promised paratroopers once they have been flown in. They will provide security for our perimeter. It’s good enough out of Paru town so that the civvies are in no danger, and close enough to the airport and connected by road to provide decent logistics.”