“Turn and burn, people! Break! Break!” Tikkar commanded.
He instantly pushed throttle all the way into afterburner, immediately feeling the sudden jerk of acceleration.
Fuel is good. All green!
He flipped the aircraft to the side, pulled back on the stick and saw the snowcapped Himalayas below fill his view. The RWR was screeching now.
The Mig-21 is agile like a sports car. But pulling out after a tight inner flip-turn after cutting afterburner strained the airframe and the response was sluggish. The aircraft dived below the peaks. Standard tactics.
All eight Indian R-77 shots were now in terminal phase and on their own now that they had lost the radar guidance from the launch aircraft. Presumably the Chinese pilots had done the same.
If not, well…
Tikkar noticed that he was over Paru…
The Joint-Force-Bhutan troops were getting a firsthand look at the battle taking place in the skies above. The first two Mig-21s screeched through the valley at low-altitude and full afterburner. Three enemy missiles streaked over the peaks from the northern leading exhaust trails line a line across the sky. The first R-77 slashed past the two Indian aircraft, having completely lost all contact with its target.
The remaining two missiles snapped down on acquisition and slashed across the flight-path of the two Indian pilots. One of the two missiles detonated in front of the rear Mig-21 in the pair…
The ensuing fireball and shockwave encompassed the doomed aircraft as it passed through it. When it exited the cloud a split-second later, it disintegrated into several pieces. The fuselage flipped over and snapped into several pieces and the onboard fuel ignited, sending smoky pillars of debris earthward just beyond the Paru airport perimeter.
“Oh god! Bull-rider-two is down! I say again, Bull-rider-two is down east of Paru airfield!” the other pilot’s voice broke over the comms, strained from the shock. But the bad news kept on piling.
“Bull-rider-four is down!”
“Eagle-Eye-Three, I need a sitrep, now!” Tikkar demanded.
On board the AEW aircraft, the mission commander ran his hands over his forehead upon hearing the news. And the battle had just begun…
“Bull-rider-Actual, we show one S-U-Two-Seven is down! The other is somewhere in the weeds north of Thimpu! Three Juliet-tens are spreading into BVR pattern over northern Bhutan, waiting for you!”
“Roger! Bull-rider-Three, confirm copy of last!” Tikkar ordered while taking his aircraft north by cutting through the valleys.
“Bull-rider-Three copies all! Pop-up I-R shots?”
“Affirmative! Stick to the valley floors! I do not have visual on you, so we are doing this individually. Good I-R contrast against the cold skies from down below! Keep an eye out for that other Sierra-Uniform bird to our north. Don’t mix it up with him! Out!” Tikkar shouted, and flipped his selection to the infrared guided R-60 missiles, of which he had two.
The J-10Bs had spread into a loose line-abreast formation just as they cleared into northern Bhutan. Now they were scanning south for the two evading Mig-21s. They had already detected the emissions from the CABS AEW to the south, which they knew to be directing the Indian defenses, but it was too far away.
Come on! Just a little further…
Tikkar willed mentally as his aircraft streaked over Thimpu at full supersonic speeds, shattering glass panes all over the city. His eyes were looking up in the sky above.
There!
“This is Bull-rider-Actual! Tally-ho!”
Tikkar pulled his aircraft up, bringing the view from his HUD to cover what his eyeballs had already detected: four dark specks against the darkening night sky to the north. The infrared optics of the R-60 had already locked on their prey as the Mig-21 cleared the peaks. Since he came up against the terrain, he had gone undetected. Till now.
The J-10s began breaking formation. They had seen the lone Indian pilot climbing up to them from below.
Tikkar fired off his two R-60s one after another towards two different targets. With these kinetics on the missile and its prey, he could hardly miss. The two thin white trails of the R-60s slammed into their targets within seconds of each other, ripping through two brand new Chinese J-10Bs…
“Splash one! And Splash two! You are not taking down Bull-rider that easy today, reds!” Tikkar exclaimed over the radio. His comms heard all the way to the AEW crew over southern Sikkim.
With his Mig-21 still at positive pitch and climbing, he cleared the target azimuth and began maneuvering to merge with the J-10s in a turning fight in the horizontal plane just as a third fireball erupted behind another J-10, sending licks of flame coming out of the fuselage of that aircraft. A moment later the cockpit canopy blew out and the pilot ejected…
“Bull-rider-Three, at your service, Leader!”
“Damn good to hear from you, boy! Do you have visual on the other buggers? I don’t ha…”
A streak of yellow tracer rounds flew past his cockpit glass. Tikkar flipped his aircraft instinctively to the side to evade. A large blur passed by the side of his glass in the darkness. The surviving Su-30 was back!
Holy crap!
“Bull-rider-Actual, you got a Flanker right within you guys!” the AEW operator warned.
“No shit! Bull-rider-Three: go after the other Juliet birds! I will take the Flanker!”
“Roger! Tally-ho!”
Tikkar had seen the Chinese Su-30 maneuvering below him. In the suddenness of the merge, the latter pilot had not been able to release missiles. But now they had recovered orientation and situational-awareness.
The Flanker began to maneuver. Hard!
On board his Mig-21, all that remained were cannon rounds. Tikkar knew that fuel would be turning critical as well. But at the moment the large monster of a Su-30 positioning itself for an infrared missile shot at point blank range was the greater worry.
This is not a fight he relished.
As he slashed across the Sukhoi, firing a burst of cannon rounds, the obviously experienced enemy pilot simply pulled away, utilizing its superior thrust-weight ratios and was now quickly behind the Mig-21. Just like that Tikkar was caught in a tail chase as he was headed straight down into the valleys below. He looked around the cockpit:
Fuel low. Weapons gone. A Flanker on his tail.
There was no escape to the mathematics of it all…
He flipped the aircraft to the side, pulled it in a steep turn that squeezed his body against the seat and managed to pull above the valley walls while turning a full 180 degrees. He only got halfway there. The Chinese pilot saw, anticipated and used his superior maneuverability to momentarily pitch the aircraft up and yaw it to the side to lace the front of turning Mig-21 with a long burst of cannon rounds, riddling the aircraft from nose to tail.
As the large Su-30 recovered from its pitch-up and pulled into the skies above Thimpu, Tikkar’s Mig-21 smashed into one of the peaks west of the city and disappeared into a ball of fire. On board the AEW aircraft to the south, Bull-rider-Actual disappeared from radar and comms.
With the skies swept clear over western Bhutan, the four remaining J-10s heading south towards Paru airport, while the Su-30 finished off the last Indian Mig-21. There were no more Indian defenses between the Chinese pilots and their target…
There were no klaxons at the airport. It was not a military base. It had been a civilian airport until a day ago. The black smoke spewing into the air at the southern edge of the airbase perimeter marked the location where one of the Bull-rider Mig-21s had gone down. It had been witnessed by the entire Para contingent securing the airbase as well as the air-force crew offloading the Mi-26 on the tarmac.