He heard Bhosale’s heavy breath on the other end of the line. He also heard some background chatter. Probably some of Bhosale’s operations officers offering suggestions.
Not that there is much to do… Malhotra viewed the images in his hands yet again. One had been taken by a RISAT bird five days ago. And the other one was from an hour ago. Other images taken in between these two had confirmed the steady removal of personal from all of the Pakistani-operated terror camps inside Kashmir. The enemy had scampered. And it wasn’t hard to guess who had tipped them off.
“This is a problem.” Bhosale added. Malhotra nodded at his end. “Indeed, sir.”
“The babus of South Block have created this cluster-fuck situation. We told those bastards not to reveal our plans to Rawalpindi. What the hell did they think was going to happen?!”
Malhotra looked away from the speaker and eyed the men in his presence, wondering why the big-boss had let his emotion get the better of him in front of all the men. If anything, it was an indicator of how bad things were with the civilian government. And the chief was, after all, only human. In any other circumstance, his emotions would be excusable. But not here. Not when morale was already sinking within the men they commanded.
“Options?” Bhosale said testily. Malhotra heard some of the other senior operations officers on the other side talking about rolling back the scale of the strikes or some such thing. Malhotra was already zoned out and lost in his own thoughts as he reviewed the images, hoping to find some viable solutions…
One thing was quite clear: the strikes would go ahead as planned. The prime-minister and his politically leaning defense-minister had set that in stone as the only means to survive in office. And followed that up with gross incompetence to ensure that the current plans were effectively castrated. If the current operations went ahead as planned, they would strike nothing but mud buildings and empty training grounds. The target individuals had dissipated like water into the rocks.
Or had they? Malhotra realized as he jerked forward in his seat and began scouring through the imagery laid out on the table until he found what he was looking for. Then he looked at the images and smiled.
Of course!
The answer had been available to them all along.
It had all to do with terrain topology and weather conditions, the latter of which was at its worst at this time of the year. Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir was mostly steep mountains and barren high-altitude ridges. These locations were unsuited for habitation in the winter months. But there were locations inside the valleys where the altitude was lower and these valleys were habitable. And if there was one thing that these mujahedeen liked more than anything else, it was creature comforts. In every war since 1947, Pakistan had attempted to use these “warriors” as the tip of their sword for the battles inside Indian Kashmir. And in all cases it had the same net result: the Pashtun warriors were more interested in pillaging and rape than in tactics and strategy. There was a reason why the terror camps were also located in the valleys and vegetated parts of the Himalayas north of the line-of-control.
The image Malhotra held in his hands showed him the consequences of this tendency of the Pashtuns. It showed Skardu before and after the Pakistanis had revealed the Indian threats to jihadists. The camps were deserted. But the soldiers had to go somewhere, right? They certainly weren’t hiding out in the mountains braving the snow. No, that wasn’t their style. And sure enough, Skardu was certainly showing a lot more people this time of the year…
And it is certainly not increased tourism! Malhotra put that image down and picked up another set from the table taken over the Deosai valley villages. Same as Skardu. Lots of “civilian” pickup trucks on the move. Much more than what the region enjoyed at this time of the year. These guys were spread out over the valley in smaller encampments by the look of it. Pakistani army convoys were also visible in the images and the soldiers in these convoys seemed to ignore these roadside camps as though they didn’t exist…
So much for joint operations against terrorism!
“Sir,” Malhotra said finally. “I have an option that you might like!”
“What’s this?” Pathanya said as he walked outside of the building. He saw several of his team members removing wooden crates and other olive-green metallic boxes from the back of two military trucks that had rolled rear-first into the parking lot.
“Our gear has been released to us.” Kamidalla noted as he walked past Pathanya carrying one of the boxes into the main lobby. Pathanya followed him in as others began bringing in more of the gear. Kamidalla put the box down on the floor and opened it. He then lifted one of the several rifles in the box and shouldered it. Pathanya picked up another one. He noticed straight away that these were the newly developed Multi-Caliber-Individual-Weapon-System or MICWS rifle. The weapon was fitted with the latest optical sights that SOCOM could provide them. The particular rifle that he had picked was fitted with a red-dot sight, but he noticed some of the other boxes were marked according to what they carried: infrared scopes, night-vision goggles, ammunition, under-barrel grenade-launcher attachments and so on. Kamidalla lofted his rifle and checked the red-dot sight as well as the balance of the weapon. Others in the room began doing the same. The click-clack metallic noise in the room was deafening.
Pathanya looked around and didn’t feel he had to say anything. These men were highly-trained, elite operators who had been selected for their intelligence. They knew what they had to do and how to do it. As such, Pathanya’s role as team leader was more unusual than a typical light-infantry unit. His job was only to lay out the plan of action and the next objective. He didn’t have to worry about the smaller details.
Gephel walked into the room a few seconds later and saw the equipment and weapons laid out over the lobby. He turned to Pathanya with a smile: “What have you done to my dinner room?”
“Apologies, sir. We will clean it up again.”
Gephel smiled: “You won’t have the time.”
“When do we leave?” Pathanya asked as activity in the room came to a sudden standstill.
“Tonight.” Gephel responded. “Twelve hours from now, the gears start to rotate. The trucks outside will take you and your team to the airbase at nineteen-hundred hours. Dust off will depend on other elements doing their job so it is likely to vary. But rest-assured, you will not be returning to this location once you leave here, this evening. So make sure your personal belongings are stowed into those same trucks outside. Colonel Ansari is already at operations and I will be joining him soon. I just wanted to wish you all luck and good hunting!” Gephel turned to Pathanya: “walk with me.”
The two men walked into the courtyard facing the snow-capped Himalayas around them. The rare sunlight cut through the clouds and illuminated the Leh valley. Gephel turned to Pathanya: “make sure your men get a good rest today. Mandatory sleep for everyone. They have a long and freezing night ahead of them. Understood?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Good.” Gephel then stiffened his back: “remember the extremely sensitive nature of this mission. Out beyond those lines,” he gestured to the northern peaks with his arm, “you and your team are going to be isolated and surrounded. This is not Bhutan, major. At least there you had the sympathetic population on your side and Warlord and his heavy firepower supporting your every move. Out here, expect to get shot from all sides and from everyone who can hold a gun. We all know what happened to Kalia and his men during the Kargil war.”