“Are there any other Pak birds over occupied Kashmir apart from the egressing kilo-echo bird?” Verma asked the operators in front of him. He got several negatives in response.
Good. Kashmir airspace is ours.
For now, anyway… he corrected himself.
“This is mongol-two-actual to overlord: the window is pried open! I say again, the window is pried open. It won’t stay that way for too long. So make it count and give them hell!”
14
The Dhruv helicopters flared for landing on the gravel. Jagat powered down the helicopter as he and his co-pilot looked outside for signs of life. The swirling dust obscured the view and the wartime blackout conditions didn’t help. It was several seconds before they could make out soldiers running to them across the landing ground. One of the officers wearing military a woodland camo uniform and a contrasting white winter smock ran over to the side of the cockpit, holding his cap with one hand. Jagat opened up the cockpit door.
“How long do you need?” Jagat asked. His crew-chief was already on the ground and helping the soldiers to refuel the helicopter.
“Ten minutes!” The lieutenant shouted his response over the sounds of the roaring trucks and other military vehicles heading down the highway further away.
“Make it fast, son! The meter is running!” Jagat said and then lowered his comms mouthpiece as the lieutenant ran off to supervise the refueling.
“Panther-two, — three: do you guys see our escorts anywhere? I do not see them from where I am parked.” Jagat looked to see his co-pilot who shrugged his shoulders.
“Uh… that’s a big negative, panther-actual,” one of the other two pilots reported. “I got nothing over here. Just some parked vehicles and trailers.”
“Panther-three here: I got negative V–I-D on leopard birds, parked or otherwise.”
“Shit!” Jagat switched comms to get in touch with command. Pathanya moved up behind the co-pilot as he listened in on the chatter.
“What’s the problem?” He asked in a whisper as Jagat began spewing expletives on the comms while the ops people at Ansari’s HQ tried to find out what was going on.
“Leopard flight was supposed to rendezvous with us here.” The co-pilot replied. “But we have no comms with them and don’t see them around. Somebody fucked things up at command or leopard got stuck in bad weather en-route and had to put down somewhere.”
“Shit!” Pathanya blurted out. The co-pilot grunted.
“Yeah. Join the cursing club.”
A sudden burst of rotor noise caught all of them by surprise and Pathanya jerked as four thin, sleek helicopters flew overhead at high speed. Jagat and his co-pilot stretched forward to see the new visitors here as they banked to the south, one kilometer to the west…
“Scratch that request, viper-actual,” Jagat said matter-of-factly, “I think leopard just showed up!” He flicked the comms off and then changed VHF frequencies to match leopard comms: “If you gentlemen are done goofing around, I would like to get this job over with!”
Pathanya saw the four helicopters now returning back to the FARP at much lower speeds and spreading out in a finger-four formation as they flared for landing. Only when they touched down did he see that these were four LCH gunships. All four choppers carried a two-man crew consisting of a weapons-system-operator, or WSO, and a pilot. He also saw the protruding cannons underneath the chin of the helicopters as well as rocket pods and quad pylons for a total of eight Nag anti-tank missiles per bird. This was serious firepower on hand…
“If only we had these in Bhutan when we needed them,” Pathanya blurted out and then stopped himself. The co-pilot heard him but chose not to say anything.
The radio squawked: “apologies for the delay, panther! Give us a few minutes to fuel up and we will be good to go.”
“Roger,” Jagat checked his wristwatch. “Make it snappy, if you would.” They were getting behind schedule already. Jagat looked out the cockpit glass and swore. Pathanya glanced at the co-pilot and then moved back into the cabin to check on his team.
“What’s going on up there?” One of his men asked as settled down next to his backpack and pulled out the maps and images for a final mental dry run. Pathanya looked at the soldier as he removed his small flashlight. “Usual errors in getting the right people at the right place at the right time under combat conditions. Don’t worry about it though. It’s under control.”
Pathanya turned his eyes to the maps spread out on his lap. One of the pictures he pulled out was a copy of the file picture RAW had of Muzammil and his chief operatives in the LET. Each of his team members had a copy of the picture to allow them to positively ID the man amongst all of his bearded cohorts. Pathanya looked at the picture of the man with long, flowing beard and reminded himself that this was the man responsible for the strike on Mumbai. And since then he had been stretching his vocal cords spewing religious hatred and promising renewed jihad against Indian forces in Kashmir and elsewhere. Pathanya heard metallic clanks suggesting that their refueling was complete and that the ground crews were preparing the helicopter for dust-off. Looking at the vast military operation currently in play to punish these militant outfits, it was now anybody’s guess as to what it meant to capture this one man when so much else was going on. Would the capture of this perpetrator even matter anymore as the two nations slugged it out? Was that what this man and the Pakistani Generals had wanted?
There was only one way to find out.
Pathanya tucked the picture inside his chest pocket as he heard the turbines of the helicopter spooling up. He heard Jagat talking to his pilots up front:
“Panther-actual to leopard. You have the lead, we have the tail. Take us to the A-O. Over.”
“Wilco, panther. Leopard-two, — three, — four. You know the drill. Protect panther from all threats, ground and air. Use deadly force as required. Advise corrections to waypoints as necessary. All right, gentlemen, here we go!”
Pathanya saw through the front cockpit glass as the four gunships leapt off the snowy-gravel and over climbed out of view. Jagat turned back to face Pathanya and his men: “Hold on gentlemen. Here we go!”
A few seconds later the helicopter lifted off the ground in rapid acceleration that left Pathanya holding tight. He saw two of the LCH gunships move up front from above and take up escort position as the seven helicopters dusted off the FARP. The flashes of artillery fire were now directly visible to the north from the cockpit glass. Pathanya grabbed his rifle and backpack and lofted it behind his back as his men did the same. He heard the last of the radio messages and recognized Ansari’s voice straight away:
“Viper-actual here. Confirmed target package within A-O and have eyes on you via cougar-two! Good hunting out there!”
The three Pinaka launcher trucks swerved off the road, one behind the other, on to the patch of even terrain nearby. Once off the road, the two vehicles in the back of the convoy drove off on either side of the lead vehicle so that they were all in abreast formation when they jerked to a stop. The crews of all three vehicles noticed that the ground shook beneath their feet as explosions erupted on the ground they had just been on to the east. The dust cloud from the explosions was now rising into the black sky above…
But that was what the Pinaka multi-rocket launchers were designed for. Much like their bigger Brahmos brethren, the Pinaka launchers were autonomous. They could fire and move to a new location to deny the enemy a chance to counter-bombard them. In the age of weapons-locating-radars, such autonomy and precision meant the difference between life and death. And it had already proven lethal to a lot of men tonight as both sides rolled fire into each other’s fixed tube-artillery positions in the mountains. Unlike the all-terrain trucks on which the Pinaka system was mounted, the long-range guns of the Indian and Pakistani armies were not nearly as mobile. And over the years both sides had meticulously marked out each other’s guns to painful detail. At the moment, the two sides were thrashing each other out. And a lot of the gun crews were having to make their escape from counter-battery fire by the seat-of-their pants.