17
Lt-colonel Kulkarni rubbed his eyes to remove the sand that had blown in. This seemed to happen almost like clockwork. But what surprised him the most was not the conditions of the blistering desert he had just rolled into, but rather the way his body was struggling to acclimatize. Of course, having spent his last three years in the mountains of Ladakh had changed his acclimatization. He found himself much more readily suited now for the mountains than for the desert.
He was being given a refresher course in desert warfare by the Thar desert which, even in March, felt as though it was somehow closer to the sun than the rest of the planet. He had arrived here a week ago and was still struggling to breathe when the afternoon heat began to boil everything around them. Touching the metal of the main-battle-tanks under his command after about two-o-clock in the afternoon was hazardous. Of course, he realized that in the freezing plains of Ladakh, it had been the same with the ice…
Kulkarni looked up as three Gypsy vehicles drove up to his tents. He saw his commanding-officer and other senior staff sitting in the vehicles. Brigadier Sudarshan smiled as he walked off the parked vehicle and headed for the shade of the tents. He shook Kulkarni’s hand and saw his reddish eyes.
“The sand getting to you?” He laughed.
“No complaints, sir.” Kulkarni said with a straight face.
“Don’t lie to me,” Sudarshan replied with a chuckle. “You are younger to me and all that, but I know how this works. I have been dealing with the desert all my life!”
Kulkarni waved the officers inside the tent. Sudarshan walked in and surveyed the very-basic interiors of Kulkarni’s command-center out here. The swaying cloth of the tent held down by stumps as well as the howl of the desert winds. The tent was filled with banks of radios and battlefield computers, powered by generators outside. A single map-table created from an overturned wood carton filled the rest of the space. Several younger officers in Kulkarni’s command were inside. Sudarshan turned to Kulkarni:
“Spartan as they come, eh?”
Kulkarni closed the cover of the tents. “Only temporary, sir. My real command-center is inside my tank.”
“So,” Sudarshan said as he nodded to his aide. The aide opened the maps on the wooden carton. “We have the plan sorted out for you and your boys.”
“Punjab sector?”
Sudarshan shook his head: “Negative. The desert.”
Kulkarni did his best to keep a straight face, but wasn’t successful. Sudarshan had known his eager tank commander long enough to catch that: “I know the feeling. But the main offensive will be launched by the T-90 units in the Punjab. Not my recommendation, mind you.”
“Considering what happened in Ladakh…” Kulkarni said and then bit off his sentence. It was not his place to say anything more. Besides, he hardly needed to. Sudarshan was there, wasn’t he? The man had lost more men in combat operations against the Chinese than Kulkarni had in his entire command. Entire mechanized battalions had been lost in the massive battles for the frozen plains of Ladakh during the China war. The mountains there were still littered with burnt-out hulks of Indian and Chinese vehicles.
The deciding factor in those battles had been the arrival of the advanced Arjun tanks of the 43RD Armored Regiment in the mountains. Kulkarni’s tanks. The original T-72 force in the sector had been lost in the first day of combat against masses of Chinese T-99 tanks and other armored vehicles. The Arjun tanks out-gunned and out-matched anything the Chinese had. This thin line of tanks under Kulkarni’s command had allowed India to hold on to that territory despite two weeks of hard combat…
As overall commander of the mechanized forces in the sector, Sudarshan had been Kulkarni’s operational commander during the war. In the years hence, he had moved on to other commands. But he had not lost sight of Kulkarni and had taken him under his wing. So when Sudarshan had been brought to the plains of Punjab and Rajasthan to coordinate offensive planning, he had brought Kulkarni with him.
Sudarshan sighed. “It’s not that easy to convince mindsets, Kulkarni. The senior brass wants the T-90s to lead the charge this time around. Based on what I gather, the Arjun tank’s achievements in Ladakh has deeply embarrassed the senior armor brass. Sorry to say this, but your achievements are being dismissed as an outlier to the overall armor doctrine. So the small Arjun force in Ladakh will stay where it is. The rest of your tanks will stay here in the desert. The brass is massing the T-90s for the charge to Lahore.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” Kulkarni said neutrally, “but what the hell am I supposed to tell my boys about what we are to do in this war? Are our capabilities to be wasted attacking isolated groups of Pak armor and outposts?”
Sudarshan motioned Kulkarni to the maps. He took a second to orient himself on the map and then pointed to their current location in the desert. “We are here,” he jabbed a finger on the map. “Twenty-five kilometers east of the border. Further west, we have this strategic highway the Pakistanis call the N-5. Heading northeast to southwest, it passes through Sukkur to the south and Rahim-Yar-Khan to the north before merging into other highways heading to Multan. West of it is the Indus river. We take the highway, and we will sever Rawalpindi’s control of the country in two pieces. You will lead the cavalry charge to the N-5.”
Kulkarni saw that the locations mentioned were deep inside Pakistan and were no place for light-armor units. The Arjun tanks under his command, however, could take care of themselves out there.
“Enemy strength, sir?”
“Hard to say for now,” Sudarshan said. “Definitely units from the enemy II–Corps at Multan. They may even bring in support from XXX–Corps further northeast.”
“So we will meet their 1ST Armored Division in combat?” Kulkarni asked and got a nod in response so he continued: “good. Who are we taking along with us?”
“Who are we taking?” Sudarshan looked to his aide as though it were a joke. “Everybody! Kulkarni, we are taking every tank we can muster between the 43RD and the 75TH regiments, to the N-5!”
Pakistani forces south of Multan were formidable. Discounting the tanks left as reserve in Ladakh to deter the Chinese, the total number of Arjun tanks tagged for this effort was slightly greater than one-hundred.
“Of course,” Sudarshan mused, “…this is all assuming that a war does happen. We think it might. Then again, it may not. Keep your powder dry, Kulkarni.”
“Yes, sir!”
“What’s the E-T-A on track start?”
“Uh… approximately thirty seconds. White-hot.”
“Main screen please.”
Malhotra turned to see Sinha standing next to him with a cup of tea. He took it with a smile and turned to face the large screen in front of them as it flicked into operation with grayscale imagery. One of the RISAT satellites had just begun its pass on another stretch of the terrain west of the international border between India and Pakistan. Compared with the vast desolation of Tibet, the view here was different. Villages, mud, concrete roads, trees and bushes. Water and canals.
Obstacles.
Malhotra saw the trap being laid out by the Pakistanis to channel attacking Indian forces into kill zones east of the city of Lahore. The analysis would have to wait but even a superficial view of the imagery showed the immense obstacles to an attacking force from the urbanization of the terrain. Not to mention the presence of jihadists amongst the civilians who were already rallying in the streets of Lahore and other Pakistani cities.