That answer caught the soldier by surprise. His mouth opened to say something about the ignominy of the deceased man who had just died fighting for his country. Haider turned to face him and the other soldiers: “did I not make myself clear? Get rid of the body! I will not be bothered with burials when a jihad is waging all around us.” He pointed to the body on the road: “This man should simply be happy that he fought and died for this country.” His voice then trailed off as he watched the eastern skies lit up by tracers and flashes of explosions.
“Sir! Over here!” Akram shouted from where he stood near the hood of the truck in Haider’s convoy. Haider walked over as the other soldiers picked up the body of the dead soldier by his limbs and carried him past the road and into the bushes. Haider saw that Akram had set up the radio on the hood of the truck. The vehicle’s engine was rumbling away on idle.
“Well?” Haider asked in obvious irritation.
“Command net is going haywire with all sorts of traffic. The Indians struck hard against the 10TH and 11TH Infantry Divisions east of here. I am hearing back and forth chatter filled with chaos and confusion. Supposedly somebody up the line issued orders for the 3RD Armored Brigade to advance to contact in anticipation of Indian forces preparing to cross over on to our territory.”
Haider banged the hood of the truck with his fist: “who passed that order? Find out! Don’t they know what is happening here? The Indians are striking hard against all openly exposed forces. When those tanks move past the outskirts of the city and on to the roads and fields, they will be destroyed before they even get a chance to fire their main guns! The Indians are already taking control of the air!” Haider unstrapped the chin-strap of his helmet before removing and placing it on top of the hood. He ran his hand over the sweating head. It was time to consider options.
“Akram,” he noted after a full minute of consideration, “We need to marshal the irregulars under our control and keep them at bay inside the city. Hussein is either clearly deluded or completely out of touch with what is happening out here. The Indians are going to break through the lines of the 10TH and 11TH Divisions. If not today, then tomorrow or the day after. Let the army bleed the Indians as much as they can, while they can. We need to stay out of it until it is the right time. That will come when the Indians reach the outskirts of Lahore, tired and depleted, hoping for a respite. That is when we will release the wave of Islamic warriors like a tidal wave of death!”
Akram smiled cruelly: “I understand, sir!” Then the smile went away: “but it will be difficult to hold the jihadists at bay, sir. They will not want to wait around in the city while the jihad against the Hindus is waging just kilometers east of them. They are not disciplined soldiers.”
“Valid point, major.” Haider nodded. “But we must convince them somehow. If they charge into the open in front of Indian forces, they will die like flies to little gain!”
“They won’t see it that way.” Akram replied. He knew most of the jihadists would happily charge into Indian armored vehicles with a bomb strapped to their chests. Their only driving concern would be to get to heaven where the promised female companions awaited them. Military gains on the ground and combat strategy were nuisances to them. Mere hindrances on their path to Allah. And certainly they were not going to take orders from the Pakistani Punjabis from the army!
“Akram,” Haider said finally, “we need to head back to the city and speak with the commanders of the irregulars. They must be made to see the flaw in their plans! Else we stand to lose this city!” Haider turned to see the fires in the charred remains of the commander center east of the road. “But if we succeed, then we will fertilize these very fields and roads with the blood of the Indian soldiers! Inshallah.”
24
“All section leaders on rhino net, this is rhino-actual.” Kulkarni said as he adjusted his helmet. “Give me op-con status. Over.”
As the various commanders in the armored task-force chimed in, Kulkarni pressed the power button on the small screen installed next to his commander-sights. This was the new Arjun-Battlefield-Management-System, or ABAMS, as his people called it. It was the next-generation force-multiplier that increased the lethality of the Arjun tank beyond its own sixty-ton mass. The ABAMS allowed better command-and-control of friendly tanks from within the commander’s vehicle. Kulkarni had used an earlier version of the same system during the battles in Ladakh. He knew the technology worked. But this would be the first time he would be using it to command a force far larger than any he had commanded.
Kulkarni noticed that the last of the section leaders had chimed in and reported full readiness. Time to change frequencies and call Sudarshan’s people: “steel-central, this is rhino-one. We are green across the board, over!”
“Steel-central copies all, rhino. Jump off as planned. Out.” Kulkarni pulled his overall’s shoulder sleeves back and checked his wristwatch despite having a digital readout on the optics in front of him. Old habits.
Okay. Two minutes to Zulu time.
He grabbed his binoculars, opened the turret hatch above him and pushed himself out. He surprised his loader who was sitting behind his turret machine-gun mount, looking for targets via his night-vision goggles. Powering on the night-scopes of the binoculars, Kulkarni looked into the pitch-black darkness on either side of him to see dozens of Arjun tanks lined up through the vast expanse of the desert.
Kulkarni lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes to allow him to adjust to the darkness. After a few seconds his pupils dilated and he saw more of the surroundings. To his east, he thought he saw the first dull-red lines of morning. The timing of the offensive was by no means random. The tanks of his rhino force would assault into Pakistan with the early morning sun riding low behind them. That would enhance the sights on the Indian side and blind the Pakistani defenders facing them.
Hopefully we would be hunkered down at our objectives before the reverse happens to us at sunset… Kulkarni checked his watch again. It was time. He lowered himself back down the hatch just as his loader did the same.
The gunner looked at the two men entering the turret: “Zulu time, sir?”
Kulkarni smiled faintly: “Zulu time.”
As the driver up front brought the rumble of the diesel engines to a roar, Kulkarni plugged into his radio once again: “all rhino elements, this is Rhino-one. Advance! Advance!”
“I see flashes on the horizon!” The gunner shouted over the tank comms. “Twenty degrees positive, off axis.”
Kulkarni looked away from the ABAMS scope and instead looked through his own external optics. He swiveled the sights to the right and saw the whitish flares erupting on the horizon against a jet-black night. They were still too far west for any noise to be heard over the constant rumble of the tank’s diesel engines.
“Ours?” The gunner asked.
Kulkarni backed away from the eyepiece of his optics and looked at his watch. “Can’t be ours. We are still off by five minutes.”
“Well, somebody is lighting up the morning sky out there.”
“I see that.” Kulkarni noted off-handedly as he switched comms for Sudarshan: “steel-central, this is rhino-one. I see explosions to my west; heavy tube-arty. Over.”