As he waited for the reply, Kulkarni peered through his sights and saw the target of the attack, whatever it was, being hammered mercilessly. He moved the optics to the side to see the dozens of other Arjun tanks menacingly silhouetted against the reddish skies of the morning. All vehicles were rumbling in unison towards the Pakistani border…
“Steel-central here. Uh… that’s not ours, rhino. Looks like the border posts are being hammered by Pakistani arty from the west.”
Shit. Kulkarni depressed his transmit button: “rhino-one copies. Those guns need to be silenced, steel-central. They are hammering our border posts into oblivion!” As if to prove a point, there was a massive lightning to the west visible on his thermal sights. It flared and then disappeared as smaller balls of white light fell across the night sky away from the point of impact. This one made its way to the tanks and Kulkarni felt the rumble. Something got hit hard…
“Steel-central copies. Head to L-O-D as planned. Over.”
“Advance to L-O-D. Wilco. Out.” Kulkarni swiveled his ABAMS screen back in front and pressed the zoom button to identify who was on his north-west flank at the border. The blue markers showed up BSF posts, regular army infantry units and others spread along the border in staggered layers… a defense in depth. There were other screen markers as well. To his west were inverted triangles showing rhino’s advance line to the jump-off point, called the line-of-departure or LOD. The screen also showed combat-engineers deployed there. These units would be responsible for creating a safe passage through any enemy minefields. Aside from the elite recon troops, these combat-engineers were the most valued infantry forces as far as Kulkarni was concerned. They would be moving with his force in mechanized columns consisting of BMP-II armored vehicles, bridge-layer tanks, repair vehicles and mine-clearing equipment. Kulkarni had some tanks in each Arjun tank company equipped with mine-ploughs in case they ever had to make their own paths through minefields while under fire. But these were less reliable, slower and hence more dangerous. The explosives-based techniques employed by the combat-engineers to make passages for his tanks were much faster and reliable. The last thing he wanted was to lose tanks to broken treads…
The small blue text on the screen next to the engineers unit was “trishul”. The trishul task-force would be moving alongside rhino. And Kulkarni was glad to have them on board. By the looks of things, trishul was already deployed on the LOD. At their current rolling speed, his tanks would reach trishul in about fifteen minutes.
Good. He noted and pulled out his folded paper maps from his overall pockets. It was already heavily marked with pencils. He could never bring himself to trust the electronics all around him. Old habits die hard.
“Rhino-two here. We are bypassing explosions on our right flank, rhino-one. Does not look pretty!”
“Roger, — two. Command says to ignore it and move on. So we are ignoring it and moving on. Over.”
“Rhino-two copies all. Keeping our eyes and ears peeled for enemy action. Out.” The line chimed off.
As the tank rolled over the sand dunes, Kulkarni had a moment to consider the ABAMS screen yet again. The enemy arty concerned him more than he let on to his subordinates. Unlike the Indian army, the Pakistanis had invested heavily in tube artillery. And what heavy guns the Indian army had were available were earmarked for the offensive in Punjab. Kulkarni did have some heavy-rocket units covering his force, but these were marked for taking out enemy guns and batteries, not providing his own force with non-line-of-sight fire. That represented the biggest weakness in the plans. His force lacked the big teeth of tube artillery that the Pakistanis possessed. If those enemy guns weren’t taken out of the equation soon, they could jeopardize the entire schedule and perhaps even the end result. The border security troops were already suffering under this murderous enemy fire. ABAMS showed several border posts to his north having been removed from the roster as units there pulled back to avoid destruction. Kulkarni hoped that was true and that these units had pulled back and not been destroyed. From inside the congested confines of his tank, he could not be sure.
West of the border, inside Pakistan, ABAMS showed units in green coloration and text: the Pakistanis. Command had added an apt color to match this particular enemy, Kulkarni thought. Somebody up the chain of command had an incisive line of thought.
The biggest threat for Kulkarni’s force emanated from the Pakistani 1ST Armored Division, staggered in a southerly axis from Bahawalpur, south of Multan. That put this enemy force roughly northwest of Kulkarni. It was also his first target of elimination. The Pakistani 1ST Armored was an elite force and manned and equipped with the best tanks and tankers that country had to offer. They would put up a stiff fight for their home turf. Kulkarni found it hard to underestimate their determination and capability. That precision artillery hammering the border only added to his concern.
Most of that threat came from their heavy compliment of Al-Khalid and T-80 tanks. It wasn’t hard for Kulkarni to see why his force was being committed to battle here. These Pakistani tank forces were part of the reserves that the Pakistani high command intended to preserve for counterattacks in Punjab. If they could be destroyed in battle here, they would cease to pose a threat further north. At the very least, threatening the Pakistani southern front would bog down these units and prevent them from moving anywhere, effectively taking them off the table. These tanks within their forces were the only ones capable of surviving on the modern battlefield. Remove them from the list of options and suddenly the Indian armored forces would have a serious advantage on the ground.
Kulkarni looked away from the screen. He saw the face of the loader as the latter stared at him in silence, his face covered with grease and sweat. Kulkarni smiled: “we will be fine.”
The radio squawked: “Rhino-four here. I have several BMP-IIs at two kilometers. I also make out several dozen other trucks and what look like engineering vehicles. Over.”
“Roger,” Kulkarni peered through his own sights. “That will be trishul on the LOD. Weapons on hold. We are passing through friendly lines. Prepare to enter marked lanes. Let’s make this quick. I don’t want to be stuck in single-file columns exposed to the enemy any longer than I have to.”
“Trishul-one to rhino-one,” a grizzly older voice on the comms chimed in. “We see your columns to our rear. Request weapons stowed. We are in your line-of-fire. Over.”
“Rhino-one here. We see you. Weapons are on hold. Requesting sit-rep. Over.”
“Mines, rhino-one. Lots of them. Anti-personnel and anti-tank. Three-hundred meter depth to our north and south. The Pakis went overboard on this one. Almost as if they were expecting us! My boys have secured four lanes through the field and have established a small bridgehead beyond. You are good to go. Over.”
“Rhino copies and sends thanks. We are rolling. Out.”
Kulkarni’s tank jerked to the side as the driver aligned the vehicle axis to match the cleared lanes. The lanes were wide enough to allow one Arjun tank to pass through with ease. Kulkarni swiveled his sights back to see dozens of Arjun tanks lining up by sub-units and columns to pass the border minefields. With four lanes and one tank passing through every minute on each lane, a force of one hundred tanks would need about thirty minutes to clear the minefield. The engineers and other columns coming up behind them meant that they would still be clearing this position an hour from now.