“You know the location we are going to?”
“Yes sir. Two kilometers west from that destroyed Pakistani outpost you see up the road. Rhino moved through here an hour ago. Mechanized convoys from trishul are already ahead of us. We go three-hundred meters north from of the road from there.”
“…and find a place there to set up.” Subramanian finished the thought for his driver. He saw the black smoke bellowing from the abandoned Pakistani outpost up the road. Further on the horizon he could make out other columns of smoke from where rhino had overrun the Pakistani infantry units…
“Good. How long?”
“Ten minutes if we race through!” The driver offered.
“Do it.”
“Be advised Rhino-one…” Kulkarni pulled away from the optics and closed his eyes to concentrate on the incoming radio transmission: “…incoming Pakistani armor forces due north, three kilometers! Battalion strength. Over.”
“Rhino copies all!” Kulkarni shouted just as the gunner let loose another main gun round.
“Say again, Rhino. Steel-central does not copy your last!”
Goddamn it… Kulkarni repeated: “rhino copies all, steel-central! We are moving to engage! Out.” He then changed frequencies: “rhino-two, you have the ball. Finish these bastards. Rhino-four, move up the road another two kilometers and lock it down. Rhino-two will mop up and merge with you. Rhino-three, you are with us. Disengage and form up on me! We are heading north!”
As the comms became alive with affirmatives, Kulkarni ignored it, opened his eyes and then swiveled the ABAMS screen around as the turret shuddered again from a main gun round. They were just about done mopping up the Pakistani convoy of trucks and M113 armored-personal-carriers that they had run into over here. The latter had been taken completely by surprise by the rapidity of the Indian advance.
Too bad for them.
Kulkarni had other things to worry about now. The Pakistanis were beginning to realize the severity of what was unfolding on the Islamgarh road and Kulkarni could only surmise that they were scared stiff by its implications. And so they were reacting in force. Steel-central had been noting the constant arrival of armored columns from Bahawalpur to the north and Shadadkot to the south. But there was a time and distance gap between the two locations and that meant that they would arrive in theater at different times. That was fine with Kulkarni, for it meant that instead of having to break up his strength into two, he could keep it combined and swing north and smash the Bahawalpur forces before pivoting south and taking on the much weaker Shadadkot axis. All the while continuing to move west towards his objective.
The ABAMS screen showed him what he needed to see. Green markers put there by steel-central showed the inbound Pakistani armored battalion north of him. His other tank commanders were seeing what he saw. And that made it easier for him to swivel his entire force without massive chaos within his formations. On cue, he felt the chassis of the tank swiveling north even though the gunner kept the turret aligned with his targets to the west. That was the power of the Arjun fire-control over all of other Russian designed tanks in the Indian arsenal. The driver, gunner and tank commander were operating independently within the same turret without creating difficulties for one another. Under fire, this fluidity meant the difference between life and death.
Forty-eight Arjun tanks turned north and accelerated across the desert, adding to the already massive dust cloud that was enveloping the sector in addition to the columns of black smoke. The other tanks continued to rampage past the Pakistani survivors. Within a few minutes the Arjuns heading north had aligned their turrets to match the direction and were looking for enemy tanks…
“All right, gentlemen. This is where metal meets metal!” Kulkarni said over the comms. “So far, we have crushed and rolled over all enemy defenses on the border. I guarantee that the Pakistani high command is shaking in their boots on what is happening out here. On what we represent! So they are sending in their best. Makes no difference to me. We will crush them all! Take no prisoners! Rhino-actual out!”
Kulkarni looked away from his sights to see the soot covered faces of his loader and gunner smiling at him. The gunner turned back to see through his sights. The loader didn’t need a cue. He pulled out an anti-armor sabot round from the onboard storage and slid it into the main-gun breech. It loaded with a metallic clang.
The hydraulic arms swung into action and pushed the square-paneled radar off the roof of the truck, tilting it to nearly sixty degrees off the base. The motors mounted on the truck rotated this radar unit by thirty degrees in the azimuth plane and then stopped with a jerk.
“Okay, let’s go.” Subramanian said as he uncrossed his arms and waved at the soldiers standing nearby with the desert camouflage netting. The netting consisted of sand-colored webbing laced with shrubs uprooted from locations nearby. The soldiers were already clambering on the trucks and spreading the netting over the vehicles. Once completed, the brown-painted vehicles would be damn-near impossible to spot visually from the air.
Subramanian watched and then blinked his eyes as sweat rolled into them from his forehead. His hands instinctively reached his eyes to rub them clear.
Damn heat!
He glanced at the blazing sun. The desert was already turning into a furnace. Well, that was life out here. He sighed and walked back to the command tent, one-hundred meters away. He noticed the buried cables crisscrossing the sand between the different vehicles.
The cables connected the different vehicles. Each welar truck consisted of its own self-contained crew, but drew its power from a different vehicle. Three such pairs of radar and power vehicles were deployed in an arc spread over a kilometer. The idea was to provide high resolution data on inbound projectiles. All of these connected to the tent that Subramanian was walking to. That tent was where the remote display monitors were hooked up and where he would coordinate the operations of the individual crews and Brigadier Sudarshan. The latter would then connect him to any counter-battery systems in the area.
Thus constituted the “ferrite” battery that was tasked to cover both the breach point near the Islamgarh road as well as the advancing columns of rhino. Once rhino moved further west, vehicle pairs from ferrite would leap-frog along with the trishul combat-engineers to extend the bubble of radar detection. In theory, at least.
Subramanian trudged through the soft, hot sand on the way to his command tent. He had thought about the battle plan for his battery long enough… and had convinced himself that it sounded good in theory. In practice, a thousand details could go wrong. A simple communications breakdown between units in this delicate structure would render the plan ineffective. And the Indian soldiers currently inside Pakistan would pay the price…
He pushed the flaps of the tent aside and noticed that his drivers were busy digging air-raid trenches nearby. The one thing that bothered him most was the air-defense coverage of his units inside Pakistan. If — when— the Pakistani commanders realized the severity of this Indian offensive, the Islamgarh breach point would become their focal point for air and missile attacks. Subramanian was under no illusions as to where his own unit ranked within the enemy’s priority lists.