A few tense seconds passed during which Gephel could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. But it was soon clear that the Mi-17 was not looking for them. And sure enough, it flew past the crouching team members by a leisurely five hundred meters. A minute later it was beyond the peaks the team had been on when they had been overlooking the village. Gephel motioned for the rest to stay where they were for another minute to make sure the threat had dissipated. Fifty seconds later it was clear that the Chinese helicopter was busy dealing with the Tibetans to their south.
“Doesn’t look like they know of our existence,” Ngawang noted for everybody. Gephel shook his head:
“You can thank the Tibetans for that. Looks like they are giving the Chinese, what the Americans call ‘a run for their money’. Okay, let’s move out.”
Ngawang got up from above the rocks and took a few steps before a dark delta winged aircraft swept over their heads and streaked to the south, the sounds of thunder sent the team diving for the rocky ground yet again.
“What the hell was that?” Ngawang shouted as the thunder in their ears subsided. Gephel was already on his back and staring at the southern peaks to see where the aircraft had gone. The hills were dark, but the green sky in his night-vision optics picked up the dark blob in contrast as the aircraft reached for the sky at much slower speeds now: the pilot was positioning to visually acquire his target…
“November-two-four has initiated attack runs. We have him gaining altitude above grid-reference three-two-bravo slash seven-nine-echo,” the radar console operator read off the numbers from the screen. Verma was already on the satellite communications link with the operations commander at WAC:
“This is Eagle-Eye-One actual. We show enemy strike package November-two-four initiating attack runs. November-two-five through eight
By this time, Air-Marshal Bhosale was monitoring the air situation personally along with his staff. It was the beginning of a long night for all of them. The giant digital map overlay in the operations center showed everybody exactly what the Phalcon radar was seeing. And it was getting very crowded up there…
“Who do we have up today to greet the reds?” Bhosale asked.
“Three Mig-29s from Leh inbound to greet the single J-10 attacking Shiquanhe in case it gets any closer to the border. Three Su-30 escorts from Eagle-Eye-One flight have assumed BARCAP positions and we have another four Su-30s heading north to assist. Eagle-Eye-One is being pulled south,” Bhosale’s operations chief replied as he read off the details from recent memory.
“Good. Pass the word: I want weapons tight on this one. No mistakes,” Bhosale said and turned his gaze to the real-time updating data on screen. The aircraft were rapidly approaching the border from both sides…
Leh airbase had been unusually busy ever since the crisis in Tibet had escalated to the threat of military clashes with China. The Indian Army was surging forward larger number of units into the Ladakh sectors. The IAF was doing its best to ensure a solid logistical node existed for those units at Leh. As such, the number of flights inbound and outbound from Leh was immense. Between the transport flights during the day, the helicopter and UAV operations by the resident units at the airbase and the fighter operations by the Mig-29s of No. 28 Squadron, the traffic pattern over the airbase was almost always filled to capacity these days.
But one section of the airbase was removed from the chaos of these operations. Amidst a bunch of high-tech trailers at the end of the airbase covered with camouflage nettings, were a group of men whose job demanded discretion. Their unmanned aircraft were deployed near to the trailers and were put in small protective shelters. An acute observer at the airbase might have noticed that one of those shelters was wide empty tonight.
The person wearing a green flight overall put down the phone in one of the trailers and walked up behind the other two sitting in their seats and staring intently at several small digital screens in front of them. One of these men had his right hand sitting on a small black joystick hard-fitted into the console. He deftly piloted the unmanned aircraft from his seat inside this trailer. His partner on this mission sat next to him, staring into a screen of his own but with a different view. This latter person was the operator for the drone’s electro-optical systems that scanned the terrain below. It was this screen that the two other men in the room wearing similar green flight-suits were interested in.
“That guy must have wiped out half of the village in that first run,” the EO operator noted to the two senior men. One of the two men, with a balding head bordered with thinning white hair, leaned forward at the screen and then nodded in agreement:
