Repeated Attacks
Old Ding scratched his head, looked the map over again, hesitated a good while, then stood and pointed at a spot roughly a hundred and eighty kilometres behind the border.
"The country south of Multan; if you ask me, this is worth a try. The ground is a little flatter. Of course, you would run head-on into the 1st Armoured Division. One armoured regiment of that division has just re-equipped with our tanks, and the other is on the Al-Khalid II.1 Heh, not much difference, really."
"Yes. For a country of no great depth, if it came to this and the 1st Armoured Division could not hold, a remedy would then be very hard to find," Lin said.
"But that belt is hilly, hard to advance through; and if a large army massed at the border, we would know some days ahead too."
"I only mean it as an example; they might move from further south, where the 1st Armoured Division's manoeuvre would be blocked by the Sutlej. Beyond that, I believe a truly large operation will not fail to reckon with the satellites. There is always some method by which an adversary can make you look straight past their assembly."
"Look past it?"
"Yes, there is always a way; perhaps they will deliberately let you see something reassuring, a not-too-obvious flaw that is in fact left there on purpose. Mm, dummy tanks or anti-aircraft guns parked on a train, say, so that people take them for men playing at deception. Such things are common enough in the history of war."
Old Ding was still shaking his head; he found it truly hard to accept Lin's leaping turns of thought and his strange conclusions. Yet Lin's line of reasoning was clear enough to him too: information warfare differed in no essential way from the wars of the past; it was the same contest of measure over measure, where the means of reconnaissance must breed the means to defeat it. In the end what decides a right or a wrong judgement on intelligence is people, and no other factor.
"So when do you think the war will begin?"
"That depends on the pace of their work on the dam; and, besides, on the personnel changes at the top in India."
"The Chief of Army Staff's tenure again?"
"I think it will be settled soon. Unless that old man submits to Singh, he is finished before long."
Old Ding smiled and shook his head; Lin's obstinacy had left a deep impression on him. With a man like this he took the line of not arguing; the facts would have to speak. Perhaps Lin was right; there was no telling.
The attack on the Mangla dam2 had entered its second week. The Indian air force had by now flown at least four hundred sorties in the bombardment, and at least six hundred tonnes of bombs in all had fallen on the face of the dam and the country around it; several great cracks on the dam's surface had begun to seep water, but the dam itself still stood where it was. In truth neither the Pakistan Army nor the air force had the strength to defend the dam any longer; beyond appealing to the international community, they had no other means of resistance. Apart from the first ambush of the Lion Squadron, the interception of the Indian aircraft striking the dam had made no further headway; ever since No. 24 Hawks Squadron took over the air defence, the Indian fighters had grown strong again, and rarely let the Pakistan Air Force find an opening. Two days earlier, an aircraft of No. 24 had used a long-range anti-radiation missile3 to make one attack on a Pakistani airborne-warning aircraft, forcing the Saab 2000, with the theatre commander, Air Commodore Islam, aboard, to flee the battle area in haste. These new tactics let the Indian air force consolidate its command of the air over the region.
Flight Lieutenant Goyal4 had not, in the two previous bombing operations, run into the Pakistani pilot who flew Thunder 101, though now and then, carrying out his task, he would hear Flight Lieutenant Rawal's voice on the radio. Rawal harped on and on over the air that one must watch at every moment for enemy fighters breaking out from the rear, plainly still shaken. Goyal knew the Indian air force had put out its best to break this dam, yet the firepower still seemed short. For that the Air Staff had revised the original plan: under the new one, the Su-30s covering the strike package would also carry bombs and join the attack, since it appeared the Pakistan Air Force had given up defending the dam. But to Goyal's eye the thing would not be so simple. Perhaps the enemy was even now studying the route of No. 24's long-range raid, studying its weak points, meaning to lay an ambush. Were he in the enemy commander's place, he told himself, that is certainly how he would think.
The fifth attack began at the appointed time. As Goyal had feared, the plan was no longer greatly altered; the take-off time too had been fixed at predawn, and the attack route little changed, so that the enemy's air command, even without long-range radar, could guess roughly when the Indian aircraft would appear near the target. It showed that a spirit of complacency was spreading through the Air Staff, and to the aircrew in the air that was a dangerous sign.
"Check the oxygen-mask pressure fitting." A voice came over the radio into the Su-30's cockpit, reminding the woolgathering Goyal that the operation had begun. Sergeant Mohit5 could be seen standing ahead, signalling for flaps down and nosewheel steering. Then the sergeant called for a check of the rudder swinging left and right. Every check done, with the help of a compressed-air cart the two engines began to roar. Goyal saw the slovenly Corporal Lugani, last of all, run clear of the aircraft's side.
"Eagle leader, make your final heading correction."
"Understood."
"The roll can run long; today's take-off weight is a touch high," the squadron commander reminded him.
"Right, understood."
"Runway is clear. Cleared for take-off."
Goyal released the brakes and drew slowly forward. In the violent shaking, a premonition came to him all at once: today's task would not end, as the last two had, in an empty return. Those men who had ambushed the Lions and got clean away, and then lain low, had lain low long enough; they would surely make their move.
The Su-30MKI climbed and circled once, waiting for the other five to take off, raised its gear and flaps, and ran a quick check of the weapons switches. Wing Commander Mohsin reminded him over the radio not to risk flying too low during the attack.
The Air Staff's notion of cutting two missiles from the Su-30 and adding conventional aviation bombs was hard to fathom. The squadron commander had heard that, with the government's bargaining with Russia over weapons prices entering a fresh round of wrangling, the stock of precision-guided weapons was being spent at speed, so that many advanced tactical aircraft now had to take off carrying a portion of unguided ordnance; nor was No. 24 the only unit given this treatment.
1. Al-Khalid II and "our tanks" (哈立德ii): The Al-Khalid is the Sino-Pakistani main battle tank built at Heavy Industries Taxila from the NORINCO Type 90-II; the Al-Khalid II is its modernised variant, with a redesigned turret, an upgraded armour package, and a more powerful engine. Ding's "our tanks" is the newer Chinese export type supplied as aid, of the VT-4 / MBT-3000 class; the source does not name it, so no firm designation is given here. Pakistan's real 1st Armoured Division is the first-line home of the Al-Khalid, which is why Ding rates the two regiments as much of a muchness. ↩
2. Mangla, the second week (杰赫勒姆大坝): The dam on the Jhelum, which the author calls by the river's name throughout (C51N2); the referent is Mangla. Four hundred sorties and six hundred tonnes of bombs have cracked the face without breaching the structure, the point being that Pakistan can no longer defend it and can only appeal internationally. ↩
3. The long-range anti-radiation missile: An IAF Su-30MKI drove off the Saab 2000 carrying Air Commodore Islam with a long-range ARM. The source names no type; the Su-30MKI's long-reach anti-radiation weapon of this period is the Kh-31P, but as the text leaves it unspecified, no designation is asserted here. Firing an ARM to chase an airborne radar off station, rather than to kill it, is a recognised way to blind a whole sector. ↩
4. Goyal's rank (戈亚中尉): The source demotes him to 中尉 (flying officer) here, but Goyal was promoted to flight lieutenant early in the war, a rank the previous chapters use correctly. This is the author's recurring rank drift; Flight Lieutenant is kept throughout and the slip is flagged once. ↩
5. Sergeant Mohit and Corporal Lugani (莫希特上士……卢加尼下士): Goyal's Bareilly ground crew, reappearing from the novel's first chapter, the slovenly Lugani still true to type. As air-force ground personnel they take RAF-pattern airman ranks (上士 Sergeant, 下士 Corporal) rather than army ranks. Their return, bracketing Goyal's rise from green flying officer to attack-flight leader, reads as a deliberate bookend. ↩