Stinger
Ten kilometres out, the dam appeared once more, far off, in the flight lieutenant's field of view, like a wall of bronze and iron that could never be brought down. This was the second time Pandit had seen this dam; he knew that attacking so mighty a structure with a television-guided bomb was, in substance, a mosquito biting an elephant. The intelligence people said the Jhelum dam was near its end, that one more hard push would bring the whole rotten thing down at once. On that point the flight lieutenant had his doubts, for they had said the same before every attack, and in the end the dam still stood unshaken.
"Scorpion flight, drop height, ready for automatic level flight. Master arm on."
"Understood, leader."
"You have to see the cracks in the concrete first; they say some are two metres wide. If you can't hit the cracks, the attack won't do a thing."
"Understood, leader, I'll aim carefully," answered the pilot of the No. 2 aircraft, lightly. This was his first time on a low-altitude raid of this kind, and he was not very clear about the dangers that might lie hidden around the target.
"I warn you, don't keep your head buried in the cockpit staring at the CRT. There's very likely enemy air-defence fire around the dam, so besides aiming, you have to look up a few more times. If you spot danger, warn everyone in time," the flight lieutenant cautioned. He knew these young men could hardly grow without being tempered; war was perhaps the finest stage on which to temper them, but he knew too that not everyone had the luck to climb these steps, and many a life would end before them. So it was very necessary to remind them not to grow careless.
"Flight Lieutenant, we've understood all this," answered Sachi, the youngest pilot in the formation. For a moment he could not make sense of the flight lieutenant's contradictory words. The flight lieutenant was forever reminding the flight that the most important thing in an attack was concentration, yet now he seemed to be overturning what he had said before; a two-metre crack, unlike a ten-metre pillbox, was a hard target to hit, and if you kept your attention wandering around, how could you ever hit it? To Flying Officer Sachi, if this dam were to collapse with a roar before his own strike, that would be the finest outcome of all; and to bring that about, what harm in running a little risk? So he made up his mind to let the leader's words go in one ear and out the other.
Flight Lieutenant Pandit began to drop height and level off; he glanced down at the RWS, and, as last time, the thing gave no warning of danger at all, as if it were dead. The flight lieutenant knew this proved nothing: since crossing the border it had never once signalled a threat, and it had very likely failed again; on the other hand, some of the enemy's air-defence means might not emit a radio pulse at all. He eased the sweep angle to its minimum, cutting his level speed as far as he could, a process that took about ten seconds. Then he switched to automatic level-flight piloting. By now the flight lieutenant could see clearly, with the naked eye, the countless great craters and cracks on the dam's face.
"Good, all hold steady. Stay tight on me, keep speed four hundred, heading due north, not too low," the flight lieutenant said, waiting patiently to come into range. But he did not slow as excessively as the time before. He knew there were no guns on top of the dam, so there was no need. On the whole, as flight leader he held the first place in the formation, which was in fact a fairly safe position.
In the tree belt a kilometre and a half west of the dam, an air-defence platoon of the Pakistan Army's 6th Armoured Division waited there for its moment.1 This was perhaps the smallest air-defence organisation in the world: the platoon was made up of four teams armed with Stinger missiles,2 and the four teams were now deployed around the trees. Ten minutes earlier they had had word that enemy aircraft were coming. By now they could faintly hear, in the distance, the sound of jets tearing the air; the platoon leader, Sahri, was up a tree, observing to the south. In truth he need not have looked to know the Indians would come south along the Jhelum, for there was no other path.
"Listen, they're nearly here. Get ready, quick, keep under cover, don't give away your positions," the platoon leader said, lowering his voice, as though afraid the Indians would hear. He dropped from the tree in a flash. The team members scattered to their several appointed places. He followed the first team to the edge of the trees.
"Don't be too hasty; wait till they turn to fire, do you hear?"
"Understood, Lieutenant. Wait till they turn."
This platoon's task was not to protect the dam, for plainly the dam could not be saved; even if it did not collapse, it would have to be pulled down afterward. So they planned to hold their fire until the Indian low-altitude bombers had dropped their loads and turned east, for at that moment the Indian aircraft would be moving fairly slowly, their tailpipes pointed roughly west, which made it easier for a gunner with an early-model FIM-92 to catch the infrared signal. Besides, once the bombing was done, the enemy pilots tended to be more eager to observe the results, their minds fairly slack.
In a vast roar, a huge enemy aircraft flashed suddenly into a gunner's view, skimming the treetops, and in the blink of an eye was upon them, catching the men on the ground somewhat off guard; a gunner hurriedly stripped the protective cap from the front of his missile, fumbled at the coolant-circuit button, and switched on the warhead power. But it seemed already too late; the enemy aircraft swept past across the sight, and the seeker's cooling was not yet complete. This yellow aircraft looked about to release its bombs; plainly, to keep tracking it had become rather forced.
"Never mind him; these swine won't come just one at a time. Keep aiming south," the platoon leader, Sahri, reminded his soldier quietly at his side. He was, after all, an old hand, with some experience; going by the previous times, the Indian formation's follow-on aircraft would come into their release point along an almost unvarying line, so there was no need to hurry. The gunner quickly turned his head back and went on observing to the south.
In the air Pandit looked up from time to time to watch both banks of the river, but saw nothing. Had the Pakistanis truly given up the dam?
He lowered his head carefully, and on the CRT, using the wide field of the television-guided bomb, quickly found the largest crack. Slant range about two kilometres; now he had to run a little risk. He kept his head down and laid the crosshairs on that crack; below it, water was gushing out, which showed the dam really had been gravely hurt. Now he had to lay a few more maggots in this great wound; though he knew, too, that a 250-kilogram warhead was still too small, not enough to bring the dam down.3
"If India had a strong penetrating bomb, why all this bother?" he thought.
"Scorpion leader, I've been right behind you watching, nothing around," said Flying Officer Sachi in the No. 2 aircraft. This eased the flight lieutenant a little. He slowly worked the throttle, shedding a little speed. His right thumb came down onto the release button.
1. The 6th Armoured Division platoon: A divisional air-defence platoon of the Pakistan Army's 6th Armoured Division (historically based in the Kharian area, near the Jhelum and Mangla), here dismounted into the tree line as four MANPADS teams. Its leader, Second Lieutenant Sahri (萨赫里), is a new and distinct name; it is kept apart from the IAF pilot Sahili and the "Sahil" of the previous chapter, which share other characters. ↩
2. Stinger (毒刺; source: "FIM-92"): The FIM-92 Stinger, the American shoulder-fired infrared missile the CIA supplied in quantity to the Afghan mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI in the 1980s, and which the Pakistan Army still fields. An early FIM-92A has a single-band infrared seeker that homes best on the hot exhaust plume, so it works best against a receding aircraft; hence the platoon waits for the bombers to turn away, tailpipes west, before firing. The seeker must first be cooled by argon gas, which is what the fumbling gunner failed to complete in time. Because the weapon is passive and emits nothing, Pandit's radar-warning receiver stays silent, the "hidden threat" his failed set can never announce. ↩
3. The television-guided bomb: The Scorpions' weapon against the dam's cracks is the TV-guided KAB-500Kr carried on the MiG-27 (Pandit's Mangla weapon in earlier chapters). At a warhead of some 250 kilograms it is, as Pandit says, a mosquito on an elephant against a structure this size, which is why he wishes for a heavy penetrating bomb India does not have. ↩