Blockade
In the small hours Singh walked out of the conference room with the bearing of a victor; beside him walked Lieutenant General Sipanga, commander of XXI Corps.1 Together they had persuaded most of the officers at the meeting to see that this campaign was wholly necessary, and was destined to be won.
"Minister, the most pressing thing now is that we need a new Chief of Staff to direct the whole movement of the army; that work is very important."
"That you are unwilling to take up the post truly surprises me; I had meant to appoint you to succeed Prasad, since you are the maker of the whole plan."
"Minister, I am sorry to disappoint you, but I want only to be an officer of a spearhead assault group; too much political and administrative work does not suit me. In fact I can hardly wait to cross swords with those showy Al-Khalid tanks of Pakistan's 1st Armoured Division. I hear their army has lately got no new ground weapons from China."
"You had best hold Chaman's intelligence in reserve; his sources have never been very reliable. But the Defence Ministry has its own eyes and ears," Singh said, and glanced mysteriously about; the crowd had dispersed, and only his office director, Rujadnahan, stood far off to one side. "We have our own source in the Karachi Port Authority. The first batch of old equipment the Pakistan army is getting will be unloaded within a few days at the new port east of Karachi, chiefly air-defence weapons, and some backward 152-millimetre self-propelled howitzers; heavy weapons like these they can hardly move over the Khunjerab pass or by air. And besides that, some anti-tank weapons they are about to retire, which you may find interesting."2
"Oh? What strange weapon?"
"A 120-millimetre self-propelled anti-tank gun, designed in its day specially to deal with the T-72 masses of the Far East, full of Cold War character."
"I know that weapon; in numbers it would be a trouble to an armoured force too."
"That I know, of course; but after we hit their freighter by mistake last time, the Prime Minister, out of political calculation, gave no order to the navy to intercept these ships. At present the first vessel has already passed the Andaman Islands, and our navy has been watching them all along. In the coming months, these weapons, none of them registered with the United Nations, will keep being unloaded at Karachi. The Prime Minister means, before his visit to America this month, to lodge a formal protest, which may also offset some of the American criticism."
"Minister, if we spend all our strength cutting Pakistan's north-south supply line, while Karachi can get a steady stream of heavy weapons, it will work against the whole campaign. I do not understand politics, but if we do not choke off the enemy's outside aid, our soldiers will pay in more blood on the battlefield; so simple a truth, I think the Prime Minister knows too."
"You are right... the Prime Minister knows, of course, and I will put the suggestion to him once more. But whatever happens, within a month, in the south they can at most raise a single reserve division... nothing to speak of. By the way, when do you return to your headquarters?"
Singh hummed and hawed, vague and unclear, then suddenly turned the subject aside; Sipanga's demand gave him a headache. He knew the Prime Minister faced great political pressure, and was unlikely, before the American visit, to send the navy to blockade Karachi; and the Indian marine corps was not large enough to mount an amphibious assault on that accursed port alongside the army.
"I leave tonight; my aircraft has been waiting at Safdarjung airfield. All the deployments must begin in dead earnest from tomorrow. You know XXI Corps, and I Corps and II Corps, have already completed their secret concentration and can be committed to battle at any moment; but those divisions in the east need at least fifteen days to advance to Jammu by my plan. To deploy them takes longer still."
"A trouble indeed. Those northeastern mountain divisions were broken up piecemeal by the old man, scattered along six hundred miles of arc-shaped defensive positions; Prasad always prided himself on this deep-defence system that squandered public money, but now, to concentrate any one of those divisions whole takes a very long time."
"Still, we can make full use of the Lucknow-Chandigarh railway; under the wartime act we can requisition that line entirely, which will keep reinforcing the false picture in the enemy's mind and draw more of their attention to Kashmir."
"You are right; the people will surely forgive us for requisitioning the railway, even now, in the month of the Amarnath pilgrimage. We can move the six eastern artillery brigades over first," Singh said, nodding to himself; he suddenly realised that driving Prasad out was only the first step, and much trouble lay ahead.
"I hope the air force can destroy the Jhelum dam in time before all the movements are complete."
"I have lost confidence in Bifrata too now, though he is far more reliable than Prasad. He tells me some of the attack squadrons have reached the point of urgently needing replacement, or they will not be able to get airborne at all."
"I know the air force's difficulties too, but this is the crux of the whole plan. Pakistan lacked foresight in building its roads in the low ground near Lahore, an opportunity heaven-sent."
"Mm, I am just about to persuade Bifrata to send some fresh, high-spirited forces into the attack."
"Fresh forces?" Sipanga grew a little doubtful.
"That's right, the newly formed No. 43 Squadron.3 Their pilots have kept asking eagerly for a fight, and the Prime Minister keeps bringing up those new Tejas fighters that make the nation proud; it is time to let them come out and try their hand."
Sipanga nodded a little, noncommittal, and passed no judgement on the Tejas or No. 43 Squadron.
"They tell me the Tejas has a degree of stealth performance, and can double as a ground-attack aircraft, very well suited to this mission. Only in ordnance there are still some problems; for now it can use only laser-guided bombs. Range, too, is a problem; and then there is the matter of too small a payload. Of course, the pilots are all fine men, aces drawn from the various other squadrons, though their training time is rather short," Singh muttered to himself, and rather contradictorily, seeming to hold both great hopes of this squadron formed barely a month ago and considerable doubts of it at once.
"By the way, what does the intelligence say about that dam?"
"The same old story; from analysis of the satellite photos, most hold that she is on the very edge of complete collapse, though they said the same last time. In particulars, the widest surface crack has grown to three metres, and new cracks have appeared on the east side too; the internal structure is judged already ruined. And the water level keeps rising; the upstream reservoir is estimated to have stored up about twelve billion cubic metres. Perhaps we need send no aircraft at all, and the dam will collapse of itself."
"Let us hope all this is true; if by then the air force's attacks have had no effect, we must rely on the northern attack to pin the enemy's main force, and, if need be, take Islamabad."
Having said this, Sipanga gave the minister a salute, turned, and left; he was in haste to get back to his troops and plan the offensive, and left all the vexing matters to Singh.
1. Sipanga's corps: The source calls Sipanga the commander of 第11集团军 (XI Corps), but he is established as GOC of XXI Corps (第21集团军, C49 and the glossary); this reads as the author dropping a digit, and XXI Corps is kept here. The three formations named as secretly massed, XXI, I, and II Corps, are India's three strike corps, distinct from the Pakistani II Corps at Multan already in play. ↩
2. The Chinese arms and Port Qasim: The heavy weapons land at the new port east of Karachi (Port Qasim), too bulky to bring over the Khunjerab pass or by air. Among them is the 120-millimetre self-propelled anti-tank gun, the Type 89 (PTZ-89), designed against Soviet tank masses, which Lin had added to the aid list earlier (C58), alongside 152-millimetre self-propelled howitzers. Singh's source is inside the Karachi Port Authority. ↩
3. No. 43 Squadron on the Tejas: A newly raised Tejas (LCA) unit, barely a month old, its pilots drawn from other squadrons. The glossary's No. 43 is the "Ibex" An-32 transport squadron, and the established Tejas unit has been No. 45 "Flying Daggers" (reforming under Jafar); the number here is the author's, and the unit is treated as a distinct new formation. The Tejas's limits, laser-guided bombs only, short range, light load, are the doubts behind Singh's contradictory tone. ↩