Contact
"He's on the eastern ridge." Saleem shouted.
Lin Huaisheng vaulted out from the left side of the aircraft. A precise three-round burst clipped past his backside and struck the wing. There were clearly other soldiers up there besides the sniper. He pressed himself into the dead ground on the far side of the fuselage, put his back against the wreckage, and took several breaths. The gunfire intensified. Bursts rained down from above. The Pakistani soldiers, behind whatever cover they could find, returned fire with wild, undirected automatic. Lin poked his head out and looked around. By the landing gear, Havildar Noorman's ashen eyes stared back at him. His rifle lay nearby. Lin crawled over and felt for the leather sling. Fragments of stone kicked up by rounds striking the ground stung his hands and face. He slowly dragged the rifle back from beside the landing gear. The movement was deliberate; anything faster would have drawn the attention of the sniper up on the snowline several hundred metres away. Lin could finally fight back, but the weapon had fallen from a height. In principle it required re-zeroing before it could be trusted, and that was not easily done in the middle of a firefight. He crawled from the nose to the point where the fuselage had broken apart and edged his head out past the torn skin. He could see several firing positions on the ridgeline, all active. None of them was his primary concern.
"He's in the snow. Camouflaged. About three hundred metres." The captain was shouting from behind a rock. This was only his impression; it was of no real value for locating the target.
Lin understood that this was nothing more than a chance contact. The Indian soldiers had not completed an ambush; they had simply arrived at the eastern high ground first. Had they established crossfire from two directions, he and this small Pakistani patrol would not be walking out alive today. He looked out a second time, sweeping the entire ridgeline through the 6× scope without purpose, and found nothing. He reckoned the marksman would quite likely keep shooting from the same spot; in his position he would have done the same. Patience was all that was required.
A sharp crack split the valley.
This time Lin saw a puff of snow rise from a mound on the hilltop. A Pakistani soldier who had been half-exposed and returning fire beside him went down with a cry, probably hit in the leg. Lin swung the crosshairs onto the mound and squeezed the trigger. As expected, the first round missed, but he saw where it struck. He worked the bolt and chambered another round, then aimed again. This was a dangerous gamble: his opponent had very likely seen him. The snow mound was growing smaller; the Indian marksman was pulling back, which meant he had recognised the threat and was trying to get behind the ridge. Lin corrected for the first round's deviation and fired again. This time he saw a red mist of blood spray above the mound.
The remaining positions on the ridgeline concentrated their fire on the wreck where Lin was sheltering. The rear half of the fuselage was an empty shell and could not stop bullets. Lin crawled back to the nose and, from behind the broken landing gear, fired two aimed bursts trying to suppress the fire from above. Both missed. An Indian soldier rose to a half-crouch from behind the ridgeline; through the scope Lin could see the Carl Gustaf1 in his hands, but his own rifle was empty. It was now obvious that the Indian raiders' objective in appearing here was not to annihilate the patrol; it was to destroy the aircraft. He waved Captain Saleem back toward the route they had come in, away from the wreckage, and grabbed a blood-streaked assault rifle from beside him. He fired upward, pinning down the soldier preparing to launch the rocket, then estimated the enemy strength above at no more than ten. That did not mean others were not coming up the far slope. Saleem fell back to the rocks a few dozen metres away and resumed firing. At this distance the effective range of both sides' assault rifles was barely sufficient to reach the other. While the enemy's fire was drawn away, Lin broke from the aircraft. The sound of helicopter rotors grew steadily clearer; a light helicopter, by the sound of it. Still invisible, but it was close, probably just behind the ridge.
"One of yours? An Alouette?"2 Lin asked.
"No, of course not." Captain Saleem paused for a moment to listen carefully.
"That's a Cheetah.3 We need to move. Now."
The sporadic Indian fire from above could not prevent the withdrawal. By the time Captain Saleem had his small party carrying the wounded two hundred metres back from the wreck, the soldiers on the ridgeline fired their first rocket. It struck the Jaguar's remains, which leaped into the air and crashed back down. Clearly it had not been completely destroyed. Then the massive rotor disc rose above the ridge. A Cheetah in mottled camouflage thundered over the crest and began descending. A soldier stood on each skid. The Pakistani troops fired at the helicopter, but the range was too great for any accuracy.
The Cheetah hovered unsteadily half a metre above the valley floor. One Indian soldier jumped off, ran to the badly damaged aircraft, and threw a large explosive charge into the cockpit. Then he ran back to the helicopter. As the Cheetah pulled sharply out of the valley, the Jaguar detonated a second time. This time it was blown to pieces. There would be nothing of value to extract now.
"If we'd got here thirty minutes earlier," Captain Saleem said.
"Don't blame yourself. It was nothing critical in the end. The intelligence on forward airfields; satellites can photograph that." Lin offered what comfort he could.
"Why would they do something this unusual? Penetrate this deep across the border just to blow up a wrecked aircraft?"
"It is interesting, I agree. I think that's the intelligence worth analysing here: it looks like the kind of overreaction that belongs to a very particular moment."4 Lin said this while watching through binoculars as several Indian soldiers on the ridgeline dragged a body and disappeared above the snowline.
"Lieutenant Colonel, you're saying they're going to attack? And they needed the IFF5 codes destroyed first?"
The signaller's radio finally picked up new orders from headquarters. In addition to reporting the Indian attack, a directive had come through from higher command: Lin Huaisheng was to return to Gilgit airfield immediately. No reason was given. Lin was baffled. He suspected the order had come from Beijing, but could not fathom why. He had been in the country for only a week. Before this he had done nothing beyond examining a sand table in an underground command post; only yesterday had he proposed to the Pakistanis the idea of visiting the forward line, and this was merely his first stop.
By eight o'clock, Lin and Captain Saleem had driven to the airfield at Skardu6 to wait for his aircraft. It was a rudimentary high-altitude strip, served by only a handful of civilian flights each week. Today was no exception; the place was empty. The aircraft sent to collect them turned out to be a Cessna 1727 liaison plane dispatched by Northern Area Command headquarters. Including the pilot's seat, it held precisely four people.
After takeoff the aircraft flew low, heading northwest. The pilot did not seem to share a civilian aviator's regard for safety margins. The radio played intermittent Urdu news broadcasts. Lin could not follow the language well and paid little attention, until the captain, who had been dozing beside him, suddenly raised his head.
"Lieutenant Colonel, I think the Indian Army is going to attack."
"Oh?"
"Listen. This afternoon, the Indian Parliament passed a very large counter-terrorism budget," Saleem began to translate. "Prime Minister Kahan has announced the formation of an emergency war cabinet."8 The captain's expression had turned anxious.
"I wouldn't expect too much trouble. There's still the United Nations."
"No, no, Lieutenant Colonel, you may not know this, but it isn't just Kahan who wants war. His Defence Minister, Singh, is the most bellicose Indian Defence Minister in history. Put those two together and they will certainly find a pretext in Kashmir."
"Relax. You've still got us, haven't you?" Lin said, and immediately regretted having spoken so carelessly. He represented nothing, in truth. Fortunately the captain was unlikely to take his words at face value. Still, Lin's instinct told him that his abrupt recall might be connected to all of this. The timing was a close fit. Had intelligence picked up that India was about to launch an offensive? But reason told him that under the current weather conditions, large-scale fighting in the high-altitude Kashmir region was improbable. As for other directions, every Pakistani Army officer he had met categorically denied the possibility, with a stubbornness Lin found almost wilfully naive. The Indo-Pakistani wars could be counted on the fingers of one hand; planning the next conflict's trajectory based on the last one was never wise. War did not conform to pre-drawn templates. Especially when they all knew that the newly appointed Minister Singh was unlike any of his predecessors.
1. Carl Gustaf (古斯塔夫火箭筒): The Carl Gustaf 84mm recoilless rifle. The Indian Army has operated the type since 1976. The Chinese 火箭筒 ("rocket launcher") is a common misnomer; the Carl Gustaf is technically a recoilless rifle, though the distinction is frequently blurred in Chinese military writing. ↩
2. Alouette (云雀): The Chinese 云雀 means "lark," the literal French meaning of "Alouette." Lin is asking whether the approaching helicopter is a Pakistani SA 316B Alouette III. If Pakistani, they are receiving support; if Indian, they have a new problem. ↩
3. Cheetah (印度豹): Here the Chinese uses 印度豹 ("Indian leopard") rather than 猎豹 ("cheetah") used in C9N7 for the same aircraft type; the inconsistency is typical of the original. The soldiers standing on the skids describe a standard Indian Army aviation insertion technique for terrain where landing is impossible. ↩
4. Overreaction (某种特殊时期的过度反应): Lin infers from the Indians' willingness to send a commando patrol deep across the LoC, supported by a helicopter, to destroy a single wreck that it contains something they cannot afford to have recovered. This aligns with the C8N11 revelation that the Jaguar contained nuclear delivery profiles and IFF codes. Lin does not yet know this. ↩
5. IFF (敌我识别装置): Identification Friend or Foe, an electronic transponder system distinguishing friendly from hostile aircraft. Recovery of current IFF codes would allow an enemy to spoof air defences. This is among the data the Defence Minister ordered destroyed in C8N11. ↩
6. Skardu (司卡杜): Skardu Airport (ICAO: OPSD) sits at approximately 2,230 metres in Gilgit-Baltistan. Originally a military airfield built in 1949, it was sparsely served by civilian flights during the novel's period. ↩
7. Cessna 172 (塞斯纳172型联络机): A four-seat, single-engine light aircraft used for staff transport in areas where larger aircraft cannot operate. Its use here is consistent with the limited aviation infrastructure of the Northern Areas. ↩
8. Emergency war cabinet (紧急状态内阁): Combined with the defence budget passage and the Vir Chakra ceremony in previous chapters, this represents the political architecture of escalation toward wider war. ↩