Part II – The Thunder Gods
I started writing Kashmiri Night without an idea or a plot behind it. I started it specifically to challenge myself and see where the first random sentence took me. This is part of an ongoing series of connected stories I will put out as and when I write them. I do not know myself how the story will pan out or end, so let us find out!
Here’s part two, titled ‘The Thunder Gods’.
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Far away, in the distant flatlands of Ambala, Haryana, the fighter jets waited in silence under the concealed hangars. The home of the No.17 Squadron of the Indian Air Force. They had, in the weeks leading upto the strike, just received the first shipment of four French made Dassault Rafale Fighters. The latest in tech, as latest as a developing country could afford. These fighter jets were known as the ‘omnirole’ fighters, their repertoire included deep strike missions, air reconnaissance, nuclear deference and most interestingly, air superiority. Amongst the other fighters on base, there was one other breed, hidden away in larger hangars, and these were the flankers, the Goliaths of the sky, the rowdies of the jet age, The Sukhoi MKI30 multirole air dominance fighters from the same makers who also made and gave the world the legendary Mig. Yes, it was now known, outside the circles of the fighter pilots, that the arrival of the Rafale meant that the Alpha role was no more the task of the Sukhoi. But, what the general public din’t know, and what the fighter pilots knew almost instinctively, was that the Sukhoi, was the Sukhoi. It was the mad dog with wings, reckless, recluse, and always menacingly hungry. It could do, in the present day and age, what even the most advanced fighters couldn’t, some of them death defying acrobatics at near Mach speeds, or some of them, thundering through the sky at Mach 2 with the gargantuan roar of the twin jet engines. What the general public and the fighter pilots both agreed upon, was that the No.17 squadron was now amongst the very best, armed with a lethal mix of technology and ballsy men and women, this was a force to reckon with, a force even the Red Dragon was wary about.
The bosses in Delhi, and the authority on boots had jointly decided it prudent to keep the fighter jets on standby, 600 kilometers south, in the Ambala Air Base. And so, the very same night the four soldiers snuck into Pak Occupied Kashmir to destroy a missile pad, 4 Rafale fighters, 6 Sukhoi flankers and 3 Mirage bombers were kept on the brink of action, ready to streak down their short runways, and proclaim their blistering kingdoms in the sky, as The Thunder Gods. Could Pakistan have known, that cold night, that silent night, that all hell was about to break loose? Perhaps they knew and perhaps they had prepared well this time. Whatever the situation, an overwhelming force was needed to swat out any reckless enemy retaliation. A single Rafale could dominate the festered skies of many Pakistani F-16s and there were four of them that night. Many years ago, the US had specifically sent the F-16s just to provide the US and Pakistan with at least 24 hours of resistance, an agreeable loss, a buffer until reinforcements came, against the regional Indian air dominance. This night, oh this night, there was going to be fire in the sky, and fire from the sky and the outcome of the fight would send shock waves across the globe. A new India now sought to change its long held image of war only in self defense – a no first-aggression policy, but the time had now come, had always been meaning to come, for preemptive strikes deep where it hurts, most.
200 kilometers further south, in New Delhi, the control room had briefly erupted with joy at first, but then tragedy had struck. The last radio garble from the Captain on the ground said, ‘We need back up stat. They got us surrounded. Ambush. It’s an ambush’. This was bad news. And in military and political circles, bad news was usually dealt with, with quick response and one not bogged down by regretful ruminations. Things had escalated rapidly and unless they were well prepared, the victory could very well go home to the wrong side of the border. Oh, if only there wasn’t a border. If only, the bastard who idiotically and stupidly and irresponsibly drew the border demarcating the now India and Pakistan, hadn’t done it in such a careless manner, the children of the Kashmir valley would get the peace they deserved. They have always deserved it, just like us all. But what fate was such as this, one which had descended on the valley and threatened to not budge, what fate should befall paradise on earth, the heaven, the dream that was once Kashmir, the land which a poet once romanticized about, ‘if there is a heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.’ Kashmir, oh dear Kashmir, let us pray that you bleed no more.
This was the new India. In order to ensure lasting peace, a brutal war had to be fought, one that results in a mass exodus of evil and one that assures at least a bit of semblance of unity, diversity and secularism. Peaceful gratification and patronizing were now the sole reason for the mess. Within seconds, the Bosses dispatched chunks of short orders for their secretaries to quickly execute. One by one, the secretaries alerted the different appendages of the Indian War Machinery. Within minutes, the infamous cold-start cells of the Army, Air Force and the Navy were alive and hungry. In the border areas, soldiers were ready for action. Out in the sea, the Submarines and the Air Craft Carriers were changing course. And somewhere in the Thar desert, a nuclear missile pod was slowly sliding open its hatch. Within the next ten minutes, various surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles were lethally pointed towards the Pakistani skies. At any moment now, on the lightest and the faintest whim of any one human, nuclear catastrophe could rain down on the world.
For the Wing Captain, waiting restlessly now outside the hangar of his Rafale jet, the night seemed to be going on forever. His body itched in all the places he couldn’t itch back and satisfy. He knew the Captain who had led the squad inside PoK. He knew him all too well. He strode slowly inside the large domed hangar, and in the darkness, he could make out the delicate curves of the Rafale. Poetry in motion, even while still and standing. The fighter jet poised there as a tiger poises right before a kill, any time now, any single second, it could jump. He ran his palm over the smooth surface of its hull, it felt cold and thirsty. At once, he wished the night would end well. He wished, as a man who knows a thing or two about Nuclear Apocalypse wishes, that the night would end in a blinding sunlight and not in a mushroom cloud.
The orders came in at about 3:20 in the AM, that the ground crew were in severe distress. And immediate air assistance was needed at the site across the border. Without a second to stop and think, the pilots ran their stations, read to fly into war. A mere five minutes later, the first Rafale took to the sky turned west and hung low in the sky. And within the next ten minutes, all of them were airborne. It would surely have been a ghastly sight for an observer, no matter his nationality, looking from far below. It was a Flying Fortress, a huge armada of doom. The Wing Captain blurted out a short sequence of orders and two Mirage bombers and one Sukhoi broke from the ranks and headed south, they would serve as decoys on the Pakistani Radar, confusing them.
The moment the fighters had been airborne, forward Chinese Air Reconnaissance systems had picked up on the serious activity on the Indian Air Space and immediately alerted Pakistani Air Force. As luck would have it, or as some say it was the work of the Indian RA&W spies, the forward Pakistani Air Base that night did not have electricity to monitor their silly skies. But the size of the approaching fleet was so massive that it was picked up as far deep into the border as Islamabad itself. At once, the F-16s had been dispatched to both the locations of border incisions. Along with the F-16s were a few JF-17 fighter jets, a Chinese rip-off of the F-16s.
The Pakistani jets which met with the smaller group of decoy Indian jets in the south, proceeded to engage in immediate dogfight. On the other hand, the jets which met the flying fleet of Rafale and Sukhoi, simple turned back and scrambled for safety. This was a job the F-16s just could not handle, not even if the pilots were ballsy and steely. This was a job that needed a call to be placed to Washington, that needed some complaining to Big Daddy to resolve. The Thunder Gods were on the move, heading deeper and deeper into enemy territory, they approached like the approaching hurricane, the storm brewing in the distance which in no time has arrived at your doorstep, knocking, banging and demanding.
The Wing Commander looked left and right at his wingmen in formation. At the far end, on the outer ring were the Sukhoi Flanker Jets, and in the middle were the precise incisors, the fifth-gen Rafale jets. The captain spared a few thoughts about the men in distress, and then, just as the others did, his mind went into a sort of a flow, a tunnel vision, streaking against the starry sky. It was a kind of subconscious state in which the pilots operated the joysticks with pure instincts, driven by years and years of training and executed by simple nerves of steel. Their mission was singular, their duty was irrevocable, the terrorists would pay a price. The men below, tormenting his blood brother, the Captain, would not be spared and the night would suddenly roar to life as the sky split open with rage and the soldiers and terrorists below craned their necks and flinched their ears to look up and see The Thunder Gods, spiteful and benevolent.
