Thanks to Fairytailnaruto25 and CajunBear73 for their commentary and input.
=O=
Chapter 14
Undisclosed location
(Technically In Bhutan)
Heather sipped her coffee as she flipped through her notebook.
All in all, the TACAN outpost was running smoothly, morale seemed high, and the staff had not violated the Joint Government agreement with the Kingdom of Bhutan – guns in the locker, no tobacco, no chicken coops for fresh chicken (slaughtering animals being illegal in the totalitarian monarchy), no fooling around with the locals.
Mmm… steamed fresh chicken…
She blinked twice, took a deep breath of the cool mountain air, and looked up from her notebook. Beyond the cliff beckoned the thickly forested foothills of the Himalayas, and beyond them, the Indian border.
Putting a navigation beacon in neutral Bhutan extended TACAN coverage by nearly a hundred kilometers, allowing the Air Force to make blind beacon-guided bomb runs over most of Assam and large chunks of West Bengal. The alternative, putting the beacon in East Pakistan's volatile – and flat – border regions had been considered a poor deal by planners.
It also meant that the beacon had to be kept completely covert. The installation was staffed by "former" Air Force personnel with papers discharging them temporarily from the Air Force, defended by Royal Bhutanese troops, and operated by the State Intelligence Service.
This, of course, was precisely why Heather had been in charge of inspecting the damned place, and not some Air Force officer.
Heather walked back into the breakroom, where an Air Force officer – sorry, former Air Force officer, her long blond hair wrapped in a ponytail, was pouring coffee from the pot. "Just getting a cup of coffee."
Heather gave the woman a nod, and looked over the drab containerized hut. Someone with a little festive spirit had hung a little painted lantern under the light, with a beautiful calligraphed poem written on its side in black ink – the only splash of color amidst green corrugated steel plates.
If it were up to her, she would have had the place evacuated on the spot. The security of Site Teepee was predicated on secrecy. Now that secrecy had been lost, this site was decidedly unsecure. But bombing operations were ongoing over West Bengal, and by absolving pilots of the need to visually identify targets, the site greatly simplified bombing runs, making them much safer for pilots. Pacifican lives were being saved every day this site was in operation.
The contractor approached her. "Ma'am, we hope you'll pass our security concerns to our higher-ups. Indian commandoes have been probing our perimeter…"
Heather nodded. "I know, and I will. This is pants-on-the-head retarded. It's not up to me, but I'll try to get you people home as soon as possible."
The contractor smiled. "Thank you. You know, I'd always thought…"
An explosion rocked the conex hut.
"Well, shit."
=O=
Heather poked her head over the sandbagged parapet. Indian mortar fire had slackened, but the Bhutanese had been pushed well back from their initial perimeter. Fire arced upslope from the lush Bhutanese mountain forest.
Beside her, a contractor, lying prone, cradled a medium machine gun, a belt of ammunition spilling from its side.
"Left! On your left, man!" The contractor fired bursts into the tree line even as his partner watched the belt carefully.
Heather groaned at the machine gunner completely failed to find the enemy. "Automatic rifleman! Eleven o'clock, troops in open! One-fifty meters! Fire!"
The medium machine gun chattered, and a pair of Indians went down near the tree line.
The enemy returned fire. Heather found a target, lifted her boxy assault rifle, and added bursts of 5.5mm caseless to the chorus. Someone found her, and a bullet, missing her head by inches, zipped by with an angry sting. A contractor popped his head over the parapet to take a shot – and went down, gore spilling from what was left of his head. They were pinned.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…
She slid a long, thin magazine of caseless ammunition - her last - into the loading slot parallel to the barrel, twisted the charging knob, and, in a fit of sentimentalism, fixed her bayonet to the rifle. The contractor next to her followed her lead.
She chuckled. Here she was, in an age of spaceships and H-bombs, armed with the most advanced and unnecessarily complicated rifle ever fielded… and she was planning on stabbing someone with a bayonet.
Typical.
Someone ran up with a backpack-mounted radio. "Shit! Guys! Does anyone know how to guide in air support?!"
Heather grabbed the radio from the radioman. "What's our callsign?"
"We're Teepee, ma'am."
"Air, this is Teepee, come in, over." Heather racked her brain as she tried to remember how exactly she had done this on the distant battlefields of someone else's war, guiding in 'indigenous' pilots with surprising familiarity with JGAF procedures and excellent foreign language skills.
"Teepee, Teepee, this is Buster 1. We have rockets, cluster, maverick, and twenty minutes of playtime."
She grabbed the radio, her instincts kicked in, and before she knew it she was calmly guiding Buster flight through the engagement even as the firefight continued to rage around her.
The roar of turbofans echoed over their position.
"Everyone down!"
A popcorn-like crackle rocked the tree line as an A-10 attack jet, flying low, loosened cluster bombs over the enemy attack. The A-10 followed up with a quick burst from the Gatling cannon before sharply turning away. Shrapnel pinged off the conex huts, and someone screamed in pain.
Three more fast jets and a slow forward air control (FAC) propeller plane appeared over their position, and Heather merrily directed pass after pass against the enemy position as the slow FAC began to take over.
Suddenly, the air crackled with automatic weapons fire, and explosions rocked the outpost. Instinct kicked in again, and Heather rolled off the conex hut – followed soon after by an airman – as a grenade arced overhead. The machine-gunners rose to jump – and were promptly gunned down by a triumphant Indian commando in an unmarked uniform and surplus M1 helmet.
Heather shot him point-blank.
While they'd been distracted by the fight, Indian commandoes had scaled the cliff on the other, less accessible side of the hilltop, essentially sneaking around their backs. They were being overrun.
She doffed the radio. Radio's broken. Gotta keep moving.
Chaos reigned as Indian commandoes rampaged through the outpost, throwing grenades left and right.
Heather dashed between and crawled through the conex huts and slit trenches with single-minded determination: Get to the comms shack with all the classified material.
Move, move, move…
A commando appeared around the corner.
Heather thrust her rifle forward and pulled her rifle back in one smooth motion, bayoneting the commando in the face. As he slumped to the floor, Heather put a round in his head.
She checked her magazine. Half full.
It was stupid. Simply shooting him would have been faster. The short, boxy rifle was utter crap for bayonet fighting. But she didn't need to think.
The comms shack beckoned. Her heart racing, she surprised the commando guarding the door, gunned him down, and rushed in. Next to a pair of dead contractors, their headsets still attached to their limp heads, a commando knelt beside an open cabinet as he rifled through documents.
With a primal yell, she bayoneted him in the back, withdrew her rifle, and then stabbed him once more in the chest, stomping on him and screaming in triumph as she yanked her bayonet out with a soft squelch. The commando gurgled, unable to scream, and stopped moving.
Energized, she searched the bodies for a grenade.
She had just finished checking the commando when she heard the thump-thump-thump of helicopter rotors.
Payback time.
She rushed out the door just in time to fire on a pair of commandoes running for cover – and hit the deck herself just as a Chinook gunship roared over her, spraying rapid shrapnel-filled death from its nose-mounted automatic grenade launcher and twin sponson-mounted autocannon. A burst of machine-gun fire landed meters from her as a door-gunner mistook her for a commando.
She whooped, and plunged into the fray,
The Airborne corporal found her trying to outflank a pair of commandoes holed up in a slit trench. "Come on! They're in there! Go! Go! Go!"
=O=
"General Haddock, the Bhutanese are pretty upset about your air support. And they want your troops to help with EOD cleanup in the area – they want all those cluster bombs gone. I cannot emphasize how much we need to honor their request…"
Stoick charged through his headquarters even as the diplomatic liaison continued to discuss the engagement. This was worse – far worse – than the skirmish last week. At least that one hadn't involved attack jets, cluster bombs and guided missiles. Heck, as a bonus, it had revealed severe problems with ADC-TAC coordination in theater, from incompatible IFFs to wildly different ROE to air tasking groups that simply failed to talk to each other.
A young captain came up to him. "Sir, the last Chinook is back in our airspace. Indian fast jets have pulled back; our top cover is in place. No shootdowns. Colonel Zhu reports that the QRF will be regenerated in six hours. ADC has a schedule for rotating patrols over Bhutanese airspace as requested by local forces, starting nine hours from now."
Stoick nodded.
"Sir, the Secretary is on line one!"
"Heather!" Stoick lowered his voice an octave. "Are you all right, lass?" Heather's blank face was caked with soot and blood, and she looked as exhausted as she walked into the command center. Heck, she was limping.
"Yeah. Yeah. I've seen worse." Heather waved Stoick away, and took a seat.
Now that her hands were no longer shaking, Heather's mind was racing through the possibilities. The vulnerability of the site had been clear. What of Indian intent? Willingness to violate Bhutanese sovereignty at the current time? Had the area been tagged for surveillance flights?
Could she have anticipated an Indian attack up the cliff? Had rampaging through the base really been her best move?
Heather looked down at her bloodstained shirt. No wonder Stoick had sounded so worried. "Not mine." By golly, she'd gone berserk during the fight. No perspective. Just adrenaline and instinct. Again. Again. As usual.
Just her luck. She'd finally worked up the nerve to transfer to an office posting, and she'd stabbed two men to death in under twelve months on the job.
"Sir! The Secretary is on line one!" the staff officer was insistent.
Stoick gave Heather a shake. "You've done a sterling job since you got here – and I've heard from my pilots that you did a spectacular job on the ground. Clean up, and try to get some rest." He went for the phone.
"Mr. Secretary?"
The Secretary spoke, his voice tinny over the encrypted phone line. "General. While we're not exactly pleased that this occurred on the soil of a third party, this represents a significant escalation of the border situation. If the Indians think that they can run roughshod all over us and our allies, and mount direct attacks on our outposts… well, we can't have that. We're escalating."
Stoick gulped. "What did you have in mind?"
The Secretary inhaled. "On the advice of General Bludvist… we have decided on a demonstration of strategic superiority to the Soviets and Indians. A nuclear test series has been scheduled. It is to coincide with an exercise of tri-service strategic nuclear forces. You will be expected to provide tactical cover for the exercises."
Stoick fumed. He desperately needed his disparate air forces – Aerospace Defense Command's interceptors, SAC's bombers, and TAC's tactical jets - to exercise together, and Drago was stealing them for a damned vanity show. Annual exercises over Nevada and Inner Mongolia were well and good, but he really, really wanted his force to get some practice.
Another voice came on the line. "Mr. Secretary, it's Heather. From what we can tell, the likelihood of an Indian response during the exercises is not low. SAC and ADC forces must be prepared to dovetail with TAC if the balloon goes up. It is our recommendation that TAC must be intimately involved in the exercises."
Stoick cleared his throat. "That is true, sir. We desperately need inter-command exercise time."
Heather spoke again. "We also need clearance for additional reconnaissance flights, preferably both Blackbirds and low-level jets. And preferably daily."
The Secretary exhaled over the phone. "Understood. We'll get back to you."
They put down their phones. Heather smiled faintly at Stoick. "Your boys did a good job too. If the Indians hadn't pulled off that climb, they'd have saved our asses back there."
Stoick tilted his head as he scrutinized Heather's expression. "Lass… I heard, from the boys on the ground – the hand-to-hand got pretty bad down there. It looks to me like this isn't your first rodeo, and most people turn out fine, but they say that talking about it seems to make it easier." He chuckled. "People always forget that the cushy flyboys lost over a hundred thousand men in World War II – and had one of the highest loss rates of any of the services to boot."
"It's not that. Not for me. I'm fine, Stoick. Really." She turned to leave. "But… thanks for asking."
=O=