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the Chinese forces had been eastwards thus far. Now there was confusion everywhere. There were several more grenade explosions that left three more soldiers dead on the main street of the village...
    “Oh Shit!” Gephel said to no one in particular.
    Although his team was not under fire, the fact was that the Chinese would soon begin advancing into these hills and more eyes would be facing this way now. The team ran an extreme risk of detection now more by accident rather than design. Sure enough, the first mortar shells were now hitting the foothills just below them. Gephel lowered himself behind cover and picked up his rifle with one hand; stowing his binoculars with the other while he shouted out orders:
    “All right, we need to get out of here before they start searching these peaks. Move! Move! Move!”
     
     
    IAF PHALCON AWACS,
    OVER WESTERN LADAKH
    MAY 15, 1848 HRS
    “Inbound. Single-ship contact detected bearing two-one-nine heading southeast. Range two-one-zero kilo-mike. Angels thirty,” the radar console operator reported over the intercom. Wing-Commander Verma, the flight operations commander, was already walking over to the concerned console and peered at the computer screen over their shoulders.
    “Type?”
    Verma mentally absorbed the details from the screen. The operator shifted the interface screen to initiate inbound track. A second later the computer ran over the flight profile parameters with a known intelligence database before displaying the result on a corner of the screen.
    “Possible J-10 variant. Designating inbound contact November-two-four. Track initiated,” the operator was already moving through the protocols but Verma remained lost in his own analysis.
    “Might be a close formation two-ship flight. The reds don’t usually fly single aircraft patrols.”
    “Could be, sir. Difficult to tell at this point. The contact is trying to keep within the peaks as best as he can. Once he gets closer we can differentiate the radar signature,” the operator did not look away from his monitor screens.
    “Point of origin?”
    “Bearing suggests dust-off from Kashgar, but we show no J-10 deployments that far west.”
    “Until now that is. This is called real-time intelligence. CINC-WAC needs to know that his commie threat level just went up a notch,” Verma noted dryly. “Anyway, where is this bugger going?”
    “The current flight path takes him to the south.”
    “How close is he going to get to our airspace with the current heading?” Verma continued as he watched that inverted ‘V’ on the screen heading downwards.
    “Around sixty to seventy kilometers east of the LAC on the way to Shipki Pass to the south. Doesn’t look like he is planning to approach anything important.”
    “Doesn’t matter. That’s close enough,” Verma said and walked away from the console and to the airborne controller:
    “Who’s up today?”
    “Three Mig-29s at Leh ORP.”
    “Good. Get them in the air and direct them towards November-two-four. Keep them on radar standby and over our airspace. Weapons release on hold. We don’t want any accidents. Do it.” Verma ordered.
     
     
    LEH AIRBASE
    INDIA
    MAY 15, 1915 HRS
    The sun had gone down some time back, and now only the western edge of the sky was a shade of dark red. Bright stars had begun to appear on the eastern skies. On the ground, activity was frantic at the southern end of the airbase as sounds of turbines spooling up filled the air. Inside the well-lit Hardened-Aircraft-Shelters or HAS, three Mig-29 pilots were strapping into their seats as the ground crewmen armed the weapons and conducted final visual checks. A minute later the first Mig-29 taxied out of the shelter into the darkness outside. This was not war, and so the runway perimeter lights were still on, as were the anti-collision strobe-lights of the aircraft as they moved out one behind the other towards the end of the runway. A minute later the thunder of afterburners reverberated