The Thar Incident - 3
Continued from Part 2.
******************
Lt. Amar Singh's men had sent a terse message on the commlink. The commlink was a burst transmitter that utlized reflections from the ionosphere to send a rapid pulse containing a small amount of information in code. The limited bandwidth meant that the message had to be text and when encypted could not exceed a few hundred kilobytes. The S.O.P required that the team moved atleast 3 miles before transmitting again so as to avoid radio triangulation. The team usually only transmitted once in the mission area that too using a Vernam cipher. The one-time pads used for this cipher were precious commodities - absolutely never to be reused - each mission was issued only two - one for a mission report - the other for an emergency.
Upon reaching the site, Lt. Amar Singh soon realized that there was no question of leaving the site or of sending more than one message so he had done his best to summarize the situation, the text message send about 45 minutes ago read as follows:
** Rch Site 2300 IST. lrg unk craft loc. in 100 ft ctr w dbris fld 1 km lg. Fire frm mig crsh vis in dist. LN KARNAL entr ctr & rep. no hum. rem. bt LNK died after 20 min in ctr. LN KAPIL ent. ctr. w same rslt. hazmat drll. not foll. due to haste. Craft apprs. shiny metal and debr. is aerospace type. No plates or mrkings. Tem hlding perim tll. reinf. arr. rept. 2 dead. hlding perim. rqst hazmat asst.**
The message that that the DAE physicist had recieved was more transparent.
"Listen, sorry about the time, but about 100 clicks north west of your position something fell out of the sky. A team reached it on foot but they have lost two members from some kind of hazmat exposure. They claim that the object appears to be some sort of aerospace instrument. I fear that somethings come a falling from space. Initially the boys at Kalagarh had a brief look at it, by looking on the IR mode of the Divya but they can't tell what it is - too much background. The Kalagarh boys are sure that nothing was scheduled to fall from the sky tonight. So this is unexpected and they say it doesn't look like any satellite we have seen before. It could be one of the newer American Misty 2.x s or perhaps even some new kind of UAV. Look I know its late but whoever owns this thing will be down there very quickly - so get to it and secure the site and give us your prelim analysis. Don't bother about the migs, the Divya shots suggest that the pilots are dead, there are no signs of any parachutes and the wreckage can be seen also. Cover story being prepared at Kalagarh is that there was a training sortie that ended in disaster. Newspaper will come with the usual horseshit about mig engines and spares etc... No mention is being made of the other object or anything else. Just get to it and send us your estimates we will send a Mi-26 skycrane from Chandigarh before 0200. and 11 IBG will join you by 0700. You should be out of there before daybreak. Remember there is atleast one hostile satellite pass by 0800 so whatever you do - get out of there before that."
The CO 58 Engineers and the NSC representative had recieved similar messages.
It was 0034 hours when the lead helo landed a few hunded meters from the site. The 22 Para team raced ahead and linked up and relieved Lt. Amar's team. The DAE man, the CO of the 58 and the NSC representative raced ahead. The DAE man fearing contamination had his radiation measuring instruments out. He pointed the geiger counter in front of him and began to read off the measurements. The readings had been scaled with a number to reflect the ambient radiation flux in curies. As they walked towards the crater radiation levels were rising dangerously. The contamination appeared to be airborne.
The CO of the 58 periodically peered at the site through a pair of night vision goggles. Though these wre third generation image intensifiers made in DRDO labs, the rotor of the Mi-8 was kicking up way too much sand for the night vision units to be very effective.
Almost breathless from the sudden exertion of running across the sand, the DAE man stumbled past the 22 Para team which cautiously followed him. As the men lurched up to the edge of the crater and the DAE man shone a flash light on the structure at the bottom of the pit, a barely audible gasp escaped his lips. Neither the bright green glow from the ionization tube nor the almost continuous clicking of the geiger counter seem to intrude - the men simply stood there stunned.
It was the DAE man who first snapped back to his senses as he finally felt the ground under his feet to be unusually warm and moments later the hazardous gas detector began to whine. The detector had found high levels of flourine in the air.
"Get back" he screamed... the C0 of the 58 to turned toward the leader of the 22 Para team almost instantly - " Captain expand cordon to 100 meters. No one is to cross without hazmat suits. There is a pool of molten sand between us and the object. The molten sand is outgassing a toxic compound that kills within minutes of exposure."
The Paras responded immediately and soon most people in the team were suiting up. The CO of the 58 ran to the pilot of the Mi-8 and told him that they would need a bulldozer to move sand and a rover that was kept by BARC folks at the Pokharan test facility. The rover was used for inspections in hazardous zones. As he spoke the could hear the Mi-17s from the Aravali hills approaching the landing zone. He braced for the blast of sand as the lead Mi-17 began its rapid descent. The Mi-8 pilots began to prepare for a trip back to Pokharan.
As the DAE man scurried around collecting his first impressions of the scene. The NSC representative walked around talking to Lt. Amar. The Capt. from 22 Para began to direct the extra manpower from the Mi-17s into a cordon. A medical station was also set up.
It was about an hour or so before the NSC man, the DAE physicist and the CO of the 58 had a chance to consult with each other. With only a flashlight to guide him, the NSC man scribbled their respective reports on a tablet PC. The PC was linked to satcom terminal that had been set up by the NCO from 22 Para only minutes earlier.
By 0152 Hours the Mi-8 had returned with rover but indicated that the dozer at Pokharan was too heavy for it to lift. The NSC man sensing the predicament used the satellite uplink to instruct the Mi-26 Skycrane to make a detour to Pokharan and pick up the dozer. This delayed the arrival of the skycrane by an hour.
The CO of the 58 and the DAE man managed to get the rover to roll out. Luckily the rover was kept at a high level of readiness and the batteries used in it were actually charged. The two men carefully chaperoned the rover to the edge of the crater and gently ushered over the top.
It took the rover some twenty minutes to navigate around the pool of molten sand. In parts the sand had solidified and the rover actually just crawled over the crust towards the shiny metallic object in the pool. It was then suddenly that the crust under the rover gave way and the rover fell into what appeared to be a pit. Fearing that the control cables might snap the DAE man began to articulate the rover's camera arm when suddenly the light from the guide lamp on the arm fell on a bizarre shape and the DAE man froze. He gestured wildly towards the CO of the 58 and the NSC representative and they ran towards him. The Capt. from the 22 Para reached only moments later.
Words could ill describe the emotions that flowed through the minds of the four men as they huddled over the LCD screen displaying the live-feed from the rover's camera.
The DAE man broke the silence - eyeing NSC representative, he said..
"It can't be done today. There is simply too much work here. We have to bury the thing and come back tomorrow - better prepared. The sat recon will pick up the our tracks and everyone will know. I don't think that is a good idea now."
The NSC man nodded and said, "I was completely unprepared for this. We are going to have to implement the Pokaran satellite evasion drill here."
After a few minutes in the huddle. The DAE man shut the rover down and extracted the memory disk containing a copy of the videofeed. The CO of the 58 and the Capt from the 22 Para began to shout out orders to the men.
At 0300 hours the Mi-26 could be heard landing in the distance and a dozer rolled off the ramp. Over the next hour the crater was filled up and the site meticulously camoflaged. In keeping with the cover story released at Kalagarh, the site was now made to look like a coorindation camp for a search and rescue party. By 0500 hours two of the Mi-17 had taken off and inserted people around the wreckage of the fallen migs. The men pretended to be carefully patrolling the land in search of the pilots.
By 0545 hours a completed report of the proceedings of the last few hours ad the video from the rover camera was uplinked to the National Command Post at Kalagarh. And at 0600 the Prime Minister was gently roused from her sleep by an aide.
******************
Lt. Amar Singh's men had sent a terse message on the commlink. The commlink was a burst transmitter that utlized reflections from the ionosphere to send a rapid pulse containing a small amount of information in code. The limited bandwidth meant that the message had to be text and when encypted could not exceed a few hundred kilobytes. The S.O.P required that the team moved atleast 3 miles before transmitting again so as to avoid radio triangulation. The team usually only transmitted once in the mission area that too using a Vernam cipher. The one-time pads used for this cipher were precious commodities - absolutely never to be reused - each mission was issued only two - one for a mission report - the other for an emergency.
Upon reaching the site, Lt. Amar Singh soon realized that there was no question of leaving the site or of sending more than one message so he had done his best to summarize the situation, the text message send about 45 minutes ago read as follows:
** Rch Site 2300 IST. lrg unk craft loc. in 100 ft ctr w dbris fld 1 km lg. Fire frm mig crsh vis in dist. LN KARNAL entr ctr & rep. no hum. rem. bt LNK died after 20 min in ctr. LN KAPIL ent. ctr. w same rslt. hazmat drll. not foll. due to haste. Craft apprs. shiny metal and debr. is aerospace type. No plates or mrkings. Tem hlding perim tll. reinf. arr. rept. 2 dead. hlding perim. rqst hazmat asst.**
The message that that the DAE physicist had recieved was more transparent.
"Listen, sorry about the time, but about 100 clicks north west of your position something fell out of the sky. A team reached it on foot but they have lost two members from some kind of hazmat exposure. They claim that the object appears to be some sort of aerospace instrument. I fear that somethings come a falling from space. Initially the boys at Kalagarh had a brief look at it, by looking on the IR mode of the Divya but they can't tell what it is - too much background. The Kalagarh boys are sure that nothing was scheduled to fall from the sky tonight. So this is unexpected and they say it doesn't look like any satellite we have seen before. It could be one of the newer American Misty 2.x s or perhaps even some new kind of UAV. Look I know its late but whoever owns this thing will be down there very quickly - so get to it and secure the site and give us your prelim analysis. Don't bother about the migs, the Divya shots suggest that the pilots are dead, there are no signs of any parachutes and the wreckage can be seen also. Cover story being prepared at Kalagarh is that there was a training sortie that ended in disaster. Newspaper will come with the usual horseshit about mig engines and spares etc... No mention is being made of the other object or anything else. Just get to it and send us your estimates we will send a Mi-26 skycrane from Chandigarh before 0200. and 11 IBG will join you by 0700. You should be out of there before daybreak. Remember there is atleast one hostile satellite pass by 0800 so whatever you do - get out of there before that."
The CO 58 Engineers and the NSC representative had recieved similar messages.
It was 0034 hours when the lead helo landed a few hunded meters from the site. The 22 Para team raced ahead and linked up and relieved Lt. Amar's team. The DAE man, the CO of the 58 and the NSC representative raced ahead. The DAE man fearing contamination had his radiation measuring instruments out. He pointed the geiger counter in front of him and began to read off the measurements. The readings had been scaled with a number to reflect the ambient radiation flux in curies. As they walked towards the crater radiation levels were rising dangerously. The contamination appeared to be airborne.
The CO of the 58 periodically peered at the site through a pair of night vision goggles. Though these wre third generation image intensifiers made in DRDO labs, the rotor of the Mi-8 was kicking up way too much sand for the night vision units to be very effective.
Almost breathless from the sudden exertion of running across the sand, the DAE man stumbled past the 22 Para team which cautiously followed him. As the men lurched up to the edge of the crater and the DAE man shone a flash light on the structure at the bottom of the pit, a barely audible gasp escaped his lips. Neither the bright green glow from the ionization tube nor the almost continuous clicking of the geiger counter seem to intrude - the men simply stood there stunned.
It was the DAE man who first snapped back to his senses as he finally felt the ground under his feet to be unusually warm and moments later the hazardous gas detector began to whine. The detector had found high levels of flourine in the air.
"Get back" he screamed... the C0 of the 58 to turned toward the leader of the 22 Para team almost instantly - " Captain expand cordon to 100 meters. No one is to cross without hazmat suits. There is a pool of molten sand between us and the object. The molten sand is outgassing a toxic compound that kills within minutes of exposure."
The Paras responded immediately and soon most people in the team were suiting up. The CO of the 58 ran to the pilot of the Mi-8 and told him that they would need a bulldozer to move sand and a rover that was kept by BARC folks at the Pokharan test facility. The rover was used for inspections in hazardous zones. As he spoke the could hear the Mi-17s from the Aravali hills approaching the landing zone. He braced for the blast of sand as the lead Mi-17 began its rapid descent. The Mi-8 pilots began to prepare for a trip back to Pokharan.
As the DAE man scurried around collecting his first impressions of the scene. The NSC representative walked around talking to Lt. Amar. The Capt. from 22 Para began to direct the extra manpower from the Mi-17s into a cordon. A medical station was also set up.
It was about an hour or so before the NSC man, the DAE physicist and the CO of the 58 had a chance to consult with each other. With only a flashlight to guide him, the NSC man scribbled their respective reports on a tablet PC. The PC was linked to satcom terminal that had been set up by the NCO from 22 Para only minutes earlier.
By 0152 Hours the Mi-8 had returned with rover but indicated that the dozer at Pokharan was too heavy for it to lift. The NSC man sensing the predicament used the satellite uplink to instruct the Mi-26 Skycrane to make a detour to Pokharan and pick up the dozer. This delayed the arrival of the skycrane by an hour.
The CO of the 58 and the DAE man managed to get the rover to roll out. Luckily the rover was kept at a high level of readiness and the batteries used in it were actually charged. The two men carefully chaperoned the rover to the edge of the crater and gently ushered over the top.
It took the rover some twenty minutes to navigate around the pool of molten sand. In parts the sand had solidified and the rover actually just crawled over the crust towards the shiny metallic object in the pool. It was then suddenly that the crust under the rover gave way and the rover fell into what appeared to be a pit. Fearing that the control cables might snap the DAE man began to articulate the rover's camera arm when suddenly the light from the guide lamp on the arm fell on a bizarre shape and the DAE man froze. He gestured wildly towards the CO of the 58 and the NSC representative and they ran towards him. The Capt. from the 22 Para reached only moments later.
Words could ill describe the emotions that flowed through the minds of the four men as they huddled over the LCD screen displaying the live-feed from the rover's camera.
The DAE man broke the silence - eyeing NSC representative, he said..
"It can't be done today. There is simply too much work here. We have to bury the thing and come back tomorrow - better prepared. The sat recon will pick up the our tracks and everyone will know. I don't think that is a good idea now."
The NSC man nodded and said, "I was completely unprepared for this. We are going to have to implement the Pokaran satellite evasion drill here."
After a few minutes in the huddle. The DAE man shut the rover down and extracted the memory disk containing a copy of the videofeed. The CO of the 58 and the Capt from the 22 Para began to shout out orders to the men.
At 0300 hours the Mi-26 could be heard landing in the distance and a dozer rolled off the ramp. Over the next hour the crater was filled up and the site meticulously camoflaged. In keeping with the cover story released at Kalagarh, the site was now made to look like a coorindation camp for a search and rescue party. By 0500 hours two of the Mi-17 had taken off and inserted people around the wreckage of the fallen migs. The men pretended to be carefully patrolling the land in search of the pilots.
By 0545 hours a completed report of the proceedings of the last few hours ad the video from the rover camera was uplinked to the National Command Post at Kalagarh. And at 0600 the Prime Minister was gently roused from her sleep by an aide.
posted by maverick at 12:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home