Less than a month earlier, covering the Kargil war, I had heard accounts from IAF fighter pilots on how they had seen missiles streak past their fighters as they bombed targets. On May 27 that year, an IAF MiG-21 was stuck by a Pakistani surface to air missile. Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja, the pilot, ejected, only to be captured and killed by Pakistani forces. The following day, an IAF Mi-17 chopper was downed after being struck by several Pakistani Stinger missiles. All four crew members perished.
The threat of Pakistani shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles was very real. This had been an unbelievably close call.
At Naliya air base, I rushed to re-confirm my news. IAF officers who were a part of our sortie went into a huddle. A short while later, they confirmed the news to the international media. We had been attacked.
I got on to our satellite phone - and dialled in the NDTV office to do a phone-in. I saw Satinder Bindra, then the CNN Bureau Chief in Delhi, do the same.
As I waited patiently for my turn to break the news, I realised that newsroom priorities in Delhi may as well have been from a different planet.
Vikram Chandra was the anchor - his focus, for the large part of that day, was a total solar eclipse, a big global event that day. There were guests in the studio. There was a science lesson on air.
The mood changed abruptly when I did my phone report.
Kargil may have ended with an Indian victory but clearly tensions with Pakistan were still war-like.
For Squadron Leader Pankaj Vishnoi, this had been the second close call in as many days.
A day earlier, within hours of the Pakistan Navy Atlantique having been shot down, he was ordered to fly into the area, spot and collect the debris.
"The wreckage was easy to spot. The area was completely barren flat land."
Categorically denying Pakistani claims that the IAF had flown across the border to pick up debris of the Atlantique, Vishnoi says "we landed on our side. We were about five hundred metres from the border."
A Quick Reaction Team (QRT) of the Indian Air Force quickly moved out of the chopper to pick up debris and load it on to the aircraft.
"The ground may have been soggy. I was holding on to the power while the helicopter wheels were lightly touching the ground." Vishnoi waited as the QRT loaded the aircraft.
"We flew to Lakhpat and landed the helicopter. We were ordered to return to the crash site again and pick up more of the wreckage."
Little did Vishnoi know what was in store for him.
"The gap between the first and second sortie to pick up the wreckage would have been just 45 minutes but on the second sorties, there was Medium Machine Gun fire from across the border." Vishnoi had never expected to see Pakistani forces in this remote area.
"There were two people hiding behind a bush and they opened up. I heard the sound. The aircraft was hit."
Unarmed and not authorised to respond with force, Vishnoi rushed back to base.
"One bullet hit the body of the aircraft. It hit the door in the rear and came out the other one. Another bullet hit the trailing edge of one of the tail rotor blades creating a one inch hole."
I spoke to Pankaj Vishnoi, now a retired Air Commodore for the first time on Tuesday, more than 20 years since we had both cheated death along with the other journalists and IAF crew members on the chopper we were flying in.
"Was that your closest call?" I asked Vishnoi.
"This was the closest call for me in all my years in the IAF," he replied.
"But did you know, Vishnu, that of the six pilots on those three Mi-8 helicopters that flew that day, two are dead."
I was stunned.
"Flight Lieutenant R Garg and Flying Officer Vikram Singh, both flying the second chopper in the formation are gone." Both were killed in separate incidents over the next several years.
R Garg was killed in a helicopter accident over the Doda valley in Kashmir and Vikram Singh was among nine IAF personnel killed when two Mi-17 helicopters had a mid-air collission near Jamnagar in September 2012.
There was another pilot we met at Naliya Air Force base that day who also lost his life.
The man who shot down the Atlantique, Squadron Leader Prashant Kumar Bundela died in August 2002, four months after he ejected from a MiG 21. Bundela had landed on his neck and was left paralysed.
I ask Air Commodore Pankaj Vishnoi about these losses.
"These are professional hazards," he says.