by M J Anand
He had to neutralize them before they could reach for their guns, which were lying by the rocks a few meters farther. Only one of them had his semi-automatic gun with him. He had a towel around his neck and seemed like the group leader. Abhimanyu had to take him out and destroy his gun. Other men would inevitably run toward their guns. He calculated he would have perhaps eight to ten seconds to take aim at them before they could reach their guns. Before any of that, he would also have to shoot down the watcher in the tree. Abhimanyu realized he didn’t have enough time or ammunition to take them on. They were just too many.
They finished their meals and laid on the fireside, not yet off to sleep. Abhimanyu waited. Few minutes later, they were still half alert and continued in Sindhi Urdu. The elder one was telling tales of how he had killed Americans, Russians, and Indians in his young days. All of Abhimanyu’s doubts were now cleared. These were fedayeen who had somehow reached this part of the country. The Indian intelligence couldn’t have missed this kind of an intel. The guards were to protect the compound from fedayeen.
He sent an SOS to Thapa from his mobile. Fedayeen in jungles. Get men at the cliff by the riverside.
Abhimanyu checked his cargos to find he only had a few cannisters and a couple magazines. He turned to sit but inadvertently stepped on dry leaves. Unfortunately, at that moment, even the jungle noise was at its minimal. The crackling of leaves were heard distinctly, an aberration to the night’s rhythm.
One fedayeen heard it and alerted another one.
‘An animal?’ He reluctantly woke up.
‘Could be. Let me check. Give me cover.’ The fedayeen stood and waited for his sleepy colleague to gain full conscious. He handed him the gun and walked toward the sound.
Abhimanyu could feel his footsteps approaching him. It was the worst-case scenario. There was no way he could escape their eyes for long enough. Thapa and his team would still take some time to reach there. Abhimanyu’s hands were forced now.
Eventually, Abhimanyu decided to take his shot. He slid behind another tree at a better angle to the shooter on the treetop. It would give him the best cover and visibility. Abhimanyu threw a small smoke can toward the tree to blunt the shooter’s vision. The smoke rose, and he double tapped the fedayeen approaching him, who died instantly without a groan.
The fedayeen giving him cover was shaken from his sleep now. He fired back on reflex with his semiautomatic machinegun.
Others took a few seconds before realizing someone was sniping at them and running toward their guns.
Abhimanyu aimed at them and fired a few shots. But the fedayeen had spotted him, and his Glock couldn’t counter the submachine gun. Abhimanyu took heavy fire from the shooter at top as well.
The shooter couldn’t see him but fired sporadically nevertheless. He wasn’t worried about wasting ammunition.
Abhimanyu had a ten-millimeter automatic gun firing at him at a speed of not less than two hundred rounds per minute. It was akin to a fighter aircraft gun barrel. He was taken aback by their firepower so deep inside India. A gun like this could only be found with the military, would be heavy to carry, and very difficult to hide. Local insurgents and even fedayeen usually carried Kalashnikovs or MI automatics at the most. One run in Abhimanyu’s direct line would be enough to shred apart the tree and kill him. Abhimanyu realized he was heavily outmatched. At the next refill, he crawled to the next tree. Abhimanyu wasn’t carrying his flash stopper, and the tree trooper had spotted the gun flash by now. He targeted the tree and took it out in the first run, as expected. Abhimanyu wasn’t equipped to fight this kind of firepower. Desperate for an escape, he changed his plan. He crawled under the bushes and out of the fire zone.
The tree trooper was still scanning the jungle to spot him, and the three other men were coming for him on foot.
Abhimanyu checked his cargo pockets. He had one more smoke cannister, one grenade, and one cartridge file left—barely enough to camouflage an escape. He recalled the river cliff. If only he could make it to the rock shelter there … Darkness was his only ally now.
Foot troopers were almost onto him. He removed the pin on his smoke-only grenade and threw it toward the gunmen. They took cover, and he dashed toward the river.
The tree trooper could only see the smoke, so he again fired indiscriminately.
A few bullets whisked past Abhimanyu’s ears. The husky sound of bullets was heavy, and he couldn’t mistake it to anything else. They were trained for it. He knew he was lucky to have missed it. Abhimanyu kept running; he could see the river now. But his legs buckled, and before he could grasp what had happened, he smelled soil in his face. Blood leaked from his calf muscles. The tree trooper had managed a hit. His pain was unbearable, and he wasn’t carrying any painkillers. He tightened the cargo pants around the wound as a makeshift tourniquet to at least slow the bleeding.
Abhimanyu tried to run but couldn’t. He heard the fedayeen moving in the trees. They were coming for him. His vision blurred due to heavy blood loss. He needed to buy a little more time. Abhimanyu unpinned his last grenade and threw it into the trees toward the fedayeen. It blew with a flash that struck Abhimanyu like a bolt. He saw a face he had been looking for, for years—his archfoe, Hussain Qadir, the satan, the meloch, the prince of his darkness, the man who had killed Bhavya, his first wife. A deep desire for revenge surged through his veins, but his body failed to respond. He checked again for any more ammunition, but there was none except the lone magazine in the Glock. Abhimanyu didn’t stand a chance. After a few moments of despair, Abhimanyu calmed himself. Reality sunk into him soon. He had to survive today, to end it all tomorrow. The fedayeen were still not dead, for he heard them moving and checking for others. He had to hide soon. Thapa and his men should not be far off by now.
Abhimanyu was struggling to maintain his balance but lowered his body on the cliff just enough to hang from the rock. With one painful swing, he threw his body into the gap under the rock. Upon landing, his pain surged instantly. It cracked through his body. Abhimanyu groaned involuntarily, but the noise was muzzled thanks to the flash fire from the grenade blast. The river underneath the cliff was calm, but the bend farther down made its presence known through the constant splattering. Abhimanyu tried to avoid any more sounds. His eyes were still red with pain and a longing desire to avenge Bhavya’s death. Abhimanyu closed his eyes and warped his visions into the dark night.
*****
Thapa couldn’t believe the message. How could Abhimanyu be so foolish to venture alone into the jungles? Perhaps it wasn’t Abhimanyu’s mistake alone. After all, none of them had shared anything about the threats they had received. Thapa took couple commando groups with him and left the rest to guard the Bagyidaw’s. Sasha was longing to join, but Thapa didn’t allow her. Besides, he needed someone in the communication room.
As they went deeper into the jungles, they could hear sporadic gunfire and even a couple of blasts. Thapa realized Abhimanyu was definitely in a soup. Thankfully, his commandos were loaded lock, stock, and barrel. They even carried medical aid should anyone, especially Abhimanyu, need it.
The commandos probed and foraged through the woods, one view at a time. The two commando groups spread out horizontally in a wall formation to cover as much area as possible. But their torchlights were still in pocket, for no one wanted to reveal their position to any lurking danger.
Sasha followed them through the drone and provided them air cover. She had tagged the location of grenade flash and used the GPS to guide the commandos. They kept walking in that direction.
‘Do you smell that?’ Alpha 1 team leader asked.
‘Gunpowder,’ another commando replied.
‘The sight is still farther down the slope.’
‘But I can smell it. Something happened here.’
Soon, they arrived at the riverbank.
‘This is a grenade crater. Fresh.’ A commando kneeled to feel the warm ash where Abhimanyu had thrown his last grenade.
They
split into pairs and extinguished the torchlights. They moved around in calibrated maneuvers, trained akin to a cat’s movement in the darkness.
Thapa moved toward the river and spotted the grenade pin. He looked for the fine markings. It was a MARCOS grenade. ‘Abhimanyu was here.’
The commandos searched everywhere but found no one in the jungles. The fedayeen had cleared even the ash from the bonfire.
‘Careful.’ A commando held Thapa as he walked up to look down.
He couldn’t see anything at first. Then something. Thapa used the night goggles to see a human body lying motionless under the rock. He kneeled. ‘It’s him.’ Thapa’s heartbroken voice said everything loud and clear. He could barely hold the sight of the blood loss.
They slipped down the ridge with the help of a rope tied to the thick semal tree trunk and pulled him out slowly and rushed him to the Bagyidaw’s.
Over the next few hours, Thapa gave him first aid and even transfused blood. They needed to buy time till he could be taken to the military hospital in Guwahati. Luckily, a commando had the same blood type.
Thanks to Thapa’s efforts, Abhimanyu finally opened his eyes, and his first words were, ‘Get me Amjad.’ He had seen a paper referencing Cortex. He had seen fedayeen. He had seen Hussain Qadir. He had seen too much.
‘You need some rest first. Let’s talk tomorrow morning,’ Sasha said sternly, as she had a task now—to stop this forever.
As for Abhimanyu, he had a lot more to chase, a lot more to protect. The enemy was getting personal and closer to his family more than ever before.
January 17, 2009
Abhimanyu woke on a stiff bed. The clock read just past nine. The bed’s wooden planks rested on a steel frame barely supporting his weight. The beds in military hospitals were of the cheapest quality the local command could afford. The bureaucrats thought never gave enough pennies for such peacetime frivolity, as they called it. Abhimanyu was in the general ward, but it was empty except for a few security men standing next to his bed.
Thapa stood at the end of his bed and smiled.
Doctors had been working on him for over twenty-four hours. After a significant blood transfusion, his body had moved into the recovery mode, and he had been transferred from the ICU. His legs were still plastered toe to knee, but Thapa was happy to see him gain conscious.
‘Do you know who they were?’ Abhimanyu hadn’t forgotten about Qadir lest be taken for insanity. No Pakistani agent had come this far inside the country yet, unless they had already figured it out.
Thapa thought for a moment and shook his head. ‘Local insurgents to stay around. I have an agreement with them. We don’t disturb them, and they don’t disturb us.’
‘So, they have never attacked the bungalow?’
Thapa again shook his head. ‘Never. If they’ve ventured so far into the jungles, its generally because they need help for themselves—sometimes with rations, sometimes with petrol or even just money. I’ve helped them occasionally, so no local group has targeted us. We have got stuck in cross firing between rival insurgent groups a few times but never an attack on us.’
‘Do the local insurgents speak Urdu?’
‘It’s rare, but some of the Muslim refugees, Rohingyas from Myanmar, do speak it. But, again, none of them come this far and disturb us. Even the bravest of the insurgents never cross the river.’
Abhimanyu didn’t mention anything about Cortex or the Urdu paper. ‘Where are my cargos?’
‘Locked in my room.’
The paper was safe, he thought. Thapa was the only one he trusted at this point. Still, he double checked on him, asked him a few more questions, for Abhimanyu had the instincts to catch a lie even from the hospital bed. Thapa wasn’t lying. ‘That’s comforting. We need to reinforce the security.’
Thapa nodded dutifully. While it wasn’t direct, Thapa was smart enough to understand where Abhimanyu was going. He held his composure and changed the tack. ‘Amjad has been waiting to talk to you.’ Thapa had handled many agents in his lifetime and was party to many secrets. He knew the ways of the spies. He also knew it left them alone to face the darkness in their life. Their instincts of mistrust creeped into every relationship and often controlled their lives. Thapa dialed Amjad on a secure wireless line for him.
‘Thank you, Thapa.’ Abhimanyu’s tone meant only one thing for Thapa and the soldiers.
They immediately left him alone for his call with Amjad.
Abhimanyu couldn’t take anything for granted when it came to his family. Thapa had provided Sasha a safe refuge in the Bagyidaw’s bungalow, but Abhimanyu was still struggling with trusting him completely. He wondered if Amjad could get him some answers. But, again, he couldn’t even trust Amjad with everything he knew. Time was his only friend.
The phone rang. ‘You can’t take a holiday, can you?’ Amjad spoke on speaker.
Abhimanyu covered his mouth even though no one was in the room now. ‘I saw something. I think I’m onto something.’
‘Yes, just like you thought you wanted to retire.’ Amjad wished to remind him that his commando instincts would never leave him. They would always hang over him.
‘Is this line secure?’
‘As secure as it can be.’
Abhimanyu finally dropped his guard. ‘I found a paper written in Urdu. It had Cortex mentioned on it.’
Amjad was taken aback. ‘How did a paper like that surface randomly in a northeast jungle?’
‘Exactly. It can’t be a coincidence.’ Abhimanyu had played his only card.
‘Of course not.’ Amjad pondered it. ‘You’ve been in the spotlight for quite some time. Now we have Khalid, thanks to you. They’re trying to get at you.’
Abhimanyu listened carefully. He had a different track of conversation on his mind, but this was also important.
‘I half expect that, but you seem to be hundred percent confident.’ Amjad didn’t want to do this on a phone, but he had no choice.
‘Am I missing something?’
After deliberating on the right choice of words, Amjad answered him. ‘Listen, we didn’t tell you, since you were on a mission, but Thapa and Sasha got a threatening letter sometime back. We immediately tightened the security at Bagyidaw’s. All those commandos there are not for you. They’re to protect Sasha.’
Abhimanyu didn’t trust Amjad already. Now he couldn’t hate him enough too. He soaked in the silence for a few moments till his left brain intervened. If he was in Amjad’s place, he would have done the same. Amjad had done the best he could in that situation. But there was one problem. ‘Your commandos are uninitiated.’
‘They are the best from the army’s northeastern command.’
‘Exactly. We don’t need the army infantry to outsmart the terrorists. They won’t break in with a gunfight. They will sneak in.’
Amjad saw the point.
‘These soldiers, good as they are, don’t stand a chance if they eventually decide to come.’
For Amjad, only one solution existed. ‘I’ll send in MARCOS, best of the lot.’
That was more than Abhimanyu had expected. He had just thought of training a few army commandos his way.
‘Let me know the names of who you trust,’ Amjad added, really stretching his resources and trying to help. Amjad would need the highest permissions to spare any MARCO.
Abhimanyu felt obliged but stopped short of acknowledging it and regained his composure. ‘I’ll just need a team of three. They can train the rest. I’m sure they’ll make the best use of the commandos we already have here.’
‘They’ll fly in by tonight.’
‘I guess I owe you one.’
‘Don’t think about it. Just get well soon and come back because we need you. Doctor tells me the wounds are very local. With the right medication and rest, you should be fine in three to four days.’
Abhimanyu eyed the plasters which told a different story but chose to ignore it. His mind was focused on the mission now. ‘How’s Siddhart
ha’s recovery?’
‘Quite well. Should be fine before you. Sonia is passing some free time with her team, and Akram is just relaxing in Aligarh.’
‘Has Khalid given away anything yet?’ Abhimanyu realized he should have started with this question. It would be tough to break his brain.
‘Not much. Just enough to stay alive. Smart cookie. We’ll need to do something unorthodox.’
‘The disk?’
‘Coders are on it. Let’s see.’ If they still had not cracked the disk, they would have already tried everything on Khalid’s mind, yet they were nowhere. ‘We’ll have enough soon. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘That’s all we don’t have—time.’
Things were moving too fast, and Abhimanyu was beginning to believe they were up against a clock, just that they hadn’t found it yet. A night’s adventure—rather, misadventure—had resulted in some delay, but even if the fedayeen were here to attack the compound, they had paid a heavy price. They had been flushed out of the area, surveillance had been tightened, and security would not be an issue anymore. With his family secure, he could go after them with vengeance.
IB Headquarters, January 18
The cold wind from the Himalayas covered vast horizons of New Delhi in thick smog that choked the traffic for the weekend savvy Delhites. A similar smog had befallen the Indian Intelligence too, and they were desperate to lift the smokescreen.
