Marcos Betrayal

by M J Anand

  ‘I know it’s your way to get the work done, Amjad.’

  Amjad let it sink into Abhimanyu. He stayed quiet and allowed Abhimanyu to gravitate.

  ‘You should know the MARCOS have arrived, and I’ve already briefed them. They’re giving the army commandos a hard time.’

  The MARCOS were revered not for no reason. Their regimen was a tough act to follow, and many army commandos took time to get used to it. Not surprisingly then, it was common for them to complain.

  ‘Yes, I got a message from the Northeast Army Commander. You know how it is. I assured him his boys are doing great.’ Amjad needed to role his dice to entice Abhimanyu. ‘We have only one priority now. Find the mole who has been hiding amongst us for such a long time that we need a plan to flush him out of his hole.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  The mole had shown his immaculate professional skills. He may not be tech savvy, but he knew his way to the right place at the right time. Despite the heavy security around the hard disk, he had gained access to it. He also managed to plant evidence to make IB chase ghosts of Pasha and got the Indians to kill an Indian informant. It wouldn’t be easy for Amjad. The mole had proven his skillset, and they needed to beat him at his own game. They needed to be quick and sharp. Amjad needed a place to start.

  ‘What if we send an advisory on a possible mole to limited people? If everyone is alert, someone might notice something,’ Sonia wondered.

  ‘The mole is industrious. What if he gets his hands on it? The mole will not only go quiet but will also know we are after him. We’ll lose him forever.’

  ‘What if we run a covert private investigation instead?’

  ‘Privately within our own agencies? Can we do that?’ Sonia was surprised.

  ‘We’ve done it in the past. We can do it again. It’ll just be a little more, should I say, risky to your career.’ Amjad would need NSA’s permission to do it, but they would still be on their own. If it went wrong, the agency wouldn’t pick up the tab till they run the whole course of investigation. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Somewhere toward the end, the NSA would intervene and pull them out on classified grounds. It had happened in the past; it could be tried again.

  ‘The hard disk was tagged the whole time,’ Sonia murmured then continued with excitement. ‘The logs of people who had access to the hard disk or the room where it was kept since it arrived.’

  Amjad added, ‘The evidence room log will not be comprehensive, but the list of people who have access will be limited and shouldn’t be very long. We can profile them—their background, recent movements, foreign travel, changes in bank balances etc. It shouldn’t take you more than a day, Sonia, right?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Her voice was confident again.

  ‘Say we have our suspects. The next question is how do we zero in on the one?’

  They thought for some time, then Abhimanyu devised the classic bait technique. ‘Send a direct mail or message saying we know about him. Hopefully, it disturbs them, and we catch the signs early enough.’

  ‘We’ll need to have a tail on all of them,’ Amjad added.

  ‘And we need to make sure they really feel we know it. If he is as smart as what we think, it’ll be difficult to force him do something incriminating. The bait has to be convincing,’ Abhimanyu said.

  ‘Go on.’ Amjad felt they were getting somewhere.

  ‘We need him to be desperate, to make him contact the handler. That will be enough.’

  It finally struck Amjad that could be the key. Abhimanyu was right. A handler was an informants’ Achilles heel. ‘Even if he sends a message to his handler and the recipient is a confirmed enemy, our job is done. We can incriminate him in the courts.’ Amjad would need a few on-ground resources to tail the suspects simultaneously—sleeper cells unaware of each other’s operations. It was beyond his remit, but he had thought of a solution.

  ‘So, why don’t you book me on the next flight then?’

  Amjad smiled, for he had lured Abhimanyu in without even a bait.

  IB Headquarters, January 23

  The last four days hadn’t been easy, but Amjad had managed to arrange many pieces. ‘Finally, you’ve arrived.’

  ‘Was always just a call away.’

  ‘Hundred percent fit?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Amjad was right in his assessment; Abhimanyu wished retirement, but his heart still enjoyed the thrill of a mission. ‘Didn’t I tell you that you can’t control your commando instincts?’ The remark came loaded with a hope to motivate Abhimanyu, make him reconsider his premature retirement. A soldier like him was a priceless asset for any nation.

  Abhimanyu got the whiff and chose not to respond—an uncharacteristic behavior of Abhimanyu, an unfortunate outcome for Amjad.

  ‘There you are.’ Sonia joined them, glad to see Abhimanyu back again. ‘Don’t grant him a leave next time.’

  ‘If he takes my permission.’ Amjad shrugged.

  They followed Sonia’s cue and walked with her to the cyber cell’s war room.

  ‘There is good news and bad news.’

  ‘Like always,’ Amjad remarked.

  ‘Intelligence inputs from Zahir and IB were correct. Khalid’s voice samples, fingerprints, and retina matched the encryption. We needed the binary DNA sequencing, but we are into the hard disk. Many of the files have been deleted, however about half the data is still there.’

  ‘Any way to put together the lost data?’

  ‘The only way, a very tedious one, is to triangulate all the data from all other databases across all intelligence teams in the country.’

  ‘We’ve already found multiple aliases, running sleeper cells which have come alive in last three years.’

  ‘Three years ago,’ Abhimanyu thought out loud, ‘we had the Chennai attack.’

  ‘They’ve been planning this activity since they failed in Chennai. The disk has their pseudo names, contact information, including email addresses, even phone numbers. We’ve already found and tagged most of them. In some cases, most of their handlers are also in the Pakistani Embassy. In all, we’ve tagged thirty-five people across India.’

  Abhimanyu and Amjad were in shock. It was not just one mole but a network of informants.

  Sonia flicked through the photos on screen. ‘IT engineers working in national information center, IPS Officers, doctors working in military hospitals, and even junior officers in the police. We can arrest all of them on a moment’s notice, but the timing has to be managed.’

  ‘What’s the bad news?’

  Sonia was quiet to collect her thoughts. ‘The file on the disk has a folder named Cortex.’

  That was a solid lead. Abhimanyu wondered what there was to be so afraid about; after all, they had been chasing for a lead all this while.

  ‘After triangulating the information in the hard disk with other databases, we’ve mapped out their key activities. Their plan has five moving parts. For each part, there is a sleeper cell. The five parts include bringing in the fedayeen, setting them up with the documents, acclimatizing them, getting them resources and, lastly, setting them loose to complete the mission.’

  Abhimanyu knew tracking the resources was the best way to follow their trail. The resources used in such missions were rare and always left a trail. ‘What kind of resources are we talking about here?’

  ‘Guns, bullets, vehicles, access cards, special meals etc.—supplies to hold out alone for a long time.’ The trail had to be something else, something deadlier and more specific.

  ‘Modus operandi?’

  ‘It’s a chain model. Sleeper cells are activated, they do their part, return to hibernation, and the next team takes over. Even if we directly intercept them, we’d only uncover a part of the chain at any stage. The larger network stays protected.’

  ‘They simply outsource that activity to another cell and the mission is on.’ Abhimanyu could see where Sonia was going.

  ‘Exa
ctly. And we can’t wait for the whole event to play out either.’

  Abhimanyu fathomed the sleeper cells would also have some sort of time constraint. ‘Do we have a sense of timeline?’

  Sonia cleared her throat. ‘Yes. And that’s the bad news. We mapped out the dates in the disk with a few guesses, the dates when each of these modules are active. We understand the first four modules are already back in hibernation. That means the fifth module is already active. They are in their last lap. The last module has been let loose to deliver the broken arrow.’

  The news was not a surprise to Abhimanyu, but a confirmation of the doomsday scenario wasn’t a lead to rejoice either. The lead had been extracted and unlocked, but it had also led them to a place they had hoped didn’t exist—a place of no return. It was here and now. Even an accidental nuclear blast would escalate into a nuclear war, and at least half of the subcontinent would vanish within an hour.

  ‘The nuke will go off in Assam on January twenty-sixth, oh-nine—India’s Republic day.’ Sonia’s words gave despair a seat in the room. It was no longer concealed but very much visible and recognizable in everyone’s eyes. In this game of chess, they had been put into checkmate. Forty-eight hours were not enough to make another move, and it would be a race against time just to save the day now.

  Akram realized brooding over lack of time would not help, so he shifted gears and thought more like a soldier and less like a spy. Think straight, he told himself. They had to do what they had to do. First step was to locate the fedayeen before the time ran out on them. Intercepting and neutralizing them was the only task that could ensure the nukes didn’t detonate.

  Akram saw Abhimanyu was lost in his thoughts, perhaps worried about Sasha who was still in the Northeast. He intervened to break his thoughts. ‘We have forty-eight hours. Let’s use it.’

  Abhimanyu, back to his senses, nodded and turned to Sonia. ‘Let’s go through everything. Tell us everything you have found about their operation.’

  Sonia put up the map of the infiltration route. ‘A three-member team infiltrated India a month ago through Gilgit in Kashmir. A sleeper cell called Shaheen was deputed to help them in crossing the border.’

  ‘Do we know them?’

  Sonia toggled to the data from the hard disk. ‘Yes. Two members of Shaheen work in a tea stall outside the Shopian Police Station, one in an Anantnag Post Office, one in a Baramulla bus station office, and one in the Kargil Police Station.’

  ‘Anything from government records?’

  ‘Yes, and it all adds up. The men in Anantnag and Baramula were on privilege leave together. The one at the Baramula Police Station, Abdullah Salim, also applied for sick leave on the same days, so all of them were out on the same dates.’

  ‘How long back was this?’

  ‘Two years! On January tenth, oh-seven.’

  It was a moment of reckoning for Amjad. He realized they were up against a meticulously planned attack and they had only been playing catchup since 2007. How deep was their planning, and how could the Indians get ahead of them for once? The answers eluded him. ‘How did you track two years old government records?’

  ‘We didn’t. We just went by the information on the hard disk. It had a call scheduled to this sleeper cell, Shaheen, on December first, oh-six, and there was no mention of this till January first, and guess what?’

  ‘The documentation cells?’

  ‘Absolutely. A person in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk was contacted. He makes fake driving licenses and passports. The local police has arrested him a couple of times, but each time, his political sources got him out on bail.’

  ‘Who is that source?’ Akram asked in frustration.

  ‘Anand Kabadiwala, member of parliament. He has built a business empire around illegal papers in Chandni Chowk. Not surprisingly, many cases have been brought against his party men for aiding forgery but to no avail.’

  ‘Talk about selling out your country, and he is in the parliament!’ Effectively, the parliamentarians’ illegal side business had cost them two years of precious time.

  ‘Hey, we’re working for the one billion Indians.’ Amjad got them some perspective. It was futile to entertain any additional negativity.

  ‘Most aliases in the documentation cell have a connection with Anand Kabadiwala. As one would expect, this sleeper cell went inactive after a month.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘They are through the chain—’

  ‘On their way to plant the broken arrow in Assam. We’re still mapping their rout, but someone, a detonator, a key person in the chain already awaits them in Assam. This person’s identity is unknown. The disk just refers to him as A2111.’ Sonia handed them the files. A2111 appeared many times. The team had deduced him to be some sort of a failsafe check on the mission because the broken arrow’s lock was mapped to the detonator’s fingerprint. The detonator was the most important person of the mission. It would be impossible to find someone hidden in the jungles of Assam in less than forty-eight hours.

  ‘It’s too late to find this person now.’

  Abhimanyu agreed and nodded.

  ‘Tell me more about the detonator.’ Amjad was still stuck on it.

  ‘The detonator is linked to Azghar because his reference comes up almost in every document alongside Azghar. The frequency of references suggest he has been a part of the plot since the very beginning and in India for a long time. It’s surprising that we have no trace of him.’ Sonia had crosschecked the phone numbers, the email addresses, and even the location references for this person, but nothing matched anything in the internal records.

  Amjad guessed the detonator to be, most likely, one of Azghar’s close aides or a youth raised by Azghar himself or his men. The detonator belonged to the inner circle. They had come across a similar individual, Zowoski Kiraja, who had turned out to be a relative of an Evil Seven member. The Indians had him in custody now.

  ‘The detonator’s a dead-end. We better find the three fedayeen. They’re our best bet,’ Akram reiterated.

  This time Amjad chose to keep quiet.

  ‘What do you have on the three-member team?’ Abhimanyu asked.

  ‘A lot more. A certain Rupesh Khamba, an ex-Indian Army commando, leads this team. He went missing after a court martial found him guilty of taking bribes from terrorists to release some of them in the guise of an ambush. We think the very same terrorist organization recruited him for Cortex soon after the court martial. References on the hard disk tag him to the same Lashkar.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘None. No liabilities. Money is the main driver. A ten million dollar transfer against his bank account in Mauritius is recorded in the hard disk.’ That was enough to incriminate him but they needed more than that now.

  ‘What about the other two?’

  ‘Czech-based Akhlaq and Iran-based Jahangir are his helpers.’ She toggled to their photos. ‘They’ve been active in Syria while transporting fissile material across North Korea and Pakistan for at least the last decade or so.’ Sonia toggled back to the fedayeen’s route. ‘Based on our chronology of events, they should be somewhere in Assam already.’

  Amjad studied the map and rushed to the nearest desktop. It was uncharacteristic of him, but it was clear he had chanced upon something. He logged into his account. Amjad opened the daily review file from his mail. Suspicious movement reported in Sandakphu national park. ‘The local army intelligence spotted it, and it came up in my daily dossier. I thought it must be the deed of notorious smugglers, but its huge size still intrigued me. So I had it tagged anyway.’ Amjad called the IB Chief, Prem Galwaokar, who was in Delhi market lanes on a mission. ‘The tag in Assam …’

  ‘Yes, what about it?’

  ‘It’s hot.’

  Prem got off the market lane and found a place where he was alone. ‘The wildlife and thick forest cover is making our lives difficult, but we have activated our local intelligence network. There are a couple of photos.’ Prem covere
d his head with a towel. The IB Chief couldn’t be seen in the Delhi locales in such shabby clothes. The IB Chief forwarded a mail from his pad to Amjad. ‘Some big vehicles, unusual on those roads.’

  Amjad projected it on the screen, and Sonia recognized it at the first glance. ‘It’s an armored vehicle, similar to the one described in the disk.’ A miniaturized nuke was three to four tons in weight, and with the support equipment would weigh seven to eight tons. Sonia deduced, a ten-tonner was an ideal size.

  Amjad traced the coordinates on the map where the IB sleuths had spotted the ten-tonner. The truck had consistently been moving eastward. ‘They’re headed to Guwahati.’ It was the largest Indian city in the Northeast.

  A gloomy silence befell the room, for a city of a million Indians was about to be reduced to a rubble.

  Amjad sensed the mood and stood to calm their nerves. ‘For the first time in this mission, we are ahead of them. They’ll take another day to drive to Guwahati. We can intercept them well before they reach Guwahati.’ Abhimanyu knew the next challenge. ‘It’ll be a disaster even if they accidentally detonate it. We must intercept them without giving them a chance to detonate it, like Chennai.’

  ‘Kill them before they realize we’re on to them and diffuse the nuke. If we can’t, we airlift it to the bay,’ Akram added.

  Sonia’s team had put them ahead, but it would only hold on for a while.

  ‘It’s a go,’ Amjad said without batting an eyelid.

  Amidst all of it, they still had no idea where the detonator would actually meet them. They had to act before they lost the edge, before the detonator met the terrorists.

  Abhimanyu eyed the IB Chief, Prem. ‘We’re flying to Guwahati. Assuming we have the truck’s coordinates by the time we land in Guwahati, we’ll need an MI-35 M-class to intercept them.’ The M-class was fitted with powerful noise silencers and advanced avionics, adept for discreet night missions. Abhimanyu knew each of them inside out. ‘I’ll need the copter number eleven of Agni Squadron. ‘

  The IB Chief had heard about Abhimanyu’s penchant for flying but was still pleasantly surprised at the specificity of his request. He regarded Amjad; the chief was impressed.