by M J Anand
Abhimanyu and Abhishek moved toward the tanker. They had to retire the sentry first. Abhimanyu removed the chloroform spray from his tracks, sprayed it on a few tissues from his side pocket and signaled Abhishek to be ready to shoot with a silencer if needed.
It wasn’t needed. The spotter was looking through his binoculars to the area where their chopper had landed.
Abhimanyu wondered what had exactly attracted his attention toward the chopper. He moved in quickly from the dark right and incapacitated him.
The spotter was unconscious within seconds and fell down the edge of the knife. His throat was slit without a whisper.
Abhimanyu used his binoculars to look for himself. He was surprised to see three people approximately a hundred meters from the helicopter. They could just be the local police or villagers, but it made him anxious.
Meanwhile, Akram and Shikhar had reached their spot, and they couldn’t hide there for long. They did not have much time, and the window to take a clear shot would be lost if they were discovered.
Abhimanyu signaled the others to be aware of the movement around the helicopter and took his position next to the tanker. The MARCOS were all set. Abhimanyu focused on the nuke through his rifle’s scope and waited for an opening. This could finally be it—the end of a mission that nearly got them captured in New York, killed across the Rajasthan border, and still had him with his family on the line. The only other question was, where was Sasha?
A shot thundered through the door, interrupting his thoughts. The man next to the nuke was down. Terrorists ran toward their semi-automatics. Some randomly shot with handguns. This was it. The MARCOS had taken the terrorists by surprise, and they didn’t know where the shot had come from.
Akram took aim and fired his automatic rifle at three hundred rounds per minute. The ten-millimeter rounds could pierce the walls and still hit the targets.
Shikhar took position about twenty meters from Akram, where he had a clear sight of both the windows and the back door. Shikhar picked off anyone who exited this door and window one at a time.
Finally, Akram could count eight dead terrorists in the hut—five kills to him and the rest to Shikhar as they had tried to escape. The hut was silenced without movement or noise for several seconds.
Akram signaled to Abhimanyu, and he took the run to the hut. Bodies laid around in a pool of blood. Two of them were wired with suicide vests. They couldn’t have risked it near the nuke anyway. It was their exit plan. Taken by surprise, they had no time to act.
Abhimanyu checked the corners, dark spots, and other usual hiding spots. It was all clear. Then he heard some movement from the second hut and immediately signaled to the others.
Shikhar signaled back with his palm over the left eye, rifle in the right. He had his eyes on the movement. He could see more people inside the safehouse.
Akram turned to his right to guard the hut from that end, and Abhishek guarded the entry point to the area.
They had the hut surrounded, and Abhimanyu had to quickly deactivate the nuke inside. All the effort put into infiltrating Pakistan to get Khalid and the hard disk had prepared them for this moment. If the retina scan and fingerprints matched, it shouldn’t take time. He patched in the control room with his tab and attached it to the nuke’s explosive discharge circuitry.
Sonia took control from here. She was on it in a flash as Amjad watched over her in the Guwahati control room.
He was anxious for the crack team to leave the area and still nervous about Sasha’s whereabouts. He knew he would soon have to go all in with Abhimanyu’s team. The drones had just reached the area, and Amjad had the visuals now. The huts were visible, thanks to the lights, but Amjad thought he saw some movement near the helicopters. It was impossible to see anything in this darkness without a local source of light. They could only see dark shadows perhaps interacting with the pilot and the commandos. Amjad got curious. ‘Can you connect us to the chopper?’
‘Coms are down. I don’t know why.’
A technical glitch was highly unlikely for a fully serviced MI-35M. They could be just locals, but he needed more confirmation to have a closure on it as soon as possible.
Akram saw some movement inside the hut and soon heard a shot.
Shikhar, who had the direct view of the second hut, had been shot in head. It looked like a sniper shot from the hut.
‘Man down. I repeat, man down.’ Akram broke radio silence and unloaded his Negev recoilless automatic light machinegun with enough firepower to penetrate the hut walls and drag out whoever was inside. Shadows moved in a frenzy inside the hut, and he just followed them till it came to a halt. Amjad had fired more than a hundred bullets in those thirty seconds. He saw two men exiting slowly with their hands raised. The night fog made it difficult to have a clear view of their faces outside the hut light.
‘Stop!’ Abhimanyu roared.
Another slender figure emerged from hut with raised hands. The three of them kneeled with hands still up.
Akram had to see their faces. Abhimanyu gave him the cover while he carefully approached them. The Negev automatic was back on his shoulders, and the semi-automatic Glock 19 and Glock 26 pistols were in both hands, pointed at the three of them. ‘Keep your heads down. Hands in the air or I’ll shoot through your heads. Bury you into the ground right here.’
Abhimanyu quickly moved into the hut with the nuke, leaving Abhishek behind to cover Akram.
In the control room, people could only watch the flashes of firing near the huts. They had their heart in their mouth. A naked nuke lay right there.
Akram spoke into the coms, slowly, ‘How much more time you need to deactivate it?’
‘Five minutes.’
‘Make it quick. We don’t know how many more of them are here.’
‘Certainly many more than we thought.’ Abhimanyu was nervous, but he refocused on securing the nuke.
Amjad and Arup watched Sonia in despair as she worked on the code to break the encryption and gain access. An entire team at the Tunnel was helping her with it.
Thanks to the fog, the terrorists’ faces were still not visible.
Akram walked closer to the hostages but maintained a distance of ten meters. The margins were very thin here. Abhishek gave him cover, but he was stretched by the double task of protecting him and keeping a lookout at the entrance as well. It was hard to verify their identities through the cameras in Abhishek’s rifle scopes, as he was quite far. The drones wouldn’t give a clear picture to the control room either. Thankfully, the Glock 26 came with a low-caliber camera retrofitted for face recognition.
Even though Amjad couldn’t see their faces, the camera picked up enough once Akram pointed it toward each of them. The feed went to their night vision cameras and the command center. The first man, Mou-ul-Ghir, was a terrorist who had been captured a year ago in Assam. But he had escaped a few months ago from the central prison in Guwahati. The second was Rouhani Aslam, known to be active in Afghanistan till last year. These were amongst the most infamous terrorists known to the intelligence agencies clearly handpicked for this mission. However, the system didn’t turn up anything for the third one.
Akram moved closer to look at him. It was not a him; it was a her. ‘Third suspect is a woman,’ he said into the coms and faced her. ‘Show me your face!’ Akram’s Glock 19 was still aimed at the other two terrorists while his Glock 26 trained at her head.
The female’s hand moved behind her in a sharp movement.
Akram was alarmed. ‘Don’t move your hand!’
Her hand stopped by the waist.
‘Show me your face, or I’ll shoot you! Now!’ he shouted with extreme aggression.
When she looked up, Akram couldn’t believe what he saw. It was a face he knew too well. It was a face Abhimanyu knew too well. It was a face Amjad knew too well. They didn’t need to run an ID on it. It was one of their own—Sasha.
Akram was taken aback, and the command center had a pin-drop silence.
Akram pulled himself together. ‘Sasha, is that you? Are you a hostage?’
Sasha unsheathed a knife from her waist and stabbed Akram.
Akram couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
Seizing the moment, Mou took Akram’s Glock 19, pointed it at his face and shot Akram through his head.
‘I was a hostage. Now I’m free.’
Rouhani took Akram’s automatic gun along with his bandoleer, which still had at least a hundred bullets left—good enough for one strong burst.
The two men rose and ran toward the hut.
Amjad couldn’t see much but had heard enough. A teary-eyed Amjad tried to put everything into perspective as quickly as he could. While still coming to terms with everything he had heard, Amjad shouted, ‘Abhimanyu, incoming! Code red! I repeat, code red!’ Sasha had killed Akram. She was not a hostage. She was with the terrorists. Only time would answer why. For now, he had to get out of this situation.
Abhishek ran toward Abhimanyu and took position just as Mou and Rouhani entered the hut.
‘How much more time?’ Amjad asked Sonia.
Sonia gathered herself even as tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Almost there. Thirty seconds more.’
Meanwhile, Abhimanyu was solely focused on vacuum wrapping the bomb after connecting the pads. With bullets flying around, it would prevent the bomb from any external damage. Unaware of what had transpired outside, Abhimanyu only came to his senses when he heard Amjad calling a code red. That was unlike Amjad’s calm demeanor. Something had snapped. Abhimanyu turned and heard footsteps rushing toward him—obviously not friends. His job with the bomb was done. He had to protect it now. He unholstered his Beretta 92FS automatic pistol and Glock 26 in other hand. ‘Akram, Abhishek, cover me.’ Abhimanyu shot at the moving figures as they passed across the window. They were fast; he missed. Abhimanyu was surprised and prepared for them to turn up at the door, but they didn’t.
‘Automatic fire, coming your away.’ Abhishek tried to give him a heads up.
Rouhani fired at Abhishek and pinned him to his spot. He couldn’t look up again.
Before Abhimanyu could react, Mou shot with Akram’s Negev through the walls. With such heavy incoming fire, Abhimanyu pulled back behind a pillar. Mou kept firing till he ran out of bullets.
‘Damn it, Abhishek. What are you doing? Where are you, Akram? I need support. These guys have gone mad. They’re shooting at a live nuke inside.’ Abhimanyu barely saved himself but was taken aback by terrorist’s firepower. A bullet shell landed next to him, dead from the recoil from the wall. He picked it up and realized it was a MARCOS bullet.
‘Listen carefully, Abhimanyu. Akram is down. I repeat, Akram is down,’ Amjad said again.
Abhimanyu inspected the bullet again and recognized it from Akram’s IMI Negev. At first, he was hurt. Then he was angry. How could they have gotten the better of AKram? Abhimanyu noticed that even with the Negev, the terrorists hadn’t fired anywhere close to the nuke. They were very well trained indeed.
Mou fired again with his own Ak-56.
Abhimanyu was now furious. He pulled his M4A1 assault rifle from his shoulder and fired back.
Rouhani and Mou retreated due to the heavy fire, giving Abhishek an opportunity to move out of his pit again.
He sniped at them, but they were good; they moved behind the trees in no time. Abhimanyu was at the door and out for vengeance. He fired at the trees, but the terrorists were moving fast.
Abhishek kept sniping at every opportunity but to no avail.
Finally, Abhimanyu ran out of magazine clips and took cover behind the wall.
Once Abhishek ran out of his load, a grave silence engulfed the encounter site.
With no incoming fire, the terrorists unloaded, breaking the silence—but not at both of them, only at Abhishek. They had to take out the sniper.
Abhimanyu was, by now, not surprised by their awareness. These were hard-trained militias, probably as well trained as themselves. If not for the initial ambush, the four of them stood no chance against these men. The surprise had made all the difference.
‘I’m hit,’ Abhishek said into the coms after a bullet grazed his right shoulder.
Abhimanyu realized the situation was dire. ‘Put on the masks.’ He removed the alpha-grade tranquilizer and rolled it toward the two of them.
Both the terrorists jumped away from the can, but it wasn’t a bomb.
Abhishek shot the can, and, in no time, there was a pin-drop silence. One can had enough to sleep induce an entire village.
‘You’ll have a lot of cleanup to do,’ Abhimanyu said.
Amjad didn’t respond, for he had bigger concerns.
‘It’s done.’ Sonia looked at Amjad. They had deactivated the circuitry. Now they just needed to take it to a safe place. But it was impossible for just Abhimanyu and Abhishek to carry it all the way to the helicopter. The backup was only a few minutes away.
Amjad considered the possibilities. The bomb was dead, terrorists were killed, but a wild card was still out in the open—Sasha. It was dangerous for them to stay there. His prime concern now was to get his men out alive. ‘Air wrap the bomb with concrete and move out of there now.’
Abhimanyu retrieved a seemingly innocuous white bag. The bag was bulletproof, not that anyone would risk firing bullets on a nuke. More importantly, no one could move it once settled. Abhimanyu air wrapped the nuke with four holes into the concrete, one at each corner, while Abhishek kept a lookout; he knew a third terrorist was still missing. ‘Any ID on the woman?’ Abhimanyu asked.
Sonia and Arup eyed Amjad. Should they or should they not tell him? ‘No, not yet.’ They had achieved the mission’s objective, and Amjad’s main focus was to just get them out safely now. The backups would deal with Sasha later. She couldn’t escape from these jungles anyway.
With all set, Abhimanyu moved backward and entered a code on his pad. The film straightened, held at the corners. Even a tank couldn’t move the rigid wall that had erected. The mission was a success, but Abhimanyu felt dejected, for he had lost a comrade.
‘Let’s move. Quick,’ Abhishek said nervously.
‘Wait.’ Abhimanyu approached the trees where Mou and Rouhani lay unconscious. He unholstered his Glock and fired a shot into their foreheads without remorse.
‘Abhimanyu, evidence?’ Abhishek asked with his coms off.
‘I don’t care. We have two less scoundrels in this world.’ The emotions had gotten the better of him. ‘But, where’s the third one?’
Abhishek shrugged. ‘Maybe … escaped toward the hills.’
‘She won’t go far.’ Abhimanyu knew a cavalry was coming her way.
‘Okay, let’s move,’ Amjad said again.
Abhimanyu and Abhishek approached the helicopter through the haze of a chloroform derivative.
‘Keep your head in. Just a few more minutes,’ Amjad cautioned them without sharing the details yet. What was Sasha scheming? Where had she disappeared? The nuke was dead and diffused. She would be trying to escape. However, she probably knew she couldn’t stay hidden in the valley for long. Neither could she outsmart the hordes of search parties who’ll blanket the hills to hunt her down. How would she escape?
They approached the helicopter unaware of the threat looming in the open. But, as they got closer, an eerie silence greeted them. The third army commando—the spotter—was missing. Weirdly enough, the copter’s taxi lights were also off.
Abhimanyu stealthily walked up to the copter from the side with his M4A1 aimed at it.
Abhishek approached it from the rear. To his shock, the pilots were dead. The pilots’ bodies were stacked up in the back seat, but someone remained in the pilot’s seat. Abhishek signaled to Abhimanyu with a neck cut that the pilots were dead and, with the left hand over his left eye, signaling someone else was inside.
In an instant, Abhimanyu swit
ched to his Glock in the right and a grenade in the left hand. ‘Who’s in there?’ Abhimanyu shouted with his guns pointed at the back of the pilot’s seat.
It was a woman; perhaps the same one from the huts, he thought. She turned around. A known face. His first expression was of happiness, a smile. Then confusion. Was she a hostage? Was she running away? Was she forced? Whatever it was, she was alive. He smiled at her, watching the bloodstained knife in her hands. So, that’s how she saved herself, he thought.
‘Yes, it’s me.’ Sasha discarded the knife toward the dead pilots and produced a gun.
Abhimanyu’s eyes followed the knife and then the wound on the pilots chest. They had been killed by the same knife. He realized she had perhaps killed the pilots. It was too late.
Sasha pulled the trigger. ‘Sorry, honey,’ she said as he fell to the edge of the helicopter.
He tried to stand. ‘Why?’.
She shot again.
Abhimanyu went silent.
She took out Abhimanyu’s tab.
Amjad couldn’t see much, but the sound was clear through the coms. The command center had plunged into deeper despair now. The mission was still extracting expensive sacrifice, one at a time. ‘Abhishek, hold back. Hide!’
‘But—’
‘Do as I say. Take cover and make sure you have a clear shot at the chopper. The reinforcements will arrive shortly. You need to hold her from flying out till then.’
Abhishek moved from the back side of the helicopter. Thankfully, the helicopter between them covered him.
Amjad had grasped Sasha’s escape plan. ‘If she does, we’ll lose her forever. It’s very hard for even the best of the radars to track that stealth machine in those hills, and we must assume she knows how to fly it by now.’
Abhishek searched for a vantage point. He crawled back and slowly climbed a rock about thirty meters from the chopper. He prepared his suppressed sniper rifle—a VSS Vintorez—and aimed for the rotors.
