Your spine tingled as adrenaline shot up and down, energized your body, giving you renewed strength and vigor making you capable of almost superhuman feats that included but was not limited to mothers throwing cars off their children. Your senses came on ultra-alert and you were superhuman for the few seconds it took for you to do the impossible.
The instructor had called this the Moment of Absolute Clarity.
Krivi’s adrenalin worked the other way around.
When he needed to make the hard choices, like getting into a bomb suit, his heart rate slowed down to well below the prescribed resting rate. His vision didn’t get sharper; it just narrowed to the next step, just the next step in front of him. He didn’t catalog the big picture or his surroundings and his hand was steady as a rock.
He was all purpose, all mission. And nothing else.
He clipped on the comm unit and spoke into it, “Alpha Two, this is Alpha One. Radio check.”
“Read loud and clear, Alpha One.”
He flipped on the protective webbing that covered almost the whole helmet and slowly, painstakingly, walked forward. A hulk of a man wearing five hundred pounds of body armor that would do him no good if the explosive he was going to disarm was disturbed in the wrong way.
The child’s branded backpack was red, with three zippers. And two of them were open. A small iron cylinder peeked out of the last opening.
The IED.
There was a steel pin on the mouth of the cylinder that he would have to carefully remove, without disturbing the integrity of the explosives inside or setting off the fuse. He got down on his knees, pliers at the ready.
And gently, as if he was handling the most exquisite woman, lifted the firing pin out. A tangle of wires came out with it, and all he heard was his own breathing. Measured, steady, calm as if he was meditating. Which he supposed in a way, he was.
He peered inside and saw the C4, three stacks of them all lined up inside like swaddled babies. Beneath it, he saw the shrapnel apparatus. Razor blades.
Krivi sucked in a breath and murmured into the comm unit, “Clear out all unnecessary personnel, right now. This is dangerous.”
“What have you found, Alpha One?”
“Razor blades as shrapnel. Enough C4 to level this place right up to the parking lot. And a fuse that I am going to need some time to figure out, because I have to switch off the power supply first. Clear everyone out, pronto.”
He was inspecting the outside zipper pocket where a tiny black device jutted out. It looked like a remote control but with the parts all exposed, so there was just a jumble of wires and circuits.
Krivi removed the heavy protection-lined gloves and threw them on the ground. He continued probing the circuits, trying to find the one that would lead him to the battery, Nife cells that he could see stuck on to the side of the remote.
He tried to visually trace the wire out, but he couldn’t, so he again stuck his fingers inside the mess and murmured into the comm-link, “Hope the area is cleared, boys.”
“BDS is en route. ETA five minutes.”
“Awesome.”
Krivi continued inching his way into the tangle of wires until he found the one he was looking for. Delicately, with the precision of a surgeon, he stripped the insulation and looked at the tungsten length inside. It would burn inside of a second with the proper spark. He touched the wire end that was attached to the Nife cells and gently shook it.
When nothing happened, he decided to brave the fates again and yanked the cells out of the remote, along with the tungsten length.
Still nothing happened.
Then, he set the power source aside and turned his attention to the bomb.
He’d disconnected the initiator firing pin but the main fuse still needed to be clipped off.
He looked critically at the wires attached to the steel pin and began running his hands over each of them. Finally, he struck gold with the fourth one which led into the cylinder, and he reached inside, his palm hitting the C4 bundles.
His heart thudded once, hard.
He reached and yanked the wire away from the C4 and it came out easily.
Krivi looked at the length of det cord in his hand and let it dangle in mid-air.
“Alpha two,” he said clearly into the microphone at his mouth. “Hot load defused. I repeat hot load defused.”
For extra measure, he took his palm out and smashed the power source into tiny pieces and watched the tungsten wire embed itself into the gravel.
Then he stood up, his legs creaking under the weight of Kevlar, rubber and his own aching bones. Reaction.
~~~~~
Immediately, three Army personnel rushed to his side and began to cut into the backpack itself and get to the explosive inside, exclaiming over the amount of shrapnel that would have destroyed any living thing to shreds if the bomb had exploded.
Krivi backed off, his footsteps leaden.
A hard hand clamped on his shoulder and he turned around slowly, hampered by the suit.
Sam’s grateful, but clear eyes stared back at him. He tapped on the visor of the helmet.
Krivi pulled it off. Sweat from his hair and temples dripped down his nose and he let the helmet dangle on his side. He started ripping the suit apart.
“Thank you. Just…thank you.”
“Are they gone? The both of them?” Ziya. He couldn’t believe that she was the first thing he wanted to ask about and it was disquieting.
“No. They’re sitting in the car, waiting for you. They’re…stressed.”
“Okay.” Krivi nodded, brushing a hand through his soaked hair. Sam smiled, slightly. “You were cool in there. Glacier cool. Done this before, haven’t you?”
Krivi nodded. “Done everything twice, Major. Can you do me a favor?”
“Name it.” The offer was instant, sincere.
“Take Noor back to the hotel with you, all right? One hysterical woman I can handle…but two’s a little out of my league.”
Sam grinned, which was a little ridiculous under the circumstances. But he nodded and matched his steps with that of Krivi’s.
“You’re afraid of two women? You, who just saved us all from certain death?”
He didn’t answer. Just shrugged off the sweltering hot suit and quietly wished for an icy cold waterfall he could just drown himself in. The temperature was now a cool fifteen degrees and he was sweating like a pig. And, he was pretty sure, underneath the jacket he smelled like one.
Dirt and sweat and fear.
They reached the edge of the parking lot and Noor shrieked as she caught sight of the two men.
Sam sighed and said, “Yep. You get the other one, soldier.”
He ran forward to intercept Noor who was crying and babbling, her floor-duster kicking up little circles of dust as she sprinted towards them.
Ziya, Krivi saw, was just walking with slow, measured steps towards them. Her eyes were level with his. They revealed nothing, but were pure luminescence. Quicksilver, glowing, like the sunny streaks in her pixie hair.
And, for a second, he wanted to find the same warmth in them that she gave everyone else.
Sam was half-supporting Noor to his own Jeep, who didn’t even bother to turn around and acknowledge the hero of the hour. All of her attention was focused on the man holding her.
Ziya reached Krivi, her hands firmly inside the pockets of her blazer, which she’d buttoned up in defense of the weather.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey,” he said.
“You didn’t blow us all up.”
“No,” he agreed. Lighting the one cigarette he carried in his pant pocket, with a match. “I didn’t.” He drew smoke in.
Ziya stared at the burning paper and tobacco and stated, “You don’t smoke.”
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t. Can we drive back now? I am in desperate need of a shower.”
Her lovely lips pursed as if she wanted to make an acerbic comment. But she only nodded at the cigarette.
“Finish that before coming in. I won’t have the car smelling of filthy tobacco.”
Ziya turned around and started walking back and Krivi couldn’t help it. He watched her straight back and bent head and started to smile. Really smile. Infinitely glad to be alive, just so he could make her eyes flare up at him again.
He threw the butt on the ground and crushed it under his boot heel and walked forward. Leaving the bomb suit where it was. Lying on the ground next to his half-smoked cigarette.
Eight
One of Wood’s earliest memories, were of catching stray chickens at the farm in Maryland and eating the eggs raw, after stealing them from underneath the big fat mama hens. The eggs tasted succulent for a child of five who had learned to sleep in barns with the other animals.
Foster care had not been much help in Wood’s case, with that monster of a father playing the charming cop when they showed up and beating the shit out of Wood’s younger brother when he got drunk and mean. Mama had split after the brother’s birth and Dad had taken it out of Wood and the brother’s hide.
Wood had learned early on to stay out of the big man’s way and not make any noise.
It was the reason why Wood had not said a word till age four.
The pre-school people were all astonished when Wood actually spoke because they were convinced the child was mute, a psychosomatic disorder of some sort that no one could cure. But, Wood spoke and that changed everything.
One night, when the father was whaling on the brother who never woke up from that beating, Wood called the cops and watched, hiding in the barn with just a one-eyed cat for company, holding it so hard it was yelping long before the cop cars came and took the entire family away.
Wood ran into the woods that night terrified that father would come back and beat the life out of Wood too.
But, no, Wood had not gotten far.
Another man had followed Wood into the woods surrounding the pretty farmhouse in Chesapeake, Maryland.
That man had been kind and spoken in a calm voice and had the kindest eyes Wood had ever seen.
That man had given Wood a Snickers bar and a tissue to wrap it in when Wood had only eaten half of it, sitting under the oak tree where Wood had tripped and fallen… and was crying inconsolably when the man turned up.
That man had taken Wood to a nice clean bed in a strange motel and asked Wood seriously, whether this family, Wood’s family, was what Wood wanted.
Wood had answered instantaneously, No.
The man had asked if Wood wanted a different family, with only, say a Dad and no one else. But an exciting fun life, filled with adventure and faraway places, with trips and no school if that was what Wood wanted.
And Wood had answered as instantaneously. Yes.
The man had offered his hand to be shaken by a small, malnourished five-year old’s. He’d called himself Tom Jones.
Wood had called him Dad since that day.
~~~~~
“Henry David Thoreau made a very famous observation. Something about quiet desperation. And all men.”
The Woodpecker smiled and bent the thumb of the blindfolded man sitting in front, back all the way. The man screamed; a high-pitched keening wail. He clutched his ruined thumb and whimpered; snot and tears running unchecked down his face.
“Pity,” Wood said. “I thought you’d be like all men.”
The man wept openly.
“Please, please,” he whispered, shrinking into himself. Hunching his shoulders, trying to occupy as little space as possible. “Please, I am sorry. I won’t mess up the order again. I won't.”
Wood came forward with a cigar trimmer. An unlit cigar was clamped to the terrorist’s lips.
The room in which the young man, the pizza boy, was tied in was large. Airy. It had plenty of natural light and white curtains. A huge white bed sat on a raised dais with fluffy curtains on the four-posts shielding it. The sheets were made with military corners because Wood didn’t allow anyone to touch them.
The Woodpecker was odd like that.
The pizza boy, Hank, was still dully crying, holding his broken hand to his heart, his thin shoulders moving with the force of his sobs. Blood poured in a thick trickle down the lower part of his face, and there was a gap where Hank’s nose had been.
The Woodpecker moved forward and yanked the thin blond head back in a sharp, painful movement, “If you don’t stop crying, I will reach down and yank your voice box out. You understand?
Hank cried harder, beyond mere fear now.
“Why don’t people do their jobs well, Hank?” Wood asked.
Hank didn’t answer, he was too busy weeping.
“I wanted pizza, you know,” Wood ruminated. “An American specialty, even though it originated in Italy in the nineteenth century. I even specified very clearly, when they asked me that I wanted half and half. Chicken and pineapple on one side for the carbs and olives and sundried tomatoes on the other. No peppers, because they mess up my sleep. I stated it, Hank. So clearly.”
“I…I’m sorry for delivering the wrong pizza. I really am. I really am.” Hank started sobbing louder now, his wails echoing off the white walls of the sunny bedroom with the white bed.
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”
The Woodpecker smiled and leaned forward on the table. The blade of the cigar trimmer flashed unholy silver as the terrorist clipped off the butt and it fell down on the carpeted floor in a rush of leaf and tobacco. The acrid scent of nicotine permeated the air around them.
Hank’s already fearful, hysterical, ruined face took on epic proportions of roundness as he smelled the nicotine and heard the methodic way with which The Woodpecker handled the knife.
“Why would I kill you, Hank?” Wood smiled. “I am not an unreasonable person. I just want a little respect. People should respect each other, don’t you think?”
Hank nodded, desperately, like a bobble-head. “Yes, yes. Yes!”
“Good. So you agree that we should be respectful towards one another.”
“Yes. Hell, yes!”
“Then why did you not show me any respect, Hank?” Wood asked, sorrowfully. “Why did you call me all those awful, awful names and said that I could take the pizza if I wanted or I could just eat dirt and die.”
Hank’s eyes, never clear, started streaming again.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I won’t ever do it again. I won’t say anything to anyone. Just let me go. Please, let me go. PLEASE!” He screamed in the end.
The Woodpecker frowned. “Don’t shout; it’s not polite. I can’t let you—"
The door to the massive bedroom opened and a tall man with piercing silver eyes and greying hair strode in. He was dressed in a conservative three-piece suit and he had a classically handsome face. A face that people would remember if only because of those remote eyes.
The man was Tom Jones. The Woodpecker’s father, for all intents and purposes.
He looked with mild distaste at Hank’s wasted form and then with censure at The Woodpecker who was chewing on the butt of the cigar instead of lighting it.
Something like defiance gleamed in those cold, dead eyes.
~~~~
“You’ve made a mess over dinner,” he observed mildly.
“He brought me the wrong pizza,” Wood said indignantly. “I asked for half and half Hawaiian and Farmhouse Special. He gave my order to somebody else.”
Tom untied Hank’s legs, wrinkling his nose at the distinct smell of urine emanating from the boy’s pants. They all wet themselves in Wood’s presence. He just couldn’t understand how to make it stop.
After he was done, he straightened and looked coldly at his kid.
“This is a seven star hotel. You cannot stuff a body down the trash chute here.”
The Woodpecker smiled sweetly. “I was going to burn him and then flush his remains down the toilet.”
Hank screamed again, terrified beyond anything. An inhuman sound.
Tom Jone
s reached behind and clipped him once on the jaw. A hard punch. Hank’s head lolled onto his shoulder, his lower lip bleeding slightly, as he finally, mercifully fainted.
“Send the boy back, Woodie. Please.”
The terrorist nodded and came to stand next to Tom. Tom put a comforting arm around Wood’s shoulder; who leaned into the embrace with an ease that was natural. Tom Jones was the only person in the whole world The Woodpecker trusted.
Tom squeezed Wood’s shoulder, a fatherly gesture.
Wood sighed. An incongruous sound, given the bloodied boy tied at their feet.
“I want pizza, Dad,” the terrorist said, sounding so alarmingly like a teenager. Another incongruity.
“Let Hank go. I’ll get you your favorite,” Tom promised.
Wood smiled and nodded.
“Okay, Dad. If you say so.”
And with that, Wood went to dispose of his handiwork in a more conventional fashion.
Nine
“And then, Krivi just picked Zee up and put her back down about two feet away without breaking a sweat, Dada,” Noor narrated. “Ziya was spitting mad, I could practically see the steam coming out of her ears, but you know how she is?”
Noor paused only to shove a bite of crisp naan in, before picking up her story again.
“All ice-queen and icy eyes. So, she pulled that routine with Rambo here.” She grinned at the silent, hulking man who was calmly eating the food on the table as if just forty-eight hours ago; he hadn’t defused a dangerous piece of explosive.
They had all, Sam included, decided to brave the night and come back home to Goonj rather than hang around Pehelgam and wait for morning light.
So, Noor had slept on Sam’s shoulder while Ziya had scrunched herself against the passenger window and Krivi had driven them back. Not even fazed by the prospect of a hard ride after the day he’d had.
Ziya concluded then and there that the man was not just superhuman, which he undoubtedly was, but that there was…little of the human in him.
Rest, food, sleep, these things didn’t matter to him at all.
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