by Deva, Mukul
‘Oh, it’s really very simple. At 0945 hours sharp, I’ll send a group text message to all four mobile phones. That will trigger off the explosions.’
‘But what good will that do?’ Imtiaz protested. ‘We’re using low-grade bombs and there’s no shrapnel in them. There will be hardly any casualties.’
‘Patience, miyan,’ Asif said with a broad smile. ‘They are not meant to cause casualties. The explosions will simply drive people in a rush towards the church gates. In the ensuing panic, there will be a stampede and not only will some more people get hurt, but the gates will get blocked. While they’re trying to get people moving away from the church, just a few minutes after the first explosion, I’ll send out the second text message and the bombs planted in the vans will go off. These are RDX-based and there’s enough masala in them to take out half the parking lot.’
Iqbal felt himself go very still as he realized he had been outwitted. Screwing up the tree bombs would minimize casualties but not by much.
Through the haze enveloping him, Iqbal heard Imtiaz ask, ‘What if the tree is still in the van? Won’t that...’
‘That’s why you must let me know if you haven’t been able to get the tree into the church. In that case, I’ll simply activate the bomb in the van directly. Even that will be more than enough...’
The rest of the conversation was lost on Iqbal as he tried frantically to think ahead.
Khalid’s target is obviously a church in Punjabi Bagh since he is carrying a Christmas tree bomb too, so that shouldn’t be too hard to find. How many churches can there be in Punjabi Bagh? And it can’t be far from where we parked yesterday, since they were only gone a few minutes.
Iqbal visualized the route they had taken and the place where they had parked the van. The Punjabi Bagh Club signboard was sharp in his memory. He was confident he could guide people there easily. But Asif’s target remained a mystery to him.
‘Come on, Iqbal! Where are you?’ He came to with a start as Imtiaz thumped him on the back. ‘Let’s go.’
‘I was... I was just trying to figure out if there’s some other way to get the tree into the church,’ he said, trying desperately to deflect the attention from himself.
‘And?’ Asif was watching him closely.
‘No! Nothing!’ Iqbal shook his head lamely. ‘I think you’ve pretty much covered all the possibilities.’
‘Fine.’ Asif gave a satisfied smirk. ‘Let’s get moving then.’ A flurry of activity ensued as the four men selected their costumes, divided up and loaded their materials into the four vans parked outside. At precisely 0732 hours, the first man, Khalid, kicked off since he had the farthest to go. Iqbal went next, a few minutes later.
Accelerating out of the narrow Mohammedpur lane, Iqbal turned left on the main road and headed straight down Africa Avenue. After crossing Ring Road he would go past the old Chanakya theatre till he hit the T-junction at Ashoka Hotel. There he would swing right and continue straight ahead to Sansad Marg after crossing Race Course Road. As it was a holiday, the traffic was reasonably light and Iqbal made it in very good time. Even the traffic light at the Ring Road intersection was green, saving him a precious couple of minutes.
As soon as he had crossed the red light, he moved over to the kerb and brought the van to a halt. He climbed into the back and hauled out the mobile phone from the base of the tree. His fingers were trembling as he removed the cover, reversed the SIM card and powered up the phone again. He began to dial Anbu’s number.
You do not have sufficient balance to make this call, an impersonal voice informed him. Cursing, he threw down the phone on the co-passenger’s seat and drove off again. He would have to find a phone somehow.
He was driving past the Chanakya complex when he spotted the familiar colours of a black and yellow ISD-STD signboard; it stood out prominently amidst the bilingual signboards on which Russian and English showed up with equal prominence. Taking a hard left, he pulled into the Yeshwant Place parking lot. Throwing a ten-rupee note at the parking attendant, Iqbal ran towards the telephone booth.
It was not open.
Iqbal raced back towards the parking lot like a madman.
‘You have a mobile?’ he asked the attendant. The man nodded; these days, everyone had one.
‘Can I borrow it for one minute? Please! It’s an emergency. I can pay you.’ Iqbal reached for his wallet with shaking fingers, his chest heaving not so much from the exertion as from the rapidly escalating stress.
‘You can, but I don’t have any balance on my phone.’ The man pulled out his phone and held it up. ‘But maybe he has.’ He pointed at his assistant, who was hovering at the other end of the parking lot. ‘Oye, you have balance on your mobile? He has an emergency.’ He jerked his thumb at Iqbal.
‘Haan, I do, but very little.’ The man strolled up towards them casually and pulled out a mobile phone from his pocket.
‘It will do. I just need it for one second.’ Iqbal’s hands were shaking as he stuffed some money into the man’s hands, grabbed the mobile from him and dialled Anbu’s number.
Ring! Ring! Come on, damn it! Hurry up!
It was precisely 0803 hours when the phone began to ring and Anbu, who had been restlessly pacing the floor of the ATTF Ops Room, answered.
‘Iqbal! Where are you? We’ve been trying to...’
‘Sir, there’s no time. I want you to call me back on this number immediately. This phone has no balance left.’
‘Okay.’ Anbu grasped the situation immediately. ‘End the call.’
The phone in Iqbal’s hand began to ring almost as soon as he had disconnected.
‘Sir, they’ve already moved out and...’ In a rush, Iqbal brought the colonel up to speed, giving details of the church that Imtiaz was targeting and the directions to Khalid’s target. ‘It can’t be more than a couple of minutes away from the Punjabi Bagh Club.’
‘Okay! Got that! And you have no idea where Asif is headed?’ Anbu asked as he rapidly made notes and assimilated the details.
‘No, sir, not the faintest.’
‘And Mujib?’
‘No clue, sir.’
‘Fine, now listen.’ Anbu had already weighed the options available to them. ‘First, we need to focus on preventing the strikes. We can have the Green Park church and the one at Punjabi Bagh covered well in time. You stay where you are till I send someone there to defuse the bomb in the van.’
‘And what about Asif, sir?’
‘We’ll simply have to cover the major churches and hope for the best, Iqbal.’
‘But what if...’
‘There’s no time for that now, son,’ Anbu cut him off urgently. Then, realizing the state of Iqbal’s mind, he added more gently, ‘You’ve done a fine job, Iqbal. Now stand by till Dhankar reaches you.’ Disconnecting the call, Anbu started the counter-attack immediately.
Within minutes the Force 22 officers had swung into action. The ATTF and BDS teams were not far behind. Ever since they had assembled in Delhi, they had been on tenterhooks, waiting eagerly for that tiny blinking light that would guide them to Iqbal and their unsuspecting quarries.
The wait was finally over, though not in the manner they had hoped for.
Dhankar and Tiwathia were lucky to get a clear run from the ATTF base in Delhi Cantonment and reached the Yeshwant Place complex at precisely 0828 hours. They found Iqbal in the parking lot, pacing around the van feverishly.
‘Let’s get this damn thing out of here.’ Tiwathia got into the van with Iqbal and they headed out of the parking lot, Dhankar following closely behind. ‘Head for Nehru Park, that should be isolated enough.’
A mile or so along the road, Tiwathia pointed at a narrow service lane running along one side of the park. ‘There, that should be okay. Pull up.’
Six more minutes had elapsed by the time Iqbal brought the van to a stop in the almost deserted service lane. Dhankar halted behind him and ran forward with his tool kit. Popping open the hood of the van, he first disco
nnected the battery terminals and then began to scour the van, starting from the front. Almost instantly, he spotted the additional wiring that had been jury-rigged for the bomb. Finding the bomb did not take more than a minute. Disarming it took five.
‘Now let’s get back to the base,’ said Dhankar as he emerged from the van, wiping his hands on his jeans and beating the dust off his clothes.
‘Any idea if they’ve located Asif yet?’ Iqbal couldn’t help asking. ‘And what about the others...’
‘Don’t worry about it, Iqbal. We’re doing everything we can.’ Tiwathia pushed him into the van. ‘Let’s go.’
There was no point in explaining the obvious to Iqbal – that finding Asif in the short time available could be close to impossible. Delhi had an abundance of churches; almost all of them had Christmas carnivals and fetes on today. Finding Asif was going to be a real challenge and would require more than luck.
Taking down Imtiaz and Khalid, of course, was going to be easier.
Imtiaz was about to head for the bathroom to get rid of his Santa outfit when Khare and Katoch came up from behind and pinned him down, much to the consternation of the people milling around the colourful stalls. Imtiaz saw the cold, pitiless look in the eyes of the men holding him and realized the game was over. He went without a fight.
‘Which van is it?’ Khare prodded him with his handgun.
‘What van?’ Imtiaz tried to keep his face expressionless.
The handgun slammed into his collarbone with a thud, driving him down to his knees. Though no sound escaped him, tears of pain swam into his eyes. ‘Don’t fuck around, shithead,’ Khare snarled. ‘We don’t have time for these games. Which one is it?’
‘That white one over there,’ Imtiaz croaked, pointing with a shaky finger, trying to press down the pain in his almost certainly fractured collarbone with the other hand.
There were still four minutes left for nine o’clock when the bomb in the van was defused and the vehicle driven away to the safe confines of the nearest BDS compound.
Khalid did not go down without a fight. He tried to break free and run when Deopa and Vashisht closed in on him. His brief flight for freedom lasted until the butt of Deopa’s pistol slammed down on his head. Knowing they needed him alive and awake until the bomb was found, Deopa had aimed the blow at his upper body, but in the struggle, it landed bang on his head. In the heat of the moment, Deopa struck much harder than he had intended to and Khalid went down as though he had been poleaxed. There was only one minute left for nine when he fell unconscious to the ground.
‘Shit! What did you have to do that for, dumbass? We needed him awake to tell us which van the bomb in is.’
‘Sorry! I didn’t mean to, but the fucker moved...’
‘Bugger it. Let’s get to the parking lot. How many vans can there be?’
There were sixteen; after all, the moderately priced Maruti van is a cost-effective option for the large Indian family. It took almost as many minutes for the BDS people to sweep through them. Even then, it was just 0914 hours by the time they located the bomb and rendered it harmless.
‘Luckily the morons had not booby-trapped the bombs,’ the sweaty BDS man remarked as he finally emerged from the van, throwing off the heavy protective gear he was clad in.
Three of the four strikes had been neutralized. That left only one unaccounted for.
Where the hell can he be? The thought gnawed at Anbu as he paced the floor relentlessly, listening to the stream of reports pouring in on the ATTF Ops Room radio set. He knew they had to find Asif. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate. But the hardened combat veteran also knew that it was a mammoth, if not impossible task. There are just too many churches... and with Christmas round the corner, all of them will be packed to the brim.
Deopa was raising his gun hand to strike Khalid down when, a dozen miles away, Asif noticed a knot of tense-looking men stride into the Vasant Kunj church which stands on the tri-junction of D Block. They were scanning the crowd intently as they slowly made their way through the fete.
Cops? His instincts kicked in instantly. Either they know, or…
Realizing that he didn’t have time to arm the tree bomb, he decided to give it a miss. Slowly backing away from the stall he was manning, Asif used the happy, boisterous crowd of people milling around as cover to move towards the toilets at the rear of the church. He moved slowly, careful not to do anything to draw attention to himself.
Other than two young boys, the men’s toilet was empty when Asif entered. Neither boy paid any heed to Asif as he got into one of the cubicles. It took him a couple of minutes to get rid of the Santa outfit, two more to clean up and smoothen out the suit he had been wearing underneath, straighten his hair and leave.
‘It’s almost 0915 hours, sir,’ Ankita reminded Anbu softly in the ATTF Ops Room. ‘Should I tell them to activate the jammers?’
Jamming all the mobile networks functional in Delhi was the final option available to Anbu. Ever since Iqbal had told them that Asif would be using his mobile to activate the bombs, he had known that it was the one feasible option they had. It would give them some more time to find the remaining bomb. He was loath to do it only because he knew the furore it was bound to create later.
‘Iqbal said they were planning to activate only at 0945 hours, right?’
‘That’s right, sir.’ Ankita nodded, her eyes drawn towards the clock again.
They watched as the long black hands raced on inexorably, with unbelievable rapidity, towards the designated time.
‘Give them another couple of minutes... if we don’t find the bastard by then, we’ll activate the jammers.’ Anbu made up his mind as the fragile second hand swept around the clock face once more like a racehorse out of control.
Blending effortlessly into the noisy crowd, Asif exited the church along with a large group of people who were also leaving. Almost immediately, he saw a second set of men with a sniffer dog scanning the vehicles in the car park. They seemed to be concentrating on the Maruti vans, of which there were plenty.
Asif felt a flash of rage as he realized they had been betrayed. It was only a matter of time before the police found the van with the bomb. He continued walking slowly and separated from the group of people he had been walking with only when they were well clear of the gates.
Asif was crossing the road when an ATTF man spotted the crumpled Santa costume in the toilet cubicle.
‘I have the costume. He is out here somewhere.’
Radio sets began to hiss urgently.
‘Look for a guy in a suit.’
Trained eyes began to scan the crowd. In the frenzy, the detachment commander forgot to report the sighting to the ATTF Ops Room.
There were dozens of young men in Sunday suits strolling all over the place. Several of them were accosted, most of them not too gently, and none with any positive result.
It was 0919 hours when Asif got into the cab parked at the taxi stand, just ahead of the T-Junction, about two hundred metres away from the church.
‘Sir.’ Ankita’s voice nudged Anbu’s attention back towards the clock on the ATTF Ops Room wall. ‘It’s 0920 hours now.’
‘Go ahead, Ankita, we still have twenty, twenty-five minutes, but I think you’re right, they may not be able to find the right church in time… we can’t take a chance.’ Anbu nodded. ‘Activate the jammers.’
Ankita picked up the phone and began to order activation of the jammers. Each of the cellular service providers operating in the National Capital Region of Delhi had already been warned and all of them were ready to go into action. Just one call from her was enough to render every mobile phone in the National Capital Region useless, and no calls, text or multimedia messages would get through.
One by one, Ankita began to shut down the cellular phone networks.
Ankita was speaking to the second cellular phone network when Asif told the cab driver, ‘Domestic airport. Let’s make it fast. I have a flight to catch.’
The message was short and ironically appropriate: BOOM!
It took Asif virtually no time to key it in. Adding the numbers of the four recipient phones from his phonebook took a little more time. Out of sheer habit or some deep-seated instinct, the first recipient phone was the one embedded in the bomb of the van he had left parked near the Vasant Kunj church.
Having added the other three numbers, a moment later Asif thumbed the green SEND button on his phone and the deadly text message swirled away in the ether even as Ankita started dialling the third cellular servicer provider.
Nine hundred metres away, the sniffer dog gave his first warning growl as he closed in on the sky-blue Maruti van parked in the middle of the parking lot outside the church. That was when the phone in the bomb received the incoming text message alert and activated the detonator. The phone was in silent-vibration mode but then, it wasn’t required to ring or vibrate; all it had to do was pass on an impulse. It did so, silently and efficiently. A second later, with a deafening roar, the forty kilograms of RDX planted in the van exploded. The van buckled briefly before it blew apart. The dog and his handler were thrown into the air as hot fiery metal enveloped the parking lot.
Like a series of thunderclaps, one by one, the fuel tanks of several other cars parked around the van followed suit, spewing lethal metal fragments and fire all around. Terrified screams and shattered bodies mingled in the bloody maelstrom that engulfed the area around the church.
‘Stop here for a minute,’ Asif told the taxi driver as they went past the Vasant Kunj Central Market. He had heard the dull boom in the distance, over the screech of the Punjabi song erupting tinnily out of the cab’s ancient music system. It brought a smile of satisfaction to his face. ‘I just need to pick up a couple of things.’
He returned fifteen minutes and three shops later with a full duffel bag and they set off again. Apart from the expected traffic jam at the Mahipalpur bottleneck, the ride to the airport was uneventful.
