by Mukul Deva
Boucher pulled over in the spot he had reconnoitered; it was on a curve, a blind spot from the security post in front. Not the optimal position, but keeping in view the security deployment, it was the best possible one.
Quickly moving to the rear of the van, Boucher reached for the already loaded weapon and also the second rocket, to be ready for an instant reload.
Taking position off the road, clear of the vehicle, he raised the launcher to his shoulder.
* * *
Mohite halted the elevator at the seventh floor and held the door open for Ruby. “Please go to Mr. Gill’s room … that one,” he pointed out, forgetting that Ruby had had a tour of the seventh floor a couple of days ago. “I will let him know you are here.”
Ruby walked past the elevator security guards and headed for Ravinder’s room. The ping of the elevator door behind her let her know it had closed. She threw a quick backward glance.
Both elevator guards had turned to see off the minister and had their backs to her.
Altering direction, she swiftly crossed to the other side of the corridor and headed for Chance’s room. Using the red access card she had purloined earlier, she eased open the door and entered.
The guards did not see which room she entered. They had heard Mohite tell her to go to the boss’s room and assumed she had. In any case, they did not perceive her as a threat; there was scarcely a cop in Delhi who’d not heard of the attack on the ATTF chief’s house and how his lionhearted daughter had responded.
* * *
Jennifer, returning from checking the stairwell guard at the end of the corridor, did see Ruby enter Chance’s room. She noticed that Ruby did not pause at the door, which to her implied that someone had opened the door for her or—
Chance? Isn’t he supposed to be on the eighth floor? Or does Ruby have an access card to his room? Neither thought felt good. Her relationship with Chance was still too new; she had yet to understand him or feel secure about him.
But Ruby’s presence in the secure area alarmed her, even though she was not privy to Ravinder’s and Chance’s suspicions. And this unrestricted entry into Chance’s room perturbed her. Frowning, she headed down the corridor.
If Chance is two-timing me … She felt a surge of anger.
Caught up in an admixture of alarm and jealousy, Jennifer forgot to radio her sighting to the control room. Or to call the reserve guard to back her up.
Both were big mistakes.
* * *
After letting herself in, Ruby halted in the center of Chance’s room. She did not switch on the lights; with the curtains pulled back, there was enough light.
A black hard-shell suitcase was on the wooden rack beside the TV. It had been with Chance as long as she could remember. Having lived with him, she knew his habits. The suitcase was locked. Chance was also forgetful; especially when it came to numbers. He always used his birth date for the suitcase. Ruby rotated the numbers of the combination lock. The case clicked open. She sighed with relief. Chance hadn’t changed.
Hasn’t he? She pushed that thought away. Not now, damnit! Focus!
The pistols were exactly where she had known they would be; at the base, wrapped in a piece of thick, soft cloth. She quickly unfolded it and found a pair of classic Browning Hi-Power pistols.
His choice of weapons has not changed.
Chance always carried a spare pair. Ruby had banked on it. Picking them up, she tested their heft. They fit with the comfort of an old sweater.
A silencer and two spare magazines were also wrapped in the same cloth. The magazines, each with a capacity of thirteen rounds, were full.
Ruby did the math. A total of fifty-two rounds in the four magazines.
If that is not enough, nothing is.…
Swiftly loading one weapon, she chambered a round, clicked on the safety, and slid it into her waistband. After thrusting the spare magazines into the pocket of her baggy jeans, she loaded the second pistol, again chambered a round, and began to screw on the silencer. Her fingers were confirming the silencer was fitted on securely when she heard the door behind her open. Ruby swung around, holding the pistol behind her.
Jennifer strode into the room, spotted Ruby, and ground to a stop. Behind Jennifer, the solid wood door slowly swung shut. Its click masked the snick of the safety catch being pushed off by Ruby.
“What are you doing here? Where is Chance?”
Before Ruby could reply, a thunderclap rang out. The windows’ panes rattled as the 84mm HEAT rocket fired by Boucher boomed out.
“What the hell was that?” Jennifer instinctively turned toward the sound, alarm on her face. Then another boom, as the rocket struck and exploded. This one was closer, much louder. Jennifer ran to the window.
Ruby stood stock-still. In her mind’s eye, she could see Boucher bring the launcher down from his shoulder, crack open the loading port, and shove in the second round, then raise it to his shoulder and place his eye to the sights. Her body tensed.
Jennifer saw the expression on Ruby’s face. That Ruby had shown no surprise at the explosions registered with her. Jennifer halted again in midstride, and her hand reached for the gun on her belt. It was moving like a blur of lightning.
Equally fast, Ruby’s hand came out from behind her back.
The sight of the silenced weapon almost froze Jennifer, but the point of no return had been crossed. She clawed out her weapon, going for it, knowing it was futile, yet hoping.
Jennifer’s weapon started to come level, aligning on Ruby. Her finger had already completed half the trigger squeeze.
* * *
Boucher’s first rocket slammed into the roadblock on the road to Ashoka Hotel. Fired from four hundred meters away, the FFV551 HEAT round punched through the waist-high wall of sandbags and ravaged the men behind. There were no screams. None of the four men survived long enough to scream.
The six at the other end of the road were alive, but overwhelmed by the shock and by the debris that billowed out and now lay like a dark cloud over the roadblock. They were trying to figure out where the attack had come from when there was another massive flare of sound and light.
Boucher had fired again.
The second shot, an FFV441B HE rocket, was aimed at the hotel’s eighth floor. It slammed explosively into the wall of the hotel, missing a window by inches. The thick stone walls stopped the HE round, but Boucher’s job was not to cause damage. It was to cause a diversion.
The explosion echoed harshly through the eighth floor, rattling the windows, shattering some. Bits of plaster broke free from the ceilings.
* * *
The second explosion masked the plop of the silenced pistol in Ruby’s hand. The 9-millimeter round caught Jennifer in her face, just above the upper lip. She was thrown backward. The pistol in her hand fired. The bullet thudded into the ceiling, sending out gouts of plaster.
Jennifer hit the ground with a sickening thud. Life deserted her.
The smell of blood rose, mingling with the smoke curling out of the Browning in Ruby’s hand. For a second she froze, but her training took over.
Time was short. She raced for the door.
* * *
Ravinder was pacing the corridor on the eighth floor when Boucher’s first rocket demolished the roadblock. Galvanized, he ran for the elevator; he had to get to the control room. He was halfway there when the second rocket struck, just a few windows away from the conference hall.
Silence returned. But he knew the attack had just begun and that rockets fired from a distance could only be a diversion.
From the other end of the hallway, he saw Chance and Peled racing toward him. They had only one thought: The delegates needed to be secured.
“Code Red.” Grabbing the radio from his belt, Ravinder snapped into it. “I say again, Code Red. Lock down the floors.”
* * *
Outside. Boucher dropped the rocket launcher and raced away, headed to the cabstand two hundred meters down the road. He would commande
er a car from there. In his head, he had already begun to race toward the airport.
What Boucher had not factored in were the snipers on all sides of the hotel roof. Ruby had known of them, but had conveniently forgotten to mention them when the two Aussies showed some reluctance during her briefing. Their lives meant little to her, considering she was putting her own on the line.
Despite the confusion below, the Indian Army sniper manning the side from which Boucher had fired was watching his area with eagle eyes. He spotted Boucher when he started running. Though he had seen the flares of the launcher’s back blast, he had not seen Boucher due to the overhang of a tree. But the minute Boucher ran for the cabstand, that cover had been removed.
The sniper did not hesitate. Rocket launchers going off and men running away from the place they’d been fired. For him, the picture was clear. The weapon in his hands steadied. His crosshairs sought out the running man and homed in. He took a lead to compensate for the target’s motion. His finger curled around the trigger of his Dragunov sniper rifle and began to squeeze.
Its 7.62 × 54mm rimless round raced forward at a velocity of 830 meters per second and covered the distance before Boucher had managed to take one more stride. The bullet smashed into Boucher’s back, tearing out his heart.
No second shot was required.
* * *
Having dropped Thakur off at the conference hall, Mohite was returning to the control room. He was in the elevator when the rockets exploded. The canned music playing kept him from hearing either of the blasts. Unaware that the summit was under attack, he was entering the control room when Ravinder’s voice erupted out of the radio.
“Code Red!” Ravinder’s voice was strident with urgency. “I say again, Code Red. Lock down the floors.”
“What the hell is happening?” Mohite asked the men at the monitors.
* * *
The minute Ontong heard the first rocket fired by Boucher explode, he grabbed hold of the rocket launcher from his van. He knew Boucher’s second one would soon be on its way.
He had already loaded the launcher, with a second also ready to go. After double-checking everything, Ontong shouldered the weapon and stepped out of the bushes as the second rocket fired by Boucher slammed against the top-floor walls.
Starting the count, Ontong steadied the launcher on his shoulder and took careful aim.
Ten, nine, eight … Ontong fired.
* * *
Ontong’s HEAT round smashed into the security post at the hotel’s entry gate. Its boom, much closer now, echoed dully through the control room.
Mohite ran to the monitor for the main gate. It had suddenly gone dark.
Unaware that the rocket had killed the camera, Mohite thumped the monitor, trying to will it back to life.
“What the fuck happened?”
* * *
Reloading swiftly, Ontong was now in a hurry to get it over with and get clear. He had no idea what had happened to Boucher, but didn’t wish to tarry here a second longer than he had to.
Moving swiftly to his left, he got the security post at the hotel exit gate into his gunsight. Hurriedly steadying himself, he fired again. But in his hurry to finish and get away, he forgot that the Maruti van behind him was on his left when he had fired the first time. When he moved left to acquire the second target, he had strayed too far to the left. The van was now directly behind him, just meters away.
He’d made a small mistake, but a fatal one.
The furiously flaming back blast of the rocket launcher caught the van head-on. Ontong had reversed the van before he’d parked it, so he could take the weapon out from the luggage compartment and bring it into use instantly. So the back blast caused the fuel tank to explode, smashing the van into smithereens. Flaming shards of metal sliced out in every direction, scything through everything in their way.
Ontong was one of those things.
* * *
Ontong’s second rocket destroyed the security post at the hotel’s exit gate. Another monitor in front of Mohite went blank as its camera too succumbed. However, the carnage at both gates was still visible from the peripheral vision of the cameras mounted in the porch. He could see that both posts were in serious trouble.
Galvanized, Mohite grabbed at his radio and screamed, “We are under attack! Both gates are down. All seventh-floor security personnel and reserve guards move down and reinforce the lobby.” His voice was shrill with anxiety. “They must not get through. Seal everything off.”
He kept shouting instructions into the radio as he ran. Accompanied by the three men held in reserve in the control room, he ran for the elevator. As it opened, he grabbed both the elevator guards also and hauled them inside. They all went down. And responding to his orders, the guards at the stairwells on either side also grabbed their weapons and headed down.
Yet another mistake had been made. This was a cardinal one.
Silence fell upon the now unguarded seventh floor.
* * *
In Chance’s room, Ruby was hurrying past Jennifer’s body when an idea struck her. She grabbed the baseball cap Jennifer had been wearing. Her fingers immediately felt its sticky wetness. The touch of blood sickened her. She fought off the nausea, but could not keep her eyes from Jennifer’s face. She saw blood all over it.
Then Ontong’s first rocket exploded. She stiffened and began to pull off Jennifer’s flak jacket. Some blood had seeped onto its collar. But this time, Ruby’s face stayed expressionless as she quickly wiped it clean on Jennifer’s shirt.
She is wrong. I am right. Isn’t that reason enough for me to pull the trigger? Is it! Of course it is. That is all there is to it … nothing to fret about.
The sound of the second rocket explosion goaded her into action.
Slipping into Jennifer’s jacket, Ruby raced to the door. The ping of the elevator closing greeted her. She peered out.
The floor was empty. Even the elevator guards had vanished.
Not believing her luck, she ran out, the red master access card in one hand and a pistol in the other. She’d have to move fast if she was to exploit the opportunity Boucher and Ontong had provided.
“Just as a precaution … not that we are expecting any trouble … but just in case of some emergency, we have also secured the top two floors of Hotel Samrat and duplicated all the same arrangements there.” Mohite’s briefing to the Home Minister echoed in her head as she used the access card to open Ravinder’s room and slipped inside.
The bank of monitors was what she wanted, to know when they began to evacuate and which route they would take. It had to be either of the two staircases or the elevator, though that was less likely; one elevator would not hold all the delegates, and the security team would be reluctant to split them.
So far, things were working out, yes—better than she had hoped.
They are wrong.… I am right.… The words now played like a litany in her head. One by one, she began to switch on the monitors.
* * *
Waiting impatienty for the elevator on the top floor, Ravinder, Chance, and Peled caught Mohite’s transmission loud and clear.
Anger exploded through Ravinder.
That fucking idiot! He did it again. Instead of waiting for the attackers to come to us, he … How can he even dream of abandoning the control room? That fucking …
Cursing, Ravinder reached for his radio set and began to speak when he realized that Mohite was still talking. Realizing that he would not be able to transmit until Mohite released the transmit button, and itching to get to the control room, Ravinder headed for the stairs. The floors needed to be resecured, no matter the cost. And he needed eyes on the floors; that was why the control room needed to be manned by a senior officer at all times. His every instinct was screaming that the security breach had already taken place, that the rocket attacks on the gates were no real threat.
They have to be diversions. So where is the real attack coming from?
He suddenly wished he
could check on Ruby’s whereabouts, but no time. Now he had time only to react and counter her.
We need to draw out the attackers.
“Activate Plan Bravo!” he yelled at Chance and Peled.
Chance and Peled ran to the conference hall and herded the delegates to the conference room at the other end. Peled took position outside the door. Chance ran down the corridor to activate the second part of the plan. The decoys were ready and waiting.
* * *
The first set of monitors that Ruby switched on showed the confusion in the hotel lobby. The second set remained black. Ruby did not know it, but they were the ones that had covered the hotel gates.
Next, the ones watching over the seventh floor flickered to life.
Ruby noted with surprise that both stairwells were empty.
Where are the guards? Is this some trick?
Her mind ferreted forward to spot a trap. She was activating the next monitor when she saw Ravinder rush out from the stairwell on the left and charge toward the control room.
Then the eighth-floor monitors came alive, flickering a bit before the picture stabilized. Chance hove into view. Weapon in hand, he was in the lead. Behind him was a ragged line of men in a variety of outfits. Bringing up the rear was one of the Palestinian PSOs. Ruby saw the two ex-SEALS traveling with the Saudi Arabian prince come running up. They took positions at the head and tail of the column, headed for the staircase closest to the conference hall.
Bingo!
She began to study the deployment of the security personnel and to freeze them in her head. She also took note of their firepower, a formidable array of Uzis, Glocks, Magnums, and Brownings. She evaluated her options and decided.
From the rear, that’s where I’ll attack. I just need to take out the guards and two or three of the delegates.
She tarried to study the stairs, especially the landings. She needed a place to hide … for one moment.
