by Abhishek Roy
About The Author
Abhishek Roy is a software engineer by profession who loves to bring out his creative side time and again. He is an ardent photographer, an avid video gamer and a traveler. His love for travel has led him to a lot of different places leading to interaction with a wide array of people. He tries to blend up his experiences with the figments of his imagination leading to plots like these. Bleeding Sun is the first part of the two book series taking the readers through the adventures of Roy Lucas, the protagonist.
Copyright © 2015 by Abhishek Roy
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher/author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Published: November 2015
Copyright © 2015 by Abhishek Roy
The Bleeding Sun
How It All Started
(The Roy Lucas Chronicles)
By
Abhishek Roy
Prologue
My hands were starting to ache as I continued to hold on for a last few minutes. My body started trembling as I could really feel the heat now. The ventilator shaft had been purposefully sealed to prevent my escape. I held on to one end of the shaft trying to balance my body against the ceiling. I needed to find some other modes of support pretty soon to prevent my drastic and untimely fall. Suddenly I could hear the footsteps near the door. The guard had come. It was dinner time. The steel door opened up with a rusty sound. The guard came in with a bowl in his right hand. He held his machine gun on his left. He entered the room and kept the bowl on the table. Then he moved towards the bed and shouted out………‘Lucas, eat this up quickly. The boss has sent some special preparations as this will be your last meal….. Ha Ha Ha.’
He kept on laughing for half a minute only to realize that I was not responding. He moved up to the bed with the machine gun pointed at the covered figure lying on it. I waited eagerly in anticipation for the next sequence of events to unfold. The room seemed to have been heated up tenfold in the past few minutes. My shirt was soaked in sweat and beads started developing on my face. As the guard moved forward to lift the sheet covering the figure, sweat started to trickle down my face and salt water beads developed on the tip of my nose just on the verge of a fall. It would surely land on the guard’s shoulder thus letting my presence be known. I just could not wipe it off as trying to do so would make me fall off the ventilator shaft. Finally the drop fell down landing straight on the guard’s head.
The next few moments seemed to occur in slow motion. The guard touched his head to feel the moist drop. As he moved his head up straight towards the ceiling, I let both my hands off the shaft and landed straight on him. He fell down crashing heavily on the table as I landed on his back. He lost his gun before managing to fire a few rounds at the door due to the sudden impact. The man was huge in size. The impact didn’t seem to affect him too much as he tried to stand up once again. However I was in no mood to take a chance. We had been taught the Krav Maga during our training. It is a military self-defense hand to hand combat technique used by the Israeli army. It is not just about self-defense, but more about utilizing your chance to disable your enemy before he can cause you the least possible harm.
I used my fist to land a punch on the perfect spot… his Adam’s apple. The man collapsed on the ground in sheer agony once and for all. My plans had all gone berserk due to the bullets the guard had fired. I could hear the alarm bells as I quickly moved out of the cell. Although my plan had failed, I was already crafting a new one…a new route for escape… a new way to accomplish my mission. That was what we were taught during our training at the base camp in Jammu.
‘We work alone… we work perfectly… we do not leave any trace… and we never fail. We give our enemies Hell so that all our innocent countrymen continue to live in Heaven. We are the proud members of the biggest secret the Indian Army, any information of which has been withheld even from the Prime Minister. We are only answerable to the President of India. We belong to the top secret club of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and are known as Authority for Neutralizing National Threats (ANNT). Every President passes this secret to his successor when his tenure ends’.
‘I never make mistakes. I complete all my missions and leave no trace. I always cheat death and leave my enemies to rot in hell. I am an agent of ANNT. I am Roy Lucas’.
Dehradun
The room had the appearance of one that did not have a single speck of dust. The Persian carpets, the velvet curtains, the huge mahogany desk, a big globe of the world, a set of tall mahogany racks holding files and facts that no one would ever know about. A small man was working on something in the computer on the desk. The man was Colonel H. K. Subramaniam alias Serpent, the director of the ANNT. The room was the headquarters of ANNT and was located on the premises of IMA Dehradun. No one knew about this secret office apart from the ANNT operatives. They visited the IMA compound as visiting officers with specialized training in various fields who had come to teach the same to the cadets. However after entering the compound they would vanish into thin air as they headed for their headquarters. Only one man present on the IMA compound had any information about this organization… Major A. Kapoor, the IMA director. He had been an operative of the ANNT for several years before being removed from espionage operations due to his declining health. He was currently in charge of handling any situations which might arise leading to a suspicion that something was wrong in IMA. Being the director of the IMA, his immense power on the premises made his job easier.
A knock on the main door forced the Colonel to stop his work and look up at the door. The Serpent knew who had come as he had been intimated as soon as the person had entered the IMA premises. He pressed one of the several buttons located underneath the desk thereby opening the door. The person who entered the room was the most tried and tested operative of the ANNT…Major Ajay Saxena. Dressed in his uniform, Major Saxena was also a cadet of the IMA. He had played very important roles in several operations along the LOC before being reallocated from the Indian Army to the DIA. The Serpent himself had moved him into the ANNT several years back. Since then Major Saxena had been one of the best operatives of ANNT with operations in Iran, Russia, China and even at the heart of the United States. His father Prof. V Saxena was a renowned physicist while his mother Alice worked for the UNICEF. She was a Czech girl who had fallen in love with Prof. Saxena and had later married him. Ajay was their only child and he had all the physical traits of his mother. He could be easily mistaken as a European international which always worked to his advantage. He had been christened ‘Roy Lucas’ after joining the ANNT.
Lucas knew the Serpent very well and had worked under him during all his operations. The Serpent had become the director of ANNT when his predecessor Colonel Tiwary was killed in an air crash two years back. The Serpent had handled the organization very well since then. He was a wily old cat…a real mastermind. He did not speak at all for about five minutes and continued to be busy with his work. Lucas on the other hand was not looking too pleased. He did not seem to be in the best of conditions. He had been in Morocco for his last mission just ten hours ago. And just when he had been on the verge of completing it, the Colonel had ordered him to come back.
The Serpent looked up once and realized that Lucas was not pleased at being made to wait for so long. So, he finally decided to talk to him regarding what it was all about. ‘How was your flight back home? Did you get some sleep? Your face looks terrible.’ He chuckled after speaking about the face.
‘Well, the journey was one of the best that I have ever undertaken. You don’t get a chance every day to travel with a bunch of high priorit
y mails and parcels in a private aircraft of a courier company. The box on which I was sitting for seven hours was even better than a recliner. I suppose I shall buy one of those for my drawing room when I return home.’
‘Sleep…Ha Ha Ha…I have been keeping these eyes open for the last forty eight hours…and I simply couldn’t afford to doze off on the plane as either and fall on the fragile stuff kept all around and wind up damaging those as well myself. I badly need some sleep.’
‘Well then get some sleep within the next twenty four hours because you have several sleepless nights coming up after that.’
‘What? Fly again tomorrow itself? I really need some answers now. I was just about to wrap up everything in Casablanca. And you bring me back? Why? What could have been more important than the retrieval of the stolen plutonium? I had everything working according to plan and was about to get them once and for all when the deal would be made in the Casablanca Twin Center itself…I was this close after these two months of hard work…But you abort the mission and call me back at this crucial junction to do God knows what.’
‘Agent Lucas, always remember that you are here to serve your country and your organization first. There is no place for sentiments and self-glory here. I hope I am clear.’
‘As far as the deal in Casablanca…it will be made tonight at the Twin Center. We have informed our agents from RAW. They will be present there to retrieve the consignment and bring it back to our nation with the help of a group of elite commandos specially trained for this mission. Your job there is done.’
‘As for the current mission, you will be travelling to Havana tomorrow. Something is definitely wrong in Castro’s land. Agent Alpha K had been sent there to look into the matter. He was clearly on to something and we need to find out what it was. Recently there has been a lot of movement in the Tropicana Casino in Havana. Suleiman Hussein, the notorious Al-Qaeda operative and Yuri Rosmus, the biggest Russian mafia boss were seen meeting each other there. They were supposed to strike a deal on something and Alpha was on the verge of tracing what it was. But something has gone drastically wrong. We have not received any communication from him for the last three days. Today our informers in Havana found a mutilated body by the beach. They are sure that it belongs to Alpha.’
‘You need to go there and take care of the unfinished business. We believe that this may be even bigger than what Alpha was originally thinking. Your tickets and forged Dutch passport have been sent to your hotel. You will find them in the locker. You will also find a brown envelope containing the mission documents and details of what Alpha had initially found out. Lucas, this one’s not going to be easy. This time there is no information, no identified enemies and certainly no particular mission objective. It’s more of a free role. You are renowned for your photographic memory. So, make it count and get back as much as you can find out. If you find something sinister, leave no stones unturned to prevent it.’
As Lucas rose in order to leave, the Colonel interrupted. The Serpent really delivered a venomous strike through the next news.
‘Well Lucas, I did forget to mention something. You will not be travelling alone this time. We don’t want an incident like Agent Alpha to be repeated once again. So you will be having a backup with you this time. Let me introduce you to your wife.’
He spoke something after lifting the receiver while Lucas stood there highly irritated. What followed was a knock on the door and the entrance of his so called wife…a young lady dressed in black uniform. She was exactly six feet tall with her boots on. The surprising factor was that she looked more like a European with her red hair, fair skin and blue eyes. No way could she have been an Indian. As Lucas was busy pondering how the lady got into ANNT, the Serpent interrupted.
‘Lucas, I’m pleased to introduce you to Ms. Annie Svensson, one of our elite female operatives. To remove all doubts, here is a brief introduction. Annie is the daughter of Dr. Arundhati Moitra, a top nuclear physicist and Dr. Mattias Husenberg, a leading scientist known for his ground breaking researches in the field of aerodynamics and trajectory. The Indian government had constituted a team in the seventies to work on the first nuclear program. These two had been a part of the program. They later married and settled down in Canada. Annie is their only child. Anita Moitra, which is her original name, had joined the Canadian army and had learned a lot. When her father died, her mother decided to move back to India. Anita left the Canadian army and joined IIT Kanpur. There she did specialization in microelectronic devices and circuits. After she left IIT, she travelled to England for specialization in nanotechnology. In England, during one of the ANNT missions, I personally identified her to work for us. At ANNT she was rechristened as Agent Annie Svensson. Since then she has been involved in many missions in Russia, Greece and England. She is an expert in electronic devices like timers and also in radio communication and radar. She will be of great help to you during this mission. Just watch her back in case of any trouble. In fact I believe, Annie will watch your back in case you fall into trouble which you definitely seem to have an affinity to. From now on Annie will be renamed as Mrs. Annie Lucas. Your passport and tickets are kept at the hotel. Good luck team… Don’t disappoint me.’
As they left the room, Annie gave Lucas a welcome smile. Lucas avoided it and responded with a blank expression. He liked to work alone. However, this time he had to protect not only his own ass but also some girl who had popped into his mission from nowhere like a misfired smart bomb.
Havana
The flight to Havana was far better than what Lucas had experienced while returning from Morocco. The trip was an awfully long one with change of flights in Amsterdam and Madrid before finally reaching Havana. However Lucas was pleased to get some sleep during the journey. Before boarding the Royal Dutch Airlines flight in Delhi, Lucas received a shocking news. Major Kapoor had turned out to be a traitor, he was an ISI agent. He attempted to murder the Serpent, but the wily old fox outsmarted him and killed him in the process. The Serpent had been handed the responsibility of the IMA as well, making his task at the ANNT headquarters a lot easier. He was in charge of anything and everything within the IMA compound.
Lucas felt ill at ease. Major Kapoor was a brave soldier and a true gentleman. He had saved Lucas’s life during an operation in Russia. He had not seemed to be the kind of person who could betray his motherland. But he could no longer have these thoughts lingering in his mind as he had more important work to do. Meanwhile Annie continued gossiping with a co passenger throughout the journey. This girl was going to cause him a lot of trouble in the near future. Lucas did not want to waste his time any more. So, he concentrated on sleeping during the entire journey so as to clear his mind and rest his brains.
They reached the José Martí International Airport in Rancho Boyeros at the stroke of midnight. The airport was about twenty five kilometers southwest of Vedado where their accommodation had been arranged. The cheapest means of transport in Havana apart from the public buses are the Ladas…the non-air-conditioned taxis colored in yellow and black. They boarded one of them and proceeded straight to their hotel at Vedado. Hotel Nacional was one of the best in entire Havana. The rooms had been arranged beforehand. Room number 702, a luxury suite was provided to them.
The short guy who carried their bags to the room was named Alfred. His father owned the car rental agency that supplied the cabs to the hotel. He had been working in the hotel for the past four years. Lucas had a brief discussion with him regarding the neighborhood and anything else that could be of any concern before giving him a hefty tip. From his past experiences he had learnt that these types of people proved really useful at crunch times. Meanwhile Annie threw away her boots and stepped into the bed straight away. Lucas just couldn’t believe that she was an ANNT operative at all. He went to the small freezer and brought out a pint of beer. He needed to quench his thirst before freshening up and beginning his work.
Lucas slipped a note beside Annie and left the room at break of dawn.
He wanted to get going as soon as possible thereby giving him abundant time to comprehend what had happened to Agent Alpha and why. While leaving the hotel he saw Alfred dozing off at the reception. He went outside Hotel Nacional. As the first rays of the sun fell on the lonely streets of Vedado, Lucas could feel a fresh burst of energy and enthusiasm within himself. He crossed the street and waited for a mode of transport. The public transport crisis of Havana had been considerably reduced by the introduction of Metro Buses which usually run to all the major parts of the city. These huge 300-plus passenger buses are hauled by trucks; all have the prefix M before their number and are color-coded. Metro Buses leave from Parque de la Fraternidad on the southern side of the Capitolio in Centro Havana.
Lucas took a bus from Vedado to the famous Centro de Prensa Internacional in Centro Havana. The Tropicana Casino being the tallest building in Centro Havana could be seen clearly from where Lucas was standing. It belonged to the Russian oil tycoon Sergei Romanovich and was built after receiving approval from Castro’s regime. Romanovich was a close friend of the Russian president thereby making the negotiations easier. The Tropicana Casino was one of the largest in the world. It had an estimated profit of 500 million dollars with the figure expected to increase in near future. Romanovich had left no stones unturned to make it the best in the world.
