by Mukul Deva
Then Iqbal took out the device he had constructed the previous night and placed it gently inside the box. He looped the end of the string to the inner side of the latch on the lid of the box and carefully tested the length – it had to be exact – before attaching the string to the small metallic ring. Finally he locked the box again and left the room after replacing the lock on the door.
Iqbal was standing at the bus stop at Malviya Nagar when the morning prayers finished and the Maulavi returned to his room. The old Maulavi let himself in and going straight to the metal box, opened it. As he lifted the lid, the taut string tied to it pulled the small metallic ring that was tied to the other end. The metal ring had a pin-like spike attached to it. It had been oiled. Both prongs of the pin slid soundlessly out of the two tiny holes they had been nestled in. The metallic lever holding the plunger shot free. The plunger lunged forward and hit the detonator with a tiny metallic thump. The sound of the detonator triggering off was lost in the creak of the opening lid. Precisely four seconds later the hand grenade that had been taped by Iqbal to the base of the metallic box detonated with an ear-shattering roar.
Getting off the bus, Iqbal set off for the inner circle of Connaught Place. At this hour the traffic was light and the brisk walk helped him keep the chill of the winter morning at bay. The city had started coming to life by now, but most of the shops were still closed. Iqbal came up to a congestion of eating joints along the road just outside the Super Bazar. He vaguely remembered coming here with his friends from engineering college.
The food at Kapoor’s Kitchen located just ahead of the Super Bazar was piping hot and delicious. Iqbal sat and ate slowly as he watched the traffic flow along the outer circle of Connaught Place. He enjoyed every morsel as he waited for the bank across the street to open. It was the same bank where Iqbal’s father had opened an account for him to pay his college fees. He had come here often to withdraw money during his college days. Iqbal was one of the first people who walked into the bank when it opened for business that morning. He deposited most of the cash into his account.
Leaving the bank Iqbal hailed the first passing cab and told the driver to head for the Delhi Cantt Railway Station.
‘What is your name?’ Iqbal asked the cabbie as he pulled away from the kerb. Something inside him wanted to reach out and connect with another human being, even if it was as casual and meaningless as this. Or maybe, it was because it was casual and meaningless that Iqbal felt safe talking to him.
‘Satnam Singh,’ the cab driver replied more than happy at the chance to make conversation. After a short pause he volunteered some more information about himself: ‘I am from Firozepur, but I have been in Delhi for almost twenty years now. This is my own taxi, you know.’ The pride in the cabbie’s tone was evident.
The traffic was heavy since the office rush hour was in full flow by now. They crawled along in companionable silence. It was almost noon when Satnam halted the cab outside the station. When Iqbal finally dismissed him, Satnam Singh was more than happy at the obscenely large tip that Iqbal gave him.
I have taken the life of one human being today. I have made another human being happy. Now I am about to take a life again.
Iqbal reached into his pocket and pulled out the mobile phone he had taken from the Maulavi’s metal box. Powering the phone he waited impatiently as it glowed to life and then he dialled the number he had memorized earlier that morning.
THE FOURTH PRONG
The fourth prong was awaiting a signal from Ahmed, the MQM activist who had been recruited by the Indian RAW some years back, and who was now a vital and trusted part of their intelligence gathering apparatus.
Ahmed had returned home from a dinner party the night before when his phone rang. ‘It’s been a long time, Ahmed. How have you been?’
He recognized the voice immediately. ‘Oh, hello, khalajaan, how are you?’
‘I am well, Ahmed, but there is a problem I need you to help with immediately. Two of my son’s friends came over to Pakistan yesterday. I want you to go and meet them and see if they need help. I have sent you an email with all the details. Please check on them and call me immediately…what?…yes, I am still in London… ’ There was some more idle chitchat before the lady rang off; both of them knew that the ISI was in the habit of monitoring overseas calls and they were too experienced to forget such basic precautions.
Getting off the phone, Ahmed logged on to the Net to find the details of the two terrorists who had travelled in by the Attari Express. There were no photographs, just the names, descriptions, dates and times of arrival and the fact that they were most certainly being helped by the ISI. But then Ahmed was a bright guy. It did take him almost the whole day but not only did he track them down he even managed to confirm that they were still present in the ISI safe house in Mari on the outskirts of Lahore.
He left his assistant armed with a mobile phone to keep watch on the safe house and returned to his hotel room in downtown Lahore to call his aunt with the details.
His assistant rang at about 0430 hours on 31 October 2005. ‘Ahmed Sahib,’ the man keeping watch on the ISI safe house at Mari said, ‘this is to confirm that both items are still safely stored in the same place.’
‘Good. Stay there for another twenty minutes. Just in case there is any change in status. After that go back home. You have done a good job today, my friend.’
Ahmed immediately called his aunt again. ‘Khalajaan, I am sorry for calling so early but I was about to leave for the Fajr prayer.’
‘That’s okay, Ahmed. Tell me, were you able to meet them?’
‘Yes, I was. They are both fine…both are still staying at the address I emailed you.’
‘Thank you, son, and do let me know if there is anything I can send you from London.’
The lady who had taken the call from Lahore did not even bother to put down the handset; she immediately dialled again and was soon speaking to Captain Khare who had been waiting for her call in the shadows of a small grove outside Amritsar. This call was short and to the point: ‘Both the men are present in the house,’ she said and then called out a series of numbers. The numbers were the grid reference coordinates of the ISI safe house at Mari. Khare carefully checked the digits and read them back to her slowly.
Replacing the mobile phone in his pocket Khare walked towards the waiting vehicles parked a few metres away and called out to Ankita. Within a couple of minutes the two of them were busy programming another Krishna UAV. They used the data on the location of the Pakistani radar sites that Ankita had forwarded to Khare and which he had vetted out during the drive. Since most low RCS radars exploit Doppler filters to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, knowing their precise locations and areas of coverage allowed the Force 22 officers to plot a route with zero radial speed. This would render the Krishna virtually invisible in the short time that it would overfly Pakistani airspace.
Khare dialled again. Miles away to the north, the Nokia mobile phone lying on the table before Anbu began to ring.
Anbu had been awake the whole night. In fact, barring short snatches of sleep, he had been awake ever since the choppers carrying his strike teams had taken off from base. Picking up the phone Anbu heard the caller out in silence. Then he glanced at his watch. 0501 hours. Anbu took a deep breath. It was the first major operation for Force 22.
‘A lot of eyes are going to be watching your people, Colonel.’ Anbu remembered his conversation with the Prime Minister. He had been unusually sombre when they had spoken just a few hours back. ‘India has a lot at stake here. You pull this off well and every damn terrorist in the world will think twice before they decide to meddle with us.’
‘Don’t worry, sir. Force 22 will not let the country down.’
Anbu had full faith in his men, but he knew that in battle a million things could go wrong. He took one long look at the huge electronic battle board that took up an entire wall of the Force 22 command post. He could see the six tiny green dots glowing over
the huge area the map presently displayed. The GPS locators carried by his teams fed back their positions in real-time to him. Anbu could tell where his men were whenever he wanted to, but he could not know how they were. He could not tell if they were captured and dead, or alive and racing towards their objectives. Eight of the dots represented the men and women who would actually be carrying out the strikes and delivering India’s message to her enemies. Only two of the eight were located on the safety of Indian soil. The other six were deep in Pakistan and squarely in harm’s way. As he spoke into the phone, his tone was cold and crisp, betraying none of the tension that coursed through him, ‘Let’s go for it, Khare.’
At 0506 hours the solitary Krishna UAV was airborne soaring silently into the air as it gained height and closed in on its target. However, unlike the pair that had guided the four Force 22 officers through the Rajasthan desert the previous night, this Krishna carried four precision-guided missiles. The missiles were third-generation laser-guided ones that needed to be shown the target and then guided to it.
The Krishna UAV streaked unseen through the still, early morning air as it headed for Mari. It was flying the course painstakingly plotted out for it by Ankita Bhatnagar and was not noticed by the host of Pakistani radar operators who keep a relentless eye on Indian airspace all along the borders. Even if they had detected the Krishna it is doubtful that the Pakistanis would have anything readily available in their arsenal that was fast enough or accurate enough to take it out in mid-air in the short time that it was in flight.
SURPRISE
0519 hours, 31 October 2005, Mari, Pakistan.
The solitary Krishna UAV reached its target area and came into a holding pattern on the outskirts of Mari town. Like a falcon getting ready to swoop it took one complete circle of the small town as it located, identified and aligned itself with the target. There was a very brief pause as a series of relays and circuits clicked into place on board the Krishna. An unseen laser shot out from the Krishna and lit up the target. The target designator showed the awaiting missiles their target. The missiles acknowledged the signal and confirmed that they had the target in their capture fields.
With a silent click the Krishna released the first set of missiles, one from each wing. A few seconds later it released the second set of missiles. Having done that the Krishna hung around for a few more seconds to ensure the missiles were heading out properly in the right direction and going to do their jobs properly. Its full-colour nose camera whirred as it captured the missiles streaking towards the target. It saw the missiles strike home before it turned around and raced back towards its handlers at optimal speed, weaving its way back along the skilfully plotted path.
Another twenty-seven minutes later the Krishna was safely back in its cradle. An hour later it was back on board the small truck that followed the jeep as the three vehicles sped back towards the Force 22 base in the Kasauli hills.
‘The bird is back, sir,’ Khare told Anbu as Ankita completed the data transfer from her laptop. ‘The BDAR (Bomb Damage Assessment Report) is being uploaded to you right now.’
‘Give me a second.’ Anbu cradled the mobile phone against his shoulder and punched a few keys on the command centre computer.
All three watched as the feed from the nose camera began to play back on the screens in front of them.
Falling away from the Krishna the four precision-guided missiles swooped down on the target like a pack of eagles. They hammered into the safe house in rapid succession and disappeared inside. With their advent the safe house ceased to be safe and became a death trap instead. The two terrorists of Team Three of the Lashkar, their ISI handler and the three ISI support personnel present in the safe house at that time were fast asleep when the first two missiles struck the house a few seconds after 0520 hours. The sharp, precisely focused explosion brought the house down like a pack of cards. They died instantaneously.
The second set of missiles simply demolished the house and ensured they were all given a thorough if not decent burial. Fifteen minutes later, when the dust and debris began to settle, the house had ceased to exist. Barring the odd cracked window here and there, none of the neighbouring houses had been damaged.
The killers had been delivered to their maker for final justice. There was no loss of any innocent lives at Mari. Unfortunately the same did not hold true for Karachi; substantial collateral damage took place there.
0505 hours, 31 October 2005, Clifton Area, Karachi, Pakistan.
The plush Clifton Area in Karachi town belied the actual state of Pakistan’s teetering economy. The streets were wide, well laid-out and in an excellent state of repair. The houses that bordered both sides of the streets were palatial, mostly double-storeyed structures built on acre-sized plots. Most of them belonged to top-level industrialists, senior civil service and military officers, serving and retired. Anybody who was anybody in Karachi owned a bungalow in the Clifton Area. Sprinkled amongst the wealthy elite of Karachi were an assortment of drug-lords, weapon-traffickers and so-called religious leaders. However they were not your average criminals. All of them, without exception, were major players in the narco-nuclear-terror networks that the ISI had fielded over the years.
‘Let me tell you, guys,’ the Force 22 Intelligence Officer had told them, ‘in that area there are more guys who have had Red Corner alerts issued for them by Interpol than there are labour unions in Kerala.’ He may have overstated it a bit, but there was substantial truth in what he had said.
Deopa and Dhankar reached the Clifton Area just a few minutes after five in the morning. At this time of the morning the streets were almost completely deserted, save for the security guards in some of the houses. The milkmen and newspaper boys had yet to begin their morning rounds. It took them ten minutes to complete their reconnaissance and mesh ground reality with the satellite pictures they had used to study the target on. The house selected by Force 22 as the operational base after studying the satellite pictures, was ideally located. Although it had a security cabin right next to the main gate there was no security guard on duty that morning. ‘Good! That is one less problem we have to deal with,’ Dhankar thought to himself as he silently opened the main gate and the two commandos let themselves in.
A small driveway ran up from the main gate to the front door of the house thirty feet away. There were two cars parked in the drive. They provided valuable cover since they partially screened the front door from the street beyond the gate. Dhankar positioned himself roughly halfway between the main gate and the front door while Deopa, moving rapidly on silent feet, completed a circuit around the house. He nodded briefly to Dhankar as he came around and then approached the front door, the commando knife in his hand gleaming dully in the early morning light. The chimes of the bell ringing inside the house echoed out faintly through the door as he raised his hand and rang the doorbell.
The middle-aged man who answered the door was shaking off sleep as he opened the door, cursing whoever it was disturbing him at this unearthly hour. The sharp edge of the knife cut open his jugular with surgical precision. He was already dying as Deopa caught his falling body and moved him away from the doorway quickly, just in case someone was watching from the street. Dhankar moved swiftly out of the shadows. Skirting the car parked right outside he raced up the stairs as Deopa swept through the ground floor. The knife was put away and now silenced pistols in their hands were poised ready to cough out their lethal cargo. The magazine of each weapon housed nine death-dealing rounds. The tenth was already in the chambers of both pistols.
There were two other people in the house. Both asleep at the time. They were dispatched with due diligence. Dhankar did not hesitate as he fired. They died without even knowing it.
Elsewhere, the Krishna UAV had already unleashed its missiles and was on its way home, when Dhankar and Deopa began to set up their equipment in the bedroom on the top floor of the house. The room had two very large windows. One of these windows faced west. It overlooked the palatial bu
ngalow across the street.
The large bungalow was set in the middle of a sprawling garden. The only entrance was through a massive gate made of sheets of solid metal. The gate was painted an ominous black and, as always, it was shut. Through his binoculars, Deopa could clearly see two men in the guard-room next to it.
‘There are two at the gate and three patrolling the garden,’ Dhankar whispered to Deopa.
‘Got them. You get some rest now. My watch.’
It took Deopa a little longer to spot the two men positioned on the terrace garden atop the house. They were standing in the lee of the water tanks and, like the guards in the garden and guard-house near the gate, were carrying automatic rifles. Deopa could read the Chinese markings on some of the weapons as he scanned each one of them through the small, but powerful binoculars he was using.
Though it appeared formidable Deopa knew that the security set-up was cosmetic at best. The man in the house and the government hiding him did not really think the security men would be ever called into action. Or maybe the guards were meant to contain the threat of other rival gangsters; a task for which they appeared adequate. Of course, taking on a trained military force was a totally different ball game.
‘According to Indian Intelligence, the security is there more to ensure the man does not get away from the country,’ the Force 22 Intelligence Officer had told them. ‘That is the most likely scenario,’ Anbu had agreed. ‘The man knows too many secrets about the Pakistani terror factory to be allowed to get away alive. His criminal network is also a vital part of the covert nuclear proliferation network set up by the Pakis. A chunk of the drug profits are used to fund the global jihadi terror factory. There is no way in hell the Pakis will ever allow him to walk out of their country alive…he knows too much and they have too much at stake riding on him.’
