LASHKAR

by Mukul Deva

  ‘What in God’s name are those idiots doing?’

  The Pakistan patrol on the ground was amazed at the sudden hostility and fire that it was drawing from up above. Frantic calls on the radio set to their Company Commander, since they had no means of communicating directly with the helicopters, resulted in more panic and confusion all around.

  It took almost twenty minutes before temperatures cooled sufficiently and some semblance of order returned to the area. In those twenty minutes the Rangers fired off enough ammunition to win a small war. Most of it fell harmlessly on to the empty desert. Some whistled past the four commandos racing towards the border. One of the bullets got lucky and nicked Sami’s right ear, taking off the lower lobe.

  ‘Shit!’ he cursed as he instinctively turned to return the fire, but then he restrained himself. There was no sense giving away their positions by opening fire. That chopper could cause serious problems if it managed to locate them again. Clasping a handkerchief to his ear to stanch the bleeding he resumed running with the others.

  The second bullet was a little luckier. It slammed into Tony’s upper thigh felling him to the ground. Katoch was running almost abreast with Tony when he saw him stumble and fall.

  ‘Man down,’ Katoch hissed urgently bringing the others to a halt. Swiftly he knelt down and checked the wound. The bullet seemed to have missed the bone. Even so the flesh was ripped apart. ‘There is no way in hell he can move with this leg. Here…’ Katoch tossed his weapon to Tiwathia and hoisted Tony onto his back. ‘Man! What the hell have you been eating?’ he said as Tony’s weight settled on him. Then they were off again. Sami led the way as Katoch followed and Tiwathia brought up the rear.

  Those twenty minutes of confusion between the Pakistan Rangers and the choppers clattering noisily overhead gave the four Force 22 officers enough time to put over a kilometre between themselves and the Pakistani patrols. The Pakistanis did not know who, how many, or where exactly they were.

  ‘Whoever it is, has to be heading for the bloody border, you idiots,’ the frantic Company Commander screamed in frustration. ‘Where else do they think they will be going? Stop them! Just head for the border and stop them.’

  By now the four commandos had given up all pretence at stealth and were heading hell for leather for Chengiz Khan. They were in superb physical condition, but there was just so much speed that Katoch was able to generate with Tony on his back. Chengiz Khan was still another eighteen hundred metres away.

  ‘Fox this is Tango. You need to haul ass. The Snakes and the Ground Bandits are barely eight hundred metres away now. One of the ground bandits teams is moving on a direct intercept path.’

  ‘Are they between us already?’

  ‘No, but they will be if you guys don’t shake a leg fast.’

  ‘Roger that Tango.’

  The three men reached within themselves and called up every reserve available. ‘Katoch, here let me take him now.’ Tiwathia quickly took Tony on his back and they raced on. Seven hundred metres away Katoch again took on Tony as Tiwathia started to tire and slow down. By now the blood from Sami’s ear had soaked the handkerchief and was starting to seep down his collar.

  ‘The finish line is close…almost in touching reach.’ Gritting his teeth he ignored the spasms of pain that coursed from his ear to his neck as he ran on. ‘So are the damn Pakis.’

  He did not know it but at that precise moment one of the Pakistan Rangers had finished deploying the battlefield surveillance radar and had begun to scan the desert. It took him barely a minute to locate Fox as it raced towards the border. The excited Ranger was on the set and screaming within seconds. Luckily he had no means of communicating directly with the chopper above and his message had to be routed through his Company Commander.

  Even so, almost immediately the hunters changed course and began to close in on the Force 22 commandos. The commandos only got wind of this when the first volley of shots rang out. Racing through the desert the commandos felt the whiplash of hot lead whine past them. None of the shots were aimed, but all of them were lethal enough in any case. Carrying Tony on his back as he ran, Katoch felt one of them hit his right arm. He stumbled as it slashed past. It must have been a graze since he did not feel any pain. Tossing up a silent prayer he raced on towards the border and the safety of Chengiz Khan.

  At Chengiz Khan, the same group of people who had seen them off, now awaited the return of the four commandos. This time however there were more combat dress uniforms to be seen than labourers’ attire; the need and time for pretence was fast receding. Also in evidence were a lot of automatic weapons. The thunder of gunfire and the roar of the choppers were clearly audible to them all.

  ‘Chengiz this is Tango. Fox is blown. They are heading your way…bandits close behind.’ The Krishnas overhead were watching everything unblinkingly. They saw the hunters alter course and knew the curtain was coming down fast. The slim window of opportunity had begun to close.

  ‘Roger that Tango. We’re hot now and ready to move in.’

  ‘No Chengiz. Don’t cross the IB till we confirm. Instead just buzz the bird and get it away from Fox. It is almost on their backs right now. In fact if it hadn’t been for the darkness they’d be toast by now.’

  ‘Chengiz this is Tiger.’ Watching from afar, Anbu cut in smoothly. ‘You are cleared to cross the IB. Do whatever it takes but get Fox back.’

  The Chengiz team leader assimilated the input.

  ‘This is serious shit, man. Nobody crosses the IB lightly…especially not armed men.’ He shrugged. ‘Thank God, we have a serious dude backing the play.’

  ‘Roger Tiger, leave it to me. Fox is coming back in one piece.’

  ‘Team One, get ready to move.’ Tossing the radio handset to the operator the Chengiz leader raced out of the tent. ‘Team Two stand by for fire support. Move, move….’

  There was a flurry of activity as men raced out cocking their weapons. The Chengiz team leader grabbed the Igla-1S MANPAD missile and ran to the top of the nearest dune.

  The Soviet made Igla-1S is an excellent surface to air missile with all aspect capability. It also has IFF capability to ensure friendly aircraft are not fired upon. The officer aligned the Igla-1S towards the Pakistani chopper hovering a little over a kilometre away. At that range and in such conditions it was a sitting duck.

  ‘I have movement there.’ The Indian soldier manning the battlefield surveillance radar at Chengiz pointed out. ‘About seven hundred metres now and closing. There are three in front and about ten behind. There are another ten angling in from the right…about five hundred metres away.’

  ‘Three? Only three men? We have four men out there.’ The officer paused and turned towards him. ‘Ajit!’ He called out to the Team Two leader. ‘Get your guys ready.’ He turned back to the Igla and zeroed in on the Pakistani helicopter. At that moment it was the most potent threat on their horizon. ‘I have to neutralize the bastard. Another minute or two and our boys will be done for.’

  A silent beam shot out from the Igla’s IFF system as it queried the helicopter.

  ‘Friend or foe? Identify yourself.’ The beam seemed to ask.

  ‘Shit!’ The Pakistani chopper pilot breathed as his systems bleeped a warning. ‘We’re being tracked…. These bloody Indians! What the fuck is wrong with them…how far are we from the border?’ Then deciding that he didn’t want to wait and find out he whirled the bird around and, dropping height, headed northwards. ‘Control this is Mike Two. What the hell is happening here? We are being hit upon with a missile track. Is there something going on that we haven’t been told?’

  ‘Mike Two what are you talking about? Stay low and pull back a little. Let me check this out.’ The Controller immediately got on to the hotline to check with his boss what they needed to do next.

  The Pakistan Rangers on ground saw the chopper pull away and move homewards. That confused the already perplexed men.

  ‘What’s going on here? Where is that joker going?’


  ‘Wait…let me check.’ The patrol leader was not an exceptionally bright man. He was also not at the age where one could expect any major surges of initiative from him. His tired patrol clustered around him as he got on to the horn with the Company Commander. They were all fed up of chasing ghosts in the desert.

  ‘Tango for Chengiz. That was neat. The bird has pulled back a bit. Enough for the moment. The ground bandits also seem to have halted for the time being.’ Pause. ‘Fox is closing in now.’

  ‘Thanks, Tango. We have got Fox on the charts…but only three of them. What’s happening out there?’

  ‘Fox for Chengiz.’ The radio crackled before Tango could reply

  ‘Fox this is Chengiz. We are reading you strength five.’ The operator manning the set was right on the ball.

  ‘Chengiz keep your guns tight. We are coming in now.’

  ‘Come on in Fox. Confirm guns tight. I repeat we are guns tight now. Over.’ The radio operator raced out.

  ‘Hey! Guys! They are coming in now. Hold your fire. Oye you…hold your fire.’

  He had barely shouted out the warning when three figures raced out of the darkness and across the gap in the fence.

  ‘We have a man wounded here!’ Tiwathia called out as he led the way in. His breath came in ragged spurts. The other two tumbled in behind him, bleeding and exhausted. ‘Do you guys have a medic around?’

  ‘Coming right up,’ the Chengiz leader yelled as the team medic rushed forward.

  Katoch heaved a sigh of relief and grinned as the medic team eased the wounded Tony off his back. ‘What the hell, Tony! I never knew you’re so full of shit. I should be getting overtime for this.’

  Fox was home.

  The hunt had gone well after all.

  IQBAL

  Even though there was dense foliage around the small knoll behind which he had taken position, Iqbal had a decent view of the complete camp from his perch at the edge of the small cluster of trees. He felt no sense of connect as he surveyed the training camp. It was as if the young man who had left the camp barely ten days ago had nothing in common with the man crouching in the undergrowth three hundred metres away.

  Twenty minutes after Iqbal moved into position he glimpsed Maulana Fazlur Rehman heading towards the hut that housed the radio set. An hour later he came out from the communications hut and walked up and down the camp a couple of times. The Maulana was stretching his legs. Iqbal followed him through the sights of his rifle. He had several opportunities to take a shot at him. But that was not the aim. Iqbal wanted to see him die. Up-close, and personal. I want you to see it coming. I want you to feel the fear, you bastard. I want you to know why you have to be killed.

  Iqbal wanted Rehman to understand why he needed to die, even though he knew he would not be able to make the Maulana see things differently. The Maulana was a man deeply handicapped by the poverty of limited judgement; the one-sided vision of the zealot. He would never be able to see or accept any other point of view.

  It was becoming hard to stay still in the cold. Iqbal could feel his extremities starting to freeze. Movement was necessary to keep the blood circulating. But motion would give him away. Iqbal forced himself to ignore the cold. Despite his best efforts, by the time night arrived, the increasing cold and the lack of motion had sapped him badly. Iqbal’s numbed hands, nose and ears were losing sensation. Yet, Iqbal resisted the temptation to get up and make his move as soon as it grew dark. That would be tactically stupid. He needed to let people settle down for the night. He needed to let the silent darkness of the cold night dull the alertness of the sentries.

  Iqbal recalled that the camp had two sentries. The first sentry guarded the communications hut and the second the weapons hut. This was reconfirmed when he saw the first set of sentries move into position just as darkness began to fall. Iqbal noted the time. It was almost 1800 hours. When the sentries moved into position there was a brief window of opportunity when the outskirts of the camp went unobserved. In any case, during the first five to ten minutes of sentry duty their eyes would still not be acclimatized to the darkness.

  Iqbal used this opportunity to rapidly crawl ahead to the second position that he had picked out during the day’s vigil. Now he was barely a hundred and seventy metres from the outer perimeter of the camp.

  Each sentry duty shift would be of the standard two hours duration unless things had changed drastically. They hadn’t. Precisely at 2000 hours Iqbal heard more than saw the guards changing. Hearing the new sentries moving in, Iqbal remembered how they had all hated night guard duty when they were undergoing training. Especially in winter. After an hour in the mind-numbing cold all you could think of was getting warm again. ‘The worst thing is the bloody pointlessness of the whole thing.’ In his mind Iqbal could hear Omar complain. ‘Nothing ever happens that can justify standing there and freezing your nuts off. Not here in the back of beyond.’

  That’s what they had all thought, Iqbal remembered.

  As the night deepened Iqbal began to flex his fingers and move his limbs more and more, rubbing his face with his hands to restore some semblance of feeling and warmth to his body. The chances of being spotted reduced as the shroud of darkness deepened.

  At midnight, Iqbal heard the sentries change again. He gave the new pair of sentries another thirty minutes to settle down. Then he got up and, moving in a wide loop, circled around till he was at the point where it was easiest to access the hut that housed the Maulana. The walk not only warmed Iqbal’s body and loosened his limbs it also adjusted his eyes completely to the darkness and primed him for silent motion in the dark. It was precisely 0125 hours by his watch when Iqbal emerged from the foliage and silently slithered into the camp. Moving imperceptibly with great stealth it took him about ten minutes to cross the open area that lay all around the camp and reach the hut where his target slept.

  He was just twenty feet away when he heard a tiny metallic clang. He froze for a few seconds and listened. It was the sentry by the weapons hut who had changed his position. Iqbal could hear him stamping his feet as he moved around. He listened for a bit longer. The poor sod seemed to be trying to stay warm. Iqbal began to move again.

  Almost diagonally opposite from the weapons hut, about ninety feet away, sat the second sentry. There was no sound from him. Iqbal guessed that the man was asleep; a lot of them tended to nap when they thought they could get away with it, which they did invariably, as the instructors couldn’t be bothered to come out and brave the chill. In any case, Iqbal knew from experience that this was the time of the night when sleep was deepest.

  Reaching the Maulana’s hut, Iqbal quickly merged with the deeper shadows immediately around the walls. Shouldering his rifle carefully he held his knife in one hand and reached for the door with the other. I hope the damn door does not creak, he thought grimly as he gently pulled it open.

  REACTION

  ‘How could those wimpy Indians have done this?’ The General’s temper was as short as his vision and political horizon. ‘How could they have even thought of doing it? Who do they think we are?’

  ‘It couldn’t have been anyone else, sir.’ The ISI Director spoke warily. ‘That much is obvious from the people who have been eliminated.’

  ‘I know that, dammit! I want to know how we were caught with our pants down!’ The dictator gave his security chief a filthy look. ‘What were your idiots doing?’

  The security chief looked away. This was not the time to tell the General that there was little they could have done; it was simply not possible to foresee every possible reaction and protect every possible target. But now was neither the time nor place to tell him that. The days of due process were over for the people of Pakistan. Those who crossed the dictator or rubbed him the wrong way tended to vanish without a trace.

  ‘What are the losses like?’ The General finally gave an angry snort and turned back to the ISI Director.

  ‘Just those three or four men.’

  ‘Who gives a shit for
men? Men die all the time. What is the damage like to the…the…pipeline?’ The General chose his words with great care. Although they were in the safe confines of his office and the offices were swept electronically every morning these days one could never be too careful. In any case, it was always wiser not to talk openly about things like the narco-nuclear-terror trail.

  ‘The damage is substantial,’ the ISI chief replied softly. He did not like being the bearer of bad tidings and cursed the wimpy security chief for not taking on these questions. This shit was his domain, after all. ‘Especially with the scientist under house arrest, the man in Karachi was vital, we were using his conduits extensively.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  The ISI chief was careful to keep the contempt off his face as he watched the dictator pace up and down the room. All he had lost was money. Shitloads of it no doubt, but they were the ones hit hardest. All those years of work had gone down the shitter with that guy in Karachi. His loss would substantially affect their capability to carry out strikes inside India.

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘We will have to develop his Second in Command to take over.’

  ‘How much time?’

  ‘Who can say for sure?’ The ISI chief shrugged. ‘A few months maybe. The Second in Command is not that bright…but then that is also a big plus for us. It makes it easier for us to control him.’

  The General stopped pacing the room and looked at him. ‘Good! That’s good. So we are not that badly off?’

  ‘Well…not that we have too many options open to us right now,’ the ISI chief shrugged. ‘The scientist is on a global shit list. If he even steps out of Pakistan God knows who will take him down…or even worse, whisk him away for questioning.’