LASHKAR

by Mukul Deva

  That is when the fear came.

  Out of nowhere. Like a pot of milk suddenly boiling over. Pure terror gleamed in Rehman’s eyes, which were now riveted on the cold steel. Iqbal raised the knife a little higher. The fear mounted. He could see it glittering in the eyes of the man lying before him. An endless silent scream stormed through the hut. Shards of cold comfort drove through Iqbal. ‘You deserve it…you bastard,’ he hissed.

  Iqbal was about to drive the knife into the soft flesh of the man’s belly when an unbidden memory intruded. There was still one more man alive who needed to die.

  ‘Do you want to live old man?’ Iqbal whispered.

  Sudden hope flared in Rehman’s fear- struck eyes. He nodded.

  ‘Then I need you to talk to me. If you tell me what I want I may let you…’

  The man nodded vehemently. He would have agreed to anything.

  ‘Good!’ Iqbal reached out. ‘I am going to remove the gag from your mouth, but I promise that if you make one sound I will kill you…no one can reach you before my knife. Do you understand?’

  Another swift nod. Iqbal reached out and removed the gag from his mouth. The man gasped and spluttered breathing greedy mouthfuls of air into his starved lungs.

  ‘The man in the hut with you that day…when you showed us the television coverage of the Delhi blasts…Salim…didn’t he mastermind the mission?’

  The man nodded. ‘Brigadier Murad Salim of the ISI.’

  ‘Salim. Brigadier Murad Salim.’ Iqbal whispered the name to himself softly. ‘Salim must die.’ He thought for a moment then prodded Rehman with his knife. ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘He has many houses and offices. I have all the addresses in that diary there.’ The man motioned to a small table in the corner. His voice was getting stronger now. Iqbal could see the man’s confidence return. ‘But they will do you no good. Salim was killed last week.’

  ‘Killed? How?’ Iqbal felt cheated.

  ‘Salim’s helicopter was shot down a few days back.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘A Stinger missile.’

  Iqbal shrugged. ‘I hope he died screaming in pain.’

  Then Iqbal reached out for him again. The Maulana tried to resist as Iqbal’s hands picked up the gag and shoved it back in his mouth. Rehman’s eyes bulged in confusion. ‘I watched a gut-shot man die a few days ago. I know how slow and painful such a death can be.’ Iqbal whispered harshly. ‘That is the kind of death you deserve.’

  Iqbal’s hand flashed up and descended in a vicious arc. The knife entered the man’s belly with a heavy sucking sound. A soundless scream ripped through him. As he writhed in pain, Iqbal withdrew the knife and carefully wiped it clean on the man’s clothes.

  ‘Die slowly, old man…and give a thought to those hundreds of innocents you have sentenced to death. Maybe Allah will forgive you.’

  Iqbal walked up to a table in the corner and picked up the small telephone book lying on it. Right next to the phone book was a sleek, almost new satellite phone. On an impulse he picked that up too. Just before leaving the hut, Iqbal taped his last grenade tightly to Rehman’s torso. He tied a string to the grenade’s pin and attached the other end to the inner handle of the door.

  This was to be his parting gift. The next man who pulled open the door would be in for the shock of his life.

  Pulling the door gently behind him Iqbal dropped silently to the ground again and melted into the jungles surrounding the camp.

  FULL CIRCLE

  Despite all their howling and screaming the Pakistanis knew that nothing concrete was going to come of the whole exercise. Maintaining the Armed Forces in the current state of readiness was slowly but deftly starting to strangle an already weak economy. But they could not afford to take the offensive lying down. From the madrassas to the offices of the various jihadi outfits there was a massive clamour at the failure of the Pakistani Government to protect them.

  A reaction was imminent. The Pakistanis continued with their political posturing while word was quietly sent out to the tribe of terror groups that the ISI controlled: ‘The Indians must be made to pay for this.’

  The coming days saw a spate of terrorist attacks and suicide bombings erupt in the Kashmir Valley and many other Indian cities as the ISI activated several sleeper cells.

  The Indians had been expecting something pretty much on these lines. Luckily, most of the attacks did not cause substantial damage. Of course, some of them did succeed.

  The number of ISI- sponsored terrorists that came in to India with the constant inflow of refugees from Bangladesh and Nepal was far higher than normal in the coming weeks. Many of them were apprehended at the borders and sent back or jailed.

  Some foreign tourists were unlucky enough to be picnicking on the banks of the Dal Lake when a suicide bomber took them out. Two of them happened to be American. This did not go down well with the American public; there were just too many body bags being flown back from all over the world.

  A party of Hindu pilgrims in the Kashmir Valley was met by two jihadi snipers who managed to cut down three of them before the security man carrying the rocket launcher was able to get a fix on the snipers and blow them to bits.

  A pressure-cooker bomb exploded in the temple city of Varanasi. Sixteen devotees were killed.

  Another bomb placed in a trashcan near the Akshardham temple in Gujarat was defused minutes before it was set to explode.

  Three Indian ministers also got unlucky as their security men failed to prevent an attack on them. Barring the loss of face to the Indian Government, their demise caused no significant loss since they were from the standard corrupt pool of politicians; two of them were facing charges for their involvement in the kind of scams that rock Indian polity every so often. In fact, their untimely departure from earth proved to be a blessing in disguise. It saved the Indian exchequer a lot of money that would have been spent needlessly prosecuting them, since it is almost certain that they would eventually have got away scot-free.

  IQBAL

  Somewhere along the LOC, POK.

  He felt neither elation nor satisfaction; neither rewarded nor redeemed. All he felt was an emptiness. Inside him was an emotional wasteland. Whatever it was that had been pushing him these past few days seemed at last to have been stilled. At least for the moment.

  In the distance was the snow-clad mountain peak that marked the path that Iqbal had to take today. Just along the base of that mountain lay the twisting path that would take him back home. Back to Abbu and Ashraf.

  It was a long journey and by no means an easy one. His legs moved of their own accord. As feet turned to yards and yards into miles Iqbal felt the relentless images in his mind recede. A blank white numbness engulfed his mind. Somewhere, far away he saw his mother and sister calling him home… Allaa-hummaftah Lee Abwaaba Rahmatik…

  It was not the soldier manning the battlefield surveillance radar who spotted the movement. It was the Machine-Gunner who first heard the sound and alerted the Section Commander. The Section Commander immediately pointed out the positions and gave the required field signals. Silently, the section moved into position. Barely eighty seconds later, all six rifles of the section were trained on the narrow winding mountain trail. So was the section’s machine-gun. The ambush was firmly in place. Every gun was cocked and poised to unleash a hail of leaden death.

  ‘No one will fire till I give the signal,’ the Section Commander whispered. Nobody nodded or spoke to acknowledge the command. Every man’s attention was focused on the barely audible sounds coming from the trail and they all tensed as the target suddenly appeared over the crest. He was not making much noise but neither was he taking many precautions. Like a zombie, like a man walking in his sleep. Stupid shit! the Section Commander thought. One of those newly-trained morons coming back to save the world.

  The man had descended almost twenty metres down the rocky slope. Another eighty metres and he would be almost at the base of the defile and within easy
striking range of the waiting guns. So would the rest of the infiltrating party that was sure to be behind him. The Section Commander had been told during his induction training that there were normally eight to ten of them in each infiltration party. By now the man had descended another fifty metres and the Section Commander was starting to get a little concerned. How come none of the others are visible yet? You never maintain such a large distance between each other when moving in such rough terrain.

  The man had almost reached the centre of the killing ground. Another few moments and he would be out of it, lost forever behind the bend in the mountain trail. The Section Commander pondered the dilemma briefly. In the end it was a pretty simple choice. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The Section Commander nodded to his men: ‘Get ready, guys,’ he whispered softly. ‘I am going to hail him once, if he doesn’t stop blow him away.’

  Guns steadied as he raised the small hailer to his mouth. Experience had shown that a sudden loud voice booming out of the mountainside more often than not froze the unsuspecting person for a few seconds. In such conditions those few seconds were more than critical. They made the difference between life and death.

  ‘Stop! Stop right there and raise your hands in the air!’

  Amplified by the hailer the Section Commander’s voice blasted out of the undergrowth shattering the uneasy calm that prevailed along the LOC.

  But it was not half as loud or disruptive as the gunfire waiting to be unleashed…

  Please turn the page

  for an exciting preview of

  Mukul Deva’s sequel to Lashkar

  Salim Must Die

  Coming in 2009

  Male Airport, Maldives

  The man squinted as the bright clear sunlight struck him. After the fog-laden climate of Murree, the bright sun was a shocker. Groping in the laptop bag slung on his shoulder, he pulled out a pair of dark sunglasses and put them on as he walked up to the edge of the ocean. The old man was watching the water lap against the low concrete wall running all along the edge when his younger companion from Murree emerged from the airport building and walked up to him.

  In his mid-thirties, the second man was tall and broad-shouldered. He sported a distinctly military haircut and his eyes were hidden behind dark wraparound shades like those worn by cricketers on the field. He was sweating profusely. He, too, must have been feeling the sharp change in climate after the long stay at Murree.

  Walking just behind him, pushing a luggage trolley, was a muscular young man with a healthy tanned complexion, in a sparkling white T-shirt with ‘Sunshine Travels’ emblazoned across his muscular chest.

  ‘We are ready, sirs,’ the young man with the luggage trolley called out brightly. ‘Please follow me. That’s our boat.’ He pushed the trolley around them and made his way to a speedboat bobbing gently alongside the wooden jetty. The trolley made a hollow trundling sound as it lumbered over the long wooden slats of the jetty. The duo from Murree waited till the luggage was on board and then jumped onto the speedboat. A few minutes later it pulled away from the jetty and headed out into the vastness of the brilliant blue ocean. The nose of the speedboat lifted into the air as it gathered speed. A fine spray arced out in the wind, gently dousing the two men standing leewards of the tiny cockpit-like cabin. It felt pleasant and refreshing.

  ‘Our hotel, the Blue Moon Resort, is there.’ The enthusiastic young man from Sunshine Travels gestured at the distant horizon. ‘It will take us about forty minutes to reach. The Blue Moon is one of the finest resorts in Maldives. I can assure you that both of you will have a wonderful time.’ He was shouting, but his voice was blown away in the wind that whipped past the speeding boat.

  ‘What is that?’ Cheema pointed at the huge gleaming golden dome sparkling in the sun.

  ‘That is the Islamic Centre. You can see it no matter which direction you approach Male from. We must come down and see it one of these days. Believe me, sirs, it is really beautiful.’

  The two men from Murree watched the huge, shining facade recede rapidly in the distance. Their escort prattled on about the islands and the wonders of Maldives.

  The younger of the two seemed to be listening intently, but his older colleague was clearly disinterested in his surroundings. The lad’s constant drone was starting to get on his nerves. Closing his mind to it, the old man turned his thoughts inwards.

  Ex-Brigadier Murad Salim of the Pakistani ISI was not here on a holiday jaunt. He was a man with a mission, though officially he was a dead man, like his younger companion and aide, ex-Captain Azam Cheema. They had both been declared dead after they had engineered their own deaths in a helicopter crash in the wake of the Delhi bomb blasts of October 2005.

  Salim was impatient to reach the hotel and meet the men and women who were gathering there from all points of the compass. They were a diverse group from different countries, of different nationalities. But they all had one thing in common. They were gathering to plot death.

  Death for a great many people…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This writing of this book has been a fascinating journey for me and not one, I might add, that I have always enjoyed. It is sad to see the kind of pain and misery that we humans are capable of inflicting on each other in the name of religion.

  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many officers of the Indian Armed Forces who have been kind enough to ensure I did not make any major blunders when writing about tactics, weapons and weapon systems. I must also mention here that all technical data used in this book is freely and easily available on the Internet and has not been provided to me by any person or persons.

  Any errors (factual or technical) that still exist in this book are solely my fault or have been deliberately left in there by me to prevent any misuse of the technology.

  This book would definitely not have been possible without the tremendous support and expert guidance that I received from my editor Nandita Aggarwal.

  I would also like to thank V.K. Karthika, Yogesh Sharma and Amit Sharma at HarperCollins for their help and support.

  About the Author

  An alumnus of La Martiniere College, Lucknow, the National Defence Academy, Pune and the Indian Military Academy, Dehra Doon, Mukul Deva was commissioned in December 1981 into the Sikh Light Infantry of the Indian Army. After fifteen years of service – including active combat duty/operations in India and overseas – as a Major in the Indian Army, he opted for premature retirement. His previously published works include, Time after Time, S.T.R.I.P.T.E.A.S.E. – The Art of Corporate Warfare, and M.O.D.E.L. – The Return of the Employee.

  Praise for Lashkar

  ‘An edge-of-the-seat-thriller’

  – The Hindustan Times

  ‘Exciting… with some action, some introspection, some retrospection… A racy read’

  – The Times of India

  ‘For the first time, an Indian thriller set in contemporary times… a gripping tale’

  – The Pioneer

  ‘Lashkar tries to make sense of the terror that surrounds our lives’

  – The Hindu

  ‘Ludlumesque’

  – The Tribune

  ‘A glance is enough to discover… this is a Tom Clancy on the LOC’

  – Time Out

  ‘A real page-turner… a riveting read’

  – Business Standard

  ‘Written with style and panache’

  – Sahara Time

  ‘A real-life take on how the so-called jehadis are picked up from anonymous Indian streets… Lashkar tells many tales with great ease’

  – MetroPlus

  ‘Lashkar is gripping… racy and visually captivating’

  – Indo Asian News Service

  ‘Magnificently paced, rich and real in imagery… Deva is a visionary’

  – Sarthak Dasgupta, filmmaker

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction although some of the events mentioned here have actually taken place.
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  All characters, places and organizations described or mentioned in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is absolutely unintentional.

  I have taken the liberty of using my alma mater, La Martiniere College, Lucknow, as a backdrop for a part of the story since I am inordinately proud of my association with this great institution; the school and its memories occupy a huge place in my mind.

  The technical details, specifications and methodologies relating to bomb-making, weaponry and tactics employed by any police, military or militant organization, and all criminal, forensic and investigative procedures mentioned herein have been deliberately kept vague, inaccurate and/or incomplete to prevent there being any misuse of the information – accidental or otherwise.

  There is no malice intended against any religion, race, caste, creed, nation, organization or people.

  First published in India in 2008 by

  HarperCollins Publishers India

  Copyright © Mukul Deva 2008

  ISBN: 978-81-7223-665-6

  Epub Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9789350295922

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  Mukul Deva asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.