by Deva, Mukul
Hearing Karamat call him Indian, one of the men asked Iqbal, ‘Are you also from the Lashkar?’
His obviously Kashmiri accent took Iqbal by surprise. Recovering quickly, he shook his head. ‘You?’
‘Yes, the twelve of us are.’ He gestured towards the knot of men around him.
Iqbal examined the raiding party closely. It was divided into four teams of twelve men each, with the remaining four grouped directly under Karamat Each twelve-man section comprised men from a particular region. From the differences in their behaviour and with the LeT jihadi’s admission, Iqbal realized that people from several different groups had been put together for this mission; some spoke Arabic, some Urdu, others Pashto or Dari. The rest spoke languages that Iqbal was not yet able to identify.
He was mulling this over when the team leaders began inspecting their men, in exactly the way Iqbal and his fellow trainees had been checked by their trainers before they moved out from the Chakoti Post to infiltrate into India after their training at the Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad.
I hope we do not meet the same fate our party encountered that night, Iqbal thought. Funnily enough, the memory of machine guns scything through the night and the screaming, dying men all around no longer had any impact on him. Death no longer seemed the same to Iqbal ever since he had seen Tanaz die. It had lost its sting.
‘Make bloody sure there is nothing on you that makes any noise or shines in the dark.’
One by one the team leaders checked their men and reported back to Karamat.
‘Weapon loads?’ he enquired.
‘All okay.’ Knowing that ammunition was what kept one alive on the battlefield, every man was carrying as much as he could; dry fruits and water constituted the balance of the load. Every rucksack was bulging to the brim, making the men hunch forward.
The vehicles left at irregular intervals of ten to fifteen minutes. All of them ran without lights, though they knew this did not afford safety from the heat-seeking equipment fitted on most American aircraft and drones. They were well aware that the eyes in the skies were technologically so powerful that they could see every detail miles below. The best they could do was have each vehicle travel alone, so that it did not draw the attention a convoy would, and even if it did and was taken out, the losses would be relatively minimal.
The journey was uncomfortable and painfully slow. But Iqbal noticed that none of the men seemed very anxious.
It was only when they halted that signs of tension began to emerge. It was obvious that the Durand Line had been crossed and they were now in the combat zone.
‘From here we go on foot,’ one of the old-timers murmured to Iqbal, who was studying the bleak terrain around them.
At a signal from Karamat, they set off at a brisk pace. The cold seeped in through the layers of clothing and cut straight to the bone. Even standing still for a few moments was enough to chill the body.
A few hours later, lights began to twinkle in the distance. It was probably the Afghan city of Jalalabad.
The lights were still far away when they halted. Karamat gathered together the leaders of the four strike teams. He unfurled a map and began briefing them under the faint glow of a shaded torch. It was a military grade map and had been annotated with blue and red markings.
Iqbal noticed that the men had taken up all-round defensive positions as soon as they had stopped, similar to an army unit. Unlike the badly-trained jihadis Iqbal had met in Muzaffarabad and Faisalabad, there was no slackness in this lot. He now understood how they had kept the Pakistan Army at bay all these years and how a mere 3,000 of them had been able to send over 12,000 Pakistani troops slinking out of the Swat Valley the previous year.
The hushed briefing lasted only a few minutes. The section commanders returned to take charge of their men. Another round of whispered instructions followed and they set off.
They were all moving in the same general direction, but following different routes. Five minutes later, Iqbal lost track of the other sections.
The pace now picked up. The thin mountain air and the heavy load ensured that the going was rough.
They halted so suddenly that Iqbal crashed into the man in front of him. The section commander hissed and everyone hit the ground. Iqbal suddenly realized that the section commander had melted away into the darkness. So had the two men immediately behind him.
Twenty minutes later, one of them returned. There was another hurried conference and he vanished into the night, taking two more men with him.
Moments later, one of them returned to signal the rest. ‘Come on, this way.’ They followed him up the steep slope as fast as possible.
The section commander and two of the men were standing near a shallow trench on top of the mountain. The fourth man lay dead a few feet away, a bayonet sticking out of his chest. In the trench lay three more bodies. The smell of freshly drawn blood hung in the air.
‘That is our target… the gun post.’ The section commander raised a commando knife and pointed up the slope. Dirty red blood glowed on the blade. Iqbal could faintly see some men moving around a camouflaged gun pit about 900 metres away. They did not seem particularly alert. He could hear the sound of their voices even from this distance.
‘The second outpost should be on the other slope,’ the section commander pointed again. ‘You four,’ he gestured at Iqbal and the last three men, ‘follow that ledge and get there. Take them out silently… No guns, okay? If something goes wrong, only you will fire.’ He pointed the knife at the man wielding a silenced carbine. ‘You have a ten-minute head start. Then we go for the main gun post, okay?’
Weapons at the ready, the four of them moved along the edge of the mountain, hunching down to ensure they were not skylighted.
The second machine gun was also manned by three men. None of the three was as alert as he should have been. One of them was even asleep. He did not wake up as his comrades fell to the knives of the assaulting quartet. By the time he stirred, Iqbal’s knife had torn into his heart and put him to sleep again. This time more permanently.
Iqbal felt a surge of satisfaction as he wiped the blade clean on the dead man’s clothes.
The last man was gasping his way to death when a commotion broke out at the gun post. They seemed to have spotted the main assault team. Not that it did them any good. A series of muted spits punctured the night as the section commander’s silenced carbine spat lead. A minute later, the muted light of a torch flashed at them from the direction of the gun post. Once. Twice. Thrice.
The man with the carbine turned to Iqbal. ‘Indian, get to the gun post now.’
As he was walking away, Iqbal saw them throw the dead bodies out of the trench and swing around the machine gun till it faced the Kabul–Jalalabad–Peshawar road; earlier it had been guarding the slope leading up to the main gun post.
As he walked up to the main gun post, Iqbal could see the section commander kneeling on the ground. Lying in front of him was another Afghan. The whimpering man had a large bloody hole where his left eye had been.
‘Give me the password.’ The section commander prodded the man’s wound with his knife. The captive screamed. It was not long before he began to talk.
‘Are you sure you are not lying to me?’
‘Allah is my witness, I am not lying,’ the man said frantically, desperate to show he was cooperating.
The section commander seemed convinced because he drew his knife smoothly across the man’s throat.
Iqbal could not keep his eyes off the body as he heard the section commander give the call sign and code words to the first rocket launcher team.
‘Are you familiar with this?’ he asked Iqbal as he swivelled the huge twin-barrelled ZU-23 2 mm gun around; now it too was facing the Kabul–Jalalabad–Peshawar road ahead.
Iqbal shook his head; he had never even seen the weapon system before.
Another reminder of the Russian invasion, the ZU-23 2 is a short-range air defence canon. The ZU or Zenitnaya Ustano
vka is an anti-aircraft mount. The 2A14 23 mm auto canons of the weapon have a practical rate of fire of 400 rounds per minute. The weapon is aimed and fired manually with the help of a ZAP-23 optical-mechanical sight that provides automatic aiming with the help of manually entered data. It also has a straight tube telescope for use against ground targets. Depending on the target and role, the ZU-23 2 can fire the BZT Armour Piercing Incendiary-Tracer (API-T) rounds or the OFZ High Explosive Incendiary-Tracer (HEI-T) rounds.
‘Damn! Yusuf was.’ The section commander was referring to the man they had lost while taking the first machine gun trench. ‘Okay, come here. See… this is all you have to do.’ He showed Iqbal how to reload the weapon, making him practise it a few times.
By the time he got the two rocket launcher teams deployed, one on either side of the ZU, the first rays of sunlight had begun to appear. They went to ground and began to wait.
Unknown to Iqbal, the second section which had gone with Karamat’s HQ team had also carried out a similar operation and taken up position on the mountain across the narrow defile in front. The road wound through the defile before vanishing round the bend. Between the two teams, they now dominated the road.
The third and fourth sections had looped around and taken position on either side of the selected ambush site, just off the road. They would seal off the road at both ends as soon as the ambush was sprung, thus ensuring no one was able to get away from the killing ground.
The wait lasted six hours.
Their quarry came up the road a little short of noon. Three Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicles led the convoy and two brought up the rear.
Named in honour of Pfc. Stuart S. Stryker, who received the award for his actions during World War II and Spc. 4 Robert F. Stryker, who received the Medal of Honour for his actions during the Vietnam War, the Stryker ICV is only the second American Army vehicle named after enlisted personnel. Armed with the .50 calibre Browning machine gun and capable of carrying nine soldiers, in addition to a two-man crew, the Stryker is often referred to as the Kevlar Coffin, due to its vulnerability to large IEDs.
The Strykers were escorting a dozen ISAF supply trucks. The tactical markings made it clear that they were American, which is possibly why this particular convoy had been selected for special treatment. After all, they had to pay for the blood their Reaper and Predator drones had drawn.
As the first vehicle approached the heart of the killing area, the adrenaline began to flow again in the frozen limbs.
‘Easy! Easy now!’ the section commander manning the ZU breathed as the vehicles droned closer. ‘Hold fire till we get the signal.’
Iqbal barely heard him, he was so keyed up. The convoy was moving cautiously, perhaps aware that the defile was a natural ambush ground.
Suddenly the radio crackled to life. It startled all of them, even though the call was expected. Iqbal was too far away to hear what was said, but he could see the expression on the operator’s face as he spoke. The relief on the man’s face mirrored the section commander’s as the code word was given and accepted.
Banking on their Afghan allies who had been deployed on both shoulders of the defile, the convoy speeded up as soon as they heard the correct words delivered on the correct frequency. No one in the convoy expected trouble now.
Iqbal watched the convoy roll into the kill zone. Unconciously, his fingers began to caress the ammunition that he had to reload into the ZU.
There was a dull bang from across the defile as the leading Stryker crossed the centre of the killing ground. An anti-tank rocket vroomed forward. Iqbal saw the fiery-tailed warhead hammer into the Stryker.
Almost immediately, the RPGs on either side of Iqbal fired, aiming for the ICV that brought up the rear.
The first rocket slammed down on top of the ICV and exploded with a roar. Within seconds, the escort vehicle buckled and burst into flames. The sound was relatively muted, but the effect was spectacular.
The unfortunate vehicle was flung up into the air, before it crashed back on the ground. The driver leapt out of the burning vehicle and began to run. A few more men crawled out and staggered away from the charred mess. They had hardly taken a few steps when machine guns on either side of the defile opened up and hammered into them, throwing their bodies on the ground.
The Stryker ICV bringing up the rear met with the same fate. Now, with burning vehicles blocking the road at either end, the rest of the convoy was trapped in the killing ground. The duck shoot began.
The ZU thundered to life with a roar, making Iqbal start. A stream of hot lead beamed out from it, instantly pulping the soft-skinned cargo carriers into nothingness. One moment there was a vehicle moving along the road, the next it had been rendered into a battered, burning hull.
By now, there was total panic. Barring a few sporadic bursts of retaliatory fire from the surviving Strykers, there was no response to the ambush. There was not much they could do, given the massive quantum of firepower that had been unleashed on the kill zone.
Another barrage of rockets snaked forward from both sides, converging on and smashing the Strykers like fiery bolts of lightning. Men ran screaming from the burning vehicles, only to be mowed down by the constantly stuttering machine guns and the hail of bullets from the ZU.
Iqbal watched in fascination as his hands loaded and reloaded the gun. By now the ZU barrels were flaming red. The heat reached out and singed the hair on his arms as he frantically reloaded, again and yet again. He was not sure how long it lasted; from one level it looked as though the killing had been going on forever, from another it seemed as though only seconds had elapsed.
Silence returned to the killing ground with suddenness. The section commander jumped out from behind the ZU with a yell and, grabbing his carbine, hurtled down the mountainside. Iqbal snatched up his rifle and followed. From both sides of the defile, men converged on the burning vehicles.
There were hardly any survivors by the time they reached the convoy. Those that still lived were finished off with mechanical efficiency.
‘This one is not wounded,’ Iqbal heard someone call out.
‘Take the bastard along,’ Karamat replied. ‘Let’s go now. If they managed to radio out, their air force will be here pretty soon.’
They moved fast, the need for stealth no longer an imperative. It was far more important to get as far away from the ambush site as possible.
The American soldier who had been taken alive was carried on a pole, trussed up like a goat, his hands tied at one end and legs at the other. Iqbal could hear him moaning, more with fear than pain.
They halted about seven miles and one mountain ridge later. By now every man was breathing hard and was layered in sweat despite the cold. The killing heat which had possessed them earlier had been replaced by the physical strain of their rapid exit from the ambush area and the growing fear of aerial interference from the ISAF.
As they halted in the lee of a cliff, they roughly threw down the American soldier. He screamed as he hit the ground hard.
‘Not so brave now, are you?’ one of the two men who had been carrying him chuckled, kicking him in the ribs. ‘You fuckers are only good at attacking people from the air. You need to know how real men fight.’
‘Don’t worry.’ A kick from the second man followed. ‘We will give you a taste of real battle.’
‘Hey you, Indian! And you,’ Karamat called out to Iqbal and another man. ‘Tie the American bastard to that tree.’
Everyone started grinning. This was obviously something they had done before.
The American began to struggle as they carried him to a tree. Suddenly irritated, Iqbal slammed the butt of his rifle on his head; not hard enough to crack it open, but hard enough to almost knock him out. He held him up as another man tied him to the tree.
Iqbal was walking away from their captive when a battle cry rang out. He turned to see several mujahideen lined up, facing the tree. One of them was running forward with his rifle held in assault position, t
he bayonet fixed on it pointing straight ahead. Iqbal felt a strange sensation engulf him as he saw the bayonet disappear into the American’s belly. Iqbal knew he should be revolted. Instead, he felt a strange curiosity.
The man screamed in pain, and the unmistakable stench of shit and piss rose in the air as his bowels and bladder voided themselves. The ambush party broke into jeering laughter.
Iqbal was unable to take his eyes off the soldier. A sweet, metallic taste swirled in his mouth as yet another bayonet sliced into the captured American. His scream, more a ragged shriek now, rang out again.
‘Oye, you stupid fucker!’ someone yelled. ‘Stay away from his chest. Aim for the belly or his arms and legs. We want to see how long that sissy cunt lasts.’
The screams continued as the bayonets thumped periodically into the man; loud cheers accompanied each strike.
‘Hey, Indian,’ Karamat called out. ‘What’s happened to you, my brave mujahideen? Don’t you have the balls for a little blood? Come on, show us your mettle.’ Karamat strode up to Iqbal and pushed him to the head of the line. ‘Go on, take a poke.’
The men began to cheer as Iqbal fixed the bayonet on his rifle and began to close in on the American.
The rifle felt alien in Iqbal’s hand. His mind was devoid of thought as the distance between the bayonet and the half-dead victim narrowed. There was no change in his expression as the bayonet slid into the American’s belly. The captive did not even whimper.
Iqbal watched in fascination. He was so engrossed that he forgot to pull out the bayonet; the thrust-in and pull-out need to be accomplished in one swift motion else the body begins to grip the intruder. When he finally tried to do so, the bayonet refused to budge, as though the American’s body was reluctant to let it go. Iqbal tugged again but to no avail. Finally, he planted his boot on the victim’s body and jerked the bayonet out with all his might. The others cheered as Iqbal’s bayonet emerged, leaving a fountain of blood in its wake.
