LASHKAR (27 page)

The patrol was blundering along in the casual fashion of bored men on a routine patrol.

Naik (Corporal) Hameed, the NCO leading the Pakistan Rangers patrol, was one of those stalwarts who rose through the ranks by the sheer weight of the number of years of service that he’d put in and not by the slightest hint of merit. Paramilitary forces the world over have an abundance of his type thronging the ranks. In times of peace they are the last ones to retire from service simply because, despite all their cribs and gripes, they know the outside world will be hard for them to survive in. During times of war and conflict they are generally the first to die, simply because they have never bothered to cultivate the skills required to survive. This in itself is not much of a problem, but for the fact that more often than not their stupidity causes many others to die with them. Hameed, the NCO in question today, had only a vague idea about reading maps and a vaguer idea still of what patrolling entailed.

‘This way,’ Sami mouthed as he gestured in the direction of the patrol coming towards them. He held up five fingers to let Tony know that there were five men. Tony rapidly checked the other direction to ensure that the coast was clear on his side before he slid down the dune and stealthily made his way towards Sami. Both men watched the patrol carefully, cocking their weapons as they did.

‘The buggers are lost,’ Tony observed. ‘See the way they are all clustering around the map.’

‘Stupid jerks. If these fuckers had been moving around like this in the Valley or even on the island they would have been dead meat by now.’

‘Who gives a shit? I just hope they stay away from us.’

But that was not to be.

‘Crap!’ Sami swore as the Rangers patrol started moving. ‘They are heading straight for us.’

‘We’ll have to take them down.’

Both men contemplated the situation for a moment.

‘Okay. Here is what we will do.’ Tony and Sami had trained together as a team long enough; it took them only a moment to decide on a plan of action. ‘You stay here. I’ll take that dune. Keep the bike between us. If they wander up to us you take the lead guy out. I’ll handle the rear.’

‘Let’s just hope no one else is around to hear the gunfire.’

The two men swiftly moved into position on the two dunes shouldering the track that led up to the motorbike lying in the sand. The motorcycle was to be the bait that would draw the patrol’s attention. The path between the dunes leading up to it was the killing ground of the ambush. The two men tightened their grip on their weapons as the Rangers patrol drew inexorably closer.

The lackadaisical attitude of the Rangers was clear from the way their weapons were slung across their shoulders and the fact that they were busy talking to each other rather than paying attention to their surroundings. ‘I guess one can’t really blame them,’ thought Tony as he watched the Rangers ambling into target. ‘Most of these guys are posted to bleak borders like this one for far too many years; nothing ever breaks the monotony.’

That was a fact. The only people the Rangers ever saw traversing this godforsaken stretch of desert border were the occasional smugglers, like Afzal, young terror recruits being sent into Pakistan for training and trained terrorists being sent back into India, whom they provided launch pads for. All three categories were a good source of income and provided a much-required break in the tedium. They always looked forward to bumping into them.

‘Holy shit!’ The man leading the patrol exclaimed loudly as the five men came through the path between the dunes and saw the motorcycle lying in the sand. There was a moment’s stunned silence before a verbal storm erupted:

‘What the hell…’ began the patrol leader.

‘It’s a motorcycle!’

‘We can see that, you idiot…‘

‘Where the hell did it come from?’

The man leading the patrol began to unsling his weapon from his shoulder as they all started towards the bike. He was the one Sami shot first. This was the signal for Tony to start firing. He fired a short two-round burst cutting down the last man in the patrol a split second after the first man dropped. The sudden volley of shots galvanized the remaining three men. They ran helter-skelter, grabbing for their weapons as they scrambled to get off the track and run for cover. The second last man tripped over the body of the last man as he turned. He did not get up; Tony’s next burst opened two gaping holes in his chest. The last two Rangers managed to get almost to the edge of the killing zone before Sami cut them down.

The action was over in a matter of seconds and the crash of gunfire settled into the silence of the desert once again. After the ear-shattering hail of gunfire the silence that descended seemed even more ominous.

*

About 500 metres away from Akbar, Katoch and Tiwathia heard the crash of gunfire. They exchanged worried glances. ‘That’s from the direction of the link-up point.’

Tiwathia, who was driving, quickly veered towards the nearest dune and brought the jeep to a screeching halt in the lee of the dune. Seconds later, they were racing towards Akbar with their weapons at the ready. They split up as they got closer and began to move alternately in short hops, each covering the other man as he moved forward. Moving swiftly but cautiously it took them almost ten minutes to close in on the link-up point.

Yet again it was Tony with his animal instincts who sensed rather than heard them first. He nudged Sami and hissed, ‘Someone else is coming up.’ He cocked his head slightly and pointed, ‘That way.’

Immediately, they both took cover again as Katoch and Tiwathia converged on the link-up point from different directions. Tiwathia covered Katoch as he closed in on the cluster of dunes. Sami spotted Katoch first. ‘Tony…cool it,’ he called out urgently. ‘It’s Vicky and Katoch.’

Tony emerged from behind the dunes. ‘Next time just honk, okay?’ He had a wide grin on his face. ‘What’s happened to your field craft, guys? We heard you coming a mile away.’

Suddenly there was an eruption of sound and static from the cluster of bodies lying beside the motorcycle. Someone seemed to be trying to raise the Rangers patrol on the radio set. For a second all four of them froze.

‘That’s torn it!’ Sami reacted first. ‘We can expect a search party real soon. You guys get ready to pull out. I’ll just take a minute to leave a welcome mat for the next lot that comes along.’ He began to rummage through his rucksack and pull out what he needed.

By the time the other three men had grabbed their gear Sami had set the explosives and wired the booby trap to the motorcycle. Then the four men raced off into the desert, back towards the jeep. Like all military plans this one too had a back-up.

‘Do you think we should tell Tiwari that we are heading for Birbal, the alternate link-up point?’ Tony asked as they climbed into the jeep.

‘I’d rather not transmit anything right now. It would really put the wind up the Pakis and they would know for sure where we are.’

‘I agree,’ Katoch concurred. ‘Let’s watch and see how things unfold.’

A silence descended on them as the jeep raced away into the desert. They all knew that the operation was not going to be simple any longer. Sooner or later the patrol would be missed and people would come looking for them. It would not take a genius to link the death of the patrolmen with the killings in Multan and Bahawalpur.

1630 hours, 31 October 2005, Ranabhana BOP on the Indo–Pakistan Border.

The officer commanding the Pakistani BOP who had sent out the patrol under Naik Hameed was very irritated when his radio operator told him the patrol was overdue and not responding. ‘Why? Why the heck aren’t they responding?’ he demanded to be told.

‘I don’t know, sir.’ The man shrugged helplessly at the senseless question.

‘The bloody fool!’ This was not the first time that Hameed had returned late from a patrol. However this was the first time that he had failed to respond on the radio set. ‘I’m going to kill him when he gets back. The stupid…’ he muttered under his breath. To the radio operator he said, ‘What the hell are you hanging around here for? Go and keep trying to raise those morons. Let me know as soon as you get those idiots on air. That motherfucker Hameed! He is going to be on everybody’s shit list tonight. I swear I will kill him…’

The Company Commander would have been a lot more perturbed if he had known that the hapless Hameed was already dead, as were the four others in his charge.

Ten minutes elapsed. The Company Commander could not control his impatience. He walked up to the radio hut.

‘Anything from them?’

‘No, sir,’ the radio operator replied. ‘Not a peep.’

By the time the Company Commander finally decided to send out the second patrol, darkness was barely an hour away. ‘I just hope he does nothing to jeopardize my retirement,’ he thought to himself as he cursed Hameed for the enth time and went out to brief the second patrol.

The second Pakistan Rangers patrol was just starting out from Ranabhana BOP when the four Force 22 officers reached Birbal, the alternate link-up point about four kilometres south-west of Akbar. The four commandos were now almost directly north of Chengiz Khan, in the gap between the Pakistani BOPs of Ranabhana and Lambawala Toba. This is from where they had entered Pakistan and this is from where they were to exit tonight.

The commandos had no way of knowing that they were now almost directly in the path of the second Rangers patrol that had just left the border outpost seven kilometres to their north-west and was going to retrace the original route of the first patrol.

Nor had they anyway of knowing that the point on the map known to them as ‘Birbal’ was known as ‘Bound Three’ to the Pakistanis. It was one of the selected bounds that all Pakistani patrols moving between Ranabhana and Lambawala halted at. But then it is these small coincidences that acquire critical mass in battle and result in people getting killed.

IQBAL

1540 hours, 07 November 2005, Terrorist Camp in Jungle above Hari, Kashmir.

Iqbal deliberately avoided the route that Omar and he had taken when they had left the camp five days ago.
It’s the most logical way in and out of the camp. I am sure there will be a sentry keeping an eye on it
. He skirted the base of the mountain for almost an hour till he saw a ravine that seemed to run all the way up to the top. Surveying the climb carefully he then started his ascent to the camp.

Half an hour later, he realized that it was a very bad climb. The gradient was steep and the loose shale was treacherous. More than once his foot lost its grip and he went tumbling down a few feet. The cold and the rapidly descending darkness of a long winter night added to his misery. Still, the rigorous training he had undergone in the camp in Muzaffarabad and his determination to get there were to his advantage. Eventually, the rhythm of the mountains began to return to him. His grip steadied. The craggy terrain felt familiar once again. His mind and feet stopped playing tricks on him. With every passing moment his movements became more surefooted as his body acclimatized to the incredible cold and darkness of the night.

Cresting the last fold of the ravine, Iqbal was confronted by a small, flattish ledge. There was something familiar about it. He looked around it as he stopped to catch his breath. It took a few moments before realization dawned.
This is where we buried the instructor.
Iqbal squinted in the dark. Yes. Definitely the same spot. In his mind’s eye Iqbal once again saw the sentry leaning against the shovel as they took a break from the digging. ‘Motherfucking Pakis…the only good ones are the dead ones,’ he had said. The harsh laugh that had followed the sentry’s words rang so clearly in his head that for a moment Iqbal almost thought there was someone with him. He thought about what the sentry had said:

Don’t you see? It is all about money. Only about money. Twenty dead mujahideen like us cost them less than one dead soldier. Plus they have the comfort of denying that they are the ones who train us and task us to fight their war. They get to fight a cheap war at almost no cost to them. Even the few bucks they throw at us we earn for them by bringing out their drugs. Do you have any idea how many millions of dollars those shit-eaters earn from drugs?

Shaking his head to clear the ghosts from his past Iqbal slowly turned a full circle. His eyes fell on a raised spot further ahead. It was the cluster of rocks where the sentry had made Omar and him bury their weapons. Iqbal automatically began to plot the route to the rock cluster. It would be easier to get to the camp from there. He was about to start around the ravine and head for the rocks when something within made him pause.
Would they have posted a sentry?
After all, this was where they kept their weapons…some of them at least. There was bound to be a sentry.

Standing stock-still in the lee of a tree Iqbal focused his attention in the direction in which he knew the camp huts lay.
If there is a man on guard then, logically, he should be in that general area
. Iqbal focused his eyes in that direction, straining in the dark for any tell-tale signs but could not spot a thing. Twenty minutes later, just when he was about to give up the vigil and start moving a tiny flicker of light shone briefly about a hundred and fifty metres away. An unseen hand cupped a matchstick as a cigarette was lit. In the mind-numbing darkness that tiny transient flame of light was more than enough.
Smoking is injurious to health
. Iqbal smiled mirthlessly in the darkness.
Don’t you guys read the warning on the packet?

Lowering his rucksack to the ground Iqbal drew his knife from his belt and started forward on light feet. A chilling calm descended on him. The field craft that had been grilled into him at the training camp surfaced effortlessly as Iqbal inched forward soundlessly in the dark. In his mind the man he was going to kill had ceased to be human. His death was simply one more formality to be completed in the interest of his mission. A job to be done; a roadblock to be eliminated. Swiftly. Efficiently. The transformation of the decent young boy from a small-town, middle-class home into a heartless killing machine had been rendered complete. And Iqbal had no idea when and how it had happened.