LASHKAR (31 page)
‘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.
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.
‘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.’
‘But what about the Indians? We must send out a strong message to them. The buggers shouldn’t get the feeling that they can get away with these James Bond stunts on our territory.’
‘There is nothing we can do overtly. We cannot even admit to those men having been killed on our territory. After all, the Indians have been asking for them to be extradited all these years and we have been denying they are in Pakistan.’
‘That’s true.’
The security chief was glad to have something other than matters pertaining to security being talked about. ‘The damn Indians even handed over a list and dossiers of the infamous twenty to us the day before…Interpol alerts and all.’
‘What are the other options?’ The General looked pointedly at the ISI Director.
Surprisingly, the security chief spoke before anyone else could: ‘To begin with we should lodge a protest over the intrusion of our air space by the Indian Air Force. We know for a fact that they have used a UAV at Mari. Otherwise there is no way those missiles could have taken out the house at Mari. We have recovered enough from the debris to establish that.’
‘The missiles were Indian?’
‘No.’ The security chief squirmed uncomfortably again. ‘They were American, but they had been modified. That’s for sure.’
‘American missiles! You think they are helping them?’
‘Not necessarily. You know the Americans. Those pimps will sell weapons to anyone who has money. In any case, there are a million ways to buy those things with no one being any wiser.’
‘Who cares?’ General Haque, the ISI Director, butted in. ‘It is not as if we have to prove anything in court. You go ahead and make the right diplomatic noises. I’ll give the Indians something to think about.’
The Pakistanis lodged a strong protest with the Indian Government the next morning. A press conference was called and Indian involvement in terrorist activities in Pakistan was spoken about at great length.
‘You’re being ridiculous. Please don’t make baseless allegations,’ a calm and polite Indian spokes-woman told the surprised Pakistanis as the Indians took a leaf out of the ISI’s own book. ‘We would be more than happy to bring to justice any person or persons involved in any criminal acts in Pakistan. Just let us have the proof, please. Meanwhile,’ she added, ‘would you please hand over the twenty terrorists being harboured by Pakistan so that we can try them here in India? You may also like to hand over Brigadier Murad Salim, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and the others who were involved in the Delhi bombings. They are criminals and must be tried as such.’
‘What nonsense! You Indians blame us even if bird flu strikes your country. Do you have any proof to support what you are alleging?’
‘Actually, we do. Switch on your televisions a couple of hours from now and you will get to see most of it.’
Sure enough, a few hours later, the Indian Government aired telecasts of the captured terrorists over all major television channels and invited the FBI and MI5 to be a part of the interrogation of these men. Finding no other option available, Pakistan fell back on its time-tested pattern of brazen denials and blatant lies, with the rabid General making some really asinine threats.
‘We have no recourse now,’ the Indian PM told the press conference that had been convened to address these threats. ‘The community of nations must realize that our neighbours leave us with no choice; we have to defend ourselves.’
The Pakistani dictator was a little taken aback when the Indians responded by mobilizing their army along the entire border and line of control. Both the Indian Naval battle groups along with the newly-inducted aircraft carriers set sail to take up position on the approach to Karachi. Tension in the region ratcheted up considerably.
A whole platoon of spy satellites and HUMINT sources from all over the globe watched as a storm of activity erupted in Indian Army cantonments all over the country. A dozen different types of camouflaged battle dresses replaced the staid olive green peacetime Army uniforms. Long convoys of fighting and troop-carrying vehicles began to stream out of the cantonments as they headed for their designated operational posts.
Pointing at the two thick black lines on the White House crisis room board the intelligence man briefing the US President said, ‘These photos are in real-time, sir. You are seeing things as they happen. That is the Indian strike corps moving out of their peacetime locations.’
‘How long before they get operational?’ the President asked.
‘Barring the forces based in South India the others are garrisoned almost on the borders. So I would say not more than a few hours, Mr President. They are already on high alert and all defensive formations are already in their positions.’