SALIM MUST DIE (9 page)

The assault had begun.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL, LANDING SOFTLY, CAT
-like, the two men slung their weapons across their chests so that they could bring them into action instantly when the need arose. In their hands razor sharp serrated commando knives gleamed in the early morning light. Moving like wraiths, they raced soundlessly across to the front and rear of the house. Both gates were closed. At the front gate there were two sentries, but there was only one at the rear.

The rear gate sentry only discovered he was not alone when a hand suddenly clamped down on his mouth. By then it was too late. The knife sliced open a neat gash across his throat, from which the blood emerged initially as a thin red line but soon gushed out in a shocking downpour. The blood continued to flow long after life had ended. Lowering the man's body silently to the ground, the commando dragged it out of sight behind the bushes. Crouching behind the bushes, he hit the transmit button of his radio. ‘North two clear.’

THE COMMANDO AT THE REAR GATE WAS LOWERING THE BODY
to the ground when, on the other side of the house, there was a very soft, almost inaudible, metallic cough. The first sentry at the front gate gasped and slowly crumpled to the ground. His companion standing about ten feet away saw him go down, but the omnipresent early morning fog impeded visibility so he was unable to see clearly. Walking across with a puzzled look on his face, he knelt down and was reaching for the fallen man when he saw the small, neat hole in the man's forehead.

The second sentry let go of the dead man as though he himself had been shot and was opening his mouth to raise the alarm when another soft cough intruded on the silence. The sentry fell wordlessly to the ground. He was dead before his body hit the ground.

A few feet away, the commando watched impassively, waiting for any signs of life. There were none. Like his comrade at the rear gate, he too tapped the transmit button of the radio strapped to his belt. ‘North one clear.’

MOVING RAPIDLY THROUGH THE SHADOWS, BOTH MEN OF
the advance guard reached the rear of the house. The water spout was exactly where the satellite picture had indicated. The first man kept guard as the second one swarmed up the pipe silently. Emerging like a ghost, the commando peeped over the parapet and scanned the roof.

The sentry manning the roof was pacing across the front. His rifle was slung across his shoulder, but the man was alert, stopping every so often to scan the garden below before crisscrossing to the other side of the roof and repeating the exercise. The commando waited till the sentry was at the far end of the roof before he hauled himself over the parapet. He landed lightly on the roof, his silenced pistol reappearing in his hand.

He fired even as the sentry was turning to begin his patrol back towards him. The subdued cough of the silenced pistol was lost in the night. The tiny lead bullet met the sentry just when he was clear of the wall. It drilled a neat hole in his head, killing him almost instantly.

The commando had launched himself forward even as the bullet left the muzzle. Racing across on soundless feet, he caught the falling sentry. Lowering him to the ground, he hissed into his transmitter.

‘Roof clear, North.’

AS THE THIRD TRANSMISSION ECHOED IN HIS HEADSET, THE
north team leader turned and signalled to the men crouching around him. Coming alive almost as one, the fourteen fighters swarmed across the wall and raced across the garden towards the house lying still and silent before them. The night vision gear strapped around their heads lent them an eerie, outlandish appearance.

None of them could have known that one of the occupants on the first floor would choose to get up and head for the toilet just then. The man was crossing one of the windows overlooking the front garden when he spotted the dark, ghostly shapes rushing silently across the lawns. The man was no genius, but it did not take him even a second to realize that they could mean nothing but trouble.

The solitary shot rang out in the still morning air with extraordinary loudness. Hard in its wake followed the loud cry of alarm as the shooter alerted the other occupants of the house. But this was no ragtag bunch of soldiers. They were superbly trained and reacted with all the speed, skill and ferocity at their command.

North team raced ahead in sharp, irregular spurts, returning the fire with short bursts, instinctively aiming at the pinpricks of light that had begun to illuminate the dark house.

‘Eagle, we're going in hot now,’ the team leader hissed into his headset as they ran forward.

‘Roger that, North. We're on our way.’ Eagle's tinny voice was almost lost in the rapidly escalating thunder of gunfire as a continuous volley of shots followed the brief lull after the first one. Every now and then, a scream punctuated the cacophony.

The first three commandos fell almost immediately. Two of them were saved by the Kevlar jackets cocooning their torsos. They stumbled to their feet and followed their comrades who were racing towards the house. The third one was beyond caring. The two neat holes near his right eye put him beyond any help.

Pausing briefly near the window, the first commando tossed two Flash-and-Bang stun grenades through it. The strike team counted down the mandatory four seconds before they slammed against the door, blowing it open just a fraction of a second after the grenades exploded.

The team rushed in with weapons primed. Figures in various stages of undress greeted them. They were cut down almost instantly as the commandos swept through the house.

The man they had come for was on the first floor of the house. He was still in bed, trying weakly to unhook the infusion pump attached to him. The man's disease-wracked face was pale and he was breathing torturously. He seemed to be in tremendous pain, but that did nothing to diminish the hate smouldering in his eyes.

He wasn't wearing the flowing white robes that he was always photographed in, nor was his flowing beard as well-groomed as it appeared in these photographs. But there was no mistaking the sharp angular features, which for the past few years had adorned the pages of almost every newspaper and magazine in the world.

For a long moment North leader checked the face in the light of the small torch as the two others in the room kept guard at the door.

There was no doubt about it.

‘It's him,’ he said tersely, unable to keep the triumph out of his voice. ‘Doc, he is all yours now.’ He nodded at the medic as he turned and got on to his radio set. ‘Eagle, we have him. Get your ass here pronto. LZ One.’

‘Great job, North.’ Eagle's voice crackled with excitement. ‘We're already on the way. LZ One. ETA in three.’

The team leader watched as the medic rapidly checked out the man on the bed. He began with the mouth, checking for suicide pills. Then he moved on to the rest of the body. The captive watched with hatred and helpless anger glowing in his eyes.

‘Hurry up, damn it, we don't have all day.’

‘I'm done.’ Hurriedly finishing his examination, the medic motioned to the team leader. ‘Help me get him onto the stretcher.’

‘What's this fucking contraption?’ North grabbed at the infusion pump connected to the captive.

‘Hey, careful! Gimme a moment. Let me check….’

‘Fuck it! There's no time. We need to get the hell out of here.’

‘Just give me a….’

‘Move it, doc!’ the commando grated harshly, chucking the still connected infusion pump onto the bedsheet. ‘You can do all that shit on the chopper. Grab the sheet from that end and let's move him.
Now
!’

They used the sheet to pick him up and move him onto the stretcher. Grabbing opposite ends of the stretcher, they began to shuffle out with their catch, moving as rapidly as they could.

‘Go! Go! Go!’ North hustled as they went down the steps and out into the front garden.

In the heat of the moment the medic did not notice that the nitroglycerine drip in the infusion pump was running dry. The doctor attending to the sick man had been getting up to replenish the drip when the assault began. Now he lay just a few feet away, three bullets embedded in his chest.

By now the gunfire had almost petered out. Barring a sporadic shot here and there, an uneasy silence had fallen upon the house.

They were bringing the barely conscious captive out into the lawns when the SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter swept out of the now lightening sky and settled noisily onto the lawn. The North team leader and the medic got into the chopper with the captive. There was a very brief delay as the body of the fallen commando was taken on board. The chopper took off immediately. The remaining commandos of North Team raced back towards their waiting vehicles.

‘Eagle to Dominos. Get your butts out of here. Code Red. I say again, Code Red.’

A series of taps acknowledged the transmission as South, East and West abandoned the positions they had taken up around the house as a precaution to ensure that no one got away. Then the wagons pulled back and raced away into the gathering light. Moving out of the area rapidly, they split up and moved along predetermined routes, though all of them had the same destination to reach.

Precisely eleven minutes had elapsed since the vehicles had drawn to a halt outside the house. In a mere eleven minutes a handful of men had achieved what thousands of soldiers had been trying to do for the past few years. The man with a twenty-seven million dollar reward on his head had been taken.

‘
We will hunt them down and smoke ’em out
,’ the US President had vowed in front of the smouldering remains of the twin towers in New York. For once, he had delivered. Of course, neither he nor his advisors had any idea of the horrendous price that his countrymen would pay for it.

Meanwhile, the helicopter carrying the most wanted man on earth raced away from the house, heading straight for the US aircraft carrier hovering just off the coast of Pakistan.

‘Eagle to Nest. We have him!’

‘
Good job, Eagle
!’ The man at the other end could not keep the delight out of his voice. ‘Bring him in.’

‘Roger that, Control. We're on our way.’

The man at Control was having trouble keeping the grin off his face as he reached for the phone and dialled Langley. He could visualize the huge press conference at which they would announce the news. His chest swelled with pride as the phone at the other end was picked up.

THE CHOPPER HAD BARELY CLEARED THE CITY LIMITS WHEN
the nitrogylcerine being pumped into the captive by the fusion pump ran out. The man on the stretcher began to gasp for breath.

‘Goddamn!’ the medic exclaimed. ‘His blood pressure is shooting up.’ He slapped the oxygen mask on, but it did little to alleviate the situation. Soon the captive began to struggle on the stretcher.

‘Hold him down!’ the team leader yelled. ‘What the hell is he doing?’

‘He must be having problems breathing while lying down, that's why he's trying to sit up,’ the medic explained breathlessly as he fought to keep the mask on his wildly thrashing patient.

Almost on cue, the captive began to cough. Blobs of sputum sprayed out of his mouth. Not much later, the frothy sputum began to bubble pink.

‘Fuck! We're losing him.’ The medic was frantic.

‘Do something, damn you!’ the commando yelled in helpless anger. ‘We need the sonofabitch alive.’

‘There's nothing I can do.’ The medic was panting almost as hard as the patient. His forte was gunshots, knife wounds and broken bones. Nothing in his life so far had prepared him for the renal failure he was confronted with. ‘He needs a doctor and a bloody hospital.’

Just then the chopper touched down and moments later, the barely alive prisoner was in the ship's hospital with a coterie of doctors and medics hovering anxiously around.

THE CHOPPER WAS ALMOST AT THE PAKISTANI COASTLINE BY
the time the police, summoned by a frantic neighbourhood, reached the house. A posse of policemen stumbled through the horrifyingly large number of bodies scattered all around. It was only when they reported the matter to the local police chief that the shit hit the ceiling. The police chief knew that this was an ISI safe house, though he had no clue exactly who occupied it. He immediately called the ISI area commander.

‘
What
?’ The stunned ISI man who took the call couldn't believe what he was hearing. ‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?’ he kept asking as he raced towards his car, throwing on whatever clothes he could lay his hands on. En route to the now totally unsafe safe house, he was on the phone almost constantly. By the time he pulled up outside the house, almost everybody who was anybody in the ISI had been informed of the catastrophe.

Reaching there, he raced from one body to the other like a madman.

Finally, having exhausted all possibilities, he called his boss. ‘He's not here, sir.’

‘Are you sure?’ his boss snapped. ‘Check again.’

‘I have, sir. He is definitely not here… not among the dead and definitely not among the living. Three of those who are still alive confirm that he's been taken captive.’

‘But who?’ his flabbergasted commander asked him. ‘Who could it be and how the fuck did they know where we were keeping him?’

‘I have no clue, sir,’ he repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time. ‘I have no clue at all, but this is disastrous.’

On this count at least, the beleaguered ISI agent was right.

S
OMEWHERE IN THE
I
NDIAN
O
CEAN, ON
B
OARD
USS
D
WIGHT
D E
ISENHOWER

THERE WAS A STRAINED LOOK ON HIS FACE WHEN THE SHIP'S
doctor noted the contents of the now empty infusion pump. The blue tongue and the pink frothy sputum spewing out completed the picture.

‘Lasix!’ he yelled urgently. ‘100 mg! Fast!’

It was in his hand almost instantly and he thumped it into the captive without finesse, but the Lasix didn't help much. Despite the frantic burst of activity around, they all knew they were losing the man. They could only watch him struggle, each gasping breath a litany of pain.