Marcos Betrayal

by M J Anand

  ‘Yes,’ Sonia said.

  After a brief pause, Abhimanyu had decided. ‘So be it. Can you give me visuals on the monitors here?’

  ‘Ahh … sure. You should have it …. now.’

  The satellites tracking the ten-tonner streamed directly on Abhimanyu’s monitor in the copter. The recently installed touchscreens gave him access to the satellite feeds, which he had already mastered over the years. The only downside was many of the flight metrics normally available on the monitor would not be visible now. Abhimanyu had to shift to manual mode and rely only on his instincts now. ‘They will still cross Teesta Bridge in about thirty minutes. General, tell me, your commandos don’t swim by any chance?’

  ‘That’s why we’ve got the MARCOS.’ It was a no. ‘Though they can take down the bridge and level the river for you.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Abhimanyu laughed and regarded the commandos, who gave him a thumbs up. Each commando force had a unique skillset, and Abhimanyu respected it.

  They had solved one problem but would have to manage a bigger one soon. The truck had change course, and if it was due to a mole, then Abhimanyu had to cut that off immediately, so he decided to cut off all feeds, including the GPS, except the incoming satellite feed. It was a risky gamble in case something were to happen to the helicopter, but he had to protect his location and movements at all costs. The mole, no matter how smart, couldn’t use an incoming satellite feed either, and that was all Abhimanyu needed.

  Watching the truck, he announced his intentions. ‘We are going offline.’

  ‘What-What are you doing? We need to have eyes on the ground!’ Arup was befuddled.

  ‘I don’t trust any of those eyes now, General.’

  Amjad put his hands around Arup’s shoulder to calm him down. ‘That’s okay.’ He would have done the same had he been in Abhimanyu’s place. He would have trusted his own instincts and only his own men. It was the best way to plug a leak.

  The copter went offline, the screens went blank, and Sonia switched off the satellite feeds. Abhimanyu and Sonia, two MARCOS between them, had blacked out the entire setup of Indian intelligence. They were free to do it in their own way now, and no one could do anything except wait for Abhimanyu’s next communication.

  In the air, Abhimanyu realized his earphones contained signal disturbance even after switching off all the feeds. The earphones, specially designed by DRDO to detect any unusual disturbance, couldn’t be wrong. In the manual mode, it should have gone silent, but it hadn’t, which only meant one thing; the helicopter was compromised. A device, a tracker of some sort, was still inside the helicopter, perhaps emitting a signal at an unknown frequency. Abhimanyu immediately activated the kill-switch designed to ensure the helicopter blocked any outgoing signal on all frequencies. The disturbance stopped immediately. There was indeed a device. Someone had planted a tracker, compromising the helicopter. That’s how they knew their locations, and that’s why the truck drivers had changed their route. The mole proved resourceful, but it was no more a surprise for Abhimanyu. He felt ready for him. Bring it on, he said to himself then faced Akram. ‘The copter was compromised.’

  Akram looked across the valley into the pitch-dark horizon with a smile. ‘The army has been compromised, but they don’t know; we know. And we are out of grid.’ Akram plotted the truck’s route on the monitor to plan the best approach. ‘The south end of the Teesta River, twenty minutes from here. That’s where we set the trap.’

  ‘They’ll die in Teesta either way,’ Abhimanyu said scornfully and lowered his helicopter to maintain low altitude.

  Twenty minutes later, army commandos took position behind the trees. They were on time and ready with their setup. A white spot emerged on their rifles’ scope. It grew bigger rather quickly. Soon, as it turned at the horizon, they could see it completely. The vehicle looked like a beast, running on sixteen tires and carrying nothing less than ten tons. The truck approached them at sixty kilometers per hour, faster than they had anticipated. One wrong move and no one would be alive to tell the tale of how they had stopped the calamity on wheels.

  ‘Three men in front,’ the first commando, a spotter, said into the earbuds.

  ‘Rupesh, Jahangir, and Akhlaq.’ Siddhartha identified them from his vantage on top of a tree on other side of the bridge. His scope reconfirmed their identities.

  ‘They’re coming right at us, sir. Should I shoot?’ the commando asked with an anxious voice and nervous hands. No one was trained well to shoot at a nuclear truck.

  ‘No. Let them enter the bridge.’

  ‘We’re losing the angle,’ the commando said as the truck approached the bridge.

  ‘No shootings. Hold your fingers as much as you can. Block it as soon as they enter. Our best-case scenario is for them to surrender,’ Abhimanyu said. It was an unlikely event but was worth a try.

  ‘This may not go the best way.’ Even Akram was nervous. He didn’t expect the terrorists to hesitate in pulling the trigger.

  ‘This will go exactly that way.’ Abhimanyu removed a device from a case Dr. Manish Chelliyappam had given him.

  ‘A phone?’

  ‘No.’ It was time to put those gadgets to use. Even as Abhimanyu’s hand steered the helicopter, his focus was on the monitor. The truck was entering the bridge.

  ‘This is coming your way, Abhimanyu.’

  Abhimanyu zoomed in on the monitors to see they were wearing suicide vests. ‘No, I have a feeling this is coming your way. They’re wearing their vests. Siddhartha, keep your scopes on them.’ Abhimanyu pulled up the jockey as he emerged from under the bridge.

  Siddhartha’s palms were wet, for he had a nuclear target on his scope.

  Akram and Siddhartha couldn’t believe it, but they had heard a lot about Abhimanyu’s flying capabilities. It inspired confidence. At least someone knew what he was doing.

  Abhimanyu kept the helicopter hovering below the bridge, waiting for the right moment. As the truck approached the middle of the bridge, he swung away his helicopter from under the bridge and swung it back on top of the bridge then hovered right in front of the truck—a shock and awe tactic. The timing had to be precise, giving them just enough opportunity to slow the truck but not long enough for the truck driver to make a move. Abhimanyu saw Rupesh straight in his eyes. Rupesh wasn’t a stranger to Abhimanyu. Abhimanyu had seen him on trial and had read about his subsequent disappearance. It felt odd to have his own countryman on the other side of this nuclear attack, but so was the world around him—untrustworthy and unreliable.

  Rupesh smiled back at him and produced a light machinegun.

  Jahangir slammed the truck into Reverse as Rupesh fired firing at the helicopter.

  Abhimanyu shouted through the mic, ‘Blow it off, now!’

  Commandos blew off the trees and blocked the bridge at both ends.

  Seeing the trees fall, Jahangir instinctively pressed the brake pedal. There was no point in ramming it into the trees with an active nuke in the truck. The nuke was meant for the millions of infidels; this was a place in the middle of nowhere and not the way he had dreamt of sacrificing his life. He decided to change the gears, but Abhimanyu had activated blindingly bright lights fixed on the nose of the helicopter and focused it on the truck cabin. The lux levels were so high that even the commandos at the other end had to cover their eyes with both hands. All three terrorists were completely blinded.

  Abhimanyu landed the chopper on the bridge, and two army commandos rushed out with guns forward. Knees bent, they carefully approached the truck while Siddhartha gave them the cover from his perch on the tree.

  The terrorists had ducked below the screen.

  Abhimanyu said into the amplifier, ‘You can’t escape. You either surrender or we shoot you.’

  Rupesh got down with Jahangir and Akhlaq who were wearing suicide jackets. Rupesh didn’t have one, but he realized the commandos would hesitate to shoot at him in case they thought he did.

  Akhlaq was visibly fru
strated at being pinned down. It was make or break for him. The detonator was not there, but, if he managed to blast his vest in the trunk, maybe the bomb would explode, so he dashed for the trunk and ran around the truck’s right side, for it was hidden from the helicopter—but not from Siddhartha.

  He had him in the open from his perch down the bridge and wasted no time taking him out. Two head shots in a moment ensured Akhlaq didn’t have any time to reach the trunk. Abhimanyu removed a pad device and pointed it at Jahangir. It seemed like a blast of wave, perhaps EMP, because it soon short-circuited the truck’s electronics.

  Rupesh and Jahangir were disoriented. It was one of Mac’s latest designs yet to be field tested, but Mac said it would work. If the suicide vest was one of the regular ones, it would have been neutralized. It was indeed a regular one. Jahangir felt a few sparks in his vest. Something had gone wrong. He immediately tried to detonate it but couldn’t.

  ‘So, this works. Good job, Mac,’ Abhimanyu muttered to himself.

  The commandos reached the truck. ‘Hands behind your back! Get to the side!’ they repeated.

  The terrorists looked just as nervous as the commandos now.

  ‘Remove the life jackets!’ Abhimanyu shouted.

  ‘Same old, same old. If I’m not wrong, you are Abhimanyu.’

  The shock silenced him.

  Reading the silence, Jahangir knew he was right. ‘Your tricks won’t stop us and our comrades! We will come for you!’

  Rupesh raised one hand and rolled his other one in some sort of a signal. Jahangir and Rupesh ran toward the railing of the bridge.

  ‘Don’t move! Stop! Stop!’ It was futile, but the commandos still shouted at them.

  They were going to jump off the bridge, so the commandos took their shots. Rupesh was immediately hit in his leg, but he kept walking. Two more shots in his legs were needed to stop him. However, Jahangir managed to reach the railing and jump into the river. Rupesh laid on the ground, nursing his wounds and angry, for it meant he had just lost the millions promised to him. Now that the promise of millions was gone, his survival instincts kicked in. He quickly realized his chances to survive lay in him helping the Indians now. ‘Bridge and trees worked in Pakistan, not again,’ he said with a sly smile even though he grimaced from the pain in his bloodstained legs.

  Abhimanyu realized he had been tagged, at least since the Kulnagar attack in Pakistan, and they knew his civilian identity.

  Rupesh, for his part, had a new target now: Abhimanyu, the man who had robbed him of a million dollars. ‘Jahangir will make sure we detonate the other device.’

  Abhimanyu looked over the bridge. ‘If he stays alive.’

  An amphibious boat sped through the bridge with searchlights fitted at the bow and Akram at its helm. Another one emerged from the banks, captained by Siddhartha who had abandoned his position to join Akram in the third man’s pursuit.

  Jahangir had jumped from the bridge, hoping to flow downstream with the waters. Little did he know that two of the best navy divers were waiting for him. Jahangir noticed them and shuddered. ‘Dadhiwali fauj,’ he muttered to himself. The MARCOS had earned that nickname in Kashmir where they guarded the many rivers, ravines, and lakes. Jahangir realized immediately he had no chance of escaping.

  Akram shot him in the leg as soon as he hit the waters and made a quick work of it. No one could swim without legs, upstream or downstream.

  Siddhartha dove in to get Jahangir on their boat as Akram kept him firmly in the lights. He had failed his mission, and now he sat there, tied down in Siddhartha’s boat instead of being at the gates of Heaven.

  Akram regarded Abhimanyu with more respect. His idea to carry the inflatable boats had saved the day. They pulled Rupesh and Jahangir into the chopper and cuffed them. Siddhartha and Akram secured the bridge while the commandos took defensive positions.

  Abhimanyu reactivated the communications and ran to the truck’s trunk. ‘AB01 is in sight. We have eyes on the nuke.’

  The officers in the command center waited in suspense, focused on the screen, except Sonia. The screen was blank. She watched her monitor for any signals. As soon as she saw an incoming signal, she linked it to the screen.

  ‘Where are the terrorists?’ Amjad asked.

  ‘One killed. Two captured.’ Abhimanyu’s voice broke the suspense.

  The officers were elated and spontaneously burst into clapping. ‘Bravo.’ ‘That’s the way!’

  Abhimanyu climbed into the trunk and checked the panels connected to the bomb.

  Sonia could see them too now.

  ‘Massive radiation spike,’ Abhimanyu remarked as the readings on his hand pad went beyond critical levels.

  ‘It’s a nuke,’ Sonia said.

  The cheering stopped.

  ‘The bomb disposal squad is already in the air, ETA thirty minutes. We still have a few hours on the timer here. We should manage to get it diffused in time,’ Arup reassured Abhimanyu.

  ‘It won’t go off without the detonator’s fingerprints anyway. But it’s active, so be careful,’ Amjad said and shifted gears. They needed more information on the second bomb; it was no time to quiz a hardened terrorist like Jahangir and lose time. Rupesh was their best bet.

  Abhimanyu thought as much, rushed to the helicopter and studied Rupesh’s weary eyes. He stepped on Rupesh’s injured leg and pressed it hard enough for him to scream. There was no time to play games. ‘Where is the second nuke?’

  Rupesh was pleasantly surprised, for this could be his ticket to freedom. Jahangir and Akhlaq had never shared the details with him, but he had travelled together and knew enough to bail himself out. It was going to be a gameplay. ‘Oh, you know about it?’

  ‘Of course, we know about it. Now you’ll spit out everything you know, or I’ll shoot you right through your temple.’

  Rupesh groaned from the pain but gathered himself quickly. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  Abhimanyu was infuriated. The pain should have been enough.

  ‘What do you need?’ a voice asked from Abhimanyu’s satellite phone.

  Rupesh recognized that voice even on a satellite phone. ‘Wow, is that you, Amjad? I heard you have grown and survived the agency politics well.’ Amjad and Rupesh had a history. In fact, Amjad had played a critical role behind the scenes in collecting the evidence that had finally gotten Rupesh court martialed. Though the records were never made public, Rupesh knew the truth.

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘It’s only appropriate that you’re the negotiator for my demands, you see. For only someone like you can achieve it, and, in my case, who better than you?’

  ‘What do you need? You have a minute.’

  ‘Oh, I have a lot of time. I know you don’t have time, so let us keep it straight. I need a pardon, a complete pardon. Can you arrange that, Amjad?’

  Amjad didn’t like it, but Rupesh was a seasoned professional. Bargaining would prove futile, and they couldn’t afford any delaying tactics. After a short moment of contemplation, Amjad agreed. ‘We’ll get it done for you, but you’ll walk out only after you’ve shared credible information with us.’

  Arup looked at Amjad, surprised. It was beyond their authority. Amjad wagged at him to trust his judgement.

  ‘No, no … not going to fall for a verbal agreement. I know the system. Get me a presidential pardon.’

  Amjad had his hands on his head. They couldn’t fool around with Rupesh, for he knew the system too well for their liking. A presidential pardon had been arranged only once in history when a dreaded terrorist had to be exchanged in return for a few hijacked political families. The families were of utmost importance, and it went all the way to the top. The news was never released to the media, and no one knew about it except for the agency managing it. Amjad happened to be the security-in-charge on that exfiltration mission, and Rupesh had been a soldier on the same team. Both knew how it worked.

  As per the set mechanism, only a handwritten letter of pardon signed b
y the President of India qualified. The letter, valid in all courts of India as per an article tugged in one of the anti-terrorist laws, never surfaced in public as the terrorists fled the country never to return. To keep it under wraps, it was in Indians’ interest to let Rupesh disappear into oblivion. Rupesh knew exactly what he was talking about, and even Abhimanyu couldn’t fathom Amjad’s response.

  With deep regret, Amjad decided to yield. ‘I’ll get it if your information turns out to be true. I’ll need an hour after you tell us what you know. Deal?’

  ‘First, the pardon letter delivered directly to my mail inbox.’ Bruised and shot, his mind was still sharp. Rupesh knew his leverage would only last till he kept quiet. It couldn’t be given away without a solid bargaining prize.

  ‘Okay. I will be back.’ Amjad excused himself.

  Everyone in the room was left clueless. After all, he couldn’t just call the president and ask him to sign a pardon letter for a terrorist who had just tried to nuke the country. Arup didn’t believe Amjad would really try to pull it off.

  Knowing him, Sonia had lesser doubts.

  Abhimanyu had caught the drift by now as well. Even as the army helicopters covered the bridge and the commandos announced, ‘Nukes secured,’ Abhimanyu knew the night was still young. Rupesh’s threat had a boast of genuine information. By far, that was their best lead on the second nuke and the reason they were, again, far behind the terrorists for now.

  Chapter 17 - Pin in the Haystack

  Teesta River, Sikkim

  It didn’t take Amjad an hour but just thirty minutes. ‘We’ve mailed it to you, just like you asked. Now, tell us all you know.’

  Rupesh eyed Abhimanyu, and he let him access his email on the pad. ‘That’s your ID.’

  ‘You keep surprising me beyond measure.’

  Rupesh removed a small, well-hidden device from the back of his buckle.

  Abhimanyu was taken aback to realize it didn’t show up in the body search. The cargos were well-padded and designed to hide such devices.

  Rupesh checked for the email, sent it to a few aliases and pressed some buttons. The device self-destructed. Rupesh had run a shredder app which burnt and destroyed the tab disk as well as the processor. He had seen the pardon letter earlier, so he knew this was indeed an original. ‘You’ve kept your part of the bargain, even though I know you’re already doomed.’ He laughed loudly but quietened immediately not to infuriate his captors beyond redemption. ‘I’ll keep my end of the bargain too. Another bomb is hidden in Assam somewhere underground. It was transported long ago and was meant to only be a backup. It’s much smaller but big enough to cause enough damage. That’s all I know.’