The Endgame

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  ‘Come on,’ Vikrant said to them, and they followed him as he ran to his car.

  ‘In the back!’

  Ayyub, who was a step ahead of Mazhar, opened the rear left door. Ben Solo was sitting inside, his pistol in his hand.

  ‘Shalom, Al Muqadam,’ he said.

  Vikrant leaned in through the driver’s door.

  ‘Ben, don’t be stupid. This is not the time.’

  ‘I’d made myself pretty clear when I came aboard, Singh,’ Solo said, his gaze never wavering from Ayyub, his gun never moving.

  At that instant, a uniformed parking attendant who was tying his shoelace on the other side of the car stood up, opened the other passenger door and stuck a syringe in Solo’s neck. Solo went rigid, then slumped in the seat just as Daniel came running up.

  ‘Get them out of here,’ Mirza said to Daniel, pulling at the collar of his uniform.

  ‘Let’s go, lad,’ he said to Vikrant. ‘We have a mission to complete.’

  31

  Vikrant pressed down on the accelerator and caught up with Shaina in ten minutes. A team of five commandos had been waiting for her at the exhibition ground and as soon as they heard Ayyub, all six of them had piled into an unmarked black SUV.

  ‘I’ve called the local police, but we have no idea what’s waiting for us,’ Mirza said into his wrist-mic.

  ‘We’ll take lead on this, sir,’ Shaina said from her vehicle.

  ‘How come we didn’t know about this till now?’ Vikrant asked.

  ‘Meaning?’ Shaina asked from her end.

  ‘Meaning, if a team of senior DRDO scientists was going to be in Mumbai, someone should have been in the loop.’

  ‘I was,’ Mirza said, checking the ammunition clip of his pistol.

  Vikrant looked at him.

  ‘Really, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Before you start with the whole no-more-secrets rant,’ Mirza said, slapping the clip back into the butt and cocking his pistol, ‘this had nothing to do with our case. Not directly, anyway.’

  ‘I wasn’t about to start anything,’ Vikrant grumbled. ‘Wait, what does “not directly” mean?’

  They were coming up on the junction connecting the BKC road with the Western Express Highway. Mirza spoke fast.

  ‘After Kumar’s death, I’d begun to suspect we have a leak way inside the inner circle. This was my way of finding out just how far inside.’

  ‘And?’ Vikrant asked.

  ‘Only those above me knew about this meeting today. Which means that’s where the leak is.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Vikrant and Shaina both said.

  Mirza said nothing.

  ‘You want to tell us now what they were doing here?’ Vikrant asked.

  ‘Those people are super secretive and report to the defence ministry directly. All I know so far is that they had a meeting to discuss some new innovations in surveillance. Some latest technology that the Amarson group has been lobbying for. The PMO finally let them have a meeting with the DRDO to pitch their product.’

  ‘Amarsons are entering the defence sector now?’ Vikrant said. The group was among the biggest and richest in the country, with fingers in every lucrative pie possible.

  ‘They’ve been trying for years,’ Mirza replied. ‘Naidu would have none of it till he was in power. Desai’s a different story.’

  They both had the same thought, even as Mirza said it, and exchanged a glance.

  ‘Heads up!’ Shaina’s voice came through their earpieces. They turned towards the road and Vikrant immediately hit the brakes even as Shaina’s driver did the same.

  A silver sedan had stopped diagonally on the road, having braked in a hurry. Four armed gunmen were advancing towards it, while those inside were just beginning to realize what was happening.

  Shaina’s SUV spun around and came to a stop in a way that allowed all the six commandos to get out of one side and still be behind its cover. Vikrant followed her example and stopped his own vehicle horizontally. He and Mirza got out of the safe side even as the four terrorists, who were armed with AK56 assault rifles, realized what was happening and opened fire at them. They all grouped together behind Shaina’s SUV, which was obviously plated with some sort of armour.

  Shaina reached through the still-open driver’s door and pulled out a duffel bag. ‘Suit up!’ she yelled as her own team started returning fire.

  Vikrant opened the bag and pulled out two bulletproof vests, passing one to Mirza and putting one on himself. Next to him, on the floor, Shaina opened the case in her hands and started assembling her sniper rifle.

  ‘I’ll cover you!’ Vikrant yelled, removing an MP5 submachine gun from the duffel bag. She nodded as she readied her own deadly gun.

  Mirza, meanwhile, was returning fire with his handgun, taking care to stay behind cover.

  Shaina picked up her rifle and made her way to the edge of the vehicle.

  Vikrant peeped out of the other side.

  ‘GO!’ he shouted as he opened fire. The other commandos, too, laid down enough covering fire as Shaina sprang out of cover and ran into the nearest building, a single-storey traffic police chowky.

  She went to the chowky’s window and peeped out to identify her targets, but quickly ducked down as a hail of bullets chipped at the window frame.

  ‘I need a spotter!’ she said into her mic.

  ‘Cover me!’ Vikrant yelled. The NSG team complied and within seconds, Vikrant was squatting next to Shaina, who handed him a scope.

  ‘That’s not going to work,’ he said, looking around and spotting a mirror on the wall. He crawled over, then sprang up and took it off its hook and fell to the ground again.

  ‘See what you can do with this,’ he said, holding it in a position that allowed Shaina to scope out the gunmen outside.

  Shaina looked intently for ten seconds before tapping Vikrant on the thigh. He lowered the mirror. She took a deep breath, turned around and sprang up in the same movement, fired once, turned slightly, fired again and took cover.

  ‘Two down!’ one of her teammates yelled. ‘Two to go!’

  ‘No,’ Vikrant said. ‘There’s one more.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘All four gunmen were occupied with us when you tried peeping out the first time. I was watching from out there. There’s another gunman, hidden from sight.’

  ‘Rehmat?’ Shaina asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  He raised the mirror again. This time, it was shot to bits. Shards of glass flew around, some of them hitting Vikrant in the face.

  ‘FUCK!’ he said.

  ‘Stay down!’ Shaina said. ‘I spotted one before the mirror shattered.’ Again, she took a deep breath, then turned and fired and crouched again. ‘One down!’ the report came through the earpieces.

  ‘Damn, you’re good,’ Vikrant said, pulling a glass shard out of his cheek.

  At that instant, the sound of helicopter blades started booming over every other sound. The lone visible terrorist looked up in alarm and one of the NSG commandos, taking advantage of his distraction, brought him down quickly. The team gradually started advancing out of cover.

  ‘We have one more hostile,’ Vikrant said in his earpiece. ‘I repeat, we have one more hostile. Be careful.’

  The NSG team acknowledged the warning but kept advancing. Shaina slowly raised herself, her rifle up, scanning the area through her scope.

  The chopper set down on the ground fifty metres away, even as the NSG commandos went over to the silver sedan. Four men were crouched on the floor of the vehicle, one of them sobbing. The team held them at gunpoint till they showed their DRDO IDs, then frisked them and escorted them back to cover, also at gunpoint.

  ‘Relax!’ Mirza said to the commandos as they brought the scientists in. ‘I know these guys. They’re not the enemy.’

  Just as the scientists were being bundled int
o the NSG’s bullet-ridden SUV, two gunshots rang out. Vikrant and Shaina both sprang from cover and ran towards the sound. Shaina threw her sniper rifle towards one of her teammates while running, who caught it in one smooth movement, and drew her pistol without breaking stride.

  There was a parking lot across the street and both Shaina and Vikrant thought it would have been an ideal spot for Rehmat to shoot from without being detected. They entered cautiously, guns raised, and made their way across its breadth to the other exit, where they stopped in their tracks.

  A man with an official-looking ID around his neck was sitting on the ground, bleeding from his shoulder. He held a handgun in his right hand. Twenty feet away from him, Rehmat was sprawled on the ground on her back, a single gunshot wound in her throat.

  Shaina and Vikrant both advanced from either side of the man, guns pointed.

  ‘Give it a rest, guys,’ the man said weakly. ‘Madan Shukla, military intelligence.’

  32

  The questioning was conducted in an interrogation room at the NSG base on the Jogeshwari–Vikhroli Link Road.

  Mankame and Shukla had been admitted in the hospital on the base and the rest of the team given temporary accommodation there while the political leadership mopped up the mess. This was done to keep the entire team away from the press, which had started flocking to the Mantralaya and the Maharashtra police headquarters. All press communication, however, had been taken over by the PMO. Prime Minister Desai was expected to make a statement soon.

  ‘I need to know everything you can tell me, and fast,’ Desai had said to Mirza on the phone half an hour ago.

  After rescuing Mankame from Kurla, Goyal had driven him to the NSG base while Jaiswal drove to Mumbra. Jaiswal had returned twenty minutes ago with the hard drive of Rehmat’s computer. Her cell phone, which was recovered from her body, was also seized.

  ‘Hard drive’s been erased but we’ll see if our cyber team can recover anything,’ Vikrant told Mirza as they walked into the interrogation room.

  Ayyub was seated on a chair, a table in front of him. He had only asked for a bottle of water. Mazhar was in a separate room, purely for safekeeping.

  Mirza and Vikrant sat down in chairs in front of him.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Ayyub asked before they could say anything.

  ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning? When you came back?’ Mirza said.

  ‘That was seven months ago. I was in Syria when I got a call. He called himself Yusuf. I soon figured out that he had just chosen the name at random. He told me that he was giving me a chance to avenge Mazhar’s killing. I asked him what he wanted in return and he only asked that I follow all his instructions without asking any questions. I figured I had nothing to lose.’

  ‘How did you get into India?’

  ‘I had some fake passports ready. I used one to fly to Turkey and another to get to Bangladesh. There, Yusuf left a set of forged Indian passports and other identity documents at a dead drop. I crossed into West Bengal and made my way to Mumbai. He was good, I must add. Each passport had my face, but with a different look. I’m guessing it was digitally altered, but it was damn well done.’

  ‘When did Rehmat enter the picture?’

  ‘Almost immediately. After I reached Mumbai and got a house on rent, Yusuf stopped speaking to me and would communicate instructions through her. I got in touch with Shetty and got the heroin operation running. Then Rehmat told me that I had to watch over some truck driver at this place in Gujarat for a few days and kill him when the orders came.’

  ‘How did he manage to escape, then?’ Mirza asked.

  ‘Sheer bad luck. Rehmat called me up and told me that there was an emergency. Gave me a contact number for a sleeper cell and told me to activate it. There were also detailed instructions about the building in Bandra where the renovation work was under way. I was to give them some of my own money to set them up and arrange for the gelatin sticks. When I returned to Gujarat, the truck driver was gone.’

  ‘You knew who the target was?’ Vikrant asked.

  ‘For the Bandra attack? Not immediately. I was told only one day before he arrived.’

  ‘What about the weapons?’

  ‘You’re not going to like the answer to that,’ Ayyub said, smiling wryly. The two cops said nothing.

  ‘You guys are not aware of it, but there are stashes of sophisticated weaponry hidden by sleeper cells all over the country, to be used only for high-value missions.’

  Vikrant and Mirza exchanged looks but said nothing.

  ‘You moved to Mumbra after the attack?’ Mirza asked.

  Ayyub nodded.

  ‘Rehmat again. Set me up in that building. Tipped me off when you guys were close. We staged that kidnapping and then her murder.’

  ‘How did you get hold of Mankame?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly how,’ Ayyub said, looking a little unsure for the first time. ‘Yusuf learned that Mankame was looking for Ghazi. Told me to contact Ghazi and lure Mankame into the trap. Whoever Yusuf is, he’s penetrated this country very well. Every bit of info he passed on to us was solid. This whole operation was based on his intelligence inputs.’

  Again, Mirza and Vikrant exchanged looks. Then Vikrant placed a notepad and pen on the table.

  ‘Write down everything. Right from the time you ran away. Every single little detail up to the time you called me up today to ask me if Mazhar was really alive.’

  Ayyub nodded.

  ‘I’m speaking to the PMO to see what leniency I can get you,’ Mirza said.

  ‘Please don’t, sir,’ Ayyub replied.

  Both cops looked at him.

  ‘Allah knows I deserve no leniency. I’ve done a lot of evil things. First, it was for Islam. Then I learned about Mazhar being killed. It sort of tipped me over the edge. After that, every terrorist activity I undertook was personal. It was for revenge. I can no longer fool myself that what I did was for the sake of my community. I’m a terrorist, plain and simple. I deserve all the punishment I’ll get.’

  ‘It won’t be easy, boy,’ Mirza warned him.

  Ayyub smiled.

  ‘I’m quite used to life not being easy, sir,’ he said. ‘And as long as Mazhar leads a good life, I am fine with it. If anyone deserves a good life, it is him.’

  There was nothing more to say. Vikrant slid the notepad and pen towards Ayyub, after which he and Mirza stood up.

  ‘You believe that part about weapons being stashed by sleeper cells?’ Vikrant asked Mirza as soon as they stepped out. Ever since the confrontation over keeping Mazhar in the dark, an uneasy silence had prevailed between them. They both knew that the job at hand was paramount and did not let their personal issues affect it, but there was still a certain level of discomfort. Neither of them had looked the other in the eye since that day.

  Mirza nodded, looking at his cell phone.

  ‘There have always been reports. And it supports logic. If a sleeper cell gets an order to become active, they won’t use locally procured countrymade guns. And they might not always have time to get high-end guns at short notice. The information we’ve received indicates that these weapons are dismantled and stored in parts. The sleeper cell just has to put them together when they are required.’

  ‘Fuck,’ was all Vikrant said.

  They both started walking out of the building when Vikrant’s phone rang.

  He took the call and spoke for a minute before hanging up.

  ‘Cyber team says Rehmat’s phone has a lot of information. She didn’t get a chance to erase it. The hard drive seems to be a lost cause, but they’re still trying.’

  Mirza nodded. Vikrant stopped just as they were about to step out of the structure.

  ‘How does a twenty-year-old girl become a sleeper agent?’ he wondered aloud.

  Mirza turned to face him.

  ‘How do fifteen-year-olds becom
e pirates in Somalia?’ he asked. ‘How do ten-year-olds become drug runners in Harlem? Nothing happens in isolation. They are a creation of our environment; of all of us.’

  ‘And where does it end?’ Vikrant asked.

  ‘It doesn’t. Threats keep getting created. Fortunately, so do allies.’

  Vikrant looked away and nodded.

  Mirza’s phone buzzed. He checked the text message. ‘Singh’s here. Let’s go.’

  33

  ‘This is a nightmare, Mirza,’ NSA Pradeep Singh said.

  They were still at the NSG base, in the hospital this time. Shukla had been treated for his gunshot wound. Thankfully, the bullet had gone through his shoulder muscle, missing any bones. It was a flesh wound that would only leave a scar after it healed.

  The dead bodies of Rehmat and her four terrorists were in the morgue on the base. Already, a RAW team had found enough information on their cell phones to indicate that the terrorists were part of another sleeper cell, formed several years ago. Like Rehmat, they too had not had time to erase their phones and the information was plentiful. Soon, their identities would be ascertained and their histories traced.

  The DRDO scientists had undergone a full formal debriefing and sent back home. Singh had flown down from Delhi and he was not happy.

  ‘I did what I had to, sir,’ Mirza said.

  ‘Really?’ Singh said irately. ‘You had to assault a MOSSAD agent on our soil?’

  ‘He was going to kill the boy.’

  ‘The boy,’ Singh said angrily, ‘is a bloody terrorist!’

  They stopped walking and paused outside Shukla’s room.

  ‘We’d extended our full cooperation to MOSSAD when it came to this Al Muqadam character, Mirza,’ Singh continued. ‘They’ve been tracking him for years. He’s caused them some serious damage over time. His death was the only condition on which they’d agreed to help us.’

  ‘I understand that,’ Mirza said. ‘But without Ayyub’s cooperation, four of our best scientists would have been dead. That has to count for something.’