Once again Singh peered from behind the wall. Except for the night cricket the fort lay quiet. Where the hell was the sharpshooter?
He got his answer. A muzzle was warm against the back of his bald head. From the corner of his eye he saw that the guard, his left arm over Mehrunisa’s shoulder, had clamped a hand over her mouth. ‘Move!’ he commanded.
Singh walked slowly, cursing his twice-poor judgement, registering the slight American accent of his attacker, and noticing his grip on Mehrunisa’s neck as he followed Singh closely with her in tow. This man was clever and chameleon like. Dressed as a guard, he looked local yet spoke like an American. He had the bearing of a trained security man, not some jihadi recruit. And he had executed two men cleanly, in the dark, kept himself concealed even as he closed the distance… A cold clutched his heart and transported R.P. Singh to the chilly wilderness of Badakhshan.
While training the Afghan police he had heard one story repeatedly. With echoes of a Hollywood film, it sounded too fantastical to be true. And yet, the existence of the man was confirmed to him by several senior Afghan officers. A highly-trained and very skilled Pashtun sniper was picking off American troops at will, having stalked the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines for months in which he had killed over a hundred men. The Americans were hunting the sniper who was stalking them across the streets of Sangin, widely regarded as the most dangerous city in Afghanistan. But that was not all: the Taliban killer was trained not in Iran or by Al Qaeda operatives; he was a US soldier who had gone AWOL.
His agenda was to drive out the invaders, abolish the Poppy Pashas and establish a new Islamic Afghan society. Apparently he had the blessings of Mullah Omar, which ensured that neither the Pakistani Taliban nor the ISI touched him. And in his jihad for a new society he had begun laying out extreme punishments. For women he’d devised a singular one that raised the hair on the backs of even hardened men: burying them alive after first stuffing their mouths with soil.
The renegade sniper of the US army who had grown into the legend of the dreaded Pathan Babur Khan was a man well versed in camouflage. R.P. Singh felt his brain freeze, as if the exposure to Wakhan chill had set off a delayed shock.
It called for swift, decisive action. Now.
In a furious flash Singh swung his left arm backwards, aiming the elbow for Babur’s heart and in a continued fluid motion he doubled over. A swift firing followed. Babur had let off a shot just as the elbow connected with his chest. Mehrunisa stumbled to one side. As Babur gasped in pain, Singh landed a punch on his jaw and he keeled over. A quick blow on Babur’s right hand and the gun clattered to the floor. Singh pushed it away with his foot. Babur lunged at his midriff. The force sent them to the floor, clutching each other like Sumo wrestlers.
Mehrunisa rubbed her neck and watched the furious pummelling. The pistol lay just inside the whirling arc of the two men. She needed one clear moment and she’d grab it.
The men were rolling on the brick floor, throwing punches. In an instant Singh had gained the upper hand as he found himself astride Babur who was pinned down. With his left hand he gripped his throat hard, and with his right attempted to pull his gun out. Babur’s hands were clawing at Singh’s hand as he wriggled desperately beneath him.
Mehrunisa saw a chance and moved in to grab the pistol from the mud floor. She had it in her hands when her left ankle was ensnared. She looked down and saw the guard had clamped his left claw around her ankle even as he struggled to stave off Singh with his right. The next instant she felt a yank and was toppling.
She landed on the two men. What followed was a blur. Singh, concerned for her safety, attempted to move her out of harm’s way. A shot rang out. Babur Khan had extricated the pistol from Mehrunisa’s hand and fired. He sat upright, the pistol levelled at Singh and Mehrunisa on the floor.
With a brief nod he indicated that Singh step away. He lunged at Mehrunisa, grabbed her by the neck and using her as a shield rose up. ‘Enough of monkeying around. Put your weapon on the floor, slowly, and slide it towards me. One moment of hesitation from your side and I shoot this woman.’
Singh did as he was instructed. Babur would not shoot Mehrunisa, otherwise he would have done it by now. It was him he wanted out of the way. So what was his game plan?
As his weapon clattered towards him over the tiled floor, Babur Khan captured it under his right foot. ‘Put your hands up where I can see them.’
Then he took a clear aim at R.P. Singh who was on the floor on his knees, his chest exposed. ‘He is not a Pathan who does not return a blow for a pinch.’
As the bullet hit R.P. Singh, he saw a shocked Mehrunisa thrashing and screaming in Babur Khan’s grip. The fact that Babur wasn’t doing anything to her meant one thing: he wanted her alive. The thought registered in his blurring mind as he toppled over in a hail of gunfire.
Bhakra Nangal Dam, India
Tuesday 10:46 p.m.
It was a curious mix of circumstance, family hierarchy and native city that had made Abu Ansari what he was: an entirely ordinary man who was nonetheless the holder of multiple passports and several aliases. Of average height and build, wheatish complexioned, black haired, he was the quintessential ‘common man’ of the subcontinent who could meld into the crowd anywhere from Dhaka to Karachi and all the land between. His wide protuberant eyes gave him a perennially perplexed look, which again cast him as a bit of a yokel not worth bothering with. Yet Abu had parlayed this very ordinariness into a skill, that of the human chameleon. Just as the lizard morphed into its particular background by changing colour, Abu became a Yemeni Arab, an Iraqi Sunni, an Isfahani, a Kabuli, Lahauri or Dilliwala through his uncommon facility for languages and his common looks. The provenance of a brown man such as him could be located anywhere in the Islamic landmass to which was tethered his peninsular homeland of India.
Growing up as one of the seven children in a lower middle-class Muslim family in Hyderabad, Abu – he of no impressive size or intellect – had figured that the way to survive was to blend in, to be one of a multitude, where benefits accrue because of membership.
In school Abu was never called upon by the teacher to answer a question – he was neither bright nor dim-witted enough. Playground bullies seldom picked on him – he made sure to stand beside their jeering cohort. Despite meagre household resources Abu never went hungry – his mother didn’t notice when he slunk in to steal food or his father when he pilfered his pant pocket for small change. So ordinary, so commonplace, that he could place a bomb in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar at peak time and have nobody notice or pay any attention. Do people notice lampposts?
Abu’s house was in the Old City where his neighbours comprised Yemeni Arabs, Armenians, Pathans, Turks and Persians who had settled in Hyderabad generations back. A melting pot spewing multiple languages in its fetid air heavy with incense, riots and resentment. Abu never made a conscious effort to learn any language besides what he was taught at school – Telugu and English – but by the age of fifteen he was fluent in multiple languages that could be heard in the city. Such was the osmosis that not only could Abu speak Arabic he could enunciate like a Yemeni or a Saudi or a Kabuli.
Abu never held this facility in any particular regard. That is, until he landed a job in the port city of Jeddah, the gateway to holy Mecca. There he met the fiery preacher who was to change his life forever and set him on the path to sharia.
His first step was to begin recruiting jihadis in Saudi Arabia from amongst immigrants. The youths who arrived from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh to work at Jeddah Port responded to him. Arid Jeddah disoriented them with its searing days and cool nights and Abu Ansari catered to them in his dulcet Urdu and soft Malayalam as he tutored their tongues in guttural Arabic. They found solace in listening to somebody from back home who understood their twin anxieties about their prospects in the land of Hindus and uncertainty in the holy yet foreign land. Abu sympathized with them, weaved in stories
of Muslims butchered in Kashmir and Gujarat and Mumbai, and pointed out how Islam was under attack everywhere. But there was a salve for a festering soul and Abu offered it – jihad.
Then he got a call to return to Hindustan to serve Kohinoor. The mission energized Abu: in Arabic, ‘sharia’ was the path to water and if they pulled off Kohinoor there would be enough water to cleanse many festering wounds! Positioning him in the heart of the operation had been easy – in this land one could buy anything! Greasing appropriate palms had resulted in Abu’s transfer from Solan city to Bhakra Dam and here was Abu Ansari, his INSAS rifle slung over one shoulder as he walked the curved rampart of the high-security dam.
How did Abu Ansari get to don the uniform of the state police of Himachal Pradesh? Where did he get his papers from? What was the security check undertaken before assigning him to the security detail at Bhakra?
Abu Ansari strolled languidly glancing at the dark waters of the reservoir below him, tourist boats hauled up on the bank in the distance. The organization he worked for had provided him with multiple passports that he used at various points in time to travel across continents. Faking a police employment record and ID had been the least of his worries. This name badge, he glanced at the right pocket of his stiff khaki uniform – Kishen Sharma – was nondescript and entirely common as befitted the man who wore it – sallow, medium-built, with a medium-thick moustache. The mauli on his wrist proclaimed his belief in the infidel practices of the land and signalled him as a pious Hindu who swore by sacred threads.
In six months on the job, Abu Ansari had learnt many things, taken several opportunities to linger and explore and record. Thanks to him Kohinoor was on track – the day of qayamat was approaching and the infidels had no idea.
Lahore, Pakistan
Tuesday 11:19 p.m.
R.P. Singh rolled his motorcycle out of the parking lot. The security guards were likely asleep but he couldn’t risk waking them up by kick-starting the bike.
For three hours he had been out cold. His assailant had shot him repeatedly – the bulletproof vest had saved him but the rapid-fire pummelling had fractured a couple of ribs at least, and shattered his phone. The trauma was followed by blackout.
When he came to, his body was frozen from chill and his chest wracked with every breath. Once on his fours he located his backpack and swallowed several Disprins. A half hour later, the pain manageable, he snuck out of the fort. Now, to get to the border and cross over to India. Pradhan and Mishra had to be alerted about the Kohinoor and Mehrunisa’s kidnapping.
Two corpses inside Lahore Fort – sooner or later police would be swarming the surround. Singh couldn’t afford to be caught. Safely out of the fort, he kick-started his bike. He would not think of Mehrunisa – she was unhurt, and he had to get to India and figure a way to get her back.
The secret of the Kohinoor was with him – he would trade it with Mishra for Mehrunisa.
Srinagar, India
Wednesday 12:12 a.m.
Jag Mishra’s room had been converted into the situation room. No operation was ever executed without one nasty surprise – the first had arrived. The chopper that ferried Saby to Lahore had returned empty after waiting for two hours – any longer and the risk of detection and capture would have escalated sharply. Saby wasn’t answering his phone, neither was Mehrunisa. The logical assumption: the operation had faltered, the agents…
A brooding Harry, dark and withdrawn, had taken charge. Against one wall ranged a table with TV terminals, telephones and a couple of tech specialists hunched over their monitors. He had been sitting in that position for a couple of hours now – brow furiously knitted, eyes fixed on some spot on the wood table, his mind trawling the labyrinth of three decades of spy work in which were stored names, locales, contacts, moles… Mishra knew what his ace spy was doing: he was walking through that memory vault, sifting the archives for intelligence he’d need in the hours ahead.
In the four hours that they’d lost contact with the agents Jag Mishra had worked his sleeper network in Lahore for information. And Harry had begun preparations for getting on the ground. Thus far, no information had come through. The only sound in the room was of fingers flying off keyboards.
A phone rang. Jag Mishra’s desk phone. The one that clanged when an operative called from the field. Mishra looked at Harry as he reached for it. Harry’s jaw was clenched so tightly that a fresh bud of blood sprouted on the bandage around his neck.
Mishra listened, his face grave, then wordlessly handed the phone to Harry. A brief quaver of his mouth confirmed it was Mehrunisa.
Papa.
At the sound of his daughter’s voice Harry stood up, cradling the instrument in his hand.
Listen, I can’t talk for long.
She sounded subdued but calm and Harry marvelled once again at the young woman who was his daughter. When he knew her, she was a girl of fourteen, feisty and fiery, brimming with the energy of youth.
Don’t try to trace me. The attack is on – if you don’t try to rescue me I’ll be let off after the attack. If–
Static. Harry scrunched his eyes, focusing his entire being on the device in his hand. A man’s voice instructed Mehrunisa. It was hushed, indistinct, like the man had covered his mouth. A pause.
If you try to track me down, I will be killed. I – her voice caught.
Then no more. Like the instrument was snatched from her hand … but Harry hung on. Nothing but quiet. Harry had stilled his breathing. Then a snatch of a muffled male voice speaking in Pashto. Next, silence.
A manic gleam in Harry’s eyes as his whole body fused to the phone in his hand. One mistake. The man had made one mistake. He had kept the mouthpiece next to his vocal cords for the fraction of time it took to bark his order before the instrument was switched off. A precious few seconds!
Harry flew to the men at the computer monitors – the IT system at RAW had recorded the entire conversation. Even the muffled Pashto command. Harry instructed them to filter and scrub the tape until he could hear just the sound of the male voice. As the two men set about their task, Harry stepped away and perambulated the room, chin on his chest. Mishra watched him, curious, but knowing better than to interrupt.
The cadence, the tone, the accent had revealed to Harry much more than the man would ever have imagined as he made the marginal delay in switching off his phone. The dialects of certain highland tribes changed ‘a’ to a rounded ‘o’. The Pashto Harry had heard was of the region that ran east of the AfPak border.
Harry’s heart sank.
FATA. Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The most lawless region of Pakistan, with Afghanistan on west, Baluchistan on south and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on north and east. A region that was home to Pakistan Taliban, where neither the ISI nor the Pakistani army held any sway, where hid the men most wanted by the US.
A flinty face flashed in front of his eyes. Babur Khan. The man who had made his name in the messy tangle of Taliban, Al Qaeda, LeT, his linkages within the AfPak terror land nebulous yet existent… Was Babur Khan the man behind Kohinoor?
Even amongst the war-hardened Taliban Babur the butcher was infamous for his barbarity. The US soldiers and NATO forces had recently reported several cases where they had come across bodies buried beneath hen coops of houses, in the village square, in the marketplace. In each case, the autopsy result was horrifying. The body showed no sign of bruises and no sign of poison or narcotics in the blood stream – the person had been alive and fully conscious when buried. Apparently Babur Khan wanted to bring back the Taliban rule of the ’90s, when harsh punishment was meted out to deter future criminals, especially unIslamic women.
The techie at one of the computers turned toward Harry. They had caught the vibrations on tape. Filtered and scrubbed, the sound was faintly audible.
Hegheh khoshaleh deh. Baharta wuzey! Mo nez aos da za ber azedo!
The alien sibilant sound filled the still air of the situation room, incomprehension on the faces of its listeners. Except one. Harry had more than understood.
She is happy. Get out. We leave now!
The hissing syllables had brought the freeze of Hindu Kush in his heart. He walked to the wall mounted with amplified maps and stopped at the one that zoomed in on the AfPak border. The tip of his index finger rested on that sliver of AfPak that was the federally administered tribal area of north-western Pakistan – Kabul to the east, Islamabad to the west, Hindu Kush mountains to the north and Safed Koh mountains to the south.
Technology had only confirmed what Harry had known. His daughter was trapped in a region the US privately admitted had rung their death knell in their decade-old war on terror in AfPak.
Srinagar, India
Wednesday 12:32 a.m.
Jag Mishra got off a phone call. Harry had asked him to source any audio file the Americans could locate on Babur Khan before he went AWOL. Mishra gave a slight shake of his head as he replaced the receiver. ‘The Americans believe Babur Khan is hiding in Afghanistan itself. Apparently, his hideout is in the Kandahar safe haven of the Afghan Taliban.’
‘You got this from your counterpart in the CIA?’
Mishra nodded. Harry gave a brisk shake of his head. ‘The CIA has a great reputation and a terrible record. It relies on machines, not men, to understand the other side. They counted Soviet weapons with spy satellites but never figured that in the meantime communism was crumbling. They poured billions into Afghanistan to give the Russians their Vietnam – which they did, only by ending up breeding an entirely new menace, the Islamic jihadis. They claimed the existence of WMD in Iraq and provided a war-mongering President with a pretext for war. Want me to go on?’ Harry snorted.
THE HUNT FOR KOHINOOR BOOK 2 OF THE THRILLER SERIES FEATURING MEHRUNISA Page 20