THE HUNT FOR KOHINOOR BOOK 2 OF THE THRILLER SERIES FEATURING MEHRUNISA
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R.P. Singh plastered himself against the wall just as a hail of bullets rained near him. Two blind men. Hulk could decide to set off the detonation any minute. Except, he hadn’t finished wiring them all. And he didn’t look the suicide bomber type.
On a deep breath, Singh closed his eyes. The dark was no different from the jungle, which could be pitch black at noon because of dense foliage impermeable even to sunlight. Only foolhardy policemen ventured inside – policemen who had learnt to listen like animals, with little reliance on sight.
Hulk was approaching, very softly for a man his size. Singh was curved flat against the curving tunnel wall. An eternity passed before it was time. Singh opened his eyes, counted the nearing breaths, zoomed out, aimed and plastered himself back. A snarl, an invective and another hail of bullets. Hulk had taken a shot.
A bear lunged at Singh, grabbed his torso and slammed him against the floor.
Dazed, beaten, pain ricocheting through his body, Singh dimly realized that Hulk had run forward under the sound and fury of his shooting and decided to pulp him. Hulk was bending when Singh lashed out at his groin. What would have rendered another man comatose made Hulk stagger. Pushing down on his palms Singh made to hoist himself up when a paw smashed his face. His head banged against the floor. Stars burst out inside the tunnel. Blood flooded his mouth.
The next instant Hulk gripped his shoulders and hoisted Singh upright, banging his head against the ceiling as he righted him. He had switched on his head torch – the light was blinding. Singh screwed his eyes. Death was staring him in the face, except it looked like Yama’s buffalo that had strayed out of Bastar. His lip curled at the joke – clearly his mind was pulp – but Hulk looked affronted at what he deemed was mirth. He slammed Singh to the floor again like a rag doll. Seizing this last chance Singh lashed out his legs like an acrobat even as his hands rummaged the floor for a sign of his gun. Wasted.
Crouched over him Hulk smashed a fist into his jaw. He heard bones fragment and loose teeth spring in his mouth even as his own blood threatened to drown him. Singh tried to breathe, force his eyes open, think. Mehrunisa. Another blow was coming his way, one that would finish him, and his dying thought was Mehrunisa. His face lit up.
Hulk, momentarily startled by the dying man’s joy, paused. A rosebud sprouted on his forehead. He swayed, eyes incredulous. A second rosebud sprouted on his neck before it began to squirt blood.
Hulk yo-yoed, his mouth open, before plunging forward. Singh slid, swerved, and Hulk crashed to the floor.
Then Raghav was there, cradling his head and pointing a torch in his face. He was wearing night-vision goggles, which had enabled him to shoot Hulk with precision.
Singh tried to speak. Couldn’t. He spat once, twice, ridding his mouth of bone fragments, blood and dislodged teeth. Turning to Raghav he croaked, ‘How do I look?’
‘You could do with a shave.’
Singh grinned, which made him wince. He had avoided Hulk’s ox trunk but his legs were still trapped under those enormous thighs. ‘Listen, can you rescue my legs too?’
Raghav eyed the mound under which Singh lay buried. ‘This will require a bulldozer.’ He launched himself at the inert mountain of flesh, pushing-shoving-pushing as Singh slithered from underneath.
When Singh had wriggled out and Raghav was catching his breath, he growled, ‘You’re making a habit of it.’
‘What?’ Raghav exhaled.
‘Of saving my skin.’
‘Ah!’ Raghav grinned. ‘A dusht in my debt, twice over.’
Bhakra Dam, India
Thursday noon
At a press conference Jag Mishra announced that a terror attack had been mounted on Bhakra Dam but it was foiled. Two policemen were dead and eight hospitalized. They had recovered a large cache of very sophisticated IEDs and other detonators, besides two dead terrorists and one who was apprehended alive. No mention of the Kohinoor was made.
He was joined by the BBMB Chairman who announced that no damage had occurred to Bhakra and operations would resume within a few days as soon as the police and intelligence completed their investigations.
R.P. Singh was flown to the military hospital in Srinagar where the country’s finest doctors were equipped with restoring the physical and mental health of security men who suffered in the line of duty. The good news was that Singh’s jawbone had not broken but would need to be in cast for a while. The net damage, beyond bruises, was one broken rib, two lost teeth, and a swollen head.
Raghav was in another room down the corridor resting the shoulder aggravated by his recent adventure.
Mehrunisa, meanwhile, was recuperating from her ordeal in an undisclosed location. Her only company was her father.
Gulmarg, India
Three weeks later
They reminded her of frosted muffins, the mountains capped with ice – distant and yet so vivid that all she had to do was reach out. The meadow was still green, the carpet of snow would arrive in a month’s time. Here the Pir Panjal mountains formed a basin, lushly carpeted, fringed by chinars, fragrant with the scent of pine. The Meadow of Flowers – the Himalayan paradise to which a father had returned with his daughter to keep a very old promise.
The Himalayas are not just pretty hills and bubbling brooks, Papa had informed her during their first trip to Kashmir. And sure enough she had discovered then, and now, the truth behind that statement.
Mehrunisa shivered where she stood in the portico, the eighteen-hole golf course undulating in front. December chill or was it the memory that had just assailed her? She set her jaw, tilted her chin and gazed at the distant hills. In the last month she had seen up close the wild rugged beauty of the Himalayas her father so loved that he had become a part of its fauna. Snow Leopard. Really! Mehrunisa shook her head and closed her eyes.
It was still unbelievable. Nobody who was taken to those limestone caves burrowed inside mountains ever came back. The cave complex was a last refuge, an inaccessible subterranean lattice carved by rivers over the ages, one that mighty armies had failed to penetrate. Bin Laden and Tora Bora?
But a father had ridden through one night, from Pir Panjal to the Hindu Kush, marshalling a lifetime’s friends and age-old debts, channelling the knowledge, cunning and skills he had accumulated over decades spent on the field, to retrieve his child from the bowels of a mountain that was the famed etymological killer of Hindus. Through sleet and snow, over treacherous slopes, defying gunfire, he had snatched his daughter from a butcher’s cleavers. He had called on old friends and they had rallied. Abdus Malik’s Lashkar lost eight men but they took out Babur the Butcher. The mayor supplied photographic evidence of the kill and his men won plaudits from press and police alike. A senior General of the Pakistan army came for discussions one night and promised a cache of arms to assist in the fight against terror.
It seemed far away, surreal in daylight. And yet, all she had to do was close her eyes to relive it.
‘Do you know there has never been a verified unprompted snow leopard attack on a human being? The only time the cat might become aggressive is if its cubs are threatened or it is.’
Jag Mishra’s words came back to her. Snow Leopard, yes. Harinder Singh Khosa: RAW agent, yes; long-lost father, no. Papa, she said. Papa, she mouthed it again. The little girl from her childhood had come back. Papa. She needed practice with that word – it had come unstuck after an aeon.
Right now the Snow Leopard was prowling the golf course, the highest green in the world. Where he had taught her her first golf lesson. Where he was waiting for her to join him. On the green Harinder Singh Khosa was assessing the grass and taking practice shots with another golfer. The two had a similar handicap, were equally tall and lithe.
Maadar was with her, and Maadar was happy. She had wanted Mehrunisa to put the past behind her and get on with her life. Well, the past was in the present, here and now.
Mehrunisa’s heart skipped a beat. They were so alike.
She sighed.
Was that a good thing?
Manreet Sodhi Someshwar trained as an engineer, graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and worked in marketing, advertising and consulting. An award-winning writer (Commonwealth Broadcasting Association), and copywriter (Creative Abbey), she is a popular blogger as well.
Her debut novel, Earning the Laundry Stripes, released in 2006 to critical acclaim, with India Today calling it ‘an enjoyable tale of a sassy girl’s headlong race up the corporate ladder…’ Her second novel, The Long Walk Home, published in 2009, garnered critical acclaim and hit several bestseller lists in India. Legendary poet-lyricist Gulzar called it ‘a narrative of pain that knows no borders’. Celebrated writer-historian Khushwant Singh has hailed Manreet as ‘a gifted writer of great promise … a new star rising on Punjab’s literary horizon’. The Taj Conspiracy released in 2012, hit several bestseller lists — Flipkart, The Hindu, Asian Age — and was critically acclaimed.
Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and several Indian publications.
Visit her online at www.manreetsodhisomeshwar.com and the-long-walk-home.blogspot.com, via Facebook at www.facebook.com/ManreetSodhiSomeshwar, via Twitter @manreetss.