Brutal

by Uday Satpathy

  The receptionist took Asif and his three jawans towards the fire exit door.

  81

  The door of Room 703 was opened by a young man. He was startled to see the massive spill of blood in front of his room.

  “What the hell!” he yelled and was just about to shut his door down when he recognized Eli. He bent over his body and asked Prakash, “What happened to him? And who are you?”

  There was no time to explain.

  “We’ve been attacked! Please let us in first,” Prakash said. “Help me get him inside,” he added, dragging Eli’s body with his hands.

  The man caught Eli’s legs to help Prakash. They lifted him up from the ground and laid him over the bed. The white sheets instantaneously turned crimson with his blood.

  Prakash ran over to the door immediately and shut it down. The man kept looking at him with a panicked face.

  “What’s going on? Have the threats against us turned out to be true?” he asked.

  Prakash nodded. He was feeling exhausted with this cat-and-mouse game since the last few days. The pain in his knee was slowly becoming unbearable. He can’t get overwhelmed now especially in this war zone, he told himself.

  He took a few deep breaths and picked up a small towel kept on the chair. He pressed it hard on Eli’s wound on his abdomen. Then he said, “Eli was attacked by one of your own colleagues.”

  “What do you mean by ‘our colleague’?” the man said with disbelief. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You are a nuclear scientist from Israel. Aren’t you?”

  The man nodded.

  “I think your attackers might have spiked your food or water with a drug named NB-67,” Prakash said, expecting a barrage of questions next. “In simple terms, it makes people extremely violent. They even attack their own friends.”

  “Bloody hell!” the man yelled. “That’s why the mineral water in my room tasted weird.”

  He picked up the mineral water bottle from the coffee table beside him and raised it high, allowing the light to fall over it. After yanking out the plastic label wrapped over the bottle, he looked at the naked bottle carefully, rotating its body about its axis.

  “Sons-of-bitches!” he said loudly, pulling out a tiny transparent cellophane tape stuck at the place where the label was there previously. “There is a syringe hole in the bottle.”

  “How much of this water did you have?” Prakash asked.

  “A few gulps. That’s it,” he said, grimacing. “But I don’t feel anything strange.”

  “That’s good. Just let me know when you start feeling odd.” He wondered whether he’d be able to fight another maniac.

  “My name is Amir Segal, by the way. And you are?”

  “Prakash. I’m a journalist.”

  “And who was my colleague who stabbed Eli?”

  “Daniel something. A tall and well-built guy.”

  “Daniel Levy!” he said with a creased forehead. “Of all people, why he?”

  82

  The moment the CCTV feeds on his screen went blank, Sultan knew Plan-B was a ‘go’. The presence of Prakash and Seema in the hotel had opened the lid over his mission even before it had started. ‘Element of surprise’ and ‘stealth’ – both were lost now. They only way to complete the mission was a blitzkrieg. Kill the targets swiftly and fly.

  He spoke with a slightly edgy voice. “We have lost all CCTV feeds, Tilak.”

  “Shit! How?”

  “I think they came to know about our intrusion into their systems,” he said. “They can operate in the dark now. So, brace up for a backlash.”

  “What was the last visual you had?” Tilak asked.

  “I saw them talking near the reception – the reporter Seema and four army guys.”

  “You should’ve killed the bitch when you had the chance.”

  “She’ll be dead. Don’t worry. Concentrate on the job at hand. The four guys might be coming upstairs. I think they’ll use the fire exit.”

  “If it’s only four people, I can take care of them. But I don’t think I can handle additional forces. What bothers me is that all the scientists might not be dead before they come in.”

  Sultan remained silent for a few seconds. It was time to tell Tilak about Plan-B. He said, “I’m coming in.”

  “What?” Tilak sounded surprised. “How are you going to come here?”

  “I’m inside La Regalia. I have always been inside as a guest.”

  “And when were you going to tell me this?” asked Tilak, anger lending a sharp edge to his voice.

  “Never. As long as the mission went on without any glitch, I would’ve remained in the shadows.”

  “So I guess there must be a new plan now?”

  “Yes. There is. Listen to me carefully.”

  Sultan narrated his plan to him quickly. It was time for action now.

  He wore a balaclava over his head and gripped the MP5 sub-machine gun firmly in his hand. He felt good in the combat attire. Quirkily, it smelled fantastic. It reminded him of his MARCOS days. He was made for this.

  83

  Asif and his team were crouched over the last flight of stairs leading to the seventh floor. They sat in a zigzag manner, with guns aimed forward. Asif was sitting on the third position from the front. He gestured to the first soldier to tell him what he saw. The man gestured back mentioning there was no one.

  The eerie silence had begun perturbing Asif. There was absolutely no sound. Have the terrorists finished their mission and got away? He motioned to the first soldier to crawl ahead cautiously.

  The next second, Asif’s heart came to his mouth. All lights went out from the sixth and the seventh floors and the staircase. They were standing in complete darkness.

  In his whole career, he had fought insurgencies in Punjab and the North-East. He had fought Naxalites in jungles. The biggest learning he had from all those missions was that you can predict the life and death of soldiers by their ability to detect an ambush. It came to him instantly that he had just failed to detect one.

  The darkness gave way to a barrage of flashes. The silence was broken by ear splitting booms of guns being fired, interspersed with the painful shrieks of the men crouching ahead of him. Asif fired his gun incessantly in the direction the flashes were coming from.

  “There is someone behind us!” cried the soldier sitting behind him. The man started firing his gun in the opposite direction.

  Asif took out a night-vision monocular from his pocket and looked ahead through its scope. He saw two dead bodies on the stairs. Vishal and Mohan gone! He heard another shriek from behind and looked back. The soldier behind him had been hit on the head. He was also gone.

  To ward off the person firing from behind, Asif fired a few rounds backwards and started climbing the stairs. He heard a commotion, but kept moving up. Are people coming out of their rooms? Through his monocular, he kept an eye out for any movement in the darkness, as he reached the seventh floor. Again, he fired a few rounds in front of and behind him. The area near the lift was deserted. He kept an ear out for stealthy movements.

  All of a sudden, something dropped near him and bounced off the ground. There was a loud explosion, emitting a huge burst of light. It’s a flash grenade! Asif’s left eye, which was looking into the monocular, was temporarily blinded in the excessive light. Even his right eye was rendered useless. He dropped his monocular. Time’s up.

  A short burst of gunfire shredded his chest and thigh, throwing him on the ground. Writhing in pain, he remembered his wife and his little son for the last time. He wanted one final assault before his body gave up. Summoning up the last remains of energy in his body, he dragged himself towards the wall beside the lift to take its support. He pointed the gun forward and pressed the trigger. The whole floor shook with thunderous cracks. Asif kept swivelling his gun in an arc till he was completely out of ammo.

  He could swear he heard a shriek. He prayed for his bullet to have hit the right person. His eyes were shutting dow
n. All he could see ahead was light. White light.

  84

  “Answer me, Tilak!” Sultan roared into his headset for the third time. There was no reply. There could only be one reason. He was dead. In such situations, there was no point in being optimistic.

  Sultan started climbing the stairs to the seventh floor. Barring Tilak’s death, his plan has worked out well. Plan-B was all about fighting in the dark with night-vision binoculars. They had turned off the main switches on the sixth and the seventh floors and then sandwiched the soldiers on the stairs between them. Surprisingly, one of the soldiers had a night-vision equipment with him. The solution to this problem lay in a flash grenade, which Tilak had thrown after alarming Sultan. Both Tilak and he had closed their eyes at the right moment.

  He was now halfway up on the stairs. A noise behind made him turn around. Through his binoculars he saw a few people downstairs, trying to sneak out of the darkness. He fired his MP5 in their direction and scared them back like cockroaches. There was little time left now to finish the mission. He took a few more steps and reached the seventh floor.

  He saw a body slumped on the ground beside the lift. He poked at it to make sure the man was dead and slowly walked ahead till he stood at the middle of the corridor. To his left, he saw another body lying on the ground. Tilak. He ran towards it and checked for any signs of life. There were none.

  He realized that the whole mission was in his hands now. He couldn’t fail. The motto of MARCOS came into his mind. The few, the fearless.

  He walked towards the right hand side of the corridor where the targets lay. The grayscale images he saw in his binoculars suggested an open door at the very end. Directing his MP5 forward, he marched towards the last room at the end. When he was in front of room 703, he heard a slight creak coming from the opposite end of the corridor. A woman was trying to sneak out from her room. He turned around and opened fire. It ended with a scream.

  One more cockroach.

  85

  Room 703

  Prakash jerked his head backwards on hearing the gunfire outside. He was peering through the aperture on the door. All he could see in the darkness were sudden flashes of light.

  His heart was beating furiously inside the walls of his chest. He pondered over the options he had. Unfortunately, there were none. If the assailant managed to enter their room, that would the end of their lives. There was no escape, other than jumping to death from seven stories.

  His eyes had got somewhat used to the present room. He managed to walk over to the bed on which Eli was lying. Amir was sitting on a chair beside the bed. Prakash couldn’t see his face in the darkness. But he knew what expression would be there. Absolute fear.

  With a trembling voice, Amir whispered, “How many are they?”

  “Only one, I think.”

  “Why are the security forces not here yet?”

  “I have a terrible feeling that the security forces might not come anytime soon,” Prakash said. “You heard the heavy burst of gunfire a few minutes back. Didn’t you? Whoever has survived that is standing outside our door.”

  86

  Room 702 was slightly ajar. Sultan recalled that it was the same room in which the Mossad agent was attacked. He and the Goddamn reporter must be hiding in one of these rooms. But the bigger problem was dealing with a rampaging Daniel Levy. Once the big man was dead, he could focus on killing all his targets surgically.

  He pressed the door with his foot and let it swivel around its axis. “Daniel Levy. Where are you?” he said, with a melodious touch to his voice. “Come out. All your enemies are dead.”

  He got inside the room, absorbing the grayscale imagery in the darkness. There were no living beings inside. When he started to move out of the room, he heard a faint noise inside the bathroom. Someone’s hiding inside. He pressed the door, but it was locked from inside.

  “Who’s inside? Open the door. There’s no point in hiding.”

  There was no response.

  “OK. I’m coming in,” he said and aimed his gun at the bathroom doorknob.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw someone standing at the entrance of the room. Before he could react, he felt two muscular hands grab his MP5. It was Daniel, with bulging eyes full of feral rage. As the burly man snatched his gun, Sultan pressed the paddle release of the gun. The magazine slid out from beneath and fell on the ground.

  But his momentary lack of attention allowed his attacker to give a shattering head butt on his right jaw. The blow was so powerful that it smashed his night-vision binoculars completely and sent him flying into the room.

  The gun was in Daniel’s hands now. He aimed the gun in the direction he had thrown Sultan in and pressed the trigger. The gun did not fire. There was no magazine. He roared with fury and whacked the gun on Sultan’s body.

  Sultan screamed with severe pain. Daniel’s blow had struck his rib cage on the left side. He could feel a few bones crack under the impact. He felt lucky that the blow hadn’t land on his head. My skull would have given in otherwise.

  He rolled over into a different place to avoid any further blows from Daniel. Slowly, he got up, holding his rib cage. The intolerable pain stole a few of his heartbeats. It was going to be a gutter fight, he realized.

  You don’t mess with a MARCOS. And if you do mess with one, you don’t get away.

  87

  The sound from the fight going in the adjoining room was trickling into their room.

  “It seems a brawl is going on inside room 702,” Amir whispered.

  “I think this is the right moment to escape,” Prakash replied.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Amir said. “If he catches us, then we’ll be like a deer caught in the headlights.”

  “And what will you achieve by staying here? This man will shoot you down anyways.”

  “I don’t think we can cross that corridor without getting caught. We’d need a weapon, which we don’t have,”

  Prakash thought Amir was correct. We need a weapon.

  “How about this man?” he said, nudging Eli. “Eli, do you have a gun?”

  Eli emitted an almost inaudible grunt. “My left leg,” he said with a feeble voice. “.38. Armed.”

  Prakash felt his hand around the ankle of Eli’s left leg. There was an ankle holster. Wow. He removed the Velcro strap to get his hands on a pistol. It was the second time he was going to use it today.

  88

  Room 702

  The movement of furniture in the room alerted Sultan. The maniac is going to attack with a chair or a coffee table. He pulled out a hunting knife from his chest harness. Just come in my arc. And you’re gone.

  Daniel lunged at him with a chair. Sultan used his knife to defend himself but it got stuck in the wood. As Daniel yanked the chair back, the knife also went away with it.

  Shit!

  Sultan’s options were receding. In the darkness, all Daniel needed was a good hit and he would be down. The only way he could level the playfield was by removing the darkness.

  Flash grenade.

  He took out a flash grenade from his pocket and threw it on the floor beside Daniel with full force. There was a huge noise and the room was filled with dazzling light. His eyes were closed all the time.

  * * *

  Prakash had just opened his door slightly to sneak out, when he saw a blinding light erupt from the adjoining room. What the hell? He closed the door back immediately.

  “What happened?” Amir asked, standing behind him. “Did someone use a grenade?”

  “Looks like a flash grenade,” said Prakash. “We need to be careful while we move.

  He opened the door slightly again.

  * * *

  The battlefield was now levelled. In fact, it was actually in Sultan’s favour. Before the blinding light petered out, he had made sure he saw Daniel’s position. The giant was crouching on the corridor outside, rubbing his eyes.

  Sultan tiptoed out of the room, careful not to stumble against an
y obstacle. He stood right in front of Daniel. The contours of the man’s body were etched in his memory now. He knew what he needed to do now. Smash my knee on the tip of his nose, driving it into his brain. Death in seconds.

  He raised his right knee and gave a crushing blow on Daniel’s face. Unfortunately, Daniel lifted his face upwards just in time and Sultan’s knee hit his lower jaw, breaking it.

  The corridor echoed with painful shrieks from two men. Daniel slumped on the floor, while Sultan fell backwards. He touched his kneecap. A sting of unbearable pain reverberated through his body. His kneecap was dislocated.

  He felt something metallic touch his scalp. It was a pistol.

  89

  “Don’t move,” Prakash said loudly.

  Sultan remained silent for a few moments, trying to absorb his pain. “Who are you?” he asked, gasping for breath.

  “How does it matter?”

  “You’re the reporter. Aren’t you?” He started laughing. “You’ve come too far for a story.”

  “And you guys have taken your ambitions too far,” he said. Even in the darkness, Prakash could imagine a fiendish smile over the man’s lip. He poked the barrel of the pistol harder into his skull. “You and your bosses have defined new limits of being inhuman. How could you try such an evil drug on innocent human beings?”

  “Every weapon has to be tested on some human being one day.”

  “And what will you do with NB-67? Manufacture wars?”

  “Business,” Sultan said with cockiness. “That’s what we’re after. We’re not ideological fools. We won’t manufacture wars; we’ll give fools toys to fight their wars.”