by Mainak Dhar
The Swami mulled his answer before saying it out loud.
'Walter and his friends were soldiers in the Russian and Eastern Bloc armies, and later became arms dealers. They peddled Eastern European small arms to anybody who had the money. Walter became my devotee a year ago, and they were here both for the meditation and to meet some clients for their shotguns.'
David spat on the floor. For a professional soldier, there was nothing quite lower than a gun runner who sold weapons in the black market, which all too often ended up in the hands of terrorists.
The Swami got up to leave when Hina stopped him.
'We are thankful for the shelter you gave us, but we must be on our way. If we leave now, we may yet make it to Ladakh by nightfall. Do you know if there are any running vehicles in the neighbouring villages? I'm sure lots of tourists would have driven here.'
A bit to Mayukh's relief and surprise, the Swami agreed readily, saying he would get Sharma and his staff to rustle up a car that was in running condition and had enough fuel, adding that if they left within the hour, they could get to Ladakh by nightfall. When he left, Swati commented with a smile.
'Now, that was easier than I thought it would be. Maybe he just looks creepier than he is.'
With everyone's mood considerably lightened, they began to make preparations for their journey. They unloaded all their remaining supplies from Walter's van and had them piled up near the gate, ready to be loaded into whatever vehicle Sharma managed to find for them.
Swati was feeding Abhi some cookies, so that he would not be hungry when they set out on what would undoubtedly be a long drive, and Hina was taking stock of their remaining food supplies. Mayukh checked his watch-it had already been forty-five minutes and there was no sign of Sharma or any car.
'David, I'll just go over to the Swami's villa and check what's going on.'
David was too busy cleaning his gun to notice, so Mayukh just headed over to the Swami's villa. He knocked twice, and hearing no response, peeped in through an open window to see that it was empty. He then figured that his best bet was to go to the administrative office and see if he could find Sharma or the Swami there. As he approached the villa, he was surprised to see Sharma walking out of the villa, smoking a cigarette.
'Mr. Sharma, did you find the car the Swami asked you to get for us?'
Sharma fumbled with his cigarette, almost dropping it in surprise on being accosted by Mayukh. He then rushed away before Mayukh could ask him anything more. Suspecting that something was amiss, Mayukh was about to storm into the villa when he heard raised voices inside. He peered in through the open door and saw the Swami and Walter talking.
'Walter, you've seen the damn piece of paper as well! It's clear what they want. Let them have the boy and maybe they'll leave us alone.'
'Look, Vinesh, they are goddamned mindless zombies! We've killed dozens every night. Let them come again and we can hold them.'
'Oh yes, we have held them when they were walking in blind. But now they can shoot! Don't you get it? They can think. They can write. They can shoot. They can't do any of them as well as us, but they are learning. How long before they break in here and turn us into creatures like them. No, no, actually, they won't do that. You've heard from the radio broadcasts what they do to those who try and fight.'
Walter looked deflated and sat down.
'He's but a boy, Vinesh. Also, if we do hand him over, what guarantee is there that they'll leave us alone?'
'I know, but what choice do we have? When the Biters tossed the paper over the wall during their first attack, I went to their villa, thinking I could take the boy then. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Then they came back with automatic weapons-as if to warn us. There are no guarantees that they'll leave us alone, but I can guarantee that they will tear us all to shreds if we don't do what they say.'
Mayukh heart was already pounding with what he had overheard, but when he saw the bloodied piece of paper in the Swami's hand, he was terrified. Scrawled in red, as if with blood, were just three words on it.
Gives the boye.
Mayukh turned, to go and warn David and the others when he saw Mikhail standing behind him. Before he could do anything, the big man shoved him, and he fell into the villa. The Swami and Walter both looked at him in shock and then at each other. Seeing the outrage and anger in Mayukh's eyes they knew that he had overheard their conversation. The Swami walked up to Mayukh, even now trying to be his usual smooth and civil self.
'Mayukh, we don't have a choice. If we give the boy, we can all live. So many have already been lost. One boy could save us all.'
Mayukh got up unsteadily to his feet and waited for the Swami to get closer. Then he put all his strength into a kick right into the Swami's groin. The Swami doubled over with a scream and fell to his knees, as Walter struck Mayukh with a blow to the head with the butt of his pistol. Mayukh found himself flat on the ground, his head spinning and warm blood beginning to stream down his face. He tried to get up, but Mikhail kicked him in the stomach, sending him down again, his body wracked with pain.
He heard the Swami shout.
'Go get the boy! And kill the soldier if you have to!'
Mayukh tried to get up again, but his legs felt like jelly and he fell again. He saw Walter looking down at him, grinning and then lashing out with his leg towards Mayukh's head.
Then Mayukh saw no more.
TEN
Hina crawled along the side of the wall, conscious of not making too much noise. It was now almost five in the evening, and from what she had heard, Abhi was to be handed over as soon as the Sun set. She knew she had less an hour in which to do something about it. The problem was that being an old college Professor and closet romance novelist meant that she had little by way of the practical skills such a situation warranted.
She remembered Walter and Mikhail running towards the gate earlier in the day, shouting that they had found a car that was in running condition, and that they wanted David to have a look at it before they loaded all their supplies into it. Swati had been playing with Abhi near the gate while she had stepped into one of the communal washrooms to relieve herself. Hina had looked outside, hearing the loud voices, and had been overjoyed at hearing the message that Walter and Mikhail brought with them. David had put his gun in its holster and started to walk away with them.
That was when everything went very, very wrong.
One of Walter's men had come up behind David and hit him hard on the back of the head with the butt of his shotgun. David staggered to the ground, bleeding from the head, but even then, he had not gone down without a fight. He had roared in anger at this betrayal and turned around and struck the man in the throat with his fist. The big man went down, screaming in pain, and did not get up again, but he had done his damage. David grabbed at his bloody head when Walter and Mikhail hit him again, sending him down for good. Two more of Walter's men ran onto the scene, grabbing Swati and Abhi. Swati scratched and kicked with all her strength, but it was not enough, and they were carted away. Hina then saw the Swami and Sharma appear on the scene. The Swami was shouting to Walter.
'Where is that old hag? Go and find her!'
Hina had slipped out of the villa that had acted as a communal washroom and hid under its slightly raised stilts for the next few hours while Walter and his henchmen searched for her. She had no idea what had happened to cause this betrayal at that time, and had been focused purely on remaining hidden. That was till she overheard the Swami and Walter talking. Then it all became clear.
She was old, she was weak, and she had no idea what to do, but if she was sure of one thing, it was the fact that she could not let Abhi be sacrificed like this.
Mayukh woke up, his head pounding with pain and his face sticky with dried blood. He could barely see out of his left eye, and as he awoke, he wiped the blood off the left side of his face so he could see clearly again. The first thing he heard was a sobbing noise to his right, and he turned to see Swati there, lo
oking pale and scared. Her smile was gone, replaced by a mask of fear and desperation.
'They took Abhi!'
It all came back to Mayukh then. What he had heard at the Swami's villa, the blows Mikhail and Walter had showered on him, the deal the Swami thought he could strike with the Biters. He tried to speak but his throat was parched, and a mere croak escaped his lips. Swati rushed to him, cradling him in her arms, and pouring some water into his mouth. He drank it greedily, and then sputtered and coughed as he took in more than he should have. As he got up, he saw that he and Swati had been locked inside the bathroom of the villa he and David had been assigned, with nothing but a bottle of water to eat or drink between them. He asked where Hina and David were but Swati merely shook her head between sobs.
The pain in his head was excruciating, but Mayukh felt something even more overpowering than the pain. Anger. A red hot rage more intense than anything he had felt before. He was sure that if the Swami or Walter had been in front of him, he would have killed them without a second thought. The problem was that he was unarmed, locked in and as he looked at his watch, he realized that there was very little time left before the Swami offered up Abhi as sacrifice to the Biters in his misguided hope that they would leave him and his followers alone. He banged on the door and kicked against it with all his strength but it would not budge. Then he closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down, praying that some idea would occur to him.
Hina heard the scream and stiffened. It had sounded like Mayukh, but she could not be sure. Yet, if there was a chance that he was alive, joining him would at least make it two of them, and hopefully he would have some ideas about how to save Abhi. She overcame her fear and crept out of her hiding place behind the villa and saw that the scream had come from the villa David and Mayukh had been in. Then she stopped in her tracks. In front of the villa were seated Sharma and one of Walter's meatheads, a tall, strongly built European cradling a shotgun. She flattened herself against the villa's back wall again, thinking furiously of what she could do. What the hell could she do? She was an old woman, and her only skills were a passing knowledge of history and the ability to write steamy romances.
Then a thought came to her. If she had been writing a novel, what would her heroine have done? She remembered one of her bestselling novels, The Thuggees, where her heroine, an Indian Princess, is abducted by a group of medieval Indian bandits, and has to escape while her British lover mounts a rescue mission. The heroine makes it because her aging attendant does something the bandits never expected her to, and that element of surprise gives the Princess the chance to escape. Of course, she had put much more time and energy into describing the torrid romance between the Princess and her British lover, but she did remember the old attendant's final charge. And now it seemed that her fiction was going to come true, though of course, she was not going to be the ravenously beautiful Princess but the doomed old hag. Oh well, one has to play the cards one is dealt, she thought, and then steeled herself as she walked out into the open and towards the two men.
Sharma looked at Hina walking calmly towards them, a smile on her face, and stood up, ashen faced as if he had seen a ghost. The man next to him asked him what had happened and then he too stiffened on seeing Hina walk towards them, humming a song, as if oblivious to the fate that had befallen her friends. Hina's heart was pounding and every ounce of common sense in her told her to run and hide, but somehow she pushed that aside and kept walking calmly towards the two men, smiling broadly.
'Hello, Mr Sharma!'
David couldn't believe what he was seeing. Hina had either completely lost her mind or was about to perform the most awesomely stupid act of bravery he had ever seen. He had been lying under the next villa, covered in mud, hiding in plain sight for the last ten minutes, waiting for the moment to make his move. He knew that alone he would have a tough time taking on Walter and his men by himself, unarmed and with his left hand broken, but if he managed to get Mayukh out, they might stand a chance. He had no sensation in the fingers of his left hand, which Mikhail had stomped to a pulp with his heavy hiking boots. David couldn't be sure, but he reckoned that at least three of his fingers were broken and that his left shoulder had been popped out of its socket.
He had been woken up by water being splashed on his face, and had found himself in a villa, with his hands and feet tied, and with Mikhail in front of him, raging about how he had killed his best friend. That was when David had remembered the betrayal at the gate and the big man whose thorax he had crushed before he had been brought down. He had looked at Mikhail's eyes and was sure that the big man would kill him and had been ready to face his death when Mikhail had brought up his shotgun. But then Mikhail had decided to have some sport first and beat David with the butt of his gun and then broken his fingers.
Apparently satisfied with the damage he had caused, Mikhail had raised his gun to finish the job when Walter had come in and screamed at him to stop. When Mikhail had said something about David having killed Matthau, Walter had told him he could have his revenge after the boy was handed over, but for now, he needed to focus on preparing the defences for the evening, and about getting one of his men to guard Mayukh and Swati at the villa. Mikhail was enraged and launched a few more kicks into David's prone body. David's body was wracked with pain, but his training came back to him, and he stilled his mind, tried to block out the pain and pretended to have passed out. Walter had pointed to the bloodied body and told Mikhail that he was half dead anyways, and pried him away. David then lay still as the men talked and then locked the door and walked away. Then he really passed out from the pain, and came to only hours later.
Then he began to plot. For all their tough talk and muscle, he realized Mikhail and his cronies were hardly the worst he had faced. He had lived through Hell Week in SEAL training when nine out of ten of the toughest soldiers in the world dropped out, he had fought hand to hand with Al Qaeda fanatics in Afghanistan, and had killed more men in combat than he could care to remember. He had only one good hand, and his head still bled, and it was likely he had a concussion. But Captain David Bremsak was going to war again, and this time it was personal. In ten minutes, he had undone the ropes binding him and picked the lock on the door. There had been no guard outside, perhaps because Walter had thought him to be incapacitated. That was a wrong assumption that David would make him pay dearly for.
Seeing the guard outside the villa where Mayukh and Swati were held, he had hidden and waited for the right opportunity to make his move, planning how he could take the guard out despite having no weapon and only one good hand. He had half smiled when he thought that for all the crap the movies showed about Navy SEALs, he honestly had no clue of what to do. He had then seen Sharma come over, and overheard them talk about what was to come. When he heard what was being planned for Abhi, a red mist of rage came over him, and broken hand and concussion or not, he told himself that Walter and the Swami would be dead men before the night ended. He had been wondering how he could make his move when Hina started walking towards the men, humming a song and cheerfully greeting them.
He crawled forward using his one good hand, and readied himself for action.
***
'Can the bitch really not know what's happening?'
The man next to Sharma didn't answer because he was as confused by Hina's sudden appearance. Hina was now just a couple of feet away, and was singing loudly.
'Let her come closer and then grab her. We can just lock her in with the others, and let the Swami decide what to do with them after we're finished with getting the boy to the Biters and those monsters leave us alone.'
The European put down his shotgun by his side so he would look less threatening and took a step toward Hina, smiling back at her.
'Would you like to meet your friends?'
Hina smiled cheerily and said.
'Of course! Can you show me where they are?'
The man now took another step, convinced that the old woman had lost her mind a
nd extended his right arm towards her. Hina took it with her left arm and then fell forward, as if she had tripped on something. The man dropped his shotgun to try and support her.
That was when Hina brought her right hand out from behind her and brought the fist-sized rock she had clutched in it crashing into the side of the man's head with all the strength she could muster.
'Shit!'
The man went down, screaming in pain, clutching at his bloodied face. Hina looked up to see Sharma, who to her shock, far from attacking her, squealed in fright and surprise and turned to run. Hina's hand was ringing from the impact of the blow she had delivered, but she brought her hand up again and delivered another blow to the kneeling man's head. He did not get back up. Sharma was now backed up against the villa, and Hina brought up the fallen man's shotgun. She had no idea how to use it, but the violence she had just dished out had taken all the fight out of Sharma, who was now pleading with her to spare him.
'You bastard, open the door and let them out first!'
Sharma went into the villa, pushed along by Hina at the point of the gun, and then opened the bathroom door.
Mayukh started in surprise as the door swung open and he saw Sharma there, and then Hina behind him, a shotgun in hand. She smiled as she saw them.
'Now you young people can join in the fun.'
Sharma looked at Hina.
'Please let me go. I have nothing to do with the Swami and Walter's plan.'
Swati was on him like a tiger and she slapped him so hard he fell against the wall.
'You fucking animal! You are going to kill a small boy to save your skins!'
Mayukh pulled Swati aside and then raised Sharma, holding him by his neck. Sharma was still pleading for his life when Mayukh head butted him as hard as he could. He heard the thin man's nose snap, and then Sharma crumpled to the floor. Mayukh locked him in the bathroom and the three of them hugged. Hina's bravado was now gone and she was shaking uncontrollably. But now, they all knew that they had to put their fears and weaknesses aside and try and save Abhi.