Eleventh Hour

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  ‘Again, too many unknowns,’ the navy commander said. ‘We have no idea where the terrorists are positioned.’

  The room fell silent as everyone racked their brain. Then Vikrant spoke up.

  ‘If you’re all done,’ he said, ‘can we start being realistic?’

  Everyone turned to him.

  ‘You know a better way, Mr Singh?’ the navy commander asked.

  ‘There is no better or worse way,’ Vikrant said. ‘There is only one way. Let me take the five prisoners to that cruise liner. It is the only way to ensure that the hostages are freed. We can insist that they let the women and children go first, and the rest after I get on board with the five IM members. And let us not forget that even if we manage to get all the hostages released, there’s still that small matter of the ’93 Cache. Those five men have been in possession of some really serious arsenal and we have no idea what they’ve done with it.’

  ‘And then what?’ Mirza snapped. ‘Watch as they shoot you?’

  Vikrant turned to his mentor.

  ‘Wrong time for you to start getting emotional, isn’t it, sir?’ he said. ‘After an entire career of hard decisions?’

  Mirza stormed out, followed by Vikrant, while the others in the room exchanged looks.

  Thirty minutes later, Mirza was on the phone with Marco.

  ‘I need a show of good faith before I give you what you want,’ he said.

  Marco laughed. ‘We’re a group of armed men holdin’ civilians hostage and askin’ for the release of five terrorists, Mr Mirza. Good faith ain’t something you should be seekin’ in this particular market. But sure, you can have some of your people back.’

  The IM five were led up to the carrier’s deck, where Vikrant was waiting for them, Mirza standing behind him. They stood in formation, Qureshi, their leader, standing in front, Shaukat Asad and Mazhar Khan on his left, and Mustafa and Ibrahim Kadri on his right. Their handcuffs were removed under the watchful eyes of fifteen naval soldiers who had their guns trained on them. Mustafa and Ibrahim stepped forward.

  ‘Where’s our mother?’ Mustafa asked.

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’ Vikrant said, injecting a good measure of insolence in his grin. ‘She was driven out of her house.’

  Mustafa moved towards Vikrant but Ibrahim pulled him back.

  Across the water, Marco’s men led twenty of the hostages up the deck and bundled them into two lifeboats at gunpoint. They were a mixed group: old men, women and children. The navy had set up powerful zoom cameras on the deck of the aircraft carrier, which were trained on the cruise liner and relaying a live feed to a screen in the Officers’ Room. Everyone in there could see the fear on the hostages’ faces.

  Vikrant and the IM Five boarded another lifeboat. All three lifeboats were lowered into the water at the same time. Vikrant navigated the one he was in, while each lifeboat carrying the hostages was navigated by one of them. Vikrant’s lifeboat passed between the two before reaching the cruise liner.

  Mirza quickly made his way to the Officers’ Room and joined the group staring at the screen. They watched as a rope ladder was lowered and Vikrant boarded the cruise liner, followed by the IM Five. The five terrorists were welcomed with handshakes by Marco and another hijacker, who was clearly Marco’s second-in-command. Mustafa Kadri turned to Vikrant and said something.

  ‘Please keep your bloody mouth shut, lad,’ Mirza said softly even as Vikrant was seen responding. Mustafa punched him in the gut and Vikrant doubled over. Ibrahim came forward and kicked Vikrant as well, making him fall to the ground.

  As Vikrant was dragged away to the lower level of the cruise liner, Shaina stifled a sob and Mirza, unseen by anyone, gave her hand a quick squeeze.

  32

  Monday night, cruise liner.

  Daniel took a deep puff of his cigarette as he looked around the recreational area where they were being held.

  Half an hour earlier, Marco had entered the area with his trademark smile.

  ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘An exchange is happenin’. I need all women, children and old men to form a straight line near the door.’

  Two of Marco’s henchmen stepped forward, guns at the ready.

  ‘These men will take you upstairs and before ya know it, y’all be aboard an Indian Navy vessel. So, please start comin’ forward.’

  Some of the hostages started shuffling around, unsure of whether to believe Marco.

  Daniel and Hakimi stood up almost in tandem.

  ‘May I?’ Daniel asked Marco, gesturing at the hostages. The Somali nodded and Daniel went over to a woman, who had a four-year-old boy with her. Kneeling down, he started speaking softly to her, willing her to get up. Hakimi went over to another hostage and soon, twenty-five captives were standing in a line near the door.

  Daniel went over to Vaishali, who shook her head, looking stubborn.

  ‘Look—’ he began.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  Daniel went closer to her. ‘Listen to me,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Get to safety. That’s one less thing for me to worry about.’

  Before Vaishali could respond, Marco spoke. ‘She stays,’ he said. ‘And so do you.’

  Daniel turned around.

  Marco then pointed to Hakimi. ‘You can leave,’ he said. Calmly, Hakimi strode up to Daniel and Vaishali and sat down with his back to the wall.

  ‘I’m not leaving either,’ he told Daniel, who looked helplessly from Hakimi to Vaishali.

  ‘What’s happenin’, Mr Union Leader?’ Marco called out from across the room.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s all of them.’

  Marco looked at Hakimi for a moment.

  ‘Last chance,’ he said.

  Hakimi stared back coolly at Marco, neither speaking nor moving. Marco shrugged and turned around, leading the line of hostages out of the door.

  The remaining passengers sat in silence for another half hour before the door slid open. Two of the Somali gunmen dragged in a man by his arms and shoved him to the ground. Marco entered a second later.

  ‘Mr Union Leader,’ he said, and Daniel stood up.

  ‘This man is known to be somethin’ of a rule-breaker. If he breaks any of my rules, I kill either the lady sittin’ by your side or the brave old man next to her,’ Marco said casually.

  ‘Where did he come from, sir?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘None of your business, sir,’ Marco replied before walking out, followed by his men. The door slid shut and the new entrant pulled himself to his feet slowly. Daniel walked over to him.

  Both men stared at each other.

  ‘Madman Dan,’ Vikrant said after a few seconds.

  ‘Toothpick Vik,’ Daniel replied, with a surprised grin. Both men shook hands warmly.

  ‘You two know each other?’ Hakimi asked curiously.

  ‘We’ve worked together. Vik here is with the National Investigation Agency, and one hell of an investigator.’

  ‘And I don’t know how well you know this man,’ Vikrant said. ‘But if there’s one person I’d blindly trust with my life, it’s Madman Dan Fernando.’

  Vikrant and Daniel went to where Hakimi and Vaishali were sitting. The two remaining hostages, a man in his late thirties named Saahir Mastan and a girl in her early twenties, Prajakta Desai, instinctively drew closer to them too.

  The night before they were supposed to call Marco, Mirza and his team had worked intensively to draw up a plan of action. Goyal and Jaiswal were asked to go through the list of hostages provided by the cruise company to see if there was anyone whose help Vikrant could potentially enlist once he was aboard.

  ‘Here’s one,’ Goyal called out. ‘Former Army Special Forces, Daniel Fernando.’

  Both Mirza and Vikrant looked at Goyal, then at each other.

  ‘Let me see that,’ Vikrant said and took the list from Goyal. One look at Daniel’s picture and Vikrant looked relieved.

  ‘There is a God after all,’ he said.
>
  Five years ago, when Vikrant was in the final year of his IB stint, he had been sent on one of his most important missions. A deep cover secret agent in Pakistan had gone on the run after his cover was blown. He had managed to slip into Bangladesh undetected and needed help to get to India. The problem was that the ISI, suspecting he might do something like that, had already sent its own people to watch the Indo-Bangladesh border at Malda in West Bengal.

  Vikrant was asked to leave for Malda and stay in contact with the agent, while the Army Special Forces provided assistance through Daniel.

  In a makeshift command centre deep in the forest near the Indian side of the border, Vikrant would speak to the agent, who was hiding in a nearby village in Bangladesh, every half hour, and relay the information to Daniel.

  ‘This isn’t going to work till we get an idea of what we’re up against, Vik,’ Daniel told Vikrant over the radio on the second day.

  ‘I know. But we don’t have ground assets on the other side of the border at this moment,’ Vikrant replied.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Daniel. ‘I slipped across fifteen minutes ago.’

  Daniel went off the line before an annoyed Vikrant could say anything. For the next hour, Vikrant paced about in the command centre. Finally, the radio crackled.

  ‘Send help to the border, Vik,’ Daniel hissed. ‘Now.’

  Vikrant went by his gut instinct and decided to trust Daniel. A team of armed BSF men waited at the Malda border as Daniel sped towards them in a stolen car. There were two other cars hot on his trail but they quickly lost interest on seeing the BSF. Daniel, armed only with a pistol and a dagger and dressed as a peasant, had singlehandedly taken out seven disguised ISI killers, rescued the IB agent, stolen a car and made it across.

  ‘I see why they call you Madman Dan,’ Vikrant later told Daniel over a drink.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Toothpick Vik,’ Daniel responded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vic Vega? Reservoir Dogs?’ Daniel asked.

  Vikrant stared blankly.

  Before they had parted ways, Daniel gifted Vikrant a DVD of the Quentin Tarantino movie.

  Now, Vikrant and Daniel updated each other with what they knew while everyone else looked at them with renewed hope.

  ‘We need to figure out a way to get some intel about this place to the people on the aircraft carrier,’ Vikrant said.

  ‘We already did.’ Daniel smiled.

  33

  Monday night–Tuesday morning, aircraft carrier.

  ‘What else can you tell us?’ Mirza asked.

  Aastha Sachdev stroked her four-year-old son’s hair as he slept with his head on her lap, and thought hard.

  The twenty hostages released by Marco and his men had been brought aboard the aircraft carrier by the navy and taken for a full medical check-up. Two of them, Aastha and a teenager, Gaurav Sanyal, had asked to speak to ‘someone in charge’ before they went for the check-up.

  ‘It’s really important,’ Aastha said.

  Shaina, who was helping the navy, overheard them and took them to see Mirza. Both hostages were now seated in a small room on the lower deck.

  ‘Well, this dude Daniel was like, make sure they know the hostages being held in the rec area down below. And they’ve got these really badass sub-machine guns from Israel or somewhere, and some pistols,’ Gaurav said.

  Mirza turned to Shaina for help.

  ‘Badass,’ she said. ‘It’s slang. The latest word for impressive.’

  She turned to Gaurav.

  ‘These sub-machine guns. Were they Uzis?’ she asked and Gaurav nodded vigorously.

  ‘And the pistols were … clock?’ he said, hesitantly.

  ‘Glock?’ she asked, and both Gaurav and Aastha nodded this time.

  ‘They also have plenty of ammunition. The captain was up in the engine room most of the time, I think, to give the impression to the control room that everything was normal. Daniel said he counted twelve hijackers. And he felt that they were ex-soldiers because, you know, Daniel is one as well and he knows the type,’ Aastha said.

  ‘Daniel Fernando?’ Mirza asked.

  ‘Yeah. He just took over like a boss after we got hijacked. Stood up to those gunmen and shit. It was wicked. Him and the other old dude were, like, totally in control while the rest of us were losing our shit. The oldie even saved a woman from getting raped,’ Gaurav gushed.

  Aastha winced at the memory and Shaina turned to her.

  ‘What is he talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, one of the hijackers sneaked into the recreational area while we were sleeping. Tried to take away a young woman at gunpoint. This old man, we all called him Uncle, he just stood up to the hijacker, telling him to go ahead and shoot him, but he won’t let the hijacker take the girl. We were all so terrified.’ Aastha trembled at the memory.

  Shaina put a hand on Aastha’s shoulder to calm her down.

  ‘So, to sum it up, there are fifteen men armed with Uzis and Glocks and plenty of ammunition. They seem to be trained ex-soldiers. The hostages are being held in the recreational area and are given meals twice a day. The captain was told to maintain the illusion that everything was normal till they were ready to reveal the hijack. Correct?’

  ‘Yep, yep. Also, the army dude thinks there’s a mole,’ Gaurav chimed in.

  Mirza stared at him hard before speaking.

  ‘I want you to repeat that without using any slang,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, well … Daniel thinks that someone among the hostages might have been … on the side of the hijackers…’

  ‘And why does he think that?’

  Gaurav shrugged.

  ‘IDK, man,’ he said.

  ‘WHAT?!!’ Mirza now lost his cool.

  ‘That … that means I don’t know…’ a startled Gaurav stammered. ‘There wasn’t much time. The dude … I mean Daniel just whispered this to me as I was leaving, saying that this was important.’

  Shaina took Aastha and Gaurav away as Mirza sat alone, processing the information.

  He then walked to the Officers’ Room, where he drew Goyal and Jaiswal aside and told them to talk to all the released hostages about the ‘uncle’ who had stood up to the hijacker.

  ‘You have a plan, sir?’ Goyal asked.

  ‘Just a thought,’ Mirza replied. ‘He might be a possible ally, and we need everyone we can get.’

  Then Mirza walked out to the deck and used one of the phones to call Mankame.

  ‘What’s happening, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re still watching the autorickshaw driver, sir. He drove to a garage in Malad after leaving Behrambaug. Parked the auto there and drove out on a bike, dressed in different clothes. From there, he went to Goregaon and entered a residential building. It’s a single-wing building, nothing fancy. Hasn’t come out since.’

  ‘See what you can find out, but be careful. And be ready to move in when I tell you to.’

  Mirza ended the call and turned around just as Jaiswal came up behind him.

  ‘It’s Qureshi,’ he said. ‘He wants to speak to you.’

  Mirza hurried to the Officers’ Room, where the naval commander and several others were huddled around a phone which had its speakerphone light on.

  ‘This is Mirza,’ he said.

  ‘Listen carefully, Mirza,’ the leader of the IM Five said. ‘I have taken over from Marco, which means that he and his team will do exactly as I ask. If you don’t tell me where Mustafa and Ibrahim’s mother is, I’ll bring Vikrant up to the deck and torture him in front of those cameras you have pointed at us.’

  ‘How is Vikrant?’ Mirza asked.

  ‘He’s alive. Where is the old woman?’

  Mirza hesitated for a second before replying, ‘She’s safe. We’ve put her up at a hotel in Bandra with three female cops for company.’

  ‘You better not be lying,’ Qureshi threatened.

  ‘I have no reason to,’ Mirza replied. ‘The whole thing was done
to draw you guys out anyway, which is pointless now.’

  ‘Which hotel?’

  Mirza told him.

  ‘Good. I want her back at her home and speaking to me on this satellite phone in two hours.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Next. There’s a commercial freighter headed our way.’

  Mirza exchanged looks with Jaiswal and Goyal.

  ‘I want you to let it reach us unhindered. Anyone tries anything funny, a hostage dies.’

  ‘What’s on the freighter?’ Mirza asked.

  ‘Someone very important,’ Qureshi responded and the line went dead.

  For a minute, nobody spoke. Only Mirza, Goyal and Jaiswal looked at each other, all of them thinking the same thing.

  Munafiq.

  34

  Tuesday early morning, Mumbai.

  ‘Heads up,’ Sonam Dhillon said into her mike.

  Sonam, her men and DCP Ashok Mankame had split up into teams of three to watch the autorickshaw driver. Sonam and two of her colleagues kept an eye on the front entrance of the building in one car, while Mankame and the remaining two watched the rear, just in case their target tried to jump over the compound wall. The entire night the team members took turns to watch, one of them standing guard while the other two slept in the back seats of the cars.

  Half an hour earlier, Mirza had called Sonam to tell her about his conversation with Qureshi and inform her that he was ordering the female cops to release Shagufta Bi. Sonam had woken up the sleeping officers and they had all taken positions along the Western Express Highway, assuming that the autorickshaw driver would find it the fastest route from the building in Goregaon to the hotel in Bandra.

  Early in the morning, he had left on his bike and Sonam had given him a five-minute lead before pulling out into the street. The IB officers’ main concern was that the man might identify a tail, because traffic wasn’t too thick on the highway that early in the morning. Mankame was asked to rush to the hotel so that he could keep an eye on Shagufta Bi as she came out. As the autorickshaw driver pulled onto the highway, Mankame called up Sonam to tell her that he would be at the hotel in ten minutes. Sonam said a little prayer of thanks and sped past her target as one of her teammates replaced her as the tail.