by Rahul Badami
After the food supplies were lugged to the truck, the only thing remaining was to gather the bunk beds and dismantle the tents. Shafiq went inside and folded the blanket and bed and tucked them under one arm. His eyes fell on the chest, and he picked it up and emerged out of the tent.
“What’s that you got?” It was Zia standing a few feet away pointing at the chest.
“Just my personal belongings.” Shafiq didn’t want to speak with Zia. Most of their discussions ended with arguments and sometimes fist fights. With his both hands occupied, he didn’t want to confront Zia. Shafiq moved on.
“Wait up.” Zia laid a firm hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Nothing in our group can be called personal. We are all brothers here and everything belongs to the group. We share everything we have with everyone. So what’s in it? Food?”
Shafiq tried hard to restrain himself, but blood was boiling inside him. He knew that there was nothing to be gained by bickering with Zia, but the guy had an uncanny knack of getting under his skin. He turned towards Zia with angry eyes.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Oh! Is it? Open it up. Now!”
Shafiq looked around. Everyone’s eyes were on him. They had all stopped working and were watching the spectacle. None of them gave an indication that they would either support him or go against him. He was on his own.
“I won’t open it.” Shafiq said in a firm voice.
“What?” Zia was momentarily stunned by the response, and then his expression hardened. “If you will not; then I will.”
Zia reached out and grabbed the chest. Shafiq pushed him away. Zia stumbled backwards and then screamed maniacally as he advanced upon Shafiq. “You insolent dog, I will show you...”
“Stop it.” A voice echoed nearby, and both of them halted on hearing their commander’s order. Shafiq turned to see the dour expression of Malik. He was positively fuming and looked angrier than Shafiq had ever seen him.
Malik marched towards them. “I tell everyone that we are on a tight schedule, and instead of helping us, you both engage in a brawl. What is the meaning of this?”
Zia spoke before Shafiq had a chance. “It’s Shafiq here. Instead of helping others with the loading, he was busy packing up his personal belongings.” Zia pointed at Shafiq carrying only a chest. The bed under his other arm had fallen off when he had pushed Zia.
Malik’s eyes narrowed and Zia continued, “I asked him to open his chest, but he refused.”
Malik walked up to Shafiq and looked down on him. “I won’t tolerate this insubordination. Open up your chest.”
Shafiq couldn’t disobey his commander. He inserted the key and opened the chest. The commander rummaged through the handful of contents and found nothing worthwhile.
“This is all junk.”
“Yes sir.” Shafiq said.
“Are you a dutiful soldier, Shafiq?” the commander asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Good, then the next time Zia gives an order, you better follow it.” The commander turned to Zia. “Keep a close eye on him, and ensure that he is not lazing around.”
There was a sadistic gleam in Zia’s eyes as he looked at Shafiq. Shafiq tried to ignore it, but a dull ache throbbed through his forehead. Zia would now be all over him. He would not let him rest easy. And would gleefully report any transgressions he did.
Shafiq shook his head and quietly picked up his bed and blanket and proceeded to the truck. There was no sense dwelling upon it. Kismet didn’t seem to be on his side.
The two hours passed quickly and it was time for their departure. Shafiq looked around and saw that the entire camp had been dismantled. The tents had been packed; the campfires were gutted and covered up; and a pit had been dug and the garbage had been dumped into it and filled with pebbles and rocks. The camp site now matched the desolation of the surroundings and it didn’t look as if anyone had ever been there.
They were gathered in front of the two trucks that would take them to their destination. Everyone around was in an upbeat mood. Malik stood on top of the truck and fired a single shot to get everyone’s attention. They all looked up.
“Brothers, we are now bound for Jalalabad. We will move first to Lashkar Gah, then Tarin Kowt and try to reach Ghazni before sundown. We will rest overnight in one of our safe houses in Ghazni. The next morning we will continue our journey to Jalalabad. Any questions?”
“Why aren’t we going via Kandahar? That route is quicker.” One of the men asked.
“We won’t be going via Highway 1 or through Kandahar and Kabul; the roads are teeming with police and they could stop us for any reason. Now once we reach Jalalabad, we will meet up with our leaders and they will let us know what our mission is. Now hop into the trucks all of you. The sun is burning out the day.”
Everyone scrambled to get into the trucks. A couple of them moved in next to the drivers; while the others squeezed themselves in the back of the truck. Shafiq got in next to the driver. He looked out of the window. A few stragglers were still determining which truck to fit into, and Malik was shouting at them. Finally everyone was aboard, and the trucks started on its long journey.
It was still early morning and the sun was out but there was no warmth as it shone down through the window. The air was chilly and the wind swept through the open windows.
Shafiq looked at the truck driver. “When do you think we will reach Ghazni?”
The driver kept his eyes on the road. “It will take around nine to ten hours. I am hoping that we reach there without any incident.”
“What do you mean?”
“You remember, when we came to Dasht-e-Margow, we had travelled in the middle of the night?
“Yes, I remember. We moved under the cover of darkness.” Shafiq said.
“Exactly. Now, we are driving in broad daylight. It worries me.”
“I am sure that Malik has his reasons.” Shafiq looked ahead. They were passing through a narrow path at the base of two mountains that ended into a blind turn.
The driver slowed the vehicle as he took the turn. “Yes, he has his reasons. Malik said that the police are more inquisitive of people travelling in the night. They don’t think we would risk travelling in the daytime. So by a twisted logic he thinks we would appear as just another goods truck among a hundred others on the road.”
Shafiq thought back to the numerous times he had seen traffic on the roads held up by a row of trucks waiting to pass and he nodded. “He does have a point. I only hope that it works.”
The driver looked at him, “We will know one way or other, by the end of the day.”
Ormara Naval Base, Balochistan, Pakistan.
Hatim peered intently at the screen in front of him. The screen showed a dozen rectangular videos that formed a collage filling the whole screen. The videos on the screens appeared to have been paused. They showed full-colour images of gates, trees, oceans, lighted paths, docks, etc. They appeared to be portraits. It was only when someone walked across on the screen that one realized that it was a surveillance motion video and not a static picture.
The young man was looking at security videos with unblinking intensity.
Hatim stifled a yawn. It was mundane work, but it was extremely crucial. And it was the reason he was in this particular post. He had a keen eye for detail and a photographic memory and he never made mistakes. His friends mockingly called him 'Google'. It was said that once Hatim met someone, he could recall their names and facial features in his sleep. It was an envious skill set that had led him to be selected for this work.
He was the security analyst for the Ormara Naval base affiliated to the ISI, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. And his job was to look for anything out of the ordinary.
The ISI was the intelligence agency of Pakistan. Tasked with gathering and analyzing Intel, its agents were spread all over the country as well as over the world. The organization was held in part dread and part awe by the Pakistanis. Its recruits were mainly fr
om the Army and Hatim was one of them.
“Hey Hatim, need your help,” his colleague in the next cubicle spoke.
Hatim pushed his legs and slid the chair a few feet to the adjacent cubicle where his colleague pointed to one of the screens. “Do you know who they are?”
Hatim wasn't surprised by the question. The moniker 'Google' meant that he was a walking database on people, events and things that others would forget in a day or two.
Hatim looked at his colleague's screen. He recognized the video feed. It was coming from Camera number 21. It showed the PNS Khalid. A number of crew members were working on the submarine. His colleague's finger pointed at two men who were talking to one of the officers.
Hatim's eyes narrowed as he observed the men, only the sides of the two men showed but nothing registered in his mind. “Zoom the image.”
His colleague complied. The focused image showed the two men more clearly, but still Hatim didn't recognize them.
And that was a problem. Because Hatim knew by sight every person who was involved in the Ormara Naval base project.
“When was this taken?” Hatim asked, his eyes still on the screen.
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Give me the time-stamp. I will check it out myself.”
His colleague gave it to him and Hatim slid his chair back to his cubicle. He entered the time-stamp and selected Camera number 22 which he estimated would give a better viewing angle. The image appeared on the screen and he hit Play.
From this angle, he could see the two men more clearly. They spoke to the officer at the dock for a few minutes and then the officer escorted them to the submarine. Hatim fast-forwarded the recording. After about forty minutes as per the time-stamp, the two men came out of the submarine. Hatim still couldn't figure out who the men were.
He was wondering what to do when an idea struck him. He could check the security logs. It should have an entry of who the men were. Hatim tapped a few keys on the keyboard and the log files for yesterday displayed on the screen. Thankfully, it had been a quiet day. There were only three entries. Hatim looked through all three entries. All of them had come in the morning, and the security logs indicated that the last person had left the naval base before noon. He looked at the video of the two men again. The time-stamp in the top right corner of the screen showed 17:02:11. There were no logs of two unknown persons entering into the Naval base at around five in the evening, nor were there any records of their exit.
So where does that leave us, Hatim mused. Two unknown men with no entry or exit records to their name. It either meant a system malfunction, or the two men found a way to bypass security. Both scenarios looked ominous.
Hatim drummed his fingers as he looked at the phone on his desk. The PNS Khalid's officer knew him and wouldn't say no to his questions.
Hatim picked up the phone and connected to the dock operator. Five minutes later he placed the phone down, more confused than ever. The officer had said that the men were part of the security team from Karachi. It didn't make sense. He knew the people in the Karachi department. These weren't them. Hatim leaned back in his chair and absentmindedly drummed his fingers on the desk. It was a reflex mechanism to jog his memory to solve the riddle that was consuming him.
But he was drawing a blank.
Hatim leaned forward and watched the video again. He watched as the two men approached the officer next to the docked submarine. They conversed for a few minutes and then the officer guided them towards the submarine. Forty minutes later the two men could be seen exiting the submarine. Hatim paused the video wondering what it meant. He pressed Play and watched the men climb down the submarine, reach the dock and go off-screen.
It suddenly hit him. He could check the entrance gate to see if the two men had exited. He pulled up the feed from the corresponding camera and checked the video. After two minutes, he doubled the video speed and after another minute he quadrupled it. No men exited the gates. Hatim upped the speed to 16x and continued watching. After forwarding through an hour of video feed, he stopped.
Hatim was flummoxed. Where did the men come from and where did they go?
He went back to Camera number 22 and watched the video again. As the men went off-screen he realized they would have been picked up by another camera. He checked the adjacent camera feed and right on cue they came into picture and walked alongside the wharf that outlined the side of the base. As Hatim watched them, he frowned. They were not going towards the exit of the underground base; they were going in the opposite direction deeper inside the base. He watched as they walked off-screen again.
Hatim noted the time-stamp and pulled out the video from another camera. This one showed the men walking towards the fuel station. As he watched, he saw the men don diving suits and plunge into the water out of sight.
Hatim's eyes widened. Their top-secret naval base had just been infiltrated. His hands shook as he dialled his superior's number.
Chapter 15
Sohail Akthar, Divisional Director of the ISI attached to the Ormara Naval base smashed the paperweight against the glass-topped desk in anger. A thin crack formed on the glass-top but Sohail was too preoccupied to care. He stood up and paced around his office clenching and unclenching his fists in uncontrollable rage.
It had all started when Hatim had rushed into his office after requesting an emergency meeting. And with every word that he uttered, his blood pressure kept spiking upwards.
It couldn't be true!
Two spies had infiltrated their naval base and escaped with no one being the wiser. It was only when he had seen the videos of them emerging from the water next to the diesel station that he felt a dull ache in his chest. And his pulse had been throbbing ever since.
He had contacted the submarine officer as well as the Captain, and the picture had become immediately clear. They were after the Babur-3 missiles currently being reconfigured in Sargodha. It was obvious that the spies would go next to Sargodha. He had to secure the missiles first, and then take care of these intruders.
“What should we do, sir?” Hatim asked in a tremulous voice.
Sohail had forgotten that Hatim was still in his office. He looked at him with an ominous gaze.
“First contact Sargodha and secure the missiles. Then we are going to take my plane and hunt down these spies. You and I are going to Sargodha.”
Outskirts of Hyderabad, Sindh Province, Pakistan
The man stood next to his car on the side of the highway. He looked down at the car. He had removed one of the tyres and it lay on its side. To any of the vehicles passing by on the road, it would look like he was fixing a flat tyre. And that was the perception he wanted to create.
The agent from the Counter Terrorism Department had arrived at that spot an hour ago. The place was twenty kilometres south of the city of Hyderabad in the Sindh Province in south-east Pakistan. While he appeared to be working on the flat tyre, his entire concentration was on the road, on the lookout for an Army jeep with four occupants. Based on the Intel he had, he estimated that they would pass by him in the next five minutes.
He didn't have to wait long. The jeep was visible from far off, and as it approached, he could see the four occupants with weapons on their sides discreetly observing the highway.
The man focused on the tyre as the jeep approached and then raced past him. He waited for a couple of seconds and then looked at the vehicle. The profile of the four men receded in the distance.
The man whipped out his mobile phone and spoke. “Get ready. The target just passed by.”
“I wouldn't want another check point.” Roshan said. It had been two hours since they had exited out of Karachi. They had driven non-stop at the highest speed the jeep could manage. But he couldn't shake the foreboding feeling that the Pakistani authorities were after them. A board indicated that the city of Hyderabad was twenty kilometres ahead. And he was sure that they would encounter another scrutiny of their vehicle. Baldev had took over the driving an hour
back from Roshan. Roshan had thought of taking a nap, but he was too keyed up to fall asleep.
“Neither do I.” Armaan said, “But they are actually toll plazas rather than check points. They are primarily set up to collect money, and not to check for guys like us.”
“That may be the case,” Baldev chipped in, “But don't forget the security cameras. If they connect the dots, we will come in the limelight. Our job requires that we should be camera-shy.”
“What's that up ahead?” Hitesh asked.
Roshan looked up ahead. He could see a couple of big construction vehicles covering the span of the road. Big barriers were erected blocking their way. Construction crews were all across the road. It was early morning and there was no traffic except for a solitary truck ahead of them. A traffic policeman pointed them to a diversion on a road that veered off the highway.
They exited the highway and turned into a smaller road behind the truck. Roshan watched the highway they were supposed to be on receding in the distance.
“Now where does this road go to?” Armaan muttered.
“I hope it connects back to Hyderabad somewhere.” Roshan said. “Can one of you check the GPS? I don't want –”
A loud screeching sound from the truck in front of him cut his words. Baldev swerved the steering wheel, nearly colliding in the back of the truck as he evaded what could have been a ghastly accident. The tarpaulin covering the rear of the truck opened and a gun materialized.
Roshan grasped the situation immediately. “Get down.” He screamed as a barrage of bullets nearly missed them as they swerved parallel to the truck. The driver’s window swivelled down and another gun popped out. But Armaan was quick. He fired off three shots and the gun clattered down the road.
“How did they know?” Armaan huffed. No one had an answer.
A stream of bullets whistled past them. Roshan looked back and saw that another truck was bearing down upon them fast. Baldev had already seen it in the rear-view mirror and he slammed down on the accelerator. As they came adjacent to the first truck’s cockpit, Roshan glanced inside. He noticed the driver’s bloodied hand as he looked daggers at them. The driver swung his hand on the wheel and the big vehicle veered sharply towards them.