Red Jihad

by Sami Ahmad Khan

  The line ahead of him started to move, slowly yet decisively, and disappeared into nothingness. Havildar Sumit Shinde looked down at his restless feet. He was outfitted for a High Altitude-Low Opening (HALO) parachute jump: he was wearing a black jumpsuit, helmet, wrist altimeter and square canopy parachute. Shinde gulped, focused on the rope, fondly patted the SIG P226 9mm semi-automatic pistol and TAR-21, for one last time and followed the lead.

  The air rushing in was getting stronger as he neared the gate, pushing him back towards the rear of the craft, vacillating between whispers, 'No! Do not Jump! It is dangerous' in his mother's voice, to screams 'Move it, Commando. Kood!' in his CO's. Intensity and proximity won again. His CO was with him in the aircraft; his mother was not.

  Shinde took a deep breath and jumped down. His legs felt the nothingness and he started to fall into the vast, empty belly of the hungry sky.

  It is strange how the first reaction of any paratrooper when he has just jumped off an aircraft is of relief at having had the courage to jump, despite the fact that he is hanging kilometres above the ground. Shinde felt relieved simply because from then on, he had no choice. All he had to do was to follow his training, survive the landing and then follow the instructions given to him.

  No more choices. Choices made him anxious. Shinde knew that an existential crisis was not good for the military. Let the officers grapple with the larger questions of life, he thought. He would handle the smaller questions about who to shoot and when.

  That is what made him a good soldier. Alas, he was not an officer. Shinde didn't like to look at the larger picture. He lacked, in short, officer-like qualities, he thought ruefully, trying to position his body to slow his fall. The ground rushed to hug him.

  Breathe. Take a deep breath. He forced himself to breathe long and deep. The impact would empty his lungs of air. Better hyperventilate now, he thought.

  Then suddenly, the constant falling motion to which Shinde was slowly getting accustomed, stopped abruptly. He had hit the ground with a soft crunch, and his heart almost stopped for a second as he made contact. He buckled under the impact, but not before he had mentally braced himself for it.

  Inertia battled gravity as he rolled over and detached his parachute from his body, hoping for the sensation to delay itself. His parachute flew off the cliff, still propelled by a strong wind. Shinde had landed on the side of a steep mountain. He clung to the rock near him and balanced himself. He closed his eyes and waited for it.

  It was then that pain struck Shinde. It felt like someone was sawing his feet away. He moaned and started counting to ten. With the count, he slowly began to feel his legs, and with it, pain. He tried not to focus on his legs. Instead, he forced his mind to go blank and imagined he was back in his native village, walking through the fields. He looked up at the sky.

  The sky seemed to be dotted with umbrellas of various colours and the horizon looked like a big rainbow stretching to infinity. He started counting to divert his attention. The parachutes were colour-coded, a new experiment by DRDO, he mused. He saw the white parachutes of the 901 Paras mingle with the green parachutes of the 201 Paras. Shinde thought that perhaps it was done to make their parachutes easier to hide in the terrain when they landed, 201 being experts in jungle warfare and 901 being their mountainous counterparts. Damn, he was already thinking like an officer; he allowed himself a self-congratulatory smile.

  The pain had started to diminish. Shinde got up. He grabbed his Tavor rifle, checked his compass and started trudging carefully towards the rendezvous point. He knew that their task would be easier from now onwards. The facility was surrounded.

  The grey thunderbirds flying above continued to drop their cocoons that metamorphosed into colourful butterflies at a certain altitude. The first wave had already landed and formed a defensive perimeter to protect the airborne troops from any ground assault.

  The stage was set. They had landed.

  The men were not law enforcement agents, nor were they plain infantry units of the army. With their gleaming balidaan badges, these men were the Special Forces, the creme de la creme of the Indian army. They were charged with intelligence collection, sabotage of vital enemy infrastructure through surgical strikes behind the enemy lines, apart from covert and overt counterterrorist operations within and beyond the Indian territory. They had seen combat not only in times of conflict, but also during peace, that too in all terrains and climes, owing to the ever-present insurgency and extremist movements in India. These men had not just trained; they had been in the thick of almost continuous combat for over two decades. It not only made them dangerous but lethal as well–for only the quick and the deadly survived to go on another mission.

  Currently, the Special Forces were engaged in hounding the Naxalites out from the Red Corridor. Apart from regular combat, 201 Paratrooper Battalion, a former unit of Maratha Light Infantry, had been coordinating with the Border Security Force (BSF), utilizing its Tehri Camp to train officers and men of regular army in counterinsurgency and jungle warfare. The other premier facilities of Counterinsurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) and Narayanpore Jungle Combat Academy (NJCA) were also operating at full capacity. Sending only specially equipped and trained men into the Red Corridor had been a policy decision as early endeavours had resulted in heavy casualties. They had almost finished the task when they were mobilized for operations in Andaman.

  Word went around of what was afoot. Their briefing said they needed to secure the area and sanitize it when the order came. Until then, they had to keep constant watch.

  Shinde intended to do more than that.

  Integrated Defence Command Headquarters, New Delhi

  Local time: 2100 hours

  Date: 24 April 2014

  'Shall I report the bad news first or the horrendous news?' Air Chief Marshal Sharma's face was grim, the ever-present twinkle in his eyes had vanished.

  'Give us the bad news first. We need time to brace ourselves for the worst,' Malhotra replied evenly.

  'They hit a reconnaissance sortie of ours. A SAM launcher seems to be the villain. Or the one holding it at least,' the ACM divulged the reason behind his glumness.

  'What the…' Malhotra's jaw almost touched the polished tiles of the floor.

  'Yes. We lost a plane... Su-30 MKI. The pilot is safe, though.' ACM Sharma lamented the loss of a million-dollar state-of-the-art machine. 'No more will Sukhoi-30 MKI be considered invincible,' he continued, anger seeping into his voice. 'Weren't we told that the attackers did not have access to any security systems on the base, least of all a SAM console? Did they not need an unbreakable password to get into the mainframe to access and activate such a system?'

  'It seems the attackers were well-equipped and they somehow managed to get the air defence systems online. This is bad news indeed but how could they? DRDO had assured me that no one would be able to get through the system. Only three individuals knew the proper coding and unlocking sequence and all of them were fully reliable!' The IB head shook his head and slapped the table in a bout of disbelieving anger.

  'Well-equipped? If they got through that system then they are surely more than well-equipped!' snorted the defence secretary. Malhotra had a fleeting vision of the defence secretary's head in place of a golf ball as he hit the stroke of his life.

  'And what is the horrendous news?' the cabinet secretary, who was quietly studying the situation with practised ease until now, asked.

  This time Admiral Sapra spoke up, 'It is based on the ill-fated sortie and fresh images from RISAT.'

  'Ah good. Now we will have some answers. Go on.'

  'They...they plan to launch Pralay/ the admiral, who was earlier talking with the chiefs of ISRO and DRDO, tried to keep his voice as even as possible. The room suddenly fell silent as hearts stopped beating for a moment to process this information.

  'They plan to WHAT?' Malhotra could not believe his ears. He was livid.

  'You heard me right. They plan to launch Pralay.' The
admiral looked down and started fiddling with the water bottle for the lack of anything better to do.

  'But how can they? Even if they got past the security, how come they can get through all the software safeguards we installed? How can they override the safety mechanism? How can they get past the hardware lockers?' Malhotra was jumping all around the room.

  A chorus played. 'They got past our security forces,' the defence secretary said, realizing the implications, his face carved out of stone.

  'They got past the software locks that our brightest had installed,' said the foreign secretary.

  'They found the assembly plans and hardware storage bunkers of the missile,' Air Chief Sharma muttered softly.

  The naval chief remarked, 'They cracked the code the missile defence system employed.'

  'All within record time!' echoed the RAW head and the cabinet secretary, sealing the eulogy with an acceptance of the veracity of the claims.

  'If only we had employed them instead of DRDO for our weapons research program. Hell!' Malhotra said and looked at them incredulously. Sometimes the most serious of all situations could be the most funny. Like a Pakistani soldier shot in his bum while peeing. Malhotra knew it. He had fired the shot. However, this was not funny. Not one bit.

  Malhotra began, 'I can understand them getting past the light CISF cover, but how on earth can they beat a complex computer program? It was specifically designed to prevent anyone from launching the missile without prior permission. All our strategies until now were based on one underlying assumption–that they could not fire the missile simply because they could not gain access to it, and that they were there to merely attract our attention. Hell, they could not even have, as I was briefed, copied the plans or sabotaged the missile. It was a futile, suicidal mission. How can they…fire it!'

  'I can think of only one explanation,' the cabinet secretary volunteered, his lips pressed in a thin line, his eyes focusing on the far end of the wall.

  'What?' asked Malhotra, a bit too vehemently.

  'If one eliminates all the options, then the one remaining, no matter how unlikely, has to be the correct explanation,' said the cabinet secretary as if to provide rational credence to what was about to come. It not only made the listener think twice before doubting the source of information, but also made him accept the viewpoint at face value, and thus the conclusion and the action plan, of the speaker. A typical, by-the-book, IAS maneuver.

  'What do you mean?' The general was on his guard. If this babu so much as hinted at his boys' incompetence or passed the blame to the sentries guarding the centre he would have had it. The dead should be respected. Their mistakes analysed, yes, but they should not be disgraced. They died fighting for the nation. The military, after all, took a different view of the errors committed in the line of duty. A reprimand, a show-cause notice or a transfer to a distant town were half as heartbreaking as a funeral. They can never understand this, the general thought. He sized up the cabinet secretary from head to foot. He thought he saw him twitch. That made him feel better, all of a sudden.

  'Yes?'

  'General,' offered the cabinet secretary, 'it seems that we have been betrayed.' It might have been Salma Sultana announcing that the new development schemes initiated by the government were having the desired results.

  'What!!' the general bellowed, bewildered.

  'Are you sure, Mishraji?' he asked the cabinet secretary incredulously.

  'Yes, I am,' came a terse and infuriatingly calm reply.

  'So are you suggesting that someone from amongst our staff passed on the schematics and the master code to unlock the hardware chamber and propulsion laboratory to the terrorists?' the admiral asked. Someone gasped.

  'Hmm... Now that I think about it, I concur with Mishraji. There is no other explanation. One of the three scientists who had the password and the biometric key must have sold us out.' The RAW head jumped into the conversation, suddenly aware that only such a turnout of events could save his job now.

  'It is betrayal! Our intelligence did not fail. Our own people did. We just did not think anyone could betray our motherland!' he said further.

  'Yes, this seems far more plausible. There is no way on earth they could have hacked into our database in a matter of hours – a database guarded by a safety program that took the IIT five years to manufacture. They most definitely had insider support,' his counterpart from IB had similar thoughts. His and RAW chief's eyes met for a brief second. A feeling of empathy passed between them, like two drowning bees who had just realized that the water was not wet at all.

  The air chief marshal opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by Malhotra's sharp voice, 'Order them to move in!' The rest of the men looked at him, realization dawning on them.

  'Attack!' Malhotra shrieked at the top of his lungs, his face puffed and his hand pointing to a red spot on the displayed map, 'Tell our forces to attack and recapture the base. Now!'

  Part II

  LAUNCH

  War is a game both subjectively and objectively.

  –Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz

  Launch Silo 01, NMRC

  Local time: 2200 hours

  Date: 24 April 2014

  His infrared scope settled on the lone gunman guarding the entry to the complex, trying to hide though the gunman was. No other enemy units were in sight. Pity, he thought, the gunman must know he will be the first one to go in case of a counter-attack, but had agreed to guard the gate to protect his comrades so that they in turn could complete their mission, whatever it was.

  Lieutenant Dilip K. Dey felt a tang of regret. People like them were unique. But then the very fact that they needed to kill each other to survive was what gave them this rare character in the first place. Birds of a feather roost together. And kill together.

  It was not that he was sitting idly as his mind brooded over the similarities. He had been cleared to engage. Another part of Dey's brain was busy receiving visual inputs and trying to find correlations in order to target him successfully. He noticed the gait, the rare stretching of legs, the speed of walking, and the weapons on the gunman, trying to find a pattern.

  The weapons, he thought. The gunman was not using an AK-47 or its Chinese variants like the Naxalites did–weapons he had seen enough of in the past few months. The gunman was holding a Heckler and Koch MP5. A commando's gun.

  He increased the magnification on his scope. Like always, he avoided focusing on the face.

  Later faces would return to haunt Dey. Shooting in the face was not his style, even if it was the standard operating procedure in such operations. This designated marksman preferred going straight through the target's heart. Armour or not, no Kevlar was strong enough to stop this baby's vomit. He caressed his semi-automatic 7.62x54mm RSVD Dragunov Sniper Rifle, felt the wind velocity and direction and modified the settings again.

  One shot. One kill.

  Dey focused his scope on the man. He seemed to be agitated. His pace had increased and he was trying to duck and find a safe location. Perhaps he had realized that the base was about to be attacked. Run wherever you can, Dey mentally conveyed to his prospective target, but you cannot run fast enough to dodge a bullet.

  Dey sucked in a deep breath and held it in, squinted again and finally squeezed the trigger. The gun recoiled, and his eardrums popped with a loud thwack that scared away birds on a nearby tree. He looked through the scope.

  The gunman was no longer standing.

  ♦

  'Major, the perimeter has been breached. We lost contact with number 6,' the man reported, shuddering as he broke the news. 'It seems that the Indian forces are at our gates. They c-c-c-can burst through anytime.'

  Rana shot an irritated look at the visibly shaken man. Not a commando by a long shot, nor commando material. He was not happy with the choice of men supplied to him. Manifestations of frustration of a rural populace at underdevelopment, acts like pelting stones and grenades at army convoys passing through a jungle
and then disappearing, were much different from the actions expected and characteristics required of a paratrooper. The people supplied may have been the best as per his superiors, but this was a different ball game altogether. These people were trained to operate in their terrain – their jungles, towns and villages. A paratrooper like him, on the other hand, operated deep inside the enemy territory. Cut-off from all routes of supply or escape, possibly even communication. That alone gave him greater adaptability, courage and resourcefulness. However, this was a time to neither differ nor debate. This was a military operation and he had to make do with what was given to him. Otherwise, would there be any difference between his people and the Lahore police?

  Major Rana's mind digressed even further when he saw himself holding a gun. It made him realize the difference between the law enforcement agencies, the military, and the intelligence community. The law enforcement agencies often whipped out their firearms, but rarely used them. The military always had to keep their arms in sight; chances to use them were not that often, especially in civilian postings. The intelligence agencies, on the other hand, rarely brandished weapons. However, whenever they had to reach out for their weapons, it usually meant an impending death. A commando was a perfect synthesis of the military and intelligence men.

  He smiled, more so at the thought than at the man bearing the news. Rana's smile seemed to have a calming effect on him. Rana always tried to understand the men under his command, like all officers worth their salt. These men were picked from the jungles of Orissa and Jharkhand. They had grown battling hunger and want. Later, indoctrinated by the Maoist cadres, they had turned their ire against the Indian state. First, they attacked the police, then the politicians and then the people, which was when the tide started to turn against them. Most of them had never seen a missile in their life, or even dreamt of seeing one, until his bosses handpicked them and sent them to train in China. A crash course later, they were ready to assemble and launch a deadly missile in a matter of hours. Ah! The wonders of liberal education. He turned towards the group.