Sniper’s Debt (7even Series Book 2)

by Mainak Dhar

  ‘But not with a convoy of vehicles and hundreds of hostages?’

  ‘You’re right about that, major. They must have dumped their vehicles somewhere and got the hostages here on foot. If they are here, that is.’

  After the irritation he had shown earlier, it was rich coming from him.

  ‘Make up your mind, Aman. Is this the location or not?’

  A bit to my surprise, he slapped me on the shoulder and laughed.

  ‘Make up your mind, major. Are you a soldier on a mission or a worried husband and father?’

  I had nothing to say back to that.

  Thankfully, Rasool and Malik came scampering up a path on the hillside, whispering to Karzai in Pashto.

  When he looked at me, I could see a marked change in his expression.

  Gone was the humour. His eyes were now hard, his lips parted ever so slightly as he breathed out softly. He and I were different in many ways, yet were so similar.

  He was getting himself ready for battle.

  ***

  Rasool had managed to crawl to within a few meters of the barracks. The number of fresh tracks and footprints had told him that many people had walked in recently and only a handful had walked out.

  Most of the tracks led to one large building in the middle of the compound.

  When Karzai finished relating Rasool’s findings to me, I nodded at the swarthy Afghan scout in admiration.

  The village could have rustled up dozens of fighting age men with a pretty impressive arsenal, but with so many hostages in harm’s way, a largescale attack was out of the question.

  This was going to be a battle fought in darkness, by a small group of attackers relying on stealth and deception.

  ‘Should we call the Americans and tell them?’

  Karzai seemed to think it over and then shook his head. ‘So many things about this don’t add up, major. Think about it… If these guys were ISIS out to make a spectacle, why are they hiding? There’s nothing to be gained by keeping the hostages here if they actually wanted to get the US to meet their demands. Even if they just wanted a spectacle, why would they choose to hole up here? Also, you had your suspicions that things weren’t what they seemed as well. Maybe they have insiders at the American base. If so, they could massacre the hostages in seconds if they got advance information and thought they were trapped.’

  That made sense, but the US would bring in special forces, helicopters, thermal imaging – all the things that would be needed to take a location like this with hostages involved.

  When I said that, Karzai grinned. ‘Major, how were you trained to take such a location with hostages inside? What do you need me to do to help you do that?’

  I thought about it. To be honest, the Paras were primarily not used for hostage rescue missions. For that, we had the National Security Guard, but we had trained for that kind of scenario and had used that training in Kashmir, when jihadis would occasionally think that taking a few civilians hostage would keep them safe.

  ‘The first step is reconnaissance, which your friends have done very well. We know where the hostages are. What we don’t know is how many bad guys there are and what positions they hold. Without that info, it’s hard to make any plan.’

  ‘Assume you got the bad guys to reveal themselves, what would you do?’

  ‘Two teams. One to neutralise the hostiles. Multiple line of fire, multiple guns on each guy, so they go down fast, and don’t have a chance to do damage. I remember we once took out a jihadi who had three hostages in a house and had a grenade in his hand. The sniper took his head, I took his shoulder and another one shot him in the gut. All at the same time. The other team goes in, secures the hostages and looks for booby traps. But to do all that, we need to get these guys to show us where they are.’

  ‘Major, we have much in common, but in some areas we are different. You think like a soldier, I think like a guerrilla. I can’t do what you do, but there are things I can do which may help us even though we may not have the firepower that the Americans would bring to the party.’

  He whispered some instructions to Rasool and Malik and they vanished into the darkness.

  Now, Karzai looked at me. ‘Now, we wait.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘Reinforcements.’

  I was flabbergasted for a second, part of my mind picturing the villagers roaring in on vehicles for a frontal attack.

  ‘Reinforcements? We just agreed that a largescale attack wouldn’t be the right tactic.’

  ‘Relax, major. These are very special reinforcements. Till they get here, we might as well get some sleep. It’s already ten and I doubt we’ll sleep much tonight.’

  I could see that for all our differences, we had perhaps learned from similar trainers. We both hunkered down and got some shut eye.

  I was woken up a couple of hours later by distant jingling noises, which got me sitting upright. The AK-47 I had borrowed from the village in my hands, I saw Karzai was already awake and smiling at me, his eyes and teeth shining in the moonlight.

  ‘Reinforcements.’

  I looked past the hill and saw at least a dozen sheep. And, who else but Hanif behind them, walking as if he had not a care in the world.

  ‘That boy is either insane or insanely brave.’

  Karzai looked at me and smiled.

  ‘I’m sure lots of people have said that about you too.’

  I looked at my watch. It was 03:02 hours.

  Karzai had chosen well. People are at their lowest levels of alertness around three or four in the morning. As Karzai filled me in on the plan, I nodded and my mind started going to a different zone. I no longer wore a uniform, but it was still the same.

  A mission, lives to be saved, lives to be taken, comrades along with me. I crawled forward, and looked through the binoculars, wishing I had night vision optics, but you make do with the tools you have.

  Karzai was peering through the scope of his sniper rifle. So far, all windows in the buildings had been shut and there had been no visible lights or signs of life.

  As Hanif and the sheep passed the building to the left of the large central one where we assumed the hostages were, the door opened. I saw two men come outside, assault rifles in their hands, their bodies silhouetted by a narrow sliver of light coming from inside the building. When they saw the sheep, they exploded into a series of expletives.

  Karzai put up his hand, two fingers showing the number of hostiles.

  I nodded.

  Only two guards?

  Perhaps there were others who had not revealed themselves.

  Hanif was doing his job better and with more nerve than almost any man I knew. He was pleading with them, gesticulating towards the hills. I must have been fast asleep when Karzai had made the plan, but it was a masterstroke. Killers or not, a kid with a bunch of sheep was perhaps the last thing these men had imagined stumbling onto them. If the boy made enough of a nuisance of himself, their bosses would no doubt reveal themselves to make the kid go away, or perhaps, just kill him.

  Hanif was in great danger, and if he was acting like a scared and lost kid, the scared part perhaps needed no acting.

  The door of the large building swung open during all the commotion and two men came out from there. Soon, all the men were clustered around Hanif, shouting at him.

  Karzai whispered to me. ‘Now, it’s your show.’

  I started moving stealthily down the hill.

  I knew Rasool and Malik were out there somewhere, flanking me, but my mind was only focused on what lay ahead.

  The four men had their backs to me, just about fifty meters away, as I scampered towards them, rifle in one hand and a knife in the other. I was within ten metres of them, when Hanif saw me out of the corner of his eye and stumbled back, kicking a couple of sheep, which sent the animals bleating and running in all directions, their bells jingling loudly, drowning out even the shouts of the men. I continued to move forward, keeping low, trying to get as close to the threa
t as possible. One of the men raised his rifle to fire – maybe at the sheep or at Hanif. We would never know whom he had in mind, as his head exploded.

  Karzai’s shot had found its mark. He had used a suppressor, and unlike the movies, no gun is really silent even with a silencer. The hushed ‘pop’ was something the men took a split second to process as a shot.

  Our ‘commando’ sheep scampering about with their bells provided a perfect cover.

  That’s where training comes in. People think training means you learn fancy moves and are able to handle all kinds of weapons. True. But true training comes into play when the man next to you has an exploding head and you have a split second to react. That spilt second is what sealed the fate of the three remaining men.

  The three other men stood frozen to the spot, not sure what exactly had just happened.

  In the split second it took for the men to process what had happened, I had snuck behind the man closest to me. Even as I jabbed the man sideways into his neck, away from the larynx in such a way that I thrust it towards the back of his neck, getting both his carotid artery as well as jugular vein.

  I then launched myself at the nearest man, throwing the the knife at him, catching him in the chest. As he clutched at his chest, I positioned my rifle to slam it into his nose, pivoting just enough to check if I had got the first man, and turned back to sweep the man with the broken nose in front of me off his feet.

  As he went down, I slammed the butt of the rifle in his face again. Once, twice, and he was out for the count.

  All that took perhaps a couple of seconds.

  Seconds in which, if you’ve been paying attention, you would remember that there were three men left standing.

  That last man – number four, before the first shot had been fired – was taken down by another pop.

  No, I hadn’t forgotten that man, and I wasn’t being careless. I was acting once again like I had when I had served in uniform.

  When in combat, you never second guess. That almost always gets you killed. You do what you are supposed to and trust your buddies to have your back. And, when your buddy is Karzai, that means a 7.62MM shell entering the man’s neck and exiting out the other side before he could even raise his rifle and shoot me.

  Four bad guys were down, and no noise other than the jingling and bleating of sheep. I guess Afghan sheep must be used to bloodshed and mayhem, because they seemed to go on their merry way without any sign of being perturbed at the four dead bodies that now lay on the ground.

  Hanif was looking at me with wide eyes. ‘You are Salman Khan.’

  I couldn’t help but smile. The kid clearly had very high standards at least in the action department, even if inspired by orchestrated action in the movies.

  Rasool and Malik came in from the flanks, their rifles held in front of them, one sweeping right to left, the other in the opposite direction. Whoever had trained them had done so well. I suspected it had been Gul Mohammed. We had no time to waste. If there were more bad guys around, they would soon suspect their buddies had met with an unhappy ending and would either come out or harm the hostages. I signaled to Rasool and Malik to cover the adjoining buildings and I entered the main barracks, turning on the flashlight that was attached to the barrel of my rifle.

  It, of course, didn’t work, having been smashed in the scuffle I had just been in.

  That’s one thing that never changes about combat – things never really work entirely the way you plan. That’s why every soldier has a Plan B.

  Mine was to take a flare that I had tucked into the small bag I was carrying and chuck it inside, then rush in, sweeping the room from side to side.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, as I saw a large crowd of people huddled together in a corner of the huge hall. In the semi-darkness, it was hard to recognise individual faces and features, but it had to be the hostages.

  A kid began to scream and I shouted out.

  ‘Relax, we are here to rescue you. Are there any more terrorists?’

  I came closer and saw the stewardess who had spoken to us on the flight stand up. She recognised me and smiled. I relaxed for the first time since our flight had been hijacked.

  ‘Ma’am, there are friendlies outside but we don’t know if there are any more terrorists, so it’s safer to wait till we get more reinforcements, which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Is everyone okay?’

  She nodded, but I could see tears form in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  What was she sorry for?

  I began to look among the passengers. ‘Zo? Zo! Zoya!’

  There was no response.

  My relief now gave way to increasing panic, as I walked among the crowd, calling out her name again and again.

  Finally, the stewardess grabbed my shoulder and recoiled as I turned on her. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘They took your wife, son and another passenger with them when they brought us here.’

  Six

  I found a satellite phone on one of the dead men and walked out towards the hill where we had been hiding. Karzai was still there, providing overwatch for any more hostiles coming our way, and from the scarf that now covered his face, I realised concealing his identity.

  I took him to be a friend, a brother in arms, but the reality was that to the Americans whom we were about to contact, he was a wanted man. He called a contact of his in Kabul, telling him to pass on word to the Americans that the hostages of the hijacking had been found, and gave him the coordinates.

  ‘Major, you can wait for the Americans if you want, but I cannot afford to be here. Maybe the Americans will help.’

  ‘Do you really think the Americans will bother about Zoya and my son? I can’t figure out why they took them, but I’m going after them.’

  He looked at me curiously. ‘You are going after them by yourself. That is your plan?’

  I tried to say something that would sound convincing, but this was Karzai. ‘My plan is to get to my wife and son and destroy the bastards who took them. I know it sounds crazy, but how I do that, I’ll figure out along the way.’

  He smiled and then tilted his head back, laughing.

  ‘You never change, major. You never change. I can understand your going after your family, but you have no idea of the terrain and what you are walking into. If you do meet locals, they are likely to take you for a spy and kill you on the spot. How far do you think you’ll get on your own?’

  The short answer: not too far. But I couldn’t give up, not with Zoya and Aman in harm’s way.

  Karzai whistled and Hanif came running up. He tousled the boy’s hair. ‘You were very brave there, little man.’

  I could see Hanif stand just a little bit straighter, his chest puffing up with pride.

  ‘Have Rasool and Malik gone ahead?’

  ‘Yes, and they took the other phone they found to be in touch.’

  Karzai looked at me, as he slung his rifle around his shoulder.

  ‘Major, we need to get going. Rasool found some vehicle tracks on the road to the west. It seems they brought the hostages here and then a few vehicles went on. Those tracks are our best bet on where they may have taken your family. Rasool and Malik are good trackers and they’ll get bikes from friendly villages nearby to make up lost time. They will also let us know what they find. Come on, let’s go before the Americans get here.’

  ‘You don’t have to come with me.’

  Karzai looked me in the eye. ‘No, major, I do have to.’

  We ran past the barracks and through mountain paths, setting a scorching pace.

  After an hour of running, we rested, the cramps in my stomach telling me that no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I was as fit as I had been when I was in the Paras, age and a civilian lifestyle had taken their toll.

  Karzai held up the sat-phone to his ear. ‘That was Rasool. He has a nephew in a nearby village. They’ve agreed to help with a truck. At least, we won’t have to run all the way.’

  Hanif
took an appraising look at me. ‘Good. Looks like he wouldn’t have been able to run much more.’

  Smartass.

  ***

  We had been traveling for just over an hour in a beaten-up pick-up truck which Karzai told me the villagers used to travel to nearby towns to buy provisions or sell their produce.

  The bed of the truck had several large jute bags containing fruits and vegetables like potatoes, grape, olive, orange, watermelon, okra, tomato, spinach – all grown in the village, and they also contained a sack filled with the rifles and ammunition we had taken from the hijackers we had killed. Two young men were also there, playing their part of being help to unload the produce and I was in the cab up front with Hanif between me and Aman, who was driving.

  So far, our journey had been without incident and we had not said much to each other. It felt like I was back in the old days – headed for a mission, playing out scenarios in my mind, thinking of what I needed to prepare for. Except this time, what was at stake was my family. I heard a crackling noise and Aman picked up the sat-phone that had been lying in front of him on the dash.

  He spoke in Pashto and hung up.

  ‘That was Malik. He has seen where they are. It’s about a three-hour drive from here, but we should abandon the vehicle earlier and go on foot. They might hear us coming otherwise. We’ll send the truck back with one of the boys to my village. He’ll get reinforcements. Once we assess how many men there are and how well defended the site is, we can decide how many men we want before we move in, but it won’t be easy.’

  ‘Where are they exactly? You don’t seem that confident.’

  He turned to look at me and I saw him grin. But his eyes told me he was putting on a brave front.

  ‘Major, nothing is easy, but we’ll get it done. We’ll get your family back. From what my man says they are at an abandoned US base in the Korengal valley.’

  He said nothing more. He didn’t need to. A US base would have been built on high ground, and designed to be defended against attack. If they had enough men and weapons, I saw no way in which we could take such a base armed only with rifles and small arms. I tried not to think of it, but there was also no way that I saw how we could take on such a base without putting Zoya and Aman in mortal danger.