Sniper’s Debt (7even Series Book 2) Read online

  I held out my hand and he took it in a firm grip. ‘Been in my share of hellholes. Major Aaditya Ghosh. Did some ten years of service, mostly the Paras. Left the Indian Army a few years ago.’

  ‘Good unit, that. Some pals in Delta had cross-trained with your boys.’

  As we walked back to my seat, he took the empty seat behind me. I remembered what he had said about working with airport security.

  ‘Could they get 3-D printed guns in through airport security?’

  ‘Maybe. Nobody’s ever done it, but they’ve simulated it enough. Disassembled, with parts spread out over several bags. The only thing is we’ve never seen jihadis, who were so sophisticated. I mean those idiots thought putting bombs in underwear was damn clever.’

  We both laughed at that, and some passengers sitting near us looked at us as if we were insane. What they didn’t know was that keeping your sanity and retaining your sense of humour when everything was going to hell was what often kept soldiers alive and gave them an edge. We sat in silence for what seemed to be a long while.

  I heard someone exclaim from the back of the plane. ‘I’ve got wi-fi! Posting my photos now on Insta.’

  Another voice, this time a female one, shouted, ‘I’m calling my Mom on Skype. Hey Ma, my flight got hijacked and we’re in Afghanistan.’

  I got up and walked across the aisle to look out the window, first in one direction, and then the other. We were surrounded by hills and seemed to be in a makeshift landing strip since there was no airport or tower to be seen. There was sand and gravel piled up on the sides. It was obvious that these people had gone to some trouble to create a landing strip out here in the middle of nowhere.

  I had earlier thought the pilot should have his license revoked. But seeing where we had landed, I realised he was very skilled. To land in a place like this without any ground control required balls, and insane levels of skills. Something of what Smith said came back to me – this wasn’t typical of most jihadis. But who knew, perhaps it was my dumb luck to run into the most bloody sophisticated jihadis on the planet.

  I could also see four pick-up trucks, two on either side of the airliner, each filled with men dressed in black, all carrying assault rifles and RPGs. There was another black van, covered with several antennae on its top. To get wi-fi in the middle of nowhere meant that van must have been providing the signal.

  The sliding door on its side opened and four men got out, and ran towards the plane. Two were carrying duffel bags and the others were lugging a large, heavy looking box between them. They repeated the dash, this time carrying a folding ladder.

  A short while later, I heard the front doors of the airplane open and something being dragged in, likely the bags and the box I had spotted. The curtains to Business Class were still drawn and as curious as I was about what was going on, it would have been suicide to take a peek, since there was no doubt the hijackers were watching.

  When I came back to my seat and checked my watch, close to an hour had elapsed since we had landed. What were the hijackers doing?

  People were still excitedly posting on social media or making calls. I shook my head. I had never understood this fascination with the social media, now even more so in a life and death situation like this.

  When I looked at Zoya, she was mixing milk powder in a bottle to feed Aman. She looked at me.

  ‘Aadi, what do they want? Why are they saying or doing nothing?’

  I had been in the Army for over ten years, but dealing with hijackings had not been my responsibility. But I had trained with many officers from the National Security Guards, the so-called Black Cats, who did this for a living, and had myself tangled with all shades of jihadis, terrorists and troublemakers. There were those who were in it for a quick kill mission, which these guys were clearly not. There were those who wanted prolonged hostage situations, which these guys might. But with the casual attitude they were taking towards people posting on social media and calling friends and family, I had a bad feeling. I mean, jihadis don’t exactly list free wi-fi as one of the perks for their hostages, do they? What next, would they start serving Jihadi Frappuccinos and try and put Starbucks out of business?

  The feeling that these guys were not in this to kill people quickly or just take hostages was cemented when the curtains were thrown open a few minutes later and all seven hijackers came into our cabin.

  It was becoming clearer that these guys wanted to create a spectacle, before they got on with whatever their end mission was.

  ***

  Their leader looked like a man transformed. Gone was the business suit. He was dressed in a robe, with a turban on his head and carrying a gold-embroidered Koran. Flanking him were the six other hijackers, all wearing black fatigues, with ammunition belts and pouches across their waists, carrying AK-47 assault rifles in their hands. They looked like poster boys for ISIS – the sort we have seen beamed into our living rooms from Iraq and Syria.

  One of them took out a flag, one most of us had seen on TV screens as well – the black flag of ISIS, and stuck it up in front of the cabin, just across the aisle to the left from where I sat.

  After the initial shock, a few passengers whipped out their phones again and began recording. No doubt posting on social media as well.

  The leader didn’t seem overly concerned. If anything, I suspected this is what he wanted.

  He stepped forward and spoke as if meeting someone for tea. ‘My men will come around and collect all your identification papers. Hand over all your passports and any other identification papers you have on you. Do not resist or try to hide anything.’

  Four of the jihadis fanned out, two to each aisle, carrying canvas bags into which they emptied any IDs and passports of the passengers.

  They had started at the back of the plane, so I had a bit of time to think. I took out my wallet and slid out the Indian Army’s Ex-Serviceman Card from it and slid it into the inside pocket of my jeans. When the hijacker came to me, I saw it was my old pal, the bearded fuck who had been ogling Zoya. I handed over our passports and made a show of emptying our wallets of our drivers’ licenses and other cards.

  He looked at Zoya’s passport and then at her. ‘Even better in real life. Even better in real life.’

  I knew how muscle like him worked. It wasn’t about Zoya, or about attraction or even about sex. It was about power. By standing up to him, Zoya had challenged his manhood; and, by grabbing his hand, I had made him feel like he was no longer the boss. I had met a lot of young men like him in Kashmir. Men who got off on their power trip by killing helpless civilians or abducting and raping local women. Perhaps some liberal journalist sitting in an air-conditioned studio might talk about how the violence they had witnessed as children in Kashmir made them who they were, and how they needed understanding and rehabilitation. I didn’t care what made them who they were – I wasn’t a shrink and I didn’t care about their trauma. I was only interested in stopping the cycle of violence they were perpetrating today. And, I was well trained on how to cure them. A bullet to the middle of the head or a broken neck usually did the trick, without needing to pay the psychiatrist’s bills.

  My bearded pal caught me staring at him. ‘Anything else you hiding from me?’

  I looked at him and smiled. ‘I do have a library membership card in there somewhere. You want that too? You don’t strike me as a man who’s graduated to chapter books yet. Maybe you could find something with big pictures.’

  He glared at me, but his boss tapped him on the shoulder and he moved on.

  The leader looked at me with a smile on his face. ‘You shouldn’t provoke Arif. He can be volatile. He is good at what he does. Inflict violence without pangs of conscience, but keeping that in check is hard for him, so don’t push your luck.’

  Two hijackers brought in a heavy box which they set up on the seat across the aisle from me, and opened the lid. I saw that inside it was a military-grade, rugged laptop of some sort with a sat-phone next to it. These were very wel
l-equipped jihadis, if that’s who they really were – 3-D printed guns, and now this.

  Their show of being the stereotypical ISIS jihadis was beginning to wear thin, at least to anyone who knew what he was looking at.

  They unfolded an antennae. The older man picked up the sat-phone. After a few seconds, he began speaking. I had no idea what he was saying, but he spoke for well over five minutes. It certainly wasn’t Urdu and it wasn’t Pashto or Dari either. I had met my share of Afghan terrorists and mercenaries in Kashmir during missions and had some working knowledge of words in both Afghan languages. Though, if I had to hazard a guess, I would have said that he was speaking Arabic. The flag, the dress, and now the Arabic. It was almost as if they were making a very deliberate show of being the typical Arab ISIS jihadi.

  As he spoke, I caught a few names and those made me sit up. I heard him say Zacarious Moussaoui, in prison in the US for his role in planning the 9/11 attacks, then he said Richard Reid, otherwise known as the shoe bomber, caught when he had tried to explode a bomb concealed in his shoe on a flight and finally Dzhokar Tsarnaev, whose name I remembered from news reports as the surviving Boston Marathon bomber. He rattled off a few more names that I didn’t immediately recognise.

  When he finished, he put the phone down and addressed all of us in English, raising his voice so that he could be heard. ‘There are seven of us. The number seven has a great significance in our lives and worship. The heavens are seven as created by Allah, the colours are seven, the days are seven, we walk around the Kaaba seven times, we stone Lucifer seven times, we are forbidden to commit seven sins and on the day of judgement, Allah will put seven kinds of people under his shade. I have just spoken to the American media and government and I am sure your recordings of my speech will reach millions of ordinary Americans, which is why I am encouraging you to post my messages. We have given the Americans a list of seven of our brothers who are currently in their so-called supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. We demand their release and for them to be flown here. The good news is that if the Americans heed our request, all of you can go home, to your families and loved ones.’

  When a terrorist says that, you can be sure that there’s bad news about to follow, and he didn’t disappoint.

  ‘We have given them sixty minutes to consider our request. If they do not do as we ask, then we will start killing hostages, one every seven minutes.’

  ***

  As the leader of the hijackers went back to the Business Class cabin, two hijackers stayed back, including my bearded pal, Arif. He was standing just a foot from me, and seemed to be staring at Zoya, who was doing her best to ignore him. That part came easy, as she was distracted enough trying to keep Aman from freaking out.

  Aman was now getting really cranky, without enough sleep and with much to keep him occupied, he was moving around in his bassinet, while Zoya unsuccessfully tried to distract him with his favourite rattle and stuffed toy, a small giraffe.

  Some passengers were still talking quietly on Skype or posting on social media. I had some calls to make, but I couldn’t risk saying what I needed to with Arif next to me. Instead, I pulled out my phone and sent out a few messages to three people I knew I would want to reach out to.

  The first was to Ravi Mathur, the man who had trained me in the Paras and the closest thing I had to a father since I lost my parents in an accident soon after I joined the army. He and his wife, Rekha, were among the few people who knew about all that had happened in Mumbai. He knew we were on this flight and I wanted him to know we were okay and not worry when he saw news of the hijacking on TV. Plus, he would get word out to old friends in the army. This was not a low-budget action movie, and I didn’t expect the Paras to come swooping in to the rescue, but the army in general, and a tight unit like the Paras, looked after their own, even the veterans, and some senior officers would be making calls to the government very soon.

  The second was to Ashutosh Phadke, a senior police officer who had arrested me in Mumbai after the first sniper attack, thinking me to be a terrorist. He had later become a friend and someone I trusted. Again, he was not likely to help directly in any way, but senior cops would be hearing from him soon enough about me.

  Both Ravi and Ashutosh were friends, but they would also get word out to the right folks higher up. Both were old pros. I didn’t just tell them how I was, but included as much intel as I could – numbers of hijackers, weapons, their comms gear and who was outside. Anything that could help those who would need more info on the men who were holding us hostage.

  The final message was to the old spymaster, MK Dhar, who had once come through for me in so many ways. I did so because he had told me that some old men still had very interesting connections. I definitely trusted him to get the word out to the intelligence agencies and the government, so that they would get ahead of the game.

  I would have liked to add one more name to the list but that man was probably dead and definitely unreachable.

  An old man from a few rows back spoke up. ‘I’m diabetic and I haven’t eaten anything. Can we get some food please?’

  One of the air hostesses spoke up. ‘We have packets of snacks which we can pass around. Please let us at least feed the passengers.’

  Arif went back to the Business Class cabin and came back and nodded at the air hostess.

  Munching on nuts, washed down with bottles of water, wasn’t exactly enough to fill anyone, but it was better than nothing, and more importantly, it helped pass the time.

  I checked my watch. Another hour had nearly passed since the hijackers had made their call. The US never negotiated with terrorists. And, it was a foregone conclusion that they wouldn’t agree to release the big fish of the sort who had been sought. What the Americans would definitely do was try and stall while they put in place some sort of plan, though I couldn’t see what kind of rescue plan even they could pull off here in the middle of nowhere. No doubt, they already had a Predator drone overhead, watching us, relaying footage back to them and hard men, the sort of men I had called brothers for years, were getting their gear ready, waiting for orders to move into action.

  Arif was now whistling, looking straight at Zoya. God, I so wanted to smash his face and teach him a lesson, but when you’re unarmed, in a confined space with your wife and baby beside you, and the bad guy is carrying a Kalashnikov, you learn to swallow your pride and put up with shit that you would normally not tolerate, hoping, waiting for the right moment.

  Zoya looked straight into his eyes. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a baby before?’

  Arif was momentarily taken off balance. Then he took a step towards us. Fortunately for him and for me, since there was no doubt I would be killed the moment I dropped him, the boss strode in again and made a big show of checking the laptop and calling on the sat-phone. He spoke in Arabic, shook his head sadly before he put the phone down and addressed us.

  As if on cue, all hijackers entered the cabin, their rifles pointed at us.

  ‘The Americans have not yet responded. It is time to show them that we mean business. Their government says they need more time, but their media is already here. Two choppers landed with CNN and Fox News crew on our invitation, but their government claims they need time to get someone here to negotiate with us. Do they think we’re fools to be toyed with?’

  He took out a passport that he was carrying.

  ‘Wilson Smith. We have run your name and your ID is clear about who you are today, and who you once were.’

  Two hijackers approached the black man behind me. One of them smashed the butt of his rifle into his head. As he slumped down into the seat, two more hijackers grabbed him and dragged him upright.

  Many passengers were sobbing, while others had gone quiet, shocked into silence by the sudden violence.

  ‘For his war crimes against innocent Iraqi civilians, Wilson Smith will be the first to die.’

  The hijackers dragged the man forward, into Business Class. I could feel Zoya’s nails dig into
my forearm, as I clenched the armrests tight. I wanted to do something, anything, to help, but there was nothing I could do without getting myself, and my family, killed.

  The leader of the hijackers turned and looked straight at me.

  ‘My name is Khalid bin Ali. I am not a heartless killer. Every unnecessary death weighs on my conscience, but Captain Smith here is not an innocent civilian. He and others like him caused untold suffering to innocents in Iraq. Those deaths have hardened my heart to what I must do.’

  I held his gaze. ‘Why are you telling me all this? No matter what you say, nothing can justify cold-blooded murder.’

  He smiled, though his eyes were hard. ‘Because Major Aaditya Ghosh, we ran your name as well. We know who you were once and what you did as recently as last year. We know the kill list you featured on and how you escaped narrowly. We also know how your hands are tainted with the blood of innocents trying to fight for their freedom in Kashmir. A man who has the blood of children on his hands should not be lecturing me about cold-blooded murder.’

  Shit!

  Hiding my ID had not really helped much, it seemed. I was much better at blowing up stuff than this cloak and dagger shit. If they knew all this about me, I knew I wouldn’t fare much better on the hijackers’ popularity charts than Smith.

  Two hijackers, including Arif, came towards me, their rifles pointed straight at Zoya, as Khalid continued. ‘You will accompany us to the front.’

  Zoya began to protest and Arif brought his rifle up to strike her with the butt. I sprang up, catching him squarely on the nose with an elbow strike. He staggered back, blood spurting from what I sincerely hoped was a broken nose.

  His friend brought up his rifle to shoot, when Khalid shouted out, ‘No! We will not start a massacre here. That is not our intent here. Stick to the plan. Major, please come up with us and nobody else here gets hurt.’

  I kissed Zoya and looked into her eyes, wondering if this would be the last time I saw her. There were tears in her eyes, but I also saw the strength that made me love her so.