Line of Control- A Thriller on the Coming War in Asia Page 5

  Iqbal whipped out his knife and slashed the throat of the nearest commando, who went down with blood spurting from his severed jugular; eyes wide open in shock and surprise. The second commando tried to raise his gun, but Iqbal’s knife sliced through his ribs before he could shoot. Now there was no time to lose. Iqbal broke open the door and ran straight for the PM’s bedroom, shooting down a servant who appeared in the doorway.

  He jumped behind a pillar as a commando opened fire behind him, but as he looked around, he was surprised to see that the other commando, a man he recognized as Ahmed, was not firing at him, but at soldiers running towards the house, having been alerted by the gunfire.

  The Afghan had not failed him.

  ***

  Khosla woke with a start at the sound of gunfire. He got up off the bed and made a big mistake by opening his door to see what was happening. He found himself face to face with a man in a police uniform advancing towards him, assault rifle at the ready.

  Khosla compounded his error by coming out into the corridor and walking towards the policeman, hoping he could clarify what was going on. To his horror, the policeman brought his rifle up to his shoulder and took aim at him. Before he could even process what was going on, let alone react in any way, Iqbal pulled the trigger.

  Iqbal fired a three shot burst at Khosla from a range of ten feet. A bullet caught Khosla in the upper arm and spun him around, slamming him against the wall.

  Khosla had never felt such intense pain before. As a much younger man, he had once had twenty stitches on his face after a disastrous attempt at go-karting. He had thought that was the most pain he had ever endured in his life. Compared to what he felt now, that had been a walk in the park. He somehow found the strength to roll over and face his attacker, slipping once in his own blood, which he realized was fast forming a small pool under him. Iqbal was now a mere six feet away and raising his gun to finish the job.

  Khosla braced himself for what seemed to be inevitable death when in a blur of movement, his personal security guard, Ram Bhan, threw himself in the path of the bullets. Bhan had been trained to take the bullet for his PM, and he did not fail. Nobody would know if Ram Bhan had even considered what he was getting into. But in that split second he had to react, training and discipline came before conscious thought.

  Iqbal cursed his luck as the Indian commando fell limply to the ground. Well, it wouldn’t change anything-just delay things a bit. He advanced towards the prostrate figure of Khosla.

  As a young man, Khosla had trained in the martial arts-but now he was over sixty, bleeding profusely from the bullet wound in his left arm, and facing a man armed with an assault rifle.

  `How could you do this….’

  Khosla had barely completed his question when Iqbal bought up his gun and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He cursed the gun and tried to fire again, but the damn gun had jammed. Well, it would have to be done with the knife. The firing behind him had stopped and he could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. He had no time to waste.

  Bhan was dying. Iqbal’s bullets had struck him in a wide arc, shredding much of his abdomen. But he had saved his PM from certain death. Now, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Iqbal approaching the fallen figure of Khosla, knife in hand.

  `Remember Kashmir, dog’, Iqbal was now a mere foot away from Khosla.

  Perhaps it was the defiant look on Khosla’s face, perhaps his training, or perhaps just anger at the sheer betrayal of trust he was witnessing-but something gave Ram Bhan a last burst of energy as he lunged across the corridor at Iqbal, his own commando knife in hand. Iqbal was taken by surprise as Ram’s knife lodged into his ribs, and he fell back. Grimacing with pain, he flipped his own knife around in his hand and nearly decapitated the guard, but it was too late now. As he slowly stepped towards Khosla, a burst of fire from commandos clambering up the stairs caught him in the neck and face, spraying blood all over Khosla. The commandos rushed up the corridor to their Prime Minister to find him covered entirely in blood-Iqbal’s, Ram Bhan’s and his own, and lying quietly on the ground.

  `Is he dead’, asked a commando, shaking despite himself at the intense and unexpected firefight he had just been in.

  `Get me up’

  Those three words from Khosla galvanized the commandos into action as they helped him up and began calling for an ambulance.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Iqbal saw Khosla being helped to his feet. His last thoughts were that he had completely failed in his mission.

  He was wrong.

  ***

  The MGF Metropolitan Mall in Gurgaon was jam packed with familes out to enjoy the weekend. There was a long queue at the ticket counter for the multiplex, and people jabbered excitedly at the prospect of watching the latest Bollywood blockbuster-a romantic potboiler starring the new queen of Bollywood, Deepika Padukone, acting opposite Hrithik Roshan.

  The two men walked in almost unnoticed. Dressed casually in jeans and loose shirts, they could have passed for college students-and they were, in a way. Having studied in the Madarasas of Afghanistan, with their practical exams in the fields of Iraq and Kashmir, they were hardened Afghan warriors. They had been surveying the mall for weeks, and had learnt that the metal detectors were faulty, and were switched off most of the time. Bribes to a mall emplyee revealed that the detectors were due to be replaced in two days time. Till then, they were essentially very expensive pieces of useless furniture. That knowledge had sealed the choice of their target.

  They walked past the rows of shops filled with the latest electronics and cosmetics and paused when they reached the crowded coffee shop in front of a book store. For a while, they looked like two students out to browse the latest bestsellers, but when they seemed to be making no move to buy anything for a while, a guard walked over to the duo. With the daily crowds at the mall, he had been trained to look for anything unusual. He didn’t quite know what bothered him, but something about the duo didn’t quite look right.

  `Excuse me, Sir, looking for something particular?’

  The men ignored him, continuing to study the crowd with interest.

  The guard ambled away to check on a kid who seemed to be lost. When he looked back a minute later, the two men were still there. As he began walking towards them, one of them nodded to the other, and they pulled out AK-47 assault rifles from their duffel bags.

  An old woman near them saw the guns and began screaming hysterically, but was stopped in mid-scream by a bullet to the throat.

  The two men now began walking calmly through the corridor, shooting with deadly precision as they walked through the mall. People tried to hide behind counters or run away from the impending death, but in the press of the panicked crowd, only a handful succeeded.

  Five policemen on duty across the road hastily threw away their lunches and rushed into a situation they were unprepared for. Armed with the old .303 rifles, which had long passed into antiquity, two of them were mowed down in the first burst. The others dove for cover and fired back. Two more fell before one of the terrorists died. The other terrorist hurled two grenades to add to the carnage before escaping outside.

  The attack on the mall claimed thirty dead, and over double that number injured.

  ***

  India Gate is located in the heart of New Delhi, an elegant and imposing monument erected in memory of the thousands of Indian soldiers who had died in the First World War. Since then, it had become a symbol of reverence for those who had given their lives in India’s defence, and a lamp burnt continuously under the Gate’s arch, as a testimony to the unknown soldier. The lush gardens and lakes around India Gate are also popular weekend picnic spots for families. This day was no exception, as children played cricket, lovers serenaded each other behind the bushes, and the elderly walked in the neatly trimmed grass, reminiscing about how much had changed in India’s capital over the years.

  What had not changed however was the proximity of India Gate to the ner
ve center of India’s government, the North and South Block, housing the External Affairs Ministry and Home Ministry respectively. The two imposing red-bricked compounds were located on either side of the same road, a straight drive from India Gate.

  Among the families at India Gate were gathered two young men. They had a large bag with them, and dressed in whites, people assumed they were young cricket players carrying their kit with them. Hiding behind a large bush, one of them looked through a small pair of binoculars, and smiled as he saw what he was waiting for.

  Less than a kilometer away, a convoy of five white Ambassador cars left North Block and turned towards India Gate. The Ambassador was a fifty-year old design, and obsolete by any standards, but still made up the bulk of the Government of India’s official fleet. In the third car of the convoy was seated Mani Tripathi, the head of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), who together with the Intelligence Bureau head, reported into Joshi. In other cars were commandos and more officials of the R&AW, headed for an urgent meeting called by Joshi after news of the attack on Khosla had broken, just a few hours ago. Word was still slowly filtering out of details of the attack, but in the prevailing chaos, nobody paid much attention to two young men out to play cricket.

  As the convoy came within two hundred meters, the two men opened the bag to reveal two narrow tubes. The tubes contained RPG anti-tank rockets. Both men took aim and fired within seconds of each other.

  Tripathi was looking at a summary on his laptop computer when the lead car in the convoy exploded into a huge fireball, destroying it and the car behind it. Tripathi’s driver tried to back up, but the car behind them was almost immediately hit by another rocket. Shrapnel sliced through Tripathi’s car, decapitating his personal guard and killing his secretary sitting next to him. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, Tripathi staggered out of the car and fell unconscious.

  The surviving commandos rushed to Tripathi and tried to carry him to safety while two men stood guard. They soon saw two seemingly unarmed men in white running at them. One commando stood up and shouted at them to go away, but realized his mistake too late. The two men triggered off high explosives strapped to their waists when they were within a few meters of the shattered convoy. The resultant explosions killed both of them, as well as everyone in the convoy who had survived the rocket attacks.

  ***

  Throughout that afternoon, similar terrorist attacks were reported across the country-in schools, temples, offices and railway stations. Over 300 people were killed, with the police claiming only a dozen terrorists killed. If the army had been called out immediately, further chaos may have been prevented. But once again, India’s famed bureaucracy worked against it. The order to call the army out was given only late that night after much intellectualization over whether the initial attacks were one-off attacks or part of a larger pattern. By then it was too late.

  ***

  The old man looked intently at the piece of paper in front of him. For several minutes, he did not say anything.

  `Sir, what do we say about the attack on Vivek and the Muslim carnage going on?’

  The old man got up and began pacing the length of the room in complete silence, as if he had not even heard the question.

  `Sir, our cadre are getting agitated. We need to take some action or at least come out with a statement on what is going on.’

  The old man now turned to look at his aide. He had been down this road before, and he wanted to shout at the younger man. You fool, don’t you realize that a single utterance by us could cause thousands their lives! Instead, he just kept silent.

  He had been in this game for too long-and now it was way past the time when he could dismount the tiger he had ridden on his way up in Indian politics. His name was Tarapore and he was an important leader in the party that was Khosla’s largest electoral ally. Tarapore’s party had long been associated with extreme right views and often accused of communalism. While to its credit, the party had undertaken several schemes of social service, over the years; it had attracted its share of lumpen elements, which seem to be attracted to Indian politics like nails to a magnet. In his younger years, Tarapore had retained an iron grip on the party-but in the last couple of years, his advancing years and failing health had meant that actual control of the party had largely passed to the younger cadre like Vinay Sethi. The new leadership mouthed much of the same political lingo, but lacked much of the genuine ideological conviction that Tarapore and his generation had. This lack of any real ideals combined with the party’s extreme views on communal matters made for a volatile cocktail.

  `Vinay, there should be no bloodshed. …’

  `Sir, we need some positive statement from you. The youth of the party still look up to you for direction. We would not want that to change.’

  The implied threat was not lost on the old man.

  `All right, do as you see fit.’

  As a gloating Sethi left the room, Tarapore slumped onto his sofa. He tried to assuage his conscience with the thought that he had never really had any control over the Pandora’s box that Sethi was going to unleash.

  ***

  Khosla woke up with a start. He had had a terrible nightmare-one in which the whole world was on fire and a man with a gun was shooting at him. He tried to sit up, but the pain in his arm reminded him that he was not in his bedroom, but lying in hospital, where he had been since the attack the previous night.

  He had fallen unconscious after the attack and had been rushed to hospital. The doctor pronounced him extremely lucky as only one bullet had lodged in his shoulder. A minor operation later, he was pronounced out of danger.

  After hearing of the terrorist attacks, he had wanted to rush to office, but was restrained by the doctor, who forbade him from going anywhere for another day.

  As he switched on the TV in the hospital room, he began to fear that his worst nightmares were about to come true.

  The door opened and Balbir Sharma, the Home Secretary, rushed in, looking almost comical with his huge frame draped in the shiny safari suit that was still pretty much the default uniform for India’s civil services.

  `Sir, it’s good to know you aren’t badly hurt……’

  Khosla cut him off in mid sentence.

  `Sharma, I think you have bigger things to worry about than my well-being. Have you seen what’s going on-attacks on Muslims have already begun. When the hell will we learn to live together as a country? Have people already forgotten what happened in 1984?’

  Khosla was alluding to the communal flare up post the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984, when in an orgy of violence; nearly 3000 Sikhs lost their lives. The proud and patriotic Sikh community had been dealt such a severe punishment for the sins of a couple of its members that the psychological scars still had not fully healed. Then, as Khosla suspected was also happening now, the initial attacks were being led by politicians-showing their loyalty to the fallen leader in a perverse and savage manner. Once the madness began, it was only a matter of time before the common criminals and thugs joined in the murder and looting. Now of course, things were made even more complicated by the well-planned terrorist strikes across the country-that were further fanning the flames of communal violence.

  `Sir, there’s even worse news. Tarapore’s people just came out with this statement to their cadres.’

  As Khosla took the paper with his good hand and began reading-he flinched as if from a physical blow. In front of his eyes was a document calling for revenge against the aggression by `Muslim attackers’ and the use of `all appropriate measure’ to safeguard life and property. It was the blueprint for a communal holocaust.

  ***

  `Daddy, I want to see a cartoon…’

  `Quiet, dear. There’s something important going on.’

  Karim smiled indulgently as his ten-year-old daughter, Nafisa, walked out, sulking.

  All the news channels were full of news of the unfolding chaos i
n India. Is this what Illahi had in mind? Karim found it hard to believe that his government was behind this-but he knew better than to be so naive. Illahi’s first phase had outlined `creating internal disturbances through surgical operations’, but Illahi had balked at going into details, not even trusting his Service Chiefs. The whole operation was being masterminded by Tariq’s elite cell in the SSG and the Emir’s men. This irked Karim, as he and his people would be forced to jump into the fray with little or no control over the factors leading to the war.

  `Ash, what’s going on?’

  His wife, Meher, had walked in. Meher was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, even after twelve years of marriage. It had been love at first sight when they had first met-Karim bewitched by the sophisticated, Oxford educated woman, and Meher drawn to the dashing Air Force officer.

  `No dear, I don’t think it’s anything we should worry about.’ As Meher went after Nafisa, Karim wished he could tell her just what a big lie he had just spoken.

  `Nafisa, come back, your cartoon’s on.’

  Karim left the room, wondering just how long he could shelter his family from the carnage that was going to engulf the subcontinent.

  ***

  FIVE

  Without harmony in the state, no military expedition can be undertaken.

  - Sun Tzu

  Pooja walked as fast as she could without attracting attention to herself. It was a Sunday morning, and she had gone out for a haircut when the trouble had started in the market. She was only about two blocks away from her apartment, but that seemed like a long way off.

  So far there had been no serious violence, just some stone throwing targeting the local mosque, but Pooja knew that could change in seconds. The journalist in her wanted to take cover to see and report what happened, but she was terrified. Almost all the shops had begun closing their shutters and no auto or taxi driver seemed to want to stop to give her a lift. She knew that all this would never have happened if she had just bothered to read the papers in the morning. Instead, the first time she heard about disturbances in her area was at the salon.