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The knife paused; the silence deafening.
“Good boy, Raoul,” the torturer approved. “Now if only you’d been a good boy yesterday and not blabbed with the pretty chica.”
“Madre Dio! She is nothing. She is a stripper. She will not talk, I promise. On my mother, I swear.”
His torturer smiled. A cold, killer’s smile. The knife point gleamed like a jewel as the torturer twisted the blade this way and that. A slow, concerted movement that was hypnotic in its grace.
“Your mother is dead, Raoul,” the torturer said softly. “You know that. So is Maria. You know that too.”
“Spare me then. Spare me, please!”
Raoul started babbling in a mixture of Portuguese and English. Prayers, incantations, invocations, beseechments. His tears mixing with the blood flowing from his busted eye. He was blind in one eye because of the force with which the torturer had heaved a rock paperweight at it.
But he could live with the blindness. He could live. Madre Dio la vida.
The torturer gave him a sharp look.
“I am bored.” It was a flat statement.
Raoul was still screaming obscenities when the knife struck, sure and true. Piercing the jugular. Blood and life poured out of Raoul. The canary who sang.
The terrorist was called The Woodpecker.
The terrorist’s specialty was bombs in public places. Signature and calling card rolled together in one burning mass of twisted metal and humanity.
The file on The Woodpecker was three inches thick, tying the terrorist to so many international bombings that the organization was getting worried now. No one person, no one terrorist was supposed to be such an efficient, soulless killer. Hold the fates of people in their hand so callously.
The man who was the terrorist’s father, the terrorist’s mentor, looked at his child’s file, filled with the exploits of a lifetime of terror and mercenary killing. He had encouraged, honed the skill, the spark, the madness that had led to the creation of this file.
The Woodpecker.
The bird that chipped and chipped away at the branch in a tree to make a nest for herself and her chicks.
The Woodpecker who never gave up.
The man shut the file closed and leaned back in his swivel chair. He looked out at the cloudless blue skies that denoted summer on the beach. And felt a weight around his heart, an organ he had forgotten existed. He tried to name the emotion that was weighing down his heart and identified it as … regret.
Tom Jones smiled; a regretful smile as the gears of his devious, devious mind started moving. He picked up a satellite phone and made a call and set in motion his plan. Things couldn’t be helped anymore.
They had to change. And change was always good. He had always believed so.
STEP ONE: IDENTIFICATION (#ulink_4880a38e-17a2-55dd-a29b-24c7d4ae461a)
one (#ulink_5f574f19-6dab-54f8-9ccc-01a396fadf21)
Ladakh
India
July 2011
It was said that God himself lived in these hills that surrounded the Northwest Frontier of India. The air was purer than air, clean and pure oxygen. The waters gleamed an unholy turquoise and the sky was an infinite, uniform blue. The horizon was a stretch of land and sky that met as far back as the naked eye could see.
Nature’s paradise.
And it was called Ladakh.
It was also home to some of the worst atrocities humanity had committed against itself. Ladakh, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, was on the very border that separated India from its neighboring countries, and was therefore fair game, for all the neighbors that wanted to encroach and possess it. Although, by some miracle, Ladakh itself had escaped being the target of the constant cross-border violence that raged in the most turbulent political state in India, the nearby town of Kargil had not been so lucky. It was home to war and fallen heroes in the last decade. And the rest of Jammu and Kashmir was not safe either.
But these places were in the rest of the beautiful part of the country that formed the crown jewel: the Himalayas. Ladakh was in demand, for the territory was valuable in itself too for the special metals mined here. The scenery was so stunning; it actually took your breath away.
The team of six, fatigue-clad men who entered the lonely, isolated cave on one such hillock on the roughest terrain did not pause to look at the stunning, breathtaking scenery. They were dressed in green-black camouflage outfits that just barely hid them in the approaching dawn. Ladakh was not just known for lush greenery and foliage; it was as much desert and sand as it was flowing streams and lovely air. A study in contrasts, the land was, as much the people that inhabited it.
The team leader, with black marks on his face, stopped at the mouth of the cave, and indicated the two next to him to go ahead. They removed tiny chemical lights, lit them by breaking them and sprinted inside like black ghosts. They were the reconnaissance guys, who would give intel on the situation inside the labyrinthine caves. The team leader marked their position on a tiny handheld, where they were just two green dots racing away like pinballs.
There were four more dots on the tiny handheld, one for each man on the mission. A radio crackled to life as the green dots stopped and the team leader tapped on an earbud inside his ear and spoke quietly.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Route’s clear. Can’t see target, but there are no unknowns out either. Intel seems fine. These guys do not do rounds.”
“They left no one to guard the target?”
The leader’s voice was expressionless, ghost-like in the early morning air. If he was surprised at all, he didn’t let it show. Surprises were not part of the package on retrieval missions, their intel had to be one hundred percent correct or lives could be lost. And the intel had been; they would leave someone behind to guard the target.
Kidnapping and ransom was tricky work at best, FUBAR at worst.
“Not as far as I can see. I could check again, do sweeps.”
“Do it.”
The team leader held the handheld out, so his teammates could also have a view of the green dots moving around in several directions, checking for bogies and guards, with the heat signature scopes on their sniper rifles. Recon guys had a hard job, they went in first, sometimes with no knowledge of what was going to meet them inside a situation, so they only packed light ammunition. Sub-machines with automatic loading, throwing knives, whatever got the job done.
The rear guard carried firepower, the grenade launchers that could level a school building in no time. But the launcher had to be assembled, and that could take up to three minutes, depending on the situation and how many limbs the rear guard had left, when the launcher was called for.
The team leader was neither recon, nor rear guard. He and his partner were the guys in the middle of the action. The ones who had to hold it together when things went to hell, as they sometimes did in their line of work. They had the hardest task of all. Retrieval of the package, at any cost. And sometimes, they had to pay the cost.
So far, this mission was routine. Things were progressing as they should because of the solid intel provided. Apart from the glitch of there being no one to guard the target.
The ransom drop-off point was in the middle of the market in downtown Leh, where the industrialist father would pay ten million rupees for his sixteen-year-old daughter who had been taken from her boarding school in Dehradun. The DP ensured plenty of cover could be provided for both the good and bad guys. But, regardless of how thoroughly they wanted to cover their asses at the DP, would they be so overconfident as to leave their location unguarded, along with the target inside?
No. The team leader knew that, understood that, but … there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except hope they wouldn’t run into trouble anyway.
“Boss?” The radio crackled again.
“Yeah?”
“We can hear screams. They’re pretty loud.”
“OK.”
“Boss?” Recon one was waiting for instructions.
The team leader exhaled. “The coast is clear. I’m coming in. Rear guard can wait here and guard the entrance. Hopefully we can be in and out in five.”
“Roger that.”
The team leader looked at the four men around him and murmured, “Cover the entrance. If you see movement, radio in. Hold off as long as you can in the event of serious trouble. And worst comes to worst.”
He nodded at the man holding a long, metal case that looked like it could hold an accordion. The man stroked the case, as he would a particularly loved pet.
“Level the place. Yeah, we got it, Boss. Go, save the girl. Like you always do.”
The team leader didn’t crack a smile at the moment of levity, he just fixed on his number two with a myopic stare and said, “Evacuate the girl however you can. It’s a priority.”
“Boss.”
He handed the handheld to him, switched his scope on and went in low. A wraith all in black, melding into the darkness, becoming one with it. No one could even hear him breathe. But they weren’t supposed to. Darkness was his companion, his lover. He was all right in the dark.
The leader walked in, because the cave roof was about fifteen meters in height, which gave him enough room to move in. He’d already told the recons that he was moving in and arriving at rendezvous point in two.
The cave sloped off east, and then slipped in three directions. He consulted a GPS strapped to his hand and took the third one. The cave became danker, smelling of cold air which was not the same thing as fresh, cool air. His combat boots made no footfalls as he moved at a steady clip, ready to anticipate trouble at any moment.
The cave split again in two directions, and he again consulted his GPS and moved further in, until he came to a well-lit passage, and saw the shadows of both his men. They were at the ready, even though their weapons were held loosely at their side. Ex-military were always ready. And Kirschner Security only employed the best, and each of these men was alive only because they were the best.
“Boss?” Recon two spoke in his ear.
“Yeah.” The leader slung his own weapon on his shoulder and strode forward. “Behind you.”
The Recons moved fluidly and let him pass them, as they journeyed further in. About five feet into the long, alarmingly well-lit tunnel he heard it too. The screams of a young girl. Heedless, terror-filled and continuous. They were not words, they were not prayers or tears. They were just screams. Just pure terror.
He stopped for a split second and then nodded once. All three broke into a run and sprinted the last five hundred yards till they came to a wooden door that the leader simply ran through with his momentum. The door splintered apart, because it had been shoddily constructed and couldn’t withstand assault from a one-ninety-pound male specimen.
The recons swung their weapons in a wide arc while the leader advanced quietly.
“All clear,” Recon one murmured.
“All clear,” echoed Recon two.
The room, a fifty-by-fifty space was empty. Just walls, a table and a freezer that probably held beers as much as body parts. And it was devoid of both Alina Gujjar, the teenage daughter of Mahesh Gujjar, or any guard that might have been foolish and smart enough to escape detection from the heat signature scopes. There was an opening from the room and it was well-lit too.
The leader walked into the next room, from where the screams were emanating. His heart was slow, his breathing steady and he had acute tunnel vision. He could only see the next step, the next movement, his adrenaline on punch-high and his reflexes cold-purpose.
“Going in to retrieve package,” he murmured. “Radio silence from here on.”
And stepped into the room. The scream and the sight in the room stopped his heart.
Alina, a slender girl in filthy jeans and a torn white sweater, was screaming and crying sightlessly. Her shoulder-length hair was matted and she was bound to a ring on the rock wall of the cave. Her hands were tied to a wire that looped through the ring and were jerked tight enough to have almost cut off circulation if the girl moved much. She was not gagged, evidence of the hoarse animal sounds coming from the girl. But, her legs were stretched in front of her in a loose binding, a length of wire running around the ankles and on the ground to a covered contraption on the side.
“Shit.”
The leader moved forward and placed his weapon on the floor beside him for easy reaching. He knelt down in front of the girl and touched her. Lightly on the shoulder. She screamed harder as she focused on him. Saw the painted face and hell-black eyes, the camo outfit and the utter sense of menace he exuded. Her eyes were open in permanent petrification and she was hysterical.
“Hi, Alina, I’m Krivi,” he said, gently. “I’m going to get you out. Right now. I promise.”
“Wha—what?” she whimpered, tears running streaks down her muddy cheeks.
“I am going to get you out in five minutes.”
“But—there is a … there is a …” Sobs started shaking her thin shoulders and she hung her head and just wept. A hopeless, wrenching sound that should have melted the hardest, stoniest heart.
But the leader, Krivi, had no heart that anyone knew of so he just touched the girl on the shoulder, with a little more pressure this time. Enough that she looked up.
“Alina, listen to me. Will you listen to me?”
She nodded, her eyes streaming anyway.
“Stop crying. Can you do that?”
“I … I …”
“Brave girls don’t cry. They are heroines who get out of terrible situations and tell their grandkids about their youthful adventures,” he said, in a quieter, reassuring tone. That just set the girl off again. He considered his options and looked back at recon one who’d just come into the room.
“Detonation cord,” he said, nodding at the girl’s feet.
“Shit.”
“I’ll look into it. You get the girl out. Now.”
“Roger that.”
Krivi moved away from the girl but she screamed and he turned back and said, “I am here, Alina. This is my friend, John. He’s going to untie your hands. If you stay still, it won’t hurt at all. Can you do that?”
“Kri … Krivi,” she whispered, a small whisper of a terrified girl.
Krivi smiled, even though it felt like stretching taffy. “Yes?”
“There’s a lock. On my neck. There’s a lock.”
His smile faded and he looked at recon one, who had already removed a small wire cutter that could run through steel nylon rope if it needed to. And it had on three separate occasions.
“I am going to unlock it and you’re going to be out of here right now.”
Her lips trembled as she looked at the calm, rock-like face of the man kneeling before her, but she refused to cry again. And Krivi gave her points for that. It took a lot of cojones to not give in when the situation went FUBAR.
“Promise?” she asked.
He nodded and held out his hand. She took it with trembling fingers and just held on. Krivi squeezed once and then barked, “Scoot her forward. Give me specs. I am going to look at that.”
