03:02 (39 page)

‘Well over four kilometres, but pretty useless in a congested urban environment like this where you can see the enemy only about five hundred metres out or so.’

I sent up a silent prayer. I’d had no idea what the range of the missile was, but had been hoping that it would be enough.

‘That means you could hit the airport from here. As the crow flies, the airport is just about four kilometres from here.’

Shwetabh looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

‘Aadi, look at all the buildings around us. We don’t have a clean shot at the airport, and the TOW is optically and wire guided, meaning I need to have a clear line of sight on the target. And we can’t really get the Humvee up to an apartment rooftop, can we?’

I grinned as I replied. ‘No, but I know where we can. Get in and drive!’

Along the way, I told Shwetabh about how a kid in my karate class had once got into trouble with his parents because he had taken his girlfriend to a building that was under construction. It was next to the Supreme Business Park and the boy had sheepishly told me that they had wanted to sit there and watch flights land and take off at night.

As we approached the business park, I pointed the building out to Shwetabh and I could see his eyes light up in understanding. We drove up the ramps leading up to its higher floors. Perhaps the building had been intended as a parking lot, but that did not matter. What mattered was what it gave us now. A clear view of the airport from a vantage point to which we could drive the Humvee.

To one side of the building was a small hill, and, till the third floor, the view was obscured by it. But, as we climbed to the fifth floor, we had a clear view of the airport. I laughed out loud. The sun was shining, and it was a clear day. One positive side-effect of the Blackout had been that the smog caused by cars and factories, which used to obscure visibility, was no longer present. So, today, even without binoculars, I could see the large black airplane on the tarmac.

Shwetabh clapped me on my shoulder. ‘You, my friend, would make a very dangerous insurgent or terrorist.’

I smiled. Wasn’t that what I was now? I looked through my binoculars as Shwetabh loaded a missile into the launcher.

‘Can the missile destroy an airplane that big?’

Shwetabh looked through the sighting system on the launcher.

‘The rangefinder shows it as just short of four kilometres away. Well within range, buddy. Now, could the missile destroy the airplane? Maybe not destroy it completely, since it is a pretty big plane, but it wouldn’t fly again for sure. But I have another idea. Take a look at what those buggers are doing and keep watching.’

Through the binoculars, I could see a fuel truck parked next to the plane and several black figures milling around it. Some were carrying boxes away from the plane while others were pulling a hose towards it. They were unloading the plane and also refuelling it so it could fly back to wherever it had come from. And they were doing it in the open, complacent that nobody could attack them in there. I scanned right and left and saw two vehicles with large tubes mounted on them.

‘Shwetabh, what are those missiles? They look different from the TOW we have.’

He replied without taking his eyes off the sight. ‘Humvees mounted with Stinger surface-to-air missiles. They must have captured all this stuff from the Iraqi Army. The US supplied a lot of equipment to them after they started pulling out combat troops, and much of it fell into ISIS hands. Now, time for us to crash their little party. Stay well to one side.’

I moved a few feet to the left and heard a loud whoosh as the missile left the tube. A few metres out, its motor ignited and it accelerated, trailing a tail of fire. Shwetabh had mentioned the missile was wire guided and I could see the thin wire following the missile as it sped towards the airport. It flew straight and true and then, just as it reached the airport, I saw it jerk up. I looked towards Shwetabh, thinking something had gone wrong, but his face was a mask of concentration, glued to the sighting system. I quickly looked back through the binoculars and saw the missile climb vertically up and then come diving down towards the fuel tanker. Some of the black figures were now moving, having seen that something was very wrong, but they had no chance.

The missile slammed into the fuel tanker and it exploded in a giant fireball that engulfed the black figures around it. The plane had been just a few metres from it, and it was shredded by shrapnel and burning fragments and exploded in an even larger fireball a few seconds later, all the ammunition and weapons on it contributing to the intensity of the explosion. An airliner parked close by was hit by fragments and exploded as well. Even from the distance, the deep rumble of the explosion was clearly audible and I jumped in excitement.

‘Son of a bitch!’

Shwetabh had allowed himself a little grin, but he was still all business, loading another missile into the tube. A few seconds later, he fired again, this time hitting one of the Humvees that had been equipped with the Stinger. The vehicle exploded on impact and I screamed in excitement as the hit cooked off one of the missiles in its launch tubes and it streaked out, hitting the main terminal building, causing another explosion and further mayhem.

As we got into the Humvee, I heard Ronald screaming on one of the MARCOS radio sets that we had kept there.

‘What the fuck did you guys do? I heard you and Shwetabh were off with the Humvee on some adventure.’

When I told him, he roared in laughter. ‘Ismail says they’ve lost it. They are transmitting in the open, in English, Arabic and god knows what other languages. One of them thinks the Americans have hit them with drones, another thinks it’s a cruise missile. Their leaders are asking them to shut up and get back to the airport. Someone talked about thirty dead before he was asked to stop transmitting in the open. Some idiot even talked about getting the Caliph to an underground parking area.’

I looked back at the burning heaps we had left at the airport and then at Shwetabh. ‘Let’s not wait to hear back from Delhi. These fuckers invaded our home, let’s take it back ourselves. We’ve effectively shut down the airport because they have no idea who’s attacking it or how many missiles we have left, and as they deal with the chaos and hunker down, let’s hit them hard.’

‘You are quite mad, Aadi. You do realize that, don’t you?’

I looked at him, a grim smile on my face. ‘I promised to avenge the kids they killed, and I fully intend to kill every single one of these bastards.’

Our council of war was not a small affair. Hundreds of people were huddled in the middle of Central Avenue, but then this was not a decision to be taken by only a few of us. All of us were at war, and we needed to get everybody on board with what we were planning. There was a feeling of renewed optimism as news of the missile strikes on the airport spread. People had heard the explosions of course, but once the full nature of the damage we had caused got around, there was a lot of excitement. I overheard several people talk about how we had shut down the airport. However, the reality was that, while we had caused significant damage, and the enemy would likely not bring in any new flights till they were clear about the nature of this new threat, we only had one TOW missile left. We needed to move fast, while the enemy was still disoriented.

There was one additional piece of news that had filtered in over the last hour which we had to factor into our plans.

Shaikh had made contact with two teams of MARCOS in the city.

‘Aadi, they’re coming in towards Powai and they should be here by midnight or so.’

‘What weapons will they have? Will they have sniper rifles like you did?’

‘They should have one sniper rifle per team. That’s two rifles for the four of them. What are you thinking?’

For all the surprises we had given the enemy, I was convinced that a frontal attack would not work. They would still have more firepower than us, and more trained fighters. We needed to continue doing what the General had advised. We had to think like insurgents.

‘Shaikh, I’m thinking of creating a diversion. Shwetabh here can use the last missile to hit one of their vehicles on the tarmac, making them think they’re under air attack, and the MARCOS can start taking out their guards at the checkpoint on the airport road leading to the international terminal, making them think they’re under attack from that direction. That’s when we hit them from a direction they won’t be focusing on—from the Western Express Highway through the domestic terminal.’

I could hear a buzz pass through the gathered crowd. It was one thing to plan small ambushes, quite another to contemplate an attack on what was effectively the enemy’s headquarters. I could sense the nervous energy and realized that people needed to understand exactly what we were getting into.

‘This is it, people. Once we attack the airport, there’s no going back. No more nights spent wondering if we will be hit. But the flip side is that this will be all or nothing. Either we win and destroy the enemy or we lose most of our fighters and equipment. You know what will happen next. It’s a gamble, but this is the best chance we have.’

‘Shouldn’t we wait for Delhi? Maybe they have a plan.’

I turned to Bhagat who had raised the question, which no doubt was on several minds.

‘We haven’t heard from Delhi for a while. We have no idea what is happening there and whether there is a plan at all. But look at it this way: we are all alive today because we chose to act and did not wait for someone else to save us. That’s all I’m proposing we do today as well. Between the TOW missile and the MARCOS, we have some elements of surprise up our sleeves that we can use.’

‘We have one more.’

It was Flight Lieutenant Tarapore, one of the officers who had come in from Goa. He had told us that a small group of pilots and technicians had stayed behind to see if they could get more planes in the air, and now, judging by the excitement on his face, he had some news.

‘I just heard from Goa. They got in touch on the shortwave radio we had carried with us and they say they can have two Sea Hawks in the air. Both were lying in the Dabolim Naval Air Museum, but they’re better than nothing.’

Having seen the last air strike and its disastrous end, and hearing that the aircraft had been in a museum, I found it hard to work up much enthusiasm.

‘How old are these planes, and what kind of firepower can they carry?’

I could tell from the look on Tarapore’s face that we weren’t talking about state-of-the-art warplanes. ‘These are old planes. They flew in the 1971 war, but unlike the Alizes you saw before, they are jet powered and, at the end of the day, fighters, as compared to slow anti-submarine aircraft. Also, Aadi, I knew the two boys who flew in on the Alizes. Flying in to attack an unknown enemy in forty-year-old propeller-powered airplanes requires a certain kind of courage. That has to count for something.’

I stood there, suitably chastised. If equipment and weapons were the only things that counted, then we would have been wiped out by now.

‘I’m sorry. They are welcome additions to our plan—and I can see them adding to the distraction.’

Shwetabh had been listening in silence and now he chipped in. ‘I can make it easier for those boys by taking out that anti-air launcher with my last TOW.’

I carried forward the thought. ‘With the two jets coming in, they will be convinced it’s an air attack, and without the surface-to-air missile, the only thing they’ll have to shoot at our planes are the heavy machine guns on the Humvees. And with the Caliph in there, I’m guessing they’ll pull back their Humvees to the terminal. That should make it easier for us to break in.’

We spent the next hour planning, and by the time we finished, all of us were itching to go. We would have to wait a bit longer, though. The time of our first strike had been decided.

03:02 a.m.

The moment when our world had been painted black.

I had advised everyone going out on the raid to get some sleep. I didn’t know about them, but I was unable to follow my own advice; I didn’t get a minute’s rest. Part of the reason was because I wanted to spend the time I had with Megha. We did not know if we would live beyond that night, and if we had nothing else, we wanted one last night together. We sat there, on my balcony, watching the airport in the distance. The lights there were still on, though I noticed several fewer lights around the tarmac. Perhaps they did indeed think they had been the victims of an air strike and were trying to present a less conspicuous target.

Megha had her fingers intertwined in mine.

‘Aadi, you do remember your usual promise, don’t you?’

I smiled as I considered my reply. ‘I have every intention of trying to get back.’

‘That’s not good enough, Aadi. Are you losing your usual cockiness?’

In the short while we had been together, it was amazing just how much she could read my mind. ‘There are so many things that could go wrong, Megha. So yes, I am worried, but if there’s one thing I’m sure about, it is that the one thing that will keep me going is the fact that I want nothing more than to come back to you.’

I kissed her and we headed downstairs together. She would be in one of the underground parking lots next to the clinic, like everyone else, and if we started receiving casualties, then she would run to the clinic. I looked at her in the moonlight, taking in all the details, remembering all the wonderful times we had spent together, and then it was time to say goodbye.

Mahadev was, as usual, waiting for me, even though this time, he was not going to be at the wheels of the jeep or an auto-rickshaw. We were going to start off on foot.

We gathered at Central Avenue and I could see almost every member of our community there. Ronald and Shaikh were in their combat gear and Ronald gave me a thumbs-up sign when I asked him about the two MARCOS teams.

‘Both are in place. They’re maintaining radio silence because they’re pretty close to the enemy checkpoint, but last I heard they had taken up positions nearby with a clear view of the enemy at the checkpoint and also the terminal.’