Part I – Even the moon was interested
I started writing Kashmiri night without an idea or a plot behind it. I started it specifically to challenge myself and see where the first random sentence took me. This is part of an ongoing series of connected stories I will put out as and when I write them. I do not know myself how the story will pan out or end, so let us find out!
Here’s part one, titled ‘Even the moon was interested’.
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The American made Chinook helicopter, now being operated by the Indian Air Force, tore through the silence of the cold Himalayan valley. The pilot expertly hugging the craft as close to the pointy pine canopy which blankets the lower mountainous regions. The night was grey and moonlit. The mountains seemed like demigods of the moon, silent silhouettes with silver capped peaks. The Chinook was 20 klicks out from crossing into hostile territory otherwise known to us as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Its peculiar double rotor configuration making it perfect for the night’s deathly job.
Inside the helicopter, other than the two pilots, just 4 silent figures sat in the dull red hue of the hull. Their faces indistinguishable in the darkness. One among them sat at a distance from the rest of them in the massive space inside the Helicopter. His face painted with black and green lines, wore no emotions other than the blankness which resembled that of a faceless warrior. He, the Captain. The outcome of the night, the success of the mission, lay heavily on the minute by minute decisions that he would have to take for the rest of the squad. The night was going to be legendary, that much the Captain knew, just how legendary, even he could not have guessed as the Helicopter swerved westward and climbed a short hillock before coming to a hover over flat grassy ground.
The red light inside the hull now switched to green and the Captain at once stood up and readied to abseil down onto enemy land. His figure was even more impressive as a towering green silhouette. The Captain ran the rope through the carabiner on his hip and away he went into the darkness. The rest of them followed like clockwork. Once on the ground, the Captain waved a sign to the Pilot and on cue the pilot rose the beastly copter and made it disappear into the darkness of the valley. The sound of the Helicopter at first very loud, now diminishing rapidly to a reverberating echo, and suddenly it was silence all over, like as though the forest had altogether engulfed the men under its mushy blanket.
The Captain clipped in his night vision sights and the rest of them followed promptly. The world around them would now be seen through the goggles as shades of strange fluorescent green, highlighted by infra red light bouncing off the objects in the moonlit dark. With a swift swivel of his left arm, the Captain delegated the next order and the direction in which they were supposed to go. And so, at 1:20 in the AM, somewhere deep in Kashmir, under the silent gaze of the mountains and path illuminated dimly by moonlight, the four commandos sprinted into the tree line in file, like a pack of hungry wolves.
Their mission, to neutralize a curious looking missile launchpad which had recently propped up very close to the border. What they did not know was that, the head of the LeT, the Bastard Commander in Chief was himself in the area the same night and with him were a hundred, perhaps even more, mujahideen fighters whose main aim was to die fighting the war against the infidels, the nonbelievers, and surely hence reach heaven where 72 choices would lay themselves out, for them to blemish and relish.
The intel reports, as clearly as the Captain has been briefed just 30 minuted ago was that the launch pad housed hypersonic missiles which Pakistan, at the time, simply did not have the technology to develop nor the budget to procure. Having hypersonic missiles, especially this close to the border presented immediate threat to the neighboring regions of the Indian side of the Kashmir border and the peaceful southern regions of Jammu. The speed with which these missiles approached their target usually meant that no missile defense system would be able to ward it off or intercept it mid air. Therefore, the need was of the hour that the launch pad be disabled, and not just disabled but completely destroyed and if possible, the team was instructed to bring back evidence relating to or suggesting the makers. At that point, only a handful of countries boasted truly hypersonic missiles in their arsenal, India and Russia being the leading countries with their joint hypersonic missile BrahMos which has had a notoriety of being one of the few missiles capable of passing through even the impermeable American Air Defense network. Others in the list, USA and only recently speculation seemed to point, China was developing one or had already developed one. But Pakistan had neither the resource nor the wherewithal for such an engineering feat. The state the country has been in the recent decades seems to suggest they had neither the motivation nor the will, heck they were sufficed to have bought nuclear secrets to become a nuclear country. Surely, buying a secret hypersonic missile of assured destruction, or merely ‘leasing’ it from China did not seem far fetched to the bosses in Delhi, who now sat shivering with anticipation in the control room situated on Raisina Hill.
The squad moved as one silent unit in the darkness, guided only by their GPS guidance systems, attached to each of their left wrists. They were in the cover of the trees now, and the night was still under the clutches of the moon, and the hint of sun, if any, was obstinately hidden behind the tall mountains on all sides. They stopped, sometimes, to catch a breath, and once done and body rested, they moved again in a unified soldierly jog barely audible beyond the first tree and the first leaf. In the front, the Captain, strapped to his back and shining in the black, the customized AK-12 with night scope. This gun, a Russian made poet of death. The three of them behind the captain, had each a specific role to play, one with the Rocket Propelled Grenade, one with the Short Assault Gear and finally that one guy, the guy who moved like the forest, the guy who, before squeezing the trigger, became the Forest, the Sniper.
One hour forty minutes later, they arrived at the vicinity of the camp. According to the latest Satellite images in the Captain’s mind, the Pakis had built outposts and barracks around the launch pad. Sort of like the British guarding the Kohinoor in their Great Museum. And like the British, the Pakis were about to be shown, the peaceful way, the Indian way, which sometimes called for an unprecedented use of force.
From a distance of 250 meters, the four of them studying the evil that lay ahead, it looked like a scene out of an Ancient Arabian Night, four raiders on the prowl on horseback in the flaming night, to destroy and pillage the sleeping hamlet. The moon was much lower in the night now, It had drifted silently across the starry sky, now somewhere between two of the lowest peaks. Across those peaks, on the other side of the valley, two of the highest peaks awaited to greet the sun’s rise in a few hours. And in the valley down below, the show was about to go down and the shit was about to hit the roof.
After a silent nod and a subliminal group hug, the four of them dispersed into the undergrowth each in their separate ways. The Captain and the gunner in the front, the RPG guy to the left and hundred feet away with a nice clearing to fire from and the Sniper, on a short elevated mound, from behind the shadowy trees. As history has repeatedly shown, nothing ever goes according to plan especially when you plan extensively for it. According to Delhi, there were an estimated 25 to 35 terrorists holed up around the launch pad. But what the Satellite Images and the Ground Intelligence had failed to capture or notice was the cleverly concealed sleeper cells. These were bunkers with their rooftops protruding just two or three feet above ground. Their rooftops camouflaged with flora, housed under it, at least 45 suicidal fighters each and there were at least four of them around the launch pad.
If the night hadn’t been colder, it was now. And if it hadn’t been darker, it was certainly now. The four soldiers poised for action and the many hundreds of sleeping terrorists, ready to wake up and die, for their God, for their Truth. Tick-Tock, the clock slowed down and the moon briefly stopped to look down with curiosity at the bloodbath that was about to unleash below. Four versus three hundred. One Nation against a Devil, one fight for peace and harmony. Let’s go!
