Part IV – At the Devil’s doorstep
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 four, titled ‘At the Devil’s doorstep’.
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For the team, the four member squad who had just taken a shot towards peace, and war, it was surely the calm before the storm. The Sniper had just taken out the regional power figure, the Commander in Chief of the LeT. The squad was part of the bigger group called the 3 PARA (SF). The PARA regiment is the Parachute Regiment Special Forces which was raised in the aftermath of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war. During the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, an impromptu commando unit (they named themselves Meghdoot Force) went into war and inflicted so much damage for such a small unit, that an entire battalion was raised with the Meghdoots as the members of its nucleus and it was renamed the PARA Regiment. The members of all PARA units are faceless. Their identities are as shady as shade itself and their actions clouded in pitch black. These were people whose names one wouldn’t hear about but one continually enjoys the freedom and security the actions of the same people steadily provide.
The four of them, in the depth of the night, had been in such messes before. They had gone knee deep, sometimes even neck deep, and come back stronger. Today, maybe it was fate, that their biggest challenge had to present itself, through so many faces that even their battle hardened hearts would fear. They were prepared. The boxers were in the ring with the latest in business bullet proof get up. They had the whole shebang, and in the darkness, they looked exactly like the next American Special Forces guy one would encounter in Iran. The Captain instructed the Grenadier to RPG the hatch on the ground from which the three terrorists had come out. But the Captain did not know there were several other hatches in the ground strewn all around the Missile area.
The RPG went streaking across the forest floor in the night, like a bright red painted with swift painter’s stroke on a black canvas. It hit the hatch just as more terrorists were starting to ooze out of it in a frenzy. The explosion tore apart the hatch and the many people under it. Because of the closed space of the tunnel leading into the barrack underground, the RPG scored more kills than it usually does. The Captain had just bought themselves some time when the enemy was disoriented. But the enemy rarely stays so. Within seconds, what seemed to the Captain, it looked like the forest bed had come alive, there were people coming out from underground at seemingly every point of earth. There were hundreds, if not more, already running around above ground and god knew how many were still under.
But the mission was still unaccomplished. The missile still lay there in the pod, prowling. And it had to be destroyed. The Captain was assessing his options when the 50 calibre shot took a big part of his right shoulder. Here’s the thing, bullet proof vests are not really bullet-anything in front of a 50 calibre bullet. These bullets are only fired from big Sniper rifles or bigger machine guns and they can pierce armor plating, vehicle doors, even engines. The Captain’s right shoulder completely came off, his right hand flew twisting and turning into the forest. Loss. Loss.
In his mind, time screeched to a halt, the past, the present and the future, everything depended on his next few actions. The Captain remembered the story his dad always told him about, The Old Man and the Sea. One of Hemingway’s better known stories. What did the old man all alone in the boat out in the sea say? What did Hemingway say? The old man was on the boat and he couldn’t waste time thinking about the things he wish he had gotten, things which were not on the boat which obviously couldn’t help him now. The only thing that mattered now were the items on the boat. The Captain’s body, stooped in the bushes, he was knocked right out of the fight. He had one arm, two legs and little blood left in his body. Would he make it through the night?
History repeats, with every passing moment. You look close in on nature, you see that it is all a repetition, a harmonic oscillator projecting patterns in the ether. The Captain’s dad was the original Meghdoot unit Captain. His dad was the first ever PARA SF soldier. The Captain had lost his right hand? He knew it was nothing compared to the two legs his dad lost in his last ever mission. Did his father’s team still complete the mission? Yes. Did he fight till the very last second, with the last available ounce of energy and spirit? Yes. The Captain knew this incident would now severely handicap the squad. He blurted with the last available blood soaked words in his mouth into the radio and called Delhi for urgent help. It was four versus a mini underground town.
On top of the unrelenting enemy fire, they were now under strict Enemy Sniper fire. It was almost as though they had expected us coming but they were not fully organized yet. The Indian Sniper knew instantly by the sound that there was another Sniper in the dark. But he couldn’t spend time looking for him immediately as he was now in command and he had to get the Captain and the other two back to safety. Sniper’s are always the second in command because they are natural leaders. They were always leaders as they were capable of truly taking care of themselves all alone.
After the Captain’s distress call, the jets in Ambala took to the skies. Help was on the way. Help was 30 minutes away. The Thunder Gods were fast but not so fast in times such as these. The Sniper had to hold fort and retreat safely to safer ground and regroup with a new action plan. The Grenadier tied cloth tightly around the Captain’s shoulder to hold back some of the spurting blood and then he hauled the dazed Captain on his back and proceeded to retreat. The sub machine gunner gave what little coverage to the slow moving duo as possible. But the Enemy Sniper then took out the Grenadier’s left leg. The 50 cal tore his leg clean apart at the knee. A sadist’s shot, a knee shot is always a sadist’s shot. The Sniper saw this and knew he had to locate the Enemy Sniper at all costs. While the sub machine gunner threw the grenades he had with him to slow down the advance of hundreds of zombies, the Sniper panned and scoped the dark to find the enemy Sniper, he was truly very well hidden.
A slow 20 minute passed, bullets being exchanged back and forth. Bombs exploding all around. People getting killed indiscriminately. The RPG guy shooting back from the ground with a missing leg, and with the Captain’s rifle, the Captain slowly bleeding away, he had a pistol in his left hand and was shooting at random in the direction of the sounds, his bullets never hit any target. The Sub machine gunner had, against all odds, kept the terrorists from advancing closer than they could safely handle. The Sniper had apparently located the enemy Sniper, the dimmest glimmer of the Enemy Sniper’s rifle scope had given his position away. The Sniper slowed his mind, took a deep breath, and held it briefly, his body calmed and his finger inched on the trigger. There was no uncertainty in the crosshair, it was rock steady. He took a shot.
As soon as he did that, to his absolute disbelief, the hypersonic missile roared to life and took off into the sky from the pod on the many-wheeled truck. It went super fast, leaving behind a glowing trail of hot smoke arcing into the starry sky. For a fraction of a second, when the missile had just plopped out of the pod, the Sniper had noticed the shape of the missile. It was unmistakable even in the darkness. It was a bloody BrahMos, now in the enemy’s hands!? Where was it heading to? Was it going towards one of the oncoming jets? Or was it headed to some village in Jammu?
Remember dear readers, the BrahMos rarely misses.
Part V is the finale and it is coming soon.
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