Maelstrom Rising

1

THE MISSING JETLINER

13 September, 0530 hours: Special Forces Command officers’ mess, Manesar

THE HIGH YOU GET in combat is strangely addictive. That rush of adrenaline, that sudden surge of enkephalins in near-death encounters – they trigger strange epiphanies. Suddenly, the sky seems incredibly blue, bluer than ever before. In the face of death, you live with an intensity that is amazing. After repeated encounters, that high gets into your bloodstream and a part of you begins to crave it. You become an addict, a combat junkie. It draws you back again and again – like a moth to a flame.

That was precisely what had happened to Colonel Dushyant Bharadwaj of the Special Forces Command.

Originally an officer from the Armoured Corps, Dusty had volunteered for a tour of duty in J&K with the Rashtriya Rifles as a young major. He had been sent to one of the most remote and dangerous outposts in Warwan that was maintained solely by helicopters. It was right in the heart of the most terrorist-infested area in north Kashmir. The Pakistani tanzeems like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad had almost converted it into a base camp. Dusty had been swept into intense and searing action, leaving him badly wounded. But he was responsible for the killing of a record number of Pakistani terrorists, including some of the most dreaded tanzeem leaders. He had been awarded the Ashok Chakra, the highest award for gallantry in the land. He had returned a changed man.

An orphan, he had lost his parents very early in life. He had been brought up by his maternal aunt. His uncle, a father of two daughters, had found him an unbearable financial burden. He carped about the amount of food that the growing lad ate. Deeply hurt, Dusty had left home to join the National Defence Academy and become an officer in the army. He never looked back. There were few human emotions left to tie him down. The NDA had made a man out of him. He became a celebrated heavyweight boxer at the academy. Though a strapping six-foot-two, strikingly handsome man, he was quiet, introverted and withdrawn. A disastrous and unrequited love affair had turned him into a complete loner, leading him to the Rashtriya Rifles and the kind of escape that only a battlefield could provide. After the very taxing tenure in J&K, he just could not readjust to the spit and polish of peacetime soldiering. He had opted for the Special Forces and that, in turn, had led to one combat assignment after another. He had become a legend in the Special Forces – the lucky commander with the winning touch, the remorseless and ruthless killing machine dedicated to his country, and nothing else.

Though unlucky in love, he was phenomenally lucky in war. He had succeeded in one combat mission after another, something that made his men believe that he had been born under the star of war. With him leading the charge, no mission would ever fail. That was why he had become one of those hardcore army bachelors – married to the army and the Special Forces, obsessively involved with his profession. Machine pistols, sniper rifles, commando knives, military gadgets and explosives were all he thought of. That was why, when the elite Special Forces Command was raised by the government, he was one of the first officers to be posted to Manesar – to head its most elite Special Action Group for clandestine actions behind enemy lines. He had swiftly risen to the rank of colonel.

The new command was modelled on the US Special Forces, and its personnel had been sourced from the special forces of all the three services in India – the Army Para-Commandos, Navy Marine Commandos and the Air Force Garuda. It was the brainchild of the new national security advisor, Ajay Davar, himself a legendary covert operations man and a former head of the Intelligence Bureau. The government had pulled no punches in giving it the very best in men, materials, gadgets and gear. It was designed to track and hunt down enemies of the state as well as top terrorist and insurgent commanders, and act proactively in any contingencies around the periphery of India. It offered the government a whole range of out-of-the-box solutions for provocations from hostile nation states and non-state actors.

This tenure had seen Dusty participate in a series of clandestine and high-risk operations that would have burnt out lesser men. But Dusty seemed to thrive on these high levels of stress. However, these assignments had left him with one affliction – nightmares from which he would often wake up in cold sweat. Nightmares that would make him toss around feverishly and sometimes cry out …

Dusty was dreaming again. He was back in Warwan in north Kashmir – near the holy cave shrine of Amaranth. He could see those mountains again, the majestic peak of the Nun Khun. It was a peak with a brooding mystic presence, and like Mount Kailash or Sinai, a spirit seemed to dwell in its heights. It dominated the landscape of his dreams. It was a powerful symbol of the unconscious – a huge phallic symbol. And then he would see Ayesha, a sight that would make him shudder involuntarily in his sleep.

Born in Warwan, Dr Ayesha Mir was the most beautiful woman Dusty had ever seen. She had a wealth of reddish brown hair that cascaded till her waist, and her unusually tall, sculpted hourglass figure made all the terrorist leaders in that region lust after her like crazed animals. Her beauty had been her greatest curse. Again and again, Dusty would see Kari Hanzala, the district commander of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, raping her. He could see her fighting desperately, digging her nails in his face. Her son had run to his post desperately and told him that Hanzala was at his house. He saw that fight again, with a screaming, half-naked Ayesha snatching a soldier’s rifle and shooting Kari in his chest. She had emptied a whole AK magazine into his quivering, twitching body.

Dusty got up with a start. He was sweating profusely and his heart was pounding painfully. He gulped down a glass of water, shook his head, and stared at his watch. It was 5.30 a.m. Ayesha was in deep trouble wherever she was. He could sense it in his bones. He could sense pain and fear somewhere. Dusty held his face in his palms. Why couldn’t he get this woman out of his system? He sighed deeply. It was too late to go back to sleep. On an impulse, he picked up the remote control and switched on the TV.

‘All contact with Air India flight AI-376 from Kuala Lumpur to New Delhi has been lost since 0140 hours this morning.’

Dusty sat up bolt upright, shocked.

AI-376? Wasn’t that the flight on which Ayesha was returning from her medical convention in Kuala Lumpur? She was transiting to Srinagar and had asked Dusty to pick her up from the Indira Gandhi International Airport today at 9.30 a.m. Her next flight to Srinagar was at 2 p.m., and she had seemed keen to tell him something between the flights. And he was really looking forward to seeing her again.

He raised the volume of the TV. The commentator was now showing a graphic of the aircraft’s route.

‘This is the route the aircraft was taking. The last transmission from the pilot came in at 0120 hours. At about 0140 hours, the radar transponder was switched off. Air Traffic Control officials at Kuala Lumpur tried repeatedly to call the aircraft, but all contact was lost. Aviation experts are trying to extrapolate the path it could have taken beyond this point. There are three possibilities. One, it could have turned northwards over the Bay of Bengal, crossed over into Myanmar or Bangladesh and – thence – via Tibet, landed in Pakistan or Afghanistan, for that was the amount of fuel it had.’

Dusty sucked in his breath sharply. ‘Shit,’ he spluttered.

If that plane lands in Pakistan, the passengers’ lives would be in grave danger. Particularly, the ISI or any of its tanzeems would rip Ayesha apart – piece by piece. He rubbed his chin furiously. This was terrible. That poor thing – she seemed to have such a penchant for getting into trouble – to paraphrase the Chetwoode motto. His mind raced back to Warwan, an extreme corner of Jammu and Kashmir where he had served at one of the most isolated outposts in the Kishtwar Himalayas. That is where he had first run into Ayesha.

Ayesha! How beautiful that woman was. Javed, her lover at the Sher-e-Kashmir Medical College, had left her to join the Hizbul Mujahideen one fine day, almost as if he had just melted away into the mountain mist. News had come in later that he was killed in an encounter with the army. She had been heartbroken. Her parents had forcibly married her off to an elderly Peer who had lost his first wife. Some years later, Ayesha had come to her ancestral home in Warwan to meet her grandmother. That was when Kari Hanzala, the most dreaded Pakistani terrorist commander in that area, had set his eyes on her. He had raped her brutally.

Dusty winced as a flood of memories suddenly overwhelmed him.

The TV commentator’s voice jerked him back to the present.

‘Alternatively, the plane could have turned southwards and flown over the Indian Ocean. Its fuel would have been exhausted somewhere around this part of the ocean, some 2,200 miles from the last point of contact – well off the coast of Australia. This is the deepest part of the ocean.’

That would be kinder. Dusty thought grimly.

He remembered how Ayesha’s young son had come running that night to inform him about Kari Hanzala’s second attempt to rape Ayesha. That Pakistani commander had gone completely berserk over Ayesha. Having raped her once, he had come back for her again – though his aakas, his handlers back in Pakistan, had sternly warned him to refrain from tempting fate by coming back to that village. This time, Kari had been killed, but not before he had strangled her elderly husband. Dusty and his men had rushed to the village, cordoned the house and rescued Ayesha from that fiend. In fact, he had held Ayesha hostage at gunpoint, and Dusty had had to physically grapple with him to free her. Dusty had beaten him to pulp. They had wanted to finish him off, but an angry Ayesha had insisted on shooting him with her own hands. She had killed one of the most important Jaish leaders in north Kashmir. Since then, she had become a marked woman – with every tanzeem in that area baying for her blood.

He shivered as he recalled that scene – the disheveled Ayesha, with just a phiran to hide her nakedness, shrieking in frenzy. She had snatched a soldier’s rifle and riddled that terrorist’s body with bullets. Dusty shook his head, as if it would help him get rid of his memories.

God! If those tanzeems managed to lay their hands on her now, they would mete out a punishment worse than death. Dusty took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the words of the TV commentator. ‘The missing plane could also have gone northwards. This would have taken it over Vietnam and the South China Sea.’

Dusty had to rush to the headquarters of the Special Forces Command in Manesar, and fast. He grabbed a sandwich and flipped channels even as he sipped a cup of hot coffee. On CNN, an American military expert was talking about the missing jetliner. ‘Satellites should have picked up the aircraft. If it had crossed into Myanmar, India or Tibet, military radars should have detected it. Chances are, it has gone south over the Indian Ocean. This is why there has been no radar contact whatsoever.’

His RAX phone rang.

‘Dusty – have you heard the news?’

Dusty stiffened automatically. It was Major General Kamal Khanna, his immediate boss in the Special Forces Command headquarters.

‘Sir,’ he confirmed.

‘Come over to the operations room right away. We have put the 52 Special Action Group on red alert, just in case this turns out to be a case of hijacking. But we are baffled. It doesn’t look like that. In fact, it doesn’t look like anything we have seen before.’

Dusty switched off the TV, zipped up his black commando overalls and pulled on his maroon beret. He grabbed his belt as he ran down.

The olive green army Gypsy was waiting. He jumped in. ‘Jaldi. HQ chalo!’ he said.

Without a word, his driver stepped on the accelerator. As the jeep sped on its way, Dusty’s mind drifted back to that outpost in Kishtwar. Winter had set in, and Ayesha was kept there after the rape. He had later moved her to the medical centre next to the post in Warwan to ensure her safety. She and her son had proved to be intelligence windfall. They had helped them eliminate many top terrorists in that area.

In an involuntary movement, he tried to shake off the thought before noticing his driver’s inquisitive eyes in the rear-view mirror. They crossed the new airfield lined with gigantic C-17 Globemaster and C-130s aircraft that the Special Forces used. The pink sandstone Special Forces Command building loomed before him, protected by a massive wall with concertina coils of barbed wire and spikes. Atop the structure, the flag of the Tri-services Special Forces Command fluttered in the morning breeze.

The armed sentry at the headquarters gate, perched behind sand-bagged sentry posts, waved the jeep down. He peered in, looked at Dusty’s identity card and saluted. He got off and placed his biometric card on the scanner. The slat on the gate jerked back. Unwilling to wait for the lift, he bounded up three flights of stairs to the operations room.

His second-in-command and three staff officers were already there to brief him.

‘So, what do we know?’ he asked.

‘Very little, sir,’ Captain Sanjay Thakur, his intelligence officer, said.

He aimed the laser pointer at the Malacca Straits on the map. ‘This is where all contact with the plane was lost,’ he said.

‘What about our low orbit satellite? Did it pick up anything last night?’

‘Negative, sir. At 0140 hours, it was on the other side of the planet.’

‘What about the military radars in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Vietnam?’

‘Sir, our military attachés in these countries are in touch with their respective armed forces headquarters there. There’s nothing to report so far.’

‘But that is crazy! What in bloody hell happened to the aircraft? A 300-tonne plane like that can’t just vanish into thin air.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully and pored over the digital map. ‘What about the American satellites – they have many more covering this area.’

‘Sir, we have checked with their defence attaché and he says they picked up nothing last night.’

‘The Russians?’

He shook his head.

‘And the Chinese – what about them?’

‘They are saying nothing, sir. As usual.’

‘Did you get in touch with the Western Air Command? Did they pick up anything unusual over Pakistan yesterday?’ Dusty demanded.

‘The aerostats have reported nothing unusual. No AWACs were up last night,’ he said, referring to the airborne early warning and control systems. ‘Now they are – but it is all normal activity so far.’

‘I suppose it would be pointless asking the Pakistanis. As usual, they will deny everything.’

‘Yeah! Their foreign minister was shedding crocodile tears already. He said Pakistan was itself a major victim of terror. The usual crap.’

‘So, where does that leave us?’ Dusty looked around.

‘I am afraid we don’t have a clue. This plane has simply vanished into thin air, sir,’ Thakur said.

‘Damn it! It is not a Piper plane. It is a huge Boeing 747. A plane that size can’t just simply vanish into thin air.’

Dusty was starting to get agitated. ‘I can’t go to the boss with this shit. Please ask the air force boys to come right now. Get Group Captain Suresh Mehndiratta. He used to fly C-130s before he joined us. He should have brighter ideas than you guys. Also bring in the navy commander. Now move it! We don’t have all day.’

They rushed out of the operations room. Dusty switched on the TV monitor in the operations room and flipped channels. None of them seemed to have any useful information on the missing jetliner.

CNN-IBN was giving details of the three possible tracks the airliner could have taken from the point of last contact. NDTV claimed that a Chinese satellite had last noticed it over the Bay of Bengal. Times Now was strident and angry as usual, and its anchor (as well as the nation) wanted to know what had happened to the missing aircraft. ‘Why are there no sky marshals on our flights? When will we learn?’ he demanded passionately. India Today was more analytical. For a change, its anchor – probably because he was an army officer’s son – seemed to have done his homework for the day. Dusty listened attentively.

‘Indications are that the plane has been diverted either to Pakistan or to Herat or Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan.’ Dusty breathed in deeply.

‘God, no!’ he again prayed fervently. ‘That poor woman had suffered enough in this life.’

‘Sir, General Khanna is coming,’ his staff officer said. The staff of the Special Forces Command trooped in and sat down. When the bell rang, they all stood up with alacrity.

General Khanna walked in and motioned them to sit.

‘Gentlemen! I’m just coming from an emergency briefing at the Integrated Defence Staff headquarters. The Americans have told us that one of their satellites has picked up signs of floating debris in the southern quadrant of the Indian Ocean region here – off the coast of Australia.’ He flashed his laser pointer on the map.

‘The Indian Navy has tasked the Destroyer INS Rajput and the Stealth Frigate INS Teer to carry out search operations in this area. The Royal Australian Navy ships are likely to reach there in the next eight to ten hours. But the area we have to search is huge – almost some 3 million square kilometres. It could take many weeks. Meanwhile, the Chinese claimed that one of their satellites may have briefly made contact with the plane over the Bay of Bengal at about 0300 hours this morning. However, they are not sure if it was our aircraft. The surprising thing is that no military radar has picked up