Kitabı oxu: «Kingdom Come»
About the Author
AARTI V RAMAN lives in Mumbai, India and has a degree in mass media from Mumbai University. She has always dreamed of being either a romance writer or a lawyer and decided to pursue a writing career from a very early stage.
Aarti has already published a romantic thriller under the name Aarti V and has more works coming out in 2014. Her favorite dream of writing for Harlequin Mills and Boon has finally come true and she hopes to continue this fantastic relationship with many more love stories and fascinating characters.
Aarti loves to watch movies, TV series and read other romances and travel to different places in order to find a new hero and a new story.
Kingdom Come
Aarti V. Raman
This book is dedicated to
Mom, my own true North
The Big Guy in the Sky
Navneet Bhaiya, because he took us all along to meet the Big Guy. (winks)
Yashesh and Nams. For me, from now on, December will always be yours, guys. Happy Wedding Month, my beautiful, wacky couple. I love you both so much! And Santosh and Kinjal, Gauri and Viraj, whose weddings I couldn’t attend because I am busy with Kingdom Come. I hope this makes up for my absence, guys.
Akshay Kumar, Kit Bale and Edgar Ramirez, all of whom have helped me to mold Krivi’s head and heart and eyes. No, but seriously. Thanks.
Ass Back Home by Gym Class Heroes feat. Neon Hitch. Your song looped, looped my book. Thank you.
And Abby. For the thing in the night. Again.
For all the brave soldiers, known and unknown who defend this fair world against the enemy, both without and within. And for all the women who are strong enough to stand by their sides and give them their hearts.
Four special people need to be simultaneously thanked and dedicated to, so am picking the dedication for them. Pippa Roscoe, Assistant Editor at Harlequin UK, who stuck by me for two long years and didn’t once tell me I sucked at writing Harlequin Romance. And, I finally don’t, Pippa. Amrita Chowdhury, Country Head of Harlequin India, who took a chance on a total unknown because she really believed in my voice. Varsha Naik, yes, you chop my book. But I like the way you do it. Live long and chop more. And lastly, Deepika Singh, Harlequin India marketing director, who followed up with one desperate woman’s desire to be published by the greatest romance publishing house in the world.
You guys have rocked my world.
Thank you
Akshay Kumar, for providing so much inspiration that I just had to write you down. My style.
Edgar Ramirez, for being the intensity I was looking for.
For my mum, dad and lovable, zany family who decided what the heck, let’s go to Kashmir, anyway. I would never have been able to figure out where to set Kingdom Come, if it weren’t for you guys. Thanks a ton.
DCP Randip Dutta of the CRPF and his lovely wife, who were kind enough to give me a glimpse of the hard life of a soldier and the woman who stands by him. Thank you for that, and for the Dal Lake boat ride through cold, driving rain. I can never forget that.
Jaysh. Honey, you are the rock, upon which I stood while writing this one.
Abbas, for being generous and amazing enough to be my OCD. I couldn’t have done this without you. I seriously wouldn’t have.
My entire iPod playlist, every single song was chosen with a very specific purpose.
Dhee, Nams, Suki, Sonu, Pra, VJ, Amitava, Yashesh, Karths, Pooj, Jaysh, Abby, Chitta, Chitti, Bharti Chits, Mom and Dad who didn’t blink an eyelash while encouraging me to aim for the stars. Who didn’t think me less than capable of something like this.
Max, for always being the one that I love.
“How do you kill a man who has no Achilles heel? You cut off his foot.”
—Tom Jones.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Thank you
Epigraph
prologue
STEP ONE: IDENTIFICATION
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
STEP TWO: IDENTIFICATION
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
STEP THREE: DISARMAMENT
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
EPILOGUE
epilogue
Endpages
Copyright
prologue
London
Midnight
January 30, 2008
He had to get out.
Krivi Iyer figured that as long as he had breath, bone, blood left he had to try and get out. That as long as he could still think, still plan, he should get out. He should get out before he snapped. And did something.
Unforgivable.
He ran rhythmically, his feet pounding the pavement. The rivers of sweat running down his back, soaking his body, already drying in the cold night air. He ran on, dreamlessly. Endlessly. There were no thoughts here. No need for thinking. No need for wondering. For what ifs. He didn’t have to be anything here. Not even himself: Krivi Iyer. Krivi didn’t want to be himself ever again.
His Nikes were well-worn, with the tread marks of a long time of usage. His grandmother would have called them scuffed and ruined. His socks were somewhere between the shade of white and pristine white that he tried to aim for when he remembered to do his laundry. The music playing on his mp3 player was pulse-pounding rock. The more noise filled his head, the less his head hurt.
It had been six months now. Six months to the day. And there were no words, no actions, nothing that meant anything to him anymore. They had told him, the price he had to pay for doing what he did: for doing it so well. No one knew, more than him, that what he did always had consequences.
He’d told this countless times to new recruits, to freshers who were cocky when they entered, with a heartless smile and dreams of glory and courage. They didn’t know what price they had to pay for all of it. For the glory, the courage and the dreams.
He dreamed of them sometimes.
The fallen. The ones who had gone away to a deep, dark, dreamless place. He didn’t believe in either heaven or hell. Sometimes he doubted if life or death held meaning for him. But he did believe, absolutely, in right and wrong. In truth. In justice. And in freedom. He believed in choice. He believed that we all got exactly what we wanted, because we chose it. Knowingly, unknowingly.
But Gemma hadn’t chosen anything.
Gemma had no need to pay for anything. Gemma had been bright and cheerful and happy. She’d brought light into his world when he didn’t think he could see anything except black. She’d made him see himself. She’d made him laugh at himself. Gemma had been everything to him. She’d been light and laughter. Sunshine and life. She’d made him see exactly what was missing in his life. What he’d never thought about. Missing her would kill him, he thought while mechanically streaking past the benches at Notting Hill Public Park.
Gemma would laugh no more.
His fear, his anger increased with every step. The dreams that he avoided when he ran, came back to haunt him virulently. And he dropped down on his knees in the middle of the pavement. The concrete grit digging into his skin, making little pores and sticking to his sweaty skin. Rock poured out of ears that should have bled at the appalling noise level. His shoulders were shaking at the abrupt loss of motion.
His hands were shaking too, when he pulled his cell phone out of his shorts pocket and looked uncomprehendingly at the terse text message. His mind was caught up in the past. It was still trapped in a moment where flash and fire and earth exploded. Where worlds stopped and worlds ended. It was caught in a frame of time when a bomb went off in a car and killed not one, not two, but four lives.
Krivi didn’t know how he was going to live with any of it. The ghosts. The fear. The guilt. The anger. The fear of anger. The fear of memories. Everything hurt right now. Even looking at a cell phone display. Sweat was pouring off his face so he could barely read the message.
Application accepted. Briefing in two days. Report to headquarters for further instructions.
A part of his mind that wasn’t wrapped in the hard kernel of grief, understood the words. Knew what to make of them. He hated that part of his mind. The part of his mind that was relief. That rejoiced at one word.
Escape.
Nearly four years later …
On the other side of the world, a man was watching the person who was torturing him play five finger fillet.
The game was simple.
You placed your palm on a flat surface, spread your fingers wide and then started moving the knife point in the spaces between the fingers. Slow, slow, fast, faster and then so fast your movements were an indistinct blur. And you did it without taking your eyes off your opponent.
The man, Raoul, watched the knife flash in a staccato burst that was a silver dizzy motion. Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut. The point flashed back and forth, back and forth until he felt physically sick.
Sick.
He wanted to throw up, but there was nothing inside of him to throw up. He looked at his side of the table, which was a disgusting mass of sick, saliva and blood. Raoul felt more bile rise up in his throat as he saw the mess.
“If you vomit again, I will make you eat it, Raoul,” his torturer said in a perfectly pleasant voice.
Raoul’s chest heaved as he tried to settle his nausea and escape out of the bonds he was tied in. He was only successful with the first.
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
one
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.”
He turned to the gunnysack-covered contraption where the wire that had tied Alina’s legs disappeared under. He removed the gunnysack carefully knowing any movement could be fatal, trickily fatal.
Bombs were like that.
It wasn’t a very smartly made IED (improvised explosive device). There was a black cylinder with three different wires protruding out of it, and a small pin held the mouth of the cylinder shut. A few sticks of C4 were strapped to the outer body of the cylinder, as if to underline the point of an explosion and the three wires, all yellow, ran to a point under the wall and then disappeared.
“Now we know why they left no guards,” he murmured, almost to himself.
“Yeah,” Recon one, John, agreed.
He smiled reassuringly at the girl and said something too low for Krivi to hear. But Alina smiled and let him reach for a clean piece of cloth and wipe her face with it.
Krivi focused all his attention on the IED. It was a pretty standard bomb, with a decent-sized blast radius given the amount of C4 wrapped around the cylinder and det cord that were designed to confuse and fluster and a trigger mechanism that was probably pressure-controlled, rather than remote-controlled.
Hence, the lock on the girl.
He unsnapped a pair of pliers and carefully removed the main firing pin from the mouth of the cylinder and laid it on the floor. He looked at the wire that disappeared into the wall and knew there was no way they could remove it all out without setting off the pressure mechanism on the trigger, even though he hadn’t even seen the trigger yet.
There was no other way to it.
Krivi unsnapped his throwing knife, a tiny thing with a blade so sharp it could slice the hide of an elephant, and started severing the C4 from the cylinder. It took moments, because they’d just tied the packets to the outside with cords. That done, he carefully wrapped the explosive in tarp and placed it in his backpack that recon two took away immediately.
Half the firepower was gone right there.
Now he turned his attention to the girl, who was somehow miraculously calm.
“Alina.”
She looked at him with a small smile and he froze infinitesimally. A girl in her position should not have been smiling. It was why he couldn’t understand humans at all, any more.
“Will you let me look at the lock now?”
She nodded and John, recon one, carefully pushed all her hair to the front while she presented him with her nape.
It was taped to her neck. The three wires came out of the wall and ended in a tiny device that was locked together with a padlock. The reading on the device read forty-five kgs. The girl’s weight. Any more and she would blow them all up. He couldn’t touch the thing without setting it off. And he couldn’t touch the wires without setting it off.
“The lock,” recon one said.
Krivi looked up, nodded approval. The lock could be reached from the top. If he was careful enough and steady enough, he could then, maybe, gain the three seconds required to sever the connection from the girl.
Big maybe.
“All right. Get out,” he said.
Recon one shook his head.
“That’s an order.”
“Not following it, Boss.”
“Bastard.” But it was said without any heat and made Alina smile. Krivi smiled at her too, a flash of white on a betel-brown face and said, “That’s a bad word. Don’t use that in front of your dad, OK? And don’t tell him I used it either.”
“OK.” She smiled again.
“I need you to hold absolutely still, Alina. Totally still.”
“Like the statue, right?”
He nodded.
Krivi unfolded to a kneeling position and crawled right beside Alina. Recon one stood back and watched as his leader inspected the tiny device and the lock over it.
It was going to be delicate as a surgery, getting to the lock without touching the trigger mechanism or the wires. But John also knew if there was any man alive who could do it, it was Krivi. The man had ice water for blood and a brain that was blade-sharp and just as deadly under pressure.
Krivi removed a cigarette from his pocket and looked at it for a second. He smiled, a strange, weird smile and put it back in his pocket.
John watched as Krivi stooped over Alina’s head, his breathing rock-steady and his hands steadier as he used a pair of picks and went to work on the lock. He twisted one, and it stuck in the place of the key, then he used the other one, without moving the position of the lock which wasn’t easy at all, to snick the lock open.
It worked after three seconds of quiet breathing and absolute, deafening silence.
The lock opened with an audible snick and the pressure mechanism moved. Alina breathed deeply, her shoulders shaking and Krivi snapped the lock back, but not all the way back to lock it.
Recon one breathed easy and shared a grim look with Krivi.
“Alina?” Krivi said.
“Yes, Krivi?”
“I am going to remove the lock now, all the way out and I want you to leap into John’s strong arms and just hold on, OK? He’s going to run really, really fast and take you out of here. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“John, you ready to take my girl out?”
John’s lips tightened but he said easily, “Alina’s my girl, Krivi. Don’t poach.”
“We’ll see, Johnny Boy. We’ll let Alina decide. Right, Alina?”
She giggled, but didn’t nod her head. She was aware of the lock on the back of her head.
“On the count of three,” he said quietly, looking at recon one. Recon one nodded slightly, because he got it. There was a growing chance that Krivi was not going to make it out in time, but there was not a damn thing he could do about it right now.
“Boss,” was all he said.
“One.” Krivi’s steady hand went to the lock. “Two.” He flicked it open, sliding it out and pushing Alina away in one motion.
“Three.”
John snatched the girl and ran straight and true, without a backward glance.
Krivi didn’t spare them a glance either, he held the pressure mechanism gingerly as a timer started counting down the seconds. He had twenty seconds before he cut the wrong wire and blew himself to kingdom come.
“Five,” he murmured, measuring the position of the wires from the detonator. All three yellow wires ended in a tangle, so he wasn’t sure anyway that he wasn’t going to be blown up.
“Eight.”
He picked one out and held his pliers over it.
“Twelve.” He picked the next one out and his fingers trembled in a fine reaction. He steadied his hand and cut the wire. The timer stopped its deathly countdown. And he placed the pressure mechanism detonator down as carefully as if it was still alive.
He pushed the earbud on once.
“Hot load is cold. I repeat, hot load is cold. Coming out now. How’s the girl? She all right?”
There was no answer from the other end for a minute. And he waited, while sweat poured off his face in rivulets, even though the temperature inside the cave was close to five degrees. The black paint he’d worn had run off, washed by his perspiration and his hand was steady again as he pushed the pliers back into his Army knife kit and shoved it into his pocket.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“Get the fuck out of there. Now.”
Krivi chuckled, a strange ghostly sound in a tomb.
“Yeah. Roger that.”
Then he slung his weapon on again and walked out, as calmly as he had come in. In the five minutes that he had told his teammates he would.
The team was lodged in Holiday Inn, paid for by a very grateful Mr. Gujjar who was probably placing an armored tank around his kid round about now. The whiskey was flowing freely in John’s room, which was Party Central. And the sounds of raucous male laughter could be heard two floors down. John walked out of his room and rapped on a door two doors down. The door opened a crack. Krivi still in his fatigues, with the shirt off, stood at the entrance.
“Come on out to the land of the living,” he invited.
“No,” Krivi said. “Thank you.”
“You did a good thing there today, Boss.”
Krivi’s face remained impassive. “We all did our jobs, John. Now go. Have some fun.” His lips twitched but his eyes remained the same. Black and flat, with not much to read in them. In fact, nothing at all to read in them. “Go on out to the land of the living.”
John smiled and tipping his head once, went back the way he’d come. It was a futile hope to think the boss would come and join in the revelry when he hadn’t done so once in all the years that John had known him. John understood death, the awful pressure of it and the horror of it. But every time he saw Krivi Iyer, he was reminded of something worse than seeing death firsthand. He was reminded of war victims who couldn’t understand life or death because neither made sense to them. Then, he stopped thinking about his boss and tossed a shot back and partied because he’d escaped his fate again.
Back in his room, Krivi stripped down to his skivvies and roamed the hotel room like a caged animal. He gave a fleeting thought to joining his men, but dismissed the thought immediately. He didn’t know how to laugh and horse around and pretend that everything was A-OK just because they had cheated death tonight. This time. This party would go on for hours, because they were all getting a hefty bonus for getting the girl out and recovering the money too.
All in a day’s work for K&R experts.
But he wasn’t a kidnapping and ransom specialist. He wasn’t even team leader because he wanted to lead a bunch of decent, strong men down dark tunnels or into dangerous situations, being responsible for their lives. Most of these men had families, wives and children: the whole enchilada. They carried around pictures in their wallets and had emails and scheduled phone calls when they were in rotation for missions. He didn’t know how to relate to them. He had no one. No pictures in wallets or emails from loved ones or scheduled phone calls.
He only had an awful, empty blackness that sometimes got filled when he stared sure death in the eye and understood today was the day he would die. Today was the day he would die. When Gemma had died along with Joe and the unborn baby, he might as well have died with them.
He didn’t know how to live anymore, because he literally had nothing to live for. His family, the ones still surviving, had long since lost hope on the brooding, dark man he had become. And it had been months since he had even spoken to his parents. For all intents and purposes, he was all alone. Just the way he liked it.
He was here in India, his birthplace, and he knew there were relatives scattered in various cities who would love for him to visit. Aunts, uncles and second cousins who his parents were regularly in touch with through the wonders of modern technology, back in their little farm in Surrey. But he didn’t feel the need to reconnect with family or his birthplace, even though he was home. He was alone and that was best.
Alone meant safety.
He stopped at the window and looked out over the white-tipped mountain ranges which were particularly beautiful in twilight. At that moment before day changed into night and everything was just slightly out of focus. Krivi smiled. It was weird. He was noticing the sunset and the beauty. Maybe coming home had not been the worst idea of all. And India, no matter how long ago he’d left it, was still home. His motherland, even though his passport was British.
He placed his hands on the sill and leaned out, deeply breathing in the unadulterated, mountainous air. Breathed in life. Sometimes, it was the only thing that mattered.
Life.
And tonight, there was a little girl who was sleeping safe in her own bed with her parents around her, standing guard over her dreams. Safe from all the monsters who roamed this world, looking for easy, pluckable prey. She probably had years of therapy ahead of her to recover from this ordeal, but she was alive and she was unharmed and that was the only thing that mattered.
He closed his eyes and reached for the cigarette he’d placed in his shirt pocket. He used a match and lit it, blowing smoke deep in his lungs and letting it out into the pure mountain air. Watched the gray smoke pass on, ethereal and wispy, getting lost in the little flurry of snow that began to fall on the Holiday Inn. He’d smoked half his cigarette when there was a peculiar beeping from his bag.
Krivi straightened instantly, on animal alert. He crossed to the bag he’d placed on the dressing table and extracted a bulky instrument that vaguely resembled a cellular phone. A satellite phone with the latest scrambler codes that bounced between at least three satellites, if he wasn’t wrong. This phone was the only way he could call his family and be completely untraceable.
He pressed a button and said, very quietly, “Iyer.”
“Hello, Krivi, my boy. You’ve been a hard man to track.”
Krivi sat down on the bed abruptly.
“Harold,” he said, shortly. “How did you find me?”
Harold Wozniacki, Assistant Director of Operations, MI5, laughed gregariously, a jarring sound that echoed in the hotel room. Krivi winced and listened to his blast from the past laugh as if he hadn’t laughed in years. All his pleasure in the moment, the evening, was gone.
The cigarette in his hand had burned down to more than three-quarters and he flicked it out the window with an accurate throw. It wasn’t the decent thing to do but he couldn’t care about butt disposal right now.
“What do you want, Harold?” he asked, when there was a break in the laughter.
“Should I answer the first question, my boy?”
Krivi shook his head. “No. What do you want, Harold? Whatever it is, the answer’s no. You know that.”
“Hey, maybe my kid has been kidnapped and I need you to rescue her. Defuse a bomb or two along the way,” Harold rejoined, full of joie de vivre.
“You have a son, Harold. And he is in the Army. If someone has taken him, they would have already lost a limb or two. Or their head.”
Harold must have spread his tentacles wide to get this much current intel on him. Probably even called in a few favors.
“I thought you would have forgotten all about me by now, Krivi.”
“I never forget, Harold. You know that.”
There was a beat of silence and then Harold exhaled. “What do you know about The Woodpecker?”
“The bird? Not much.” But he sat up straighter. “Why do you ask, Harold?”
“A series of bombings in Benghazi,” Harold answered instantly. “Car bombs. IEDs, with circuitry fucked up so badly it would have taken a rat to clear it. Remote detonation on start-up. Semtex and plastique as primary explosives, with marble shrapnel. Recognize it?”
Krivi felt cold, colder than he’d felt in four years. His vision sharpened, his breath slowed, his heart slowed. He gripped the phone so tight, his knuckles showed veins.
“What are you saying, Harold?”
“You know what I am saying, Krivi. Come back, and you can find the son of a bitch who took out Joe and Gemma.”
“No.”
The word was short and cold.
“Come back, Krivi. The Woodpecker is a dangerous entity. No fear, no consequences. But no one can catch him because there are rumors about identity, no one can confirm. Gun for hire type and with no moral compass to guide him, from the looks of things. People are getting hurt, Krivi. You can help stop that.”
His other hand clenched in a fist. His short nails dug into the skin of his palms.
“No, Harold. Goodbye.”
“Krivi, there’s a face and features match, eyes, skin color, mom’s date of death and DOB with a civilian. Ninety percent chance of siblings. That’s a huge chance for someone we haven’t ever seen. We need confirmation and you can get it for us. The female is in India, in Kashmir. Transport wouldn’t be a problem for you. You can nail The Woodpecker.”
“It’s a fucking awful codename for a terrorist.”
Harold chuckled weakly. The sound seemed wrong in the conversation they were having.
Krivi loosened his grip on the phone. Looked at the blinking red light that indicated call active on the satellite phone. He thought about the last four years and the six months before that. He thought about all those days and nights when he had sat and thought about nothing else but finding the person responsible for killing his soul.
“I pull the trigger,” he said.
“Now, Krivi—”
“I come back, I do your ID, I catch the bastard and I pull the trigger and watch the life bleed out of him. Do we have a deal?”
“Krivi, I don’t think—”
“Goodbye, Harold.” He made to press the end call button.
“Goddammit. Wait.”
Krivi waited.
“Fine. You come back, run the op and we will see where we end up. Deal?”
“I come back, run the op, ID the female, find out her connection to him and when we get the bastard; I put a bullet between his eyes. Deal.”
Harold Wozniacki was a smart man. He knew when to weigh his options and he knew when to hedge his bets. He also knew that Krivi Iyer was the best man for the job because there was no one else with his unique skill set. And that skill set included, cold, purposeful, lethal vengeance.
Harold sighed.
“You always were a stubborn bull, my boy. Fine. Come back and we have a deal.”
Krivi smiled. And it was a terrible thing to see. “Good. Send me the details at the—”
“Holiday Inn, Ladakh. Yeah, I know.”
Krivi shook his head, the call ended. And every muscle in his body loosened just as his brain sharpened.
The Woodpecker. It was an awful name for a cold-blooded murderer. But there was no name suitable enough for a monster like that. And he was going to kill this monster and pay his blood debt once and for all. Maybe, he could even die in the process. Maybe, God would be that kind.
If ever there was a God.
Krivi took out his cellphone, the one provided by his employers and punched in speed dial two.
When his boss picked up he said, very briefly, very clearly, “Jim. Krivi Iyer. Yeah, everything went down OK. The girl’s OK. I am calling to let you know I am done. I quit.”
Jim asked something and Krivi answered, “Why? Just something I have to take care of. No, not a woman. I quit, Jim. You can wire the rest of my funds to Ladakh. Thanks.”
two
Srinagar
India
May 2012
Ziya Maarten had never looked forward to early mornings, till she came to Srinagar, the heartland of some of the most beautiful country she had ever seen. She’d done the Euro backpacking trip, fresh out of school, saving up for her grand adventure when other girls her age had been trying out graduation day dresses and making out with their boyfriends in shady corners.
Ziya had worked two jobs, as a library helper and a waitress at a trendy Soho café, in order to see the Eiffel Tower, Pisa, the Coliseum and the sandy beaches of Corfu. Kids who bounced from foster home to foster home, learnt the value of being grounded to places rather than people early on in life. Places that you had been to, places that you dreamed about, were something else altogether. They were permanent. They were forever.
People, on the other hand were so much more inconvenient to love. People came and went. More often than not, they left you. And she’d experienced more loss in her twenty-nine years than she’d wanted. Ergo, she’d traveled extensively and wide, as a troubleshooter for an organic chemical fertilizer company that operated out of England and had ties in China.
Ziya had worked hard after high school too, getting into Trinity, which was no mean feat and then getting her business admin degree from the London School of Economics. All on scholarship. Because foster kids were really on their own after age eighteen. And, it had been a stroke of luck that she had become roommates with the most interesting creature in Trinity, who was waiting for the love of her life to finish his Army training.
Noor Saiyed, a Kashmiri princess who had only spent the summers in India till her twenty-seventh birthday which fell this year, had simply refused to let Ziya be alone. She had cajoled and laughed and giggled and drunk her way into Ziya’s life, until they really were Best Friends Forever. Last year she’d given those goofy, tacky, matching BFF bracelets to Ziya as a gag gift. And this, from a woman with an IQ in the triple digits, and who had made the Dean’s List all four years of her undergrad as a literature major at Trinity. Ziya couldn’t hold out against someone with so much love and sunniness and eternal optimism, even though Noor was as impulsive as Ziya was methodical and pragmatic.
And, when Noor, had told Ziya that one of her distant relatives had an interesting job opening back in Kashmir, managing a fairly large estate and the various business concerns that made up Goonj Enterprises, one of which was manufacturing cricket bats, the most popular sport in the sub-continent, Ziya had been hard-pressed to not at least give the interview a fair shot. And she had flown into Srinagar Airport, after a connecting journey filled with innumerable delays.
Ziya had been fully prepared to turn down the job, because she didn’t think she was suited to just settle down in one place, no matter how interesting and challenging the running of it was.
She had not counted on Kashmir. Her first view of the mountains that ringed the hilly terrain of Srinagar had made her catch her breath. Her second view of the Dal Lake, totally frozen in winter, with the houseboats moored in for the duration like soldiers hunkering down for the long haul, had clutched at her heart. And she’d wanted this job, the managing of an estate she knew almost nothing about, with a desperation that still worried her.
Kashmir was a place, you could love a place.
But, she loved Goonj too. The house of wood and stone, set high up in the hills, overlooking the lake, which flickered like a bright jewel on a clear spring night that she could see down her bedroom window. The challenging job of overseeing the different business interests of the Akhtar family, all of whom were settled in other parts of the world and wanted nothing to do with the house and the business.
And Dada Akhtar.
Grandpa.
Ziya sighed as she looked out her bedroom window and saw Dada Akhtar puttering around with his beloved rose bushes, his tiny gardening scissors going snip-snip on the bad leaves. His beady eyes large behind the gigantic glasses he wore with obvious pride. He was nearing eighty, a retired military man, who was now content with looking after his roses and holding court over his family when they deigned to visit him.
He was the grandfather she’d never had.
Ziya pressed a hand against the chilled glass of her window and called out, “Good morning, Dadaji.”
Dada Akhtar, still spry and having all of his senses whipped his head up and smiled a wrinkled smile at the woman he already considered his newest granddaughter. Mostly because she loved Goonj almost as much as he did. It was home. When he died, it would his resting place. Laid to rest next to his beloved wife Saira, underneath an apple tree in the very first orchard that his grandfather had planted with his own hands.
“Good morning, Ziya. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
Ziya smiled, pushed a swathe of tousled hair away from her face and answered, “Absolutely, Da. Still in love with your roses?”
He held the pair of scissors in a kind of salute and touched one vivid, blood-red bloom with something close to reverence. “As much as I love you, baby girl.”
She laughed, shook her head and was about to close the window when he called out her name.
“Yes?”
Dada Akhtar smiled, a crafty glint in his still-sharp eyes. “Krivi’s coming over for breakfast. I think he has the figures for the new venture you were talking about.”
Ziya caught herself before her smile slipped and irritation took its place. There was no reason to be irritated, therefore she wasn’t. The logic always worked for her. She nodded and said, “I’ll set an extra place for him then.”
She shut the window on Dada Akhtar’s boom of knowing laughter, as if watching Ziya squirm was a source of particular amusement for him. She tied her blond highlighted hair back in a tiny stub, because it barely brushed her shoulders as it is. Less maintenance, less hassle she’d always claimed. But secretly, she was vain enough to know that short hair went particularly well with her face and accentuated her best features while minimizing her flaws.
Now, padding into the bathroom just off her bedroom, she examined that same face while brushing her teeth diligently. It was an average kind of face, with great cheekbones, pale gray eyes, a too-wide mouth and a stub of a nose that looked a little out of place with the rest of the features. She had a nose ring, a tiny clip-on that she wore sometimes and Noor claimed it gave her a fey quality that attracted men in droves. She didn’t know about the fey thing or the droves, because she rarely had time for either of them.
The rest of her wasn’t that bad either, she conceded as she showered rapidly. Nice legs, thank God, and a figure that was curved but with a tendency to go to fat if she didn’t watch out. So she watched out and ate sparingly when she could and binged when she couldn’t resist the temptation anymore.
Besides, work at Goonj meant a lot of walking, even sprinting in some cases. Spring was the best time to get a lot of traveling and work done, because it ended so quickly. And she had several inspections scheduled over the next few weeks over the fields and the cricket bat manufacturing plant and the lumber lot too. The lumber union was demanding a renegotiation of their contract and that was one particular headache she was eager to solve.
Her plate was full, and breakfast had to be made for five people. So, why was she wondering about her decidedly unsexy body in the middle of her shower?
Him, the answer came to her mind immediately.
Krivi Iyer, the new manager who Bashir Akhtar Salman had hired to help her with the management of the estate. She hadn’t been present at his interview. All she knew was that he’d shown up one day in a battered Jeep with a duffel bag full of clothes and unreadable black eyes. He’d arrived six months ago, and they’d barely spoken ever since.
She got on well with people as a rule, it had been drummed into her in B-School, and before that in her various foster homes, the early ones … when she’d tried so hard to be the kid, the one kid they would keep and not send back after six months or a year or two weeks. Agreeability was a learned nature for her.
Yet, she couldn’t make herself look Krivi Iyer in the eyes long enough to make herself agreeable to him. And he, strangely enough, kept to himself too. They never spoke unless there was a business matter to attend to. Sometimes she’d even wondered if he was all there in the head, then she would look into those pitch-dark eyes and know. He was all there in the head all right. He just looked through her. So she made an effort to ignore him as thoroughly and effortlessly as he ignored her, and the plan was working splendidly.
Ziya dressed in jeans and a pullover, ran a brush through her now-free hair and without a trace of makeup, walked downstairs to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Her Google Nexus smartphone, which had been Dada Akhtar’s welcome to Goonj present for her, was already in her hand and she was running through her schedule for the day.
She again blessed Da, as she did every time she punched in keys on her cute-yet-edgy cell phone and smiled fondly as she ticked off making breakfast on her to-do list.
Goonj was laid out in a typical Indian manor house fashion. There was the huge living room which also served as the dining room when the occasion warranted it and the kitchen next to it, with the mudroom just off the back of it. A simple wooden staircase led to the two upper floors, where all the bedrooms and Dada Akhtar’s study and office were.
Ziya’s own rooms were on the second floor because Dada Akhtar had insisted a single girl like her was not staying by herself in the gamekeeper’s cottage, just at the edge of the gardens that surrounded Goonj.
The cottage had been unoccupied till six months ago, when Krivi Iyer had arrived and parked his second-hand Jeep and duffel bag there. Till date, Ziya had found reasons to never visit him at his own place.
Any off-hours business that had to be conducted was done either over the phone or in Dada Akhtar’s home office.
Ziya shook her head and muttered, “Stop acting like a sixteen-year-old ninny.” And entered the kitchen.
“Well, honey, talking to yourself is considered an evolved form of ninny-ness,” a sexy female voice drawled from the inside.
Ziya chuckled and reached for the coffee pot before addressing the comment and its maker.
Noor, dressed only in shorts and a tank top, sexy, sleepy attire with an opened hot pink hoodie thrown on for fashion as much as modesty, raised her coffee mug in a toast. She had the kind of face that stopped traffic. Heart-shaped, with sharp, green eyes that could turn sultry or throw daggers, and a mouth that was made for sex. That with a killer body that she dressed to maximum effect. She could have been a supermodel but she had chosen academia as her calling.
“Just because you are an Oxford scholar doesn’t mean you can make words up, my dear.”
She fired up the gas and placed the iron skillet on it, dropping in a healthy pat of butter while she scrounged the refrigerator for eggs. Scrambled eggs were a morning staple around here. She glanced over her shoulder at Noor who cradled her mug for warmth. “You want?”
Noor shuddered, and the sweatshirt slipped a little to show one tanned shoulder. “No way. That much carbs in the morning will make me a beached whale and then I won’t look hot at my wedding. And, hey, ninny-ness is too a word. I can prove it to you.” Noor took the English language more seriously as the season’s latest fashion.
Ziya broke open the eggs and mixed in the milk, salt and pepper, and the chopped tomatoes and onions which were already frozen in a Tupperware box. She added them and sliced a green chili open right down the middle and added that too. Whisked everything together and poured it over the skillet.
“Don’t just sit there, my beached whale,” she said mildly. “Pop the bread in the toaster, would you? Make extra. Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult.”
Noor laughed; a husky sound and whistled. “Ooh! Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult, is he?”
Ziya didn’t bother to answer her best friend. So Noor singsonged, “Ziya and Krivi sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Ziya removed a toasted bread slice from the pile Noor was adding to, and stuffed it in her opened mouth. Noor’s lovely green eyes rounded in indignation and she munched on the slice before she removed it with a sputter.
“That was low, Zee.”
“Really? It looked pretty justified to me.”
Noor’s toast dropped out of her hands as she squealed and turned around to the man who’d just spoken.
Ziya watched indulgently, affectionately as her best friend launched herself on the military-uniform-clad man who’d come in through the mudroom. He topped at about six feet, and was leanly muscled as befit an officer of the Indian Army, and he had drop-dead good looks and hazel eyes that complemented Noor’s own beauty.
She was kissing him quite enthusiastically, winding her long legs around his lean waist. And he kissed her back, pressing her closer to him for just a second, a second too long before he slid her off his body.
Noor grinned back at Ziya.
“Look what the cat dragged in, Zee.”
“I thought it was your irresistible lure that brought me here, baby,” Major Sameth Qureshi murmured, as he brushed a tender hand over his beloved’s tumbled hair. He made himself move away from her, even though it was becoming increasingly difficult to move away, to stay away, when all he wanted was forever with her. But, the life of an Army man’s wife was not for Noor Saiyed, impending PhD from Oxford. And he didn’t know how he could let her go either.
Right now, that beauty queen face softened into pure beauty that shone from her untarnished soul, through those eyes he saw in his dreams. Noor, who had never known true loss or unhappiness for a single minute of her sheltered life. And, if he had his way, she never would.
“I didn’t want to give myself that much credit. Zee would accuse me of having a bloated head,” she stage-whispered.
“Zee doesn’t have to accuse,” Ziya pointed out dryly. “She already knows about your bloated head, honey. Morning, Sam. You staying for breakfast too, I suppose?”
Sam nodded and stepped fully back from Noor. He dragged his eyes away from her face and smiled at Ziya. A big brother smile. Ziya Maarten was the best friend a girl could have, and she was the closest thing he had to a sister. He worried about her, as much as he admired her for her drive and grit to simply forge ahead and get things done.
“Morning, Ziya. Yes, I came here for your breakfast actually. Not Noor’s supposed lures,” he added with a wink.
Noor rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm before strolling away to pour him coffee. Ziya followed Sam’s eyes as they watched his girlfriend with a kind of helpless fascination she’d always found vaguely pathetic.
“You two are a riot, aren’t you?” Noor sulked as she dumped the mug in Sam’s surprised hands.
Ziya leaned down and picked up the fallen bread slice and gave her a wry look. “You make it so easy, honey. How can we resist? Right, Sam?”
Sam dropped a kiss on top of Noor’s head and slid into a chair next to her. “If I answer that, she will skin me alive.”
Noor brightened and leaned into Sam and said, “Nope. If you answer that, I will make you marry me.”
Sam’s dark eyes shuttered and his face hardened into the soldier that he was. “We have discussed this already, Noor and—”
“We didn’t discuss anything,” she cut in icily, while Ziya fanned the gas flame higher in an effort to drown out the conversation. “You just nixed the idea before we could ever discuss it, Sam.”
“Noor, I told you already, the Army is my career. And it’s a dangerous one, a terrible one. I can’t stand to have you waiting for me when I go to war.”
Noor’s face took on a pugnacious look. Even though they’d had this same argument, practically every day since she’d come back three months ago in order to claim him. Thirty-one, in the Rulebook of Noor, was the right time for a bachelor to settle down. And she was damn well not going to celebrate another birthday as a single woman.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
