A MISSING JET, A TERROR PLOT PLOT, A RACE AGAINST TIME

MAELSTROM RISING Major General G.D. Bakshi (retd) is a combat veteran of many skirmishes on the Line of Control and counter-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab. He commanded his battalion in active operations in Kargil and was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal. Later, he commanded a Rashtriya Rifles brigade in counterterrorist operations in Kishtwar and earned the Sena Medal. He finally commanded the famous Romeo Force in the J&K districts of Rajouri and Poonch, considered to be hotbeds of terrorists. He served two tenures at the prestigious Directorate General of Military Operations (during Operation Pawan and Operation Vijay). He appears regularly on news channels as a commentator on defence issues and is a prolific writer on matters military and non-military. He is also the author of The Siege of Warwan, a novel.

MAELSTROM RISING G. D. BA K SHI

HarperCollins Publishers India

First published in India in 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers India A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India www.harpercollins.co.in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Copyright © G.D. Bakshi 2016 P-ISBN: 978-93-5177-242-2 E-ISBN: 978-93-5177-243-9 This is a work of fiction with some parts based on historical fact. All situations, incidents, dialogue and characters in this novel, with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. They are not intended to depict actual events or people or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. G.D. Bakshi asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Typeset in 11.5/14.5 Fournier MT Std by R. Ajith Kumar

Dedicated to all ranks of 50 (I) Para Brigade and the Maldivian Defence Forces who took part in Operation Cactus to rescue the Maldives from the coup of Abdullah Luthufi and his terrorists of PLOTE in November 1988

CONTENTS

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

The Missing Jetliner The Search On Letting Go Why Is There No Storm in Your Ocean? Ghazwa-e-Hind: The Final Battle for India An Arms Merchant Is Reborn The Child Prostitutes of Pattaya The Maldives: A Pearl in the Ocean The Great Gambler The Arms Deal Ground Reconnaissance The First Operation The Broken Arrow The Lovesick Moron Shakila’s Insight On Going to Gan A Soldier Scorned The Four Horsemen The Broken Arrow Moves

1 14 19 23 32 37 42 54 63 70 76 85 96 101 106 111 117 129 138

viii

Contents

20. The Coup Begins 21. Horsemen of the Apocalypse 22. Operation Tri-Shakti 23. Never Let You Go 24. The Kill 25. The Rescue 26. The Coup Is Crushed 27. The Battle of Gan 28. The Resignation 29. On Running Amok 30. Liberation

143 151 161 173 183 187 193 203 214 217 224

Acknowledgements 228

1 THE MISSING JETLINER 13 September, 0530 hours: Special Forces Command officers’ mess, Manesar

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.

THE HIGH YOU GET

1

2

G.D. Bakshi

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

maelstrom rising

3

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 outof-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.

4

G.D. Bakshi

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.

maelstrom rising

5

‘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

6

G.D. Bakshi

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.’

maelstrom rising

7

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

From a veteran of the army’s counter-terrorist operations, an action-packed sequel to The Siege of Warwan ‘All contact with flight AI-376 from Kuala Lumpur to New Delhi has been lost since 0140 hours.’

Colonel Dusty Bharadwaj of the Special Forces is waiting for Dr Ayesha Mir, whom he first met while serving in Kashmir, when news breaks that the aircraft she is travelling on has disappeared. Ayesha, as deadly as she is ravishing, had once killed a Pakistani terrorist commander and helped Dusty’s team eliminate a number of militants in the Warwan Valley. If the plane has been hijacked, Dusty fears she will not be spared. Even as the mystery of the missing jetliner deepens, Dusty is summoned by the national security advisor and sent on a secret mission to the Maldives. If rogue elements in the military in cahoots with the ISIS take over, the coup brewing in the island nation can be devastating for India. But what Dusty stumbles upon is much more menacing: the missing aircraft and a plot to wipe out Mumbai. The premise – born out of a scenario-generation exercise that has the ISIS taking terrorism to extremes – is chillingly plausible. In the vein of Tom Clancy’s novels, Maelstrom Rising is realistic right up to its nail-biting finish.

MAJ. GEN. G.D. BAKSHI (RETD)

` 299

Cover design Pinaki De Cover photograph Kishorej (Dreamstime.com) www.harpercollins.co.in f HarperCollinsIndia t @HarperCollinsIN

ISBN 978-93-5177-242-2

THRILLER