The Endgame Read online

  For my sons Ammar and Zain,

  the real superheroes of my life

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Author’s Note

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  Although he had never figured out why, Vikrant Singh had always loved the sound of church bells.

  As the bells at Mount Carmel Church in Bandra started tolling, Vikrant found himself shutting out the feedback from his earpiece as well as the noise of traffic from the busy road outside. For a few seconds, it was only him and the church bells.

  Sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the church, a flesh-coloured wireless earpiece crackling intermittently in his left ear, Vikrant sipped his strong black coffee and waited for the signal.

  No passer-by could have guessed that the casually dressed man was a deputy inspector general with the Research and Analysis Wing. He was dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans, with an overshirt to hide his 9mm pistol tucked in the back of his waist. Another smaller handgun rested snugly in an ankle holster on his right leg, and his sling bag had three extra clips of ammunition for each gun.

  Five days ago, Somesh Kumar, a special director general with the Border Security Force, had announced his decision to come to Mumbai. In a purely precautionary measure, as Kumar’s visit was announced at very short notice, Vikrant, along with his reporting head, Additional Director General Shahwaz Ali Mirza, was instructed to ensure his security.

  Kumar had come to visit former Prime Minister Parmeshwar Naidu, who had been admitted to the ICU at Lilavati Hospital with multiple injuries following a car accident six days earlier. Naidu had finished his term a year ago and was staying with his daughter Vaishali in Mumbai. The doctors at the hospital had hinted that he might not make it.

  Vikrant sighed.

  Concealed cleverly in the strap of his wristwatch was a tiny microphone that allowed him to communicate with his five team members, who were spread out evenly around the hospital.

  Bringing his mic close to his mouth, he asked for a status report in a low voice.

  As the reports came in one by one from each of his team members, Vikrant once again found himself thinking about Kumar’s visit.

  Despite the short notice, Vikrant thought they were well prepared. He and his five teammates, all in civilian clothes, had been waiting there ever since Kumar had reached the hospital half an hour ago. As for Mirza, Vikrant was sure he was around but had no idea where.

  Each of the RAW members had an ID card tucked away, which was to be used only in extreme cases. This meant that on the off-chance that Kumar was attacked, they would have to make sure the IDs were around their necks before they drew their own guns.

  ‘No one knows our faces. The local cops have just been told that we’re here. If things go south, those IDs are what will save us from being shot down by our own people,’ Mirza had said in the pre-operation briefing.

  Absently, Vikrant slipped a hand into his bag and touched his ID, just to make sure it was there, while his eyes roamed over the road in front of him, trying to locate Mirza.

  It was something of a game between the mentor and the protégé. Mirza was known for his ability to assume disguises right from the day he had been a young field agent and he had lately started training Vikrant to do the same.

  ‘Think as outrageous as you can,’ Mirza would say. ‘And by outrageous, I don’t mean red-coloured trousers. The disguise you choose should be something your adversary – or anyone else for that matter – would never think of.’

  ‘Icarus on the move,’ Vikrant’s earpiece crackled and he instinctively stiffened.

  ‘Copy,’ he whispered into his watch, gulped down the last of his coffee, picked up his pack of cigarettes and slowly walked out of the coffee shop. At the entrance, he slipped a cigarette between his lips and lit it.

  It took over three minutes – during which time Vikrant imagined Kumar walking from Naidu’s room to the elevator, riding down to the parking area and then walking to his bulletproof vehicle – before the next report came in.

  ‘Wheels rolling.’

  Smoothly, Vikrant brought his right hand up to take a puff and whispered an acknowledgement into his watch.

  Two Mumbai Police SUVs brought up the front and rear, while three BSF vehicles rode in the middle. Traffic had already been stopped and a lane cleared, and the convoy swung towards S.V. Road for the twenty-minute drive to Juhu Airbase. Vikrant and his team had their own vehicles. Their plan was to follow the convoy from a distance without making their presence known.

  That plan, however, went out of the window two minutes later.

  Two things reached Vikrant’s ears at the same time. One of his men was stationed 100 metres away from the hospital. As the convoy approached him, he whispered, ‘Icarus passing by my … HOLY FUCK!’

  At the same instant, the sound of automatic gunfire started booming in the air.

  ‘Hospital gate. Now,’ Vikrant snapped into his mic, already running.

  It took the team two minutes to gather at the rear gate of the hospital, by which time all of them had their IDs around their necks. They then made a mad dash towards the source of the gunfire.

  Kumar’s convoy had taken a left on K.C. Marg after exiting the hospital and was supposed to follow the same road till it joined S.V. Road. As Vikrant crouched behind a parked truck, one hand on his pistol, he ascertained that the gunfire was coming from the row of residential societies lining the left side of K.C. Marg.

  ‘Shit,’ he thought.

  During the pre-visit security check, concerns had been expressed about the buildings. However, there had been no time to manually check the credentials of every resident and the RAW team had had to rely on the local police’s inputs.

  ‘This is going to be a nightmare later,’ Vikrant thought as he finally got close enough to the battle to get a good look, even as the air was rent with continuous gunfire.

  Vikrant could make out at least four men crouched behind the compound wall of one building, firing with assault rifles, while the police and BSF returned fire.

  ‘Romeo Team, coming in,’ Vikrant said into his mic and drew his gun.

  Inside his bulletproof SUV, Special Director General Somesh Kumar crouched low between the seats, even as a barrage of assault-rifle rounds slammed into his vehicle. In the front and rear sections, his guards did the same.

  ‘Don’t worry, sir,’ one of his guards said in a trembling voice.

  Kumar dug into one of his pockets and brought out his cell phone. Hurriedly, he opened the file he needed and got to work. He knew he didn’t have much time.

  ‘Romeo One, coming in,’ Vikrant’s earpiece crackled. He whipped around to see Mirza rush into the fray.

  Before Vikrant could say anything, Mirza grabbed him by his shi
rt and dragged him from the middle of the road to the far end. Both men crouched behind an ice-cream cart while stray bullets hit the containers on it.

  ‘Put the bloody gun away!’ Mirza snapped. Vikrant complied immediately. RAW was supposed to stay in the shadows. Any stray cell-phone camera aimed at the gunfight could capture them and expose them to the world as intelligence agents. Drawing his gun had been pure instinct and Vikrant regretted it already.

  The sudden gunfire had caused complete pandemonium and vehicles which had been travelling in the opposite lane went completely crazy.

  Pure survival instinct drove the motorists to take completely reckless U-turns to flee from commotion and, as a result, an entire cluster of vehicles swung right into the convoy’s path, blocking it completely. To make matters worse, motorists who found themselves caught in the snarl abandoned their vehicles and ran away on foot, creating a permanent hurdle.

  ‘There could be civilians trapped in those vehicles, lad,’ Mirza said as guns blazed all around them. Vikrant nodded and brought his wrist-mic up.

  ‘Romeo Team, check the vehicles. We’re on civilian rescue. And keep your heads down and guns inside.’

  Vikrant had barely issued the command when a barrage of bullets took out a large chunk of the ice-cream cart.

  As they ran to take cover behind a parked car, Vikrant saw, for the first time, that Mirza was dressed like a Catholic priest.

  ‘Were you … were you inside Carmel Church??’

  ‘Not the time, boy,’ Mirza said as a BSF officer came running to their position with two assault rifle rounds snapping at his heels.

  ‘Who’s Mirza?’ he asked abruptly. ‘I was asked to meet a Mirza here…’

  ‘That’s me,’ Mirza cut him off. ‘Tell me honestly, how much can those vehicles withstand?’

  The officer took a second before speaking.

  ‘Honestly, there’s a limit. But it will still take entire clips of ammo, and I’m not sure they have that much time. Already, a police commando team is circling around to enter the building compound from the other end. And NSG is on the way.’

  ‘Romeo Five is down!’ a screamed report came in through Vikrant’s and Mirza’s earpieces.

  ‘FUCK!’ Vikrant said.

  ‘Keep your head, boy. This is war,’ Mirza snapped.

  A stray shower of bullets zinged past the three men and they shifted their position, hiding behind a cluster of three cars that had been abandoned in the middle of the road.

  Inside his vehicle, Kumar gave a faint smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ he typed and hit the ‘send’ button. Then he turned to one of his guards.

  ‘I need this destroyed,’ he told the man.

  Without asking any questions, the officer crouching in the rear part of the SUV opened up the cell phone and removed its SIM as well as the memory card. Fishing a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, he set both on fire. Then he placed the handset on the SUV’s floor and drove the butt of his gun into it.

  ‘What’s their play?’ Vikrant shouted as the faint sound of helicopter blades permeated the air. The NSG was coming. ‘What’s their endgame?’

  At that instant, someone yelled, ‘BOMB!’

  Vikrant, Mirza and the BSF officer all sprang from their cover, only to be thrown several metres backward by the sheer force of the blast. The BSF officer hit his head on a makeshift shack’s wall and passed out.

  Vikrant ran to Mirza to help him up, but Mirza was already running at full speed towards the burning wreckage of the BSF vehicle. Just when it seemed Mirza was going to throw himself into the fire, Vikrant caught up with him and grabbed him.

  ‘Let go!’ Mirza yelled furiously. Vikrant held on.

  ‘LET ME FUCKING GO!’

  ‘Sir, COME ON!’ Vikrant yelled back. ‘This is war, remember? We need you calm, goddammit!’

  Mirza finally stopped struggling and went down on his knees, breathing heavily, his eyes never moving from the burning wreckage.

  Vikrant looked all around him, registering the reports coming in through his earpiece.

  ‘Hostiles down. Hostiles down.’

  ‘Romeo Team moving out. Taking Romeo Five to hospital.’

  ‘Gupta? Anyone see DCP Gupta?’

  ‘This is NSG Captain…’

  Vikrant took Mirza by the arm and helped him up. The two men walked away silently.

  2

  It had been three years since Vikrant and Mirza had foiled an attempt by the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, to leak sensitive secrets of the Indian armed forces. The operation had resulted in the death of one of the most dreaded terrorists in Asia, a character so slippery that no one seemed to know his real name. He became notorious as Munafiq, the Urdu word for two-faced, a sobriquet that Mirza had conferred on him thanks to his ability to appear like an ordinary citizen while spreading terror across the continent.

  The success of the operation had earned the entire team accolades from all over the world, and Vikrant and Mirza, after being promoted to senior ranks, were both transferred from the National Investigation Agency to RAW.

  In fact, Naidu had been the prime minister during the terrorist operation and had had a large role to play in the drama. Munafiq had hijacked a cruise liner in Lakshadweep on which Naidu’s estranged daughter, Vaishali, was holidaying, and tried to use her as leverage to get access codes to the Indian Navy base’s mainframe on Lakshadweep, INS Dweeprakshak. Fortunately, Mirza figured out the plot before Naidu could hand over the access codes. The incident had brought father and daughter closer.

  Now, Mirza and the closest thing he had to a son were sitting in a suite rented by the state government in a five-star hotel in the Bandra Kurla Complex, which had become the command centre of the team investigating the attack.

  ‘I didn’t know you were friends,’ Vikrant said.

  ‘Worked together on a lot of missions back in the day. A lot of our undercover operatives who were rescued from behind enemy lines owe their lives to his brilliant planning and strategy,’ Mirza replied.

  Two days had passed since the attack. Somesh Kumar had been confirmed dead half an hour after the dust had settled. The SUV was mangled to a ball and his body, which was hanging together by its sinews, was removed after the vehicle was cut open using blowtorches.

  Four Mumbai Police personnel and three BSF jawans had also fallen prey to the terrorists’ bullets, while four others were in the hospital with serious injuries.

  As Mirza and Vikrant had expected, the investigation had begun as a bureaucratic nightmare, with everyone wanting a piece of the action. The NIA demanded that they spearhead the probe. The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad wanted the same. The CIA and MOSSAD wanted to send their own people. IB and RAW were ever present in the shadows. Mumbai Police, smarting from the loss of face as the attack had happened on their turf, were also lobbying hard to be part of the investigation.

  There were cries of ‘intelligence failure’ all around. Two hours after the attack, Mirza and Vikrant had had a video conference call with National Security Advisor Pradeep Singh.

  ‘What the hell happened down there?’ Singh roared and went on for a good five minutes before running out of breath.

  Mirza allowed a minute of silence to pass before speaking.

  ‘If we’re done with the outrage, sir, can we move on?’ he said quietly.

  Singh glared and looked as if he was going to say something but Mirza cut him off.

  ‘We messed up. Yes. But when I say “we”, I mean all of us,’ Mirza said.

  ‘Mirza, you were the ones we’d entrusted with…’

  ‘We could do this all day, sir,’ Mirza cut in again. ‘But somehow, those terrorists got the jump on us, all of us, and something that big can’t be one person or agency’s failure. I think we all know that. So please hold whoever you want responsible for the sake of politics
, but do it fast. Because some of us have different priorities.’

  Singh breathed heavily for half a minute and then let out a heavy sigh, leaning back in his chair.

  ‘I want them dead,’ Singh said finally, his voice cold and hard. ‘Whoever was behind this, whoever was part of this, I want all of them dead.’

  ‘Everyone, sir?’ Mirza asked.

  ‘Every single one,’ Singh said. ‘No matter where they are from. You let me worry about the fallout.’

  Mirza nodded. He had heard what he needed. Singh and Mirza were both spies and both knew that this carte blanche would only be verbal, never in writing. It was good enough for both of them.

  Meanwhile, officers from each agency were using their friends in the media to plant stories indicating how it was the other guy’s fault. Enterprising reporters went one step further and added juicy bits of speculation to the few facts they knew, adding further to the confusion and the panic.

  To absolutely no one’s surprise, the television media went overboard. One news anchor sat in his studio all day and yelled at the top of his voice, demanding that India declare war on Pakistan that very instant. Another started anchoring the prime-time bulletin wearing green combat fatigues. ‘Expert’ after ‘expert’ appeared on panel debates to talk about how the culprits needed to be brought to book for their heinous crimes without any delay. Nobody, however, was sure exactly who the culprits were.

  Ultimately, Singh put his foot down and formed a special team to investigate the attack. Mirza was chosen to head it, with Vikrant acting as his second in command. This was not just because of the success of the Lakshadweep operation, but also because both Mirza and Vikrant had worked in Mumbai in the past. Shiv Prakash Sharma, the Mumbai head of the NIA, was drafted into the team, and the three officers were given complete freedom to choose anyone from any other agency.

  The first recruit of the team knocked on the door of the suite and entered with a smile on his face.

  ‘Good to see you again, sir,’ DCP Ashok Mankame said to Mirza. ‘And you, sir,’ he said, addressing Vikrant.