Eleventh Hour Read online

  They reached out at the same time and took each other’s hand.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt?’ she asked. ‘To talk about it?’

  ‘A lot of things hurt. Doesn’t mean I have to let it show every time.’

  ‘And I thought I was damaged,’ she mused.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ he said, looking around him out of habit.

  By now the hostages had settled into a routine. Their captors – who seemed to be mercenaries of some kind, according to Daniel – would lead the kitchen crew up to the cafeteria every morning to prepare sandwiches and milkshakes for everyone. The meals were served thrice a day and never varied. The recreational area had two large washrooms, which took care of daily ablutions and toilet visits.

  Every morning, Marco would lead Sahani to the radio room so that he could maintain regular contact with his colleagues back in Mumbai, and take him and the kitchen crew back to the recreational area at night. Sahani would interact with his crew every time he went there. They were all being treated well but watched closely.

  However, the hostages were getting restless. They had not changed their clothes in seven days, and Marco had refused to allow anyone access to razors or scissors, so all the men had stubbles by now. Almost everyone was irritated at having to wear the same soiled clothes every day after taking a wash. Only Daniel, who had seen worse, remained calm.

  ‘It’s a control tactic,’ he explained to Vaishali when she wondered why they weren’t even being given fresh clothes. ‘Allow them to get too comfortable and they might turn mutinous. Keep them fed and give them basic facilities, but at the same time, deny them more than is strictly necessary. It helps keep them obedient.’

  ‘What are you so relaxed about?’ Vaishali asked.

  Daniel smiled.

  ‘I know they’re not simple pirates. And they don’t know that I do. Every step they take to mislead us into believing they’re pirates is actually a peep into their actual plan. And when the time comes, that knowledge will help me.’

  ‘When the time comes?’ Vaishali wondered.

  ‘What, you think I’m letting us die here?’ he said.

  ‘Damn it, Dan. You can’t take on ten armed men by yourself, no matter what commando stuff you did back in the army,’ she whispered, alarmed.

  ‘There are twelve of them,’ he corrected. ‘And they’re giving me a lot of time to plan while they wait for their orders.’

  Vaishali squeezed his hand.

  ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Daniel said, caressing her hair.

  She nodded. ‘Like what?’ she asked.

  ‘Like your Abdul uncle glaring at me every time he sees me within five metres of you, which, frankly, is all the time,’ Daniel said, grinning.

  It worked. Vaishali smiled and slapped his thigh lightly.

  ‘Rascal,’ she said softly.

  However, this did nothing to ease Daniel’s worries. Absently patting Vaishali as she stretched on the ground with her head in his lap, he went back to thinking of what he had not told anyone yet, even her.

  Before he had quit the army, Daniel had been part of a division that undertook covert operations for the Research and Analysis Wing. The years of secret missions had sharpened his mind, which was why he could gauge certain things before anyone else. Ever since Marco had taken over the cruise liner, Daniel had carefully observed every move he and his men made. When the captives were led to the recreation hall, what had struck Daniel immediately was that the mercenaries seemed to be familiar with the layout of the vessel. Over the next seven days, Daniel mused over his initial hunch, slowly examining every angle.

  He dismissed the idea that Marco and his men had carefully surveyed the cruise liner the night they had slipped aboard. They only had a three-hour window, which was simply too little time. Plus, there was always a chance of them being discovered by some guest.

  Next, the mercenaries had no way of being sure that every guest aboard the cruise liner was asleep and in their rooms before they climbed aboard, even if they had been watching the cruise liner from afar using binoculars.

  Their takeover of the ship’s crew had also gone off too smoothly. The ship’s crew would have been well-trained in measures to take in such contingencies, which would include sounding off some kind of an alarm or sending a distress signal. The hijackers had made sure none of that happened, and takeovers worked this effectively only when the perpetrators had two things on their side: the element of surprise and all the information necessary.

  It was the second thing that bothered Daniel the most. The mercenaries seemed to have had too much information before they even set foot aboard the cruise liner. Which meant that there was a high chance they had inside help, a mole aboard the cruise liner. Which meant that apart from coming up with a plan to save everyone on board, Daniel also had to identify the mole. And he had no idea how much time he had left.

  20

  Friday afternoon, Mumbai.

  Among the many qualities that Mirza and Vikrant were famous for was their seemingly endless patience. Where others fretted and fumed, the mentor-protégé duo calmly ploughed ahead, choosing to focus on the solution rather than the problem.

  That patience came in handy at the NIA office in Mumbai that afternoon as Mirza and Vikrant sat in a conference room going through reams of paperwork. They were examining reports sent by SP Devendra Kumar of the Bhopal Central Jail about the movements and interactions of the IM Five, as they had now come to be known by the police, over the last six months. The SP had personally put together the report after interviewing all the guards who had come in contact with

  the five.

  Three days after Mirza had apprised the Maharashtra DGP of the ’93 Cache situation, Vikrant had been racking his brains over a cigarette on the terrace of the NIA building. He had been forbidden to go out of the building unless, in Mirza’s words, ‘You staying in the building would directly result in the loss of human life.’ He remembered something else that Mirza had told him in their initial days of working together, ‘There will always be one direction where you haven’t looked hard enough. If everything else fails, find this direction and look again.’

  In this case, the direction turned out to be backwards.

  Vikrant suddenly remembered the reports on the movements and interactions of the IM Five that the officers at the Bhopal Central Jail had sent. At the time, the tip-off from his informant, Kamran Sheikh, about Asad’s uncle, had put everything else on the backburner. He realized that the investigating team had never studied the reports, which had been hurriedly put together in the first place. As he flicked ash from his cigarette, he called Devendra Kumar and asked for the reports to be compiled again, in more detail this time. ‘You can send them one by one, but keep them coming,’ Vikrant told him.

  And so it was that on the eighth day of Maharashtra going on high alert, Vikrant and Mirza sat across from each other at a long table in the conference room, each holding a report in his hand. Two laptops and a printer were set up in the room so that reports could be printed the moment Kumar emailed them from Bhopal.

  Goyal and Jaiswal, meanwhile, were going through reports of all the Mahindra Boleros stolen in Bhopal over the last three months. The forensic technicians had pulled a partial licence plate from the burned-out remains of the SUV at Palghar, which showed that it was registered in Bhopal.

  Mankame – whom Mirza had drafted into his team – was studying the background of Advocate Aslam Parkar, who had been representing the IM Five after their arrest.

  ‘Assuming that the ISI got word to those five, setting the ball rolling, it must have been the lawyer who played postman. No one else would be in a better position, and their interactions with outsiders were restricted anyway,’ Mirza had said after listening to Vikrant’s idea of looking in a different direction.

  The problem was that Parkar was known to be a clean lawyer, one of the few who truly believed in justice and ensuring a fair trial for everyone. In an age where defence law
yers had turned exploiting loopholes in the law into an art form, everybody who knew Parkar swore that his mission in life was only to ensure that the prosecution did not cut corners. He had chosen to represent the IM Five simply because he knew that terror accused were seen as terrorists by all and sundry even before being convicted, and he did not want that perception to decide their fate.

  Mirza and Vikrant had both locked horns with Parkar in the past, and to think that someone like him could be connected with the ISI was next to impossible. However, both cops had seen stranger things and hence, Mankame was instructed to run an objective eye over Parkar’s life.

  However, none of the three junior cops were as patient as their seniors. Jaiswal’s leg was bouncing up and down at a supersonic speed, which irritated Goyal. He would snap at Jaiswal roughly every half an hour and the latter would snap back. They would argue like kids till Mirza would silence them with a warning ‘Lads…’ or ‘Boys!’

  Mankame, after two hours of poring over Parkar’s life, had stepped out for a smoke. ‘I need some bloody nicotine in my system or else I’m going to scream,’ he was heard muttering on his way out. Vikrant asked Mankame to get a pack for him as well and Mirza shot the former a look of extreme disapproval.

  Only Vikrant and Mirza seemed to be their usual calm selves.

  ‘Look at this,’ Vikrant said, sliding a report forward. ‘Three months ago, Parkar sent another lawyer to fill in for him during a routine hearing.’

  ‘So?’ Mirza asked, looking up from his own report.

  ‘So, Parkar has always attended court in person in terror cases. He shuttles from his house in Pune wherever he needs to, once he’s taken a personal interest in the case. I can recount at least … five instances, I think, in this trial alone, when he simply did not turn up and the hearing was adjourned. But he’s never let anyone else appear.’

  Mirza exhaled thoughtfully. ‘I remember noticing this about him when he was defence for that case we had three years ago. He’s got an ailing mother. He never talks about it because he hates people pitying him, but she sometimes has to be rushed to the hospital,’ he said.

  Vikrant nodded. ‘The illegal arms case. He didn’t turn up for some three or four hearings. The prosecutor even asked him to let a partner or employee fill in for him, to which he flatly refused.’

  ‘And yet…’ Mirza picked up the report Vikrant had just read. ‘Rishabh Chawla. Ever heard this man’s name before?’ he asked, loud enough so that Goyal and Jaiswal could hear. They both shook their heads.

  ‘Fuck,’ Vikrant said. ‘ISI bought Parkar?’

  ‘Either bought or blackmailed. See if this Chawla fellow makes any more appearances in the story,’ Mirza said, turning to the door just as Mankame walked in.

  ‘You’re going to Pune,’ Mirza told Mankame.

  ‘But give me my cigarettes first,’ Vikrant added.

  21

  Friday night, Lakshadweep.

  Years of covert operations in enemy territory had sharpened Daniel’s instincts till he could sense trouble a mile away. As he lay on his back in the dark with his eyes open, his instincts told him that something was brewing.

  It was the night of their ninth day in captivity. Earlier in the day, Marco and all his men had silently trooped into the room, a little after the captives had finished their breakfast and the kitchen crew had returned.

  The hostages tensed up as Marco, casually holding his Uzi, strode to the centre of the room and ran a lazy eye over them.

  ‘Everybody eat well?’ he asked, smiling pleasantly. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Good,’ he went on. ‘So in the next two minutes, I want everybody to form a straight line. After that, y’all walk up to the top deck with me without doin’ anythin’ stupid. If everybody behaves, this will be over before y’all know it.’

  Daniel had to approve of his technique. He had allowed everyone to settle into a fixed routine for several days and then suddenly caught them off guard, just after they had finished a meal. This guy was good, he thought. Whatever he was planning, he was not going to meet with any resistance.

  Marco’s men were already taking positions. Two of them stationed themselves inside the room on either side of the doors, while the others trooped outside. Daniel guessed that they were taking positions along the corridor and staircase leading up to the top deck.

  The captives silently shuffled into a straight line, nervously glancing at each other. Captain Sahani was at the lead. Daniel let Vaishali get into the middle of the line and then slowly manoeuvred himself backwards so that he was at the end. Vaishali realized he was gone and anxiously looked around for him till she saw him. He quickly nodded to her and she turned around again. Daniel glanced at Marco to see if he was watching, but he was talking to his second-in-command, whose name, Daniel had learned by keeping his ears open, was Omar.

  Marco finished conferring with Omar and turned around.

  ‘Y’all ready?’ he asked.

  A few of the hostages nodded.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  As Vaishali crossed the door, gently supporting an elderly woman in front of her, the gunman on the left leaned a little too close to her for comfort and inhaled deeply, loud enough for Vaishali to hear. Daniel could almost see her cringe as she walked on, head down.

  A video camera on a tripod had been set up in the middle of the top deck, and the captives were marched up to it, after which they were made to sit down in three rows. One of their captors then started recording, panning the camera slowly from left to right and back again, till he had captured the entire crowd. Then he switched off the camera, removed its memory card and handed it to Marco, who turned to the captives.

  ‘Good job, everybody,’ he said nodding in approval. ‘Let’s all stay cooperative like this, huh? Easy for everyone. Now I got some work to take care of, so please get in a single line and walk back down. My man here,’ Marco gestured to Omar, ‘will be right behind y’all.’

  As they were getting back in a line, Sahani caught Daniel’s eye and they both nodded. Proof of life.

  This time Daniel got into the middle of the line, a few heads away from Vaishali, who was behind Hakimi. The old man turned towards her and smiled briefly. Silently, they walked downstairs and back into the recreational area, passing Marco’s men at regular intervals.

  Daniel kept an eye on Vaishali and, as she passed through the doors, he saw the gunman who had leaned close to her earlier put out a hand and brush her hip as she passed. This time, she looked at him sharply and he responded with an insolent smile. With visible effort, Vaishali turned her gaze in front and stiffly walked to one corner of the room. Daniel sat beside her and held her till she stopped shaking.

  Which was why, twelve hours later, Daniel lay awake as everyone around him, including Vaishali, slept, expecting trouble any second.

  Trouble didn’t disappoint. About half an hour later, one of the sliding doors opened wide enough for a person to step through, and Daniel saw the silhouette of a henchman slip inside. Noiselessly, he picked his way over the sleeping hostages till he was standing over Vaishali. Daniel, who was lying about a foot away, had closed his eyes just before the henchman got there, and now he opened one eye just wide enough to see the man kneel down and clamp a hand over her mouth.

  Vaishali snapped awake and started to struggle. The mercenary pulled out a stiletto knife from his boot and held it in front of her face. She seemed to go rigid with fear and complied as he pulled her to her feet and started dragging her towards the door, holding the knife at her throat and his other hand over her mouth.

  Slowly, Daniel brought himself up to a crouch and judged the distance between himself and the light switches. He was about to spring to them when someone else beat him to it.

  People in the room were jolted awake when the lights were suddenly thrown on one by one. Daniel, whose eyes adjusted to the light faster, thanks to his army training, still blinked several times before he could believe what he was seeing. Standing near t
he light switches, hands curled into fists, was Abdul Jabbar Hakimi.

  The henchman’s lust melted away into panic at the sight of the waking captives and he dropped his knife to the ground, reached behind him, and brought up his Uzi. Most of the other captives were on their feet by now.

  ‘Any of you fuckers move, you get killed,’ he snarled.

  Daniel slowly circled around the crowd, watching as Hakimi roughly pushed two people out of his way and walked straight up to the henchman, who was waving the Uzi from left to right, still holding on to Vaishali.

  ‘You want to kill me, you khabees?’ Hakimi growled, standing about a foot away from the man’s gun, who brought it up to face level.

  ‘You testing me, you old motherfucker?’ the henchman said.

  In a steady voice, Hakimi said, ‘Have not you read the chapter on women in the Quran? Men are the protector of women!’

  The henchman stared uncomprehendingly but kept his gun poised.

  ‘I will protect her from you,’ Hakimi declared.

  ‘Man, get the fuck away!’ the henchman said, backing towards the door.

  ‘You want to kill me?’ Hakimi repeated, stepping forward. ‘Do it. Do it, because while there is a single breath left in my body, I will stand in your path. And I will not allow you to touch her.’

  Daniel had managed to worm his way through the crowd to the very edge of the gunman’s line of sight, and was now slowly moving forward, his eyes on the man’s trigger finger. He was standing on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce at the slightest sign of pressure on the trigger, when the doors to the room slid open.

  Everyone turned to look, including the gunman, and Daniel took advantage of the moment to move even closer to him.

  Marco was standing at the door, and this time he wasn’t smiling.

  22

  Saturday afternoon, Pune.

  Aslam Parkar’s ancestral home in Pune stood behind the Aaina Masjid in Ganesh Peth, one of the many ‘peths’ or localities in the city.