Noor on the other hand burst out with an amused chuckle and said, “You have no idea how strategic my Zee is, K. She scalped the sorority chicks in Trinity one semester because one of them had dared her to wear a bikini in December for Pledge Week.”
Ziya thunked the back of Noor’s beret-clad head. “Stop talking. Now.” She threatened.
“You want to know what she did?”
Krivi didn’t answer, so Noor continued anyway. “She posted a notice on the college website and charged a pound for all the frat house boys to see her parade in a Victoria’s Secret ensemble outside their frat houses. At two a.m.”
Krivi’s lips twitched but he kept his straight face on. “The sorority girl’s boyfriend was one of the idiots who paid up, I assume.”
“Yep,” she confirmed with an urchin’s grin. “He was. And all of his friends too, who were, of course, her girlfriends’ guys. Needless to say, there were a lot of breakups that week. And my Zee got a lot of desperate offers for dates.”
“Of course.”
“Noor?” Ziya said conversationally.
“Yeah, Zee.” Noor fiddled with the radio controls right as her cell phone started ringing. And the display picture was Sam. She turned the volume on high to drown out the sound of the ringing.
“If you don’t keep your trap shut I will rip my earmuffs off your pretty ears. Along with your ears.”
Noor held her hands up in a gesture of surrender and tossed her phone to the backseat, and Ziya sighed. The rest of the ride was accomplished to the sound of raucous music and the intermittent ringing of a cell phone.
The first thing Krivi noticed when they got to the Gulmarg Tourist Office parking lot was that the immediate area was almost empty of parked cars. The horse handlers were also leading their horses away from the sloping parkland. The tourist mania that was May in Gulmarg was also conspicuously absent.
Then his twenty-twenty vision spotted something near the cable car station. The station was about a kilometer into the parkland and was swarming with people. At first glance, they looked like normal civilians, tourists. But his veteran eyes could make out the outlines of firepower hanging from the sides of the perimeter guys. Which begged the immediate question, why the hell was a perimeter being formed at the cable car station at all?
Krivi recalled similar situations from news reports and snippets of news broadcasts he’d read and seen over the years. Unidentified vehicle in Srinagar contains IED. Ten dead, forty-four injured. A car bomb in July of 2011 resulting in the death of twenty-two people and several more injured. Some maimed for life. And that deadly suicide bombing of the Raghunath Temple, where terrorists affiliated to one of the jihad groups entered the temple twice, and killed closed to sixty people, injuring almost a hundred of them, all of them unarmed. All of them innocent.
Security was not just an issue in Kashmir, it was a foreboding presence. And seeing military personnel at the cable car park could be a regular exercise. But something in his gut, his spidey sense, told him that wasn’t the case.
He was out the door before he could stop himself.
“Krivi?” Ziya called out, in an uncertain voice.
He looked back at the two women still sitting inside the car.
“Stay inside. Don’t move,” he ordered.
He was sprinting towards the cable car station and covering it at a rapid clip before Ziya could process his action. Then she turned the door handle and leaped out of the Rover. Noor followed her, jumping out and keeping pace with her stride effortlessly. By now, Krivi was a distant blur as he’d already reached the perimeter.
“You know, he’s going to be very mad because we didn’t listen to him,” Noor said, as she tried to keep her breathing even in the freezing temperature.
Sunset was about forty minutes away and the air was turning colder by the second.
“He’s not my boss. I am his employer,” Ziya corrected Noor as she walked rapidly to the crowd that was formed around the cable car station. “He has no right to order me around.” She wasn’t sure but she thought they were all military personnel, which was very odd and a whole lot frightening. There were only a couple of reasons why the Army would make an appearance at a hopping tourist spot. Noor gasped next to her and caught her arm, pointing at the crowd.
“Sam’s Jeep. I see his Jeep, Zee.” Noor sprinted past Ziya, all her fear and love focused on the jeep and the man inside it.
Ziya ran faster and passed her and was almost at the crowd when she was lifted off the ground and thrust back with an almost violent force.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” Krivi asked her tonelessly, his black eyes pitch dark.
She stumbled away from him and Noor crashed into her and he steadied them both. His fingers biting into her skin.
“I asked you two to stay in the goddamn car.”
“She said … you’re not … her boss. Sam’s Jeep.” Noor bent over, trying to catch her breath.
Ziya simply glared at him and tried to stalk past him. He hauled her back again with insulting ease and this time her fist plowed into his stomach. It didn’t even faze him as he stared at her with infuriating calm.
“Go back,” he repeated, as if she was a five-year-old.
Noor’s eyes were streaming and she screamed, “Sam. Sameth! Answer me if you’re here.”
Krivi closed his eyes as the crowd parted and turned as one to look at the two females and one male who’d intruded on their party. Then, Sam came forward, walking fast and then with every step running towards Noor. She couldn’t be held back even by Krivi’s hard arms as she ran towards him and he caught her up in a bruising embrace.
“Go back,” he yelled, as soon as he’d taken his lips off hers.
“No.” She shook her long hair back, her Jackie O glasses on the ground somewhere, naked fear in her eyes. “Not without you.”
“Nuria—” He closed his eyes.
Ziya sighed and shook herself free from Krivi’s tight hold. Her skin hurt with the force of his fingers on her. He didn’t look all that happy with the way she surreptitiously rubbed her shaking fingers over her upper arm.
“Noor, maybe we should—”
“No.”
Sam looked at Krivi who shrugged; a movement that Ziya felt because she was still standing way too close for comfort.
“IED? Insurgents?” Was what he asked.
Sam nodded, hooked his glasses up. “IED. Found in a child’s backpack. The tourist admins were not sure at first, and by the time they reported it the thing was live. BDS is ten minutes out.” BDS was the Bomb Disposal Squad of the Indian Army that handled, well, disarmament of hot loads.
“IED?” Noor shrieked.
“Stop the hysterics,” Ziya said firmly, taking her friend by the arm. And shooting a fulminating look at Sam at the same time. “Sam’s Army guys are going to disarm the thing before we know it. It’s his job, isn’t it, Sam?”
“Yes.” Sam nodded reassurance emphatically, but his expression was very grave. He looked at Krivi.
“Can you make it out of here, pronto?”
Krivi walked forward and removed his wallet. He flipped open the worn, black leather which was torn at the edges and flashed a badge at Sam, whose eyes widened when he saw it. And severe speculation and respect filled them a second later.
“I could take a look,” he offered quietly. “If you can tell me the specs.”
Ziya’s stomach did a