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.
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