Mumbaistan (6 page)

The ACP shrugged. 'We need him as backup. You never know what might happen.'

Rabia lapsed into a frustrated silence.

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The Christian Cemetery is a silent oasis in the midst of the hurly burly of Mumbai's chemical manufacturing and port-warehousing area, Sewree. It was established by Arthur Crawford, the first municipal commissioner of Bombay, on a horticultural garden next to the saltpans and the ruined Sewree Fort. Consecrated in March 1867, it has served as the final resting place for many, Britishers of the Raj including F. W. Stevens, who designed the VT station and A. M. Jacob of Shimla, said to be the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's jeweller-cum-magician-cum-spymaster, Lurgan Saheb.

As dusk fell, the shadowy figures of ATS men, now multiplied in numbers and adorned in 'attack gear', crawled on all fours through the cemetery. They were snaking towards the Excel Godown that bordered the eastern fencing of the cemetery. The godown had been chosen well. Its location gave a strategic advantage to the people inside. The daily business approach for it was from the open medium-width lane from the north that threaded through the maze of warehousing structures of all shapes and sizes. On the south and west of the godown were the Sewree Jetty and the saltpans, the famous refuge of flamingos during the winter months. Because of the acres of open expanse and marshy slush, the saltpans could not be used as an approach. The only approach that afforded any sort of cover was through the cemetery, that, too, only under cover of darkness.

Rabia arrived in a taxi driven by a policeman in disguise. The taxi parked outside the main gate and, as instructed, Rabia asked the taxi driver to wait for her. She walked up to the gate and was let inside by the lone sentry on duty. It was obvious that the sentry had been awaiting her arrival. He motioned her towards a small wooden side door that led into the godown. The wooden door opened by itself as soon as she neared. Rabia disappeared from the policemen's sight as the door closed behind her.

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In the adjoining cemetery, ACP Hani and the ATS men waited in the shadows. Tanvir, who was a couple of paces behind the ACP, crawled up to him in the dark. 'Now what?' he enquired.

The ACP raised his finger to his lips. 'Now, we wait,' he muttered, irritated. He got busy focusing his infrared binoculars on the upper glass windows of the godown, hoping to catch some movement inside.

The night was cool, yet small sweat droplets trickled their way down Tanvir's temples. He was not used to maintaining a prone position for a long time. He felt specially constrained because of the heavy bulletproof jacket and leather boots kitted out to him by the ATS team, and shifted in his position from time to time as the alien equipment chafed his skin.

They had been lying in wait for almost two hours now, yet there was not a single movement seen in the godown. Deep worry lines furrowed ACP Hani's forehead; he kept glancing at his waterproof wristwatch and then at the taxi still waiting at the gate. The taxi driver, in true waiting-for-passenger style, was lounging with his head thrown back. However, the ACP knew that he was just pretending to sleep. But what the ACP was not sure of was whether he could see any activity through the upper glass windows of the godown. Although the taxi driver was equipped with a walky-talky, the ACP dared not contact him for fear of the signal being picked up by someone inside.

ACP Hani now turned towards his deputies and made some hand signals. The deputies started crawling in the direction of the team clusters. The team members showed signs of pushing their alertness up a few notches. Tanvir, confused at this action all around, crawled towards the ACP and whispered in his ear, 'What is happening?'

The ACP ignored him but Tanvir persisted. 'What are you doing?'

The ACP turned towards Tanvir, irritated as before, but this time there was an edge to his voice that Tanvir found very dangerous. 'Your Rabia might have gone over to their side.'

Tanvir's face fell. 'But...but...she won't do that...please wait a little while more.'

The ACP seemed firm, 'I have to attack, or this chance, too, will be lost.'

He turned to check if all the clusters were ready and was about to give the signal to fire when, all of a sudden, he heard a voice coming through a loudspeaker. 'Shame on you police-wallahs, you hide and send a woman to face danger. Innocent people of our qaum have been ill-treated by you vardiwallas for too long.'

The ACP and his squad were ready for battle before the sentence was over. The taxi driver sprang out of his seat with a drawn gun and took cover behind the taxi. The sentry on duty shrank into a corner, confused and fearful. The ACP kept trying to identify the source of the voice, but he couldn't make anything out. The voice continued, 'If you have the courage, let us fight man to man.'

The wooden door in the godown building swung open, without warning. Rabia stood in the doorway. Her mouth was taped shut and even from the distance it was clear that her hands were tied behind her back. All the ATS guns were trained on her. The voice spoke again. 'First, we are letting this innocent woman out. We got all the information that we wanted from her. We don't want to hurt her.' Rabia started walking towards the ATS men in the cemetery No one moved a muscle. As Rabia took her slow steps towards them, the ACP trained his infrared binoculars on her. Rabia was now near a broken gap in the wire fencing between the godown premises and the cemetery. Suddenly, the ACP sucked in his breath and raised his automatic pistol simultaneously. 'Bomb!' he shouted. Before anyone could react, he shot at Rabia. The bullet hit Rabia in the arm and she spun and fell backwards on to the cemented ground. Everybody dove for cover except the shocked Tanvir, who stood up and looked towards where Rabia had fallen. She lay prone on the ground in front of the wire fencing. Tanvir let out a cry of anguish and, without thinking, ran towards her. The ACP shouted a loud 'No!' from behind, but Tanvir paid him no heed. He bounded towards Rabia and reached her in no time.

Rabia's eyes were glazed. Tanvir fell on his knees next to her, took her in his arms and hugged her. Her wound was bleeding copious amounts of blood on to the ground. Tanvir cried out, 'Please don't die. I love you. Don't leave me, please!'

Rabia fainted. Tanvir hugged her tighter. Till he became aware that under her burqa she was strapped with bombs. The ACP shouted out to him, 'Tanvir, move away now. There must be a timer backup to blow her up.' Tanvir, instead, ripped apart Rabia's burqa and saw the mass of wires and bombs strapped on her. He looked for a way to remove the contraption. Luck was on his side, as he found that the bomb makers had found the easiest and fastest way to strap bombs without their telltale bumps showing outside the clothes—a corset. The whole contraption was sewn onto a wraparound corset, fastened only by a single Velcro strip on her right side. Tanvir tore at the Velcro strip and it started to peel off. As the last of the Velcro strip unfastened, the corset came loose. There was another attachment, a metal brace clipped onto her arm. Tanvir broke this brace with one hard twist. Without hesitation, Tanvir rose with the corset in his hands and flung it away towards the godown. He then grabbed Rabia and lifting her bodily, dragged her across the gap in the wire fencing into the cemetery grounds. He rolled along with Rabia, moving on the ground as fast as he could in the opposite direction. As he reached closer to the ATS men, a couple of them stepped forward to help him. The ACP, meanwhile, asked his sharpshooters to shoot at the upper windows. They let loose a volley of gunshots that shattered all the window glass and poured bullets into the godown. After a while, the ACP raised his hand as he realized there was no return fire. He shook his head in anger and slammed his fist into a tree. He then rose and spoke into his walky-talky, 'Bomb squad. Please come forward to incident point.'

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A state-of-the-art sound system and a small voice-recorder were lying on a wooden table inside the empty godown. Two old chairs lay by the side, atop which two powerful loudspeakers had been positioned. The ACP surmised that the recording must have been done as soon as Rabia had entered. Then the hapless woman must have been strapped with the bombs and told to walk out as soon as the door was opened. She had been through a lot. It was a surprise that she hadn't fainted due to fear of her imminent death. The infrared laser trigger beam that he had seen through his binoculars was supposed to trigger off the bomb as soon as she stepped across the wire fence. The backup timer that he had expected was not there, but a carefully -thought out trigger had been placed under Rabia's hand. Her hand had been encased in a metal brace attached to the corset. The metal hand brace was designed to lock down her hand on the trigger, should she fall to a bullet. But somehow, the trigger had not gone off. Perhaps his bullet that had hit a nerve in her arm that had immobilized her hand movement, perhaps it was the way she had fallen, or perhaps Tanvir had taken off the jacket before her hand could automatically lock down on the button. These thoughts bounced around the ACP's head as he watched the swarm of policemen and forensics department officials working on the godown.

Aalamzeb and the terrorists were long gone. In fact, they must have left a mere ten minutes after Rabia entered, after quickly carrying out the recording, strapping and positioning, thought the ACP, as he watched his men wade through the large indoor nullah that functioned as the escape route. Through what looked like an abandoned effluent pipe, the nullah wound out towards the south emptying into to a small rivulet that ran through the saltpans leading to the Sewree creek. A small fishing boat could take three, maybe four, crouched men through the rivulet without being detected by a casual observer. The rivulet led into the mangroves bordering the creek on the far eastern side of the saltpans. From there, anybody with the know-how could have trudged through the narrow walkway of the Sewree Mangrove Park, hopped into Sewree Fort and from there, melted into the night.

The ACP rubbed his chin as he was just coming to realize the degree of organization that the Pakistani terrorists had undertaken while visiting Mumbai. They were forming a bad habit of staying one step ahead of him, and he didn't like that at all.

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Usually, at nights, the silence in Dr Chitrekar's Lie-in Clinic assumed almost eerie proportions. Dim lights shone only in the few wards on the ground floor that were used by the ward boys and chowkidars as their quarters. The rest of the ramshackle building would be shrouded in an uncomfortable black veil.

But tonight, a bright light shone on the second floor. This housed the room that Rabia was being treated in. She had been wheeled into the room and put on a makeshift operating table in front of a reluctant surgeon, who had been pulled out of his mistress's cosy bed. Fearing the disclosure of his peccadillo to all and sundry, he had agreed to operate on Rabia's bullet wound. Rabia had lost a lot of blood, but luckily, her blood type was the universal recipient AB+, and sufficient bottles could be obtained from the government-run JJ Hospital through semi-official channels. The bullet had passed though the thick fabric of the corset and lodged in the fleshiest part of the right deltoid. The cheating surgeon was adept at his work, and dislodged the bullet with a few quick strokes of his scalpel. He removed the bullet with his forceps and shivered at the sight as he dropped it in the garbage. After that, he went through the standard procedures of swabbing, stitching and bandaging. His work done, he smiled in relief at the ward boy assisting him, and scampered out of the ward. On the way out he bumped into Tanvir and said, 'Your wife will be all right. In about an hour or so she'll be up. The wound will heal soon. Just make sure she gets proper rest and care.' Before a relieved Tanvir could thank him, he had exited the premises, fearing that his good work might be required for others too.

Tanvir tiptoed into the wardroom to spy on the sleeping Rabia. She had a hint of a smile on her peaceful face. She did not look at all like someone who had been through hell and back. Tanvir drew up a chair and sat next to her. All of a sudden, the day's proceedings hit his body with full force. A wave of fatigue gripped him. In a flash, Tanvir had fallen asleep, snoring softly next to the slowly recovering Rabia.

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Tanvir opened his eyes a crack. Rabia was staring at him with a blank look. He opened his eyes further. Rabia didn't shift her gaze. Tanvir sprang towards her. Her eyes flickered an acknowledgement as he went closer, but he stopped short as he saw a flash of anger in them. He didn't know whether to be happy at her having regained consciousness or to be sad at the hardness of her expression.

'My life is over.' She spat out the words. The anger in her voice was palpable.

Tanvir's voice was soft. 'Don't say that, Rabia. Allah granted you life. You are going to be fine.'

Rabia looked away at the dust-caked window, as if trying to spot any sign of normal life outside on the street. Tanvir continued, 'You tried your best, but Aalamzeb escaped. Now our work is over. We can go away. As far away as you want.'

Rabia screamed, 'You don't understand. Get away from me before you cause more harm. I don't want you in my life anymore.'

Tanvir reeled in shock. He tried to speak, but couldn't find any words.. He stood at the foot of Rabia's bed, shifting from one foot to another, unsure of what to do next.

ACP Hani's entry broke the pall of awkward silence that had fallen over the room. Unmindful of the swirling tension, the ACP ignored Tanvir's presence and strode towards Rabia's bed. 'I'm sorry that I shot you.' The accompanying nonchalant shrug indicated that he wasn't really sorry. 'It was something I had to do to save the others...and in the process, save you.'

Rabia didn't speak, but her eyes conveyed that she didn't really care for what the ACP was saying. The ACP, too, realized that he was not making much headway, so in his usual manner he abruptly changed tack. 'What happened to the camera?'

The memory of the chip-camera encased in the nazar bead came flooding back to Rabia's mind. But regarding its present location, her mind drew a blank.