The Dust Will Never Settle (10 page)

By the time Raider Two moved to the twelfth man, her breath was coming in rasping gasps, her eyes blazing, and splatters of blood pockmarked her.

The final hostage did not scream. There was an amazing calm in the way he stared at her, perhaps a touch of pity. His lips were moving as though praying for her.

The surge of anger on Raider Two’s face at his lack of fear was palpable. Perhaps that he was a Jew fuelled her anger. Shifting the knife’s angle, she sliced out his right ear. The hostage screamed now. Though no sound emerged, each viewer could hear the animal-like howl of pain.

The scream goaded Raider Two on. She sliced off the other ear too. Then reversing her hold on the knife, she drove it into the hostage’s right eye. The scream ended abruptly as the knife entered the brain and drove the life out of him.

Raider Two stood frozen, still holding the knife buried in the hostage’s skull. She seemed depleted. As though it was not just the hostage who had died. As though something inside her had died too.

Ravinder felt his breath thud to a stop, unable to believe the brutality he had witnessed.

Watching it on the BlackBerry’s screen, Raider One smiled. She began tapping something on the keypad. Then she watched impatiently as the file uploaded slowly.

A moment later she gave a satisfied nod and was putting the phone away when a stun grenade smashed through a nearby window. It exploded with a blinding flash.

Moments later, the IDF commandos raced in and unleashed a hail of bullets.

Their mission complete, the two terrorists triggered their camera bombs and death claimed them.

‘The BlackBerry handset was destroyed so we’ll never know whom she sent that video to.’

Peled’s comment was cut off as Raider Five raced into the central hall. She saw that her teammates were down and reached for the trigger of her camera bomb.

A commando had heard her run in and shot at her twice even as her hand was reaching for the camera bomb.

His first bullet missed. The second grazed her temple. It bit deeply enough to make her reel and clutch at the wound.

In a flash the commando was on her, hammering her into the ground, disarming her and pinning her down, making sure her hands got nowhere near her camera bomb.

The carnage was over.

The silence in the conference room was complete, though the footage on the screen rolled on.

The task force commander now raced into the mosque. He came to a stunned stop as he surveyed the bodies.

‘The last hostage killed was Ean Gellner, the son of Ziv Gellner, who is one of our delegates for this Summit,’ Peled said softly.

On the screen, the task force commander turned and said something to the commando who had captured Raider Five.

‘I knew we had to keep her capture from the media,’ Peled said.

‘
You?’
Chance asked wide-eyed. ‘You were the task force commander?’

‘Yes,’ Peled replied. ‘I also did most of the post-event investigation. That is why I was asked to come down and brief you all.’

A long silence followed his words.

‘Who were the others involved?’ Jennifer’s voice broke the moment.

‘The mastermind was a Qassam Brigades commander.’

‘Who?’ Jennifer asked again.

‘We are still not sure,’ Peled replied with a straight face. No way Israel would officially admit to Yusuf Sharbati’s involvement, not after he had been disposed of in Dubai by a kidon team barely a week ago. ‘But we do know that the Qassam commander was funded by someone from the Lashkar-e-Toiba.’

‘Not surprising,’ Ravinder remarked. ‘They’ve been looking for a way to up their profile in global terror for years. Of late, they’ve become frantic because their refusal to take up arms against their sponsors – the Pakistani government – has tagged them as betrayers of Islam.’

‘True,’ Mohite agreed. ‘That is why they are under huge pressure to redeem themselves in the eyes of the “ummah”, the community. Not to mention that they want to exploit the gap in leadership of Terror Central, with Osama dead and other senior Al Qaeda leaders having gone underground.’

‘That could also explain the similarities of the Jerusalem strike to the 26/11 LeT ghazwa on Mumbai,’ Chance pointed out. ‘Mumbai was also their doing.’

‘Yes,’ Peled nodded. ‘We have certain leads about this man but have yet to ascertain his identity.’

‘You know, we have a very extensive database on all LeT commanders,’ Ravinder offered. ‘We have suffered because of these lunatics and their ISI handlers for decades now. Let us know if we can help.’

‘That is kind of you, sir.’ Peled gave a grateful smile. ‘We shall take you up on that.’

‘Just share your leads with us and Mohite will help you dig up possible matches.’

‘Right, so…’ Again, it was Jennifer who brought them back to the present. ‘Twelve women and two guys… that takes care of fourteen people. You said there were fifteen. Who was the fifteenth?’

‘There was a thirteenth woman,’ Peled replied.
Damn! Thirteen, again!
Ravinder swore under his breath. It had become a recurring theme with this damn Summit.

Peled continued, ‘We do not know much except that she is probably Caucasian. The terrorist we captured caught a glimpse of her and heard her talking when she came to meet the Qassam commander. She says she heard a British accent. As of now, that is all we know.’

The others were listening, but did not catch the unspoken. Ravinder did. He sensed that Peled knew more than he was telling.

At that moment, barely thirteen miles away, the thirteenth woman, dressed as a tourist, complete with camera, hat and water bottle, approached Ashoka hotel.

Ruby carried out two runs to and through the hotel. The minute she entered it, she knew she had no hope of going past the main lobby or the restaurants. Disappointed, but not surprised, she surveyed as best she could.

On her first run she studied the layout and identified ingress points. On the second, she confirmed the observations she had made, double-checking to ensure she was correct.

By sunset, Ruby had every detail of the venue embedded in her head. Satisfied with the day’s work, she returned to her hotel room and began to work out attack combinations.

It was not going to be easy. She’d seen cops crawling all over the place, in plainclothes and in uniform. Most inner areas in the hotel had already been cordoned off. Roadblocks had been set up on all approaches and there were security posts at both hotel gates.

It did not take her long to realize that a frontal assault would fail. It would have to be a covert attack – though a frontal assault
could
be a useful diversion. In fact, a critical one, if delivered right.

A couple of hours later, her plans tentatively complete, she called it a night. Though exhausted, her sleep was hampered by her anxiety about the meeting with Nanda, the arms dealer, the next morning.

I hope that bugger can come up with the Glocks.
That was her last thought as she fell asleep.

Dinner was drawing to a close when the phone began to clamour. Simran frowned as Ravinder wiped his hands and got up to answer it.

‘We have two candidates, sir,’ Mohite sounded excited. ‘It took a while, but…’

‘Candidates for what, Govind?’ Ravinder cut in. ‘Oh!’ Mohite checked himself. ‘I was helping Peled to sift through our database on the LeT commanders and we have two possible suspects. The first is Pasha.’

‘Hmm. Give me a moment while I get my laptop out.’ Ravinder retreated to his study. Booting up the device, he pulled up Pasha’s profile. The screen showed two photos, the only two they had of him.

The first, taken by an Indian intelligence operative, showed a clean-shaven man in a neat and obviously expensive steel-grey business suit. He carried the suit well, as though used to it. Short and diminutive, he looked like a jockey. A small but prominent pear-shaped scar marked his right temple.

The second, taken by a Taliban turncoat, showed a different man, heavily bearded with shoulder-length hair, now dressed in a typical black Pathani kameez and ankle-high salwar. There was little resemblance to the man in the first photo.

Ravinder scanned through the man’s profile. Born Khalid Abbas Khawaja, he had been a Wing Commander in the Pakistan Air Force. No one knew whether he had retired or had been ordered to retire, or if it had been made to look like he had retired. Mysteriously, one fine day Wing Commander Khalid Abbas Khawaja had just vanished.

He appeared to have little in common with the man who surfaced in Afghanistan a year later, the year the Taliban had begun to make its presence felt. The crew cut and sharp pencil line moustache had been replaced by an unruly beard and shoulder-length hair. This slightly built man, with an AK-74 in one hand and a radio or satellite phone in the other, soon became a fixture in the entourage of the one-eyed leader of the Taliban. He now piloted people, not planes, tweaking their destinies and ensuring they served just one purpose, the jihad.

However, as he had been ordered to do, Pasha stuck to the shadows. He feared the powerful generals in Islamabad. He knew they would throw him to the wolves if he dared cross them.

It was Pasha who had planned and executed the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. This much was known – or at least strongly conjectured.

‘Who is the other suspect?’ Ravinder asked.

‘Well, if it is not Pasha then it could only be Saeed Anwar.’

Ravinder opened Anwar’s profile. There were many photos of the portly, skullcap-wearing, bearded, bespectacled man. Clad in white, he was fond of leading public rallies and was a primary fundraiser for the LeT. He had helped Osama plan and execute the 9/11 strike and was known to have transferred 100,000 US dollars to the hijackers just before the attack.

Yes, he too is a strong possibility. In fact, considering the others in the LeT leadership, it seems certain that one of the two would have been behind the Jerusalem attack.

‘Good work, Mohite. What does the Israeli have to say?’

‘He said his boss would be talking to you soon.’

‘All right.’ Ravinder rang off.

Sure enough, an hour later his phone rang again and on the line was Meir Dagan.

Though he had met him only once, Ravinder could easily picture Dagan, the current head of Mossad. Known to be the antithesis of M, the James Bond spymaster, Dagan, an avid student of history, a no-frills man who clocked eighteen hours of work every day, was famous for his bull-headed doggedness, and commanded respect, both within Mossad and outside.

Though Ravinder did not know it yet, the reason Dagan took an hour to finally call him, was because he first needed to get the Israeli PM’s sanction. Ordering a kidon hit was not something Dagan had the authority to do on his own.

To have Pasha and Anwar taken out, he had to first get their names added to the ‘execution list.’

Given the severity of the Jerusalem attack, Dagan had little doubt that the sanction to place Pasha and Anwar on this list would be accorded. However, as per protocol, such a request could be confirmed by the Israeli PM only after a go-ahead by the designated judicial investigator, a person whose identity is so secret almost no one has heard of him. The judicial investigator must have been clocking serious overtime that day since he had given his approval quite fast.