The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (29 page)

Guns crackled. Grenades grumbled. ‘Hello?’ Umer was back. Qahafa asked: ‘Are they coming from upstairs or downstairs?’ Did they still hold the high ground? Were the police pinned down? Umer was out of breath: ‘We don’t know.’ He sounded like he was losing his cool. Qahafa had a solution. The four gunmen should split into two teams. ‘Divide the prisoners,’ he ordered.

But Umer was distracted. ‘One minute, I’ll talk to you later,’ he cried out. ‘Need water.’ Qahafa backed off: ‘OK, I’ll listen; you work.’ Then he whispered to Wasi, sitting next to him in Lashkar’s Malir Town control room. The police position had been attacked. ‘Shoaib fired at them, so they ran off.’ They needed to press home their advantage. Qahafa shouted into the phone: ‘Divide into two teams; divide the hostages.’

But all he could hear was Umer grunting and screaming. He hoped he was not falling to pieces. ‘Umer, Umer, pray, brother, make less sound. Umer, stop the noise.’ Qahafa tried another tack: ‘Umer, Umer, throw the grenade.’ No response. ‘Umer, Umer, firing is on, my friend, firing.’ Had they been overrun? He shouted into the phone, using the one ploy that always worked. ‘There are twenty thousand rupees for you,’ he said, ‘if you take them out.’

But Umer was gone, although the phone line remained open. The ATS and Qahafa could hear new voices talking: men whispering in English and Marathi. ‘Open it, man,’ a voice said. ‘Untie it quickly.’ The ATS wondered who else was still there. ‘Release his hands first.’ In Nagpada they speculated that these must be the hostages trying to escape. Where was Umer? Another new voice: ‘That’s it. Now open the window.’ Had the police made it up from the third floor? ‘Smash the glass.’

Qahafa whispered to Wasi, next to him: ‘I think this is someone else.’ What had happened to the four gunmen? ‘It’s the army talking, the mobile has fallen; someone is breaking the door,’ said Qahafa, confused. ‘Umer?’ he called. Silence. The line filled with the cascading sound of a window exploding.

‘They have been martyred,’ Qahafa whispered. ‘Praise be to Allah.’

Down on the second floor, on the landing of the Grand Staircase, the Black Suit Petwal was still inside the great wooden box and could hardly breathe. He waited, counting, until a break in the firing. Then he flipped open the heavy lid, leapt out and bolted for a pantry, where, seeing a fire hose, he turned it on and squirted a circle around himself, creating a wet buffer.

Further along the corridor, close to the CCTV room, Inspector Dhole, who could smell his clothes and skin burning, spied a row of fire extinguishers, as incoming rounds and grenades continued to pummel his position. His hands and arms stung as shrapnel sliced into them. Everyone in the column had been cut and burned, and they were three men down. On a UN mission to Cyprus the
inspector had undergone intensive training in fire-fighting. He recalled that the instructor had been a Pakistani army officer. ‘Now I’m fire-fighting to save myself from the Pakis,’ he told himself, running for an extinguisher, pulling the pin, and focusing the jet all around his men. The skin on his arms blistered. His face felt like it had been flayed and when he brushed his head with his hand, hair came away. He eyed up the next fire extinguisher. ‘Let’s go,’ he shouted, spurring the others on.

Dousing and running, as the fire licked all around them, he reached a doorway and kicked it in, the column falling behind him into the cool pitch black. ‘God’s grace,’ he said to himself. ‘We have seen death and escaped.’ He pushed through another door and before him a fire crew loomed, gesturing for them to run. Ecstatic, he realized that that they had reached an exit. Inspector Dhole lapped up the fresh air, falling to his knees. A paramedic ran over, accompanied by an officer he knew well from Colaba station. ‘Name and rank?’ the policeman asked. ‘Dhole. Inspector,’ he muttered, confused that this man was treating him like a stranger. What was up with the dimwit? He ran his fingertips over his face, finding great blisters. The fire had disfigured him. He motioned for the cop to come nearer. ‘I have terrible news,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘We have lost men. Patil Sir and Rajvardhan Sir are among the dead.’

Upstairs on the fifth floor, in room 520, five hostages bound hand and foot lay in the dark, with smoke pouring in through the door left open by the departing gunmen. The banker Ram wriggled and twisted, struggling to release the tight bindings digging into his bleeding ankles and wrists. Adil Irani, who was beside him, whispered: ‘Sir, they’ve gone. We need to get out.’ The two men could barely see each other through the gloomy smoke-choked room. The three on the far side of the bed were whimpering: ‘We’re going to burn to death.’

Ram rolled over. With every muscle straining he struggled up and pulled one hand free. ‘Find something to cut us loose,’ urged Adil as Ram hobbled over to the dresser, his fingers feeling for the
central drawer. Pulling it open, he felt inside, scrabbling over the prayer books, a folder of writing paper and a slim envelope of cotton wool. No scissors. He groaned. Feeling around on top of the dresser, his fingertips brushed something metallic. A blunt fruit knife. Better than nothing. He seized it and attempted to saw at Adil’s bonds.

At the ATS headquarters, and in the Lashkar control room in Malir Town, Karachi, eavesdroppers were still trying to make sense of what they were hearing, as the mobile phone dropped on the floor by Umer continued to transmit. A man could be heard struggling: ‘No, it’s not cutting. It’s not cutting with the knife.’ In Karachi, Qahafa the Bull wondered aloud if he had been too quick to conclude his gunmen were martyred. ‘Umer?’ he called out, hopefully.

Ram dropped the knife and went back to the drawer, finding a sewing kit with tiny scissors. He stumbled around the room, freeing everyone, until all five sat rubbing their wrists and ankles, wheezing in the toxic fug. Outside the open glass doors, fire flowed like lava. They were still trapped. The butler Swapnil reached over and slid them shut, using wet towels to seal the gap. Their lungs burned. How would they get out? Adil spoke first. ‘I know where we are. The windows, it’s the only way.’

The young waiter pitched a heavy waste bin against the glass, smashing a single pane before the entire frame gave way in an explosion of glass. As smoke was sucked out, fresh air gushed in and they greedily gulped it down. Ram dared to hope for the first time, and watched the waiter climb out and call over from the ledge. A few stars shone in the sky, but otherwise it was pitch black, the hotel’s tiled roof mottled with inky shadows.

The ATS and Karachi control both picked up Adil’s shout: ‘Help, help.’

Qahafa muttered: ‘Umer?’ There was no answer, just the same voice crying out: ‘Help, help.’

Beckoning the other hostages over, Adil pointed down. They were in the top inside corner of the south wing, facing the pool. Beneath
them was the sloping gabled roof of the floor below and, three floors down, a concrete terrace that ran across the top of the Crystal Room. ‘We can climb down there,’ Adil said. Ram looked horrified. ‘Come on, sir,’ Adil urged. He squinted, catching something moving down below. He heard footsteps and saw a figure scurry across the terrace. Was it a gunman? Studying the silhouette, he was sure it was Puru Petwal. After escaping from the CCTV room, the Black Suit had made it out of the second-floor fire-trap unharmed. Emboldened, Adil waved and called out, trying to get Petwal’s attention. ‘Help, help.’ He then realized Petwal was not alone. Five housekeepers were with him. They were waving up. Adil looked down and saw that they were signalling to someone else.

At the ATS and in Karachi control they heard a voice brief the others in the room: ‘What are they saying? It’s the Taj guys.’ Adil leant right out, and spotted a female guest below him, hanging from a drainpipe. He could hear her sobbing. She was frozen and trembling. Petwal shouted: ‘Please, ma’am, keep going. Don’t lose your nerve.’ Everyone below watched as she inched down. Then she stopped again and shook her head.

Edging out on to the gable, Adil at last saw the full scene. A male guest lay below on the terrace, with his legs splayed at an unnatural angle. Like many others stuck inside the stricken hotel for six hours without any sign of a rescue, he had decided to take his chances. But he had fallen, smashing on to the concrete. He looked like he might be dead. Petwal and others ran over with blankets and duvets. ‘Jump,’ they shouted up to the woman. From above, Adil watched her let go of the pipe, and tumble through the air, and into the folds of bed linen, before being carried off the terrace, alive.

Petwal came back and for the first time spotted Adil sitting on the gable. He signalled: ‘Wait’, and ran inside, returning with a coil of fire hose. He motioned for Adil to pull it up. Shouting back, Adil’s voice was picked up by the ATS and Karachi control: ‘Wait, man, I’m telling you, you can’t come from there.’

Petwal had something else with him, a rope of bedsheets that he tied to one end of the heavy hose, coiling up the loose end before he
hurled it up. Once, twice. Adil, who had rammed his legs into the frame of the gable, finally caught the improvised rope and used it to heave up the heavy hose.

ATS and Karachi control picked up the sound of someone inside the room. It was the butler trying to braid his own rope to attach to Petwal’s. ‘This curtain is thicker than this curtain. Take the pillow.’ They attached the rope and the hose to the gable and now they had to slide down, both of them, hand over hand. Offering to go first, Adil pushed off the gable, twisted around to face the building and let the hose take his weight. His last thought before he spun off into an airless world of velvety blackness and lost consciousness was of being glad that the others had not seen the tableau of the stricken man below.

At the ATS and in Karachi, they heard someone in room 520 shouting: ‘Tie it, tie it, Raju. He is hanging.’ Adil had fainted. Ram screamed at Raju Bagle, the housekeeping boy, while Petwal’s team held the hose taut, praying Adil would not fall. But the rope was slipping fast through his fingers and he fell, crashing to the ground with a sickening thud. ‘Is he dead?’ asked a horrified Ram. Because of the angle of the gable, Adil was now out of view. Those left behind in 520 scrabbled around, looking for another exit. Instead, they spotted the abandoned phone.

At the ATS and in Karachi they heard footsteps, and a voice. Raju Bagle: ‘I think your mobile is here.’ Ram: ‘No, no, it’s yours.’ Then came a dawning realization that the handset didn’t belong to any of them. Ram: ‘Whose is it then?’ A pause.
‘Arre
[Hey], it might be a bomb or something, don’t touch it, throw it away.’ A thud.

In Karachi, Qahafa the Bull finally disconnected the line.

Down on the terrace, Adil came to, staring into Petwal’s face: ‘Are you OK?’ Shooting pains gripped his chest. His ribs felt broken and his feet were bleeding. But he was alive. ‘You fainted, man,’ he heard Petwal say, giving him a bearhug. Behind, he could see the housekeeping boys gathering up the body of the other fallen guest, a 39-year-old German TV producer, Ralph Burkei, who would later die from his wounds. His wife, Claudia, who was at home in Munich,
had missed his last call, in which he had said he was going to try to climb out of the hotel. She would not learn of his death for several hours more.

Summoning all his strength, Adil got up and limped into the sight of those hostages still in 520, waving up to them, clutching his ribs. ‘Come down, you have to try,’ he called. Swapnil, the butler, sitting on the gable end, shifted his weight awkwardly, hesitated and then began rappelling down, without making a sound. Next came Raju Bagle, the housekeeping boy. Ram was left with Sunil Jadhav, the bellboy. They looked at each other. Who would go next? What lay ahead of them was a Special Forces obstacle course. Sunil signalled he would rather take his chances than stay and he hauled himself on to the ledge, twisting himself around, and sliding off.

Ram was alone, listening to the crackling fire behind him. His mind felt like a pack of shuffling cards. He sat on the ledge, his legs dangling. His collarbone ached, and his back and hip were badly bruised. Even though he wanted to live more than anything in the world, his body had gone through too much. He could see everyone waving at him. ‘Come on, Ram. Please try.’ But he had also seen them carrying off the German guest’s body. He could not do it. His eyes welled. He felt too broken and old. Ram crawled back into the smoke-logged room, slumping down by the bed. What came to him was an aromatic smell of beeswax and sandalwood, the sound of bells chiming in a buttery hall, and warm feet on cool, pitted flagstones, smoothed by a thousand years of procession and worship. He was back in the Mylapore Temple of Kapaleeshwara, making a wish, as he had done so many times in his life, pleading with the
devi
for his freedom. He chanted. ‘Which is it to be?’

Opening his eyes, he saw some pyjamas lying on the floor and remembered his nakedness. Pulling them on, he made up his mind. He picked up the wet towels from the floor, wrapping them around his face and shoulders, slid open the glass doors and stumbled out into the flames. He wanted to live.

7.

Deep Night

Thursday, 27 November 2008, 3 a.m.

One mile north of the Taj, Amit Peshave, the manager of the Shamiana coffee shop, paced the corridors of Bombay Hospital, his neatly parted hair awry, his black suit encrusted with dirt and his white work shirt flapping. He looked like he had been sucked up and spat out by a tornado. The hospital’s windowless corridors were doused in a harsh neon light and it was hard to know if it was day or night in this twilight world of the sick and injured. A smell of rotting blood permeated everything and mournful cries echoed up the stairwell.

In the past five hours, Amit should have died many times over. One of his waiters had been gunned down before him. He had rallied thirty-one diners while under intense fire and witnessed the execution of two guests. Volunteering to search for a missing child, he had also come face to face with a gunman, who shot at him and then threw a grenade. His mind whirled with horror at what had befallen his beloved city.