And his mission ensured the afterlife.
He looked around and saw the overcast clouds and the drizzle hitting the windows. Flashes of thunder followed intermittently, lighting up the bridge in a flood of bluish-white light. The glass vibrated a few seconds later as the thunder crackled through the skies.
Filthy weather… he thought as the ship heaved again, following the motion of yet another of the never-ending waves. Afridi struggled to hold on and maintain his balance. He was not a sailor. Never had been and never thought about it. But apparently Allah had other plans, as it had turned out. Given the nature of the job he had been given, however, the discomfort on the high seas was irrelevant.
This “ship” was barely deserving of the term. But it was a decades-old veteran of the Arabian sea. It had survived countless storms and had always made it back to port. And that kind of security was what Afridi and his men needed on their journey from the beaches west of Karachi.
Security and anonymity… Afridi reminded himself. For all its glorious years on the seas off the Pakistani and Indian coasts, this ship and its crew were well known to authorities on both sides. And that was important. The last thing he needed now was to be caught off the coast, away from his objective, by Indian naval and coastal security forces.
Which is where the weather came in… He thought as he put his hand out of the windows to feel the drizzling rain.
This bad weather made his job easier. There would be little chance of detection from low flying patrol aircraft with these clouds and rolling waves. There would be no moonlight to assist in visual acquisition and the undulating surface of the water coupled with the extremely small thermal signature of this low-tech vessel would ensure that sensory detection threat was low.
At least that’s what they told us… he shrugged off the rain water and again shouldered his rifle behind his back. The eyes of the two crewmen were focused on his actions.
“Look at the sea where we are going!” he shouted with a brash wave of his arm. “If we get lost out here, I will personally chop and throw your heads off this boat for the sharks to feast on! I want to be at our objective within the next few hours before this storm dies away! Understand?!”
The two men nodded in quick successions but said nothing. Afridi moved to the old man and grabbed him by the throat, nearly choking him.
“You have been very quiet ever since I came up here. You are not having second thoughts about the task God has given you, do you?” He pressed his fingers tighter around the old man’s neck, causing him to gasp for breath. “Speak up, you old bastard!”
A few seconds later Afridi relaxed his grip around the man’s throat. The captain instantly fell on his knees gasping for air.
“Bah. You miserable villagers are not worthy to be leading this task!” Afridi turned to a hatch nearby that led into the belly of the ship. That was where the rest of his men were. There was a small orange-yellow glow of light coming from down there. Afridi bent over the hatch and was met down the ladder by one of his men, sitting with his rifle next to the base of the ladder.
“Rashid!” Afridi shouted. Rashid looked up and smiled.
“Wake everybody up. We are getting close to the destination. I want the cargo checked and primed. Understand?” Rashid nodded and threw his cigarette away, getting up with the help of the ladder. Afridi looked back at the bridge once Rashid was on his way. He could hear the voices of other men now. The captain’s assistant had helped the captain get up and take a seat near the steering column. The latter’s face was red and he was still struggling for breath.
“You!” Afridi pointed at the assistant. “Get back to the control! Leave him or I will shoot you right here and now!”
As the petrified man promptly got up to get to the controls, Afridi looked out the glass and saw the drizzle dying down. He could even see some break in the cloud cover…
“How far are we from the coast?”
“Probably two dozen kilometers.”
Not a good time to lose weather cover… Afridi thought. They were entering one of the busiest commercial shipping areas. He could even make out the lights of at least half a dozen large container ships on the horizon.
Afridi turned as he heard noise behind him and saw Rashid climbing up the stairs to the bridge, his rifle slinging over his shoulders. He kicked the captain blocking his way on the floor and walked past the writhing man. Afridi had taken the binoculars from the bridge and was actively scanning the horizon.
“Problems?” Rashid asked.
“Not yet,” Afridi replied without taking his eyes off the optics. “But the weather is starting to clear and we still have some distance to go before we are in range of the dinghies.”
“Inshallah, we will deliver as promised!” Rashid proclaimed confidently. Afridi grunted and smiled.
“Indeed, my friend! I…” Afridi’s voice died off as both men overheard droning aircraft noise. A warning from the assistant made them look just as an Indian coast-guard Dorner-228 aircraft broke cloud cover about a kilometer away from their location. The aircraft was on a path away from the boat and was moving on…
“Maybe they didn’t see us!” Rashid offered. Afridi continued to watch the departing aircraft through his binoculars as it drifted in and out of the low hanging clouds and the early morning mist. The aircraft noise was dying down now and Afridi was almost agreed with Rashid when the aircraft banked to port and began to turn.
“The infidels have spotted us!” Afridi lowered his binoculars and let out some heart-felt expletives. He then turned to Rashid as the aircraft noise began to rise: “Get everybody up now! Tell Ahmed to open up the containers we have for just this emergency! Go!”
As Rashid leapt to the ladder and began climbing down, Afridi kept his eyes on the twin-engined propeller aircraft as it swung by the ship, this time within a few hundred meters of the bow. Afridi saw the logo of the Indian coast-guard against the flicker of a lightening flash. He thought he also saw light flashing from some small dome-shaped optical pod lens…
There’s no hiding it now…he looked on as Rashid and two other men of his team brought up a pair of wooden containers through the hatch. Rashid slid one of the containers over the floor of the bridge and cracked open the lid. He removed the thin cover of foam on top to reveal a long green tube with optics on one end. It had painted on it “ANZA MK-II”. Rashid put his rifle down and hefted the loaded surface-to-air missile launcher in his hands. He removed the lid off its optics and slid the batteries in. The optics lit up. He looked to Afridi:
“Ready when you are!”
Afridi frowned. This was to have been their last resort. But given the nature of the mission at hand, they were armed for any eventuality. He held no assumptions that the Indians would be unaware of the threat posed by this weapon or even the weapon’s characteristics. After all, they had faced versions of the same weapon many years ago during the Kargil war. No, the issue here was not the weapon itself but its use. Deniability doesn’t work very well if one advertises the source of one’s weaponry…
“Not yet,” he replied finally. “Let’s make sure they are on to us. For all they know, we are just another fishing vessel lost in the storm.” He got a wicked smile from Rashid on that one just as the aircraft made another low pass over the vessel, drowning the bridge in propeller noise.