David laughed. They had been trekking in the mountains of the Paktia province of Afghanistan for the last fifteen days, living off their rations and the land. They were members of the secretive Task Force 121, created to hunt down HVTs, so called High Value Targets, in the seemingly never-ending `war on terror'. Osama was dead and fish food by now, but his acolytes were hard at work, and David's job was to hunt them down.
David reached into his pack and took out some chewing gum.
'This is the best I can offer by way of hospitality.'
Mike popped it into his mouth and smiled. The two other men also took the gum that David passed around. Dan already had his eyes glued to the scope of his M82A1 Barrett sniper rifle, while the fourth man, Rob, was to his right, his own M4 carbine at his shoulder. The four of them had been inserted into the area when a local informant had passed on news that Mullah Omar, the one-eyed Taliban leader and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama's deputy, were both reputed to be on the move. In the world of HVTs, that was about as high as it got, and their mission was to report in on movements, and call in air strikes if they found anything.
David saw that Mike had his own M4 at the ready by his side. In his two years with TF121, David had worked with a lot of other spooks, but what made Mike better than most CIA desk jockeys who joined them on missions was the fact that he had been an Army Ranger before joining the CIA's Special Activities Division. He might be a spook now, but he was at heart a warrior like them.
'Holy shit!'
David turned to Dan.
'What the hell did you see? A ghost?'
'Even better, Sir. Frigging Mullah Omar just stepped out to take a leak.'
David stared through his binoculars with incredulity. There was no mistaking the face he had studied a dozen times or more in pre-mission briefings. Yes, there he was, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban, standing a kilometer away with his pants literally around his knees. It would have been funny if they did not have some deadly serious business to attend to. David's orders were clear on what they were expected to do if they did encounter any HVTs. He turned to Dan even as Mike asked Eagle Eye to launch.
'Dan, take the shot.'
Specialist Daniel Barnett took a deep breath and then fired a single shot. The fifty-caliber bullet fired from the Barrett sniper rifle was designed to punch through light armour. What it did to Mullah Omar's head was not a pretty sight. The Taliban bodyguards inside saw their leader fall a split second before they heard the unmistakable report of a heavy weapon being fired. They were about to rush out when two Hellfire missiles slammed into the hut, fired by a Predator drone loitering thousands of feet and a couple of miles away. The explosions incinerated everyone and everything inside.
David had seen more than his share of fighting and killing in his ten years as a Navy SEAL and then with Task Force 121 but this was by far the most exhilarating mission he had ever been a part of. His mind was reeling at the implications of what they had achieved. With Mullah Omar gone, it was more than likely that the Taliban would cease to be the more or less unified force they had been, and perhaps more amenable to a peace deal with the Americans. And if Al-Zawahiri had indeed been with him, then killing him just months after Osama, would cripple Al Qaeda. With this one mission in the mountains of Afghanistan, they may just have changed the course of history.
'Pack up, boys. We don't want to be around when the Taliban get here.'
As silently as they had come, the four men picked up their gear and began their hour long trek through the jagged peaks and narrow passes to reach their exfiltration point, where a chopper was en route to pick them up. They were deep in enemy territory and as much as they would have liked to go in closer to verify their kills, the Predator overhead had already warned them of approaching Taliban forces.
Half an hour after they had left, three pick up trucks climbed the pass leading to the hut. More than twenty heavily armed, black-turbaned Taliban warriors leapt out, weapons at the ready. But when they saw that they were too late to save their leader, several of them sat down, stunned and in shock. From the last truck emerged four men who looked totally out of place. They were all dressed in western clothes, two of them were white and two were black. They were Al Qaeda's most prized foreign operators. Men who had been born and bred in Western society, but had converted to the cause along the way. Men who had western identities and passports and could carry their jihad deep into the infidel's lands. They were to have been the carriers of the deadly cocktail of poisons Al-Zawahiri had come to take delivery of.
They stood looking at the burnt remains of the hut and the men who had assembled there. None of them had known about the exact contents of what special weapons their leaders had themselves come down to take delivery of, and many of the uneducated Taliban warriors poked at the wreckage at random till one of the Western Jihadis told them to be more careful. One of the Americans wondered aloud if the American Predators were still overhead and if they should just get away as fast as possible. The Taliban were going to have none of that. They had lost their leaders, and were now collecting body parts, intent on giving Mullah Omar a fitting burial. One or two of the Westerners tried to reason with them that getting away immediately was the only sensible thing to do, but the illiterate Taliban soldiers pointed their guns at them and told them to wait. The grisly task took fifteen minutes, their hands cut and chafed in many places as they sorted through the charred remains. Unknown to them, they both inhaled and ingested into their bloodstreams a cocktail of some of the most deadly toxins known to man.
The Taliban were silent, many of them in tears. Their Jihad had suffered a massive setback.
Little did they realize that their Jihad was going to take on a horrifying new dimension, and that they were to be the ones to strike the first blow in it.
***
'Mom, I said I'll do it later.'
Mayukh Ghosh put his headphones back on, satisfied that he had postponed yet another plea by his mother to clean up his room. But this time, it seemed that she was not going to be as easily put off as usual. The door to his room swung open and his mother was there, hands on her hips.
'Young man, you will listen to me when I ask you to do something.'
Mayukh stopped playing on his PS3 to talk to his mother. When she started any sentence with the words 'young man', it usually meant he was in bigger trouble than usual.
'Mom, it's not a big deal. I'll clean up my room over the weekend.'
His mother moved some of the CDs and sports magazines strewn across his bed and sat down on it.
'This isn't just about your room. You're seventeen now and you'll be in college soon. You need to start thinking more seriously about what you want to do with your life. I mean, look at you.'
Mayukh sighed loudly, which only served to irritate his mother even more.
'You just loiter around with that good for nothing friend of yours and play video games all day. You need to pay more attention to what your future will be like.'
Mayukh had already tuned out. He had heard this lecture many times, and was in no mood to hear it again.
'Mom, I know what you're going to say. All your friend's kids are doing well in school, they're so well behaved, they all have a plan. I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment, all right?'
With those words, he walked out of his room, slamming the door shut behind him. He knew he would be in big trouble when he got back home, but for now he just wanted to be by himself. He rode his bicycle for about twenty minutes, the cold November air blasting into his face. Winter was not yet fully upon Delhi, but pedaling as fast as he could, the wind felt freezing. It was just what he needed to cool himself down. Finally, his legs aching, he stopped to catch his breath. His usually curly and long hair (another cause of his mother's angst-why couldn't he get a haircut?) was now falling all over his face, and he wondered what was it about parents, anyways? Whatever he did never seemed to be good enough. And if they suddenly had discovered that he needed to be more responsible, weren't they to blame in any way?