The Hunt for Shambhala

36

Lee Kuan was of the opinion that Rakesh Madan would pay a Mughal emperor’s ransom to stop the most sacred Hindu city from being turned into ash and glass, especially with one of his own precious bombs. It was with this thought that he drove the Tata Starbus across the Ganges and into the Ghasi Tola district of the city.

Kuan checked the mirror and saw Vòng and two other men in the back of the tour bus. They were trying to look calm, but keeping a safe distance from the prototype of Madan’s super-EMP bomb. It was strapped to a paramedic’s gurney in the aisle so they could manoeuvre it when they reached the target site. He smiled. A safe distance would require hundreds of kilometres, not hiding behind a few rows of bus seats.

He glanced out the side window and saw hundreds of devout pilgrims lining the banks of the Ganges River. They stood on ghats or special embankments constructed from large pieces of stone, and performed their rituals in the dark green water.

Kuan cruised the Starbus past the world-famous Manikarnika Ghat where people gathered in their thousands to cremate their dead and scatter the ashes into the Ganges. This was one of the most holy sites in Hinduism, created when the goddess Sati immolated herself after one of Lord Brahma’s sons humiliated Lord Shiva for marrying her. It was Shiva who carried her blazing body into the Himalayas, but there would be no bodies left if the Yama I detonated in the heart of this busy city.

He nodded and smiled as he recalled the time Madan had told him about his own pilgrimage to the river to scatter the ashes of his parents. Something told him the billionaire would be more than happy to pay up if it meant saving all of this.

The Indian billionaire had been very careful in his calculations. When Yama II, III and IV blasted the world’s most powerful electromagnetic pulses all over the USA, Europe and the Far East, India would remain untouched as would everywhere else not on his hit-list. His skilful protection of India had shown his weakness and Kuan knew he would pay any amount to get the bomb back and save his precious Varanasi.

Across town, Vedika Jha gripped the wheel of the police Jeep and powered the vehicle toward the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The former Australian soldier from the 1st Commando Regiment and SAS was sitting beside her, checking the magazine in his weapon and behind him was Dr Diana Silva. The night was hotter than normal, and tonight Riley Carr was wearing nothing beneath the tactical vest Jha had given him back at the airport, exposing his sweat-slicked arms. She glanced over at him and saw a single tattoo on his right shoulder: Strike Swiftly.

“And do you?” she said, returning her attention to the road.

“Do I want?” he said.

“What your tattoo says.”

“Ah,” he laughed. “That’s the motto of my old regiment. And yes, we do.”

“This is good to know, Mr Carr.”

“Demolitions, sabotage, anti-terror raids, airdrops, diving, unarmed combat — you name it, we do it — and call me Riley.”

“This will come in useful tonight,” she said with a quick, polite smile. “There are well over one million people in Varanasi, Riley. If this criminal thug Kuan detonates a neutron bomb in the city, they will all be gone in five seconds, not to mention thousands of years of culture and architecture.”

“He’s not going to detonate it,” Riley said, smacking the magazine into the grip and holstering the gun. “He wants Madan to pay a ransom, so he’s not going to play his hand until Madan tips his first.”

“Let’s hope so,” Diana said quietly.

Jha changed gear and took a corner. “I wish I could share your optimism.”

“But you can’t?”

She shook her head and tightened her grip on the wheel as she braked to swerve the Jeep around another sharp bend and powered back up again on the straight. “No — any number of things could go wrong. For all we know, Rakesh Madan is tipping his hand as we speak and the bomb could go off before we even get there… or perhaps Kuan will detonate it in a panic if he feels cornered.”

“Well, thanks for cheering me up,” Riley said.

“You did ask,” Diana said from the back.

“I guess I did,” he said.

“We’re here,” Jha said. “And it looks like we might already be too late for some.”

They reached the temple in time to hear screams coming from a nearby market beside the holy site. Streams of people were rushing away from the market stalls with fear in their eyes.

“Any sign of Kuan?” Riley said, searching the chaos.

Jha sighed. “No — just his men in the market, but that’s a start.”

Her team knew what to do, and seconds after climbing out the truck they went into the fight hard and fast, drawing their weapons and charging into the fray prepared to do whatever it took to take Kuan down and secure the Yama I.

They sprinted inside the market and Jha was instantly met by one of Kuan’s thugs who had been hiding and waiting for them. He was armed, but Jha pulled the gun from his hand and it clattered to the floor. She sprung her elbow back hard into the man’s face and he grunted as it smashed into his mouth and nose. Stinging from the pain and with blood running down his chin, he fell backwards and desperately scanned the floor for his weapon, but Jha was too fast.

She spun around and brought her right leg up, striking the man’s exposed throat with the heel of her riot boot. She winced when she heard the wet-smacking sound as her boot heel crushed his throat, but the fight was over. With wide terrified eyes the man collapsed to the floor with his hands clawing at his throat as he struggled to heave fresh air into his lungs through his collapsed windpipe.

“Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you, mate,” Riley said.

“I will, and you can start by not calling me ‘mate’,” came the terse reply.

“Got it, boss!” Riley said, but his sentence was ended by an enormous explosion which ripped through their part of the market and blasted two of the stalls all over the street behind them. It propelled Jha, Riley and Diana to the floor where they landed on the concrete with a heavy thud. Riley was up first and he scrambled over to the Indian woman, extending his arm to help her up.

She took one look at his arm and brushed it away. “I can get up without your help!”

“Jesus, I was only trying to help!”

She fixed her dark brown eyes on his. “What did we just say about getting on my wrong side?”

Riley searched for the hint of a smile, but then realized Agent Jha wasn’t fooling around. “Where’s Diana?”

His eyes crawled over the floor until he saw the Portuguese academic taking cover beneath a table in one of the stalls. She was pinned down by enemy fire and one of Kuan’s men was approaching her with a gun.

Jha and Riley were also pinned down, but Riley was able to take out the man. He struck him in the throat, killed him stone-dead and blasted his pistol out of his hands. It landed with a clatter on the asphalt. “Grab the gun, Diana!” Riley shouted, but she was still in danger as the armed man approached.

Diana crawled out from under the table and found the dead man’s gun. It was still smoking, and she reached out and picked it up just in time to fire at the man who was running toward her. Riley fired at him too, but it was her shot that took him out.

She gasped in terror and dropped the weapon again, rubbing a burn on her hand. The gun’s slide and barrel were red hot because of its recent use. Another man approached. She had no choice but to pick it up again — it was another first degree burn on her hands or this guy was going to kill her… she could tell by the look in his eyes.

She grabbed it again but this time by the grip. No heat. She didn’t know how to check it was loaded and there was no one around to ask — Riley and Jha were fighting their own battle. She picked it up with two trembling hands and pointed it at the man.

The man stopped moving toward her and looked at the gun wobbling at arms’ length in front of her. “Go easy,” he said, taking a gentle step closer. “You could really hurt someone with that thing.”

“That’s what I want to do,” she said. Her voice was wobbling nearly as much as the gun in her hands — and it was heavy. She had no idea how much one of these things weighed until a few seconds ago when she snatched it off the street.

“No, no… you are not a killer,” he said, quickly glancing over his shoulders to keep an eye on the battle raging across the market. “I can see by the way you are holding the gun — by the look in your eyes.” He smiled like a devil, extended his arm and opened his hand. He beckoned for the gun. “Give me it.”

“If you say so,” she said, and fired over and over again. The muzzle flashed and smoke and heat danced before her eyes as the rounds raked across the man’s chest and his white shirt exploded with blood.

Diana continued shooting the weapon until the sound of dry-firing filled her ears, and then she hurled the gun away with a look of disgust on her face. “Deus me ajude!” she whispered, and made the sign of the cross over her chest and face. She had never killed a person until today, and she never wanted to ever again.

As she watched the man’s smoking corpse cooling quietly on the street, she thought she was going to be sick, but then Riley scrambled in beside her under a hail of bullets tracing over his head. “All right, mate?”

“I…” she raised her hand at the dead body and directed the Australian’s attention to it. She was hoping for some kind of consolation, for him to say it was okay and that everything would be all right.

“You plugged the bastard!” he said. “Good job.”

Jha joined them when a savage burst of fire tore though a market stall to their right and blasted the stock to shreds, but it was aimed not at them but at Kuan’s men.

“What the fuck?” Riley said.

“That’s Singh!” Jha said. “One of Madan’s men — I recognize him from Banerjee’s intel briefing earlier.”

“He wants Kuan dead more than we do,” Riley said and reloaded his gun.

Diana hesitated for a moment and then picked up the gun again, tightening her fingers around the gun’s grip. Until today, she had never held a weapon like this before and didn’t want to hold this one either, but she understood the danger she might be in if she was cornered by Kuan’s men and she was unarmed.

“We have to find Kuan!” Jha said, pulling her palm mic up to her mouth. “Attention all units — finding Lee Kuan and the bomb is the priority!”

Then their world was rocked by a short-fuse grenade. It tumbled over the wall into the marketplace and was just too far for Riley or Jha to reach and throw back. With no time to get to safety, instinct drove them to their feet and they sprinted away from it, but the explosion blasted them into the air. Riley tried to shield Diana but she was hit hard, and when she fell back to Earth her head smashed into the side of the pavement.

Riley ran to her, clearing the smoke and dust from his eyes. “Jesus, Diana!”

“How is she?” Jha asked, businesslike.

“I don’t know yet!” he called over his shoulder. “I just hope she’s still alive.”