The Tiger Warrior

11

Look below us now. Quick, before they vanish. In the jungle.”

Jack peered out of the open side door of the helicopter, feeling the downdraft of the rotor against his helmet. Costas did the same on the other side. At first they saw nothing but the lushness of the jungle, draped over the rugged contours of the hills like a thick pile carpet. Then Jack realized there was movement in the gloom below the canopy, a ripple like a spreading shadow, as if the Godavari River behind them had burst its banks and was tumbling through the ravines and gullies of the jungle. He saw individual black shapes in the lead, pounding through the jungle clearings. He heard nothing except the helicopter, but he sensed a rumble like thunder, the sound of a herd of bison as they rolled through the jungle toward some unknown destination.

“They’re gaur,” Pradesh said through the intercom from the co-pilot’s seat. “The Koya fear them almost as much as the tigers. With a herd this size around, that’s another reason for avoiding the jungle path and taking the helicopter.”

Jack leaned back inside. He and Costas were strapped into the door seats facing aft, and Jack held on to the mounting where the door gun would once have been. The helicopter was an old Huey, ex-Indian army but now used as a workhorse for supplying remote villages in the jungles of the Eastern Ghats. It had been out of the question for Pradesh to request a helicopter from his own unit, with markings that would have alarmed the Koya and the Maoist terrorists, and the IMU Lynx looked too much like one of the machines that brought in the mining prospectors. But Jack felt they were adequately protected for the mission at hand, a quick foray that Pradesh hoped would take them less than two hours, so they could be out before sunset. On the fold-down seats opposite were two of Pradesh’s sappers, cheerful men from the Madras Engineering Group Assault Company. Each had a weapons case strapped down on the floor in front of them. Jack looked at their faces, at the moustaches and fierce eyes, and wondered if they too had ancestors who had been up here before, men who might have been with his own great-great-grandfather on the jungle path below them on that fateful day in 1879.

“We’re only ten minutes away now,” Pradesh said. “The clearing with the shrine is ahead of us, and the village of Rampa is about a kilometer to the east, where you can see the smoke rising above the jungle.” The two sappers quickly opened their weapon cases, taking out AK-74 assault rifles and pushing in the banana-shaped magazines. They cocked the rifles and held them on their knees, muzzles facing outward. One of them motioned for Jack and Costas to slide their seats along the floor runnels toward the center of the cabin, away from the open doors. Pradesh leaned around, checking that they had moved. “Just in case we encounter any incoming rounds,” he said. “According to the Koya we just spoke to, the clearing hasn’t been used as a regular camp by the Maoists for some time now, but the Koya have been too fearful to go there themselves. They said the Rampa villagers heard a lot of shooting on the day the Chinese mining prospectors went there. There’s no telling what we’ll find.”

“So what’s with Rampa village, the name?” Costas said.

“It’s derived from Rama, the prince who became a focus for Hindu worship,” Pradesh replied. “According to the Ramayana, the ancient Sanskrit epic, Prince Rama traveled south from Oudh and spent ten years in exile in the jungle. The place we’re going to, the shrine, has always been known as the temple of Rama.”

Jack pressed the intercom on his helmet. “I’ve been thinking about that since we saw that Roman coin from the velpu. When the Romans were at Arikamedu, the most common local name for them was yavanas, westerners. But the name raumanas also crops up in Brahmin literature. It may just be coincidence.”

“Come on, Jack,” Costas said. “When have you ever believed in coincidences?”

“It’s a fascinating possibility,” Pradesh said. “As a Hindu, I took the Ramayana at face value. That seemed to account for it. But I know from my Koya ancestry that a shrine to Rama is completely at odds with jungle beliefs. They have no shrines to their gods, no holy sanctums, not even sacred colors. Their gods are all around them, pure immanence. As Hindus we accept stories of interlopers, as our religion is all-encompassing. But for the animist beliefs of the Koya, it’s a different story. If it wasn’t Prince Rama himself, it must have been an equally powerful presence who came here and left a mark.”

“Maybe another interloper,” Costas said.

“Okay. Here we are now.” The helicopter slowed down, angled slightly to port and began to fly a wide circle around a misty patch in the jungle. Jack could see where they had flown up over a ravine, the rugged jungle flank rising up on either side over patches of dull red where the mud must have slipped during the monsoon. Through the dense foliage he could make out the flow of the stream that had carved the ravine, among jumbled masses of boulders exposed in the bed. It was the only obvious route up from the river fifteen kilometers to the south-west, and it must have been where Howard and Wauchope came with their sappers in 1879. They would have been completely exposed to fire from above, and it was hard to see how they were not cut down by the rebels. But Jack remembered Pradesh’s story of the bamboo velpu, Howard’s promise to the muttadar. It was the only explanation for how they could have got through unscathed.

The downdraft from the rotor cleared a swathe through the air, and Jack could see where the stream skirted the east side of the clearing after disgorging from another tumble of boulders that had rolled down from the jungle flank beyond. He could see the trickling waterfall where the boulders extended out into the clearing. In front were three slabs of enormous size, one of them resting on the other two like a gigantic prehistoric lintel.

“That’s the shrine,” Pradesh said, pointing. “The entrance is under the lintel at the front, but it was sealed off by the earthquake after the two British officers came here, the day the most sacred velpu disappeared forever. My grandfather said the earthquake was retribution from the konda devata, the tiger spirit. The Koya were already terrified of this place-tigers come here to drink from the stream at night. After the earthquake, hardly any Koya ever came here again, even into the clearing.”

“So how do we get inside?” Costas said.

“My grandfather said there was another entrance through the waterfall at the back. But you have to be very small, lithe. He said he had once done it as a boy, and seen terrifying demons inside. The Koya elders in Rampa village told the same story to their children. We sneaked up here at night, but the story of demons kept us all from trying to get inside.”

“Waterfall archaeology,” Costas said. “That’s a new one on me.”

Pradesh dangled a cord behind his seat. “There is another way.”

Costas twisted around to look, his eyes suddenly gleaming. “Detonator cord! Now that’s my kind of archaeology.”

The pilot came over the center of the clearing, pointing the nose of the helicopter toward the boulders some fifty meters away. He leveled out and began to descend. The rotor had cleared away the mist below them but now kicked up a swirl of dust and leaves. Jack leaned toward the doorway to peer out. Suddenly there was a massive clang and the helicopter lurched sideways, the edge of the door nearly hitting Jack’s face. There were more clangs and the crack of gunfire, a jolting noise even through the headphones. The air was split by a series of violent snaps as bullets whizzed through the open doors of the helicopter, missing them by inches. Jack instinctively put his left arm out to keep Costas down. The pilot pulled up on the collective and the helicopter lurched up and away. Jack glimpsed figures below, three of them, in combat fatigues and red bandanas. The pilot leveled out again and the two sappers knelt beside the open door and shouldered their rifles. They opened fire on full automatic, pouring rounds down on their assailants. They stopped, looked out for a second, then fired three rounds each, aiming carefully this time. They snapped off their magazines and quickly reloaded. Jack saw the three figures lying sprawled in the dust, surrounded by dark red stains expanding into a puddle on the clearing floor.

“Maoists,” Pradesh exclaimed. “My guess is, not a reception party for us though. There’s no way they could have known we were coming. This was an advance party for a larger group, probably a few hours away in the jungle. They usually do their recce in threes. They panicked when they saw we were about to land.”

“What do we do now?” Jack said, his heart still pounding with the adrenaline.

“We stick to the plan. You’ve seen what my two chaps can do. Chances are the rest of the Maoists are far enough away not to have heard the gunfire. Noise is quickly absorbed in the jungle. The pilot will drop us and then disappear south, so as not to arouse suspicion. The Maoists will be used to seeing this old bird flying to and from the villages with supplies.”

Pradesh nodded at the pilot, who made a quick descent this time, bouncing the skids on the hard surface of the clearing. The two sappers were out before the helicopter had settled, kicking the three bodies and checking the perimeter. Jack and Costas unbuckled themselves and stepped out, ducking and running from the whirling rotor. Pradesh followed them, carrying his bag, then the engine revved up to a whine and the Huey rose in a cloud of dust, tilting forward as soon as it cleared tree height and heading off to the south. A few moments later the noise was gone. Jack stood up, shouldering his khaki bag and checking Costas. They took off their helmets and piled them together. The dust was settling on the three dead bodies a few meters away, sopping up the blood. Jack was still coursing with adrenaline. He could see that Pradesh was wired up too, his Magnum revolver held out in front of him, tense and poised like a hunting animal. The whole action had taken only a few seconds, but was replaying in Jack’s mind in slow motion. It had happened to him before, when he had been inches from death. He glanced at Costas, who was walking toward a rock outcrop on the jungle fringe, about thirty meters from the entrance to the boulder shrine. The outcrop had evidently been used as a shelter, and the Maoists’ rucksacks were there. Costas squatted down, peering at the bags, then at the ground.

“Watch for snakes,” Pradesh called out. Costas held up a long, decaying skin, shed from a cobra. “Got you.” He let it drop, swatted a mosquito and then picked something else up. “Check this out. Those Maoists had Kalashnikovs, and there are plenty of casings around. In fact, too many for what we’ve just had. It looks like they’ve used this place as a shooting gallery before, fairly recently to judge from the state of the brass. And look at this. It’s a much older casing. Looks like it was from an elephant gun. Big-game hunters, maybe. There are quite a few of these casings lying around too, but trampled into the ground. Must have been a long time ago.”

Jack joined him. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s a. 577, Snider-Enfield. The rifles the Madras Sappers had in 1879.”

“You’re kidding.” Costas picked up another, looked closely at the rim, then grunted. “Battlefield archaeology. They did it with cartridges from Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Bighorn. You can reconstruct fields of fire, the flow of the battle.” Costas got up, looking around. “Maybe this rock was where Bebbie met his end. Maybe this was where Howard and Wauchope found him. With the rock behind, it would have been the best shelter around, a defensive position against the rebels while Bebbie and the sappers waited for rescue.”

“I think I know what those three terrorists were doing when we surprised them,” Pradesh called out. “It wasn’t just a recce. They were cleaning up.” He had advanced around the back of the rock, his revolver at the ready. Costas and Jack cautiously followed. The jungle smell became stronger, mustier, different from the rusty smell of fresh blood around the bodies in the clearing. Jack knew what it was even before he rounded the corner. A mass of bones and ragged clothes had been pushed into a crevice in the rock. Some were bleached white, but there was still hair to be seen and the limbs were still articulated, with sinews between the joints. Pradesh peered closer, holding his nose, then stepped back, gasping for breath. “Well, that solves one mystery. These are our Chinese, the ones the Koya saw arriving three months ago. Look, you can see the word INTACON on their shirts. That’s the mining company. They must have been ambushed by the Maoists. That explains all the Kalashnikov cartridges.” He picked up a stick, and used it to lift a flap of clothing. “And look at this. Exactly as the Koya described.” It was a section of skin still intact on the arm of one of the skeletons. They could see the remains of a tattoo, probably what had preserved the skin. Jack felt a wave of apprehension. So far it had all been talk, speculation. This was real. The image staring out at them was smudged, half rotted away, but there was no doubt about it. A tiger tattoo.

Pradesh waved to the two sappers and pointed so they could see where the bodies were, and then put up six fingers and drew his hand across his throat. He got up, and Jack and Costas followed him back out into the clearing past the three fresh bodies. Suddenly there was an earsplitting crack. Flecks of blood flew off Costas’ shoulder, and Jack just had time to see one of the bodies with a pistol raised before Pradesh aimed and fired. The first round took off the top of the man’s head, sending brain and bone spattering behind. The man’s legs drummed against the ground, but he was already dead. Pradesh fired round after round, slowly and methodically, letting the big revolver return from the recoil and aiming carefully, reducing the man’s head to a bloody pulp. Jack reached out and held Pradesh’s arm in an iron grip, pulling it away. He fired once more, the last chamber, the bullet ricocheting off the rock behind. “Enough,” Jack said. Pradesh turned and stared at him, wide-eyed, enraged. Jack could smell the fresh sweat, the adrenaline. He eased his grip and stared Pradesh straight in the eyes. “You got him,” Jack said quietly. “For your father.” Jack quickly turned to check Costas, who was dabbing blood from a graze on his shoulder. He looked as imperturbable as ever. “You okay?”

Costas nodded, then turned to Pradesh. “Yeah. And thanks.”

Pradesh took a deep breath, nodded then went over and kicked the other two bodies, reloading his revolver as he did so. The two sappers kept their rifles trained on the bodies until he signaled them, and then they returned to the edge of the clearing where they had taken up position before, concealed beside the path entrance. Pradesh snapped his fingers, pointed two fingers at his eyes, tapped his watch and waved toward the jungle. One of the sappers held his rifle at the ready and disappeared down the path. “He’s doing a recce,” Pradesh said. “If those three Maoists were an advance party, the main group will be following them. They only ever use the existing paths. They’re not jungle people at all. The path comes from Chodavaram, past another of the Maoist hangouts. They move between places, a few nights here, a few there. They think they’re like Bollywood heroes, like Robin Hood. But they’re cowards and murderers and their ideology stinks. I loathe them.”

“So we see.” Costas grunted, fishing out a bandage shell dressing from Jack’s bag and plastering it on his wound.

Jack put his hand on Pradesh’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“You just killed a man.”

“That wasn’t a man. And it wasn’t the first time. I’ve been in Kashmir. I shot a Pakistani army engineer who was trying to blow up a mountain bridge we’d just built. They shot at us, we shot at them. I did it for my men. I could have chosen to miss him, but I didn’t. That time, I threw up. Not this time.”

Jack nodded. He had made the same rationalizations himself, and he knew what Pradesh was doing. His ears were ringing, from the adrenaline and the gunfire. They needed to focus on their objective, to keep tight. He gestured toward the boulders where the water was cascading down into the stream. Pradesh took a deep breath, glanced at the corpses, then handed Jack his revolver. He opened his bag and took out a small slab of C-4 explosive wrapped in plastic, and the coil of detonator cord he had shown them in the helicopter. “The obstruction’s one small boulder, lodged in the entrance passage,” he said. “If I can split it, we may be able to get in.” He led them over the clearing to the entrance. The tumble of boulders extended at least fifteen meters out from the face of the waterfall. It looked like an ancient megalithic tomb, yet it was completely natural, the result of a massive landslide far back in history that had eroded away and left the tumble of rock exposed. It was taller and wider than it had seemed from the helicopter, at least twice Jack’s height at the entrance. The two massive upright boulders and the lintel formed a passage beneath, blocked up with the boulder Pradesh had described. Rock fragments were strewn on the ground in front. Pradesh knelt down and picked one up. “This is fresh,” he said. “Someone’s had a go at that boulder with a pick, pretty recently.”

Costas knelt down beside him. “The Maoists?” Pradesh shook his head. “More likely the prospectors. The Maoists may have caught them in the act and gunned them down, or maybe the prospectors gave up here and tried to find another way in.”

“Or it could have been Katya’s uncle,” Jack murmured.

“Whoever it was, it makes the job easier for us.” Pradesh crawled in a few meters to the wedged boulder, and packed the explosive in a space underneath. He pressed in the detonator cord, then wound off the spool and backed out of the entrance, carrying on across the clearing about ten meters to another large rock protruding from the jungle fringe. Jack and Costas followed him, and squatted behind the rock. Pradesh clipped on a small electronic detonator, then raised his arm in warning to the sapper who had been glancing at him from his position on the far side of the clearing. Pradesh looked at Jack and Costas, patting his ear with one hand. “Fire in the hole.”

They crouched close together behind the rock with their hands over their ears. Pradesh clicked the detonator and a second later there was a crack and a thud. They looked up, and saw a cloud of dust at the passage entrance. Pradesh leapt forward to inspect his work, waiting outside a few moments for the dust to settle before cautiously crawling in. “All I needed was enough explosive to crack the boulder,” he said, his voice muffled. “It’s perfect.”

“Nice job,” Costas said, peering in behind.

“There’s a hole about a meter square. It’s wide enough even for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Costas grumbled.

“It means you’re invited in.” Jack took his halogen diving flashlight from his bag, and knelt under the lintel. Pradesh was about six inches shorter than Jack, lithely built, and the hole was a little less generous than he had described. Jack eased himself over the jagged surfaces where the rock had cracked with the explosive, and pulled himself through the hole. The rock wall he felt beyond was smooth, and he knew he was inside the passageway. He heard curses and grumbles as Costas followed, and then a ripping sound. “My shirt. My special Hawaiian shirt.”

“I’ll buy you another. When we get there.” Jack held out his hand, and Costas grasped it, heaving himself through. Jack stumbled forward in the gloom behind Pradesh, seeing only a flickering pool of light in the darkness ahead. Jack lingered for a moment, glancing back through the hole into the jungle clearing. The setting sun flashed off the wet palm leaves on the far side, as if the jungle were suddenly ignited in flame. Jack could still see the sapper squatting against the rock halfway down the clearing, cradling his rifle, staring intently in his direction. He saw the bodies in the dust, and thought of Rebecca. Thank God he hadn’t allowed her to come along. He had almost said yes. He glanced at his watch. They had an hour, no more. He turned back and looked into the darkness of the passageway. He felt the rush of excitement he always felt at the threshold of the unknown. He put a hand on Costas’ shoulder. He remembered Katya, his promise to find out what had happened to her uncle. She would be waiting. They needed to get cracking.