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“IED?” Noor shrieked.
“Stop the hysterics,” Ziya said firmly, taking her friend by the arm. And shooting a fulminating look at Sam at the same time. “Sam’s Army guys are going to disarm the thing before we know it. It’s his job, isn’t it, Sam?”
“Yes.” Sam nodded reassurance emphatically, but his expression was very grave. He looked at Krivi.
“Can you make it out of here, pronto?”
Krivi walked forward and removed his wallet. He flipped open the worn, black leather which was torn at the edges and flashed a badge at Sam, whose eyes widened when he saw it. And severe speculation and respect filled them a second later.
“I could take a look,” he offered quietly. “If you can tell me the specs.”
Ziya’s stomach did a slow, nauseating roll as she heard the casual words. She suddenly understood Noor’s hysteria a lot better than she had five seconds ago. Her fists clenched at her sides as Sam spoke about a standard Iraq-style IED.
Cylindrical container with suspected C4 and an initiator pin that held the mouth of the container closed. Trigger mechanism was probably det cords, and there seemed to be no timer, except the tourist fools had moved the backpack and the load had jostled and gone live. Power source was a tiny switch that had been hidden in a side-zipper that had flipped on when the fool admin guy had handled the package.
Krivi nodded as if he understood all these terms.
Then he said, “Standard disarmament procedure isn’t it? Works with pliers, cutting off the PS is first priority.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. I’ll talk to my superiors. Give me sixty.”
Ziya swallowed as he went back in and Noor went after him. She was stopped by the guards and her gestures became threatening.
“Krivi?” Ziya asked, trying to even her tone.
He didn’t turn to look at her. “Yeah?”
“You’re going to defuse that bomb?”
He shrugged and her stomach pitched violently. She reached out and caught his arm which made him turn to look at her. Her eyes were shadowed, her quietly lovely face was composed but with the vivid red of her shirt blowing against her slim form he became aware of a terrible fragility in her.
“Don’t blow us all up to kingdom come, OK?”
He smiled. A real genuine smile that made her heart clench with sudden, appalling fear. And he disengaged from her light hold. “I won’t. I promise.”
Then he disappeared inside the perimeter, which of course, let him in and not Noor, moving with lethal grace and the absolute promise of using it.
As Krivi suited up inside the five-hundred-pound bomb suit they had on emergency supply, all he could focus on was the mission. His breathing slowed, evened out in time with the beat of his heart. Back when he’d been a rookie, one of his instructors had spoken about adrenalin and how it affected your responses and actions. When a split second was all you got to save your teams’ and your own life.
The spine tingled as the hormones shot up and down, energized your body, giving you renewed strength and vigor making you capable of almost superhuman feats that included, but was not limited to, throwing cars off mothers and children. Your senses came on ultra-alert and you were superhuman for the few seconds it took for you to do the impossible.
The instructor had called this the Moment of Absolute Clarity. Krivi’s adrenalin worked the other way around. When he needed to make the hard choices, like today, getting into a bomb suit, his heart rate slowed down to well below the prescribed resting rate. His vision didn’t get sharper; it just narrowed to the next step, just the next step in front of him. He didn’t catalog the big picture or his surroundings and his hand was steady as a rock. He was all purpose, all mission. And nothing else.
He clipped on the communication unit and spoke into it, “Alpha Two, this is Alpha One. Radio check.”
“Read loud and clear, Alpha One.”
He flipped on the protective webbing that covered almost the whole helmet and slowly, painstakingly walked forward. A hulk of a man wearing five hundred pounds of body armor that would do him no good if the explosive he was going to disarm was disturbed in the wrong way.
The child’s backpack was a red one, from the brand Jansport. It had three zippers, and two of them were open. A small iron cylinder peeked out of the last opening.
The IED.
There was a steel pin on the mouth of the cylinder that he would have to carefully remove, without disturbing the integrity of the explosives inside or setting off the fuse. He got down on his knees, pliers at the ready. And gently, as if he was handling the most exquisite woman, lifted the firing pin out. A tangle of wires came out with it, and all he heard was his own breathing. Measured, steady, calm as if he was meditating. Which he supposed in a way, he was. He peered inside and saw the C4, three stacks of them all lined up inside like swaddled babies. Beneath he saw the shrapnel apparatus. Razor blades. He sucked in a breath and murmured into the comm unit, “Clear out all unnecessary personnel, right now. This is dangerous.”
“What have you found, Alpha One?”
“Razor blades as shrapnel. Enough C4 to level this place right up to the parking lot. And a fuse that I am going to need some time to figure out, because I have to switch off the power supply first. Clear them out, pronto.”
He was inspecting the outside zipper pocket where a tiny black device jutted out. It looked like a remote control but with the parts all exposed, so there was just a jumble of wires and circuits. Krivi removed the heavy protection-lined gloves and threw them on the ground. He continued probing the circuits, trying to find the one that would lead him to the battery. Nickle-Iron (NiFe) cells that he could see stuck on to the side of the remote. He tried to visually trace the wire out, but he couldn’t, so he again stuck his fingers inside the mess and murmured into the comm unit, “Hope the area is cleared, boys.”
“BDS is en route. ETA five minutes.”
“Awesome.”
But he continued inching his way into the tangle of wires until he found the one he was looking for. Delicately, with the precision of a surgeon, he stripped the insulation and looked at the tungsten length inside. It would burn inside of a second with the proper spark. He touched the wire end that was attached to the NiFe cells and gently shook it. When nothing happened, he decided to brave the fate again and yanked the cells out of the remote, along with the tungsten length.
Still nothing happened. Then, he set the power source aside and turned his attention to the bomb. He’d disconnected the initiator firing pin but there was still the main fuse that needed to be clipped off. He looked critically at the wires that were attached to the steel pin and began running his hands over each of them. Finally, he struck gold with the fourth one which led into the cylinder, and he reached inside, his palm hitting the C4 bundles. His heart thudded once, hard. He reached and yanked the wire away from the C4 and it came out easily. Krivi looked at the length of det cord in his hand and let it dangle in mid-air.
“Alpha Two,” he said clearly into the microphone at his mouth. “Hot load defused. I repeat, hot load defused.”
For extra measure, he took his palm out and smashed the power source into tiny pieces and watched the tungsten wire embed itself into the gravel. Then he stood up, his legs creaking under the weight of Kevlar, rubber and his own aching bones.
Reaction.
Immediately, three Army personnel rushed to his side and began to cut into the backpack itself and get to the explosive inside, exclaiming over the amount of shrapnel that would have destroyed any living thing into shreds if the bomb had exploded.
Krivi backed off, his footsteps leaden.
A hard hand clamped on his shoulder and he turned around slowly, hampered by the suit. Sam’s grateful, but clear eyes stared back at him. He tapped on the visor of the helmet and Krivi pulled it off. Sweat from his hair and temples dripped down his nose and he let the helmet dangle on his side. He started ripping the suit apart.
“Thank you. Just … thank you.”
“Are they gone? The both of them?” Ziya. He couldn’t believe that she was the first thing he wanted to ask about and it was disquieting.
“No. They’re sitting in the car, waiting for you to drive them.”
Krivi nodded, brushing a hand through his soaked hair. Sam smiled, slightly. “You were cool in there. Glacier cool. Done this before, haven’t you?”
Krivi nodded. “Done everything twice, Major. Can you do me a favor?”
“Name it.” The offer was instant, sincere.
“Take your female back to the hotel with you, all right? One hysterical woman I can handle … but two’s a little out of my league.”
Sam grinned, which was a little ridiculous under the circumstances. But he nodded and matched his steps with that of Krivi’s.
“You’re afraid of two women? You, who just saved us all from certain death?”
He didn’t answer. Just shrugged off the sweltering hot suit and quietly wished for an icy cold waterfall he could just drown himself in. The temperature was now a cool fifteen degrees and he was sweating like a pig. And, he was pretty sure, underneath the suit he smelled like one.
Dirt and sweat and fear.
They reached the edge of the parking lot and Noor shrieked as she caught sight of the two men. Sam sighed and said, “Yep. You get the other one, soldier.”
He ran forward to intercept Noor who was crying and babbling, her floor-duster kicking up little circles of dust as she sprinted towards them.
Ziya, Krivi saw, was just walking with slow, measured steps towards them. Her eyes level with his. They revealed nothing, but were pure luminescence. Quicksilver, glowing, like the sunny streaks in her pixie hair. And for a second he wanted to find the same warmth in them that she gave everyone else.
Sam was half-supporting Noor to his own Jeep, who didn’t even bother to turn around and acknowledge the hero of the hour. All of her attention was focused on the man holding her.
Ziya reached Krivi, her hands firmly inside the pockets of her blazer, which she’d buttoned up in defense of the weather.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey,” he said.
“You didn’t blow us all up.”
“No,” he agreed. Lighting the one cigarette he carried in his pant pocket with a match. “I didn’t.” He drew smoke in.
Ziya stared at the burning paper and tobacco and stated, “But you don’t smoke.”
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t. Can we drive back now? I am in desperate need of a shower.”
Her lovely lips pursed as if she wanted to make an acerbic comment. But she only nodded at the cigarette.
“Finish that before coming in. I won’t have the car smelling of filthy tobacco.”
Ziya turned around and started walking back and Krivi couldn’t help it. He watched her straight back and bent head and started to smile. Really smile. Infinitely glad to be alive, just so he could make her eyes flare up at him again.
He threw the butt on the ground and crushed it under his boot heel and walked forward. Leaving the bomb suit where it was. Lying on the ground next to his half-smoked cigarette.
four
One of Wood’s earliest memories, were of catching stray chickens at the farm and eating the eggs raw, after stealing them from underneath the big fat mama hens. Foster care had not been much help in Wood’s case, with that monster of a father playing the cops when they showed up and beating the shit out of Wood’s older brother when he got drunk and mean. Mama had split after the brother’s birth and Dad had taken it out on Wood and his brother’s hide.
Wood had learned early on to stay out of the big man’s way and not make any noise. It was the reason why Wood had not said a word till age four.
One night, when the father was whaling on the brother, who never woke up from that beating, Wood called the cops and watched, hiding in the barn with just a one-eyed cat for company, as the cop cars came and took the entire family away. Wood ran into the woods that night terrified that the father would come back and beat the life out of Wood too.
But, Wood had not gotten far. Another man had followed Wood into the woods surrounding the pretty farmhouse in Chesapeake, Maryland. That man had been gentle and spoken in a calm voice and had the kindest eyes Wood had ever seen. That man had given Wood a Snickers bar and a tissue to wrap it in when Wood had only eaten half of it, sitting under the oak tree where Wood had fallen and was crying inconsolably when the man turned up.
That man had taken Wood to a nice clean bed in a strange motel and asked Wood seriously, whether this family, Wood’s family was what Wood wanted. Wood had answered instantaneously, no. The man had asked if Wood wanted a different family, with only, say a dad and no one else. But an exciting fun life, filled with adventure and faraway places, with trips and no school if that was what Wood wanted.
And Wood had answered as instantaneously. Yes.
The man had offered his hand to be shaken by a small, malnourished five-year-old. And had called himself Tom Jones. Wood had called him Dad since that day.
The Woodpecker smiled and bent the thumb of the blindfolded man sitting in front, back all the way. The man screamed; a high-pitched, keening wail. He clutched his ruined thumb and whimpered; snot and tears running unchecked down his face.
The man wept openly.
“Please, please,” he whispered, shrinking into himself. Hunching his shoulders, trying to occupy as little space as possible. “Please, I am sorry. I won’t mess up the order again. I won’t.”
Wood came forward with a cigar trimmer. An unlit cigar was clamped to the terrorist’s lips. The room in which the man, the pizza boy, was tied in was large. Airy. It had plenty of natural light and white curtains. There was a huge white bed on a raised dais with fluffy curtains on the four posts shielding it. A dream cloud of a bed. The sheets were made with military corners because Wood didn’t allow anyone to touch them. The Woodpecker was odd like that.
The pizza boy, Hank was his name, was still dully crying, holding his broken hand to his heart, his thin shoulders moving with the force of his sobs. There was blood on the lower part of his face, pouring down in a thick trickle and a gap where Hank’s nose had been. The Woodpecker moved forward and yanked the thin blond head back in a sharp, painful movement, “If you don’t stop crying, I will reach down and yank your voice box out. You understand?”
Hank cried harder, beyond mere fear now.
“I wanted pizza, you know,” Wood ruminated. “An American specialty, even though it originated in Italy in the nineteenth century. I even specified very clearly, when they asked me, that I wanted half and half. Chicken and pineapple on one side for the carbs, and olives and sundried tomatoes on the other. No peppers, because they mess up my sleep. I stated it, Hank. So clearly.”
“I … I’m sorry for delivering the wrong pizza. I really am. I really am.” Hank started sobbing louder now, his wails echoing off the white walls of the sunny bedroom with the white bed.
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”
The Woodpecker smiled and leaned forward on the table. The blade of the cigar trimmer flashed unholy silver as the terrorist clipped off the butt and it fell down on the carpeted floor in a rush of leaf and tobacco. The acrid scent of nicotine permeated the air around them.
Hank’s already fearful, hysterical, ruined face took on epic proportions of roundness as he heard the methodic way with which The Woodpecker handled the knife.
“Why would I kill you, Hank?” Wood smiled. “I am not an unreasonable person. I just want a little respect. People should respect each other, don’t you think?”
Hank nodded, desperately, like a bobblehead. “Yes, yes. Yes!”
“Good. So you agree that we should be respectful towards one another.”
“Yes. Hell, yes!”
“Then why did you not show me any respect, Hank?” Wood asked, sorrowfully. “Why did you call me all those awful, awful names and said that I could take the pizza if I wanted or I could just eat dirt and die.”
Hank’s eyes, never clear, started streaming again.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I won’t ever do it again. I won’t say anything to anyone. Just let me go. Please, let me go. PLEASE!” He screamed in the end.
The Woodpecker frowned. “Don’t shout; it’s not polite. I can’t let you—”
The door to the massive bedroom opened and a tall man with piercing silver eyes and graying hair strode in. He was dressed in a conservative three-piece suit and he had a classically handsome face. A face that people would remember if only because of those remote eyes.
The man was Tom Jones. The Woodpecker’s father, for all intents and purposes. He looked with mild distaste at Hank’s wasted form and then with censure at The Woodpecker who was chewing on the butt of the cigar instead of lighting it. Something like defiance gleamed in those cold, dead eyes.
“You’ve made a mess over dinner,” he observed mildly.
“He brought me the wrong pizza,” Wood said indignantly. “He gave my order to somebody else.”
Tom untied Hank’s legs, wrinkling his nose at the distinct smell of urine emanating from the boy’s pants. They all wet themselves in Wood’s presence. After he was done, he straightened and looked coldly at his kid.
“This is a seven star hotel. You cannot stuff a body down the trash chute here.”
The Woodpecker smiled sweetly. “I was going to burn him and then flush his remains down the toilet.”
Hank screamed again, terrified beyond anything. An inhuman sound. Tom Jones reached behind and clipped him once on the jaw. A hard punch. Hank’s head lolled onto his shoulder, his lower lip bleeding slightly, as he finally, mercifully fainted.
“Send the boy back, Woodie. Please.”
The terrorist nodded and came to stand next to Tom. Tom put a comforting arm around Wood’s shoulder; who leaned into the embrace with an ease that was natural. Tom Jones was the only person in the whole world The Woodpecker trusted. Tom squeezed Wood’s shoulder. A fatherly gesture.
Wood sighed. An incongruous sound, given the bloodied boy tied at their feet.
“I want pizza, Dad,” the terrorist said, sounding so alarmingly like a teenager. Another incongruity.
“Let Hank go. I’ll get you your favorite,” Tom promised.
Wood smiled and nodded.
“OK, Dad. If you say so.”
And with that, Wood went to dispose of his handiwork in a more conventional fashion.
“And then, Krivi just picked Zee up and put her back down about two feet away without breaking a sweat, Da,” Noor narrated. “Ziya was spitting mad, I could practically see the steam coming out of her ears, but you know how she is?”
Noor paused, only to shove a bite of crisp naan, wheat bread that went well with most Indian curries before picking up her story again.
“All ice-queen and icy eyes. So, she pulled that routine with K here.” She grinned at the silent, hulking man who was calmly eating the food on the table as if not just forty-eight hours ago he hadn’t defused a dangerous piece of explosive.
They had all, Sam included, decided to brave the night and come back home to Goonj rather than hang around Pehelgam and wait for morning light. So, Noor had slept on Sam’s shoulder in the back while Ziya had scrunched herself against the passenger window and Krivi had driven them back. Not even fazed by the prospect of a hard ride after the day he’d had.
Ziya had concluded then and there that the man was not just superhuman, which he undoubtedly was, but that there wasvery little human in him. Rest, food, sleep, these things didn’t matter to him at all. He wasn’t even any different these two days than he’d been for the last six months. He looked the same, remote and with a hard face that could break granite. He dressed the same, jeans and sweaters to ward off the mild chill that signified the end of spring.
Yet, for the life of her, Ziya couldn’t understand why she suddenly found everything about him distractingly appealing. Even his usual morose taciturn behavior couldn’t make her stop watching him covertly, through the corner of her eye. At the way those long, tanned fingers used the fork to shred some chicken before chewing it slowly. Those same hands had touched an unexploded ordnance and come off the victor.
Those same hands had touched her too. With such unbelievable strength she still had finger marks on her arm that she’d covered with a long-sleeved shirt. But it wasn’t the pain she remembered or even her own justifiable anger at his high-handedness in ordering her about. It was just the sensation of his fingers touching her flesh. Hot, searing on impact. As if there was a current running between them that had shorted a few circuits in her brain.
Made her aware of a very unpleasant fact about Krivi Iyer. Namely, that she was aware of Krivi Iyer. More than she’d wanted, more than she thought possible and now, more than was comfortable for her. Because he was still the same, silent assistant manager who refused to look her in the eye for the eight hours that they shared office space.
Ziya turned back to her own food, determined to not join in Noor’s delighted ribbing of her. Determined to not let anything get to her. Most of all, the way Krivi was plowing through his food, as if he couldn’t eat and get away from the dinner table fast enough. Such an unsociable animal he was. And yet, he’d smiled at her with something close to sexiness. And promised her he wouldn’t blow them all to kingdom come. Heroes, Ziya decided, were a strange breed. And she wanted nothing to do with them. She ate some of the field greens on her plate and looked up to see Sam grinning wryly at her.
She quirked a brow and mouthed, “What’s up?”
Sam shook his head and addressed his next comment to Dada Akhtar who’d stopped eating while the saga was being unfolded for him. In full, Technicolor detail. And certain embellishments on the part of one Noor Saiyed.
“I wasn’t there to see Krivi tackle on my Amazonia.” Sam smiled fondly at Ziya who rolled her eyes at the nickname. “But I did see how he did the linebacker routine to stop Ziya and Noor from breaking into the perimeter. And still lives to see daybreak. Strong man, you are, K. And very lucky too.”
Since the last comment was addressed directly to him, Krivi looked up and saw Dada Akhtar’s avid, grateful face. He did the decent thing and smiled modestly.
“It’s nothing, Major. Always glad to help out in an emergency.”
“But this wasn’t an emergency. This was a bomb threat, Krivi. A whole different world from the word emergency, son.”
Noor hugged Krivi’s side who was sitting to her left and announced, “Superheroes are extremely modest, Da. Don’t you know?”
“And what else do you know about superheroes, Kid?” Krivi asked her, his eyes indulgent.
Sam caught Ziya looking at him again and grinned.
“Maybe Ziya has some thoughts on superheroes, huh, Zee?”
Ziya gave him a bland look. “The only superheroes I know are extremely flawed because they feel the need to hide their humanity under tights and outside underwear, which is an extremely tacky fashion choice,” she ended judiciously.
Sam looked a little nonplussed but Krivi’s lips twitched and there was a look of interest sharpening the remoteness in his black eyes.
“Touché, Zee,” Noor said. “But you have to admit, K would look extremely hot in tights and outside underwear.”
Krivi put his fork down and looked interestedly at Ziya, who wrinkled her button nose and said, “I wouldn’t know. My imagination is not that vivid.” And she carefully did not look at the man in question.
Dada Akhtar reached over and squeezed Krivi’s shoulder in a gesture of support and affection.
“Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstance, I am just glad that you were there today to look out for my two girls. I can’t begin to thank you for this debt, beta.” Son. His beetle-black eyes gleamed with emotion under bushy white brows, surprising Krivi. Moving him a little, enough that he covered the wrinkled, still-strong hand with his own and returned the squeeze.