Tom Clancy - Locked On

This second bike, too, rolled on, leaving the carnage behind as the rear gunner reloaded and prepared to attack the next scene of horror up the flyover.

But Abdul Ibrahim arrived at the articulated bus and the wreckage around it just moments later. He pulled up in the middle of the slaughter, just like dozens of other cars, vans, and motorcycles had done. The thin Lashkar-e-Taiba operative took a pipe bomb from his satchel, lit it with a lighter, and rolled it under a small Volkswagen bus that was parked in the jam, and then he drove away quickly.

Seconds later the VW exploded, the hot metal and shattered glass tore through the traffic jam, and fire ignited leaking gas from the articulated bus. Men and women burned alive across the two southbound lanes of the flyover as the Lashkar cell continued on, a rolling three-stage attack along the raised toll road.

They continued on like this for several kilometers; the first two bikes poured automatic weapons fire into moving busses, the vehicles stopped suddenly, careened left or right, many crashed into cars and trucks. Ibrahim cruised slowly and calmly through the wreckage left behind by his comrades, pulled to a stop next to one bus after another, smiled grimly at the screams and moans from inside the wreckage, and tossed in grenades and pipe bombs.

Twenty-four-year-old Kiron Yadava was driving himself to work that morning because he had missed his carpool. A jawan (enlisted soldier) with the Central Industrial Security Force, he worked the day shift as a patrolling constable at Electronics City, an easy job after two years of service deployed in a paramilitary unit. Normally he packed into a van with six of his mates at a bus stop in front of the Meenakshi Temple for the ride across town to work, but today he was running late and, consequently, traveling alone.

He had just paid his toll to get on the flyover, and he pushed the accelerator on his tiny two-seater Tata nearly down to the floorboard to climb the ramp to the restricted access road that traveled to Electronics City. As he drove he listened to a CD in his stereo, the riffs of Bombay Bassment were jacked up full volume, and he rapped along with the MC at the top of his lungs.

The track ended as Kiron merged into the thick traffic, and the next song had just begun, a thumping electronic reggae-infused dance beat. When the young man heard a low whump whump that seemed to defy the rhythm, he looked at his stereo. But when he heard it again, louder than the music coming through his speakers, he looked into his rearview mirror, and he saw black smoke rising from a dozen sources on the flyover behind him. The nearest plume was just a hundred yards back, and he saw a flaming minibus in the far right-hand lane.

Constable Yadava saw the motorcycle a moment later. Just forty meters away, two men rode a yellow Suzuki. The rear rider held a Kalashnikov, and he fired it from the hip at a four-door sedan that then sideswiped a bus as it swerved to escape the hot lead.

Yadava could not believe the images in his rearview mirror. The motorcycle streaked closer and closer to his tiny car, but Constable Yadava just kept driving, as if he were watching an action show on television.

The Suzuki bike passed by his car. The ris car. ider was hooking a fresh mag into his AK, and he even made eye contact with Yadava in his tiny two-seater, before the pair of terrorists wove in front of other cars and out of view.

The CISF jawan heard more shooting behind him now, and finally he reacted to the action. The Tata pulled off the road on the left, just ahead of another car that had done the same. Yadava climbed out, then reached back in, grabbing his work bag. After unzipping the bag he reached in, his fingers felt past his plastic lunch container and his sweater, and they wrapped around the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun that he carried while on duty. He grabbed his weapon as close rifle fire and incessant honking of horns assaulted his ears.

With the gun and his single reserve magazine of thirty rounds of ammo, Yadava sprinted into traffic, searching for a target. Men on motorcycles and men and women in private cars raced by. Everyone on the flyover knew they were under assault, but there was nowhere to turn off until the next off ramp more than a kilometer farther on. Vehicles hit one another as they fought to get out of the way of the slaughter, and Yadava, operating on one part training to three parts adrenaline, just ran out into the midst of all this madness.

Fifty meters back, he saw a yellow Mazda SUV slam hard into the waist-high protective barrier on the edge of the road. It hit with such speed that it then flipped over the side and spun through the air, almost as if in slow motion, before it hurtled some forty feet down toward the heavy traffic on the service road below the flyover.

A motorcycle approached Yadava. It was nearly identical to the one that had passed him a minute before, and the man behind the driver held a rifle with a large drum magazine.

The driver saw the uniformed CISF constable with the black sub-gun standing in the traffic, but he could not warn his gunner, so as Yadava raised his MP5 to fire, the biker slid his Suzuki onto the ground. He rolled off of it, and then slid with his partner.

Yadava raised his ring sight over the man with the Kalashnikov and he fired. Now his training in the paramilitaries was put to good use. His shots tore up the road and then the man, blood fountained from the terrorist’s salwar kameez. The man in the street dropped his AK and then stilled, and Yadava moved his sights to the driver.

The CISF warned their jawan s that Pakistani terrorists, as this man certainly was, often wore suicide vests that they would detonate if they faced capture, and the CISF therefore instructed their men to offer no quarter to a terrorist operative when caught in the act.

Young Kiron Yadava did not weigh the pros and cons of shooting an unarmed man. As long as the Islamist lived on this earth he was a danger to India, the country the constable had sworn to protect to his dying breath.

Kiron Yadava emptied his weapon into the man lying in the street.

As he reloaded his MP5, he turned to begin running after the other bike, but he heard the detonation of a hand grenade in the heavy traffic behind him. He knew instantly there was a third motorcycle still behind him. It would be approaching in moments, and it was up to him to stop the attack.

Abdul Ibrahim fired his Makarov pistol into the chest of the driver of a passenger van. The driver slumped to the floor, his foot came off the brake, and this caused the big vehicle to rear-end a Fiat with a dead husband and wife in the front seat. In the back three rows of the van, eight Europeans in business suits recovered fr recoverom the crash and then cowered at the sight of the terrorist climbing off his bike, and then, with an incredible expression of peace on his face, pulling a pipe bomb out of a bag hanging from his chest.

Ibrahim looked down to his lighter, careful to put the flame on the tip of the short wick of his bomb, lest he martyr himself accidentally. He lit his wick, replaced the lighter in his pocket, and then reached back to toss the bomb under the van.

Just then he heard the rat-a-tat of a submachine gun firing up the street. He turned to look at the source of the fire, he knew his men carried heavier rifles. He saw the Indian CISF man, saw the flash of fire from his weapon, and then felt his body buckle and spasm with the impact of the bullets. He was hit twice in the pelvis and groin, and he fell to the ground, on top of his improvised explosive device.

Abdul Ibrahim shrieked “Allahu Akbar!” just before his pipe bomb detonated into his chest, blowing him to bits.