Aarti Raman - Kingdom Come

Krivi didn’t know how he was going to live with any of it. The ghosts. The fear. The guilt. The anger. The fear of anger. The fear of memories. Everything hurt right now. Even looking at a cell phone display. Sweat was pouring off his face so he could barely read the message.

Application accepted. Briefing in two days. Report to headquarters for further instructions .

A part of his mind that wasn’t wrapped in the hard kernel of grief, understood the words. Knew what to make of them. He hated that part of his mind. The part of his mind that was relief. That rejoiced at one word.

Escape.

Nearly four years later …

On the other side of the world, a man was watching the person who was torturing him play five finger fillet.

The game was simple.

You placed your palm on a flat surface, spread your fingers wide and then started moving the knife point in the spaces between the fingers. Slow, slow, fast, faster and then so fast your movements were an indistinct blur. And you did it without taking your eyes off your opponent.

The man, Raoul, watched the knife flash in a staccato burst that was a silver dizzy motion. Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut. The point flashed back and forth, back and forth until he felt physically sick.

Sick.

He wanted to throw up, but there was nothing inside of him to throw up. He looked at his side of the table, which was a disgusting mass of sick, saliva and blood. Raoul felt more bile rise up in his throat as he saw the mess.

“If you vomit again, I will make you eat it, Raoul,” his torturer said in a perfectly pleasant voice.

Raoul’s chest heaved as he tried to settle his nausea and escape out of the bonds he was tied in. He was only successful with the first.

The knife paused; the silence deafening.

“Good boy, Raoul,” the torturer approved. “Now if only you’d been a good boy yesterday and not blabbed with the pretty chica .”

“ Madre Dio! She is nothing. She is a stripper. She will not talk, I promise. On my mother, I swear.”

His torturer smiled. A cold, killer’s smile. The knife point gleamed like a jewel as the torturer twisted the blade this way and that. A slow, concerted movement that was hypnotic in its grace.

“Your mother is dead, Raoul,” the torturer said softly. “You know that. So is Maria. You know that too.”

“Spare me then. Spare me, please!”

Raoul started babbling in a mixture of Portuguese and English. Prayers, incantations, invocations, beseechments. His tears mixing with the blood flowing from his busted eye. He was blind in one eye because of the force with which the torturer had heaved a rock paperweight at it.

But he could live with the blindness. He could live. Madre Dio la vida .

The torturer gave him a sharp look.

“I am bored.” It was a flat statement.

Raoul was still screaming obscenities when the knife struck, sure and true. Piercing the jugular. Blood and life poured out of Raoul. The canary who sang.

The terrorist was called The Woodpecker.

The terrorist’s specialty was bombs in public places. Signature and calling card rolled together in one burning mass of twisted metal and humanity.

The file on The Woodpecker was three inches thick, tying the terrorist to so many international bombings that the organization was getting worried now. No one person, no one terrorist was supposed to be such an efficient, soulless killer. Hold the fates of people in their hand so callously.

The man who was the terrorist’s father, the terrorist’s mentor, looked at his child’s file, filled with the exploits of a lifetime of terror and mercenary killing. He had encouraged, honed the skill, the spark, the madness that had led to the creation of this file.

The Woodpecker.

The bird that chipped and chipped away at the branch in a tree to make a nest for herself and her chicks.

The Woodpecker who never gave up.

The man shut the file closed and leaned back in his swivel chair. He looked out at the cloudless blue skies that denoted summer on the beach. And felt a weight around his heart, an organ he had forgotten existed. He tried to name the emotion that was weighing down his heart and identified it as … regret.

Tom Jones smiled; a regretful smile as the gears of his devious, devious mind started moving. He picked up a satellite phone and made a call and set in motion his plan. Things couldn’t be helped anymore.

They had to change. And change was always good. He had always believed so.

Ladakh

India

July 2011

It was said that God himself lived in these hills that surrounded the Northwest Frontier of India. The air was purer than air, clean and pure oxygen. The waters gleamed an unholy turquoise and the sky was an infinite, uniform blue. The horizon was a stretch of land and sky that met as far back as the naked eye could see.

Nature’s paradise .

And it was called Ladakh.

It was also home to some of the worst atrocities humanity had committed against itself. Ladakh, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, was on the very border that separated India from its neighboring countries, and was therefore fair game, for all the neighbors that wanted to encroach and possess it. Although, by some miracle, Ladakh itself had escaped being the target of the constant cross-border violence that raged in the most turbulent political state in India, the nearby town of Kargil had not been so lucky. It was home to war and fallen heroes in the last decade. And the rest of Jammu and Kashmir was not safe either.

But these places were in the rest of the beautiful part of the country that formed the crown jewel: the Himalayas. Ladakh was in demand, for the territory was valuable in itself too for the special metals mined here. The scenery was so stunning; it actually took your breath away.

The team of six, fatigue-clad men who entered the lonely, isolated cave on one such hillock on the roughest terrain did not pause to look at the stunning, breathtaking scenery. They were dressed in green-black camouflage outfits that just barely hid them in the approaching dawn. Ladakh was not just known for lush greenery and foliage; it was as much desert and sand as it was flowing streams and lovely air. A study in contrasts, the land was, as much the people that inhabited it.

The team leader, with black marks on his face, stopped at the mouth of the cave, and indicated the two next to him to go ahead. They removed tiny chemical lights, lit them by breaking them and sprinted inside like black ghosts. They were the reconnaissance guys, who would give intel on the situation inside the labyrinthine caves. The team leader marked their position on a tiny handheld, where they were just two green dots racing away like pinballs.

There were four more dots on the tiny handheld, one for each man on the mission. A radio crackled to life as the green dots stopped and the team leader tapped on an earbud inside his ear and spoke quietly.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Route’s clear. Can’t see target, but there are no unknowns out either. Intel seems fine. These guys do not do rounds.”

“They left no one to guard the target?”

The leader’s voice was expressionless, ghost-like in the early morning air. If he was surprised at all, he didn’t let it show. Surprises were not part of the package on retrieval missions, their intel had to be one hundred percent correct or lives could be lost. And the intel had been; they would leave someone behind to guard the target.

Kidnapping and ransom was tricky work at best, FUBAR at worst.

“Not as far as I can see. I could check again, do sweeps.”