Chapter Text
Forty-seven children. Eleven parents. Four teachers. One guard.
Sixty-three bodies laid out on white sheets on the cold cement floor of a community hall in Mokokchung, because the town's single hospital mortuary had only twelve drawers and no one had ever imagined needing more.
The community hall was a building meant for weddings. For Christmas services. For the annual Ao Naga cultural function where, old men recited oral histories and young women performed welcome dances for visiting dignitaries. It smelled, on ordinary days, of incense and paper streamers and the particular sweetness of pineapple cake, because someone's grandmother was always baking something for something.
On this day it smelled of antiseptic and blood and the soft wet coldness of February rain coming in through a window someone had forgotten to shut.
The youngest body was six years old. Her name was Temjen. Her school bag had been found twelve feet from her, still zipped, with her tiffin box inside containing rice and boiled egg her mother had packed that morning at six a.m., humming.
The mother was two rows over. She had arrived to pick up her daughter at 2,47 p.m. and had reached the school gate at 2,51 p.m., which was the exact moment the first AK-47 burst began.
They had died within four minutes of each other.
In the community hall, someone had placed them on adjacent sheets. Whether this was deliberate or accidental, no one ever asked.
*
Three thousand kilometres away, in the Cabinet Committee Room on the first floor of South Block in New Delhi, Ajay Sanyal opened the folder in front of him and did not look up immediately.
The room was not a large room. It was built for decisions, not for audiences. The table was long and polished and smelled faintly of furniture wax. At its head sat the Prime Minister. To his right, the Home Minister. To his left, the Minister of External Affairs. Down the table, arranged without ceremony in the seats they had taken when they walked in— the Defence Minister, the Chief of Defence Staff, the Army Chief in his olive drabs with his cap on the table beside him, the chief of RAW, the Director General of the NIA, and behind Sanyal in the chair against the wall, silent and attentive, his aide Sushant Bhansal with a second folder on his knee.
Thirty-six hours since Mokokchung.
The Prime Minister had been awake for thirty-two of them.
Sanyal said, without preamble, "We have the list."
The Prime Minister looked at him,"How many?"
"Eighteen."
Sanyal opened the folder and began sliding identical printed copies down the table. Bhansal moved quietly behind him, passing the additional sets where Sanyal's arm could not reach. The men at the table took the folders without comment. Paper rustled. Pages turned. For four full minutes, no one spoke.
The Home Minister was the first to look up.
"All confirmed?"
"All confirmed. R&AW human intelligence cross-referenced with signals intelligence from the two weeks preceding the attack, cross-referenced with the ground forensics team's findings at Mokokchung. Eleven shooters. Four planners. Two financiers. One commander. ENLF splinter cadre. Every name in that folder was on Indian soil or involved in material planning for what happened on Thursday at 2,47 p.m."
"And the commander?" The Army Chief, without looking up from the page he was reading.
"Last known location, remote compound in Sagaing Division, approximately 80 kilometres east of the Irawaddy River. Protected. Small personal militia. He is the hardest name on that list and he will be the last one we take."
The Defence Minister looked up. "We."
"Yes."
"And clearly you’re proposing?"
"I am proposing," Sanyal said, and now he stood, because he wanted them to see his face when he said it, "that this government authorise a sustained, deniable, target-specific elimination campaign against every one of these eighteen men. Executed by a hand-selected Para SF unit from 21 Battalion, under NSA operational oversight, with R&AW intelligence support and NIA investigative backing. Eight months. Three phases. No attribution."
The room was very quiet.
The Minister of External Affairs, slowly, "Myanmar will ask."
"Myanmar will ask nothing that we cannot answer. Myanmar does not control Sagaing. Myanmar has not controlled Sagaing since before the coup. The junta has effective authority over the cities and the riverbanks; everything east of the Chindwin is held by a patchwork of ethnic militias and cross-border criminal networks, of which the ENLF is one. We are not violating a functioning state. We are entering territory that is already contested, eliminating eighteen men, and leaving."
"And if they ask anyway?"
"Then we will offer condolences, express our willingness to share intelligence on cross-border militancy, and suggest that the deaths of eighteen known criminals in a region experiencing widespread instability is regrettable but unsurprising. We will say this in writing. We will say it in Mandarin if it reaches that.” Sanyal thinned his lips, “It will not reach that."
The External Affairs Minister leaned back. He did not speak but did not object either. A small smile played on his lips.
The Home Minister, "Civilian exposure?"
"Minimised at every stage. Every operation will be preceded by minimum three weeks of surveillance. No operation will be executed in circumstances where civilian casualties cannot be effectively zero. If the window is not clean, we wait. We have eight months. We can afford to wait."
The Army Chief, quietly, "Who is running it?"
Sanyal had been waiting for this question.
He allowed himself a short pause.
"Captain Jaskirat Singh Rangi. 21 Para Special Forces. Eight years of service. Sena Medal for a Manipur counter-insurgency operation in 2023 that remains officially unacknowledged. His selection has been vetted by his CO, by the Director General Military Operations, and by my office."
"Rangi," the Home Minister said. "Pathankot?"
"Yes, sir."
"Naib Subedar Arjun Singh's son?"
"Yes, sir."
A small expression moved across the Home Minister's face. Not quite a smile. Just a recognition. He nodded once and said nothing further.
The Defence Minister asked, "Your personal assessment of Rangi?"
Sanyal did not answer immediately. He looked at the folder on the table in front of him. He looked at the photograph clipped to the first page— a man in his mid-forties, heavyset, smiling in front of a jeep somewhere green. Lalthanpuia Khoiba. Planner of the attack.
Then he looked up.
"He is the kind of officer," he said, "who can take this list, execute it cleanly, and walk away from it intact. That is a rare quality. It is the quality the operation requires. I have watched men carry operations like this and I have watched what it does to them afterward. Most of them lose something they do not get back. I do not think Rangi will. That is why he is the one."
The Prime Minister, who had not spoken since how many, spoke.
"Ajay."
"Sir."
"You said eight months."
"Yes, sir."
"You will bring me every phase closure in writing. You will brief me personally every thirty days. You will not take a single elimination outside the protocol you just described, not one, not under any operational pressure. If a target slips, we wait. If the intelligence degrades, we hold."
"Yes, sir."
"And Ajay?"
"Sir."
"The families. In Mokokchung."
"Yes, sir."
"I want them taken care of. Every child, every parent, every teacher. The government is going to be visible in that town for the next ten years. Schools, hospitals, livelihood. Not as compensation but as presence. Because they will ask me one day what we did and I will not tell them about this folder. I will tell them about that. Home Minister Sir, kindly look into this as well."
"Yes, sir."
"Good."
The Prime Minister closed the folder in front of him, placed both hands flat on top of it, and looked down the table.
"Authorised."
No one spoke. No one moved to leave. The weight of the word settled in the room for a long moment before anyone so much as shifted.
The Prime Minister stood.
They all stood.
He asked, "Codename?"
Sanyal said, "Pratighat."
The Prime Minister nodded once.
"Retribution."
"Yes, sir."
"Appropriate."
He walked out. The room emptied behind him, slowly, by rank, the senior ministers first, the service chiefs following, until only Sanyal and Bhansal remained.
Bhansal closed his folder on his knee. Waited.
Sanyal was at the window.
Outside, on Rajpath, the February afternoon was pale and thin. A sparrow was sitting on the window ledge. He watched it for a moment.
Bhansal said, quietly, "Sir."
Sanyal said, without turning, "The journalist."
"Sir?"
"I want to meet him next week. Privately. Not at the office. Somewhere he is comfortable. Somewhere he will say no if he wants to say no. You have his file?"
"Yes, sir, here.”
Sanyal picked up the folder from the table. A greyish thinner folder.
Inside was a photograph of a young man— young, late twenties, in a crowded coffee shop in Delhi, caught mid-laugh at something outside the frame. He had a sharp jaw, sharper eyes, and the specific handsomeness of a man who was not unaware of it and had decided, long ago, not to make it his primary asset.
Below the photograph was a name.
Uzair Baloch. Senior Features Writer.
"He is Baloch," Sanyal said, "by blood. Indian by five generations. Barmer family. Writes for serious people. Has gone into more dangerous places than I would have authorised, and has come out with stories that were— fair. To everyone. Which is rare."
“It’s be an advantage, Sir. Proper, just as the nation needs it right now.”
Sanyal kept the file back on the table. He let out a deep breathe.
"The youngest one’s name’s Temjen," he said. "The six-year-old. Her mother reached the gate at 2,51 p.m."
Bhansal did not answer. There was nothing to answer.
After a moment, Sanyal turned from the window.
"Let's go."
*
Two months later, on a dawn-cold morning in a forward operations base outside Dimapur, Captain Jaskirat Singh Rangi stood on an airstrip with his second-in-command and watched a single-prop aircraft come down through the mist.
"Remind me," he said, not looking at Vicky, "why we are doing this?"
Vicky said, "Because you were told to, sir."
"I am aware I was told to."
"And you are the kind of officer who does what he is told to."
"I am."
"Which is why we are doing this."
Jaskirat gave him a sideways look. Vicky gave it back, blandly, the way only a man who had shared a barracks with you for six years could.
The aircraft touched down. It taxied to the end of the strip, engine throttling down to a rough idle, and for a moment neither man moved.
Then the side door opened.
A man stepped out.
He was wearing a dark grey kurta, fitted trousers, and the kind of leather boots that were meant for walking through Delhi winters, not standing on airstrips in Nagaland. He had a laptop bag over one shoulder and a single duffel in his other hand, and he descended the aircraft steps with the deliberate, unhurried ease of a man who had arrived in difficult places before and was not going to perform difficulty for anyone's benefit.
He reached the bottom of the steps. Set his duffel down. Looked across the strip.
Saw Jaskirat.
Walked over.
Jaskirat did not move to meet him halfway. Neither, he noticed distantly, did the journalist expect him to.
Uzair Baloch stopped three feet away. Set his bag down. Extended his hand.
"Captain."
"Mr. Baloch."
The handshake was firm. Brief. Correct.
Uzair's eyes moved over Jaskirat's face— not rudely, not assessingly, just the quick open cataloguing of a man who was used to reading rooms and had two seconds to read this one. Jaskirat felt the assessment and disliked it.
"Major Ahuja," Jaskirat said, indicating Vicky. "My second."
Uzair extended his hand to Vicky. "Major."
"Mr. Baloch." Vicky's smile was, Jaskirat noted, a full degree warmer than his own. "Welcome to Dimapur."
"Thank you."
Jaskirat picked up the duffel without asking. It was heavier than he expected. He did not comment on this. He turned toward the waiting jeep.
"This way."
Uzair followed.
In the jeep, Jaskirat drove. Vicky sat in the passenger seat. Uzair sat in the back, and for twelve minutes no one spoke, and the only sounds were the engine and the occasional crackle of the unit's radio chatter bleeding through the dashboard.
Then, as they turned onto the access road to the forward base, Uzair said,
"Captain."
Jaskirat, eyes on the road, "Yes."
"I want to say this once and then I will not say it again."
Jaskirat's hands on the steering wheel did not tighten. He was too disciplined for that. But something behind his sternum did.
"Say it."
Uzair's voice, from the back, was level. Unhurried. Not apologetic.
"I did not ask for this posting," he said. "I was asked. I said yes because I believe the story needs to be told, and I believe it needs to be told by someone who is not going to turn it into propaganda or a scandal. I know you did not ask for me. I know you did not want me. I am not here to make your work harder. I am here to witness it. If at any point my presence threatens the operation or your men, I will remove myself. That is my commitment to you."
Silence.
Then Jaskirat said, still looking at the road, "Noted."
"Captain."
"Mr. Baloch."
"I would prefer Uzair."
"Mr. Baloch is fine."
In the passenger seat, Vicky made a sound that was almost— but not quite— a cough.
Uzair, after a pause, said, "As you wish, Captain."
The jeep turned through the first security checkpoint. The guard saluted. Jaskirat returned it without looking.
They drove in silence the rest of the way.
That night, in his quarters, Uzair sat on the edge of his cot with his laptop on his knees and an empty document open on the screen and the cursor blinking at him, unmoved, for the better part of an hour.
Outside his window, the base was quiet. Somewhere distant, two men were laughing at something. Somewhere closer, someone was playing low music through a speaker— an old Kishore Kumar song, tinny through whatever device was carrying it.
Uzair looked at the blinking cursor.
He typed,
Day one.
He looked at the two words for a long moment.
Then he typed,
The Captain does not want me here. He is right not to.
He stopped. Read it back. Deleted it.
Then typed, slowly,
The Captain has the eyes of a man who has been told that something is his responsibility and has never in his life asked anyone to share it. I do not know yet if this is a strength or a wound. I suspect it is both. I suspect, also, that I am going to spend eight months learning the difference, and that at the end of those eight months I will be a different kind of writer than the one who landed at the airstrip this morning.
I do not yet know what kind.
He saved the document. Closed the laptop. Sat for a moment in the dark.
Somewhere on the base, a door closed. Boots moved across gravel. The radio in the operations room crackled faintly through the thin walls and went quiet again.
Uzair lay back on the cot.
In another quarters two corridors away, Captain Jaskirat Singh Rangi was sitting at his desk reading, for the fourth time, Uzair Baloch's published work. A profile from 2022, on a CRPF jawan who had died in Chhattisgarh. The piece was eight thousand words long. Jaskirat had not been able to finish it the first time. He had put it down after paragraph three and not picked it up again for an hour.
He was finishing it now.
When he reached the final paragraph, he did not move for a long time.
Then he closed the folder, placed it in his drawer, and sat at his desk in the lamplight, looking at his own hands.
Somewhere a door closed. Somewhere boots moved across gravel.
Neither man slept well that night.
*
In Mokokchung, the community hall had been returned to its ordinary use by March. There were no more bodies. The window that had been left open in February had been shut. The smell of antiseptic had faded. A wedding was scheduled for April.
In the meantime, eighteen men in three countries were going about their ordinary business— eating, sleeping, meeting with other men, counting money, making plans for operations they believed would follow the February success.
They did not know their names were on a list.
They did not know the list had been handed to a soldier who had not asked for it.
They did not know the soldier had, that week, met a journalist who had not asked for him.
And they did not know — could not know — that somewhere in the space between the soldier and the journalist, in the eight months that were about to begin, something would happen that would outlast all eighteen of them, outlast the campaign that killed them, outlast even the book that was going to be written about it.
They could not know.
But it was already beginning.