Page 126 - Love Story of a Commando

18. Surgical Strikes

Soon I was breathing heavily with the strenuous activity and I fell down!
One of the commandos walking ahead of me held me in a quick
reflex and that invited blazing wrath from Virat. He looked on jealously and
did not make any moves for a while and watched me accepting generous
help by the para in pheran, almost grudgingly. It’s stupid, men think they
hide their emotions well, but one push reveals everything. No wonder they
believe in solving critical issues and misunderstandings with punches and
kicks. Fools!
Virat suddenly knelt down in a deliberate attempt to avoid any eye
contact with me. He carefully pulled out a telescope from one of his pockets
and held it to his left eye and pointed it towards the opposite side of the
jungle ahead of us. And suddenly, through the dappled woods, everyone saw
it. There were many barracks several meters from where we were standing.
‘Something is not right here. Everybody hide,’ Virat mumbled.
‘What happened?’ Vaibhav asked.
‘I am seeing a well-organized formation of houses in the woods,
looks like a colony. Farmers in this area cannot afford to have such
accommodations,’ Virat mumbled again, deeply engrossed in his thoughts.
Suddenly everybody, except me, said simultaneously, ‘Training
camps! PoK terrorist training camps!’
Their eyes met and immediately everyone got down on their knees,
gripping their TAR-21 assault rifles and MP5 submachine guns into ambush
position. Virat squinted through his telescope again and said, ‘I can see
several men in pherans. Some are moving around with their rifles on their
backs. There is also a group of men sitting together, perhaps playing carom
or something. I can also feel a lot of movement inside the houses which are
well-maintained barracks, unlike the thatched huts that should be there.
There are several wooden crates piled over each other, which might possibly
contain weapons. I also see several CCTV cameras installed and dish TV
antennas on the rooftops. Such an advanced facility cannot belong to a rogue
terrorist organization so it must be Pakistani military. Could they be BATs?’
‘Bats? You mean bats that fly in the sky?’ I regretted saying it
immediately.