Page 127 - Love Story of a Commando

‘Pakistan Border Action Team!’ The same para who held me earlier
replied rather softly. His name was Aakash. I smiled back at him while
glancing towards Virat from the corner of my eyes.
‘Did she ask you?’ Virat growled.
‘Do you have any problem?’ Aakash replied sternly; I swear he even
flexed his biceps.
My encounters with men have seriously left me doubting the whole
gender, I thought. Do they follow some secret code of conduct of
brotherhood and whosoever breaks it is an outcast among peers? I have seen
men bonding over mugs of beer and football matches, right when you think
of some uniform code of conduct, a girl would enter the scene and that
brotherhood would disappear. Swords would be drawn within seconds but
the next second could be filled with puddles of tears over their mutual
heartbreaks.
Whoever talked about female mystery should have researched deep
into men’s world really!
‘It’s definitely a very mixed crowd out there. Some of them look
really young, some rugged, flaunting beards, while some do look like
Special Forces or at least military men. It might be a military-sponsored
advanced training camp indoctrinating young men to be terrorists.’ One of
the paras broke that weird atmosphere of love and loathing, bringing us back
to the harsh realities of saving our asses first and then dealing with personal
dynamics.
‘Now the question arises, should we try to sneak out quietly or use all
our training here?’ Vaibhav asked.
‘I am the senior-most here and our mission finishes as soon as we
cross the LOC. Plus, we have her and we have been ordered to keep a low
profile. We cannot jeopardize the secrecy of our Indian identities. It will be a
big blow to Indian diplomacy in the UN. Pakistan will leave no stone
unturned to prove that we entered their soil and risked the precious lives of
its innocent citizens.’ The para almost smirked with the last sentence.
His name was Major Tushar.
‘But we cannot turn our backs from the gathering of these terrorists
who are gearing up to infiltrate our own borders and eventually target
Jammu and Kashmir, or maybe even the metros, with an aim to damage our
sovereignty and kill our countrymen,’ Virat argued in a rather mellow tone.
‘True! But our orders were to extract both of you and cross the
borders silently without jeopardizing our identities,’ Major Tushar replied
calmly.
‘Okay! But how do you plan to do that because I can see no other
way around this. We cannot return to the old route and the only correct route