*FOUR MONTHS AGO*

“Okay, we’re going to practice getting dropped-in. Or choppered-in.”

I waited for the unmatched enthusiasm for danger that the other 6 of my team shared with me to subside.

“I go down first, take a 360 degree look around, and then give a go-ahead. Next person rappels down, puts his back at mine, next dude joins to the left of him, and so on till all 7 of us are on the ground. The chopper stays just till we’ve made a full-range scan of the surroundings, and then goes back.”

“Where are these scans you keep talking about?”, QY asked the question playing in most of the others' minds, except AS and HS, who had worked on the covert tech we would be taking into the battlefield, wherever it may be.

“They’re getting here; we’ll do their first field test along with the drop-in practice.”

We were waiting for our first collective look at the choppers. I had seen them before, but only on the ground. QY and SC had become familiar with the choppers, but the others would be getting their first looks at the flying beauties today. The preceding week had been fun, testing the more conventional weapons we would be carrying as backups in case the new tech had issues.

Two days ago, we had finished with the tactical gear training; expectations were high that things would continue to run on schedule. As RHCP put it very truly, "nothing ever goes according to plan". Anyhow, word from higher up was that today was a huge day; any minute now we would hear the choppers coming.

As soon as the low throb became audible, we rushed out to witness two super-sleuth versions of the Comanche helicopter coming in to land. It was exhilarating; the pilot of the nearer chopper waved at us encouragingly, beckoning us to approach. We didn't need to be asked twice, and ran to the chopper at full pelt.

SC and QY reached the door first; the pilot glanced at his dashboard, flicked a switch to slide open the door, and within a minute all 7 of us were on board, huddled in the limited space. It was practically built, without protrusions and paraphernalia – a means of transport, designed to be radar-evasive and super-silent.

HS snapped out the headphones from the clasp on the steel wall separating us from the pilot, and spoke with excitement.

“Take off! Take off! We’re all here!” he said, beaming at us. Then he frowned, concentrating on hearing the pilot’s reply. After about thirty seconds, he nodded, said okay into the headset, took it off, and smiled at us sheepishly. The rotors were slowing down, unmistakably.

“He says they’ve been warned about us. He’s not going anywhere until we get the briefing they’ve come prepared with.” We laughed our way back to the tent we had been waiting in two minutes ago.

We spent the next four hours learning – digesting – the deep field operations knowledge the officers gave us. As a bonus for our “good behavior”, as the senior-most of the three officers put it, we were to get our first practice drop at night – ideally the best operating conditions.

The next three months whizzed by, putting ourselves through drills and training, most of the times fully geared, incorporating and executing mock scenarios and situations. We more than enthusiastically took half a dozen more night outings than our commanders had conservatively scheduled.

Every weekend the choppers flew back to their base and we whiled away the time going over the info coming in about infiltrators and how our fellow soldiers kept repelling them.

One morning, we flew back to the base of the choppers so that aqueous drills could be run. It was fortunate we did, since we discovered that our GPS systems were not waterproof enough. The addition of a simple casing made the unit impenetrable to water, and we felt like everything was ready.

Our communication and understanding with our support teams was fine-tuned; emergency procedures and situations-turning-catastrophically-bad had been argued about, pondered over, solved theoretically, and laughed off.

The leadership had been sharing periodic updates on the enemy’s activities; things were progressively looking like ramping up on the enemy's side. At last, after four months of prep, we got the go-ahead. It was time to do something: our first mission.

*PRESENT DAY*

*NORTH-EAST*

“Everyone seeing the 4 dots up ahead to the left?”, I whispered.

There were no negatives. “Anything to add?”

“Support says there is movement of 6 people, in a tight group, between our targets’ location and the civilian area half a klick north. Ground intel was unable to ID them as friendly or hostile.”

“Is there any more detail expected in the next” – I glanced at the digital clock high up in my HUD – “4 to 6 minutes?”

There was a pause as AS asked support, then he said, “None at all.”

I looked around again, weighing the situation. The hills were terrace-farmed. We were at the point of closest concealment from our targets a couple of hundred meters ahead of us.

Although there was a chance the terrorists were farther than my estimated two levels above ours, I thought that unlikely, given the distance they were from us and the average width of the terraces. What if the group of 6 that was approaching them from the village that lay on the other side was their backup? We would be heavily outnumbered.

I exhaled slowly. Time kept on ticking away.

I felt I should raise the question, throw it out to the team. I repeated, “Anything to add?”

There were no positive responses. I took a deep breath, and said, “Advance in a line. Scale this level, stay low till the next embankment, and regroup at next level’s edge. 360-bio. Okay?” I paused longer than I was used to. “Go silent.”

I dragged myself over the edge of the terraced farm we had taken cover behind and crawled forward on my hands and knees. Just as I was bringing my head up to scope the field, I heard a soft thud about three meters ahead of me and to my left. Some dirt kicked up, and I said, loudly, “Back! Cover!” and scrambled backwards until I slid feet first, face down, back over the edge I had cleared hardly half a minute ago.

Sniper fire, more of it, thudded into the ground and whizzed through the air in the darkness. These terrorists were getting very cautious.

I breathed deep, slow, but my adrenaline rush made it difficult. I tried to calm down silently. “Check in, one.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
“Seven, over.”

This was the first enemy fire we had encountered. I wondered how the others felt - they were all silent, quite uncharacteristically.

I imagined enemy scopes scanning the edge of the terrace farm above our heads, waiting for a helmet to show, waiting for a movement giving away our exact position...best to talk while we were in good cover, I thought. “Everyone okay? Any ideas?”

“What does support say?” said PS. AS said, "Wait" and we heard a snick in our earpieces as he patched us into the support channel that usually stayed permanently active only in his comms.

It was the middle of a sentence as we tuned in: “...position, hostile action confirmed. Ground forces are engaged with our targets, maintain position, hostile action confirmed. Standby for next directive.”

AS switched it back to his channel and said, “Standing by.”

“So it was their backup that was coming in, the snipers were keeping lookout for giving them cover,” said SC. “Who do you think they ran up against? Paramilitary?”

“I was surprised they were letting us come in this close to an actively patrolled area,” said HS.
“Yeah, but think about this – if these – our targets, I mean – guys were waiting for their backup, wouldn’t they be looking with their backs towards us? How’d they see us?” said SK, who was assembling a periscope so that our scanners would be able to scan ahead of the edge above us.

“That's for later. Right now, we know they have good grade weapons. Sniper rifles come with all sorts of scopes and scanners these days, we can't risk exposing ourselves. You done with that, dude?” asked HS, and SK nodded in the dim moonlight.

He extended the retractable camera from its ground tripod to its full height of over 8 feet, and adjusted it for a minute or two while getting a fix on our target site.

As we waited, we could hear definite echoes of gunfire coming from the other side of our targets. SK pressed a very final-sounding button on the periscope, and beckoned to us to switch on Shared Perspective mode.

The best part about this customized scanning equipment of ours was that once a view was locked into its sights, we could all share the vantage point on our HUDs. It helped tremendously when all 7 of us needed to see the same thing simultaneously.

The scanner was locked on the window facing us in a two-story wooden building from where their sniper had most probably fired on us; the window seemed shut.

As we watched, movement could be seen inside the room to which the window belonged – frantic, life-depends-on-every-move movement.

AS spoke, “Support says that the incoming party of six has managed to make it to within a hundred metres of the front door of our target. If they reach it, there will be a siege, and our target is seemingly prepared for one. We – “ he paused to listen to support, then continued. “Okay. We’re all on.” He patched us all of into support’s channel again.

“If it weren’t for the time factor, we would’ve droned them, now that there is out-and-out open firing. However, since that easy, painless option has been ruled out, we must play loud and dirty – have you carried explosives?”

I replied, “Yes, sir, yes we have.”

“We think that they can’t have a siege if they don’t have a fort, now, can they?”

“Understood. Update extraction to match our next move.”

“We're on it.”

Another snick told me it was us seven again. “Okay, you heard him. Ideas?”

“We can cut a little to the left from here, keeping an eye on that window. This hill drops into the next one, we can advance up that crevice to about fifty metres from target,” said PS.

I nodded, and said, “Sounds good, dude, everyone, let’s go, no silence on this one.” We moved off along the embankment and after 5 minutes of duck-walking, reached the 8-10 foot drop in between the hills. The crevice had a trickle of water at its bottom. Two minutes later we were making our way up the small ravine.

The sounds of gunfire grew closer.

Next week: Chapter 3