As he reloaded his MP5, he turned to begin running after the other bike, but he heard the detonation of a hand grenade in the heavy traffic behind him. He knew instantly there was a third motorcycle still behind him. It would be approaching in moments, and it was up to him to stop the attack.
Abdul Ibrahim fired his Makarov pistol into the chest of the driver of a passenger van. The driver slumped to the floor, his foot came off the brake, and this caused the big vehicle to rear-end a Fiat with a dead husband and wife in the front seat. In the back three rows of the van, eight Europeans in business suits recovered fr recoverom the crash and then cowered at the sight of the terrorist climbing off his bike, and then, with an incredible expression of peace on his face, pulling a pipe bomb out of a bag hanging from his chest.
Ibrahim looked down to his lighter, careful to put the flame on the tip of the short wick of his bomb, lest he martyr himself accidentally. He lit his wick, replaced the lighter in his pocket, and then reached back to toss the bomb under the van.
Just then he heard the rat-a-tat of a submachine gun firing up the street. He turned to look at the source of the fire, he knew his men carried heavier rifles. He saw the Indian CISF man, saw the flash of fire from his weapon, and then felt his body buckle and spasm with the impact of the bullets. He was hit twice in the pelvis and groin, and he fell to the ground, on top of his improvised explosive device.
Abdul Ibrahim shrieked
Constable Kiron Yadava came upon the bullet-riddled bodies of the final two men in the terror cell a few minutes later. The pair had tried to run their Suzuki motorcycle through a hasty CISF roadblock just before the last off ramp before Electronics City. The eight constables stood over the dead men, but Yadava screamed at them. He told them to stop admiring their handiwork and to help him tend to the two dozen or so scenes of bloodshed all the way down the southbound lane of the ten-kilometer stretch of the Bangalore Elevated Tollway.
Together these men, followed soon by hundreds of other first responders, spent the entire day treating survivors of the massacre.
Riaz Rehan was in his office at ISI headquarters in the Aabpara district of Islamabad when his television reported a huge traffic accident in Bangalore. It meant nothing to him at first, but when the size of the carnage was relayed by the news anchor, Rehan stopped his other work and sat in rapt attention at his desk, watching the television. Within minutes there was confirmation that there had been a gun battle and within minutes more terrorists were being blamed for a massacre.
Rehan had awoken furious with the LeT cell for not executing the night before, but now he was ecstatic. He could not believe these reports out of Bangalore. He had hoped for a casualty count of twenty with at least ten dead, perhaps some news footage of a burning guard post or a crater next to a building. Instead his five-man-strong cell, with only five rifles and a few small explosives, had managed to massacre sixty-one people and injure an incredible one hundred forty-four.
Rehan beamed with pride and made a mental note that when he became president of Pakistan he would have a statue built in honor of Abdul Ibrahim, but he also realized the attack had actually done more damage than he wanted. LeT would be targeted with renewed vigor by not only the Indians but also the Americans. The pressure on Pakistan’s government to root out LeT would be twice what he’d expected. Rehan knew that the US/Pakistani Intelligence Fusion Center would be working overtime now and shifting their workload toward LeT.
Rehan did not panic. Instead he reached out to his LeT contacts and told them he would take over as project manager for the next operation, and it would need to be moved up on the calendar. Forces opposed to LeT in his government, forces who were allied with the United States, would begin rounding up the usual suspects after this attack, and Rehan knew that every day before phase two of his plan to bring Pakistan and India to the brink of war woink of wuld increase the chance that Operation Saker would be somehow compromised.
32
Valentin Kovalenko was nothing like his father. Where Oleg had been big and fat, thirty- five-year-old Valentin looked like a gym rat. He was thin but muscular; he wore a beautiful tailored suit that Laska had no doubt cost more than the car Oleg drove back in Moscow. Laska knew enough about luxury items to recognize that Valentin’s fashionable Moss Lipow eyeglasses cost more than three thousand dollars.
Another stark departure from the demeanor of his father, especially the version of his father that Laska remembered from Prague, was that Valentin seemed quite friendly. Upon his arrival in Laska’s suite just after ten p.m., he’d complimented the Czech on his tireless philanthropy and support for the causes of the downtrodden, then he’d taken a chair by the fireplace after politely turning down the offer of a snifter of brandy.
When both men were settled in front of the fire, Valentin said, “My father says he knows you from your days in Prague. That is all he has said, and I have made it a point to not ask him for any more information than that.” His English was spoken with a noticeable British accent.
Laska shrugged. Valentin was being polite, and it might even be true, but if Laska’s plan was to go forward, there was not a chance in the world that Valentin Kovalenko would not look into the past of the famous Czech. And there was no chance he would not find out about Laska’s duties as a mole. There was no point in hiding it. “I worked for your father. Whether or not you know that yet, you will soon enough. I was an informant, and your father was my handler.”
Valentin smiled a little. “My father impresses me sometimes. Ten thousand bottles of vodka down the hatch and the old man still can keep secrets. That is bloody impressive.”
“He can,” agreed Laska. “He did not tell me anything about you. My other sources in the East, via my Progressive Nations Institute, were the ones who told me about your position in SVR.”
Valentin nodded. “In my father’s day we’d send men and women to the gulag for revealing that information. Now I will just send an e-mail to internal state security mentioning the leak and they will file the e-mail away and do nothing.”
The two men watched the fireplace in the huge suite for a moment. Finally Paul said, “I have an opportunity that I think will interest your government greatly. I would like to suggest an operation to you. If your agency agrees, I will only work with you. No one else.”
“Does it involve the United Kingdom?”
“It involves the United States.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Laska, but that is not my area of operations, and I am very busy here.”
“Yes, being assistant
Valentin smiled. An affectation of amusement, but Laska could see a glint in the boy’s eyes that reminded him of his father in his younger years.
Valentin Kovalenko asked, “What is it you are proposing, Mr. Laska?”
“Nothing less than the destruction of the American President, Jack Ryan.”
Valentin’s head rose. “You’ve given up haope for your friend Edward Kealty?”
“Completely. Ryan will be elected. But I have hope that he will not set foot in the Oval Office to begin his second term.”
