The Glacier of Retribution

The blast was massive; Jai could hear it through the crashing ice and the blizzard. It shook the ledge and threw a deep red flush against the peaks and the sky. The sky lit up like a giant beacon and ice chunks of all shapes and sizes were shooting in every direction. The sudden dual detonations pierced the sounds of the blizzard. He vaulted backward under the impact of the explosions. The overhang plunged suddenly into the valley of two colossal waves of rolling snowpack, lifting him off his feet; he twisted to his left unable to get a hold. He screamed, his hands now seeking purchase, his eyes blinded by blood and the interminable gush of ice. He was unable to get a secure hold; his legs genuflected as his body listed forward and he plunged over the ledge. He felt rushing snow engulf him. As the avalanche accelerated it grew in mass and volume and began to entrain more snow.

The gush of the snowpack swept him off his feet and he tumbled, twisted, and was whipped around by the wave. His arms and feet were working hysterically against the weight of the flowing snowpack. He kicked frantically, scrabbling at the hefty walls of ice above. He breached surface, flailing to stay on top of the flowing sheets.

Suddenly he was plummeting downward into a void again. He could feel the rushing lumps of snow crash over his shoulders searing the ice-cold scores in his stomach and his legs. His chest felt as though it was rammed by a truck. It happened again and again. He is whole body was writhing in pain. He could not take this abuse any more. He wanted peace, darkness and silence.

***

Jai had no idea for how long he was insentient.When he woke up, he was lying on a rock. He could hardly breathe and his chest, limbs, and head hurt, and were all throbbing. He slowly got to his feet. At least his legs hadn’t been hurt. He took a deep breath and looked around.The frost had evaporated and misted over his goggles. He wiped them off.

Jai struggled to stand against the blizzard.Particles of wind-blown ice crusted his wool hood and clung there. The weight of the hood was such that it kept his head bent forward. That was good it protected cheeks from the sting of ice pellets. A steady wind blew from behind him. It raised fine particles of ice from the glacier and swept them from the peaks. The icy mist rose in sharp arcs in wide circles, flying high enough to glimmer in first light of the rising sun before dropping back to the dark stone. The airborne eddies were limiting the visibility.

A moment later he saw two of his men, Rakesh and Arjun. The bodies two of them were tangled together in the foot of the icefall. The men were sprawled on the ground. Their cold weather outfits were smeared with blood. Then he saw the fourth beyond and above the other two. The rope was caught on a small out cropping about thirty feet up. Selvam was suspended close beneath it. He was rocking gently at the end of the line. Ranjeet was missing.

He had lost friends in Sopore. The emotional territory was bitterly familiar. But he had never lost an entire team before. “Don’t think about this now” he warned himself. He had to look ahead, at the cause for which team had sacrificed their lives. Otherwise there would be many more casualties.

This was the place where the Leopards had died. That made it sacred ground to Jai. It made no sense to fight for geography without any special value. But once blood had been spilled there, one fought for the memory of fallen comrades.

***

The chain of events leading to this moment started twenty four hours back. A team from RAW was sent to Mt. Nanda Devi to retrieve the thermonuclear generator designed to supply power to a telemetry device which was placed high on the peak in order to monitor Chinese nuclear and missile activity in the Xinjiang province of China but was lost during a storm and threatened to become a source of radioactive contamination to the area lost. There was also the information that LeT was deploying some of its Indian assets to salvage the thermonuclear generator. As the TNG contained 241Am as its fuel, the Indian security agencies perceived a possible threat that the terrorist might assemble a nuclear bomb if they got their hands on the TNG. Hence, team Leopard- as it was called officially- with agent Jai as its leader was sent to retrieve the TNG.

As soon as the Leopards retrieved the TNG they headed for their base camp at the foot of the Pindari glacier. But as they were descending Mt. Nanda Khat, situated near the foot of Mt. Nanda Devi twin explosions took out Jai’s team leaving him as the only survivor.

It had been hours since he had begun walking. He looked around and saw that he had reached eastern side of the Traill’s pass. His thighs burned from the struggle of the upward and then downward trek, his feet were blistered front and back. Every step generated hot, abrasive pain. Jai did not know how much longer he could continue. He had discarded all but few of the heavy climbing gears. He had eaten his food, so that he would not have to carry it. The water had frozen in his canteen and he had left that behind as well. When he was thirsty he simply broke off the icicles he found in small hollows. Surviving was increasingly unlikely, if the turncoat did not kill him the elements would.

The rugged beauty of the Pindari glacier presented an awe inspiring site. There were long, large lumps of dirty white ice about ten feet high with crevasses between them. They led to a gently sloping area that rose higher and higher into the darkness. The formation made him feel puny.

He took a step, felt the ground give way, and fell. He screamed with the cracking of a bone on hard ice. He fell headlong into the crevasse but his fall was arrested. Jai was now looking almost straight down. Almost at once he knew he was in trouble. He looked around and saw he was jammed in a tunnel like structure. He then pulled himself in over a bend, using his hands and legs like a lizard. A few yards into the tube he became aware of the wind whistling through it. There was complete darkness; he could not know whether his eyes were closed or not in the pitch darkness. He could hear his own breathing amplified by the reverberation within the tunnel.

He kept moving down the pitch black tunnel wriggling and pulling himself with his hands, foot by foot. The blood was pooling inside his head as abruptly he slid a few yards deeper into the tunnel which narrowed unexpectedly. He inhaled, and found that the girth of the tunnel prevented his chest from expanding fully. He was wheezing now, his breath reduced to a whistling stridor, his very alveoli constricted by stress hormones. He found the walls of the tunnel pressing against his chest. He had to struggle simply to move.He felt entombed. His bag was taking up a lot of space and the ice axes gouged into his ribs. He worked them free, and then they slipped from his grip, falling and crashing on some hard unseen surface below him. He moved a few feet further, straight down now.His hips bruised further with every snaking move.

He wiggled another yard, and then his stretched out hand touched something uneven, a loose block of ice. He pressed at it and felt it yield slightly. Now he banged at it with his hand and he heard it crash onto a pitch dark bottom; if there was a bottom at all.

Jai expelled the last ounce of breath from his body, curled his fingers around the edge where the block had been, and pulled himself through. His head and then his torso slid out at a painfully awkward angle, and then the floor came up so fast that he barely had time to meet it with his feet. Jai hit hard with his chest. He let out blood curdling scream and felt as if he had been slammed in the chest with a log.

Jai switched on a tritium powered flashlight. The bright beam played over the ice walls. He saw a blue, icy cave with glistening walls and sunlight at the top, streaming through a twenty foot wide gap. Starting very close to the ground, the slopes jutted out at steep angles. At some time in the past slabs of ice must have broken from the facades and covered the ground. Or perhaps this was an ice cave and the roof had simply collapsed. “If only I was back in Kolkata”, he thought. He could feel the cool pillows and sheets of his bed back home. He longed for the beautiful sunsets and dry warmth from the afternoon sun.

Snapping back into reality, he headed for the gap from where the light was coming through. He grabbed his ice axe and put on his rucksack. Jai took a moment to walk along the bottom of the crevasse. There were collapsible ice crampons strapped rigid boots. The talons on the feet would allow for a secure grip on the ice. As he jammed the crampon of his left boot into the ice wall, he took one last look up the mountain of ice.

“I’m going to beat you,” he muttered. “I’m going to get up there and finish the job my team started.”

His ribs and dislocated left shoulder hurt more and more every time he drove an axe into the ice wall, but he kept going. The light became brighter and brighter until he could see the edge of the cliff above. “Just ten more feet” he said to himself.

As he pulled himself up around edge of the transverse crevasse, he could see the twenty-foot gap. Almost at once visibility proved to be a challenge. He slowly and shakily stood, staggering forward. Perspiration from his eyebrows was flung onto the tops of his eyepieces. The sweat froze there. That was a high altitude problem. He could barely feel his fingers. Despite the heavy gloves and the constant movement, the cold was beyond anything he had ever experienced. His hands were numb when they were still, like dead weight. They burned when he moved them and blood was forced to circulate. It was the same with his feet. His eyes were wind blasted and dry. Brutally cold air tore along his pants. He felt as if skin were peeled back. The wind rose from the peaks two thousand feet above and roared past him. The gales kicked the shroud up and back. The water vapour in the clouds condensed on his face. It cooled the hot perspiration on his forehead and cheeks revitalizing him.

The perspiration on the Jai’s face was beginning to freeze. It was a strange feeling, like candle wax hardening. The insides of his thighs were badly chafed and his lungs hurt from the cold air they had been breathing. The longer he stood here the more aware he became of how vulnerable he was. It would be easy to stand still a moment too long and die.

When Jai was in boot camp, his drill instructor had told him something that he absolutely did not believe. “The body ignores a nonlethal assault,” the Hammer told them. “Whatever juices we’ve got pour in like reserves, numbing the pain of a punch or a stab or even a gunshot and empowering the need to strike back”. Jai did not believe that until the first time he was in a hand-to-hand combat situation in Khasmir. Army and LeT recon units literally stumbled upon each other during a patrol near Sopore. Jai had suffered a knife wound high in the left arm. But he was not aware of it until after the battle.

Jai’s anger kept him from freezing. He was waiting to kill the man who massacred his team. Jai was prodding the ground with a long staff he had picked up, making sure there were no pockets of thin ice.Jai had taken a last look around before night finally engulfed him. He was on a flat, barren expanse. Unless Jai did something to speed up his progress he would not get to the basecamp in time, if at all.

Jai was leg-weary as he made its way across the landscape. The ice was glass-smooth and difficult to navigate. Jai was glad he still had his crampons, heavy though they were.

The blizzard had stopped, though not the winds. It would take the heat of the sun to warm and divert them. The wind still swept down with punishing cold and force and a terrible monotony. The relentless whistling was the worst of it.

He staggered onto a ledge, and began a slow and agonizing descent. After several minutes, his head began to spin. He paused for a second, looking down at the ice fall below. “How am I ever going to get down there?” he thought. It’s hopeless. Upon reaching a large ice block, he hit his left arm on it and howled, his voice echoing through the expanse below. The icefall was extremely rough and uneven, covered with seracs and slashed with narrow, jagged fissures. He continued walking across the uneven terrain. It was difficult to keep their footing because of all the small pits, cracks, and occasional patches of smooth ice. The seracs rushed towards him relentlessly. The lower he went the faster the sharps edged blocks came towards him. “This was not going to be easy”, he thought.

Eventually he came near the tents of his team. Jai was trembling. His lips were broken and his cheeks were raw. His nose was raw and bleeding. His gloves were so thick with ice that he could not move his fingers. His sore feet were taking all of the dead weight. He trundled from side to side to keep him from putting all his weight straight down. At least the terrain was level. That made it easier on his leg muscles. His eyes were tearing from the wind and pain, Jai staggered the last few yards to a boulder. He fell against it and his knees just shivered. Jai winced as he put his weight back on his swollen feet. He began hobbling towards the tents.

Suddenly from behind him he thought he heard the noise of a broken twig or branch, as if from a footfall. He stole a quick glance behind him. There was nothing.

Jai heard it again. At first it sounded it sounded like a sharp whistling of the wind. But it grew louder. He felt a bullet whiz past him and the ricochet on the ice wall. Someone was shooting at him.

He scratched the frozen sweat from his cheeks and forehead. Then he slipped his hand into his coat pocket. He removed the pistol from his pocket.

Jai stopped and raised his eyes. Jai saw a large boulder with something moving behind the right side. Jai could not make out what it was.

It fired again. Jai pulled off his hood. He also removed his glove, tucked it in his left pocket, and drew out the pistol from his right pocket. Jai immediately dropped to his belly and began wriggling through the broken terrain. The boulder was roughly four feet tall and seven feet wide.

Bullets pinged furiously from the top of the formation. Jai rose and fired several rounds at the figure. Crouching and moving as quietly as possible he made his way along the wall. He wanted to be far enough from the slab so that he stayed protected.

The assailant’s hood had fallen away and was whipping behind him. Finally he caught a glimpse of his assailant. “You” he cried. The word came out like a groan, the sound of a nail pried from a board. “Ranjeet” he shouted hoarsely.

Jai felt a searing kick in his upper torso and a splotch of red blossomed on his parka, a few inches below his sternum. The sheer Kevlar vest he wore beneath his pullover prevented the puncture, did little to diffuse the impact of the round. A few inches higher and the bullet could have been fatal.

In one fluid motion, he raised his own gun and returned fire. Jai was a professional; the round entered Ranjeet’s forehead killing him instantly. Jai squeezed the trigger. A spray of blood and viscera spattered onto boulder behind Ranjeet.

His chest was bleeding but the freezing air had slowed the flow considerably. Now that the drama had ended his heart rate was slowing and his bleeding was substantially reduced. There was a portable intravenous kit and a vial of desmopressin in his rucksack. Jai removed the items. He began setting up the IV. From the triage classes he remembered that the desmopressin was used to decrease secretions, including blood loss. That would help stabilize someone if there was internal bleeding. He finished setting up the IV. Then he uncapped the needle. He pulled aside his parka and injected the syringe directly into the cephalic vein near his left elbow.He cleaned and bandaged his wound. When it was finished he reached into his rucksack and opened a flap to retrieve his sat-phone. At least what was left of it. Jai looked at the unit in his gloved hand. The faceplate was shattered. Red and green wires were sticking up from the cracked plastic. Several shards of green casing along with broken chips were rattling in the bottom of the sat-phone. The unit must have been damaged when the rucksack had impacted the crevasse bed. The TNG looked secure but he could not be sure that the eighteen millimetres lead shielding was intact. He put it back in the rucksack

Ranjeet’s sat-phone seemed intact. Removing it from his chest rig he turned towards the ice wall. As walked towards it, Jai switched the sat-phone on. The red light on top right corner glowed. Suddenly, the sat-phone beeped. It was the last thing Jai expected to feel. It could only be a call from someone at the RAW. But the signal absolutely should not be able to reach him out here. Not with the mountains surrounding the glacier, the distance from the telecommunication towers in Dharasu, and the ice storms that whipped around the peaks in the dark. The friction of the ice particles produced electrostatic charges that made even point-to-point radio communications difficult. Yet the phone line was definitely active. As if he was riding the Metro in Washington instead of standing on a glacier in the middle of the Kumaon Himalayas.

He pushed the answer button quickly and said “Yes?”

The transmission was broken and the voice was barely recognizable. The response was lost in static- a loud, frustrating crackle emanating from the unit. Jai turned down the volume and kept the channel open for another few moments. Then he shut the sat-phone off to conserve the batteries and slipped the unit back in his belt.

As Jai bent over Ranjeet’s body he noticed a rivulet of red seeping from behind his head. Blood continued to pool. He felt grateful as he removed the dead man’s coat and gloves. Stripping the bodies of enemies had always been a part of warfare. Jai knelt beside the body as he dressed. His mind began to race- he had known Ranjeet from the very moment he got deputed to RAW. They had hated each other ever since. Ranjeet was a headstrong agent always looking for avenues to amass money. He was glad that he could put a bullet in the traitors head and avenge the death of his fallen comrades.

As the Jai finished, his knees began to tickle. At first he thought it was a result of the cold. Then he realized that the ground was vibrating slightly. A moment later he heard a low, low roar. He obviously felt it too and knew what it meant. It felt and sounded like the beginnings of an avalanche. The vibrations were now strong enough to shake Jai’s entire body. A moment later, the beat of the rotors was audible as the Indian helicopter rolled in low over the horizon.He heard the constant roar of the powerful eight thousand and five hundred kilo-watt rotors. The powerful Russian-made Mil Mi-26 heavy lift helicopter soared swift and low over the glacier. The Mi-26 is the leading attack helicopter of the Indian air force. He continued to watch as the chopper descended. Suddenly, the Russian bird stopped moving. It hovered above the centre of the clearing. Maybe twenty seconds passed and then the chopper suddenly landed.

“Jai!” someone shouted. Jai looked up it was Vikrant, another fellow agent and his best friend.

“We traced your sat-phone signal. We are here to take you home buddy.” Vikrant shouted over the sound of the rotor blades.

Everything from Jai’s legs to his spirit to his brain felt as though they had been given a shot of adrenaline. He kept running, leaping cracks and dodging mounds of ice.

“I can’t believe there were just you,” Vikrant said as he pulled Jai up into the cargo bay. “We thought there were more.”

“There were,” Jai said. He looked at the chopper ahead. “They’re dead now.”

He removed the TNG from his rucksack and handed it over to Vikrant. The aircraft rose quickly, simultaneously angling from the foot of the glacier. As the helicopter door was slid shut behind him, Jai staggered toward the side of the crowded cargo compartment. There were no seats, just the outlines of cold, tired bodies. The Jai felt the adrenaline kick leave as his legs gave out and he dropped to the floor. The helicopter levelled out and sped north-west towards Dharasu air-base. Indian soldiers sat around them, lighting cigarettes and blowing warmth on their hands.

The cabin temperature inside the helicopter was little higher than freezing, but the relative warmth felt blissful. Jai’s skin crackled warmly. His eyelids shut. He could not help it. His mind started to shut down as well. Before it did, the Jai felt a flash of satisfaction that he had won. He now knew one thing he did not know a few minutes ago. The pain inside him would end very soon.

***

Glossary:

TNG – Thermonuclear Generator

Sat-phone – Satellite phone

Seracs – Huge blocks of ice formed by intersecting crevasses

RAW – Research and Analysis Wing. India’s external intelligence agency

Desmopressin – Intravenous medicine is also used to stop bleeding due to trauma.

Kilo-Watt – Unit of power

Kevlar vest – Bulletproof vest made up of Kevlar, a synthetic fibre

LeT – Lashkar-e-Toiba, a terrorist organisation

241Am – Radioactive chemical element which is used both as nuclear fuel in nuclear reactors and in making nuclear weapons.

***

About the author:

Shanil Kar was born in a port city of southern Andaman Islands in India. He had spent his childhood across the length and breadth of the state of West Bengal in India residing in its various district headquarters and mofussils. Later he moved to Kolkata metropolis from where he pursued his graduation. Shanil is a mountaineering enthusiast and an avid bird photographer. This is his first online story.

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