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“Sounds like a plan,” said Dheer. “Are you in, RV?”
“I am,” said Ranvijay excitedly.
“I have enough ammo to blow their operation to kingdom come,” said Dheer, with a laugh. “But we have to do it at night under the cover of darkness.”
We laid careful plans based on the information Kirori Ji had gleaned for us.
I texted Isha to say I was staying at the palace for the night. Nothing more. She didn’t even bother to reply.
After dinner, we dressed in camo and Dheer led us to the huge cache of weapons he had in his dungeon, and we picked up sticks of dynamite and blasting caps to blow up the whole operation, in addition to basic surveillance apparatus. We set off for the desert on horseback because horses were quieter than cars.
“Kirori Ji sent me the location of the entrance to the labs. It’s built to look like an ordinary sand dune, and it’s one of those,” said Dheer, who was navigating, pointing to a bunch of dunes in the distance.
We stuck a post in the ground and tied the horses to it before we set off on foot. It was a dark, moonless night and the black horses were practically invisible in the dark.
When we got to the dunes, each of us took one and went searching for the entrance to the labs. We converged on the last one and began knocking on the floor in front of the dune, looking for a metallic sound to indicate a grate.
“Did you hear that? It sounds like there’s metal underneath,” said Ranvijay.
We dug the sand out with our hands and sure enough, a metal grate came into view. Dheer pulled out a thermal imaging camera and checked to see if there were any humans around.
“The entrance is clear,” he murmured.
We pulled the grate aside, exposing a deep hole below it.
Dheer shone a torch into the hole and jumped in before we could stop him.
“Come down, guys. It isn’t very deep,” he called out.
We followed him down and found ourselves at the opening of a tunnel. The thermal camera still showed no human activity, so we forged ahead, despite my misgivings. It feels too easy, said a voice in my mind that sounded suspiciously like Isha.
The tunnel opened up into a rabbit warren of little tunnels filled with lab equipment and boxes upon boxes of a white powder that looked a lot like cocaine.
We used the thermal camera to check the whole area for any guards or workers lurking around the corners but found no one. Each tunnel led to a dead end, which meant that this was the extent of the entire operation. If we blew this up, we had a very good chance of crippling the Goels’ business.
At a nod from Dheer, we set up the dynamite sticks and connected them to the blasting caps with remote detonators. The plan was that we’d wait until we were at a safe distance away from the tunnels before we blew them up.
After we placed the last bomb, Dheer did a quick scan of the area and we set off for the exit. Ranvijay was first in line to exit, so it came as a surprise when he suddenly came to a hard stop in the large tunnel. I peered around him and saw the barrel of a rifle pointing at us.
We backed up into the lab and the person pointing the gun at us slowly came into view.
“Aao, Sa. Welcome to my little world,” drawled Sapna Goel.
Damn it! I knew it was never going to be so easy.
“You know, I was just about to wind up my work and go home when I saw a movement on the cameras. Yes, you didn’t know about the wire cameras stuck in the sand at regular intervals, did you?” she asked, with a cackle.
Dheer made a quick move, but Sapna aimed her rifle at one of our homemade bombs.
“Make any move and I’ll blow us all into the next world, asshole. How would your poor pregnant wife like that?”
Dheer froze in place but kept his eyes on her.
“You can’t fight all of us,” said Ranvijay. “Even if you kill one of us, the others will get you.”
“Will they? Will the mighty Rajputs really attack a woman? You’ll have to hit me because I don’t see any weapons on you. Not even a gun,” she tutted. “Very poor planning.”
It wasn’t poor planning. It was a tactical choice. We didn’t want to accidentally detonate the bombs if a gun went off. Dynamite was very unstable and we couldn’t take the risk. This was supposed to be a clean operation. But Sapna Goel had tripped us up with her wire cameras.
