Kingdom Come

About the Author

AARTI V RAMAN lives in Mumbai, India and has a degree in mass media from Mumbai University. She has always dreamed of being either a romance writer or a lawyer and decided to pursue a writing career from a very early stage.

Aarti has already published a romantic thriller under the name Aarti V and has more works coming out in 2014. Her favorite dream of writing for Harlequin Mills and Boon has finally come true and she hopes to continue this fantastic relationship with many more love stories and fascinating characters.

Aarti loves to watch movies, TV series and read other romances and travel to different places in order to find a new hero and a new story.

Kingdom Come

Aarti V. Raman

This book is dedicated to

Mom, my own true North

The Big Guy in the Sky

Navneet Bhaiya, because he took us all along to meet the Big Guy. (winks)

Yashesh and Nams. For me, from now on, December will always be yours, guys. Happy Wedding Month, my beautiful, wacky couple. I love you both so much! And Santosh and Kinjal, Gauri and Viraj, whose weddings I couldn’t attend because I am busy with Kingdom Come. I hope this makes up for my absence, guys.

Akshay Kumar, Kit Bale and Edgar Ramirez, all of whom have helped me to mold Krivi’s head and heart and eyes. No, but seriously. Thanks.

Ass Back Home by Gym Class Heroes feat. Neon Hitch. Your song looped, looped my book. Thank you.

And Abby. For the thing in the night. Again.

For all the brave soldiers, known and unknown who defend this fair world against the enemy, both without and within. And for all the women who are strong enough to stand by their sides and give them their hearts.

Four special people need to be simultaneously thanked and dedicated to, so am picking the dedication for them. Pippa Roscoe, Assistant Editor at Harlequin UK, who stuck by me for two long years and didn’t once tell me I sucked at writing Harlequin Romance. And, I finally don’t, Pippa. Amrita Chowdhury, Country Head of Harlequin India, who took a chance on a total unknown because she really believed in my voice. Varsha Naik, yes, you chop my book. But I like the way you do it. Live long and chop more. And lastly, Deepika Singh, Harlequin India marketing director, who followed up with one desperate woman’s desire to be published by the greatest romance publishing house in the world.

You guys have rocked my world.

Thank you

Akshay Kumar, for providing so much inspiration that I just had to write you down. My style.

Edgar Ramirez, for being the intensity I was looking for.

For my mum, dad and lovable, zany family who decided what the heck, let’s go to Kashmir, anyway. I would never have been able to figure out where to set Kingdom Come, if it weren’t for you guys. Thanks a ton.

DCP Randip Dutta of the CRPF and his lovely wife, who were kind enough to give me a glimpse of the hard life of a soldier and the woman who stands by him. Thank you for that, and for the Dal Lake boat ride through cold, driving rain. I can never forget that.

Jaysh. Honey, you are the rock, upon which I stood while writing this one.

Abbas, for being generous and amazing enough to be my OCD. I couldn’t have done this without you. I seriously wouldn’t have.

My entire iPod playlist, every single song was chosen with a very specific purpose.

Dhee, Nams, Suki, Sonu, Pra, VJ, Amitava, Yashesh, Karths, Pooj, Jaysh, Abby, Chitta, Chitti, Bharti Chits, Mom and Dad who didn’t blink an eyelash while encouraging me to aim for the stars. Who didn’t think me less than capable of something like this.

Max, for always being the one that I love.

“How do you kill a man who has no Achilles heel? You cut off his foot.”

—Tom Jones.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Thank you

Epigraph

prologue

STEP ONE: IDENTIFICATION

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

STEP TWO: IDENTIFICATION

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

STEP THREE: DISARMAMENT

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

EPILOGUE

epilogue

Endpages

Copyright

prologue

London

Midnight

January 30, 2008

He had to get out.

Krivi Iyer figured that as long as he had breath, bone, blood left he had to try and get out. That as long as he could still think, still plan, he should get out. He should get out before he snapped. And did something.

Unforgivable.

He ran rhythmically, his feet pounding the pavement. The rivers of sweat running down his back, soaking his body, already drying in the cold night air. He ran on, dreamlessly. Endlessly. There were no thoughts here. No need for thinking. No need for wondering. For what ifs. He didn’t have to be anything here. Not even himself: Krivi Iyer. Krivi didn’t want to be himself ever again.

His Nikes were well-worn, with the tread marks of a long time of usage. His grandmother would have called them scuffed and ruined. His socks were somewhere between the shade of white and pristine white that he tried to aim for when he remembered to do his laundry. The music playing on his mp3 player was pulse-pounding rock. The more noise filled his head, the less his head hurt.

It had been six months now. Six months to the day. And there were no words, no actions, nothing that meant anything to him anymore. They had told him, the price he had to pay for doing what he did: for doing it so well. No one knew, more than him, that what he did always had consequences.

He’d told this countless times to new recruits, to freshers who were cocky when they entered, with a heartless smile and dreams of glory and courage. They didn’t know what price they had to pay for all of it. For the glory, the courage and the dreams.

He dreamed of them sometimes.

The fallen. The ones who had gone away to a deep, dark, dreamless place. He didn’t believe in either heaven or hell. Sometimes he doubted if life or death held meaning for him. But he did believe, absolutely, in right and wrong. In truth. In justice. And in freedom. He believed in choice. He believed that we all got exactly what we wanted, because we chose it. Knowingly, unknowingly.

But Gemma hadn’t chosen anything.

Gemma had no need to pay for anything. Gemma had been bright and cheerful and happy. She’d brought light into his world when he didn’t think he could see anything except black. She’d made him see himself. She’d made him laugh at himself. Gemma had been everything to him. She’d been light and laughter. Sunshine and life. She’d made him see exactly what was missing in his life. What he’d never thought about. Missing her would kill him, he thought while mechanically streaking past the benches at Notting Hill Public Park.

Gemma would laugh no more.

His fear, his anger increased with every step. The dreams that he avoided when he ran, came back to haunt him virulently. And he dropped down on his knees in the middle of the pavement. The concrete grit digging into his skin, making little pores and sticking to his sweaty skin. Rock poured out of ears that should have bled at the appalling noise level. His shoulders were shaking at the abrupt loss of motion.

His hands were shaking too, when he pulled his cell phone out of his shorts pocket and looked uncomprehendingly at the terse text message. His mind was caught up in the past. It was still trapped in a moment where flash and fire and earth exploded. Where worlds stopped and worlds ended. It was caught in a frame of time when a bomb went off in a car and killed not one, not two, but four lives.

Krivi didn’t know how he was going to live with any of it. The ghosts. The fear. The guilt. The anger. The fear of anger. The fear of memories. Everything hurt right now. Even looking at a cell phone display. Sweat was pouring off his face so he could barely read the message.

Application accepted. Briefing in two days. Report to headquarters for further instructions.

A part of his mind that wasn’t wrapped in the hard kernel of grief, understood the words. Knew what to make of them. He hated that part of his mind. The part of his mind that was relief. That rejoiced at one word.

Escape.

Nearly four years later …

On the other side of the world, a man was watching the person who was torturing him play five finger fillet.

The game was simple.

You placed your palm on a flat surface, spread your fingers wide and then started moving the knife point in the spaces between the fingers. Slow, slow, fast, faster and then so fast your movements were an indistinct blur. And you did it without taking your eyes off your opponent.

The man, Raoul, watched the knife flash in a staccato burst that was a silver dizzy motion. Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut. The point flashed back and forth, back and forth until he felt physically sick.

Sick.

He wanted to throw up, but there was nothing inside of him to throw up. He looked at his side of the table, which was a disgusting mass of sick, saliva and blood. Raoul felt more bile rise up in his throat as he saw the mess.

“If you vomit again, I will make you eat it, Raoul,” his torturer said in a perfectly pleasant voice.

Raoul’s chest heaved as he tried to settle his nausea and escape out of the bonds he was tied in. He was only successful with the first.

The knife paused; the silence deafening.

“Good boy, Raoul,” the torturer approved. “Now if only you’d been a good boy yesterday and not blabbed with the pretty chica.”

“Madre Dio! She is nothing. She is a stripper. She will not talk, I promise. On my mother, I swear.”

His torturer smiled. A cold, killer’s smile. The knife point gleamed like a jewel as the torturer twisted the blade this way and that. A slow, concerted movement that was hypnotic in its grace.

“Your mother is dead, Raoul,” the torturer said softly. “You know that. So is Maria. You know that too.”

“Spare me then. Spare me, please!”

Raoul started babbling in a mixture of Portuguese and English. Prayers, incantations, invocations, beseechments. His tears mixing with the blood flowing from his busted eye. He was blind in one eye because of the force with which the torturer had heaved a rock paperweight at it.

But he could live with the blindness. He could live. Madre Dio la vida.

The torturer gave him a sharp look.

“I am bored.” It was a flat statement.

Raoul was still screaming obscenities when the knife struck, sure and true. Piercing the jugular. Blood and life poured out of Raoul. The canary who sang.

The terrorist was called The Woodpecker.

The terrorist’s specialty was bombs in public places. Signature and calling card rolled together in one burning mass of twisted metal and humanity.

The file on The Woodpecker was three inches thick, tying the terrorist to so many international bombings that the organization was getting worried now. No one person, no one terrorist was supposed to be such an efficient, soulless killer. Hold the fates of people in their hand so callously.

The man who was the terrorist’s father, the terrorist’s mentor, looked at his child’s file, filled with the exploits of a lifetime of terror and mercenary killing. He had encouraged, honed the skill, the spark, the madness that had led to the creation of this file.

The Woodpecker.

The bird that chipped and chipped away at the branch in a tree to make a nest for herself and her chicks.

The Woodpecker who never gave up.

The man shut the file closed and leaned back in his swivel chair. He looked out at the cloudless blue skies that denoted summer on the beach. And felt a weight around his heart, an organ he had forgotten existed. He tried to name the emotion that was weighing down his heart and identified it as … regret.

Tom Jones smiled; a regretful smile as the gears of his devious, devious mind started moving. He picked up a satellite phone and made a call and set in motion his plan. Things couldn’t be helped anymore.

They had to change. And change was always good. He had always believed so.

STEP ONE: IDENTIFICATION

one

Ladakh

India

July 2011

It was said that God himself lived in these hills that surrounded the Northwest Frontier of India. The air was purer than air, clean and pure oxygen. The waters gleamed an unholy turquoise and the sky was an infinite, uniform blue. The horizon was a stretch of land and sky that met as far back as the naked eye could see.

Nature’s paradise.

And it was called Ladakh.

It was also home to some of the worst atrocities humanity had committed against itself. Ladakh, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, was on the very border that separated India from its neighboring countries, and was therefore fair game, for all the neighbors that wanted to encroach and possess it. Although, by some miracle, Ladakh itself had escaped being the target of the constant cross-border violence that raged in the most turbulent political state in India, the nearby town of Kargil had not been so lucky. It was home to war and fallen heroes in the last decade. And the rest of Jammu and Kashmir was not safe either.

But these places were in the rest of the beautiful part of the country that formed the crown jewel: the Himalayas. Ladakh was in demand, for the territory was valuable in itself too for the special metals mined here. The scenery was so stunning; it actually took your breath away.

The team of six, fatigue-clad men who entered the lonely, isolated cave on one such hillock on the roughest terrain did not pause to look at the stunning, breathtaking scenery. They were dressed in green-black camouflage outfits that just barely hid them in the approaching dawn. Ladakh was not just known for lush greenery and foliage; it was as much desert and sand as it was flowing streams and lovely air. A study in contrasts, the land was, as much the people that inhabited it.

The team leader, with black marks on his face, stopped at the mouth of the cave, and indicated the two next to him to go ahead. They removed tiny chemical lights, lit them by breaking them and sprinted inside like black ghosts. They were the reconnaissance guys, who would give intel on the situation inside the labyrinthine caves. The team leader marked their position on a tiny handheld, where they were just two green dots racing away like pinballs.

There were four more dots on the tiny handheld, one for each man on the mission. A radio crackled to life as the green dots stopped and the team leader tapped on an earbud inside his ear and spoke quietly.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Route’s clear. Can’t see target, but there are no unknowns out either. Intel seems fine. These guys do not do rounds.”

“They left no one to guard the target?”

The leader’s voice was expressionless, ghost-like in the early morning air. If he was surprised at all, he didn’t let it show. Surprises were not part of the package on retrieval missions, their intel had to be one hundred percent correct or lives could be lost. And the intel had been; they would leave someone behind to guard the target.

Kidnapping and ransom was tricky work at best, FUBAR at worst.

“Not as far as I can see. I could check again, do sweeps.”

“Do it.”

The team leader held the handheld out, so his teammates could also have a view of the green dots moving around in several directions, checking for bogies and guards, with the heat signature scopes on their sniper rifles. Recon guys had a hard job, they went in first, sometimes with no knowledge of what was going to meet them inside a situation, so they only packed light ammunition. Sub-machines with automatic loading, throwing knives, whatever got the job done.

The rear guard carried firepower, the grenade launchers that could level a school building in no time. But the launcher had to be assembled, and that could take up to three minutes, depending on the situation and how many limbs the rear guard had left, when the launcher was called for.

The team leader was neither recon, nor rear guard. He and his partner were the guys in the middle of the action. The ones who had to hold it together when things went to hell, as they sometimes did in their line of work. They had the hardest task of all. Retrieval of the package, at any cost. And sometimes, they had to pay the cost.

So far, this mission was routine. Things were progressing as they should because of the solid intel provided. Apart from the glitch of there being no one to guard the target.

The ransom drop-off point was in the middle of the market in downtown Leh, where the industrialist father would pay ten million rupees for his sixteen-year-old daughter who had been taken from her boarding school in Dehradun. The DP ensured plenty of cover could be provided for both the good and bad guys. But, regardless of how thoroughly they wanted to cover their asses at the DP, would they be so overconfident as to leave their location unguarded, along with the target inside?

No. The team leader knew that, understood that, but … there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except hope they wouldn’t run into trouble anyway.

“Boss?” The radio crackled again.

“Yeah?”

“We can hear screams. They’re pretty loud.”

“OK.”

“Boss?” Recon one was waiting for instructions.

The team leader exhaled. “The coast is clear. I’m coming in. Rear guard can wait here and guard the entrance. Hopefully we can be in and out in five.”

“Roger that.”

The team leader looked at the four men around him and murmured, “Cover the entrance. If you see movement, radio in. Hold off as long as you can in the event of serious trouble. And worst comes to worst.”

He nodded at the man holding a long, metal case that looked like it could hold an accordion. The man stroked the case, as he would a particularly loved pet.

“Level the place. Yeah, we got it, Boss. Go, save the girl. Like you always do.”

The team leader didn’t crack a smile at the moment of levity, he just fixed on his number two with a myopic stare and said, “Evacuate the girl however you can. It’s a priority.”

“Boss.”

He handed the handheld to him, switched his scope on and went in low. A wraith all in black, melding into the darkness, becoming one with it. No one could even hear him breathe. But they weren’t supposed to. Darkness was his companion, his lover. He was all right in the dark.

The leader walked in, because the cave roof was about fifteen meters in height, which gave him enough room to move in. He’d already told the recons that he was moving in and arriving at rendezvous point in two.

The cave sloped off east, and then slipped in three directions. He consulted a GPS strapped to his hand and took the third one. The cave became danker, smelling of cold air which was not the same thing as fresh, cool air. His combat boots made no footfalls as he moved at a steady clip, ready to anticipate trouble at any moment.

The cave split again in two directions, and he again consulted his GPS and moved further in, until he came to a well-lit passage, and saw the shadows of both his men. They were at the ready, even though their weapons were held loosely at their side. Ex-military were always ready. And Kirschner Security only employed the best, and each of these men was alive only because they were the best.

“Boss?” Recon two spoke in his ear.

“Yeah.” The leader slung his own weapon on his shoulder and strode forward. “Behind you.”

The Recons moved fluidly and let him pass them, as they journeyed further in. About five feet into the long, alarmingly well-lit tunnel he heard it too. The screams of a young girl. Heedless, terror-filled and continuous. They were not words, they were not prayers or tears. They were just screams. Just pure terror.

He stopped for a split second and then nodded once. All three broke into a run and sprinted the last five hundred yards till they came to a wooden door that the leader simply ran through with his momentum. The door splintered apart, because it had been shoddily constructed and couldn’t withstand assault from a one-ninety-pound male specimen.

The recons swung their weapons in a wide arc while the leader advanced quietly.

“All clear,” Recon one murmured.

“All clear,” echoed Recon two.

The room, a fifty-by-fifty space was empty. Just walls, a table and a freezer that probably held beers as much as body parts. And it was devoid of both Alina Gujjar, the teenage daughter of Mahesh Gujjar, or any guard that might have been foolish and smart enough to escape detection from the heat signature scopes. There was an opening from the room and it was well-lit too.

The leader walked into the next room, from where the screams were emanating. His heart was slow, his breathing steady and he had acute tunnel vision. He could only see the next step, the next movement, his adrenaline on punch-high and his reflexes cold-purpose.

“Going in to retrieve package,” he murmured. “Radio silence from here on.”

And stepped into the room. The scream and the sight in the room stopped his heart.

Alina, a slender girl in filthy jeans and a torn white sweater, was screaming and crying sightlessly. Her shoulder-length hair was matted and she was bound to a ring on the rock wall of the cave. Her hands were tied to a wire that looped through the ring and were jerked tight enough to have almost cut off circulation if the girl moved much. She was not gagged, evidence of the hoarse animal sounds coming from the girl. But, her legs were stretched in front of her in a loose binding, a length of wire running around the ankles and on the ground to a covered contraption on the side.

“Shit.”

The leader moved forward and placed his weapon on the floor beside him for easy reaching. He knelt down in front of the girl and touched her. Lightly on the shoulder. She screamed harder as she focused on him. Saw the painted face and hell-black eyes, the camo outfit and the utter sense of menace he exuded. Her eyes were open in permanent petrification and she was hysterical.

“Hi, Alina, I’m Krivi,” he said, gently. “I’m going to get you out. Right now. I promise.”

“Wha—what?” she whimpered, tears running streaks down her muddy cheeks.

“I am going to get you out in five minutes.”

“But—there is a … there is a …” Sobs started shaking her thin shoulders and she hung her head and just wept. A hopeless, wrenching sound that should have melted the hardest, stoniest heart.