Page 130 of The Circle of Exile
“She will not be able to remain quiet for long. You are on your way to completing your half-term. If she wants to destabilise you, this is the time.”
“Hmm.”
“Patience.”
He tore his eyes open. “Aren’t you scared?”
“Of what?”
“Of this coming out?”
“You are here.”
His chest stuttered, then swelled, then filled with blood.
“What did I do to make you like this?”
“Brought me to Jammu,” she smiled cheekily. And Atharva laughed, pulling her down and over him. If what happened on your birthday happened all year round then he wanted to do a lot of things to her.
24. A man could burn for the woman he loved, but he would burn the world down for the family he made…
A man could burn for the woman he loved, but he would burn the world down for the family he made. As Atharva stepped on the soft earth of the deep winter forest of Kupwara, his team and security bubbled around him, the media a barrage behind him, and the heads of two units of forces waiting for him at the door of the small hideout, he knew this with crystal clarity that the stakes to protect had risen. It wasn’t just his wife he protected now, it was the mother of his child.
Major Banot straightened and saluted him as he approached. Atharva nodded, holding the man’s stare. He wasn’t supposed to salute a CM. There was no hierarchy or protocol like that. And yet the three Captain-rank officers behind him snapped their hands in salutes.
“Sir,” Major Banot briefed. “Operation Black Crag was a success. Target cell was neutralised. Eight confirmed KIA, two captured. Minimal collateral. No civilian footprint in the area.”
Atharva gave a nod. He didn’t smile. He never did after ops — especially not when the smell of iron was still on the wind.
“Walk me through the breach.”
DGP Khan, from the J&K Police SF unit opened a map folded over his arm, gesturing to the ridge. Major Banot weighed in on it, surprisingly cohesive. Atharva remembered not a few months ago how Major Banot had gone toe-to-toe with Commissioner Malik. This operation, among its many wins, was also an unprecedented smooth sail between the military and the J&K Police.
“Intercepted comms yesterday morning confirmed a weapons drop,” Major Banot led. “Our drone teams marked infrared movement near the pine line at 1300 hours. At 1400, two teams entered from the west and north, silent incursion. They were running triple-layer security. Booby traps on the western entrance. We cut through.”
“Intel confirmed local or foreign assets?”
“Mixed, sir. But leadership was foreign. Pakistani handlers, possibly from Gilgit.”
Atharva’s gaze panned across the group gathered, meeting Captain Husain’s before moving on.Find out if this has Dilshad Khan’s fingerprints all over it.
DGP Khan offered a tablet —“We have visual ID on one of the dead. Cross-checked with the July 9th Srinagar school blast.”
Atharva’s jaw barely moved.
“Positive?”
“Facial match 96.2%. Fingerprint match 100%. Hassan Qadri. Explosives expert. We believe he was training two new recruits inside. One’s alive. Seventeen. Scared.”
Atharva looked at the screen for exactly three seconds. Then —“Keep him that way. Interrogation should be protocol Delta, no stagecraft.”
“He is strong-headed, sir.” Major Banot remarked.
“But he is seventeen, Major. It will be possible to catch him between that place of ‘I cannot betray my masters’ and‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ We want to know where Hassan Qadri’s masters are stationed, and what the next plan is — without turning the boy into another martyr in someone else's war.”
Atharva saw that the Major did not like it. He wasn’t obligated to take Atharva’s advice either. But Atharva was stuck in a hard place between making friends with the forces again and holding his responsibility as the CM. It became a three-way tag when his own experience leading interrogations in SFF began to play like it was just yesterday. These young kids weren’t broken by psychological tactics or coercion of pain. The brainwashing was too fresh and their minds too soft to understand grey.
Atharva moved toward the hideout’s mouth — low stone, scorched black from a flash-grenade ignition. His boots crunched frost and ash.
