Immortals

Book I of 'The Domus' Series'

Chapter One

Jai and Juliet

Mumbai–Pune Expressway, India

8 May, 2012

Jai cried out in anguish as he felt the bullet from the ‘Abdi nightmare’ smash into his guts. Jai had been having these nightmares ever since he had been aware of his dreams. In his dreams, he had always been this Somali Jihadi warrior. He had failed to understand why he relentlessly dreamt about being a habshi Jihadi warrior who fought his wars valiantly and had died in numerous different ways in each of his nightmares. Some days it would be a bomb that ripped him into a hundred tiny shreds and on others it would be a bayonet that sank into the Jihadi’s heart, but on most of the occasions it would be a bullet smashing into him on a faraway battlefront.

He had seen scores of ‘Abdi deaths’ in his dreams and Abdi had come back from each of his deaths, stronger and ready to kill more ‘infidels’. Abdi had thus grown from being a new recruit of ‘Allah’s Army’ to being a feared commander of the Islamic Jihad in Somalia.

These nightmares were always vivid accounts of the war in Somalia and it perplexed Jai, as he had never ever been to high school to see Somalia mentioned in some obscure chapter of a social sciences book and yet all he dreamt about was being a Somali warrior.

He had talked about his dreams with his sister when she was alive and she had understood what they were.

‘They are images of your previous life.’ She had the simple explanation of an eleven year old and that was all there was to it. Jai had only been thirteen then and he had had a very difficult day at the orphanage and a terrible Somali nightmare in the night and then, in spite of his reserved nature, he had talked about his dreams for the first time with Ayesha.

But today, Jai wasn’t on a Somali battlefield and it wasn’t a bullet that had really hit his belly. It had been the point of a boot that had been shoved into his battered guts right about the time when the bullet had shoved into Abdi’s guts in Jai’s semi-awake, semi-conscious nightmare.

That boot-kick had brought Jai back to his full waking senses.

It was almost evening on a totally fucked bad-ass Sunday. Ali and his goons had found Jai in the godown owned by Salim ‘Capital’. There had been a bloody shootout in that godown only a couple of hours ago and Salim and seven of his cronies had been gunned down in the ambush.

Jai, seventeen years of age, was gagged, bound, and beaten up and now he lay curled in a foetal position on the floor of a Chevrolet Tavera that was hurtling down the Mumbai–Pune expressway. Jai knew he was being led to slaughter. The only reason they had not pumped a bullet into his head was that a more gruesome death awaited him.

There were four of them in the Tavera, which was running along the road, out of Mumbai, leaving the skyline, leaving the slums, and then out into the fresh air of the highway. It was dusk and the orange light of the evening sun filtered through the tinted windows to a play of shadows on the seats of the speeding SUV.

He was the prize catch of the melée that had ensued since the day before and he was being led to Rashique Bhai’s den as a trophy catch where Bhai was going to have his share of ‘fun’ with him before killing him in any one of his grisly ways of meting out justice to those who betrayed the gang.

Jai’s would be an ‘example’ killing; an example to others in the gang, a deterrent against future betrayals.

Traitor Jai was.

Traitor he had been branded.

And as traitor he had been caught.

That seriously limited the number of days to his life and put an immediate and imminent threat to the integrity of his limbs. His seventeen-year-old body was badly bruised; his face lacerated in at least two places that might leave a scar in the unlikely event that he lived through tonight. His handsome teenage face had lost both the front upper incisors and he had a terrible pain in his groin after having been booted mercilessly in his belly and crotch.

He didn’t know about it yet, but there was a slow but steady trickle of blood inside his abdomen from a small avulsive tear in the right lobe of his liver.

Tears mixed with blood from a cut on his left eyelid rolled onto his cheeks, preventing the blood from clotting and drying up on his face.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Ali Asgar hissed as he ploughed the butt of his revolver into Jai’s face. Jatin and Lalit were sitting in the front seats and Jatin was driving the car.

Lalit looked over to the back and sniggered

‘The bugger was acting very smart. Now he’ll know what it costs to cross Rashique Bhai.’

Jatin looked back and added,

‘This bastard is only a kid, for fuck’s sake, and look at his guts. He has the guts to think of doing a number on Bhai and getting away with it. Even that bitch Juliet is involved in the act. After all, how did Rajan’s shooters know that Bhai would be at her apartment yesterday night?’

Ali whacked Jatin’s head lightly with the revolver butt from behind.

‘Saale, keep your eyes on the road. Anything happens to my Tavera, I will have you piss out ten petis from your baburao.’

Lalit laughed out loud.

‘But this Tavera is not worth ten petis, Ali Bhai.’

‘Well, my emotional bonding with it has to count for something extra, shouldn’t it?’ Ali chuckled.

Ali liked being called Bhai.

The banter died down and the Tavera rolled on the wide expressway towards Pune. The Tavera was on its way to a farmhouse in Shirgaon, on the outskirts of Pune on the Mumbai–Pune expressway where Rashique Bhai and gang had taken refuge, after the botched attempt on Bhai’s life at Juliet’s apartment in Vashi the day before.

Retribution had been swift and they had succeeded in gunning down Salim ‘Capital’, the key aide and head of Navi-Mumbai operations for Rajan Bhai. It was pretty darned clear that it had to be the job of an insider mole who had tipped the shooters of the Rajan gang. The hunt for the insider had begun on the same night.

Jai and Juliet had absconded the next day.

They had traced Jai to Salim’s godown in Wadala. They had staked out and marked the joint and had taken down his gang in a bloody ambush of Salim Bhai’s party as it was entering the godown. A hand grenade had made instant hash of the front car, a dowdy Innova, and had stopped the Camry and the two Ambys behind, dead in their tracks. There had been a barrage of bullets from three sides and Salim and his goons were dead before they even realised what had hit them.

Ali and his troupe had waited for more than three-quarters of an hour after the last gunshot had been fired, before entering the godown. And when they were sure that there was no-one else to fight, they had forced their way into the godown.

The police had already been informed and paid off and they had been asked to reach the site after an hour of their receiving the first call about the shootout. There was an absolute, eerie silence with the four vehicles and a score of dead people in them lying on the road outside the godown, as Ali and his goons had kept watch for about an hour, covering all the exits. The scant public that was present before the shootout had disappeared into their holes after the report of the first gunshot was heard, in an area now all too familiar with the noise of guns and bombs. All that remained was the stench of death and gunpowder, which hung in the air about Ali and his waiting men.

When Ali was sure that there wasn’t any sniper attack forthcoming, he had two of his boys force the rear gate and had snuck into the godown; they had done a quick search inside and had then led the rest of his gang inside. Ali had found Jai hunkered in the basement and all he had by way of defence was an empty revolver, which he had thrown at them in desperation as soon as they had entered the basement.

It was, overall, a job well done apprehending Jai, although there was still not a trace of Juliet.

Juliet had sneaked out of the house, in barely her undergarments, after probably letting in Rajan’s shooters, just about in time for the fireworks. She had left a naked Rashique Bhai on her bed to die in a ballistic hail.

It was Rashique Bhai’s ageing prostate that had saved his life. Bhai was pushing fifty and had trouble keeping his bladder in check during the night. And a trip to the toilet barely seconds after Juliet had left the bed, and seconds before the shooters sneaked into the bedroom, had saved Bhai’s life.

Ali took this as a lesson for himself.

One should never trust a hooker with one’s life, no matter how long you have been fornicating with her.

Juliet had been Bhai’s property for the last three years. She had been brought ‘fresh’ from Kolkata as a gift for Bhai’s completing thirty years of his Mumbai operations. Bhai had given her much more than what a whore like her deserved. Hell, she had her own apartment, a swish car, and Bhai had even given her enough freedom to go out with some of her friends, every now and then. She had the life of a princess and yet the bitch had betrayed Bhai.

She too had been ‘turned’ by the Rajan gang for this operation and she would have to pay; pay dearly, when she was caught.

And Ali hoped that it would be sooner rather than later.

Ali had left a ‘watcher’ at her apartment and two at a friend’s house in Currimbhoy’s chawl in Byculla. They were keeping a ‘24 x 7’ watch and would report to Ali as soon as she materialised at any of these places. Ali had been organising affairs for Rashique Bhai and had risen up the ranks of the gang in south Mumbai. South Mumbai was where the crème de la crème of Mumbai lived. The gang needed a presence down here, although they liked to keep it quiet. Ali understood that it needed subtlety and diplomacy to run a quiet operation.

He knew Rashique had shown immense trust in him by handing him this area’s responsibility. He took pride in solving problems for Bhai independently and he was one of the brazen younger ‘lieutenants’ of the Rashique gang, though not the youngest.

Yet this business of an attack at Rashique Bhai’s life had to dent his reputation. After all, this shit happened in his own backyard. It hurt Ali’s reputation that it was his recruit that had gone sour and knew that this act of Jai’s betrayal would cost him at least a couple of years of favour with Rashique Bhai.

Ali dearly hoped that his eliminating Salim and the swift capture of Jai would prevent the shit from hitting the fan.

He was ambitious and yet knew he had to be a loyal vassal to Bhai till his time came. He looked around at the occupants of the Tavera – Jatin, seventeen years of age, from Bhagalpur, and Lalit, a sharpshooter, nineteen years of age, from Moradabad. He had picked them up from the proverbial Mumbai gutter and had apprenticed and inducted them into the gang.

He knew, rather hoped, that these two were loyal to him before their loyalty to Rashique Bhai, and that they would lay their lives on the line fighting for him if the Tavera were to be ambushed now.

Jai was a different story. Ali had been a mentor to him but he had never owned Jai. Jai had respect for him but Ali had suspected that Jai could never be loyal to anyone but himself. Jai had never shown fear of any kind. In fact his emotions had always been blunted and that had scared even Ali sometimes. Jai had taken to being a shooter well and had killed his targets without showing any kind of remorse, ever.

Ali had met him at the ‘Adarsh’ juvenile home in Vikhroli two years ago where Jai was incarcerated for aggravated assault and killing under blind rage, charges that stopped just short of murder. Jai was dexterous with his smuggled kolhapuri knife and Ali had been impressed. Ali had befriended Jai there and had later recruited him into the gang. Jai had graduated effortlessly from the kolhapuri to a local ghoda and then on to an imported revolver, a gift from Ali on his sixteenth birthday. Jai had risen rapidly amongst the ranks, from a carrier boy to a shooter in two years. He had accompanied Ali on his ‘kill’ runs and Ali had let him finish some of his targets. Ali had entrusted Jai with three other successful ‘solo’ jobs after that.

Ali couldn’t still believe that it had been Jai. He couldn’t comprehend the reasons for Jai’s betrayal.

There was a pungent stench of urine, which brought Ali back from his reverie. He cursed.

‘Jatin, saale! Roll down the windows. This motherfucker has pissed in his sorry pants. Bastard!’

The window panes were lowered and the odour wafted outside with fresh air blowing in from the low hills through which the highway cut across towards Pune.

 ‘Abey beedichaaps! You want cigarettes?’ Ali hollered from the front seat and offered them a Wills each. The boys had done well today and deserved more than just a cig. As far as he knew, both of them had a healthy sexual appetite and he planned to set them up with some fancy bitch in a couple of days.

A good general should keep his men disciplined, marshalled, well fed, well paid, and well fucked.

Ali never smoked or had alcohol himself. He believed every man was entitled to only a single vice and that any more would do him no good. His vice involved the carnal pleasures and he had promised himself that he would stop at just that.

Not many around him, however, subscribed to his idea about a single vice.

Soon the two of them in the front seat had a burning cig at their lips and Ali, all of twenty-three, was again lost in his thoughts.

Ali had a chhamiya already, a girl that he liked to think he was going steady with. A high-profile Queen’s College chick, who did ‘private’ work sometimes, as an escort, for the extra cash, and had a soft corner for Ali. He hoped to have an audience with her in a couple of days, if Jai’s business wrapped itself early.

***

The Tavera rolled into the farmhouse by around midnight. It had been close to thirty hours since Jai had had more than a semi-conscious semblance of a sleep. Moreover, that too had been wasted on the great Jihadi, Abdi. He had been intermittently butt-whipped and gut-kicked all the while that he had been in the Tavera.

They had stopped for a cup of tea and some cigarettes in between. Ali had denied Jai even water at the teashop. The roadside shop owner had had a glimpse of Jai, bound, gagged, and bleeding on the floor of the truck. Their eyes had momentarily met when the Tavera doors had opened but the shop-owner knew better than to meddle in the matters of three menacing young men coming out of a shiny Tavera in the dead of night with a bound captive with them.

‘Saala will not see tomorrow’s sun. No need to waste tea on this bastard,’ Ali had told the other boys.

Jai was taken straight to the barn of the farmhouse. He lay there in a heap till Rashique Bhai made his entry into the barn an hour later. Rashique Bhai was lean and lanky with an ominous-looking cropped beard on his square jaws. The muscles on his neck and arms bore testimony to his gym routine. He looked much fitter than his fifty years. He wore a pathan suit with its sleeves rolled up high and sat down on a torn sofa in the barn of the farmhouse, flanked by four armed men.

The farmhouse belonged to Subhash Shinde, the local MLA who had employed the services of Rashique Bhai’s muscle to handle his electioneering and campaigns in the past. Rashique Bhai used the farmhouse as and when he pleased.

Today he was celebrating yet another unsuccessful attempt on his life and had a mini-army of his trusted lieutenants by his side.

It was deemed unsafe by Hazari Baba for him to stay in Mumbai after the attack. He always listened to Baba who had been Bhai’s mentor, philosopher, and guide for many years. People whispered of a blood relationship between the two.

There were rumours that Rashique Bhai was actually the bastard son of Baba with the two-timing wife of a film producer. The producer had abandoned Bhai in Baba’s care after having his wife murdered for her deception. Baba had secured the safety of his son on the promise of not hurting or having anything to do with the producer’s family after he got custody of his son.

Bhai knew about his connection with Baba and yet he kept up the pretence and they never acknowledged each other as father and son; at least not in front of others.

Bhai had been told everything by Baba on his twentieth birthday. He had argued that he was not bound by the promise that Baba had made to the producer and Hazari Baba had relented at last.

Bhai had then very brazenly gone on to cleanse the producer’s extended family off the face of the earth in one of the most audacious attacks on Bollywood by the underworld.

Bhai had flushed into the ground the producer, his latest trophy wife, his three ex-wives, and his four sons and three daughters, and their families, taking the toll to twenty-one in a bloody soliloquy of revenge.

A stirring in the almost lifeless body of Jai, slumped on the floor in front of him, brought Bhai back from his thoughts.

The farmhouse reeked of tandoori chicken, booze, and cheap whores.

Things were to get messy with Jai, and Rashique Bhai wanted to finish off with this traitor in the barn. A Bollywood starlet and three teen nymphets and wannabe starlets from the ‘Dance India’ troupe were giving him company today and he was a trifle impatient to get back to them. But they would have to wait. Rashique Bhai knew that he had to make an example of Jai, as a deterrent against any repeat attempt at a similar betrayal in the future.

Jai lay hunched on his side on the ground facing Bhai on the couch, his hands tied behind his back. The tears had long dried up and the wounds had run out of blood. The ground was littered with hay and horse-shit that made Jai choke into coughing spasms every now and then. Sacks of feed were stored on one side of the barn and Ali watched the proceedings, slumped on a sack in the corner in the dark.

‘What should I do with you, chotu?’ Bhai asked. His voice had a tone of condescending exasperation.

Jai looked up but kept silent.

Jai wanted the ‘killing’ to get over soon. No, he was not in any tearing hurry to get anywhere; just that quick dead would be easy dead.

Jai had indeed planned the entire ‘operation’ well. He had already been paid half his remuneration, which was tucked away somewhere safe. The plan was for Bhai’s murder to get over smoothly and for him to vanish with Juliet. He had two unreserved tickets to Dehradun for that night’s train. They could then just disappear into the hills, far away from Mumbai.

Jai realised now that he was not going to make that train ride.

His only mistake had been to surrender his safety in Salim Bhai’s hands. He had put his trust in Salim Bhai and things had soured fast. Rashique Bhai had escaped the killing, marshalled his forces, extracted a swift retribution, and had his hands on him, all in just about a day’s work. Juliet was missing and he had no news of her.

Little did Jai know that Juliet was being held captive in the garage of the farmhouse, just a hundred metres from where he was, where she was being punished for her role in the attempted killing of Bhai. Bhai had ordered that she be treated like the whore that she was, and she had had a steady stream of Bhai’s men visiting her since that evening. She lay tied to the bed-post of a cot in the watchman’s room by the garage, barely conscious and bleeding from her ravaged privates.

Rashique Bhai got down to the business of Jai’s betrayal. He had his finest cutlery laid out on the table in front of him.

He was going to make this extra special for Jai.

Not only had Jai betrayed him to his enemies, he had been two-timing with Juliet. This had come as a real shock to him, and it was a huge embarrassment for him in front of his minions.

An SMS message had been found in the sent folder of Juliet’s cell phone telling Jai that the ‘work’ was done, and that she would be at the railway station at the designated time.

Rashique Bhai motioned to two of his men who approached Jai, turned him prone on an upturned cart, and divested him of his clothes…

***

Two hours later Jai was left with belt welts all over his body, a broken tailbone, three amputated toes, a displaced hip joint, and a broken nasal cartilage. He was barely conscious, and only a guttural howl emanated from his throat each time his bodily integrity was violated.

Before the torture had started, Bhai had whispered in Jai’s ears

‘I know all about you and Juliet and believe me – right now you are having a better time than she is.’ Jai had recoiled with anger and despair and Bhai had enjoyed the impotent rage of Jai.

The end came soon afterwards in the form of a Swiss army knife that Rashique pushed through Jai, between the fourth and fifth ribs in the left of his chest. The blade rapidly exsanguinated Jai and he was dead in a heartbeat.