The night in Mangaluru was heavy, like wet smoke. The trio sat in the dim-lit hotel room, the stink of old cigarettes and sweat soaking the walls. The air hung thick with silence as the last frames of Maqbool's video haunted the laptop screen, his voice echoing in Nawaz's skull like a funeral drum.
His father wasn't just murdered—he was erased. By ministers. By soldiers. By people who wore khadi and carried flags in the day, and sold death at night.
Now the bastard names were clear. MLA Ravindra Bhandari. CRPF's rogue wing. And a shadow network of arms smugglers using the Karwar coast to funnel death through ports like Bellary.
Not the fake-clean Bellary they showed on tourist sites. But the blood-rusted underbelly, where iron ore was just a cover for gun barrels, and where men disappeared like smoke.
Nawaz lit a beedi with a shaking hand. Took a drag. Exhaled rage.
"Kaise karenge?" Balraj asked. "Seedha udaa dein sabko ya andar se phodte hain?"
"How do we do it?" Balraj asked. "Blow them up directly or destroy them from the inside?"
Nawaz stared at the USB on the table. That tiny metal stick had enough dirt to bury a government.
"Sabotage. Silent and systematic," Nathan said, leaning forward. "We hit them where they don't expect. Not guns yet. We take out logistics, comms, their money chain."
"Aur tere paas plan hai?" Nawaz growled.
"And you have a plan for this?" Nawaz growled.
"I have a blueprint."
Nathan pulled out a tablet, cracked and taped on the side. He projected a map onto the hotel wall with a tiny Pico projector.
"Bellary's got three choke points. One, the freight warehouse near Hospet road — it's where they store and swap cargo. Two, the safehouse-slash-bunker under St. Xavier's orphanage — hidden in plain sight. And three... their comms relay center in an old telecom tower."
He tapped each point like a surgeon marking veins.
"All three need to go offline. Same night. Same hour. No noise."
Nawaz smirked. "Tu sure hai tu hacker hai? Ya surgical terrorist?"
"Are you sure you're a hacker? Or a surgical terrorist?"
Nathan didn't laugh. "They killed your father. They kill kids too. What else should I be?"
Balraj cracked his knuckles. "Toh karte hain. Lekin mujhe orphanage pe kaam chahiye. Bachpan se church buildings se nafrat hai."
"Let's do it then. But I want the orphanage job. I've hated church buildings since childhood."
They split tasks:
Balraj would breach the orphanage bunker — use brute force and fake fire alarm distraction.
Nathan would handle the telecom tower — using a homemade virus to fry their digital signals.
Nawaz would infiltrate the warehouse — dressed as a labourer, planting C4 with a ten-minute timer.
They had 48 hours to prepare.
•
Preparation Day 1
In the grimy corners of a second-hand tech market, Nathan bargained with silent nods. He picked up tools — soldering kits, temp sensors, an old CRPF radio. All untraceable.
Nawaz practiced with plastic explosives in an abandoned quarry near Suratkal. Sweat poured down his back as he practiced timing, wiring, planting. He didn't flinch even when the dummies went boom.
Balraj found a drunk ex-priest to give him blueprints of the orphanage. The priest wept about lost souls.
Balraj just smiled, patted his back, and said, "Mujhe bas basement dikhade, baba."
"Just show me the basement, father."
•
Preparation Day 2
A stolen tempo. Fake IDs. Three bags — one with tools, one with homemade bombs, one with backup guns.
They stayed silent the whole ride to Bellary. Nathan drove. Nawaz looked out the window at the red dust. Balraj chewed on supari like he was going to war.
"Bellary smells like burnt promises," Nathan murmured.
Nawaz muttered, "Bellary smells like my father's grave."
•
Operation Night: 3 AM
Rain started just as they reached the drop point.
Nathan went first. Telecom tower. He climbed the side scaffold like a rat in the dark. Inside, wires hissed like snakes. He opened his backpack, plugged in a Raspberry Pi, uploaded his virus, and jammed their frequencies.
"Signal blackout in 3… 2… Done."
•
Balraj, in a fireman jacket, pulled the orphanage alarm.
Children screamed, nuns ran in panic. Under the chaos, he slipped into the boiler room, removed a panel in the wall, and crawled into a rusted shaft. Below, a bunker — crates of weapons, forged documents, dirty money.
He poured kerosene.
Lit a match.
And walked out without looking back.
•
Nawaz pushed a trolley inside the warehouse. Guards were playing cards, too lazy to notice.
He reached the heart — behind a pile of steel crates labeled "FERTILIZER."
He planted the C4, set the timer, and whispered, "For you, Baba."
"For you, father."
•
3:59 AM.
Boom.
One. Two. Three.
The sky lit orange. Sirens wailed. Children cried. Network lines blinked dead. Cargo turned to ash. The Bellary cartel screamed in confusion.
Nawaz, Nathan, and Balraj regrouped in the hills outside town. Mud on their shoes. Blood on their hands. Fire in their eyes.
"First domino has fallen," Nathan said.
Nawaz looked down at Bellary.
"This was a whisper. Next, we make them scream."
To be continued.