SALIM MUST DIE Read Online Free

shielded the battle-clad men from the gaze of passers-by and the noisy street around the van smothered the cold metallic snicks of weapons being cocked. The stops were in place to prevent any one from escaping the ambush site from the rear of the building.
    On the other side of the building, as soon as the van came to a halt, five men spilled out from it. Crossing the pavement, they opened the door and raced up the stairs on silent feet. A variety of guns were held steady in their hands as they ran. Bulky body armour concealed by the loose shirts they all wore protected them from the hot, lethal lead that was certain to be thrown at them very soon.
    Right at the top of the staircase was a flimsy wooden door that led to the terrace. The door gave way with a loud crack as the first two men slammed into it, and then all five gunmen erupted onto the terrace.
    Caught in a tight huddle in a corner of the terrace were four men. Two of them shouldered Russian RPG-7V rocket launchers while the other two were assisting them. The rockets were pointed at the road along which the Peace Bus would travel shortly. The men were absorbed in their task and only realized they had company when the door burst open.
    All four terrorists turned at the sound. Three of them froze. The fourth reacted instinctively, the way most armed amateurs do when confronted with anything that threatens their existence. He pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, he happened to be holding a rocket launcher and not a handgun. The rocket sped out of the launcher with a roar and impacted onto the concrete floor three feet away. It blew him and his able assistant into tiny pieces.
    The back blast of the rocket launcher engulfed the remaining two in an unforgiving ball of fire. One of them died instantly. Consumed in flames, the fourth terrorist backed away. He did not even realize when he went over the low parapet wall. He was screaming as he went. The shrill high-pitched scream ended in a dull thud as his burning remains smashed onto the concrete pavement three floors below.
    At the head of the four-man squad that had stormed the rooftop, Balwant watched open-mouthed as the four men in front of him faded away into death. Shit! The Minister wanted them alive . He sighed as he imagined the haranguing that would follow. Had he known how much worse things were soon going to get, he would not have been even remotely worried about the death of the four terror merchants.
    THE THIRD ROCKET LAUNCHER WAS NOT OF RUSSIAN MAKE. It was a Swedish 84 mm Carl Gustav that had been stolen from an Indian Army Ordnance depot a few weeks earlier. The Carl Gustav is a highly versatile and lethally accurate weapon that is capable of firing a High Explosive (HE) round, a High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) round or a Para-illuminating round. This morning, wielded by a surly looking man in his mid-thirties, the rocket launcher in question was loaded with a HEAT round.
    At the precise moment that the four men on the rooftop were attacked and put out of circulation, the man with the third launcher was sitting in the rear of a soft-top Maruti jeep parked by the side of the road leading to Radcliffe Point. Deep lines of stress creased his nondescript face. Large pools of sweat accumulating in his armpits accounted for the stuffy smell blanketing the enclosed vehicle. He heard the roar of the rocket firing in the distance and knew the first team was blown. That's okay . He shrugged. It was anticipated . In fact, that had been the plan. Of course, those four men had not known that they were simply sacrificial red herrings.
    His breathing quickened as he watched the Peace Bus come up the street. It was about three hundred metres away from him when it turned the corner. The escort was a hundred metres ahead of the bus. At that range, with the weapon he was wielding, the bus was an easy target.
    Like a diver about to plunge into water, he took a deep breath before throwing off the jeep's soft canopy in one swift