India's most fearless 2: more military stories of unimaginable courage and sacrifice shiv aroor - Th
India's Most Fearless 2: More Military Stories of Unimaginable Courage and Sacrifice Shiv Aroor
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13. ‘Nota SounduntilThey Enter the KillZone’ Acknowledgements
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EBURY PRESS
INDIA’S MOST FEARLESS 2
Shiv Aroor is an editor and anchor with India Today television, with experience of over a decade covering the Indian military. He has reported from conflict zones that include Kashmir, India’s North-east, Sri Lanka and Libya. For the latter, he won two awards for war reporting. As a political reporter on TV, he was also recently awarded for his coverage of the 2018 state elections in his home state, Karnataka. Aroor also runs the popular award-winning military news and analysis site, Livefist, on which he frequently tells the stories of India’s military heroes.
Rahul Singh has covered defence and military affairs at the HindustanTimesfor over a decade, in a career spanning twenty years. Apart from extensive and deep reporting from the world of the Indian military, including several newsbreaks that have set the national news agenda over the years, Singh has reported from conflict zones including Kashmir, the North-east and war-torn Congo.
Praise for India’s Most Fearless 1
‘If our nation is to be stronger, the stories of these heroes must spread far, wide and never be forgotten.’—General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Army Staff
‘India’s new generation will find it impossible to forget these riveting military tales.’—Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, Chief of the Air Staff
‘Inspirational accounts of extraordinary courage, fearlessness and heroism of our valiant soldiers under extreme adversity—a mustread.’—Admiral Sunil Lanba, Chief of the Naval Staff
Forewords
‘Either I will come back after hoisting the tricolour, or I will come back wrapped in it, but I will be back for sure.’
—Captain Vikram Batra, Param Vir Chakra
These immortal words of one of India’s bravest warriors encapsulate the spirit of the Indian Armed Forces. Our fine men and women epitomize the highest standards of honour, courage and commitment. They meet the myriad challenges of our volatile security environment with an unflinching sense of purpose, fully prepared to make any sacrifice required to protect the nation.
Over the last four decades, there have been innumerable acts of valour by our men and women from the three services. Many a times, in challenging situations at sea, one has seen extraordinary feats being performed to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Similarly, stories about the heroic acts by our soldiers and air warriors, against the enemy and in protection of the citizenry, abound. These chronicles are an affirmation of the strength of our ethos, conviction and resolve.
This sequel to India’sMostFearlessoffers the reader a poignant insight into a few such instances. The willingness and confidence of the individuals to surmount all fear and push the limits of the possible, described in each of these stories in the book, will leave an indelible mark. The stories about our heroic submariners give a unique insight into the obscure, hostile and unforgiving realm in which these silent warriors operate.
Readers will undoubtedly gain a deeper understanding of the culture of our forces, as well as an appreciation of the sacrifices
made in the defence of the nation. In this day of incessant ‘Breaking News’ and short-lived societal memory, accounts such as these serve to rekindle our memory of those who made enormous sacrifices for India’s security and our tomorrow . . . ‘lest we forget’.
Our heroes, through their sacrifices and bravery, have continued to strengthen the very foundations of our great nation. By remembering them, we ensure that their example continues to guide us in all walks of life.
Jai Hind.
Admiral Sunil Lanba PVSM, AVSM, ADC Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, and Chief of the Naval Staff
‘Always do everything you ask of those you command.’
General George S. Patton, Jr
3 June 1999 seems like yesterday to me. I remember taking off from Srinagar with my Flight Commander in a pair of MiG-21 jets, soaring over the Drass-Kargil heights and dropping 250 kg bombs on Tiger Hill. Our squadron had moved from Punjab to the Kashmir Valley a fortnight earlier to help hunt down and destroy the enemy intruder positions.
Being deployed for war was a dream. As difficult and dangerous it was, this was what my squadron and I had trained tirelessly for. What could be more fulfilling than to be called upon to do what you had joined the Indian Air Force for?
Those few weeks threw up some of India’s best known and most beloved heroes. Men whose actions have deservedly won them a valuable price in public memory. But as I have always held, India has never needed a full-scale war or conflict for its heroes to step up. In a country that faces threats from across the spectrum, the demand for courage and gallantry remains high. History is rife with acts of courage and valour by the three services.
Air power and employment of the Air Force is frequently seen as an indisputable act of hostility in a conflict. The nature of military aviation and the many other roles of the Indian Air Force mean that our men and women are uninterruptedly in difficult and demanding lines of duty. From a fighter cockpit that’s on fire, to a transport plane headed to a dangerously small airfield high up on a mountain, from daring helicopter rescues during floods to the extensive ground operations that occupy thousands of our ranks, it does not stop.
In India’sMostFearless2, you will gain insight into the story of an air warrior, amongst others, in a role that you would not normally associate with the Indian Air Force as you know it: Anti-Terror Operations. The other accounts, equally, must occupy us with questions not only about the will to survive and the skill of our three
services, but also about what it takes to make peace with one’s own likely demise, if in the bargain many more lives are saved.
My compliments to the authors for the sequel, for very aptly highlighting the valour of our heroes once again.
Jai Hind.
Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa PVSM, AVSM, YSM, VM, ADC Chief of the Air Staff
The wide readership of the first book, India’sMostFearless, has been a source of great satisfaction to the Army fraternity. The book undoubtedly brings to light the bravery against all odds of a few of the ‘heroes’ of Indian Army, amongst many such stories of unparalleled guts, glory and courage.
The book and its popularity is an affirmation that despite many distractions in our modern and hyper-connected society, millions are still interested in the stories of our men and women in uniform. The soldiers keep themselves professionally abreast and ensure that they are available for the ‘call of duty’ at all times to uphold the sovereignty and integrity of our great nation.
Our men and women in uniform have never let the nation down in the highest traditions of the Armed Forces. After having seen the entire spectrum of challenges in which Indian Army soldiers operate, I can say with conviction that we will continue to put the nation first, always and every time.
We are grateful to the citizens of our nation who continue to acknowledge the bravery and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform in any manner they can, through messages, cards, letters, social media or even standing ovations at public places. We are sanguine of the continued support of our countrymen in the times to come.
Compliments to the authors for having continued with the sequel to highlight the actions of our ‘heroes’.
Jai Hind.
General Bipin Rawat
PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, YSM, SM, VSM, ADC Chief of the Army Staff
Introduction
At 2.45 p.m. on 11 January 2019, just as we had finished writing much of this book, an improvised explosive device (IED) was remotely detonated at the LoC in Nowshera, north of Jammu, an area infamous for Pakistani ceasefire violations and infiltration attempts. Two Indian Army personnel on patrol were instantly killed in the explosion, believed to be the work of a hybrid infiltration unit comprising Pakistan Army commandos and terrorists, better known as the Border Action Team (BAT).
The soldier killed in the blast was Rifleman Jiwan Gurung, twentyfour years old and at the start of his life. The officer, Major Sashidharan Vijay Nair, wasn’t much older—thirty-three. For a few days after the incident, their deaths would merely add to the familiar statistics of mortality from that part of the country. But within four days, by 15 January, journalists would discover a numbing back story that would push the deceased Major into the news headlines.
The back story would radiate from a young figure in a wheelchair first seen at the Pune war memorial and later at the city’s Vaikunth cremation ground. Maj. Sashidharan had met and fallen in love with Trupti six years ago. Only months into their engagement, Trupti was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that manifests itself with progressively intensifying symptoms that can be managed but never cured. On the threshold of marriage, friends and family are said to have advised Maj. Sashidharan—then twenty-seven—to reconsider his future. Friends say that even Trupti told her fiancé she would understand if he were to break off the engagement and move on with his life.
Maj. Sashidharan would hear none of it. Trupti and he were married a few weeks later. Months after the wedding, Trupti suffered another serious health setback that rendered her paralysed from the waist down, permanently consigning her to a wheelchair. The young officer would devote himself to Trupti, ensuring that they never missed out on the army life he had signed up for. Days before his death, while on leave in Pune, he had calmed a worried Trupti about being deployed at the LoC.
In life as in death, said a news report about him.
But would Maj. Sashidharan be more than a flag-draped casket on the inside pages of a newspaper had it not been for these details about his personal life? What if they had never been discovered? What about the soldier, young Rifleman Gurung, who died with him? Does he too have a crushing back story that burnishes his heroism? Is such a back story even necessary to amplify the heroism of those who put their lives on the line as a matter of daily routine? These aren’t loaded black-and-white questions, but ones we have continuously grappled with through the writing of this book, the second in the India’s Most Fearless series.
A month after the explosion that killed Maj. Sashidharan and Rifleman Gurung, on 14 February, an election-bound India was shatteringly interrupted by a suicide vehicle attack on a convoy of the CRPF in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama. For a country that has become inured to periodic Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attacks, there was an immediate and unmissable ‘enough is enough’ air. Few could tell quite why this attack had proven so uniquely numbing—India had suffered bloodier attacks at Pakistan’s hands before. Was it the terrifying nature of the attack? Was it a country that had already raised the bar on punitive responses with its strikes inside PoK in 2016? Did looming elections play a role as critics would later allege? Whatever it was, twelve days later, India would cross a new red line with a historic air attack on a terror facility of the JeM inside Pakistan.
The Balakot operation has already attained mythical status even as India and Pakistan fight an uninterrupted stream of claims and counterclaims. While that has always been the nature of the beast between the two countries, the operation itself remains classified in India, with the barest of details ever emerging officially. And that means there is a good chance that the names of over a dozen of those fighter pilots who were assigned the historic and enormously dangerous task of flying into Pakistani airspace in darkness, will never be known with certainty. The prologue to this book carries an account of the Balakot air strikes based on conversations with many of those involved, but who cannot be named. From radar operators, mission support pilots and planners, their work will linger, possibly forever, in the shadows.
Like them, there are hundreds on land, in the air and at sea, who cannot be named because of the nature of their feats.
In the course of writing India’sMostFearless1and 2,if there’s one unshakeable truth that we have come upon, it is this: if you look hard enough, every soldier has a shattering back story. But, like in the case of Maj. Sashidharan, does it take their deaths for such stories to bubble to the surface? Jim Morrison of The Doors may have been right when he said:
Death makes angels of us all
And gives us wings
Where we had shoulders
Smooth as raven’s claws.
(‘A Feast of Friends’, The Doors)
But it is equally true that the stories of our soldiers are there to be told if only someone were willing to ask. As in the first book of this series, many of the heroes in India’sMostFearless2are no longer alive. But as you will hopefully discover as you turn the pages, death was only a final flourish in lives lived with constant heroism.
What this journey started out as was two guys who’ve spent their entire careers as journalists listening to stories of military valour deciding it was time to begin documenting them. Not out of any lofty sense of responsibility, but simply because these are stupendous stories that everyone needs to hear. Since the first India’sMost Fearlesswas published in 2017, a common response we receive from readers is, thanks for the inspiration. Any thanks, we always tell them, is due only to the heroes, their comrades and their families. We haven’t for a moment chosen to tell these stories with the intention to inspire. We have done so because they were amazing stories for us personally. If inspiration is the inevitable effect of these stories, then thanks is due only to the men we’ve written about.
The book you hold in your hands takes forward the legacy we didn’t imagine would take so powerful a root when the first India’s MostFearlesswas released in 2017. Neither of us fathomed that stories of military heroes would be read by so many people in so many languages and with a thirst for more. The book you are (hopefully) about to read is the result of thousands of messages from readers urging us to write about more heroes and their amazing feats.
When we announced this book early in 2019, one reader sent us a message saying, ‘The India’s Most Fearless series can never end, because India will never run out of heroes.’ This is the truth, but a disturbing one. It has never escaped our minds for a moment that it is India’s uniquely difficult security atmosphere that creates opportunities for military heroism—the Balakot strikes will serve as a numbing reminder to a generation of Indians that wasn’t born when India and Pakistan last locked horns in Kargil. And in many ways, it does mean there will be a steady flow of acts of courage from our frontlines and disturbed areas. But not for a moment is India’sMost Fearlessa romanticization of conflict. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt in telling these stories, it is the silent and humble trust of every soldier that India will not send them into combat unless
absolutely necessary. That their heroism comes at an enormous premium. And that the country would rather its soldiers were safe, than forced into a situation where they have to decide between life and death.
MiG-29K
While the stories in this book seek to keep the spotlight on individual heroism, it doesn’t exclude the many hard questions that must rightly be asked about military operations. Questions of leadership and decision-making, of tactics and training, of spirit and initiative, all of which have a bearing on why the heroes needed to face their ultimate dilemma in the first place. Let no one tell you that these questions don’t bear asking. If there’s one thing our military heroes deserve, it is an unending stream of questions about the circumstances surrounding their operations. The stories that follow answer some of these questions and raise some more. But through them all, as you will see, the core of courage stands unshaken. If the first book in the series made the front pages of newspapers for the first and only personal account of the 2016 surgical strikes into PoK, the book in your hands features several operations that took place in the aftermath of that momentous mission. Missions that throw important light on India’s security after that daring revenge strike by the Indian Army’s Special Forces squads, including the 26 February 2019 air strikes in Balakot, Pakistan.
As in the first book, we are also privileged to have been able to feature heroes who went beyond the call of duty to save the lives of others. Stories that still give us sleepless nights, and that we hope will keep you awake too. If there’s one thing that India’sMost Fearlesshas showed us, it is that there’s an insatiable hunger for stories about our military, told in detail and told well. As this hunger reflects in other books, Bollywood films and documentaries, what we can tell you with certainty is that we are now on an unstoppable train. And we are so happy you are with us on this journey. We had ended the introduction to the first India’sMostFearless with, ‘It’s true. Heroes walk among us.’ It won’t ever stop being true.
Prologue
Just after 3.30 a.m. on 26 February 2019, climbing abruptly to 27,000 feet in dark airspace over Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), an Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot flying in a single-seat Mirage 2000 fighter jet pushed a button on his flight-stick. A few feet below him, from the rumbling belly of his aircraft, an Israeli-made bomb silently detached itself and dropped away to begin a journey—first gliding and then careening—towards a target over 70 km away. The bomb, fed with satellite coordinates and an on-board guidance chip, had all the information it needed to hurtle to its destination.
The Mirage 2000 was far from home. It had taken off from the Gwalior air force base over 1000 km away earlier that night along with at least six more Mirage jets from the three squadrons based there. Over the hour the jets flew over central India and into the northern sector. Following in their wake, five more Mirage 2000 jets took off in the darkness from an air base in Punjab.
The dozen Mirages, flying in three separate and unequal formations, weren’t alone in the air. Two airborne early warning jets, an Embraer Netra from the Bathinda air base and a higher performance Phalcon jet from Agra were already in the air, their powerful radars and sensors on full alert to the mission ahead. Communications between aircraft were kept to a minimum. This was a mission with almost no room for deviation unless absolutely necessary. And it needed to last for as little time as possible.
As the three Mirage formations flew in a circuit at low altitude, very much in the manner of night flying training sorties conducted by squadrons, ten jets more roared off the tarmac from two more air
bases, including Sukhoi Su-30 MKI fighters from the forward air base at Halwara. It was this pack of Su-30s that would play a crucial role in what came next.
With a total of twenty-two IAF fighters in the air, the jets slowly mixed their formations to create three separate packs—two mixed packs of Mirage 2000 and Su-30 fighters. And a third pack comprised only of Su-30s. While it’s tempting to think of these three packs as neat little jet formations in the sky, it was nothing quite like that. The jets in each pack flew tens of kilometres from each other, and were only bound by a loose common flightpath and mission profile.
Shortly after 3 a.m., the mission began with a pre-planned deception.
The third fighter pack, consisting of big, heavy Su-30 jets, turned south, heading out of Punjab and into the Rajasthan sector, all the while ensuring it remained prominent and visible to Pakistani radars on the other side of the international border. Turning around over Jodhpur, the fighters began provocatively flying in the direction of the international border north of the Chandan firing ranges, their noses pointed towards a Pakistani city that couldn’t possibly have been on a higher alert at the time—Bahawalpur, 250 km to the north, the city that was home to the Jaish-e-Mohammad’s (JEM’s) headquarters and largest terror training facilities. The IAF planners had counted on Pakistan’s ‘hair-trigger’ state of alert to provoke a reaction. It happened within minutes.
The Pakistan Air Force scrambled a group of F-16 jets from the Mushaf air base in Sargodha about 320 km to the north of Bahawalpur. Just as the jets were getting airborne and moving south to fend off any possible attack by the Indian Su-30s, the second IAF pack, comprising Mirage 2000s and Su-30s, broke away from its circuit and turned south over Jammu along a radial pointed towards Sialkot and Lahore in Pakistan, both large and commercially important cities. This second pack split further, with one part flying
along a radial that would pass through Pakistan’s Okara and lead once again to Bahawalpur.
The twin air manoeuvres from two directions doubled the air threat to the ‘capital city’ of the JeM. More F-16s departed Sargodha to engage with this second Indian threat. Pakistan’s instantaneous scrambling of fighters wasn’t surprising to Indian radar controllers and sensor operators on the two airborne early warning jets. The country’s air defences would have been on their highest state of readiness since the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, an act of carnage terrible enough that it got India to seriously consider retaliatory air strikes for the first time.
And now, for twelve days without pause, Pakistan’s military had cranked its alertness levels to maximum.
Eleven days earlier, at 9.30 a.m. on 15 February 2019, the chiefs of the Indian armed forces and intelligence agencies, top ministers and the National Security Advisor arrived at Delhi’s leafy 7, Lok Kalyan Marg compound where the Prime Minister of India lives and sometimes operates from. It was far from a routine weekly meeting for the Prime Minister to take stock of national security.
Eighteen hours earlier, 800 kilometres north, in the Lethapora area of Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district, a vehicle packed with explosives and driven by a young man named Adil Ahmad Dar, had managed to snake between vehicles of a large convoy of Srinagarbound trucks carrying 2500 troops from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and rammed it. The explosion killed forty troops, spattering the highway with their blood and body parts. Minutes after the blast, a stream of pictures of the mangled vehicles and sickening carnage taken from mobile phones of locals and first responders flooded social media.
With the Pakistan-administered JeM terror group claiming responsibility for the attack, the Prime Minister had convened this meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) solely to assess how India could respond. Forty minutes later, the meeting was
finished. Asked if air strikes on a terror target were a viable option, IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa responded in the affirmative, also briefing the Cabinet Committee that the country’s jets would be ready to strike with confirmed targets in a matter of days. He was given two weeks.
From 16–20 February, the IAF worked with intelligence agencies at the operations room in Delhi’s Vayu Bhawan. With National Security Advisor Ajit Doval receiving a daily update on proceedings, the deliberations were honed by satellite imagery, human intelligence from the ground in Pakistan and PoK, and photographs from a pair of Heron drones flying daily missions along the Line of Control (LoC).
On 21 February, the IAF presented a classified set of ‘target tables’ to the government via the National Security Advisor.
The first in the list of seven separate target options was a JeM terror training compound that sat on a hill called Jabba Top outside the city of Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The IAF recommended Balakot, just 100 km from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, since it was a secluded target with the lowest probability of non-terrorist casualties. The two other ‘viable’ targets presented to the government were in PoK—Muzzafarabad, 23 km south-east of Balakot, and Chakothi about 70 km away. But these two, along with Bahawalpur, carried not just the risk of collateral damage, but a slightly higher chance of being hindered by Pakistani air defences. Among the remaining options was Muridke, north of Lahore, the city that held the headquarters of that other dreaded India-focused terror group, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). This too was deemed a highly risky target to consider.
By midnight on 22 February, a highly controlled chain of command decided that the Indian jets would strike the first target in the list the one outside Pakistan’s Balakot. Every man and woman in the secret chain was aware that if such a mission went through, it would be India’s first air strike on Pakistani soil since the 1971 war. What
amplified the mission ahead was that the two countries weren’t at war in 2019. Could such a mission change that?
There was another important reason why Balakot was chosen. Unlike Muzzafarabad and Chakothi, Balakot was in Pakistan and not PoK. As an international message, an air strike on sovereign Pakistani soil—as opposed to PoK, which India considers its own territory—would make all the difference in the world.
The target dossier submitted to the government also contained pages of data detailing the latest intelligence assessments of the kind of damage that could be caused to terrorist infrastructure in each case. In the case of Balakot, apart from satellite imagery and some medium-grade electronic intelligence, the Indian intelligence agencies had also been able to procure invaluable human inputs from Balakot town. The intelligence, obtained from Indian ‘assets’ on the ground, provided invaluable shape to the target, and was the original source of a number that would later be the subject of much controversy and debate. India’s assets in Balakot had reported that there would be at least 300 terrorists and terror trainees on site at Jabba Top at any given time. In other words, a facility that was known to house a significant enough number of handlers, terrorist recruits and ideologues, to justify a high-risk air strike from airspace peppered with and primed for anti-air defence.
As a fully intelligence-based operation, it was imperative that India chose targets that involved not just terror infrastructure, but the presence of a significant number of terrorists at any given time. Apart from the National Technical Research Organization’s (NTRO) signal intelligence inputs, it was this human intelligence that helped guide and lock India’s choice of target.
It wasn’t the first time India was using such human assets for an offensive operation in hostile territory. In September 2016, during the Indian Army Special Forces ‘surgical strikes’ in PoK, Indian assets 1 in the JeM had confirmed the terror launch pads as viable targets, revealed first in the first book of the India’s Most Fearless series.
A data analyst with one of India’s intelligence agencies told the authors, ‘An operation of this kind is very difficult without human intelligence on the ground. It would have been a huge risk to do so without a conclusive word to corroborate your other inputs, whether satellite or electronic.’
An Army officer who served on the composite intelligence team that formulated the target packages during the 2016 trans-LoC strikes says, ‘The question is not about whether ground assets were used or not. They 100 per cent were. The only question, might I add that nobody needs to ever know about, is whether these were the same assets that helped in 2016 or similar assets—or assets of a totally different kind. That will hopefully remain guesswork. Let films and books (!) do the guessing.’
On 24 February, pilots of the Mirage 2000 squadrons in Gwalior were briefed about the mission. That same day, aircraft would be airborne over central India for a short mock air drill alongside a Phalcon AWACS jet and Ilyushin-78M mid-air refuelling tanker from Agra. The jets taking part in the drill didn’t return to Gwalior, instead landing at a base in Punjab. They would remain at the base all of the next day.
The IAF was about to take a violent break from history, but in Delhi, every effort was made to ensure that it was business as usual. On the night of 25 February, hours before the Mirages took to the air on their mission, the IAF hosted a customary farewell banquet for the outgoing chief of the Western Air Command, Air Marshal C. Hari Kumar—he was retiring three days later. The sit-down dinner was organized at the Akash Air Force Officer’s mess near Delhi’s India Gate, where just a few hours earlier Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the country’s National War Memorial.
In his speech, IAF Chief Dhanoa regaled the audience with stories of how he and Air Marshal Hari Kumar had gone to the same school —Rashtriya Indian Military College (RIMC), Dehradun—and were from the same house. It was a typical military evening of mirth and
nostalgia. The banquet had over eighty senior air force officers in attendance. But only a handful of them, IAF chief Dhanoa and Air Marshal Hari Kumar included, were in the ‘need-to-know’ loop on what was about to happen. Those who weren’tin that loop confirm to the authors that there was absolutely no indication that evening that some of their service personnel were about to soar out across the border to drop bombs inside Pakistan.
After farewell speeches and dessert, the banquet wound up at 11 p.m. IAF Chief Dhanoa was driven back to his official residence on Delhi’s Akbar Road. He tells the authors he received a final update on preparations before turning in for a quick couple of hours of rest —everything was in control by a team he knew he could trust his life with. Thirty minutes before the Mirages took off from Gwalior, Dhanoa woke up to plug back into the secret proceedings.
Four kilometres away at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, Prime Minister Modi was awake too. He received his final pre-mission brief 20 minutes before the jets departed Gwalior. There would be communication silence for the next half hour—covering the most crucial part of the mission. The intrusion.
As the second and third fighter packs flew menacing flight paths on the Jodhpur–Bahawalpur and Jammu–Sialkot radials, the first pack, comprising six Mirage 2000 jets, crossed the LoC at low altitude in the Keran sector in Kupwara. Flying over the Athmuqam town in PoK, the six jets spread out further and climbed, crossing between 12–15 km into hostile airspace.
With the Jabba Top hill now in effective range, and given the all clear from radar controllers in the Phalcon jet, the aircraft dropped their bombs one by one. Five munitions from five aircraft dropped away in the cold dark, whooshing west out of PoK and into sovereign Pakistani airspace.
Tracking the weapons as they closed in on Jabba Top, pilots in the air and controllers on the ground knew history had already been made. The IAF weaponry was about to hit targets on Pakistani soil
for the first time in over forty-seven years—and, crucially, for the first time when the two countries weren’t involved in a full-blown war. The very act of pushing the button and letting those bombs loose was a message, the IAF leadership would tell pilots in a debrief later.
Seconds after the weapons release, a warning call went out to the Mirages as they tracked the bombs screaming towards their targets using infrared sensors. Three Pakistani jets had been scrambled from the Minhas air base in Pakistan’s Kamra town, just over 60 km northwest of Islamabad. Tracked by the Indian Phalcon jet, the Pakistani fighters, believed to be Chinese-origin JF-17 Thunder jets, flew at full throttle towards PoK. It was near impossible for Pakistani defences to know that Indian bombs were headed towards Balakot.
With Pakistani jets inbound, Indian controllers on the Phalcon jet instructed the Mirage pilots to turn around immediately, drop altitude quickly and return across the LoC. With the Pakistani jets well over 50 km away, the six jets would cross back between Chowkibal and the Leepa Valley, flying close to Chakothi, one of the targets that had been considered but dropped in favour of Balakot.
The intrusion into hostile airspace had lasted only a few minutes. The six Mirages, their backs watched by the Phalcon jet, landed safely in Srinagar. The other Mirages and Su-30s from the second and third pack would also be summoned back to bases in Punjab. A debrief of the full mission would later affirm that the second and third packs had very ably lured Pakistani ‘first responder’ F-16s away from the area of attack to the north, and kept them engaged and ‘on edge’ until the strike mission was complete. The Netra early warning jet from Bathinda would record the deception, providing compelling battlespace imagery for post-mission discussions.
Thirty hours after the air strikes on Balakot, the historic mission would be overshadowed briefly by Pakistan’s retaliation attempt over the LoC in the Sunderbani sector near Jammu, using a pack of fighters that included F-16s, Mirage IIIs and JF-17s from the
Sargodha and Rafiqui air bases. While the Balakot air strikes had passed without the names of any of the Indian pilots or personnel involved reaching the media, one name would per force become public the following morning. Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, in his MiG-21 Bison jet, would be shot down while chasing a Pakistani intruder back across the LoC. With its pilot repatriated to India barely 48 hours later, the IAF would publicly credit Varthaman with having shot down a Pakistani F-16 jet during the air joust, triggering an uninterrupted storm of claims and counterclaims, with questions likely to linger indefinitely.
The true history of that late winter week, however, would be in the work done in darkness by a group of IAF pilots—many of them young—who, under instructions, had flown into the most hostile airspace imaginable, to conduct a mission never done before. Each of those pilots will have known the risks and the substantial chances that they could be shot down by ground fire or surface-to-air missiles in an area that was on high alert. Just how the Indian Mirages managed to make their way so deep into PoK unchecked will likely be a low-profile introspection within Pakistan’s military. Just as the events of the following morning will be one for the IAF.
While the authors have interviewed several officers involved or familiar with the 26 February mission, the pilots must remain nameless. At the time that this book is published, the historic air strike on Balakot remains a classified operation.
‘Something’s not right,’ Abu Torara whispered to the man slouched on a cot next to him. A pair of early summer evening sunbeams streamed into the room from a half-open window in their small hideout not far from Shopian, just over 50 km south of Srinagar.
Abu Sabzar drew deeply on a cigarette, exhaled through his nostrils, roughly scratched his beard and turned to look at Torara, who was on his feet, leaning against the wall. A pair of AK-47 assault rifles lay at the foot of the cot. Torara was looking straight ahead of him at the tiny doorway that led to the next room—a small balconycum-kitchen that opened out into the woods. Emanating from that direction was the sound of boiling water, the aroma of kahwa, the frothy pour of liquid into glass tumblers and their clink as they were placed on a tray.
‘You want to talk to him some more?’ Sabzar asked, stubbing out his cigarette on the windowsill next to him. Torara said nothing. A few seconds later, bearing a steel plate with glasses of tea, Iftikhar Bhatt stepped through the tiny doorway and into the room.
Six feet two inches tall, with hair down to his shoulders and most of his face covered with a bushy beard that flowed down his neck, Bhatt wore a stony expression as he stepped forward to offer the other two terrorists their tea. His own rifle was slung from his neck, resting at his side. After they had picked up their glasses, Bhatt picked up his own and sat down at the edge of the cot, silent, staring straight ahead.
Minutes passed as the three men sipped from their steaming glasses. Then, Torara stepped forward and spoke.
‘Iftikhar, I’m going to ask you only once,’ Torara said, still sipping his tea, placing the other hand on Bhatt’s knee. ‘Who are you?’
Bhatt said nothing, his face rigid, unmoved, his hand still bringing the tea up to his lips. He had met the two terrorists two weeks earlier in a village near Shopian. They had never seen him before and he said very little apart from telling them the village he was from. A few days later, he opened up a little more, speaking about how his brother had been killed in an encounter three years ago. Another young man, they thought, looking for revenge, looking for work with a militant outfit, both for a livelihood as well as for closure. At the end of a full week, he spoke his first full sentences, telling them he wanted their help with an attack on an Army checkpoint. He showed them hand-drawn maps depicting the movement of Army patrols along a little-known hill trail, research that suggested this young, bearded man of few words had already begun reconnaissance, the most crucial groundwork for a successful attack on security forces.
Torara and Sabzar were moderately impressed. Bhatt, clearly in his twenties, though the beard hid much of his youthfulness, had demonstrated the motivation to take matters into his own hands—
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Sergeant Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
During the next few days Charles Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odors of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.
Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorizing it as she waited and listened
anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of "Eliphas Levi," that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova, Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton Ou Agla Methon, verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae, conventus sylvorum, antra, gnomorum, daemonia Coeli God, Almonsin, Gibor, Jehosua, Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.
This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighborhood a pandemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was over-shadowed by the odor which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbors above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognized its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: "DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE
DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS."
Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odor, different from the first but equally unknown and
intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like "Yi-ngah-Yog-Sothoth-he-lglb-fithrodag"—ending in a "Yah!" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles' door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realizing that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighboring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alternation of inflections
suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts, it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he and there had come in response to it from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that hushed and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles' own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: "Sshh!—write!"
Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles' laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of
his son Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles' aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odors were indeed inexcusable nuisances. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse chemical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise, despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so.
On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned for ever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-gray dust.
4. A Mutation and a Madness
In the week following that memorable Good Friday, Charles Ward was seen more often than usual, and was continually carrying books between his library and the attic laboratory. His actions were quiet and rational, but he had a furtive, hunted look which his mother did not like, and developed an incredibly ravenous appetite as gauged by his demands upon the cook.
Dr. Willett had been told of those Friday noises and happenings, and on the following Tuesday had a long conversation with the youth in the library where the picture stared no more. The interview was, as always, inconclusive; but Willett is still ready to swear that the youth was sane and himself at the time. He held out promises of an early revelation, and spoke of the need of securing a laboratory elsewhere. At the loss of the portrait he grieved singularly little considering his first enthusiasm over it, but seemed to find something of positive humor in its sudden crumbling.
About the second week Charles began to be absent from the house for long periods, and one day when good old black Hannah came to help with the spring cleaning she mentioned his frequent visits to the old house in Olney Court, where he would come with a large valise and perform curious delvings in the cellar. He was always very liberal to her and to old Asa, but seemed more worried than he used to be; which grieved her very much, since she had watched him grow up from birth.
Another report of his doings came from Pawtuxet, where some friends of the family saw him at a distance a surprising number of times. He seemed to haunt the resort and canoe-house of Rhodeson-the-Pawtuxet, and subsequent inquiries by Dr. Willett at that place brought out the fact that his purpose was always to secure access to the rather hedged-in river-bank, along which he would walk toward the north, usually not reappearing for a very long while.
Later in May came a momentary revival of ritualistic sounds in the attic laboratory which brought a stern reproof from Mr. Ward and a somewhat distracted promise of amendment from Charles. It occurred one morning, and seemed to form a resumption of the imaginary conversation noted on that turbulent Good Friday. The youth was arguing or remonstrating hotly with himself, for there suddenly burst forth a perfectly distinguishable series of clashing shouts in differentiated tones like alternate demands and denials, which caused Mrs. Ward to run upstairs and listen at the door. She could hear no more than a fragment whose only plain words were "must have it red for three months," and upon her knocking all sounds ceased at once. When Charles was later questioned by his father he said that there were certain conflicts of spheres of consciousness which only great skill could avoid, but which he would try to transfer to other realms.
About the middle of June a queer nocturnal incident occurred. In the early evening there had been some noise and thumping in the laboratory upstairs, and Mr. Ward was on the point of investigating when it suddenly quieted down. That midnight, after the family had retired, the butler was nightlocking the front door when according to his statement Charles appeared somewhat blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs with a large suitcase and made signs that he wished egress. The youth spoke no word, but the worthy Yorkshireman caught one sight of his fevered eyes and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Ward went out, but in the morning he presented his resignation to Mrs. Ward. There was, he said, something unholy in the glance Charles had fixed on him. It was no way for a young gentleman to look at an honest person, and he could not possibly stay another night. Mrs. Ward allowed the man to depart, but she did not value his statement highly. To fancy Charles in a savage state that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as she had remained awake she had heard faint sounds from the laboratory above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a sighing which told only of despair's profoundest depths. Mrs. Ward had grown used to listening for sounds in the night, for the mystery of her son was fast driving all else from her mind.
The next evening, much as on another evening nearly three months before, Charles Ward seized the newspaper very early and accidentally lost the main section. This matter was not recalled till later, when Dr. Willett began checking up loose ends and searching out missing links here and there. In the Journal office he found the section which Charles had lost, and marked two items as of possible significance. They were as follows:
More Cemetery Delving
It was this morning discovered by Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial ground, that ghouls were again at work in the ancient portion of the cemetery. The grave of Ezra Weeden, who was born in 1740 and died in 1824 according to his uprooted and savagely splintered slate headstone, was found excavated and rifled, the work being evidently done with a spade stolen from an adjacent tool shed.
Whatever the contents may have been after more than a century of burial, all was gone except a few slivers of decayed wood. There were no wheel tracks, but the police have measured a single set of footprints which they found in the vicinity, and which indicate the boots of a man of refinement.
Hart is inclined to link this incident with the digging discovered last March, when a party in a motor truck were frightened away after making a deep excavation; but Sergeant Riley of the Second Station discounts this theory and points to vital differences in the two cases. In March the digging had been in a spot where no grave was known; but this time a well-marked and cared-for grave had been rifled with every evidence of deliberate purpose and with a conscious malignity expressed in the splintering of the slab which had been intact up to the day before.
Members of the Weeden family, notified of the happening, expressed their astonishment and regret; and were wholly unable to think of any enemy who would care to violate the grave of their ancestor. Hazard Weeden of 598 Angell Street recalls a family legend according to which Ezra Weeden was involved in some very peculiar
circumstances, not dishonourable to himself, shortly before the Revolution; but of any modern feud or mystery he is frankly ignorant. Inspector Cunningham has been assigned to the case, and hopes to uncover some valuable clues in the near future.
Dogs Noisy in Pawtuxet
Residents of Pawtuxet were aroused about three A.M. today by a phenomenal baying of dogs which seemed to centre near the river just north of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. The volume and quality of the howling were unusually odd, according to most who heard it; and Fred Lemdin, night watchman at Rhodes, declares it was mixed with something very like the shrieks of a man in mortal terror and agony. A sharp and very brief thunderstorm, which seemed to strike somewhere near the bank of the river, put an end to the disturbance. Strange and unpleasant odours, probably from the oil tanks along the bay, are popularly linked with this incident; and may have had their share in exciting the dogs.
The aspect of Charles now became very haggard and hunted, and all agree in retrospect that he may have wished at this period to make some statement or confession from which sheer terror withheld him. The morbid listening of his mother in the night brought out the fact that he made frequent sallies abroad under cover of darkness, and most of the more academic alienists unite at present in charging him with the revolting cases of vampirism which the press so sensationally reported about this time, but which have not yet been definitely traced to any known perpetrator. These cases, too recent and celebrated to need detailed mention, involved victims of every age and type and seemed to cluster around two distinct localities; the residential hill and the North End, near the Ward home, and the suburban districts across the Cranston line near Pawtuxet. Both late wayfarers and sleepers with open windows were attacked, and those who lived to tell the tale spoke unanimously of a lean,
lithe, leaping monster with burning eyes which fastened its teeth in the throat or upper arm and feasted ravenously.
"These cases of Vampirism involved victims of every age and type."
Dr. Willett, who refuses to date the madness of Charles Ward as far back as even this, is cautious in attempting to explain these horrors. He has, he declares, certain theories of his own; and limits his positive statements to a peculiar kind of negation. "I will not," he
says, "state who or what I believe perpetrated these attacks and murders, but I will declare that Charles Ward was innocent of them. I have reason to be sure he was ignorant of the taste of blood, as indeed his continued anaemic decline and increasing pallor prove better than any verbal argument. Ward meddled with terrible things, but he has paid for it, and he was never a monster or a villain.
"As for now, I don't like to think. A change came, and I'm content to believe that the old Charles Ward died with it. His soul did, anyhow, for that mad flesh that vanished from Waite's hospital had another."
Willett speaks with authority, for he was often at the Ward home attending Mrs. Ward, whose nerves had begun to snap under the strain. Her nocturnal listening had bred some morbid hallucinations which she confided to the doctor with hesitancy, and which he ridiculed in talking to her, although they made him ponder deeply when alone. These delusions always concerned the faint sounds which she fancied she heard in the attic laboratory and bedroom, and emphasized the occurrence of muffled sighs and sobbings at the most impossible times. Early in July Willett ordered Mrs. Ward to Atlantic City for an indefinite recuperative sojourn, and cautioned both Mr. Ward and the haggard and elusive Charles to write her only cheering letters. It is probably to this enforced and reluctant escape that she owes her life and continued sanity.
Not long after his mother's departure Charles Ward began negotiating for the Pawtuxet bungalow. It was a squalid little wooden edifice with a concrete garage, perched high on the sparsely settled bank of the river slightly above Rhodes, but for some odd reason the youth would have nothing else. He gave the real-estate agencies no peace till one of them secured it for him at an exorbitant price from a somewhat reluctant owner, and as soon as it was vacant he took possession under cover of darkness, transporting in a great closed van the entire contents of his attic laboratory, including the books both weird and modern which he had borrowed from his study. He had this van loaded in the black small hours, and his father recalls
only a drowsy realization of stifled oaths and stamping feet on the night the goods were taken away. After that Charles moved back to his own old quarters on the third floor, and never haunted the attic again.
To the Pawtuxet bungalow Charles transferred all the secrecy with which he had surrounded his attic realm, save that he now appeared to have two sharers of his mysteries; a villainous-looking Portuguese half-caste from the South Main Street Waterfront who acted as a servant, and a thin scholarly stranger with dark glasses and a stubbly full beard of dyed aspect whose status was evidently that of a colleague. Neighbors vainly tried to engage these odd persons in conversation. The mulatto, Gomes, spoke very little English, and the bearded man who gave his name as Dr. Allen voluntarily followed his example. Ward himself tried to be more affable, but succeeded only in provoking curiosity with his rambling accounts of chemical research. Before long queer tales began to circulate regarding the all-night burning of lights; and somewhat later, after this burning had suddenly ceased, there rose still queerer tales of disproportionate orders of meat from the butcher's and of the muffled shouting, declamation, rhythmic chanting, and screaming supposed to come from some very deep cellar below the place. Most distinctly the new and strange household was bitterly disliked by the honest bourgeoisie of the vicinity, and it is not remarkable that dark hints were advanced connecting the hated establishment with the current epidemic of vampiristic attacks and murders; especially since the radius of that plague seemed now confined wholly to Pawtuxet and the adjacent streets of Edgewood.
Ward spent most of his time at the bungalow, but slept occasionally at home and was still reckoned a dweller beneath his father's roof. Twice he was absent from the city on week-long trips, whose destinations have not yet been discovered. He grew steadily paler and more emaciated even than before, and lacked some of his former assurance when repeating to Dr. Willett his old, old story of vital research and future revelations. Willett often waylaid him at his father's house, for the elder Ward was deeply worried and perplexed, and wished his son to get as much sound oversight as could be
managed in the case of so secretive and independent an adult. The doctor still insists that the youth was sane even as late as this, and adduces many a conversation to prove his point.
About September the vampirism declined, but in the following January, Ward almost became involved in serious trouble. For some time the nocturnal arrival and departure of motor trucks at the Pawtuxet bungalow had been commented upon, and at this juncture an unforeseen hitch exposed the nature of at least one item of their contents. In a lonely spot near Hope Valley had occurred one of the frequent sordid waylayings of trucks by "hi-jackers" in quest of liquor shipments, but this time the robbers had been destined to receive the greater shock. For the long cases they seized proved upon opening to contain some exceedingly gruesome things; so gruesome, in fact, that the matter could not be kept quiet amongst the denizens of the underworld. The thieves had hastily buried what they discovered, but when the State Police got wind of the matter a careful search was made. A recently arrested vagrant, under promise of immunity from prosecution on any additional charge, at last consented to guide a party of troopers to the spot; and there was found in that hasty cache a very hideous and shameful thing. It would not be well for the national—or even the international—sense of decorum if the public were ever to know what was uncovered by that awestruck party. There was no mistaking it, even by these far from studious officers; and telegrams to Washington ensued with feverish rapidity.
The cases were addressed to Charles Ward at his Pawtuxet bungalow, and State and Federal officials at once paid him a very forceful and serious call. They found him pallid and worried with his two odd companions, and received from him what seemed to be a valid explanation and evidence of innocence. He had needed certain anatomical specimens as part of a program of research whose depth and genuineness anyone who had known him in the last decade could prove, and had ordered the required kind and number from agencies which he had thought as reasonably legitimate as such things can be. Of the identity of the specimens he had known absolutely nothing, and was properly shocked when the inspectors
hinted at the monstrous effect on public sentiment and national dignity which a knowledge of the matter would produce. In this statement he was firmly sustained by his bearded colleague Dr. Allen, whose oddly hollow voice carried even more conviction than his own nervous tones; so that in the end the officials took no action, but carefully set down the New York name and address which Ward gave them as a basis for a search which came to nothing. It is only fair to add that the specimens were quickly and quietly restored to their proper places, and that the general public will never know of their blasphemous disturbance.
On February 9, 1928, Dr. Willett received a letter from Charles Ward which he considers of extraordinary importance, and about which he has frequently quarreled with Dr. Lyman. Lyman believes that this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia praecox, but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly sane utterance of the hapless youth. He calls especial attention to the normal character of the penmanship; which though shewing traces of shattered nerves, is nevertheless distinctly Ward's own. The text in full is as follows:
100 Prospect St., Providence, R. I., March 8, 1928.
Dear Dr. Willett—
I feel that at last the time has come for me to make the disclosures which I have so long promised you, and for which you have pressed me so often. The patience you have shewn in waiting, and the confidence you have shewn in my mind and integrity, are things I shall never cease to appreciate.
And now that I am ready to speak, I must own with humiliation that no triumph such as I dreamed of can ever be mine. Instead of triumph I have found terror, and my talk with you will not be a boast
of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the world from a horror beyond all human conception or calculation. You recall what those Fenner letters said of the old raiding party at Pawtuxet. That must all be done again, and quickly. Upon us depends more than can be put into words—all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and nature you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.
I have left that Pawtuxet place forever, and we must extirpate everything existing there, alive or dead. I shall not go there again, and you must not believe it if you ever hear that I am there. I will tell you why I say this when I see you. I have come home for good, and wish you would call on me at the very first moment that you can spare five or six hours continuously to hear what I have to say. It will take that long—and believe me when I tell you that you never had a more genuine professional duty than this. My life and reason are the very least things which hang in the balance.
I dare not tell my father, for he could not grasp the whole thing. But I have told him of my danger, and he has four men from a detective agency watching the house. I don't know how much good they can do, for they have against them forces which even you could scarcely envisage or acknowledge. So come quickly if you wish to see me alive and hear how you may help to save the cosmos from stark hell.
Any time will do—I shall not be out of the house. Don't telephone ahead, for there is no telling who or what may try to intercept you. And let us pray to whatever gods there be that nothing may prevent this meeting.
In utmost gravity and desperation,
Charles Dexter Ward.
P. S.—Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in acid. Don't burn it.
Dr Willett received this note about ten-thirty a.m., and immediately arranged to spare the whole late afternoon and evening for the momentous talk, letting it extend on into the night as long as might be necessary. He planned to arrive about four o'clock, and through all the intervening hours was so engulfed in every sort of wild speculation that most of his tasks were very mechanically performed. Maniacal as the letter would have sounded to a stranger, Willett had seen too much of Charles Ward's oddities to dismiss it as sheer raving. That something very subtle, ancient, and horrible was hovering about he felt quite sure, and the reference to Dr. Allen could almost be comprehended in view of what Pawtuxet gossip said of Ward's enigmatical colleague. Willett had never seen the man, but had heard much of his aspect and bearing, and could not but wonder what sort of eyes those much-discussed dark glasses might conceal.
Promptly at four Dr. Willett presented himself at the Ward residence, but found to his annoyance that Charles had not adhered to his determination to remain indoors. The guards were there, but said that the young man seemed to have lost part of his timidity. He had that morning done much apparently frightened arguing and protesting over the telephone, one of the detectives said, replying to some unknown voice with phrases such as "I am very tired and must rest awhile," "I can't receive anyone for some time, you'll have to excuse me," "Please postpone decisive action till we can arrange some sort of compromise," or "I am very sorry, but I must take a complete vacation from everything; I'll talk with you later." Then, apparently gaining boldness through meditation, he had slipped out so quietly that no one had seen him depart or knew that he had gone until he returned about one o'clock and entered the house without a word. He had gone upstairs, where a bit of his fear must have surged back; for he was heard to cry out in a high terrified fashion upon entering his library, afterward trailing off into a kind of choking gasp. When, however, the butler had gone to inquire what the trouble was, he had appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had silently gestured the man away in a manner that terrified him unaccountably Then he had evidently done some rearranging of his shelves, for a great clattering and thumping and creaking ensued; after which he had reappeared and left at once.
Willett inquired whether or not any message had been left, but was told that there was none. The butler seemed queerly disturbed about something in Charles' appearance and manner, and asked solicitously if there was much hope for a cure of his disordered nerves.
For almost two hours Dr. Willett waited vainly in Charles Ward's library, watching the dusty shelves with their wide gaps where books had been removed, and smiling grimly at the paneled overmantel on the north wall, whence a year before the suave features of old Joseph Curwen had looked mildly down. After a time the shadows began to gather, and the sunset cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like before the night. Mr. Ward finally arrived, and showed much surprise and anger at his son's absence after all the pains which had been taken to guard him. He had not known of Charles' appointment, and promised to notify Willett when the youth returned. In bidding the doctor good night he expressed his utter perplexity at his son's condition, and urged his caller to do all he could to restore the boy to normal poise. Willett was glad to escape from that library, for something frightful and unholy seemed to haunt it; as if the vanished picture had left behind a legacy of evil. He had never liked that picture; and even now, strong-nerved though he was, there lurked a quality in its vacant panel which made him feel an urgent need to get out into the pure air as soon as possible.
The next morning Willett received a message from the senior Ward, saying that Charles was still absent. Mr. Ward mentioned that Dr. Allen had telephoned him to say that Charles would remain at Pawtuxet for some time, and that he must not be disturbed. This was necessary because Allen himself was suddenly called away for an indefinite period, leaving the researches in need of Charles' constant oversight. Charles sent his best wishes, and regretted any bother his abrupt change of plans might have caused. In listening to this message Mr Ward heard Dr Allen's voice for the first time, and it
seemed to excite some vague and elusive memory which could not be actually placed, but which was disturbing to the point of fearfulness.
Faced by these baffling and contradictory reports, Dr. Willett was frankly at a loss what to do. The frantic earnestness of Charles' note was not to be denied, yet what could one think of its writer's immediate violation of his own expressed policy? Young Ward had written that his delvings had become blasphemous and menacing, that they and his bearded colleague must be extirpated at any cost, and that he himself would never return to their final scene; yet according to latest advices he had forgotten all this and was back in the thick of the mystery. Common sense bade one leave the youth alone with his freakishness, yet some deeper instinct would not permit the impression of that frenzied letter to subside. Willett read it over again, and could not make its essence sound as empty and insane as both its bombastic verbiage and its lack of fulfilment would seem to imply. Its terror was too profound and real, and in conjunction with what the doctor already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from beyond time and space, to permit of any cynical explanation. There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought to stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.
For over a week Dr. Willett pondered on the dilemma which seemed thrust upon him, and became more and more inclined to pay Charles a call at the Pawtuxet bungalow. No friend of the youth had ever ventured to storm this forbidden retreat, and even his father knew of its interior only from such descriptions as he chose to give; but Willett felt that some direct conversation with his patient was necessary. Mr. Ward had been receiving brief and non-committal typed notes from his son, and said that Mrs. Ward in her Atlantic City retirement had had no better word. So at length the doctor resolved to act; and despite a curious sensation inspired by old legends of Joseph Curwen, and by more recent revelations and warnings from Charles Ward, set boldly out for the bungalow on the bluff above the river.
Willett had visited the spot before through sheer curiosity, though of course never entering the house or proclaiming his presence; hence knew exactly the route to take. Driving out Broad Street one early afternoon toward the end of February in his small motor, he thought oddly of the grim party which had taken that selfsame road a hundred and fifty-seven years before, on a terrible errand which none might ever comprehend.
The ride through the city's decaying fringe was short, and trim Edgewood and sleepy Pawtuxet presently spread out ahead. Willett turned to the right down Lockwood Street and drove his car as far along that rural road as he could, then alighted and walked north to where the bluff towered above the lovely bends of the river and the sweep of misty downlands beyond. Houses were still few here, and there was no mistaking the isolated bungalow with its concrete garage on a high point of land at his left. Stepping briskly up the neglected gravel walk he rapped at the door with a firm hand, and spoke without a tremor to the evil Portuguese mulatto who opened it to the width of a crack.
He must, he said, see Charles Ward at once on vitally important business. No excuse would be accepted, and a repulse would mean only a full report of the matter to the elder Ward. The mulatto still hesitated, and pushed against the door when Willett attempted to open it; but the doctor merely raised his voice and renewed his demands. Then there came from the dark interior a husky whisper which somehow chilled the hearer through and through, though he did not know why he feared it. "Let him in, Tony," it said, "we may as well talk now as ever." But disturbing as was the whisper, the greater fear was that which immediately followed. The floor creaked and the speaker hove in sight—and the owner of those strange and resonant tones was seen to be no other than Charles Dexter Ward.
The minuteness with which Dr. Willett recalled and recorded his conversation of that afternoon is due to the importance he assigns to this particular period. For at last he concedes a vital change in Charles Dexter Ward's mentality, and believes that the youth now spoke from a brain hopelessly alien to the brain whose growth he had watched for six and twenty years. Controversy with Dr. Lyman
