Makran Coast, Balochistan – March 24th, 1949 – 02:17 AM
The desert was black as death. No moon tonight, just stars scattered across the sky like broken glass. The only sound cutting through the silence was their jeep engine screaming bloody murder as it bounced across the rocky riverbed.
Jones gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles had gone white. Sweat mixed with dirt streaked down his face despite the cold night air. Next to him, Miller clutched his bleeding shoulder and winced with every bump.
Both men wore the rough tribal clothes that had seemed like such a good idea weeks ago. Now the disguise felt like a joke, a pathetic attempt at blending in that had fooled nobody.
"Christ, how much further to Iran?" Jones yelled over the engine noise. His throat was raw from shouting and dust.
"Too bloody far!" Miller shouted back. Blood was seeping through his fingers where he pressed against the bullet wound. "This whole damn track is falling apart under us. The Indians have blocked every route we mapped out!"
A rifle cracked somewhere on the ridge above them. The sound echoed off the rocks, sharp and mean. A second later they heard the metallic ping of a bullet hitting their rear bumper.
"Shit! They're still back there!" Jones yanked the wheel hard left to dodge a boulder the size of a washing machine. The jeep tilted on two wheels for a terrifying moment before crashing back down. "How the hell did they find us so fast? Our intel said these routes were clear!"
Miller twisted around to look behind them. Three sets of headlights bobbed and weaved through the darkness, maybe half a mile back but gaining ground. The Indian Army jeeps were built for this terrain and their drivers knew these hills better than any American ever would.
"Doesn't matter how they found us," Miller said through gritted teeth. "Matters that they did. This whole operation has gone to shit, Jones. We were supposed to supply some weapons to a few tribal troublemakers, stir up some resistance to India, then slip back across the border like ghosts. Instead, we're out here running for our lives."
Jones didn't answer because he was too busy fighting the steering wheel. The wadi ahead split into three different paths and he had maybe ten seconds to choose the right one before the Indians got close enough for accurate shooting.
The whole mess had started three days ago when the Khan of Kalat decided to play ball with Delhi. Smart move for him, terrible news for everyone else who had skin in the game.
Back then, Jones and Miller had been operating out of a safe house near the Iranian border. Their job was simple enough on paper. Cross into Balochistan, make contact with tribal leaders who weren't happy about status of being Indian protectorate, provide them with weapons and training, then sit back and watch the fireworks. Classic CIA playbook stuff.
The weapons had been easy to get. Soviet surplus, Italian leftovers from the war, some British rifles that had somehow found their way into the black market. Nothing that could be traced back to America, everything deniable if things went sideways.
And things had definitely gone sideways.
The Turbat ambush was supposed to be a test run. A small group of tribal fighters would hit an levies patrol under Khan, make some noise, and show that Balochistan wasn't going to roll over quietly for Delhi.
Maybe kill a few soldiers, capture some weapons, send a message that this new region wasn't as secure as Prime Minister Mehra wanted everyone to believe.
But well, the tribals weren't as reliable as they thought. Though they managed to kill all the levies they encountered, they lost two of their men. But that wasn't the main issue. The problem was that they forgot to recover the weapons from the dead tribals in the eagerness to retreat and hide quickly.
And if that wasn't bad enough, who would have thought that entire Balochistan, which was supposed to be a protectorate, will straight up agree to become an official state of India in just 3 days? And willingly at that. Surely an attack as minor as that wouldn't force them to do that right? It wasn't as if they were being invaded or something.
And that's when Jones knew that their cover was blown. He realized that someone in Delhi had figured out there were foreign agents operating in the region. But they were Americans, and Americans always thought they were smarter than everyone else.
Now they were running through the desert at two in the morning with half the Indian Army on their tail and a slowly dying jeep between them and capture.
"There!" Miller pointed ahead with his good arm. "See those rocks? That's the border marker. Iran's maybe two hundred yards past that ridge."
Jones could see it now. A jumbled pile of stones that marked where India ended and Iran began. Not that the border meant much out here in the middle of nowhere, but it was the difference between capture and escape.
Another rifle shot cracked behind them. This one came closer, close enough that Jones heard the bullet whine past his ear.
"They're getting too close," Miller said. His voice was starting to slur from blood loss. "Jones, if they take us alive..."
"They're not taking us anywhere," Jones said. He pressed the accelerator to the floor even though the engine was already screaming in protest. "We get across that border or we die trying. Those are the only options."
The jeep hit a hidden dip in the wadi and went airborne for a heart stopping second. When it crashed back down, Jones heard something important break in the suspension. The steering got mushy and the whole vehicle started pulling hard to the right.
Behind them, the Indian headlights were close enough now that Jones could make out individual vehicles. Three jeeps, just like Miller had said. Probably carrying a full squad each, all of them armed and pissed off about spending their night chasing foreign spies through the desert.
"Contact ahead!" Miller suddenly shouted.
Jones looked up and saw muzzle flashes winking in the darkness near the border stones. For a split second his heart stopped because he thought they were trapped, caught between two Indian forces with nowhere to run.
Then he realized the shots weren't aimed at them. Tracer rounds were streaking past their jeep toward the pursuing Indians. Someone on the Iranian side of the border was providing covering fire.
"That's our people!" Miller said. Relief flooded his voice despite the pain. "The Iran station must have been monitoring our radio frequency. They're giving us cover!"
The Indian pursuit vehicles suddenly slowed down. Their headlights began to spread out as they looked for defensive positions. Nobody wanted to get into a cross-border firefight with Iran, especially not some lieutenant who would have to explain to his superiors why he started an international incident.
Jones didn't slow down. He kept the accelerator pinned to the floor and aimed straight for the border stones while bullets from both sides filled the air around them. The jeep was shaking itself apart, the engine making sounds that meant it would die any minute, but they were close now. So close that he could smell safety.
Fifty yards from the border, their right front tire exploded.
The jeep spun sideways and rolled twice before crashing into a gully. Jones found himself hanging upside down from his seatbelt, tasting blood and wondering if anything important was broken. Next to him, Miller was unconscious, blood running from a gash on his forehead.
Jones cut himself free and dropped onto the roof. He could hear Indian voices getting closer, shouting orders in Hindi. The covering fire from Iran had stopped, probably because the shooters couldn't risk hitting the crashed Americans.
He grabbed Miller under the arms and started dragging him toward the border. Miller was heavy and unconscious and bleeding from multiple wounds. Jones's own legs felt like rubber, but he kept moving because the alternative was a prison cell in Delhi.
The Indian voices were very close now. Jones could see flashlight beams cutting through the darkness, searching for them. He pulled Miller behind a boulder and drew his pistol. Six rounds left. Not much, but enough to make things interesting if it came to that.
Then he heard an engine approaching from the Iranian side. A jeep with its headlights off came bouncing across the rocky ground. It stopped twenty yards away and two men jumped out.
"Jones! Miller! Move your asses!" one of them shouted in perfect American English.
Jones didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed Miller's shoulders while one of the rescue team took his feet. Together they carried the wounded man to the jeep and threw him in the back seat.
"Go, go, go!" Jones shouted as soon as he was in the passenger seat.
The Iranian based CIA team's jeep spun its wheels and shot forward into the darkness. Behind them, Jones could hear Indian officers shouting at their men to hold fire. Nobody wanted to shoot across an international border, even at escaping spies.
Five minutes later they were safely inside Iran, hidden in a cave system that the local CIA station had been using for years. Miller was unconscious but breathing. Jones was battered and exhausted but alive.
The station chief for Iranian operations, a tall man named Williams, handed Jones a cup of coffee that tasted like heaven.
"Hell of a thing," Williams said. "We've been monitoring Indian radio traffic for the past week. They knew exactly where you were operating. Someone in Delhi has built themselves one impressive intelligence network."
Jones nodded and sipped his coffee. His hands were shaking from adrenaline crash.
"The whole Balochistan operation is blown," he said. "They rolled up our networks faster than I've ever seen. It's like they had a playbook for exactly this kind of thing."
Williams looked thoughtful. "Maybe they did. This new Indian government, they're not playing by the old rules anymore. Their Prime Minister has turned that country into something we don't recognize."
Back on the Indian side of the border, Director Sharma walked slowly through the wreckage of the crashed jeep. His men had found weapons, radio equipment, and maps marked with safe house locations.
He picked up a blood-stained paper that had the names of some people, most likely the tribal leaders, and examined it in his flashlight beam. All of this confirmed one thing, that this was a highly sophisticated operation.
Sharma's radio crackled. "Director, this is Western command. Did we catch the culprits?"
"No, they managed to get away." Sharma said into the handset. "Two western operatives identified and pursued to the Iranian border. They escaped with assistance from Iranian based assets, but we have recovered significant intelligence material. Their entire network is compromised and neutralized."
"I see. Please visit the PM Office at once to brief Prime Minister Mehra."
"Alright, I'm on the way."
Sharma took one last glace at the Iranian border where the foreign agents escaped, before returning to the jeep. For now, he would first need to deal with all the tribal leaders whose names were recovered.
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[A/N: So, here is the final chapter. I'll be on the break for the next 2 months. Mainly to take things a bit slowly and carefully plan out the rest of the storyline. Oh, and also to have a considerable stockpile of chapters so that I can resume 5 chapter/week after I return, probably in January.]