Muzaffarabad, 4:30 am
The safehouse was cold, lit only by a single bulb swinging overhead. Zayan paced while his team cleaned their weapons in tense silence. The encrypted phone buzzed—Benny.
"You let one live," her voice was sharp, accusatory.
"He's wounded. Running blind somewhere near the Neelum Valley. We'll find him."
Benny paused. "Zayan, this isn't some foot soldier. That man you let escape? His name is Major Tejas Rathore—General Rathore's nephew. RAW's golden boy. He's been on their kill-for-India roster for eight years."
The room went still.
"If he makes it back across the LoC," Benny continued, "he'll expose your response time, your tactics. He'll tell them about Phantom. And then they'll send more. Smarter. Meaner."
Zayan's knuckles whitened around the phone. "He won't make it back."
"You have forty-eight hours. After that, ISI will order you back, and they'll send drones to erase any evidence. Including him. Including anyone who helped him."
The line went dead.
---
Neelum Valley, 5:45 am
Tejas pressed his back against a moss-covered boulder, tearing a strip from his shirt to wrap the gash on his forearm. The bleeding had slowed, but the cold was worse now—the kind of damp Himalayan cold that settled into bones and didn't leave.
Four of my men, he thought. Gone.
He pulled out his encrypted beacon—cracked. Useless. His secondary GPS was still functioning, but it would take twelve hours of hard terrain to reach the LoC. And that assumed Phantom wasn't tracking him.
He laughed bitterly, a sound swallowed by the forest. They'd walked into a trap. Someone had talked. Someone in Delhi.
Tejas closed his eyes and made a promise to the dark: I will find out who. And I will make them pray for death before I'm done.
He stood, checked his sidearm—eleven rounds left—and disappeared deeper into the woods.
---
ISI Headquarters, Islamabad, 7:00 am
Director Aliya Riaz was not a woman who appreciated surprises. The silver-haired spymaster sat behind her oak desk, reading Zayan's after-action report with the expression of someone calculating the cost of a mistake.
"You engaged without authorization," she said, not looking up.
"With respect, ma'am—"
"You let a high-value target escape into our own backyard." She finally raised her eyes. "Do you understand what happens if Indian media gets hold of a captured RAW officer on Pakistani soil? They'll demand him back. The UN will intervene. And we'll have to choose between handing him over looking weak or keeping him and looking guilty."
Zayan stood rigid. "He won't be captured, ma'am. He'll be eliminated."
Aliya leaned back. "Then why are you still standing here, Major?"
---
Somewhere along the Line of Control, 9:15 am
Daniyal found the first trace—a bloody bandage tangled in a thorn bush, still wet.
"He's heading north-east," Daniyal whispered, pointing toward the ridgeline. "Aiming for the crossing near Chakothi."
Ubaid frowned. "That's a fifteen-kilometer trek through some of the worst terrain in Kashmir. Wounded? He'll be lucky to make five."
"He's desperate," Haroon said quietly. "Desperate men do desperate things."
Zayan knelt beside the bandage, turning it over in his gloved hand. The blood was darkening, but not yet brown. Two hours old, maybe three.
"He's not just running," Zayan said slowly. "He's hunting."
The team exchanged glances.
"Think about it," Zayan continued. "He knows we're behind him. He knows the terrain better than any of us—RAW would've drilled him on every inch of this valley for years. He could hide. But he's leaving a trail. Why?"
Ubaid's eyes widened. "He wants us to follow him."
"Or he wants us to think he wants us to follow him," Haroon countered.
Zayan stood, brushing dirt from his knee. "Either way, we don't split up. We don't rush. We track him like the wounded predator he is—and when we find him, we end this."
He raised his rifle.
"Phantom, move out."
---
Neelum Valley, 11:30 am
High above the tree line, hidden in a crevice between two granite slabs, Tejas watched through a sniper scope as Phantom team crossed a stream below.
Five of them, he counted. Well-trained. Disciplined.
He could take one—maybe two—before they scattered. But then the rest would pin him down, and eleven rounds wouldn't hold them off for long.
No. He needed something bigger.
His eyes swept the valley. A fuel depot, two kilometers south. An old watchtower, crumbling but strategic. A narrow gorge where a well-placed shot could trigger a rockslide.
Tejas smiled for the first time in hours.
Let them track me, he thought. Let them think I'm prey.
He chambered a round and began to climb higher.
---