Using a tiny Sony mobile handset, Iqbal calls Captain Sami. “Just two miles away as the crow files, Sami answered his phone. He, along with Tiwathia, Dhankar, Khare and Ankita, were parked at the Officers’ Mess behind the military hospital at Khadki,” narrates Mukul Deva in ‘Blowback’ (www.harpercollins.co.in).
‘First, I want you to open the suitcase and photograph it. Take careful note of the way everything is packed,’ Sami commands. The 8 mega-pixel camera in the phone comes handy for the purpose; so is the Bluetooth icon on Iqbal’s laptop, to mate it with the phone and then email the photos.
“At the other end, Dhankar began to analyse each photo as it came in. It took him only a few moments to break down the components and understand the type and construct of the bombs that they would be used to make.”
Taking the phone from Sami, Dhankar tells Iqbal that it’s a fairly simple device. “‘The integrated circuit is the key we can use to get the bombs to malfunction. Have a look at the seventh photo you sent.’ He tapped the picture of the tiny IC chip that glowed on the laptop screen in front of him. ‘That’s what is going to trigger the bombs. Just take all of them out and then rejig them as I tell you.’”
Using the computer link between them, Dhankar talked Iqbal through the process, ensuring that none of the ICs could send out the required current to trigger the detonators, Deva recounts. “He also got Iqbal to embed a GPS locator in every IC. ‘Use the smallest ones from the set I gave you,’ he said. ‘The microdot ones.’”
After the rejig of the ICs, it will be the GPS locators that use the bomb’s power source instead of the impulse being passed on to the detonators, Dhankar clarifies.
Gripping tale.
**
Tailpiece
“Looking for Twitter insurance…”
“To be sure that it works all the time?”
“No, to cover the risks of politically incorrect tweets!”
