The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (13 page)

When the smoke cleared, he could see the two men were drilling rounds into the crowd inside the café and out in the street. Hair-raising, wild screams filled the air as bullets flew all around, some slamming into the metal shutters behind his head. He crawled, moaning, for cover, and put his hands over his ears. They were bleeding and his face was lacerated.

Inside, Line could not move. ‘Oh God,’ Meetu said, standing up, dazed. Arne also staggered to his feet: ‘What the hell?’ Coming to her senses, Line grabbed both of them by their wrists and hauled them under the table, as another blast upturned tables and diners. Then the
ack, ack, ack
came at them again, in short controlled bursts. ‘Keep quiet! Don’t move!’ whispered Line, hugging Arne and Meetu who lay on either side of her.

‘This can’t be real,’ she kept saying to herself. The
ack, ack, ack
drove channels into the tiled floor, throwing up cement chips. There were cries followed by more short bursts. Were they executing diners? Right now the gunmen were on the other side of the room, but moving over. Meetu was shaking. ‘Play dead,’ Line whispered. ‘Lie still!’ A gunman was beside them now. She felt hot bullet casings clatter down. She turned to Arne. He was ashen. ‘I love you,’ she
mouthed, as everything was drowned out by the thrum of the firing.

A sweet ferrous smell pricked Line’s nostrils: blood. It was unmistakeable. Meetu shook and Line kept hold of her, as short convulsions surged through her body. To Line, it felt as if Meetu were radiating a peaceful wave of energy. She rolled over to Arne, recoiling as she saw that he had been shot in the face and hand. ‘Meetu’s dead,’ she whispered, holding on to her tears and hugging her friend as her body went limp.

Two hundred metres away from the café in Colaba police station, the duty inspector heard the rounds tumble and fizz, wondering if they were from an AK-47. Running down to investigate, he left the TV and the one-day international between England and India and put a mark in the station incident log at 9.45 p.m. His lodgings were on the first floor of the police station and he was certain the firing came from the direction of the Leopold.

At the station gate, nervous-looking constables gathered in a huddle while pedestrians ran by screaming. The inspector walked a few paces and was certain he could see bodies lying ahead in Colaba Causeway. It looked like a bomb had gone off: advertising hoardings had been ripped off the buildings, car sirens were wailing and the streetlights had blown out. He grabbed a subordinate’s walkie-talkie and called South Control. ‘21.48. Police Colaba Walkie-Talkie: Send Colaba 1 to Leopold hotel.’

The inspector buttonholed two constables armed with standard issue .303 bolt-action rifles. They were so antiquated that they were no longer in production in India, making repairs difficult and spare parts scarce. At most city police stations these and bamboo
lathis
(canes) were the only weapons available. Behind him was a mobile unit of five men, Colaba 1, armed in a similar way. ‘Let’s go,’ he urged them, clapping his hands, as if he were driving hens. Whatever was happening, it was chaotic and bloody. He strode ahead, approaching the café, stepping around the injured. The
ack, ack, ack
was now softer, as if the attackers had moved off.

After a few minutes, he spotted a face everyone knew: Rajvardhan Sinha, the chief of SB2, galloping over. Relief washed over him. The Special Branch Deputy Commissioner was like a tank, rolling over whatever came in his way. A veteran of many skirmishes, he would know what to do. Rajvardhan had been at home in the police station campus on VT Road with his family when he got a call from the state’s deputy intelligence chief, who suspected this was a scrap between Russian and Israeli gangs who ran drugs in Goa. The inspector shrugged. All he knew was that his men said there were two gunmen, carrying assault rifles, who had shot up the Leopold and were running towards the Taj.

Rajvardhan strode inside. Beside the door were three bodies, two of them Westerners. He estimated that fifteen or sixteen more were dead among the jumble of badly injured. In one corner, a bloodstained waiter was calmly sweeping up, as if a tray had simply fallen. Rajvardhan glanced up to the mezzanine, and saw a diner had been shot dead, falling against the glass, his grimacing face peering down. A constable would have to haul that body back. He blocked out the hysterical weeping and screaming, focusing on the evidence trail. Explosions had ripped large chunks out of the concrete floor. Grenades, he concluded. He followed the flurries of shrapnel pockmarks up the walls. Then, he spotted two empty AK-47 clips taped together on a tabletop and recognized this as a classic combat configuration, allowing a quick change around. This was no
goonda
(hired thug) drive-by. It was not Russians or Israelis. He wondered if the two gunmen were operating with others or on their own.

He grabbed a passing wireless operator. ‘Where’s the backup?’ he shouted into the handset, already worried that the gunmen who had fled the scene were part of a much bigger operation. The force needed to mobilize. ‘All police patrols operating within a one-mile vicinity of the area should come immediately.’ There was no response from the Control Room. He called it in again. ‘21.49. Police Colaba Walkie-Talkie: Send help, send help.’ This time South Control responded, calling in a pitter-patter of men. Rajvardhan counted. Four units. That meant two dozen officers at best, which was nowhere near enough.

He did a quick tour of the walking wounded, asking for descriptions. He stared at a woman hugging another female diner, who was clearly dead. It was Line Kristin Woldbeck, who stammered that she had seen two or three shooters, young and clean-shaven. Another Westerner described how one gunman was dressed all in black, while the second, who was taller and bulkier, wore black combat trousers and a long-sleeved grey T-shirt with some pattern on the front. South Control called, asking about casualties. The DCP hedged his bets: possibly sixteen needing hospitalization, with a dozen dead. ‘Is the one who opened fire held or did he escape?’ Rajvardhan listened to the now distant shooting. ‘The firing is still on, near Taj hotel.’ South Control called it in: ‘Striking 1, come to Taj hotel immediately.’

Striking 1 consisted of a Bolero jeep, carrying six men. Rajvardhan sighed. They were not going to win like this. The force needed to pull its finger out. He ran off down Nowraji Ferdonji Road, following the
ack, ack, ack
, working through what he had seen inside the café. ‘It’s the fucking Pakis,’ he said, under his breath. ‘Come to piss in our backyard.’

Manish Joshi, a Taj computer operator, had come off duty at the Taj’s office in Oxford House, on Nowraji Ferdonji Road, when he heard ‘wedding crackers’ at 9.46 p.m. Going outside, he saw something lying in the road. He walked over and found a foreign woman, shivering and bleeding. She had been shot, she stammered, and the gunmen had run on. She pointed towards the Taj. Horrified, and unable to understand what was going on, Manish dragged her inside, and propped her up, while he reached for his mobile phone, ringing colleagues inside the hotel: ‘I think gunmen are coming for you. Get out.’

A Taj security guard on the Oxford House terrace saw two men carrying assault rifles running along the road and he also rang ahead to warn his colleagues inside the hotel: ‘Lock down the hotel. Gunmen are coming.’ The message was relayed up to the Taj’s security chief, Sunil Kudiyadi, on the fifth floor, who knew five entrances were open: the main Tower lobby through which Bob Nicholls and
Captain Ravi had arrived; the Palace entrance facing the sea, where the critic Sabina had checked in; the south-side Northcote door, the route Will and Kelly had used returning from the Leopold; the Time Office staff entrance; and another staff door at the rear of Taj Tower.

Out front, Puru Petwal, a young security officer on duty in the Tower lobby, one of Kudiyadi’s so-called ‘Black Suits’, dressed in sombre, well-tailored jackets and trousers, got the message to lock the doors just as a tsunami of guests, diners and passers-by surged through the security barriers and walk-through X-ray machine.

In the crush was Sajjad Karim, a Labour MEP for Blackburn, England, who was part of the EU delegation. Moments earlier, he had spotted another guest carrying a half-conscious, bleeding woman through the main gates, shouting that he had come from the Leopold Café, which was under attack, many drinkers from there having fled to the five-star Taj, assuming it would be safer.

Petwal waded into the torrent, as a second scrum of passers-by – chauffeurs, taxi drivers and policemen – attempted to get inside. ‘Slow down,’ he screamed, panicking. ‘People are getting trampled.’ The MEP Karim allowed himself to be carried through the lobby past the Harbour Bar on his left, then the reception desks and towards Shamiana in the top left-hand corner. ‘I have no option,’ he said to himself.

Back out on the main steps, unnoticed by Petwal, two young men with backpacks also slipped in with the current of people, seen only by the hotel’s CCTV. Inside, they stood for a few seconds, overwhelmed by the opulence. Then one, dressed in a red T-shirt and red baseball cap, calmly turned left towards the Harbour Bar, while the other, dressed in a yellow T-shirt, headed straight on for Shamiana. They knew exactly where they were going.

As if on cue, they set down their bags and pulled out assault rifles.

Up on the second floor of the Palace, Florence Martis was in the Data Centre when she heard what sounded like a lorry dropping a load of freight. It came from the direction of the lobby. She glanced
at her computer: 9.48 p.m. Mumbai was a city of ruckus, she told herself. But tonight she felt unsettled. Tonight she was alone on the night shift, and she hated it. She tried singing her favourite Bollywood film tune but it did not help. Half an hour earlier, she had popped down to the Palm Court, one floor below, looking for her father Faustine, but he was nowhere to be seen. She had tried his phone: no answer. She wasn’t too worried about that, though, as the family had bought him a new handset for his birthday and he had still not got the hang of it.

Florence pulled her thin cardigan tighter. Manish Joshi, who worked with the hotel’s computers, had got her going a few days back by spinning ghost stories about long-dead guests coming back to haunt the Palace corridors. What she needed now was a bright memory. Something came to her. To celebrate her new job at the Taj, the family had gone on its first holiday, to Mount Abu, a hill station in Rajasthan. They had hired local costumes and got their photos taken. Her father had been invited to a ‘gents’ party’: a few beers and one or two pegs of whisky. Tomorrow he was having a day off, to celebrate his wedding anniversary. She looked down at the smart white plimsolls that he had given her as a present that morning and smiled. Then her desk phone rang. ‘Florence, terrorists have come.’ She knew the voice: Manish, the office prankster. She wasn’t falling for it again. ‘Just stop it,’ she hissed, cutting the line.

One floor up in the Palace wing, in room 316, Will was flicking through the TV channels, waiting for Kelly to finish getting ready, when he heard fireworks or gunfire. He went to the window but there was nothing to see. ‘Kelly, did you hear that?’ he called through the bathroom door. ‘What?’ she asked, coming out, wrapped in a towel. ‘I heard shooting.’ She pulled a face. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. This is a five-star hotel. We’re going for dinner.’

Ack, ack, ack.
This time Kelly, dripping water on the carpet, heard it too. It was hard to say where it was coming from, but it was near by. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she asked, drying her hair.
Ack, ack, ack.
That burst was inside the hotel. The shots were echoing. Was it
the Grand Staircase? They were fifty paces to the left of it, and three floors up. ‘Let’s see,’ Will urged. Kelly did not want to go but she did not want to stay on her own. Opening the door, they ran along the silent corridor in bare feet, keeping their heads low, ‘like people did in the movies’. The hotel no longer smelled of freshly cut flowers and expensive perfume but of fireworks, and when they reached the staircase, they gingerly poked their heads over the banisters to see smoke coiling up towards them. ‘Look at that,’ Will said. Kelly had no idea what she was looking at. It smelled of autumn in the park.

Across the staircase they spotted a blond Westerner, who had had the same idea as them. They exchanged nods, their eyes drawn to two young Taj staffers who ran up from below. Will waved at them, but they kept going to the fourth floor then disappeared. ‘Some rescue party,’ he murmured.

The bang-bang started again. This time there was no doubt that these were gunshots. The man opposite ran off and Will and Kelly scurried back, too. Should they hide or try to get out? ‘We don’t even know where the fire escapes are,’ Will said, starting to panic, looking for a map on the back of the door. ‘Look, the hotel will protect us,’ Kelly reasoned. That is how it went, right? The hotel’s security team would chase the gunmen out and then come for them. That’s what they did in
Towering Inferno.

They locked the door, turned off the TV and lights, wedged themselves between the bed and the bathroom wall, and took each other’s hands.

From the top floor of the Taj Tower, in the sleek, glass-walled Souk, the orange flare from the city’s streetlights unfurled below like a fine silk carpet. Captain Ravi Dharnidharka, the US Marine captain, was no longer looking at the view but worrying about the great wave of text messages and calls crashing across the room. One of his cousins received a call: ‘Gang fight in Colaba, a couple of blocks away.’ An aunt rang next. ‘A crazy man is waving a gun around behind the Taj.’

‘Told you,’ Ravi said to himself, recalling earlier misgivings about security in the hotel’s main entrance. When he had walked through the security cordon half an hour back, a metal detector had beeped, but no one had stopped him. That had really got him going. Why did people have systems and then pay no heed to them? Who else had got through unchecked? He hoped that his paranoia was simply the prolonged repercussion of battle fatigue.