The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (30 page)

After escaping from the Taj, Amit had chaperoned an injured British guest to the hospital, running and then walking against a tide of bloodstained and injured people, learning along the way of all the other multiple attacks. As the man was being admitted to hospital, a woman had called his mobile phone from the UK, revealing that her sister (and his wife) was missing, last seen fleeing to the Nalanda bookshop in the Taj lobby. ‘Please help us find her,’ the sister-in-law implored. Amit had taken down the distraught woman’s number, promising to do his best, before texting Chef Hemant
Oberoi, asking to be recalled to the hotel. But the boss insisted he stay put. ‘There will be things for you to do there.’

Amit had roamed restlessly outside the ward, looking for a cigarette, until midnight, when he had noticed a dishevelled European woman sitting on the floor, dressed in a bloodstained
shalwar kameez.
As he went over, she had shrunk back, terrified. But he had coaxed a story out of her. She introduced herself as Line Kristin Woldbeck, a Norwegian tourist who had been caught up in the Leopold attack. ‘My boyfriend is terribly injured; he has lost a lot of blood. I saw so many bodies.’ Amit listened, incredulous. It was the first time he had heard in any detail what had happened at the café.

As they had walked down to the hospital entrance for a cigarette, Amit had spotted a sink. ‘Wash your face,’ he suggested. ‘Yes, my angel,’ Line said, smiling for the first time at the thought of this boyish restaurant manager bossing around someone twice his age. He had sensed her relief as she scrubbed off a rusty layer of dry blood caking her hair, neck, face and clothes. He handed her his jacket to dry herself on.

Refreshed, Line opened up about Arne, telling Amit how a bullet had sliced open his face from eyebrow to jawbone, and severed the tops off three fingers. A surgeon was attempting to reattach them. She described her friend Meetu, who had not been so lucky, and bled to death on the café floor. She had had to leave her body behind, as she dragged her boyfriend around the city, looking for a hospital, she explained, tears welling.

Just as Amit and Line came outside for their smoke, gunshots had sounded out. Incredulous, Amit ran back inside as someone screamed: ‘GET DOWN!’ But where was Line? She had bolted down a narrow alley, becoming trapped. When Amit found her again she was howling at the wall. He hurried her back inside. ‘Into the lift, quickly,’ he urged, pressing the sixth-floor button. Upstairs, she collapsed on the floor and burst into tears. Calming her down, Amit left her clutching her boyfriend’s blood-soaked clothes and listening to the clanking lifts, petrified
a gunman was coming up. ‘Good luck, Line,’ he whispered. ‘I have to go.’

Down below, Amit had returned to his injured British guest and caught the news from hospital porters that the most recent gunshots had come from Rang Bhavan Lane, where an ambush had killed three senior police officers: Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Inspector Salaskar. If
these
guys can die, Amit thought, what chance is there for the rest of us? Spooked, he desperately wanted to return to his colleagues at the Taj. He texted his chef, Boris Rego: ‘How’s things?’ Rego was busy helping out in Chambers. He tried the Golden Dragon chef, Hemant Talim: ‘You OK?’ Talim was preoccupied, too. Everyone seemed to be working at full tilt to secure the guests. ‘Just wait,’ he was told.

Back inside the hotel, Sunil Kudiyadi, the Taj’s security chief, sent a text message to Karambir Kang and Chef Oberoi, who were working out whom to evacuate next. There were still five significant pockets of people trapped. The first was in the Zodiac and Starboard Bar; diners and guests who fled the lobby at the start of the evening.

The second was in the function rooms on the first floor of the Palace, the Gateway and Prince’s, where the powerful Hindustan Unilever board had been dining. The hotel’s 23-year-old Assistant Banqueting Manager, Mallika Jagad, who was chaperoning thirty-seven trapped guests and twenty-eight staff in the Prince’s Room, had ruled out an escape down the Grand Staircase. But waiters had started fashioning ropes from curtains and tablecloths to escape through the sea-facing windows, should the fire reach them.

The third group was the 150 diners and Korean conference delegates shuttered away on the top floor of the Tower. The biggest group of all was in Chambers, on the hotel’s first floor: 250 refugees included tycoons, business leaders, MPs, and a high court judge, as well as the journalist Bhisham Mansukhani, his mother and her friends, the yacht owner Andreas Liveras and his cruise director, Remesh Cheruvoth, Mike and Anjali Pollack and their dining companions.

Disparate guests were trapped inside rooms from the second to the sixth floors of the Palace, among them Amit and Varsha Thadani in 253, and Will Pike and Kelly Doyle in 316. These were the hardest to protect – as Karambir Kang knew, fretting about his own family. And they were the most exposed. Alone and listening to everything: they heard the gunmen pacing the corridors, kicking doors, shooting into some of the rooms, and lighting fires. Some could also make out the excruciating sounds of those gunned down trying to run for it, including a 71-year-old Australian businessman on the third floor, who tried to flee with his wife. He was shot dead, his wife left injured and in agony. Her screams for help were audible to Will and Kelly, and sent a chill down their spines.

They had been stuck in their room for more than five hours now and were struggling to hold it together. After the second bomb, the electricity had gone off, so they were without air conditioning, light or power to charge their mobiles. As 3 a.m., the deepest part of the night, approached, the room grew darker until the light was lost altogether. Only the occasional vehicle headlamp flickering a trail across the wall gave them a fleeting moment of reconnection with the world outside.

Will was at the windows, searching for signs of a rescue. ‘It’s completely deserted out there,’ he whispered to Kelly. All he could see was the Arabian Sea. That afternoon it had looked cool and inviting, but now that the moon had gone it was a brooding slick. Deep terror was turning to hopelessness.

He shuffled back beside Kelly, shivering despite the heat. Time moved in its own special way in the middle of the night and the noises, distant booms and cracks, seemed to linger for an age.

Out of the blue, Will scrambled to his feet. ‘Gin and tonic?’ he asked, summoning the last dregs of positivity. He made a limp joke about not needing to worry about racking up an eye-watering minibar bill, as he clowned about with straws and stirrers. ‘Thanks, Will,’ she whispered, as she took a sip. They
were
going to get through this.

He tried to conjure up their blissful months together, but before long he spiralled back down again. Here they were, still in their flip-flops, having run out of fags, on the tipping point of disaster. The absurdity and horror of being trapped together, the chaos they had left in their wake in London, and not knowing what any of it meant, made no sense at all.

It was a struggle to recall that just twenty-four hours earlier they had been contemplating the plaited bamboo ceiling of their boutique cottage at Ciaran’s resort in Palolem Beach, anticipating a night of luxury at the Taj. They drained their glasses. Now what could they do? What, he thought, was the etiquette of personal space in a life-altering crisis? Were there social rules to conform to – even now? On a mundane level, he needed a crap. But flushing the toilet could alert the gunmen. He went anyhow and they lived with the shit, piling paper on top of it.

The explosions started up again, rattling their windows. Smoke was getting through the towel barrier and still no one was ringing. There were no updates. No prognosis. Just Will and Kelly, two empty glasses and the turd in the loo. He texted his father. With his phone battery running low, he was rationing these morale-boosting exchanges. ‘What’s going on, Dad?’ Nigel, who was glued to the TV back at home, three phones on his knee, was still trying to get information from the Foreign Office in London. ‘Sit tight, they
will
come for you soon.’ Kelly called her mother, weeping into the phone.

Explosions rolled down the corridor like a massed band. Glass splintered somewhere on the third floor and wood snapped. It sounded as if a boot had been planted through a partition wall and was now being twisted and flexed. At least the woman crying out along the corridor had stopped. Kelly picked up a fruit knife and handed it to Will. It was small and blunt.

They moved to the bathroom, sliding into the bath, facing one another. If the Goan holiday had brought them closer, what would surviving this do? It was a defining moment. ‘Why are we in the bath?’ she whispered. ‘There isn’t any logic to it.’ Will smiled. ‘At least we are together,’ he said. Kelly grimaced. The line sounded
hackneyed. ‘OK, if the worst happens then we’ll die together,’ he added. She closed her eyes, trying not to cry. She wasn’t planning on that.

The telephone rang. After such a long silence it sounded like a fire alarm. Will scrambled out of the bath, thrilled to receive a call. ‘Hello!’ It was a woman’s voice, calm and reassuring. ‘Hello? Mr Doyle? Mr Doyle?’ When they checked in, this mistake had made him hoot. Now he just wanted to know what they were doing to get them out. ‘Stay in the room, Mr Doyle, the situation is under control. The police are here.’ She rang off.

Will was stunned. Was that it? More worryingly was this a ploy? The caller had said she was ringing from the switchboard, but for all they knew a gun might have been held to her head. Whoever it was now knew room 316 was occupied and would be sending up their henchmen. Kelly tried to reassure him. But Will was working himself up. As if to make his case, gunfire pattered down the corridor, with a huge shell smacking into the marble floor and walls adjacent to their room. Kelly and Will slipped back into the tub.

A single shot was followed by a shrill scream. A door was kicked open. Then another shot. Along the corridor they were executing people. ‘We’re going to die,’ Will whispered, surprised that he had said it out loud. Neither of them wanted to seem weak. He leapt up. ‘GET BEHIND THE DOOR!’ They both squeezed behind the bathroom door, Kelly crouching, Will still gripping the fruit knife. ‘What the fuck am I going to do with this?’ She looked into his eyes: ‘He’s going to come in and you’re going to stab him in the neck.’ Will stared at her doubtfully. Then he reached for his whirring phone. ‘Will,’ his father texted, ‘get out of the building now. They have set it on fire.’

They left the bathroom and crept over to the window. Kelly knew what he was thinking. ‘We’re sixty feet up,’ she said, her heart racing. There was no one coming to help them, he replied. ‘Everything is burning.’ He started pulling the sheets from the bed. ‘Kelly, help me.’ The windows were their only choice. They tied together whatever they could, while she found some scissors in the desk
drawer. ‘Look, we can use these to cut up strips. Let’s pull down the curtains too. Get the towels.’

They cut and knotted lengths together, braiding a lengthy escape cord. Will stepped back and paid out the coil. ‘It’s not strong enough,’ warned Kelly. ‘Let’s give it a try,’ he replied. They pulled a tug-of-war across the bed. The rope held so they dragged it to the windows. Will grabbed the marble coffee table and hurled it, but it bounced, smacking him in the face. ‘What the fuck.’ Bruised, he threw it again. This time the inner pane cracked and the third time, the outer glass exploded too, allowing the cool night air to flow into the sweltering room.

Will felt a twinge. He looked down and saw he had cut his arm open; blood was dripping on the carpet. He pressed on with the task, knocking out the remaining shards. He leant out, feeling the wind on his face, as Kelly looked at the gaping frame with horror. Will stared up and saw flames flaring off the roof. He looked down and there was no task force of rescuers, only journalists filming from the Gateway. ‘Kelly, we have to give it a try.’ He would go first. She began crying, pleading with him not to. The whole thing seemed so haphazard. But Will was already anchoring the rope to the desk. Testing it, he tried to peer over the bulbous parapet of their balcony. ‘I can’t see the ground,’ he shouted. He turned and gave her a kiss. ‘I love you,’ he mouthed, as he slowly allowed the hand-made rope to take his weight, feeling its resistance, edging to the lip of the balcony and dropping down. Kelly tried to steady him as a tiny flicker of hope sparked inside her. She could see them leaving India with a tale to tell and a story that seemed to have cemented their headlong rush into a relationship.

The rope went limp. Kelly tugged at it and it rushed up to meet her. ‘Will!’ She hauled up the great, bulky rope in folds, with the disappointment of a fisherman reeling in a broken line. ‘Will!’ She poked her head out of the broken window, but could not see down to the ground. Looking sideways, she spotted a woman at the window of an adjacent room. Kelly started tying the rope around her own waist, and was about to lower herself over the parapet, when the woman waved to her, in an exaggerated mayday.

She mouthed some words, as shouts might attract the killers. Kelly studied her lips and got some of it: ‘Don’t. Climb. Down.’ Kelly frowned. The neighbour waved and continued mouthing. ‘I can see him. Your boyfriend is dead.’

One floor down, in 253, the newlywed Amit glanced at his watch and noted, with exasperation, that it was 3.15 a.m. and they were still stranded. When the last big blast had gone off, it had blown their door off its hinges, and he had found himself staring into the corridor, mumbling ‘This is our 9/11’, while Varsha ran around behind him, screaming, ‘Shut the door.’ At more than 80kg, Amit could bring some force to the equation and, after he had come to his senses, he had shoulder-charged the broken door and slid a set of drawers in front of it, while Vasha took a floor lamp, ramming it up against the handle.

Now he heard a mobile phone ringing out in the corridor. He recognized the tone, a Nokia, as he had one just like it. For some reason he counted . . . eight, nine, ten . . . before a massive detonation rang out. They had to get out now. Presuming that the mobile had set off a bomb, he wondered where the next one was planted. None of their improvised measures were going to last long. Amit ran over to the windows and could see that people were climbing out further along the building, trying to escape. Filmed by the TV crews, these pictures, with their haunting echoes of 9/11, were being broadcast around the world.