After a while, Ishar got off the airplane and inhaled a deep breath, the cool air of Kashmir. For obvious reasons, the headquarters of his team was situated in secret.
Amongst the vibrant streets of Kashmir, taking a left into a gully, a turn on a saffron garden, through a random path in the snow, Ishar arrived in front of a dilapidated building which stood unnoticed and camouflaged due to its sheer ugliness.
As beautiful and classic as the other buildings were, this building looked as if a rock had been carved by an immature child to look like something presentable.
No one attempted to even look at that poor building, and Ishar was thankful for that.
With a small smile on his face, he went inside, the floorboards creaking slightly as he walked, and cobwebs glimmering in the sunlight. A fragmented chandelier hung above, looking quite sorrowful. The room was splintered and looked as if the walls could give away any moment, but Ishar knew undoubtedly that they wouldn't.
It was one of the many perks of being an Army Officer!
Turning to his left, he went down a miserable set of stairs to yet another destroyed room. It was a dead end to common eyes, but Ishar knew better. Bending down, he lifted a broken floorboard, revealing a digital lock with blue numbers and a fingerprint sensor.
He entered the passcode '18201004' and pressed his right thumb inside the sensor.
The lock glowed green and a digital voice said,
"Please tell me your name and ID."
Ishar cleared his throat and replied,
"Ishar Amar Singh. Captain and part of the BSF secret team."
Suddenly, an irksome, terrifying noise rang through the air- as if a bullet had been shot. If any other person had been there, they would have surely fled for their precious lives. However, Ishar knew otherwise.
After all, he had been part of the crew which had decided that gunshots would be a lovely tune to add after decoding the digital lock.
Though this was to scare off people, it was somehow satisfying to hear gunshots every now and then, in a weird, unexplainable way.
To the right of the lock, a secret handle was pushed out of the titanium, which when turned, opened a metal door in the wall. Ishar entered and was greeted by the friendly faces of his team, and a handsome white dog.
He reached down and petted the dog, which wagged its tail smartly and jumped up and down.
It had been just a puppy when they found him in the ruins of the building, and due to its cute 'white-ness', they had named him 'Moti', meaning 'pearl.' Soon, they had him trained and geared up, fit to be by a soldier's side like any K-9.
Looking up from Moti, he saluted his fellow soldiers and said, "Jai Hind. Anything new today?".
"Jai Hind," his best friend and computer genius Pratap Roy, replied.
"Nope. Just a normal day as usual. We're monitoring all the systems and nothing seems unusual- except for the fact that you let that dog come here again. Now, would you please tell me, Your Majesty, why would you ever set that demonic monster free?"
Ever since they were babies, Pratap and Ishar were inseparable. They had learned to walk together, to talk together, to laugh together. They were each other's back hands, and loyal supporters. The only difference now was that they used to fight enemies, instead of playing soccer on the field. However, there was only one disadvantage of their relationship.
Pratap was deathly afraid of Moti, and by afraid, he meant the type where you'd rather die than face your fears. Just imagine. A soldier analyst afraid of dogs.
Who knew? It was the one time when Ishar actually considered him to be an idiot.
Some time back, Pratap had been chased all the way into the secret room by the dog, and had refused to come out until the team hauled him outdoors.
"Well, the poor dog didn't do anything wrong to you. In fact, he is the sweetest and smartest dog I have ever seen." Ishar said.
"Sweetest dog, huh? This Moti nearly bit me today. When the rest of the team members came, he looked innocently at everyone and earned a handful of treats. I swear I saw it smirk- I think he's secretly trying to kill me." Pratap said.
He looked at Moti with a death stare that could frighten the gods. Moti stared straight back. Ishar admired Moti's innocent stare.
"Stop staring at each other. We have a nation to protect." He finally said, and turned to go inside the central HQ, a small room with spyware, weapons, a coffee machine and all other modern gizmos.
His 5-member team was seated on the chairs. Pratap Roy, Gargi Saxena, Aniket Jadhav, Karan Kapadia and of course, Ishar himself. They had been selected as a team for the BSF, but were free to cooperate with other forces when needed.
Karan, with a coffee in his hand, mirthfully said
"Hey, how are you? You missed all the fun today. You should have seen Pratap's face when Moti ran towards him to lick him. I have never seen anything funnier in my life!".
Pratap stood at the side, glaring at Karan, slightly embarrassed.
"Yeah, but Pratap described it to me as if it was a terror attack by wolves. Found anything new yet?" Ishar asked.
Gargi handed him over a file and said, "Nothing weird as of now. Me and Aniket have been scanning the news and computers."
Aniket looked at her with a shocked expression. After a moment, he said, "Nothing weird?! The singer- Hardeep just decided to retire. The CEO of WeaponR bought 50 high-range missiles. And half of the roof fell down last night. Everything weird is going on!".
Everybody, even Moti, rolled their eyes at his melodramatic blabber. Ishar sat down, ready for another day of work. 3 hours later, after some monitoring, some pointless fights, more monitoring and more useless bickering, everything ended when Gargi got irritated and chucked one of her heels at Aniket and Karan, who were arguing like children.
Ishar waited silently for his coffee to fill up, mentally laughing.
He had just taken the first wonderful sip of his much needed coffee, when his phone began to ring.
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Ishar glanced at the caller ID and for one second, one time-stopping second, his heart froze.