Crimson valleys

[king of cochin]

OOC: Continued from [url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=90657&view=findpost&p=2638483"]here[/url].

IC:
The old sheep herder was singing an ancient folk song to amuse himself and his two grandsons as they kept watch over their herd of sheep now grazing over this green grassy patch on one of the ledges of the valley. With a magnificent view of the valley and the now abandonment trail to Kalimpong this is one of his favorite grazing areas. Enjoying the light breeze and warm sunrays drenching him from behind some light clouds the old man is slightly drowsing when one of his grandsons wake him up, "Grandpa, Grandpa, who are all those people with so many ponies?"

For a long time since the opening of the highways to the East, this pass had not seen much caravans. Did they start them up again? Perhaps he could do some trading with them. It has been a long time since he went to the markets of Kalimpong. Perhaps a sack of tea leaves for a sheep or two?

Thinking like this the old man started climbing down the mountain ledge where his sheeps and grandsons were and started hailing the caravan. However something seemed amiss. They were in awful lot of hurry, definitely a bad thing while travelling through these treacherous passes and also seemed to have a lot of stretchers tied to some ponies indicating injured people. And what is it that they are now pulling from their backs and leveling at him?

The realization suddenly kicked in and the old man turned back to his grandsons still sheltered by the rocky ledge, "Run! Run back to the village! Tell your father that there are armed bandits here! Go , go faaa" At that moment however a hail of bullets fired at the old man by the people of the caravan found their target and the old man crumpled down to his death atop the very mountains he had roamed since his childhood. His grandsons, already well versed in the maze of trails known to the sheep herders ran on towards their village, the horror of their grandpa's death vividly etched in their young minds but inured as they are by their harsh and spartan lifestyle, they knew well enough to hide their own travails for the time being and fulfill the last commands of their beloved grandfather. Perhaps his father, a constable in the local police station could avenge the death of their grandfather.

[king of cochin]

The revolutionary insurgency in Bengal and Sri Lanka had failed prematurely due to the massive crackdown by the Sri Lankan forces but the excellent escape mechanisms set up by Guo Zhong enabled a large number of cadre from Bengal to escape via Kalimpong. The lax border security which enabled the influx of material now enabled the rapid evacuation of the injured comrades before Sri Lankans and Kochiites closed off the border. However the large number of injured meant that more pack animals were needed and no more could stealth ue to small size be depended. The ancient trails were however hardly used and Guo decided to carry on.

However the incident of the sheep grazer ruined everything. These pastoral nomads of Tibet have traditionally hated Communists ever since the ghastly rule of the first People's Republic of China in Tibet. They can all be assumed to be monarchists supporting the Cochin govt. Thus no overt activism could ever be attempted in Tibet. Guo had planned to take the injured comrades to their farms where they could secretly be treated by doctors amongst their ranks and then slowly be explained away as new employees hired from Bengal. The forced march over the passes was inevitable and there was no way to easily hide the injured or the weapons brought by the cadre. As he watched the old man crumble through his gunsight, Guo had no remorse for the death of the old man, but he was worried about the loss of secrecy.

Making extreme haste the caravan carried on towards the base camp at Guo's own large farmhouse and estate near Kangmar where medical teams were waiting to treat his injured comrades. His estate is also the principal armory for the ACLF in Tibet from where the weapons and men were distributed in Tibet and Bengal. His estate had around 300 odd employees most of whom were his fellow comrades. While Guo had no pretence of being able to survive if the Cochin Police detected his Communist ideology he hoped to make a break for the United Federation of the East to the North and East of Tibet who being one of the world's foremost communist sympathizers could be expected to give him and his comrades asylum. Though he had yet to initiate any contact with authorities in UFE had created a network of safe houses from his estate till the UFE border region each belonging to Communists in hiding. If worst comes to worst ACLF would have to escape and hope to continue the revolution at a later date.

Chiding himself for these defeatist thoughts Guo Zhong prodded his horse to greater speed while calling upon the rest of the caravan to speed up their pace.

[king of cochin]

There are some people exceptionally brilliant at what their jobs but this very expertise denying them advancement in career. Col. Kyung Haneul was one such person. A superb investigator, a veritable bloodhound in seeking out and rooting out insurgents and terrorists, she is one of the best detectives in the Central Bureau of Investigation. What gave her the edge in this particular case was her rabid hatred for communism. Hailing from a Korean family, her parents had sent her off to live with relatives in Bishkek so that at least she could escape from the horrors of living in Communist North Korea. Learning of the death of her parents due to starvation during a particularly gruesome famine in North Korea had only intensified her hatred for Communism.

Having made her bones in the anti communist crackdowns in Xinjiang and Tibet, she had rose to her prominence in the insurgency crackdown in India. Leading a team of ace investigators Col. Haneul rose up the hierarchy winning laurels in every single case assigned to her since the matching of her expertise and passion led her to go to unnatural extents to pursue her leads. Absolutely ruthless she had grudgingly earned the nickname of “Bloody Dragon” amongst her fellow investigators for the extents to which she went to follow the leads. She had no qualms in employing of third degree and had at several times used torture and inhumane intimidation to reduce the most hardened of communist criminals cringing in fear after confessing everything they ever knew from their brains. The final destruction of Communism from India was her crowning triumph as also undoing. Her reputation and records of ruthless and inhumane investigation meant that she would never be considered for promotion to Directors grade or Brigadier General but she was also such a skilled investigator that she could not just be laid off. Thus Col. Kyung Haneul was remaining in a state of limbo occasionally handling some high sensitivity criminal cases across the country and lecturing at various Royal Cochin Police Force training colleges when the case from Yadong was assigned to her.

Sgt. Chogyal Dorje was enjoying a hot cup of tea with fresh yak milk after returning from the Station when he saw his sons running in from a distance. Usually when they are off with his father for sheep herding they are usually gone for a week or two. It has only been three days since they had left. While looking for his father to show up Chogyal was filled with an uncertain apprehension at the grave looks on his sons’ faces.

Half an hour later Chogyal had raced off to the station on his Yamaha motorbike while also instructing his wife to call his brothers and cousins scattered in farms in the nearby villages to gather a posse to collect his father’s body. Alerting the Lieutenant who is the inspector of the station he also got the RCPF machinery moving. While Tibetans of these regions are no strangers to deaths due to accidents or as victims to their harsh landscape, murders are extremely rare. A murder with guns even more so. Sgt. Dorje had read updates about the short lived Communist insurgency in Bengal and they had even discussed the possibility of them trying to cross into Cochin.

With his sons acting as guides Sgt. Dorje had located his father’s body within a day and a quarantine zone established in the environs. The numerous bullet shells strewn along the trail had also confirmed suspicion of insurgents using the trail. The possibility of large number of armed insurgents on the loose kicked the issue from a simple murder of a sheep herder to a National Security problem and hence the investigators from CBI were sent.

Col. Kyung Haneul saw in the eyes of these rustic Tibetans the same anger and hatred that had several times conquered her eyes when she remembered the communists who caused the death of her parents. The softer side of the Bloody Dragon was seen by only very few people, the wife of Raman Nair, the engineer ambushed by Communists in Betul, the daughter of Peter Johnson, the ambulance driver killed by rioters in Calcutta, fellow victims of the Communist scourge. While instructing her junior officers she saw out of the corner of her eyes the two little boys who were standing near the spot where their grandfather was shot down their demeanor that of absolute stoicism, the tears flowing from their eyes failing to soften their grim hatred of the murderers who took their beloved Grandpa from them. Any person or ideology who finds justification in bringing such demeanor in little children deserves nothing but destruction. Reaffirming her own beliefs Col. Haneul sent out her teams. While one small team along with local police units would retrace the trail back to Bengal she would lead a larger team in finding the track of the insurgents. She knew that it was a caravan of a few score mules, there were at least a hundred persons in the caravan. The signs of that were obvious. The occasionally abandoned bloodied bandages also indicated wounded amongst them. The local Border Guards brigade had assigned one Bell 212 for her use and as her team followed the trail on their own horses she took off in the helicopter do reconnoiter the area. The Superintendent of Police of Tibet had kept the reserve Provincial SWAT force earmarked for her use and they were waiting at Shigatse waiting for her command. The Bloody Dragon is on the hunt.

[Triyun]

OOC: About those safehouses. You do realize you sealed the border when I annexed Yunnan and never said you reopened anything other than that temporary logistical corridor?

[king of cochin]

[quote name='Triyun' timestamp='1298646974' post='2644751']
OOC: About those safehouses. You do realize you sealed the border when I annexed Yunnan and never said you reopened anything other than that temporary logistical corridor?
[/quote]

OOC: Of course. These safehouses are in areas open to civilians only. The closed borders remain closed. The real RP would happen in my closed areas,

[king of cochin]

Guo Zhong was settling in his estate near Kangmar and tending to his comrades when the postman came to the estate. The call on his cell phone about a registered mail caused Guo to proceed to his bungalow on his horse. Usual mails would be received by his gatekeeper himself but since registered mail requires the official signature of the addressee along with his or her Citizens’ Representation ID Card, Guo had to collect it himself.

As he grabbed the pen and the pad with the signing slip and card RFID reader he noticed fleetingly that the postman was much too trim looking and had a sharp eye. The CBI Investigator who had been disguised as a postman also took in the various bruises on the man’s visage which seemed indicative of a rough trek done very recently. Col. Kyung Haneul had plotted the course of the caravans through the ancient mountain pass and through a subtle and intermittently extreme investigation had finally figured out the Zhong Estate as a likely hold out. Col. Haneul had secured from Ministry of Interior and the NRA full plot diagrams and terrain maps of the estate.

The doubt regarding the Zhong estate and its owner Guo Zhong increased with the report from the undercover investigator. From all indications so far a considerable number of people were employed or living in the Zhong Estate. All the police stations in the environs were alerted for the possibility of an encounter and Col. Kyung Haneul prepared to finish the investigation. Final proof was yet to be ascertained that this was in fact a hideout of Communist rebels who had escaped from Sri Lanka.

To ascertain this, a covert intelligence operation was mounted by Col. Kyung herself and two of her SWAT trained co-investigators. Slipping into the estate compound at dark they walked through paths monitored to be unused at night and scouted around the various buildings of the estate. They found that all of temporary employees of the estate were staying in one large outhouse while the other outhouse seemed to have very few employees going in and out of it, albeit carrying heavy bundles of materials. Covert reconnaissance through some ajar windows and planks also showed a sight of several beds lying as if in a hospital and several bloodied bandages discarded for incineration in a bundle.

This was all the indicators that Col. Kyung was looking forward to. Reaching back to the local police station used as her base camp for investigation she informed the CBI authorities and local Police officials that the case was all but solved. It was now up to the local police officers to arrest the Estate owner and his staff for interrogation and later trial.

However unknown to Col. Kyung Haneul, Guo Zhong had an informer at the police station in the form of the boy friend of one of the local Constables. Upon receiving the information from this informer Guo immediately alerted his comrades for escape. Most of the escaped Communists from Bengal were already convalescing and thus able to move. Guo started preparations for movement within two days.

[king of cochin]

The plan was for Guo Zhong and his comrades to slip away in batches of ten towards the town of Kangmar over the next few days. Midway to Kangmar there is a truck resting station where Guo Zhong would have arranged for some container trucks in whose containers the Communists would escape towards the UFE border. The truck drivers were all bribed individually by Guo the very day after the refugees arrived at his estate. Guo was finalizing location of the first truck driver when he heard the sound of an approaching car. Looking out through the windows he saw the unmistakable blinking lights of a Police Jeep.

He never expected the Police to come around this fast. After all investigation was completed only yesterday evening! Surely the bureaucratic system of Cochin is not this fast! Come what may Guo decided to meet with the Police. He also indicated two of his servants to arm themselves and surreptitiously provide cover for him.

Col. Kyung Haneul watched from distance with her binoculars as the Sub Inspector of the local Police Station approached the house. Despite her work being over, she had insisted on watching the communist criminals being arrested and thus was permitted to look on from a distance. She could not hear the words exchanged since the Inspector had not switched on his shoulder borne wireless set but could make out the face of the house owner getting visibly angry as the Inspector read out the arrest warrant. As he turned to order his Constables to search the house the Inspector could not see it, but Col. Haneul saw in vivid horror the motion Guo Zhong made at which two bursts of flames shot out from two of the windows flanking the entrance. Yet more bursts ensured the deaths of the Inspector and the three constables. The driver of the jeep reversed the vehicle in panic but yet another burst of gunfire shattered the windshield into a bloodied maze.

Communists are generally not very known for sanctity paid to a human life let along the life of a police officer. The cold blooded massacre of the police team who were sent to arrest and interrogate the Communist rebels unleashed a chain of events. Assuming command as the senior most officer in the locality Col. Haneul ordered the remaining local police constables to close off all roads and called in urgent reinforcements, the Provincial SWAT at Shigatse who would fly in within 2 hours and more Armed Police reinforcements were called in.

The Border Guard Bell212 was used by a local police officer to blare out a warning over the estate informing the inhabitants to proceed peacefully to the police roadblocks in front of the estate entrance. A few workers of the estate, working outside the main buildings ran out on hearing the announcements but the police could also see through their field glasses bursts of fire emanating from various outhouses and barns where apparently other innocent workers were being killed by the communists. As the helicopter veered over the gap between two barns at seeing a large group of people being shot down a shoulder launched surface to air missile was fired at the helicopter. The well trained Border Guards aviator jerked and wove his way out of the incoming missile while launching the meager counter measures he had but still had the missile impact at the bottom rear fuselage where the missile blew off the rear landing wheels. The Bell 212 managed to crash land safely outside the estate but the incident proved the presence of heavy weapons with the rebels.

Amongst those workers who escaped out from the estate, an old woman who worked as a sheep herder, called in panic to her son who is working at Shigatse. The son heard out the sob filled and increasingly incoherent account from his mother and after comforting her and assuring he would be back at Kangmar by nightfall cut the call and ran up to his boss’s cubicle. The Tibetan Times employee immediately placed a call to the branch office at Kangmar alerting of a possible large scale siege drama. The camaraderie and tough competition between journalists ensured that within an hour the news spread like wildfire fueled by intrigue and treachery which is intermittent in high stakes TRP driven media journalism. Within 4 hours of the incoherent call placed by a mother to her son, the first TV truck arrived outside the police cordons in the Zhong Estate, first of several scores of news truck who raced in to cover a sensitive national security incident before the Police and Ministry of Interior drove them away.

Watching live feed of the media coverage from a TV Guo Zhong was smiling at this inadvertent stroke of luck. If he played it right this was a chance to publicly humiliate the Cochin Government in front of the world media before media blackout was placed. He and his comrades have set up excellent defenses in all the buildings with several interlocking fields of fire and efficient wireless communications between various groups. It would be very difficult for the Cochin Police to dislodge them and dislodge them they will but not without receiving due embarrassment themselves. Guo knew that there is no more escape for them, only death, but he could with the hostages he had with him ensure that the price paid by Cochin would be quite large too.

As Guo Zhong was laughing silently at this stroke of luck, he would be shocked if he knew that instead of fretting about the publicizing of this incident, the King of Cochin is also smiling about this.

[kitex]

***Private message to the RCDF****

Dear RCDF,

We would like to send over a research associate to document the ongoing struggle in your nation.


Sincerely,

The Global Research Team

[kitex]

Gary Hanson landed in Cochin and through his connections, went to the Kangmar state and introduced himself.

Edited March 21, 2011 by kitex