Boom! Boom! Boom!
Gunshots shattered the silence of the mountains—a sound that had become all too familiar these days. The volunteers of the Mizo National Front, the armed wing of a nation fighting for its soul, had risen. They targeted the enemy with precision, their morale ironclad and unwavering.
“We will fight until the last drop of blood leaves our bodies,” was the unspoken vow on every pair of lips. “No matter the strength of the enemy, we will keep Mizoram free.”
Fueled by this resolve and acting on intelligence about an incoming convoy, General Thu-Aya and his men lay in wait. They were hidden in the dense foliage overlooking the main road—a serpentine track clinging to the mountainside. The terrain was unforgiving: to one side, the hill rose steeply; to the other, a sheer drop plunged into a deep gorge. A single moment of carelessness could send a vehicle tumbling into the abyss.
The government had deployed the army to crush the rebellion, sending convoy after convoy rolling into the hills from Silchar. They were determined to suppress the uprising, but Thu-Aya was ready.
After a long, tense silence, a faint mechanical drone drifted up from the valley below. Military vans. They were still half an hour away, winding their way up the treacherous slopes, but the sound triggered a rising adrenaline in the rebels. As the drone grew into a roar, the anticipation became almost physical.
When the lead vehicle was fifty meters out—Crack!
A deafening explosion of gunfire erupted, the echoes multiplying off the canyon walls until it sounded like an entire army firing from all sides. The convoy of six or seven vans shuddered to a halt. Panic ensued. The soldiers, stunned more by the sudden noise than the impact, scrambled out of the vehicles like sparrows scattered by a hawk.
For half an hour, bullets and crude bombs rained down on the road. Then, silence returned.
The sun was dipping rapidly below the western horizon. Two vans burned fiercely in the middle of the road, casting dancing shadows against the hill where a third van leaned precariously. Bodies lay scattered across the asphalt in twisted, unnatural angles.
“Are they all finished?” Thu-Aya whispered to the man beside him. “The shooting has stopped.”
“If the bullets didn’t get them, the fall did,” the comrade replied with a grim smile. “Some jumped into the ditch in panic. If they aren’t dead, they are broken on the rocks four or five hundred meters down.”
Thu-Aya returned the smile. It was a common sight: terrified by the ambush, the soldiers often leaped blindly into the death traps of the gorges.
As twilight deepened into night, the silence of the mountains grew heavy. Like shadows, Thu-Aya and his men descended to the road. They moved quickly among the wreckage, scavenging rifles and ammunition from the fallen. Guerrilla warfare had rules: strike hard, take what you can, and vanish before reinforcements arrive.
They retreated up the secret path to a clearing in the jungle to wait for the signal to move. Thu-Aya sat down, lighting a bylo. He exhaled the smoke with deep satisfaction, the buzz of victory making him restless.
“They never expected us to hit them here,” Thu-Aya said.
“Look at how the bastards were sitting in the vans,” his comrade Jaichoanga scoffed. “Relaxed. Like they were on a pleasure trip.”
“Pleasure trip?” Bongthanga asked.
“Thinking they’d reach Aizawl, get drunk, and hunt for village girls,” Jaichoanga spat. He started to say more, but Rolkhoma interrupted darkly.
“That is their version of ‘suppressing rebellion.’ Entering a punjee, beating the men, and attacking the women.”
Thu-Aya listened, his temper flaring at the truth of it. “There isn’t a punjee near Aizawl they haven’t defiled,” he said, his voice hard. “They target our mothers, our sisters… looting their honor to satisfy their beastly lust. And yet, look at them. Cowards. From the ordinary soldier to the captain, one sudden gunshot and they fall apart.”
The conversation drifted into silence. Overhead, the stars began to twinkle, indifferent to the war below.
Suddenly, two long flashes of light cut through the distant darkness on a faraway hill.
The signal.
Thu-Aya, Bongthanga, Jaichoanga, and the rest immediately stood up. The scouts were guiding them to safety. Even if the enemy saw the lights, they would never decipher the code or know where the squad was heading. Shouldering their captured rifles, the men slipped away into the deep jungle, moving toward their secret hideout.
By the time news of the missing Aizawl security force reaches high command, General Thu-Aya and his men will be safely ensconced in their hideout. Incensed by the rebels’ audacity, the military will inevitably swarm the ambush site with overwhelming firepower, intent on total annihilation. Yet, their massive operation will end in anticlimax—like a mountain laboring to bring forth a mouse. After hours of fruitless scouring, the soldiers will realize they have been chasing shadows in the deep jungle for nothing.