See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer
Authors: Robert Baer
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flock to separate a lamb. Indian military officers were a segregated class, forbidden to go to cocktail parties that foreigners attended or to join the same clubs foreigners did. When they did meet a foreigner, they were supposed to report it immediately. While most things in India were inefficient, the government’s effort to isolate its military officers from foreign contact wasn’t.
I soon discovered that a back window had been accidentally left open. Indian military officers loved to hunt. On weekends and on vacation, they would go up to the Punjab to shoot partridge and sometimes a large Indian deer called a Blue Bull. I figured by simply reinventing myself into an avid hunter, I could run into some of them.
On my first vacation back to the US , I bought a Browning double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun and a crate of shells. To be as unobtrusive as possible, I picked up a surplus Indian-made military jeep on my return, one modeled on the original 1942 World War II Willy’s. It was in fantastic condition, including its original camouflage paint. The owner told me it had been decommissioned after the 1971 Pakistan war, but it looked newer than that to me. Sorting out the registration took forever, but I went ahead and slapped some civilian plates on it, thinking no one would notice, and then I finagled a weekend invitation to a partridge hunt.
We started about nine in the morning, when the sun was up and the grass dry. To flush the partridge from the high corn where they fed, we mustered field hands to walk through and beat the stalks with sticks, yelling, ‘Titah, titah,’ Punjabi for ‘partridge.’ By mid afternoon we had bagged a good hundred of them. At night, while we sat around a bonfire in the courtyard, the cook roasted a dozen for dinner.
On my fourth trip to the Punjab, I met a Sikh who looked to be about thirty-five. He introduced himself as Major Singh and said he was the cousin of the landlord who owned the farm we were hunting on. I kept away from any sensitive subjects - hunting would do. Nor did I try to set up a follow-on meeting. I knew if I came back to his cousin’s farm, I would run into him again.
The next Saturday I hunted with Major Singh. Like most Indian military officers, he was a magnificent shot. I never saw him miss a bird. At the end of the day, when we were low on ammunition, he’d shoot only if he had a chance of taking down two partridges as they crisscrossed. Even then he rarely wasted a shot. That night around the bonfire we talked for several hours about India and the US He loved America. He thought it was a mistake for India to ally with the Soviet Union, both for ideological reasons and because Soviet military equipment was vastly inferior to America’s. His secret desire, he told me, was to attend staff college in the US We turned in about midnight.
That fall Singh and I spent almost every weekend together. We became friends. I eventually offered to buy an Italian shotgun for him, a magnificent weapon not for sale in India. When I presented it to him several weeks later, he hugged me. At our next meeting Singh brought some money to pay me back. I refused, telling him it was a gift and it would be an insult to accept money for it. He hemmed and hawed before accepting. The hook was set.
Worried that people would notice how much time we were spending together, I started taking Singh out to hunt during the week. There wasn’t time to go deep into the Punjab, but good partridge could be found closer to Delhi.
We were driving back into town one evening along a side road, to avoid the traffic on the Grand Trunk Road, the main highway that links Calcutta in the east to Kabul, Afghanistan, in the west (it runs 1, 600 miles diagonally across India) when Singh suddenly shouted,’ Stop!’ At first I thought there was something in the road, but as soon as I stopped the car, Singh jumped out, clutching his new shotgun, ran across the road, and hopped over a low stone wall. About
I soon discovered that a back window had been accidentally left open. Indian military officers loved to hunt. On weekends and on vacation, they would go up to the Punjab to shoot partridge and sometimes a large Indian deer called a Blue Bull. I figured by simply reinventing myself into an avid hunter, I could run into some of them.
On my first vacation back to the US , I bought a Browning double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun and a crate of shells. To be as unobtrusive as possible, I picked up a surplus Indian-made military jeep on my return, one modeled on the original 1942 World War II Willy’s. It was in fantastic condition, including its original camouflage paint. The owner told me it had been decommissioned after the 1971 Pakistan war, but it looked newer than that to me. Sorting out the registration took forever, but I went ahead and slapped some civilian plates on it, thinking no one would notice, and then I finagled a weekend invitation to a partridge hunt.
We started about nine in the morning, when the sun was up and the grass dry. To flush the partridge from the high corn where they fed, we mustered field hands to walk through and beat the stalks with sticks, yelling, ‘Titah, titah,’ Punjabi for ‘partridge.’ By mid afternoon we had bagged a good hundred of them. At night, while we sat around a bonfire in the courtyard, the cook roasted a dozen for dinner.
On my fourth trip to the Punjab, I met a Sikh who looked to be about thirty-five. He introduced himself as Major Singh and said he was the cousin of the landlord who owned the farm we were hunting on. I kept away from any sensitive subjects - hunting would do. Nor did I try to set up a follow-on meeting. I knew if I came back to his cousin’s farm, I would run into him again.
The next Saturday I hunted with Major Singh. Like most Indian military officers, he was a magnificent shot. I never saw him miss a bird. At the end of the day, when we were low on ammunition, he’d shoot only if he had a chance of taking down two partridges as they crisscrossed. Even then he rarely wasted a shot. That night around the bonfire we talked for several hours about India and the US He loved America. He thought it was a mistake for India to ally with the Soviet Union, both for ideological reasons and because Soviet military equipment was vastly inferior to America’s. His secret desire, he told me, was to attend staff college in the US We turned in about midnight.
That fall Singh and I spent almost every weekend together. We became friends. I eventually offered to buy an Italian shotgun for him, a magnificent weapon not for sale in India. When I presented it to him several weeks later, he hugged me. At our next meeting Singh brought some money to pay me back. I refused, telling him it was a gift and it would be an insult to accept money for it. He hemmed and hawed before accepting. The hook was set.
Worried that people would notice how much time we were spending together, I started taking Singh out to hunt during the week. There wasn’t time to go deep into the Punjab, but good partridge could be found closer to Delhi.
We were driving back into town one evening along a side road, to avoid the traffic on the Grand Trunk Road, the main highway that links Calcutta in the east to Kabul, Afghanistan, in the west (it runs 1, 600 miles diagonally across India) when Singh suddenly shouted,’ Stop!’ At first I thought there was something in the road, but as soon as I stopped the car, Singh jumped out, clutching his new shotgun, ran across the road, and hopped over a low stone wall. About
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