A Detour to Destiny.

At 77, I’d seen my share of the world’s chaos with decades lecturing on environmental protection and water management, consulting for governments in Asia and Africa, and advising Israeli kibbutzim on irrigation. My life was a tapestry of lecture halls, dusty fields, and boardrooms. But nothing prepared me for the detour that awaited on my way to Jalandhar in Punjab, India.

It began with Eli, a former student from a kibbutz, now in his thirties, with the lean build and sharp eyes of an ex-IDF special forces soldier. He invited me to join a delegation to set up a field school for water management in Punjab. Alongside him were David, another grizzled ex-special forces man, and Adi, a 27-year-old with a quiet intensity, a veteran of the IDF’s search and rescue unit. They felt like my own kids, though their military pasts were a world apart from my academic one. After much thought, I agreed. India was familiar terrain. I’d worked there extensively, and the challenge called to me. The only way to keep young at my age is not to live my age.

We flew from Tel Aviv to New Delhi, landing in the humid embrace of the Indian capital. The Indian government, eager to impress, lodged us at the Imperial Hotel, a colonial-era gem exuding opulence. Built in 1931, its white marble corridors and palm-lined courtyards whispered of the British Raj, while its chandeliers and teak furnishings spoke of timeless luxury. Our rooms overlooked manicured gardens, and the staff, in crisp uniforms, moved with practiced grace.

That evening, we dined at the hotel’s Spice Route restaurant, a cavern of carved wood and silk tapestries. The table groaned under North Indian delicacies: buttery chicken tikka masala, its sauce rich with tomatoes and cream; spicy lamb rogan josh, fragrant with cardamom; dal makhani, slow-cooked lentils swimming in butter; and fiery paneer vindaloo that made my eyes water. Our host, a jovial official from the Ministry of Agriculture, clapped when I asked for extra chili, laughing as I savored the heat. “You handle spice like a Punjabi!” he said, raising a glass of lassi. The meal was a lavish prelude to the Spartan week ahead in Jalandhar, a bustling city in Punjab’s Doaba region, surrounded by fertile plains and crisscrossed by canals, yet plagued by water mismanagement.

The next morning, the hotel limousine, a 1950s Rolls Royce Silver Wraith, its chrome gleaming, whisked us to Indira Gandhi International Airport. The four of us (Eli, David, Adi, and I) were joined by two Indian escorts from the Ministries of Agriculture and Education, both Sikhs, Udham and Mohan. We boarded a cramped ATR-42 turboprop, its 30 seats filled with passengers in traditional Punjabi kurtas and trousers. We stood out in our jeans and T-shirts, the only foreigners aboard. Two female passengers eyed us curiously. We settled into row four, Udham and Mohan behind us, the only Sikhs on board.

The flight to Jalandhar, 280 kilometers away, was meant to take under an hour. But as we reached cruising altitude, chaos erupted. Two men in the front rows leapt up, threw off their Kurtas to reveal camouflaged military outfits, and brandishing Kalashnikovs, charged the cockpit, shoving the air-hostesses into the aisle with bone-jarring force. From the back, three more men stood, shouting in whatever language it was, waving rifles, and ordering us to lie face down in the aisles, eyes closed, hands over our heads. My heart pounded, but I signaled to Eli, David, and Adi to stay calm, my old army commander experience taking over. Their own military training showed. They were still, eyes scanning, waiting.

The cabin descended into mayhem. The hijackers screamed, their voices jagged with adrenaline, jabbing rifles at passengers who whimpered or prayed. One young man, barely 20, was yanked from his seat. A terrorist with a scarred face grabbed him by the hair, shouting out loud to us all, “This is your warning!” In a flash, a knife gleamed, and the boy’s throat was slit, blood spraying across the seats. His body crumpled as women screamed and men shouted in terror. The terrorists roared for silence, their rifles swinging wildly.

I kept my head down, calculating. An hour passed, but the plane didn’t descend. Jalandhar’s airport should’ve been close, yet we were still cruising. We were suddenly ordered to sit down, fasten our seat belts, and close the window blinds. As I lowered mine, I glimpsed two fighter jets shadowing us. Indian Air Force, perhaps? The hijackers didn’t notice, too busy snarling orders. I risked a glance at Adi, who sat next to me. She whispered, “They’re speaking Urdu.” Her Indian heritage and linguistic skills surely were an asset. Her face composed, despite the horror. The hijackers demanded our passports, and my stomach tightened. I usually travel on my Dutch passport and left my Israeli at home, but Eli, David, and Adi only had Israeli passports, a dangerous distinction. We handed our passports over without flinching, as I saw Eli’s jaw tighten.

Then they singled us out, the only four foreigners, as well as Udham and Mohan, and marched us to the front. The leader, a wiry man with a manic grin, sneered in broken English, “Jews. A nice bonus.” My blood ran cold. They turned on Udham and Mohan, violently pulled their Pagri (turban) from their heads, their long hair swirling around, and beat them savagely with rifle butts. Blood streamed from their faces as punches landed on their faces and stomachs. We were shoved into the tiny pantry, our two Sikhs’ moans echoing. The cockpit door was open, revealing one terrorist at the controls. The pilot and co-pilot lay motionless on the floor; dead or unconscious, I couldn’t tell.

Adi knelt, trying to staunch Udham’s and Mohan’s bleeding with strips of her T-shirt. The hijackers brutally grabbed the two men and stuffed them together into the bathroom, slamming the door. We hunkered down on the floor, the pantry’s walls closing in. I felt the plane descend, the vibrations rattling my bones. A rough landing threw us against each other, and I glimpsed the sign of the airport terminal through the small window of the door: Sialkot Airport International Airport. My mind raced. Sialkot was across the Indian border in Pakistan, a hub near Jammu and Kashmir. This was no random hijacking.

The plane stopped abruptly at the end of the runway. The engines switched off. The door was flung open. No stairs. We were thrown out, a drop of three meters onto the tarmac. Outside stood two unmarked trucks with green canvas covering and a jeep. There five heavily armed terrorists in fatigues waiting. They had patches on their sleeves: Two crossed Kalashnikovs and an Arabic looking script. Adi whispered, it’s Urdu “Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.” A Kashmiri terrorist group. My worst fears were confirmed.

We were herded into the trucks with 15 other passengers, the rest was left behind. The absence of airport security (police, military, or fire trucks) was chilling. This was planned, likely with full complicity of the Pakistani Army. We took off, the trucks rumbled through dense jungle, the tracks so rough my teeth rattled. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and rotting vegetation, the canopy above blotting out the stars. Branches clawed at the canvas sides of the truck, snapping with sharp cracks. The passengers sat in tense silence, some clutching each other, others staring blankly as the vehicle lurched over roots and ruts. My hands gripped the splintered wooden bench, the vibrations jarring my spine. Adi, beside me, scanned the darkness through a tear in the canvas, her eyes catching faint glints of moonlight. Eli and David sat opposite, their faces unreadable but their bodies coiled, ready. The drivers shouted in Urdu, their voices cutting through the drone of the engines, while the terrorists in the back barked orders, their rifles glinting. After an hour, the jungle grew denser, the path narrowing until the trucks slowed at a riverbank, its waters glinting like black glass under the sparse light. A crumbling, weed-choked ruin loomed ahead, its stone walls pockmarked by time and conflict, leading to a network of chambers and a vast cellar. We were shoved inside, the air thick with humidity and the stench of decay. Boxes of stale bread and a container of watery black lentil soup were tossed at us. Our rations for the time to come. The water in metal army flasks was murky, flecked with sediment, but thirst forced us to drink. The cellar, 40 degrees and suffocating, became our prison.

The four of us and oddly enough two of the passengers were later moved to a smaller, cave-like room, 20 by 10 meters, with a low ceiling and a single hole for ventilation, barely wide enough for a hand to pass through. The walls, rough-hewn stone slick with moss and condensation, seemed to close in, amplifying every sound. Drips of water, the scuttle of unseen insects, our own ragged breaths. I didn’t trust the two strangers. They could be informants. We spoke in Hebrew, confusing them. Adi dropped a bombshell: she was Mossad, embedded to investigate arms smuggling to Kashmiri terrorists, working with India’s R&AW. She revealed a tiny GPS tracker under her armpit, its faint pulse a lifeline. “They’ll find us,” she whispered calmly. “We wait.”

Days crawled by. The heat was relentless, the air heavy with sweat, filth, and the metallic tang of fear. We had no way to clean ourselves, and bowel movements were relegated to a corner under the ventilation hole, the stench unbearable, a putrid mix of waste and decay that clung to our clothes and skin. Food was scarce: more stale bread, its crusts brittle and mold-flecked; half-eaten chicken legs, greasy and cold, crawling with flies; and three bottles of sickly-sweet juice that tasted of chemicals, leaving a bitter film on our tongues. Sleep was fitful, the stone floor bruising our bones, its uneven surface digging into hips and shoulders. We took turns leaning against the walls to relieve the pain, but the dampness seeped through our clothes, chilling us despite the heat. The two passengers kept to themselves, huddling in the opposite corner, their eyes darting suspiciously whenever we whispered. We had no idea where Udham and Mohan were, their absence a gnawing void. The silence between us grew heavy, broken only by the occasional groan of the ruin above or the distant howl of a jungle creature. Adi’s calm kept us sanguine, but the weight of uncertainty pressed harder each day, our bodies weakening, our minds fraying at the edges. Adi was the youngest of us, but appeared indefatigable

On the sixth day, the ground shook. Explosions rocked the ruin, dust and debris raining from the ceiling, stinging our eyes and choking our lungs. We pressed against the walls, hearts pounding, as the stone groaned under the force of the blasts. The door burst open, and stun grenades clattered inside, their blasts deafening, flashing white-hot across our vision. A voice shouted in Hebrew, “Lie down! Cover your heads with your hands!” Then, “You’re safe.” The words cut through the ringing in my ears, a lifeline in the chaos.

Israeli commandos, faces blackened with camouflage paint, stormed in, moving with lethal precision, their silenced rifles sweeping the room. Indian commandos followed, their uniforms emblazoned with NSG patches, their guns trained on every shadow. Gunfire echoed outside, sharp and final, punctuated by the dull thuds of grenades and the screams of the terrorists caught off-guard. The operation was a blur of controlled violence. Doors kicked in, bodies hitting the ground, the air thick with cordite and dust. The terrorists didn’t stand a chance; every one of them was eliminated, their bodies strewn across the ruin, blood pooling on the ancient stones. Adi’s tracker had guided the joint rescue team, a surgical strike coordinated with R&AW, pinpointed to the ruin’s coordinates. The two passengers threw up their hands, faces pale with fear, later revealed as low-level Hizb-ul-Mujahideen operatives planted to monitor us. Udham and Mohan were never found, their fate a grim mystery, though whispers among the commandos suggested they’d been executed early on, their bodies dumped in the jungle. As the commandos secured the area, an Israeli doctor who had come along checked us for injuries, her hands steady despite the chaos. We were hustled out through a breached wall, the jungle alive with the crackle of radios and the distant roar of helicopter blades, our salvation drawing closer.

We were airlifted out, the jungle fading beneath a helicopter’s roar, its blades slicing through the humid air as we clung to each other, exhaustion and relief warring in our veins. Back in Delhi, the diplomatic fallout was fierce, a geopolitical firestorm that dominated global headlines. Pakistan denounced the operation, claiming sovereignty violations, much like the uproar after Osama bin Laden’s killing in Abbottabad. Their government accused India and Israel of orchestrating an illegal incursion, demanding UN sanctions and rallying allies to condemn the raid. India countered with evidence of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen’s ties to Pakistani intelligence, presenting intercepted communications and Adi’s intelligence on the arms smuggling network, which implicated rogue elements in Sialkot. Israel, defiant, justified the operation as a necessary rescue of its citizens, citing the hijacking as an act of terrorism. The UN Security Council convened an emergency session, but vetoes from the US and Russia stalled any resolution, leaving the region teetering on the edge of escalation. Protests erupted in Islamabad, with effigies of Indian and Israeli leaders burned in the streets, while in Delhi, nationalist rallies hailed the operation as a triumph. The media frenzy was relentless, with outlets speculating about covert deals and back-channel talks to de-escalate.

For us, the political maelstrom was a distant roar; we were safe, our detour to destiny over. Adi’s mission had exposed a smuggling network, crippling a key artery of terrorist funding, though at a cost none of us could’ve foreseen. Lives lost, alliances strained, and the Indian escorts’ fate unresolved. As I boarded a flight home, my hands still trembling, I thought of the Punjab field school we never reached. The world’s chaos had found me again but so had the resilience of those three I called my kids. We’d survived, and that was enough.