A drone strike in Pakistan kills Fathima Khan's brother. Grief hardens into purpose, and purpose becomes a plan: detonate a nuclear device at the centre of Delhi, timed to kill the visiting US Secretary of State. Fathima's unlikely partner is a retired ISI major who has his own reasons to want the operation to succeed. The clock starts running from the moment the weapon crosses the border.
Set against Fathima in a race neither can afford to lose is Radha Mehra, a rising officer in India's Intelligence Bureau. When a fragmentary intelligence report about a nuclear threat reaches her desk, she has only the information she can wring from reluctant sources, a hostile timeline, and her own instincts to go on. Soumitra Kandpal moves the action between the mountains of Kashmir and the streets of Delhi, keeping both women fully in view — the operative who wants the city to burn and the officer who will not let it.
COUNTDOWN works because it takes its villain seriously. Fathima Khan is not a cartoon; her grief is the engine of the plot, and that makes Radha's mission feel genuinely precarious from start to finish.
It starts with a drone strike in Pakistan. Will it end with a nuclear attack in Delhi? When her brother is killed in a drone strike Fathima Khan is incensed. She teams with a retired major of the ISI to take revenge against the Americans and the Indians who are responsible for her brother's untimely death. Her plan-A nuclear attack in the heart of Delhi to devastate the capital of India and kill the visiting US secretary of state. Radha Mehra is a rising star in the Intelligence Bureau. When an intelligence input about a nuclear threat to Delhi is received, she must use all her wits and intelligence to find the bomb before the clock countdowns to zero. An edge-of-the-seat thriller which takes you from mountains of Kashmir to the streets of Delhi as Radha Mehra battles to stop an apocalypse.
