The book is an attempt at understanding the enormity of Mumbai 26/11. India has seen serious assaults on its democratic institutions – including on the Red Fort and its Parliament – but 26/11 was vastly different in both its intent and its intensity. The ten-member fidayeen squad that sneaked in via the sea route from Karachi, all the way to Mumbai was distinctly different from any other. Mumbai's attackers had clearly been trained well; the conspiracy had been in the making for close to a year; ten of the thirty-two who had been trained were handpicked for Mission Mumbai and the planning was as detailed as it was lethal. Several chapters in the book take a long, hard, even despairing look at how terror unfolded, step by step for over sixty long hours as India was held hostage. The chapters contain hitherto unpublished information on how the operation was planned and executed. Well-known journalists Ashish Khetan and Rahul Shivshankar have painstakingly reconstructed the horror at the three main target sites: hotels Taj and Oberoi and Nariman House and all three chapters give crucial insights into the terrorists' modus operandi, hair-raising conversations between the attackers and their handlers in Pakistan and the fight back–the almost impossible manner in which the National Security Guards got down to the task of pinning the terrorists down, even as they groped in the dark without too much help from other agencies who had begun intercepting the calls being made between Mumbai and Pakistan. The book also details the intelligence failures, critical failures that are in urgent need of redress. Another chapter tracks the story back to Muridke, the infamous address just outside Lahore, where the Lashkar-e-Toiba is headquartered and where Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist was trained for the Mumbai attack.
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