Line of Control (33 page)

    At least, what was left of it.

    Mike Rodgers looked at the unit in his gloved hand. The faceplate was shattered. Yellow and green wires were sticking up from the cracked plastic. Several shards of black casing along with broken chips were rattling in the bottom of the radio. The unit must have been damaged when Rodgers's right side collided with the ledge.

    Rodgers glanced at the dead striker's equipment vest. The radio pouch was underwater. Even if he took off his uniform to keep it dry and retrieved the radio, it was not likely to work. He looked down river at the tangled parachutes of the other two Strikers. The partly inflated canopies were rolling back and forth in the brisk wind. The bodies beyond were on the narrow, rocky stretch of dry land on his side of the river. Rodgers jogged toward them. His right side and his leg hurt but he refused to let that slow him down.

    Private Terry Newmeyer and Corporal Pat Prementine lay inert at the other end of the chutes. Newmeyer was on his right side. Rodgers gently rolled him to his back. His uniform and cheek were soaked with thick, nearly frozen blood. Like his body, Newmeyer's radio was crushed. It looked as if it had caught a piece of shrapnel. The general gave the dead man's shoulder a gentle pat then moved over to Prementine.

    The corporal was sprawled on his back. One eye was shut, the other was half-open. Prementine's left arm was lying across his chest, the right was twisted beneath him. But his radio seemed intact. Removing it from the pouch, Rodgers turned toward the valley wall. As he walked toward the cliff, the general switched the radio on. The red light on the top right corner glowed. At least something else in this goddamn valley was still alive, Rodgers thought bitterly.

    The general raised the radio to his lips. He pressed "speak."

    And he hoped the Indian army was not monitoring this frequency.

    

    The Great Himalaya Range Thursday, 5:41 p. m.

    Brett August and William Musicant had begun moving southward along the plateau. A fierce, cold wind was blowing toward them as the air cooled and the thermal currents stopped rising. The men had to put their goggles back on to keep their eyes from tearing as they worked their way toward the ledge some four hundred meters ahead. According to the NRO, that was the northern artery of the same ledge the Pakistani cell was traveling on.

    The colonel halted when the TAC-SAT beeped. He crouched and picked up the receiver. It was Bob Herbert.

    The intelligence chief instructed the men to wait where they were.

    "What's going on?" August asked.

    "There's a chance the cell may have divided," Herbert informed him.

    "The group that's coming toward you may be bait to draw the Indian soldiers to the northwest." "That would make sense," August said.

    "Yes, but we don't want you to be caught in the middle of that," Herbert said.

    "There's also a chance that there may have been a struggle of some kind.

    We just don't know. We want you to proceed to a forward point that you can defend and then wait there." "Understood," August said. The point where the plateau narrowed would be ideal for that.

    "Paul has asked Stephen Viens to have a look around the area northeast of the plateau," Herbert went on.

    "We have reason to believe the rest of the cell may be headed that way."

    "That's where Mike went down," August said.

    "I know," Herbert said.

    "Paul's thinking is if we can locate Mike he can help us find the branch cell-" A firm, low, intermittent beep began to sound in a pocket of August's equipment vest.

    "Bob, hold on!" August interrupted.

    "I've got an incoming point-to-point radio transmission."

    "Careful, Brett." Herbert said.

    The colonel set the phone down. He plucked his radio from the equipment vest and punched it on. He would not let himself hope that it was a Striker. More likely it was someone who'd found one of the radios or an Indian army communications officer cutting into their frequency.

    "Atom," August said. That was the code name he had selected. It was derived from the first initial of his last name.

    The Strikers used code names when they were uncertain about the origin of a call. If any of them were taken prisoner and forced to communicate they would use a backup code name based on the initial of their first name.

    "Atom, it's Reptile," the caller said.

    August did not feel the wind or the cold. The world that had felt so dead suddenly had a faint pulse.

    "Are you okay?" August asked.

    "Yeah," Rodgers replied.

    "But I'm the only one. You?"

    "Midnight and I are fine," he replied. As he was speaking, August pulled the area map from a vest pocket. These were specially marked with coded grids. He laid it on the ground and stepped on one end while he held the other.

    "Do you have your map?" August asked.

    "Getting it now," Rodgers said.

    "I'm at 37-49."

    "Three-seven-four-nine," August repeated.

    "I copy that.

    Are you secure at that location?"

    "I seem to be," Rodgers replied.

    "Very good," August said.

    "I'm going to relay that information home. We may have new instructions."

    "Understood," Rodgers said.

    Colonel August set the radio on the map and picked up the TAC-SAT receiver. As he did he gave Musicant a thumbs-up. The medic smiled tightly. But at least it was a smile.

    "Bob, it was Mike," August said.

    "He's safe in the valley, about three miles from the foot of the glacier."

    "Thank you, Lord," Herbert said.

    "Other survivors?"

    "Negative," August told him.

    "I see. All right. Colonel," Herbert said.

    "Set up your perimeter, hang tight, and tell Mike to do the same. I'll pass the update to Paul."

    "Bob, keep in mind that there is some very rough terrain out here and it's going to get dark and cold pretty fast," August said.

    "If we're going to send Mike on any search and-recon missions, he's only got another forty minutes or so of visibility."

    "I'm aware of the situation," Herbert said.

    "Tell him to get a good look at the landscape. We'll get back to you ASAP."

    August hung up the TAC-SAT and briefed Rodgers. The general was his usual stoic self.

    "I'll be okay down here," Rodgers replied.

    "If I have to move north it's a pretty straight shot to the glacier.

    I'll just follow the river."

    "Good. Is your suit intact?" August asked.

    "Yes," Rodgers replied.

    "There's only one thing I need.

    It's probably the same thing you need."

    "What's that?" August asked.

    Rodgers replied, "To find whoever sold us out and make them regret it."

    

    Washington, D. C. Thursday, 8:30 a. m.

    Paul Hood was on the phone with Senator Barbara Fox when the interoffice line beeped.

    Now that the mission was beyond the point of recall, and politics would not get in the way of international security, Hood briefed the senator on the status of Striker and its mission.

    Several years before, the senator had lost her own teenage daughter in a brutal murder in Paris. Hood had expected her to respond with compassion and to give her support to the personnel who were still in the field.

    She did not. The senator was furious.

    "Op-Center took too much responsibility in this operation," the woman charged.

    "The other intelligence agencies should have been involved to a much greater extent." "Senator, I told the CIOC that we have a crisis requiring immediate attention," Hood said.

    "I said we were involving the NRO and the NSA to the extent that time and onsite manpower permitted. You did not object to our handling of this at that time."

    "You did not outline the specifics of the danger," she replied, "only the gravity of the threat."

    "We did not know the specifics until we were in the middle of this,"

    Hood pointed out.

    "Which is exactly my point," she replied.

    "You sent resources into this situation without adequate intelligence.

    And I mean that in every sense of the word, Mr. Hood."

    The interoffice line beeped again.

    "Do you want me to pull the remaining assets out?" Hood asked the senator. Hell, he thought. If she was going to criticize his judgment he might as well leave the rest of the mission in her hands.

    "Is there another way of resolving the crisis?" she asked.

    "Not that we've come up with," Hood replied.

    "Then unfortunately we are married to the scenario you've mapped out," the senator said.

    Of course. Hood thought. It was now a no-lose situation for the politician. If it worked she would grab the credit for involving the CIOC at this juncture, for saving the lives of the rest of the Strikers as well as countless Indians and Pakistanis.

    If the mission failed Hood would take the full hit.

    This was not the first crisis the two had been through together.

    But it was the first one of this magnitude and with this high a price tag. Hood was disappointed that she was looking for a scapegoat instead of a solution.

    Or maybe he was the one looking for someone to blame, he thought. What if the senator was right? What if he had fast-tracked this operation simply because Striker was enroute and it seemed relatively risk-free at the onset? Maybe Hood should have pulled the plug when he learned how risky the jump itself would be. Maybe he had let himself become a prisoner to the ticking clock he feared instead of the things he knew for certain.

    The interoffice line beeped a third time.

    Years before. Chad Malcolm, the retiring mayor of Los Angeles, gave Hood some of the best advice he had ever received. Malcolm had said that what any good leader did was take information in, process it, and still react with his gut.

    "Just like the human body," the mayor had said.

    "Goes in through the top and out through the bottom. Any other way just isn't natural."

    Senator Fox informed Hood that the CIOC would take up this "fiasco" in an emergency session. Hood did not have anything else to say. He clicked the senator off and took the call.

    "Yes?" Hood said.

    "Paul, we've got him," Herbert said.

    "Brett spoke with Mike."

    "Is he okay?" Hood asked.

    "He's fine," Herbert replied.

    "He landed in the valley at the foot of the plateau."

    "Bob, thank you." Hood wanted to shout or weep or possibly both. He settled for a deep sigh and a grateful smile.

    "While I was waiting for you to pick up the phone I called Viens,"

    Herbert told him.

    "Instead of searching for Mike I've got him looking to see if the cell broke off. The way I read my map, there's a point between where Ron Friday joined the cell and where Colonel August is now that would have been perfect for the Pakistani group to split. If one team headed straight toward Pakistan, they would have had a relatively short distance of about nine or ten miles to cross. The two barriers they would face there were the line of control and the Siachin Glacier. But if Indian soldiers have been moved from the LOC to this new forward line, that would leave the border relatively clear."

    "Which makes the glacier the big impediment," Hood said.

    "Right. But that makes stamina instead of greater numbers the big obstacle," Herbert pointed out.

    "Under the circumstances, that's the challenge I'd choose to face."

    "I agree," Hood said.

    "The good news is, Mike is at the foot of the glacier," Herbert went on.

    "If we find a second group of Pakistanis, he has a good shot at intercepting them."

    Hood brought up the map on his computer. He studied it for a moment.

    "Who's in touch with Mike?" "Brett is," Herbert said.

    "Bob, we're going to have to have Mike move out of the valley now," Hood said.

    "Whoa," Herbert said.

    "You want him on the glacier before we know for sure that the Pakistanis are even there?"

    "We don't have a choice," Hood replied.

    "We do," Herbert protested.

    "First, we find the cell. Second, if they exist, we see which way they're going. If they're coming toward the valley, and we've sent him up the glacier, we'd be committing him to some pretty unfriendly terrain for nothing."

    "I'm looking at the relief map of the region," Hood said.

    "They have to take the glacier. The valley route adds another twelve miles or so to the trek."

    "Twelve relatively flat, easy miles," Herbert added.

    "Listen to me, Paul. That glacier is over eighteen thousand feet high."

    "I see that."

    "The cell was seven thousand, three hundred feet up in the mountains when Friday caught up with them," Herbert went on.

    "They would have to be out of their minds to go up when they could go down to a valley that's just two thousand feet above sea level."

    "Certainly the Indian army would assume that," Hood said.

    "Maybe," Herbert said.

    "No, they'd have to," Hood insisted.

    "Think about it. If your manpower were depleted at the LOC would you reinforce the valley exit or the glacier? Especially if you thought the cell was moving in another direction altogether?"