Line of Control (47 page)

    It did not escape Nanda's notice that the American had taken a moment to thank her for the work she had done. In the midst of all the turmoil and doubt, the horror of what had been and what might lie ahead, his word smelled like a single, beautiful rose.

    That was the pretty image in the young woman's mind as the ground heaved and her back grew hot beneath her clothes and the roar blew through her hands, ringing her skull from back to jaw.

    

    The Siachin Glacier Friday, 3:27 a. m.

    Rodgers did not go as far from ground zero as the others.

    He knew that the explosion would not hurt him, though it would be hot.

    But he was counting on that. His exposed fingers were numb and he was going to need them warmed to work. He went as far as the edge of the slab and sat there with his knees upraised and his face buried between them.

    He used the-insides of his knees to cover his ears. His arms were folded across his knees. He was braced for quite a bump when the grenade went off.

    Rodgers made certain that the knife was back in his equipment vest and the radio was secure in his belt before he sat down. And he leaned to his left side as much as possible.

    Hopefully, if the blast knocked Rodgers over, he would not fall on the radio.

    The in-ground explosion was even more potent than Rodgers had imagined.

    The ice beneath him rolled but did not knock Rodgers over. But the blast did take an edge of the slab off. Rodgers could hear the chunk as it whistled upward.

    The sound was shrill enough to cut through the surf-loud roar of the detonation itself. It came down somewhere to the left. Rodgers imagined the Indians initially thinking they had been attacked by a mortar shell.

    After a moment they would probably realize that the enemy had detonated another flash bang grenade.

    There were a series of lesser flashes and whiplike cracks as the grenade continued to fire. Before they died, Rodgers made his way over to the site. The explosion had cut a hole in the ice roughly four feet by four feet. Melted ice filled the excavation. Near the center was a severed cable.

    While the last embers of the grenade still burned on the edge of the hole, Rodgers flopped on his belly and grabbed the dish-side end of cable. There were three wires bundled together inside a half-inch-thick plastic cover. One of the wires was red, another was yellow, and the third was blue.

    Rodgers removed his knife and pried the red one from the others. He cut the wet edge off and quickly scored the rubber sides of the wire with the tip of the knife. As he was finishing, the light from the last embers was fading.

    "Friday, matches!" he said.

    There was no answer.

    "Friday!" he repeated.

    "He's not here!" Nanda said.

    Rodgers looked back. It was too dark to see that far. Either the NSA operative was hiding until he saw which way this went or, anticipating failure, he was making his way to the Indian side of the clearing.

    Whichever it was, Rodgers could not afford to worry about him. He laid the cable down so the exposed end was out of the melted ice. Then, moving quickly but economically, with a level of anxiety he had never before felt, Rodgers removed the map from his vest pocket. He unfolded the sheet away from the dying ember so it did not create a local breeze.

    Then he held his breath, leaned forward, and touched the edge of the map to the barely glowing thread of magnesium. He was afraid that if he touched the ember too hard it would be extinguished. Too light and the map would not feel it.

    The fate of two nations had been reduced to this. One man's handling of the first and most primitive form of technology human beings had embraced. It put forty thousand years of human development into perspective. We were still territorial carnivores huddling in dark caves.

    The paper smoked and then reddened around the edges. A moment later a small orange flame jumped triumphantly across the printed image of Kashmir. That seemed fitting.

    "Nanda, come here!" Rodgers said.

    The woman hurried over. Assuming the Indians did not move on them, the duo was safe for now. The remaining section of slab would afford them enough protection as long as they did not move from here.

    Rodgers handed Nanda the paper when she arrived. He removed his coat, set it on the ice beside the hole, and told Nanda to put the map on it.

    He said the coat would not burn but he needed to find something else that would.

    "Very quickly," he added.

    "Hold on," Nanda said.

    The young woman reached into her coat pocket and removed the small volume of Upanishad. s she always carried.

    She also removed the documents she was supposed to plant on the terrorists to help implicate them when they were captured.

    "These devotionals will save more souls than the Brahmans ever imagined," she said.

    Obviously, Nanda was experiencing some of the same spiritual and atavistic feelings Rodgers was. Or maybe they were both just exhausted.

    As the papers burned, the general withdrew the radio from the belt loop and laid it on the coat. He bent low over it.

    The radio was made of one vacuum-formed casing. Rodgers knew he would not be able to break that without risk of damaging the components he needed. Instead, he stuck the knife into the area around the recessed mouthpiece. Rodgers carefully pried that loose. The wire behind it, and the chip to which it was attached, were what he needed to access.

    Still listening for activity from across the clearing, Rodgers used the knife to fish out the chip that was attached to the mouthpiece. He could not afford to sever the chip from the unit. If he did that, the chip itself would have no power source. That power came from the battery in the radio, not from the battery behind the satellite dish.

    He had to make sure he cut the right one to splice. He pulled the mouthpiece out as far as it could go and tilted the opening toward the light. Twenty years ago, this would have been a hopeless task. Radios then were crammed with transistors and wires that were impossible to read. The inside of this radio was relatively clean and open, just a few chips and wires.

    Rodgers saw the battery and the wire that hooked the microchip and mouthpiece to it. The other wire, the one that led to the radio antenna, was the one he needed to cut.

    Carefully placing the radio back on the coat, Rodgers used the knife to slice that wire as close to the radio antenna as possible. That would give him about two inches of wire to work with.

    Crouching and using the tip of his boot as a cutting surface, Rodgers scored and stripped that remaining piece of wire. Then he picked up the scored cable from the satellite dish. He used his fingernails to chip the plastic casing away.

    When a half inch of wire was exposed, he twisted the two pieces of copper together and turned the unit on. Then he backed away from the radio and gently urged Nanda toward it.

    It was the unlikeliest, most Frankenstein monster-looking, jury-rigged device that Mike Rodgers had seen in all his years of service. But that did not matter. Only one thing did.

    That it worked.

    

    Washington, D. C. Thursday, 6:21 p. m.

    It was something Ron Plummer had never experienced. A moment of profound euphoria followed by a moment so sickening that the drop was physically disorienting.

    When the call came from Islamabad, Ambassador Simathna listened for a moment then smiled broadly. Plummer did not have to wait for the call to be put on speakerphone to know what it was.

    Mike Rodgers had succeeded. Somehow, the general had gotten the message to the Pakistani base that monitored the silo. They had forwarded the message to the Pakistani Ministry of Defense. From there, the tape was given to CNN and sent out to the world.

    "My name is Nanda Kumar," said the high, scratchy voice on the recording.

    "I am an Indian citizen of Kashmir and a civilian network operative.

    For several months I have worked with India's Special Frontier Force to undermine a group of Pakistani terrorists. The Special Frontier Force told me that my actions would result in the arrest of the terrorists.

    Instead, the intelligence I provided allowed the Special Frontier Force to frame the Pakistanis. The terrorists have been responsible for many terrible acts. But they were not responsible for Wednesday's bomb attack on the pilgrim bus and Hindu temple in the Srinagar market. That was the work of the Special Frontier Force."

    Ambassador Simathna was still beaming as he shut the phone off and leaned toward a second speakerphone. This was the open line to Paul Hood's office at Op-Center.

    "Director Hood, did you hear that?" the ambassador asked.

    "I did," Hood replied.

    "It's also running on CNN now." "That is very gratifying," Simathna said.

    "I congratulate you and your General Rodgers. I do not know how he got the woman's message through but it is quite impressive."

    "General Rodgers is a very impressive man," Hood agreed.

    "We'd like to know how he got the message through ourselves. Bob Herbert tells me that Colonel August is unable to raise him. The cell phone must have died."

    "As long as it is just the cell phone," Simathna joked.

    "Of course, the Indians will certainly claim that Ms. Kumar was brainwashed by the Pakistanis. But General Rodgers will help to dispel that propaganda."

    "General Rodgers will tell the truth, whatever that turns out to be,"

    Hood said diplomatically.

    As Hood was speaking the other phone beeped. Simathna excused himself and answered it.

    The ambassador's smile trembled a moment before collapsing.

    His thin face lost most of its color. Ron Plummer did not dare imagine what the ambassador had just been told.

    Thoughts of a Pakistani nuclear strike flashed through his desperate mind.

    Simathna said nothing. He just listened. After several seconds he hung up the phone and regarded Plummer. The sadness in his eyes was profound.

    "Mr. Hood, I'm afraid I have bad news for you," the ambassador said.

    "What kind of bad news?" Hood asked.

    "Apparently, the slab on top of the silo was removed or significantly damaged during General Rodgers's actions."

    Simathna said.

    "Don't say it," Hood warned.

    "Don't you frigging say it."

    Simathna did not have to. They all knew what that meant.

    The defensive explosives around the silo had been automatically activated. Without someone inside the silo to countermand them, they would detonate in just a few minutes.

    

    Washington, D. C. Thursday, 6:24 p. m.

    Paul Hood could not believe that Mike Rodgers had gone this far, worked whatever miracle he had conceived, only to be blown up for something that could be prevented. But to prevent it they would have to reach him.

    Though Hood, Herbert, and Coffey sat in silence, frustration under the surface was intense. Despite the technology at their disposal, the men were as helpless as if they were living in the Stone Age.

    Hood was slumped in his leather seat. He was looking down, humbled by this uncharacteristic sense of helplessness.

    In the past there had always been another play in the book.

    Someone they could call for assistance, time to move resources into position, at the very least a means of communication.

    Not now. And he suspected that Mike or Nanda or the others had used up their guardian spirit quota stopping a nuclear war. Hood did not think it would help to pray for their salvation now. Maybe their lives and the lives of the Strikers were the price they had to pay. Still, Hood did ask quietly that whatever Christian, Hindu, or Muslim entities had gotten them this far would see them a little further. Paul Hood was not ready to lose Mike Rodgers. Not yet.

    "Maybe Mike and the girl did their business and left the area," Coffey suggested.

    "it's possible," Herbert said.

    "Knowing Mike, though, he would continue to broadcast for a while. They may have no way of knowing that their message got through."

    Coffey scowled.

    "Even if they did leave, I'm not sure they would have gone far enough,"

    Herbert went on.

    "What do you mean?" Coffey asked.

    "It's dark, dead-of-night where they are," Herbert said.

    "My guess is that after all they've been through, Mike would have wanted to find a place to bunk down until well after sunrise. Let the area warm a little. If anyone was wounded, in whatever went on out there, Mike might have wanted to take time to perform first aid. The bug in the juice is we don't know exactly how much time is left before the blast.

    Obviously, Mike accessed the silo somehow to make the transmission. The explosives were armed when he moved the slab. That means we're well into the countdown."

    "I can't believe those bastards in Pakistan can't shut the process down," Coffey said.

    "I do," Herbert replied.

    "And I'll tell you what's happening right now. I've been thinking about this. I'll bet they put together a network of underground silos out there, all linked by tunnel. Right now the missile is automatically shifting to another site."

    "You mean like an underground Scud," Coffey said.

    "Exactly like that," Herbert replied.