by Tom Clancy
Lewis said he would. Herbert hung up.
It was refreshing to talk to someone in the covert community who was actually willing to share information. Intelligence chiefs were notoriously secretive. If they controlled information they could control people and institutions. Herbert refused to play that game. While it was good for job security it was bad for national security. And as Jack Fenwick had demonstrated, a secretive intelligence chief could also control a president.
But though Ron Friday was a seasoned field operative, Herbert was not quite as willing to bet the ranch on his report. Herbert only believed in people he had worked with himself.
Herbert phoned Paul Hood to brief him on the new development. Hood asked to be conferenced on the call to Mike Rodgers whenever that took place. Then Herbert put in a call to the Indian Intelligence Bureau. Sujit Rani, the deputy director of internal activities, told Herbert pretty much what he expected to hear: that the IIB was investigating the explosions but did not have any additional information. The notion that there had been three explosions, not two, was something the IIB had heard and was looking into. That information vindicated Ron Friday somewhat in Herbert's eyes. Herbert's contact at the Defense Ministry told him basically the same thing. Fortunately, there was time before Striker reached India. They would be able to abort the mission if necessary.
Herbert went into the Kashmir files. He wanted to check on other recent terrorist strikes in the region. Maybe he could find clues, a pattern, something that would help to explain this new attack. Something about it did not sit right. If Pakistan were really looking to turn up the heat in Kashmir they probably would have struck at a place that had intense religious meaning, like the shrine at Pahalgam. Not only was that the most revered site in the region but the terrorists would not have had to worry about security. The Hindus trusted completely in their sacred trinity. If it was the will of Vishnu the preserver then they would not be harmed. If they died violently then Shiva the destroyer would avenge them. And if they were worthy, Brahma the creator would reincarnate them.
No. Bob Herbert's gut was telling him that the Hindu temple, the bus, and the police station were struck for some other reason. He just did not know what that reason was.
But he would.
TWELVE
C-13 °Cabin
Wednesday, 10:13 A.M.
When he first joined Striker, Corporal Ishi Honda discovered that there was not a lot of downtime on the ground. There was a great deal of drilling, especially for him. Honda had joined the team late, replacing Private Johnny Puckett who had been wounded on the mission to North Korea. It was necessary for Honda, then a twenty-two-year-old private, to get up to speed.
Once he got there Honda never let up. His mother used to tell him he was fated never to rest. She ascribed it to the different halves of his soul. Ishi's maternal grandfather had been a civilian cook at Wheeler Field. He died trying to get home to his family during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Ishi's paternal grandfather had been a high-ranking officer on the staff of Rear Admiral Takajiro Onishi, chief of staff of the Eleventh Air Fleet. Onishi was the architect of the Japanese attack. Ishi's parents were actors who met and fell in love on a show tour without knowing anything about the other's background. They often debated whether knowing that would have made a difference. His father said it absolutely would not have. With a little shake of her head, her eyes downturned, his mother said it might have made a difference.
Ishi had no answers and maybe that was why he could not stop pushing himself. Part of him believed that if he ever stopped moving he would inevitably look at that question, whether or not a piece of information would have kept him from being born. And he did not want to do that because the question had no answer. Honda did not like problems without solutions.
What he did like was living the life of a Striker. It not only taxed him mentally, it challenged him physically.
From the time he was recruited to join the elite unit there were long daily runs, obstacle courses, hand-to-hand combat, arms practice, survival training, and maneuvers. The field work was always tougher for Honda than for the others. In addition to his survival gear he had to carry the TAC-SAT equipment. There were also tactical and political sessions and language classes. Colonel August had insisted that the Strikers learn at least two languages each in the likely event that those skills would one day be required. At least Honda had an advantage there. Because his father was Japanese, Honda already had a leg up on one of the languages he had been assigned. He selected Mandarin Chinese as the other. Sondra DeVonne had chosen Cantonese as one of her languages. It was fascinating to Honda that the languages shared identical written characters. Yet the spoken languages were entirely different. While he and DeVonne could read the same texts they could not communicate verbally.
Though the time the Strikers spent on the ground was rewarding, Honda had learned that their time in the air was anything but. They rarely took short trips and the long journeys could be extremely dull. That was why he had come up with constructive ways of filling his time.
Wherever they were going, Honda arranged to patch his personal computer into the data files of both Stephen Viens at the National Reconnaissance Office and those of Op-Center's computer chief, Matt Stoll. The NRO was the group that managed most of America's spy satellites. Because Viens was an old college chum of Stoll's, he had been extremely helpful in getting information for Op-Center when more established groups like military intelligence, the CIA, and the NSA were fighting for satellite time. Viens was later accused of forward-funding two billion dollars of NRO money into a variety of black ops projects. He was vindicated with Op-Center's help and recently returned to duty.
Before Striker headed to any territory, Viens set aside satellite time to do all the photographic recon that Colonel August needed. That imaging was considered of primary importance and was sent on the mission in Colonel August's files. Meanwhile, Stoll spent as much time as possible collecting electronic intelligence from the region. Police departments and the military did not share everything they knew, even with allies. In many foreign countries, especially Russia, China, and Israel, American operatives were often watched without their knowledge by foreign operatives. It was up to Op-Center to pick up whatever information they could and protect themselves accordingly. They did this by diverging from the agreed-upon routes and time schedules, using "dispensable" team members to mislead tails, or occasionally subduing whoever was following them. A host nation could not complain if the person they had sent to spy on an ally was later found bound and gagged in a hotel closet.
The ELINT Stoll had gathered was composed of everything from fax messages and e-mail to phone numbers and radio frequencies. Everything that came to or went from official sources or known resistance and opposition forces. These numbers, frequencies, and encryption codes were then run through programs. They were compared with those of known terrorists or foreign agents. If there were any possible "watchdogs or impediments" in the region, as mission planners referred to them, these scans helped to find and identify them. The last thing American intelligence chiefs wanted was to have undercover operatives photographed or their methods observed by foreign governments. Not only could that information be sold to a third party, but the United States never knew which friendly governments might one day be intelligence targets.
"Think Iran," Colonel August reminded them whenever they went on a joint mission with allies.
Honda had brought along a Striker laptop. The computer was equipped with a wireless, high-speed modem to download data Stoll was still collecting. Honda would memorize any relevant data. When Striker reached India, the computer would be left on the transport and returned to the base. Colonel August would keep his laptop to download data. Where they were going, the less Corporal Honda had to carry the happier he would be.
As the new intelligence was dumped into Honda's computer, an audio prompt pinged. It was alerting him to an anomaly that Stoll's program had picked up at Op-Center. Honda accessed the
flagged data.
The Bellhop program on the air force's "Sanctity" satellite continually scanned the cell phones and radios that used police bands. Op-Center and the other U.S. intelligence agencies had these numbers for their own communications with foreign offices. It was a simple matter to hack the computers and look for other incoming calls.
The Bellhop had picked up a series of point-to-point calls made on a police-registered cell phone. It was coded "field phone" in the Bellhop lexicon. Most of the calls were placed over a five-month period from Kargil to the district police headquarters in Jammu, coded "home phone." During that time there was only one call to that field phone from the home phone. Stoll's program, which integrated Op-Center intel with NRO data, indicated that the call was placed less than one second before the Kashmir-focused ClusterStar3 satellite recorded an explosion in a bazaar in Srinagar.
"Damn," Honda muttered.
Honda wondered if Colonel August or General Rodgers had been informed about a possible terrorist attack. The fact that a police cell phone made a call to the site an instant before the explosion could be a coincidence. Perhaps someone was phoning a security guard. On the other hand there might be a connection between the two. Honda unbuckled himself from the uncomfortable seat and went forward to inform his commanding officers. He had to walk slowly, carefully, to keep from being bucked against his teammates by the aircraft's movements in the turbulent air.
August and Rodgers were huddled together over the general's laptop when he arrived.
"Excuse me, sirs," Honda said. He had to shout to be heard over the screaming engines.
August looked up. "What have you got, Corporal?"
Honda told the two officers about the explosion. August informed Honda that they were just reading an e-mail from Bob Herbert about the blast. It provided what few details anyone had about the attack. Then Honda informed his superiors about the phone calls. That seemed to grab General Rodgers's interest.
"There were two calls a day for five months, always at the same time," Honda said.
"Like a routine check-in," Rodgers said.
"Exactly, sir," Honda replied. "Except for today. There was just one call and it was made to the field phone. It was placed a moment before the explosion that took out the temple."
Rodgers sat back. "Corporal, would you go through the data file and see if this calling pattern is repeated, probably from field phones with different code numbers? Outgoing calls to one home phone and one or none coming back?"
"Yes, sir," Honda replied.
Honda crouched on the cold, rumbling floor and raised one knee. He put the laptop upon it. He was not sure what the officers were looking for exactly and it was not his place to ask. He input the code number of the home phone and asked for a Bellhop search. Colonel August's hunch was correct. He told them that in addition to this series there were seven weeks of calls from another field phone in Kargil. They were made twice a day at the same times. Before that there were six weeks of calls from another field phone, also two times daily. Thirteen weeks was as far back as these Bellhop records went.
"New Delhi must have had civilian agents tracking a terrorist cell," Rodgers said.
"How do you know that?" August asked. "The calls may just have been field ops reporting in."
"I don't think so," Rodgers told him. "First of all, only one of the calls on Corporal Honda's list was made from the home phone to the field phone."
"That was the one made at the time of the explosion," August said.
"Correct," Rodgers replied. "That would suggest the officers in charge of the recon did not want field phones ringing at inopportune moments."
"I'll buy that," August said.
"There's more than that, though," Rodgers said. "When Pakistan was knocked out of Kargil in 1999, the Indian Special Frontier Force knew that enemy cells would be left behind. They couldn't hunt them down with soldiers. The locals would have known if strangers were moving through a village. And if the locals knew it members of the cell would have known it. So the SFF recruited a shitload of locals to serve in their Civilian Network Operatives unit." The general tapped his laptop. "It's all here in the intelligence overview. But they couldn't give the recruits normal militia radios because, that close to Pakistan, those channels are routinely monitored by ELINT personnel. So the SFF gave their recruits cell phones. The agents call the regional office and complain about break-ins, missing children, stolen livestock, that sort of thing. What they're really doing is using coded messages to keep the SFF informed about suspected terrorist movements and activities."
"All right," August said. "But what makes you think the calls on this list aren't just routine field reports?"
"Because CNO personnel don't make routine field reports," Rodgers said. "They only report when they have something to say. There's less chance of them being overheard that way. I'm willing to bet that there are terrorist strikes to coincide with the termination of each of those series of calls. A target was hit, the cell moved on, the calls stopped being placed."
"Perhaps," August said. "But that doesn't explain the call to the temple right before the blast."
"Actually, it might," Rodgers told him.
"I don't follow," August said.
Rodgers looked up at Honda. "Corporal, would you please get the TAC-SAT?"
"Yes, sir."
Rodgers turned back to August. "I'm going to ask Bob Herbert to check on the dates of terrorist strikes in the region," he said. "I want to see if reports from field phones stopped coming in after terrorist strikes. I also want Bob to look into something else."
"What's that?" August asked.
Honda closed his laptop and stood. He lingered long enough to hear Rodgers's reply.
"I want to know what kind of detonator caps the SFF uses for counterterrorist strikes," the general replied.
"Why?" August asked.
"Because the Mossad, the Iraqi Al Amn al-Khas, Abu Nidal's group, and the Spanish Grapo have all used PDEs on occasion," Rodgers said. "Phone-detonated explosives."
THIRTEEN
Srinagar, Kashmir
Wednesday, 6:59 P.M.
It was nearly dark when Ron Friday returned to the bazaar. Though he was curious to see how the authorities here were handling the investigation he was more interested in what he might be able to find out about the attack. His life might depend on that information.
The rain had stopped and there was a cold wind rolling off the mountains. Friday was glad he had worn a baseball cap and a windbreaker, though the drop in temperature was not the reason he had put them on. Even from his room he could hear helicopters circling the area. When Friday arrived he found that the two police choppers were hovering low, less than two hundred feet up. In addition to looking for survivors, the noise echoing loudly through the square helped to keep onlookers from staying too long. But that was not the only reason the choppers were there. Friday guessed that they were also maintaining a low altitude to photograph the crowd in case the terrorist was still in the area. The cockpits were probably equipped with GRRs — geometric reconstructive recorders. These were digital cameras that could take photographs shot at an angle and reconfigure the geometry so they became accurate frontal images. Interpol and most national security agencies had a "face-print" file consisting of mug shots and police sketches of known and suspected terrorists. Like fingerprints, face-print photographs could be run through a computer and compared to images on file. The computer superimposed the likenesses. If the features were at least a 70 percent match, that was considered sufficient to go after the individual for interrogation.
Friday had worn the baseball cap because he did not want to be face-printed by the chopper. He did not know which governments might have his likeness on file or for what reason. He certainly did not want to give them a picture with which to start a file.
The blast sights had been roped off with red tape. Spotlights on ten-foot-tall tripods had been erected around the perimeters. Physically, the main market a
rea reminded Friday of a gymnasium after a dance. The event was over, the place eerily lifeless, and the residue of activity was everywhere. Only here, instead of punch there were bloodstains. Instead of crepe there were shredded awnings. And instead of empty seats there were abandoned carts. Some of the vendors had taken their carts away, leaving dust-free spots on the ground in the shape of the stall. In the sharp light they resembled the black shadows of trees and people that had been burned on the walls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear fire. Other carts had been simply abandoned. Perhaps the owners had not been there when the blast occurred and the hired help did not want to stick around. Maybe some of the sellers had been injured or killed.
Militiamen from the regular army were stationed around the perimeters. They were carrying MP5K submachine guns, very visible in the bright lights. Police were patrolling the square carrying their distinctive.455 Webley revolvers. Apart from discouraging looters — which did not really require exposed firearms — there was only one reason to haul out artillery after a strike. It was a means of restoring wounded pride and reassuring the public that the people in charge were still a potent force. It was all so sadly predictable.
Reporters were allowed to make their news broadcasts or take their pictures and then were asked to leave. An officer explained to a crew from CNN that it would be more difficult to watch for looters if a crowd gathered.
Or maybe they just did not want cameras recording their own thefts, Friday thought. He was willing to bet that many of the goods that had been left behind would be gone by morning.
A few people had come to the marketplace just to stare. Whatever they expected to see — broken bodies, the spectacle of destruction, news being made — it did not appear to fulfill them. Most left looking deflated. Bomb sites, combat zones, and car wrecks often did that to people. They were drawn to it and then repulsed. Maybe they were disappointed by a sudden awareness of their own bloodthirstiness. Some people came with flowers, which they laid on the ground beneath the tape. Others just left behind prayers for dead friends, relatives, or strangers.