Line of Control o-8

by Tom Clancy

  "No," she replied.

  "I don't like it," Friday said. "I don't even know if that was Colonel August on the line. The Indian army might have captured him, made him give them the code number."

  "They didn't," a voice said from the darkness.

  Friday and Nanda both started. The American grabbed the torch and held it to his left. That was the direction from which the voice had come.

  A man was walking toward them. He was dressed in a white high altitude jumpsuit and U.S. Army equipment vest, and he was carrying a flashlight. Samouel was trailing slightly behind him. Friday shifted the torch to his left hand. He slipped his right hand back into the pocket with the gun. He rose.

  "I'm General Mike Rodgers of Striker," said the new arrival. "I assume you're Friday and Ms. Kumar."

  "Yes," the woman replied.

  Friday was not happy to have company. First, he wanted to be sure the man was who he claimed to be. Friday studied the man as he approached. He did not appear to be Indian. Also, his cheeks and the area around his eyes were wind-blasted red and raw. He looked like he could be someone who walked a long way to get here.

  "How do you know that it was actually August who called me?" Friday demanded.

  "Colonel August spent several years as a guest of the North Vietnamese," Rodgers said. "He didn't tell them anything they wanted to know. Nothing's changed. Why did he contact you?"

  "Washington wants us to go to a point northeast of here, away from the line of control," Friday replied. "But they didn't tell us why."

  "Of course not," Rodgers said. "If we're captured by the enemy we can't tell them where we're headed." He removed his radio and tried it. There was only static. "How did Colonel August contact you?"

  "TAC-SAT to cell phone," Friday replied.

  "Clever," Rodgers said. "Is he holding up all right?"

  Friday nodded. As long as August kept the Indians off their trail, he did not care how the pack animal was holding up.

  Rodgers walked over to Apu and offered him a hand. Water had begun to pool around the Indian's feet.

  "I suggest we start walking before we freeze here," Rodgers said.

  "That's it, then?" Friday said. "You've decided that we should go deeper into the glacier?"

  "No. Washington decided that," Rodgers replied. He helped Apu to his feet but his eyes remained on Friday.

  "Even though we don't know where we're going," Friday repeated.

  "Especially because of that," Rodgers said. "If they want to keep the target a secret it must be important."

  Friday did not disagree. He simply did not trust the people in Washington to do what was best for him. On top of that, Friday loathed Rodgers. He had never liked military people. They were pack animals who expected everyone else to obey the pack leader's commands and conform to the pack agenda, even if that meant dying for the pack. Standing up to captors instead of cooperating for the good of all. That was not his way. It was the reason he worked alone. One man could always find a way to survive, to prosper.

  Nanda and Samouel both moved to where Rodgers was standing with Apu. If the Indian woman had decided to continue on to the line of control, Friday would have gone with her. But if she was joining Rodgers, Friday had no choice but to go along with them.

  For now.

  Friday extinguished the torch by touching it to the melted ice. The water would freeze in seconds and he could knock the ice off if they needed the torch again.

  The group continued its trek across the ice with Samouel in the lead and Rodgers and Nanda helping Apu. Friday kept his right hand in his pocket, on the gun. If at any point he did not like how things were going he would put them back on their original course.

  With or without General Rodgers.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The Himachal Peaks

  Thursday, 11:41 P.M.

  It had been an arduous day for Major Dev Puri and the two hundred men of his elite frontline regiment. This was supposed to be a straightforward sweep of the foothills of the Great Himalaya Range. Instead, it had become a forced march sparked by surprising intelligence reports, unexpected enemies, evolving strategies, and constantly changing objectives.

  The most recent shift was the riskiest. It carried the danger of drawing the attention of Pakistani border forces. Because of Puri's mission, it would be much easier for the enemy to cross the line of control at Base 3.

  The Indian soldiers had been marching virtually without rest since they left the trenches. The terrain was merely rugged to start. Then the higher elevations brought cold and walls of wind. The successful attack on the paratroopers had given the force a much-needed morale boost as they continued to search for the Pakistani cell. But darkness and sleet had battered them as they ascended. Now they were looking at a climb that was going to tax their energies to the limit. Then there was the unknown factor: the strength and exact location of the enemy. It was not the way Major Puri liked to run a campaign.

  Nearly eight hours before, the Indian soldiers had begun closing ranks at the base of the Gompa Tower in the Himachal cluster of peaks. The latest intelligence Puri had received was that American soldiers were jumping in to help the terrorists get through the line of control to Pakistan. That was where the parachutists had been headed. The Pakistani cell was almost certainly there as well. There was no way forward except through the Indian soldiers. The Pakistanis were undoubtedly exhausted and relatively underarmed now that the Americans had been stopped. Still, Major Puri did not underestimate them. He never took an enemy for granted when they had the high ground. The plan he and his lieutenants had worked out was to have twenty-five men ascend the peak while the rest covered them from the ground with high-powered rifles and telescopic sights. Twenty-five more would be ready to ascend as backup if needed. One or another of the teams was bound to take the cell. One or another of the teams was also likely to take casualties. Unfortunately, Defense Minister Kabir did not want to wait for the Pakistanis to come down. Now that Americans had been killed there would be hard questions from Washington and New Delhi about what had happened to the paratroopers. The minister was doing his best to stall air reconnaissance from moving in to locate and collect the American remains. He had already informed the prime minister that Major Puri's team was in the region and would pinpoint them for the Himalayan Eagles. What Kabir feared was that air reconnaissance might locate the Pakistanis as well as the paratroopers. The defense minister did not want the cell to be taken alive.

  Using night glasses and shielded flashlights, the Indian troops had been deploying their climbing gear. They had detected faint heat signatures above and knew the enemy was up there waiting. Unfortunately, flyovers would not help them now. The fierce ice storms above made visibility and navigation difficult. And blind scatter-bombing of the region was not guaranteed to stop the cell. There were caves they could hide in. Besides, there were very holy, anchoritic religious sects and cliff-dwelling tribes living in the foothills and in some of the higher caves. The last thing either side wanted was to collaterally destroy the homes or temples of these neutral peoples. That would force them or their international supporters into political or military activism.

  The Indian soldiers were nearly halfway into the preparations to scale the cliff when Major Puri received a surprising radio communique. Earlier in the day a helicopter on routine patrol had reported what looked like the wreckage of an aircraft in the Mangala Valley. However, there was no room for the chopper to descend and search for possible survivors. Major Puri had dispatched a four-soldier unit to investigate. Two hours before, the men had reported the discovery of a downed helicopter. It looked like a Ka-25. But the aircraft was so badly burned they could not be certain. Puri called the Base 3 communications center. They checked with the air ministry. There were no choppers on special assignment in the region.

  Because the chopper went down in the narrow valley, rescue personnel would not be dispatched until the following day. A parachute drop at night was too risky and, in any case
, there were no survivors.

  An hour later, Puri's group found the remains of ten American paratroopers. Major Puri relayed that information to the defense minister. The minister said he would sit on that information until after the cell had been taken. He had already come up with a scenario in which, regrettably, Puri's soldiers had mistaken the Americans for Pakistanis and had shot the team down.

  What surprised the Indian reconnaissance team was what they discovered on the body of one of the Americans. The soldier, a black woman, was hanging from a ledge by her parachute. There was a point-to-point radio in her equipment belt. Occasionally, the red "contact" light flashed. Someone in the communications link was trying to contact her or someone else in the link. That meant not all the soldiers had been killed. Unfortunately, the Indian soldiers could not confirm that. All they got on the radio was static.

  Puri expected that he would find those soldiers in the cliffs above, with the Pakistanis. But the Mangala Valley unit had employed infrared glasses in a scan of the region. They had come up with a different scenario.

  "We're detecting a very strong heat source several miles to the northeast," Sergeant Baliah, the leader of the reconnaissance unit, had reported. "There is a singular heat source on the glacier."

  "It could be some of the native people," Puri said.

  Several groups of mountain dwellers lived in the upper foothills of the ranges that surrounded the glacier. They often hunted at night after small game and the larger gazelles had returned to their dens and warrens. They also used the darkness to set traps for predators that hunted in the early morning. The Tarari did not eat the wolves and foxes but used their fur for clothing. The traps also kept the animals from becoming so numerous that they depopulated the region of prey.

  "It's a little far west for them," Baliah remarked. "The heat signature is also less than we would get from a string of torches. I'm wondering if it might be some of the Americans. If their equipment was damaged in the jump, they might have built a campfire."

  "How far is 'several miles'?" Puri asked.

  "Approximately four," Baliah responded. "What I don't understand is why the Americans would have left the valley. The weather is much more temperate there. They could not have failed to see the ice."

  "The survivors might have found the wreckage of the helicopter and anticipated a recon team. They moved on," Puri suggested.

  "But then why would they have left the radio?" the sergeant wondered aloud. "They could easily have gotten it down. Then no one would know there were survivors."

  "Maybe we were meant to find it," Puri said. "That way they could feed us miscommunications." Yet even as the major said that, he knew it did not make sense. The Americans could not have known that a reconnaissance unit was en route to the site.

  Puri began to consider likely scenarios. The helicopter was probably in the valley to support the clandestine American operation. Perhaps it was there to extract the soldiers when their mission was completed. That was why there was no immediate flight profile. Perhaps the Americans were only supposed to link up with the Pakistanis and see them as far as the border.

  And then it hit him. Maybe that was still the objective.

  "Sergeant, can you make your way to that heat source double-time?" Major Puri asked.

  "Of course," Baliah replied. "What do you think is going on, sir?"

  "I'm not sure," Major Puri told him. "It's possible that some of the Americans survived the drop and joined the Pakistani cell on our plateau. But other paratroopers may have been blown clear of the valley."

  "And you think the two may be trying to stay in touch point-to-point in order to find each other?" Sergeant Baliah asked.

  "That's possible," Puri replied.

  The major looked up at the plateau his men were getting ready to climb. The peak was dark but he could see the outline by the way it blocked the clouds above. Except for the presence of the American paratroopers he did not know for certain that the cell was up there. What if they were not? What if the American drop had been a feint? The shortest way to Pakistan from this region was across the Siachin Glacier, Base 3 sector.

  Right through his command.

  "Sergeant, pursue the Siachin element," Puri decided. "I'm going to request immediate air support in that region."

  "At night?"

  "At night," Puri said. "Captain Anand knows the region. He can get a gunship to the target. I want you there in case an enemy is present and he digs in where the rockets can't get him."

  "We're on our way, sir," the sergeant replied. "We'll have a report in two hours or so."

  "That should be about the time the chopper arrives," Puri said. "Good luck, Sergeant."

  Baliah thanked him and clicked off.

  The major walked over to his communications officer and asked him to put in a call to the base. Puri would brief Captain Anand and get the air reconnaissance underway. Puri would make certain that the operation be as low-key as possible. Anand was to take just one chopper into the field and there would be no unnecessary communications with the base. Even if the Pakistanis could not interpret the coded messages, a sudden increase in radio traffic might alert them that something was going on.

  While the major waited for Captain Anand he told the lieutenant in charge of the ascent to finish the preparations but to put the operation itself on hold. They could afford to wait two hours more before risking the climb. The Pakistanis on the plateau were not going anywhere.

  If there really were Pakistanis on the ledge.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The Siachin Glacier

  Friday, 12:00 A.M.

  When Mike Rodgers was in boot camp, his drill instructor had told him something that he absolutely did not believe.

  The DI's name was Glen "the Hammer" Sheehy. And the Hammer said that when an opponent was punched during an attack, the odds were good that he would not feel it.

  "The body ignores a nonlethal assault," the Hammer told them. "Whatever juices we've got pour in like reserves, numbing the pain of a punch or a stab or even a gunshot and empowering the need to strike back."

  Rodgers did not believe that until the first time he was in a hand-to-hand combat situation in Vietnam. U.S. and Vietcong recon units literally stumbled upon each other during a patrol north of Bo Duc near the Cambodian border. Rodgers had suffered a knife wound high in the left arm. But he was not aware of it until after the battle. One of his friends had been shot in the butt and kept going. When the unit returned to camp and the medics had put the survivors back together, one of Rodgers's buddies gave him a black bandanna with a slogan written in red grease pencil. It said, "It only hurts when I stop fighting."

  It was true. Moreover, there was no time to hurt. Not with more lives depending upon you.

  The reality of losing the Strikers was with Rodgers every moment. But the pain had not yet sunk in. He was too busy staying fixed on the goal that had brought them here.

  Rodgers was leg-weary as his group made its way across some of the starkest landscape Rodgers had ever encountered. The ice was glass-smooth and difficult to navigate. Nanda and Samouel slipped with increasing regularity. Rodgers was glad he still had his crampons, heavy though they were. Rodgers continued to help Apu Kumar along. The farmer's left arm was slung across Rodgers's neck and they were on a gradual incline. Apu's feet had to be dragged more than they moved. Rodgers suspected the only thing that kept the elderly man moving at all was a desire to see his granddaughter reach safety. The American officer would have helped the farmer regardless, but he was touched by that thought.

  That was not a sentiment Ron Friday seemed to share.

  Friday had stayed several paces behind Rodgers, Apu, and Nanda. Samouel continued to hold the point position, turning the flashlight on at regular intervals. At just under an hour into the trek, Friday stepped beside Rodgers. He was panting, his breath coming in wispy white bursts.

  "You realize you're risking the rest of this mission by dragging him along," Friday said. />
  Though the NSA operative spoke softly, his voice carried in the still, cold air. Rodgers was certain that Nanda had heard.

  "I don't see it that way," Rodgers replied.

  "The delay is exponential," Friday continued. "The longer it takes the weaker we become, slowing us down even more."

  "Then you go ahead," Rodgers said.

  "I will," he said. "With Nanda. Across the border."

  "No," she said emphatically.

  "I don't know why you're both so willing to trust those bastards in Washington," Friday went on. "We're at our closest approach to the border. It's just about twenty or thirty minutes north of here. Troops have probably been pulled out to man the incursion line."

  "Some," Rodgers agreed. "Not all."

  "Enough," Friday replied. "Heading there makes more sense than going another hour northeast to God-knows-where."

  "Not to the guys we report to," Rodgers reminded him.

  "They're not here," Friday shot back. "They don't have on-site intelligence. They aren't in our shoes."

  "They're not field personnel," Rodgers pointed out. "This is one of the things we trained for."

  "Blind, stupid loyalty?" Friday asked. "Was that also part of your training, General?"

  "No. Trust," Rodgers replied. "I respect the judgment of the men I work with."

  "Maybe that's why you ended up with a valley full of dead soldiers," Friday said.

  Mike Rodgers let the remark go. He had to. He did not have the time or extra energy to break Friday's jaw.

  Friday continued to pace Rodgers. The NSA agent shook his head. "How many disasters have to bite a military guy in the ass before he takes independent action?" he asked. "Hell, Herbert isn't even a superior officer. You're taking orders from a civilian."

  "And you're pushing it," Rodgers said.

  "Let me ask you something," Friday went on. "If you knew you could cross the line of control and get Nanda to a place where she could broadcast her story, would you disobey your instructions?"