Mentally and physically, it was such a trying and unforgiving environment that any officer who successfully completed a one-year tour of duty was automatically eligible for a desk job in a "safe zone" like Calcutta or New Delhi. That was what the forty-one-year-old Puri was working toward. Three months before, he had been transferred from the army's HQ Northern Command where he trained border patrols. Nine more months of running this small base, of "kiting with tripwire," as his predecessor had put it, and he could live comfortably for the rest of his life. Indulge his passion for going out on anthropological digs. He loved learning more about the history of his people. The Indus Valley civilization was over 4,500 years old. Back then the Pkitania and Indian people were one. There was a thousand years of peace. That was before religion came to the region.
Major Puri chewed his tobacco. He smelled the brewed tea coming from the mess tent. It was time for breakfast, after which he would join his men for the morning briefing. He took another moment to savor the morning. It was not that a new day brought new hope. All it meant was that the night had passed without a confrontation.
Puri turned and stepped down the stairs. He did not imagine that there would be very many mornings like this in the weeks ahead. If the rumors from his friends at HQ were true, the powder keg was about to get a new fuse.
A very short, very hot fuse.
ONE
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 5:56 A.M.
The air was unseasonably chilly. Thick, charcoal-gray clouds hung low over Andrews Air Force Base. But in spite of the dreary weather Mike Rodgers felt terrific.
The forty-seven-year-old two-star general left his black 1970 Mustang in the officers' parking lot. Stepping briskly, he crossed the neatly manicured lawn to the Op-Center offices. Rodgers's light brown eyes had a sparkle that almost made them appear golden. He was still humming the last tune he had been listening to on the portable CD player. It was Victoria Bundonis's recording of the 1950s David Seville ditty "Witch Doctor." The young singer's low, torchy take on "Oo-ee-oo-ah-ah" was always an invigorating way to start the day. Usually, when he crossed the grass here, he was in a different frame of mind. This early, dew would dampen his polished shoes as they sank into the soft soil. His neatly pressed uniform and his short, graying black hair would ripple in the strong breeze. But Rodgers was usually oblivious to the earth, wind, and water--three of the four ancient elements. He was only aware of the fourth element, fire. That was because it was bottled and capped inside the man himself. He carried it carefully as though it were nitroglycerin. One sudden move and he would blow.
But not today.
There was a young guard standing in a bullet-proof glass booth just inside the door. He saluted smartly as Rodgers entered.
"Good morning, sir," the sentry said.
"Good morning," Rodgers replied. " 'Wolverine.' "
That was Rodgers's personal password for the day. It was left on his GovNet e-mail pager the night before by Op-Center's internal security chief, Jenkin Wynne. If the password did not match what the guard had on his computer Rodgers would not have been allowed to enter.
"Thank you, sir," the guard said and saluted again. He pressed a button and the door clicked open. Rodgers entered.
There was a single elevator directly ahead. As Rodgers walked toward it he wondered how old the airman first class was. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? A few months ago Rodgers would have given his rank, his experiences, everything he owned or knew to be back where this young sentry was. Healthy and sharp, with all his options spread before him. That was after Rodgers had disastrously field-tested the Regional Op-Center. The mobile, hi-tech facility had been seized in the Middle East. Rodgers and his personnel were imprisoned and tortured. Upon the team's release, Senator Barbara Fox and the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee rethought the ROC program. The watchdog group felt that having a U.S. intelligence base working openly on foreign soil was provocative rather than a deterrent. Because the ROC had been Rodgers's responsibility he felt as though he'd let Op-Center down. He also felt as though he had blown his last, best chance to get back into the field.
Rodgers was wrong. The United States needed intelligence on the nuclear situation in Kashmir. Specifically, whether Pakistan had deployed warheads deep in the mountains of the region. Indian operatives could not go into the field. If the Pakistanis found them it might trigger the war the United States was hoping to avoid. An American unit would have some wiggle room. Especially if they could prove that they were bringing intelligence about Indian nuclear capabilities to Pakistan, intelligence that a National Security Agency liaison would be giving Rodgers in the town of Srinagar. Of course, the Indian military would not know he had that. It was all a big, dangerous game of three-card monte. All the dealer had to do was remember where all the cards were and never get busted.
Rodgers entered the small, brightly lit elevator and rode it to the basement level.
Op-Center--officially the National Crisis Management Center--was housed in a two-story building located near the Naval Reserve flight line. During the Cold War the nondescript, ivory-colored building was a staging area for crack flight crews. In the event of a nuclear attack their job would have been to evacuate key officials from Washington, D.C. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the downsizing of the air force's NuRRDs--nuclear rapid-response divisions--the building was given to the newly commissioned NCMC.
The upstairs offices were for nonclassified operations such as news monitoring, finance, and human resources. The basement was where Hood, Rodgers, Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert, and the rest of the intelligence-gathering and -processing personnel worked.
Rodgers reached the underground level. He walked through the cubicles in the center to his office. He retrieved his old leather briefcase from under the desk. He packed his laptop and began collecting the diskettes he would need for his journey. The files contained intelligence reports from India and Pakistan, maps of Kashmir, and the names of contacts as well as safe houses throughout the region. As he packed the tools of his trade Rodgers felt almost like he did as a kid growing up in Hartford, Connecticut. Hartford endured fierce winter storms. But they were damp storms that brought packing snow. Before putting on his snow suit Rodgers would get his bucket, rope, spade, and swimming goggles and toss them into his school gym bag. His mother insisted on the goggles. She knew she could not prevent her son from fighting but she did not want him getting hit by a snowball and losing an eye. Once outside, while all the other kids were building snow forts, Rodgers would climb a tree and build a snow tree house on a piece of plywood. No one ever expected that. A rain of snowballs from a thick branch.
After Rodgers had his briefcase packed he would head to the "Gulf cart" parked at the back door. That was what the military had christened the motorized carts that had shuttled officers from meeting to meeting during both Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The Pentagon bought thousands of them just before what turned out to be the last gasp of face-to-face strategy meetings before secure video-conferencing was created. After that, the obsolete carts had been distributed to bases around the country as Christmas presents to senior officers.
The Gulf cart would not have far to travel. A C-130 Hercules was parked just a quarter of a mile away, in the holding area of the airstrip that passed directly behind the NCMC building. In slightly under an hour the hundred-foot-long transport would begin a NATO supply trek that would secretly ferry Rodgers and his Striker unit from Andrews to the Royal Air Force Alconbury station in Great Britain to a NATO base outside Ankara, Turkey. There, the team would be met by an Indian Air Force AN-12 transport, part of the Himalayan Eagles squadron. They would be flown to the high-altitude base at Chushul near the Chinese border and then choppered to Srinagar to meet their contact. It would be a long and difficult journey lasting just over twenty-four hours. And there would be no time to rest when they reached India. The team had to be ready to go as soon as they touched down.
But that was fine with Mike Rodgers. He
had been "ready to go" for years. He had never wanted to be second-in-command of anything. During the Spanish-American War, his great-great-grandfather Captain Malachai T. Rodgers went from leading a unit to serving under upstart Lt. Colonel Teddy Roosevelt. As Captain Rodgers wrote to Mrs. Rodgers at the time, "There is nothing better than running things. And there is nothing worse than being a runner-up, even if that happens to be under a gentleman you respect."
Malachai Rodgers was right. The only reason Mike Rodgers had taken the deputy director's position was because he never expected Paul Hood to stay at Op-Center. Rodgers assumed that the former Los Angeles mayor was a politician at heart who had eyes on the Senate or the White House. Rodgers was wrong. The general hit another big bump in the road when Hood resigned from Op-Center to spend more time with his family. Rodgers thought Op-Center would finally be his. But Paul and Sharon Kent Hood weren't able to fix what was wrong with their marriage. They separated and Hood came back to Op-Center. Rodgers went back to being number two.
Rodgers needed to command. A few weeks before, he and Hood had ended a hostage siege at the United Nations. Rodgers had directed that operation. That reminded him of how much he enjoyed risking everything on his ability to outthink and outperform an adversary. Doing it safely from behind a desk just was not the same thing.
Rodgers turned to the open door a moment before Bob Herbert arrived. Op-Center's number three man was always announced by the low purr of his motorized wheelchair.
"Good morning," Herbert said as he swung into view.
"Good morning, Bob," Rodgers replied.
"Mind if I come in?"
"Not at all," Rodgers told him.
Herbert swung the wheelchair into the office. The balding, thirty-nine-year-old intelligence genius had lost the use of his legs in the Beirut embassy bombing in 1983. The terrorist attack had also taken the life of Herbert's beloved wife. Op-Center's computer wizard Matt Stoll had helped design this state-of-the-art wheelchair. It included a computer that folded into the armrest and a small satellite dish that opened from a box attached to the back of the chair.
"I just wanted to wish you good luck," Herbert said.
"Thanks," Rodgers replied.
"Also, Paul asked if you would pop in before you left," Herbet said. "He's on the phone with Senator Fox and didn't want to miss you."
Rodgers glanced at his watch. "The senator is up early. Any particular reason?"
"Not that I know of, though Paul didn't look happy," Herbert said. "Could be more fallout over the UN attack."
If that were true then there was an advantage to being the number two man, Rodgers thought. He did not have to put up with that bullshit. They had absolutely done the right thing at the United Nations. They had saved the hostages and killed the bad guys.
"They're probably going to beat us up until the secretary-general cries uncle," Rodgers said.
"Senator Fox has gotten good at that," Herbert said. "She slaps your back real hard and tells your enemies it's a lashing. Tells your friends it's a pat on the back. Only you know which it is. Anyway, Paul will deal with that," Herbert went on. He extended his hand. "I just wanted to wish you well. That's a remote, hostile region you're heading into."
Rodgers clasped Herbert's hand and grinned. "I know. But I'm a remote, hostile guy. Kashmir and I will get along fine."
Rodgers went to withdraw his hand. Herbert held it.
"There's something else," Herbert said.
"What?" Rodgers asked.
"I can't find out who your contact man is over there," Herbert said.
"We're being met by an officer of the National Security Guard, Captain Prem Nazir," Rodgers replied. "That's not unusual."
"It is for me," Herbert insisted. "A few calls, some promises, a little intel exchange usually gets me what I want. It lets me check up on people, make sure there isn't a double-cross on the other end. Not this time. I can't even get anything on Captain Nazir."
"To tell you the truth, I'm actually relieved that there's tight security for once," Rodgers laughed.
"Tight security is when the opposition doesn't know what is going on," Herbert said. "I get worried when our own people can't tell me exactly what is going on."
"Cannot or will not?" Rodgers asked.
"Cannot," Herbert said.
"Why don't you call Mala Chatterjee," Rodgers suggested. "I bet she would be delighted to help."
"That's not funny," Herbert said.
Chatterjee was the young Indian secretary-general of the United Nations. She was a career pacifist, the most vocal critic of Op-Center and the way they had taken over and resolved the crisis.
"I talked to my people at the CIA and at our embassies in Islamabad and New Delhi," Herbert went on. "They don't know anything about this operation. That's unusual. And the National Security Agency does not exactly have things under control. The plan has not gone through the usual com-sim. Lewis is too busy housecleaning for that."
"I know," Rodgers said.
"The usual com-sim" was a computer simulation that was run on any plan that had been approved for the field. The sponsoring agency typically spent days running the simulations to find holes in the main blueprint and also to give backup options to the agents heading into the field. But the National Security Agency had recently been shaken up by the resignation of their director, Jack Fenwick. That occurred after Hood had identified Fenwick as one of the leaders of a conspiracy to help remove the president from office. His replacement, Hank Lewis, formerly assistant to the president, coordinator of strategic planning, was spending his time removing Fenwick loyalists.
"We'll be okay," Rodgers assured him. "Back in Vietnam my plans were always held together with spit."
"Yeah, but there at least you knew who the enemy was," Herbert pointed out. "All I want you to do is stay in touch. If something seems out of whack I want to be able to let you know."
"I will," Rodgers promised. They would be traveling with the TAC-SAT phone. The secure uplink would allow Striker to call Op-Center from virtually anywhere in the world.
Herbert left and General Rodgers picked up the files and diskettes he wanted to take. The hall outside the door was getting busier as Op-Center's day crew arrived. It was nearly three times the size of the skeletal night crew. Yet Rodgers felt strangely cut off from the activity. It was not just the focused "mission mode" Rodgers went into before leaving the base. It was something else. A guardedness, as if he were already in the field. In and around Washington that was not far from the truth.
Despite Rodgers's assurances, what Herbert said had resonated with him. Herbert was not an alarmist and his concerns did worry Rodgers a little. Not for himself or even his old friend Colonel Brett August. August would be commanding Op-Center's elite Striker unit. Rodgers was worried about the young multiservice members of Striker who would be joining him in Kashmir. Especially the ones with families. That was never far from any commander's mind. Herbert had helped to give it a little extra volume. But risk came with the uniform and the generous pension. Rodgers would do everything he could to safeguard the personnel and the mission. Because, in the end, there was one inescapable truth about actions taken by men like Mike Rodgers and Brett August.
The goal was worth the risk.
TWO
Srinagar, India Wednesday, 3:51 P.M.
Five hours after giving a false name to officials at the Foreigners' Regional Registration Office at Srinagar Airport, Ron Friday was walking the streets of what he hoped would be his home for the next year or two. He had checked into a small, cheap inn off Shervani Road. He'd first heard about Binoo's Palace the last time he was here. There was a gaming parlor in the back, which meant that the local police had been paid to keep the place secure. There, Friday would be both anonymous and safe.
The National Security Agency officer was happy to have gotten out of Baku, Azerbaijan. He was happy not only to get out of the former Soviet Republic but to be here, in Srinagar, less than twenty-five miles from the
line of control. He had been to the capital of the northern state before and found it invigorating. Distant artillery fire was constant. So were the muted pops of land mines in the hills. During early morning there was the scream of jets and the distinctive whumping sound of their cluster bombs and the louder crashes of their guided missiles.
Fear was also in the air day and night. The ancient resort city was governed and patrolled by Indian Hindu soldiers while commerce was controlled by Kashmiri Muslims. Not a week went by without four or five deaths due to terrorist bombings, shoot-outs, or hostage situations.
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