Line Of Control (2001)

by Clancy, Tom - Op Center 08

  Friday loved it. Nothing made each breath sweeter than when you were walking through a minefield.

  The forty-seven-year-old Michigan native walked through the largest open-air market in the city. It was located on the eastern end of the town, near hills that had once been fertile grazing areas. That was before the military had appropriated the hills as a staging area for helicopter flights and convoys headed out toward the line of control. A short walk to the north was the Centanr Lake View Hotel, which was where most foreign tourists stayed. It was located near the well-kept waterfront region known collectively as the Mughal Gardens. These gardens, which grow naturally, helped give the region its name Kashmir, which meant "Paradise" in the language of the Mughal settlers.

  A cool, light rain was falling, though it did not keep away the regular crowds and foreigners. The market smelled like nowhere else Friday had ever been. It was a combination of musk--from the sheep and damp rattan roofs on the stalls--lavender incense, and diesel fuel. The fuel came from the taxis, minibuses, and scooter-rickshaws that serviced the area. There were women in saris and young students in western clothing. All of them were jockeying for position at the small wooden stands, looking for the freshest fruits or vegetables or baked goods. Merchants whipped small switches at sheep who had been driven from adjacent fields by depleted pasturage or by soldiers practicing their marksmanship. The strays tried to steal carrots or cabbage. Other customers, mostly Arab and Asian businessmen, shopped at a leisurely pace for shawls, papier-mache trinket boxes, and leather purses. Because Srinagar and the rest of Kashmir were on the list of "no-go zones" at the State Department, British Foreign Office, and other European governments, very few Westerners were here.

  A few merchants hawked rugs. There were farmers who had parked their trucks and carts at one end and were carrying baskets with fresh produce or bread to various stands. And there were soldiers. Except in Israel, Friday had never seen a public place where there were nearly as many soldiers as there were civilians. And those were only the obvious ones, the men in uniform. He was sure that there were members of the Special Frontier Force, which was a cocreation of the CIA and India's Research and Analysis Wing, their foreign espionage service. The job of the SFF was to disrupt the flow of materiel and intelligence to and from enemy positions. Friday was equally sure the crowd included members of Pakistan's Special Services Group. A division of the army's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the group monitored actions behind enemy lines. They also worked with freelance operatives to commit acts of terrorism against the Indian people.

  There was nothing like this in Baku, where the markets were quiet and organized and the local population was small and relatively well behaved. Friday liked this better. One had to watch for enemies while trying to feed one's family.

  Having a desk at the embassy in Baku had been interesting but not because of the work he was doing for Deputy Ambassador Dorothy Williamson. Friday had spent years working as an attorney for Mara Oil, which was why Williamson had welcomed him to her staff. Officially, he was there to help her draft position papers designed to moderate Azerbaijani claims on Caspian oil. What had really made Friday's tenure exciting was the undercover work he had been doing for Jack Fenwick, the president's former national security advisor.

  The broad-shouldered man had been recruited by the NSA while he was still in law school. One of his professors, Vincent Van Heusen, had been an OSS operative during World War II. Professor Van Heusen saw in Friday some of the same qualities he himself had possessed as a young man. Among those was independence. Friday had learned that growing up in the Michigan woods where he went hunting with his father for food--not only with a rifle but with a longbow. After graduating from NYU Friday spent time at the NSA as a trainee. When he went to work for the oil industry a year later he was also working as a spy. In addition to making contacts in Europe, the Middle East, and the Caspian, Friday was given the names of CIA operatives working in those countries. From time to time he was asked to watch them. To spy on the spies, making certain that they were working only for the United States.

  Friday finally left the private sector five years ago. He grew bored with working for the oil industry full-time and the NSA part-time. He had also grown frustrated, watching as intelligence operations went to hell overseas. Many of the field agents he met were inexperienced, fearful, or soft. This was especially true in the Third World and throughout Asia. They wanted creature comforts. Not Friday. He wanted to be uncomfortable, hot, cold, hurting, off balance.

  Challenged. Alive.

  The other problem was that increasingly electronic espionage had replaced hands-on human surveillance. The result was much less efficient mass-intelligence gathering. To Friday that was like getting meat from a slaughterhouse instead of hunting it down. The food didn't taste as good when it was mass-produced. The experience was less satisfying. And over time the hunter grew soft.

  Friday had no intention of ever growing soft. When Jack Fenwick had said he wanted to talk to him, Friday was eager to meet. Friday went to see him at the Off the Record bar at the Hay-Adams hotel. It was during the week of the president's inauguration so the bar was jammed and the men were barely noticed. Fenwick recruited Friday to the "Undertaking," as he had called it. An operation to overthrow the president and put a new, more proactive figure in the Oval Office. One of the gravest problems facing America was security from terrorists. Vice President Cotten would have dealt with the problem decisively. He would have informed terrorist nations that if they sponsored attacks on American interests their capital cities would be bombed flat. Removing fear from Americans abroad would have encouraged competitive trade and tourism, which would have helped covert agencies infiltrate nationalist organizations, religious groups, and other extremist bands.

  But the plotters had been stopped. The world was once again safe for warlords, anarchists, and international muggers.

  Fortunately, the resignations of the vice president, Fenwick, and the other high-profile conspirators were like cauterizing a wound. The administration had its main perpetrators. They stopped the bloodletting and for the time being seemed to turn attention away from others who may have assisted in the plan. Friday's role in setting up the terrorist Harpooner and actually assassinating a CIA spoiler had not been uncovered. In fact, Hank Lewis was trying to get as much intel as possible as fast as possible so he could look ahead, not back. NSA operatives outside Washington were being called upon to visit high-intensity trouble spots and both assist in intelligence operations and report back first-hand. That was why Friday left Baker. Originally he tried to get transferred to Pakistan, but was moved to India by special request of the Indian government. He had spent time here for Mara Oil, helping them evaluate future productivity in this region as well as on the border between the Great Indian Desert in India's Rajasthan Province and the Thar Desert in Pakistan. He knew the land, the Kashmiri language, and the people.

  The irony, of course, was that his first assignment was to help a unit from Op-Center execute a mission of vital importance to peace in the region. Op-Center, the group that had stopped the Undertaking from succeeding.

  If politics made strange bedfellows then covert actions made even stranger ones. There was one difference between the two groups, however. Diplomacy demanded that politicians bury their differences when they had to. Field agents did not. They nursed their grudges.

  Forever.

  THREE

  Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 6:32 A.M.

  Mike Rodgers strode down the corridor to the office of Paul Hood. His briefcase was packed and he was still humming "Witch Doctor." He felt energized by the impending challenge, by the change of routine, and just by getting out of the windowless office.

  Hood's assistant, Stephen "Bugs" Benet, had not yet arrived. Rodgers walked through the small reception area to Hood's office. He knocked on the door and opened it. Op-Center's director was pacing and wearing headphones. He was just finishing up his phone conversation with
Senator Fox. Hood motioned the general in. Rodgers made his way to a couch on the far end of the room. He set his briefcase down but did not sit. He would be sitting enough over the next day.

  Though Hood was forty-five, nearly the same age as Rodgers, there was something much younger-looking about the man. Maybe it only seemed that way because he smiled a lot and was an optimist. Rodgers was a realist, a term he preferred to pessimist. And realists always seemed older, more mature. As an old friend of Rodgers's, South Carolina Representative Layne Maly, once put it, "No one's blowin' sunshine up my ass so it ain't showin' up between my lips." As far as Rodgers was concerned that pretty much said it all.

  Not that Hood himself had a lot to smile about. His marriage had fallen apart and his daughter, Harleigh, was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a result of having been taken hostage at the United Nations. Hood had also taken a bashing in the world press and in the liberal American media for his guns-blazing solution to the UN crisis. It would not surprise Rodgers to learn that Senator Fox was giving Hood an earful for that. The goddamn thing of it was nothing helped our rivals more than when we fought among ourselves. Rodgers could almost hear the cheering from the Japanese, from the Islamic Fundamentalists, and from the Germans, the French, and the rest of the Eurocentric bloc. And we were arguing after saving the lives of their ambassadors.

  It was a twisted world. Which was probably why we needed a man like Paul Hood running Op-Center. If it were up to Rodgers he would have taken down a few of the ambassadors on his way out of the UN.

  Hood slipped off the headphones and looked at Rodgers. There was a flat look of frustration in his dark hazel eyes. His wavy black hair was uncharacteristically unkempt. He was not smiling.

  "How are you doing?" Hood asked Rodgers. "Everything set?"

  Rodgers nodded.

  "Good," Hood said.

  "How are things here?" Rodgers asked.

  "Not so good," Hood said. "Senator Fox thinks we've gotten too visible. She wants to do something about that."

  "What?" Rodgers asked.

  "She wants to scale us back," Hood said. "She's going to propose to the other members of the COIC that they recharter Op-Center as a smaller, more covert organization."

  "I smell Kirk Pike's hand in this," Rodgers said.

  Pike was the newly appointed head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The ambitious former chief of navy intelligence was extremely well liked on the Hill and had accepted the position with a self-prescribed goal: to consolidate as many of the nation's intelligence needs as possible under one roof.

  "I agree that Pike is probably involved, but I think it's more than just him," Hood said. "Fox said that Secretary-General Chatterjee is still grumbling about bringing us before the International Court of Justice. Have us tried for murder and trespassing."

  "Smart," Rodgers said. "She'll never get the one but the jurists may give her the other."

  "Exactly," Hood said. "That makes her look strong and reaffirms the sovereign status of the United Nations. It also scores points with pacifists and with anti-American governments. Fox apparently thinks this will go away if our charter is revoked and quietly rewritten."

  "I see," Rodgers said. "The CIOC acts preemptively to make Chatterjee's action seem bullying and unnecessary."

  "Bingo," Hood said.

  "Is it going to happen?" Rodgers asked.

  "I don't know," Hood admitted. "Fox hasn't discussed this with the other members yet."

  "But she wants it to happen," Rodgers said.

  Hood nodded.

  "Then it will," Rodgers said.

  "I'm not ready to concede that," Hood said. "Look, I don't want you to worry about the political stuff. I need you to get this job done in Kashmir. Chatterjee may be secretary-general but she's still Indian. If you score one for her side she'll have a tough time going after us."

  "Not if she passes the baton to Pike," Rodgers said.

  "Why would she?" Hood asked.

  "Back-scratching and access," Rodgers said. "A lot of the intel I have on Kashmir came from the CIA. The Company works very closely with the Indian Intelligence Bureau."

  "The domestic surveillance group," Hood said.

  "Right," Rodgers said.

  Under the Indian Telegraph Act, the Indian Intelligence Bureau has the legal authority to intercept all forms of electronic communication. That includes a lot of faxes and e-mail from Afghanistan and other Islamic states. It was IIB that blew the whistle on Iraq's pharmaceutical drug scam back in 2000. Humanitarian medicines were excluded from the United Nations sanctions. Instead of going to Iraqi hospitals and clinics, however, the medicines were hoarded by the health minister. When shortages pushed up demand the drugs were sold to the black market for hard foreign currency that could be used to buy luxury goods for government officials, bypassing the sanctions.

  "The IIB shares the information they collect with the CIA for analysis," Rodgers went on. "If Director Pike helps Chatterjee, the Indians will continue to work exclusively with him."

  "Pike can have the trophy if he wants," Hood said. "We still get the intelligence."

  "But that isn't all Pike wants," Rodgers said. "People aren't satisfied just winning in Washington. They have to destroy the competition. And if that doesn't work they go after his friends and family."

  "Yeah--well, he'll have to get a task force for that one," Hood said quietly. "We Hoods are kind of spread out now."

  Rodgers felt like an ass. Paul Hood was not living with his family anymore and his daughter, Harleigh, spent a lot of time in therapy. It was careless to have suggested that they might be at risk.

  "Sorry, Paul. I didn't mean that literally," Rodgers said.

  "It's all right," Hood replied. "I know what you meant. I don't think Pike will cross that line, though. We've got pretty good muckrakers and a great press liaison. He won't want to take any rivalry public."

  Rodgers was not convinced of that. Hood's press liaison was Ann Farris. For the last few days the office was quietly buzzing with the rumor that the divorcee and Paul Hood were having an affair. Ann had been staying late and the two had been spotted leaving Hood's hotel together one morning. Rodgers did not care one way or the other as long as their relationship did not impact the smooth operation of the NCMC.

  "Speaking of family, how is Harleigh doing?" Rodgers asked. The general was eager to get off the subject of Pike before leaving for India. The idea of fighting his own people was loathsome to him. Though the men did not socialize very much, Rodgers was close enough to Hood to ask about his family.

  "She's struggling with what happened in New York and with me moving out," Hood said. "But she's got a good support system and her brother's being a real trouper."

  "Alexander's a good kid. Glad to hear he's stepping up to the plate. What about Sharon?" Rodgers asked.

  "She's angry," Hood said. "She has a right to be."

  "It will pass," Rodgers said.

  "Liz says it may not," Hood replied.

  Liz was Liz Gordon, Op-Center's psychologist. Though she was not counseling Harleigh, she was advising Hood.

  "Hopefully, the intensity of Sharon's anger will diminish," Hood went on. "I don't think she and I will ever be friends again. But with any luck we'll have a civil relationship."

  "You'll get there," Rodgers said. "Hell, that's more than I've ever had with a woman."

  Hood thought for a moment then grinned. "That's true, isn't it? Goes all the way back to your friend Biscuit in the fifth grade."

  "Yeah," Rodgers replied. "Look, you're a diplomat. I'm a soldier. I'm a prisoner to my scorched earth nature."

  Hood's grin became a smile. "I may need to borrow some of that fire for my dealings with Senator Fox."

  "Stall her till I get back," Rodgers said. "And just keep an eye on Pike. I'll work on him when I get back."

  "It's a deal," Hood said. "Stay safe, okay?"

  Rodgers nodded and the men shook hands.

  The general felt uneasy
as he headed toward the elevator. Rodgers did not like leaving things unresolved--especially when the target was as vulnerable as Hood was. Rodgers could see it in his manner. He had seen it before, in combat. It was a strange calm, almost as if Hood were in denial that pressures were starting to build. But they were. Hood was already distracted by his impending divorce, by Harleigh's condition, and by the day-to-day demands of his position. Rodgers had a feeling that the pressure from Senator Fox would become much more intense after the CIOC met. He would give Bob Herbert a call from the C-130 and ask him to keep an eye on Op-Center's director.

  A watcher watching the watcher, Rodgers thought. Op-Center's intelligence chief looking after Op-Center's director, who was tracking Kirk Pike. With all the human drama gusting around him the general almost felt as if it were routine to go into the field to search for nuclear missiles.

  But Rodgers got his perspective back quickly. As he walked onto the tarmac he saw the Striker team beginning to assemble beside the Hercules transport. They were in uniform, at ease, their grips and weapons at their feet. Colonel August was reviewing a checklist with Lieutenant Orjuela, his new second-in-command.