by Clancy, Tom
“Shiva—the destroyer,” Friday said. “A nuclear war.”
“Provoked by the SFF and its radical allies in the cabinet and the military before Pakistan is equipped to respond,” Nazir said.
Friday started running toward the Kamov. “I’m going to get in touch with Op-Center and see if they know more than they’re telling,” he said. “You’d better grab Mr. Kumar and bring him to the chopper. We may need someone to help convince Nanda she’s on the wrong side of this thing.”
As Friday hurried across the field he realized one thing more. Something that gave him a little satisfaction, a little boost.
Captain Nazir was not as smart as he had pretended to be back at the inn.
TWENTY
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 8:17 P.M.
For most of its history, the shadowy National Reconnaissance Office was the least known of all the government agencies. The spur for the formation of the NRO was the downing of Gary Powers’s U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in May of that year. President Eisenhower ordered Defense Secretary Thomas Gates to head a panel to look into the application of satellites to undertake photographic reconnaissance. That would minimize the likelihood that the United States would suffer another humiliation like the Powers affair.
From the start there was furious debate between the White House, the air force, the Department of Defense, and the CIA over who should be responsible for administering the agency. By the time the NRO was established on August 25, 1960, it was agreed that the air force would provide the launch capabilities for spy satellites, the Department of Defense would develop technology for spying from space, and the CIA would handle the interpretation of intelligence. Unfortunately, there were conflicts almost from the start. At stake were not just budgeting and manpower issues but the intelligence needs of the different military and civilian agencies. During the next five years relationships between the Pentagon and the CIA became so strained that they were actually sabotaging one another’s access to data from the nascent network of satellites. In 1965, the secretary of defense stepped in with a proposal that time and resources would be directed by a three-person executive committee. The EXCOM was composed of the director of the CIA, the assistant secretary of defense, and the president’s science advisor. The EXCOM reported to the secretary of defense, though he could not overrule decisions made by the EXCOM. The new arrangement relieved some of the fighting for satellite time though it did nothing to ease the fierce rivalry between the various groups for what was being called “intelligence product.” Eventually, the NRO had to be given more and more autonomy to determine the distribution of resources.
For most of its history NRO operations were spread across the United States. Management coordination was handled in the Air Force Office of Space Systems in the Pentagon. Technology issues were conducted from the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base in California. Intelligence studies were conducted from the CIA Office of Development and Engineering in Reston, Virginia. Orbital control of NRO spacecraft was initially handled by technicians at the Onizuka Air Force Base in Sunnyvale, California, and then moved to the Falcon Air Force Station in Colorado. Signals intelligence other than photographic reconnaissance was handled by the National Guard at the Defense Support Program Aerospace Data Facility at Buckley Air National Guard Base in Aurora, Colorado. The U.S. Navy’s NRO activities were centered primarily on technology upgrades and enhancement of existing hardware and software. These duties were shared by two competing naval groups: the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in Crystal City, Virginia, and SPAWAR’s Space Technology Directorate Division, SPAWAR-40, located at the Naval Research Laboratory across the Potomac River in the highly secure Building A59.
Though the NRO proved invaluable in bringing data back to earth, the management of the NRO itself became a nightmare of convolution and in-fighting. Though the government did not officially acknowledge the existence of the organization, its denials were a joke among the Washington press corps. No one would explain why so many people were obviously struggling with such rancor to control something that did not exist.
That changed in 1990 with the construction of a permanent NRO facility in Fairfax, Virginia. Yet even while the NRO’s existence was finally acknowledged, few people had firsthand knowledge about its day-to-day operations and the full breadth of its activities.
Photographic reconnaissance operations director Stephen Viens was one of those men.
The consolidation of NRO activities under one roof did not end the competition for satellite time. But Viens was loyal to his college friend Matt Stoll. And he would do anything for Paul Hood, who stood by him during some difficult CIOC hearings about the NRO’s black ops work. As a result, no group, military or civilian, got priority over Op-Center.
Bob Herbert had telephoned at four P.M. What he needed from Viens was visual surveillance of a specific site in the Himalayas. Viens had to wait two hours before he could free up the navy’s Asian OmniCom satellite, which was in a geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean. Even though the navy was using it, Viens told them he had an LAD—life-and-death—situation and needed it at once. Typically, the OmniCom listened to sonar signals from Russian and Chinese submarines and backed them up with visual reconnaissance when the vessels surfaced. That allowed the navy to study displacement and hull features and even to get a look down the hatch when it was opened. The satellite image was sharp to within thirteen inches from the target and refreshed every .8 seconds. If the angle were right the OmniCom could get in close enough to lip-read.
Working at the OmniCom station in the level four basement of the NRO, it was relatively easy for Viens and his small team to use the repositioned satellite to ride the field phone signal to its source. They pinpointed it to a site above the foothills at 8,112 feet. When Viens and his group had repositioned the satellite to look down on the site, dawn was just breaking in Kashmir. The rising sun cleared the mountains to the east and struck an isolated structure. It resembled a slender travertine stalagmite more than it did a mountain peak. Whatever it was, something remarkable was happening on its face.
There were over a dozen figures in white parkas on the eastern side of the peak. They were armed with what looked like automatic weapons. Some were climbing up the peak, others were rappelling down. They were all converging on a small mouth located near the base of the tor.
Viens quickly refined the location of the audio signal. It was not coming from the people on the cliff but from a stationary target. Probably from an individual or individuals inside the cave.
Viens immediately phoned Bob Herbert and redirected the signal to Op-Center.
TWENTY-ONE
Siachin Base 2E, Kashmir Thursday, 7:01 A.M.
There is nothing like sunrise in the Himalayas.
The higher altitude and thinner, cleaner atmosphere allow a purer light to get through. Ishaq did not know how else to describe it. A photographer in Islamabad once told him that the atmosphere acted like a prism. The lower to the ground you were, the thicker the air blanket was and the more the sunlight was bent to the red. Ishaq was not a scientist. He did not know if that were true.
All the Pakistani knew was that the light up here was like he imagined the eye of Allah to be. It was white, warm, and intense. He wondered if the story of the mountain coming to Mohammad had originated in a peak like this one. For as the sun edged higher above the foothills below and the shadows shortened, the crags actually appeared to move. And as they moved their snow-covered sides glowed brighter and brighter. It was almost as though enlightenment were spreading throughout the land. Perhaps this was what the tale of the Prophet signified. The light of Allah and his Prophet was stronger than anything on this earth. And opening one’s heart and mind to them made us as strong and eternal.
That was a comforting thought to Ishaq. If this were to be his last dawn at least he would die satisfied and closer to God. In fact, as he looked back over his life he had just one regret:
that he might have to die here and now. He had wanted to be with his comrades when they returned to their homeland. But they had intentionally selected for their armory a cave that had no other direct line of sight nearby. It would have been difficult for anyone to spot the small outpost or to watch them while they were here.
Ishaq had stayed up all night preparing. Then he had watched the sun rise as he ate breakfast. He had not wanted to sleep. There would be time enough for that. Now, as he sat in the dark in the back of the cave, Ishaq heard scraping noises outside.
Sharab was right. They had been tracked here.
The Indians had been quiet at first. Now they were no longer taking pains to conceal their approach. They were probably wearing crampons and they sounded like mice outside a wall, scratching their way in. The sounds grew from a few scrapes along the rear and sides of the cave to constant noise and motion. From the shifting location of the sounds he could tell that the Indians were already within range of the mouth of the cave. They would probably lob teargas before charging in. If the cell had been here there would have been no escape.
Ishaq decided that this would be a good time to put on his gas mask. He slipped the Iranian-made unit on, tightened the straps over his head, and snapped the mouthpiece in place. His breath was coming in little bursts. He was anxious, but not because of what was going to happen. He was worried because he hoped he had done everything right. The Pakistani looked at the wooden crates lined with plastic. He had gathered them nearby, like wives in a harem, ready for a final embrace. It had been a simple process to attach detonators to individual explosives, leave them on the top of the crates, and make sure the receivers were facing him. But he had not been able to examine all of the explosives. They had been stored up here for nearly two years. Though it was dry and cold and dampness should not be a problem, dynamite was temperamental. The sticks they had used in Srinagar had been showing signs of caking. Moisture had gotten inside.
Still, everything should be all right. Ishaq had rigged seven bundles of dynamite with C-4 and remote triggers. All he needed was for one of the bundles to blow. He pulled off his heavy gloves and took the detonator in his right hand. He leaned back against the stone wall.
Ishaq’s legs were spread straight out in front of him and his backside was cold. The folded canvas he was sitting on was a bad insulator. Not that it mattered. He would not be sitting on it much longer.
The scraping stopped. He watched the tarp through the greenish tint of his facemask. Curtains of sunlight hung along the side walls of the cave. They shifted and undulated as the wind pushed against the tarp. The covering itself rattled against the hooks that held it in place.
Suddenly, the tarp dropped. Particles of ice that had collected on the outside flew, glistening in the sunlight. The shimmering beads died as two large, cylindrical canisters were lobbed in. They clanked on the cave floor and rolled toward Ishaq. They were already hissing and jetting thick clouds of smoke into the air and across the ground. Some of the gas unfurled sideways, and some of it was sprayed in his direction.
The Pakistani sat there, waiting calmly. The rolling green gas was still about fifteen meters away. The view to the nearest of the detonators remained unobstructed. He had a few more moments.
He began to pray.
Ishaq listened for the scraping to resume. After a moment it did, moving rapidly toward the front of the cave. He watched as the clouds of gas began to billow and roll aside as though people were moving through it. The gas had nearly reached the explosives.
It was time.
The Muslim continued his silent prayer as he pressed the blue “engage” button. A light on top of the small controller came on. Ishaq quickly pressed the red “detonate” button below it.
For a blessed moment the sun shined all around Ishaq and he felt as if he had been embraced by Allah.
TWENTY-TWO
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 9:36 P.M.
“What the hell just happened, Stephen?” Bob Herbert asked.
Op-Center’s intelligence chief had pulled his wheelchair deep under the desk. He was leaning over the speakerphone as he watched the OmniCom image on his computer. What he had said was not so much a question as an observation. Herbert knew exactly what had happened.
“The side of the mountain just exploded,” Viens said over the phone.
“It didn’t just explode, it evaporated,” Herbert pointed out. “That blast had to have been the equivalent of a thousand pounds of TNT.”
“At least,” Viens agreed.
Herbert was glad there was no sound with the image. Even just seeing the massive, unexpected explosion wakened his sensory memories. Tension and grief washed over him as he was reminded of the Beirut embassy bombing.
“What do you think, Bob? Was it set off by a sensor or motion detector?” Viens asked.
“I doubt it,” Herbert said. “There are a lot of avalanches in that part of the world. They could have triggered the explosion prematurely.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Viens admitted.
Herbert forced himself to focus on the present, not the past. Op-Center’s intelligence chief reloaded the pictures the satellite had sent moments before the blast. He asked the computer to enhance the images of the soldiers one at a time.
“It looked to me like the climbers tossed gas inside,” Herbert said. “They obviously believed that someone might be waiting for them.”
“They were right,” Viens said.
“The question is how many people were in there?” Herbert said. “Were the people who used that cave expecting the climbers? Or were they caught by surprise and decided they did not want to be captured alive?”
An image of the first soldier filled Herbert’s monitor. There was a clear shot of the man’s right arm. On top, just below the shoulder of the white camouflage snowsuit, was a circular red patch with a solid black insignia. The silhouette showed a horse running along the tail of a comet. That was the insignia of the Special Frontier Force.
“Well, one thing’s dead for sure,” Viens said.
“What’s that?” Herbert asked.
“Matt Stoll just phoned to say he’s not picking up the cell phone signal anymore,” Viens told Herbert. “He wanted to see if we’d lost it too. I just checked. We have.”
Herbert was still looking at the monitor. He saved the magnified image of the shoulder patch. “I wonder if the cell led the commandos there to throw them off the trail,” he said.
“Possibly,” Viens said. “Do we have any idea which way the Indian commandos would have come?”
“From the south,” Herbert replied. “How long would it take you to start searching through the mountains north of the site?”
“It will take about a half hour to move the satellite,” Viens said. “First, though, I want to make sure we’re not wasting our time. If anyone left the cave they would have had to go up before they could go down again. I want to get the OmniCom in for a closer look.”
“Footprints in the snow?” Herbert said as the secure phone on his wheelchair beeped.
“Exactly,” Viens replied.
“Go for it. I’ll wait,” Herbert told him as he backed away from the desk so he could reach the phone. He snapped up the receiver. “Herbert.”
“Bob, it’s Hank Lewis,” said the caller. “I’ve got Ron Friday on the line. He says it’s important. I’d like to conference him in.”
“Go ahead,” Herbert said. He had been wondering what Friday would find at the farmhouse. He was hoping it did not confirm their fears of police or government involvement in the Srinagar market attack. The implications were too grim to contemplate.
“Go ahead, Ron,” Lewis said. “I have Director of Intelligence Bob Herbert on the line with us.”
“Good,” Friday said. “Mr. Herbert, I’m at the Kumar farmhouse in Kargil with my Black Cat liaison. I need to know what other intel you have on the farmer and his granddaughter.”
“What have you found out there?” Herbert
asked.
“What?” Friday said.
“What did you find at the farm?” Herbert asked.
“What is this, ‘I show you mine and you show me yours?’ ” Friday angrily demanded.
“No,” Herbert said. “It’s a field report. Tell me what you’ve got.”
“I’ve got my ass on the front frigging line and you’re sitting on your ass safe in Washington!” Friday said. “I need information !”
“I’m on my ass because my legs don’t work anymore,” Herbert responded calmly. “I lost them because too many people trusted the wrong people. Mr. Friday, I’ve got an entire team headed toward your position and they may be at considerable risk. You’re a piece in my puzzle, a field op for me. You tell me what you have and then I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
Friday said nothing. Herbert hoped he was considering exactly how to word his apology.
After a few moments Friday broke the silence. “I’m waiting for that information, Mr. Herbert,” he said.
That caught Herbert off guard. Okay. They were playing hardball with a hand grenade. He could do that.
“Mr. Lewis,” Herbert said, “please thank your field operative for reconnoitering the farmhouse. Inform him we will get our information directly from the Black Cat Commandos and that our joint operation is ended.”
“You bureaucratic asshole—!” Friday snapped.
“Friday, Mr. Herbert has the authority to terminate this alliance,” Lewis said. “And frankly, you’re not giving me a reason to fight for it.”
“We need each other out here!” Friday said. “We may be looking at an international catastrophe!”
“That’s the first useful insight you’ve given me,” Herbert said. “Would you care to continue?”