Tom Clancy's Op-Center: LINE Of CONTROL [042-066-4.9]
Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik written by Jeff Rovin
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TOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: LINE OF CONTROL
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Jack Ryan Limited
Partnership and S & R Literary, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition / June 2001
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg,
Larry Segriff, Robert Youdelman, Esq." Tom Manon, Esq." and the
wonderful people at Penguin Putnam Inc." including Phyllis Grann,
David Shanks, and Tom Colgan.
As always, we would like to thank Robert Gottlieb, without whom this
book would never have been conceived.
But most important, it is for you, our readers, to determine how
successful our collective endeavor has been.
--Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik
PROLOGUE.
Slachin Base 3, Kashmir Wednesday, 5:42 a. m.
Major Dev Puri could not sleep. He had not yet gotten used to the flimsy
cots the Indian army used in the field. Or the thin air in the
mountains. Or the quiet. Outside his former barracks in Udhampur there
were always the sounds of trucks and automobiles, of soldiers and
activity. Here, the quiet reminded him of a hospital. Or a morgue.
Instead, he out on his olive green uniform and red turban.
Puri left his tent and walked over to the front-line trenches.
There, he looked out as the rich morning sun rose behind him. He watched
as a brilliant orange glow crept through the valley and settled slowly
across the flat, deserted demilitarized zone. It was the flimsiest of
barriers in the most dangerous place on earth.
Here in the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir, human life was always in
jeopardy. It was routinely threatened by the extreme weather conditions
and rugged terrain. In the wanner, lower elevations it was at risk
whenever one failed to spot a lethal king cobra or naja naja, the Indian
cobra, hiding in the underbrush. It was endangered whenever one was an
instant too late swatting a disease-carrying mosquito or venomous brown
widow spider in time. Life was in even greater peril a few miles to the
north, on the brutal Siachin Glacier. There was barely enough air to
support life on the steep, blinding-white hills.
Avalanches and subzero temperatures were a daily danger to foot patrols.
Yet the natural hazards were not what made this the most dangerous spot
on the planet. All of those dangers were nothing compared to how humans
threatened each other here.
Those threats were not dependent on the time of day or the season of
the year. They were constant, every minute of every hour of every day
for nearly the past sixty years.
Puri stood on an aluminum ladder in a trench with corrugated tin walls.
Directly in front of him were five-foot high sandbags protected by razor
wire strung tightly above them from iron posts. To the right, about
thirty feet away, was a small sentry post, a wooden shelter erected
behind the sandbags. There was hemp netting on top with camouflage
greenery overhead. To the right, forty feet away, was another watch
post.
One hundred and twenty yards in front of him, due west, was a nearly
identical Pakistan trench.
With deliberate slowness, the officer removed a pouch of ghutka,
chewable tobacco, from his pants pocket. Sudden moves were discouraged
out here where they might be noticed and misinterpreted as reaching for
a weapon. He unfolded the packet and pushed a small wad in his cheek.
Soldiers were encouraged not to smoke, since a lighted cigarette could
give away the position of a scout or patrol.
As Puri chewed the tobacco he watched squadrons of black flies begin
their own morning patrol. They were searching for fecal matter left by
red squirrels, goatlike mark hors and other herbivores that woke and fed
before dawn.
It was early winter now. Puri had heard that in the summer the insects
were so thick they seemed like clouds of smoke drifting low over the
rocks and scrub.
The major wondered if he would be alive to see them.
During some weeks thousands of men on both sides were killed. That was
inevitable with more than one million fanatic soldiers facing one
another across an extremely narrow, two hundred-mile-long "line of
control." Major Puri could see some of those soldiers now, across the
sandy stretch between the trenches. Their mouths were covered with black
muslin scarves to protect them against the westward-blowing winds.
But the eyes in their wind-burned faces blazed with hatred that had been
sparked back in the eighth century. That was when Hindus and Muslims
first clashed in this region. The ancient farmers and merchants took up
arms and fought about trade routes, land and water rights, and ideology.
The struggle became even more fierce in 1947 when Great Britain
abandoned its empire on the subcontinent. The British gave the rival
Hindus and Muslims the nations of India and Pakistan to call their own.
That partition also gave India control over the Muslim-dominated region
of Kashmir. Since that time the Pakistan. s have regarded the Indians as
an occupying force in Kashmir.
Warfare has been almost constant as the two sides struggled over what
became the symbolic heart of the conflict.
And I am in the heart of the heart, Puri thought.
Pakistan and China. It was ironic, the career soldier told himself.
This "heart" looked exactly like Dabhoi, the small town where he had
grown up at the foot of the Satpura Range in central India. Dabhoi had
no real value except to the natives, who were mostly tradesmen, and to
those trying to get to the city of Broach on the Bay of Cambay. That was
where they could buy fish cheap. It was disturbing how hate rather than
cooperation made one place more valuable than another.
Instead of trying to expand what they had in common they were trying to
destroy what was uncommon.
The officer stared out at the cease-fire zone. Lining the sandbags were
orange binoculars mounted on small iron poles. That was the only thing
the Indians and Pakistans had ever agreed on: coloring the binoculars so
they would not be mistaken for guns. But Puri did not need them here.
The brilliant sun was rising behind him. He could clearly see the dark
faces of the Pakistans behind their cinderblock barricades.
The faces looked just like Indian faces except that they were on the
wrong side of the line of control.
Puri made a point of breathing evenly. The line of control was a strip
of land so narrow in places that cold breath was visible from sentries
on both sides. And being visible, the puffs of breath could tell guards
on either side if their counterparts were anxious and breathing rapidly
or asleep and breathing slowly. There, a wrong word whispered to a
fellow soldier and overheard by the other side could break the fragile
truce. A hammer hitting a nail had to be muffled with cloth lest it be
mistaken for a gunshot and trigger return rifle fire. then artillery,
then nuclear weapons. That exchange could happen so fast that the
heavily barricaded bases would be vaporized even before the echoes of
the first guns had died in the towering mountain passageways.
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.
CHAPTER 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
Govnel e-mail pager the night before by Op Center 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 gel 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 non classified 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
Clancy, Tom - Op Center 8 - Line of Control Page 1