Clancy, Tom - Op Center 8 - Line of Control

by Line of Control [lit]

  granddaughter support the terrorists or because they are holding her

  hostage," Friday said to him.

  Apu hesitated.

  "Mr. Kumar, people were killed yesterday when a bomb exploded in

  Srinagar," Captain Nazir said.

  "Police officers, pilgrims on the way to Pahalgam, and worshipers in a

  temple.

  Did your granddaughter have a hand in that or did she not?"

  "No!" Apu half-shouted, half-wept.

  "We do not support them. They forced her to go with them! They left

  yesterday.

  I was told to be silent or they said they would kill her. How is she?

  How is my granddaughter?" "We don't know," Nazir told him.

  "But we want to find her and help her. Have they been back here since

  the explosion?" Nazir asked.

  "No," Apu said.

  "One man stayed behind when the others left. He called and claimed

  responsibility for an attack. I heard him. But then he left suddenly at

  around five o'clock." "Suddenly?" Nazir asked.

  "He seemed very upset after talking to someone else on the telephone,"

  Apu told him.

  "As if something had gone wrong?" Friday asked. That would certainly

  confirm what Op-Center was thinking.

  "I don't know," Apu said.

  "He was usually very calm. I even heard him make jokes sometimes. But

  not then. Maybe something did happen."

  "If you came to Srinagar with us, would you be able to tell us what

  these people look like?" Nazir asked.

  Apu nodded.

  Friday touched Nazir's arm.

  "We may not have time for that," the NSA operative said. Whatever is

  happening seems to be happening very quickly.

  "Mr. Kumar, were your visitors Pakistani?"

  "Yes."

  "How many of them were there and how long did they stay with you?"

  Friday asked.

  "There were five and they stayed for five months," Apu told him.

  "Did you hear any of their names?" Nazir asked.

  "Yes," Apu said.

  "I heard "Sharab' but no last names."

  "Did they ever leave you alone?" Friday asked.

  "Only in our bedroom," Apu told him.

  "One of them was always on guard outside."

  "Did they ever mistreat you?" Friday asked.

  Apu shook his head. He was like a prizefighter who kept getting peppered

  with jabs. But that was how interrogations needed to be conducted. Once

  the target opened up the interrogator had to keep him open. Friday

  looked over at the stone barn.

  "Who took care of your chickens?" Friday asked.

  "I did in the morning and Nanda--that's my granddaughter--she took care

  of them in the late afternoon," Apu replied.

  "The Pakistanis were with you then?" Nazir said.

  "Yes."

  "How did your eggs get to market?" Friday asked.

  "The Pakistanis took them," Apu replied.

  That would explain how the terrorists had cased their target in Srinagar

  without being noticed. But it did not explain the field phone signal

  that came from here.

  "Do you or your granddaughter own a cellular telephone, Mr. Kumar?"

  Friday asked.

  Apu shook his head.

  "What did she do in her free time?" Friday pressed.

  "She read and she wrote poetry." "Did she always write poetry?" Friday

  asked.

  Apu said she did not. Friday sensed that he was on to something.

  "Do you have any of the poetry?" Friday asked.

  "In the room," Apu told him.

  "She used to recite it to herself while she worked."

  Friday was definitely on to something. He and Captain Nazir exchanged

  glances. They asked to see the poems.

  Apu took them inside. Friday was alert as they walked into the

  two-bedroom house. There was no one inside or anywhere to hide. There

  was hardly any furniture, just a few chairs and a table. The place

  smelled of ash and musk. The ash was from the wood-burning stove on

  which they also did their cooking. The musk, Friday suspected, was from

  their guests.

  Apu led them to the bedroom. He took a stack of papers from the drawer

  in the nightstand. He handed them to Captain Nazir. The poems were short

  and written in pencil. They were about everything from flowers to clouds

  to rain. Nazir read the earliest.

  It rained five days and flowers grew. And they stayed fresh and new- In

  my cart I kept a few To sell to all of you.

  "Not very profound," Nazir said.

  Friday did not comment. He was not so sure of that.

  The captain nipped through the others. The structure seemed to be the

  same in all of the poems, a

  "Mary Had a Little Lamb" cadence.

  "Go back to the first," Friday said.

  Nazir flipped back to the top sheet.

  "Mr. Kumar, you said Nanda recited these poems while she worked?" Friday

  asked.

  "Yes."

  "Is she a political activist?"

  "She is an outspoken patriot who was devoted to her parents," Apu said.

  "My daughter and son-in-law were killed resisting the Pakistanis."

  "There it is," Friday said.

  "I don't follow," Captain Nazir said.

  Friday asked Apu to stay in the bedroom. He led Nazir back outside.

  "Captain, there were five Pakistanis," Friday told him.

  "The woman mentions the number five in the first line of the first poem.

  The Pakistanis stayed here--she mentions that word too. She says

  something about her can going to market.

  The Pakistanis sold the eggs for her. Suppose someone got her a cell

  phone. Suppose the line was open and monitored twenty-four seven You

  said the poems don't seem very profound.

  I disagree."

  "She could have emphasized words that gave information to someone,"

  Nazir said.

  "Right," Friday said.

  "Doesn't the SFF maintain a group of volunteers from the general

  population? Civilian Network Operatives?"

  "Yes." "How does that system work?" Friday asked.

  "Operatives are recruited in sensitive regions or businesses and visited

  on a regular basis, either at their place of employment or at home,"

  Captain Nazir said.

  "They report unusual activities or provide other information they may

  have collected."

  "What if an operative were to miss an appointment?" Friday asked.

  "What if Nanda failed to show up at the marketplace?"

  Nazir nodded.

  "I see what you mean," he said.

  "The SFF would come looking for her." "Exactly," Friday said.

  "Suppose at some point this woman, Nanda, had been recruited by the SFF.

  Maybe when the Pakistanis held Kargil, maybe after. If someone showed up

  with her cart in the bazaar, her SFF contact would have known that

  something was wrong. They might have arranged to drop a field phone off

  in the barn where she was sure to find it." "Yes, it's starting to come

  together," Nazir said.

  "The SFF sponsors the woman. She feeds them information about the cell

  and they decide to let the terrorists make their attack on the police

  station. At the same time the SFF enlarges the scope of that attack so

  the Pakistanis will take the blame for striking at religious targets.

  The SFF also seals off the site to clean up
any evidence that might

  connect them to the other two explosions." "But the job isn't finished,"

  Friday said.

  "The terrorists realize they've been set up and are probably trying to

  get to Pakistan. They take Nanda with them in case they need a hostage."

  "More likely a witness," Nazir pointed out.

  "The terrorists claimed responsibility for the explosion, probably

  before they knew the full extent of the damage. Nanda knows they were

  not responsible for the temple bombing. They need her to say that."

  "Good point," Friday said.

  "Meanwhile, if she still has her cell phone with her, she may be

  signaling the SFF, telling them where to find them."

  Nazir was silent for a moment.

  "If that is true, they probably haven't caught up with the terrorists

  yet," he said.

  "I would have heard about it. Which means we've got to get to them

  first.

  If the SFF executes the terrorists before they can be heard it will turn

  nearly one billion Hindus against Pakistan. There will be a war and it

  will be an all-out war, a holy war, with flame from the nostrils of

  Shiva." "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.

  CHAPTER 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 EX COM was

  composed of the director of the CIA, the assistant secretary of defense,

  and the president's science advisor. The EX COM reported to the

  secretary of defense, though he could not overrule decisions made by the

  EX COM 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 SPA WAR Space Technology Directorate

  Division, SPA WAR-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 Omni Com

  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--lifeanddeath--situation and needed it at once. Typically, the Omni

  Com 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 Omni Com could get in close enough

  to lip-read.

  Working at the Omni Com 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,"2 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.