Herbert looked at his watch.
"They've got another six hours or so to go," he said.
"Four and change with a good tailwind and if we don't keep them on the
ground in Turkey for more than a few minutes."
Hood clicked on the Op-Center personnel roster. He opened the file.
"Matt is still here," he said, looking at the log-in time.
"He's going over the surveillance photos with Stephen Viens," Herbert
said.
"He hasn't left his desk since this started." "He should," Hood said.
"We'll need him to work on any ELINT that we need in the region."
"I'll have Gloria Gold spot him for a while," Herbert said.
Gold was the nighttime director of technical affairs. She was qualified
to run tech operations though she did not have the same background in
analysis that Stoll had.
"We also better get Lowell and Liz Gordon in on this," Hood said.
Lowell Coffey was Op-Center's international legal expert.
"We need to be up on Pakistani and Indian law in case they get caught.
Psych profiles of the Pakistanis would also help. Did we get a detailed
jurisdictional map of the region for Striker's missile search?" "No,"
Herbert said.
"That was going to be pretty tightly localized in Pakistani territory."
"We'll definitely need that, then," Hood said.
"We're screwed if Striker stumbles into Chinese spheres of influence and
gets caught."
"If Al George doesn't have those maps in archives I'll get them from
State," Herbert said.
"I've got a friend there who can keep his mouth shut."
"You've got friends everywhere." Hood grinned. It felt good to be part
of a team that included people like Bob Herbert. People who were
professional and thorough and there to support the team and its leader.
It also felt good to smile.
"What about Viens? How many satellites are there in the region?"
"Three," Herbert said.
"Will he be able to hold on to them?" Hood asked.
"That shouldn't be a problem," Herbert told Hood.
"No one else is asking for intel from that region right now. Viens also
has his entire team on rotation, so the satellite monitoring stations
will always be manned. They can run three separate recons at once."
"Good," Hood said. He continued to look at the computer screen. There
were other people he could call on if needed.
Right now, though, he thought it was best to keep the number of people
involved to a minimum. He would call Hank Lewis at the NSA and recommend
that he do the same. He hoped that the new appointee would be content to
let Op-Center run this as a "silent operation"--one in which the chain
of command stopped short of involving the president.
Herbert left to get his personnel set up and to obtain the map. Hood
called Coffey and tore him away from Politically Incorrect. Since
Coffey's home phone line was not secure, Hood could not tell him what
the late-night meeting was about. All he said was that the title of the
TV show pretty well summed it up. Coffey said he would be there as soon
as possible.
Hood thanked Coffey. He fished a few more Wheat Thins from the box and
sat back. There was still a lot to do before he would authorize this
mission. For one thing, Stephen Viens had to find the cell. Without that
information they had nothing. Then Hood and Herbert would have to decide
whether to land Striker as planned and then chopper them near the cell
or try to jump them in. Parachuting would be extremely dangerous in the
mountains due to the cold, wind, and visibility.
Perhaps they could get Ron Friday out there first to plant flares. But
landing would also present a problem since Striker was expected in
Srinagar for an entirely different mission. It might be difficult to
break away from their hosts as quickly as Op-Center needed them to.
Besides, Hood thought, the fewer people who came into contact with
Striker the better it would be for security. Lowell or Herbert could
come up with a reason for them to have parachuted in. The Indian air
force would have to go along with that or face the mission being
scrubbed.
Hood thought about Rodgers and his team. He was proud to be working with
them too. Regardless of how this unfolded it would be brutally difficult
for Striker if they went forward. Thinking about it did not make Hood's
own problems seem less immediate or important. Relativity never worked
like that. Harleigh was traumatized by what had happened at the United
Nations. Knowing that other people had lost their lives there did not
make it any easier to deal with her condition.
But it did do one thing. It reminded Hood what courage was. He would not
forget that in the hours and days ahead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.
Washington, D. C. Thursday, 1:12 a. m.
"We may have something!" Stephen Viens declared.
Gloria Gold was leaning forward in her chair. The excitement in Stephen
Viens's voice came through clearly on the computer audio link.
He was right. After methodically scanning the terrain for hours the
cameras had detected a promising image.
"Hold on," Viens said.
"Bemardo is switching us to infrared.
The changeover will take about three minutes." "I'm holding," said
Gloria Gold.
"Nice work," she added.
"Hold the back-patting," Viens said.
"It still could be just a row of rocks or a herd of mountain goats."
"That would be a flock of mountain goats," the fifty-seven year-old
woman pointed out.
"Excuse me?" Viens said.
"Herds are domesticated animals," she said.
"Flocks live in the wild."
"I see. Once a professor, always a professor," Viens teased.
"But who will have the last laugh if we find out it's goats being led
around by a Sherpa with a crook?"
Gloria smiled.
"You will." "Maybe we should bet on it," Viens said.
"Your micro cam against my lapel pin." "No go," Gloria said.
"Why not?" Viens asked.
"Mine has the range."
"And mine has the substance," she replied.
The NRO recon expert had once showed her the MIT lapel pin he had
customized. It contained a dot-sized microphone made of molecules that
resonated one against the other. It could broadcast sound to his
computer audio recorder up to two hundred miles away. Her micro cam was
better than that.
It broadcast million-pixel images to her computer from up to ten miles
away. It was better and it was much more useful.
"Okay," Viens said.
"Then let's bet dinner? The loser cooks?
It's a fitting deal. Infrared image, microwave meals--"
"I'm a lousy cook," said Gloria.
"I'm not."
"Thanks, but no," said the thrice-divorced woman. For some reason Viens
had always had a crush on her. She liked him too but he was young enough
to be her son.
"We'll make it a gentle person bet," she said.
"If you found the Pakistanis, we both win."
Viens sighed.
"A diplomat's deal. I accept, but under protest."
Tall, slender Gloria Gold smiled and lea
ned back in her chair. She was
sitting at her glass-topped desk in Op-Center's technical sector. The
lights of her office were off. The only glow came from the
twenty-one-inch computer monitor. The halls were silent. She took a swig
from the bottle of Evian water she kept on the floor. After knocking
over a bottle and shorting her computer the night after she first came
to work here, Gloria had learned not to keep anything liquid on her
desk. Luckily her boss. Assistant Director Curt Hardaway-"the Night
Commander," as they called him--admitted that he had once done that as
well. Whether he had done that or not it was a nice thing to say.
The levity about the bet had been welcome. She had only been at this an
hour but Viens had been working all day.
And the elements in the image-feed from the NRO did look very promising.
They were at five-meter resolution, meaning that anything down to five
meters long was visible. The computer's simultaneous PAP--photographic
analysis profile-had identified what it thought could be human shadows.
Distorted by the terrain and angle of the sun, they were coming from
under an intervening ledge. Infrared would ascertain whether the shadows
were being generated by living things or rock formations. The fact that
the shadows had shifted between two images did not tell them much. That
could simply be an illusion of the moving sun.
The Op-Center veteran watched and waited. The quiet of night shift made
the delay somehow seem longer.
The tech-sec was a row of three offices set farthest from the busy
front-end of the executive level. The stations were so thoroughly linked
by computer, webcam, and wireless technology that the occupants wondered
why they did not just tear down the walls and shout to each other, just
to make human contact now and then. But Matt Stoll had always been
against that. That was probably because Matt did things in private he
did not want the rest of the world to know about.
But Gloria Gold knew his dark secret. She had spied on him one night
using her digital micro cam hidden on the door handle of his mini
refrigerator Four or five times a day. Matt Stoll washed down a pair of
Twinkies with Gatorade.
That helped to explain the boundless energy and increasing girth of
Op-Center's favorite egghead. It also explained the occasional yellowish
stains on his shirt. He chugged the Gatorade straight from the bottle.
Even now, while Stoll was supposed to be resting on his sofa, he was
probably reading the latest issue of Nutech or playing a hand-held video
game.
Unlike his former classmate Viens, Matt Stoll, with his sugar and
Gatorade rush, defined the word wired.
Gloria's mind was back on the screen as the feed from the National
Reconnaissance Office was refreshed. The mostly white image was now the
color of fire. There were a series of yellow-white atmospheric
distortions radiating from hot red objects along the bottom of the
monitor.
"Looking good," Viens said.
"Whatever is making the shadows is definitely alive."
"Definitely," Gloria said. They watched as the image refreshed again.
The red spot got even hotter as it moved out from under the ledge. The
blob like shape was vaguely human.
"Shit!" Viens said.
"Bemardo, go back to natural light."
"That's no mountain goat," Gloria said.
"I'm betting it isn't a Sherpa either," Viens added.
Gloria continued to watch as the satellite switched oculars.
This changeover seemed to take much longer than the last.
The delay was not in the mechanical switch itself but in the optics
diagnostics the satellite ran each time it changed lenses. It was
important to make certain the focus and alignment were correct. Wrong
data--off-center imaging, improper focus, a misplaced decimal point in
resolution--was as useless as no data.
The image came on-screen in visible light. There was a field of white
with the gray ledge slashing diagonally across the screen. Gloria could
see a figure standing half beneath it.
The figure was not a goat or a Sherpa. It was a woman.
Behind her was what looked like the head of another person.
"I think we've got them!" Viens said excitedly.
"Sure looks like it," Gloria agreed as she reached for the phone.
"I'll let Bob Herbert know."
Bob Herbert was there before the next image appeared.
The image that clearly showed five people making their way along the
narrow ledge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
Kargil, Kashmir Thursday, 12:01 p. m.
Ron Friday liked to be prepared.
If he were going into a building he liked to have at least two exit
strategies. If he were going into a country he always had his eye on the
next place he would go to out of choice or necessity. If he had a
mission in mind he always checked on the availability of the equipment,
clearances, and allies he might need. For him, there was no such thing
as downtime.
After talking with Bob Herbert, Friday realized that it might be
necessary for him and Captain Nazir to move into the mountains. He knew
that the helicopter was good for travel at heights up to twelve thousand
feet and temperatures down to twelve degrees Fahrenheit. They had enough
fuel left for a seven-hundred-mile flight. That meant they could go into
the mountains about four hundred miles and still get back. Of course,
there was also the problem of having to set the chopper down at too high
an altitude and having liquid bearing components freeze. Depending on
where they had to fly, it could be a long and unpleasant walk back.
Friday removed the detachable phone and kept it with him.
Then he checked the gear they had onboard. There was basic climbing
equipment but no cold-weather clothing. That might not be a problem,
however. He had gone through Apu Kumar's things. There were some heavy
coats. There were hats and gloves so those would not be a problem. His
biggest concern was oxygen. If he and Captain Nazir had to do a lot of
climbing at higher altitudes exhaustion would be a factor.
Perhaps Striker was bringing some of that gear with them.
Friday would not know that or the location of the target area itself
until he talked to Bob Herbert or Hank Lewis.
In the meantime, Friday reviewed maps with Captain Nazir to familiarize
himself with the region. Apu was with them in the small kitchen area of
his farmhouse, adding what firsthand knowledge he had of the region. He
used to climb the foothills when he was younger.
Friday plotted a course from the Srinagar bazaar to the explosion in the
mountains. He also mapped a route from the farm to the Himalayan blast
site. There had been more than enough time for both the cell and the man
from this farm to have reached the mountain site before the detonation.
The question was where they would move from there. The cell only had to
cover roughly twenty miles to go from the mountains to the Pakistani
border. But they were a mountainous twenty miles that included both the
line of
control and the brutal Siachin Glacier. Reaching up to some
eighteen thousand feet, the glacier would be difficult to climb under
the best of circumstances. Tired and presumably pursued from the ground
and possibly the air, the Pakistanis would need a miracle to get across.
The helicopter phone beeped while Friday was looking at topographic
charts of the region. Nazir answered. It was Bob Herbert and Hank Lewis.
He passed the phone to Friday.
"We've found the cell," Herbert said.
"Where are they?" Friday asked eagerly. He bent over the charts that
were spread on the table.
"I have seven to ten tactical pilotage charts each of the Muzaffarabad
border region, the Srinagar border region, and the area from Srinagar to
Kargil."
"They're in the Srinagar border region," Herbert said.
"Just outside of Jaudar."
"What are the coordinates?" Friday asked as he went to that set and
began flipping through the charts, looking for the village.
Clancy, Tom - Op Center 8 - Line of Control Page 20