Clancy, Tom - Op Center 8 - Line of Control
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A profound sense of despair.
CHAPTER SEVENTY.
Washington, D. C. Tuesday, 7:10 a. m.
Paul Hood sat alone in his office. He was looking at his computer,
reviewing the comments he planned to make at the ten a. m. Striker
memorial.
As promised, Herbert had persuaded the Indians to bring choppers from
the line of control to collect the bodies of the Strikers. The leverage
he used was simple. The Pakistanis agreed to stay out of the region,
even though they claimed the valley for their own. Herbert convinced New
Delhi that it would be a bad idea for Pakistanis to collect the bodies
of Americans who had been killed by Indians. It would have made a
political statement that neither India nor the United States wished to
make.
Colonel August was in the valley to meet the two Mi-35s when they
arrived late Friday afternoon. The bodies had already been collected and
lined up beneath their canopies.
August stayed with the bodies until they had been flown back to Quantico
on Sunday. Then and only then did the colonel agree to go to a hospital.
Mike Rodgers was there to meet him.
Hood and Rodgers had performed too many of these services since
Op-Center had first been chartered. Mike Rodgers inevitably spoke
eloquently of duty and soldiering. Heroism and tradition. Hood always
tried to find a perspective in which to place the sacrifice. The
salvation of a country, the saving of lives, or the prevention of war.
The men invariably left the mourners feeling hope instead of futility,
pride to temper the sense of loss.
But this was different. More than the lives of the Strikers was being
memorialized today.
New Delhi had publicly thanked Op-Center for uncovering a Pakistani
cell. The bodies of three ten-orists had been found at the foot of the
Himachal Peaks in the Himalayas. They appeared to have slipped from a
ledge and plummeted to their deaths. They were identified by records on
file at the offices of the Special Frontier Force.
Islamabad had also publicly thanked Op-Center for helping deter a
nuclear strike against Pakistan. Though Indian Defense Minister John
Kabir had been named by Major Dcv Puri and others as the man behind the
plot, Kabir denied the allegations. He vowed to right any indictments
the government might consider handing down. Hood suspected that the
minister and others would resign, and that would be the end of it. New
Delhi would rather bury the reality of any wrongdoing than give Pakistan
a more credible voice in the court of world opinion.
Hood even got a thank-you call from Nanda Kumar. The young woman called
from New Delhi to say that General Rodgers had been a hero and a
gentleman. Although he had not been able to save her grandfather, she
realized that Rodgers had done everything he could to make the trek
easier for him. She said she hoped to visit Hood and Rodgers in
Washington when she got out of the hospital. Even though she was
technically an Indian intelligence operative. Hood had no doubt that she
would get a visa. Nanda's broadcast had made her an international
celebrity. She would spend the rest of her life speaking and writing
about her experience.
Hood hoped that the twenty-two-year-old was wise beyond her years. He
hoped she would use the media access to promote tolerance and peace in
Kashmir, and not the agendas of India or Nanda Kumar.
The praise from abroad was unique. Even when Op-Center succeeded in
averting disaster. Hood and his team were typically slammed for their
involvement in the internal affairs of another nation--Spain or the
Koreas or the Middle East or anywhere else they handled a crisis.
Despite the praise coming from abroad, Op-Center took several
unprecedented hits on the home front. Most of those came from Hank Lewis
and the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee. They wanted to
know why General Rodgers had left the Siachin Glacier without Ron
Friday.
Why Striker had jumped into a military hot zone during the day instead
of at night. Why the NRO was involved in the operation but not the CIA
or the full resources of the NSA, which had an operative on-site. Hood
and Rodgers had gone over to Capitol Hill to explain everything to Lewis
and to Fox and her fellow CIOC members.
They might just as well have been speaking Urdu. The CIOC had already
decided that in addition to the previously discussed downsizing,
Op-Center would no longer be maintaining a military wing. Striker would
be officially disbanded.
Colonel August and Corporal Musicant would be reassigned and General
Rodgers's role would be "reevaluated."
Hood was also informed that he would be filing daily rather than
semiweekly reports with CIOC. They wanted to know everything that the
agency was involved with, from situation analyses to photographic
reconnaissance.
Hood suspected the only thing that protected Op-Center at all was the
loyalty of the president of the United States. President Lawrence and
United Nations Secretary-General Mala Chatterjee had issued a joint
statement congratulating Paul Hood for his group's nonpartisan efforts
on behalf of humanitarian and world peace. It was not a document the
CIOC could ignore, especially after Chatterjee's bitter denunciation of
the way Hood had handled the Security Council crisis. Hood could not
imagine the kind of pressure Lawrence must have applied to get that
statement. He also wondered how Chatterjee really felt. She was a
pacifistic Indian whose nation had tried to start a nuclear war against
its neighbor. Unless she was steeped in denial, that had to be difficult
for her to reconcile. Hood would not be surprised to hear that she was
resigning her post to run for political office at home.
That would certainly be a good step toward peace in the region.
All of which served to make this a very different time, a very different
memorial service. It was the last time Paul Hood and the original
Op-Center would do anything as teammates. The rest of them would not
know that yet.
But Paul Hood would. He wanted to say something that addressed a new
loss they would all soon be feeling.
He reread the opening line of his testimonial.
"This is the second family I have lost in as many months ..."
He deleted it. The statement was too much about him. Too much about his
loss.
But it did start him thinking. Although he was no longer living with
Sharon and the kids, he still felt as though they were together in some
way. If not physically then spiritually.
And then it came to him. Hood knew the line was right because it caught
in his throat as he tried to say it.
Hood typed with two trembling index fingers as he tried to see the
computer monitor. It was blurry because he was blinking out tears over
what was supposed to be just a job. "This I have learned," he wrote with
confidence.
"Wherever fate takes any of us, we will always be family ..."
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Line of Control [lit], Clancy, Tom - Op Center 8 - Line of Control