Tom Clancy's Op-center Novels 7-12 (9781101644591)

by Clancy, Tom

  August felt a special kinship with Grey because the sergeant was at home in the air. But August was close to all his personnel. Privates David George, Jason Scott, Terrence Newmeyer, Walter Pupshaw, Matt Bud, and Sondra DeVonne. Medic William Musicant, Corporal Pat Prementine, and Lieutenant Orjuela. They were more than specialists. They were a team. And they had more courage, more heart than any unit August had ever worked with.

  Newly promoted Corporal Ishi Honda was another marvel. The son of a Hawaiian mother and Japanese father, Honda was an electronics prodigy and the unit’s communications expert. He was never far from the TAC-SAT phone, which Colonel August and Rodgers used to stay in touch with Op-Center. The backpack containing the unit was lined with bullet-proof Kevlar so it would not be damaged in a firefight. Because it was so loud in the cabin Honda sat with the TAC-SAT in his lap. He did not want to miss hearing any calls. When he was in the field, Honda wore a Velcro collar and headphones of his own creation. They plugged directly into the pack. When the collar was jacked in, the “beep” was automatically disengaged; the collar simply vibrated when there was an incoming call. If Striker were on a surveillance mission there was no sound to give them away. Moreover, the collar was wired with small condensor microphones that allowed Honda to communicate subvocally. He could whisper and his voice would be transferred clearly to whoever was on the other end.

  But Striker was more than just a group of military elite drawn from different services. Lt. Colonel Squires had done an extraordinary job turning them into a smart, disciplined fighting unit. They were certainly the most impressive team August had ever served with.

  The plane banked to the south and August’s old leather portfolio slid from under his seat. He kicked it back with his heel. The bag contained maps and white papers about Kashmir. The colonel had already reviewed them with his team. He would look at them again in a few minutes. Right now August wanted to do what he did before beginning every mission. He wanted to try and figure out why he was here, why he was going. That was something he had done every day since he was first a prisoner of war: take stock of his motivations for doing what he was doing. That was true whether August was in a Vietcong stockade, getting up in the morning to go to the Striker base, or leaving on a mission. It was not enough to say he was serving his country or pursuing his chosen career. He needed something that would allow him to push himself to do better than he did the day before. Otherwise the quality of his work and his life would suffer.

  What he had discovered was that he could not find another reason. When he was optimistic, pride and patriotism had been his biggest motivators. On darker days he decided that humans were all territorial carnivores and prisoners of their nature. Combat and survival were a genetic imperative. Yet these could not be the only things that drove us. There had to be something unique to everyone, something that transcended political or professional boundaries.

  So what he searched for in these quiet times was the other missing motivation. The key that would make him a better soldier, a better leader, a stronger and better man.

  Along the way, of course, he discovered many things, thought many interesting thoughts. And he began to wonder if the journey itself might be the answer. Given that he was heading to one of the birthplaces of Eastern religion, that would be a fitting revelation. Maybe that was all he would find. Unlike the mission, there were no maps to show him the terrain, no aircraft to take him there.

  But for now he would keep looking.

  SIX

  Srinagar, India Wednesday, 4:22 P.M.

  There was a two-and-one-half-hour time difference between Baku and Kashmir. Still on Azerbaijan time, Ron Friday bought several lamb skewers from one of the food merchants. Then he went to a crowded outdoor café and ordered tea to go with his dinner. He would have to eat quickly. There was a dusk-to-dawn curfew for foreigners. It was strictly enforced by soldiers who patrolled the streets wearing body armor and carrying automatic rifles.

  Though the rain had stopped, the large umbrellas were still open over the tables. Friday had to duck to make his way through. He shared his table with a pair of Hindu pilgrims who were reading while they drank their tea. The two men were dressed in very long white cotton robes that were tied at the center with a brown belt. It was the wardrobe of holy men from the United Provinces near Nepal, at the foot of the Himalayas. There were heavy-looking satchels at their sides. The men were probably on their way to a religious shrine at Pahalgam, which was located fifty-five miles south of Srinagar. The presence of the satchels suggested that they were planning to spend some time at the shrine. The men did not acknowledge Friday as he sat, though they were not being rude. They did not want to interrupt his tranquillity. One of the men was looking over a copy of the International Herald Tribune. That struck Friday as odd, though he did not know why it should. Even holy men needed to keep up with world events. The other man, who was sitting right beside Friday, was reading a volume of poems in both Sanskrit and English. Friday glanced over the man’s forearm.

  “Vishayairindriyagraamo na thrupthamadhigachathi ajasram pooryamaanoopi samudraha salilairiva,” it said in Sanskrit. The English translation read, “The senses can never be satisfied even after the continuous supply of sensory objects, as the ocean can never be filled with a continuous supply of water.”

  Friday did not dispute that. People who were alive had to drink in everything around them. They consumed experiences and things and turned that fuel into something else. Into something that had their fingerprints on it. If you weren’t doing that you were living, but not alive.

  While the pilgrims sat at the table they were approached by a Muslim. The man offered low-price shelter at his home if they wished to stay the night. Often, pilgrims had neither the time nor the money to stay at an inn. The men graciously declined, saying they were going to try and catch the next bus and would rest when they reached the shrine. The Muslim said that if they missed this bus or one of the later ones he could arrange for his brother-in-law to drive them to the shrine the next day. He gave them a card with his address handwritten on it. They thanked him for his offer. The man bowed and excused himself. It was all very civil. Contact between the Muslims and Hindus usually was cordial. It was the generals and the politicians who provoked the wars.

  Behind Friday two men had stopped for tea. From their conversation he gathered that they were heading to the night shift at a nearby brick factory. To Friday’s left three men in the khaki uniforms of the Kashmir police force were standing and watching the crowd. Unlike in the Middle East, bazaars were not typically the scene of terrorist attacks in Kashmir. That was because as many Muslims as Hindus frequently mingled in marketplaces. Hindu-specific sites were usually targeted. Places such as homes of local officials, businesses, police stations, financial institutions, and military bases. Even militaristic, aggressive groups like the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen guerrillas did not typically attack civilian locales, especially during business hours. They did not want to turn the people against them. Their war was with the Hindu leaders and those who supported them.

  The two pilgrims quickly finished their tea. Their bus was pulling up three hundred yards to the right. It braked noisily at a small, one-room bus stop at the far western side of the market. The bus was an old green vehicle, but clean. There were iron racks on the roof for luggage. The uniformed driver came out and helped passengers off while a luggage clerk brought a stepladder from inside the bus stop. While he began to unload the bags of riders who were disembarking, ticket-holders began queuing up beside him to board. For the most part the line was extremely orderly. When the two men were finished they both entered the small wooden structure.

  The two pilgrims at Ron Friday’s table had put away their reading material and picked up their big lumpy bags. With effort, the men threw the satchels over their shoulders and made their way onto the crowded street. Watching them go, Friday wondered what the punishment was for stealing. With customers packed so closely together and focused on getting what they
needed, the market would be a pickpocket’s heaven. Especially if they were going to get on a bus and leave the area quickly.

  Friday continued to sip his tea as he ate the lamb from the wooden skewers. He watched as other pilgrims rushed by. Some of them were dressed in white or black robes, others were wearing Western street clothes. The men and women who were not wearing traditional robes would be permitted to worship at the shrine but not to enter the cave itself. A few people were pulling children behind them. Friday wondered if their hungry expressions were anxiety about getting onto the bus or a physical manifestation of the religious fervor they felt. Probably a little of both.

  One of the police officers walked toward the bus stop to make sure the boarding process was orderly. He walked past the police station, which was to his left. It was a two-story wooden structure with white walls and green eaves. The two front windows were barred. Beyond the police station, practically abutting it, was a decades-old Hindu temple. Friday wondered if the local government had built the police station next to a temple in an effort to protect it from terrorists. Friday had been to the temple once before. It was a dvibheda—a bidivisional house of worship that honored both Shiva, the god of destruction, and Vishnu, the preserver. The main portal was fronted by the five-story-tall Rajagopuram, the Royal Tower. To the sides were smaller towers over the auxiliary entrances. These white-brick structures were trimmed with green and gold tile and honored the two different gods. The walls were decorated with canopies, roaring lions, humanlike gatekeepers in what appeared to be dancing poses, and other figures. Friday did not know a great deal about the iconography. However, he did recall that the interior of the temple was designed to symbolize a deity at rest. The first room was the crest, followed by the face, the abdomen, the knee, the leg, and the foot. The entire body was important to the Hindus, not just the soul or the heart. Any part of a human being without the other part was incomplete. And an incomplete individual could not manifest the ultimate perfection required by the faith.

  However fast they were going, each pilgrim took a moment to turn to it and bow slightly before continuing on. As important as their individual goals were, the Hindus understood that there was something much greater than they were. Other pilgrims were exiting the temple to catch the bus. Still other Hindus, probably local citizens, as well as tourists were moving in and out of the arched portal.

  A block past the temple was a movie theater with an old-style marquee. India made more motion pictures than any nation in the world. Friday had seen several of them on videotape, including Fit to Be a King and Flowers and Vermilion. Friday believed that the dreams of a people—hence, their weaknesses—could be found in the stories, themes, and characters of their most popular films. The Indians were especially drawn to the three-hour-long contemporary actionmusicals. These films always starred attractive leads who had no names other than “Hero” and “Heroine.” They were Everyman and Everywoman in epic struggles yet there was always music in their hearts. That was how the Indians viewed themselves. Reality was a disturbing inconvenience they did not choose to acknowledge. Like an oftentimes cruel caste system. Friday had a theory about that. He had always believed that castes were an embodiment of the Indians’ faith. In society as in the individual there was a head, feet, and all parts in between. All parts were necessary to create a whole.

  Friday glanced back at the market proper. Movement continued unabated. If anything it was busier than before as people stopped by before dinner or on their way home from work. Customers on foot and on bicycles made their way to different stalls. Baskets, wheelbarrows, and occasionally truckloads of goods continued to arrive. The markets usually remained open until just after sunset. In Srinagar and its environs, workers tended to be very early risers. They were expected to arrive at the local factories, fields, and shops around seven in the morning.

  Friday finished eating and looked over at the bus. The driver had returned and was helping people board. The bus stop employee was back on his stepladder loading bags onto the roof. What was amazing to Friday was that amid all the seeming chaos there was an internal order. Every individual system was functioning perfectly, from the booths to the shoppers, from the police to the bus. Even the supposedly antagonistic religious factions were doing just fine.

  A fine drizzle started up again. Friday decided to head over to the bus station. It looked as if there were new construction there and he was curious to see what lay beyond. As Friday followed the last of the pilgrims he watched the bus driver take tickets and help people onboard.

  Something was not the same.

  It was the driver. He was not a heavyset man but a rather slender one. Maybe he was a new driver. It was possible; they all wore the same jackets. Then he noticed something else. The clerk who was loading bags into the rack was being very careful with them. Friday had not gotten a very good look at the clerk. The exiting passengers had blocked his view. He could not tell if this were the same man.

  The bus was still two hundred yards away. The American quickened his pace.

  Suddenly the world to Friday’s left vanished, swallowed in a flash of bright white light, infernal white heat, and deafening white noise.

  SEVEN

  Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 7:10 A.M.

  Paul Hood sat alone in his office. Mike Rodgers and Striker were on their way and nothing else was pressing. Hood’s door was shut and a file labeled “Working OCIS” was open on his computer. The “working” part of the heading indicated that this was not the original draft but a copy. The OCIS was a clickable chart of Op-Center’s internal structure. Under each division was a list of the departments and personnel. Attached to each name was a subfile. These were logs that were filed each day by every employee. They outlined the activities of the individual. Only Hood, Rodgers, and Herbert had access to the files. They were maintained to allow the Op-Center directors to track and cross-reference personnel activities with phone records, e-mail lists, and other logs. If anyone were working at cross-purposes with the rest of the team—cooperating with another agency or even another government—this was the first line of security. The computer automatically flagged any activity that did not have a log entry ordering or corroborating it.

  Right now Paul Hood was not looking for moles. He was looking for lambs. The sacrificial kind. If Senator Fox and the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee wanted cutbacks he had to be prepared to make them. The question was where?

  Hood clicked on Bob Herbert’s intelligence department. He scrolled through the names. Could Herbert get by with just daytime surveillance of e-mail communications in Europe ? Not likely. Spies worked around the clock. What about a single liaison with the CIA and the FBI instead of one for each? Probably. He would ask Herbert which one he wanted to lose. Hood moved the cursor to the tech division. What about Matt Stoll? Could he survive without a satellite interface officer or a computer resources upgrade manager? Matt could outsource the work he needed whenever they had to eavesdrop on foreign communications satellites or change hardware or software. It would be inconvenient but it would not be debilitating. He double-clicked on the upgrade manager and the position disappeared.

  Hood’s heart sped up as he checked the next department. It was the office of the press liaison. Did Op-Center really need someone to issue news releases and organize press conferences ? If Senator Fox were afraid that the National Crisis Management Center was too visible, then the press officer and her one assistant should be the first to go.

  Hood stared at the computer. Never mind what Senator Fox thought. What did he think?

  Hood did not see the list. He saw the face of Ann Farris. After years of flirting the two had finally spent a night together. It was at once the most wonderful and devastating encounter of Hood’s life. Wonderful because he and Ann cared about each other, deeply. Devastating because Hood had to acknowledge that a bond existed. It was even stronger than the one he had felt when he encountered his old lover Nancy Jo Bosworth in Germany. Yet he was st
ill married to Sharon. He had his children’s well-being to consider, not to mention his own. And he would have to deal with Sharon’s feelings if she ever found out. Though Hood loved being close to Ann this was not the time for another relationship.

  And what would Ann think? After a rough divorce of her own, Ann Farris was not a very secure woman. She was poised when meeting the press and she was a terrific single mother. But those were what psychologist Liz Gordon had once described at an employee “Job vs. Parenting” seminar as “reactionary qualities.” Ann responded to external stimuli with good, natural instincts. Inside, where she had allowed Paul to go, she was a scared little girl. If Hood let her go she would think he was doing it to keep her away. If he kept her she would think he was playing favorites, protecting her.

  Personally and professionally it was a no-win situation. And Hood was not even considering how the rest of Op-Center would react. They had to know what was going on between him and Ann. They were a tight-knit office and an intelligence group. This had to be the worst-kept secret on the base.