by Clancy, Tom
The clearing was silent as the reverberation of the grenade subsided. There were no moans from the other side, no shouting. There was just deadly silence as time and options slipped away. Without the cell phone they could not communicate with August or hook up to the dish. Finding the unit in the dark would be time consuming, if it was even possible. Going out with a torch was suicide. And if they lost Samouel, none of it even mattered.
It had been a good plan. Ironically, they would have been better off following the instincts of a man who might well be a traitor.
Mike Rodgers crouched there, his arms held low. He continued to press on the makeshift bandage, hoping the blood on the underside would freeze. When that happened he would have to try to recover the phone, even if it cost him his life.
As Rodgers waited, his right elbow knocked into something in his belt.
He realized at once what it was.
Possible salvation.
SIXTY-ONE
Siachin Base 3, Kashmir Friday, 3:22 A.M.
The Mikoyan Mi-35 helicopter set down on its small, dark pad. The square landing area was composed of a layer of asphalt covered with cotton and then another layer of asphalt. The fabric helped keep the ice from the lower layer from reaching the upper layer.
No sooner had the pilot cut the twin rotors than he received a message over his headset.
“Captain, we just received a message from Major Puri,” the base communications director informed him. “You’re to refuel, deice, and go back out.”
The captain exchanged a disgruntled look with the copilot. The cockpit was poorly heated and they were both tired from the difficult flight. They did not feel like undertaking a new mission.
As the pilot looked over, he glanced past his companion. Through the starboard window of the cockpit he could already see ground crews approaching. There were two trucks crossing the landing area. One was a fuel tank, the other a truck loaded with high-volume hoses and drums of a solution of sodium chloride–ferric ferrocyanide.
“What is the objective?” the captain asked.
“The cell you were tracking before,” the BCD replied. “One of Major Puri’s units has them cornered. The unit estimates that there are four individuals but they do not know how heavily armed they are.”
The captain felt a flush of satisfaction at the news. Although he had admired the way one man, armed with a pistol, had driven them back, he did not like being outsmarted.
“Where are they?” the captain asked. At the same time he punched up the topographical map on the computer.
“The Upper Chittisin Plateau,” the officer replied, and provided the coordinates.
The pilot entered the figures. The criminals had simply followed the mountain. It was a particularly high, cold, inhospitable section of the glacier. He wondered if they had gone there intentionally or ended up there by accident. If intentionally, he could not imagine what was there. Perhaps a safe house of some kind, or a weapons cache.
Whatever it was, he could take the chopper around the glacier on the southwest side and be there in forty-five minutes.
“When we find them, what are our orders?” the captain asked.
“You are to retrieve Major Puri’s team and then complete your previous mission,” the BCD informed him.
The captain acknowledged the order.
Ten minutes later he was in the air heading toward the target. This time, he would not fail to exterminate the terrorists.
SIXTY-TWO
The Siachin Glacier Friday, 3:23 A.M.
Samouel’s blood was beginning to freeze. Rodgers felt it in his fingertips. They were the only part of his hands that had stayed warm.
As soon as that happened he picked up his knife and leaned close to Nanda. “I want you to come with me,” he said.
“All right,” she replied.
Together, they crept across the area between the ice barricade and the entrance to the silo.
“I’m coming in with Nanda,” Rodgers said in a loud whisper. He did not want Friday thinking it was the Indians circling around.
“Is everything all right?” Friday asked.
“Samouel’s been hit,” Rodgers told him.
“How bad?”
“Bad,” Rodgers said.
“You dumb bastard,” Friday said. “And I’m even dumber for following you assholes.”
“I guess so,” Rodgers replied. He sidled next to Friday and handed him the knife. “If we’re through with your debriefing, I’m going back to get Samouel. Meantime, I need you to start digging me a hole in the ice along the side of the silo entrance.”
“That’s how you’re planning to get to the cable?” Friday asked.
“That’s how,” Rodgers admitted.
“It could be ten feet down!” Friday exclaimed.
“It won’t be,” Rodgers said. “The ice melts and refreezes out here. The conduit probably cracks a lot. They would not put it so far down that they couldn’t reach it for repairs.”
“Maybe,” Friday said. “Even so, digging through three or four feet of ice is going to take—”
“Just do it,” Rodgers told him.
“Up yours,” Friday replied. “If Sammy boy croaks we’re dead anyway. I think I’m going to have a talk with our Indian neighbors. See if we can’t work something out.”
Rodgers heard the knife clunk on the ice.
A moment later he heard the blade scrape the ice.
“I’ll do it,” Nanda said as she began chopping.
That caught Rodgers by surprise. Her voice sounded strong. It was the first indication he had that she was “back.” It was their first bit of luck and the timing could not have been better.
Rodgers could not see Friday but he could hear his harsh breathing. The general had his right hand in his coat pocket. He was prepared to shoot Friday if he had to. Not for leaving them. He had that right. But he was afraid of what a cold, tired, and hungry man might say about their situation.
Ron Friday’s breathing stayed in the same place. Nanda’s action must have shamed him. Or maybe Friday had been testing Rodgers. Sometimes, what a man did not say in response to a threat said more, and was more dangerous, than a saber-rattling reply.
“I’ll be right back with Samouel,” Rodgers said evenly.
The general turned and recrossed the small area between the two positions. The Indians maintained their silence. Rodgers was now thinking they had been advance scouts for another party. Their orders were obviously to keep the enemy pinned until backup could arrive. Hopefully, that would not be for another half hour or so. If everything else went right in his improvisation, that was all the time Rodgers would need.
Samouel was breathing rapidly when Rodgers reached him. The general was not a doctor. He did not know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Under the circumstances, breathing at all was good.
“How’re you doing?” Rodgers asked.
“Not very well,” Samouel said. He was wheezing. It sounded as if there were blood in his throat.
“You’re just disoriented by the trauma,” Rodgers lied. “We’ll fix you up as soon as we’re done here.”
“What can we do without the cell phone?” Samouel asked.
Rodgers slipped his arms under the Pakistani. “We still have my point-to-point radio,” the general told him. “Will that work?”
“It should,” Samouel replied. “The wiring is basically the same.”
“That’s what I thought,” Rodgers said. “I’m going to get us to the cable and pry the back from the radio. Then you’re going to tell me how to hook it to the satellite dish.”
“Wait,” Samouel said.
Rodgers hesitated before lifting him.
“Listen,” Samouel said. “Look for the red line underground. Red is always the audio. Inside the radio, find the largest chip. There will be two lines attached. One leads to the microphone. The other to the antenna. Cut the wire leading to the antenna. Splice the red wire from the dish to that one.”
“All right,” Rodgers replied.
“You understand all that?” Samouel asked.
“I do,” Rodgers assured him.
“Then go,” Samouel said.
The Pakistani’s voice had become weaker as he spoke. Rodgers did not argue with him. Pausing only long enough to squeeze Samouel’s hand, Rodgers turned and hurried back to the slab.
SIXTY-THREE
The Siachin Glacier Friday, 3:25 A.M.
Nanda did not remember much of what had happened since the helicopter had attacked them. She knew that her grandfather had died. But it seemed as if after that her mind had drifted. She was awake but her spirit had been elsewhere. The shock of her grandfather’s death must have dulled her kundalini, her life force. That forced the Shakti to take over. Those were the female deities that protected true believers in times of strife. Using their own secret mantras and mandalas, the mystical words and diagrams, the Shakti had guarded her life force until Nanda’s own depleted natural energies could revive it.
The shock of the latest explosions and the rattling gunfire had accelerated the process. General Rodgers’s high-intensity activities of the last few minutes had finished it. Whatever alertness Nanda had always felt when she was dealing with the SFF had come back to her. And she was glad it had. The young woman’s return seemed to have defused whatever tensions had been building between Rodgers and his fellow American.
Nanda continued to chisel, hack, and pry at the ice. She worked from left to right, cutting new inroads with her right hand while scooping out ice chips with her left. At the same time she felt for anything that might be a cable or a conduit. With their luck they would find one and it would be made of steel or some compound they could not break through.
Whatever the outcome, the activity of chopping the hard ice felt good for the moment. It helped keep her blood flowing and kept her torso and arms relatively warm.
Rodgers had only been gone a minute or two before returning. He came back alone.
“Where’s your boy?” Friday asked.
“He’s not doing too well,” Rodgers admitted. “But he told me what to do.” The general moved close to Nanda. “Hold on a second,” he said. “I want to check the dig.”
Nanda stopped. She could hear General Rodgers feeling along the perimeter of the slab.
“This is good,” he said. “Thanks. Now I need you both to move back, over by the slope. Lie there with your feet to your chin, arms tucked in, hands over your ears. Leave as little of yourself exposed as possible.”
“What are you going to do?” Nanda asked.
“I have one more of those flash-bang grenades I used earlier,” Rodgers said. “I’m going to put it in here. Enough of the force will go downward. The heat of the explosion should melt the ice for several feet in all directions.”
“Did our terrorist friend tell you what to do if the cable is inside two-inch-thick piping?” Friday asked.
“In that case we bury the hand grenade I have,” Rodgers said. “That should put a good-sized dent in any casing. Now go back,” he went on. “I’m ready to let this go.”
Her hands stretched in front of her, Nanda knee-walked toward the slope. The ground was sharp and lumpy and it hurt. But she was glad to feel the pain. Years before, a potter, an artisan of the menial Sudra caste in Srinagar, had told her that it is better to feel something, even if it is hunger, than to feel nothing at all. Thinking of her own suffering and her dead grandfather, Nanda finally understood what the man had meant.
When she reached the wall, Nanda curled up on the ice the way Rodgers had instructed.
It did not escape Nanda’s notice that the American had taken a moment to thank her for the work she had done. In the midst of all the turmoil and doubt, the horror of what had been and what might lie ahead, his word smelled like a single, beautiful rose.
That was the pretty image in the young woman’s mind as the ground heaved and her back grew hot beneath her clothes and the roar blew through her hands, ringing her skull from back to jaw.
SIXTY-FOUR
The Siachin Glacier Friday, 3:27 A.M.
Rodgers did not go as far from ground zero as the others. He knew that the explosion would not hurt him, though it would be hot. But he was counting on that. His exposed fingers were numb and he was going to need them warmed to work. He went as far as the edge of the slab and sat there with his knees upraised and his face buried between them. He used the insides of his knees to cover his ears. His arms were folded across his knees. He was braced for quite a bump when the grenade went off.
Rodgers made certain that the knife was back in his equipment vest and the radio was secure in his belt before he sat down. And he leaned to his left side as much as possible. Hopefully, if the blast knocked Rodgers over, he would not fall on the radio.
The in-ground explosion was even more potent than Rodgers had imagined. The ice beneath him rolled but did not knock Rodgers over. But the blast did take an edge of the slab off. Rodgers could hear the chunk as it whistled upward. The sound was shrill enough to cut through the surf-loud roar of the detonation itself. It came down somewhere to the left. Rodgers imagined the Indians initially thinking they had been attacked by a mortar shell. After a moment they would probably realize that the enemy had detonated another flash-bang grenade.
There were a series of lesser flashes and whiplike cracks as the grenade continued to fire. Before they died, Rodgers made his way over to the site. The explosion had cut a hole in the ice roughly four feet by four feet. Melted ice filled the excavation. Near the center was a severed cable.
While the last embers of the grenade still burned on the edge of the hole, Rodgers flopped on his belly and grabbed the dish-side end of cable. There were three wires bundled together inside a half-inch-thick plastic cover. One of the wires was red, another was yellow, and the third was blue. Rodgers removed his knife and pried the red one from the others. He cut the wet edge off and quickly scored the rubber sides of the wire with the tip of the knife. As he was finishing, the light from the last embers was fading.
“Friday, matches!” he said.
There was no answer.
“Friday!” he repeated.
“He’s not here!” Nanda said.
Rodgers looked back. It was too dark to see that far. Either the NSA operative was hiding until he saw which way this went or, anticipating failure, he was making his way to the Indian side of the clearing. Whichever it was, Rodgers could not afford to worry about him. He laid the cable down so the exposed end was out of the melted ice. Then, moving quickly but economically, with a level of anxiety he had never before felt, Rodgers removed the map from his vest pocket. He unfolded the sheet away from the dying ember so it did not create a local breeze. Then he held his breath, leaned forward, and touched the edge of the map to the barely glowing thread of magnesium. He was afraid that if he touched the ember too hard it would be extinguished. Too light and the map would not feel it.
The fate of two nations had been reduced to this. One man’s handling of the first and most primitive form of technology human beings had embraced. It put forty thousand years of human development into perspective. We were still territorial carnivores huddling in dark caves.
The paper smoked and then reddened around the edges. A moment later a small orange flame jumped triumphantly across the printed image of Kashmir. That seemed fitting.
“Nanda, come here!” Rodgers said.
The woman hurried over. Assuming the Indians did not move on them, the duo was safe for now. The remaining section of slab would afford them enough protection as long as they did not move from here.
Rodgers handed Nanda the paper when she arrived. He removed his coat, set it on the ice beside the hole, and told Nanda to put the map on it. He said the coat would not burn but he needed to find something else that would.
“Very quickly,” he added.
“Hold on,” Nanda said.
The young woman reached into her coat pocket and
removed the small volume of Upanishads she always carried. She also removed the documents she was supposed to plant on the terrorists to help implicate them when they were captured.
“These devotionals will save more souls than the Brahmans ever imagined,” she said.
Obviously, Nanda was experiencing some of the same spiritual and atavistic feelings Rodgers was. Or maybe they were both just exhausted.
As the papers burned, the general withdrew the radio from the belt loop and laid it on the coat. He bent low over it.
The radio was made of one vacuum-formed casing. Rodgers knew he would not be able to break that without risk of damaging the components he needed. Instead, he stuck the knife into the area around the recessed mouthpiece. Rodgers carefully pried that loose. The wire behind it, and the chip to which it was attached, were what he needed to access.
Still listening for activity from across the clearing, Rodgers used the knife to fish out the chip that was attached to the mouthpiece. He could not afford to sever the chip from the unit. If he did that, the chip itself would have no power source. That power came from the battery in the radio, not from the battery behind the satellite dish. He had to make sure he cut the right one to splice. He pulled the mouthpiece out as far as it could go and tilted the opening toward the light. Twenty years ago, this would have been a hopeless task. Radios then were crammed with transistors and wires that were impossible to read. The inside of this radio was relatively clean and open, just a few chips and wires.
Rodgers saw the battery and the wire that hooked the microchip and mouthpiece to it. The other wire, the one that led to the radio antenna, was the one he needed to cut.
Carefully placing the radio back on the coat, Rodgers used the knife to slice that wire as close to the radio antenna as possible. That would give him about two inches of wire to work with.
Crouching and using the tip of his boot as a cutting surface, Rodgers scored and stripped that remaining piece of wire. Then he picked up the scored cable from the satellite dish. He used his fingernails to chip the plastic casing away. When a half inch of wire was exposed, he twisted the two pieces of copper together and turned the unit on. Then he backed away from the radio and gently urged Nanda toward it.
