Line of Control (21 page)

    Those were a standardized series of gestures developed by MEAN in the 1930s. The Indian army adopted them in 1947. The signals told them little more than to advance, retreat, wait, proceed, slow down, speed up, and attack. Directions for attacks were indicated by finger signals: the index finger was north, middle finger south, ring finger west, and pinky east. The thumb was the indication to "go." Those hand signals were usually enough.

    The commands were issued by noncommissioned officers stationed in the center of each platoon. They could be overruled by the company lieutenants and by Puri himself, who would be leading the operation from the center of the wide sweep. In the event of an emergency, the men had radios they could use.

    Puri picked up the phone. He ordered his aide to assemble his lieutenants in the briefing room. The major said he would be there in five minutes. He wanted top-level security for the meeting: no phones or radios present, no laptop computers, no notepads.

    Puri chewed his tobacco a moment more before rising.

    Hussain had told him that the Pakistani cell had evaded capture and was thought to be heading to Pakistan. Four other bases along the line of control were activating units in an effort to intercept the terrorists.

    Each of the base leaders had been given the same order: to take the cell, dead or alive.

    That option did not include their lone hostage, an Indian woman from Kashmir. Commander Hussain said that the SFF did not expect the woman to survive her ordeal. He did not say that she had been mistreated.

    His tone said something else altogether.

    He wanted her not to survive.

    Major Puri turned toward the door and left the shelter. The morning light was cold and hazy. He had checked the weather report earlier. It was snowing up in the mountains.

    That always produced haze here in the lower elevations.

    Nothing was clear, not even the walls of the trench itself.

    Nor his own vision.

    Major Puri had not expected to play that part either. The role of assassin. As he headed for the meeting it struck him as odd that a single life should matter. What he did here would contribute to the deaths of millions of people in just a day or two. What did one more mean?

    Was he upset because she was Indian? No. Indians would die in the conflagration as well. Was he upset because she was a woman? No.

    Women would certainly die.

    He was upset because he would probably be there when she died. He might even be the one to execute the commander's order.

    He would have to look into her eyes. He would be watching the woman as she realized that she was about to die.

    In 1984, when India was rocked by inter caste violence, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered a series of attacks on armed Sikh separatists in Amritsar. Over a thousand people were killed. Those deaths were unfortunate, the inevitable result of armed conflict. Several months later, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated by Sikhs who were members of her own bodyguard. Her murder was a cold-blooded act and a tragedy.

    It had a face.

    Major Puri knew that this had to be done. But he also knew that he wished someone else would do it. Soldiering was a career he could leave behind. The job of combatant was temporary. But once he killed, even in the name of patriotism, that act would stay with him for the rest of his life.

    And the next.

    

    Washington, D. C. Wednesday, 11:45 p. m.

    Paul Hood was glad when Bob Herbert came to see him.

    Hood had shut his office door, opened a box of Wheat Thins, and worked on the Op-Center budget cuts for the better part of the evening. He had left word with Bugs Benet that he was not to be disturbed unless it were urgent. Hood did not feel like end-of-the-day chitchat. He did not want to have to put on a public face. He wanted to hide, to lose himself in a project-any project.

    Most of all Hood did not feel like going home. Or what passed for home these days, an undistinguished fifth-floor suite at the Days Inn on Mercedes Boulevard. Hood had a feeling that it would be a long time, if ever, before he regarded anything but the Hood house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, as home. But he and his wife, Sharon, were separated and his presence at the house created strife for her. She said he was a reminder of their failed marriage, of facing a future without a companion. Their two children did not need that tension, especially Harleigh. Hood had spent time with Harleigh and her younger brother, Alexander, over the weekend.

    They did things that Washingtonians rarely did: they toured the monuments. Hood had also arranged for them to get a personal tour of the Pentagon. Alexander was impressed by all the saluting that went on. It made him feel important not to have to do it. He also liked the kick-ass intensity of all the guards.

    Harleigh said she enjoyed the outing but that was pretty much all she said. Hood did not know whether it was posttraumatic stress, the separation, or both that were on her mind. Psychologist Liz Gordon had advised him not to talk about any of that unless Harleigh brought it up.

    His job was to be upbeat and supportive. That was difficult without any input from Harleigh. But he did the best he could.

    For Harleigh.

    What he had been neglecting in all of this were his needs.

    Home was the biggest and most immediate hole. The hotel room did not have the familiar creaking and pipe sounds and outside noises he had come to know. There was no oil burner clicking on and off. The hotel room smelled unfamiliar, shared, transient. The water pressure was weaker, the soap and shampoo small and impersonal. The nighttime lighting on the ceiling was different. Even the coffeemaker didn't pop and burble the same as the one at home. He missed the comfort of the familiar. He hated the changes.

    Especially the biggest one. The huge hole he had dug for himself with Ann Fan-is, Op-Center's thirty-four year-old press liaison. She had pursued him virtually from the day she arrived. He had found the pursuit both flattering and uncomfortable.

    Flattering because Paul Hood and his wife had not been connecting for years. Uncomfortable because Ann Farris was not subtle. Whatever poker face Ann put on during press briefings she did not wear around Hood.

    Maybe it was a question of balance, of yin and yang, of being passive in public and aggressive in private. Regardless, her open attention was a distraction for Hood and for the people closest to him, like Mike Rodgers and Bob Herbert.

    So of course Hood made the desperate mistake of actually making love to Ann. That had ratcheted up the tension level by making her feel closer and him feel even guiltier. He did not want to make love to her again.

    At least, not until he was divorced. Ann said she understood but she still took it as a personal rejection. It had affected their working relationship.

    Now she was cool to him in private and hot with the press in public.

    How had Paul Hood gone from someone who reached the top of several professions at a relatively young age to someone who had messed up his own life and the lives of those around him? How the hell had that happened?

    Ann was really the one that Hood did not want to see tonight. But he could not tell Bugs to keep only her out.

    Even if she did figure out that was what Hood was doing he did not want to insult her directly.

    Ironically, the work Hood was doing involved cutting Ann and her entire division.

    Hood was not surprised that Herbert was working this late.

    The intelligence chief preferred work to socializing. It was not politically correct but it was pure Herbert: he said that it was more of a challenge trying to get inside a spy's head than into a woman's pants.

    The rewards were also greater, Herbert insisted. The spy ended up dead, in prison, or incapacitated.

    It was a lesson Hood should have learned from his friend.

    Hood was glad when Herbert came to see him. He needed a crisis to deal with, one that was not of his own making.

    The briefing that Bob Herbert gave Hood was not the low intensity distraction he had been hoping for. However, the prospect of nuclear war between India and Pakistan did chase all other thoughts from Hood's mind.

    Herbert brought Hood up to speed on the conversations he'd had with Mike Rodgers and Ron Friday. When Herbert was finished. Hood felt energized.

    His own problems had not gone away. But part of him, at least, was out of hiding. The part that had a responsibility to others.

    "This is a sticky one," Hood said.

    "Yeah," Herbert agreed.

    "What's your gut say?" "It says to take this situation to the president and drop it square in his lap," Hood replied.

    Herbert regarded Hood for a moment.

    "There's a 'but' in your voice," Herbert said.

    "Actually, there are three 'buts' in my voice," Hood told him.

    "First, we're only guessing about what's going on.

    They're educated guesses, but we still don't have proof. Second, let's assume your intel is right. That there is a plot to start a war. If we tell the president, the president will tell State. Once you tell State, the world will know about it through leaks, moles, or electronic surveillance. That could scare the perpetrators off-or it could accelerate whatever timetable they have."

    "I agree," Herbert said.

    "The SFF and their allies would have insecurity issues instead of security issues. Typical when you're keeping information from your own countrymen." "Exactly," Hood said.

    "All right. So what's the third 'but'?" Herbert asked.

    "The fact that we may prove a nuclear attack plan is in place," Hood said.

    "If the United States exposes it we may actually give it impetus." "I don't understand," Herbert said.

    "In terms of military support and intelligence assistance, India has always leaned toward Russia," Hood said.

    "An entire generation of Indians considers the United States the opposition.

    Suppose we expose a patriotic plan. Do you think that will cause the Indians to kill it?"

    "If it involves a nuclear exchange, yes," Herbert said, "Russia would come down on our side. So would China." "I don't know if I agree," Hood said.

    "Russia is facing an Islamic threat along several of its borders.

    Op-Center just defused a crisis where the Russians were scared about Iran's access to Caspian oil. Moscow fought the mujahedin in Afghanistan.

    They're afraid of aggressive fifth-column activities in their own cities, in allied republics. We can't be sure they would back a Muslim nation against their old friend India. As for China, they're looking for allies in a move against Taiwan. Suppose India provided them with that, a kind of quid pro quo."

    Herbert shook his head slowly.

    "Paul, I've been in this game a long time. I've seen videos of Saddam using gas and gunships against his own people. I've been to a Chinese execution where five men were shot in the head because they expressed dissenting political beliefs. But I can't believe that sane individuals would make a deal about nuclear strikes that will kill millions of people." "Why not?" Hood asked.

    "Because a nuclear exchange raises the bar for all of human conflict,"

    Herbert insisted.

    "It says that anything goes.

    No one gains by that." "Fair enough," Hood said.

    "I still believe that we may have a radical group of Indian officials who may want to nuke Pakistan," Herbert said.

    "Then valid or not, all three of my concerns point to the same thing,"

    Hood said.

    "We need more intel before we go to the president," Herbert said.

    "Right," Hood said.

    "Is there any way of getting that electronically or from sources in the government?"

    "There might be, if we had the time," Herbert said.

    "But we've got the Pakistani cell on the run in the mountains and the dead SFF commandos behind them. The Indians are not going to wait."

    "Has anything been on DD-1 yet?" Hood asked. DD-1 National was the flagship station of Doordarshan, the Indian national television network.

    The broadcaster was also closely affiliated with Prasar Bharati, All India Radio, which was run and maintained by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

    "One of Matt's people is taping the newscasts," Herbert replied.

    "He's going to give me an assessment of how riled up people are and at what rate the media are adding to the whipping-up process."

    "Can we go in and bust up their satellite?" Hood asked.

    Herbert grinned.

    "They use five," he said.

    IN SAT-2E, 2DT, 2B, PAS-4, and Thai Com We can scramble them all if we have to." "Good," Hood said. He regarded Herbert.

    "You're pushing for Striker to go in and grab the Pakistanis, aren't you?" "Hell," Herbert said, "I don't want to just drop Mike and his people into the Himalayas-"

    "I know that," Hood assured him.

    "But I don't know if we have any other options, Paul," Herbert continued.

    "Whatever we think of what the Pakistanis have done, they have to get out to tell what they did not do."

    "What would we do if Striker weren't headed toward the region?" Hood asked.

    Herbert thought for a moment then shrugged.

    "What we did in Korea, Russia, and Spain," Herbert said.

    "We'd send 'em."

    Hood nodded thoughtfully.

    "We probably would," he agreed.