Line of Control (42 page)

    Rodgers got to his feet. He paused to remove the dead man's parka then ran toward the slope. The helicopter was moving slowly and the American paced it. He stayed behind the cockpit and out of view. He was waiting for the Mi-35 to get a little closer. That was when things should start to happen.

    The nose gun began to spit fire again. The red-yellow flashes lit the slope like tiny strobes. Rodgers could see Nanda and the two men running along the curving base, away from the aircraft. The gentle turn in the slope kept the chopper from having a clear shot.

    The chopper slowed as it moved closer to the slope. The guns fell silent as the chopper tracked its prey. Flying this close the pilots had to consider rotor clearance, winds, and prop wash Rodgers hoped those were the only things the pilots were worried about. That would be their undoing.

    Rodgers reached the base of the ragged slope. He felt his way along.

    The winds from the tail rotor were savage, like waves of ice water.

    Rodgers shielded his eyes as best he could. He would be able to see as soon as the guns resumed firing. He was going to have to move quickly when they did.

    The chopper continued to creep along the glacier. The throaty sound from the rotors knocked loose powder from the crags. Rodgers could feel it hitting his bare cheeks.

    That was good. The plan might work.

    A few moments later the guns came to life. Rodgers saw the cliff light up and started running toward the others. As he expected, this close to the slope, the sound of the guns and the rotor shook particles of ice from the wall. The area around the helicopter quickly became a sheet of white. And the flakes did not fall. The winds kept them whipping around in the air, adding layer upon layer. Within moments visibility had diminished to zero.

    The guns shut down just as Rodgers raced around the front of the helicopter. Even with their night-vision goggles, the crew would not be able to see him or their quarry.

    Rodgers had judged the distance between himself and the others. He guided himself toward them by running a hand along the slope. Though his legs were cramping he refused to stop.

    "We've got to move!" Rodgers shouted as he neared the spot where he had seen the group.

    "What's happening?" Nanda cried.

    "Keep going!" Rodgers yelled.

    "Is my grandfather all right?" she demanded.

    From the sound of her voice Rodgers judged the woman to be about thirty yards away. He continued running hard. A few seconds later he bumped up against one of the refugees.

    Judging from the height of the individual it was Friday. They had stopped. Rodgers made his way around him. The general reached for Nanda, who was next in the line. The woman was facing him.

    "Grandfather?" Nanda shouted.

    "Everyone move!" Rodgers screamed.

    In a crisis situation, an individual's fight-or-flight mechanisms are in conflict. When that happens, the shout of an authority figure typically shuts down the combative side. A harsh command usually closes it just enough to let the survival instinct prevail by following the order. In this case, however, Rodgers's cry killed Nanda's flight response. Friday stopped moving altogether as Nanda became as combative as Rodgers.

    "Where is he?" the woman screamed.

    "Your grandfather didn't make it," Rodgers said.

    She screamed for the old man again and started to go back.

    Rodgers stuffed Apu's parka under his arm then grabbed Nanda's shoulders. He held them tight and wrestled her in the opposite direction.

    "I won't leave him!" she cried.

    "Nanda, he shielded me with his body!" Rodgers shouted.

    "He begged me to save you!"

    The young woman still grappled with him as she attempted to go back.

    Rodgers did not have time to reason with her.

    He literally hoisted Nanda off her feet, turned her around, and pulled her forward. She fought to keep her feet beneath her, but at least those struggles kept her from fighting with him.

    Rodgers half-carried, half-dragged the woman as he ran forward. She managed to get her balance back and Rodgers took her hand. He continued to pull her ahead. She went with him, though Rodgers heard her sobbing under the drone of the oncoming chopper. That was fine, as long as she kept moving.

    The slope circled sharply toward the northeast. Samouel was still in the lead as they rushed to stay out of the helicopter's line of sight.

    But without the added drumming of the guns to dislodge fresh ice particles, the pilot would soon be able to see them. Rodgers was going to have to do something about that.

    "Samouel, take Nanda's hand and keep going!" Rodgers said.

    "Yes, sir," Samouel said.

    The American held the woman's arm straight ahead as the Pakistani reached behind him. He found Nanda's hand and Rodgers released her.

    The two continued ahead. Rodgers stopped and Friday ran into him.

    "What are you doing?" Friday asked.

    "Give me the torches and the matches. Then go with them," Rodgers said as he took Apu's parka from under his arm.

    The NSA operative did as he was instructed. When Friday was gone, Rodgers took one of the torches, lit it, and jammed it into a small crack in the slope. Then he hung Apu's coat on a crag just behind it.

    Removing his gun from his equipment vest, Rodgers moved away from the ice wall. He got down on one knee, laid the torch across his boot to keep it dry, then pointed his automatic up at a sixty-degree angle.

    That would put his fire about sixty feet up the cliff. He could not see anything above twenty feet or so but he did not have to.

    Not yet.

    Within moments the helicopter crept around the curve in the glacier.

    The pilots stopped to kill their night-vision goggles.

    Otherwise, the fire would have blinded them. They switched on their exterior light, illuminating the side of the cliff. As soon as the chopper opened fire on what they thought was one of the terrorists, Rodgers also began to shoot. His target were bulges of ice nearest the top of the chopper. The nose gun ripped up the torch, dousing the flame.

    The roar also tore away more surface ice. At the same time Rodgers's barrage sent larger ice chips flying into the rotor. The blades sliced the ice into a runny sleet that rained down on the cockpit. The slush landed on the windshield and froze instantly.

    The chopper stopped firing.

    So did Rodgers.

    While the chopper still had its lights on, Rodgers briefly considered taking a shot at the cockpit. However, since Afghanistan and Chechnya, the Russians had equipped many of the newer Mikoyan assault choppers with bulletproof glass to protect them from snipers. Rodgers did not want the flashes from his muzzle to reveal his position.

    The general crouched in the open, waiting to see what the helicopter would do. He calculated that it had been in the air at least ninety minutes. The pilot had to allow for at least another ninety minutes of flying time to return to base. That would strain the Mi-35's fuel supply. It would also put extreme stress on the chopper's thermal tolerance, especially if the crew had to fight an ice storm each time they fired their nose gun. Even though the windshield would defrost in a minute or two, the ice would chill the external rotor casing.

    Rodgers watched as the chopper hovered. His heart was thumping double-time due to anticipation and cold. Except for being a hell of a lot warmer, Rodgers wondered if the young shepherd David felt the same after letting his small pebble fly against the Philistine champion Goliath. If successful, David's gamble could result in victory for his people.

    If it failed, the boy faced an ugly, obscure death in the dusty Vale of Elah.

    The chopper's exterior lights snapped off. The glacier was once again in darkness. All Rodgers could do now was wait and listen. It took exactly fifteen heartbeats for him to hear what he had been waiting for. With a sudden surge of power, the Mi-35 turned and swung back along the glacier. The beat of the rotor retreated quickly behind the wall of ice.

    Rodgers waited to make certain that the helicopter was really gone.

    After another minute or so the glacier was silent.

    Slipping his gun into his vest, he took the matches from his jacket pocket and lit the torch. He held it ahead of him. The flame cast a flickering orange teardrop across the ice. It dimly illuminated the ice wall. And with it, the fallen torch and the shredded parka.

    "Thank you, Apu, for saving me a second time," Rodgers said. Throwing off a small salute, he turned and followed the others to the northeast.

    

    Washington, D. C. Thursday, 4:30 p. m.

    Paul Hood watched the clock turn on his computer.

    "Make the call. Bob," he said.

    Bob Herbert and Lowell Coffey III were both in the office with Hood.

    The door was closed and Bugs Benet had been told not to interrupt the men unless the president or Senator Fox was calling. Herbert picked up the wheelchair phone to call Brett August. Coffey was seated beside Herbert in a leather armchair. The attorney would be present for the remainder of the mission. His job was to counsel Hood regarding international legal matters that might come up.

    Coffey had already strongly informed Hood that he was very unhappy with the idea on the table. That an American military officer was leading a team consisting of a Pakistani terrorist, an NSA agent, and what amounted to two Indian hostages. And he was taking them into what was apparently a Pakistani nuclear missile site that had been erected in disputed territory. The idea that this constituted an ad hoc United Nations security council team still wasn't working for him.

    Hood agreed that Ambassador Simathna's plan was not a great idea.

    Unfortunately, it was the only idea. Bob Herbert and Ron Plummer both backed Hood up on that.

    The TAC-SAT number Herbert had to input included not just the number of the unit but a code to access the satellite.

    This made it extremely difficult for someone to reach the TAC-SAT or use it if they found it. Hood waited while Herbert finished punching in the lengthy number.

    As Hood had expected, he had not heard from the president and the members of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee. Over ninety minutes ago. Hood had e-mailed them a summary of the Pakistani plan. According to executive assistants to both President Lawrence and Senator Fox, they were still "studying" Op-Center's proposal.

    After a short, angry debate with Coffey, Hood decided not to tell the president or Fox what kind of Pakistani military facility Rodgers was visiting. He did not want the CIA crawling all over sources in the region to try to find out what was out there. Coffey argued that with events moving beyond their direct control. Hood had a responsibility to give the president all the facts and hearsay at his disposal. And then it was up to the president, not Hood, to decide whether to call in the CIA. Hood disagreed. He had only Simathna's say-so that there was a nuclear site out there. Hood did not want to legitimize a possible Pakistani ploy by routing it through the White House and thus making it seem valid.

    Moreover, Hews of a possible nuclear silo might trigger an Indian strike while Rodgers was out there. That, too, could serve Pakistani purposes by forcing the United States into a confrontation with India.

    Even with the edited report he had presented. Hood did not expect to hear from the president or Fox before H-hour.

    If the operation failed, they would say that Hood had been acting on his own. It would be Oliver North redux. If the Striker mission succeeded they would quickly jump onboard, like the Soviets declaring war on Japan in the waning hours of the Second World War.

    After all that Paul Hood had done to help President Lawrence, he would have liked more support. Then again, when Hood saved the administration from a coup attempt he was doing his job. Now the president was performing his own duties. He was stalling. President Lawrence was using the delay to create a buffer of plausible deniability. That would protect the United States from possible international backlash if the Kashmir situation exploded. The abandonment was not personal. It only felt that way.

    Hood did not have the luxury of time. He had told Mike Rodgers that he would hear from Brett August in two hours.

    Two hours had passed. It was time to place the call.

    Op-Center's director had rarely felt this isolated. There were usually other field personnel or international organizations backing them up, whether it was Interpol or the Russian Op-Center. Even when he was dealing with the terrorists at the United Nations, Hood had the backing of the State Department.

    Except for the nominal support of the new head of the NSA, and the help of Stephen Viens at the NRO, they were alone. Alone and trying to stop a nuclear war, a world away, with a cell phone. Even the National Reconnaissance Office was not able to help much now. The towering peaks of the glacier blocked the satellite's view of much of the "playing field," as intelligence experts called any active region.

    Ice storms blocked the rest. Viens had not even been able to verify there was anything but ice at the coordinates the Pakistani ambassador had provided.

    Herbert and August had not spoken for nearly an hour.

    Herbert had not wanted to distract him. Hood hoped there was someone at the other end of the TAC-SAT to take the call.

    Colonel August answered quickly. Herbert put the conversation on the speakerphone. Except for the shrieking winds behind him, the colonel's voice was strong and clear.