Line of Control (8 page)

    Many of them were Muslim anyway. Though they did not want to cooperate and risk arrest, they did not resist the FKM.

    Sharab and her people only struck military, police, and government offices, never civilian or religious targets. They did not want to push or alienate the Hindu population of Kashmir or India, turn them into hawkish adversaries. They only wanted to deconstruct the resources and the resolve of the Indian leaders. Force them to go home and leave Kashmir.

    That was what they were trying to do in the bazaar. Cripple the police but not harm the merchants. Scare people away and impact the local economy just enough so that farmers and shoppers would fight the inflammatory presence of Indian authorities.

    They had been so careful to do just that. Over the past few nights one member of the party would go to the bazaar in Srinagar. He would enter the temple dressed in clerical robes, exit in back, and climb to the roof of the police station.

    There, he would systematically lift tiles and place plastique beneath them. Because it was in the middle of a night shift, when this section of the city was usually quiet, the police were not as alert as during the day. Besides, terrorist attacks did not typically occur at night.

    The idea of terrorism was to disrupt routine, to make ordinary people afraid to go out.

    This morning, well before dawn, the last explosives were placed on the roof along with a timer. The timer had been set to detonate at exactly twenty minutes to five that afternoon.

    Sharab and the others returned at four thirty to watch from the side of the road to make sure the explosion went off.

    It did. And it punched right through her.

    When the first blast occurred Sharab knew something was wrong. The plastique they had put down was not strong enough to do the damage this explosion had done. When the second blast went off she knew they had been set up. Muslims had seemingly attacked a Hindu temple and a busload of pilgrims. The sentiments of nearly one billion people would turn against them and the Pakistan people.

    But Muslims had not attacked Hindu targets, Sharab thought bitterly.

    The FKM had attacked a police station.

    Some other group had attacked the religious targets and timed it to coincide with the FKM attack.

    She did not believe that a member of the cell had betrayed them. The men in the truck had been with her for years. She knew their families, their friends, their backgrounds. They were people of unshakable faith who would never have done anything to hurt the cause.

    What about Apu and Nanda? Back at the house they had never been out of their sight except when they were asleep.

    Even then the door was always ajar and a guard was always awake. The man and his granddaughter did not own a transmitter or cell phone. The house had been searched. There were no neighbors who could have seen or heard them.

    Sharab took a long breath and opened her eyes. For the moment, it did not matter. The question was what to do right now.

    The truck sped past black-bearded pilgrims in white tunics and mountain men leading ponies from the marketplace. Distant rice paddies were visible at the misty foot of the Himalayas.

    Trucks bearing more soldiers sped past them, headed toward the bazaar.

    Maybe they did not know who was responsible for the attack. Or maybe they did not want to catch them right away. Perhaps whoever had framed them was waiting to see if they linked up with other terrorists in Kashmir before closing in.

    If that was the case they were going to be disappointed.

    Sharab opened the glove compartment and removed a map of the region.

    There were seventeen grids on the map, each one numbered and lettered.

    For the purposes of security the numbers and letters were reversed.

    "All right, Ishaq," she said into the phone, "I want you to leave the house now and go to position 5B."

    What Sharab really meant was that Ishaq should go to area 2E. The E came from the 5 and the 2 from the B. Anyone who might be listening to the conversation and who might have obtained a copy of their map would go to the wrong spot.

    "Can you meet us there at seven o'clock?" "Yes," he said.

    "What about the old man?"

    "Leave him," she said. She glanced at Nanda. The younger girl's expression was defiant.

    "Remind him that we have his granddaughter. If the authorities ask him about us he is to say nothing. Tell him if we reach the border safely she will be set free."

    Ishaq said he would do that and meet the others later.

    Sharab hung up. She folded the cell phone and slipped it in the pocket of her blue windbreaker.

    There would be time enough for analysis and regrouping.

    Only one thing mattered right now.

    Getting out of the country before the Indians had live scapegoats to parade before the world.

    

    Siachin Base 3, Kashmir Wednesday, 5:42 p. m.

    Major Dev Puri hung up the phone. A chill shook him from the shoulders to the small of his back.

    Puri was sitting behind the small gunmetal desk in his underground command center. On the wall before him was a detailed map of the region.

    It was spotted with red flags showing Pakistan emplacements and green flags showing Indian bases. Behind him was a map of India and Pakistan.

    To his left was a bulletin board with orders, rosters, schedules, and reports tacked to it. To his right was a blank wall with a door.

    Affectionately known as "the Pit," the shelter was a twelve-by-fourteen-foot hole cut from hard earth and granite.

    Warping wood-panel walls backed with thick plastic sheets kept the moisture and dirt out but not the cold. How could it? the major wondered. The earth was always cool, like a grave, and the surrounding mountains prevented direct sunlight from ever hitting the Pit. There were no windows or skylights. The only ventilation came from the open door and a rapidly spinning ceiling fan.

    Or at least the semblance of ventilation, Puri thought. It was fakery.

    Just like everything else about this day.

    But the cool command center was not what gave Major Puri a chill. It was what the Special Frontier Force liaison had said over the phone.

    The man, who was stationed in Kargil, had spoken just one word.

    However, the significance of that word was profound.

    "Proceed," he had said.

    Operation Earthworm was a go.

    On the one hand, the major had to admire the nerve of the SFF. Puri did not know how high up in the government this plan had traveled or where it had originated. Probably with the SFF. Possibly in the Ministry of External Affairs or the Parliamentary Committee on Defence.

    Both had oversight powers regarding the activities of nonmilitary intelligence groups. Certainly the SFF would have needed their approval for something this big. But Puri did know that if the truth of this action were ever revealed, the SFF would be scapegoated and the overseers of the plot would be executed.

    On the other hand, part of him felt that maybe the people behind this deserved to be punished.

    A "vaccination." That was how the SFF liaison officer had characterized Operation Earthworm when he first described it just three days before.

    They were giving the body of India a small taste of sickness to prevent a larger disease from ever taking hold. When the major was a child, smallpox and polio had been fearful diseases. His sister had survived smallpox and it left her scarred. Back then, vaccination was a wonderful word.

    This was a corruption. However necessary and justifiable it might be, destroying the bus and temple had been vile, unholy acts.

    Major Puri reached for the Marlboros on his desk. He shook a cigarette from the pack and lit it. He inhaled slowly and sat back. This was better than chewing the tobacco. It helped him to think clearly, less emotionally.

    Less judgment ally Everything was relative, the officer told himself.

    Back in the 1940s his parents were pacifists. They had not approved of him becoming a soldier. They would have been happy if he had joined them and other citizens of Haryana in the government's fledgling caste advancement program.

    The Backward Classes list guaranteed a gift of low-paying government jobs for underprivileged natives of seventeen states. Dev Puri had not wanted that. He had wanted to make it on his own.

    And he had.

    Puri drew harder on the cigarette. He was suddenly disgusted with his own value judgments. The SFF had obviously viewed this action as a necessary extension of business as usual. Trained jointly by the American CIA and the Indian military's RAW-Research and Analysis Wing-the SFF were masters of finding and spying on foreign agents and terrorists. For the most part, enemy operatives and suspected collaborators were eliminated without fanfare or heavy firepower.

    Occasionally, through a specially recruited unit. Civilian Network Operatives, the SFF also used foreign agents to send disinformation back to Pakistan. In the case ofsharab and her group, the SFF had spent months planning a more elaborate scheme. They felt it was necessary to frame Pakistan terrorists for the murder of dozens of innocent Hindus.

    Then, when the Pakistani cell members were captured-as they would be, thanks to the CNO operative who was traveling with them-documents and tools would be "found" on the terrorists. These would show that Sharab and her party had traveled the country planting targeting beacons for nuclear strikes against Indian cities. That would give the Indian military a moral imperative to make a preemptive strike against Pakistan's missile silos.

    Major Puri drew on the cigarette again. He looked at his watch. It was nearly time to go.

    Over the past ten years more than a quarter of a million Hindus had left the Kashmir Valley to go to other parts of India. With a growing Muslim majority it was increasingly difficult for Indian authorities to secure this region from terrorism.

    Moreover, Pakistan had recently deployed nuclear weapons and was working to increase its nuclear arsenal as quickly as possible. Puri knew they had to be stopped. Not just to retain Kashmir but to keep hundreds of thousands more refugees from flooding the neighboring Indian provinces.

    Maybe the SFF was right. Maybe this was the time and place to stop the Pakistani aggression. Major Puri only wished there had been some other way to trigger the event.

    He drew long and hard on the cigarette and then crushed it in the ashtray beside the phone. The tin receptacle was filled with partly smoked cigarettes. They were the residue of three afternoons filled with anxiety, doubt, and the looming pressure of his role in the operation.

    His aide would have emptied it if a Pakistani artillery shell had not blown his right arm off during a Sunday night game of checkers.

    The major rose. It was time for the late afternoon intelligence report from the other outposts on the base. Those were always held in the officers' bunker further along the trench.

    This meeting would be different in just one respect. Puri would ask the other officers to be prepared to initiate a code yellow nighttime evacuation drill. If the Indian air force planned to "light up" the mountains with nuclear missiles, the front lines would have to be cleared of personnel well in advance of the attack. It would have to be done at night when there was less chance of the Pakistanis noticing.

    The enemy would also be given a warning, though a much shorter one.

    There would be no point in striking the sites if the missiles were mobile and Pakistan had time to move them.

    Around seven o'clock, after the meeting was finished, the major would eat his dinner, go to sleep, and get up early to start the next phase of the top-secret operation. He was one of the few officers who knew about an American team that was coming to Kashmir to help the Indian military find the missile silos. The Directorate of Air Intelligence, which would be responsible for the strikes, knew generally where the silos were located. But they needed more specific information.

    Scatter-bombing the Himalaya Mountains was not an efficient use of military resources. And given the depth at which the silos were probably buried, it might be necessary to strike with more than conventional weapons. India needed to know that as well.

    Of course, they had not shared this plan with their unwitting partners in this operation.

    The United States wanted intelligence on Pakistan's nuclear capacity as much as India did. The Americans needed to know who was helping to arm Islamabad and whether the missiles they had deployed could reach other non-Muslim nations. Both Washington and New Delhi knew that if an American unit were discovered in Kashmir it would cause a diplomatic row but not start a war. Thus, the U. S. government had offered to send over a team that was off the normal military radar. Anonymity was important since Russia, China, and other nations had moles at U. S. military installations.

    These spies kept an eye on the comings and goings of the U. S. Navy SEALs, the U. S. Army Delta Force 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment, and other elite forces. The information they gathered was used internally and also sold to other nations.

    The team that was enroute from Washington, the National Crisis Management Center's Striker unit, had experience in mountain silo surveillance going back to a successful operation in the Diamond Mountains of North Korea years before.

    They were linking up with a NSA operative who had worked with the the Indian government and knew the area they would be searching.