Line of Control o-8 Read online

  Rodgers glanced at his watch. "The senator is up early. Any particular reason?"

  "Not that I know of, though Paul didn't look happy," Herbert said. "Could be more fallout over the UN attack."

  If that were true then there was an advantage to being the number two man, Rodgers thought. He did not have to put up with that bullshit. They had absolutely done the right thing at the United Nations. They had saved the hostages and killed the bad guys.

  "They're probably going to beat us up until the secretary-general cries uncle," Rodgers said.

  "Senator Fox has gotten good at that," Herbert said. "She slaps your back real hard and tells your enemies it's a lashing. Tells your friends it's a pat on the back. Only you know which it is. Anyway, Paul will deal with that," Herbert went on. He extended his hand. "I just wanted to wish you well. That's a remote, hostile region you're heading into."

  Rodgers clasped Herbert's hand and grinned. "I know. But I'm a remote, hostile guy. Kashmir and I will get along fine."

  Rodgers went to withdraw his hand. Herbert held it.

  "There's something else," Herbert said.

  "What?" Rodgers asked.

  "I can't find out who your contact man is over there," Herbert said.

  "We're being met by an officer of the National Security Guard, Captain Prem Nazir," Rodgers replied. "That's not unusual."

  "It is for me," Herbert insisted. "A few calls, some promises, a little intel exchange usually gets me what I want. It lets me check up on people, make sure there isn't a double-cross on the other end. Not this time. I can't even get anything on Captain Nazir."

  "To tell you the truth, I'm actually relieved that there's tight security for once," Rodgers laughed.

  "Tight security is when the opposition doesn't know what is going on," Herbert said. "I get worried when our own people can't tell me exactly what is going on."

  "Cannot or will not?" Rodgers asked.

  "Cannot," Herbert said.

  "Why don't you call Mala Chatterjee," Rodgers suggested. "I bet she would be delighted to help."

  "That's not funny," Herbert said.

  Chatterjee was the young Indian secretary-general of the United Nations. She was a career pacifist, the most vocal critic of Op-Center and the way they had taken over and resolved the crisis.

  "I talked to my people at the CIA and at our embassies in Islamabad and New Delhi," Herbert went on. "They don't know anything about this operation. That's unusual. And the National Security Agency does not exactly have things under control. The plan has not gone through the usual com-sim. Lewis is too busy housecleaning for that."

  "I know," Rodgers said.

  "The usual com-sim" was a computer simulation that was run on any plan that had been approved for the field. The sponsoring agency typically spent days running the simulations to find holes in the main blueprint and also to give backup options to the agents heading into the field. But the National Security Agency had recently been shaken up by the resignation of their director, Jack Fenwick. That occurred after Hood had identified Fenwick as one of the leaders of a conspiracy to help remove the president from office. His replacement, Hank Lewis, formerly assistant to the president, coordinator of strategic planning, was spending his time removing Fenwick loyalists.

  "We'll be okay," Rodgers assured him. "Back in Vietnam my plans were always held together with spit."

  "Yeah, but there at least you knew who the enemy was," Herbert pointed out. "All I want you to do is stay in touch. If something seems out of whack I want to be able to let you know."

  "I will," Rodgers promised. They would be traveling with the TAC-SAT phone. The secure uplink would allow Striker to call Op-Center from virtually anywhere in the world.

  Herbert left and General Rodgers picked up the files and diskettes he wanted to take. The hall outside the door was getting busier as Op-Center's day crew arrived. It was nearly three times the size of the skeletal night crew. Yet Rodgers felt strangely cut off from the activity. It was not just the focused "mission mode" Rodgers went into before leaving the base. It was something else. A guardedness, as if he were already in the field. In and around Washington that was not far from the truth.

  Despite Rodgers's assurances, what Herbert said had resonated with him. Herbert was not an alarmist and his concerns did worry Rodgers a little. Not for himself or even his old friend Colonel Brett August. August would be commanding Op-Center's elite Striker unit. Rodgers was worried about the young multiservice members of Striker who would be joining him in Kashmir. Especially the ones with families. That was never far from any commander's mind. Herbert had helped to give it a little extra volume. But risk came with the uniform and the generous pension. Rodgers would do everything he could to safeguard the personnel and the mission. Because, in the end, there was one inescapable truth about actions taken by men like Mike Rodgers and Brett August.

  The goal was worth the risk.

  TWO

  Srinagar, India

  Wednesday, 3:51 P.M.

  Five hours after giving a false name to officials at the Foreigners' Regional Registration Office at Srinagar Airport, Ron Friday was walking the streets of what he hoped would be his home for the next year or two. He had checked into a small, cheap inn off Shervani Road. He'd first heard about Binoo's Palace the last time he was here. There was a gaming parlor in the back, which meant that the local police had been paid to keep the place secure. There, Friday would be both anonymous and safe.

  The National Security Agency officer was happy to have gotten out of Baku, Azerbaijan. He was happy not only to get out of the former Soviet Republic but to be here, in Srinagar, less than twenty-five miles from the line of control. He had been to the capital of the northern state before and found it invigorating. Distant artillery fire was constant. So were the muted pops of land mines in the hills. During early morning there was the scream of jets and the distinctive whumping sound of their cluster bombs and the louder crashes of their guided missiles.

  Fear was also in the air day and night. The ancient resort city was governed and patrolled by Indian Hindu soldiers while commerce was controlled by Kashmiri Muslims. Not a week went by without four or five deaths due to terrorist bombings, shoot-outs, or hostage situations.

  Friday loved it. Nothing made each breath sweeter than when you were walking through a minefield.

  The forty-seven-year-old Michigan native walked through the largest open-air market in the city. It was located on the eastern end of the town, near hills that had once been fertile grazing areas. That was before the military had appropriated the hills as a staging area for helicopter flights and convoys headed out toward the line of control. A short walk to the north was the Centanr Lake View Hotel, which was where most foreign tourists stayed. It was located near the well-kept waterfront region known collectively as the Mughal Gardens. These gardens, which grow naturally, helped give the region its name Kashmir, which meant "Paradise" in the language of the Mughal settlers.

  A cool, light rain was falling, though it did not keep away the regular crowds and foreigners. The market smelled like nowhere else Friday had ever been. It was a combination of musk — from the sheep and damp rattan roofs on the stalls — lavender incense, and diesel fuel. The fuel came from the taxis, minibuses, and scooter-rickshaws that serviced the area. There were women in saris and young students in western clothing. All of them were jockeying for position at the small wooden stands, looking for the freshest fruits or vegetables or baked goods. Merchants whipped small switches at sheep who had been driven from adjacent fields by depleted pasturage or by soldiers practicing their marksmanship. The strays tried to steal carrots or cabbage. Other customers, mostly Arab and Asian businessmen, shopped at a leisurely pace for shawls, papier-mache trinket boxes, and leather purses. Because Srinagar and the rest of Kashmir were on the list of "no-go zones" at the State Department, British Foreign Office, and other European governments, very few Westerners were here.

  A few merchants hawked rugs.
There were farmers who had parked their trucks and carts at one end and were carrying baskets with fresh produce or bread to various stands. And there were soldiers. Except in Israel, Friday had never seen a public place where there were nearly as many soldiers as there were civilians. And those were only the obvious ones, the men in uniform. He was sure that there were members of the Special Frontier Force, which was a cocreation of the CIA and India's Research and Analysis Wing, their foreign espionage service. The job of the SFF was to disrupt the flow of materiel and intelligence to and from enemy positions. Friday was equally sure the crowd included members of Pakistan's Special Services Group. A division of the army's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the group monitored actions behind enemy lines. They also worked with freelance operatives to commit acts of terrorism against the Indian people.

  There was nothing like this in Baku, where the markets were quiet and organized and the local population was small and relatively well behaved. Friday liked this better. One had to watch for enemies while trying to feed one's family.

  Having a desk at the embassy in Baku had been interesting but not because of the work he was doing for Deputy Ambassador Dorothy Williamson. Friday had spent years working as an attorney for Mara Oil, which was why Williamson had welcomed him to her staff. Officially, he was there to help her draft position papers designed to moderate Azerbaijani claims on Caspian oil. What had really made Friday's tenure exciting was the undercover work he had been doing for Jack Fenwick, the president's former national security advisor.

  The broad-shouldered man had been recruited by the NSA while he was still in law school. One of his professors, Vincent Van Heusen, had been an OSS operative during World War II. Professor Van Heusen saw in Friday some of the same qualities he himself had possessed as a young man. Among those was independence. Friday had learned that growing up in the Michigan woods where he went hunting with his father for food — not only with a rifle but with a longbow. After graduating from NYU Friday spent time at the NSA as a trainee. When he went to work for the oil industry a year later he was also working as a spy. In addition to making contacts in Europe, the Middle East, and the Caspian, Friday was given the names of CIA operatives working in those countries. From time to time he was asked to watch them. To spy on the spies, making certain that they were working only for the United States.

  Friday finally left the private sector five years ago. He grew bored with working for the oil industry full-time and the NSA part-time. He had also grown frustrated, watching as intelligence operations went to hell overseas. Many of the field agents he met were inexperienced, fearful, or soft. This was especially true in the Third World and throughout Asia. They wanted creature comforts. Not Friday. He wanted to be uncomfortable, hot, cold, hurting, off balance.

  Challenged. Alive.

  The other problem was that increasingly electronic espionage had replaced hands-on human surveillance. The result was much less efficient mass-intelligence gathering. To Friday that was like getting meat from a slaughterhouse instead of hunting it down. The food didn't taste as good when it was mass-produced. The experience was less satisfying. And over time the hunter grew soft.

  Friday had no intention of ever growing soft. When Jack Fenwick had said he wanted to talk to him, Friday was eager to meet. Friday went to see him at the Off the Record bar at the Hay-Adams hotel. It was during the week of the president's inauguration so the bar was jammed and the men were barely noticed. Fenwick recruited Friday to the "Undertaking," as he had called it. An operation to overthrow the president and put a new, more proactive figure in the Oval Office. One of the gravest problems facing America was security from terrorists. Vice President Cotten would have dealt with the problem decisively. He would have informed terrorist nations that if they sponsored attacks on American interests their capital cities would be bombed flat. Removing fear from Americans abroad would have encouraged competitive trade and tourism, which would have helped covert agencies infiltrate nationalist organizations, religious groups, and other extremist bands.

  But the plotters had been stopped. The world was once again safe for warlords, anarchists, and international muggers.

  Fortunately, the resignations of the vice president, Fenwick, and the other high-profile conspirators were like cauterizing a wound. The administration had its main perpetrators. They stopped the bloodletting and for the time being seemed to turn attention away from others who may have assisted in the plan. Friday's role in setting up the terrorist Harpooner and actually assassinating a CIA spoiler had not been uncovered. In fact, Hank Lewis was trying to get as much intel as possible as fast as possible so he could look ahead, not back. NSA operatives outside Washington were being called upon to visit high-intensity trouble spots and both assist in intelligence operations and report back first-hand. That was why Friday left Baker. Originally he tried to get transferred to Pakistan, but was moved to India by special request of the Indian government. He had spent time here for Mara Oil, helping them evaluate future productivity in this region as well as on the border between the Great Indian Desert in India's Rajasthan Province and the Thar Desert in Pakistan. He knew the land, the Kashmiri language, and the people.

  The irony, of course, was that his first assignment was to help a unit from Op-Center execute a mission of vital importance to peace in the region. Op-Center, the group that had stopped the Undertaking from succeeding.

  If politics made strange bedfellows then covert actions made even stranger ones. There was one difference between the two groups, however. Diplomacy demanded that politicians bury their differences when they had to. Field agents did not. They nursed their grudges.

  Forever.

  THREE

  Washington, D.C.

  Wednesday, 6:32 A.M.

  Mike Rodgers strode down the corridor to the office of Paul Hood. His briefcase was packed and he was still humming "Witch Doctor." He felt energized by the impending challenge, by the change of routine, and just by getting out of the windowless office.

  Hood's assistant, Stephen "Bugs" Benet, had not yet arrived. Rodgers walked through the small reception area to Hood's office. He knocked on the door and opened it. Op-Center's director was pacing and wearing headphones. He was just finishing up his phone conversation with Senator Fox. Hood motioned the general in. Rodgers made his way to a couch on the far end of the room. He set his briefcase down but did not sit. He would be sitting enough over the next day.

  Though Hood was forty-five, nearly the same age as Rodgers, there was something much younger-looking about the man. Maybe it only seemed that way because he smiled a lot and was an optimist. Rodgers was a realist, a term he preferred to pessimist. And realists always seemed older, more mature. As an old friend of Rodgers's, South Carolina Representative Layne Maly, once put it, "No one's blowin' sunshine up my ass so it ain't showin' up between my lips." As far as Rodgers was concerned that pretty much said it all.

  Not that Hood himself had a lot to smile about. His marriage had fallen apart and his daughter, Harleigh, was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a result of having been taken hostage at the United Nations. Hood had also taken a bashing in the world press and in the liberal American media for his guns-blazing solution to the UN crisis. It would not surprise Rodgers to learn that Senator Fox was giving Hood an earful for that. The goddamn thing of it was nothing helped our rivals more than when we fought among ourselves. Rodgers could almost hear the cheering from the Japanese, from the Islamic Fundamentalists, and from the Germans, the French, and the rest of the Eurocentric bloc. And we were arguing after saving the lives of their ambassadors.

  It was a twisted world. Which was probably why we needed a man like Paul Hood running Op-Center. If it were up to Rodgers he would have taken down a few of the ambassadors on his way out of the UN.

  Hood slipped off the headphones and looked at Rodgers. There was a flat look of frustration in his dark hazel eyes. His wavy black hair was uncharacteristically unkempt. He was not smiling.r />
  "How are you doing?" Hood asked Rodgers. "Everything set?"

  Rodgers nodded.

  "Good," Hood said.

  "How are things here?" Rodgers asked.

  "Not so good," Hood said. "Senator Fox thinks we've gotten too visible. She wants to do something about that."

  "What?" Rodgers asked.

  "She wants to scale us back," Hood said. "She's going to propose to the other members of the COIC that they recharter Op-Center as a smaller, more covert organization."

  "I smell Kirk Pike's hand in this," Rodgers said.

  Pike was the newly appointed head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The ambitious former chief of navy intelligence was extremely well liked on the Hill and had accepted the position with a self-prescribed goal: to consolidate as many of the nation's intelligence needs as possible under one roof.

  "I agree that Pike is probably involved, but I think it's more than just him," Hood said. "Fox said that Secretary-General Chatterjee is still grumbling about bringing us before the International Court of Justice. Have us tried for murder and trespassing."

  "Smart," Rodgers said. "She'll never get the one but the jurists may give her the other."

  "Exactly," Hood said. "That makes her look strong and reaffirms the sovereign status of the United Nations. It also scores points with pacifists and with anti-American governments. Fox apparently thinks this will go away if our charter is revoked and quietly rewritten."

  "I see," Rodgers said. "The CIOC acts preemptively to make Chatterjee's action seem bullying and unnecessary."

  "Bingo," Hood said.

  "Is it going to happen?" Rodgers asked.

  "I don't know," Hood admitted. "Fox hasn't discussed this with the other members yet."

  "But she wants it to happen," Rodgers said.

  Hood nodded.

  "Then it will," Rodgers said.