Line of Control

TEN

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 judgmentally.

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 fire-power. Occasionally, through a specially recruited unit, Civilian Network Operatives, the SFF also used foreign agents to send disinformation back to Pakistan. In the case of Sharab 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 en route 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.

Major Puri had to make certain that as soon as the American squad arrived the search-and-identify mission went smoothly and quickly. The Americans would not be told of the capture of the Pakistani cell. They would not know that a strike was actually in the offing. That information would only be revealed when it was necessary to blunt international condemnation of India's actions. If necessary, the participation of the Striker unit would also be exposed. The United States would have no choice then but to back the Indian strike.

Puri tugged on the hem of his jacket to straighten it. He picked up his turban, placed it squarely on his head, and headed for the door. He was glad of one thing, at least. His name was not attached to the SFF action in any way. As far as any official communiques were concerned, he had simply been told to help the Americans find the silos.

He was just doing his job.

He was just carrying out orders.