THIRTEEN

Srinagar, Kashmir
Wednesday, 6:59 P.M.

It was nearly dark when Ron Friday returned to the bazaar. Though he was curious to see how the authorities here were handling the investigation he was more interested in what he might be able to find out about the attack. His life might depend on that information.

The rain had stopped and there was a cold wind rolling off the mountains. Friday was glad he had worn a baseball cap and a windbreaker, though the drop in temperature was not the reason he had put them on. Even from his room he could hear helicopters circling the area. When Friday arrived he found that the two police choppers were hovering low, less than two hundred feet up. In addition to looking for survivors, the noise echoing loudly through the square helped to keep onlookers from staying too long. But that was not the only reason the choppers were there. Friday guessed that they were also maintaining a low altitude to photograph the crowd in case the terrorist was still in the area. The cockpits were probably equipped with GRRs — geometric reconstructive recorders. These were digital cameras that could take photographs shot at an angle and reconfigure the geometry so they became accurate frontal images. Interpol and most national security agencies had a "face-print" file consisting of mug shots and police sketches of known and suspected terrorists. Like fingerprints, face-print photographs could be run through a computer and compared to images on file. The computer superimposed the likenesses. If the features were at least a 70 percent match, that was considered sufficient to go after the individual for interrogation.

Friday had worn the baseball cap because he did not want to be face-printed by the chopper. He did not know which governments might have his likeness on file or for what reason. He certainly did not want to give them a picture with which to start a file.

The blast sights had been roped off with red tape. Spotlights on ten-foot-tall tripods had been erected around the perimeters. Physically, the main market area reminded Friday of a gymnasium after a dance. The event was over, the place eerily lifeless, and the residue of activity was everywhere. Only here, instead of punch there were bloodstains. Instead of crepe there were shredded awnings. And instead of empty seats there were abandoned carts. Some of the vendors had taken their carts away, leaving dust-free spots on the ground in the shape of the stall. In the sharp light they resembled the black shadows of trees and people that had been burned on the walls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear fire. Other carts had been simply abandoned. Perhaps the owners had not been there when the blast occurred and the hired help did not want to stick around. Maybe some of the sellers had been injured or killed.

Militiamen from the regular army were stationed around the perimeters. They were carrying MP5K submachine guns, very visible in the bright lights. Police were patrolling the square carrying their distinctive.455 Webley revolvers. Apart from discouraging looters — which did not really require exposed firearms — there was only one reason to haul out artillery after a strike. It was a means of restoring wounded pride and reassuring the public that the people in charge were still a potent force. It was all so sadly predictable.

Reporters were allowed to make their news broadcasts or take their pictures and then were asked to leave. An officer explained to a crew from CNN that it would be more difficult to watch for looters if a crowd gathered.

Or maybe they just did not want cameras recording their own thefts, Friday thought. He was willing to bet that many of the goods that had been left behind would be gone by morning.

A few people had come to the marketplace just to stare. Whatever they expected to see — broken bodies, the spectacle of destruction, news being made — it did not appear to fulfill them. Most left looking deflated. Bomb sites, combat zones, and car wrecks often did that to people. They were drawn to it and then repulsed. Maybe they were disappointed by a sudden awareness of their own bloodthirstiness. Some people came with flowers, which they laid on the ground beneath the tape. Others just left behind prayers for dead friends, relatives, or strangers.

At the destroyed police station and temple, building inspectors were moving through surrounding structures to determine whether they had been weakened or damaged in the blasts. Friday recognized them by their white hard hats and palm-sized echometers. These devices emitted either single-or multidirectional sound waves that could be adjusted to the composition of an object, from stone to concrete to wood. If the sound waves encountered anything that was inconsistent with the makeup of the material — which typically meant a breach — an alarm would sound and the officials would examine the site further.

Apart from the engineers there were the usual police recovery units and medical personnel working at all three sites. But Friday was surprised by one thing. Typically, terrorist attacks in India were investigated by the district police and the National Security Guard. The NSG was established in 1986 to act as a counterterrorist force. The so-called Black Cat Commandos handled situations ranging from in-progress hijackings and kidnappings to forensic activities at bomb sites. However, there was not a single black-uniformed NSG operative here. These sites were under the control of the brown-uniformed Special Frontier Force. Friday had never been to any bomb sites in Srinagar. Maybe this was the way responsibility for antiterrorist investigations had been parceled out, with the SFF getting the region nearest the line of control.

Friday was motioned along by one of the police officers. He would not be able to get into the rubble himself. But he could still come up with some sound ideas about how the attack was made. As he walked toward the place where the bus had exploded, Friday used his cell phone to call Samantha Mandor at the NSA's photo archives. He asked her to search the AP, UPI, Reuters, and other digital photograph files for pictures of sites struck by terrorists in Kashmir. He also wanted her to pull together any analysis files that were attached to the photographs. He probably had some of those in his own computer files back in his room. But he wanted information that was incident-specific. Friday told her to phone back the minute she had the photo and text archives.

The American operative neared the roped-off bus site. Unlike the two buildings, where the walls had kept people and objects from the street, the bus debris had been strewn everywhere by the powerful explosion. The bodies had been cleared away but the street was covered with metal, leather, and glass from the bus itself. There were books and cameras that the passengers had been carrying and travel accessories, clothing, and religious icons that had been packed in luggage. Unlike the buildings, this scene was a snapshot of the moment of impact.

Friday's cell phone beeped as he neared the red tape. He stopped walking and took the call.

"Yes?" he said.

"Mr. Friday? It's Samantha Mandor. I have the photographs and information you asked for. Do you want me to send the images somewhere? There are about four dozen color pictures."

"No," Friday said. "When was the last attack in Srinagar?"

"Five months ago," Samantha told him. "It was against a shipment of artillery shells that were en route to the line of control. The attack caused one hell of an explosion."

"Was it a suicide bombing?" he asked.

"No," Samantha said. "There's a microscopic image of liquid crystal display fragments that were found near ground zero. The lab analysis says it was part of a timer. They also said a remote sensor was found in the debris but that it was apparently not detonated."

That was probably part of a backup plan, Friday thought. Professionals often included a line-of-sight device to trigger the explosives in case the timer did not work or if the device were discovered before the timer could activate them. The presence of an LOS receiver meant that at least one of the terrorists was almost certainly in the area when the device exploded.

"What about the personnel at the bomb site?" Friday asked. "What kind of uniforms were they wearing?"

"There were National Security Guard officers as well as local police on the scene," the woman informed him.

"Any members of the Special Frontier Force?" Friday asked.

"None," she said. "There were additional assaults against military targets in Srinagar. They occurred six and seven weeks prior to that attack. National Security Guard officers were present there as well."

"Did anyone claim responsibility for those attacks?" Friday asked.

"According to the data file those two and this one were claimed by the same group," Samantha told him. "The Free Kashmir Militia."

"Thank you," Friday said. He had heard of them. Reportedly, they had the backing of the Pakistan government.

"Will you need anything else?" Samantha asked.

"Not right now," he replied and clicked off.

Friday hooked the cell phone to his belt. He would call his new boss later, when he had something solid to report. He looked around. There were no Black Cat Commandos here. Maybe that was significant, maybe it was not. Their absence might have been a territorial issue. Or maybe the NSG had been unable to stop the terrorists and the problem had been turned over to the SFF. Perhaps a former SFF officer had been named to a high government post. Appointments like that routinely led to reorganizations.

Of course, there was always the possibility that this was not routine. What kind of exceptional circumstances would lead to a department being shut out of an investigation? That would certainly happen if security were an issue. Friday wondered if the NSG might have been compromised by Pakistani operatives. Or maybe the SFF had made it look as though the Black Cats had been penetrated. Because budgets were tighter there was even more interagency rivalry here than there was in the United States.

Friday turned around slowly. There were several two- and three-story-high buildings around the market. However, those would not have been good vantage points for the terrorists. If they had needed to use the remote detonators, the carts with their high banners, awnings, and umbrellas might have blocked the line of sight. If there had been any cooked-food stands in the way smoke might also have obscured their vision. Besides, the terrorists would also have had the problem of renting rooms. There was a danger in leaving a paper trail, like the terrorists who charged the van they used to attack the World Trade Center in New York. And only amateur terrorists paid cash for a room. That was a red flag that usually sent landlords right to the police. Not even the greediest landlord wanted someone who might be a bomb maker living in their building.

Besides, there was no need to hide here. It would have been easy for a terrorist to remain anonymous in this busy marketplace day after day to case the targets, plant the explosives, and watch the site today. But Friday did wonder one thing. Why did the police station and the temple blow up at the same time while the bus did not explode until several seconds later? It was extremely likely that they were related attacks. It could have been that the timers were slightly out-of-synch. Or maybe there was another reason.

Friday continued walking to where the bus had been parked. Traffic had been diverted from Route 1A to other streets. He was able to stand in the broad avenue and look back at the site. This road was the most direct way out of here. It fed any number of roads. Pursuit would have been extremely difficult even if the police knew the individual or kind of vehicle they were looking for. He found the line-of-sight spot that would have been the ideal place to stand in case the timer failed. It was on the curb, near where the bus was parked. It was about four hundred yards from the target, which was near the maximum range for most remote detonators. Obviously, if a terrorist were waiting there for the blast, he would not have wanted the bus to blow up yet. He would have waited until after the temple explosion then moved a safe distance away. The bus explosion would have been scheduled to give him time to get away. Or else he had triggered the blast himself using the same remote he would have used on the temple.

But that still did not tell him why there were two separate explosions for the police station and temple. One large explosion would have brought both structures down.

Friday started back toward the other end of the market. When he got back to his room he would call the NSA. The market attack itself did not bother him. He did not really give a damn who ended up being in charge here. What concerned him were the Black Cats. These people would have access to intelligence about him and Striker once they went into the mountains. If there was even a possibility that the NSG was leaking, he wanted to make sure they were kept out of the circuit.

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