Line of Control

EIGHTEEN

Mike Rodgers was looking at files Bob Herbert had e-mailed from Op-Center when the giant C-130 touched down at the Royal Air Force station in Alconbury. Though the slow takeoff had seemed like a strain for the aircraft, the landing was barely noticeable. Maybe that was because the plane shook so much during the trans-Atlantic flight that Rodgers did not realize it had finally touched down. He was very much aware when the engines shut down, however. The plane stopped vibrating but he did not. After over six hours he felt as if there were a small electric current running through his body from sole to scalp. He knew from experience that it would take about thirty to forty minutes for that sensation to stop. Then, of course, Striker would be airbound again and it would start once more. Somewhere in that process was a microcosm of the ups and downs and sensations of life but he was too distracted to look for it right now.

The team left the aircraft but only to stand on the field. They would only be on the ground for an hour or so, long enough for a waiting pair of hydraulic forklifts to off-load several crates of spare parts.

The officers of the RAF referred to Alconbury as the Really American Field. Since the end of World War II it had effectively been a hub of operations for the United States Air Force in Europe. It was a large, modern field with state-of-the-art communications, repair, and munitions facilities. Since every base, every field, every barracks needed a nickname, the Americans here had nicknamed the field "Al." Many of the American servicemen went around humming the Paul Simon song, "You Can Call Me Al." The Brits did not really get the eternal American fascination with sobriquets for everything from presidents to spacecraft to their weapons — Honest Abe, Friendship 7, Old Betsy. But Mike Rodgers understood. It made formidable tools and institutions seem a little less intimidating. And it implied a familiarity, a kinship with the thing or place, a sense that man, object, and organization were somehow equal.

It was very American.

The members of Striker walked down the cargo bay ramp and onto the tarmac. Two of the Strikers lit cigarettes and stood together near an eyewash stand. Other soldiers stretched, did jumping jacks, or just lay back on the field and looked up at the blue-black sky. Brett August used one of the field phones standing off by the warehouse. He was probably calling one of the girls he had in this port. Perhaps he would bail on the team and visit her on the way back. The colonel certainly had the personal time coming to him. They all did.

Mike Rodgers wandered off by himself. He headed toward the nose of the aircraft. The wind rushed across the wide-open field, carrying with it the familiar air base smells of diesel fuel, oil lubricant, and rubber from the friction-heated tires of aircraft. As the sun went down and the tarmac cooled and shrunk, the smells seemed to be squeezed out of them. Whatever airfield in the world Rodgers visited, those three smells were always present. They made him feel at home. The cool air and very solid ground felt great.

Rodgers had his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the oil-stained field. He was thinking about the data Friday had sent to the NSA and the files Herbert had forwarded to him. He was also thinking about Ron Friday himself. And the many Ron Fridays he had worked with over the decades.

Rodgers always had a problem with missions that involved other governments and other agencies within his own government. Information given to a field operative was not always informative. Sometimes it was wrong, by either accident, inefficiency, or design. The only way to find out for sure was to be on the mission. By then, bad information or wrong conclusions drawn from incomplete data could kill you.

The other problem Rodgers had with multigroup missions was authority and accountability. Operatives were like kids in more ways than one. They enjoyed playing outside and they resented having to listen to someone else's "parent." Ron Friday might be a good and responsible man. But first and foremost, Friday had to answer to the head of the NSA and probably to his sponsor in the Indian government. Satisfying their needs, achieving their targets, took priority over helping Rodgers, the mission leader. Ideally, their goals would be exactly the same and there would be no conflict. But that rarely happened. And sometimes it was worse than that. Sometimes operatives or officers were attached to a mission to make sure that it failed, to embarrass a group that might be fighting for the attention of the president or the favor of a world leader or even the same limited funding.

In a situation where a team was already surrounded by adversaries Mike Rodgers did not want to feel as if he could not count on his own personnel. Especially when the lives of the Strikers were at risk.

Of course, Rodgers had never met Ron Friday or the Black Cat officer they were linking up with, Captain Nazir. He would do what he always did: size them up when he met them. He could usually tell right away whether he could or could not trust people.

Right now, though, the thing that troubled Rodgers most had nothing to do with Friday. It had to do with the explosion in Srinagar. In particular, with that last call from the home phone to the field phone.

Other nations routinely used cell phones as part of their intelligence-gathering and espionage efforts. Not just surveillance of the calls but the hardware itself. The electronics did not raise alarms at airport security; most government officials, military personnel, and businesspeople had them; and they already had some of the wiring and microchips that were necessary for saboteurs. Cell phones were also extremely well positioned to kill. It did not take more than a wedge of C-4, packed inside the workings of a cell phone, to blow the side of a target's head off when he answered a call.

But Rodgers recalled one incident in particular, in the former Portuguese colony of Timor, that had parallels to this. He had read about it in an Australian military white paper while he was on Melville Island observing naval maneuvers in the Timor Sea in 1999. The invading Indonesian military had given cell phones to poor East Timorese civilians in what appeared to be a gesture of good will. The civilians were permitted to use the Indonesian military mobile communications service to make calls. The phones were not just phones but two-way radios. Civilians who had access to groups that were intensely loyal to imprisoned leader Xanana Gusmao were inadvertently used as spies to eavesdrop on nationalistic activities. Out of curiosity, Rodgers had asked a colleague in Australia's Department of Defense Strategy and Intelligence if the Indonesians had developed that themselves. He said they had not. The technology had come from Moscow. The Russians were also big suppliers of Indian technology.

What was significant to Rodgers was that the radio function was activated by signals sent from the Indonesian military outpost in Baukau. The signals were sent after calls had indicated that one individual or another was going to be in a strategic location.

Rodgers could not help but wonder if the home phone had somehow signaled the field phone to detonate the secondary blasts. The timing was too uncomfortably close to be coincidence. And the continuation of the signal at such regular intervals suggested that the terrorists were being tracked.

Hell, it did more than suggest that, Rodgers told himself. And the more he thought about it, the more he began to realize that they might have a very nasty developing situation on their hands. The Pentagon's elite think tank, with the innocuous name of the Department of Theoretical Effects, called this process "computing with vaporware." Rodgers had always been good at that, back when the Pentagon still called it "domino thinking."

He had to talk to Herbert about this.

Rodgers called over to Ishi Honda. The communications man was lying on the tarmac with the TAC-SAT beside him. He came running over with the secure phone. Rodgers thanked him then squatted on the field beside the oblong unit and phoned Bob Herbert. He used the earphones so he could hear over the roar of landing and departing jets.

Herbert picked up at once.

"Bob, it's Mike Rodgers," the general said.

"Glad to hear from you. Are you at Al?" Herbert asked.

"Just landed," Rodgers said. "Listen, Bob. I've been thinking about this latest data you sent me. I've got a feeling that the Srinagar bombers have been tagged, maybe by someone on the inside."

"I've got that same feeling," Herbert admitted. "Especially since we've been able to place the calls from field to home before that. They originated at a farm in Kargil. We notified the SFF. They sent over a local constable to check the place out. The farmer refused to say anything and they could not find his granddaughter. Ron and the SFF guy are going over first thing in the morning, see if they can't get more out of him."

"None of this smells right," Rodgers said.

"No, it doesn't," Herbert said. "And there's something else. The farmer's daughter and son-in-law were resistance fighters who died fighting the Pakistani invasion."

"So the farmer certainly had a reason to be part of a conspiracy against the Free Kashmir Militia," Rodgers said.

"In theory, yes," Herbert said. "What we're looking at now is whether there is a conspiracy and whether it could have involved the district police station that was home for the cell phone. Matt Stoll's gotten into their personnel files and my team is looking at the backgrounds of each officer. We want to see if any of them have connections with antiterrorist groups."

"You realize, Bob, that if you find a link between the police and the Pakistani cell, we may have an unprecedented international incident on our hands," Rodgers said.

"I don't follow," Herbert replied. "Just because they might have known about the attack and decided not to prevent it—"

"I think it may have been more than that," Rodgers said. "There were three separate attacks. Only one of them conformed to the established m.o. of the Free Kashmir Militia, the bombing of the police station."

"Wait a minute," Herbert said. "That's a big leap. You're saying the police could have planned this action themselves? That the Indians attacked their own temples—"

"To coincide with the FKM attack, yes," Rodgers said.

"But an operation like that would have to involve more than just the police in Kashmir," Herbert pointed out. "Especially if they're tracking and going to attempt to capture the cell, which is apparently the case."

"I know," Rodgers replied. "Isn't it possible they do have help? From a group that is a little more involved than usual?"

"The SFF," Herbert said.

"Why not? That could be the reason they wanted the bazaar sealed and the Black Cats kept out," Rodgers said.

Herbert thought for a moment. "It's possible," he agreed. "But it's also possible we're getting ahead of ourselves."

"Better than being behind," Rodgers pointed out.

"Touche," Herbert said. "Look. Let's see what Ron Friday and his partner turn up in the morning. I'll bring Paul up to date and let you know when we have anything else."

"Sure," Rodgers said. "But while we're getting ahead of ourselves let's go one step further."

"All right," Herbert said tentatively.

"Striker is going in to Pakistan to look for nukes," Rodgers said. "What if we don't find very many or even none at all? Suppose the Indian government authorized the Srinagar attack just to rouse their population and pick a fight. A fight Pakistan cannot possibly win."

"You think they'll respond with a nuclear strike?" Herbert said.

"Why not?" Rodgers asked.

"The world wouldn't stand for it!" Herbert replied.

"What would the world do?" Rodgers asked. "Go to war against India? Fire missiles on New Delhi? Would they impose sanctions? What kind? To what end? And what would happen when hundreds of thousands of Indians started to starve and die? Bob, we're not talking about Iraq or North Korea. We're talking about one billion people with the fourth largest military in the world. Nearly a billion Hindus who are afraid of becoming the victims of a Muslim holy war."

"Mike, no nation on earth is going to condone a nuclear strike against Pakistan," Herbert said. "Period."

"The question is not condoning," Rodgers said. "The question is how do you respond if it happens. What would we do alone?"

"Alone?"

"More or less," Rodgers said. "I'm betting Moscow and Beijing wouldn't complain too loud, for starters. India nuking Pakistan leaves Moscow free to slam whichever republics they want with a limited nuclear strike. No more long wars in Afghanistan or Chechnya. And China probably wouldn't bitch too loud because it gives them a precedent to move on Taiwan."

"They wouldn't," Herbert said. "It's insane."

"No, it's survival," Rodgers said. "Israel's got a nuclear strike plan ready in case of a united Arab attack. And they'd use it, you know that. What if India has the same kind of plan? And with the same very powerful justification, I might add. Religious persecution."

Herbert said nothing.

"Bob, all I'm saying is that it's like the house that Jack built," Rodgers said. "One little thing leads to another and then another. Maybe it's not those things, but it's nothing good."

"No, it is nothing good," Herbert agreed. "I still think we're overreacting but I'll get back to you as soon as we know anything. Meantime, I have just one suggestion."

"What's that?" Rodgers asked.

"Make sure you sleep on the flight to India," Herbert said. "One way or another you're going to need it."