Line of Control

FORTY-FIVE

During the flight from Washington, Mike Rodgers had read a number of white papers on the Siachin Glacier. The most interesting was written by a Pakistani intelligence officer.

Dubbed "the world's highest battleground" by both the Indian and the Pakistani press, the Siachin Glacier has no strategic value. Long claimed by Pakistan, the glacier reaches nearly eighteen thousand feet in height, the temperatures drop below minus thirty-five degrees Celsius, and the near-constant blizzards and lack of oxygen make the region "subhuman," as one Indian report put it. No one lives there and no one crosses it on foot.

The glacier became a war zone in 1984 when Indian intelligence officers began showing up in the region. Their thinking, apparently, was to force Pakistan to assign human resources to the region, thus making them unavailable for war in habitable Kashmir and along the line of control. However, Pakistan discovered the presence of the Indian reconnaissance teams early in the process thanks to a mountaineering advertisement that appeared in an Indian magazine. The full-page ad showed recent photographs of the region without naming it. The text offered experienced climbers excellent compensation and the adventure of a lifetime to help lead tours through "uncharted territories." Pakistani counterespionage operatives began tracking and capturing the Indian recon teams. The conflict escalated and soon the region was drawing resources from both sides of the dispute. Nearly twenty years later, thousands of troops and aircraft from both sides were assigned to patrol the massive formation.

If they were out there now, Rodgers could neither see nor hear them. He had been in many isolated places during his long military career but he had never experienced anything like this. Standing at the foot of the glacier he was not just alone, surrounded by mountain and ice, but he could only see as far as his flashlight let him. And he was unable to get anything but static on his radio. He shined the light up the sloping white ice. The foot of the glacier reminded him of a lion's paw. There were long, large lumps of dirty white ice about ten feet high with crevasses between them. They led to a gently sloping area that rose higher and higher into the darkness. The formation made him feel fragile and insignificant. The glacier had probably looked exactly like this when the first humans were tossing sticks and berries at each other from trees in the valley.

Suddenly, Rodgers's radio beeped. He grabbed it quickly.

"Yes?"

"The target is up there," said the caller.

The transmission was broken and the voice was barely recognizable. But Rodgers had no doubt that it was Brett August. The colonel did not know how long he would be able to transmit. So he got right to the heart of the communication without wasting words.

"Copy that," Rodgers said.

"Team of four," August said. "Girl and grandfather, Friday, and one cell member."

"I copy," Rodgers said again. "I'm at the foot of the zone. Should I go up now?"

"If you wait till sunup you may miss them," August said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Rodgers said.

"Will try and keep enemy busy," August went on. His voice began to break up. "Storming here — cell exhausted. Ammo low."

"Then bail out," Rodgers said. "I'll be okay."

August's response was lost in static.

"I've got a good head start," Rodgers went on. He was shouting each syllable, hoping he would be heard. "Even if they enter the valley now they won't catch up to me. I'm ordering you to pull back. Do you read? Pull back!"

There was no response. Just a loud, frustrating crackle.

Rodgers turned down the volume and kept the channel open for another few moments. Then he shut the radio off to conserve the batteries and slipped the unit back in his belt.

Rodgers hoped that August would not try to stick this one out. Going back down the mountain might not be an option for August and the others. But finding a cave and building a fire would be a better use of their energies than hanging on to a slope and trying to draw the Indian army toward them. Unfortunately, Rodgers knew the colonel too well. August would probably regard retreat as abandonment of a friend as well as a strategic position. Neither of those was acceptable to August.

The plateau was also the place where the Strikers had died. That made it sacred ground to August. There was no way he would simply turn and walk away from it. Rodgers understood that because he felt the same way. It made no sense to fight for geography without strategic value. But once blood had been spilled there, one fought for the memory of fallen comrades. It validated the original sacrifice in a way that only combat soldiers could understand.

Rodgers took a moment to walk along the bottom of the glacier. It did not seem to matter where he started. He had to pull himself up one of the "toes" and start walking.

There were collapsible steel bipoint ice crampons in his vest. Rodgers removed them and slipped them over his rigid boots. The two-pronged claws on the bottoms would allow for a surer grip on the ice.

He strapped them on and removed the pitons from another pocket. He would hold them in his fists and use them to assist his climb. He would not take the time to hammer them in unless he had to.

Before he left, Rodgers secured the flashlight in his lefthand shoulder strap. There were powerful cadmium batteries in the specially made lights. The bulb itself was a low-intensity scatter-beam in front of a highly polished mirror. They would definitely last through the night. As he rested the toe of his left boot on the "toe" of the glacier, he took one last look up the mountain of ice.

"I'm going to beat you," he muttered. "I'm going to get up there and finish the job my team started."

Rodgers's eyes continued up through the darkness. He saw the stars, which were dimly visible through the wispy clouds. Time seemed to vanish and Rodgers suddenly felt as if he were every warrior who had ever undertaken a journey, from the Vikings to the present. And as he jabbed the base of one crampon into the ice and reached up with a piton, Mike Rodgers no longer saw stars. He saw the eyes of those warriors looking down on him.

And among them the eyes of the Strikers looking after him.