Clancy, Tom - Op Center 8 - Line of Control Read online

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: LINE Of CONTROL [042-066-4.9]

  Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik written by Jeff Rovin

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that

  this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and

  destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher

  has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  are either the product of the author's imagination or are used

  fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: LINE OF CONTROL

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Jack Ryan Limited

  Partnership and S & R Literary, Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / June 2001

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright 2001 by Jack Ryan Limited Partnership and S & R Literary,

  Inc.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without

  permission.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-425-18005-0

  BERKLEY

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division

  of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY and the "B" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam

  Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 987654321

  Acknowledgments

  We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg,

  Larry Segriff, Robert Youdelman, Esq." Tom Manon, Esq." and the

  wonderful people at Penguin Putnam Inc." including Phyllis Grann,

  David Shanks, and Tom Colgan.

  As always, we would like to thank Robert Gottlieb, without whom this

  book would never have been conceived.

  But most important, it is for you, our readers, to determine how

  successful our collective endeavor has been.

  --Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik

  PROLOGUE.

  Slachin Base 3, Kashmir Wednesday, 5:42 a. m.

  Major Dev Puri could not sleep. He had not yet gotten used to the flimsy

  cots the Indian army used in the field. Or the thin air in the

  mountains. Or the quiet. Outside his former barracks in Udhampur there

  were always the sounds of trucks and automobiles, of soldiers and

  activity. Here, the quiet reminded him of a hospital. Or a morgue.

  Instead, he out on his olive green uniform and red turban.

  Puri left his tent and walked over to the front-line trenches.

  There, he looked out as the rich morning sun rose behind him. He watched

  as a brilliant orange glow crept through the valley and settled slowly

  across the flat, deserted demilitarized zone. It was the flimsiest of

  barriers in the most dangerous place on earth.

  Here in the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir, human life was always in

  jeopardy. It was routinely threatened by the extreme weather conditions

  and rugged terrain. In the wanner, lower elevations it was at risk

  whenever one failed to spot a lethal king cobra or naja naja, the Indian

  cobra, hiding in the underbrush. It was endangered whenever one was an

  instant too late swatting a disease-carrying mosquito or venomous brown

  widow spider in time. Life was in even greater peril a few miles to the

  north, on the brutal Siachin Glacier. There was barely enough air to

  support life on the steep, blinding-white hills.

  Avalanches and subzero temperatures were a daily danger to foot patrols.

  Yet the natural hazards were not what made this the most dangerous spot

  on the planet. All of those dangers were nothing compared to how humans

  threatened each other here.

  Those threats were not dependent on the time of day or the season of

  the year. They were constant, every minute of every hour of every day

  for nearly the past sixty years.

  Puri stood on an aluminum ladder in a trench with corrugated tin walls.

  Directly in front of him were five-foot high sandbags protected by razor

  wire strung tightly above them from iron posts. To the right, about

  thirty feet away, was a small sentry post, a wooden shelter erected

  behind the sandbags. There was hemp netting on top with camouflage

  greenery overhead. To the right, forty feet away, was another watch

  post.

  One hundred and twenty yards in front of him, due west, was a nearly

  identical Pakistan trench.

  With deliberate slowness, the officer removed a pouch of ghutka,

  chewable tobacco, from his pants pocket. Sudden moves were discouraged

  out here where they might be noticed and misinterpreted as reaching for

  a weapon. He unfolded the packet and pushed a small wad in his cheek.

  Soldiers were encouraged not to smoke, since a lighted cigarette could

  give away the position of a scout or patrol.

  As Puri chewed the tobacco he watched squadrons of black flies begin

  their own morning patrol. They were searching for fecal matter left by

  red squirrels, goatlike mark hors and other herbivores that woke and fed

  before dawn.

  It was early winter now. Puri had heard that in the summer the insects

  were so thick they seemed like clouds of smoke drifting low over the

  rocks and scrub.

  The major wondered if he would be alive to see them.

  During some weeks thousands of men on both sides were killed. That was

  inevitable with more than one million fanatic soldiers facing one

  another across an extremely narrow, two hundred-mile-long "line of

  control." Major Puri could see some of those soldiers now, across the

  sandy stretch between the trenches. Their mouths were covered with black

  muslin scarves to protect them against the westward-blowing winds.

  But the eyes in their wind-burned faces blazed with hatred that had been

  sparked back in the eighth century. That was when Hindus and Muslims

  first clashed in this region. The ancient farmers and merchants took up

  arms and fought about trade routes, land and water rights, and ideology.

  The struggle became even more fierce in 1947 when Great Britain

  abandoned its empire on the subcontinent. The British gave the rival

  Hindus and Muslims the nations of India and Pakistan to call their own.

  That partition also gave India control over the Muslim-dominated region

  of Kashmir. Since that time the Pakistan. s have regarded the Indians as

  an occupying force in Kashmir.

  Warfare has been almost constant as the two sides struggled over what

  became the symbolic heart of the conflict.

  And I am in the heart of the heart, Puri thought.
r />   Base 3 was a potential flashpoint, the fortified zone nearest both

  Pakistan and China. It was ironic, the career soldier told himself.

  This "heart" looked exactly like Dabhoi, the small town where he had

  grown up at the foot of the Satpura Range in central India. Dabhoi had

  no real value except to the natives, who were mostly tradesmen, and to

  those trying to get to the city of Broach on the Bay of Cambay. That was

  where they could buy fish cheap. It was disturbing how hate rather than

  cooperation made one place more valuable than another.

  Instead of trying to expand what they had in common they were trying to

  destroy what was uncommon.

  The officer stared out at the cease-fire zone. Lining the sandbags were

  orange binoculars mounted on small iron poles. That was the only thing

  the Indians and Pakistans had ever agreed on: coloring the binoculars so

  they would not be mistaken for guns. But Puri did not need them here.

  The brilliant sun was rising behind him. He could clearly see the dark

  faces of the Pakistans behind their cinderblock barricades.

  The faces looked just like Indian faces except that they were on the

  wrong side of the line of control.

  Puri made a point of breathing evenly. The line of control was a strip

  of land so narrow in places that cold breath was visible from sentries

  on both sides. And being visible, the puffs of breath could tell guards

  on either side if their counterparts were anxious and breathing rapidly

  or asleep and breathing slowly. There, a wrong word whispered to a

  fellow soldier and overheard by the other side could break the fragile

  truce. A hammer hitting a nail had to be muffled with cloth lest it be

  mistaken for a gunshot and trigger return rifle fire. then artillery,

  then nuclear weapons. That exchange could happen so fast that the

  heavily barricaded bases would be vaporized even before the echoes of

  the first guns had died in the towering mountain passageways.

  Mentally and physically, it was such a trying and unforgiving

  environment that any officer who successfully completed a one-year tour

  of duty was automatically eligible for a desk job in a "safe zone" like

  Calcutta or New Delhi. That was what the forty-one-year-old Puri was

  working toward.

  Three months before, he had been transferred from the army's HQ Northern

  Command where he trained border patrols.

  Nine more months of running this small base, of "kiting with tripwire,"

  as his predecessor had put it, and he could live comfortably for the

  rest of his life. Indulge his passion for going out on anthropological

  digs. He loved learning more about the history of his people. The Indus

  Valley civilization was over 4,500 years old. Back then the Pkitania and

  Indian people were one. There was a thousand years of peace. That was

  before religion came to the region.

  Major Puri chewed his tobacco. He smelled the brewed tea coming from the

  mess tent. It was time for breakfast, after which he would join his men

  for the morning briefing.

  He took another moment to savor the morning. It was not that a new day

  brought new hope. All it meant was that the night had passed without a

  confrontation.

  Puri turned and stepped down the stairs. He did not imagine that there

  would be very many mornings like this in the weeks ahead. If the rumors

  from his friends at HQ were true, the powder keg was about to get a new

  fuse.

  A very short, very hot fuse.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  Washington, D. C. Wednesday, 5:56 a. m.

  The air was unseasonably chilly. Thick, charcoal-gray clouds hung low

  over Andrews Air Force Base. But in spite of the dreary weather Mike

  Rodgers felt terrific.

  The forty-seven-year-old two-star general left his black 1970 Mustang in

  the officers' parking lot. Stepping briskly, he crossed the neatly

  manicured lawn to the Op-Center offices.

  Rodgers's light brown eyes had a sparkle that almost made them appear

  golden. He was still humming the last tune he had been listening to on

  the portable CD player. It was Victoria Bundonis's recording of the

  1950s David Seville ditty

  "Witch Doctor." The young singer's low, torchy take on "Oo-ee-oo-ah-ah"

  was always an invigorating way to start the day. Usually, when he

  crossed the grass here, he was in a different frame of mind. This early,

  dew would dampen his polished shoes as they sank into the soft soil. His

  neatly pressed uniform and his short, graying black hair would ripple in

  the strong breeze. But Rodgers was usually oblivious to the earth, wind,

  and water--three of the four ancient elements.

  He was only aware of the fourth element, fire. That was because it was

  bottled and capped inside the man himself.

  He carried it carefully as though it were nitroglycerin.

  One sudden move and he would blow.

  But not today.

  There was a young guard standing in a bullet-proof glass booth just

  inside the door. He saluted smartly as Rodgers entered.

  "Good morning, sir," the sentry said.

  "Good morning," Rodgers replied. "

  "Wolverine."

  That was Rodgers's personal password for the day. It was left on his

  Govnel e-mail pager the night before by Op Center internal security

  chief, Jenkin Wynne. If the password did not match what the guard had on

  his computer Rodgers would not have been allowed to enter.

  "Thank you. sir," the guard said and saluted again. He pressed a button

  and the door clicked open. Rodgers entered.

  There was a single elevator directly ahead. As Rodgers walked toward it

  he wondered how old the airman first class was. Twenty-two?

  Twenty-three? A few months ago Rodgers would have given his rank, his

  experiences, everything he owned or knew to be back where this young

  sentry was.

  Healthy and sharp, with all his options spread before him.

  That was after Rodgers had disastrously field-tested the Regional

  Op-Center. The mobile, hi-tech facility had been seized in the Middle

  East. Rodgers and his personnel were imprisoned and tortured. Upon the

  team's release. Senator Barbara Fox and the Congressional Intelligence

  Oversight Committee rethought the ROC program. The watchdog group felt

  that having a U. S. intelligence base working openly on foreign soil was

  provocative rather than a deterrent.

  Because the ROC had been Rodgers's responsibility he felt as though he'd

  let Op-Center down. He also felt as though he had blown his last, best

  chance to gel back into the field.

  Rodgers was wrong. The United States needed intelligence on the nuclear

  situation in Kashmir. Specifically, whether Pakistan had deployed

  warheads deep in the mountains of the region. Indian operatives could

  not go into the field. If the Pakistanis found them it might trigger the

  war the United States was hoping to avoid. An American unit would have

  some wiggle room. Especially if they could prove that they were bringing

  intelligence about Indian nuclear capabilities to Pakistan, intelligence

  that a National Security Agency liaison would be giving Rodgers in the


  town of Srinagar. Of course, the Indian military would not know he had

  that. It was all a big, dangerous game of three-card monte. All the

  dealer had to do was remember where all the cards were and never get

  busted.

  Rodgers entered the small, brightly lit elevator and rode it to the

  basement level.

  Op-Center--officially the National Crisis Management Center--was housed

  in a two-story building located near the Naval Reserve flight line.

  During the Cold War the nondescript, ivory-colored building was a

  staging area for crack flight crews. In the event of a nuclear attack

  their job would have been to evacuate key officials from Washington, D.

  C. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the downsizing of the air

  force's Nurrds--nuclear rapid-response divisions--the building was given

  to the newly commissioned NCMC.

  The upstairs offices were for non classified operations such as news

  monitoring, finance, and human resources.

  The basement was where Hood, Rodgers, Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert,

  and the rest of the intelligence-gathering and -processing personnel

  worked.

  Rodgers reached the underground level. He walked through the cubicles in

  the center to his office. He retrieved his old leather briefcase from