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

  insides rattle. August and Rodgers loved it.

  After school each day the boys would do their homework together, each

  taking alternate math problems or science questions so they could finish

  faster. Then they would build plastic model airplanes, boats, tanks, and

  jeeps, taking care that the paint jobs were accurate and that the decals

  were put in exactly the right place.

  When it came time to enlist--kids like the two of them didn't wait to be

  drafted--Rodgers joined the army and August went into the air force.

  Both men ended up in Vietnam.

  While Rodgers did his tours of duty on the ground, August flew

  reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam. On one flight northwest of

  Hue, August's plane was shot down. He mourned the loss of his aircraft,

  which had almost become a part of him. The flier was taken prisoner and

  spent over a year in a POW camp, finally escaping with another prisoner

  in 1970. August spent three months making his way to the south before

  finally being discovered by a patrol of U. S. Marines.

  Except for the loss of his aircraft, August was not embittered by his

  experiences. To the contrary. He was heartened by the courage he had

  witnessed among American POWs.

  He returned to the United States, regained his strength, and went back

  to Vietnam to organize a spy network searching for other American POWs.

  August remained undercover for a year after the U. S. withdrawal. After

  he had exhausted his contacts trying to find MIAs, August was shifted to

  the Philippines.

  He spent three years training pilots to help President Ferdinand Marcos

  battle Moro secessionists. After that August worked briefly as an air

  force liaison with NASA, helping to organize security for spy satellite

  missions. But there was no flying involved and being with the astronauts

  now was different from being with the monkey Ham when he was a kid. It

  was frustrating working with men and women who were actually getting to

  travel in space. So August moved over to the air force's Special

  Operations Command, where he stayed ten years before joining Striker.

  Rodgers and August had seen one another only intermittently in the

  post-Vietnam years. But each time they talked or got together it was as

  if no time had passed. When Rodgers first signed on at Op-Center he had

  asked August to come aboard as the leader of the Striker force.

  August turned him down twice. He did not want to spend most of his time

  on a base, working with young specialists. It. Colonel Charlie Squires

  got the post. After Squires was killed on a mission in Russia, Rodgers

  came to his old friend again. Two years had passed since Rodgers had

  first made the offer. But things were different now. The team was shaken

  by the loss and he needed a commander who could get them back up to

  speed as fast as possible. This time August could not refuse. It was not

  only friendship. There were national security issues at stake.

  The NCMC had become a vital force in crisis management and Op-Center

  needed Striker.

  The colonel looked toward the back of the plane. He watched the group as

  they sat silently through the slow, thunderous ascent. The

  quick-response unit turned out to be more than August had expected.

  Individually, they were extraordinary.

  Before joining Striker, Sergeant Chick Grey had specialized in two

  things. One was HALO operations-high-altitude, low-opening parachute

  jumps. As his commander at Bragg had put it when recommending Grey for

  the post, "the man can fly." Grey had the ability to pull his ripcord

  lower and land more accurately than any soldier in Delta history. He

  attributed this to having a rare sensitivity to air currents. Grey

  believed that also helped with his second skill--marksmanship. Not only

  could the sergeant hit whatever he said he could, he had trained himself

  to go without blinking for as long as necessary. He'd developed that

  ability when he realized that all it took was the blink of an eye to

  miss the "keyhole," as he called it.

  The instant when the target was in perfect position for a takedown.

  August felt a special kinship with Grey because the sergeant was at home

  in the air. But August was close to all his personnel. Privates David

  George, Jason Scott, Terrence Newmeyer, Walter Pupshaw, Matt Bud, and

  Sondra Devon the Medic William Musicant, Corporal Pat Prementine, and

  Lieutenant Orjuela. They were more than specialists.

  They were a team. And they had more courage, more heart than any unit

  August had ever worked with.

  Newly promoted Corporal Ishi Honda was another marvel.

  The son of a Hawaiian mother and Japanese father, Honda was an

  electronics prodigy and the unit's communications expert. He was never

  far from the TAC-SAT phone, which Colonel August and Rodgers used to

  stay in touch with Op Center

  The backpack containing the unit was lined with bullet-proof Kevlar so

  it would not be damaged in a firefight.

  Because it was so loud in the cabin Honda sat with the TACSAT in his

  lap. He did not want to miss hearing any calls.

  When he was in the field, Honda wore a Velcro collar and headphones of

  his own creation. They plugged directly into the pack. When the collar

  was jacked in, the "beep" was automatically disengaged; the collar

  simply vibrated when there was an incoming call. If Striker were on a

  surveillance mission there was no sound to give them away.

  Moreover, the collar was wired with small condenser microphones that

  allowed Honda to communicate subvocally. He could whisper and his voice

  would be transferred clearly to whoever was on the other end.

  But Striker was more than just a group of military elite drawn from

  different services. It. Colonel Squires had done an extraordinary job

  turning them into a smart, disciplined fighting unit. They were

  certainly the most impressive team August had ever served with.

  The plane banked to the south and August's old leather portfolio slid

  from under his seat. He kicked it back with his heel. The bag contained

  maps and white papers about Kashmir.

  The colonel had already reviewed them with his team.

  He would look at them again in a few minutes. Right now August wanted to

  do what he did before beginning every mission. He wanted to try and

  figure out why he was here, why he was going. That was something he had

  done every day since he was first a prisoner of war: take stock of his

  motivations for doing what he was doing. That was true whether August

  was in a Vietcong stockade, getting up in the morning to go to the

  Striker base, or leaving on a mission.

  It was not enough to say he was serving his country or pursuing his

  chosen career. He needed something that would allow him to push himself

  to do better than he did the day before. Otherwise the quality of his

  work and his life would suffer.

  What he had discovered was that he could not find another reason. When

  he was optimistic, pride and patriotism had been his biggest motivators.

  On darker days he decided that humans were all territorial carnivores

  and p
risoners of their nature. Combat and survival were a genetic

  imperative. Yet these could not be the only things that drove us. There

  had to be something unique to everyone, something that transcended

  political or professional boundaries.

  So what he searched for in these quiet times was the other missing

  motivation. The key that would make him a better soldier, a better

  leader, a stronger and better man.

  Along the way, of course, he discovered many things, thought many

  interesting thoughts. And he began to wonder if the journey itself might

  be the answer. Given that he was heading to one of the birthplaces of

  Eastern religion, that would be a fitting revelation.

  Maybe that was all he would find. Unlike the mission, there were no maps

  to show him the terrain, no aircraft to take him there.

  But for now he would keep looking.

  CHAPTER SIX.

  Srinagar, India Wednesday, 4:22 p. m.

  There was a two-and-one-half-hour time difference between Baku and

  Kashmir. Still on Azerbaijan time, Ron Friday bought several lamb

  skewers from one of the food merchants. Then he went to a crowded

  outdoor cafe and ordered tea to go with his dinner. He would have to eat

  quickly.

  There was a dusk-to-dawn curfew for foreigners. It was strictly enforced

  by soldiers who patrolled the streets wearing body armor and carrying

  automatic rifles.

  Though the rain had stopped, the large umbrellas were still open over

  the tables. Friday had to duck to make his way through. He shared his

  table with a pair of Hindu pilgrims who were reading while they drank

  their tea. The two men were dressed in very long white cotton robes that

  were tied at the center with a brown belt. It was the wardrobe of holy

  men from the United Provinces near Nepal, at the foot of the Himalayas.

  There were heavy-looking satchels at their sides.

  The men were probably on their way to a religious shrine at Pahalgam,

  which was located fifty-five miles south of Srinagar.

  The presence of the satchels suggested that they were planning to spend

  some time at the shrine. The men did not acknowledge Friday as he sat,

  though they were not being rude. They did not want to interrupt his

  tranquillity. One of the men was looking over a copy of the

  International Herald Tribune. That struck Friday as odd, though he did

  not know why it should. Even holy men needed to keep up with world

  events. The other man, who was sitting right beside Friday, was reading

  a volume of poems in both Sanskrit and English.

  Friday glanced over the man's forearm.

  " Vishayairindriyuraamo na thrupthamcidhigwhathi ajasrain pooryamuanoopi

  samudraha salilairiva," it said in Sanskrit.

  The English translation read, "The senses can never be satisfied even

  after the continuous supply of sensory objects, as the ocean can never

  be filled with a continuous supply of water."

  Friday did not dispute that. People who were alive had to drink in

  everything around them. They consumed experiences and things and turned

  that fuel into something else.

  Into something that had their fingerprints on it. If you weren't doing

  that you were living, but not alive.

  While the pilgrims sat at the table they were approached by a Muslim.

  The man offered low-price shelter at his home if they wished to stay the

  night. Often, pilgrims had neither the time nor the money to stay at an

  inn. The men graciously declined, saying they were going to try and

  catch the next bus and would rest when they reached the shrine. The

  Muslim said that if they missed this bus or one of the later ones he

  could arrange for his brother-in-law to drive them to the shrine the

  next day. He gave them a card with his address handwritten on it. They

  thanked him for his offer. The man bowed and excused himself. It was all

  very civil. Contact between the Muslims and Hindus usually was cordial.

  It was the generals and the politicians who provoked the wars.

  Behind Friday two men had stopped for tea. From their conversation he

  gathered that they were heading to the night shift at a nearby brick

  factory. To Friday's left three men in the khaki uniforms of the Kashmir

  police force were standing and watching the crowd. Unlike in the Middle

  East, bazaars were not typically the scene of terrorist attacks in

  Kashmir.

  That was because as many Muslims as Hindus frequently mingled in

  marketplaces. Hindu-specific sites were usually targeted. Places such as

  homes of local officials, businesses, police stations, financial

  institutions, and military bases. Even militaristic, aggressive groups

  like the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen guerrillas did not typically attack civilian

  locales, especially during business hours. They did not want to turn the

  people against them. Their war was with the Hindu leaders and those who

  supported them.

  The two pilgrims quickly finished their tea. Their bus was pulling up

  three hundred yards to the right. It braked noisily at a small, one-room

  bus stop at the far western side of the market. The bus was an old green

  vehicle, but clean. There were iron racks on the roof for luggage. The

  uniformed driver came out and helped passengers off while a luggage

  clerk brought a stepladder from inside the bus stop. While he began to

  unload the bags of riders who were disembarking, ticket-holders began

  queuing up beside him to board.

  For the most part the line was extremely orderly. When the two men were

  finished they both entered the small wooden structure.

  The two pilgrims at Ron Friday's table had put away their reading

  material and picked up their big lumpy bags. With effort, the men threw

  the satchels over their shoulders and made their way onto the crowded

  street. Watching them go, Friday wondered what the punishment was for

  stealing. With customers packed so closely together and focused on

  getting what they needed, the market would be a pickpocket's heaven.

  Especially if they were going to get on a bus and leave the area

  quickly.

  Friday continued to sip his tea as he ate the lamb from the wooden

  skewers. He watched as other pilgrims rushed by.

  Some of them were dressed in white or black robes, others were wearing

  Western street clothes. The men and women who were not wearing

  traditional robes would be permitted to worship at the shrine but not to

  enter the cave itself. A few people were pulling children behind them.

  Friday wondered if their hungry expressions were anxiety about getting

  onto the bus or a physical manifestation of the religious fervor they

  felt. Probably a little of both.

  One of the police officers walked toward the bus stop to make sure the

  boarding process was orderly. He walked past the police station, which

  was to his left. It was a two-story wooden structure with white walls

  and green eaves. The two front windows were barred. Beyond the police

  station, practically abutting it, was a decades-old Hindu temple.

  Friday wondered if the local government had built the police station

  next to a temple in an effort to protect it from terrorists.
r />   Friday had been to the temple once before. It was a dvibheda--a bidi

  vision al house of worship that honored both Shiva, the god of

  destruction, and Vishnu, the preserver. The main portal was fronted by

  the five-story-tall Rajagopuram, the Royal Tower. To the sides were

  smaller towers over the auxiliary entrances. These white-brick

  structures were trimmed with green and gold tile and honored the two

  different gods. The walls were decorated with canopies, roaring lions,

  humanlike gatekeepers in what appeared to be dancing poses, and other

  figures. Friday did not know a great deal about the iconography.

  However, he did recall that the interior of the temple was designed to

  symbolize a deity at rest. The first room was the crest, followed by the

  face, the abdomen, the knee, the leg, and the foot. The entire body was

  important to the Hindus, not just the soul or the heart.

  Any part of a human being without the other part was incomplete.

  And an incomplete individual could not manifest the ultimate perfection

  required by the faith.

  However fast they were going, each pilgrim took a moment to turn to it

  and bow slightly before continuing on. As important as their individual

  goals were, the Hindus understood that there was something much greater

  than they were.

  Other pilgrims were exiting the temple to catch the bus. Still other

  Hindus, probably local citizens, as well as tourists were moving in and

  out of the arched portal.

  A block past me temple was a movie theater with an old style marquee.