For a blessed moment the sun shined all around Ishaq and he felt as if he had been embraced by Allah.
TWENTY-TWO
"What the hell just happened, Stephen?" Bob Herbert asked.
Op-Center's intelligence chief had pulled his wheelchair deep under the desk. He was leaning over the speakerphone as he watched the OmniCom image on his computer. What he had said was not so much a question as an observation. Herbert knew exactly what had happened.
"The side of the mountain just exploded," Viens said over the phone.
"It didn't just explode, it evaporated," Herbert pointed out. "That blast had to have been the equivalent of a thousand pounds of TNT."
"At least," Viens agreed.
Herbert was glad there was no sound with the image. Even just seeing the massive, unexpected explosion wakened his sensory memories. Tension and grief washed over him as he was reminded of the Beirut embassy bombing.
"What do you think, Bob? Was it set off by a sensor or motion detector?" Viens asked.
"I doubt it," Herbert said. "There are a lot of avalanches in that part of the world. They could have triggered the explosion prematurely."
"I didn't think of that," Viens admitted.
Herbert forced himself to focus on the present, not the past. Op-Center's intelligence chief reloaded the pictures the satellite had sent moments before the blast. He asked the computer to enhance the images of the soldiers one at a time.
"It looked to me like the climbers tossed gas inside," Herbert said. "They obviously believed that someone might be waiting for them."
"They were right," Viens said.
"The question is how many people were in there?" Herbert said. "Were the people who used that cave expecting the climbers? Or were they caught by surprise and decided they did not want to be captured alive?"
An image of the first soldier filled Herbert's monitor. There was a clear shot of the man's right arm. On top, just below the shoulder of the white camouflage snowsuit, was a circular red patch with a solid black insignia. The silhouette showed a horse running along the tail of a comet. That was the insignia of the Special Frontier Force.
"Well, one thing's dead for sure," Viens said.
"What's that?" Herbert asked.
"Matt Stoll just phoned to say he's not picking up the cell phone signal anymore," Viens told Herbert. "He wanted to see if we'd lost it too. I just checked. We have."
Herbert was still looking at the monitor. He saved the magnified image of the shoulder patch. "I wonder if the cell led the commandos there to throw them off the trail," he said.
"Possibly," Viens said. "Do we have any idea which way the Indian commandos would have come?"
"From the south," Herbert replied. "How long would it take you to start searching through the mountains north of the site?"
"It will take about a half hour to move the satellite," Viens said. "First, though, I want to make sure we're not wasting our time. If anyone left the cave they would have had to go up before they could go down again. I want to get the OmniCom in for a closer look."
"Footprints in the snow?" Herbert said as the secure phone on his wheelchair beeped.
"Exactly," Viens replied.
"Go for it. I'll wait," Herbert told him as he backed away from the desk so he could reach the phone. He snapped up the receiver. "Herbert."
"Bob, it's Hank Lewis," said the caller. "I've got Ron Friday on the line. He says it's important. I'd like to conference him in."
"Go ahead," Herbert said. He had been wondering what Friday would find at the farmhouse. He was hoping it did not confirm their fears of police or government involvement in the Srinagar market attack. The implications were too grim to contemplate.
"Go ahead, Ron," Lewis said. "I have Director of Intelligence Bob Herbert on the line with us."
"Good," Friday said. "Mr. Herbert, I'm at the Kumar farmhouse in Kargil with my Black Cat liaison. I need to know what other intel you have on the farmer and his granddaughter."
"What have you found out there?" Herbert asked.
"What?" Friday said.
"What did you find at the farm?" Herbert asked.
"What is this, 'I show you mine and you show me yours?' " Friday angrily demanded.
"No," Herbert said. "It's a field report. Tell me what you've got."
"I've got my ass on the front frigging line and you're sitting on your ass safe in Washington!" Friday said. "I need information!"
"I'm on my ass because my legs don't work anymore," Herbert responded calmly. "I lost them because too many people trusted the wrong people. Mr. Friday, I've got an entire team headed toward your position and they may be at considerable risk. You're a piece in my puzzle, a field op for me. You tell me what you have and then I'll tell you what you need to know."
Friday said nothing. Herbert hoped he was considering exactly how to word his apology.
After a few moments Friday broke the silence. "I'm waiting for that information, Mr. Herbert," he said.
That caught Herbert off guard. Okay. They were playing hardball with a hand grenade. He could do that.
"Mr. Lewis," Herbert said, "please thank your field operative for reconnoitering the farmhouse. Inform him we will get our information directly from the Black Cat Commandos and that our joint operation is ended."
"You bureaucratic asshole—!" Friday snapped.
"Friday, Mr. Herbert has the authority to terminate this alliance," Lewis said. "And frankly, you're not giving me a reason to fight for it."
"We need each other out here!" Friday said. "We may be looking at an international catastrophe!"
"That's the first useful insight you've given me," Herbert said. "Would you care to continue?"
Friday swore. "I don't have time for a pissing contest, Herbert. I'll straighten you out later. We've learned that a Pakistani cell, part of the Free Kashmir Militia, stayed at the farm of Apu Kumar for about five months. The farmer's granddaughter, Nanda, is the only child of a couple who died fighting the Pakistanis. The girl wrote poetry the whole time the cell was here. It appears to have contained coded elements reporting on the cell's activities. She used to recite her poems aloud while she took care of the chickens. We suspect members of the Special Frontier Force heard what she was saying, probably by cell phone. She was with them when the bazaar attack in Srinagar took place and we believe the SFF was behind the temple bombing. We also believe that she is still with them, and might have the cell phone to signal SFF."
"She was signaling the SFF," Herbert replied.
"What happened?" Friday asked.
It was time to give Friday a little information, a little trust. "The Indian pursuit team was just taken out by a powerful explosion in the Himalayas," Herbert informed him.
"How do you know that?" Lewis asked.
"We've got ELINT resources in the region," Herbert said.
Herbert used the vague electronics intelligence reference because he did not want Lewis to know that he had satellite coverage of the region. The new NSA head might start pushing the NRO for off-the-books satellite time of his own.
"How many men were killed?" Lewis asked.
"About thirteen or fourteen," Herbert replied. "They were closing in on what appeared to be an outpost about eight thousand feet up in the mountains. The men, the outpost, and the side of the mountain are all gone."
"Were you able to ID the commandos?" Friday asked. "Were they wearing uniforms?"
"They were SFF," Herbert replied.
"I knew it," Friday said triumphantly. "What about the cell?"
"We don't know," Herbert admitted. "We're trying to find out if they got away."
Herbert looked at the computer monitor. Stephen Viens had just finished zooming in slowly on the northern side of the cliff. The resolution was three meters, sufficient to show footprints. The angle of the sun was still low. That would help by casting shadows off the side walls of any prints. Viens began panning the flattest, widest areas of the slopes. Those were the sections where people were likely to be walking in the darkness.