Samouel was breathing rapidly when Rodgers reached him. The general was not a doctor. He did not know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Under the circumstances, breathing at all was good.
"How're you doing?" Rodgers asked.
"Not very well," Samouel said. He was wheezing. It sounded as if there were blood in his throat.
"You're just disoriented by the trauma," Rodgers lied. "We'll fix you up as soon as we're done here."
"What can we do without the cell phone?" Samouel asked.
Rodgers slipped his arms under the Pakistani. "We still have my point-to-point radio," the general told him. "Will that work?"
"It should," Samouel replied. "The wiring is basically the same."
"That's what I thought," Rodgers said. "I'm going to get us to the cable and pry the back from the radio. Then you're going to tell me how to hook it to the satellite dish."
"Wait," Samouel said.
Rodgers hesitated before lifting him.
"Listen," Samouel said. "Look for the red line underground. Red is always the audio. Inside the radio, find the largest chip. There will be two lines attached. One leads to the microphone. The other to the antenna. Cut the wire leading to the antenna. Splice the red wire from the dish to that one."
"All right," Rodgers replied.
"You understand all that?" Samouel asked.
"I do," Rodgers assured him.
"Then go," Samouel said.
The Pakistani's voice had become weaker as he spoke. Rodgers did not argue with him. Pausing only long enough to squeeze Samouel's hand, Rodgers turned and hurried back to the slab.
SIXTY-THREE
Nanda did not remember much of what had happened since the helicopter had attacked them. She knew that her grandfather had died. But it seemed as if after that her mind had drifted. She was awake but her spirit had been elsewhere. The shock of her grandfather's death must have dulled her kundalini, her life force. That forced the Shakti to take over. Those were the female deities that protected true believers in times of strife. Using their own secret mantras and mandalas, the mystical words and diagrams, the Shakti had guarded her life force until Nanda's own depleted natural energies could revive it.
The shock of the latest explosions and the rattling gunfire had accelerated the process. General Rodgers's high-intensity activities of the last few minutes had finished it. Whatever alertness Nanda had always felt when she was dealing with the SFF had come back to her. And she was glad it had. The young woman's return seemed to have defused whatever tensions had been building between Rodgers and his fellow American.
Nanda continued to chisel, hack, and pry at the ice. She worked from left to right, cutting new inroads with her right hand while scooping out ice chips with her left. At the same time she felt for anything that might be a cable or a conduit. With their luck they would find one and it would be made of steel or some compound they could not break through.
Whatever the outcome, the activity of chopping the hard ice felt good for the moment. It helped keep her blood flowing and kept her torso and arms relatively warm.
Rodgers had only been gone a minute or two before returning. He came back alone.
"Where's your boy?" Friday asked.
"He's not doing too well," Rodgers admitted. "But he told me what to do." The general moved close to Nanda. "Hold on a second," he said. "I want to check the dig."
Nanda stopped. She could hear General Rodgers feeling along the perimeter of the slab.
"This is good," he said. "Thanks. Now I need you both to move back, over by the slope. Lie there with your feet to your chin, arms tucked in, hands over your ears. Leave as little of yourself exposed as possible."
"What are you going to do?" Nanda asked.
"I have one more of those flash-bang grenades I used earlier," Rodgers said. "I'm going to put it in here. Enough of the force will go downward. The heat of the explosion should melt the ice for several feet in all directions."
"Did our terrorist friend tell you what to do if the cable is inside two-inch-thick piping?" Friday asked.
"In that case we bury the hand grenade I have," Rodgers said. "That should put a good-sized dent in any casing. Now go back," he went on. "I'm ready to let this go."
Her hands stretched in front of her, Nanda knee-walked toward the slope. The ground was sharp and lumpy and it hurt. But she was glad to feel the pain. Years before, a potter, an artisan of the menial Sudra caste in Srinagar, had told her that it is better to feel something, even if it is hunger, than to feel nothing at all. Thinking of her own suffering and her dead grandfather, Nanda finally understood what the man had meant.
When she reached the wall, Nanda curled up on the ice the way Rodgers had instructed.
It did not escape Nanda's notice that the American had taken a moment to thank her for the work she had done. In the midst of all the turmoil and doubt, the horror of what had been and what might lie ahead, his word smelled like a single, beautiful rose.
That was the pretty image in the young woman's mind as the ground heaved and her back grew hot beneath her clothes and the roar blew through her hands, ringing her skull from back to jaw.
SIXTY-FOUR
Rodgers did not go as far from ground zero as the others. He knew that the explosion would not hurt him, though it would be hot. But he was counting on that. His exposed fingers were numb and he was going to need them warmed to work. He went as far as the edge of the slab and sat there with his knees upraised and his face buried between them. He used the insides of his knees to cover his ears. His arms were folded across his knees. He was braced for quite a bump when the grenade went off.
Rodgers made certain that the knife was back in his equipment vest and the radio was secure in his belt before he sat down. And he leaned to his left side as much as possible. Hopefully, if the blast knocked Rodgers over, he would not fall on the radio.
The in-ground explosion was even more potent than Rodgers had imagined. The ice beneath him rolled but did not knock Rodgers over. But the blast did take an edge of the slab off. Rodgers could hear the chunk as it whistled upward. The sound was shrill enough to cut through the surf-loud roar of the detonation itself. It came down somewhere to the left. Rodgers imagined the Indians initially thinking they had been attacked by a mortar shell. After a moment they would probably realize that the enemy had detonated another flash-bang grenade.
There were a series of lesser flashes and whiplike cracks as the grenade continued to fire. Before they died, Rodgers made his way over to the site. The explosion had cut a hole in the ice roughly four feet by four feet. Melted ice filled the excavation. Near the center was a severed cable.
While the last embers of the grenade still burned on the edge of the hole, Rodgers flopped on his belly and grabbed the dish-side end of cable. There were three wires bundled together inside a half-inch-thick plastic cover. One of the wires was red, another was yellow, and the third was blue. Rodgers removed his knife and pried the red one from the others. He cut the wet edge off and quickly scored the rubber sides of the wire with the tip of the knife. As he was finishing, the light from the last embers was fading.
"Friday, matches!" he said.
There was no answer.
"Friday!" he repeated.
"He's not here!" Nanda said.