Line of Control - Tom Clancy [155]
It would take a war like the one they had barely managed to avoid. Or it would take an unparalleled and sustained international effort lasting generations.
For a sad, transient moment August shared something with Sharab.
A profound sense of despair.
CHAPTER SEVENTY.
Washington, D. C. Tuesday, 7:10 a. m.
Paul Hood sat alone in his office. He was looking at his computer, reviewing the comments he planned to make at the ten a. m. Striker memorial.
As promised, Herbert had persuaded the Indians to bring choppers from the line of control to collect the bodies of the Strikers. The leverage he used was simple. The Pakistanis agreed to stay out of the region, even though they claimed the valley for their own. Herbert convinced New Delhi that it would be a bad idea for Pakistanis to collect the bodies of Americans who had been killed by Indians. It would have made a political statement that neither India nor the United States wished to make.
Colonel August was in the valley to meet the two Mi-35s when they arrived late Friday afternoon. The bodies had already been collected and lined up beneath their canopies.
August stayed with the bodies until they had been flown back to Quantico on Sunday. Then and only then did the colonel agree to go to a hospital.
Mike Rodgers was there to meet him.
Hood and Rodgers had performed too many of these services since Op-Center had first been chartered. Mike Rodgers inevitably spoke eloquently of duty and soldiering. Heroism and tradition. Hood always tried to find a perspective in which to place the sacrifice. The salvation of a country, the saving of lives, or the prevention of war.
The men invariably left the mourners feeling hope instead of futility, pride to temper the sense of loss.
But this was different. More than the lives of the Strikers was being memorialized today.
New Delhi had publicly thanked Op-Center for uncovering a Pakistani cell. The bodies of three ten-orists had been found at the foot of the Himachal Peaks in the Himalayas. They appeared to have slipped from a ledge and plummeted to their deaths. They were identified by records on file at the offices of the Special Frontier Force.
Islamabad had also publicly thanked Op-Center for helping deter a nuclear strike against Pakistan. Though Indian Defense Minister John Kabir had been named by Major Dcv Puri and others as the man behind the plot, Kabir denied the allegations. He vowed to right any indictments the government might consider handing down. Hood suspected that the minister and others would resign, and that would be the end of it. New Delhi would rather bury the reality of any wrongdoing than give Pakistan a more credible voice in the court of world opinion.
Hood even got a thank-you call from Nanda Kumar. The young woman called from New Delhi to say that General Rodgers had been a hero and a gentleman. Although he had not been able to save her grandfather, she realized that Rodgers had done everything he could to make the trek easier for him. She said she hoped to visit Hood and Rodgers in Washington when she got out of the hospital. Even though she was technically an Indian intelligence operative. Hood had no doubt that she would get a visa. Nanda's broadcast had made her an international celebrity. She would spend the rest of her life speaking and writing about her experience.
Hood hoped that the twenty-two-year-old was wise beyond her years. He hoped she would use the media access to promote tolerance and peace in Kashmir, and not the agendas of India or Nanda Kumar.
The praise from abroad was unique. Even when Op-Center succeeded in averting disaster. Hood and his team were typically slammed for their involvement in the internal affairs of another nation-Spain or the Koreas or the Middle East or anywhere else they handled a crisis.
Despite the praise coming from abroad, Op-Center took several unprecedented hits