Line of Control - Tom Clancy [57]
Though the NRO proved invaluable in bringing data back to earth, the management of the NRO itself became a nightmare of convolution and in-fighting. Though the government did not officially acknowledge the existence of the organization, its denials were a joke among the Washington press corps. No one would explain why so many people were obviously struggling with such rancor to control something that did not exist.
That changed in 1990 with the construction of a permanent NRO facility in Fairfax, Virginia. Yet even while the NRO's existence was finally acknowledged, few people had firsthand knowledge about its day-to-day operations and the full breadth of its activities.
Photographic reconnaissance operations director Stephen Viens was one of those men.
The consolidation of NRO activities under one roof did not end the competition for satellite time. But Viens was loyal to his college friend Matt Stoll. And he would do anything for Paul Hood, who stood by him during some difficult CIOC hearings about the NRO's black ops work.
As a result, no group, military or civilian, got priority over Op-Center.
Bob Herbert had telephoned at four p. m. What he needed from Viens was visual surveillance of a specific site in the Himalayas. Viens had to wait two hours before he could free up the navy's Asian Omni Com satellite, which was in a geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean.
Even though the navy was using it, Viens told them he had an LAD-lifeanddeath-situation and needed it at once. Typically, the Omni Com listened to sonar signals from Russian and Chinese submarines and backed them up with visual reconnaissance when the vessels surfaced.
That allowed the navy to study displacement and hull features and even to get a look down the hatch when it was opened. The satellite image was sharp to within thirteen inches from the target and refreshed every 8 seconds. If the angle were right the Omni Com could get in close enough to lip-read.
Working at the Omni Com station in the level four basement of the NRO, it was relatively easy for Viens and his small team to use the repositioned satellite to ride the field phone signal to its source.
They pinpointed it to a site above the foothills at 8,"2 feet. When Viens and his group had repositioned the satellite to look down on the site, dawn was just breaking in Kashmir. The rising sun cleared the mountains to the east and struck an isolated structure. It resembled a slender travertine stalagmite more than it did a mountain peak.
Whatever it was, something remarkable was happening on its face.
There were over a dozen figures in white parkas on the eastern side of the peak. They were armed with what looked like automatic weapons.
Some were climbing up the peak, others were rappelling down. They were all converging on a small mouth located near the base of the for.
Viens quickly refined the location of the audio signal. It was not coming from the people on the cliff but from a stationary target.
Probably from an individual or individuals inside the cave.
Viens immediately phoned Bob Herbert and redirected the signal to Op-Center.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
Slachin Base 2E, Kashmir Thursday, 7:01 a. m.
There is nothing like sunrise in the Himalayas.
The higher altitude and thinner, cleaner atmosphere allow a purer light to get through. Ishaq did not know how else to describe it. A photographer in Islamabad once told him that the atmosphere acted like a prism. The lower to the ground you were, the thicker the air blanket was and the more the sunlight was bent to the red. Ishaq was not a scientist. He did not know if that were true.
All the Pakistani knew was that the light up here was like he imagined the eye of Allah to be. It was white, warm, and intense.