Tom Clancy's op-center_ acts of war - Tom Clancy [140]
Now here he was, showing the people who had tortured Mike how to work the ROC. If he stopped telling them what he knew, his colleagues in the pits would suffer. If he continued, scores of people might be injured or killed--starting with that poor soul the ROC'S thermal-imaging system had shown lurking in the foothills. Yet an equal number of Kurds might also be saved.
Nothing good came without a price.
Most importantly, Katzen had bought time for his fellow hostages. With time came hope, and the hope-sustaining knowledge that Op-Center had not abandoned them. If something could be done to help them, Bob Herbert would find it.
Yet Katzen had also had the basic "S&S" course--seighty hours of safety and security. All Op-Center personnel were required to take them. Traveling abroad, American government officials were tempting targets. They had to know the fundamentals of psychology, of weapons and self-defense, of survival. Katzen knew that to survive, it was vital to be alert. However tired he was, however unsettled he felt about what was happening, he had to be aware of his surroundings. Hostages could not always count on rescuers to pull them out. Sometimes they had to seize on the distraction of a counterattack to escape. Sometimes they had to counterattack on their own.
Because Katzen had faith in Bob Herbert, he had decided to buy time by working as slowly as possible. He'd also decided to turn on equipment that would be useful to him. Radios, infrared monitors, radar, and the other basics. Since his two captors understood English, he was careful to avoid the Striker frequency. He would record it and listen later, if possible.
It was Katzen who had inadvertently aleited the Kurds to the presence of the lone spy in the foothills. The man had been listening to them with a sophisticated radio, possibly a TACSAT-3. With the help of the ROC's laser imaging system, the Kurds had been able to follow him easily as he tried to get away. Every move he'd made had been radioed to the pursuers in the field. What the Kurds didn't know was that the man had been prepared to beam a signal to Israel. Katzen had watched the man's parabolic dish search for the uplink. As soon as he saw where the dish was headed--there was only the Israeli satellite in that sector of the sky--Katzen had switched to a simulation program which showed a field operative attempting to contact a recon group, code-named Veeb. Veeb, for Victory Brigade, was a group of unknown size and an indeterminate nationality in an unspecified region of the Syrian-Israeli border. The point of the simulation was to use ROC software to find out who and where they were.
After the man was taken, Katzen had used the ROC to listen to everything which transpired in the cave. The man had been speaking in Arabic to the commander, so Katzen had no idea what had passed between them. His two guards understood, of course. Their smug expressions told him that, though they said nothing. When Katzen stole a low-tech look out the front window of the van and saw the prisoner being led out, he had no doubt that the man was going to be executed. He might have been a spy. Or perhaps he'd been a scout for Striker.
Katzen took a nervous breath. The air-conditioner had been cut down to conserve fuel. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. He'd risked his life for seals and bears, for dolphins and spotted owls. He wasn't about to stay in the van and let this happen.
"I need some air," Katzen said suddenly.
"Work," the man on his right commanded.
"I need to breathe, dammit!",she said. "What do you think I'm going to do? Run away? You know how to follow me on this"--he pointed to the monitor--"and where the hell would I go anyway?"
The man on his left pursed his lips. "Only for a moment," he said. "There isn't much time."
"Fine," Katzen said. "Whatever you say."
The" Kurd grabbed the back of Katzen's