Tom Clancy's Op-Center: LINE Of CONTROL [042-066-4.9]
Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik written by Jeff Rovin
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
TOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: LINE OF CONTROL
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Jack Ryan Limited Partnership and S & R Literary, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition / June 2001
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2001 by Jack Ryan Limited Partnership and S & R Literary, Inc.
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ISBN: 0-425-18005-0
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg, Larry Segriff, Robert Youdelman, Esq.' Tom Manon, Esq.' and the wonderful people at Penguin Putnam Inc.' including Phyllis Grann, David Shanks, and Tom Colgan.
As always, we would like to thank Robert Gottlieb, without whom this book would never have been conceived.
But most important, it is for you, our readers, to determine how successful our collective endeavor has been.
--Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik
PROLOGUE.
Slachin Base 3, Kashmir Wednesday, 5:42 a. m.
Major Dev Puri could not sleep. He had not yet gotten used to the flimsy cots the Indian army used in the field. Or the thin air in the mountains. Or the quiet. Outside his former barracks in Udhampur there were always the sounds of trucks and automobiles, of soldiers and activity. Here, the quiet reminded him of a hospital. Or a morgue.
Instead, he out on his olive green uniform and red turban.
Puri left his tent and walked over to the front-line trenches.
There, he looked out as the rich morning sun rose behind him. He watched as a brilliant orange glow crept through the valley and settled slowly across the flat, deserted demilitarized zone. It was the flimsiest of barriers in the most dangerous place on earth.
Here in the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir, human life was always in jeopardy. It was routinely threatened by the extreme weather conditions and rugged terrain. In the wanner, lower elevations it was at risk whenever one failed to spot a lethal king cobra or naja naja, the Indian cobra, hiding in the underbrush. It was endangered whenever one was an instant too late swatting a disease-carrying mosquito or venomous brown widow spider in time. Life was in even greater peril a few miles to the north, on the brutal Siachin Glacier. There was barely enough air to support life on the steep, blinding-white hills.
Avalanches and subzero temperatures were a daily danger to foot patrols.
Yet the natural hazards were not what made this the most dangerous spot on the planet. All of those dangers were nothing compared to how humans threatened each other here.
Those threats were not dependent on the time of day or the season of the year. They were constant, every minute of every hour of every day for nearly the past sixty years.
Puri stood on an aluminum ladder in a trench with corrugated tin walls.
Directly in front of him were five-foot high sandbags protected by razor wire strung tightly above them from iron posts. To the right, about thirty feet away, was a small sentry post, a wooden shelter erected behind the sandbags. There was hemp netting on top with camouflage greenery overhead. To the right, forty feet away, was
