Two hours before, the men had reported the discovery of a downed helicopter. It looked like a Ka-25.
But the aircraft was so badly burned they could not be certain.
Puri called the Base 3 communications center. They checked with the air ministry. There were no choppers on special assignment in the region.
Because the chopper went down in the narrow valley, rescue personnel would not be dispatched until the following day. A parachute drop at night was too risky and, in any case, there were no survivors.
An hour later, Puri's group found the remains of ten American paratroopers. Major Puri relayed that information to the defense minister. The minister said he would sit on that information until after the cell had been taken. He had already come up with a scenario in which, regrettably, Puri's soldiers had mistaken the Americans for Pakistanis and had shot the team down.
What surprised the Indian reconnaissance team was what they discovered on the body of one of the Americans. The soldier, a black woman, was hanging from a ledge by her parachute. There was a point-to-point radio in her equipment belt. Occasionally, the red 'contact' light flashed.
Someone in the communications link was trying to contact her or someone else in the link. That meant not all the soldiers had been killed.
Unfortunately, the Indian soldiers could not confirm that. All they got on the radio was static.
Puri expected that he would find those soldiers in the cliffs above, with the Pakistanis. But the Mangala Valley unit had employed infrared glasses in a scan of the region. They had come up with a different scenario.
'We're detecting a very strong heat source several miles to the northeast,' Sergeant Baliah, the leader of the reconnaissance unit, had reported.
'There is a singular heat source on the glacier.'
'It could be some of the native people,' Puri said.
Several groups of mountain dwellers lived in the upper foothills of the ranges that surrounded the glacier. They often hunted at night after small game and the larger gazelles had returned to their dens and warrens. They also used the darkness to set traps for predators that hunted in the early morning The Tarari did not eat the wolves and foxes but used their fur for clothing. The traps also kept the animals from becoming so numerous that they depopulated the region of prey.
'It's a little far west for them,' Baliah remarked.
'The heat signature is also less than we would get from a string of torches. I'm wondering if it might be some of the Americans.
If their equipment was damaged in the jump, they might have built a campfire.'
'How far is 'several miles'?' Puri asked.
'Approximately four,' Baliah responded.
'What I don't understand is why the Americans would have left the valley.
The weather is much more temperate there. They could not have failed to see the ice.'
'The survivors might have found the wreckage of the helicopter and anticipated a recon team. They moved on,' Puri suggested.
'But then why would they have left the radio?' the sergeant wondered aloud.
'They could easily have gotten it down. Then no one would know there were survivors.'
'Maybe we were meant to find it,' Puri said.
'That way they could feed us mis communications Yet even as the major said that, he knew it did not make sense. The Americans could not have known that a reconnaissance unit was enroute to the site.
Puri began to consider likely scenarios. The helicopter was probably in the valley to support the clandestine American operation. Perhaps it was there to extract the soldiers when their mission was completed.
That was why there was no immediate flight profile. Perhaps the Americans were only supposed to link up with the Pakistanis and see them as far as the border.
And then it hit him. Maybe that was still the objective.
'Sergeant, can you make your way to that heat source double-time?' Major Puri asked.
'Of course,' Baliah replied.
'What do you think is going on, sir?'
'I'm not sure,' Major Puri told him.
'It's possible that some of the Americans survived the drop and joined the Pakistani cell on our plateau. But other paratroopers may have been blown clear of the valley.'
'And you think the two may be trying to stay in touch point-to-point in order to find each other?' Sergeant Baliah asked.
'That's possible,' Puri replied.
The major looked up at the plateau his men were getting ready to climb.
The peak was dark but he could see the outline by the way it blocked the clouds above. Except for the presence of the American paratroopers he did not know for certain that the cell was up there. What if they were not?
What if the American drop had been a feint? The shortest way to Pakistan from this region was across the Siachin Glacier, Base 3 sector.
