White and red flares exploded in the skies above the clearing.
Rodgers could now see the soldiers who were firing at them. They were a handful of Indian regulars, probably out from the line of control.
The four or five men took up positions behind ice formations near the entrance.
Rodgers immediately dropped to his belly and began wriggling through the broken terrain. Friday was behind the slab at the entrance to the missile silo. He was firing at the Indians to keep them down. Rodgers watched the entrance for signs of additional troops. There were none.
The flares also enabled Rodgers to see Samouel and Nanda. The two were about thirty feet away. They were lying on their sides behind a thick chunk of ice. The barricade was roughly three feet tall and fifteen feet wide. The Pakistani was stretched out behind the woman. He was pushing her face-first against the ice, his arm around her, protecting her on all sides. Rodgers did not have the time to contemplate it, but the irony of a Pakistani terrorist protecting an Indian civilian operative did not escape him.
Bullets pinged furiously from the top of the formation. The onslaught showered the two with ice. As the barrier was whittled down Samouel looked around. Mike Rodgers was behind and slightly to the right of the two. The Pakistani did not appear to notice him.
'Samouel!' Rodgers yelled.
The Pakistani looked over. Rodgers sidled to his right, behind a boulder-shaped formation. He wanted Nanda as close as possible, in case they managed to get inside the silo.
'Come back here!' Rodgers shouted.
'I'll cover you!'
Samouel nodded. The Pakistani pulled Nanda away from the ice and bundled her in his arms. Crouching as low as possible, Samouel ran toward Rodgers. The general rose and fired several rounds at the Indians. But as the light of the flares began to fade, and the last streaming embers fell to earth, the soldiers stopped shooting.
Obviously, they wanted to conserve both their flares and their ammunition. Though Rodgers kept his automatic trained on the entrance there was no further exchange of gunfire. The ice walls kept even the wind outside. An eerie stillness settled on the enclosure.
There was only the crunch of Samouel's boots on the ice and a deep, deep freeze that caused the exposed flesh around Rodgers's eyes to burn.
Samouel and Nanda reached the ice boulder. The Pakistani slid to his knees beside Rodgers. He was breathing heavily as he sat Nanda with her back to the ice. The young woman was no longer in the near-catatonic state she had been in earlier. Her eyes were red and tearing, though Rodgers did not know whether it was from sadness or the cold. Still, they were moving from side to side and she seemed to be registering some awareness of her surroundings.
Samouel moved toward Rodgers.
'General, I saw something when the flares went off,' Samouel panted.
'What did you see?' Rodgers asked.
'It was directly behind the place where you and Mr. Friday were,' the Pakistani said.
'On one of the lower ledges of the slopes, about nine or ten feet up.
It looked like a satellite dish.'
An uplink, Rodgers thought. Of course.
'Maybe that has something to do with why we were sent to this place,' Samouel continued.
'I'm pretty sure it does,' Rodgers said.
'Was the dish out in the open?'
'Not really,' Samouel said.
'It was set back, in a little cave. About five or six feet it seemed.'
The Pakistani shook his head. He sighed.
'I can't say for sure that it was a dish.
There was white lattice, but it could have been icicles and a trick of the light.'
'Would the site have been visible from the air?' Rodgers asked.
'Not from directly overhead,' Samouel told him.
Rodgers glanced back. It was too dark to see the ice wall now. But what Samouel just said made sense. If there were a video setup somewhere inside the Pakistani missile silo, then there had to be an uplink somewhere on the outside. The dish or antenna did not have to be on the top of a peak.
All the dish needed was an unobstructed view of one area in the sky. A single spot where a communications satellite, possibly Russian or Chinese built-and-launched, was in geosynchronous orbit. The cables connecting the relay to the silo would probably be relatively deep inside the ice wall. Whoever designed an uplink for this area would not want the wiring too close to the surface. Melting ice might expose the cables to wind, sleet, or other corrosive forces, not to mention leaving it visible to passing recon aircraft.
'Tell me something, Samouel,' Rodgers said.
'You wired some of the bombs and remote detonators for Sharab, didn't you?' 'Yes,' Samouel said softly.
'Do you have experience with radios?' Rodgers asked.
'I have worked with all kinds of electronics,' the Pakistani told him.
