equipment vest.
He had immediately begun prioritizing. Stop the Indians.
Stop Samouel's bleeding. Then he would worry about the phone.
'Don't bother with me,' Samouel said.
'I'm all right.'
'You're hit,' Rodgers said.
The general cut into the man's coat. He put his right hand through the opening. He felt for a wound.
Rodgers found it. A bullet hole just below the left shoulder blade. He reached out to the right and felt for his gloves. He found them, cut out the soft interior linings, and placed them on the wound. He pressed down hard. He could not think of anything else to do.
The clearing was silent as the reverberation of the grenade subsided.
There were no moans from the other side, no shouting. There was just deadly silence as time and options slipped away. Without the cell phone they could not communicate with August or hook up to the dish.
Finding the unit in the dark would be time consuming, if it was even possible. Going out with a torch was suicide. And if they lost Samouel, none of it even mattered.
It had been a good plan. Ironically, they would have been better off following the instincts of a man who might well be a traitor.
Mike Rodgers crouched there, his arms held low. He continued to press on the makeshift bandage, hoping the blood on the underside would freeze.
When that happened he would have to try to recover the phone, even if it cost him his life.
As Rodgers waited, his right elbow knocked into something in his belt.
He realized at once what it was.
Possible salvation.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE.
Siachin Base 3, Kashmir Friday, 3:22 a. m.
The Mikoyan Mi-35 helicopter set down on its small, dark pad. The square landing area was composed of a layer of asphalt covered with cotton and then another layer of asphalt.
The fabric helped keep the ice from the lower layer from reaching the upper layer.
No sooner had the pilot cut the twin rotors than he received a message over his headset.
'Captain, we just received a message from Major Puri,' the base communications director informed him.
'You're to refuel, deice, and go back out.'
The captain exchanged a disgruntled look with the copilot.
The cockpit was poorly heated and they were both tired from the difficult flight. They did not feel like undertaking a new mission.
As the pilot looked over, he glanced past his companion.
Through the starboard window of the cockpit he could already see ground crews approaching. There were two trucks crossing the landing area.
One was a fuel tank, the other a truck loaded with high-volume hoses and drums of a solution of sodium chloride-ferric ferrocyanide.
'What is the objective?' the captain asked.
'The cell you were tracking before,' the BCD replied.
'One of Major Puri's units has them cornered. The unit estimates that there are four individuals but they do not know how heavily armed they are.'
The captain felt a flush of satisfaction at the news. Although he had admired the way one man, armed with a pistol, had driven them back, he did not like being outsmarted..
'Where are they?' the captain asked. At the same time he punched up the topographical map on the computer.
'The Upper Chittisin Plateau,' the officer replied, and provided the coordinates.
The pilot entered the figures. The criminals had simply followed the mountain. It was a particularly high, cold, inhospitable section of the glacier. He wondered if they had gone there intentionally or ended up there by accident. If intentionally, he could not imagine what was there. Perhaps a safe house of some kind, or a weapons cache.
Whatever it was, he could take the chopper around the glacier on the southwest side and be there in forty-five minutes.
'When we find them, what are our orders?' the captain asked.
'You are to retrieve Major Puri's team and then complete your previous mission,' the BCD informed him.
The captain acknowledged the order.
Ten minutes later he was in the air heading toward the target. This time, he would not fail to exterminate the terrorists.
