The other men hugged her arms weakly and also spoke silent words.
'An Indian helicopter will arrive at sunup,' August went on.
'Corporal Musicant will be leaving on it. I'm going to make my way back to the valley to find the rest of my team.
What do you want to do?'
Sharab turned her tearing eyes toward August. There was deep despair in her gaze. Her voice was gravelly and tremulous when she spoke.
'Will America ... help us ... to make the case ... for a Pakistani Kashmir?' she asked.
'I think things will change because of what happened over the last few days,' August admitted.
'But I don't know what my nation will say or do.'
Sharab laid an icy glove on August's forearm.
'Will ... you help us?' she pressed.
'They ... killed ... your team.'
'The madness between your countries killed my team,' August said.
'No,' she said. She gestured violently toward the edge of the plateau.
'The men ... down there ... killed them. They are godless ... evil.'
This was not a discussion August wanted to have. Not with someone who blew up public buildings and peace officers for a living.
'Sharab, I've worked with you to this point,' August said.
'I can't do any more. There will be a trial and hearings. If you surrender, you will have the opportunity to make a strong case for your people.'
'That will not ... help,' she insisted.
'It will be a start,' August countered.
'And if ... we go back ... down the mountain?' the woman asked.
'What will you do?'
'I guess I'll say good-bye,' he replied.
'You won't try ... to stop us?' Sharab pressed.
'No,' August assured her.
'Excuse me, now. I'm going back to join the rest of my unit.'
August looked at the defiant Pakistani for a moment longer. The woman's hate and rage were burning through the cold and physical exhaustion. He had seen determined fighters during his life. The Vietcong. Kurdish resistance fighters.
People who were fighting for their homes and families. But this furnace was a terrifying thing to witness.
Colonel August turned and walked back across the slippery, windswept ridge. Tribunals would be a good start. But it would take more than that to eradicate what existed between the Indians and the Pakistanis.
It would take a war like the one they had barely managed to avoid. Or it would take an unparalleled and sustained international effort lasting generations.
For a sad, transient moment August shared something with Sharab.
A profound sense of despair.
CHAPTER SEVENTY.
Washington, D. C. Tuesday, 7:10 a. m.
Paul Hood sat alone in his office. He was looking at his computer, reviewing the comments he planned to make at the ten a. m. Striker memorial.
As promised, Herbert had persuaded the Indians to bring choppers from the line of control to collect the bodies of the Strikers. The leverage he used was simple. The Pakistanis agreed to stay out of the region, even though they claimed the valley for their own. Herbert convinced New Delhi that it would be a bad idea for Pakistanis to collect the bodies of Americans who had been killed by Indians. It would have made a political statement that neither India nor the United States wished to make.
Colonel August was in the valley to meet the two Mi-35s when they arrived late Friday afternoon. The bodies had already been collected and lined up beneath their canopies.
August stayed with the bodies until they had been flown back to Quantico on Sunday. Then and only then did the colonel agree to go to a hospital.
Mike Rodgers was there to meet him.
Hood and Rodgers had performed too many of these services since Op-Center had first been chartered. Mike Rodgers inevitably spoke eloquently of duty and soldiering. Heroism and tradition. Hood always tried to find a perspective in which to place the sacrifice. The salvation of a country, the saving of lives, or the prevention of war.
The men invariably left the mourners feeling hope instead of futility, pride to temper the sense of loss.
But this was different. More than the lives of the Strikers was being memorialized today.
