explosion in Srinagar. In particular, with that last call from the home phone to the field phone.
Other nations routinely used cell phones as part of their intelligence-gathering and espionage efforts. Not just surveillance of the calls but the hardware itself. The electronics did not raise alarms at airport security; most government officials, military personnel, and business people had them; and they already had some of the wiring and microchips that were necessary for saboteurs. Cell phones were also extremely well positioned to kill. It did not take more than a wedge of C-4, packed inside the workings of a cell phone, to blow the side of a target's head off when he answered a call.
But Rodgers recalled one incident in particular, in the former Portuguese colony of Timor, that had parallels to this.
He had read about it in an Australian military white paper while he was on Melville Island observing naval maneuvers in the Timor Sea in 1999.
The invading Indonesian military had given cell phones to poor East Timorese civilians in what appeared to be a gesture of good will. The civilians were permitted to use the Indonesian military mobile communications service to make calls. The phones were not just phones but two-way radios. Civilians who had access to groups that were intensely loyal to imprisoned leader Xanana Gusmao were inadvertently used as spies to eavesdrop on nationalistic activities. Out of curiosity, Rodgers had asked a colleague in Australia's Department of Defense Strategy and Intelligence if the Indonesians had developed that themselves.
He said they had not. The technology had come from Moscow. The Russians were also big suppliers of Indian technology.
What was significant to Rodgers was that the radio function was activated by signals sent from the Indonesian military outpost in Baukau. The signals were sent after calls had indicated that one individual or another was going to be in a strategic location.
Rodgers could not help but wonder if the home phone had somehow signaled the field phone to detonate the secondary blasts. The timing was too uncomfortably close to be coincidence.
And the continuation of the signal at such regular intervals suggested that the terrorists were being tracked.
Hell, it did more than suggest that, Rodgers told himself.
And the more he thought about it, the more he began to realize that they might have a very nasty developing situation on their hands. The Pentagon's elite think tank, with the innocuous name of the Department of Theoretical Effects, called this process 'computing with vaporware.'
Rodgers had always been good at that, back when the Pentagon still called it 'domino thinking.'
He had to talk to Herbert about this.
Rodgers called over to Ishi Honda. The communications man was lying on the tarmac with the TAC-SAT beside him.
He came running over with the secure phone. Rodgers thanked him then squatted on the field beside the oblong unit and phoned Bob Herbert. He used the earphones so he could hear over the roar of landing and departing jets.
Herbert picked up at once.
'Bob, it's Mike Rodgers,' the general said.
'Glad to hear from you. Are you at Al?' Herbert asked.
'Just landed,' Rodgers said.
'Listen, Bob. I've been thinking about this latest data you sent me.
I've got a feeling that the Srinagar bombers have been tagged, maybe by someone on the inside.' 'I've got that same feeling,' Herbert admitted.
'Especially since we've been able to place the calls from field to home before that. They originated at a farm in Kargil. We notified the SFF. They sent over a local constable to check the place out. The farmer refused to say anything and they could not find his granddaughter. Ron and the SFF guy are going over first thing in the morning, see if they can't get more out of him.'
'None of this smells right,' Rodgers said.
'No, it doesn't,' Herbert said.
'And there's something else. The farmer's daughter and son-in-law were resistance fighters who died fighting the Pakistani invasion.'
'So the farmer certainly had a reason to be part of a conspiracy against the Free Kashmir Militia,' Rodgers said.
'In theory, yes,' Herbert said.
'What we're looking at now is whether there is a conspiracy and whether it could have involved the district police station that was home for the cell phone. Matt Stoll's gotten into their personnel files and my team is looking at the backgrounds of each officer. We want to see if any of them have connections with antiterrorist groups.'
'You realize. Bob, that if you find a link between the police and the Pakistani cell, we may have an unprecedented international incident on our hands,' Rodgers said.
'I don't follow,' Herbert replied.
'Just because they might have known about the attack and decided not to prevent it--'
'I think it may have been more than that.' Rodgers said.
'There were three separate attacks. Only one of them conformed to the established m. o. of the Free Kashmir Militia, the bombing of the police station.' 'Wait a minute,' Herbert said.
'That's a big leap. You're saying the police could have planned this action themselves?
