'I'm waiting for that information, Mr. Herbert,' he said.
That caught Herbert off guard. Okay. They were playing hardball with a hand grenade. He could do that.
'Mr. Lewis,' Herbert said, 'please thank your field operative for reconnoitering the farmhouse. Inform him we will get our information directly from the Black Cat Commandos and that our joint operation is ended.'
'You bureaucratic asshole--!' Friday snapped.
'Friday, Mr. Herbert has the authority to terminate this alliance,' Lewis said.
'And frankly, you're not giving me a reason to fight for it.'
'We need each other out here!' Friday said.
'We may be looking at an international catastrophe!'
'That's the first useful insight you've given me,' Herbert said.
'Would you care to continue?'
Friday swore.
'I don't have time for a pissing contest, Herbert. I'll straighten you out later. We've learned that a Pakistani cell, part of the Free Kashmir Militia, stayed at the farm of Apu Kumar for about five months.
The farmer's granddaughter, Nanda, is the only child of a couple who died fighting the Pakistanis. The girl wrote poetry the whole time the cell was here. It appears to have contained coded elements reporting on the cell's activities. She used to recite her poems aloud while she took care of the chickens. We suspect members of the Special Frontier Force heard what she was saying, probably by cell phone. She was with them when the bazaar attack in Srinagar took place and we believe the SFF was behind the temple bombing. We also believe that she is still with them, and might have the cell phone to signal SFF.'
'She was signaling the SFF,' Herbert replied.
'What happened?' Friday asked.
It was time to give Friday a little information, a little trust.
'The Indian pursuit team was just taken out by a powerful explosion in the Himalayas,' Herbert informed him.
'How do you know that?' Lewis asked.
'We've got ELINT resources in the region,' Herbert said.
Herbert used the vague electronics intelligence reference because he did not want Lewis to know that he had satellite coverage of the region. The new NSA head might start pushing the NRO for off-the-books satellite time of his own.
'How many men were killed?' Lewis asked.
'About thirteen or fourteen,' Herbert replied.
'They were closing in on what appeared to be an outpost about eight thousand feet up in the mountains. The men, the outpost, and the side of the mountain are all gone.'
'Were you able to ID the commandos?' Friday asked.
'Were they wearing uniforms?'
'They were SFF,' Herbert replied.
'I knew it,' Friday said triumphantly.
'What about the cell?'
'We don't know,' Herbert admitted.
'We're trying to find out if they got away.'
Herbert looked at the computer monitor. Stephen Viens had just finished zooming in slowly on the northern side of the cliff. The resolution was three meters, sufficient to show footprints. The angle of the sun was still low. That would help by casting shadows off the side walls of any prints.
Viens began panning the flattest, widest areas of the slopes.
Those were the sections where people were likely to be walking in the darkness.
'If the cell did get away the SFF is not going to give up,' Friday continued.
'There's a possibility the SFF set them up to take the fall for the temple bombings in Srinagar.'
'Do you have proof of that?' Herbert asked. He was interested that Friday had come to the same conclusion as he and General Rodgers.
'No,' Friday admitted.
'But the Black Cats would normally have handled the investigation and they were cut out of it by the SFF. They also obviously knew about the cell.'
'That doesn't mean they were involved in the destruction of the temple,' Herbert said.
'The Free Kashmir Militia are known terrorists. According to Indian radio they already took credit for the bombing--'
'Whoever made that call may not have known the extent of the attack,' Friday said.
