over a bottle and shorting her computer the night after she first came to work here, Gloria had learned not to keep anything liquid on her desk. Luckily her boss. Assistant Director Curt Hardaway-'the Night Commander,' as they called him--admitted that he had once done that as well. Whether he had done that or not it was a nice thing to say.
The levity about the bet had been welcome. She had only been at this an hour but Viens had been working all day.
And the elements in the image-feed from the NRO did look very promising. They were at five-meter resolution, meaning that anything down to five meters long was visible. The computer's simultaneous PAP--photographic analysis profile-had identified what it thought could be human shadows. Distorted by the terrain and angle of the sun, they were coming from under an intervening ledge. Infrared would ascertain whether the shadows were being generated by living things or rock formations. The fact that the shadows had shifted between two images did not tell them much. That could simply be an illusion of the moving sun.
The Op-Center veteran watched and waited. The quiet of night shift made the delay somehow seem longer.
The tech-sec was a row of three offices set farthest from the busy front-end of the executive level. The stations were so thoroughly linked by computer, webcam, and wireless technology that the occupants wondered why they did not just tear down the walls and shout to each other, just to make human contact now and then. But Matt Stoll had always been against that. That was probably because Matt did things in private he did not want the rest of the world to know about.
But Gloria Gold knew his dark secret. She had spied on him one night using her digital micro cam hidden on the door handle of his mini refrigerator Four or five times a day. Matt Stoll washed down a pair of Twinkies with Gatorade.
That helped to explain the boundless energy and increasing girth of Op-Center's favorite egghead. It also explained the occasional yellowish stains on his shirt. He chugged the Gatorade straight from the bottle. Even now, while Stoll was supposed to be resting on his sofa, he was probably reading the latest issue of Nutech or playing a hand-held video game.
Unlike his former classmate Viens, Matt Stoll, with his sugar and Gatorade rush, defined the word wired.
Gloria's mind was back on the screen as the feed from the National Reconnaissance Office was refreshed. The mostly white image was now the color of fire. There were a series of yellow-white atmospheric distortions radiating from hot red objects along the bottom of the monitor.
'Looking good,' Viens said.
'Whatever is making the shadows is definitely alive.'
'Definitely,' Gloria said. They watched as the image refreshed again.
The red spot got even hotter as it moved out from under the ledge. The blob like shape was vaguely human.
'Shit!' Viens said.
'Bemardo, go back to natural light.'
'That's no mountain goat,' Gloria said.
'I'm betting it isn't a Sherpa either,' Viens added.
Gloria continued to watch as the satellite switched oculars.
This changeover seemed to take much longer than the last.
The delay was not in the mechanical switch itself but in the optics diagnostics the satellite ran each time it changed lenses. It was important to make certain the focus and alignment were correct. Wrong data--off-center imaging, improper focus, a misplaced decimal point in resolution--was as useless as no data.
The image came on-screen in visible light. There was a field of white with the gray ledge slashing diagonally across the screen. Gloria could see a figure standing half beneath it.
The figure was not a goat or a Sherpa. It was a woman.
Behind her was what looked like the head of another person.
'I think we've got them!' Viens said excitedly.
'Sure looks like it,' Gloria agreed as she reached for the phone.
'I'll let Bob Herbert know.'
Bob Herbert was there before the next image appeared.
The image that clearly showed five people making their way along the narrow ledge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
Kargil, Kashmir Thursday, 12:01 p. m.
Ron Friday liked to be prepared.
If he were going into a building he liked to have at least two exit strategies. If he were going into a country he always had his eye on the next place he would go to out of choice or necessity. If he had a mission in mind he always checked on the availability of the equipment, clearances, and allies he might need. For him, there was no such thing as downtime.
After talking with Bob Herbert, Friday realized that it might be necessary for him and Captain Nazir to move into the mountains. He knew that the helicopter was good for travel at heights up to twelve thousand feet and temperatures down to twelve degrees Fahrenheit. They had enough fuel left for a seven-hundred-mile flight. That meant they could go into the mountains about four hundred miles and still get back. Of course, there was also the problem of having to set the chopper down at too high an altitude and having liquid bearing components freeze. Depending on where they had to fly, it could be a long and unpleasant walk back.
