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BOOKS: EXTRACT
Heatwave In Siachen
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An
Islamic cleric who is waging a jehad against the Indian state. An all-out
war between India and Pakistan. And caught in the crossfire is America's
super-efficient crack team, Op-Centre, whose current mission is the capture
of the cleric. And complicating the scenario is an inscrutable double
agent. This is Tom Clancy (right), the internationally bestselling author
of techno thrillers like The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games, on
the Indo-Pak border. Line of Control (HarperCollins, 371 pages, £6.99)
is the eighth in Clancy's Op-Centre series, created by Clancy and Steve
Pieczenik, written by Jeff Rovin. The Washington-based Op-Centre, specialists
in defence and intelligence crises, is the American government's last
resort when the crisis is "dirty and dangerous". In Line of
Control, only Striker, the military wing of Op-Centre, can handle the
danger created by the mullah. The action stretches from the Siachen Glacier
to Srinagar to Kargil to the Great Himalayan Range to New Delhi to Ankara
to Washington. Take this: Indian defence minister John Kabir (who has
a socialist background) "was not going to give Pakistan the chance
to attack India. He was, however, willing to send them to Paradise. He
intended to do that with a pre-emptive strike." Well, the end of
the Cold War and the fall of the Evil Empire have made the thriller writer
nearly homeless. Clancy has become the first A-list master of the genre
to visit the latest Armageddon.
PROLOGUE
Siachin Base 3, Kashmir
Wednesday, 5:42 A.M.
Major Dev Puri could
not sleep. He had not yet gotten used to the flimsy cots the Indian army
used in the field. Or the thin air in the mountains. Or the quiet. Outside
his former barracks in Udhampur there were always the sounds of trucks
and automobiles, of soldiers and activity. Here, the quiet reminded him
of a hospital. Or a morgue.
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"A
wrong word whispered to a fellow soldier and overheard ... could
break the fragile truce."
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Instead, he put on his olive green uniform and
red turban. Puri left his tent and walked over to the front-line trenches.
There, he looked out as the morning sun rose behind him. He watched as
a brilliant orange glow crept through the valley and settled slowly across
the flat, deserted demilitarized zone. It was the flimsiest of barriers
in the most dangerous place on earth.
Here in the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir,
human life was always in jeopardy. It was routinely threatened by the
extreme weather conditions and rugged terrain. In the warmer, lower elevations
it was at risk whenever one failed to spot a lethal king cobra or naja
naja, the Indian cobra, hiding in the underbrush. It was endangered whenever
one was an instant too late swatting a disease-carrying mosquito or venomous
brown widow spider in time. Life was in even greater peril a few miles
to the north, on the brutal Siachin Glacier. There was barely enough air
to support life on the steep, blinding-white hills. Avalanches and subzero
temperatures were a daily danger to foot patrols.
Yet the national hazards were not what made
this the most dangerous spot on the planet. All of those dangers were
nothing compared to how humans threatened each other here. Those threats
were not dependent on the time of day or the season of the year. They
were constant, every minute of every hour of every day for nearly the
past 60 years.
Puri stood on an aluminum ladder in a trench
with corrugated tin walls. Directly in front of him were five-foot-high
sandbags protected by razor wire strung tightly above them from iron posts.
To the right, about thirty feet away, was a small sentry post, a wooden
shelter erected behind the sandbags. There was hemp netting on top with
camouflage greenery overhead. To the right, forty feet away, was another
watch post.
One hundred and twenty yards in front of him,
due west, was a nearly identical Pakistan trench.
With deliberate slowness, the officer removed
a pouch of ghutka, chewable tobacco, from his pants pocket. Sudden moves
were discouraged out here. They might be noticed and misinterpreted as
reaching for a weapon. He unfolded the packet and pushed a small wad in
his cheek. Soldiers were encouraged not to smoke, since a lighted cigarette
could give away the position of a scout or patrol.
As Puri chewed the tobacco he watched squadrons
of black flies begin their own morning patrol. They were searching for
fecal matter left by red squirrels, goat-like markhors and other herbivores
that woke and fed before dawn. It was early winter now. Puri had heard
that in the summer the insects were so thick they seemed like clouds of
smoke drifting over the rocks and scrub.
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