The Eye of Shiva (23 page)

Everyone was looking at
the relic. The cleric suddenly looked out past the crowd. Sayeed turned to see what he was looking at and saw the line of soldiers. He put his hand on Afridi's shoulder.

"Abdul."

Afridi turned, annoyed, his prayers interrupted.

"Soldiers," Sayeed said,
his voice quiet.

Afridi looked
at the soldiers advancing in a tight line, weapons at port arms.

"Dogs,"
he hissed. His face was angry.

"When they reach the crowd there will be panic," Sayeed said.
"That will be our best chance to escape."

He slipped a long dagger from his sleeve and held it
down by his side in his right hand. Afridi nodded and drew his own. Allah would forgive the shedding of blood at this holy site. It was permitted in defense of the faith against the infidel. Whatever happened here today, it was on the heads of these Indian vermin.

The soldiers were almost upon the
worshipers. Voices rose in alarm. People started to turn around. With no warning, the soldiers attacked. They used their rifles as clubs, striking out at anyone in their path, driving viciously into the crowd. Afridi saw an old man go down, blood gushing from his forehead. He heard screams from the other side of the compound, where the women had gathered separately from the men.

"
Abdul," Sayeed said, "over there."

T
he formation began to break up as the soldiers plunged into the crowd. A small gap appeared in the line and Afridi and Sayeed started for the opening. They pushed against the current of people trying to get away.

A
shot sounded, flat and harsh, echoing from the marble walls of the mosque. A low moan swept through the crowd. For an instant, there was silence. Then someone shouted in a voice filled with rage and anguish.

"
Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!" God is Great!

Words that had echoed
over the centuries. Words that had soaked a quarter of the earth in blood.

The mob awoke.
Thousands of voices took up the cry. In seconds, the lawn in front of the mosque turned into a churning mass of people. Soldiers began to go down under a storm of kicks and curses as the crowd surged forward. More shots were fired. The sound grew into a constant, rippling crackle.

Afridi and Sayeed were surrounded by panicked and angry men.
Two soldiers blocked Afridi's way. He ran his knife into the stomach of one and ripped upward. Bright red blood gushed out and the man screamed. Sayeed's dagger flashed in the sunlight and another Indian fell. Then the two men were through the line and running for their lives. 

Nick turned off the exit road and
started back into the city. Trucks filled with police sped past them, sirens blaring. Lamont was in the back of the van, watching through the binoculars.

"The
soldiers are firing into the crowd," he said. "It's a massacre."

"Whoever
sent them in has got a lot of explaining to do," Selena said.

"Why do that?" Lamont asked. "Those people weren't hurting anybody."

"It's a deliberate provocation." Nick swerved to avoid a man on a bicycle. "How do you think this will go down in Pakistan? Indian troops attacking unarmed Muslim worshipers?"

"
Maybe Cobra's behind it," Lamont said.

"If he wants a war, he's got it. It
can't be stopped after this. The only question is whether or not it goes nuclear."

"Why
would he think India could win a nuclear war?" Selena asked. "It's crazy."

"
People like him think they're smart enough to control the outcome," Nick said. "They never think the missiles will fall on them. Or else they think they've figured out how to survive and that means they win."

"
What if Cobra isn't motivated by winning?" Selena said.

"What else would it be?"

"Hate. Revenge. Religion. Love."

"How do you get love in there?" Lamont asked.

"Shakespeare did it all the time. Love and hate are just flip sides of the same feeling."

Nick thought about what she had just said. If you didn't care about winning, you had nothing to lose.
An enemy with nothing to lose was the most dangerous kind of opponent. An enemy with nothing to lose who wanted a nuclear war and the ability to make it happen was a nightmare.

More trucks filled with troops
sped past them, heading toward the mosque.

"What's our next move?" Lamont said.

"Time to bring Harker up to date and see what she wants us to do."

Nick touched the trans
ceiver in his ear. "Director, you copy?"

"Copy, Nick. Go ahead."

"Things are going south over here."

He told her about the
attack at the mosque.

"Any sign of Afridi or Cobra?"
Elizabeth said.

"Negative."

"Where are you now?"

"Heading back to our hotel."

"This changes everything," Harker said. "It makes war between Pakistan and India a certainty."

"I thought the same thing."

"Keep trying to find Afridi."

"We need more Intel or we'll never find him."

"I'll see what I can do," Elizabeth said. "Be ready to get out of there in case things start to heat up."

"I think they already have," Nick said.

CHAPTER 42

The
threat of war had sent tourists and businessmen packing, leaving a glut of rooms in Srinagar. The hotel they'd settled on was nearly empty. They had the entire top floor to themselves.

Selena stepped from the shower and began drying off. She wrapped a towel around her hair
and walked across her room to the window, leaving damp footprints on the wood floor. It was raining, a steady, depressing rain that fell from skies thick with gray cloud. Selena looked out over Lake Dal and watched the rain.

Nick and Lamont were in rooms
to either side of hers. She didn't feel like dealing with her feelings about Nick right now. They were all tired and separate rooms had seemed like a good idea. Nick hadn't argued about it. She was grateful for that. At the same time, it made her feel sad.

There was a soft noise behind her.
She turned her head in time to see a silent, dark shape coming at her. There was a gleam of steel in his left hand. He wore a black ski mask. She could see his eyes, black pupils wide, intent on murder.

Years of Korean martial arts training and conditioned reflexes took over. She
spun and blocked the knife thrust and kicked out. The blow landed off-center. Her attacker stumbled and recovered. He turned and came at her again. She pulled the towel from her hair and whipped it around his arm, pivoted and pulled him past. The knife sliced along her ribs under her breast as he went by, a sharp clean pain. The front of her body was suddenly slick with blood.

She held onto the end of the towel and jerked hard and leapt into the air. She struck him in the chest with
one of her feet. Something cracked. He grunted and staggered back. She landed and pulled down and around and back, twisting his arm into an impossible angle. The shoulder joint gave way and he let out a muffled scream of pain. The knife clattered across the floor. She pivoted to land a kick to his spine and slipped in her blood on the polished floor.

She landed hard on her hip
. Pain shot down her leg. Her attacker scrambled for the knife and she swung her leg and tripped him. He landed on his back. She rolled and brought the hard edge of her rigid hand down on his throat. A choking, gurgling noise came from his mouth. Blood ran over his lips.

She rolled away and
got to her feet, breathing hard, and watched him die.

A fist
pounded on the door.

"Selena. Selena, open up." Nick's voice.

She went to the door and unlocked it.

Nick
and Lamont were in the hallway. Nick saw the blood.

"You're hurt."

"I'm all right," Selena said. "I think."

He looked beyond her at the motionless figure on the floor.

"Lamont, watch the hall. There could be more of these guys."

"I'll be right outside," Lamont said.

Nick stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He guided her over to the bed.

"Sit down."

Nick saw a hotel bathrobe hanging by the bathroom door. He took it and draped it over her. Red spots began to appear through the white cloth. He went into the bathroom and got some towels. He wet one, came back out, opened her robe and gently began cleaning away the blood. He held a dry towel against the wound until the bleeding slowed. The cut was eight or nine inches long, the flesh laid open in a wide gash.

"
It's nasty, but it's not too deep," he said. "It needs stitches."

"
There's a kit in my belt pack."

He found the
kit. He cleaned the wound with disinfectant and sprinkled antibiotic powder on it.

"This will hurt."

Nick began stitching the edges of the wound together. She winced as he worked.

"
What happened?"

"
I'd just come out of the shower and I was watching the rain. I heard a noise. When I looked, I saw him coming at me. He must've been hiding in the closet. He was good, he almost had me. I hurt him but he kept coming."

"He must be one of Cobra's men."

Selena began shivering. "I feel cold," she said.

The shivering turned into shaking. Her whole body shook. Nick
put his arms around her and held her close.

"I...don't know...why..."

"Shh," he said, "shh. It's all right. It's just a reaction, it'll pass soon."

He held her for what seemed like a long time before the shaking stopped.

CHAPTER 4
3

Stephanie came into Elizabeth's office,
her face flushed with excitement.

"
Cobra," she said. "I've got him. I hacked into RAW's computers and took a look at their personnel files. Then I pulled a record of all the phones issued by the agency and referenced it against that list and Cobra's encrypted number. Cobra's information was behind four layers of security. He's the Secretary for Special Operations at RAW, the equivalent of our DCNS. His name is Ashok Rao."

"That explains how he had the resources needed to fake those calls," Elizabeth said.

"I also found out who Ijay is. He commands a black ops unit that works under Rao. He has birthmarks that remind people of the spots of a leopard. That's how his group got their name."

"Very poetic. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that they were the ones who blew up the Indian Embassy in Manila."

"It might be hard to prove that."

"We have a bigger problem to worry about," Elizabeth said. She briefed Stephanie on what Nick had told her about the Hazratbal mosque.

"Nick said it was a massacre. Automatic weapons turned against unarmed civilians."

"It must be what Cobra meant in that phone call," Stephanie said, "about the Army being ready."

Elizabeth shook her head in disgust. "He has to be stopped. It's too late to prevent a war. Indian soldiers firing on Muslims at a holy shrine is the last straw."

"What are you going to do
about Rao?"

"I'm going to tell Rice what we found out and let him decide.
Without presidential authorization he's untouchable. I can't do anything right now except let Nick know who he is."

She picked up her pen and set it down again.

"Rao is trying to start a war. Why?"

"His file was extensive," Stephanie said. "He's a Hindu nationalist and was an active
field agent in Afghanistan for several years before he was singled out for promotion. His wife and son were killed in a terrorist attack by Afridi's group. He blames Pakistan and he hates Muslims."

"Lots of people in India hate Muslims and Pakistan too. They don't try to start a war because of it. Rao may be psychotic."

"If he's crazy, he's doing a good job of hiding it," Stephanie said. "The only medical notes in his file are routine. His psych profile shows tendencies toward violence and paranoia but that wouldn't be unusual for a field operative. "

"Anything else?"

"He has a high IQ. He comes from an acceptable caste for his position, but he's risen as high as he's going to. It's a little unusual that he got that far, which says a lot about his ability. He's also a devotee of Shiva. That's not unusual in India."

"How old is he?"