going on in the telephone. Harry got the number from the den, nodding at Dukas while he was jabbering at somebody at NCIS, smiled at Leslie. Harry wandered into the big living room, tapping numbers into his cell phone. Waited. Waited. Then a British-accented female voice said, “Mahe International Hotel, may I be of service?”
The woman on the other end was good. She knew within half a minute that Commander Craik wasn’t there. Had he tried the naval base? Then Dukas and Leslie came in, and Rose stood in the kitchen doorway with the telephone still in her hand, and the three-year-old, Bobby, woke from his nap and wandered in with the nanny from the bedroom wing. And then Mike—the other Mike, named after Mike Dukas—Alan’s and Rose’s nine-year-old son, came in from outside, looking at all the adults with the wisdom born of years among such people, and said, “What’s wrong now?” Then, with the condescension that only a child can show to his mother, he said, “Mom, you’re burning the tomato sauce again.”
Northern India
A continent away from Rose’s burned sauce, the sharp smell of rancid ghee carried over the industrial antiseptic and mold to burn in Daro’s throat. He coughed, his hand automatically rubbing his abdomen. Despite the discomfort, he savored the anonymity of his new headquarters.
They now occupied a former telemarketing center over a restaurant. The walls were gray-green, the carpet dull and moldy. There were no posters, no personal photographs, no cartoons, no graffiti. Three cheap digital clocks provided the only relief for the eye. On the floor, desks formed a long curve with a bank of small flat-screen displays against the far wall.
Mohenjo Daro paced the floor in front of the screens, often pausing opposite the desk of one of his operators to hear a report, curled into himself by pain despite his discipline.
Vashni, on the other hand, sat to one side with three laptops open in front of her, collating data. She raised her head from her screen. “The Americans have cancelled the exercise. We have a report that their carrier is on fire.”
Daro nodded. He was leaning over another operator, reading her screen.
Vashni raised her voice, unsure whether her news had been heard. “Shiva’s Spear was a success.”
“Hundreds of men and women are dead, Vash. Try not to sound so pleased.”
She swung her hair. “We can move to phase two. Americans are the greatest offenders against this planet—”
Daro was shaking his head even as she started to speak. “I wish we could have recruited there more effectively.”
“In America? All they care about is money and primitive religion.” Vash’s facade of civility cracked and her voice grew shriller. “No one would have joined.”
He ignored her, placed a hand on his stomach, shrugged. “So—let us move on to phase two, then.”
Daro clapped his hands. The operators looked up.
“Phase two, my friends.”
Conversation stilled. The gentle tapping of fingers on keyboards became the only sound, intense concentration the only expression. Phase two would turn India into chaos.
An hour passed. Two men in white lab coats served food, which was eaten automatically.
Daro moved around the room, scanning screens, making suggestions and responses, praising much and reproving little. Three times in the hour he stopped, hands at his waist, head down. After the hour’s walking, he was visibly weaker.
Despite her own tasks, Vashni watched him from the cover of her computer screens. She was sure that the bouts were coming quicker and hitting him harder.
One of the men at the left of the room punched a fist in the air, and Daro walked over to look at his screen, where a data stream was made visible as a digital waterfall. “I’m in,” the man said, indicating his screen. Then his fingers flew over the keyboard. As he typed, flat screens on the front wall lit up and provided images, all black and white. Nine of them showed corridors, one showed a desk with a guard; a few showed outside views of a low concrete building, and three showed the top of a dam. One showed a low concrete building with a heavy blast door marked “Bldg. 37.” Altogether, there were twenty-seven screens, and, even as Daro watched, they changed to a new set of views: more landscapes, a helipad, more security stations. Distant mountains showed in some views, and a dam, and the lake behind it, and twelve huge turbines; factories, power storage, power transmission, a nuclear reactor. The whole of the Ambur Regional Electrical Power Facility, the most extensive in India, unfolded across the wall in the frames of the flat paneled screens.
Daro reached out a hand toward Ali, his assistant, and snapped his fingers, and Ali unwrapped a new cell phone from its plastic and handed it to Daro, who opened it and dialed a long number. The crackling of the discarded plastic was the loudest sound in the room.
“Ready?” he asked. Something about the reply amused him, and he smiled. “You should have the feed now. Three minutes? I think we can wait that long. Very good.” He pressed a button to end the call, and handed the phone to Ali while he watched the screens, leaning the weight of his torso on one arm on the back of a chair.
“Station Two will insert loops as soon as they have sufficient footage for each camera. Our views will continue to be live,” he said.
“I have control of all their SCADA functions,” the man said at the end of the table.
“Station Two will give you the cue to cut the lights.”
The man nodded, his head back down on his screen.
The rest of the center remained quiet. Even Vashni had stopped working to watch the screens that flickered away, changing scenes every five seconds. There were hundreds of views, with guard stations, exteriors, interiors, machinery, more power turbines. The clocks counted down three minutes. Several of the computers gave low chimes, the sound of arriving e-mail.
“Our troops are going in.” A small woman in the center took a deep breath.
“Lights out—now,” said one of Daro’s operators.
Daro caught a movement in one of the scenes because he had been watching for it. A man in black appeared by one of the security stations. Most of the screens went black. The external views of the power facility dimmed as the artificial lights in the compound went out.
Daro motioned for another cup of tea. “I think it is time to move again, Vash,” he said, his face old now, pinched. He pointed at the operator on the end. “Stay online.”
Vashni reached in her purse and brought out a hand bell, which she rang sharply. One of the two doors to the room opened and a group of men in white overalls marked “Dow Chem” walked in, pushing industrial carts. The operators began unplugging their laptops and loading them on the carts while the white overalls took down the display monitors and the digital clocks. Several of the monitors were showing bursts of automatic weapons fire as they were unplugged.
“Leave that one,” Daro said, pointing to a monitor that showed a helipad. The operator nodded.
Daro exhaled sharply and bent over, his face moon pale.
Vashni surprised herself by placing a hand under his elbow. He turned his head, locked
