There was a sense of despair in his eyes, in the sad downturn of his mouth. Perhaps Apu had been in the mountains as a young man. He had had some idea what was beyond the foothills. But Apu had certainly never gone this far, never this high. He had never gazed down at the barren peaks. He had never heard the constant roar of the wind over powerful 671 kw rotors, or felt that wind batter an aircraft, or experienced the cold that blasted through the canvas-lined metal walls. The farmer knew that unless they found Nanda the chances were not good that she would survive.

The chopper continued toward the line of control without any of the occupants spotting the terrorists. Friday was not overly concerned.

They still had the southward trip along the other side of the range to go.

Suddenly, something happened that Friday was not expecting.

He heard a voice in his helmet. A voice that did not belong to Captain Nazir.

"Negative zone three," said the very faint, crackling voice.

"Repeat: negative zone three." A moment later the voice was gone.

Friday made sure the headset switch on the communications panel was set on "internal" rather than "external." That meant they were communicating only with the cockpit instead of an outside receiver.

"Who is that?" Friday asked.

Nazir shook his head slowly.

"It's not control tower communication."

The wheel was shaking violently. He did not want to release his two-handed grip.

"Do you see that yellow button below the com-panel?" he asked.

"Yes," Friday said.

"That's the nose dome antenna," Nazir said.

"Push it once then push on the external signal again."

Friday did. As soon as the button was depressed the voices began to come in more clearly. Other zones were checking in. There was also a blip on the small green directional map.

The signal was coming from the northwest. Friday switched back to internal communications.

"We'd better check it out," Friday said.

"It cannot be a Pakistani search party," Nazir said.

"They would not communicate on this frequency."

"I know," Friday replied.

"The line of control isn't far from here. I'm worried that it could be an Indian unit moving in."

"A sweep coming down through different zones," Nazir said.

"That would be a standard search-and-rescue maneuver.

Should we do a fly over "Why?" Friday asked.

"They may have intelligence on the cell's location that we do not,"

Nazir said.

"The direction they are headed may tell us something." "No," Friday said. He continued to look out the window.

"I don't want to waste the time or fuel."

"What do we do if they contact us?" Nazir asked.

"Radar at the line of control may pick us up as we near the end of the range. They may ask us to help with the search."

"We'll tell them we're on routine reconnaissance and were about to turn back to Kargil," Friday said.