Using night glasses and shielded flashlights, the Indian troops had been deploying their climbing gear. They had detected faint heat signatures above and knew the enemy was up there waiting.

Unfortunately, fly overs would not help them now. The fierce ice storms above made visibility and navigation difficult. And blind scatter-bombing of the region was not guaranteed to stop the cell.

There were caves they could hide in. Besides, there were very holy, anchoritic religious sects and cliff-dwelling tribes living in the foothills and in some of the higher caves. The last thing either side wanted was to collate rally destroy the homes or temples of these neutral peoples. That would force them or their international supporters into political or military activism.

The Indian soldiers were nearly halfway into the preparations to scale the cliff when Major Puri received a surprising radio communique.

Earlier in the day a helicopter on routine patrol had reported what looked like the wreckage of an aircraft in the Mangala Valley.

However, there was no room for the chopper to descend and search for possible survivors.

Major Puri had dispatched a four-soldier unit to investigate.

Two hours before, the men had reported the discovery of a downed helicopter. It looked like a Ka-25.

But the aircraft was so badly burned they could not be certain.

Puri called the Base 3 communications center. They checked with the air ministry. There were no choppers on special assignment in the region.

Because the chopper went down in the narrow valley, rescue personnel would not be dispatched until the following day. A parachute drop at night was too risky and, in any case, there were no survivors.

An hour later, Puri's group found the remains of ten American paratroopers. Major Puri relayed that information to the defense minister. The minister said he would sit on that information until after the cell had been taken. He had already come up with a scenario in which, regrettably, Puri's soldiers had mistaken the Americans for Pakistanis and had shot the team down.

What surprised the Indian reconnaissance team was what they discovered on the body of one of the Americans. The soldier, a black woman, was hanging from a ledge by her parachute. There was a point-to-point radio in her equipment belt. Occasionally, the red "contact" light flashed.

Someone in the communications link was trying to contact her or someone else in the link. That meant not all the soldiers had been killed.

Unfortunately, the Indian soldiers could not confirm that. All they got on the radio was static.

Puri expected that he would find those soldiers in the cliffs above, with the Pakistanis. But the Mangala Valley unit had employed infrared glasses in a scan of the region. They had come up with a different scenario.

"We're detecting a very strong heat source several miles to the northeast," Sergeant Baliah, the leader of the reconnaissance unit, had reported.

"There is a singular heat source on the glacier."