Failure was not the worst of this. What bothered Sharab most was the idea that she and her team had been used. She had been warned about this five years ago when she was still in Pakistan, at the combat school in Sargodha. The Special Services Group agents who trained her said she had to be wary of success. When a cell succeeded over an dover it might not be because they were good. It might be because the host was allowing them to succeed so they could be watched and used at some later date.

For years Sharab's group, the Pakistan-financed Free Kashmir Militia, had been striking at select targets throughout the region. The modus operand! for each attack was always the same. They would take over a house, plan their assault, then strike the target. At the moment of each attack whichever cell member had remained behind would telephone a regional police or military headquarters. He would claim credit for the attack on behalf of the Free Kashmir Militia. After that the FKM would move to another home.

In the end, the isolated farmers whose homes and lives they briefly borrowed cared more about survival than about politics.

Many of them were Muslim anyway. Though they did not want to cooperate and risk arrest, they did not resist the FKM.

Sharab and her people only struck military, police, and government offices, never civilian or religious targets. They did not want to push or alienate the Hindu population of Kashmir or India, turn them into hawkish adversaries. They only wanted to deconstruct the resources and the resolve of the Indian leaders. Force them to go home and leave Kashmir.

That was what they were trying to do in the bazaar. Cripple the police but not harm the merchants. Scare people away and impact the local economy just enough so that farmers and shoppers would fight the inflammatory presence of Indian authorities.

They had been so careful to do just that. Over the past few nights one member of the party would go to the bazaar in Srinagar. He would enter the temple dressed in clerical robes, exit in back, and climb to the roof of the police station.

There, he would systematically lift tiles and place plastique beneath them. Because it was in the middle of a night shift, when this section of the city was usually quiet, the police were not as alert as during the day. Besides, terrorist attacks did not typically occur at night.

The idea of terrorism was to disrupt routine, to make ordinary people afraid to go out.

This morning, well before dawn, the last explosives were placed on the roof along with a timer. The timer had been set to detonate at exactly twenty minutes to five that afternoon.

Sharab and the others returned at four thirty to watch from the side of the road to make sure the explosion went off.

It did. And it punched right through her.