by Tom Clancy
“Grandparents. That was before her mom died. I was doing comps for my doctorate at Georgetown, couldn’t get out of it. As it was I got my degree in two and a half years, and I sweated blood that last year between the university and seminars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This was supposed to be a vacation.” Ryan grimaced. “The first real vacation since our honeymoon. ”
“What were you doing when the attack took place?” Owens got things back on track. All three inquisitors seemed to lean forward in their seats.
“Looking the wrong way. We were talking about what we’d do for dinner when the grenade went off.”
“You knew it was a grenade?” Taylor asked.
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. They make a distinctive sound. I hate the damned things, but that’s one of the little toys the Marines trained me to use at Quantico. Same thing with the machine-gunner. At Quantico we were exposed to East Bloc weapons. I’ve handled the AK-47. The sound it makes is different from our stuff, and that’s a useful thing to know in combat. How come they didn’t both have AKs?”
“As near as we can determine,” Owens said, “the man you wounded disabled the car with a rifle-launched antitank grenade. Forensic evidence points to this. His rifle, therefore, was probably one of the new AK-74s, the small-caliber one, fitted to launch grenades. Evidently he didn’t have time to remove the grenade-launcher assembly and decided to press on with his pistol. He had a stick grenade also, you know.” Jack didn’t know about the rifle grenade, but the type of hand grenade he’d seen suddenly leaped out of his memory.
“The antitank kind?” Ryan asked.
“You know about that, do you?” Ashley responded.
“I used to be a Marine, remember? Called the RKG-something, isn’t it? Supposed to be able to punch a hole in a light armored vehicle or rip up a truck pretty good.” Where the hell did they get those little rascals—and why didn’t they use them ... ? You’re missing something, Jack.
“Then what?” Owens asked.
“First thing, I got my wife and kid down on the deck. The traffic stopped pretty quick. I kept my head up to see what was happening.”
“Why?” Taylor inquired.
“I don’t know,” Ryan said slowly. “Training, maybe. I wanted to see what the hell was going on—call it stupid curiosity. I saw the one guy hosing down the Rolls and the other one hustling around the back, like he was trying to bag anyone who tried to jump out of the car. I saw that if I moved to my left I could get closer. I was screened by the stopped cars. All of a sudden I was within fifty feet or so. The AK gunner was screened behind the Rolls, and the pistolero had his back to me. I saw that I had a chance, and I guess I took it.”
“Why?” It was Owens this time, very quiet.
“Good question. I don’t know, I really don’t.” Ryan was silent for half a minute. “It made me mad. Everyone I’ve met over here so far has been pretty nice, and all of a sudden I see these two cocksuckers committing murder right the hell in front of me.”
“Did you guess who they were?” Taylor asked.
“Doesn’t take much imagination, does it? That pissed me off, too. I guess that’s it—anger. Maybe that’s what motivates people in combat,” Ryan mused. “I’ll have to think about that. Anyway, like I said, I saw the chance and I took it.
“It was easy—I was very lucky.” Owens’ eyebrows went up at that understatement. “The guy with the pistol was dumb. He should have checked his back. Instead he just kept looking at his kill zone—very dumb. You always ‘check-six.’ I blindsided him.” Ryan grinned. “My coach would have been proud—I really stuck him good. But I guess I ought to have had my pads on, ’cause the doc says I broke something up here when I hit him. He went down pretty hard. I got his gun and shot him—you want to know why I did that, right?”
“Yes,” Owens replied.
“I didn’t want him to get up.”
“He was unconscious—he didn’t wake up for two hours, and had a nasty concussion when he did.”
If I’d known he had that grenade, I wouldn’t have shot him in the ass! “How was I supposed to know that?” Ryan asked reasonably. “I was about to go up against somebody with a light machine gun, and I didn’t need a bad guy behind me. So I neutralized him. I could have put one through the back of his head—at Quantico when they say ‘neutralize,’ they mean kill. My dad was the cop. Most of what I know about police procedures comes from watching TV, and I know most of that’s wrong. All I knew was that I couldn’t afford to have him come at me from behind. I can’t say I’m especially proud of it, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.
“I moved around the right-rear corner of the car and looked around. I saw the guy was using a pistol. Your man Wilson explained that to me—that was lucky, too. I wasn’t real crazy about taking an AK on with a dinky little handgun. He saw me come around. We both fired about the same time—I just shot straighter, I guess.”
Ryan stopped. He hadn’t meant it to sound like that. Is that how it was? If you don’t know, who does? Ryan had learned that in a crisis, time compresses and dilates—seemingly at the same time. It also fools your memory, doesn’t it? What else could I have done? He shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said again. “Maybe I should have tried something else. Maybe I should have said, ‘Drop it!’ or ‘Freeze!’ like they do on TV—but there just wasn’t time. Everything was right now—him or me—do you know what I mean? You don’t ... you don’t reason all this out when you only have half a second of decision time. I guess you go on training and instinct. The only training I’ve had was in the Green Machine, the Corps. They don’t teach you to arrest people—Christ’s sake, I didn’t want to kill anybody, I just didn’t have a hell of a choice in the matter.” Ryan paused for a moment.
“Why didn’t he—quit, run away, something! He saw I had him. He must have known I had him cold.” Ryan slumped back into the pillow. Having to articulate what had happened brought it back all too vividly. A man is dead because of you, Jack. All the way dead. He had his instincts, too, didn’t he? But yours worked better—so why doesn’t that make you feel good?
“Doctor Ryan,” Owens said calmly, “we three have personally interviewed six people, all of whom had a clear view of the incident. From what they have told us, you have related the circumstances to us with remarkable clarity. Given the facts of the matter, I—we—do not see that you had any choice at all. It is as certain as such things can possibly be that you did precisely the right thing. And your second shot did not matter, if that is troubling you. Your first went straight through his heart.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah, I could see that. The second shot was completely automatic, like my hand did it without being told. The gun came back down and zap! No thought at all ... funny how your brain works. It’s like one part does the doing and another part does the watching and advising. The ‘watching’ part saw the first round go right through his ten-ring, but the ‘doing’ part kept going till he went down. I might have tried to squeeze off another round for all I know, but the gun was empty.”
“The Marines taught you to shoot very well indeed,” Taylor observed.
Ryan shook his head. “Dad taught me when I was a kid. The Corps doesn’t make a big deal about pistols anymore—they’re just for show. If the bad guys get that close, it’s time to leave. I carried a rifle. Anyway, the guy was only fifteen feet away.” Owens made some more notes.
“The car took off a few seconds later. I didn’t get much of a look at the driver. It could have been a man or a woman. He or she was white, that’s all I can say. The car went whippin’ up the street and turned, last I saw of it.”
“It was one of our London taxis—did you notice that?” Taylor asked.
Ryan blinked. “Oh, you’re right. I didn’t really think about that—that’s dumb! Hell, you have a million of the damned things around. No wonder they used one of those.”
“Eight thousand six hundred seventy-nine, to be exact,” Owens s
aid. “Five thousand nine hundred nineteen of which are painted black.”
A light went off in Ryan’s head. “Tell me, was this an assassination attempt or were they trying to kidnap them?”
“We’re not sure about that. You might be interested to know that Sinn Fein, the political wing of the PIRA, released a statement completely disowning the incident.”
“You believe that?” Ryan asked. With pain medications still coursing through his system, he didn’t quite notice how skillfully Taylor had parried his question.
“Yes, we are leaning in that direction. Even the Provos aren’t this crazy, you know. Something like this has far too high a political price. They learned that much from killing Lord Mountbatten—wasn’t even the PIRA who did that, but the INLA, the Irish National Liberation Army. Regardless, it cost them a lot of money from their American sympathizers,” Taylor said.
“I see from the papers that your fellow citizens—”
“Subjects,” Ashley corrected.
“Whatever, your people are pretty worked up about this.”
“Indeed they are, Doctor Ryan. It is rather remarkable how terrorists can always seem to find a way to shock us, no matter what horrors have gone before,” Owens noted. His voice was wholly professional, but Ryan sensed that the chief of Anti-Terrorist Branch was willing to rip the head right off the surviving terrorist with his bare hands. They looked strong enough to do just that. “So what happened next?”
“I made sure the guy I shot—the second one—was dead. Then I checked the car. The driver—well, you know about that, and the security officer. One of your people, Mr. Owens?”
“Charlie was a friend of mine. He’s been with the Royal Family’s security detail for three years now....” Owens spoke almost as though the man were still alive, and Ryan wondered if they had ever worked together. Police make especially close friendships, he knew.
“Well, you guys know the rest. I hope somebody gives that redcoat a pat on the head. Thank God he took the time to think it all out—at least long enough for your guy to show up and calm him down. Would have been embarrassing for everybody if he’d stuck that bayonet out my back.”
Owens grunted agreement. “Indeed it would.”
“Was that rifle loaded?” Ryan asked.
“If it was,” Ashley replied, “why didn’t he shoot?”
“A crowded street isn’t the best place to use a high-powered rifle, even if you’re sure of your target,” Ryan answered. “It was loaded, wasn’t it?”
“We cannot discuss security matters,” Owens said. I knew it was loaded, Ryan told himself. “Where the hell did he come from, anyway? The Palace is a good ways off.”
“Clarence House—the white building adjoining St. James’s Palace. The terrorists picked a bad time—or perhaps a bad place—for their attack. There is a guard post at the southwest comer of the building. The guard changes every two hours. When the attack took place, the change was just under way. That meant that four soldiers were there at the time, not just one. The police on duty at the Palace heard the explosion and automatic fire. The Sergeant in charge ran to the gate to see what was going on and yelled for a guardsman to follow.”
“He’s the one who sounded the alarm, right? That’s how the rest of them arrived so fast?”
“Charlie Winston,” Owens said. “The Rolls has an electronic attack alarm—you don’t need to tell anyone that. That alerted headquarters. Sergeant Price acted entirely on his own initiative. Unfortunately for him, the guardsman was a hurdler—the lad runs track and field—and vaulted the barriers there. Price tried to do it also, but he fell down and broke his nose. He had a devil of a time catching up, plus sending out his own alarm on his portable radio.”
“Well, I’m glad he caught up when he did. That trooper scared the hell out of me. I hope your Sergeant gets a pat on the head, too.”
“The Queen’s Police Medal for starters, and the thanks of Her Majesty,” Ashley said. “One thing that has confused us, Doctor Ryan. You left the military with a physical disability, yet you evidenced none of this yesterday.”
“You know that after I left the Corps, I went into the brokerage business. I made something of a name for myself, and Cathy’s father came down to talk to me. That’s when I met Cathy. I passed on the invitation to move to New York, but Cathy and I hit it right off. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we were engaged. I wore a back brace then, because every so often my back would go bad on me. Well, it happened again right after we got engaged, and Cathy took me into Johns Hopkins to have one of her teachers check me out. One was Stanley Rabinowisz, professor of neurosurgery there. He ran me through three days of tests and said he could fix me good as new.
“It turned out that the docs at Bethesda had goofed my myelogram. No reflection on them, they were sharp young docs, but Stan’s about the best there is. Good as his word, too. He opened me up that Friday, and two months later I was almost as good as new,” Ryan said. “Anyway, that’s the story of Ryan’s back. I just happened to fall in love with a pretty girl who was studying to be a surgeon.”
“Your wife is certainly a most versatile and competent woman,” Owens agreed.
“And you found her pushy,” Ryan observed.
“No, Doctor Ryan. People under stress are never at their best. Your wife also examined Their Royal Highnesses on the scene, and that was most useful to us. She refused to leave your side until you were under competent medical care; one can hardly fault her for that. She did find our identification procedures a touch long-winded, I think, and she was quite naturally anxious about you. We might have moved things along more quickly—”
“No need to apologize, sir. My dad was a cop. I know the score. I understand you had trouble identifying us.”
“Just over three hours—a timing problem, you see. We had your passport out of your coat, and your driving license, which, we were glad to see, had your photograph. Our initial request to your Legal Attaché was just before five, and that made it noon in America. Lunchtime, you see. He called the FBI’s Baltimore field office, who in turn called their Annapolis office. The identification business is fairly straightforward—first they had to find some chaps at your Naval Academy who knew who you were, when you came over, and so forth. Next they found the travel agent who booked your flight and hotel. Another agent went to your motor vehicle registration agency. Many of these people were off eating lunch, and we reckon that cost us roughly an hour. Simultaneously he—the Attaché—sent a query to your Marine Corps. Within three hours we had a fairly complete history on you—including fingerprints. We had your fingerprints from your travel documents and the hotel registration, and they matched your military records, of course.”
“Three hours, eh?” Dinnertime here, and lunchtime at home, and they did it all in three hours. Damn.
“While all that was going on we had to interview your wife several times to make sure that she related everything she saw—”
“And she gave it to you exactly the same way every time, right?” Ryan asked.
“Correct,” Owens said. He smiled. “That is quite remarkable, you know.”
Ryan grinned. “Not for Cathy. Some things, medicine especially, she’s a real machine. I’m surprised she didn’t hand you a roll of film.”
“She said that herself,” Owens replied. “The photographs in the paper are from a Japanese tourist—that’s a cliché, isn’t it?—half a block away with a telephoto lens. You might be interested to know that your Marine Corps thinks rather highly of you, by the way.” Owens consulted his notes. “Tied for first in your class at Quantico, and your fitness reports were excellent.”
“So, you’re satisfied I’m a good guy?”
“We were convinced of that from the first moment,” Taylor said. “One must be thorough in major felony cases, however, and this one obviously had more than its share of complications.”
“There’s one thing that bothers me,” Jack said. There was more than one, but his brain was w
orking too slowly to classify them all.
“What’s that?” Owens asked.
“What the hell were they—the Royals, you call them?—doing out on the street with only one guard—wait a minute.” Ryan’s head cocked to one side. He went on, speaking rather slowly as his mind struggled to arrange his thoughts. “That ambush was planned—this wasn’t any accidental encounter. But the bad guys caught ‘em on the fly.... They had to hit a particular car in a particular place. Somebody timed this one out. There were some more people involved in this, weren’t there?” Ryan heard a lot of silence for a moment. It was all the answer he needed. “Somebody with a radio ... those characters had to know that they were coming, the route they’d take, and exactly when they got into the kill zone. Even then it wouldn’t be all that easy, ’cause you have to worry about traffic....”
“Just an historian, Doctor Ryan?” Ashley asked.
“They teach you how to do ambushes in the Marines. If you want to ambush a specific target ... first, you have to have intelligence information; second, you choose your ground; third, you put your own security guys out to tell you when the target is coming—that’s just the bare-bones requirements. Why here—why St. James’s Park, The Mall?” The terrorist is a political creature. The target and the place are chosen for political effect, Ryan told himself. “You didn’t answer my question before: was this an assassination or an attempted kidnapping?”
“We are not entirely sure,” Owens answered.
Ryan looked over his guests. He’d just touched an open nerve. They disabled the car with an antitank rifle-grenade, and both of them had the hand-thrown kind, too. If they just wanted to kill ... the grenades would defeat any armor on the car, why use guns at all? No, if this was a straight assassination attempt, they would not have taken so long, would they? You just fibbed to me, Mr. Owens. This was definitely a kidnap attempt and you know it.
“Why just the one security officer in the car, then? You have to protect your people better than that.” What was it Tony said? An unscheduled trip? The first requirement for a successful ambush is good intelligence.... You can’t pursue this, idiot! The Commander solved the problem for Jack.