by Tom Clancy
Until he remembered his fear. The pain of his back injury had made his first week at Bethesda a living hell. He knew that his present injury paled by comparison, but the body does not remember pain, and the shoulder was here and now. He forced himself to remember that pain medications had made his back problem almost tolerable ... except that the doctors had gotten just a little too generous with his dosages. More than the pain, Ryan dreaded withdrawal from morphine sulphate. That had lasted a week, the wanting that seemed to draw his entire body into some vast empty place, someplace where his innermost self found itself entirely alone and needing.... Ryan shook his head. The pain rippled through his left arm and shoulder and he forced himself to welcome it. I’m not going to go through that again. Never again.
The door opened. It wasn’t Kittiwake—the med was still fourteen minutes away. Ryan had noticed a uniform outside the door when it had opened before. Now he was sure. A thirtyish uniformed officer came in with a floral arrangement and he was followed by another who was similarly loaded. A scarlet and gold ribbon decorated the first, a gift from the Marine Corps, followed by another from the American Embassy.
“Quite a few more, sir,” one uniformed officer said.
“The room isn’t all that big. Can you give me the cards and spread these around some? I’m sure there’s people around who’d like them.” And who wants to live in a jungle? Within ten minutes Ryan had a pile of cards, notes, and telegrams. He found that reading the words of others was better than reading his own when it came to blocking out the ache of his damaged shoulder.
Kittiwake arrived. She gave the flowers only a fleeting glance before administering Ryan’s medication, and hustled out with scarcely a word. Ryan learned why five minutes later.
His next visitor was the Prince of Wales. Wilson snapped to his feet again, and Jack wondered if the kid’s knees were tiring of this. The med was already working. His shoulder was drifting farther away, but along with this came a slight feeling of light-headedness as from a couple of stiff drinks. Maybe that was part of the reason for what happened next.
“Howdy.” Jack smiled. “How are you feeling, sir?”
“Quite well, thank you.” The answering smile contained no enthusiasm. The Prince looked very tired, his thin face stretched an extra inch or so, with a lingering sadness around the eyes. His shoulders drooped within the conservative gray suit.
“Why don’t you sit down, sir?” Ryan invited. “You look as though you had a tougher night than I did.”
“Yes, thank you, Doctor Ryan.” He made another attempt to smile. It failed. “And how are you feeling?”
“Reasonably well, Your Highness. And how is your wife—excuse me, how is the Princess doing?”
The Prince’s words did not come easily, and he had trouble looking up to Ryan from his chair. “We both regret that she could not come with me. She’s still somewhat disturbed—in shock, I believe. She had a very ... bad experience.”
Brains splattered over her face. I suppose you might call that a bad experience. “I saw. I understand that neither of you was physically injured, thank God. I presume your child also?”
“Yes, all thanks to you, Doctor.”
Jack tried another one-armed shrug. The gesture didn’t hurt so much this time. “Glad to help, sir—I just wish I hadn’t got myself shot in the process.” His attempt at levity died on his lips. He’d said the wrong thing in the wrong way. The Prince looked at Jack very curiously for a moment, but then his eyes went flat again.
“We would all have been killed except for you, you know—and on behalf of my family and myself—well, thank you. It’s not enough just to say that—” His Highness went on, then halted again and struggled to find a few more words. “But it’s the best I can manage. I wasn’t able to manage very much yesterday, come to that,” he concluded, staring quietly at the foot of the bed.
Aha! Ryan thought. The Prince stood and turned to leave. What do I do now?
“Sir, why don’t you sit down and let’s talk this one over for a minute, okay?”
His Highness turned back. For a moment he looked as though he would say something, but the drawn face changed again and turned away.
“Your Highness, I really think ...” No effect. I can’t let him go out of here like this. Well, if good manners won’t work—Jack’s voice became sharp.
“Hold it!” The Prince turned with a look of great surprise. “Sit down, goddammit!” Ryan pointed to the chair. At least I have his attention now. I wonder if they can take a knighthood back....
By this time the Prince flushed a bit. The color gave his face life that it had lacked. He wavered for a moment, then sat with reluctance and resignation.
“Now,” Ryan said heatedly, “I think I know what’s eating at you, sir. You feel bad because you didn’t do a John Wayne number yesterday and handle those gunmen all by yourself, right?” The Prince didn’t nod or make any other voluntary response, but a hurt expression around his eyes answered the question just as surely.
“Aw, crap!” Ryan snorted. In the corner, Tony Wilson went pale as a ghost. Ryan didn’t blame him.
“You oughta have better sense ... sir,” Ryan added hastily. “You’ve been through the service schools, right? You’ve qualified as a pilot, parachuted out of airplanes, and even had command of your own ship?” He got a nod. Time to step it up. “Then you’ve got no excuse, you damned well ought to have better sense than to think like that! You’re not really that dumb, are you?”
“What exactly do you mean?” A trace of anger, Ryan thought. Good.
“Use your head. You’ve been trained to think this sort of thing out, haven’t you? Let’s critique the exercise. Examine what the tactical situation was yesterday. You were trapped in a stopped car with two or three bad guys outside holding automatic weapons. The car is armor-plated, but you’re stuck. What can you do? The way I see it, you had three choices:
“One. You can just freeze, just sit there and wet your pants. Hell, that’s what most normal people would do, caught by surprise like that. That’s probably the normal reaction. But you didn’t do that.
“Two. You can try to get out of the car and do something, right?”
“Yes, I should have.”
“Wrong!” Ryan shook his head emphatically. “Sorry, sir, but that’s not a real good idea. The guy I tackled was waiting for you to do just that. That guy could have put a nine-millimeter slug in your head before you had both feet on the pavement. You look like you’re in pretty good shape. You probably move pretty good—but ain’t nobody yet been able to outrun a bullet, sir! That choice might have gotten you killed, and the rest of your family along with you.
“Three. Your last choice, you tough it out and pray the cavalry gets there in time. You know you’re close to home. You know there’s cops and troops around. So you know that time is on your side if you can survive for a couple of minutes. In the meantime you try to protect your family as best you can You get them down on the floor of the car and get overtop of them so the only way the terrorists can get them is to go through you first. And that, my friend, is what you did.” Ryan paused for a moment to let him absorb this.
“You did exactly the right thing, dammit!” Ryan leaned forward until his shoulder pulled him back with a gasp. It wasn’t all that much of a pain medication. “Jesus, this hurts. Look, sir, you were stuck out in the open—with a lousy set of alternatives. But you used your head and took the best one you had. From where I sit, you could not have done any better than you did. So there is nothing, repeat nothing, for you to feel bad about. And if you don’t believe me, ask Wilson. He’s a cop.” The Prince turned his head.
The Anti-Terrorist Branch officer cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Your Royal Highness, but Doctor Ryan is quite correct. We were discussing this, this problem yesterday, and we reached precisely the same conclusion.”
Ryan looked over to the cop. “How long did you fellows kick the idea around, Tony?”
“Perhaps ten minutes,
” Wilson answered.
“That’s six hundred seconds, Your Highness. But you had to think and act in—what? Five? Maybe three? Not much time to make a life-and-death decision is it? Mister, I’d say you did damned well. All that training you’ve picked up along the line worked. And if you were evaluating someone else’s performance instead of your own, you’d say the same thing, just like Tony and his friends did.”
“But the press—”
“Oh, screw the press!” Ryan snapped back, wondering if he’d gone too far. “What do reporters know about anything? They don’t do anything, for crying out loud, they just report what other people do. You can fly an airplane, you’ve jumped out of them—flying scares the hell out of me; I don’t even want to think about jumping out of one—and commanded a ship. Plus you ride horses and keep trying to break your neck—and now, finally, you’re a father, you got a kid of your own now, right? Isn’t that enough to prove to the world that you’ve got balls? You’re not some dumb kid, sir. You’re a trained pro. Start acting like one.”
Jack could see his mind going over what he’d just been told. His Highness was sitting a little straighter now. The smile that began to form was an austere one, but at least it had some conviction behind it.
“I am not accustomed to being addressed so forcefully.”
“So cut my head off.” Ryan grinned. “You looked like you needed a little straightening out—but I had to get your attention first, didn’t I? I’m not going to apologize, sir. Instead, why don’t you look in that mirror over there. I bet the guy you see now looks better than the one who shaved this morning.”
“You really believe what you said?”
“Of course. All you have to do is look at the situation from the outside, sir. The problem you had yesterday was tougher than any exercise I had to face at Quantico, but you gutted it out. Listen, I’ll tell you a story.
“My first day at Quantico, first day of the officer’s course. They line us up, and we meet our Drill Instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Willie King—humongous black guy, we called him Son of Kong. Anyway, he looks us up and down and says, ‘Girls, I got some good news, and I got some bad news. The good news is, if you prove that you’re good enough to get through this here course, you ain’t got nothin’ left to prove as long as you live.’ And he waits for a couple of seconds. ‘The bad news is, you gotta prove it to me!’ ”
“You were top in your class,” the Prince said. He’d been briefed, too.
“I was third in that one. I tied for first in the Basic Officer’s Course later on. Yeah, I did okay. That course was a gold-plated sonuvabitch. The only easy thing was sleeping—by the time your day was finished, falling asleep was easy enough. But, you know, Son of Kong was almost right.
“If you make it through Quantico, you know you’ve done something. After that there was only one more thing left for me to prove, and the Corps didn’t have anything to do with that.” Ryan paused for a moment. “Her name is Sally. Anyway, you and your family are alive, sir. Okay, I helped—but so did you. And if any reporter-expert says different, you still have the Tower of London, right? I remember that stuff in the press about your wife last year. Damn, if anybody’d talked that way about Cathy I’d have changed his voice for him.”
“Changed his voice?” His Highness asked.
“The hard way!” Ryan laughed. “I guess that’s a problem with being important—you can’t shoot back. Too bad. People in that business could use some manners, and people in your business are entitled to some privacy, just like the rest of us.”
“And what of your manners, Sir John?” A real smile now.
“Mea maxima culpa, my Lord Prince, you got me there.”
“Still, we might not be here except for you.”
“I couldn’t just sit there and watch some people get murdered. If situations had been reversed, I’ll bet you’d have done the same thing I did.”
“You really think so?” His Highness was surprised.
“Sir, are you kidding? Anybody dumb enough to jump out of an airplane is dumb enough to try anything.”
The Prince stood and walked over to the mirror on the wall. Clearly he liked what he saw there. “Well,” he murmured to the mirror. He turned back to voice his last self-doubt.
“And if you had been in my place?”
“I’d probably just’ve wet my pants,” Ryan replied. “But you have an advantage over me, sir. You’ve thought about this problem for a few years, right? Hell, you practically grew up with it, and you’ve been through basic training—Royal Marines, too, maybe?”
“Yes, I have.”
Ryan nodded. “Okay, so you had your options figured out beforehand, didn’t you? They caught you by surprise, sure, but the training shows. You did all right. Honest. Sit back down, and maybe Tony can pour us some coffee.”
Wilson did so, though he was clearly uneasy to be close to the heir. The Prince of Wales sipped at his cup while Ryan lit up one of Wilson’s cigarettes. His Highness looked on disapprovingly.
“That’s not good for you, you know,” he pointed out.
Ryan just laughed. “Your Highness, since I arrived in this country, I nearly got run over by one of those two-story buses, I almost got my head blown off by a damned Maoist, then I nearly get myself shish-kabobed by one of your redcoats.” Ryan waved the cigarette in the air. “This is the safest damned thing I’ve done since I got here! What a vacation this’s turned out to be.”
“You do have a point,” the Prince admitted. “And quite a sense of humor, Doctor Ryan.”
“I guess the valium—or whatever they’re giving me—helps. And the name’s Jack.” He held out his hand. The Prince took it.
“I was able to meet your wife and daughter yesterday—you were unconscious at the time. I gather that your wife is an excellent physician. Your little daughter is quite wonderful.”
“Thanks. How do you like being a daddy?”
“The first time you hold your newborn child ...”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Sir, that’s what it’s all about.” He stopped talking abruptly.
Bingo, Ryan thought. Afour-month-old baby. If they kidnap the Prince and Princess, well, no government can cave in to terrorism. The politicians and police have to have a contingency plan already set up for this, don’t they? They’d take this town apart one brick at a time, but they wouldn‘t—couldn’t—negotiate anything, and that was just too bad for the grown-ups, but a little baby ... damn, there’s a bargaining chip! What kind of people would—
“Bastards,” Ryan whispered to himself. Wilson blanched, but the Prince suspected what Jack was thinking about.
“Excuse me?”
“They weren’t trying to kill you. Hell, I bet you weren’t even the real objective....” Ryan nodded slowly. He searched his mind for the data he’d seen on the ULA. There hadn’t been much—it hadn’t been his area of focus in any case—a few tidbits of shadowy intelligence reports, mixed with a lot of pure conjecture. “They didn’t want to kill you at all, I bet. And when you covered the wife and kid, you burned their plan ... maybe, or maybe you just—yeah, maybe you just threw them a curve, and that blew their timing a little bit.”
“What do you mean?” the Prince asked.
“Goddamned medications slow your brain down,” Ryan said mainly to himself. “Have the police told you what the terrorists were up to?”
His Highness sat upright in the chair. “I can’t—”
“You don’t have to,” Ryan cut him off. “Did they tell you that what you did definitely—definitely—saved all of you?”
“No, but—”
“Tony?”
“They told me you were a very clever chap, Jack,” Wilson said. “I’m afraid I can’t comment further. Your Royal Highness, Doctor Ryan may be correct in his assessment.”
“What assessment?” The Prince was puzzled.
Ryan explained. It only took a few minutes.
“How did you arrive at this conclusion, Jack?”
The Prince looked deep into his coffee cup. His face was that of a man who had recovered from fear and shame. Now he contemplated cold anger at what might have been.
“Well, they’ve had their chance, haven’t they?”
“Yes, sir. I imagine if they ever try again, it’ll be a lot harder. Right, Tony?”
“I seriously doubt that they will ever try again,” Wilson replied. “We should develop some rather good intelligence from this incident. The ULA have stepped over an invisible line. Politically, success might have enhanced their position, but they didn’t succeed, did they? This will harm them, harm their ‘popular’ support. Some people who know them will now consider talking—not to us, you understand, but some of what they say will get to us in due course. They were outcasts before, they will be outcasts even more now.”
Will they learn from this? Ryan wondered. If so, what will they have learned? There’s a question. Jack knew that it had only two possible answers, and that those answers were diametrically opposed. He made a mental note. He’d follow up on this when he got home. It wasn’t a merely academic exercise now. He had a bullet hole in his shoulder to prove that.