by Tom Clancy
What was new, then, was not the violence, but the safety of the nation that either performed or sponsored it. Until that changed, the killing would never stop.
So, on the international level, terrorism was a form of war that didn’t even have to interrupt normal diplomatic relations. America itself had embassies in some of the nations, even today. Nearer to home, however, it was being treated as a crime. He’d faced Miller in the Old Bailey, Ryan remembered, not a military court-martial. They can even use that against us. It was a surprising realization. They can fight their kind of war, but we can’t recognize it as such without giving up something our society needs. If we treat terrorists as politically motivated activists, we give them an honor they don’t deserve. If we treat them as soldiers, and kill them as such, we both give them legitimacy and violate our own laws. By a small stretch of the imagination, organized crime could be thought of as a form of terrorism, Ryan knew. The terrorists’ only weakness was their negativity. They were a political movement with nothing to offer other than their conviction that their parent society was unjust. So long as the people in that society felt otherwise, it was the terrorists who were alienated from it, not the population as a whole. The democratic processes that benefited the terrorists were also their worst political enemy. Their prime objective, then, had to be the elimination of the democratic process, converting justice to injustice in order to arouse members of the society to sympathy with the terrorists.
The pure elegance of the concept was stunning. Terrorists could fight a war and be protected by the democratic processes of their enemy. If those processes were obviated, the terrorists would win additional political support, but so long as those processes were not obviated, it was extremely difficult for them to lose. They could hold a society hostage against itself and its most important precepts, daring it to change. They could move around at will, taking advantage of the freedom that defined a democratic state, and get all the support they needed from a nation-state with which their parent society was unwilling or unable to deal effectively.
The only solution was international cooperation. The terrorists had to be cut off from support. Left to their own resources, terrorists would become little more than an organized-crime network.... But the democracies found it easier to deal with their domestic problems singly than to band together and strike a decisive blow at those who fomented them, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary. Had that just changed? The CIA had given data on terrorists to someone else, and action had been taken as a result. What he had seen earlier, therefore, was a step in the right direction, even if it wasn’t necessarily the right kind of step. Ryan told himself that he’d just witnessed one of the world’s many imperfections, but at least one aimed in the proper direction. That it had disturbed him was a consequence of his civilization. That he was now rationalizing it was a result of ... what?
Cantor walked into Admiral Greer’s office.
“Well?” the DDI asked.
“We’ll give him a high B, maybe an A-minus. It depends on what he learns from it.”
“Conscience attack?” the DDI asked.
“Yeah.”
“It’s about time he found out what the game’s really like. Everybody has to learn that. He’ll stay,” Greer said.
“Probably. ”
The pickup truck tried to pull into the driveway that passed under the Hoover building, but a guard waved him off. The driver hesitated, partly in frustration, partly in rage while he tried to figure something else out. The heavy traffic didn’t help. Finally he started circling the block until he was able to find a way into a public parking garage. The attendant held up his nose at the plebeian vehicle—he was more accustomed to Buicks and Cadillacs—and burned rubber on the way up the ramp to show his feelings. The driver and his son didn’t care. They walked downhill and across the street, going by foot on the path denied their truck. Finally they got to the door and walked in.
The agent who had desk duty noted the entrance of two people somewhat disreputably dressed, the elder of whom had something wrapped in his leather jacket and tucked under his arm. This got the agent’s immediate and full attention. He waved the visitors over with his left hand. His right was somewhere else.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Hi,” the man said. “I got something for you.” The man raised the jacket and pulled out a submachine gun. He quickly learned that this wasn’t the way to get on the FBI’s good side.
The desk agent snatched the weapon and yanked it off the desk, standing and reaching for his service revolver. The panic button under the desk was already pushed, and two more agents in the room converged on the scene. The man behind the desk immediately saw that the gun’s bolt was closed—the gun was safe, and there wasn’t a magazine in the pistol grip.
“I found it!” the kid announced proudly.
“What?” one of the arriving agents said.
“And I figured I’d bring it here,” the lad’s father said.
“What the hell?” the desk agent observed.
“Let’s see it.” A supervisory agent arrived next. He came from a surveillance room whose TV cameras monitored the entrance. The man behind the desk rechecked to make sure the weapon was safe, then handed it across.
It was an Uzi, the 9mm Israeli submachine gun used all over the world because of its quality, balance, and accuracy. The cheap-looking (the Uzi is anything but cheap, though it does look that way) metal stampings were covered with red-brown rust, and water dripped from the receiver. The agent pulled open the bolt and stared down the barrel. The gun had been fired and not cleaned since. It was impossible to tell how long ago that had been, but there weren’t all that many FBI cases pending in which a weapon of this type had been used.
“Where did you find this, sir?”
“In a quarry, about thirty miles from here,” the man said.
“I found it!” the kid pointed out.
“That’s right, he found it,” his father conceded. “I figured this was the place to bring it.”
“You thought right, sir. Will both of you come with me, please?”
The agent on the desk gave both of them “visitor” passes. He and the other two agents on entrance-guard duty went back to work, wondering what the hell that had been all about.
On the building’s top floor, those few people in the corridor were surprised to see a man walking around with a machine gun, but it would not have been in keeping with Bureau chic to pay too much attention—the man with the gun did have an FBI pass, and he was carrying it properly. When he walked into an office, however, it did get a reaction from the first secretary he saw.
“Is Bill in?” the agent asked.
“Yes, I’ll—” Her eyes didn’t leave the gun.
The man waved her off, motioned for the visitors to follow him, and walked toward Shaw’s office. The door was open. Shaw was talking with one of his people. Special Agent Richard Alden went straight to Shaw’s desk and set the gun on the blotter.
“Christ, Richie!” Shaw looked up at the agent, then back down at the gun. “What’s this?”
“Bill, these two folks just walked in the door downstairs and gave it to us. I thought it might be interesting.”
Shaw looked at the two people with visitor passes and invited them to sit on the couch against the wall. He called for two more agents to join them, plus someone from the ballistics laboratory. While things were being organized, his secretary got a cup of coffee for the father and a Dr Pepper for the son.
“Could I have your names, please?”
“I’m Robert Newton and this here’s my son Leon.” He gave his address and phone number without being asked.
“And where did you find the gun?” Shaw asked while his subordinates were taking notes.
“It’s called Jones Quarry. I can show you on a map.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was fishing. I found it,” Leon reminded them.
“I was getting in some fire
wood,” his father said.
“This time of year?”
“Beats doing it during the summer, when it’s hot, man,” Mr. Newton pointed out reasonably. “Also lets the wood season some. I’m a construction worker. I walk iron, and it’s a little slow right now, so I went out for some wood. The boy’s off from school today, so I brought him along. While I cut the wood, Leon likes to fish. There’s some big ones in the quarry,” he added with a wink.
“Oh, okay.” Shaw grinned. “Leon, you ever catch one?”
“No, but I got close last time,” the youngster responded.
“Then what?”
Mr. Newton nodded for his son.
“My hook got caught on sumthin’ heavy, you know, an’ I pulled and pulled and pulled. It come loose, and I tried real hard, but I couldn’t reel it up. So I called my daddy.”
“I reeled it in,” Mr. Newton explained. “When I saw it was a gun, I almost crapped my drawers. The hook was snagged on the trigger guard. What kinda gun is that, anyway?”
“Uzi. It’s made in Israel, mostly,” the ballistics expert said, looking up from the weapon. “It’s been in the water at least a month.”
Shaw and another agent shared a look at that bit of news.
“I’m afraid I handled it a lot,” Newton said. “Hope I didn’t mess up any fingerprints.”
“Not after being in the water, Mr. Newton,” Shaw replied. “And you brought it right here?”
“Yeah, we only got it, oh”—he checked his watch—“an hour and a half ago. Aside from handling it, we didn’t do anything. It didn’t have no magazine in it.”
“You know guns?” the ballistics man asked.
“I spent a year in Nam. I was a grunt with the 173rd Airborne. I know M-16s pretty good.” Newton smiled. “And I used to do a little hunting, mostly birds and rabbits.”
“Tell us about the quarry,” Shaw said.
“It’s off the main road, back maybe three-quarters of a mile, I guess. Lots of trees back there. That’s where I get my firewood. I don’t really know who owns it. Lots of cars go back there. You know, it’s a parking spot for kids on Saturday nights, that sorta place. ”
“Have you ever heard shooting there?”
“No, except during hunting season. There’s squirrels in there, lotsa squirrels. So what’s with the gun? Does it mean anything to ya?”
“It might. It’s the kind of gun used in the murder of a police officer, and—”
“Oh, yeah! That lady and her kid over Annapolis, right?” He paused for a moment. “Damn.”
Shaw looked at the boy. He was about nine, the agent thought, and the kid had smart eyes, scanning the items Shaw had on his walls, the memorabilia from his many cases and posts. “Mr. Newton, you have done us a very big favor.”
“Oh, yeah?” Leon responded. “What you gonna do with the gun?”
The ballistics expert answered. “First we’ll clean it and make sure it’s safe. Then we’ll fire it.” He looked at Shaw. “You can forget any other forensic stuff. The water in the quarry must be chemically active. This corrosion is pretty fierce.” He looked at Leon. “If you catch any fish there, son, you be sure you don’t eat them unless your dad says it’s all right.”
“Okay,” the boy assured him.
“Fibers,” Shaw said.
“Yeah, maybe that. Don’t worry. If they’re there, we’ll find ’em. What about the barrel?”
“Maybe,” the man replied. “By the way, this gun comes from Singapore. That makes it fairly new. The Israelis just licensed them to make the piece eighteen months ago. It’s the same outfit that makes the M-16 under license from Colt’s.” He read off the number. It would be telexed to the FBI’s Legal Attaché in Singapore in a matter of minutes. “I want to get to work on this right now. ”
“Can I watch?” Leon asked. “I’ll keep out of the way.”
“Tell you what,” Shaw said. “I want to talk to your dad a little longer. How about I have one of our agents take you through our museum. You can see how we caught all the old-time bad guys. If you wait outside, somebody will come and take you around.”
“Okay!”
“We can’t talk about this, right?” Mr. Newton asked after his son had left.
“That’s correct, sir.” Shaw paused. “That’s important for two reasons. First, we don’t want the perpetrators to know that we’ve had a break in the case—and this could be a major break, Mr. Newton; you’ve done something very important. The other reason is to protect you and your family. The people involved in this are very dangerous. Put it this way: you know that they tried to kill a pregnant woman and a four-year-old girl.”
That got the man’s attention. Robert Newton, who had five children, three of them girls, didn’t like hearing that.
“Now, have you ever seen people around the quarry?” Shaw asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Anybody.”
“There’s maybe two or three other folks who cut wood back there. I know the names—I mean their first names, y‘know? And like I said, kids like to go parking back there.” He laughed. “Once I had to help one out. I mean, the road’s not all that great, and this one kid was stuck in the mud, and ...” Newton’s voice trailed off. His face changed. “Once, it was a Tuesday ... I couldn’t work that day ’cause the crane was broke, and I didn’t much feel like sitting around the house, y‘know? So I went out to chop some wood. There was this van coming outa the road. He was having real trouble in the mud. I had to wait like ten minutes ’cause he blocked the whole road, slippin’ and slidin’, like.”
“What kind of van?”
“Dark, mostly. The kind with the sliding door—musta been customized some, it had that dark stuff on the windows, y’know?”
Bingo! Shaw told himself. “Did you see the driver or anybody inside?”
Newton thought for a moment. “Yeah ... it was a black dude. He was—yeah, I remember, he was yellin‘, like. I guess he was pissed at getting stuck like that. I mean, I couldn’t hear him, but you could tell he was yelling, y’know? He had a beard, and a leather jacket like the one I wear to work.”
“Anything else about the van?”
“I think it made noise, like it had a big V-8. Yeah, it must have been a custom van to have that.”
Shaw looked at his men, too excited to smile as they scribbled their notes.
“The papers said all the crooks were white,” Newton said.
“The papers don’t always get things right,” Shaw noted.
“You mean the bastard who killed that cop was black?” Newton didn’t like that. So was he. “And he tried to do that family, too.... Shit!”
“Mr. Newton, that is secret. Do you understand me? You can’t tell anybody about that, not even your son—was he there then?”
“Nah, he was in school.”
“Okay, you can’t tell anyone. That is to protect you and your family. We’re talking about some very dangerous people here.”
“Okay, man.” Newton looked at the table for a moment. “You mean we got people running around with machine guns, killing people—here? Not in Lebanon and like that, but here?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Hey, man, I didn’t spend a year in the Nam so we could have that shit where I live.”
Several floors downstairs, two weapons experts had already detail-stripped the Uzi. A small vacuum cleaner was applied to every part in the hope there might be cloth fibers that matched those taken from the van. A final careful look was taken at the parts. The damage from water immersion had done no good to the stampings, made mostly of mild steel. The stronger, corrosion-resistant ballistic steel of the barrel and bolt were in somewhat better shape. The lab chief reassembled the gun himself, just to show his technicians that he still knew how. He took his time, oiling the pieces with care, finally working the action to make sure it functioned properly.
“Okay,” he said to himself. He left the weapon on the table, its bolt closed on
an empty chamber. Next he pulled an Uzi magazine from a cabinet and loaded twenty 9-millimeter rounds. This he stuck in his pocket.
It always struck visitors as somewhat incongruous. The technicians usually wore white laboratory coats, like doctors, when they fired the guns. The man donned his ear protectors, stuck the muzzle into the slot, and fired a single round to make certain that the gun really worked. It did. Then he held the trigger down, emptying the magazine in a brief span of seconds. He pulled out the magazine, checked that the weapon was safe, and handed it to his assistant.
“I’m going to wash my hands. Let’s get those bullets checked out.” The chief ballistics technician was a fastidious person.
By the time he was finished drying his hands, he had a collection of twenty spent bullets. The metal jacket on each showed the characteristic marks made by the rifling of the machine gun’s barrel. The marks were roughly the same on each bullet, but slightly different, since the gun barrel expanded when it got hot.
He took a small box from the evidence case. This bullet had gone completely through the body of a police officer, he remembered. It seemed such a puny thing to have taken a life, he thought, not even an ounce of lead and steel, hardly deformed at all from its deadly passage. It was hard not to dwell on such thoughts. He placed it on one side of the comparison microscope and took another from the set he’d just fired. Then he removed his glasses and bent down to the eyepieces. The bullets were ... close. They’d definitely been fired by the same kind of gun.... He switched samples. Closer. The third bullet was closer still. He carefully rotated the sample, comparing it with the round that was kept in the evidence case, and it ...