by Tom Clancy
“Thank you, and God bless America,” he concluded. The crowd stood and cheered. The band struck up. Ryan turned away from the armored podium to shake hands again with the local officials, and made his way off the stage, waving as he did so. Arnie was waiting behind the curtain.
“For a phony, you still do pretty good.” Ryan didn’t have time to respond to that before Andrea came up.
“FLASH-traffic waiting for you on the bird, sir. From Mr. Adler.”
“Okay, let’s roll. Stay close,” he told his principal agent on the way out the back.
“Always,” Price assured him.
“Mr. President!” a reporter shouted. There were a bunch of them. He was the loudest this morning. He was one of the NBC team. Ryan turned and stopped. “Will you press Congress for a new gun-control law?”
“What for?”
“The attack on your daughter was—”
Ryan held his hand up. “Okay. As I understand it, the weapons used were of a type already illegal. I don’t see how a new law would accomplish much, unfortunately.”
“But gun-control advocates say—”
“I know what they say. And now they’re using an attack on my little girl, and the deaths of five superb Americans, to advance a political agenda of their own. What do you think of that?” the President asked, turning away.
“WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?”
He described his symptoms. His family physician was an old friend. They even played golf together. It wasn’t hard. At the end of every year, the Cobra representative had plenty of demonstrator clubs in nearly mint condition. Most were donated to youth programs or sold to country clubs as rental sticks. But some he could give to his friends, not to mention some Greg Norman autographs.
“Well, you have a temperature, one hundred and three, and that’s a little high. Your BP’s one hundred over sixty-five, and that’s a little low for you. Your color’s rotten—”
“I know, I feel sick.”
“You are sick, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Probably a flu bug you picked up in some bar, and all the air travel doesn’t help much, either—and I’ve been telling you for years about cutting back on the booze. What happened is you picked something up, and other factors worsened it. Started Friday, right?”
“Thursday night, maybe Friday morning.”
“Played a round anyway?”
“Ended up with a snowman for my trouble,” he admitted, meaning a score of 80.
“I’d settle for that myself, healthy and stone-sober.” The doctor had a handicap of twenty. “You’re over fifty and you can’t wallow with the pigs at night and expect to soar with the eagles in the morning. Complete rest. A lot of liquids-non-alcoholic. Stay on the Tylenol.”
“No prescription?”
The doc shook his head. “Antibiotics don’t work on viral infections. Your immune system has to handle those, and it will if you let it. But while you’re here, I want to draw some blood. You’re overdue for a cholesterol check. I’ll send my nurse in. You have somebody here to drive you home?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to drive myself.”
“Good. Give it a few days. Cobra can do without you, and the golf courses will still be there when you feel better.”
“Thanks.” He felt better already. You always did when the doc told you that you weren’t going to die.
“HERE YOU GO.” Goodley handed the paper over. Few office buildings, even secure government ones, had the communications facilities that were shoehorned into the upper-level lounge area of the VC-25, whose call sign was Air Force One. “Not bad news at all,” Ben added.
SWORDSMAN skimmed it once, then sat down to read it more slowly. “Okay, fine, he thinks he can defuse the situation,” Ryan noted. “But he still doesn’t know what the goddamned situation is.”
“Better than nothing.”
“Does the working group have this?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Maybe they can make some sense out of it. Andrea?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Tell the driver it’s time to get moving.” He looked around. “Where’s Arnie?”
“I’M CALLING YOU on a cellular,” Plumber said.
“Fine,” van Damm replied. “I’m on one, too, as a matter of fact.” The instruments on the aircraft were also secure, with STU-4 capability. He didn’t say that. He just needed a retort. John Plumber was no longer on his Christmas card list. Unfortunately, his direct line was still on Plumber’s Rolodex. What a shame he couldn’t change it. And he’d have to tell his secretary not to put this guy through anymore, at least not when he was traveling.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Good, John. Then I don’t have to say what I think.”
“Catch the broadcast tonight. I’ll be on at the end.”
“Why?”
“See for yourself, Arnie. So long.”
The chief of staff thumbed the kill switch on the phone and wondered what Plumber meant. He’d once trusted the man. Hell, he’d once trusted the man’s colleague. He could have told the President about the call, but decided not to. He’d just delivered a pretty good speech, distractions and all, doing well in spite of himself, because the poor son of a bitch really did believe in more than he knew. It wouldn’t be smart to drop something else on him. They’d tape the speech on the flight into California, and if it were fit to view, then he’d show it to POTUS.
“I DIDN’T KNOW there was a flu bug around,” he said, putting his shirt back on. It took time. The auto executive was sore all over.
“There always is. Just it doesn’t always make the news,” the physician replied, looking over the vital signs his nurse had just written down. “And you got it.”
“So?”
“So, take it easy. Don’t go to the office. No sense infecting your whole company. Ride it out. You should be fine by the end of the week.”
THE SNIE TEAM met at Langley. A ton of new information had come across from the Persian Gulf region, and they were sorting through it in a conference room on the sixth floor. Chavez’s photo of Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had been blown up by the in-house photo lab and was now hanging on the wall. Maybe somebody would throw darts at it, Ding thought.
“Track toads,” the former infantryman snorted, watching the Predator video.
“Kinda big to take on with a rifle, Sundance,” Clark observed. “Those things always scared the hell out of me.”
“LAWS rocket’ll do ’em fine, Mr. C.”
“What’s the range on a LAWS, Domingo?”
“Four, five hundred meters.”
“Those guns shoot two or three kilometers,” John pointed out. “Think about it.”
“I’m not up on the hardware,” Bert Vasco said. He waved at the screen. “What’s this mean?”
The answer came from one of CIA’s military analysts. “It means the UIR military is in much better shape than we’d expected.”
An Army major brought over from the Defense Intelligence Agency didn’t dispute that. “I’m fairly impressed. It was a pretty vanilla exercise, nothing really complicated on the maneuver side, but they kept themselves organized for all of it. Nobody got lost—”
“You suppose they’re using GPS now?” the CIA analyst asked.
“Anybody who subscribes to Yachting magazine can buy the things. The price is down to four hundred bucks, last time I looked,” the officer told his civilian counterpart. “It means they can navigate their mobile forces a lot better. More than that, it means their artillery will become a whole lot more effective. If you know where your guns are, where your forward observer is, and where the target is in relation to him, then your first round is going to be pretty much on the money.”
“Fourfold increase in performance?”
“Easy,” the major replied. “That elderly gent on the wall has a big stick to wave at his neighbors. I imagine he’ll let them know about it, too.”
“Bert?” Clark asked.
Va
sco squirmed in his seat. “I’m starting to worry. This is going faster than I expected. If Daryaei didn’t have other things to worry about, I’d be more worried.”
“Like?” Chavez asked.
“Like he has a country to consolidate, and he has to know that if he starts rattling sabers, we’ll react.” The FSO paused. “Sure as hell, he wants to let his neighbors know who the big boy on the block is. How close is he to being able to do something?”
“Militarily?” the civilian analyst asked. He gestured to the guy from DIA.
“If we were not in the picture, now. But we are in the picture.”
“I ASK NOW that you will join me in a moment of silence,” Ryan told the audience in Topeka. It was eleven here. That made it noon back home. Next stop Colorado Springs, then Sacramento, then, blessedly, home.
“YOU HAVE TO ask yourself what kind of man we have here,” Kealty said in front of cameras of his own. “Five men and women dead, and he doesn’t see the need for a law to control these guns. It’s just beyond my comprehension how anyone can be as coldly heartless as that. Well, if he doesn’t care about those brave agents, I do. How many Americans will have to die before he sees the need for this? Will he have to actually lose a family member? I’m sorry, I just can’t believe that remark,” the politician went on for the minicam.
“WE CAN ALL remember when people ran for reelection to Congress, and one of the things they told us was, ‘Vote for me, because for every dollar that taxes take from this district, a dollar-twenty comes back.’ Do you remember those claims?” the President asked.
“What they didn’t say was—well, it was actually a lot of things. Number one, who ever said that you depend on the government for money? We don’t vote for Santa Claus, do we? It’s the other way around. The government can’t exist unless you give it money.
“Number two, are they telling you, ‘Vote for me, ’cause I really stick it to those rotten people in North Dakota’? Aren’t they Americans, too?
“Number three, the real reason this happens is that the government deficit means every district gets more in federal payments than it lost in federal taxes—excuse me, I mean direct federal taxes. The ones you can see.
“So they were bragging to you that they were spending more money than they had. If your next-door neighbor told you he was kiting checks drafted on your personal bank, you think maybe you might call the police about it?
“We all know that the government does take more than it gives back. They’ve just learned to hide it. The federal budget deficit means that every time you borrow money, it costs more than it should—why? Because the government borrows so much money that it drives up interest rates.
“And so, ladies and gentlemen, every house payment, every car payment, every credit-card bill is also a tax. And maybe they give you a tax break on interest payments. Isn’t that nice?” POTUS asked. “Your government gives you a tax break on money you ought not to have to pay in the first place, and then it tells you that you get back more than you pay out.” Ryan paused.
“Does anybody out there really believe that? Does anybody really believe it when people say that the United States can’t afford—not to spend more money than it has? Are these the words of Adam Smith or Lucy Ricardo? I have a degree in economics, and I Love Lucy wasn’t on the course.
“Ladies and gentlemen. I am not a politician, and I am not here to speak on behalf of any of your local candidates for the vacant seats in the People’s House. I am here to ask you to think. You, too, have a duty. The government belongs to you. You don’t belong to it. When you go out to vote tomorrow, please take the time to think about what the candidates say and what they stand for. Ask yourself, ‘Does this make sense?’ and then make the best choice you can—and if you don’t like any of them, go to the polls anyway, go into the voting booth, and then go home without giving your vote to anyone, but at least show up. You owe that to your country.”
THE HEATING AND air-conditioning van pulled up the driveway, and a pair of men got out and walked up to the porch. One of them knocked.
“Yes?” the lady of the house asked in puzzlement.
“FBI, Mrs. Sminton.” He showed his credentials. “Could we come in, please?”
“Why?” the sixty-two-year-old widow asked.
“We’d like you to help us with something, if you might.” It had taken longer than expected. The guns used in the SANDBOX case had been traced to a manufacturer, from the manufacturer to a wholesaler, from the wholesaler to a dealer, and from the dealer to a name, and from a name to an address. With the address, the Bureau and Secret Service had gone to a United States District Court judge for a search-and-seizure warrant.
“Please come in.”
“Thank you. Mrs. Sminton, do you know the gentleman who lives next door?”
“Mr. Azir, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“Not very well. Sometimes I wave.”
“Do you know if he’s home now?”
“His car’s not there,” she replied, after looking. The agents already knew that. He owned a blue Oldsmobile wagon with Maryland tags. Every cop in two hundred miles was looking for it.
“Do you know when the last time was you saw him?”
“Friday, I guess. There were some other cars there, and a truck.”
“Okay.” The agent reached in his coveralls pocket and pulled out a radio. “Move in, move in. Bird is probably—say again, probably—out of the coop.”
Before the widow’s astonished eyes, a helicopter appeared directly over the house three hundred yards away. Zip lines dropped from both sides, and armed agents slid down them. At the same time, four vehicles converged from both directions on the country road, all of them driving off the road, onto the wide lawn straight toward the dwelling. Ordinarily, things would have gone slower, with some period of discreet surveillance, but the word was out on this one. Front and back doors were kicked in—and thirty seconds later, a siren went off. Mr. Azir, it seemed, had a burglar alarm. Then the radio crackled.
“Clear, building is clear. This is Betz. Search complete, building is clear. Bring in the lab troops.” With that, two vans appeared. These proceeded up the driveway, and one of the first things the passengers did was to take samples of the gravel there, plus grass, to match with scrapings from the rented cars left at Giant Steps.
“Mrs. Sminton, could we sit down, please? There are a couple questions we’d like to ask you about Mr. Azir.”
“SO?” MURRAY ASKED, arriving in the FBI Command Center.
“No joy,” the agent at the console said.
“Damn.” It wasn’t said with passion. He’d never really expected it. But he expected some important information anyway. The Lab had collected all manner of physical evidence. Gravel samples could match the driveway. Grass and dirt found on the inside of fenders and bumpers could link the vehicles to the Azir house. Carpet fibers—maroon wool—on the shoes of the dead terrorists could put them inside the house. Even now, a team of ten agents was beginning the process of discovering exactly who “Mordecai Azir” was. Smart money was that he was about as Jewish as Adolf Eichmann. Nobody was covering that wager.
“Commander Center, this is Betz.” Billy Betz was assistant special agent in charge of the Baltimore Field Division, and a former HRT shooter, hence his dramatic descent from the helicopter, leading his men ... and a woman.
“Billy, this is Dan Murray. What do you have?”
“Would you believe it? A half—empty crate of seven-six-two ball ammo, and the lot numbers match, Director. Living room has a dark red wool rug. This is our place. Some clothes missing from the master-bedroom closet. I’d say nobody’s been here for a couple of days. Location is secure. No booby traps. The lab troops are starting their routine.” And all eighty minutes from the time the Baltimore SAC had walked into the Garmatz Federal Courthouse. Not fast enough, but fast.
The forensics experts were a mix of Bureau, Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms, a troubled agency whose technical staff was nonetheless excellent. They’d all be shaking the house for hours. Everyone wore gloves. Every surface would be dusted for fingerprints to match with those of the dead terrorists.
“SOME WEEKS AGO you saw me take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That’s the second time I did that. The first time was as a brand-new Marine second lieutenant, when I graduated from Boston College. Right after that, I read the Constitution, to make sure I knew what it was that I was supposed to be defending.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we often hear politicians saying how they want government to empower you, so that you can do things.
“That’s not the way it is,” Ryan told them forcefully. “Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That’s you. The Constitution is something you should all read. The Constitution of the United States was not written to tell you what to do. The Constitution establishes the relationship among the three branches of government. It tells the government what it may do, and it also tells the government what it may not do. The government may not restrict your speech. The government may not tell you how to pray. The government may not do a lot of things. Government is a lot better at taking things away than it is at giving, but most of all, the government does not empower you. You empower the government. Ours is a government of the people. You are not people who belong to the government.
“Tomorrow you will not be electing masters, you will be choosing employees, servants of your will, guardians of your rights. We do not tell you what to do. You tell us what to do.
“It is not my job to take your money and give it back. It is my job to take what money I must have to protect and serve you—and to do that job as efficiently as possible. Government service may be an important duty, and a great responsibility, but it is not supposed to be a blessing for those who serve. It is your government servants who are supposed to sacrifice for you, not you who sacrifice for them.