Jack Del Rio: Complete Trilogy: Reservations, Betrayals, Endgames

by Richard Paolinelli

  “Please remember, Norman, that all he wanted to achieve was for our two countries to become friends, to ensure that we would never again find ourselves at war with each other. Please remember that when you have finished reading everything on that drive and forgive him.”

  THREE

  “Director Cavanaugh?”

  The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency looked up from his computer screen in mild irritation at the interruption. His hawk-like face was well-known for conveying his irritation when he wanted to. He held nothing back now.

  He’d only just returned from his meeting with the President-elect’s transition team, receiving assurances from them that he would keep his current job in the new Administration despite some recent news reports to the contrary, and now he was trying to catch up on his report reading.

  “Yes,” he answered the young man, an aide to the agency’s Deputy Director, Intelligence, who’d entered his office in a tone that clearly indicated this had better be something important.

  “There’s been no official report made to anyone, especially at the Secret, and it hasn’t leaked to the press yet,” the aide reported. “But it seems that Vice-President-elect Cashman managed to slip away from his meetings down in Atlanta and only took three members of his Secret Service protection detail along with him.”

  “What was his destination?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “He boarded a private jet at a small airfield outside Atlanta,” the aide reported. “The pilot did not file a flight plan so we had no clue where he was going. But Cashman was spotted by one of our agents disembarking from the plane at the airport in Nassau, Bahamas. The agent was curious and followed Cashman. He sent us this photo of a meeting Cashman had at a beachside café.”

  Cavanaugh took the pro-offered photo and studied it. He did not like what he saw, nor did he need to ask his aide the identity of the other man in the photo.

  “Do we have any idea at all why Cashman was secretly meeting with a former Director of the KGB?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “No, sir,” the aide replied. “The agent was unable to get close enough to overhear them. Nor did he see anything being passed between them. They apparently had a drink, spoke to each other for a few brief minutes, and then each went their own way. Cashman’s plane is scheduled to depart Nassau in a half hour and this time the pilot has filed a flight plan. They are not flying back to Atlanta, but are flying straight back here to D.C.”

  “I see,” Cavanaugh said, seemingly unconcerned with the news that the jet was not returning to its original point of departure. “Well, I would imagine this is nothing more than Karpov wanting to congratulate an old adversary in private without making a public spectacle out of it. However, I will ask Mr. Cashman about it when he gets back. I’m sure there’s nothing sinister about this, but thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

  Cavanaugh waited until the man had left the room, closing the door firmly behind him. The neutral look Cavanaugh had maintained on his face throughout the entire conversation quickly morphed into a deep scowl as soon as he heard the snick of the closing door latch. After spending a few more moments studying the photo, Cavanaugh reached for a small black box next to his desk phone and firmly pressed the lone button on its face.

  A bright red light above the button flared to life, indicating that any potential listening devices in range would only hear a lot of white noise. He reached into his blazer pocket and withdrew a very unofficial cell phone, then pressed a single key before holding the phone to his ear.

  “Cavanaugh,” he said when the call was answered. “We might have a problem connected to Cashman, and there is a hard time element involved.”

  He used the phone to snap a quick picture of the photo of the two old adversaries and sent it over, glancing quickly at his watch before returning the phone to his ear.

  “Agreed,” he said after a few seconds, folding up the photo and slipping it into the same pocket he’d withdrawn the phone from. “I will be there in ten minutes. I recommend we have our assets alerted now and standing by.”

  Cavanaugh ended the call, slipping the phone back into the pocket before killing the white noise devise. He then pressed the intercom button on the phone and instructed his secretary to have his driver have his car waiting for him downstairs. As he made his way down to the garage, his mind was already looking ahead to the upcoming meeting. Knowing who would be there, he anticipated quite a lively discussion. But no matter what was said, there really could only be one possible outcome.

  ***

  “Engine room, conn,” blared out the overhead speaker.

  “Conn, aye,” replied Steve Del Rio, commander of the U.S. Navy submarine Los Angeles, as he grabbed onto the overhead receiver. “What’s the word down there, XO?”

  “Lousy, Captain,” the Executive Officer replied, “and I’ve got a few more bad ones to add to it. The Chief says we can fix the leak without having to go back to Norfolk, but he strongly recommends we surface and open some hatches. He’s worried about too much gas building up before he plugs up the leak.”

  “Plot,” Del Rio asked around a sigh. “Current position?”

  “About twenty klicks east of Virginia Beach, sir.”

  “Sonar,” Del Rio called out, “any traffic out there?”

  “Nothing out there now, sir,” the crewwoman called out. “There had been some small civilian craft puttering around up there earlier, sir, but they are long gone and its dead quiet up there now.”

  “Very well,” Del Rio said. “XO, tell the Chief he has an hour to get his repairs done then get yourself on back up here. Prepare to surface.”

  Del Rio called out the last three words to the bridge at large as he’d already hung up on his XO.

  “Sir,” the Los Angeles’ communications officer asked from his station, “should I inform Norfolk of our situation?”

  “Negative,” Del Rio replied after a few moments thought. “I’m confident the Chief can get us back underway in good order and we can make up the delay once we get going again.”

  But what I will do, the Captain thought to himself grimly, is log in this little snafu and see to it that whoever screwed up while the Los Angeles was dry-docked and put in a faulty valve in a critical system on his boat was busted all the way back to E—1, a lowly Seaman Recruit.

  The XO stepped into the bridge and nodded to his commander, his mood little better than his captain’s. If it were up to him, whoever was responsible would best be punished with a good old-fashioned keel-hauling, the new politically correct Navy be damned.

  “Welcome back XO,” Del Rio said. “Surface the boat.”

  “Aye, sir. Chief of the boat, surface, surface, surface.”

  In less than two minutes the Los Angeles rose majestically out of the watery depths she called home and settled on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The sun was just setting over Norfolk to the west and the water to the east was just darkening to match the skies above. Hatches were quickly opened and several men poured outside to take up watch on the deck and the conning tower above.

  “XO,” Del Rio said as he headed for the ladder to join his men up on the tower, “head back down and see if the Chief needs anything to help move things along. Keep me informed. I’ll be heading out. Mr. Howard, you have the bridge.”

  “Aye, sir,” from several sources followed the Captain up the ladder.

  ***

  “Good God,” Cashman exclaimed in a hushed voice as he finished reading the final document from Karpov’s thumb drive. After the clandestine meeting, he’d rushed back to the airport, plugged the drive into his laptop and started sorting through the information even as the jet screamed down the runway and lifted into the air.

  Gary Kliene, Cashman’s lead Secret Service agent, was seated next to Cashman in the cabin and had been reading the material as well. For a few moments only the sound of the jet’s engines filled the cabin as the plane sliced through the darkening skies over the Atlantic, and it began its nearly
two-hour trek toward Washington D.C. While the two pilots concentrated on their duties in the cockpit, two other agents sat quietly near the rear of the cabin. Among the three agents, only Kliene knew the true purpose of the unscheduled flight, and who it was that Cashman had met when they had arrived.

  “You know, Gary,” Cashman said in a hushed tone, “when Bill Arthur asked me to be his running mate, I honestly thought that I finally had a chance to make a real difference in D.C. But now…” Cashman’s voice trailed off as he gave a small, sad shrug of his shoulders.

  “You still can, sir,” Kliene said with a lot more conviction than he actually felt after having just read what Karpov had delivered to his charge.

  “By creating the greatest constitutional crisis this country has ever seen and might ever see in its entire history?” Cashman replied with bitter sarcasm, deeply troubled by what he was facing.

  “How much of this,” Kline began, after briefly pausing to think about what he was going to ask, with a slight wave at the screen, “information that Karpov gave you back there can you actually believe?”

  “I’ve known Vlade Karpov since back when the Cold War was still running pretty hot,” Cashman answered firmly. “He was a KGB station chief about the same time I was a station chief at the CIA and we talked face-to-face once or twice after we both became Directors of our agencies. I’ll tell you this much. In all of my dealings with him he has never once lied to me.”

  “That you know of.”

  “Ever,” Cashman affirmed without the slightest hint of doubt. “You weren’t at that table, Gary. He was absolutely terrified of this and I can assure you that nothing ever scares that man.”

  “And you?”

  “It scares the living hell out of me,” Cashman admitted. “And before this, I’d have told you nothing scares me either.”

  “The problem is if he is right, then we don’t know who actually is involved or how far up it goes. It just says what is planned, not who is carrying it out. Hell, it could be someone already in the White House right now.”

  “Even the Oval Office,” Cashman added grimly, making Kliene swallow hard, “or perhaps about to inhabit it.”

  “Dear God,” Kliene said in shocked disbelief at the thought. “Just a week from Inauguration Day and for all that we know—”

  “The President or the President-elect of the United States,” Cashman finished the thought in a cold, matter-of-fact tone that froze Kliene’s blood, “could very well be a traitor to his country.”

  ***

  “We have no way of knowing what exactly was said between the two of them,” Cavanaugh said, interrupting the pointless debate going on between the other two people in the room. “But the fact is that immediately after his meeting with Karpov, Cashman swiftly returned to his plane and it took off directly for D.C. Given what we know of Karpov’s own personal history it is abundantly clear that he has tipped off Cashman in some fashion as to what is about to transpire here. Now Cashman is coming back as fast as he can to warn whomever he thinks it is that can help him at this time. He is going to land in D.C. in just over an hour. If we are in fact going to act on this matter then we need to do so now.”

  “Even if he lands,” the other man, the same age as Cavanaugh but a little more heavyset, in the room asked, “would anyone actually believe him? What could Karpov possibly have given him, and we have no report that says anything other than words were actually exchanged between the two, that could harm us in any way?”

  “As I said before, Charles,” Cavanaugh answered, “we have no way of knowing what was or was not provided. But whatever it was, it was enough to convince Cashman to bypass rejoining his staff in Atlanta and fly directly here.”

  “More importantly,” the lone woman in the meeting interjected, “how would his death so close to the inauguration impact our plans? Having him being the next Vice President was already an inconvenience we could have done without.”

  Cavanaugh was hardly surprised at the woman’s focus on their shared goal. Only two years his junior, Georgina Soors might look the part of a typical New York socialite, but she was very much like the most deadly predator known to mankind in her single-mindedness regarding their mission.

  “At best?” Cavanaugh responded. “Arthur replaces him with the man he should have taken as his running mate in the general election in the first place. At worst? We continue as originally planned and Nan Liposey ascends to the presidency as the sitting Speaker of the House when we remove whoever may be between her and the Oval Office, if Arthur stubbornly picks someone else again.” He scanned the room. “But all of this is moot if we do nothing tonight and allow Cashman to safely return to D.C. I am convinced Karpov has given him something and that whatever it may have been is a direct threat to us. What is your decision?”

  “I agree,” Soors replied. “We cannot take the chance that Cashman has something that could disrupt us, not now. Can you manage it before he lands?”

  “We already have assets in place right now. They are just waiting for the word to proceed.”

  “And Karpov?” Soors asked in a tone that dropped the ambient temperature in the room ten degrees.

  “After we’ve dealt with Cashman,” Cavanaugh said. “Then I’ll put in a call. We’ll let Karpov’s own people deal with him. Charles?”

  “I believe you already have the necessary majority, Brad.”

  “I know. But I would prefer it to be unanimous, especially…” Cavanaugh let his voice trail off.

  “As I alone have always opposed our deviating from the original mission plan laid out for our parents all those years ago?” Charles finished sardonically.

  Cavanaugh merely nodded.

  “I am still uncertain we made the right decision back then. But as we are committed, I see no reason to oppose this. Proceed. But what is to be done about his staff down in Atlanta?”

  “They are boarding the plane they flew down on right now to come back here,” Cavanaugh replied. “The plane will explode in mid-flight somewhere over the Appalachians. Cashman will be confirmed to have been on that flight and all that remains is to make sure Arthur makes the right decision this time around. If you will excuse me?”

  Cavanaugh turned away as he pulled out one of the three cell phones he carried with him at all times. This one was a phone no one anywhere in the U.S. government knew existed and, more importantly, no one could possibly trace back to him.

  “This is no time to get squeamish, Charles,” Soors said with a slight hint of contempt in her voice after Cavanaugh had stepped out of hearing range.

  “We could have accomplished all of our aims with just a little more patience and quite a lot less bloodshed.”

  “Perhaps,” Soors allowed. “But I grow tired of waiting for the ‘perfect time’ to present itself. We’ve made our time happen by our own actions, not by sitting around and talking while nothing gets done.”

  Charles declined to respond and only shook his head sadly and turned his attention back to Cavanaugh, who had drifted over to a far corner to complete his call.

  “Cavanaugh,” he identified himself when his call went through. “Is the asset in place?”

  “Holding station in an F/A-18 Hornet out of Norfolk. He’s directly behind the target and waiting for the go ahead from you.”

  “Where are they right now?”

  “Coming up the coast, very near Norfolk at this point. They are flying lower than expected which should reduce the chances of someone seeing anything. There’s nothing in the air or on the surface in the area. If we are going to do this, there will not be a better time that right now.”

  “Very good,” Cavanaugh said. “Connect me to the pilot. What is his call sign?”

  “Ninja.”

  How very appropriate, Cavanaugh thought as he waited for the connection.

  “He’s on now, sir, go ahead.”

  “Ninja,” Cavanaugh said without preamble, “this is Gateway.”

  Twenty thousand feet above the
Atlantic Ocean, Lt. Paul Hirako, who’d naturally been dubbed Ninja by his fellow Navy pilots when it came time to give him his call sign, was tracking a jet that he’d been told was possibly carrying foreign terrorists with evil intentions toward his country.

  Before taking off, he’d been briefed on the jet’s flight plan and ordered to intercept and follow the jet while awaiting orders. If the intelligence was confirmed he would be ordered to bring down the jet from the call sign “Gateway”. What he had not been told was that if the order was given, any radar stations in the area would be jammed so that no one would ever know what had happened.

  Had he known that, he might have questioned exactly what was going on. But taking down terrorists was all he needed to hear to justify shooting down a passenger aircraft. The interception was child’s play and the pilots of the jet ahead had no clue there was an armed Navy aircraft right on their “six” and armed to the teeth.

  “I read you, Gateway,” Hirako said, feeling a little surge of adrenalin.

  “Ninja, you are ordered to splash the target. I repeat, splash the target.”

  “Roger that, Gateway. Stand by.”

  Hirako lined up the jet as he started to drop further back and he armed the missiles that would send the terrorists straight to their much deserved hell. But he suddenly stopped up short and smiled broadly as a thought occurred to him. Anyone could splash this target with a missile, which would be too quick and clean of a death for this bunch as far as he was concerned.

  So Hirako armed his M61 Vulcan, a Gatling-gun style cannon, instead, and took careful aim at each of the jet’s engines as he closed back to within the gun’s range. Once the range was right, Hirako gently squeezed off two quick bursts, shredding both of the jet’s engines and sent it plummeting, engines ablaze toward the ocean. He could only imagine the panic and screams of the doomed terrorists aboard as they fell to their deaths inside the intact fuselage. He felt not one ounce of pity as the plane hit the water, although he was impressed by how well the pilots had controlled the descent of the plane. With any luck, a few of the terrorists survived the impact so they could drown when the jet sank.