by Tom Clancy
“I don’t know,” said Jack. He knew, as Dom said, the two of them could do what they wanted with their downtime.
But he also knew this was violating the spirit of Sam Granger’s instructions, if not the actual instructions. Even though they wouldn’t be working for The Campus on their trip, that was a pretty fine line.
“You want to go home and sit on your ass this weekend, or do you want to do something that just might make a difference? Again, if nothing comes of it, no harm, no foul. But if we do get some actionable intel, we take it to Sam and give it to him with apologies. You know how it is. Sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
That hit home with Jack. He saw himself sitting around wondering what he could accomplish if he took his cousin up on his offer. He thought it over a little more, then smiled slyly. “I have to admit, cuz, that I love a good mojito.”
Caruso smiled. “That’s my boy.”
FIFTY-THREE
Dominic and Jack arrived in Miami late on Friday afternoon. They’d flown commercial, coach, and it felt a bit like the Stone Age to them compared with the Hendley G-550, but the flight was on time and both men had slept most of the way.
They had no guns on them, although bringing a gun along on a commercial flight in the United States is not against the law. Since licensed concealed carry of a handgun was permitted in Florida, they could have flown into Miami with locked, unloaded guns in their checked luggage, but that entailed forms and delay, and, both men decided, this wasn’t that type of a trip. They were under orders not to initiate a formal surveillance operation of the command server location, and they also knew if Sam somehow found out, the fact they hadn’t even brought their pieces along might serve in their defense, indicating they weren’t down there on “official business.”
It was splitting hairs, and Jack didn’t feel great about it, but he did feel that The Campus operators should get their own eyes on the command server location.
They rented a nondescript Toyota four-door and drove it to Miami Beach, where they found a cheap one-and-a-half-star motel. Dominic rented two rooms for two nights and paid cash for them while Ryan waited in the car. They found their adjoining rooms, tossed their overnight bags onto their beds, and headed back out to the Toyota in the parking lot. Within thirty minutes of checking in they were walking down Collins Avenue on foot, making their way through the throngs of beachgoers and weekend tourists. They headed two blocks over to Ocean Drive and sat down at the first bar they saw, which, like most nightspots on a Friday night in Miami, had an impressive amount of beautiful women.
When each man had drained a mojito and ordered a second, they talked about their plan for the weekend.
“First thing in the morning we head down to Coral Gables,” Dom said.
“A daylight drive-by?” asked Jack.
“Sure. Just a soft recon. We’re not going to get away with much else on this trip. You saw the street on Google Maps, there’s not going to be an opportunity to disappear around there, so we’ll have to stay mobile, either on foot or in the car.”
“Sure you don’t want to go by there right now?”
Dominic looked around the bar at the beautiful women. “Cuz, you may not be single anymore, but I am. Have a heart.”
Ryan laughed. “I’m still single. I’m just not looking at the moment.”
“Right. I see how you melt when she calls. Hell, dude, your voice goes up half an octave when you talk to her.”
Jack groaned. “No. Please tell me it doesn’t.”
“Sorry. She’s got you whipped.”
Jack was still reacting to the possibility that guys in the office could tell when he was talking to Melanie on the phone. But he sighed, then said, “I got lucky with this one.”
“It’s not luck. You’re a good guy. You deserve her.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes while they sipped their drinks. Ryan was bored; he checked his phone for any texts from Melanie, while Dom eyed a Colombian beauty at the bar. She smiled back, but a few seconds later her boyfriend appeared, kissed her, and sat down at the bar stool next to her. He looked like a linebacker for the Dolphins. Caruso shook his head with a chuckle, then finished his mojito with a slurp.
“Fuck it, cuz. Let’s go check out the command server.”
Ryan had a pair of twenties out of his wallet a second later. He tossed them on the table and they headed back to get their rental.
—
It was almost midnight by the time they found the address.
They drove past the building slowly, both men eyeing the parking lot and the entrance. The sign said BriteWeb was a data-hosting company for individuals as well as small businesses. There were a few lights on inside the two-story building, and a few cars in the small lot.
They turned the corner and looked into a small, lighted breezeway that went through the middle of the building.
Instantly Jack felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
Dominic just whistled. He said, “Those don’t look like computer nerds.”
Two young men stood by the door in the breezeway, smoking cigarettes. Both men wore tight-fitting T-shirts and khaki cargo pants; they were well over six feet tall and muscular. They had dirty-blond hair, square jaws, and wide, Slavic noses.
“Did those guys look Russian to you?”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “But I doubt either one of those guys is Dmitri Oransky, the owner of the place. They looked like security.”
Dom said, “Might be Russian mob. They are all over South Florida.”
“Whoever they are, they are going to see us if we keep rolling by here at this time of night. Let’s come back in the a.m.”
“Good call.”
“How ’bout we both pick up two new vehicles, just to make sure we don’t get compromised? Different makes and models. This is South Florida, so we’ll have tinted glass, which will help. With two cars it will double our time on target without raising any red flags with the goons watching the street. We need to get pictures of everyone coming and going.”
“Roger that.”
—
Nine thousand miles away, in a fourteen-story building in Guangzhou, a twenty-three-year-old woman leaned forward to check an image on her monitor. Five seconds later she tapped a button on her keyboard, and she heard a short, low beep in her headset.
She sat quietly, watching the real-time image from Miami while she waited for Center to accept her videoconference. She had seen Center walking by a few minutes earlier, so he might well have been in the conference room and not in his office. If so, he would take the call on his VOIP headset instead of on the videoconference feature on his computer. Even though he might have been here in the room, she did not call out to him. If everyone did that the room would sound like the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
The image of Dr. Tong appeared on her computer monitor next to the image in Coral Gables.
He looked up from his desk. “Center.”
“Center, desk thirty-four.”
“Yes?”
“Target Hendley Associates, Maryland, United States. Personality Jack Ryan, Junior, and personality Dominic Caruso.”
“Have they arrived in Florida?”
“Affirmative. They are conducting surveillance on the command server at the location there. I have them in real time in a rented vehicle just a block from the BriteWeb location.”
“Alert local assets. Notify them that an unknown force has compromised the command server. Give them their hotel information, vehicle identification, and descriptions. Do not reveal identities of personalities to local assets. Instruct local assets to terminate the targets. We have allowed this to continue long enough.”
“Understood.”
“Then tell Data Logistics to divert
data flow from the Miami command server. That operation is closed as of now. With the death of Jack Ryan, Junior, there will be close scrutiny of the incident, and we must not leave any trackbacks to the Ghost Ship.”
“Yes, Center.”
“Data Logistics can route through the Detroit command server until they can find a permanent solution.”
“Yes, Center.”
The twenty-three-year-old controller disconnected the call and then opened the Cryptogram application on one of her monitors. In seconds she was patched through to a computer in Kendall, Florida. It was owned by a thirty-five-year-old Russian national living in the U.S. on an expired student visa.
Twelve minutes and thirty seconds after Center spoke to his desk officer, a cell phone rang in the pocket of a Russian U.S. citizen at a nightclub in Hollywood Beach, Florida.
“Da?”
“Yuri, it’s Dmitri.”
“Yes, sir?”
“We have a situation. Are the boys with you?”
“Yes.”
“Grab a pen and write down this address. You guys get to have some serious fun tonight.”
—
Jack and Dom made it back to the fleabag motel and drank a beer together on the tiny back patio adjacent to Ryan’s room. At about one-thirty they finished their beers, and Dom started to head to his room but decided he’d go buy a bottled water from the vending machine in the breezeway first.
He opened the door to head out into the breezeway and found himself staring down the barrel of a long black automatic pistol.
Ryan was still out on the patio. He looked up in time to see two men come over the low fence. They both carried pistols that they waved in Ryan’s face.
“Back inside,” said a man with a pronounced Russian accent.
Jack raised his hands.
—
Two aluminum patio chairs were brought in from the patio by one of the Russians, and Ryan and Caruso were forced down into them. The smallest of the three goons had a canvas gym bag with him, and from it he pulled out a huge roll of wide duct tape. While both of the other men stood on the far side of the room, the Russian taped first Jack’s and then Dom’s legs to the legs of the chairs, and then their hands behind the backs of the chairs.
Ryan had been too stunned to speak at first; he knew he had not been followed back to the motel, so he could not imagine how they had been tracked here.
The three guys looked serious, but they also looked like simple muscle. Jack could tell these were not the brains behind this operation, or any operation more complicated than tying their shoes or shooting their pistols.
These would be Dmitri’s thugs, and by the looks of things, Dmitri wanted Ryan and Caruso dead.
Dom tried to talk to the men. “What’s this all about?”
The obvious leader of the trio said, “We know you are spying on us.”
“I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. We just came down to the beach for the weekend. We don’t even know who—”
“Shut up!”
Every fiber of Ryan’s being was focused on readying himself to act. He knew once his feet were tied together it would be over, he’d have no way to move or fight.
But he did not see any opening. The two men holding the pistols on them were on the other side of the bed, easily ten feet away. Jack knew there was no way in hell he could get to those guns before the men fired them.
Jack said, “Look. We don’t want any trouble. We were just following orders.”
The man in charge said, “Yeah? Well, your boss is going to have to get a new crew, because you two pretty boys are about to die.”
The smaller man with the gym bag pulled out a length of black wire and handed it across to his boss. It took Ryan only a moment to see the loops at each end, and to understand what he was looking at.
It was a garrote, an assassination device designed to be placed around the neck and then pulled tight from behind to strangle the victim.
Ryan continued speaking more quickly: “You don’t understand. Our boss is the same as your boss.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Center sent us. He says Dmitri is stealing from the wire transfer that is supposed to be split evenly among you. That’s why we’re here.”
“What are you talking about?”
Caruso followed Jack’s lead: “Center hacked your boss’s computer and his phone, and you boys are getting ripped off.”
One of the men on the other side of the bed said, “They are just making up some shit so we don’t kill them.”
Jack said, “I’ve got proof on my laptop. A Cryptogram conversation where Center tells Dmitri how much to pay you guys. I can show you.”
“You aren’t showing us shit,” said the same guy. “You are lying. Why would Center care what we are getting paid?”
“Center demands that his agents do what he says. You guys must know that. He tells your boss to pay you a certain amount, he damn well expects that to happen. Dmitri is skimming off your cut, and Center sent us down to take care of it.”
Caruso chimed in again: “Yeah. A few months back he sent us to Istanbul to take out some guys who were cheating him.”
The lead Russian against the wall said, “Dmitri told me Center wanted you guys taken care of.”
Jack and Dom looked at each other. Center knew they were here in Miami? How?
But Jack recovered quickly. “That’s what Dmitri told you? I can prove that’s bullshit.”
“How?”
“Let me log on to Cryptogram. I can be talking to Center inside of two minutes. You can confirm with him.”
The three goons started speaking in rapid-fire Russian. One asked, “How will we know if it’s really him?”
Jack shrugged in his bindings. “Dude. It’s Center. Ask him anything. Ask him about your organization. Ask him what ops you’ve done for him. Hell, ask him what your birthday is. He’ll know.”
That sank in with the Russians, Ryan could tell.
After another conversation between them, one of the three holstered his pistol and walked over to the desk. “Give me your password. I’ll check with Center on your computer.”
Ryan shook his head. “That won’t work. He can see through the webcam. Shit, how long have you guys been on the job? He’ll see it’s not me and he won’t authenticate the conversation. He’ll lock out the machine and, knowing Center, he’ll probably send another crew down to Miami to kill everybody down here working for him, starting with the idiot that logged on to my machine.”
“You are exaggerating,” the Russian at the desk said. Still, he took a step back from the laptop, away from its camera.
“Trust me,” said Jack. “The Chinese take their security seriously.”
“Chinese?”
Jack just looked back at the man.
“Center is Chinese?” one of the other Russians asked.
“Are you serious?” Jack said, then looked at Dom. Dom just shook his head like he was in the presence of idiots.
“Are you guys new?”
“No,” said the smaller man in the crew.
With a barking order from the man by the desk, one of the other two pulled a butterfly knife from his jacket and whipped it open with a flourish. He cut the tape from Ryan’s ankles and wrists, and Jack got up from the metal chair. As he moved the ten feet he looked back over his shoulder at Caruso. Dominic gave nothing away with his look. He just sat there watching.
Ryan looked to the head goon now. “Let me connect with him, explain the situation, and then bring you into the conversation.”
The Russian nodded, and Jack could tell that he’d successfully tricked the three armed men who just a minute before had been about to kill him and his cousin.
He knelt in front of his laptop, painfully aware of three sets of eyes on him right now. The closest man was just two steps away on his right, another was still on the other side of the bed with his weapon low by his side, and the third, the man who had just cut Ryan free, stood next to Caruso with his butterfly knife in his hand.
Jack had a plan, but it was an incomplete plan. He knew he wasn’t going to be talking to Center on Cryptogram, he did not even have the software on his machine, so he was seconds away from a full-on fight here in the room. And while he felt reasonably certain he could take care of one of these three thugs in a mano-a-mano brawl, there was no way he would make it across the room to the guy on the other side of the bed.
He needed a gun, and the closest gun was in the holster under the shirt of the man next to him.
Jack looked up at him from his kneeling position in front of the computer.
“Well?” said the Russian.
“Maybe I won’t check with Center,” Jack said, his tone a lot sharper than when he was taped to the chair.
“Why not?” asked the Russian.
“You guys aren’t going to do anything to us. You’re just bluffing.”
“Bluffing?” The man was confused. The American in front of him just spent several minutes trying to talk him into letting him use his computer. Now he was saying he would not. “I am not bluffing.”
“What, are you going to have your little buddies beat me up?”
The leader shook his head and smiled. “No, they will shoot you.”
“Oh, I see. You have these guys with you to do the shit you are too scared to do yourself.” Jack shook his head. “Typical Russian pussy.”
Draw your gun! Jack’s inner voice screamed it. It was the only chance he and Dom had to survive the next few seconds.
The man’s face reddened with fury, and he reached under his red silk shirt to his appendix area.
Bingo, thought Jack, and he launched up from his knees, both of his hands going for the weapon that was just now coming out from under the silk.
The man tried to take a step back and away, but Ryan had spent many hours working on weapon takeaways, and he knew what he was doing. As he used his body to slam into the Russian, knocking him back, he pushed the pistol’s muzzle down and to his left to get out of the line of fire in case the Russian got a shot off. With the same motion he both pulled on the Russian’s gun and twisted it against his trigger finger, snapping the appendage. As the man screamed, Jack got his own finger in the trigger guard and twisted the gun back nearly a hundred eighty degrees, with the Russian’s hand still holding it. Jack pressed the Russian’s broken finger against the trigger.