exhausted but anxious, running on adrenaline and
caffeine. When the rush ended, McCaskey would
crash big-time.
"Let me bring you up to date," McCaskey said.
He sipped his own coffee and sat heavily in the
swivel chair. Matt Stoll's small
electromagnetic egg was between them, ensuring the
security of the conversation. "Aideen Marley is on
the way back to Madrid. She was up at the
Ramirez boat factory in San Sebastian
284 OP-CENTER
when it was attacked by General Amadori's forces.
You know about that?"
August nodded.
McCaskey looked at his watch. "Her chopper
should be landing in about five minutes and she'll be brought
back here. She went up to find out more about the
forces that are rallied against Amadori. He beat
her to them. Aideen's partner on the mission, Maria
Comeja, managed to get herself captured
by Amadori's soldiers. We don't know
exactly where Amadori is based. We're hoping
that Maria can find out and somehow let us know. Have you
spoken with Mike?"'"
August nodded.
"Then you have some sense of what your mission is."
August nodded again.
"Once Amadori is found," McCaskey said,
his gaze locked on August, "he must be captured
or removed by terminal force."
August nodded a third time. His face was
impassive, as though he'd just been given the day's
duty roster. He had killed men in Vietnam and
he'd been tortured nearly to death when he was a
POW there. Death was extreme, but it came with the
uniform and it was the coin of war. And there was no doubt
that Amadori was at war.
McCaskey folded his hands. His tired eyes were still
on August.
"Striker's never had a mission like this,"
McKaskey said. "Do you have a problem with it?"
August shook his head.
BALANCE OF POWER 285
"Do you think any of your team will have a problem with it?"
"I don't know," August said. "But I'll find
out."
McCaskey looked down. "There was a time when this
kind of thing was standard operating procedure."
"There was," August agreed. "But back then it was
a first-strike option rather than a last resort. I
think we've found the moral high ground."
"I suppose so," McCaskey said. He rubbed
his eyes. "Anyway, you guys hang loose in the
commissary. I'll let you know as soon as we have
anything."
McCaskey rose and drained his coffee cup.
August stood and took a sip from his own cup. Then
he handed it to McCaskey. McCaskey smiled and
accepted it. He took a swallow.
"Darrell?" August said.
"Yeah?"
"You're looking pretty close to flameout."
"I'm gettin" there," he admitted. "It's been
a long haul."
"You know," August said, "if we have to go in I need
you to be sharp. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if after
Aideen arrives, you lay down somewhere. I
can debrief her, talk to Luis, come up with a few
scenarios."
McCaskey walked around the desk. He slapped
August on the back. "Thank you very much.
Colonel. I believe I will take that rest."
He grinned. "You know what sucks?"
August shook his head.
"Not being able to do the things that you were able to do easily in
your twenties," McCaskey said. "That
286 OP-CENTER
sucks. All-nighters used to be a breeze for
me. So was eating junk food and not having my
stomach burn like a son-of-a-bitch." The grin
faded. "But age makes it different. Losing a
coworker makes it different. And something else makes
it different. The realization that just being right doesn't
matter. You can have law and treaties and justice and
humanity and the United Nations and the Bible and everything
else on your side, and you can still get your ass handed
to you. You know v."...hat the moral high ground has
cost us, Colonel? It's cost us the ability to do
the right thing. Pretty damn ironic, huh?"
August didn't answer. There was no point.
Soldiers didn't have philosophies; they couldn't
afford to. They had targets. And the
failure to achieve them meant death, capture, or
dishonor. There was no irony. At least, not in that.
The officer headed toward the commissary, where his team was
waiting. When he arrived, he turned on the
computerized " "playbook"" he carried. He
indicated the plan McCaskey had presented, then
he polled the team to make sure everyone was willing
to be on the field, ready to play.
They were.
August thanked them, after which the team hung loose.
All except for Prementine and Pupshaw, who
figured out where and how hard to hit the soda machine so
it would dispense free cans.
August accepted a 7-Up and then sat back in the
plastic chair. He drank the soda to wash away
the bitter coffee taste. As he did, he thought about
what had happened over the past day. The fact that the
politi-
BALANCE OF POWER 287
cians in Spain had turned to Amadori to stop a
war. Instead, he used it as a primer to start a
bigger war. Now the politicians were turning to more
soldiers to stop that war.
August was a soldier, not a philosopher. But if
there were an irony in all this, he was
pretty sure he'd find it in there.
Written in blood and bound in suffering.
TWEIWYSEVE-LIKE caret
Tuesday, 1:35 a.m. Washington, D.c.
Hood awoke with a jolt.
He had returned from the White House and immediately
called Darrell McCaskey to relay the
President's orders. McCaskey had been
silent and accepting. What else could he be? Then,
knowing he'd want to be awake whenever the Striker
operation commenced, Hood shut the lights off and lay
down on his office couch to try to rest.
He started to think about Op-Center's unprecedented
two-tiered involvement in the operation. First there was the
elimination of Amadori. Then there was the aftermath,
helping to manage chaos. With Amadori gone many
politicians, businesspeople, and military
officers would fight to fill the power vacuum. They
would do that by seizing individual regions:
Catalonia, Castile, Andalusia, the Basque
Country, Galicia. Bob Herbert's office was
compiling a list for the White House. So far, there were
at least two dozen viable contenders for a piece of the
power. Two
dozen.
At best, what used to be Spain would become a
loose confederation of states similar to the former
Soviet Union. At worst, those states would
turn on each other like the former republics of
Yugoslavia.
BALANCE OF POWER 289
His eyes were heavy and his thoughts became dis
jointed and
Hood drifted off quickly. But his sleep was
troubled. He didn't dream about Spain. He
dreamt about his family. They were all driving together and
laughing. Then they parked and walked down an
anonymous Main Street somewhere. The kids and
Sharon were eating ice cream cones. They continued
laughing. The ice cream was melting fast and the more it
dripped over their fists and clothes the more they laughed.
Hood sulked beside them, feeling sad and then angry.
Suddenly he stopped behind a parked car and slammed his
fists on the trunk. His family continued to laugh,
not at him but at the mess the ice cream was making.
The three of them were ignoring him and he started
to scream. His eyes snapped open-
Hood looked around. Then his eyes settled on the
illuminated clock on the coffee table beside the couch.
It had been only about twenty minutes since he'd
shut his eyes. He lay back down, his
head on the cushioned armrest. He closed his eyes
again.
There was nothing quite like waking from a bad dream. He
always felt a tremendous relief because that world
wasn't real. But the emotions it aroused were genuine and
that kept the sense of well-being from seeping deep
inside. Then there were the people he dreamt about. Dreams
always made them more real, more desirable.
Hood had had enough. He needed to talk to Sharon.
He got up, turned on the desk light, and sat
down. He ground the heels of his palms into his
eyes then punched in her cell phone number. She
answered quickly.
290 OP-CENTER
"Hello?"
Her voice was strong. She hadn't been sleeping.
"Hi," Hood said. "It's me."
"I know," Sharon said. "It's kind of late for
anyone else to be calling."
"I guess it is," Hood said. "How are the
kids?"
"Good."
"And how are you?"
"Not so good," Sharon told him. "How about you?"
"The same."
"Is it work," she asked pointedly, "or us?"
That pinched. Why did women always assume the worst
about men, that they were always preoccupied and upset about
their jobs?
Because we usually are.
Hood told himself. Somehow, when it was this late and this
dark and this quiet, you just had to be honest with yourself.
"Work is what it always is," he answered.
"We've got a crisis. Even with that, what I'm
most upset about is you. About us."
"I'm
only
upset about you," Sharon replied.
"All right, hon," Hood said calmly. "You win
that one."
"I don't want to 'win" anything," she said.
"I just want to be honest. I want to figure out
what we're going to do about this. Things can't continue the
way they are. They just can't."
"I agree," Hood said. "That's why I've
decided to resign."
Sharon was silent for a long moment. "You'd leave
Op-Center?"
BALANCE OF POWER 291
"What choice do I have?"
"The truth?" Sharon asked.
"Of course."
"You don't need to resign," she said. "What you
need to do is spend less time there."
Hood was really annoyed. He'd been sincere.
He'd played his hole card-a big one. And instead
of giving her husband a big wet kiss, Sharon was
telling him how he'd done
that
all wrong.
"How am I supposed to do that?" Hood asked.
"Nobody can predict what's going to happen here."
"No, but you have backups," Sharon said. "There's
Mike Rodgers. There's the night team."
"They're all very capable," Hood replied, "but
they're here for when things are running smoothly. I have
to be on top of a situation like this one, or like the one
we had last time-""
"Where you were nearly killed!" she snapped.
"Yes, where I was nearly killed, Sharon,"
Hood said. He stayed calm. His wife was already
getting angry and his own temper would just fuel that.
"Sometimes there's danger. But there's danger right here
in Washington."
"Oh, please, Paul. It isn't the
same."
"All right. It
is
different," Hood admitted. "But there are also
rewards from what I do. Not just a good home but
experiences. The kids have gone overseas with us, been
exposed to things other people never get to do or see. How
do you break that all out? How do you decide, "This
trip to a world capital wasn't worth missing ten
dinners with Paul." Or, "Okay, we got to
292 OP-CENTER
visit the Oval Office but Dad couldn't be at a
violin concert at school." his
"I don't know," Sharon admitted. "But I do
know that a "good home" is more than just a nice
house. And a family is built by a lot of little
things, ordinary things. Not just big, showy things."
"I've been there for a lot of that," Hood said.
"No, Paul," Sharon countered. "You
comwere
there for a lot of that. Things have changed. When you took
this job most of the work was going to be domestic.
Remember?"
"I remember."
"Then your first international situation happened
and everything changed."
Sharon was right. Op-Center was established
primarily to handle domestic crises. They jumped
into the international arena when the President named
Hood to head up the task force investigating a
terrorist attack in Seoul, Korea. Hood had
never been flattered by the appointment. Like the
assassination of Amadori, it was a job no one
else had wanted.
"So things changed," Hood admitted. "What was
I supposed to do, walk away from it all?"
"You did in L.a., didn't you?" Sharon asked.
"That's right," Hood said. "And it cost me something."
"What? Power?"
"No," Hood replied. "Self-respect."
"Why? Because you gave in to your wife?"
Aw, Jesus,
Hood thought. He gives her what she wants and
he still can't win. "That is absolutely not the
reason," Hood replied. "Because as much of a
BALANCE OF POWER 293
pain in the ass as politics was, and as long as the
hours were, and even though privacy was nonexistent,
I gave up something where I felt I was making a
difference." His voice was tense. He was
angrier about that than he'd thought. "So I quit
politics and I got caught up in long hours
all over again. Do you know why? Because once again I'm
making a difference. Hopefully making things better
for people. I like that, Sharon. I like the challenge. The
responsibility. The sense of satisfaction."
"You know, I liked what I did too before I
became a mother," Sharon said. "But I had to cut
way back on that for the sake of the kids. For our
family. At least you
don't have to do anything that
extreme. But you also can't micromanage, Paul.
You have backups. Let them help you so that you can
give us what we need to remain a family."
"You mean by your definition-was
"No. We need you. That's a fact."
"You
have
me," Hood said. He was growing angry now.
"Not enough," Sharon shot back. Her voice was
clipped and firm. Here they were again, in the roles they
always assumed when well-meaning discussions degenerated
into unpleasant debates. Paul Hood playing the
angry offense, his wife playing the cool defense.
"Jesus," Hood said. He wanted to lay the
phone aside and scream. He settled for
squeezing the receiver. "I've promised to quit,
I've got a crisis here, and I can't sleep
without thinking about all of you. And you tell me all the
things I'm doing wrong while
294 OP-CENTER
you're up there holding the kids hostage."
"I'm not holding them hostage," Sharon said
curtly. "We're yours whenever you want us."
"Sure," Hood said. "On your terms."
"These are
not
"my terms," Paul. This isn't about me winning
and you losing. It's not about you giving up a job or
career. It's about making a few changes. Asking
for a few concessions. It's about the
kids
winning."
The interoffice line beeped. Hood looked at the
LCD: it was Mike Rodgers.
"Sharon, please," Hood said. "Hold on a
sec." He put her on mute and picked up the
other phone. "Yes, Mike?"
"Paul, I'm here with Bob Herbert. Check the
computer. I'm sending over a picture from the
NRO. We need to talk, now."
"All right," Hood said. "I'll be right with you."
He returned to Sharon. "Hon, I've got to go.
I'm sorry."
"I know you are," she said softly. "But you're not as
sorry as I am. Goodbye, Paul. I do love
you."
She hung up and Paul spun toward the computer
monitor on the adjoining stand. He didn't want
to think about what had just happened. About how his family
was slipping away and there didn't seem to be a
damn thing he could do about it. What rankled him most
was Sharon seemed to believe that having him none of the
time was better than having him some of the time. That made
no sense.
Unless she's trying to pressure me,
he thought.
He resented that. But then, what other weapon did
BALANCE OF POWER 295
Sharon have? And she was right: he had screwed up, and
more than once. He'd abandoned them on day one of
Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power Page 28