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Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power

Page 28

by Balance of Power [lit]


  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

 

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