by Tom Clancy
His head broke the surface behind the sailboat as it lay to, close enough to read the name. He went down again. It took another minute to come up on the west side of the twenty-six-footer.
“Hello?”
“Jesus—is that you?” Maxwell called.
“I think so.” Well, not exactly. His hand reached up.
The doyen of naval aviation reached over the side, hauled the bruised and sore body aboard, and directed him below.
“Forty-One, this is Navy to your west now . . . this doesn’t look real good, fella.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Navy. You can break off if you want. I think we’ll stay a while,” Oreza said. It had been good of them to quarter the surface for three hours, a good assist from a couple of flag officers. They even handled their sailboat halfway decent. At another time he’d have taken the thought further and made a joke about Navy seamanship. But not now. Oreza and Forty-One-Bravo would continue their search all night, finding only wreckage.
It made the papers in a big way, but not in any way that made sense. Detective Lieutenant Mark Charon, following up a lead on his own time—on administrative leave following a shooting, no less—had stumbled into a drug lab and in the ensuing gun battle had lost his life in the line of duty while ending those of two major traffickers. The coincidental escape of three young women resulted in the identification of one of the deceased traffickers as a particularly brutal murderer, which perhaps explained Charon’s heroic zeal, and closed a number of cases in a fashion that the police reporters found overly convenient. On page six was a squib story about a boating accident.
Three days later, a file clerk from St. Louis called Lieutenant Ryan to say that the Kelly file was back but she couldn’t say from where. Ryan thanked her for her effort. He’d closed that case along with the rest, and didn’t even try the FBI records center for Kelly’s card, and thus made unnecessary Bob Ritter’s substitution of the prints of someone unlikely ever to visit America again.
The only loose end, which troubled Ritter greatly, was a single telephone call. But even criminals got one phone call, and Ritter didn’t want to cross Clark on something like that. Five months later, Sandra O’Toole resigned her position at Johns Hopkins and moved to the Virginia tidewater, where she took over a whole floor of the area’s teaching hospital on the strength of a glowing recommendation from Professor Samuel Rosen.
EPILOGUE
February 12, 1973
“We are honored to have the opportunity to serve our country under difficult circumstances,” Captain Jeremiah Denton said, ending a thirty-four-word statement that rang across the ramp at Clark Air Base with “God bless America.”
“How about that,” the commentator said, sharing the experience as he was paid to do. “Right there behind Captain Denton is Colonel Robin Zacharias, of the Air Force. He’s one of the fifty-three prisoners about whom we had no information until very recently, along with . . .”
John Clark didn’t listen to the rest. He looked at the TV that sat on his wife’s dresser in the bedroom, at the face of a man half a world away, to whom he’d been much closer in body, closer still in spirit not so long before. He saw the man embrace his wife after what had to be five years of separation. He saw a woman who’d grown old with worry, but now was young with love for the husband she’d thought dead. Kelly wept with them, seeing the man’s face for the first time as a thing of animation, seeing the joy that really could replace pain, no matter how vast. He squeezed Sandy’s hand so hard that he almost hurt it until she rested his on her belly to feel the movement of their soon-to-be firstborn. The phone rang then, and Kelly was angry for the invasion of the moment until he heard the voice.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself, John,” Dutch Maxwell said. “We’re getting all twenty back. I wanted to make sure you knew that. It wouldn’t have happened without you.”
“Thank you, sir.” Clark hung up. There was nothing else to be said.
“Who was that?” Sandy asked, holding his hand in place.
“A friend,” Clark said, wiping his eyes as he turned to kiss his wife. “From another life.”
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
The Hunt for Red October
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE FIRST DAY
THE SECOND DAY
THE THIRD DAY
THE FOURTH DAY
THE FIFTH DAY
THE SIXTH DAY
THE SEVENTH DAY
THE EIGHTH DAY
THE NINTH DAY
THE TENTH DAY
THE ELEVENTH DAY
THE TWELFTH DAY
THE THIRTEENTH DAY
THE FOURTEENTH DAY
THE FIFTEENTH DAY
THE SIXTEENTH DAY
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY
THE EIGHTEENTH DAY
Patriot Games
Copyright Page
1 - A Sunny Day in Londontown
2 - Cops and Royals
3 - Flowers and Families
4 - Players
5 - Perqs and Plots
6 - Trials and Troubles
7 - Speedbird Home
8 - Information
9 - A Day for Celebration
10 - Plans and Threats
11 - Warnings
12 - Homecoming
13 - Visitors
14 - Second Chances
15 - Shock and Trauma
16 - Objectives and Patriots
17 - Recriminations and Decisions
18 - Lights
19 - Tests and Passing Grades
20 - Data
21 - Plans
22 - Procedures
23 - Movement
24 - Connections Missed and Made
25 - Rendezvous
26 - The Sound of Freedom
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Epigraph
1. - The Reception of the Party
2. - Tea Clipper
3. - The Weary Red Fox
4. - Bright Stars and Fast Ships
5. - Eye of the Snake/ Face of the Dragon
6. - One if by Land
7. - Catalysts
8. - Document Transfer
9. - Opportunities
10. - Damage Assessment
11. - Procedures
12. - Success and Failure
13. - Councils
14. - Changes
15. - Culmination
16. - Damage Assessment
17. - Conspiracy
18. - Advantages
19. - Travelers
20. - The Key of Destiny
21. - Knave’s Gambit
22. - Active Measures
23. - Best-Laid Plans
24. - The Rules of the Game
25. - Convergence
26. - Black Operations
27. - Under Wraps
Epilogue: Common Ground
Clear and Present Danger
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Dedication
1. - The King of SAR
2. - Creatures of the Night
3. - The Panache Procedure
4. - Preliminaries
5. - Beginnings
6. - Deterrence
7. - Knowns and Unknowns
8. - Deployment
9. - Meeting Engagement
10. - Dry Feet
11. - In-Country
12. - The Curtain on SHOWBOAT
13. - The Bloody Weekend
14. - Snatch and Grab
15. - Deliverymen
16. - Target List
17. - Execution
18. - Force Majeure
19. - Fallout
20. - Discoveries
21. - Explanations
22. - Disclosures
&nbs
p; 23. - The Games Begin
24. - Ground Rules
25. - The ODYSSEY File
26. - Instrumentsof State
27. - The Battleof Ninja Hill
28. - Accounting
29. - Fill-ups
30. - The Good of the Service
The Sum of All Fears
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Epigraph
1 - THE LONGEST JOURNEY...
2 - LABYRINTHS
3 - ... A SINGLE SIT
4 - PROMISED LAND
5 - CHANGES AND GUARDS
6 - MANEUVERS
7 - THE CITY OF GOD
8 - THE PANDORA PROCESS
9 - RESOLVE
10 - LAST STANDS
11 - ROBOSOLDIERS
12 - TINSMITHS
13 - PROCESS
14 - REVELATION
15 - DEVELOPMENT
16 - FUELING THE FIRE
17 - PROCESSING
18 - PROGRESS
19 - DEVELOPMENT
20 - COMPETITION
21 - CONNECTIVITY
22 - REPERCUSSIONS
23 - OPINIONS
24 - REVELATION
25 - RESOLUTION
26 - INTEGRATION
27 - DATA FUSION
28 - CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS
29 - CROSSROADS
30 - EAST ROOM
31 - DANCERS
32 - CLOSURE
33 - PASSAGES
34 - PLACEMENT
35 - THREE SHAKES
36 - WEAPONS EFFECTS
37 - HUMAN EFFECTS
38 - FIRST CONTACTS
39 - ECHOES
40 - COLLISIONS
41 - THE FIELD OF CAMLAN
42 - ASP AND SWORD
43 - THE REVENGE OF MOEDRED
44 - THE BREEZE OF EVENING
Afterword
Without Remorse
Copyright Page
1 - Enfant perdu
2 - Encounters
3 - Captivity
4 - First Light
5 - Commitments
6 - Ambush
7 - Recovery
8 - Concealment
9 - Labor
10 - Pathology
11 - Fabrication
12 - Outfitters
13 - Agendas
14 - Lessons Learned
15 - Lessons Applied
16 - Exercises
17 - Complications
18 - Interference
19 - Quantity of Mercy
20 - Depressurization
21 - Possibilities
22 - Titles
23 - Altruism
24 - Hellos
25 - Departures
26 - Transit
27 - Insertion
28 - First In
29 - Last Out
30 - Travel Agents
31 - Home Is the Hunter
32 - Home Is the Prey
33 - Poisoned Charm
34 - Stalking
35 - Rite of Passage
36 - Dangerous Drugs
37 - Trial by Ordeal
EPILOGUE