by Tom Clancy
He stumbled more than once. The shrapnel wounds in his thighs and calves had caused muscle injuries that made walking uncoordinated as well as painful, and with the metal chains on his wrists he could not reach out to balance himself.
As he passed the locals here, he was somewhat surprised to see there was little interest in him from those around the compound. Either this place got a lot of prisoners or they were just disciplined enough to not make a show of someone new in their midst.
Down in the basement he had his answer. He entered a room at the end of a stone hall, then passed a long row of small iron-bar-fronted cells on his left. Looking into the dim cages, he counted seven prisoners. One was Western, a young man who did not speak as Driscoll passed. Two more were Asian; they lay on rope cots and stared blankly back at him.
The rest of the prisoners were Afghans or Pakistanis. One of these men, a burly older man with a long gray beard, lay on the floor of his cell on his back. His eyes were half open and glassy. It was apparent even in the low light that his life would be leaving his body soon unless he received medical care.
Driscoll’s new home was the last cell on the left. It was dark and cold, but there was a rope cot that would keep him off the concrete floor, and the guards removed his chains. As the iron bars clanged shut behind him, he stepped over the waste bucket and eased his sore body onto the cot.
For a former Army Ranger accustomed to living an austere life, these digs weren’t the worst he’d ever seen. They were a damn sight better than where he’d just come from, and the fact that it looked like he might be here for a while, while it was certainly not his first choice, caused his spirits to improve markedly from where they had been a day before.
But more than anything involving his own predicament, Sam Driscoll thought about his mission. He just had to find some way to get the word back to The Campus that General Rehan was working with Haqqani network agents on something that he very much wanted to keep shrouded in secrecy.
48
Paul Laska would have very much liked to visit this beautiful nineteenth-century French estate in the summer. The swimming pool was exquisite, the beach below was private and pristine, and there was outdoor seating all over the back of the huge walled property, ideal natural nooks in the gardens and grounds set for relaxing or dining or enjoying a cocktail as the sun set.
But it was late October now, and though it was still quite lovely here, out in the back garden, with afternoon temperatures hovering in the lower sixties and evenings dipping down into the upper forties, there was not much in the way of outdoor recreation to be had for a seventy-year-old man. The pool and the Mediterranean were both frigid.
And in any case, Laska did not have time for frivolity. He was on a mission.
Saint Aygulf was a developed seaside town, without all the clutter and crowds of Saint Tropez, just to the south on the southern tip of the Bay of Saint Tropez. But it was as beautiful as its more famous neighbor; in fact, the exquisite villa, the hills behind it, and the water in front of it were, to put it mildly, paradise.
The property was not his own; it belonged instead to an A-list Hollywood actor who split his time between the West Coast of the United States and the southern coast of France. A call from a Laska aide to the actor’s people had secured the villa for the week, though Paul expected to be here less than a day.
It was well after nine p.m. when a burly Frenchman in his mid-fifties entered the back patio through the sliding glass doors from the library. He wore a blue blazer with a collar open to reveal his thick neck. He’d come up from Cannes, and he moved like a man who had someplace to be.
Laska stood from his chair by the infinity pool when the man approached.
“How wonderful to see you again, Paul.”
“Likewise, Fabrice. You are looking healthy and tan.”
“And you are looking like you are working too hard over there in America. I always tell you, ‘Come to the south of France, you will live forever.’”
“May I fix you a Cognac before dinner?”
“Merci.”
Laska stepped over to a rolling cart near his table by the pool. As the two men discussed the beautiful villa and the beautiful girlfriend of the actor who owned it, the Czech billionaire poured Cognac into a pair of brandy snifters and passed one to his guest. Fabrice Bertrand-Morel took the snifter, sipped, and nodded in appreciation.
Laska motioned for the Frenchman to take a seat at the table.
“You are always the gentleman, my dear Paul.”
Laska nodded with a smile as he warmed the cup of the snifter with his hand.
Then Bertrand-Morel finished the thought: “Which makes me wonder why you allow your bodyguards to search me for a wire. It was a little too intimate.”
The older man shrugged. “Israelis,” he said, as if that somehow explained the frisking that had just taken place inside the house.
Bertrand-Morel let it go. He held his snifter over the open flame of a tea-light candle on the table to warm it. “So, Paul. I enjoy seeing you in person, even if it comes with demands to lift my shirt and to loosen my belt. It has been so very long. But I am wondering, what could possibly be so très important that we would need to meet like this?”
“Perhaps the matter can wait until after dinner?”
“Let me hear it now. If it is important enough, then dinner can wait.”
Laska smiled. “Fabrice, I know you as a man who can assist in the most delicate of affairs.”
“I am at your service, as always.”
“I imagine you know of the John Clark matter that is on the news in the United States?” Laska inflected the statement as a question, but he had little doubt that the French investigator knew all about the matter.
“Oui, l’affaire Clark. Jack Ryan’s personal assassin, or so say the French papers.”
“It is every bit as grave a scandal as that. I need you, and your operatives, to find Mr. Clark.”
Fabrice Bertrand-Morel’s eyebrows rose slightly and he sipped his drink. “I can see how I could be asked to get involved with the hunt for this man, as my people are all over the world and very well connected. But what I do not understand, at all, is why I am being asked to do this by you. What is your involvement?”
Laska looked out at the bay. “I am a concerned citizen.”
Bertrand-Morel chuckled; his large frame shifted up and down in his chair as he did so. “I’m sorry, Paul. I need to know more than that to agree to this operation.”
Now the Czech-American turned his head to his guest. “All right, Fabrice. I am a concerned citizen who will see that your organization is paid whatever you wish to capture Mr. Clark and return him to the United States.”
“We can do this, although I understand the CIA is working the same mission at present. I worry there is the potential for stepping on one another’s toes.”
“The CIA does not want to catch the man. They will not get in the way of a motivated detective like yourself.”
“Are you doing this to help Edward Kealty?”
The older man nodded as he sipped his Cognac.
“Now I see why President Kealty’s people did not come to me about this.” The Frenchman nodded. “Am I to assume he has information that would be embarrassing to candidate Ryan?”
“The existence of John Clark is embarrassing to candidate Ryan. But without him captured, without the footage on the news of him being dragged into a police station, President Kealty looks impotent and the man remains a compelling mystery. We do not need him as a mystery. We need him as a prisoner. A criminal.”
“‘We,’ Paul?”
“I am speaking as an American and a lover of the rule of law.”
“Yes, of course you are, mon ami. I will begin work immediately on finding your Mr. Clark. I assume you will be footing the bill? Not the American taxpayer?”
“You will give me the figures personally, and I will have my foundation reimburse you. No invoice.”
“Pas de
problème. Your credit is always good.”
49
The wealth and connections of Gerry Hendley came in handy at times like these. Across four hundred meters of water from the Dubai safe house of Riaz Rehan in Palm Jumeirah sat the five-star Kempinski Hotel & Residences, and here a three-bedroom water bungalow was owned by an English friend of Gerry’s who worked in the oil and gas business. Hendley told the man he needed to borrow his place, and the American financial manager offered an extraordinary sum for the property, paid out on a per-week basis. It would have been too perfect for the home to be empty at that moment. Instead the “friend of Gerry’s” was there with his wife and young daughter. But the oil and gas man was only too happy to pack up his family and move over to the opulent Burj Al Arab, an exquisite “six-star” hotel in the shape of a sail that jutted out into the Persian Gulf.
All on Gerry Hendley’s dime, of course.
The oil and gas man left his home just in time. The Gulfstream G550 landed at Dubai International Airport, cleared customs, and then parked in a great sea of corporate jets billeted at an FBO there on the ramp.
As Ryan, Caruso, and Chavez began unloading their gear from the baggage compartment, Captain Reid and First Officer Hicks stood glassy-eyed on the hot tarmac—not from exhaustion after the long flight but in amazement at what they figured to be something in the neighborhood of five billion dollars’ worth of machinery parked around them.
Luxury jets and high-tech helicopters were lined up tip to tail, and Hicks and Reid both planned to get a closer look at each and every one.
The three operators had plans themselves to get a closer look at one of the craft. A Bell JetRanger owned by the Kempinski was waiting to ferry them and their baggage directly to their residence.
Twenty minutes after deplaning from the Gulfstream, Dom, Ding, and Jack were back in the air, lifting into the glorious morning sunshine. They flew low along Dubai Creek at first, the wide waterway that separated Old Dubai and its congested streets and low sprawling stone structures from the skyscrapers of New Dubai along the coast.
Soon they headed out over the water, flying over the five-kilometer-wide Palm Island itself, developed roads built up over the water in the shape of a tree trunk and fifteen palm fronds, all these surrounded by a crescent-shaped island that served as a breakwater.
On this breakwater sat the Kempinski Hotel & Residences, and here the helicopter landed.
The three Campus operators were led to their property, a luxurious bungalow alongside a placid lagoon. Four hundred yards away, Rehan’s safe house sat on the end of one of the palm fronds. They would be able to see it from here with the Leupold binoculars they brought with them, though they planned on getting a much closer look once night fell.
At two-thirty in the morning Ryan, Chavez, and Caruso sat in a rubber boat halfway between the Kempinski Hotel & Residences and the “palm frond” upon which Rehan’s safe house sat, and they watched the dark compound through their night optics. They were happy to determine that, other than the small permanent security force—a man at the front guardhouse and a couple of foot sentries on patrol—the grounds outside the main house seemed to be uninhabited. There would be cameras and motion detectors and perhaps even acoustic monitoring equipment, but Chavez, Caruso, and Ryan were prepared for this, so tonight they would execute the most dangerous portion of their operation.
They were much less concerned about equipment that could give them away and much more concerned about men who could shoot them.
They had rented the boat and the scuba gear from a PADI dive shop not far from their bungalow. All three men had significant scuba experience, though Domingo reminded them all that John Clark had more dives under his belt in one six-month period as a SEAL than Chavez, Ryan, and Caruso had in their combined lives. Still, the water was calm, and they were not planning on going very deep or staying under very long.
The small rubber boat was not optimal for the operation; neither was the scuba equipment they wore. But this was the equipment available to them, so when Ryan complained that their gear could be better, Chavez just reminded him that they would all have to “adapt and overcome.”
If they had needed to make a true covert underwater entry on the compound itself, they would have preferred to use rebreathing equipment, regulators that did not emit bubbles but instead reprocessed the exhaled gas with fresh oxygen. Rebreathers were crucial for covert scuba work, but even though the basic open-circuit gear they had rented from the recreational dive shop would give off bubbles galore when they swam underwater, they did not plan on arriving close enough to the compound to attract attention before coming out of the water.
They dropped anchor and slipped into the water silently. Ryan handed weighted and watertight boxes over the side to the other two men before he climbed out of the rubber boat and attached his swim fins to his feet. Soon all three men, each with a box in his hand, swam down to a depth of ten feet and checked their dive computers, found the direction to their target, and lined their bodies up on the lubber line of their compasses. They headed out with Chavez in the lead.
Ryan brought up the rear. His pounding heart created an odd techno-style cadence when coupled with the hissing noise of his breathing through his regulator’s valve. The warm black water cocooned him as he progressed, giving him the sense of being totally alone. Only the slight rhythmic pressures of his cousin Dominic’s swim fins kicking ten feet or so ahead of him reminded him that his colleagues were with him, and he was comforted by this knowledge.
Finally, after he was underwater for ten minutes, Jack’s forehead bumped gently into Dominic’s tank. Dom and Ding had stopped; they were on a sandy terrace on the incline that led out of the water up to the narrow strip of beach by Al Khisab Road. The depth on the terrace was just eight feet, and here Chavez used a faint red flashlight to show the other two where they should deposit their scuba gear. The men took off their equipment, strapped it together, and lashed it to a large rock, and then they each took one more long breath on their regulators. This done, the three men walked out of the water, dressed head to toe in black neoprene and carrying the watertight boxes with them.
Ten minutes after leaving the ocean behind, Dom, Ding, and Jack had moved onto a darkened property four lots down from Rehan’s estate. This home was neither walled nor patrolled, so they took a chance there were no motion detectors installed, either. Behind a large pool house, the Americans began setting up the equipment they’d pulled from the watertight cases. It took a good fifteen minutes of preparations, each man working on his own project, but shortly after three a.m. Chavez gave a silent thumbs-up and Ryan sat down with his back to the pool house wall. He placed a set of video glasses over his eyes, and he lifted a shoebox-sized remote control module out of a box.
From now until the deployment of the surveillance equipment was complete, Jack Ryan Jr. was in charge of this mission.
With a well-practiced flick of a switch on the controller in his hands, Ryan’s glasses projected the image transmitted from the infrared camera hanging from a rotating turret on the bottom of a miniature radio-controlled helicopter that sat on a foldout plastic landing pad a few feet away. The over-under propellers of the tiny aircraft were only fourteen inches in diameter, and the device looked not much different from a high-end toy.
But this was no toy, as evidenced by the sound it made when Jack engaged the engine. Its motor generated only thirty percent of the noise of a regular RC helo of this size, and the device also carried a payload from an operator-releasable locking mechanism on its belly.
The German company that manufactured the microhelo sold it as a remote viewing and transporting device for the nuclear and biological waste industries, giving an operator standoff capability to view unsafe areas and deliver remote cameras and testing equipment. As The Campus had moved from an assassination team to more of an intelligence-gathering shop in the past year, they had been on the lookout for new technologies that could serve as force multipliers in th
eir endeavors. They had only five field operators, after all, so they did what they could to leverage their efforts with high-tech solutions.
Jack had a total of five payloads to deploy tonight with his microhelo, so he did not waste a moment before lifting his aircraft into the night sky.
When Ryan had his tiny craft hovering fifty feet above its landing pad, his deft fingers moved to a toggle switch on the right side of his controller. Using this, he tilted down the camera on the turret below the nose, and with ninety degrees of tilt he was looking down on himself and his two colleagues tucked tightly into the darkest portion of yard behind the pool house. He then called out softly to Dom, “Set waypoint alpha.”
Caruso sat next to him with a laptop computer opened and displaying the transmission from the tiny chopper’s camera. With a click of a button, Dom created a waypoint in the memory of the microhelo so that when called back to “alpha,” the craft’s GPS and autopilot would fly it directly back to a position over its base.
After tapping the requisite keys of his computer, Dom said, “Alpha set.”
Jack then climbed the aircraft to a height of two hundred feet. Once this altitude was attained, he flew over the three properties between his location and Rehan’s estate, flying with a slightly downward tilt to the turret cam so that he could monitor the sky in front of him as well.
When he had positioned his helo and its payload directly over the flat portion of the roof of the estate, he called out to Dom, “Set bravo.”
A moment later, the reply: “Waypoint bravo set.”
Jack’s target was the large air-conditioning vent on the roof of the building, but he did not descend immediately. Instead he used the turret cam, switched to thermal infrared, and began looking for Rehan’s guard force. He had no great worry about the device being seen in the darkness above the roof, but he was instead concerned about noise. Because although the microhelo’s engine was indeed quiet, it was definitely not silent, especially when operating over a darkened property on a dead-end street in the middle of the night. Ryan needed to make absolutely certain there were no guards on the roof or patrolling alongside the gardens at the northeastern part of the building.