by Tom Clancy
There were some other limitations to the technology, as well, which Jack had to keep in mind, for the device’s light weight made it susceptible to sea breezes coming in from the gulf. Even with the stability-control internal gyroscope, Jack had to take care that a breeze that pulled him off course did not disorient him and send him into a wall or a palm tree. He could combat this by trying to gain altitude or calling for Dom to send the helo back up to waypoint bravo, but he knew he would not have much time to make that decision once he got down closer to the ground.
He scanned slowly; with his video glasses all he saw through his own eyes was what was picked up by the tiny camera two hundred feet over the ground and one hundred fifty yards away. Both he and Dom were involved in what they were doing, so it was Chavez’s job to serve as team security. He had no laptop to monitor, no goggles obstructing his vision. Instead he knelt by the pool house, using the infrared scope on his suppressed HK MP7 submachine gun, scanning for threats.
Through his goggles Jack made out the heat register of the man at the front gate, and a second man, standing outside the guardhouse chatting with him. Scanning back to the building he found a third signature, a sentry strolling lazily all the way over by the tennis court/helicopter pad. Ryan determined all three to be well out of earshot of his microhelo.
He finally allowed himself a second to wipe a thick sheen of sweat from his brow before it dripped into his eyes. Everything—their entire mission, their biggest chance to obtain actionable intelligence on General Riaz Rehan—depended on his fingertips and his decision-making in the next few minutes.
“I’m going in,” he said softly, and he gently touched the Y-axis joystick on the controller, bringing his buzzing craft down to 150 feet, then 100 feet, then 50 feet. “Set waypoint Charlie,” he whispered.
“Charlie set.”
Quickly he panned the camera back to the front guardhouse, then back to the helipad. He saw the three perimeter guards; they were right where they needed to be for him to continue on with his mission. He scanned the roof again, and it was clear.
A breeze from the ocean sent his craft rocking to the left. He combated the motion with a countermotion on the X-axis joystick of the controller. Jack did not feel the breeze on his body by the pool house, but at fifty feet it had come very close to sending his helo tumbling off course. He had a backup microhelo in one of the watertight cases, but setting it up for use would waste precious time. They had decided that if they lost a helo on the insertion, they would use the second craft to attempt to recover the first, as they did not want to leave a radio-controlled helicopter with a high-tech camera and a transmitter on the grounds of their target, lest the security force there be tipped off to the surveillance mission against them.
Caruso leaned in to his cousin’s ear. “It’s okay, Jack. Just try again. Take your time.”
More sweat dripped into Ryan’s eyes now. This wasn’t like back on the roof or in the parking lot of Hendley Associates. This was the field, the real world, and it bore no resemblance to his training.
Jack let the sweat drip freely now as he concentrated on landing his remote aircraft.
He touched down gently next to an air-conditioning vent on the roof. Immediately he shut down the helo, then put down the controller, and lifted a second controller from the grass, finding it only by feeling around for a moment with his hands. This device was a one-handed module, not one-third the size of the remote control for the microhelo. On this second handheld unit he pushed a single button, and now his video glasses projected a new image over his eyes. It was a low-light camera image that showed one of the struts over the microhelo’s landing skids, and behind it, the narrow slats of the ventilation shaft.
This second camera was fixed to a four-inch-long, two-inch-wide, one-inch-tall robot that had been attached to the bottom of the helo by a magnet. On command from Ryan’s controller it released its magnetic hold, and when Ryan powered it up, two rows of tiny legs extended like a centipede, and it lifted off the roof.
The legs were the propulsion system of this ground-traveling bug-bot, and Ryan tested the device by ordering it forward and backward, then panning the 1080p video camera in all directions. Once satisfied that the robot was working nominally, he powered it down, then switched back to the helo controller. He ordered the microhelo to hit its three way-points and return to its helipad.
Five minutes later he was flying a second bug-bot to Rehan’s roof, landing it near the first. The wind had picked up a little between flights, so the second sortie took almost twice as long as the first.
“Ready for number three,” Jack whispered when the helicopter was back on its pad.
Chavez loaded the bug-bot on the aircraft. “Microhelo is ready to launch payload three.”
“How are we on time, Ding?” Ryan asked.
After a moment’s hesitation, Chavez said, “Fair. Don’t rush, but don’t fuck around, either.”
“Roger that,” Jack said, and he switched his video glasses back over to the camera in the swivel turret under the microhelo’s nose.
After the third and fourth bug-bots were delivered to the air vent over the attic of the target building, Jack brought the helo back to waypoint alpha, two hundred feet above his head, in preparation for a landing. Chavez was ready with the fifth payload and fresh battery for the chopper, as they had determined it could not fly for more than an hour on a single charge.
“Okay,” Jack said. “I’m bringing it down.”
Just then a breeze caught the helicopter, pushing it inland. Jack had dealt with a half-dozen such incidents in the past forty-five minutes, so he did not panic. Instead he brought the chopper back out over the water, it took a second for it to right itself, and he thought he had control. But it drifted again, and then a third time as he started his descent.
“Damn it,” he whispered. “I think I’m losing her.”
Caruso was watching the feed in his monitor. “Just bring her down a little faster.”
“Okay,” Jack said. At one hundred fifty feet the craft jolted forward, and Ryan had to pull it back. “I’m losing the GPS hold. Could be losing battery.”
Caruso said, “Ding, can you see it?”
Chavez looked into the night sky above. “Negative.”
“Keep looking, you may have to catch it.”
But it was too late. Jack saw his video feed turn away from the water and the lights of the Kempinski Hotel as the microhelo began to spin slowly, and its descent speed increased sharply.
“Shit!” he said, a little too loudly considering their covert position. “It’s dead. It’s dropping.”
“I don’t see shit,” Chavez said. He was walking around with his eyes in the sky. How fast is it coming down?”
Just then the helicopter slammed into the grass ten feet from its launch pad. It exploded into a dozen fragments.
Jack took off his goggles. “Son of a bitch. Set up the reserve helo.”
But Chavez was already moving toward the wreckage. “Negative. We’ll go with the four bots we have in place. That’s going to have to do it. We don’t have time to send another bird up.”
“Roger that,” said Jack, secretly relieved. He was exhausted with the stress of flying the tiny aircraft into the target location, and he looked forward to getting back across the water, where Caruso would be in charge of operating the bug-bots in the air vents.
50
It was approaching five a.m. when the three men got back to their bungalow. Jack was beyond exhausted. While Domingo and Dominic set up the remote equipment for the bug-bots, Ryan dropped onto the couch, still wet from his swim. Dom laughed; he’d been through every bit of the physical exertion that his cousin had endured, but the mental strain of launching, flying, and landing had all been on Jack Junior.
Now it was Caruso’s turn to drive.
Dominic had studied the architectural plans from the developers of several of the Palm Jumeirah properties in order to find the best entry points for their
bug-bots. The attic vents were deemed the best bet, and as the former FBI agent drove his first little bug-shaped robot into the vent, he was happy to find no post-construction metal grating or wire mesh in his way.
The tiny legs on the robot could be magnetized for moving up and down metal surfaces, just like in the ductwork of the air-conditioning system, so he had no problem moving on both the X and Y axes as he progressed deeper into Rehan’s safe house.
The video quality was amazingly good, though the fluctuating transmission speeds at times caused a degradation in the quality. Dom and the other operators at The Campus had also tested a thermal infrared camera, similar to but superior to the one in the nose turret of the microhelo’s thermal cam, but ultimately they decided that that feature would not be necessary for the indoor work they had planned here in Dubai, plus the infrared cams drew more battery power and this would be detrimental to their mission, so they were not attached to the ground drones.
After twenty minutes of operation, he had his first bot in position at the ground a/c return duct in the master bedroom. Dom adjusted the tilt of the camera and checked to make certain that nothing was obstructing the pan. Then he set the white balance and focused.
The laptop in the bungalow displayed a near-perfect color image of the room, and even though there was nothing to hear at the moment, the rush of air through the vent convinced him the audio was working nominally.
Dominic Caruso repeated this process twice more over the course of the next hour. The second bug-bot he placed in a duct overlooking the great room. The camera afforded only a narrow view of the sofa area and the entry hall—by no means a perfect shot of every corner of the room—but Caruso felt sure the microphone was positioned well to record anything that was said in the room below.
The third bug-bot started normally and moved a few inches, but stopped within a foot of the entrance to the ventilation system. Dom and Jack spent a few minutes troubleshooting the problem, but finally they gave up, unable to tell if there was some hardware damage to the transmitter or if a software glitch was creating the problem. They declared the device dead, and Caruso moved on to the last robot. This one he placed in a second-floor office area without any problems.
By seven a.m. the operation was complete and Dominic powered down all the cameras. The surveillance equipment, the cameras and the microphones, were passive systems, meaning they did not operate all the time—instead they had to be turned on remotely. This saved battery power greatly, but it also would be incredibly beneficial for an operation that was expected to last a week or more.
Caruso called Granger in Maryland, and Granger confirmed that they had been able to pick up feeds from three of the cameras and audio from three of the mikes, just as Dom, Jack, and Ding could from the bungalow. The feed needed to be sent to The Campus instantly as, it was assumed, much of the audio they would pick up would be in Rehan’s native tongue, and Rick Bell had an Urdu-speaking analyst at the ready twenty-four/seven.
Caruso asked Granger if there was any news about Clark, but John had not checked in. Sam Granger also said that Sam Driscoll had not checked back in yet, either, but they had no reason to suspect anything was amiss.
When Chavez hung up with Granger, he flopped on the couch next to Ryan. Both men were worn out.
At first Jack Jr. was dejected with the success of the mission. “All that work and just three out of five cams and mikes are online? Are you serious? For all we know Rehan likes to sit at the kitchen table when he works. If that’s the case, we’re fucked, because we won’t hear a damn thing that isn’t in the office, the great room, or the master bedroom.”
But Domingo calmed his junior colleague. “Don’t ever forget, ’mano, the real world isn’t like the movies. As far as I’m concerned three out of five is a home run. We are in. Doesn’t matter if it’s one camera or one hundred cameras. We are fucking in! We’ll get the goods, trust me.”
Chavez insisted the other two celebrate with him by ordering a massive breakfast. Ryan begged off at first, said he needed to catch some sleep, but once the Moët Champagne, huge omelets, and flaky pastries arrived, Ryan got his second wind and he indulged with the other two.
After breakfast, they cleaned their scuba gear.
And then they slept.
51
It took Clark several days to locate his target in Germany. The man he sought was Manfred Kromm, and Kromm had proven to be an exceedingly challenging person to find. He was not undercover, nor was he taking active measures to ensure he remained hidden. No, Manfred Kromm was difficult to locate because he was a nobody.
Thirty years ago he had played a role in East German intelligence. He and his partner had done something illegal, and Clark had been brought in to sort it out. Now the man was in his seventies, and he was no longer in Berlin, no longer a government employee, and no longer someone who anyone cared about.
Clark knew he was still alive because the questions the FBI asked Hardesty could have been triggered only by Manfred Kromm. Yes, it was possible Kromm could have written down his version of events years ago and passed away in the interim, but Clark did not suppose that was a document Kromm would have written willingly, and he did not suppose there was any reason that information should come to light right now, unless Kromm had only recently told his story.
Kromm now lived in Cologne, Germany, in the state of North Rhine–Westphalia, on the Rhine River. Clark had found his man finally after going to his last known address, a two-story building in the Haselhorst section of Berlin, and then pretending to be a long-lost relative. A woman there knew Kromm had moved to Cologne, and she knew he wore a brace on his leg due to nerve damage from his diabetes. Clark took this information and headed to Cologne, where he spent three full and very long days posing as an employee of a medical equipment company from the United States. He printed up business cards and invoices and phony e-mail exchanges, and he took them to nearly every end-user supplier of medical devices in town. He claimed to have a customized ankle-and-foot orthotic ordered by a man named Kromm, and requested help finding the man’s current address.
Some shops turned him away with a shrug, but most efficiently checked their databases, and one had a listing for a man named Manfred Kromm, age seventy-four, address Thieboldgasse thirteen, flat 3A, who was sent monthly supplies of insulin test strips and syringes.
And just like that, John Clark had found his man.
Clark found the home of his target in the Altstadt of Cologne. Number thirteen Thieboldgasse was a four-story white stucco apartment building that was a carbon copy of the fifty or more that ran down both sides of the road, accented here and there with a single tree out front. The near-identical properties had tiny grass lawns bisected by fifteen-foot walkways up to the single glass doors to their lobbies.
For an hour John strolled the neighborhood in an afternoon rain shower that allowed him to use an umbrella and wear the collar of his raincoat high above his ears and thereby mask his face. He determined possible escape routes in case his meeting did not go well, found his way to the bus stop and to the Strassenbahn, and from the streetcar he kept an eye out for cops or postmen or any others who could be a bother if they passed up the street at the wrong time. These were rental buildings, and there was enough foot traffic in and out of them that he did not worry about drawing attention from passersby, and after the hour of peripheral surveillance he focused his attention on building number thirteen.
The building was not old in the European sense; very little in Cologne could be considered old, as the city had been altogether flattened during the Second World War. Spending several minutes across the street staring at number thirteen Thieboldgasse through the rainfall, Clark found the building to be as featureless and colorless and charmless as the Cold War itself.
Back then, during a Cold War that was never cold enough for men on the sharp edge like John Clark, Clark had come to Germany on a special operation. He was CIA/SAD at the time, the Special Activities Division.
He was pulled out of a training evolution in North Carolina with members of the Army’s newly minted tier-one unit, Delta Force, and he was put on a CIA 35A Learjet and flown to Europe. After a stop at Mildenhall AFB in Suffolk, England, to refuel, Clark was back in the air.
No one told him where they were taking him or what he’d be doing when he got there.
Clark landed at Tempelhof in Berlin, and was whisked to a safe house within pistol shot of the Berlin Wall.
There he met an old friend named Gene Lilly. They’d worked together in ’Nam, and now Lilly was the chief of CIA’s Berlin Station. Lilly told Clark he was needed for a simple bag-drop operation over the border, but Clark smelled the bullshit in the story. He knew they didn’t need an SAD hard asset for a bag drop. He relayed his doubt to his superior, and then Gene Lilly broke down in tears.
Gene said he’d been caught in a honey trap by a hooker working with a couple of Stasi foot soldiers who’d gone rogue to make some extra cash. They had extorted from him all of his life’s savings, and he needed John to hand over the satchel full of cash and pick up a folder full of negatives. Clark did not ask what was on the negatives—he was damn certain he did not want to know.
Lilly made it clear to Clark that there was no one else in the Agency he trusted, and the thirty-three-year-old SAD asset agreed to help out his old friend.
Minutes later John was handed a satchel full of deutschmarks and taken to the U-Bahn, then he shuffled into a train half full of locals.