by Tom Clancy
Kyle had actually met Jack Junior—a college kid at the time—when she was still with the Capitol Police. Nice kid. Good-looking. Kind of bookish, too, as she recalled. Georgetown, wasn’t it? Yeah, that was it. Just like his old man. That meant he was smart.
It wasn’t completely crazy that someone like him would work for a financial outfit like Hendley Associates. Gerry Hendley and President Ryan went way back. She could see the President picking up the phone and asking Gerry to do him a favor and hire his kid. Good connections for Hendley, too.
But why was Clark playing chauffeur to a suit monkey like Junior? Clark must have been, what, seventy-plus years old by now? Too old to be a bodyguard, and besides, that’s what the Secret Service was for.
So where in the hell was the Secret Service?
Something was definitely off about all of this.
“You get any pictures of the passenger?”
“Sending now.”
A moment later, her phone dinged. She checked the photo.
Yeah. That was Junior for sure. Interesting.
The President’s son.
“Where did Clark pick him up?”
“At an apartment in Alexandria. They left there and headed back over to Hendley Associates. Pulled into the underground parking lot. I couldn’t follow. About twenty minutes later they pulled back out and headed west.”
“West?”
“Yeah. Surprised me, too. I assumed they were headed for the airport. That’s when they started their evasion route. After three turns, I broke off, as per my SOP.”
Kyle sighed. There wasn’t any way to run mobile surveillance with just one vehicle on a determined target. Breaking off was the right move. Maybe Tyler wasn’t a complete idiot after all.
“Did you get the plate number?”
“Sending now.”
Kyle’s phone chirped again. “Good job. You can call it a night.”
“Sorry I dropped the ball, chief.”
“This one’s on me. I’ll take it from here.”
Kyle rang off, then dialed another number. A captain in the D.C. Metro Police Department owed her a favor. Last year, his wife contacted Kyle’s agency, wanted a surveillance on her husband, whom she suspected of having an affair. She wanted evidence—or, more accurately, her divorce attorney did. Kyle agreed. Came back empty-handed.
“You sure?” the captain’s wife replied, stunned and disbelieving.
“I never caught him with another woman” was Kyle’s honest answer. Honest, because Kyle was the woman the captain was sleeping with, and there was no other woman besides her that she ever saw. Saved the captain half of his pension and six figures in legal fees.
“Sandra? To what do I owe the pleasure?” the captain said.
“Need a favor.”
The gravelly-voiced captain chuckled. “The long favor or the short one?”
“I thought you and your wife were back together.”
“We are. But you know how it is.”
“Well, the favor I’m asking for is vertical, not horizontal. I need you to track a vehicle for me on the DAS—and on the down-low.”
“I’m just about to leave my shift.”
“It’s important.”
“Give me the details.”
Kyle gave the captain the plate number, along with the make, model, and color of the vehicle. She also suggested its final destination.
“How long will it take?”
“Depends on where it lands. If you’re right, probably no more than thirty minutes.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“And you know how I’ll want it paid back, don’t you?”
“Horizontal.”
“Next Tuesday. My place in Georgetown. Eight o’clock.”
“Deal.” She didn’t mind. Captain Merriweather was a legendary lay.
* * *
—
Twenty-three minutes later, Merriweather called.
“I just texted you a file. Your car arrived at Dulles ten minutes ago. Headed for the charter jet FBO.”
“Thanks, DeAndre.”
“Next Tuesday. Don’t forget.”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
He laughed at the imagery. “Hope we don’t wake the neighbors.”
He hung up just as his text message arrived. It was all pictures, each taken from the D.C. DAS—the Microsoft-branded Domain Awareness System. The technology was straight out of the television show Person of Interest. The DAS was a surveillance software package that linked thousands of D.C. metro area cameras, allowing law enforcement to track the movement of people and vehicles in real time. It was even possible to track them twenty-four hours prior—everything was recorded, but the city budget allowed for only one day’s worth of data storage.
Tracking a vehicle was especially easy when the vehicle license plate was known. The DAS even provided a windshield shot of both Clark and Ryan in the front seat of their generic sedan. Exactly the kind of confirmation Kyle liked.
Clark had, indeed, driven aggressively to either avoid or shake any kind of tail. Kyle hoped it was the former. Dixon had been quite specific about not getting caught in the act. The final picture in Merriweather’s text was of the car passing through the general aviation gate toward the FBO terminal.
But why Dulles? Reagan National was far closer to the Hendley Associates building. Then Kyle remembered: Reagan was good only for domestic flights for private charters. A private charter had to go through either Baltimore or Dulles for international flights. Reagan National didn’t have the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities needed for international travel on private planes.
So Ryan was flying out of the country. But to where?
No way to tell from these photos. But Kyle had an idea. She jumped on her laptop and started digging into her favorite databases. Within an hour she had pieced it all together. Hendley Associates owned a Gulfstream G550. After procuring its tail number, it was a short jump to the FAA database to find the filed flight plan.
Bingo.
Jack Junior was heading for Warsaw, Poland.
She called Dixon with the intel.
Strangely, the senator didn’t seem surprised.
26
NEAR RIVAK, TAJIKISTAN,
CLOSE TO THE BORDER OF AFGHANISTAN
The big Chinese-built JAC diesel tractor-trailer rumbled down the narrow asphalt road at the foot of the gray-and-rust-colored Pamir Mountains, rising higher the farther west they traveled.
Giant sandstone boulders crowded the road shoulder. The driver, Lin, imagined the rocks crashing down from high above centuries ago—or maybe even this morning. Any one of them was big enough to catapult his big red diesel rig into the pale green Gunt River on the other side of the two-lane.
Despite his cushioned air-suspension seat, Lin’s rear end and lower back were trashed after sitting for so many kilometers from Kashgar in Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, where the three-truck convoy had loaded up. His mouth was dry from the bitter tobacco he’d been forced to smoke for the last three days, but his screaming bladder told him not to drink any more warm soda.
The three-truck convoy was due at its destination in three hours, but Lin doubted they would arrive on time. The narrow road twisted and turned as it followed the river wending its way through the anticline mountains, snowcapped in the far distance.
The forty-year-old driver lit another cigarette as he began a long turn around the next bend.
“Another smoke?” the man in the next seat asked, smiling. He was staring up at the mountains through a monocular pressed against his eye.
“Nervous habit,” Lin responded, snapping his lighter shut.
“Yes. Nervous.”
Lin thought the Frenchman looked a little like the American movie star Matt Damon, in par
t because he heard one of the other laowai call him Mathieu. His last name was Cluzet. He looked to be thirty years old, if that, and wore his dirty-blond hair short. Cluzet was clean-shaven, unlike his friends, and built like a runner. He seemed unremarkable in most regards, but he was a pleasant fellow and his Mandarin was good. He wore Levi’s, running shoes, and a University of American Samoa Law School sweatshirt.
He carried no weapons. Not even a knife.
And he was in charge.
“The mountains are beautiful, and the air is crystal clear,” Cluzet said. “You can see forever.” He lowered the monocular.
They rounded the sharp corner and Lin slammed his brakes. The truck shuddered to a halt in a whoosh of air brakes.
A roadblock. Two battered, open-aired Soviet-era UAZ jeeps stood bumper-to-bumper in the middle of the highway. Both drivers flashed AK-47s, and the men in back of each held RPGs on their shoulders. Each bearded man wore the distinctive woolen Afghan pakol cap, including the tallest, a scowling giant standing over six feet five inches in the middle of the road, a short-barreled AKS-74U rifle draped by his side, held in one hand by the pistol grip. His face was dark and leathered from years in the mountains, his woolly beard shot through with flecks of gray.
Cluzet winked at Lin. “I bet now you’re really nervous, eh?”
Lin tossed his cigarette out the window, mute with fear. He glanced in his sideview mirrors and saw the two other trucks lunging to a halt behind him, rocking on their shocks. It was lucky they didn’t crash into him or each other.
“Kill the engine,” Cluzet ordered as he dropped down out of the high truck cab and approached the giant Afghan.
“Salaam alaykum,” Cluzet offered cheerfully.
The grim Afghan leader nodded. “Wa alaykumu salam.”
“What do you want?” Cluzet asked in passable Dari, one of the two major languages here and across the border in Afghanistan.
The tall Afghan did a poor job of hiding his surprise that the infidel spoke his language. His wide eyes narrowed. “How long were you in my country?”
“Three years.”
“You fought?”
Cluzet nodded at the Russian military-issue watch on his wrist. “You did as well, but not Russians. Too young.”
The giant smiled broadly, showing a few missing teeth. “My father killed many Russians. He took this from an officer. 103rd Guards Airborne Division.”
Cluzet smiled in return and held up his arm. A big Casio G-Shock was on his wrist. He tapped it hopefully. “Let’s trade! Mine is much better.”
The Afghan dismissed the smaller, younger man with a shrug. “I don’t want your watch. I want your trucks. Or at least what is inside of them.”
Cluzet laughed. “You must be joking. They’re full of nothing but DVD players, portable radios, and children’s toys.” He nodded toward his armed friends. “They don’t look like children to me.”
The Afghan leader shook his head. “Indeed, they are not. They are men who do what I command.”
Cluzet held up his left hand in a peaceful gesture. “I’m reaching into my back pocket to show you something. Don’t get nervous, okay?” He flashed a friendly smile, then slowly reached into the back pocket of his jeans and extracted a thick wallet.
The Afghan leader’s dark eyes were fixed on the billfold. Cluzet opened it and pulled out a wad of American twenty-dollar bills. U.S. currency was more valuable in this part of the world than local paper. Cluzet held the cash out and the Afghan slung his weapon. Cluzet handed the stack of bills over as he scanned the rocks above. The metallic click of rifles grabbed Cluzet’s attention. The nervous Afghan drivers raised their AKs as two more Europeans stepped forward, one on each side of Cluzet. Unlike Cluzet, these two men were armed with pistols holstered on their legs.
“These men are my friends. They mean you no harm,” Cluzet said.
Without looking up, the Afghan leader shouted back at his men, “Put your rifles down.”
The rifles lowered, but the hard stares didn’t.
“Everything okay, boss?” the man on Cluzet’s left, a German, asked in English.
“Kein Problem,” Cluzet said. “We’re just about done here.”
The other man, a short, barrel-chested Spaniard, smiled broadly, speaking in a near whisper through clenched teeth, like a ventriloquist. “These guys speak English?”
“Not a word.”
The Spaniard raised his voice but kept staring at the armed fighters in the jeeps. “I counted ten men up top.”
“Thirteen,” Cluzet said. “Including a sniper on the other side of the river.”
The Spaniard nodded. “Good eye.”
“Four hundred American dollars,” the Afghan finally said. “Not enough.”
“But that is all I’m going to give you.” Cluzet smiled even more broadly than before. “Take it. Please.”
“Do you think I am an idiot? Do foreign devils with guns travel in these mountains to deliver children’s toys?”
“Look, I admire you. I really do. You picked a terrific blocking point. A narrow part of the road just around a blind curve. That is very expert. And your men above on both sides with long-range weapons and RPGs.”
“Then you realize I can kill you all and just take what I want.”
“Of course I do. And I understand you. I really do. You are a businessman, just like me. We can be friends. No need for violence. Just take the money.”
The Afghan nodded thoughtfully as he pocketed the money. “Yes. I will take the money.” His fierce scowl broke into a wide grin. “And your trucks.”
Cluzet shook his head as he ran his fingers through his hair. “That is truly unfortunate, my friend.”
The Afghan suddenly noticed the tattoo on the Frenchman’s forearm. A wing with an arm and a sword. He didn’t recognize it for what it was: the arm of the Archangel Michael, the patron saint of the 2e Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes of the French Foreign Legion.
“Fortunate or not, I am taking what I want. Stand aside or I will kill you and take it anyway.” He raised his weapon. “I don’t fear a man with a woman’s smooth face.”
Cluzet rubbed his beardless face. “Yes, smooth, like Setara’s, I imagine. She’s your youngest wife, right? The prettiest, at least. I should think she would like my face.”
The Afghan chieftain scowled with confusion. “You know my wife’s name?”
Cluzet’s boyish charm suddenly vanished, his face hardening like the limestone looming above their heads. “Pull out your phone, Behzad Khatloni, and call her now.”
“How do you know these things? You are a devil!”
“My job is to know everything. Call now. Or you will regret it.”
Khatloni marched over to his jeep and his driver handed him his phone. He dialed. A moment later, a panicked woman’s voice answered.
“Our sons! Behzad! Please!” a woman’s voice shouted over the speaker. Everyone could hear it.
“What is happening?”
“Foreigners. Infidels. Rifles, machine guns. Vehicles. They have rounded us all up. They said they will kill us.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know,” she cried. “Many.”
Khatloni’s eyes widened with rage. He turned toward the Frenchman. “What is this?”
“All of your fighters are here. If you don’t leave in the next sixty seconds, my men will burn your village, kill your elderly, rape your women—and your sons.”
The Afghan whipped a long choora knife from its sheath and lunged at Cluzet, landing the blade millimeters from Cluzet’s neck before the other two mercenaries could react.
“Call them off!”
Cluzet didn’t flinch. He could smell the stink of Khatloni’s breath. “My men have their orders. They will slit your children’s throats, drop the bodies into the dung tren
ch, and piss on them.”
He pressed the t-shaped blade against Cluzet’s throat. “Have you no fear?”
“Yes. Of boredom.”
The Afghan’s men stirred anxiously, worried about their own families. Cluzet’s men stayed frozen in place, ready to pounce on command.
The giant Afghan searched Cluzet’s unblinking eyes.
“You are the spawn of Satan!”
“Probably. Thirty seconds.”
Khatloni cursed, sheathing his blade. He barked orders to his men. The jeep engines fired up and he turned to leave.
“Not yet,” Cluzet said.
The Afghan spun around. “What?”
“Your watch.”
Khatloni stiffened. “Are you insane?”
“Your watch, now. Or I don’t call.”
“You would kill my children for a cursed watch?”
Cluzet shrugged, puzzled. “Yes. I would.”
The Afghan clawed at the watch’s wristband, grunting with frustration.
“I hate you devils! You curse my land.”
“Yes, I suppose we do. But it’s an interesting way to pass the time.”
The Afghan flung the freed watch at Cluzet, who caught it with a laugh.
“Make the damn call, infidel!”
The Spaniard reached behind his back and handed Cluzet a sat phone as Khatloni piled into his jeep. The engines roared and the two UAZs sped away in a screech of smoking tires burning on the asphalt.
Cluzet punched numbers on the sat phone, catching the puzzled gaze of his two men. He turned around and saw Lin in the cab of the truck, his white-knuckled hands welded to the steering wheel in abject terror.
Cluzet turned to the German, grinning.
“I think that went very well, don’t you?”
27
BADAKHSHAN PROVINCE, NORTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN
It was a clear, cool morning, the sky a blue so brilliant it hurt Cluzet’s eyes as he stared at it, sipping a hot tea.
His three tractor-trailers stood beneath tents of heavy camouflage netting to mask the heat signatures of the big diesel engines and to avoid the prying eyes of the school-bus-sized KH-11 Keyhole satellite passing over Afghanistan nearly fifteen times per day at a mean altitude of four hundred kilometers.