by Marc Cameron
42
Ding Chavez and Adara Sherman sat at a sidewalk café nursing cold bottles of Quilmes Patagonia beer while they listened intently to the drama playing across their earpieces. They were too far away to hear the report of the blast, but they’d been able to tell something was up from the alarmed reactions of Midas and Jack. Ding stifled the human urge to ask questions and give advice. He wasn’t on scene, and Jack was doing a good job of keeping him up to speed as things went down. It was best to keep his mouth shut and let the operators do what they did best—operate. And anyway, things were about to get interesting here. At eight blocks away, the brunette would be there in minutes.
Adara suddenly tipped the neck of her beer toward the Italian restaurant two businesses to the east. “Chen’s moving. Looks like he just put one cell phone in his pocket and took out a second. He’s in comms with somebody.”
Chen put the second phone away and walked to the street with another Asian male. Both men looked up and down the wide sidewalk before trotting diagonally across Junín and turning left to walk briskly along the fifteen-foot brick wall surrounding the cemetery.
Chavez peeled a couple hundred-peso notes off the roll in his pocket and left them on the table. Tipping was outside the norm in Argentina. The waitress would think him an idiot turista for leaving the equivalent of twelve bucks for two beers that cost half that, but it was better than her chasing them down street for leaving too little.
Chavez pushed away from the table and held up the flat of his hand, signaling for Adara to hang back while he took the first eyeball on Chen. She nodded and crossed the street directly while he took a more diagonal route to intercept Chen’s trail immediately. She’d follow at a respectable distance and the two would leapfrog, so as to give a fresh face to the follow. Chavez slowed a half-step when Chen and the other man hung a right at the end of the block, still following the cemetery wall. Chavez continued across the street and then turned right himself so as not to round the corner where Chen had gone without checking it out first from a different vantage point. The two Asians were still moving steadily, not quite trotting, halfway down the block now.
“Got your right,” Adara said, letting Chavez know she’d seen the turn.
Ryan and Midas were still giving a play-by-play of their individual pursuits. Chavez waited for them to pause, then claimed the airspace.
“Listen up,” he said. “We got a lot going on. Keep the bullshit to a minimum. Necessary traffic only. Speed, direction, and any threats. Got it?”
Ryan responded with “North on Callao.”
“North . . . Rodríguez Peña . . . behind the shooter,” Midas said, still running.
“I’m right behind you, Ding,” Adara said, for Midas and Jack’s benefit.
Chavez started to give his location when the two men ahead of him broke into a run, taking another right at the end of the block.
Adara picked up her pace. “They see you?”
“I don’t think so,” Chavez said.
He called out the location, following his own orders so Jack and Midas could keep up with the common operating picture. He trotted now, again swinging wide around the corner to avoid an ambush. He made it around in time to see the second Asian scale a construction fence behind Chen. Both men scrambled up some scaffolding to the top of a construction trailer, and then bounded over the cemetery wall and out of sight.
Adara ran up behind Chavez, turning to check behind herself as she came to a stop. It was long past the time to try to stay covert if anyone was trailing them down the dark street.
“You sure they didn’t see you?” Adara said again. Both she and Chavez cupped their hands over their chests, blocking the neck mics so they didn’t clutter the radio net.
Chavez said, “They never looked behind them.”
“Cemetery gates are locked up for the night,” Adara said. “We’ll have to go in the same way they did.”
Chavez rubbed his face and studied the construction trailer, his mind racing. He’d been in leadership positions in the past two decades. Hell, he’d led a team of some of the most elite operators with Rainbow. But life was so much easier when he’d been an impetuous troop and could let the bosses worry about the magnet in his ass that pulled him, without thinking, toward danger. He’d never been very good about aborting a pursuit, but he reminded himself that he had the entire team to consider. Like a good leader, he made the decision look as though it was second nature.
“First rule of following someone blind into a dark alley?”
“Is not to follow someone blind into a dark alley,” Adara finished his mantra. It was one of many, and she knew it well. “You gotta admit, the cemetery is a heck of a good SDR. It’s a maze in there. They’d know for sure if we followed them in.”
“The problem with an alley,” Ding said, toying with the beginnings of a plan, “is that you’re walking into a fatal funnel—that is, the way you’re expected to walk in. We just need to find a different way than the one they used.”
• • •
Hellooo, Midas,” Jack hailed his fellow operator, once he’d learned Chen had gone over the cemetery wall. “What’s your position?”
“Rodríguez Peñ—” he said, cutting out, still breathless.
“You’re moving parallel to us,” Ryan said.
The brunette moved more quickly now, still walking, but much faster than the rest of the crowd. She touched her ear as she jigged around a bus-stop shelter, in comms with somebody. Looking right at the next intersection, she paused for a split second, then ran across the street to her left.
“She’s coming toward you, Ding,” Jack said.
With his eyes on the brunette, he didn’t see the oncoming Japanese woman until it was too late, and the two ran headlong into each other. The woman bounced away, falling sideways, spitting like an angry cat. Ryan was stunned from the impact but able to remain standing. He reached down to offer the woman a hand, but she slapped it away, springing to her feet, ready to run again. Midas had caught up by now and grabbed a handful of her collar, giving it a yank, lifting the sputtering woman off her feet. She’d been holding a cell phone when they collided and it now lay on the ground with a badly damaged screen.
People on the street were still stampeding away from the bomb blast around the corner, and ran by without interfering.
“Let. Me. Go.” The woman said it through a clenched jaw. Her English was accented English but very good. “She is . . . escaping.”
Ryan turned to watch the brunette disappear into the darkness at the other end of the block, then turned back to Midas, both hands up, as if to say What gives?
Midas knew exactly what he meant. “You can’t hear me, can you?”
Ryan shook his head.
Midas raised his eyebrows. “Then my radio’s tits-up. I tried to tell you we were coming. Took me a half a block to realize I wasn’t hearing my own voice.”
Chavez came across the net, unaware of this new development.
“We’re walking toward you on south side of the cemetery,” he said. “We’re trying to find a way in that won’t get our asses handed to us.”
“Copy,” Ryan said. “Midas is with me, but his comms are down. I’ve lost sight of the brunette. We’re having a talk with our Japanese friend.”
Chavez’s dismay was apparent. “You made contact?”
Ryan rubbed his aching ribs, injured for a second time by a female hurtling through space. We sure did, he thought. He said, “I’ll explain later.”
He relayed Chavez’s situation and location to Midas.
The Japanese woman reached for the shattered phone, but Midas wrenched her arm back with the hand that wasn’t holding her neck. She was shorter than Jack by seven or eight inches, fit, built like a runner. Even restrained, her chin tilted upward slightly—a match to the defiant glint in her eyes.
She trie
d to jerk away and, when she found that was impossible, turned her glare on Jack. “You are wasting time.”
“I’ll take care of this,” Jack said, scooping up the broken phone. Close enough to study now, the scratches down the left side of her face looked like they were maybe a week old. Healing, but still pink and quite deep, probably caused by a very determined set of fingernails. “Who are you?”
She scoffed, then mocked his tone. “Who are you?”
Ryan feigned an unconcerned shrug. The truth was this woman was beginning to piss him off. He needed to get this done and catch up with the brunette. “You might reconsider that attitude since we just saw you shoot someone in the head.”
The Japanese woman’s eyes went momentarily wide, but she regained her composure quickly.
“Have it your way,” Midas said, increasing his grip on her arm until she winced. “I guess you’d rather talk to the police.”
“Bakayaro!” she spat. “You fools! I am the police.”
43
President Ryan sat in the Oval Office, waiting, mulling over what he was about to say. An eight-by-ten color photograph of a smiling sailor with rosy cheeks looked up at him. The twenty-year-old sailor sat in front of an American flag, wearing enlisted “crackerjack” blues and a white Dixie cup hat. It was one of those boot-camp graduation portraits that proud grandpas and nervous parents keep on the mantel. Petty Officer 3rd Class Stephen Ridgeway had helped save a life—a woman under attack from pirates, no less. Parents would want to know that. Wouldn’t they? Ryan would want to know, if something happened to one of his children. That was the thing about death. It was always personal. Somebody else’s kid died and you immediately thought of your own, how fickle life was, how incredibly easy it was to snuff out the spark that made someone alive—no matter how brightly it burned.
Betty Martin’s sure voice came over the intercom.
“Mr. President, the White House operator has Randy and Lois Ridgeway on the line.”
“Thank you, Betty.” Ryan took a deep breath, attempting to settle himself. Best not to think about things like this for too long. It made the speeches sound canned. Truth was, he thought about it all the time. He couldn’t help it.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ridgeway,” he said, “this is Jack Ryan. I am so very sorry for your loss . . .”
• • •
The condolence call lasted four minutes. There was not much he could say, at least nothing worthwhile. The Ridgeways already knew what sort of man their son was. They didn’t need the President of the United States to remind them to be proud of him. Ryan looked at Stephen Ridgeway’s portrait for another full minute while he thought over his next course of action. At length, he moved it reverently to the side and centered a yellow notepad on his desk.
He pushed the intercom button.
“It’s a Saturday night, Betty,” he said. “You shouldn’t even be here. Go ahead, take off.”
“Right away, Mr. President.” It was what Betty Martin said when she wouldn’t commit to leaving. Her husband probably sat at home sticking pins in a Jack Ryan doll for all the time she spent at the White House.
“Seriously,” Ryan pressed. “I just have one more call to make.”
“I’ll get the party on the line for you.”
“Go home,” Ryan said. “That’s an order from your commander in chief. I’ll make the call myself.”
“There are protocols, Mr. President,” Betty said.
“Very well.” He read back the number written on his notepad and then said, “Now will you go home?”
“Right away, Mr. President,” she said.
• • •
The Watermelon Park Campground wasn’t exactly roughing it, but compared to the bustle of downtown Arlington, Virginia, the picnic tables, drop toilets, and fire pits overlooking the Shenandoah River were a blissful wilderness. It had taken Dr. Ann Miller all the way to Leesburg just to calm down the night before after her command performance at the White House. Her boyfriend was getting sick of hearing the story.
Miller wore the same red-and-black buffalo-plaid shirt that she’d worn to the meeting, but she and Eric had spent the day canoeing, so she’d traded the long pants for a pair of swimming shorts. She was strictly a yogurt-and-blueberries girl back in civilization, but she’d opted to splurge with s’mores tonight. She hunkered shoulder to shoulder with Eric, toasting marshmallows over a snapping fire. It was marvelously dark beyond the chestnut trees, just cool enough to make the heat of the fire against her bare knees feel perfect.
She teased at Eric’s toasting stick with hers, pushing it out of her way.
He chuckled, letting his marshmallow catch on fire, and watched it burn. “I guess people who get summoned to the White House should have the prime coal areas.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Ann said smugly.
“You know,” Eric said, casting a glance at the tent, “you being in such demand by the highest officials in the land is a real turn-on . . .”
She scoffed. “Eric Jordan, a leaf falling off one of those red oaks would turn you on.”
Eric moved his eyebrows up and down. “Depends on where it fell. But seriously, getting called to the White House is a big friggin’ deal.”
Miller’s phone began to play “The Ride of the Valkyries” in her jacket pocket. She’d sealed it in a Ziploc bag in the event they swamped the canoe, and it took her a couple seconds to dig it out.
“Wonder who that could be?” Eric teased. “Ten Downing Street, mayhaps?”
She waved him away and put the phone to her ear.
“Hello.”
It was a woman’s voice, straight to the point.
“Dr. Ann Miller?”
“This is she.”
“Dr. Miller, please hold for the President of the United States.”
Miller stood at once, dropping her stick into the fire. It was stupid, she realized, but she remained there anyway. Eric looked at her like she’d lost her mind.
An instant later: “Dr. Miller, Jack Ryan here. I apologize for calling so late, but I have some things I’d like you to look over. Would you mind coming by my office tomorrow morning?”
Eric moved in closer now and pressed his ear to hers, listening.
“Of course, Mr. President.”
“Very well,” Ryan said. “I’ll send a car for you.”
“No, no,” she stammered. “I mean, that won’t be necessary, sir. We’re in the Shenandoah right now. My boyfriend can drop me off.”
“Shall we say nine o’clock tomorrow morning, then?”
Eric feigned a pout after she’d hung up. “Should I be jealous?”
She laughed, draining off nervous energy. “I don’t know,” she said. “He is pretty cool. Maybe a little.”
She picked up a camp chair and headed to the car.
“What are you doing?” Eric said.
“Going home,” she said. “A girl can’t wear flannel to the White House twice in a row.”
• • •
Ryan hung up the phone at the same moment Arnie van Damm burst in through the door from the secretaries’ suite.
“What’s Betty doing here on a Saturday night?” He waved his hand before Ryan could answer. “Never mind. You need to get to a television. Something’s going on in Buenos Aires.”
Ryan groaned, moving toward his private study off the Oval. Arnie never wanted him to watch TV when good news was breaking.
“Some kind of bombing,” van Damm continued.
Ryan’s stomach tightened at the word. “Any of our people?” It was always his first question.
Van Damm shook his head. “A meeting of agricultural ministers, I guess. No U.S. representatives were present.” The CoS scratched his bald head. “I’m not sure why, but Foreign Minister Li was there. It’s unspooling even as we speak. Unconfirmed number of dead.
”
Arnie followed Ryan into the small study down a short hall off the Oval Office. He picked up the remote because God forbid Ryan should have to turn on his own television.
They stood together in silence for a time and watched live reports of shaky cell phone footage. The plate-glass windows in the front of what looked like a restaurant had been shattered. Uniformed men and women appeared to be moving in all directions. Two fire trucks were parked out front, their lights pulsing in the evening darkness, causing the video footage to flare dramatically. Ambulances rolled up on scene, motioned forward by the uniforms. The commentary was in Spanish, and an American news anchor did her best to repeat a whole lot of nothing over and over again. What else could she do? Nothing was precisely what everyone in the United States knew at this point.
Arnie asked, “Shall I round up the NSC? The Principal Committee, at least?”
The Principal Committee was an abbreviated version of the National Security Council—consisting of the DNI, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, D/CIA, and a handful of cabinet secretaries. They could convene in the Situation Room, but the number was small enough that they could meet in his office.
Ryan thought over the value of calling in even the abbreviated committee on a Saturday evening. “No Americans are involved?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Arnie said.
“But China again . . .”
“Yep.”
Ryan watched two Argentine firefighters carry a body out of the restaurant in a bag. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Let’s just get Mary Pat on the line for now. I want to run a couple things by her.”
Van Damm sat down at the small desk in the cramped study and went to work getting in touch with the DNI while Ryan sat back on one of the two tufted leather chairs to watch the coverage from Buenos Aires. The news crawl along the bottom of the screen carried the BREAKING NEWS message, but with nothing but amateur video coming in, there was little to report. The crawl repeated headlines from the last few hours, including news of Typhoon Catelyn gathering strength two hundred nautical miles east of Okinawa. He’d already been briefed on what was then Tropical Storm Catelyn when it narrowly missed the U.S. Naval base on Guam. Now the damn thing had turned north toward Yokosuka, Japan.