by Tom Clancy
"Robby," Ryan said, looking over the new reading glasses Cathy had just gotten him, "if you don't start calling me 'Jack' when we're alone, I'm going to break you back to ensign by executive order."
"We're not alone," Admiral Jackson objected, nodding toward Agent Price.
"Andrea doesn't count—oh, shit, I mean—" Ryan blushed.
"He's right, Admiral, I don't count," she said, with a barely contained laugh. "Mr. President, I've been waiting weeks for you to say that."
Jack looked down at the table and shook his head. "This is no way for a man to live. Now my best friend calls me 'sir, and I'm being impolite to a lady."
"Jack, you are my commander-in-chief," Robby pointed out, with a relaxed grin at his friend's discomfort. "And I'm just a poor sailor man."
First things first, the President thought: "Agent Price?"
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"Pour yourself a drink and sit down."
"Sir, I'm on duty, and regulations—"
"Then make it a light one, but that's an order from your President. Do it!"
She actually hesitated, but then decided that POTUS was trying to make some sort of point. Price poured a large thimbleful of whiskey into the Old Fashioned glass and added a lot of ice and Evian to it. Then she sat next to the J-3. His wife, Sissy, was upstairs in the House with the Ryan family.
"As a practical matter, people, the President needs to relax, and it's easier for me to do that if I don't make ladies stand up, and my friend can call me by my name once in a while. Are we agreed on that?"
"Aye aye," Robby said, still smiling but seeing the logic and desperation of the moment. "Yes, Jack, we are all relaxed now, and we will enjoy it." He looked over at Price. "You're here to shoot me if I misbehave, right?"
"Right in the head," she confirmed.
"I prefer missiles myself. Safer," he added. "You did okay with a shotgun one night, or so the Boss has told me. By the way, thanks."
"Huh?"
"For keeping him alive. We actually like taking care of the Boss, even if he gets too familiar with the hired help." Jack freshened his drink while they relaxed on the other sofa. Remarkable, he thought. For the first time, there was a genuinely relaxed atmosphere in the office, to the point that two people could joke about him, right in front of him, as though he were a human being instead of POTUS.
"I like this a lot better." The President looked up. "Robby, this gal has been around more crap than we have, listened in on all sorts of things. She has a master's degree, she's smart, but I'm supposed to treat her like she's a knuckle-dragger."
"Well, hell, I'm just a fighter jock with a bad knee."
"And I still don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be. Andrea?"
"Yes, Mr. President?" Getting her to call him by his name was an impossible goal, Jack knew.
"China, what do you think?"
"I think I'm no expert, but since you ask, I don't know."
"You're expert enough," Robby observed with a grunt. "All the king's horses and all the king's men don't know much, either. The additional subs are arriving," he told the President. "Mancuso wants them on the north-south line between the two navies. I've concurred on that, and the Secretary's signed off on it."
"How's Bretano doing?"
"He knows what he doesn't know, Jack. He listens to us on operational stuff, asks good questions, and listens some more. He wants to start getting out into the field next week, poke around and see the kids at work to educate himself. His managerial skills are downright awesome, but he's swinging a big ax—he's going to, that is. I've seen his draft plan for downsizing the bureaucracy. Whoa," Admiral Jackson concluded, with an eye-roll.
"You have problems with that?" Jack asked.
"No way. It's about fifty years overdue. Ms. Price, I'm an operator," he explained. "I like greasy flight suits and the smell of jet fuel and pulling g's. But us guys at the sharp end always have the desk-sitters after us like a bunch of little dogs at our ankles all the time. Bretano loves engineers and people who do things, but along the way he's learned to hate bureaucrats and cost accountants. My kind of guy."
"Back to China," Ryan said.
"Okay, we still have the electronics-intelligence flights working out of Kadena. We're getting routine training stuff. We do not know what intentions the ChiComs have. CIA isn't giving us much. Signal intelligence is unremarkable. State says that their government says, 'What's the big deal? And that's it. The Taiwanese navy is big enough to handle the threat, if there is one, unless they get coldcocked. That's not going to happen. They're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, doing their own training ops. A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing I can make out."
"The Gulf?"
"Well, we're hearing from our people in Israel that they're taking a very close look, but I gather they're not getting much in the way of hard intel. Whatever sources they had were probably with the generals who bugged out to Sudan—aides and such, probably. I got a fax in from Sean Magruder—"
"Who's that?" Ryan asked.
"He's an Army colonel, boss-man of the 10th Cav in the Negev. I met him last year; he's a guy we listen to. 'Most dangerous man in the world, is what our good pal Avi ben Jakob says of Daryaei. Magruder thought that was insightful enough to pass it along."
"And?"
"And we need to keep an eye on it. It's probably a ways off, but Daryaei has imperial ambitions. The Saudis are playing it wrong. We should have people on the way over now, maybe not many, but some, to show the other side that we're in the game."
"I talked to Ali about that. His government wants to cool it."
"Wrong signal," Jackson observed.
"Agreed." POTUS nodded. "We'll work on that."
"What's the state of the Saudi military?" Price asked.
"Not as good as it ought to be. After the Persian Gulf War, it got fashionable to join their National Guard, and they bought equipment like it was a bunch of Mercedes cars from a wholesaler. For a while they had themselves a fine old time playing soldier, but then they found out that you have to maintain the stuff. They hired people to do that for them. Kinda like squires and knights back in the old days. Ain't the same," Jackson said. "And now they're not training. Oh, sure, they run around in their tanks, and they do their gunnery—the M1 is a fun tank to shoot, and they do a lot of that—but they're not training in units. Knights and squires. Their tradition is guys on horses going after other guys on horses—one-on-one, like in the movies. War ain't like that. War is a great big team working together. Their culture and history are against that model, and they haven't had the chance to learn. Bottom line, they're not as good as they think they are. If the UIR gets its military act together someday and comes south, the Saudis are outgunned and damned sure outmanned."
"How do we fix that?" Ryan asked.
"For starters, get some of our people over there, and some of their people over here, out to the National Training Center for a crash course in reality. I've talked it over with Mary Diggs at the NTC—"
"Mary?"
"General Marion Diggs. 'Mary' goes back to the Point. It's a uniform thing," Robby told Price. "I'd like to fly a Saudi heavy battalion over here and have the OpFor pound them into the sand for a few weeks to get the message across. That's how our people learned. That's how the Israelis learned. And that's how the Saudis are going to have to learn, damned sight easier that way than in a shooting war. Diggs is for it, big time. Give us two or three years, maybe less if we set up a proper training establishment in Saudi, and we can snap their army into shape—except for politics," he added.
POTUS nodded. "Yeah, it'll make the Israelis nervous, and the Saudis have always worried about having too strong a military, for domestic reasons."
"You could tell them the story about the three little pigs. It might not fly with their culture, but the big bad wolf just moved in next door to them, and they'd better start paying attention before he starts a-huffin' and a-puffin'."
"I hear you, Robby. I'l
l have Adler and Vasco think that one over." Ryan checked his watch. Another fifteen-hour day. One more drink would have been nice, but as it was, he'd be lucky to get six hours of sleep, and he didn't want to wake up with a larger headache than necessary. He set his drink down and waved for the other two to follow, down the ramp and out the door.
"SWORDSMAN heading to the residence," Andrea spoke into her radio mike. A minute later, they were in the elevator and going up.
"Try not to let the booze show," Jack remarked to his principal agent.
"What are we going to do with you?" she asked the ceiling, as the doors opened.
Jack walked out first, leaving the other two behind as he took his jacket off. He hated wearing a jacket all the time.
"Well, now you know," Robby said to the Secret Service agent. She turned to look in his eyes.
"Yeah." Actually she'd known for quite a while, but she kept learning more and more about SWORDSMAN.
"Take good care of him, Price. When he escapes from this place, I want my friend back."
THE VAGARIES OF winds made the Lufthansa flight first to arrive at the international terminal in Frankfurt, Germany. For the travelers it was like an inverted funnel. The jetway was the narrow part, and on entering the concourse they all spread out, checking the video monitors for their gates. The layovers ranged from one to three hours, and their luggage would be automatically transferred from one aircraft to another—for all the complaints about airport luggage-handlers, 99.9 percent is a passing grade in most human endeavors; and the Germans were notoriously efficient. Customs control points didn't worry them, because none of them were spending any more time in Europe than was necessary. They studiously avoided eye contact, even when three of them entered a coffee shop, and all three, on reflection, decided on decaf. Two walked into the men's rooms for the usual reason, and then looked into the mirrors to check their faces. They'd all shaved just before leaving, but one of them, especially heavily-bearded, saw that his jaw was already shadowed. Perhaps he should shave? Not a good idea, he thought, smiling at the mirror. Then he lifted his carry-on bag and walked off to the first-class lounge to wait for the flight to Dallas-Fort Worth.
"LONG DAY?" JACK asked, after everyone had gone home, and just the usual squad of guards patrolled outside.
"Yeah. Grand rounds tomorrow with Bernie. Some procedures the next day, though." Cathy changed into her nightgown, as tired as her husband was.
"Anything new?"
"Not in my shop. Had lunch with Pierre Alexandre. He's a new associate professor working under Ralph Forster, ex-Army, pretty smart."
"Infectious diseases?" Jack vaguely remembered meeting the guy at some function or other. "AIDS and stuff?"
"Yeah."
"Nasty," Ryan observed, getting into bed.
"They just dodged a bullet. There was a mini-outbreak of Ebola in Zaire," Cathy said, getting in the other side. "Two deaths. Then two more cases turned up in Sudan, but it doesn't look like it's going anywhere."
"Is that as bad as people say?" Jack turned the light off.
"Eighty percent mortality—pretty bad." She adjusted the covers and moved toward him. "But enough of that stuff. Sissy says she's got a concert scheduled for two weeks from now at Kennedy Center. Beethoven's Fifth, with Fritz Bayerlein conducting, would you believe? Think we can get tickets?" He could sense his wife's smile in the dark.
"I think I know the theater owner. I'll see what I can do." A kiss. A day ended.
"SEE YOU IN the morning, Jeff." Price went to the right for her car. Raman went to the left for his.
A mind could be dulled by this job, Aref Raman told himself. The sheer mechanics of it, the hours, the watching and waiting and doing nothing—but always being ready.
Hmph. Why should he complain about that? It was the story of his adult life. He drove north, waited for the security gate to open and headed northwest. The empty streets made it go quickly. By the time he got to his home, the bled-off stress of working the Detail in the White House had him nodding, but there were still mechanics.
Unlocking the door, he next turned off the security system, picked up the mail that had come through the slot in the door and scanned it. One bill, and the rest was junk mail offering him the chance of a lifetime to buy things he didn't need. He hung up his coat, removed the pistol and holster from his belt, and walked into the kitchen. The light was blinking on the answering machine. There was one message.
"Mr. Sloan," the digital recorder said to him in a voice that was familiar, though he'd only heard it once before, "this is Mr. Alahad. Your rug just came in, and is ready for delivery."
37 DISCHARGES
AMERICA WAS SLEEPING when they boarded their flights in Amsterdam, and London, and Vienna, and Paris. This time no two were on the same aircraft, and the schedules were staggered so that the same customs inspector would not have the chance to open two shaving kits and find the same brand of cream and then wonder about it, however unlikely that might be. The real risk had been in placing so many men on the same flights out of Tehran, but they'd been properly briefed on how to act. While the ever-watchful German police, for example, might have taken note of a gaggle of Middle Eastern men huddling together after arriving on the same flight, airports have always been anonymous places full of semi-confused wandering people, often tired and usually disoriented, and one lonely, aimless traveler looked much like another.
The first to board a transatlantic flight walked onto a Singapore Airlines 747 at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport. Coded as SQ26, the airliner pulled away at eight-thirty A.M. and got into the air on time, then angled northwest for a great-circle course that would take it over the southern tip of Greenland. The flight would last just under eight hours. The traveler was in a first-class window seat, which he tilted all the way back. It was not even three in the morning in his next destination city, and he preferred sleep to a movie, along with most of the other people in the nose of the aircraft. He had his itinerary memorized, and if his memory failed, with the confusion of long-distance travel, he still had his tickets to remind him of what to do next. For the moment, sleep was enough, and he turned his head on the pillow, soothed by the swish of passing air outside the double windows.
Around him, in the air, were other flights, with other travelers heading for Boston, Philadelphia, Washington-Dulles, Atlanta, Orlando, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, and Los Angeles, the ten principal gateway cities into America. Each of them had a trade show or convention of some sort underway now. Ten other cities, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Seattle, Phoenix, Houston, and New Orleans, also had events, and each was but a brief flight—in two cases, a drive—from the nearest port of entry.
The traveler on SQ26 thought about that as he faded off. The shaving kit was tucked in his carry-on bag under the seat in front of him, carefully insulated and wrapped, and he made certain that his feet didn't touch, much less kick, the bag.
IT WAS APPROACHING noon outside Tehran. The Movie Star watched as his group conducted weapons practice. It was a formality really, designed more for morale than anything else. They all knew how to shoot, having learned and practiced in the Bekaa Valley, and though they weren't using the same weapons they'd have in America, it didn't really matter. A gun was a gun, and targets were targets, and they knew about both. They couldn't simulate everything, of course, but all of them knew how to drive, and they spent hours every day going over the diagram and the models. They would go in during the late afternoon, when parents came in to pick up their children for the daily trip home, when the bodyguards would be tired and bored from a day of watching the children doing childish things. Movie Star had gotten descriptions of several of the «regular» cars, and some were common types which could be rented. The opposition was as trained and experienced as they had to be, but they were not supermen. Some were even women, and for all his exposure to the West, the Movie Star could not take women seriously as adversaries, guns or
no guns. But their biggest tactical advantage was that his team was willing to use deadly force with profligate abandon. With over twenty toddlers about, plus the school staff, and probably a few parents in the way as well, the opposition would be greatly hampered. So, no, the initial part of the mission was the easiest. The hard part would be getting away—if things got that far. He had to tell his team that they would get away, and that there was a plan. But really it didn't matter, and in their hearts all of them knew it.
They were all willing to become sacrifices in the unannounced jihad, else they would never have joined Hezbol-lah in the first place. They were also willing to see their victims as sacrifices. But that was just a convenient label. Religion was really nothing more than a facade for what they did and who they were. A true scholar of their religion would have blanched at their purpose, but Islam had many adherents, and among them were many who chose to read the scriptures in unconventional ways, and they too, had their following. What Allah might have thought of their actions was not something they considered very deeply, and the Movie Star didn't trouble himself to think about it at all. For him, it was business, a political statement, a professional challenge, one more task to occupy his days. Perhaps, too, it was a step toward a larger goal, the achievement of which would mean a life of comfort, and perhaps even some personal power and stability—but in his heart he didn't really believe that, either. At first, yes, he'd thought that Israel might be overthrown, the Jews expunged from the face of the earth, but those careless beliefs of his youth had long since faded. For him, it was all mere process now, and this was one more task. The substance of the task didn't really matter all that much, did it? he asked himself, watching the team's grimly enthusiastic faces, as the men hit the targets. Oh, it seemed to matter to them. But he knew better.
THE DAY BEGAN at five-thirty A.M. for Inspector Patrick O'Day. A clock-radio roused him from his bed, then off to the bathroom for the usual start-up functions, a look in the mirror, and off to the kitchen to get the coffee going. It was the quiet of the day. Most people (the sensible ones) weren't up yet. No traffic on the streets. Even the birds still slumbering on their perches. Outside to get the papers, he could feel the silence and wonder why the world wasn't always this way. Through the trees to the east was the glow of a coming dawn, though the stronger of the stars still burned overhead. Not a single light showing in the rest of the houses in the development. Damn. Was he the only one who had to work such punishing hours?