by Tom Clancy
That was also the problem of those who sent them. This mission had been different, after all. Ordinarily, terrorists boasted widely of what they did, however odious the act, and at CIA and elsewhere they'd waited for fifteen hours for the press release. But it never came, and if it hadn't by now, then it never would. If they didn't make the release, then they didn't want anyone to know. But that was an illusion. Terrorists always proclaimed their acts, but they didn't always appreciate that police agencies could figure things out anyway.
Nation-states knew better, or were supposed to. Okay, fine, the dealers hadn't had anything that could identify their point of origin—or so some might think. But Mary Pat was under no such illusions. The FBI was better than good, good enough that the Secret Service was letting the Bureau handle all of the forensics. And so it was likely that whoever had initiated the mission might actually expect that the story would eventually unravel. Knowing that— probably—they'd gone ahead with it anyway. If this line of speculation were true, then—
"Part of something else?" Clark asked. "Not a standalone. Something else, too."
"Maybe," Mary Pat observed.
"If it is, it's big," Chavez went on for them. "Maybe that's why the Russians called in to us."
"So big… so big that even if we figure it out, it won't matter when we do."
"That's pretty big, Mary Pat," Clark said quietly. "What could it be…?"
"Something permanent, something we can't change after it's done," Domingo offered. His time at George Mason University hadn't been wasted.
Mrs. Foley wished her husband were in on this, but Ed was meeting with Murray right now.
SATURDAYS IN THE spring are often days of dull but hopeful routine, but in just over two hundred homes little was done. Gardens were not planted. Cars were not washed. Garage sales were not attended. Paint cans went unopened. That wasn't counting government employees or news personnel working the big story of the week. Mainly the people suffering from the flu were men. Thirty of them were in hotel rooms. Several even tried to work, attending their trade shows in the new cities. Wiping their faces, blowing their noses, and wishing the aspirin or Tylenol would kick in. Of the last group, most went back to the hotel rooms to relax—no sense in getting the customers sick, was there? In not a single case did anyone seek medical attention. There was the usual winter/spring flu bug circulating around, and everybody got it sooner or later. They weren't that sick, after all, were they?
NEWS COVERAGE OF the incident at Giant Steps was entirely predictable, starting with camera shots taken from about fifty yards away, and the same words repeated by all of the correspondents, followed by the same words delivered by «experts» in terrorism and/or other fields. One of the networks took the viewer all the way back to Abraham Lincoln for no other reason than that it was otherwise a very slow news day. All of the coverage pointed to the Middle East, though the investigating agencies had declined any comment at all on the event so far, except to cite an FBI agent's heroic interference and the spirited battle put up by the Secret Service bodyguards of little Katie Ryan. Words like "heroic," "dedicated," and «determined» were bandied about with great frequency, leading to the "dramatic conclusion."
Something very simple had gone wrong, Badrayn was certain, though he wouldn't know for sure until his colleague got back to Tehran from London, via Brussels and Vienna, on several different sets of travel documents.
"The President and his family are at the Presidential Retreat at Camp David," the reporter concluded, "to recover from the shock of this dreadful event just north of peaceful Annapolis, Maryland. This is…"
"Retreat?" Daryaei asked.
"It means many things in English, first among them is to run away," Badrayn answered, mainly because he was sure that's what his employer would like to hear.
"If he thinks he can run away from me, he is mistaken," the cleric observed in dark amusement, the spirit of the moment getting the better of his discretion.
Badrayn didn't react to the revelation. It was easy at the instant of his realization, since he was looking at the TV and not at his host, but things then became more clear. There was not all that much risk at all, was there? Mah-moud Ilaji had a way to kill this man, perhaps whenever he wished to do so, and it was all being orchestrated. Could he really do it? But, of course, he already had.
IVIS MADE LIFE hard on the OpFor. Not all that hard! Colonel Hamm and the Blackhorse had won this one, but what only a year before would have been a wipeout of cosmic proportions—Fort Irwin was in California, and some linguistic peculiarities were inevitable—had been a narrow victory. War was about information. It was always the lesson of the National Training Center: Find the enemy. Don't let the enemy find you. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. The IVIS system, operated by halfway competent people, shot the information out to everyone so fast that the soldiers were leaning in the right direction even before the orders came down. That had nearly negated a maneuver on the OpFor's part, which would have been worthy of Erwin Rommel on his best day, and as he watched the fast-play of the exercise on the big screen in the Star Wars Room, Hamm saw just how close it had been. If one of those Blue Force tank companies had moved just five minutes faster, he would have lost this one, too. The NTC would surely lose its effectiveness if the Good Guys won regularly.
"That was a beautiful move, Hamm," the colonel of the Carolina Guard admitted, reaching in his pocket for a cigar and handing it over. "But we'll whip your ass tomorrow."
Ordinarily, he would have smiled and said, Sure you will. But the cracker son of a bitch just might pull it off, and that would take a lot of the fun out of Hamm's life. The colonel of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment would now have to come up with ways of spoofing IVIS. It was something he'd thought about, and had been the subject of a few discussions over beers with his operations officer, but so far they had only agreed that it was no small feat, probably involving dummy vehicles… like Rommel had used. He'd have to get funding for those. He walked outside to smoke his cigar. It had been honorably won. He found the Guard colonel there, too.
"For Guardsmen, you're pretty damned good," Hamm had to admit. He'd never said such a thing to a Guard formation before. He rarely said it to anyone at all. Except for one deployment error, the Blue Force plan had been a thing of beauty.
"Thank you for saying that, Colonel. IVIS came as a rude surprise, didn't it?"
"You might say that."
"My people love it. A lot come in on their own time to play on the simulators. Hell, I'm surprised you took us on this one."
"Your reserve was too close in," Hamm told him. "You thought you knew what to exploit. Instead, I caught you out of position to meet my counterattack." It wasn't a revelation. The senior observer/controller had made that lesson clear to the momentarily contrite tank commander.
"I'll try to remember that. Catch the news?"
"Yeah, that sucks," Hamm thought aloud.
"Little kids. I wonder if they award medals to the Secret Service?"
"They have something, I imagine. I can think of worse things to die for." And that's what it was all about. Those five agents had died doing their jobs, running to the sound of the guns. They must have made some mistakes, but sometimes you didn't have a choice in the matter. All soldiers knew that.
"God rest their brave souls." The man sounded like Robert Edward Lee. It triggered something in Hamm.
"What's the story on you guys? You, Colonel Edding-ton, you're not supposed—what the hell do you do in real life?" The guy was over fifty, very marginal for an officer in command of a brigade, even in the Guard.
"I'm professor of military history at the University of North Carolina. What's the story? This brigade was supposed to be the round-out for 24th Mech back in 1991, and we came here for workups and got our ass handed to us. Never got to deploy. I was a battalion XO then, Hamm. We wanted to go. Our regimental standards go back to the Revolution. It hurt our pride. We've been waiting to come back here near on ten
years, boy, and this IVIS box gives us a fair chance." He was a tall, thin man, and when he turned, he was looking down at the regular officer. "We are going to make use of that chance, son. I know the theory. I been readin' and studyin' on it for over thirty years, and my men ain't'a'gonna roll over and die for you, you he'ah?" When aroused, Nicholas Eddington tended to adopt an accent.
" 'Specially not for Yankees?"
"Damn right!" Then it was time for a laugh. Nick Ed-dington was a teacher, with a flair for the impromptu dramatic. The voice softened. "I know, if we didn't have IVIS, you'd murder us—"
"Ain't technology wonderful?"
"It almost makes us your equal, and your men are the best. Everybody knows that," Eddington conceded. It was a worthy peace gesture.
"With the hours we keep, kinda hard to get a beer at the club when you need one. Can I offer you one at my home, sir?"
"Lead on, Colonel Hamm."
"What's your area of specialty?" BLACKHORSE Six asked on the way to his car.
"My dissertation was on the operational art of Nathan Bedford Forrest."
"Oh? I've always admired Buford, myself."
"He only had a couple of days, but they were all good days. He might have won the war for Lincoln at Gettysburg."
"The Spencer carbines gave his troopers the technical edge," Hamm announced. "People overlook that factor."
"Choosing the best ground didn't hurt, and the Spencers helped, but what he did best was to remember his mission," Eddington replied.
"As opposed to Stuart. Jeb definitely had a bad day. I suppose he was due for one." Hamm opened the car door for his colleague. It would be a few hours before they had to prepare for the next exercise, and Hamm was a serious student of history, especially of the cavalry. This would be an interesting breakfast: beer, eggs, and the Civil War.
THEY BUMPED INTO each other in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, which was doing a great business in coffee and donuts at the moment.
"Hi, John," Holtzman said, looking at the crime scene from across the street.
"Bob," Plumber acknowledged with a nod. The area was alive with cameras, TV and still, recording the scene for history.
"You're up early for a Saturday—TV guy, too," the Post reporter noted with a friendly smile. "What do you make of it?"
"This really is a terrible thing." Plumber was himself a grandfather many times over. "Was it Ma'alot, the one in Israel, back—what? 1975, something like that?" They all seemed to blend together, these terrorist incidents.
Holtzman wasn't sure, either. "I think so. I have somebody checking it back at the office."
"Terrorists make for good stories, but, dear God, we'd be better off without them."
The crime scene was almost pristine. The bodies were gone. The autopsies were complete by now, they both imagined. But everything else was intact, or nearly so. The cars were there, and as the reporters watched, ballistics experts were running strings to simulate shots at mannequins brought in from a local department store, trying to re-create every detail of the event. The black guy in the Secret Service windbreaker was Norman Jeffers, one of the heroes of the day, now demonstrating how he'd come down from the house across the street. Inside was Inspector Patrick O'Day. Some agents were simulating the movements of the terrorists. One man lay on the ground by the front door, aiming a red plastic "play gun" around. In criminal investigations, the dress rehearsals always came after the play.
"His name was Don Russell?" Plumber asked.
"One of the oldest guys in the Service," Holtzman confirmed.
"Damn." Plumber shook his head. "Horatius at the bridge, like something from a movie. 'Heroic' isn't a word we use often, is it?"
"No, that isn't something we're supposed to believe in anymore, is it? We know better. Everybody's got an angle, right?" Holtzman finished off his coffee and dumped the cup in the trash bin. "Imagine, giving up your life to protect other people's kids."
Some reports talked about it in Western terms. "Gun-fight at the Kiddy Corral" some local TV reporter had tried out, winning the low-taste award for last night, and earning his station a few hundred negative calls, confirming to the station manager that his outlet had a solid nighttime viewership. None had been more irate about that than Plumber, Bob Holtzman noted. He still thought it was supposed to mean something, this news business they both shared.
"Any word on Ryan?" Bob asked.
"Just a press release. Callie Weston wrote it, and Arnie delivered it. I can't blame him for taking the family away. He deserves a break from somebody, John."
"Bob, I seem to remember when—"
"Yeah, I know. I got snookered. Elizabeth Elliot fed me a story on Ryan back when he was Deputy at CIA." He turned to look at his older colleague. "It was all a lie. I apologized to him personally. You know what it was really all about?"
"No," Plumber admitted.
"The Colombian mission. He was there, all right. Along the way, some people got killed. One of them was an Air Force sergeant. Ryan looks after the family. He's putting them all through college, all on his own."
"You never printed that," the TV reporter objected.
"No, I didn't. The family—well, they're not public figures, are they? By the time I found out, it was old news. I just didn't think it was newsworthy." That last word was one of the keys to their profession. It was news personnel who decided what got before the public eye and what did not, and in choosing what got out and what didn't, it was they who controlled the news, and decided what, exactly, the public had a right to know. And in so choosing, they could make or break everyone, because not every story started off big enough to notice, especially the political ones.
"Maybe you were wrong."
Holtzman shrugged. "Maybe I was, but I didn't expect Ryan to become President any more than he did. He did an honorable thing—hell, a lot more than honorable. John, there are things about the Colombian story that can't ever see the light of day. I think I know it all now, but I can't write it. It would hurt the country and it wouldn't help anybody at all."
"What did Ryan do, Bob?"
"He prevented an international incident. He saw that the guilty got punished one way or another—"
"Jim Cutter?" Plumber asked, still wondering what Ryan was capable of.
"No, that really was a suicide. Inspector O'Day, the FBI guy who was right there across the street?"
"What about him?"
"He was following Cutter, watched him jump in front of the bus."
"You're sure of this?"
"As sure as I've ever been. Ryan doesn't know that I'm into all this. I have a couple of good sources, and everything matches up with the known facts. Either it's all the truth or it's the cleverest lie I've ever run into. You know what we have in the White House, John?"
"What's that?"
"An honest man. Not 'relatively honest, not 'hasn't been caught yet. Honest. I don't think he's ever done a crooked thing in his life."
"He's still a babe in the woods," Plumber replied. It was almost bluster, if not disbelief, because his conscience was starting to make noise.
"Maybe he is. But who ever said we were wolves? No, that's not right. We're supposed to chase after the crooks, but we've been doing it so long and so well that we forgot that there are some people in government who aren't." He looked over at his colleague again. "And so then we play one off against another to get our stories—and along the way we got corrupted, too. What do we do about that, John?"
"I know what you're asking. The answer is no."
"In an age of relative values, nice to find an absolute, Mr. Plumber. Even if it is the wrong one," Holtzman added, getting the reaction he'd hoped for.
"Bob, you're good. Very good, in fact, but you can't roll me, okay?" The commentator managed a smile, though. It was an expert attempt, and he had to admire that. Holtzman was a throwback to the days Plumber remembered so fondly.
"What if I can prove I'm right?"
"Then why didn't you write the sto
ry?" Plumber demanded. No real reporter could turn away from this one.
"I didn't print it. I never said I didn't write it," Bob corrected his friend.
"Your editor would fire you for—"
"So? Aren't there things you never did, even after you had everything you needed?"
Plumber dodged that one: "You talked about proof."
"Thirty minutes away. But this story can't ever get out."
"How can I trust you on that?"
"How can I trust you, John? What do we put first? Getting the story out, right? What about the country, what about the people? Where does professional responsibility end and public responsibility begin? I didn't run this one because a family lost a father. He left a pregnant wife behind. The government couldn't acknowledge what happened, and so Jack Ryan stepped in himself to make things right. He did it with his own money. He never expected people to find out. So what was I supposed to do? Expose the family? For what, John? To break a story that hurts the country—no, that hurts one family that doesn't need any more hurt. It could jeopardize the kids' educations. There's plenty of news we can cover without that. But I'm telling you this, John: You've hurt an innocent man, and your friend with the big smile lied to the public to do it. We're supposed to care about that."
"So why don't you write that?"
Holtzman made him wait a few seconds for the answer. "I'm willing to give you the chance to set things right. That's why. You were there, too. But I have to have your word, John. I'll take yours."
There was more to it than that. There had to be. For Plumber, it was a matter of two professional insults. First, that he'd been steamrolled by his younger associate at NEC, one of the new generation who thought journalism was how you looked in front of a camera. Second, that he'd also been rolled by Ed Kealty—used… to hurt an innocent man? If nothing else, he had to find out. He had to, otherwise he'd be spending a lot of time looking in mirrors.