“First you lay the suit flat on the deck, unzipped, and then you sit down with your rear end just above the lowermost point of the zipper,” the Russian was saying.
Merdasan and his men were, of course, following along, doing their best to appear attentive. None of them appeared well, though, the building seas having leached the color from their faces. The cabin stank of vomit and sweat and overcooked vegetables.
“Legs go in first, followed by each arm in turn, followed by the hood. Once that’s done, you roll to your knees, pull the zipper fully closed, and close the Velcro flaps over the lower half of your face.”
The Russian went from man to man, making sure each one of them was following his instructions. Satisfied, he looked around and said, “Any questions?”
There were none.
“If you go overboard, your EPIRB-”
“Our what?” asked one of the men.
“Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon-the thing attached to your collar-will activate automatically as soon as it is submerged.”
“Any questions about that part?”
There were none.
“Okay, I suggest you get in your bunks and hold on.”
Though Vitaliy knew what to expect, the speed and ferocity with which the storm hit was jarring nevertheless. The sky went night-black around them, and within five minutes the sea went from relative calmness, with six- to eight-foot swells, to a roiling surface and twenty-foot waves that crashed into the bow ramp like the hand of God itself.
Great plumes of spray and foam billowed over the slab sides and pelted the wheelhouse windows like handfuls of hurled gravel, obliterating Vitaliy’s vision for ten seconds before the wipers could compensate, only to clear in time to give him a glimpse of the next wave. Every few seconds, tons of seawater broke over the starboard rail and surged knee-deep across the deck, overloading the scuppers, which couldn’t keep up with the volume. Hands clenched tightly around the wheel, Vitaliy could feel the helm growing sluggish as the trapped water crashed from beam to beam against the gunwales.
“Get below and mind the engines and the pumps,” Vitaliy told Vanya, who lurched to the ladder.
Joggling the dual throttles, Vitaliy struggled to keep the bow pointed into the oncoming waves. To let the boat swing broadside into the surge was to invite a fatal roll that would capsize them. The flat-bottomed T-4 had virtually no ability to snap itself upright beyond anything more than a fifteen-degree roll. Capsized in a trough, the boat would go under within a minute or two.
On the other hand, Vitaliy was too aware of the bow ramp’s structural limitations. Though he and Vanya had worked hard to ensure that the ramp was secure and water-resistant, there was no way around its design: It was meant to drop flat on a beach to disgorge soldiers. With each crashing wave, the ramp shuddered, and even over the roar of the storm, Vitaliy could hear the metal-on-metal hammering of the inch-thick securing pins.
Another wave loomed over the rail and broke, half of it shearing off and cascading over the deck, the other half slamming into the wheelhouse windows. The boat lurched to port. Vitaliy lost his footing and pitched forward, his forehead slamming into the console. He regained his feet and blinked rapidly, vaguely aware of something wet and warm running down his temple. He took his hand from the wheel and touched his forehead; his fingers came back bloody. Not too bad, though, he decided. A couple stitches.
From the intercom, Vanya’s muffled voice: “Pump… failed… trying restart…”
Damn. One pump they could do without, but Vitaliy knew most boats sank not from a single catastrophic incident but from a domino effect of them, one after the other, until the boat’s vital functions were overwhelmed. And if that happened out here… It didn’t bear thinking about.
Sixty seconds passed, then Vanya again: “Pump restarted!”
“Understood!” Vitaliy replied.
From below he heard a voice shout, “No, don’t! Come back!”
Vitaliy scooted to his right and pressed his face to the side window. Aft he saw a figure stumble through the cabin door and onto the pitching deck. It was one of Fred’s men.
“What the devil…”
The man stumbled, fell to his knees. Vomit spewed from his mouth. He was panicked, Vitaliy now saw. Trapped belowdecks, the man’s instinct to escape had overwhelmed the logical part of his brain.
Vitaliy reached for the engine-room intercom. “Vanya, there’s a man on the afterdeck-”
The boat’s stern was tossed up in the air. As it dropped back down, a rogue wave struck the starboard quarter. The man, already airborne, was tossed sideways and slammed into the gunwale. He hung there for a moment, draped over the side like a rag doll, legs on deck, torso hanging in space, then tipped over and disappeared.
“Man overboard, man overboard!” Vitaliy shouted over the boatwide intercom. He peered through the windows, looking for a gap in the crests so he could come about.
“Don’t,” he heard a voice say behind him.
He turned to see Fred standing at the top of the ladder, both hands clenching the safety railing. The front of his shirt was vomit-stained.
“What?” Vitaliy asked.
“He’s gone; forget him.”
“Are you insane? We can’t-”
“If you turn the boat around, we risk being capsized, yes?”
“Yes, but-”
“He knew the risks, Captain. I’m not going to let his mistake jeopardize the rest of us.”
Vitaliy knew Fred was logically correct, but to abandon a man to the sea without even trying to recover him seemed inhuman. And to do it without the slightest trace of emotion on one’s face…
As if sensing Vitaliy’s indecision, the man known as Fred said, “My men are my responsibility; yours is the safety of the boat and its passengers, true?”
“True.”
“Then we continue.”
39
HELLO?” former President Jack Ryan said. He still liked to answer his own phone, at least this one.
“Mr. President?”
“Yeah, who’s this?” Whoever it was, he had access to Jack’s private line. There weren’t many of those.
“John Clark. Just got back from the UK day before yesterday.”
“John, how’re you doing? So they did it, huh? Sent the Yankee packing.”
“Afraid so. Anyway, Ding and I are home. Reason I called, well, maybe we both owe you a courtesy call. Is it okay?”
“Hell, yes. Come on over for lunch. Tell me when.”
“Maybe an hour and a half?”
“Okay, lunch is fine. See you about eleven?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The name’s still Jack, remember?”
Clark chuckled. “I’ll try to remember.”
And the phone went dead. Ryan switched lines and beeped Andrea.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Two friends coming over about eleven. John Clark and Domingo Chavez. Remember ’em?”
“Yes, sir. Okay, I’ll put them on the list,” she replied in a studiously neutral voice. These two people, she remembered, were of the dangerous sort, though they seemed loyal enough. As a special agent of the United States Secret Service, she trusted nobody at all. “For lunch?”
“Probably.”
It was a pleasant drive east on U.S. Route 50, then south before reaching Annapolis. Clark found that re-adapting to driving on the right side of the road after several years driving on the left was almost automatic. Evidently the programming of a lifetime easily overcame the adjustments he’d made in the UK, though he occasionally had to think about it. The green signs helped. The corresponding signs in England and Wales had been blue, and had been a convenient reminder that he’d been in a foreign land, albeit one with better beer.
“So what’s the plan?” Chavez asked.
“We tell him we’ve signed on.”
“And about Junior?”
“What you decide is up to you, Ding, but here’s how I see
it: What father and son tell one another is their business, not ours. Jack Junior is an adult. What he does with his life is his business, and who he includes in that loop is his business, too.”
“Yeah, I hear you, but man, if he got hurt… Christ almighty, I wouldn’t want to be around for that shit storm.”
Neither would I, Clark thought.
“But then again, what could you have said?” Ding continued. “The man asks you to train him, you can’t hardly say no.”
“You got that right.” The truth was, Clark felt bad about not telling Ryan Senior-they went back a long way, after all, and he owed the former President a lot-but he’d built a big part of his life on keeping other people’s secrets. This was personal, of course, but Jack was a big boy with a decent head on his shoulders. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try to convince Jack to tell his father about working at The Campus.
After forty minutes they turned right onto Peregrine Cliff Road, doubtless under TV surveillance from this point on, and Secret Service agents would be on their computers to check out his license plate numbers, then to determine that he was driving a rental car, and they couldn’t access Hertz’s computer quickly enough to identify the renter. That would get them slightly worried, though only in an institutional sense, something the USSS did well. Finally came the stone pillar that marked the entrance to Ryan’s quarter-mile driveway.
“Please identify,” said the remote-control voice in the pillar’s speaker.
“Rainbow Six inbound to see SWORDSMAN.”
“Proceed,” the voice replied, followed by an electronic tone and the hydraulic sound of the gate controls being told to open.
“You didn’t tell them about me,” Chavez objected.
“Just keep your hands in the open.” Clark chuckled.
Andrea Price-O’Day stood on the porch as they drove up. The detail chief herself, Clark noted. Maybe they thought he was important. Being a friend of the boss had its uses.
“Hello, Chief,” she said in greeting.
She likes me? Clark thought. Only his friends called him Chief.
“Good morning, ma’am. How’s the boss doing?”
“Working on his book, like always,” Andrea answered. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” He took her offered hand. “You know Domingo, I believe.”
“Oh, sure. How’s the family?”
“Great. Glad to be home. Got another one on the way, too.”
“Congratulations!”
“How’s he doing?” Clark asked next. “Climbing the walls?”
“Go see for yourself.” Andrea opened the front door.
They’d both been here before, the large open living room, the Potlatch decking that formed the ceiling, and the large expanse of windows revealing the Chesapeake Bay, plus Cathy’s Steinway grand piano, which she probably played every other day. Andrea led them up the carpeted steps, right to Ryan’s library/office, and left.
They found Ryan tapping on his keyboard with strokes heavy enough to kill one every two years or so. Ryan looked up as they entered.
“Heavy thoughts, Mr. President?” Clark asked with a smile.
“Hey, John! Howdy, Ding. Welcome!” Steps were taken and handshakes exchanged. “Sit down and take a load off,” Jack commanded, and his orders were followed. Old friend or not, he was a former President of the United States, and they’d both worn uniforms in the not-so-distant past.
“Glad to see you’re in one piece,” Clark said.
“What, Georgetown?” Ryan shook his head. “Not even a close call. Andrea dropped him as pretty as you please. With a tip-off from Jack, that is.”
“Come again?”
“He was there. He gave Andrea the nod. He spotted something about the janitor that didn’t sit right.”
“Such as?” asked Clark.
“He was using a screwdriver on a buffer; should have had a crescent.”
“Sharp kid,” Chavez observed. “Gotta make Dad proud.”
“Bet yer ass,” former President Ryan said, not hiding it. “Want some coffee?”
“That’s one thing they don’t do well in England, sir,” Chavez said in agreement. “They got Starbucks, but that doesn’t quite do it for me.”
“I’ll fix you up. Come on.” He rose and walked down to the kitchen, where there was a pot full of Kona and mugs close by. “So how was life in Britain?”
“Good people. Our base was out near the Welsh border-nice people out there, good pubs, and the local food was pretty good. I especially like their bread,” Clark reported. “But they think corned beef is something that comes out of a can.”
Ryan laughed. “Yeah, dog food. I worked in London nearly three years, and I never found decent corned beef. They call it ‘salt beef,’ but it isn’t quite the same. Rotated out of Rainbow, huh?”
“I guess we just wore out our welcome,” Clark said.
“Who’d you leave behind?” President Ryan asked.
“Two go-teams, all trained up, about half SAS members from the British Army. They’re pretty good,” Clark assured him. “But the other European contingents are backing off. Too bad. Some of them were ace operators. The intel backup is also pretty well up to snuff. Rainbow will still work, if they let it. But the local-by which I mean mainly European-bureaucrats, they kinda wet their pants when my boys deploy.”
“Yeah, well, we have them here, too,” Ryan replied. “Kinda makes you wonder where Wyatt Earp went to.”
That got a chuckle from his guests.
“What’s SHORTSTOP doing now?” Clark asked. It was a natural question to ask among friends who’d been apart; failing to ask would have been noted.
“Trading business, like I did. I haven’t even asked where. Having a President for a father can be disabling at his age, y’know?”
“Especially the chase cars on a date,” Chavez suggested with a grin. “Not sure I would have liked that.”
They spent ten minutes chatting and catching up on their respective families, on sports, and on the general state of the world, then Ryan said, “What are you guys going to do? I imagine CIA has suggested you both retire. If you need a letter of reference, let me know. You’ve both served your country well.”
“That’s one of the things we wanted to talk to you about,” Clark said. “We ran into Jimmy Hardesty at Langley, and he put us in touch with Tom Davis.”
“Oh?” Ryan said, setting his cup down.
Clark nodded. “They offered us a job.”
Former President Ryan considered this for a moment. “Well, it’s not like I hadn’t bounced that around in my head before. You two are suited for it, no doubt about that. What’d you think of the setup?”
“Good. Some growing pains going on, I think, but that’s to be expected.”
“Gerry Hendley’s a good guy. I wouldn’t have signed off on it otherwise. You know about the pardons?”
Chavez answered that one. “Yeah, thanks in advance. Pray we won’t need one, but nice to know they’re there.”
Ryan nodded. “How’s lunch grab you?”
And thus endeth the conversation, Clark noted. Brainchild of Ryan’s or not, The Campus was something best kept at arm’s length.
“Thought you’d never ask,” Clark said, not missing a beat. “Can I hope for corned beef?”
“Place called Attman’s up in Baltimore. One nice thing about the Secret Service: They don’t let me do anything, and so they run a lot of errands.”
“In the old days I bet they’d fly it down from the Carnegie in New York,” Chavez speculated.
It was Ryan’s turn to smile. “Occasionally. You have to be careful with that sort of stuff. You can get spoiled, and you can start believing you deserve it. Hell, I miss not being able to wander around shopping myself, but Andrea and her troops have a conniption fit when I try to do it.” The Secret Service had insisted, for example, that his house have a sprinkler system. Ryan had submitted and footed the bill himself, though it could have been billed to
the Department of the Treasury. He didn’t want to start feeling like a king. With that decided, he led his guests into the kitchen, where the corned beef was already laid out, along with kaiser rolls and deli mustard.
“Thank God for an American lunch,” Clark said aloud. “I love the Brits, and I like having a pint of John Smith’s with it, but home is home.”
In the car, Ryan said, “Now that you’re free men, tell me: How’s the new Langley?”
Clark answered, “You know me, Jack. How long have I been screaming about building up the DO?” he asked, meaning the CIA’s Clandestine Service, the real spies, the field intelligence officers. “Plan Blue got off the ground just long enough to be shot down in flames by this jack-off Kealty.”
“You speak Arabic, right?”
“Both of us,” Chavez confirmed. “John’s better than I am, but I can find the men’s room when I need to. No Pashto, though.”
“Mine’s pretty rusty,” Clark said. “Haven’t been there in twenty years or so. Interesting people, the Afghans. They’re tough but primitive. Thing is, the whole place is about the poppy.”
“How big a problem?”
“There are some no-shit billionaires over there, all from opium. They live like kings, spread the money around in the form of guns and ammo, mostly, but all the hard drugs you can buy on the street in Southeast Washington come from Afghanistan. Nobody seems to recognize that. All of it, or damned near. It generates enough money to corrupt their culture, and ours. They don’t need the help. Until the Russians came in ’79, they were killing off each other. So they got their act together and gave Ivan a major bellyache, took maybe two weeks off after the Red Army bugged out, and then they started killing each other again. They don’t know what peace is. They don’t know what prosperity is. If you build schools for their kids, they blow the schools up. I lived there for over a year, climbing the hills and shooting at Ivan, trying to get them trained up. There’s a lot to like about them, but don’t turn your back on ’em. Toss in the terrain. Some places too high to fly a helicopter. Not your basic vacation spot. But their culture is the hard part. Stone-age people with modern weapons. They seem to have genetic knowledge of anything you can kill a guy with. They’re not like anybody you’ve ever met. The only thing they won’t do is eat your body after they kill you. They’re Muslim enough for that. Anyway, as long as the poppy brings in money, that’s the engine that drives the country, and ain’t nothing gonna change it.”
Dead or Alive Page 31