Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  “Sounds grim,” Ryan observed.

  “Grim ain’t the word. Hell, the Russians tried everything they knew-building schools, hospitals, and roads-just trying to make it an easy campaign, to buy them off, and look how far that got ’em. Those people fight for fun. You can buy their loyalty with food and stuff, and, yeah, try building hospitals and schools and roads. It ought to work, but don’t bet the ranch on it. You have to figure a way to erase three thousand years of tribal warfare, blood feuds, and distrust of outsiders. Tough nut to crack. Hey, I served in Vietnam, and Vietnam is like fucking Disneyland compared to Afghanistan.”

  “And somewhere in the Magic Kingdom the Emir is playing hide-and-seek,” Chavez observed.

  “Or maybe not,” Clark countered. “Everybody’s assuming he’s still there.”

  “You know something we don’t?” Ryan asked with a smile.

  “No, just trying to think like the guy. In SEALs, that was rule number one in evasion and escape training: Go where the bad guys ain’t. Yeah, his options are limited, but they’ve got a decent infrastructure and plenty of cash.”

  “Maybe he’s in Dubai,” Ding offered, “in one of those luxury villas.”

  Former President Ryan laughed at that one. “Well, we’re looking hard. Problem is, without a DI to ask the right questions, and a DO deep enough to go get them, you’re just spinning your wheels. All the guys Kealty’s put in are big-picture thinkers, and that just isn’t gonna get the job done.”

  Two hours later, Clark and Chavez were heading back to Washington, digesting lunch and contemplating what they’d learned. Though Ryan hadn’t given the subject more than a passing comment, it was clear to Clark that another run for the White House was weighing heavily on the former CINC.

  “He’s going to do it,” Chavez observed.

  “Yep,” Clark agreed. “He feels trapped.”

  “He is trapped.”

  “So are we, Domingo. New job, same shit.”

  “Not exactly the same. Going to be interesting, that’s for sure. Wonder how much-”

  “Not too much, I’d think. Dead bodies are generally bad for business, and dead bodies don’t tell you much. We’re in the information business now.”

  “But sometimes the herd needs culling.”

  “True. At Langley, the problem’s always been to get somebody to sign the order. Paper lasts forever, you know? In Vietnam, we had a real war, and orders could be verbal, but when that ended, the desk-sitters kept getting their panties in a wad, and then the lawyers raised their ugly heads, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. We can’t have government employees giving that sort of order whenever the mood strikes them. Sooner or later, person A is going to get carried away, and person B is going to have a conscience attack and rat you out for it, no matter how much the bad guy needed to meet God. It’s amazing how dangerous a conscience can be-and usually at the wrong time. We live in an imperfect world, Ding, and there ain’t no rule that says it has to make sense.”

  “A blank presidential pardon,” Chavez observed, changing directions. “And it’s legal?”

  “Well, that’s what the man said. I remember when Dr. No came out. I was in high school. The promo for the film said, ‘The double-oh means he has a license to kill who he wants, when he wants.’ That was cool back in the ’60s. Before Watergate and all that, the Kennedy administration liked the idea, too. So they initiated Operation Mongoose. It was a total fuckup, of course, but it’s never been revealed how big a fuckup it was. Politics,” Clark explained. “I guess you’ve never heard the stories.”

  “Not on the syllabus down at The Farm.”

  “Just as well. Who’d want to work for an agency that did dumb shit like that? Taking down a foreign chief of state is really bad juju, son. Even if one of our Presidents thought it was cool to be a sociopath. Funny how people don’t like to think things all the way through.”

  “Like us?”

  “Not when you take out people who don’t matter all that much.”

  “What’s that shit about the Ranger?”

  “Sam Driscoll,” Clark replied. Ryan had told them about Kealty’s push for the CID investigation. “Humped a few hills with Driscoll in the ’90s. Good man.”

  “Anything being done to stop it?”

  “Don’t know, but Jack told us about it for a reason.”

  “New recruit for The Campus?”

  “It sure would soften Driscoll’s fall, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but still, to watch your career get flushed because some dickhead wants to make a point-it just ain’t right, mano.”

  “In so many ways,” Clark agreed.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Chavez said, “He looks worried. Tired.”

  “Who, Jack? I would be, too. Poor bastard. He just wants to write his memoirs and maybe work on his golf game, play daddy to the kids. You know, he really is a good guy.”

  “That’s his problem,” Chavez pointed out.

  “Sure as hell.” It was nice to know that his son-in-law hadn’t wasted his time at George Mason University. “A sense of duty can take you into some tight places. Then you have to figure your own way out.”

  Back at Peregrine Cliff, Ryan found his mind drifting, fingers poised over the keyboard. Fucking Kealty… Prosecuting a soldier for killing the enemy. It was, he thought sadly, a perfect testament to the character of the current President.

  He glanced at the multiline phone. He started reaching for it twice, only to have his hand stop, seemingly of its own accord, in contradiction to Saint Augustine’s dictum on will and resistance. But then he picked it up and punched the buttons.

  “Yeah, Jack,” van Damm’s voice answered. He had caller ID on his private line.

  “Okay, Arnie, pull the trigger. And God help me,” he added.

  “Let me make some phone calls. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. See ya.” And Ryan hung up.

  What the hell are you doing? he asked himself.

  But he knew the answer all too well.

  40

  THEY HAD TO PRACTICE not being conspiratorial, to seem like ordinary people having an ordinary lunch in a Parisian café on a drizzly day, which worked in their favor. Aside from themselves, there were only two patrons, a young couple, at a nearby umbrella-covered table.

  Ibrahim had told them how to dress-like middle-class Frenchmen-and to do it all the time from now on. They all spoke French, and while all were Muslims, none of them attended mosque on a regular basis, doing their daily prayers at home, and definitely not attending the sermons of the more radical and assertive imams, all of whom were kept under regular observation by the various French police agencies.

  In sticking to public places and chattering like normal people, they avoided conspiratorial meetings in small rooms that could be bugged by clever policemen. Open-air meetings were easy to observe but nearly impossible to record. And nearly every man in France had regular lunch mates. However large and well funded the French police were, they could not investigate everybody in this infidel country. With regular visibility came anonymity. Quite a few others had been caught or even killed by taking the other route. Especially in Israel, where the police agencies were notoriously efficient, largely because of the money they so liberally spread on the street. There were always those willing to take money for information, which was why he had to choose his people so carefully.

  And so the meeting did not begin with religious incantations. They all knew them anyway. And they spoke exclusively in French, lest someone take note of a foreign language. Too many Westerners were learning what Arabic sounded like-and to them it always sounded conspiratorial. Their mission was to be invisible in plain sight. Fortunately, it wasn’t all that hard.

  “So what is this mission?” Shasif Hadi asked.

  “It’s an industrial facility,” Ibrahim answered. “For now that’s all you need to know. Once we’re on the ground, you’ll be fully briefed.”

  “How many
?” Ahmed asked. He was the youngest member of the team, clean-shaven with a well-groomed mustache.

  “The goal isn’t casualties-at least not human casualties.”

  “Then what?” This was Fa’ad. He was a Kuwaiti, tall and handsome.

  “Again, you’ll know more when it becomes necessary.” He drew a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it on the table before them. It was a computer-printed map, altered with some image-editing software so all the place names were missing.

  “The problem will be selecting the best point of entry,” Ibrahim said. “The facility is fairly well guarded, both within and along the perimeter. The explosive charges necessary will be trivial, small enough to carry in one backpack. The guards inspect the area twice daily, so timing will be critical.”

  “If you’ll get me the explosive specifications, I can start planning,” Fa’ad said, pleased to have his education being used in Allah’s Holy Cause. The others thought him overly proud of his engineering degree from Cairo University.

  Ibrahim nodded.

  “What about the police and intelligence services there?” Hadi asked.

  Ibrahim waved his hand dismissively. “Manageable.”

  His casual tone belied his thoughts. He had a genuine fear of police investigators. They were like evil djinns in the way they could inspect a piece of evidence and turn all manner of magical information from it. You could never tell what they knew and how they could tie it all together. And his primary job was not to exist. No one was to know his name or his face. He traveled as anonymously as a desert breeze. The URC could stay alive only if it remained hidden. For his part, Ibrahim traveled on numerous unknown credit cards-cash, unfortunately, was no longer anonymous at all; the police feared those who used cash, and searched them out rigorously. He had enough passports in his home to satisfy a nation-state’s foreign ministry, each of them expensively procured and used only a few times before being burned to ashes. And he wondered if even this was precaution enough. It took only one person to betray him.

  And the only people who could betray him were those whom he trusted absolutely. Thoughts like that turned over and over in his mind. He took a sip of coffee. He even worried about talking in his sleep on an aircraft during an overwater flight. That’s all it might take. It wasn’t death he feared-none of them feared that-but rather failure.

  But were not the Holy Warriors of Allah those who did the hardest things, and would not his blessings be in proportion to his merit? To be remembered. To be respected by his compatriots. To strike a blow for the cause-even if he managed to do that without recognition, he would go to Allah with peace in his heart.

  “We have final authorization?” Ahmed asked.

  “Not yet. Soon, I expect, but not yet. When we separate here, we won’t see each other again until we’re in country.”

  “How will we know?”

  “I have an uncle in Riyadh. He’s planning on buying a new car. If my e-mail says it is a red car, we wait; if a green car, we move to the next stage. If so, five days after the e-mail we will meet in Caracas, as planned, then drive the rest of the way.”

  Shasif Hadi smiled and shrugged. “Then let us all pray for green car.”

  The office already had their name tags on the doors, Clark noticed. Both he and Chavez had medium-sized adjoining offices, with desks, swivel chairs, two visitor chairs each, and personal computers, complete with manuals on how to use them and how to access all manner of files.

  For his part, Clark was quick to figure out his computer system. Inside of twenty minutes, rather to his amazement, he was surfing through the basement-bedrock-floor level of CIA’s Langley headquarters.

  Ten minutes later: “Holy shit,” he breathed.

  “Yeah,” Chavez said from the door. “What do you think?”

  “This is a director-level compartment I just surfed into. Jesus, this lets me into damned near everything.”

  Davis was back. “You’re both fast. The computer system gives you access to a lot of stuff. Not quite everything, just the major compartments. It’s all we need. Same thing with Fort Meade. We have a road into nearly all of their SigInt stuff. You have a lot of reading to catch up on. Keyword EMIR will let you into twenty-three compartments-all we have on that bird, including a damned good profile; at least we think so. It’s labeled AESOP.”

  “Yeah, I see it here,” Clark replied.

  “A guy named Pizniak, professor of psychiatry at Yale medical school. Read it over and see what you think. Anyway, if you need me, you know where my shop is. Don’t be afraid to come up and ask questions. The only dumb question is the one you don’t ask. Oh, by the way, Gerry’s personal secretary is Helen Connolly. She’s been with him for a long time. She is not-repeat not-cleared into what we do here. Gerry does his own drafting of reports and stuff, but mostly we do it verbally at his level of decision-making. By the way, John, he told me about your restructuring idea. Glad you said it; saved me from bringing it up.”

  Clark chuckled. “Always happy to be the bad guy.”

  Davis left, and they got back to work. Clark went first to the photos they had of the Emir, which weren’t many and were of poor quality. The eyes, he saw, were cold. Almost lifeless, like a shark’s eyes. No expression in them at all. Isn’t that interesting? Clark thought. Many said the Saudis were a humorless people-like Germans but without the sense of humor was the phrase a lot of people used-but that hadn’t been his experience there.

  Clark had never met a bad Saudi. There were a few he knew well from his life in the CIA, people from whom he’d learned the language. They’d all been religious, part of the conservative Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam. Not unlike Southern Baptists in the thoroughness of their devotion. That was fine with him. He’d been to a mosque once and watched the exercise of the religion, careful to stay inconspicuously in the back-it had been a language lesson, for the most part, but the sincerity of their religious beliefs was evident. He’d talked religion with his Saudi friends and found nothing the least bit objectionable in it. Saudis were hard to make as close friends, but a true Saudi friend would step in front of the bullet for you. Their religion’s rules on such things as hospitality were admirable indeed. And Islam prohibited racism, something Christianity had unfortunately left out.

  Whether the Emir was a devout Muslim or not Clark didn’t know, but the man was no fool, that much AESOP made clear. He was patient by nature but also capable of being decisive in his decision-making. A rare combination, Clark thought, though he’d been that way himself on occasion. Patience was a hard virtue to acquire, all the more so for a true believer in whatever cause he might have chosen as his life mission.

  His computer manual had a directory of the Agency’s in-house computer library, and he also had references from the keyword EMIR access point. So Clark started surfing. How much did Langley have on this mutt? What field officers had worked with him? What anecdotes did they write down? Did anyone have the key to this guy’s character?

  Clark shook himself out of his reverie and checked his watch. An hour had gone by. “Time flies,” he muttered, and reached for the phone. When the other end picked up, Clark said, “Gerry, John. Got a minute? Tom, too, if he’s handy.”

  He was in Hendley’s office two minutes later. Tom Davis, The Campus’s recruiter, walked in a minute later. “What’s up?”

  “Got a candidate, maybe,” Clark said, then, before either of them could ask the obvious question, continued: “This came from Jack Ryan-Senior, that is.”

  This got the attention of Hendley, who leaned forward in his chair, hands clasped on his desk blotter. “Go on.”

  “Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know all the details, but there’s a Ranger, an old hand named Driscoll, who’s landed in some hot water. Rumor is, Kealty is looking to make an example of him.”

  “Over what?”

  “A mission in the Hindu Kush. Killed a handful of bad guys in a cave while they were sleeping. Kealty and his AG want to hang murder
on Driscoll.”

  “Good Christ,” Tom Davis muttered.

  “You know this guy?” Hendley asked.

  Clark nodded. “About ten years ago, just before Rainbow started, I had a little job in Somalia. Had a team of Rangers working overwatch for me. Driscoll was one of them. We’ve stayed in touch, had a beer now and again. Solid guy.”

  “How far’s this thing with the AG gone?”

  “The Army CID has it. Preliminary investigation.”

  Hendley sighed and scratched his head. “What’s Jack say?”

  “He told me for a reason. He knows I’m on board here.”

  Hendley nodded. “First things first: If this is coming from the White House, Driscoll’s not getting out of this unscathed.”

  “I’m sure he knows that.”

  “Best case, he’s separated. Maybe keep his pension.”

  “He knows that, too, I’m sure.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Brooke Army Medical down in San Antonio. He got a little souvenir in the shoulder during the exfil.”

  “Serious?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Okay, go have a chat with him. Feel him out.” Then to Davis: “Tom, in the meantime, get a jacket started on Driscoll. Full background and all that.”

  “Right.”

  Come on in,” Ben Margolin told Mary Pat. “Shut the door.”

  Another day at NCTC. More intercept traffic, more leads that could be something big or nothing at all. The volume was overwhelming, and while this was nothing new to any of them, most were worried they were missing much more than they were catching. Better technology would help, but who knew how long it would take to get the new systems up and running. The Trailblazer fiasco had made the powers-that-be gun-shy of another failure, so they were beta testing the hell out of the thing. In the meantime, Mary Pat thought, she and the rest of the NCTC scrambled, trying to keep the dike plugged while looking for new cracks.