Games of State o-3

by Tom Clancy

  Then she turned on him, her expression feral. "Into Hell?

  They scattered like cockroaches when the American turned on them. They were beaten back by one man in a wheelchair with only an hysterical girl to help him! They shamed me. I shamed myself." "All the more reason to put the incident behind us," Manfred said. "It was a fluke. We let down our guard." "I want revenge. I want blood." "No," Manfred implored. "That was the old way. The wrong way. This is a setback, not a defeat—" "Words! Bullshit words!" "Karin, listen!" Manfred said. "You can rekindle the passion another way. By helping Richter lead us all to Hanover." Karin turned. She looked through the flames. "I have no right to lead anyone while those two live. I stood by Richter and watched as my people, my soldiers, did nothing." She spotted a pathway through the shrinking fires and picked her way through the thinning smoke. Manfred lumbered after her.

  "You can't chase a car," Manfred said.

  "He's driving without headlights on a dirt road," she said. She broke into a slow jog. "I'll catch him or I'll track him. It won't be difficult." Manfred trotted after her. "You're not thinking," he said. "How do you know he's not waiting for you?" "I don't." "What will I do without you?" Manfred yelled.

  "Join up with Richter, as you said." "That isn't what I mean," he said. "Karin, let's at least talk—" She began to run.

  "Karin!" he yelled.

  She enjoyed the explosion of energy and the breathless dodging as she moved through the trees arid across the uneven terrain.

  "Karin!" She didn't want to hear anything else. She wasn't sure how much her supporters had failed her and how much she had failed them. All she knew was that to atone for her role in the debacle, to feel clean again, she had to wash her hands in blood.

  And she would. One way or another, tonight or tomorrow, in Germany or in America, she would.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Thursday, 9:32 P.M., Toulouse, France

  Hood was looking out the window as Hausen guided the jet to a careful, easy landing. Hood had no doubt about where they were headed. A bright spotlight mounted high on the small terminal shone down on a band of eleven men clad in jeans and workshirts. A twelfth man was dressed in a business suit. As he watched the young fellow check his watch repeatedly or brush down his hair, Hood could tell he wasn't a lawman. He didn't have the patience for it. Hood also knew right off which man was Ballon. He was the one with the bulldog expression who looked as though he wanted to bite someone.

  Ballon walked over before the plane had come to a complete stop. The man in the business suit scurried after him.

  "We didn't even get bags of peanuts," Matt Stoll said as he undid his seatbelt and drummed his knees.

  Hood watched as Ballon— and it was the bulldog he'd picked out— ordered his men to roll the stairway toward the jet. When the copilot finally opened the door, it was waiting.

  Hood ducked through the door. He was followed by Nancy, Stoll, and Hausen. Ballon glanced at them all, but his gaze lingered harshly on Hausen. It snapped back to Hood when he reached the tarmac.

  "Good evening," Hood said. He held out his hand. "I'm Paul Hood." Ballon shook it. "Good evening. I'm Colonel Ballon." He pointed with his thumb to the man in the business suit. "This is M. Marais of Customs. He wants me to tell you that this is not an international airport and that you are only here as a favor to myself and the Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale." "Vive la France," Stoll said under his breath.

  "Les passeports, " M. Marais said to Ballon.

  "He wants to see your passports," Ballon said. "Then, hopefully, we can be on our way." Stoll said to Ballon, "If I forgot mine, does that mean I get to go home?" Ballon regarded him. "Are you the man with the machine?" Stoll nodded.

  "Then no. If I have to shoot Marais, you're coming with us." Stoll reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his passport. The others produced theirs as well.

  Marais looked at each in turn, checking the faces against the photographs. Then he handed them back to Ballon, who passed them to Hood.

  "Continuez," Marais said impatiently.

  Ballon said, "I'm also supposed to tell you that, officially, you have not entered France. And that you will be expected to leave within twenty-four hours." ' "We don't exist but we do," Stoll said. "Aristotle would have loved that." Nancy was standing behind him. "Why Aristotle?" she asked.

  "He believed in abiogenesis, the idea that living creatures can arise from nonliving matter. Francesco Redi disproved it in the seventeenth century. And now we've disproved Redi." Hood had returned the passports and stood watching Marais. He could tell from the man's face that all was not well. After a moment, Marais took Ballon aside. They spoke quietly for a moment. Then Ballon walked over. His face was even unhappier than before.

  "What is it?" Hood asked.

  "He's concerned," Ballon said. He looked at Hausen.

  "He doesn't want this very irregular situation to receive any publicity." Hausen said coolly, "I don't blame him. Who would want to advertise that they are the home of Dominique?" "No one," Ballon replied, "except, perhaps, the nation which gave us Hitler." Hood's instinct in any confrontation of this type was to mediate. But he decided to stay out of the way of this one.

  Both men had been out of line, and he felt he could only make enemies by interfering.

  Nancy said, "I came here to help stop the next Hitler, not make cracks about the last one. Anybody care to help?" Shouldering past Ballon, Marais, and the other members of the Gendarmerie, Nancy headed for the terminal.

  Hausen looked at Hood and then at Ballon. "She's right," he said. "My apologies to you both." Ballon's mouth scrunched as if he weren't quite ready to let the matter go. Then it relaxed. He turned to Marais, who appeared deeply confused.

  "A demain, " he said sternly, then signaled his men to go on. Hood, Stoll, and Hausen followed.

  As they walked briskly through the terminal, Hood wondered if it had been coincidental. that Ballon had selected the salutation "See you tomorrow," which in French also reflected where they were going.

  Ballon led the group to a pair of waiting vans. Without undo fuss, he made certain that Stoll was comfortable between Nancy and Hood. Ballon got in front, beside the driver. There were three other men in the rearmost seat.

  None carried arms. Those were in the second van, along with Hausen.

  "I feel like the botanist on HMS Bounty," Stoll remarked to Hood when they were under way. "He had to transplant the breadfruit they were after and Captain Bligh really looked out for him." "Where does that leave the rest of us?" Nancy said with a scowl.

  "Bound for Tahiti," Hood said.

  Nancy didn't smile. She didn't even look at him. Hood had the impression of being on the Ship of Fools, not the Bounty, Without the romanticism of memory to obscure it, he remembered now, vividly, how Nancy would regularly get into moods. She'd go from sad to depressed to angry, as if she were sliding down a muddy slope. The moods wouldn't last long, but when they came over her things could get nasty. He didn't know what scared him more: the fact that he'd forgotten them or the fact that she was in one now.

  Ballon turned around. "I spent what was left of favors owed to me getting you into France. I had already used up most of them obtaining the search warrant to enter Demain.

  It expires tonight at midnight but I don't want to waste it.

  We've been watching the plant for days by remote video camera, hoping to see something that would justify entering. But so far, there's been nothing." "What do you hope we'll find?" Hood asked.

  "Ideally?" Ballon said. "Faces of known terrorists.

  Members of his terrible New Jacobin paramilitary force, a resurrection of the league which did not hesitate to murder old women or young children if they belonged to the upper classes." The Colonel used a key attached to his wrist to open the glove compartment. He handed Hood a folder. Inside were over a dozen drawings and blurry photographs.

  "Those are known Jacobins," Ballon said. "I need a match with one of them
in order to go in." Hood showed the file to Stoll. "Are you going to be able to see a face clear enough to make a positive ID?" Stoll flipped through the pictures. "Maybe. Depends on what someone's standing behind, whether or not they're moving, how much time I have to do the imaging—" "Those are a lot of conditions," Ballon said irately. "I need to place one of these monsters inside the factory." "There's absolutely no leeway in the warrant?" Hood asked.

  "None," Ballon said angrily. "But I won't let poor resolution allow us to pretend an innocent man is a guilty one just so we can go inside." "Gee," Stoll said. "That doesn't put too much pressure on me, does it?" He returned the folder to Ballon.

  "That is what separates professionals from amateurs," Ballon noted.

  Nancy glared at Ballon. "I'm thinking that a professional wouldn't have let these terrorists get inside. I'm also thinking that Dominique has stolen, possibly killed, and is ready to start wars. But he gets the job done. Does that make him a professional?" Ballon replied evenly, "Men like Dominique disregard the law. We don't have that luxury." "Bull," she said. "I live in Paris. Most Americans are treated like shit by everyone from landlords to gendarmes.

  The laws don't protect us." "But you obey the laws, don't you?" he asked.

  "Of course." Ballon said, "One side operating outside the law is still just that. A rogue force. But both sides operating outside the law is chaos." Hood decided to get in the middle of this one by changing the subject. "How long until we reach the factory?" "Another fifteen minutes or so." Ballon was still looking at Nancy, who had turned away. "Mlle. Bosworth, your arguments are sound and I regret having spoken harshly to M. Stoll. But there is a great deal at stake." He looked at all of them. "Have any of you considered the risks of success?" Hood leaned forward. "No, we haven't. What do you mean?" "If we work surgically and only Dominique falls, his company and its holdings can still survive. But if they fall, billions of dollars will be lost. The French economy and its government will be seriously destabilized. And that will create a vacuum similar to those we have seen in the past." He looked past them toward the van behind them. "A vacuum in which German nationalism historically has flourished. In which German politicians stir the blood." His eyes shifted to Hood. "In which they look with greed at Austria, Sudetenland, Alsace-Lorraine. MM. Hood and Stoll, Mlle. Bosworth— we are on a tightrope. Caution is our balancing pole and the law is our net. With them, we will reach the other side." Nancy turned to look out the window. Hood knew she wouldn't apologize. But with her, the fact that she'd stopped arguing meant the same thing.

  Hood said, "I also believe in the law and I believe in the systems we've built to protect it. We'll help you get to the other side of that tightrope, Colonel." Ballon thanked him with a small nod, the first appreciative display he'd shown since they arrived.

  "Thanks, Boss," Stoll sighed. "Like I said, that doesn't put too much pressure on me, does it?"

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Thursday, 9:33 P.M., Wunstorf, Germany

  When the car died, Jody had lifted her foot from the gas pedal, lay back on the headrest, and shut her eyes.

  "I can't move," she panted.

  Herbert turned on the overhead light and leaned toward her. "Sweetheart," he said softly, "you have to." "No." He began pulling wads of cotton-soft padding from the car seat. "Our car's dead. We will be too if we don't get out." "I can't," she repeated.

  Herbert moved the collar of her blouse aside and gently dabbed at the blood on her wound. The hole wasn't large.

  He wouldn't be surprised if the bullet was a.22 fired from some homemade piece of crap by one of the kids in the crowd.

  Stupid punks, he thought. They'd puke at the sight of their own damn blood.

  "I'm afraid," Jody said suddenly. She started to whimper. "I was wrong. I'm still afraid!" "It's okay," Herbert said. "You're asking too much of yourself." Herbert felt bad for the kid, but he couldn't afford to lose her. Not now. He didn't doubt for a moment that Karin would be coming after him, alone or in force. The caduceus of Nazism had to be coated with the blood of the conquered to serve as an emblem of power.

  "Listen, Jody," Herbert said. "We're close to where we started, about a mile from the main road. If we can get there we'll be okay." Herbert turned to the glove compartment and opened it. He found a bottle of acetaminophen inside and gave two to Jody. Then he reached into the backseat, retrieved one of the water bottles, and gave her a drink. When she was finished, he let his hands drop behind the seat. He was feeling for something.

  "Jody," he said, "we need to get out of here." He found what he was looking for. "Sweetie," he said, "I've got to fix the wound." She opened her eyes. "How?" she asked, wincing as she shifted her shoulder.

  "I've got to take the bullet out. But there's no tape for a bandage or thread for a suture. When I'm done I'm going to have to cauterize it." She was suddenly more alert. "You're going to burn me?" "I've done it before," Herbert said. "We have to get out of here and I haven't got the horsepower to do that." He said, "What I'm going to do will hurt, but you're hurting now. We've got to fix that." She lay her head back.

  "Hon? We don't have time to waste." "All right," she rasped. "Do it." Holding his hands low where she couldn't see, he lit a match and held it to the tip of his Urban Skinner to sterilize it. After a few seconds he blew out the flame and used his fingers to gently open the wound. The back of the shell glinted in the yellow light of the car. Taking a deep breath, Herbert placed his left hand over her mouth. "Bite me if you have to," he said as he raised the knife.

  Jody groaned.

  The trick to treating a bullet wound was not to cause more damage removing the shell than it caused going in.

  But it had to be removed lest it work its way around the tissue, ripping it or even fragmenting itself as they fled.

  Ideally, the surgeon would have forceps or tweezers to remove the shell. Herbert had only the knife. That meant he had to get under the bullet and pop it out fast, lest her writhing drive the blade this way and that.

  He studied the wound for a moment, then put the tip to the opening. The bullet had entered at a slight left-to-right angle. He would have to go in the same way. He held his breath, steadied the knife, then pushed it in slowly.

  Jody screamed into his hand. She struggled hard against Herbert, but he pinned her with his left forearm.

  There was nothing like pushing around a wheelchair to build the upper body.

  Herbert pushed the blade along the bullet. He felt its end, angled the tip of the knife beneath it, and used the Skinner like a lever to ease the shell out. It emerged slowly, then tumbled down her body.

  Herbert tucked the knife into his belt and released her.

  He grabbed the matches.

  "I need four or five seconds to seal the wound," he said. "Will you give me that?" Her lips and eyes pressed shut, she nodded briskly.

  Herbert struck a match and used it to set the rest of the matchbook on fire. The matches would be hotter and faster than if he heated the knife and used it to close the wound. And seconds mattered now.

  Once again pressing his hand to her mouth, Herbert pressed the heads of the matches to the bloody wound.

  Jody tensed and bit his hand. He knew this pain and knew it would grow worse as the moisture in her skin evaporated. As she dug her teeth into him, he fought his own pain and bent toward her ear.

  "Did you ever see Kenneth Branagh in Henry V?" One second. The blood boiled off. Jody's hands shot toward Herbert's wrist.

  "Remember what he told his soldiers?" Two seconds. The flesh began to sear. Jody's teeth sliced through the meat of his palm.

  "Henry said that one day they'd point to their scars and tell their kids that they were tough cookies." Three seconds. The wound sizzled. Jody's strength seemed to evaporate. Her eyes rolled up.

  "That's you," Herbert said. "Except you'll probably have plastic surgery." Four seconds. The edges of the wound knit together under the heat. Jody's hands fell back.

  "No one will ever b
elieve you were shot. That you fought with King Bob Herbert on St. Crispin's Day." Five seconds. He pulled at the matches. They broke from the burned flesh with a slight tug. He dropped the book, then brushed away the embers which still clung to her skin. It was a small, ugly job, but at least the wound was closed.

  He removed his hand from her teeth. His palm was bleeding.

  "Now we'll both have scars to show off," he grumbled as he reached for the passenger's side door. "Think you'll be able to walk now?" Jody looked at him. She was sweating and her perspiration glistened in the car light.

  "I'll make it," she said. She didn't look at the wound as she pulled her blouse over it. "Did I hurt your hand?" "Unless you have rabies I'll be fine." He opened the door. "Now if you'll help me with the chair we can get the hell out of here." Jody moved slowly, tentatively as she came around the car. She was more confident with each step and seemed her old self by the time she reached him. She struggled slightly to get the chair out, then held it open for him.

  Pressing his hands on the car seat, he hopped in.

  "Let's go," he said. "Due east. To the left." "That's not the way I came," she said.

  "I know," Herbert replied. "Just do it." She started pushing. The chair seemed to snag on every exposed root and fallen branch. Far behind them, in an otherwise still and silent night, they heard crunching.

  "We're never going to make it," Jody said.

  "We are," Herbert said, "as long as you keep going in this direction.

  Jody leaned into the chair and they moved slowly through the dark. And as they did, Herbert told the young woman one thing more he needed her to do.