by Tom Clancy
That concluded Killgore’s work for the day. He made his way outside. The evening air was chilly and clean and pure—well, as pure as it could be in this part of the world. There were a hundred million cars in the country, all spewing their complex hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. Killgore wondered if he’d be able to tell the difference in two or three years, when all that stopped. In the glow of the building lights, he saw the flapping of bats. Cool, he thought, one rarely saw bats. They must be chasing insects, and he wished his ears could hear the ultrasonic sounds they projected like radar to locate the bugs and intercept them.
There would be birds up there, too. Owls especially, magnificent raptors of the night, flying with soft, quiet feathers, finding their way into barns, where they’d catch mice, eat and digest them, and then regurgitate the bones of their prey in compact little capsules. Killgore felt far more kinship for the wild predators than he did for the prey animals. But that was to be expected, wasn’t it? He did have kinship with the predators, those wild, magnificent things that killed without conscience, because Mother Nature had no conscience at all. It gave life with one hand, and took it back with the other. The ageless process of life, that had made the earth what it was. Men had tried so hard and so long to change it, but other men now would change it back, quickly and dramatically, and he’d be there to see it. He wouldn’t see all the scars fade from the land, and that was too bad, but, he judged, he’d live long enough to see the important things change. Pollution would stop almost completely. The animals would no longer be fettered and poisoned. The sky would clear, and the land would soon be covered with life, as Nature intended, with him and his colleagues to see the magnificence of the transformation. And if the price was high, then the prize it earned was worth it. The earth belonged to those who appreciated and understood her. He was even using one of Nature’s methods to take possession—albeit with a little human help. If humans could use their science and arts to harm the world, then other humans could use them to fix it. Chester and Pete would not have understood, but then, they’d never understood much of anything, had they?
“There will be thousands of Frenchmen there,” Juan said. “And half of them will be children. If we wish to liberate our colleagues, the impact must be a strong one. This should be strong enough.”
“Where will we go afterwards?” René asked.
“The Bekaa Valley is still available, and from there, wherever we wish. I have good contacts in Syria, still, and there are always options.”
“It’s a four-hour flight, and there is always an American aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.”
“They will not attack an aircraft filled with children,” Esteban pointed out. “They might even give us an escort,” he added with a smile.
“It is only twelve kilometers to the airport,” Andre reminded them, “a fine multilane highway.”
“So, then, we must plan the mission in every detail. Esteban, you will get yourself a job there. You, too, Andre. We must pick our places, then select the time and the day.”
“We’ll need more men. At least ten more.”
“That is a problem. Where can we get ten reliable men?” Juan asked.
“Sicarios can be hired. We need only promise them the right amount of money,” Esteban pointed out.
“They must be faithful men,” René told them forcefully.
“They will be faithful enough,” the Basque told them. “I know where to go for them.”
They were all bearded. It was the easiest disguise to adopt, and though the national police in their countries had pictures of them, the pictures were all of young, shaven men. A passerby might have thought them to be artists, the way they looked, and the way they all leaned inward on the table to speak with intense whispers. They were all dressed moderately well, though not expensively so. Perhaps they were arguing over some political issue, the waiter thought from his station ten meters away, or some confidential business matter. He couldn’t know that he was right on both counts. A few minutes later, he watched them shake hands and depart in different directions, having left cash to pay the bill, and, the waiter discovered, a niggardly tip. Artists, he thought. They were notoriously cheap bastards.
“But this is an environmental disaster waiting to happen!” Carol Brightling insisted.
“Carol,” the chief of staff replied. “It’s about our balance of payments. It will save America something like fifty billion dollars, and we need that. On the environmental side, I know what your concerns are, but the president of Atlantic Richfield has promised me personally that this will be a clean operation. They’ve learned a lot in the past twenty years, on the engineering side and the public relations side, about cleaning up their act, haven’t they?”
“Have you ever been there?” the President’s science advisor asked.
“Nope.” He shook his head. “I’ve flown over Alaska, but that’s it.”
“You would think differently if you’d ever seen the place, trust me.”
“They strip-mine coal in Ohio. I’ve seen that. And I’ve seen them cover it back up and plant grass and trees. Hell, one of those strip mines—in two years they’re going to have the PGA championship on the golf course that they built there! It’s cleaned up, Carol. They know how now, and they know it makes good sense to do it, economically and politically. So, no, Carol, the President will not withdraw his support for this drilling project. It makes economic sense for the country.” And who really cares a rat’s ass for land that only a few hundred people have ever seen? he didn’t add.
“I have to talk to him personally about it,” the science advisor insisted.
“No.” The chief of staff shook his head emphatically. “That’s not going to happen. Not on this issue. All you’d accomplish is to undercut your position, and that isn’t smart, Carol.”
“But I promised!”
“Promised whom?”
“The Sierra Club.”
“Carol, the Sierra Club isn’t part of this administration. And we get their letters. I’ve read them. They’re turning into an extremist organization on issues like this. Anybody can say ‘do nothing,’ and that’s about all they’re saying since this Mayflower guy took it over.”
“Kevin is a good man and a very smart one.”
“You couldn’t prove that by me, Carol,” the chief of staff snorted. “He’s a Luddite.”
“Goddamnit, Arnie, not everyone who disagrees with you is an extremist, okay?”
“That one is. The Sierra Club’s going to self-destruct if they keep him on top of the masthead. Anyway.” The chief of staff checked his schedule. “I have work to do. Your position on this issue, Dr. Brightling, is to support the Administration. That means you personally support the drilling bill for AAMP. There is only one position in this building, and that position is what the President says it is. That’s the price you pay for working as an advisor to the President, Carol. You get to influence policy, but once that policy is promulgated, you support it, whether you believe it or not. You will say publicly that you think that drilling that oil is a good thing for America and for the environment. Do you understand that?”
“No, Arnie, I won’t!” Brightling insisted.
“Carol, you will. And you will do it convincingly, in such a way as to make the more moderate environmental groups see the logic of the situation. If, that is, you like working here.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, Carol, I am not threatening you. I am explaining to you how the rules work here. Because you have to play by the rules, just like I do, and just like everyone else does. If you work here you must be loyal to the President. If you are not loyal, then you cannot work here. You knew those rules when you came onboard, and you knew you had to live by them. Okay, now it’s time for a gut check. Carol, will you live by the rules or won’t you?”
Her face was red under the makeup. She hadn’t learned to conceal her anger, the chief of staff saw, and that was too bad. You couldn’t afford to ge
t angry over minor bullshit items, not at this level of government. And this was a minor bullshit item. When you found something as valuable as several billion barrels of oil in a place that belonged to you, you drilled into the ground to get it out. It was as simple as that—and it was simpler still if the oil companies promised not to hurt anything as a result. It would remain that simple as long as the voters drove automobiles. “Well, Carol?” he asked.
“Yes, Arnie, I know the rules, and I will live by the rules,” she confirmed at last.
“Good. I want you to prepare a statement this afternoon for release next week. I want to see it today. The usual stuff, the science of it, the safety of the engineering measures, that sort of thing. Thanks for coming over, Carol,” he said in dismissal.
Dr. Brightling stood and moved to the door. She hesitated there, wanting to turn and tell Arnie what he could do with his statement . . . but she kept moving into the corridor in the West Wing, turned north, and went down the stairs for the street level. Two Secret Service agents noted the look on her face and wondered what had rained on her parade that morning—or maybe had turned a hail-storm loose on it. She walked across the street with an unusually stiff gait, then up the steps into the OEOB. In her office, she turned on her Gateway computer and called up her word-processing program, wanting to put her fist through the glass screen rather than type on the keyboard.
To be ordered around by that man! Who didn’t know anything about science, and didn’t care about environmental policy. All Arnie cared about was politics, and politics was the most artificial damned thing in the world!
But then, finally, she calmed down, took a deep breath, and began drafting her defense of something that, after all, would never happen, would it?
No, she told herself. It would never happen.
CHAPTER 12
WILD CARDS
The theme park had learned well from its more famous model. It had taken care to hire away a dozen senior executives, their lavish salary increases paid for by the park’s Persian Gulf financial backers, who had already exceeded their fiscal expectations and looked forward to recouping their total investment in less than six years instead of the programmed eight and a half.
Those investments had been considerable, since they determined not merely to emulate the American corporation, but to exceed it in every respect. The castle in their park was made of stone, not mere fiberglass. The main street was actually three thoroughfares, each adapted to three separate national themes. The circular railroad was of standard gauge and used two real steam locomotives, and there was talk of extending the line to the international airport, which the Spanish authorities had been so kind as to modernize in order to support the theme park—as well they might: the park provided twenty-eight thousand full-time and ten thousand more part-time or seasonal jobs. The ride attractions were spectacular, most of them custom designed and built in Switzerland, and some of them adventurous enough to make a fighter pilot go pale. In addition, it had a Science World section, with a moonwalk attraction that had impressed NASA, an underwater walk-through mega-aquarium, and pavilions from every major industry in Europe—the one from Airbus Industrie was particularly impressive, allowing children (and adults) to pilot simulated versions of its aircraft.
There were characters in costumes—gnomes, trolls, and all manner of mythical creatures from European history, plus Roman legionnaires to fight barbarians—and the usual marketing areas where guests could buy replicas of everything the park had to offer.
One of the smartest things the investors had done was to build their theme park in Spain rather than France. The climate here, while hotter, was also sunny and dry most of the year, which made for full-year-round operations. Guests flew in from all over Europe, or took the trains, or came down on bus tours to stay at the large, comfortable hotels, which were designed for three different levels of expense and grandeur, from one that might have been decorated by César Ritz down to several with more basic amenities. Guests at all of them shared the same physical environment, warm and dry, and could take time off to bathe in the many pools surrounded by white-sand beaches, or to play on one of the two existing golf courses—three more were under construction, and one of them would soon be part of the European Professional Tour. There was also a busy casino, something no other theme park had tried. All in all, Worldpark, as it was called, had been an instant and sensational success, and it rarely had fewer than ten thousand guests, and frequently more than fifty thousand.
A thoroughly modern facility, it was controlled by six regional and one master command center, and every attraction, ride, and food outlet was monitored by computers and TV cameras.
Mike Dennis was the operations director. He’d been hired away from Orlando, and while he missed the friendly managerial atmosphere there, the building and then running of Worldpark had been the challenge he’d waited for all his life. A man with three kids, this was his baby, Dennis told himself, looking out the battlements of the tower. His office and command center was in the castle keep, the tall tower in the twelfth-century fortress they’d built. Maybe the Duke of Aquitaine had enjoyed a place like this, but he’d used only swords and spears, not computers and helicopters, and as wealthy as his grace had been back in the twelfth century, he hadn’t handled money in this quantity—Worldpark took in ten million dollars in cash alone on a good day, and far more than that from plastic. Every day a cash truck with a heavy police escort left the park for the nearest bank.
Like its model in Florida, Worldpark was a multistory structure. Under the main concourses was a subterranean city where the support services operated, and the cast members changed into costumes and ate their lunches, and where he was able to get people and things from place to place quickly and unseen by the guests in the sunlight. Running it was the equivalent of being mayor of a not-so-small city—harder, actually, since he had to make sure that everything worked all the time, and that the cost of operations was always less than the city’s income. That he did his job well, actually about 2.1 percent better than his own pre-opening projections, meant that he had a sizable salary, and that he’d earned the $1,000,000 bonus that had been delivered to him only five weeks earlier. Now, if only his kids could get used to the local schools. . . .
Even as an object of hatred, it was breathtaking. It was a city, Andre saw, the construction of which had cost billions. He’d lived through the indoctrination process in the local “Worldpark University,” learned the absurd ethos of the place, learned to smile at everything and everybody. He’d been assigned, fortuitously, to the security department, the notional Worldpark Policia, which meant that he wore a light blue shirt and dark blue trousers with a vertical blue stripe, carried a whistle and a portable radio, and spent most of his time telling people where the restrooms were, because Worldpark needed a police force about as much as a ship needed wheels. He’d gotten this job because he was fluent in three languages, French, Spanish, and English, and thus could be helpful to the majority of the visitors—“guests”—to this new Spanish city, all of whom needed to urinate from time to time, and most of whom, evidently, lacked the wit to notice the hundreds of signs (graphic rather than lettered) that told them where to go when the need became overwhelming.
Esteban, Andre saw, was in his usual place, selling his helium-filled balloons. Bread and circuses, they both thought. The vast sums expended to build this place—and for what purpose? To give the children of the poor and working classes a brief few hours of laughter before they returned to their dreary homes? To seduce their parents into spending their money for mere amusement? Really, the purpose of the place was to enrich further the Arab investors who’d been persuaded to spend so much of their oil money here, building this fantasy city. Breathtaking, perhaps, but still an object of contempt, this icon of the unreal, this opiate for the masses of workers who had not the sense to see it for what it was. Well, that was the task of the revolutionary elite.
Andre walked about, seemingly in an aimless way, b
ut actually in accordance with plans, both his and the park’s. He was being paid to look around and make arrangements while he smiled and told parents where their little darlings could relieve themselves.
“This will do it,” Noonan said, walking into the morning meeting.
“What’s ‘this’?” Clark asked.
Noonan held up a computer floppy disk. “It’s just a hundred lines of code, not counting the installation stuff. The cells—the phone cells, I mean—all use the same computer program to operate. When we get to a place, I just insert this in their drives and upload the software. Unless you dial in the right prefix to make a call—7-7-7, to be exact—the cell will respond that the number you’re calling is busy. So, we can block any cellular calls into our subjects from some helpful soul outside and also prevent them from getting out.”
“How many spare copies do you have?” Stanley asked.
“Thirty,” Noonan answered. “We can get the local cops to install them. I have instructions printed up in six languages.” Not bad, eh? Noonan wanted to say. He’d gone through a contact at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, to get it. Pretty good for just over a week’s effort. “It’s called Cellcop, and it’ll work anywhere in the world.”
“Good one, Tim.” Clark made a note. “Okay, how are the teams?”
“Sam Houston’s down with a sprained knee,” Peter Covington told Clark. “Hurt it coming down a zip-line. He can still deploy, but he won’t be running for a few days.”
“Team-2’s fully mission-capable, John,” Chavez announced. “George Tomlinson is a little slowed down with his Achilles tendon, but no big deal.”