Command Authority jr-10
Page 61
* * *
Jack Ryan, Jr., called his father from the back of the Hendley Associates jet when he was over the Atlantic. His dad had been worried about him for the past week for the simple reason that Jack had gone to London to move out of his flat, and even with Dom and Sam to help him, it still took a little time.
Jack didn’t want to call his dad while he was still in the UK. Instead, he called his mom and sent e-mails, assuring them both that he’d be home soon.
Dom and Sam loved the UK, and Jack had to admit he was going to miss it greatly. He recognized it was his own melancholy when he arrived that had made his time here tough going at first, long before the Russian mob made the experience even less cheery.
But now he was on his way home, which meant he could talk to his father without having to hear all the concern in his voice that Jack had heard so much of the past few years. He realized he made his dad’s tough life even tougher by his choice of profession, but he also realized one other thing.
If there was anyone on earth who understood the need to serve a greater good despite personal danger, it was his own father.
* * *
After establishing the fact that his son’s next stop would be the United States of America, Jack Senior said, “Son, I haven’t had a chance to thank you for passing me all the intel last week. You turned the tide. You damn well saved a lot of lives.”
Jack Junior wasn’t patting his own back, though. “I don’t know, Dad. Volodin is still alive and in power. They are dancing in the streets in the parts of Ukraine where he is now the head honcho. Doesn’t quite feel like a victory.”
Ryan said, “It’s not the ending any of us wanted. But we stopped a war.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just delay it?”
Jack Senior sighed. “No. I’m not sure at all. In fact, in some ways a weakened Volodin is even more dangerous. He might be like a wounded animal. Ready to lash out at anything. But I’ve been at this sort of thing for a while, and I feel like we maximized benefit and minimized detriment. A lot of good people lost their lives over this: Sergey, Oxley, men in and out of uniform serving in Eastern Europe. It’s okay to wish we got more out of this, but the real world bites back.”
“Yeah,” Jack Junior said. “It does.”
Jack Senior said, “We didn’t lose, Jack. We just didn’t win.”
That sank in after a moment. “Okay.”
Ryan asked, “What’s your plan now, son?”
“I want to come home. I’ve talked to Gerry already. He found a new building in Fairfax County, and Gavin has come up with some new technology to help us move forward.”
Ryan said, “That’s good. I know you miss working with the team. I can’t say I don’t wish you would live a safer life, though.”
Jack Junior said, “You saw what happened when I took a boring job with no chance for danger.”
“Yeah, I did. I sent you off after some of that danger, didn’t I?”
“You trusted me. I appreciate that. Thanks.”
“You bet, sport. Drop by as soon as you can when you get home. I miss you.”
“I will, Dad. I miss you, too.”
EPILOGUE
Thirty years earlier
CIA analyst Jack Ryan climbed out of the taxi in front of his house on Grizedale Close. He’d borrowed a coat from a colleague at Century House, and he was glad he had, because it was a cold night here in Chatham. The street was empty, and he figured it had to have been after midnight, but he’d taken his watch off in Berlin when the doctor treated his injury, and he’d thrown it in his suitcase after that.
It had occurred to him on the train from Victoria Station that he should have called home from his office. Instead Sir Basil had insisted he get his forearm looked over by their doctor, and then, after that, he’d spent hours reviewing a facsimile of a copy of the contact report he’d written that morning at Mission Berlin. His first draft ran some eleven pages, and while reading it at Century House he’d added another five pages of information, using a map of Berlin and some other reference materials to help him get every detail just right.
He’d been too distracted to call Cathy then, and by the time he thought of it he was already on the train.
He entered through the front door as quietly as he could; he didn’t want to wake the kids. He put his luggage down in the foyer and started to take off his shoes so he could step even a little more quietly, but he heard Cathy moving up the hall in the dark.
Cathy all but leapt into his arms. “I missed you,” she said.
“I missed you, too.”
It was a tender moment, broken only by “Did you get a new coat?”
“Oh. It’s borrowed. Long story.”
They hugged and kissed all the way to the living room, where Cathy sat on the couch. She looked beautiful to him, even in her housecoat. Jack pulled off his coat, forgetting that his right forearm looked like it had been mummified.
“Oh my God. What did you do?”
Jack shrugged. He couldn’t lie to Cathy, because she was his wife, but he also couldn’t lie to her because she was a surgeon. She’d take one look at his forearm and know that he’d been slashed by a knife.
Within seconds, she had the bandages unwrapped and held his arm up to the light from the lamp on the end table. She examined it with a practiced eye. “You are lucky, Jack. It’s long, but it’s not deep at all. It looks like someone did a good job dressing it.”
“Yes.”
She started rewrapping it. “I’ll clean it again and rebandage it in the morning. What happened?”
“I can’t say.”
She looked at the injury, then up into his eyes with an expression that was one of both concern and hurt. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“I can’t,” he repeated himself, imploring her to not dig any deeper.
And this told her most everything she needed to know. “The only reason you wouldn’t be able to tell me is that this had something to do with the CIA. Were you attacked?”
You might say that, he thought. But not just by the German terrorist with the knife. There was also the little matter of the sniper and the unknown goons by the Berlin Wall. He didn’t say any of this, of course. Instead, he just said, “I’m fine, babe. I promise.”
She did not believe him. “I’ve been watching the news. The restaurant in Switzerland. The art gallery in Berlin. Jesus, Jack, which one was it?”
Ryan could have said “Both,” or he could have been pedantic and pointed out that it wasn’t actually an art gallery. Instead, he said, “You have to believe me, Cathy. I didn’t go looking for any trouble.”
“You never do. You just can’t turn away from it when it presents itself.”
Jack looked across the room. He was too tired for a fight, and there wasn’t much he could say, anyway. She was right. She didn’t marry a soldier or a spy. She married a commodities trader and a historian. He was the one getting himself into situations like Berlin. He had no valid argument that Berlin came looking for him.
He said the only thing he could think of, and it was truly the only thing that mattered to him now: “I love you, and I’m glad to be home.”
“I love you too, Jack, and I like having you around. Which is why it’s so damn difficult when you are gone for days, and then come home with a knife wound. Please tell me you understand that.”
“Of course I do.”
They hugged. There was nothing about this matter that was resolved, really, but she showed him she was going to let it go for now.
Cathy said, “I’m sorry, but I have surgery at nine.”
Jack looked at the time. One a.m. The night before at this time, he’d been sitting with Marta Scheuring, and two nights earlier he’d been minutes away from a gun battle. Three nights earlier he’d stood in Zug, Switzerland, watching a building burn.
Jack kissed his wife, and she headed to the bedroom. He called after her, “I’ll be right in after I check on the kids.”
&n
bsp; * * *
Ryan looked in on little Sally. She was sound asleep, with her stuffed bunny clutched tightly. He stepped in silently and kissed her on her forehead.
Next he leaned into little Jack’s room, and he was surprised to see his toddler standing up in the crib. Under a shock of black hair were wide blue eyes and a big smile for his daddy.
Ryan laughed softly. “Hey, sport.” He picked Jack up and hugged him, then carried his little boy into the living room, where he sat on the sofa with the boy on his lap.
It was quiet in the room even with the ticking of the clock, and as Ryan sat there he felt his son’s heartbeat against his own chest.
Suddenly the danger and death of the past few days rushed to the front of his mind. His life had been on the line multiple times, and now his own heart pounded in terror with the knowledge that he could have lost everything he had, everything he held.
And his family could have lost him.
He squeezed Jack tighter, and the little boy squirmed in his arms.
He told himself he had to get away from this life before little Jack and little Sally lost their father.
As he sat there contemplating his own mortality and what he suddenly saw as the irresponsibility of playing fast and loose with his life, he thought not only of the peril he had been in, but also of others. Of David Penright, of the two Swiss bankers he’d never even met, the innocents killed in Switzerland and Germany, and he thought of Ingrid Bretz, of Marta, and of the man who’d come out of the trees to step in to help a stranger, at great danger to himself.
Jack got into this intelligence game to make the world a better place. It was naive, he had the self-awareness to admit this, but at the end of the day, he knew he’d done some good. Maybe not much, but hell, he was just one man, and he was doing his best.
He looked down at Jack Junior again, and was pleased to see he’d fallen asleep, just like that, right there in his arms.
Ryan knew he could not walk away from doing his best. He would do whatever he could to stay safe so that he could live a long life and provide for his family, but he realized now that the more he did himself, the harder he fought to make this world a better place, the greater the chance the world Jack Junior would inherit would be just a little better off, and a little safer for him.
Jack figured his own late father, a Baltimore cop named Emmet Ryan, had probably held him in his arms and thought the same thing. Hell, it was every father’s wish, though he wondered how hopeful it might be. For all Ryan knew, little Jack would face dangers Ryan himself could never imagine, but as he stood up and carried his sleeping son back to his room, he realized every father owed it to his children to try.
* * *
For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit www.penguin.com/clancychecklist
ALSO BY TOM CLANCY
FICTION
The Hunt for Red October
Red Storm Rising
Patriot Games
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
The Sum of All Fears
Without Remorse
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
The Bear and the Dragon
Red Rabbit
The Teeth of the Tiger
Dead or Alive
Against All Enemies
Locked On
Threat Vector
NONFICTION
Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship
Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment
Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing
Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit
Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force
Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier
Into the Storm: A Study in Command with General Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.), and Tony Koltz
Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign with General Chuck Horner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces with General Carl Stiner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Battle Ready with General Tony Zinni (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Copyright
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2013 by Rubicon, Inc.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
ISBN 978-1-101-63649-7
INTERIOR MAPS © 2013 BY JEFFREY L. WARD
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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