Tom Clancy's Power Plays 5 - 8
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“INCREDIBLY ADDICTIVE.”
—Daily Mail (London)
RED RABBIT
Tom Clancy returns to Jack Ryan’s early days—in an engrossing novel of global political drama . . .
“A WILD, SATISFYING RIDE.”
—New York Daily News
THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON
A clash of world powers. President Jack Ryan’s trial by fire . . .
“HEART-STOPPING ACTION . . . CLANCY STILL REIGNS.”
—The Washington Post
RAINBOW SIX
John Clark is used to doing the CIA’s dirty work. Now he’s taking on the world . . .
“ACTION-PACKED.”
—The New York Times Book Review
EXECUTIVE ORDERS
A devastating terrorist act leaves Jack Ryan as president of the United States . . .
“UNDOUBTEDLY CLANCY’S BEST YET.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
DEBT OF HONOR
It begins with the murder of an American woman in the back streets of Tokyo. It ends in war . . .
“A SHOCKER.”
—Entertainment Weekly
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
The smash bestseller that launched Clancy’s career—the incredible search for a Soviet defector and the nuclear submarine he commands . . .
“BREATHLESSLY EXCITING.”
—The Washington Post
RED STORM RISING
The ultimate scenario for World War III—the final battle for global control . . .
“THE ULTIMATE WAR GAME . . . BRILLIANT.”
—Newsweek
PATRIOT GAMES
CIA analyst Jack Ryan stops an assassination—and incurs the wrath of Irish terrorists . . .
“A HIGH PITCH OF EXCITEMENT.”
—The Wall Street Journal
THE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN
The superpowers race for the ultimate Star Wars missile defense system . . .
“CARDINAL EXCITES, ILLUMINATES . . . A REAL PAGE-TURNER.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER
The killing of three U.S. officials in Colombia ignites the American government’s explosive, and top secret, response . . .
“A CRACKLING GOOD YARN.”
—The Washington Post
THE SUM OF ALL FEARS
The disappearance of an Israeli nuclear weapon threatens the balance of power in the Middle East—and around the world . . .
“CLANCY AT HIS BEST . . . NOT TO BE MISSED.”
—The Dallas Morning News
WITHOUT REMORSE
His code name is Mr. Clark. And his work for the CIA is brilliant, cold-blooded, and efficient . . . but who is he really?
“HIGHLY ENTERTAINING.”
—The Wall Street Journal
NOVELS BY TOM CLANCY
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
SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare
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 Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret.)
Every Man a Tiger
(written with General Charles Horner, Ret.) Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND STEVE PIECZENIK
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Games of State
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Acts of War
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Balance of Power
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: State of Siege
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Divide and Conquer
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Line of Control
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mission of Honor
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Sea of Fire
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Call to Treason
Tom Clancy’s Net Force
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Hidden Agendas
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Night Moves
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Breaking Point
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Point of Impact
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: CyberNation
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: State of War
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Changing of the Guard
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND MARTIN GREENBERG
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Politika
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: ruthless.com
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Shadow Watch
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Bio-Strike
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cold War
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cutting Edge
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Zero Hour
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Wild Card
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
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TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: WILD CARD
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Berkley edition / November 2004
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Marc Cerasini, Larry Segriff, Denise Little, John Helfers, Brittiany Koren, Robert Youdelman, Esq., Danielle Forte, Esq., Dianne Jude, and the wonderful people at Penguin Group (USA) Inc., including David Shanks and Tom Colgan. But most important, it is for you, my readers, to determine how successful our collective endeavor has been.
—Tom Clancy
PROLOGUE
TRINIDAD
APRIL 1773
MORPAIGN SUPPOSED HE MIGHT HAVE KNOWN it would turn to his advantage. When all was said and done, he could rely on his sharp nose for profit, and his knack for finding opportunity even in ill circumstance, to take him far along in the world.
Looking out over the water, Lord Claude Morpaign truly might have realized the flames would burn a pathway to bigger and better things. But he didn’t pause to consider the larger picture, not right at once, standing there in his moment of stunned discovery. His thoughts, like the merchant vessel, were on fire, seething with inexpressible anger. There had been no call for the sea wolf to flex his muscle in so brutal a manner. He could have made a persuasive offer without setting the ship ablaze and, worse, putting two able-bodied slaves to their violent deaths. Whatever the reasons, his tactics were excessive . . . unless the killing and destruction were carried out solely for his own relish, putting his bloodthirsty nature into full view.
While Morpaign would never have certain evidence of this, the suspicion later grew strong within him. And no man’s heart would prove more like Redbone Baxter’s than his own in the final reckoning.
Leaving the main house at twilight, Morpaign had anticipated an uneventful, matter-of-course run. His chief overseer, Didier, had met him at their prearranged spot with a team of slaves handpicked for their trustworthiness and experience working in the tunnel. As usual, a separate pair of slaves had brought a horse-drawn wagon around the skirts of the forest, ready for their fellows to emerge from down below. Once the load was on the wagon, the entire group would ride a short distance up the strand and transfer the barrels from their carriage to waiting longboats. From there the laden boats were to head out toward the New England–bound merchant vessel under Morpaign’s attentive eye.
Routine as routine could be, such was his business at the start.
The head of the tunnel was just past the edge of the woods near the southern boundary of Morpaign’s vast estate, its opening screened by tropical underbrush and covered with a mat of packed sod and twigs. Thirty or forty feet beyond the entrance a stone chimney top projected from the forest floor amid the obscuring vegetation.
Didier had led the group through the woods in his tattered, begrimed muslins and laborer’s cap, a lantern swaying in his hand as dusk fell heavily over the island. He’d come to the loose section of turf, flapped it back, raised the hinged trapdoor underneath, and descended some narrow wooden stairs, followed in single file by the slaves.
Morpaign took up the rear, careful to avoid brushing his embroidered silk dress frock against the moist, grubby walls of the passage. Although he’d rather have worn clothes more befitting the night’s task, an unexpected late-day visit by his father-in-law, the Spanish governor, had left him rushed and unable to change into them before his rendezvous, squandering much of the afternoon besides.
As he reached the tunnel floor, Morpaign had taken some fair consolation knowing his night would not be likewise wasted.
Still leading the rest by several paces, Didier had moved on through the gloom, removed the candle from his lantern, and, one at a time, lit the oil lamps hanging in niches along the masonry walls to either side of him. Their rag wicks ignited with little flumps of displaced air as he went down the line.
“These lamps are quick to take and brighten, never mind the dank,” he said to Morpaign. “The stuff fueling’em ought to be bottled and sold.”
“So you’ve urged in the past.”
“And will again, seigneur. You could price it cheaper than whale oil an’ still outprofit those who market it abroad . . . cheaper by more’n half, I’d think,” Didier said. “The pitch lake’s near bottomless, and skimming barrels of mineral oil from its surface would take naught but labor that’s already been put t’work there dredging caulk. Best of all, you’d have no middleman showing his eager palm for a commission.”
Morpaign gave the Breton a look of mildly amused condescension. In his hire for many years, Didier spoke a coarse rustic French that still sometimes thwarted an ear attuned to the more refined speech of Versailles aristocrats. Yet for all his lowbred crudity he was valuable for his protective instincts—like some loyal and duteous mongrel dog.
“It is one thing to separate enough of the bitumen for our own use,” Morpaign said. “Show me how to filter it from that stinking tar in volume and I’ll heed your suggestion.” And praise the superior intellect behind it, he thought with a pinched little smile. “Until then I shall be content to market the spirits we’ve drummed up beneath the ground.”
He waved a fleshy hand toward an archway in the wall to his right. Large enough for three big men to pass through abreast, it was swamped with shadows, as was the recess beyond.
The overseer merely shrugged and then turned into the darkened chamber. Putting his candle to its lamps, he motioned for the carriers to join him.
Again, Morpaign went last, in his perpetual caution.
An approximate rectangle, the chamber was much deeper than wide. Charred oak casks lined the walls to either side of Morpaign, resting on their flat, round heads in even rows. In a corner near the entrance was a stall holding some open-framed wooden pushcarts.
Morpaign paused beneath the arch, his nostrils tickled by the smell of burned tinder . . . and more faintly underneath it, the pungent, mingled aromas of cinnamon and bay.
He strode past the carts in the lamplight then, his gaze reaching out to a pair of great brick kettles across the chamber. The double firebox base on which they stood off the dirt floor had been similarly built of bricks; behind it, a shared flue rising aboveground matched the sooty gray stone-and-mortar construction of the tunnel walls. Two wooden barrels, each taller than a grown man, stood flanking either end of the base, their lids connected with an array of thin, curved iron pipes.
Morpaign went over to the assembly and regarded it with quiet satisfaction. His pot distillery was small, its production far surpassed by others in the islands—but it had been barely a year since he’d relocated from Haiti at his father-in-law’s invitation, and most of his efforts since had been directed toward settling his household. Even when the still reached peak output, moreover, there would be limits imposed by the need to keep it buried out of sight. While the British navy and Morpaign’s hosts from the Spanish capital were generally at violent cross-purposes, it was ironic that they might have a common will to block his illicit trade.
He rubbed his chin in thought, his back toward Didier and the slaves. “How much of our stock is ready to go tonight?”
“There are twenty-two aged barrels in the storeroom, besides the fourteen you see around us,” Didier said.
Morpaign did a hasty mental computation.
“Over six thousand liters of spiced, total,” he said. “Very good.”
“Oui,” Didier said. “We’ll be moving the rum in two or three trips. And I expect those rowers will have to do the same before our full cargo’s loaded aboard their ship.”
“My only concern is that the lute has arrived without delay.”
“Be a foul surprise if it hasn’t . . . though you’d imagine Javier and Leon would’ve reported such news to us.”
Morpaign considered that and nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “One would imagine so.”
The overseer remained standing behind him. “Will you accompany the first haul, sir, or wait here till the last?” he said.
“I’ll go out with the first.” Morpaign finally
turned from the platform. “It’s a pleasant evening, and I would much prefer the ocean air to the closeness of this tunnel.”
Didier nodded, grunted his hurried orders at the slaves. “These hard-muscled bulls should get it done in here,” he said to Morpaign. “Meanwhile, I’d better take some of ‘em into the storeroom and fire up the lamps.”
A moment later he turned back through the archway, leading the rest of the men out.
Silent, his arms folded over his chest, Morpaign watched the slaves who’d remained behind with him stoop to their task. Whether on his estate grounds or the Tobago plantation, it was Morpaign’s strict rule of house to address the males in his workforce only through his overseers. The slaves for their part were forbidden from ever speaking a direct word to him, or so much as looking him in the eye. And while there were nights when Morpaign found himself gripped by the desire for a closer and more intimate contact with his négresse housemaid, Jaqueline—nights when he would slip from his wife’s side to her quarters, and tell her how to satisfy his cravings in clear and bluntly expressed terms—he considered this an exception that came with his privilege of ownership, a secret and guarded affair to be kept locked away as if in a hidden strongbox.