by Tom Clancy
“I’m sorry, Jack,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I knew she was fooling with the seat belt, but I didn’t do anything because I was in a hurry—and then that truck came, and I didn’t have time to—if I had made sure she was strapped in, Sally would be fine ... but I was in a hurry,” she finished, and looked away. “Jack, I’m so sorry.”
My God, she thinks it’s her fault ... what do I say now?
“She’s going to be okay, babe,” Ryan managed to say, stunned at what he’d just heard. He held Cathy’s hand to his face and kissed it. “And so are you. That’s the only thing that matters now.”
“But—” She stared at the far wall.
“No ‘buts.’ ”
Her face turned back. Cathy tried to smile but tears were rolling from her eyes. “I talked to Doctor Ellingstone at Hopkins—he came over and saw Sally. He says—he says she’ll be okay. He says that Shapiro saved her life.”
“I know.”
“I haven’t even seen her—I remember seeing the bridge and then I woke up two hours ago, and—oh, Jack!” Her hand closed on his like a claw. He leaned forward to kiss her, but before their lips touched, both started weeping.
“It’s okay, Cathy,” Jack said, and he started to believe that it really was, or at least that it would be so again. His world had not ended, not quite.
But someone else’s will, Ryan told himself. The thought was a quiet, distant one, voiced in a part of his mind that was already looking at the future while the present occupied his sight. Seeing his wife weeping tears caused by someone else started a cold rage in him which only that someone’s death could ever warm.
The time for grief was already ending, carried away by his own tears. Though it had not yet happened, Ryan’s intellect was already beginning to think of the time when his emotions would be at rest—most of them. One would remain. He would control it, but it would also control him. He would not feel like a whole man again until he was purged of it.
One can only weep for so long; it is as though each tear carries a finite amount of emotion away with it. Cathy stopped first. She used her hand to wipe her husband’s face. She managed a real smile now. Jack hadn’t shaved. It was like rubbing sandpaper.
“What time is it?”
“Ten-thirty.” Jack didn’t have to check his watch.
“You need sleep, Jack,” she said. “You have to stay healthy, too.”
“Yeah.” Jack rubbed his eyes.
“Hi, Cathy,” Robby said as he came through the door. “I’ve come to take him away from you.”
“Good.”
“We’re checked into the Holiday Inn over on Lombard Street.”
“We? Robby, you don’t—”
“Stuff it, Jack,” Robby said. “How are you, Cathy?”
“I have a headache you wouldn’t believe.”
“Good to see you smile,” Robby said softly. “Sissy’ll be up after lunch. Is there anything she can get for you?”
“Not right now. Thanks, Rob.”
“Hang in there, Doc.” Robby took Jack’s arm and hauled him to his feet. “I’ll have him back to you later today.”
Twenty minutes later Robby led Jack into their motel room. He pulled a pill container from his pocket. “The doc said you should take one of these.”
“I don’t take pills.”
“You’re taking one of these, sport. It’s a nice yellow one. That’s not a request, Jack, it’s an order. You need sleep. Here.” Robby tossed them over and stared until Jack swallowed one. Ryan was asleep in ten minutes. Jackson made certain that the door was secured before settling down on the other bed. The pilot dreamed of seeing the people who had done all this. They were in an airplane. Four times he fired a missile into their bird and watched their bodies spill out of the hole it made so that he could blast them with his cannon before they fell into the sea.
The Patriots Club was a bar across the street from Broadway Station in one of South Boston’s Irish enclaves. Its name harkened not back to the revolutionaries of the 1770s, but rather to the owner’s image of himself. John Donoho had served in the First Marine Division on the bitter retreat from the Chosin Reservoir. Wounded twice, he’d never left his squad on the long, cold march to the port of Hungnam. He still walked with a slight limp from the four toes that frostbite had taken from his right foot. He was prouder of this than of his several decorations, framed under a Marine Corps standard behind the bar. Anyone who entered the bar in a Marine uniform always got his first drink free, along with a story or two about the Old Corps, which Corporal John Donoho, USMC (ret.), had served at the ripe age of eighteen.
He was also a professional Irishman. Every year he took an Aer Lingus flight from Boston’s Logan International Airport to the old sod, to brush up on his roots and his accent, and sample the better varieties of whiskey that somehow were never exported to America in quantity. Donoho also tried to keep current on the happenings in the North, “the Six Counties,” as he called them, to maintain his spiritual connection with the rebels who labored courageously to free their people from the British yoke. Many a dollar had been raised in his bar, to aid those in the North, many a glass raised to their health and to the Cause.
“Hello, Johnny!” Paddy O’Neil called from the door.
“And good evening to you, Paddy!” Donoho was already drawing a beer when he saw his nephew follow O‘Neil through the door. Eddie was his dead brother’s only son, a good boy, educated at Notre Dame, where he’d played second string on the football team before joining up with the FBI. It wasn’t quite as good as being a Marine, but Uncle John knew that it paid a lot better. He’d heard that Eddie was following O’Neil around, but was vaguely sad to see that it was true. Perhaps it was to protect Paddy from a Brit assassin, the owner rationalized.
John and Paddy had a beer together before the latter joined a small group waiting for him in the back room. His nephew stayed alone at the end of the bar, where he drank a cup of coffee and kept an eye on things. After ten minutes O’Neil went back to give his talk. Donoho went to say hello to his nephew.
“Hi, Uncle John,” Eddie greeted him.
“Have you set the date yet, now?” John asked, affecting an Irish accent, as he usually did when O’Neil was around.
“Maybe next September,” the younger man allowed.
“And what would your father say, you living with the girl for almost a year? And the good fathers at Notre Dame?”
“Probably the same thing they’d say to you for raising money for terrorists,” the young agent replied. Eddie was sick and tired of being told how to live his life.
“I don’t want to hear any of that in my place.” He’d heard that line before, too.
“That’s what O’Neil does, Uncle John.”
“They’re freedom fighters. I know they bend some of our laws from time to time, but the English laws they break are no concern of mine—or yours,” John Donoho said firmly.
“You watch TV?” The agent didn’t need an answer to that. A wide-screen TV in the opposite comer was used for baseball and football games. The bar’s name had also made it an occasional watering hole for the New England Patriots football players. Uncle John’s interest in TV was limited to the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. His interest in politics was virtually nil. He voted for Teddy Kennedy every six years and considered himself a staunch proponent of national defense. “I want to show you a couple of pictures.”
He set the first one on the bar. “This is a little girl named Sally Ryan. She lives in Annapolis.”
His uncle picked it up and smiled. “I remember when my Kathleen looked like that.”
“Her father is a teacher at the Naval Academy, used to be a Marine lieutenant. He went to Boston College. His father was a cop.”
“Sounds like a good Irishman. Friend of yours?”
“Not exactly,” Eddie said. “Paddy and I met him earlier today. This is what his daughter looked like then.” The second photo was
laid on the bar.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” It wasn’t easy to discern that there was a child under all the medical equipment. Her feet stuck out from heavy wrappings. An inch-wide plastic pipe was in her mouth, and what parts of her body were visible formed a horribly discolored mass that the photographer had recorded with remarkable skill.
“She’s the lucky one, Uncle John. The girl’s mother was there, too.” Two more photos went onto the bar.
“What happened, car accident—what are you showing me?” John Donoho asked. He really didn’t know what this was all about.
“She’s a surgeon—she’s pregnant, too, the pictures don’t show that. Her car was machine-gunned yesterday, right outside of Annapolis, Maryland. They killed a State Police officer a few minutes later.” Another picture went down.
“What? Who did it?” the older man asked.
“Here’s the father, Jack Ryan.” It was the same picture that the London papers had used, Jack’s graduation shot from Quantico. Eddie knew that his uncle always looked at Marine dress blues with pride.
“I’ve seen him before somewhere ...”
“Yeah. He stopped a terrorist attack over in London a few months back. It looks like he offended the terrorists enough that they came after him and his family. The Bureau is working on that. ”
“Who did it?”
The last photo went down on the bar. It showed Ryan’s hands less than a foot from Paddy O’Neil, and a black man holding him back.
“Who’s the jig?” John asked. His nephew almost lost his temper.
“Goddammit, Uncle John! That man is a Navy fighter pilot.”
“Oh.” John was briefly embarrassed. He had little use for blacks, though one who wore a Marine uniform into his bar got his first drink free, too. It was different with the ones in uniform, he told himself. Anyone who served the flag as he had done was okay in his book, John Donoho always said. Some of my best friends in the Corps.... He remembered how Navy strike aircraft had supported his outfit all the way back to the sea, holding the Chinese back with rockets and napalm. Well, maybe this one was different, too. He stared at the rest of the picture for a few seconds. “So, you say Paddy had something to do with this?”
“I’ve been telling you for years who the bastard fronts for. If you don’t believe me, maybe you want to ask Mr. Ryan here. It’s bad enough that O‘Neil spits on our whole country every time he comes over here. His friends damned near killed this whole family yesterday. We got one of ’em. Two Marine guards at the Naval Academy grabbed him, waiting to shoot Ryan. His name’s Eamon Clark, and we know that he used to work for the Provisional Wing of the IRA—we know it, Uncle John, he’s a convicted murderer. They caught him with a loaded pistol in his pocket. You still think they’re good guys? Dammit, they’re going after Americans now! If you don’t believe me, believe this!” Eddie Donoho rearranged the photos on the wooden surface. “This little girl, and her mother, and a kid not even bom yet almost died yesterday. This state trooper did. He left a wife and a kid behind. That friend of yours in the back room raises the money to buy the guns, he’s connected with the people who did this.”
“But why?”
“Like I said, this girl’s dad got in the way of a murder over in London. I guess the people he stopped wanted to get even with him—not just him, though, they went for his whole family,” the agent explained slowly.
“The little girl didn’t—”
“Goddammit,” Eddie swore again. “That’s why they’re called terrorists!” It was getting through. He could see that he was finally getting the message across.
“You’re sure that Paddy is part of this?” his uncle asked.
“He’s never lifted a gun that we know of. He’s their mouthpiece, he comes over here and raises money so that they can do things like this at home. Oh, he never gets his hands bloody. He’s too smart for that. But this is what the money goes for. We are absolutely sure of that. And now they’re playing their games over here.” Agent Donoho knew that the money-raising was secondary to the psychological reasons for coming over, but now wasn’t the time to clutter the issue with details. He watched his uncle stare at the photos of the little girl. His face showed the confusion that always accompanies a completely new thought.
“You’re sure? Really sure?”
“Uncle John, we have over thirty agents on the case now, plus the local police. You bet we’re sure. We’ll get ‘em, too. The Director’s put the word out on this case. We want ’em. Whatever it takes, we’ll get these bastards,” Edward Michael Donoho, Jr., said with cold determination.
John Donoho looked at his nephew, and for the first time he saw a man. Eddie’s FBI post was a source of family pride, but John finally knew why this was so. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a man with a job about which he was deadly serious. More than the photographs, it was this that decided things. John had to believe what he’d been told.
The owner of the Patriots Club stood up straight and walked down the bar to the folding gate. He lifted it and made for the back room, with his nephew trailing behind.
“But our boys are fighting back,” O’Neil was telling the fifteen men in the room. “Every day they fight back to—joining us, Johnny?”
“Out,” Donoho said quietly.
“What—I don’t understand, John,” O’Neil said, genuinely puzzled.
“You must think I’m pretty stupid. I guess maybe I was. Leave.” The voice was more forceful now, and the feigned accent was gone. “Get out of my club and don’t ever come back.”
“But, Johnny—what are you talking about?”
Donoho grabbed the man by his collar and lifted him off his chair. O’Neil’s voice continued to protest as he was propelled all the way out the front door. Eddie Donoho waved to his uncle as he followed his charge out onto the street.
“What was that all about?” one of the men from the back room asked. Another of them, a reporter for the Boston Globe, started making notes as the bar owner stumbled through what he had finally learned.
To this point no police agency had implicated any terrorist group by name, and in fact neither had Special Agent Donoho done so. His instructions from Washington on that score had been carefully given and carefully followed. But in the translation through Uncle John and a reporter, the facts got slightly garbled—as surprised no one—and within hours the story was on the AP wire that the attack on Jack Ryan and his family had been made by the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army.
Sean Miller’s mission in America had been fully accomplished by an agency of the United States government.
Miller and his party were already back home. As many people in this line of work had done before, Sean reflected on the value of rapid international air travel. In this case it had been off to Mexico from Washington’s Dulles International, from there to the Netherlands Antilles, to Schiphol International Airport on a KLM flight, and then to Ireland. All one needed were correct travel documents and a little money. The travel documents in question were already destroyed, and the money untraceable cash. He sat across from Kevin O’Donnell’s desk, drinking water to compensate for the dehydration normal to flying.
“What about Eamon?” One rule of ULA operations was that no overseas telephone calls ever came to his house.
“Alex’s man says he was picked up.” Miller shrugged. “It was a risk I felt worth taking. I selected Ned for it because he knows very little about us.” He knew that O‘Donnell had to agree with that. Clark was one of the new men brought into the Organization, and more of an accident than a recruit. He’d come south because one of his friends from the H-blocks had come. O’Donnell had thought him of possible use, since they had no experienced work-alone assassins. But Clark was stupid. His motivations came from emotion rather than ideology. He was, in fact, a typical PIRA thug, little different from those in the UVF for that matter, useful in the same sense that a trained dog was useful, Kevin told himself. He knew but a few names and faces within the Orga
nization. Most damning of all, he had failed. Clark’s one redeeming characteristic was his doglike loyalty. He hadn’t broken in Long Kesh prison and he probably wouldn’t break now. He lacked the imagination.
“Very well,” Kevin O’Donnell said after a moment’s reflection. Clark would be remembered as a martyr, gaining greater respect in failure than he had managed to earn in success. “The rest?”
“Perfect. I saw the wife and child die, and Alex’s people got us away cleanly.” Miller smiled and poured some whiskey to follow his liter of ice water.
“They’re not dead, Sean,” O’Donnell said.
“What?” Miller had been on an airplane less than three hours after the shooting, and hadn’t seen or heard a snippet of news since. He listened to his boss’s explanation in incredulous silence.
“But it doesn’t matter,” O’Donnell concluded. He explained that, too. The AP story that had originated in the Boston Globe had been picked up by the Irish Times of Dublin. “It was a good plan after all, Sean. Despite everything that went wrong, the mission is accomplished.”
Sean didn’t allow himself to react. Two operations in a row had gone wrong for him. Before the fiasco in London, he’d never failed at all. He’d written that off to random chance, pure luck, nothing more. He didn’t even think of that in this case. Two in a row, that wasn’t luck. He knew that Kevin would not tolerate a third failure. The young operations officer took a deep breath and told himself to be objective. He’d allowed himself to think of Ryan as a personal target, not a political one. That had been his first mistake. Though Kevin hadn’t said it, losing Ned had been a serious mistake. Miller reviewed his plan, rethinking every aspect of the operation. Just going after the wife and child would have been simple thuggery, and he’d never approved of that; it was not professional. Just going after Ryan himself, however, would not have carried the same political impact, which was the whole point of the operation. The rest of the family was—had been necessary. So his objectives had been sound enough, but ...
“I should have taken more time on this one,” he said finally. “I tried to be too dramatic. Perhaps we should have waited.”