by Tom Clancy
The new S-3, operations officer, for the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry, which formed part of the First Brigade, 7th Infantry Division (Light), checked out his office while his wife struggled with the movers. Already sitting on his desk was a Mark-2 Kevlar helmet, called a Fritz for its resemblance to the headgear of the old German Wehrmacht. For the 7th LID, the camouflage cloth cover was further decorated with knotted shreds of the same material used for their battle-dress uniform fatigues. Most of the wives referred to it as the Cabbage Patch Hat, and like a cabbage, it broke up the regular outline of the helmet, making it harder to spot. The battalion commander was off at a briefing, along with the XO, and the new S-3 decided to meet with the S-1, or personnel officer. It turned out that they’d served together in Germany five years before, and they caught up on personal histories over coffee.
“So how was Panama?”
“Hot, miserable, and I don’t need to fill you in on the political side. Funny thing—just before I left I ran into one of your Ninjas.”
“Oh, yeah? Which one?”
“Chavez. Staff sergeant, I think. Bastard wasted me on an exercise.”
“I remember him. He was a good one with, uh ... Sergeant Bascomb?”
“Yes, Major?” A head appeared at the office door.
“Staff Sergeant Chavez—who was he with?”
“Bravo Company, sir. Lieutenant Jackson’s platoon ... second squad, I think. Yeah, Corporal Ozkanian took it over. Chavez transferred out to Fort Benning, he’s a basic-training instructor now,” Sergeant Bascomb remembered.
“You sure about that?” the new S-3 asked.
“Yes, sir. The paperwork got a little ruffled. He’s one of the guys who had to check out in a hurry. Remember, Major?”
“Oh, yeah. That was a cluster-fuck, wasn’t it?”
“Roge-o, Major,” the NCO agreed.
“What the hell was he doing running an FTX in the Canal Zone?” the operations officer wondered.
“Lieutenant Jackson might know, sir,” Bascomb offered.
“You’ll meet him tomorrow,” the S-1 told the new S-3.
“Any good?”
“For a new kid fresh from the Hudson, yeah, he’s doing just fine. Good family. Preacher’s kid, got a brother flies fighter planes for the Navy—squadron commander, I think. Bumped into him at Monterey awhile back. Anyway, Tim’s got a good platoon sergeant to teach him the ropes.”
“Well, that was one pretty good sergeant, that Chavez kid. I’m not used to having people sneak up on me!” The S-3 fingered the scab on his face. “Damn if he didn’t, though.”
“We got a bunch of good ones, Ed. You’re gonna like it here. How ’bout lunch?”
“Sounds good to me. When do we start PT in the morning?”
“Zero-six-fifteen. The boss likes to run.”
The new S-3 grunted on his way out the door. Welcome back to the real Army.
“Looks like our friends down there are a little pissed,” Admiral Cutter observed. He held a telex form that had emanated from the CAPER side of the overall operation. “Who was it came up with the idea of tapping into their communications?”
“Mr. Clark,” the DDO replied.
“The same one who—”
“The same.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Ex-Navy SEAL, served nineteen months in Southeast Asia in one of those special operations groups that never officially existed. Got shot up a few times,” Ritter explained. “Left the service as a chief bosun’s mate, age twenty-eight. He was one of the best they ever had. He’s the guy who went in and saved Dutch Maxwell’s boy.”
Cutter’s eyes went active at that. “I knew Dutch Maxwell, spent some time on his staff when I was a j.g. So, he’s the guy who saved Sonny’s ass? I never did hear the whole story on that.”
“Admiral Maxwell made him a chief on the spot. That’s when he was COMAIRPAC. Anyway, he left the service and got married, went into the commercial diving business—the demolitions side; he’s an expert with explosives, too. But his wife got killed in a car accident down in Mississippi. That’s when things started going bad for him. Met a new girl, but she was kidnapped and murdered by a local drug ring—seems she was a mule for them before they met. Our former SEAL decided to go big-game hunting on his own hook. Did pretty well, but the police got a line on him. Anyway, Admiral Maxwell was OP-03 by then. He caught a rumble, too. He knew James Greer from the old days, and one thing led to another. We decided that Mr. Clark had some talents we needed. So the Agency helped stage his ‘death’ in a boating accident. We changed his name—new identity, the whole thing, and now he works for us.”
“How—”
“It’s not hard. His service records are just gone. Same thing we did with the SHOWBOAT people. His fingerprints in the FBI file were changed—that was back when Hoover still ran things and, well, there were ways. He died and got himself reborn as John Clark.”
“What’s he done since?” Cutter asked, enjoying the conspiratorial aspects of this.
“Mainly he’s an instructor down at The Farm. Every so often we have a special job that requires his special talents,” Ritter explained. “He’s the guy who went on the beach to get Gerasimov’s wife and daughter, for example.”
“Oh. And this all started because of a drug thing?”
“That’s right. He has a special, dark place in his heart for druggies. Hates the bastards. It’s about the only thing he’s not professional about.”
“Not pro—”
“I don’t mean it that way. He’ll enjoy doing this job. It won’t affect how he does it, but he will enjoy it. I don’t want you to misunderstand me. Clark is a very capable field officer. He’s got great instincts, and he’s got brains. He knows how to plan it, and he knows how to run it.”
“So what’s his plan?”
“You’ll love it.” Ritter opened his portfolio and started taking papers out. Most of them, Cutter saw, were “overhead imagery” —satellite photographs.
“Lieutenant Jackson?”
“Good morning, sir,” Tim said to the new battalion operations officer after cracking off a book-perfect salute. The S-3 was walking the battalion area, getting himself introduced.
“I’ve heard some pretty good things about you.” That was always something that a new second lieutenant wanted to hear. “And I met one of your squad leaders.”
“Which one, sir?”
“Chavez, I think.”
“Oh, you just in from Fort Benning, Major?”
“No, I was an instructor at the Jungle Warfare School, down in Panama.”
“What was Chavez doing down there?” Lieutenant Jackson wondered.
“Killing me,” the major replied with a grin. “All your people that good?”
“He was my best squad leader. That’s funny, they were supposed to send him off to be a drill sergeant.”
“That’s the Army for you. I’m going out with Bravo Company tomorrow night for the exercise down at Hunter-Liggett. Just thought I’d let you know.”
“Glad to have you along, sir,” Tim Jackson told the Major. It wasn’t strictly true, of course. He was still learning how to be a leader of men, and oversight made him uncomfortable, though he knew that it was something he’d have to learn to live with. He was also puzzled by the news on Chavez, and made a mental note to have Sergeant Mitchell check that out. After all, Ding was still one of “his” men.
“Clark.” That was how he answered the phone. And this one came in on his “business” line.
“It’s a Go. Be here at ten tomorrow morning.”
“Right.” Clark replaced the phone.
“When?” Sandy asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“How long?”
“A couple of weeks. Not as long as a month.” Probably, he didn’t add.
“Is it—”
“Dangerous?” John Clark smiled at his wife. “Honey, if I do my job right, no, it’s not dangerous.”
“Why is it,” Sandra Burns Clark wondered, “that I’m the one with gray hair?”
“That’s because I can’t go into the hair parlor and have it fixed. You can.”
“It’s about the drug people, isn’t it?”
“You know I can’t talk about that. It would just get you worried anyway, and there’s no real reason to worry,” he lied to his wife. Clark did a lot of that. She knew it, of course, and for the most part she wanted to be lied to. But not this time.
Clark returned his attention to the television. Inwardly he smiled. He hadn’t gone after druggies for a long, long time, and he’d never tried to go this far up the ladder—back then he hadn’t known how, hadn’t had the right information. Now he had everything he needed for the job. Including presidential authorization. There were advantages to working for the Agency.
Cortez surveyed the airfield—what was left of it—with a mixture of satisfaction and anger. Neither the police nor the army had come to visit yet, though eventually they would. Whoever had been here, he saw, had done a thorough, professional job.
So what am I supposed to think? he asked himself. Did the Americans send some of their Green Berets in? This was the last of five airstrips that he’d examined today, moved about by a helicopter. Though not a forensic detective by training, he had been thoroughly schooled in booby traps and knew exactly what to look for. Exactly what he would have done.
The two guards who’d been here, as at the other sites, were simply gone. That surely meant that they were dead, of course, but the only real knowledge he had was that they were gone. Perhaps he was supposed to think that they had set the explosives, but they were simple peasants in the pay of the Cartel, untrained ruffians who probably hadn’t even patrolled around the area to make certain that ...
“Follow me.” He left the helicopter with one of his assistants in trail. This one was a former police officer who did have some rudimentary intelligence; at least he knew how to follow simple orders.
If I wanted to keep watch of a place like this ... I’d think about cover, and I’d think about the wind, and I’d think about a quick escape....
One thing about military people was that they were predictable.
They’d want a place from which they could watch the length of the airstrip, and also keep an eye on the refueling shack. That meant one of two corners, Cortez judged, and he walked off toward the northwest one. He spent a half hour prowling the bushes in silence with a confused man behind him.
“Here is where they were,” Félix said to himself. The dirt just behind the mound of dirt was smoothed down. Men had lain there. There was also the imprint from the bipod of a machine gun.
He couldn’t tell how long they’d watched the strip, but he suspected that here was the explanation for the disappearing aircraft. Americans? If so, what agency did they work for? CIA? DEA? Some special-operations group from the military, perhaps?
And why were they pulled out?
And why had they made their departure so obvious?
What if the guards were not dead? What if the Americans had bought them off?
Cortez stood and brushed the mud off his trousers. They were sending a message. Of course. After the murder of their FBI Director—he hadn’t had time to talk to el jefe about that act of lunacy yet—they wanted to send a message so that such things were not to be repeated.
That the Americans had done anything at all was unusual, of course. After all, kidnapping and/or killing American citizens was about the safest thing any international terrorist could do. The CIA had allowed one of their station chiefs to be tortured to death in Lebanon—and done nothing. All those Marines blown up—and the Americans had done nothing. Except for the occasional attempt at sending a message. The Americans were fools. They’d tried to send messages to the North Vietnamese for nearly ten years, and failed, and still they hadn’t learned better. So this time, instead of doing nothing at all, they’d done something that was less useful than nothing. To have so much power and have so little appreciation of it, Cortez thought. Not like the Russians. When some of their people had been kidnapped in Lebanon, the KGB’s First Directorate men had snatched their own hostages off the street and returned them—one version said headless, another with more intimate parts removed—immediately after which the missing Russians had been returned with something akin to an apology. For all their crudeness, the Russians understood how the game was played. They were predictable, and played by all the classic rules of clandestine behavior so that their enemies knew what would not be tolerated. They were serious. And they were taken seriously.
Unlike the Americans. As much as he warned his employer to be wary of them, Cortez was sure that they wouldn’t answer even something as outrageous as the murder of senior officials of their government.
That was too bad, Cortez told himself. He could have made it work for him.
“Good evening, boss,” Ryan said as he took his seat.
“Hi, Jack.” Admiral Greer smiled as much as he could. “How do you like the new job?”
“Well, I’m keeping your chair warm.”
“It’s your chair now, son,” the DDI pointed out. “Even if I do get out of here, I think it’s time to retire.”
Jack didn’t like the way he pronounced the word if.
“I don’t think I’m ready yet, sir.”
“Nobody’s ever ready. Hell, when I was still a naval officer, about the time I actually learned how to do the job, it was time to leave. That’s the way life is, Jack.”
Ryan thought that one over as he surveyed the room. Admiral Greer was getting his nourishment through clear plastic tubes. A blue-green gadget that looked like a splint kept the needles in his arm, but he could see where previous IV lines had “infiltrated” and left ugly bruises. That was always a bad sign. Next to the IV bottle was a smaller one, piggybacked with the D5W. That was the medication he was being given, the chemotherapy. It was a fancy name for poison, and poison was exactly what it was, a biocide that was supposed to kill the cancer a little faster than it killed the patient. He didn’t know what this one was, some acronym or other that designated a compound developed at the National Institutes of Health instead of the Army’s Chemical Warfare Center. Or maybe, Jack thought, they cooperated on such concoctions. Certainly Greer looked as though he were the victim of some dreadful, vicious experiment.
But that wasn’t true. The best people in the field were doing everything they knew to keep him alive. And failing. Ryan had never seen his boss so thin. It seemed that every time he came—never less than three times per week—he’d lost additional weight. His eyes burned with defiant energy, but the light at the end of this painful tunnel was not recovery. He knew it. So did Jack. There was only one thing he could do to ease the pain. And this he did. Jack opened his briefcase and took out some documents.
“You want to look these over.” Ryan handed them over.
They nearly tangled on the IV lines, and Greer grumbled his annoyance at the plastic spaghetti.
“You’re leaving for Belgium tomorrow night, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give my regards to Rudi and Franz from the BND. And watch the local beer, son.”
Ryan laughed. “Yes, sir.”
Admiral Greer scanned through the first folder. “The Hungarians are still at it, I see.”
“They got the word to cool it down, and they have, but the underlying problem isn’t going to go away. I think it’s in the interests of everyone concerned that they should cool it. Our friend Gerasimov has given us some tips on how to get word to a few people ourselves.”
Greer nearly laughed at that. “It figures. How is the former KGB Director adapting to life in America?”
“Not as well as his daughter is. Turns out that she always wanted a nose job. Well, she got her wish.” Jack grinned. “Last time I saw her she was working on a tan. She restarts college next fall. The wife is still a little antsy, and Gerasimov is still cooperating. We haven’t figure
d out what to do with him when we’re finished, though.”
“Tell Arthur to show him my old place up in Maine. He’ll like the climate, and it ought to be easy to guard.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“How do you like being let in on all the Operations stuff?” James Greer asked.
“Well, what I’ve seen is interesting enough, but there’s still ‘need-to-know’ to worry about.”
“Says who?” the DDI asked in surprise.
“Says the Judge,” Jack replied. “They have a couple of things poppin’ that they don’t want me in on.”
“Oh, really?” Greer was quiet for a moment. “Jack, in case nobody ever told you, the Director, the Deputy Director—they still haven’t refilled that slot, have they?—and the directorate chiefs are cleared for everything. You are now a chief of directorate. There isn’t anything you aren’t supposed to know. You have to know. You brief Congress.”
Ryan waved it off. It wasn’t important, really. “Well, maybe the Judge doesn’t see things that way and—”
The DDI tried to sit up in bed. “Listen up, son. What you just said is bullshit! You have to know, and you tell Arthur I said so. That ‘need-to-know’ crap stops at the door to my office.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of that.” Ryan didn’t want his boss to get upset. He was only an acting chief of directorate, after all, and he was accustomed to being cut out of operational matters which, for the past six years, he’d been quite content to leave to others. Jack wasn’t ready to challenge the DCI on something like this. His responsibility for the Intelligence Directorate’s output to Congress, of course, was something he would make noise over.
“I’m not kidding, Jack.”