by Tom Clancy
“I can remember when it was in far worse shape, Governor,” Jack said, grateful for having been let off the hook.
“So why not ease back, cut arms, like I propose?”
“I think it’s too soon for that.”
“I don’t.”
“Then we disagree, Governor.”
“What is going on in South America?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does that mean that you do not know what we are doing, or that you do not know if we are doing anything, or that you do know and have been ordered not to discuss it?”
He sure talks like a lawyer. “As I told Ms. Elliot last night, I have no knowledge on that subject. That is the truth. I have already indicated areas in which I do have knowledge which I am not allowed to discuss.”
“I find that very strange, given your position.”
“I was in Europe for a NATO intelligence meeting when all this started, and I’m a European and Soviet specialist.”
“What do you think we ought to do about the killing of Director Jacobs?”
“In the abstract, we should react forcefully to the murder of any of our citizens, even more so in a case like this. But I’m Intelligence, not Operations.”
“Including cold-blooded murder?” Fowler pressed.
“If the government decides that killing people is the correct course of action in the pursuit of our national interests, then such killing falls outside the legal definition of murder, doesn’t it?”
“That’s an interesting position. Go on.”
“Because of the way our government works, such decisions have to be made ... have to reflect the way the American people want things to be, or would want them to be, if they had the knowledge available to the people who make the decisions. That’s why we have congressional oversight of covert operations, both to ensure that the operations are appropriate, and to depoliticize them.”
“So you’re saying that that sort of decision depends upon reasonable men making a reasoned decision—to commit murder.”
“That’s overly simplified, but, yes.”
“I disagree. The American people support capital punishment; that’s wrong, too. We demean ourselves and we betray the ideals of our country when we do things like that. What do you think of that?”
“I think you are wrong, Governor, but I don’t make government policy. I provide information to those who do.”
Bob Fowler’s voice changed to something Jack had not yet heard this morning. “Just so we know where we stand. You’ve lived up to your billing, Dr. Ryan. You are indeed honest, but despite your youth I think that your views reflect times past. People like you do make government policy, by casting your analysis in directions of your own choosing—hold it!” Fowler held up his hand. “I’m not questioning your integrity. I do not doubt that you do the best job you can, but to tell me that people like you do not make government policy is arrant nonsense.”
Ryan flushed red at that, feeling it, trying to control it, but failing miserably. Fowler wasn’t questioning Jack’s integrity, just the second-brightest star in his personal constellation, his intelligence. He wanted to snarl back what he thought, but couldn’t.
“Now you’re going to tell me that if I knew what you knew, I’d think differently, right?” Fowler asked.
“No, sir. I don’t use that argument. It sounds and smells like bullshit. Either you believe me or you do not. All I can do is persuade, not convince. Maybe I am wrong sometimes,” Jack allowed as he cooled off. “All I can do is give you the best I have. May I pass along a lesson, too, sir?”
“Go on.”
“The world is not always what we wish it to be, but wishes don’t change it.”
Fowler was amused. “So I should listen to you even when you’re wrong? What if I know you’re wrong?”
A marvelous philosophical discussion might have followed, but Ryan knew when he was beaten. He’d just wasted ninety minutes. Perhaps one final try.
“Governor, there are tigers in the world. Once I saw my daughter lying near death in a hospital because somebody who hated me tried to kill her. I didn’t like it, and I tried to wish it away, but it didn’t work. Maybe I just learned a harder lesson. I hope you never have to.”
“Thank you. Good morning, Dr. Ryan.”
Ryan collected his papers and left. It was like something dimly remembered from the Bible. He’d been measured and found wanting by the man who might be his country’s next President. He was even more disturbed by his reaction to it: Fuck him. He’d fulfilled Fowler’s own observation. It was a very dumb thing to think.
“Kick it loose, big brother!” Tim Jackson said. Robby cracked open one eye to see Timmy clad in his multicolored uniform and boots. “It’s time for our morning run.”
“I remember changing your diapers.”
“You gotta catch me first. Come on, you got five minutes to get ready.”
Captain Jackson grinned up at his little brother. He was in pretty good shape, and a kendo master. “I’m gonna run your ass right into the ground.”
Pride goeth before the fall, Captain Jackson told himself fifteen minutes later. He would have settled for a fall. If he fell down, he might rest for a few seconds. When he started staggering, Tim backed the pace off.
“You win,” Robby gasped. “I ain’t gonna change your diapers again.”
“Hey, we’ve barely done two miles.”
“A carrier’s only a thousand feet long!”
“Yeah, and I bet the steel deck’s bad on the knees, too. Go on, head back and get breakfast ready, sir. I got two more miles to do.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Where are my kendo sticks? Robby thought, I can still whip his ass at that!
It took Robby five minutes to find his way back to the right BOQ building. He passed a number of officers heading to or from their runs, and for the first time in his life, Robby Jackson felt old. It was hardly fair. He was one of the youngest captains in the Navy, and still one hell of a fighter pilot. He also knew how to fix breakfast. It was all on the table when Timmy got back.
“Don’t feel too bad, Rob. This is what I do for a living. I can’t fly airplanes.”
“Shut up and drink your juice.”
“Where the hell did you say you were?”
“Aboard Ranger—that’s a carrier, boy. Observing ops off Panama. My boss gets into Monterey this afternoon and I’m s’posed to meet him there.”
“Down where the bombs are going off,” Tim observed as he buttered his toast.
“Another one last night?” Robby asked. Well, that made sense, didn’t it?
“Looks like we bagged us another druggie. Nice to see the CIA, or somebody, grew hisself a pair of balls for a change. Love to know how the guys are getting the bombs in.”
“What do you mean?” Robby asked. Something wasn’t right.
“Rob, I know what’s going down. It’s some of our people down there doin’ it.”
“Tim, you’ve lost me.”
Second Lieutenant Timothy Jackson, Infantry, leaned across the breakfast table in the conspiratorial way of junior officers. “Look, I know it’s a secret and all, but, hell, how smart do you have to be? One of my people is down there right now. Figure it out, man. One of my best people disappears, don’t show up where he’s supposed to be—where the Army thinks he is, for Christ’s sake. He’s a Spanish speaker. So are some others who checked out funny, Muñoz out of recon, León, two others I heard about. All Spanish speakers, okay? Then all of a sudden there’s some serious ass-kickin’ going on down in banana land. Hey, how smart you gotta be?”
“Have you told anyone about this?”
“Why tell anybody? I’m a little worried about Chavez—he’s one of my people, and I worry a little about him, but he’s one good fucking soldier. Far as I’m concerned, he can kill all the druggies he wants. I just want to know how they did the bombs. That might come in handy someday. I’m thinking about going special-ops.”
The Navy did t
he bombs, Timmy, Robby thought very loudly indeed.
“How much talk is there about this?”
“About the first bombing, everybody thought that was pretty good, but talk about our people bein’ involved? Uh-uh. Maybe some folks’re thinking the same way I am, but you don’t talk about shit like that. Security, right?”
“That’s right, Tim.”
“You know a senior Agency guy, right?”
“Sort of. Godfather for Jack Junior.”
“Tell him for us, kill all you want.”
“I’ll do that,” Robby said quietly. It had to be an Agency operation. A very “black” Agency operation, but it wasn’t nearly as black as they wanted it to be. If some nugget a year out of the academy could figure it out.... The ordies on Ranger, personnel officers and NCOs all over the Army—lots of people must have put it together by now. Not all of those who heard the talk would be on the good side.
“Let me give you a tip. You hear talk about this, you tell people to clam up. You get talk started about an operation like this, people start disappearing.”
“Hey, Rob, anybody wants to mess with Chavez and Muñoz and—”
“Listen to me, boy! I’ve been there. I’ve been shot at by machine guns, and my Tomcat ate a missile once, damned near killed the best RIO I ever had. It’s dangerous out there, and talk gets people dead. You remember that. This isn’t college anymore, Tim.”
Tim considered that for a moment. His brother was right. His brother was also wondering what, if anything, he should do about it. Rob considered just sitting on it, but he was a Tomcat driver, a man of action, not the sort to do nothing at all. If nothing else, he decided, he’d have to warn Jack that the security on the operation wasn’t as secure as it ought to be.
22.
Disclosures
UNLIKE AIR FORCE and Army generals, most Navy admirals do not have personal aircraft to chauffeur them around, and for the most part they fly commercial. A coterie of aides and drivers waiting at the gates helps ease the pain, of course, and Robby Jackson was not above making points with his boss by appearing at San José Airport just as the 727 pulled up to the jetway that evening. He had to wait for the first-class passengers to deplane, of course, since even flag officers fly coach.
Vice Admiral Joshua Painter was the current Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare, known to insiders by his “designator,” OP-05, or just “oh-five.” His three-star rank was a miracle. Painter was first of all an honest man; second, an outspoken one; third, someone who thought the real Navy was at sea, not alongside the Potomac River; finally and most damagingly, he was that rarest of naval officers, the author of a book. The Navy does not encourage its officers to commit their thoughts to paper, except for the odd piece on thermodynamics or the behavior of neutrons within a reactor vessel. An intellectual, a maverick, and a warrior in a service that was increasingly anti-intellectual, conformist, and bureaucratized, he thought of himself as the token exception in what was turning into The Corporate Navy. Painter was a crusty, acerbic Vermont native, short and slight of build, with pale, almost colorless blue eyes and a tongue sharp enough to chip stone. He was also the living god of the aviation community. He’d flown more than four hundred missions over North Vietnam in several different models of the F-4 Phantom, and had two MiGs to his credit—the side panel from his jet, with two red stars painted on it, hung in his Pentagon office, along with the caption, SIDEWINDER MEANS NOT HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY. Though a perfectionist and a very demanding boss, he deemed nothing too good for his pilots or his enlisted crews, especially the latter.
“I see you got the message,” Josh Painter observed, reaching a finger out to tap Robby’s bright new shoulder boards.
“Yes, sir.”
“I also hear your new tactics were a disaster.”
“They could have worked out a little better,” Captain Jackson admitted.
“Yeah, it does help if the carrier survives. Maybe a CAG slot will reinforce that in your mind. I just approved you for one,” OP-05 announced. “You get Wing Six. It chops to Abe Lincoln when Indy goes in for overhaul. Congratulations, Robby. Try not to screw up too badly in the next eighteen months. Now, what went wrong with the Fleet-Ex?” he asked as they walked off toward the waiting car.
“The ‘Russians’ cheated,” Robby answered. “They were smart.” That earned him a laugh from his boss. Though crusty, Painter did have a lively sense of humor. The discussion took care of the drive to flag quarters at the Naval Post-Graduate School on the California coast at Monterey.
“Any more on the news about those drug bastards?” Painter asked while his aide carried his bags in.
“We’re sure giving them a hard time, aren’t we?” Jackson observed.
The Admiral stopped dead in his tracks. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I know that I’m not supposed to know, sir, but I mean, I was there, and I did see what was going on.”
Painter waved Jackson inside. “Check the fridge. See if you can put a martini together while I pump bilges. Fix whatever you want for yourself.”
Robby made the proper arrangements. Whoever set up flag quarters for them knew what Painter liked to drink. Jackson opened a Miller Lite for himself.
Painter reappeared without his uniform shirt and took a sip from his glass. Then he dismissed his aide and gave Jackson a very close look.
“I want you to repeat what you said on the way in, Captain.”
“Admiral, I know I’m not cleared for this, but I’m not blind. I watched the A-6 head for the beach on radar, and I don’t figure it was a coincidence. Whoever set up security on the op could have done a better job, sir.”
“Jackson, you’re going to have to forgive me, but I just spent five and a half hours sitting too close to the engines on a beat-up old 727. You’re telling me that those two bombs that took druggies out fell off one of my A-6s?”
“Yes, sir. You didn’t know?”
“No, Robby, I didn’t.” Painter knocked off the rest of his drink and set the glass down. “Jesus Christ. What lunatic set up this abortion?”
“But that new bomb, it had to—I mean, the orders and everything—shit, for this sort of thing, the orders have to chop through -05.”
“What new bomb?” Painter nearly shouted that out, but managed to control himself.
“Some kind of plastic, fiberglass, whatever, some kind of new bombcase. It looks like a stock, low-drag two-thousand-pounder with the usual attachment points for the smart-bomb gear, but it’s not made out of steel or any other kind of metal, and it’s painted blue like an exercise bomb.”
“Oh, okay. There has been a little work on a low-observable bomb for the ATA”—Painter referred to the new Stealth attack plane the Navy was working on—“but, hell, we’ve just done a little preliminary testing, maybe a dozen drops. Whole program’s experimental. They don’t even use the regular bomb filler, and I’m probably going to shit-can the program, ’cause I don’t think it’s worth the money. They haven’t even taken those things off China Lake yet.”
“Sir, there were several in Ranger’s bomb locker. I saw ‘em, Admiral, I touched’em. I saw one attached to an A-6. I watched that A-6 on radar while I was up in the E-2 for the Fleet-Ex. It flew off to the beach and came back from a different direction. The timing might be a coincidence, but I’d be careful putting money down on that. The night I flew back, I saw another one attached to the same aircraft. Next day I hear that another druggie got his house knocked flat. It stands to reason that half a ton of HE’ll do just fine for that, and a combustible bombcase won’t leave shit behind for evidence.”
“Nine hundred eighty-five pounds of Octol—that’s what they use in those things.” Painter snorted. “It’ll do a house, all right. You know who flew the mission?”
“Roy Jensen, he’s skipper of—”
“I know him. We were shipmates on—Robby, what the hell is going on here? I want you to start over from the beginning and tell me everyt
hing you saw.”
Captain Jackson did just that. It took ten uninterrupted minutes.
“Who was the ‘tech-rep’ from?” Painter asked.
“I didn’t ask, sir.”
“How much you want to bet he isn’t even aboard anymore? Son, we’ve been had. I’ve been had. Goddammit! Those orders should have come through my office. Somebody’s been using my fucking airplanes and not telling me.”
It wasn’t about the bombings, Robby understood, it was about propriety. And it was about security. Had the Navy planned the job, it would have been done better. Painter and his senior A-6 expert would have set it up so that there would have been no awkward evidence for other people—like Robby in the E- 2C-to notice. What Painter feared was the simple fact that now his people could be left holding the bag for an operation imposed from above, bypassing the regular chain of command.
“Get Jensen up here?” Robby wondered.
“I thought of that. Too obvious. Might get Jensen in too much trouble. But I’ve got to find out where the hell his orders came from. Ranger’s out for another ten days or so, right?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Has to be an Agency job,” Josh Painter observed quietly. “Authorized higher up than that, but it has to be Agency.”
“For what it’s worth, sir, I got a good friend who’s pretty senior there. I’m godfather for one of his kids.”
“Who’s that?”
“Jack Ryan.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve met him. He was with me on Kennedy for a day or two back when—you’re sure to remember that cruise, Rob.” Painter smiled. “Right before you took that missile hit. By that time he was off on HMS Invincible. ”
“What? Jack was aboard then? But—why the hell didn’t he come down to see me?”
“You never did find out what that op was all about, did you?” Painter shook his head, thinking of the Red October affair. “Maybe he can tell you about it. I can’t.”