by Tom Clancy
The Pattersons’ lawyer was in the room, of course. They never spoke to a police officer without their attorney present—or so he thought, anyway.
“Hey,” Harvey said. “Nobody fuck with me, I don’t fuck with nobody. I heard a scuffle, like. That was it, man. You hear something like that in a place like this, smart move is you don’t even look, y‘know? You be better off not knowin’.”
“It would appear that my clients have nothing to contribute to your investigation,” the lawyer told the detectives. “Is it possible that the two men killed each other?”
“We don’t know. We are just interviewing those who were present when it happened.”
“I understand, then, that you do not contemplate charging my clients with anything having to do with this regrettable incident?”
“Not at this time, counselor,” the senior detective said.
“Very well, I want that on the record. Also, for the record, my clients have no knowledge that is pertinent to your investigation. Finally, and this, too, is for the record, you will not question my clients except in my presence.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you. Now, if you will excuse me, I would like to confer with my clients in private.”
That conference lasted for about fifteen minutes, after which the attorney knew what had taken place. Which is to say that he didn’t “know” in the metaphysical or legal sense, or in any way that had anything to do with legal ethics—but he knew. Under the Canons of Ethics, of course, he could not act on his speculation without betraying his oath as an officer of the court. And so he did what he could do. He filed a new discovery motion on his clients’ murder case. By the end of the day he would have added proof of what he did not know.
“Good morning, Judge,” Ryan said.
“’Morning, Jack. This’ll have to be fast. I’m going out of town in a few minutes.”
“Sir, if somebody asks me what the hell’s going on in Colombia, what do I tell ’em?”
“We have kept you out of this one, haven’t we?” Moore said.
“Yes, sir, you have.”
“I have orders to do that. You can guess where the orders come from. What I can tell you is, the Agency hasn’t blown anybody up, okay? We do have an op running down there, but we haven’t planted any car bombs.”
“That’s good to know, Judge. I really didn’t think that we were in the car-bomb business,” Ryan said as casually as he could. Oh, shit! The Judge, too? “So, if I get a call from The Hill, I tell them that, right?”
Moore smiled as he rose. “You’re going to have to get used to dealing with them, Jack. It’s not easy, and it’s often not fun, but I think you’ll find that they do business—better than Fowler and his people do, from what I heard this morning.”
“It could have gone better, sir,” Ryan admitted. “I understand the Admiral handled the last one. I suppose I ought to have spoken more with him before I flew out.”
“We don’t expect you to be perfect, Jack.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And I have to catch a flight out to California.”
“Safe trip, Judge,” Ryan said as he walked out of the room. Jack entered his office and closed the door before he let his face slip out of neutral.
“Oh, my God,” he breathed to himself. If it had been a simple, straight lie from Judge Moore, it would have been easier to take. But it hadn’t been. The lie had been carefully crafted, and must have been planned, must have been rehearsed. We haven’t planted any car bombs.
No, you let the Navy drop them for you.
Okay, Jack. Now what the hell do you do?
He didn’t know, but he had all day to worry about it.
Whatever lingering doubts they might have had were eliminated by Monday’s dawn. The people who’d come into the hills hadn’t left. They had spent all night at a base camp of their own, just a few klicks to the south, and Chavez could hear them blundering around now. He’d even heard a single shot, but whatever it had been aimed at wasn’t a member of his squad. Maybe a deer, or whatever, maybe a guy slipped and let one go by mistake. It was ominous enough all by itself.
The squad was tucked into a tight defensive position. The cover and concealment were good, as were the fire lanes, but best of all their position was unobvious. They’d refilled their canteens on the way and were far from a water source; anyone hunting soldiers would look for the reverse. They’d also look for a spot on higher ground, but this one was almost as good. The uphill side was dense with trees and could not be approached quietly. The reverse slope was treacherous, and other paths to the overlook point could be seen from the squad’s position, allowing them to wait for their chance and move out of the way if necessary. Ramirez had a good eye for terrain. Their current mission was to avoid contact if possible; and if not, to sting and move. That also meant that Chavez and his comrades were no longer the only hunters in the woods. None of them would admit to being afraid, but the wariness factor had just doubled.
Chavez was outside the perimeter at a listening/observation post which gave him a good view of the most likely avenue of approach to the rest of the squad, and a covert path back to it, should he have to move. Guerra, the operations sergeant, was with him. Ramirez wanted both SAWs in close.
“Maybe they’ll just go away,” Ding thought aloud—in a whisper, really.
Guerra snorted. “I think maybe we yanked their tail one time too many, man. What we need right now’s a deep hole.”
“Sounds like they stopped off for lunch. Wonder how long?”
“Also sounds like they’re sweeping up and down like they think they’re a fucking broom. If I guess right, we’ll see them over on that point, then they’ll come down that little draw and head back up right in front of us.”
“You may be right, Paco.”
“We oughta be movin’.”
“Better to do it at night,” Ding replied. “Now we know what they’re doing, we can keep out of their way.”
“Maybe. Looks like rain, Ding. You suppose maybe they’ll go home ’steada gettin’ wet like us fools?”
“We’ll know in an hour or two.”
“It’s going to blow visibility to shit, too.”
“Roger that.”
“There!” Guerra pointed.
“Got ’em.” Chavez put his glasses on the distant treeline. He saw two of them at once, joined by six more in less than a minute. Even from a few miles away it was obvious that they were huffing and puffing. One man stopped and took a drink from a bottle—beer? Ding wondered—right out in the open, standing up like he wanted to be a target. Who were these scum? They wore ordinary clothing with no thought of camouflage, but had web gear just like Chavez. The rifles were demonstrably AK-47s, mainly folding-stock.
“Six, this is Point, over.”
“Six here.”
“I got eight—no, ten people carrying AKs, half a klick east and downhill of the top of hill two-zero-one. They’re not doin’ much of anything at the moment, just standing there, over.”
“Where are they looking, over.”
“Just jerkin’ off, sir. Over.”
“Keep me posted,” Captain Ramirez ordered.
“Roger. Out.” Chavez went back to his glasses. One of them waved toward the top. Three others headed that way with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
“Wassa matta, wittle baby don wanna cwime da widdle fucking hill?” Ding asked. Though Guerra didn’t know it, he was quoting his first platoon sergeant from Korea. “I think they’re gettin’ tired, Paco.”
“Good. Maybe they’ll go home.”
They were tired, all right. The three took their own sweet time going up. Once there, they shouted down that they hadn’t seen anyone. Below them, the others stood mostly in the clearing, just stood there like fools, Ding noted in some surprise. Confidence was a good thing in a soldier, but that wasn’t confidence, and those weren’t soldiers. About the time the three climbers were halfway down, clouds blotted out the sun.
Almost immediately thereafter rain started to fall. A major tropical thunderstorm had built up on the western side of the mountain. Two minutes behind the rain came lightning. One bolt struck the summit, right where the climbers had been. It hung there for a surprisingly long fraction of a second like the finger of an angry god. Then others started hitting everywhere, and the rain started falling in earnest. What had been unrestricted visibility was now a radius of four hundred meters at most, expanding and contracting with the march of the opaque, wet curtains. Chavez and Guerra traded a concerned look. Their mission was look-and-listen, but now they couldn’t see very far and could hear less. Worse, even after the storm passed, the ground around them would be wet. Leaves and twigs wouldn’t crackle when people stepped on them. Humidity in the air would absorb sound. The inept clowns they’d been watching could therefore approach much closer to the outpost without notice. On the other hand, if the squad had to move, it could move faster with a lower risk of detection, for the same reasons. As always, the environment was neutral, giving advantage only to those who knew how to take it, and sometimes imposing the same handicaps on both sides.
The storm lasted all afternoon, dropping several inches of rain. Lightning touched down within a hundred yards of the sergeants, an experience new to both and as frightening as an artillery barrage, with its sudden burst of light and noise. After that it was just wet, cold, and miserable as the temperature dropped into the upper fifties.
“Ding, look left front,” Guerra whispered urgently.
“Oh, fuck!” Chavez didn’t have to ask aloud how they’d gotten this close. With their hearing still affected by the thunder, and the whole mountain sodden, there were two men, not two hundred meters away.
“Six, this is Point, we got a pair of gomers two hundred meters southeast of us,” Guerra reported to his captain. “Stand by. Over.”
“Roger, standing by,” Ramirez answered. “Be cool, Paco.”
Guerra keyed his transmit switch by way of reply.
Chavez moved very slowly, bringing his weapon closer to a firing position, making sure the safety was on but leaving his thumb on the lever. He knew that they were the nearest thing to invisible, well concealed in ground cover and sapling trees. Each man had his war paint on, and even from fifty feet away they would look like part of the environment. They had to keep still, since the human eye is very effective at detecting movement, but as long as they did, they were invisible. This was a very practical demonstration of why the Army trained people to be disciplined. Both sergeants wished they had their camouflage fatigues, but it was a little late to worry about that, and the khaki cloth was brown with rain and mud anyway. By unspoken agreement, each man watched a discrete sector so that they wouldn’t have to turn their heads very much. They knew that they could speak if they did so in whispers, but they would do so only for really important information.
“I hear something behind us,” Chavez said ten minutes later.
“Better look,” Guerra answered.
Ding had to take his time, over thirty seconds to rotate his body and head.
“Uh-oh.” There were several men putting bedrolls down on the ground. “Stayin’ for the night.”
It was clear what had happened. The people they’d been watching had continued their patrol routine and ended up straddling the observation post with their night camp. They could now see or hear over twenty men.
“This is gonna be a fun night,” Guerra whispered.
“Yeah, and I gotta take a leak, too.” It was a feeble attempt at a joke. Ding looked up at the sky. The rainfall was down to sprinkles now, but the clouds were just as thick. It would be dark a little early, maybe in two hours.
The enemy was spread out in three groups, which wasn’t entirely stupid, but each group built fires for cooking, which was. They were also noisy, talking as though they were sitting down for a meal in some village cantina. That was good news for Chavez and Guerra. It allowed them to use their radio again.
“Six, this is Point, over.”
“Six here.”
“Six, uh ...” Chavez hesitated. “The bad guys have set up their camp all around us. They don’t know we’re here.”
“Tell me what you want to do.”
“Nothin’ right now. I think maybe we can walk on out when it gets dark. We’ll let you know when.”
“Roger. Out.”
“Walk on out?” Guerra whispered.
“No sense gettin’ him all worried, Paco.”
“Hey, ’mano, I’m fucking worried.”
“Bein’ worried don’t help.”
There were still no answers. Ryan left his office after what appeared to have been a normal day’s work of catching up on correspondence and reports. Not much work had actually been accomplished, however. There were too many distractions that simply hadn’t gone away.
He told his driver to head for Bethesda. He hadn’t called ahead, but going there would not seem to be too much out of the ordinary. The security watch on the VIP suite was as strong as ever, but they all knew Ryan. The one by the door gave him a sorrowful shake of the head as he reached for the door. Ryan caught that signal clearly enough. He stopped and composed himself before going in. Greer didn’t need to see shock on the faces of his visitors. But shock was what Jack felt.
He was barely a hundred pounds now, a scarecrow that had once been a man, a professional naval officer who’d commanded ships and led men in the service of their country. Fifty years of government service lay wasting away on the hospital bed. It was more than the death of a man. It was the death of an age, of a standard of behavior. Fifty years of experience and wisdom and judgment were slipping away. Jack took his seat next to the bed and waved the security officer out of the room.
“Hey, boss.”
His eyes opened.
Now what do I say? How are you feeling? There’s something to say to a dying man!
“How was the trip, Jack?” The voice was weak.
“Belgium was okay. Everybody sends regards. Friday I got to brief Fowler, like you did the last time.”
“What do you think of him?”
“I think he needs some help on foreign policy.”
A smile: “So do I. Gives a nice speech, though.”
“I didn’t exactly hit it off with one of his aides, Elliot, the gal from Bennington. Obnoxious as hell. If her man wins, she says, I retire.” That was really the wrong thing to say. Greer tried to move but couldn’t.
“Then you find her, and kiss and make up. If you have to kiss her ass at noon on the Bennington quad, you do that. When are you going to learn to bend that stiff Irish neck of yours? Ask Basil sometime how much he likes the people he has to work for. Your duty is to serve the country, Jack, not just the people you happen to like.” A blow from a professional boxer could not have stung worse.
“Yes, sir. You’re right. I still have a lot to learn.”
“Learn fast, boy. I haven’t got many lessons left.”
“Don’t say that, Admiral.” The line was delivered like the plea of a child.
“It’s my time, Jack. Some men I served with died off Savo Island fifty years ago, or at Leyte, or lots of other parts of ocean. I’ve been a lot luckier than they were, but it’s my time. And it’s your turn to take over for me. I want you to take my place, Jack.”
“I do need some advice, Admiral.”
“Colombia?”
“I could ask how you know, but I won’t.”
“When a man like Arthur Moore won’t look you in the eye, you know that something is wrong. He was in here Saturday and he wouldn’t look me in the eye.”
“He lied to me today.” Ryan explained on for five minutes, outlining what he knew, what he suspected, and what he feared.
“And you want to know what to do?” Greer asked.
“I could sure use a little guidance, Admiral.”
“You don’t need guidance, Jack. You’re smart enough. You have all the contacts you need. And you know what’s right
.”
“But what about—”
“Politics? All that shit?” Greer almost laughed. “Jack, you know, when you lay here like this, you know what you think about? You think about all the things you’d like another chance at, all the mistakes, all the people you might have treated better, and you thank God that it wasn’t worse. Jack, you will never regret honesty, even if it hurts people. When they made you a Marine lieutenant you swore an oath before God. I understand why we do that now. It’s a help, not a threat. It’s something to remind you how important words are. Ideas are important. Principles are important. Words are important. Your word is the most important of all. Your word is who you are. That’s the last lesson, Jack. You have to carry on from here.” He paused, and Jack could see the pain coming through the heavy medications. “You have a family, Jack. Go home to them. Give ’em my love and tell them that I think their daddy is a pretty good guy, and they ought to be proud of him. Good night, Jack.” Greer drifted off to sleep.
Jack didn’t get up for several minutes. It took that long for him to regain control of himself. He dried his eyes and walked out of the room. The doctor was on his way in. Jack stopped him and identified himself.
“Not much longer. Less than a week. I’m sorry, but there never was much hope.”
“Keep him comfortable,” Ryan said quietly. Another plea.
“We are,” the oncologist replied. “That’s why he’s out most of the time. He’s still quite lucid when he’s awake. I’ve had some nice talks with him. I like him, too.” The doctor was used to losing patients, but had never grown to enjoy it. “In a few years, we might have saved him. Progress isn’t fast enough.”
“Never is. Thanks for trying, doc. Thanks for caring.” Ryan took the elevator back down to ground level and told the driver to take him home. On the way they passed the Mormon temple again, the marble lit with floodlights. Jack still didn’t know exactly what he’d do, but now he was certain of what he had to accomplish. He’d made his silent promise to a dying man, and no promise could be more important than that.
The clouds were breaking up and there would be moonlight soon. It was time. The enemy had sentries out. They paced around the same as the ones who’d guarded the processing sites. The fires were still burning, but conversation had died off as weary men fell asleep.