by Tom Clancy
“I don’t think we can fix things at all! You know what this all is? It’s like Sophocles. We have our fatal flaw, and they have their fatal flaw, and when the fucking deus comes ex the fucking machina, the deus is going to be a cloud of ICBMs, and it’s all going to be over, Peter. Just like we thought a few years ago up in New Hampshire.” It wasn’t Hicks’s first smoke of the evening, Henderson realized. Intoxication always made his friend morose.
“Wally, tell me what the problem is.”
“There’s supposedly this camp . . . ” Hicks began, his eyes down, not looking at his friend at all now as he related what he knew.
“That is bad news.”
“They think there’s a bunch of people there, but it’s just supposition. We only know about one. What if we’re fucking over the peace talks for one guy, Peter?”
“Put that damned thing out,” Henderson said, sipping his beer. He just didn’t like the smell of the stuff.
“No.” Wally took another big hit.
“When is it going?”
“Not sure. Roger didn’t say exactly.”
“Wally, you have to stay with it. We need people like you in the system. Sometimes they will listen.”
Hicks looked up. “When will that be, do you think?”
“What if this mission fails? What if it turns out that you’re right? Roger will listen to you then, and Henry listens to Roger, doesn’t he?”
“Well, yeah, sometimes.”
What a remarkable chance this was, Henderson thought.
The chartered bus drove to Andrews Air Force Base, duplicating, Kelly saw, more than half of his drive. There was a new C-141 on the ramp, painted white on the top and gray on the bottom, its strobe lights already rotating. The Marines got out of the bus, finding Maxwell and Greer waiting for them.
“Good luck.” Greer said to each man.
“Good hunting,” was what Dutch Maxwell told them.
Built to hold more than double their number, the Lockheed Starlifter was outfitted for litter patients, with a total of eighty beds bolted to the side of the aircraft and room for twenty or so attendants. That gave every Marine a place to lie down and sleep, plus room for all the prisoners they expected to rescue. The time of night made it easy for everyone, and the Starlifter started turning engines as soon as the cargo hatch was shut.
“Jesus, I hope this works,” Maxwell said, watching the aircraft taxi into the darkness.
“You’ve trained them well, Admiral,” Bob Ritter observed. “When do we go out?”
“Three days, Bob,” James Greer answered. “Got your calendar clear?”
“For this? You bet.”
26
Transit
A new aircraft, the Starlifter was also a disappointingly slow one. Its cruising speed was a mere 478 miles per hour, and their first stop was Elmendorf Air Force base in Alaska, 3,350 miles and eight hours away. It never ceased to amaze Kelly that the shortest distance to any place on Earth was a curve, but that was because he was used to flat maps, and the world was a sphere. The great-circle route from Washington to Danang would actually have taken them over Siberia, and that, the navigator said, just wouldn’t do. By the time of their arrival at Elmendorf, the Marines were up and rested. They departed the aircraft to look at snow on not-so-distant mountains, having only a few hours before left a place where heat and humidity were in a daily race for 100. But here in Alaska they found mosquitoes sufficiently large that a few might have carried one of their number off. Most took the opportunity to jog a couple of miles, to the amusement of the Air Force personnel, who typically had little contact with Marines. Servicing the C-141 took a programmed time of two and a quarter hours. After refueling and one minor instrument replacement, the Marines were just as happy to reboard the aircraft for the second leg of the journey, for Yokota, in Japan. Three hours after that, Kelly walked onto the flight deck, growing bored with the noise and confinement.
“What’s that over there?” he asked. In the distant haze was a brown-green line that denoted somebody’s coast.
“Russia. They have us on radar right now.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Kelly observed.
“It’s a small world, sir, and they own a big hunk of it.”
“You talk to them—air-traffic control, like?”
“No.” The navigator laughed. “They’re not real neighborly. We talk on HF to Tokyo for this leg, and after Yokota, we’re controlled through Manila. Is the ride smooth enough?”
“No beefs so far. Gets long, though.”
“It does that,” the navigator acknowledged, turning back to his instruments.
Kelly walked back into the cargo area. The C-141 was noisy, a constant high-frequency whine from the engines and the air through which they were passing. The Air Force didn’t waste any money, as airlines did, on sound insulation. Every Marine was wearing earplugs, which made conversation difficult, and after a time didn’t really block the noise anyway. The worst part of air travel was the boredom, Kelly thought, made worse by the sound-induced isolation. You could only sleep so much. Some of the men were honing knives which they would never really use, but it gave you something to do, and a warrior had to have a knife for some reason. Others were doing push-ups on the metal cargo deck of the aircraft. The Air Force crewmen watched impassively, not wanting to laugh, wondering what this obviously select group of Marines was up to, but unable to ask. It was for them just one more mystery as their aircraft slid down the Siberian coast. They were used to it, but to a man they wished the Marines well on whatever their job was.
The problem was the first thing on his mind when his eyes opened. What do I do about this? Henderson asked himself crossly.
It wasn’t what he wanted to do, but what he would be able to do. He’d delivered information before. At first unknowingly, through contacts in the peace movement, he’d—well, not so much given over information as had joined in rambling discussions which over time had become more and more pointed until finally one of his friends had asked something just a little too directed to be a random inquiry. A friendly question she’d asked, and at a very friendly moment, but the look in her eyes was a little too interested in the reply and not enough interested in him, a situation which had immediately reversed when he’d answered the question. A spoonful of sugar, he’d told himself later, rather vexed with himself that he’d fallen prey to such an obvious and old-fashioned-well, not an error, really. He liked her, believed as she did in the way the world should be, and if anything he was annoyed that she’d felt it necessary to manipulate his body in order to get something that reason and intellect would have elicited quite readily from his mind . . . well, probably.
She was gone now, gone somewhere. Henderson didn’t know where, though he was sure that he’d never see her again. Which was sad, really. She’d been a great lay. One thing had led to another in a seemingly gradual and natural series of steps ending with his brief conversation at H.M. Tower of London, and now—now he had something the other side really needed. It was just that he didn’t have anyone to tell it to. Did the Russians really know what they had there at that damned-fool camp southwest of Haiphong? It was information which, if used properly, would make them feel far more comfortable about detente, would allow them to back off a little, in turn allowing America to back off a little. That was how it had to start. It was a shame Wally didn’t grasp that it had to start as little things, that you couldn’t change the world all at once. Peter knew that he had to get that message across. He couldn’t have Wally leave government service now, to become just one more goddamned financial puke, as though the world didn’t have enough of them already. He was valuable where he was. Wally just liked to talk too much. It went along with his emotional instability. And his drug use, Henderson thought, looking in the mirror as he shaved.
Breakfast was accompanied by a morning paper. There it was again, on the first page as it was almost every day. Some medium-sized battle for some hill that had been exchanged a dozen
or more times, X number of Americans and Y number of Vietnamese, all dead. The implications for the peace talks of some air raid or other, another boring and predictable editorial. Plans for a demonstration. One, Two, Three, Four. We don’t want your fucking war. As
though something so puerile as that really meant anything. In a way, he knew, it did. It did put pressure on political figures, did catch media attention. There was a mass of politicians who wanted the war to end, as Henderson did, but not yet a critical mass. His own senator, Robert Donaldson, was still on the fence. He was called a reasonable and thoughtful man, but Henderson merely found him indecisive, always considering everything about an issue and then most often going with the crowd as though he hadn’t thought anything at all on his own. There had to be a better way, and Henderson was working on that, advising his senator carefully, shading things just a little bit, taking his time to become trusted so that he could learn things that Donaldson wasn’t supposed to tell anyone—but that was the problem with secrets. You just had to let others know, he thought on the way out the door.
Henderson rode the bus to work. Parking on The Hill was such a pain in the rump, and the bus went nearly from door to door. He found a seat in the back where he could finish reading the paper. Two blocks later he felt the bus stop, and immediately thereafter a man sat down next to him.
“How was London?” the man asked in a conversational voice, barely over the noise of the bus’s diesel. Henderson looked over briefly. It wasn’t someone he’d met before. Were they that efficient?
“I met someone there,” Peter said cautiously.
“I have a friend in London. His name is George.” Not a trace of an accent, and now that contact was established, the man was reading the sports page of the Washington Post. “I don’t think the Senators will make it this year. Do you?”
“George said he had a . . . friend in town.”
The man smiled at the box score. “My name is Marvin; you can call me that.”
“How do we . . . how do I . . . ?”
“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” Marvin asked.
“Nothing much. Want to come over—”
“No, Peter, that is not smart. Do you know a place called Alberto’s?”
“Wisconsin Avenue, yeah.”
“Seven-thirty,” Marvin said. He rose and got off at the next stop.
The final leg started at Yokota Air Base. After another programmed two-and-a-quarter-hour service wait, the Starlifter rotated off the runway, clawing its way back into the sky. That was when things started to get real for everyone. The Marines made a concerted effort to sleep now. It was the only way to deal with the tension that grew in inverse proportion to the distance from their final destination. Things were different now. It wasn’t just a training exercise, and their demeanor was adapting itself to a new reality. On a different sort of flight, a commercial airliner, perhaps, where conversation might have been possible, they’d trade jokes, stories of amorous conquests, talk about home and family and plans for the future, but the noise of the C-141 denied them that, and so they traded brave smiles that hung under guarded eyes, each man alone with his thoughts and fears, needing to share them and deflect them, but unable to in the noisy cargo compartment of the Starlifter. That was why many of them exercised, just to work off the stress, to tire themselves enough for the oblivion of sleep. Kelly watched it, having seen and done it himself, alone with his own thoughts even more complex than theirs.
It’s about rescue, Kelly told himself. What had started the whole adventure was saving Pam, and the fact of her death was his fault. Then he had killed, to get even, telling himself it was for her memory and for his love, but was that really true? What good things came from death? He’d tortured a man, and now he had to admit to himself that he’d taken satisfaction in Billy’s pain. If Sandy had learned that, then what? What would she think of him? It was suddenly important to consider what she thought about him. She who worked so hard to save that girl, who nurtured and protected, following through on his more simple act of rescue, what would she think of someone who’d torn Billy’s body apart one cell at a time? He could not, after all, stop all the evil in the world. He could not win the war to which he was now returning, and as skilled as this team of Recon Marines was, they would not win the war either. They were going for something else. Their purpose was rescue, for while there could be little real satisfaction in the taking of life, saving life was ever something to recall with the deepest pride. That was his mission now, and must be his mission on returning. There were four other girls in the control of the ring. He’d get them clear, somehow . . . and maybe he could somehow let the cops know what Henry was up to, and then they could deal with him. Somehow. How exactly he wasn’t sure. But at least then he could do something that memory would not try to wash away.
And all he had to do was survive this mission. Kelly grunted to himself. No big deal, right?
Tough guy, he told himself with bravado that rang false even within the confines of his own skull. I can do this. I’ve done it before. Strange, he thought, how the mind doesn’t always remember the scary parts until it was too late. Maybe it was proximity. Maybe it was easier to consider dangers that were half a world away, but then when you started getting closer, things changed. . . .
“Toughest part, Mr. Clark,” Irvin said loudly, sitting down beside him after doing his hundred push-ups.
“Ain’t it the truth?” Kelly half-shouted back.
“Something you oughta remember, squid—you got inside and took me out that night, right?” Irvin grinned. “And I’m pretty damned good.”
“They ought not to be all that alert, their home turf an’ all,” Kelly observed after a moment.
“Probably not, anyway, not as alert as we were that night. Hell, we knew you were coming in. You kinda expect home troops, like, go home to the ol’ lady every night, thinking about havin’ a piece after dinner. Not like us, man.”
“Not many like us,” Kelly agreed. He grinned. “Not many dumb as we are.”
Irvin slapped him on the shoulder. “You got that right, Clark.” The master gunnery sergeant moved off to encourage the next man, which was his way of dealing with it.
Thanks, Guns, Kelly thought, leaning back and forcing himself back into sleep.
Alberto’s was a place waiting to be fully discovered. A small and rather typical mom-and-pop Italian place where the veal was especially good. In fact, everything was good, and the couple who ran it waited patiently for the Post’s food critic to wander in, bringing prosperity with him. Until then they subsisted on the college crowd from nearby Georgetown University and a healthy local trade of neighborhood diners without which no restaurant could really survive. The only disappointing note was the music, schmaltzy tapes of Italian opera that oozed out of substandard speakers. The mom and pop in question would have to work on that, he thought.
Henderson found a booth in the back. The waiter, probably an illegal Mexican who comically tried to mask his accent as Italian, lit the candle on the table with a match and went off for the gin-and-tonic the new customer wanted.
Marvin arrived a few minutes later, dressed casually and carrying the evening paper, which he sat on the table. He was of Henderson’s age, totally nondescript, not tall or short, portly or thin, his hair a neutral brown and of medium length, wearing glasses that might or might not have held prescription lenses. He wore a blue short-sleeve shirt without a tie, and looked like just another local resident who didn’t feel like doing his own dinner tonight.
“The Senators lost again,” he said when the waiter arrived with Henderson’s drink. “The house red for me,” Marvin told the Mexican.
“Sí,” the waiter said and moved off.
Marvin had to be an illegal, Peter thought, appraising the man. As a staffer for a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Henderson had been briefed in by serious members of the FBI’s Intelligence Division. “Legal” KGB officers had diplomatic covers, and if caught
could only be PNG’d—declared persona non grata—and sent home. So they were secure from serious mishandling on the part of the American government, which was the good news; the bad news was that they were also more easily tracked, since their residences and automobiles were known. Illegals were just that, Soviet intelligence officers who came into the country with false papers and who if caught would end up in federal prison until the next exchange, which could take years. Those facts explained Marvin’s superb English. Any mistake he made would have serious consequences. That made his relaxed demeanor all the more remarkable.
“Baseball fan, eh?”
“I learned the game long ago. I was a pretty good shortstop, but I never learned to hit a curve ball.” The man grinned. Henderson smiled back. He’d seen satellite imagery of the very place where Marvin had learned his trade, that interesting little city northwest of Moscow.
“How will it work?”
“I like that. Good. Let’s get down to business. We won’t be doing this very often. You know why.”
Another smile. “Yeah, they say that winters at Leaven-worth are a motherfucker.”
“Not a laughing matter, Peter,” the KGB officer said. “This is a very serious business.” Please, not another bloody cowboy, Marvin thought to himself.
“I know. Sorry,” Henderson apologized. “I’m new to this.”
“First of all, we need to set up a way of contacting me. Your apartment has curtains on the front windows. When they are all the way open, or all the way closed, there is nothing to concern us. When there is, leave them halfway closed. I will check your windows twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings, about nine. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes, Marvin.”
“For starters, Peter, we’ll use a simple transfer method. I will park my car on a street close to your home. It’s a dark-blue Plymouth Satellite with license number HVR-309. Repeat that back to me. Don’t ever write it down.”