by Tom Clancy
“Fair enough. You don’t have to sell me on that. I saw what you boys can do. We damn sure would have been overrun without your help in Sevastopol, and we would have lost a lot of boys in Kiev if you weren’t there fighting alongside us on that hit there.”
Clark said, “I can promise you action. I can promise you ops that are crucial to the security of the United States, and I can promise you a great group of committed individuals you would work with every day. You will be a strategic-level asset. Oh . . . and we pay better than the government.”
Midas said, “That’s not hard to do, but all those government bennies add up if you live long enough to use them.” “Bennies” was slang for benefits; military folks revered their significant retirement and health insurance perks, because their monthly take-home wasn’t much to get thrilled about.
Clark said, “I can’t go into too much detail until I know if you want in, but you will be making probably two and a half times what you’d start at with a GS-9 rating. There are other options and benefits that greatly outpace government service. And you’d get the satisfaction of serving the interests of the U.S. without all the bureaucratic mumbo jumbo to deal with.”
“Like walking out of the Army as an officer in Delta and having to wait six months to a year to know if you got in at CIA?”
“Yeah, exactly like that. You say yes today, you can start tomorrow.” Clark shrugged. “You said the fish weren’t biting.”
Midas smiled again. “You mentioned one of the guys I met over there in Ukraine is no longer with your group. Did he get his benefits when he left?”
Clark looked out over the lake for a second. “No . . . but his mom did.”
“Damn. It wasn’t little Jack, because I’d have heard about that.”
“Sam passed away.”
Midas nodded. “I remember him. Good dude. In the field?”
Clark was still gazing out through the pines and over the water. He nodded. “Doing his job. Making a difference.” Clark looked at Midas now. “You’d be his replacement. We’re looking at another in-house promotion, too.”
Midas asked, “How deep did you look into me? You know all my secrets?”
Clark said, “For a group like us, the secret stuff is the easiest to find out. But we never found out how you got your call sign. Wasn’t Midas the guy who turned everything he touched into gold?”
“Yeah. Back in the initial invasion into Iraq, I was a sergeant in 5th Group. I ended up staying a couple nights in the palace of Uday, one of Saddam’s kids. It was a big gilded room. A couple nights later I was in Al-Faw at one of Saddam’s palaces. Again, me and my A-team ended up in a room with all this gold-leaf shit everywhere. Then, up in Tikrit, we were billeted in Saddam’s mom’s palace. I don’t even remember if the room had gold in it, but I’m told it did. A few years later, after I made officer I went through selection and assessment at Delta. One of the cadre remembered running into me and my A-team in all these golden rooms. He said I must have had the Midas touch because he and the other D-boys always had to stay in some cinder-block shit house.”
Clark laughed. “Let me guess, you haven’t been in another golden room since you got the name Midas.”
Midas said, “Yeah, it’s been pretty much cinder-block shit houses ever since.” He looked at Clark. “You were a SEAL, right?”
“In another life.”
“What did they call you back on the teams?”
Clark answered flatly, “They called me Kelly.”
“Why?”
“Because that was my name back then.” There was a tone that told Midas he’d asked one question too many, so he left it right there.
Clark said, “I’ve seen your DoD photo. With the possible exception of Jack Junior, I’ve never seen anybody in my life who looks more different when he wears a beard as compared to when he doesn’t.”
Midas cracked a little smile. “I kind of look like a banker or something.”
“I was going to say computer repair.”
Midas nodded. “Yeah, that works. I see my brother and his family once a year or so. If I wear my beard my little niece bawls her eyes out.”
Both men sipped beers in silence, then Clark said, “There would be a training workup, but nothing like what you went through to get into Delta.”
Midas said, “That’s good. I left the bottoms of both feet somewhere on a hill up in West Virginia.”
Clark said, “SEAL training was damn tough, but Delta Selection and Assessment just sounds cruel.”
Midas shrugged. “They try to weed out the sane guys by making it to where only crazy folks would stick it out, and then they take what’s left and weed out the ultracrazy. There is an acceptable level of freak that works best in Delta.” Midas shrugged. “I served ten years in the Unit, so make of that what you will.”
“I’ll make an offer. I want you to come work for us. You interested?”
Midas said, “Let’s say I agree. Let’s say I get in and it doesn’t work out. I don’t know why, maybe I spend a year twiddling my thumbs, don’t feel like I’m making an impact. Is my working with you going to damage my chances at getting in the Agency?”
“Not at all. If you come to me and say you want out, I’ll put in a good word for you wherever you want to go.”
Midas shrugged. “All right, Mr. Clark. You’ve just caught yourself a fish. Let’s see what this is all about.”
Both men climbed off their stumps and shook hands.
15
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is located in Tysons Corner, Virginia, a ten-minute drive south from CIA headquarters, and a half-hour west of the White House in good traffic, which pretty much exists only in the middle of the night.
The government complex that houses the organization is called Liberty Crossing, abbreviated in the government to LX, with the property split into two main sections. The National Counterterrorism Center fills up LX1, and the ODNI is at LX2.
On the top floor of LX2, in the office of the director, Mary Pat Foley returned from a meeting at noon. A cranberry chicken salad and an iced tea had been placed on her desk for her so she could work through lunch, and she’d just sat down when her secretary’s voice came over the intercom.
“Madam Director, I have Directors Canfield and Murray on a conference call for you.”
Mary Pat’s shoulders slumped a little. The salad looked good, and now she’d have to just stare at it through the phone call.
The call was put through, and Dan Murray spoke first. “My snatch team, the guys who flew from HK to Indonesia to pick up the Department of State guy spying for the North Koreans. They were just detained at the airport in Jakarta.”
Instantly, Mary Pat realized this had a familiar ring to it. “Detained? Why?”
Jay Canfield said, “Same as in Iran. We don’t know, but the word is it had something to do with the fingerprint scanner.”
Murray added, “Their covers were solid. Rock solid. The biometric data of those men matches their passports. Somehow the Indonesians knew the men’s actual identities.”
“How is that possible?” Foley asked, and then she answered her own question. “Somehow, in some way, there has been a breach of data, and it has been exploited by multiple parties.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Canfield said. “Iran was my guy. CIA. New Jersey was a Navy officer. And this . . . these guys are FBI. How the hell could Russians, Indonesians, and Iranians simultaneously find out the identities of all these different assets across all these different divisions of the U.S. government?”
Mary Pat said, “I have no idea, but we have to find the commonality between these three incidents. We also have to figure out how large this is. We have a lot of assets out in the field, obviously, and no idea who might be compromised.”
Dan Murray said, “Look, all this is true, but putti
ng that crisis aside for the moment, I have to get somebody into Jakarta, now.”
Canfield asked, “Don’t you have anybody at the embassy there who could take care of it?”
“Not really. I have special agents there, but they aren’t trained in counterintel to the point they could be relied on to tag and bag this unknown traitor right in front of the North Koreans without it turning into a big mess.”
Mary Pat had an answer. “We need somebody who is not part of the U.S. government, and we need them to be discreet and skilled.”
Dan Murray said, “You’re talking about Gerry Hendley’s boys.” Murray had recently been read in on The Campus and its work with the U.S. intelligence community abroad.
“Yes, I am,” Mary Pat said.
There was a short pause, then Director Murray sighed. “Yeah, okay. I don’t know what other options we have. I’ll send everything I have on the case directly to you. I assume you can pass it on.”
“I’ll take care of it personally.”
—
Two minutes later Foley’s salad remained untouched, and she was on the phone with Gerry Hendley. “We’ve got an emergent situation in Jakarta. Is your team in a position where they can get moving quickly and help us out?”
“How soon do you need us there?”
“Now, frankly.”
Gerry spoke quickly. “The Gulfstream is at Reagan, a ten-minute drive from the office. The flight crew is at the airport now, and all three of my operatives are here in the building. I can get them in a van fifteen minutes from now. I imagine they’ll have to refuel en route, and I don’t know the flight time.”
Mary Pat said, “The flight time is twenty-two hours from Andrews, including a refueling stop. DCA will be virtually the same.”
Gerry said, “Then I can have Chavez, Caruso, and Ryan there by roughly this time tomorrow. Will that do you any good?”
Mary Pat said, “That’s within my time window, but barely. Please get them moving, I’ll give you specifics when everything is in motion.”
“Of course. Any special equipment they need to bring with them?”
Mary Pat thought for a moment. She said, “Basic surveillance gear. And some weapons for their own defense. This might involve a hostile party willing to put up a fight.”
“Understood.”
Gerry ended the call, then started to call Clark’s office, but he remembered Clark was in North Carolina tracking down Barry Jankowski. So he called Chavez, gave him the news of the in extremis op, and asked him to notify the others. This done, he contacted Helen Reid and Chester Hicks.
—
Twenty-five minutes later, the three operators of The Campus carried their go bags up the stairs of the Gulfstream G550, parked on the tarmac just west of Runway 1 at Ronald Reagan National Airport. The cockpit crew was already on board, and the two Rolls-Royce turbofan engines were already spinning. The Campus operators knew only where they were going, not why, or what they would be called upon to do once there.
Nobody liked spending twenty-two hours in the air, but at least they would be traveling in style. The G550’s interior was as plush and luxurious as any aircraft in corporate aviation. There were multifunction monitors around that could display their route in the air, the Internet, or the latest films, and there were cabin chairs that reclined fully, along with a sofa in the back that turned into a bed.
It was nice, but it would be less nice on this trip, and all the boys knew it the second that copilot Chester “Country” Hicks met them just inside the cabin. They had always been met by Adara Sherman, who would take their luggage and their coats, talk to them about the flight, and bring them drinks or help them in any possible way.
But Adara had been given the day off to prepare for the start of Clark’s training program. This meant no warm greeting, no update on flying time, the itinerary, no handling of the hotels and vehicle rentals while en route, no meal choices, and no offers to take their bags for them.
Nope, Country just gave the three a quick nod, told them to stow their shit and to strap their asses down for takeoff.
The trip in the Hendley Associates Gulfstream from Washington, D.C., to Jakarta, Indonesia, was 8,833 nautical miles, and the moment the three men entered the aircraft this fact was noted with looks of resignation when they saw the distance yet to travel on their monitors. They treated the news with slumped shoulders and depressed sighs; they’d be in this luxurious but tiny space together for the entire next day.
Once in the cabin, Dom said, “Hey, Country. I’ll have a Sapphire and tonic, extra lime. And can I get one of those really fluffy pillows?”
Dom was joking, and Jack stifled a smile.
Country gnashed his teeth before saying, “If Clark was here I’d say it to his face. Adara might turn into a fine member of your little outfit, but we are not happy we lost her. She made every part of our jobs better.”
Chavez said, “Gerry knows he needs to bring in a replacement for her. He’s probably working on it already, but this thing in Indonesia has cropped up in the meantime. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of ourselves back here, and we can work out the logistics of our stay in Jakarta while en route.”
Country seemed to calm a little. He nodded to Chavez and Ryan, gave Caruso a half eye-roll, and started back to the cockpit. “There are plenty of frozen meals on board, but I don’t even know how to work the microwave. There’s drinks or whatever you guys want in the front galley. If you make some calls I’m sure you can arrange to have fresh food delivered to the plane when we stop in Van Nuys to refuel.”
He added, “Buckle up. We’ll get through customs and start taxiing in a couple minutes.”
Dom said, “No drink? Really?” He was still joking, already on his way to the galley to make a round for himself, Chavez, and Jack.
—
They’d been in the air for only twenty minutes when the three operators sat at a table in the middle of the cabin, upon which a speakerphone broadcast the voice of Mary Pat Foley. She gave them everything she knew about the situation in Jakarta, and she sent along several files from Dan Murray, all of which were available on a monitor in the wall by the table.
When she told them she needed to rush them over to Indonesia to stop an unknown man from passing over intelligence material, Chavez asked, “Isn’t there someone at the embassy . . . Marine security, deputy chief of mission, anybody, who you can just call? They could just get in this guy’s face and say, ‘We know what’s up.’”
“It’s not that simple. We don’t know who the traitor is, and the SIGINT source that we used to intercept the communication isn’t something we want broadcast to embassy personnel.
“We considered just blanketing the pass-off location with Marines, calling in a bomb threat, all sorts of things, but we don’t know the North Koreans won’t communicate with the traitor some way we don’t know about and make other arrangements. The only way we can be sure to stop this from happening is to have someone there able to visually identify the person who shows up to make the transaction.”
Chavez said, “Makes sense. I don’t like the thought of leaping off an airplane after a day of travel and going into an unknown situation, but I recognize the predicament you’re in.”
Mary Pat said, “Dan Murray is having his local agent go to the meeting place and take some video for you; it should help you get an idea of the layout. I’ll send it along in a few hours. That might help.”
“It would help a lot,” Chavez said. “Okay, you know where to find us for the next day. Right here. Please feel free to contact us at any time with updates.”
“Will do,” Mary Pat said. “By the way, where are you with bringing new blood into your team?”
Chavez said, “We’re looking to bring in two new operators. They should fit in nicely with the team once we get them trained up.”
“Former military?�
��
“Yes, both of them. A lieutenant colonel from the Army, ex–Delta Force, named Bartosz Jankowski. And a former Navy corpsman who deployed with Marine infantry in Afghanistan. Her name is Adara Sherman. She’s been with us for years as the transportation coordinator and flight attendant on our Gulfstream. She’s served alongside us as a quasi-operative on more than one occasion.”
“Excellent,” Mary Pat said. “I’m glad The Campus is growing. Whatever this breach of intelligence is that we’re dealing with, I can see the need for some people outside of the conventional system stepping up and helping out.”
Chavez replied, “We’re at your service. We just ask that we get as much information as you have just as fast as you can get it to us. As this stands now, the bad guys have all the advantages.”
16
Abu Musa al-Matari stood in the rainy evening, looked out over the flat jungle of western Guyana as the lights of the approaching aircraft shone through the darkness.
The plane itself came into view over the trees and under the clouds seconds later, and it touched down perfectly on the runway, a spray of rainwater and loose gravel behind its wheels.
Al-Matari was no expert on aviation, but he had been told the plane was the right tool for the job at hand. The mysterious Saudi had arranged it all, and he explained that this thirty-year-old Antonov An-32 had been purchased by a Bolivian charter airline from a freight company in Lima. The aircraft was larger than what he needed, but its range would get it from this location to his destination, well over 2,000 miles away, with only a single stop for fuel.
Al-Matari turned and looked back over his shoulder. Two of his top lieutenants were here with him, and they’d be going along on the mission to the USA. Both men were named Mohammed, but one was from Libya and the other Algeria, so al-Matari called them Tripoli and Algiers, respectively.
