by Mike Maden
“What I just handed you is my proposed legislation to clean it all up. The sweetheart deals, the revolving doors, the family loopholes—all of it. Get this bill passed and on my desk in its present form for me to sign in the next sixty days or I’ll see you in court.”
“And if I get it done? Then what?”
“Then I memory-hole that report I handed you. And then you can resign to spend more time with your family. Whatever you decide to do after that is up to you.”
Dixon smiled a little. “You know, an anticorruption bill like this would make a great presidential platform to run on.”
Arnie was right, Ryan thought. Dixon was pure ambition, even in the face of disaster.
“You may not be on Beijing’s payroll but you killed the Poland treaty because you’re dancing to their tune. Was it all that Chinese money your husband made that flipped you, or something else?”
“Money? Don’t be ridiculous. What matters is something Sun Tzu called shi. Do you know the term?”
“Momentum, advantage . . . power.”
Dixon shook her head, incredulous. “Always the professor. Then you also know that the world’s changing, and China is the future.”
“My future is whatever we have the courage to make of it. My job as President is to create change, not follow it.”
Dixon lifted the heavy file folder. “How do I know you still won’t release that report after I get this legislation passed?”
“If everything in that report all came out, it might do more damage to the country than to you, and, frankly, you’re not worth it. More to the point, once you get that legislation passed, you have my word I won’t use anything we discussed today to sabotage you or your family, as much as that idea sickens me.”
At that moment, Dixon hated Ryan’s guts more than any person she had ever known.
But she agreed to his terms.
Because as much as she hated him, Dixon still knew that Jack Ryan was an old-fashioned patriot and, indeed, a man of his word.
EPILOGUE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
With President Ryan’s blessing and an executive order in hand, Foley put every available resource at her disposal into dismantling the Iron Syndicate, now deemed a high-priority national security threat.
Within weeks, significant Iron Syndicate assets were uncovered and identified. Foley personally contacted the heads of the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian security agencies to provide them the names of the criminal elements within their respective governments, “in order to stem the tide of illegal drugs and human trafficking around the world,” she assured them.
It was also a ploy to throw them off the scent of her recent espionage coup—perhaps the greatest in modern history.
But the cancerous tendrils of the Iron Syndicate ran deep. Removing them proved difficult and painful. Investigators raced against Iron Syndicate bosses desperate to cauterize leaks, cut away evidence, and tie off loose ends.
Both President Ryan and Foley expected unintended consequences would follow.
They did. Sooner than they’d anticipated.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
The bankruptcy judge banged her gavel.
CloudServe, the most powerful cloud company on the planet, was dead. The circling vultures would soon divide the remains among themselves.
The disappearance of Elias Dahm had raised alarm bells all over Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., though for entirely different reasons.
Locals assumed Dahm’s disappearance was connected to the suicide of Lawrence Fung, whose troubled life and financial difficulties were detailed in a poignant exposé that relied heavily on unnamed government sources.
The locals were only half right.
Despite Watson’s fervent denials, the Feds feared Dahm was somehow connected to her plot and fled the country to avoid questioning and, worse, found asylum with one of America’s strategic competitors.
Foley suspected Dahm was merely a coward, abandoning responsibility for his failed dreams.
Weeks passed before a New Zealand widow sailing solo across the Pacific Ocean sighted the wreckage of Dahm’s yacht, Prometheus. Investigators concluded it had been swamped and broken apart by a recent tropical storm.
His body was never recovered.
GDAŃSK, POLAND
The theme-cruise pirate ship sailed slowly under engine power, with tourists on deck sipping hot mulled wine and shivering in the cool air. “What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor?” blared in Polish over the loudspeakers.
Two retired schoolteachers from Knoxville, Tennessee, stood on the forward deck, searching TripAdvisor on their smartphones for a seafood restaurant along the well-lit Motława riverfront.
Both of them felt the same thunk in the soles of their shoes as the pirate ship bumped into a heavy object in the water.
The puffy-sleeved pirate crewman standing nearby shot them both a nervous glance, then leaned over the side to see what the ship had hit.
An hour later, the police coroner’s van hauled away the decomposed corpses of Christopher Gage and Hu Peng, bound together by ropes and drowned in the same canvas bag.
CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS, ROMANIA
The Czech stood on the edge of the forest, the pine-scented air crisp and cool in his nose. His favorite rifle in hand, his best dog at his side, and a guide’s recent sighting of fat boar in the area promised a perfect day.
He hadn’t been this happy in years. Retirement, though forced, had suited him, he decided. No more burdens of running a vast criminal enterprise.
His Bohemian pointer began barking wildly, his bearded snout aimed at the stand of trees ahead of them in the far distance.
“Rexi! Good boy! What do you see?”
The Czech heard the familiar crack but didn’t bother to move. In truth, he’d been expecting it for some time now.
Two hundred grains of steel-jacketed lead split the mountain air some six hundred meters distant. The bullet struck The Czech’s forehead cleanly, but the back of his skull erupted in a gory cloud of blood, bone, and brain matter.
His corpse tumbled into the tall grass, Rexi barking and whining at his feet.
On the other side of the clearing, the Polish ABW sniper and his spotter slipped away, headed for their exfil point. Vodka would flow like tap water back at their barracks tonight.
Foley had agreed to spare The Czech’s life, but she never promised not to track him or convey his indirect responsibility for Liliana Pilecki’s death to the Polish government.
Liliana’s actual killer remained unknown to the Poles.
But not to Jack.
BENGHAZI, LIBYA
News of his brother’s death had only just reached him.
Cluzet had been on the run for several weeks now. He was holed up in a fourth-floor apartment of a bombed-out six-story tenement building built with oil money by the Ghaddafi regime decades ago. Ghaddafi’s death and the ensuing chaos transformed the richest country in Africa into an impoverished hellscape within a few short months, tortured and divided by rival Islamic factions, drug runners, and human-trafficking syndicates. It was in the midst of this chaos and death that Cluzet finally found sanctuary—and kindred spirits.
With only intermittent water and electricity, his apartment was less of a home than a concrete cave, but useful for his current, desperate circumstance, hunted by hostile governments and vengeful enemies alike. Its singular virtue was an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean on the far side of the coastal road.
He got word out to a former Iron Syndicate colleague in the city, a gun runner named Tóth, that he was in town and available for the wet work Cluzet was famous for. Today, his friend would arrive within minutes, bearing good news, he promised.
Broken glass crunched beneath Cluzet’s boots as he stood in front of the shattered window overlooking the parking lot and the
street beyond, careful to remain in the shadows. No telling who was lurking out there with a sniper rifle and a bullet with his name on it.
A cool breeze chilled the skin of his tattooed arm. A short burst of automatic gunfire echoed in the distance, a common sound in the shattered, seaside city.
He studied the trash-strewn parking lot, flooded by the morning rain. A rusted, bullet-riddled car squatted on blown tires near the next building, home to an elderly woman even more desperate than he.
A white Toyota Hilux sped in off the street. The 7.62-millimeter machine gun mounted in back was crewed by a man in sunglasses and wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh wrapped around his face, just like the driver.
The Hilux charged toward Cluzet’s building, its knobby tires splashing away the cigarette butts and soda cans floating in the puddles. It skidded to a stop just below his balcony.
His friend Tóth, a fat, knife-scarred Hungarian, leaped out of the passenger seat, his boots splashing in the filthy water. His round, bearded face was uncovered for the Frenchman’s benefit.
“Cluzet!”
The blond legionnaire stepped out of the shadows and onto the balcony. “Tóth, you old wolf! You came!”
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I?”
“You risk a lot, knowing me.”
Cluzet’s eyes drifted toward the man on the machine gun, staring at him behind his dark glasses. He hadn’t moved.
“We are all being hunted, my friend,” Tóth said. “That is why we must stick together.”
“I need work. What do you have for me?”
Tóth planted his hands on his broad hips and shook his head, smiling. “Yes, you need work. But someone else, I’m afraid, must speak with you first.”
“Who?”
“Me, asshole.”
Cluzet spun on his heels, pulling his SIG as he turned.
Jack’s Glock fired first, putting two slugs into the bridge of Cluzet’s nose, killing him instantly.
Cluzet’s SIG fired as his hand spasmed.
The nine-millimeter round plowed into the peeling paint of the moldy wall just inches from Jack’s head.
Jack stepped over to the corpse and put two rounds in the blond skull, then two more into the lifeless heart, shredding it.
He stared at the ruined man, satisfied.
Jack holstered his weapon and stepped over to the balcony, his eyes drawn to the wide horizon of the boundless sea. A wheeling gull cried in the distance.
The man in the back pulled off his headgear.
“All good, kid?” Clark asked, leaning on the machine gun.
Jack nodded.
“Yeah. All good.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Tom Clancy was the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of more than eighteen books. He died in October 2013.
Mike Maden is the author of the critically acclaimed Drone series. He holds both a master’s and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Davis, specializing in international relations and comparative politics. He has lectured and consulted on the topics of war and the Middle East, among others. Maden has served as a political consultant and campaign manager in state and national elections, and hosted his own local weekly radio show for a year.
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