by Tom Clancy
Had he possessed a deadly weapon right then and there, he might have used it on her, and to hell with the consequences. A large injection of air might have worked a few hours before, causing a fatal embolism, but the breakdown of her vascular system was such that he couldn’t even be sure of that. It was her strength that made the ordeal so terrible. Small though she was, she’d worked forty years of long hours, and earned surprisingly good health as a result. The body which had sustained her courageous soul for so long would not give up the battle, futile as it was.
“Come, Moudi, you know better than this,” the director said behind him.
“What do you mean?” he asked without turning.
“If she were back in the hospital in Africa, what would be different? Would they not treat her the same way, taking the same measures to sustain her? The blood, and the IV fluids, and everything else. It would be exactly the same. Her religion does not allow euthanasia. If anything, the care here is better,” he pointed out, correctly, if coldly, then turned away to check the chart. “Five liters. Excellent.”
“We could start—”
“No.” The director shook his head. “When her heart stops, we will drain all her blood. We will remove the liver, kidneys and spleen, and then our real work begins.”
“Someone should at least pray for her soul.”
“You will, Moudi. You are a fine doctor. You care even for an infidel. You may be proud of that. If it were possible to save her, you would have done so. I know that. You know that. She knows that.”
“What we are doing, to inflict this on—”
“On unbelievers,” the director reminded him. “On those who hate our country and our Faith, who spit upon the words of the Prophet. I will even agree that this is a woman of virtue. Allah will be merciful with her, I am sure. You did not choose her fate. Neither did I.” He had to keep Moudi going. The younger man was a brilliant physician. If anything, too good. The director for his part thanked Allah that he’d spent the last decade in laboratories, else he might have succumbed to the same human weaknesses.
BADRAYN INSISTED. This time, three generals. Every seat full, and one of them with two small children strapped in together. They understood now. They had to. He’d explained it to them, pointing to the tower, whose controllers had watched every flight in and out, and who had to know what was going on by now, and arresting them would do little good, as their families would miss them, and if their families were picked up, the neighbors would know, wouldn’t they?
Well, yes, they had agreed.
Just send a damned airliner next time, he wanted to tell Tehran, but no, someone would have objected, here or there, it didn’t matter, because no matter what you said, no matter how sensible it was, somebody would object to it. Whether on the Iranian side or the Iraqi, that didn’t matter, either. Either way it would get people killed. It certainly would. There was nothing for him to do but wait now, wait and worry. He could have had a few drinks, but he decided against it. He’d had alcohol more than once. All those years in Lebanon. As Bahrain still was, Lebanon had been, and probably would be again, a place where the strict Islamic rules could be violated, and there he had indulged in Western vice along with everyone else. But not now. He might be close to death and, sinner or not, he was a Muslim, and he would face death in the proper way. And so he drank coffee for the most part, staring out the windows from his seat, next to the phone, telling himself that the caffeine was making his hands shake, and nothing else.
“YOU’RE JACKSON?” Tony Bretano asked. He’d spent the morning with the acting chiefs. Now it was time for the worker bees.
“Yes, sir, J-3. I guess I’m your operations officer,” Robby replied, taking his seat and not, for once, carrying a bundle of papers and scurrying around like the White Rabbit.
“How bad is it?”
“Well, we’re spread pretty thin. We still have two carrier battle-groups in the IO looking after India and Sri Lanka. We’re flying a couple battalions of light infantry to the Marianas to reassert control there and supervise the withdrawal of Japanese personnel. That’s mainly political, we don’t expect any problems. Our forward-deployed air assets have been recalled to CON US to refit. That aspect of operations against Japan went well.”
“You will want me to speed production of the F-22 and restart B-2 production, then? That’s what the Air Force said.”
“We just proved that Stealth is one hell of a force-multiplier, Mr. Secretary, and that’s a fact. We need all of those we can get.”
“I agree. What about the rest of the force structure?” Bretano asked.
“We’re too damned thin for all the commitments we have. If we had to go to Kuwait again, for example, like we did in 1991, we can’t do it. We literally do not have all that force to project anymore. You know what my job is, sir. I have to figure out how to do the things we have to do. Okay, operations against Japan took us as far as we could go, and—”
“Mickey Moore said a lot of nice things about the plan you put together and executed,” the SecDef pointed out.
“General Moore is very kind. Yes, sir, it worked, but we were on a shoestring the whole time, and that’s not the way American forces are supposed to go out into harm’s way, Mr. Secretary. We’re supposed to scare the bejeebers out of people the moment the first private steps off the airplane. I can improvise if I have to, but that’s not supposed to be my job. Sooner or later, I goof, or somebody goofs, and we end up with dead people in uniform.”
“I agree with that, too.” Bretano took a bite of his sandwich. “The President’s given me a free hand to clean this department out, do things my way. I have two weeks to put the new force requirements together.”
“Two weeks, sir?” If Jackson were able to go pale, that would have done it to him.
“Jackson, how long you been in uniform?” the SecDef asked.
“Counting time at the Trade School? Call it thirty years.”
“If you can’t do it by tomorrow, you’re the wrong guy. But I’ll give you ten days,” Bretano said generously.
“Mr. Secretary, I’m Operations, not Manpower, and—”
“Exactly. In my way of looking at things, Manpower fills the needs that Operations defines. Decisions in a place like this are supposed to be made by the shooters, not the accountants. That’s what was wrong at TRW when I moved in. Accountants were telling engineers what they could have to be engineers. No.” Bretano shook his head. “That didn’t work. If you build things, your engineers decide how the company runs. For a place like this, the shooters decide what they need, and the accountants figure out how to shoehorn it into the budget. There’s always a struggle, but the product end of the business makes the decisions.”
Well, damn. Jackson managed not to smile. “Parameters?”
“Figure the largest credible threat, the most serious crisis that’s likely, not possible, and design me a force structure that can handle it.” Even that wasn’t good enough, and both men knew it. In the old days there had been the guideline of two and a half wars, that America could deploy to fight two major conflicts, plus a little brush fire somewhere else. Few had ever admitted that this “rule” had always been a fantasy, all the way back to the Eisenhower presidency. Today, as Jackson had just admitted, America lacked the wherewithal to conduct a single major military deployment. The fleet was down to half of what it had been ten years earlier. The Army was down further. The Air Force, ever sheltering behind its high-tech, was formidable, but had still retired nearly half its total strength. The Marines were still tough and ready, but the Marine Corps was an expeditionary force, able to deploy in the expectation that reinforcements would arrive behind them, and dangerously light in its weapons. The cupboard wasn’t exactly bare, but the enforced diet hadn’t really done anyone much good.
“Ten days?”
“You’ve got what I need sitting in a desk drawer right now, don’t you?” Planning officers always did, Bretano knew.
“Give me a couple da
ys to polish it up, sir, but, yes, we do.”
“Jackson?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary?”
“I kept track of our operations in the Pacific. One of my people at TRW, Skip Tyler, used to be pretty good at this stuff, and we looked over maps and things every day. The operations you put together, they were impressive. War isn’t just physical. It’s psychological, too, like all life is. You win because you have the best people. Guns and planes count, but brains count more. I’m a good manager, and one hell of a good engineer. I’m not a fighter. I’ll listen to what you say, ’cause you and your colleagues know how to fight. I’ll stand up for you wherever and whenever I have to. In return for that, I want what you really need, not what you’d like to have. We can’t afford that. We can cut bureaucracy. That’s Manpower’s job, civilian and uniform. I’ll lean this place out. At TRW I got rid of a lot of useless bodies. That’s an engineering company, and now it’s run by engineers. This is a company that does operations, and it ought to be run by operators, people with notches cut in their gun grips. Lean. Mean. Tough. Smart. You get what I’m saying?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Ten days. Less if you can. Call me when you’re ready.”
“CLARK,” JOHN SAID, picking up his direct line.
“Holtzman,” the voice said. The name made John’s eyes go a little wide.
“I suppose I could ask how you got this number, but you’d never reveal your source.”
“Good guess,” the reporter agreed. “Remember that dinner we had a while back at Esteban’s?”
“Vaguely,” Clark lied. “It’s been a long time.” It hadn’t actually been a dinner, but the tape machine that had to be on the phone didn’t know that.
“I owe you one. How about tonight?”
“I’ll get back to you.” Clark hung up and stared down at his desk. What the hell was this about?
“COME ON, THAT’S not what Jack said,” van Damm told the New York Times.
“That’s what he meant, Arnie,” the reporter responded. “You know it. I know it.”
“I wish you’d go easy on the guy. He’s not a politician,” the chief of staff pointed out.
“Not my fault, Arnie. He’s in the job. He has to follow the rules.”
Arnold van Damm nodded agreement, concealing the anger that had risen in an instant at the correspondent’s casual remark. Inwardly he knew that the reporter was right. That’s how the game was played. But he also knew that the reporter was wrong. Maybe he’d grown too attached to President Ryan, enough so that he’d actually absorbed some of his flaky ideas. The media, exclusively composed of the employees of private businesses—most of them corporations with publicly traded stock—had grown in power to the point that they decided what people said. That was bad enough. What was worse, they enjoyed their jobs too much. They could make or break anyone in this town. They made the rules. He who broke them could himself be broken.
Ryan was a naif. There was no denying it. In his defense, he’d never sought his current job. He’d come here by accident, having sought nothing more than a final opportunity to serve, and then to leave once and for all, to return to private life. He’d not been elected to his post. But neither had the media, and at least Ryan had the Constitution to define his duties. The media was crossing the line. They were taking sides in a constitutional matter, and they were taking the wrong side.
“Who makes the rules?” Arnie asked.
“They just are,” the Times answered.
“Well, the President isn’t going to attack Roe. He never said that he would. And he’s not going to pick Justices off park benches, either. He isn’t going to pick liberal activists, and he isn’t going to pick conservative activists, and I think you know that.”
“So Ryan misspoke himself?” The reporter’s casual grin said it all. He’d report this as spin control by a senior administration official, “ ‘clarifying,’ which means correcting, what the President said,” the article would read.
“Not at all. You misunderstood him.”
“It sounded pretty clear to me, Arnie.”
“That’s because you’re used to listening to professional politicians. The President we have now says things straight. Actually I kind of like that,” van Damm went on, lying; it was driving him crazy. “And it might even make life easier for you. You don’t have to check the tea leaves anymore. All you have to do is take proper notes. Or maybe just judge him by a fair set of rules. We’ve agreed that he’s not a politician, but you’re treating him as if he were. Listen to what he’s really saying, will you?” Or maybe even look at the videotape, he didn’t add. He was skating on the edge now. Talking to the media was like petting a new cat. You never knew when they’d reach up and scratch.
“Come on, Arnie. You’re the most loyal guy in this town. Damn, you would have been a great family doctor. We all know that. But Ryan doesn’t have a clue. The speech at National Cathedral, that loony speech from the Oval Office. He’s about as presidential as the chairman of the Rotary in Bumfuck, Iowa.”
“But who decides what’s presidential and what isn’t?”
“In New York, I do.” The reporter smiled again. “For Chicago, you have to ask somebody else.”
“He is the President of the United States.”
“That’s not what Ed Kealty says, and at least Ed acts presidential.”
“Ed’s out. He resigned. Roger took the call from Secretary Hanson, and told me about it. Damn it, you reported that yourself.”
“But what possible motive could he have for ”
“What motive could he have for boffing every skirt that crossed his bow?” the chief of staff demanded. Great, he thought, now I’m losing control of the media!
“Ed’s always been a ladies’ man. He’s gotten better since he got off the booze. It never affected his duties,” the White House correspondent made clear. Like his paper, he was a strong proponent of women’s rights. “This one will have to play out.”
“What position will the Times take?”
“I’ll get you a copy of the editorial,” the reporter promised.
HE COULDN’T STAND it anymore. He lifted the phone and dialed the six digits while staring out at the darkness. The sun was down now, and clouds were rolling in. It would be a cold, rainy night, leading to a dawn which might or might not take place before his eyes.
“Yes?” a voice said halfway through the first ring.
“Badrayn here. It would be more convenient if the next aircraft were larger.”
“We have a 737 standing by, but I need authorization to have it sent.”
“I will work on this end.”
It was the TV news which had gotten him moving. Even more muted than usual, there had not been a single political story. Not one, in a nation where political commentary often as not displaced the weather forecasts. Most ominously of all, there was a story about a mosque, an old Shi’a mosque, one that had fallen into disrepair. The story lamented that fact, citing the building’s long and honorable history, and ignoring the fact that it had fallen into disrepair because it had once been a meeting place for a group charged, perhaps truthfully, with plotting the demise of Iraq’s fallen, beloved, great, and evidently soon-to-be-forgotten political leader. Worst of all, the taped footage had shown five mullahs standing outside the mosque, not even looking directly at the camera, merely gesturing at the faded blue tile on the wall and probably discussing what needed to be done. The five were the same ones who’d flown in to be hostages. But not a single soldier was in sight on the TV screen, and the faces of at least two of the mullahs were well known to Iraqi audiences. Somebody had gotten to the TV station, more precisely to the people who worked there. If the reporters and others wanted to retain their jobs and their heads, it was time to face a new reality. Were the brief few moments on the screen enough for the common folk to see and recognize the visitors’ faces—and get the message? Finding out the answer to that question could be dangerous.
But the common people didn’t matter. Colonels and majors did. Generals not on the proper list did. Quite soon they’d know. Probably some already did. They’d be on the phone, first calling up the line to see what was going on. Some would hear lies. Some would hear nothing. They’d start thinking. They’d start making contacts. Over the next twelve hours they’d talk among themselves and have to make hard decisions. These were the men who were identified with the dying regime. The ones who couldn’t run, who had no place to run to and no money to run with, the ones who had to stay. Their identification with the past regime could be a death sentence—for many, certainly would be so. For others, there was a chance. To survive, they would have to do what criminals all over the world did. They would save their own lives by offering up a larger fish. So it always was. The colonels would overthrow the generals.
Finally, the generals understood.
“There is a 737 standing by. Enough room for all. It can be here in ninety minutes,” he told them.
“And they will not kill us at Mehrabad Airport?” the deputy chief of staff of the Iraqi army demanded.
“Would you prefer to die here?” Badrayn asked in reply.
“What if it’s all a trap?”
“There is that risk. In that case, the five television personalities will die.” Of course they wouldn’t. That would have to be the act of troops loyal to generals already dead. That sort of loyalty didn’t exist here. They all knew that. The mere act of taking hostages had been an instinctive gesture, and one already invalidated by someone, perhaps in the media, but maybe the colonel who’d headed the guard force over the Iranian clerics. He was supposed to be a trusted intelligence specialist, Badrayn remembered on reflection, a loyal Sunni officer, son of a Ba’ath Party member. That could mean that the Ba’ath Party was already being suborned. It was going too fast now. The mullahs would not have concealed the nature of their mission, would they? But none of that mattered. Killing the hostages would accomplish nothing. The generals were doomed if they stayed here, and martyrdom wasn’t exactly offensive to Iranian clerics. It was an integral part of the Shi’a tradition.
