by Tom Clancy
“The alternative, Dan, is to become like them.”
“I know that’s true, Jimmy, but I just don’t like it right now.”
When Barry Shapiro next checked his watch it was five in the morning. No wonder I feel so tired, he thought. Twenty hours on duty. I’m too old for this. He was senior staff. He was supposed to know better.
The first sign was staying on duty too long, taking on too much personal responsibility, taking too keen an interest in patients who in the final analysis were nothing more or less than bruised and broken pieces of meat. Some of them died. No matter how great his skill, how refined his technique, how determined the efforts of his team, some would always die. And when you got this tired, you couldn’t sleep. Their injuries—and worse, their faces—were too fresh in your memory, too haunting to go away. Doctors need sleep more than most men. Persistent loss of sleep was the last and most dangerous warning. That was when you had to leave—or risk a breakdown, as had happened all too often to the Shock-Trauma staffers.
It was their grimmest institutional joke: how their patients arrived with broken bodies and mostly went home whole—but the staff doctors and nurses who came in with the greatest energy and highest personal ideals would so often leave broken in spirit. It was the ultimate irony of his profession that success would engender the expectation of still greater success; that failure in this most demanding of medical disciplines could leave almost as much damage on the practitioner as the patient. Shapiro was cynic enough to see the humor of it.
The surgeon reread the print-out that the blood-analyzer unit had spat out a minute before, and handed it back to the nurse-practitioner. She attached it to the child’s chart, then sat back down, stroking her dirty hair outside the oxygen mask.
“Her father is downstairs. Get relief here and go down and tell him. I’m going upstairs for a smoke.” Shapiro left the CCRU and got his overcoat, fishing in his pockets for his cigarettes.
He wandered down the hall to the fire stairs, then climbed slowly up the six flights to the roof. God, he thought. Dear God, I’m tired. The roof was flat, covered with tar and gravel, spotted here and there with the UHF antennas for the center’s SYSCOM communications net, and a few air-conditioning condensers. Shapiro lit a cigarette in the lee of the stairway tower, cursing himself for his inability to break the noxious habit. He rationalized that, unlike most of his colleagues, he never saw the degenerative effects of smoking. Most of his patients were too young for chronic diseases. Their injuries resulted from the miracles of a technical society: automobiles, motorcycles, firearms, and industrial machinery.
Shapiro walked to the edge of the roof, rested his foot on the parapet as though on a bar rail, and blew smoke into the early-morning air. It wafted away to appear and disappear as a gentle morning breeze carried it past the rooftop lights. The doctor stretched his tired arms and neck. The night’s rain had washed the sky clean of its normal pollution, and he could see stars overhead in the pre-dawn darkness.
Shapiro’s curious accent resulted from his background. His early childhood had been spent in the Williamsburg section of New York, the son of a rabbi who had taken his family to South Carolina. Barry had had good private schooling there, but emerged from it with a mixture of Southern drawl and New York quip. It was further damaged by a prairie twang acquired during his medical training at Baylor University in Texas. His father was a distinguished man of letters in his own right, a frequent lecturer at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. An expert in 19th-century American literature, Rabbi Shapiro’s specialty was the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Barry Shapiro loathed Poe. A scribbler of death and perversity, the surgeon called him whenever the subject came up, and he’d been surprised to learn that Poe had died in Baltimore long before, after falling asleep, drunk, in a gutter; and that Poe’s home was only a few blocks from the University Hospital complex, a demi-shrine for the local literati.
It seemed to the surgeon that everything about Poe was dark and twisted, always expecting the inevitability of death—violent, untimely death, Shapiro’s own very personal enemy. He had come to think of Poe as the embodiment of that enemy, sometimes beaten, sometimes not. It was not something he talked about to the staff psychiatrist, who also kept a close eye on the hospital staff—but now, alone, he looked north to the Poe house.
“You son of a bitch,” he whispered. To himself. To Poe. To no one. “You son of a bitch! Not this time—you don’t get this one! This one goes home.” He flicked the cigarette away and watched the point of orange light fall all the way to the shining, empty street. He turned back to the stairs. It was time to get some sleep.
16
Objectives and Patriots
Like most professional officers, Lieutenant Commander Robby Jackson had little use for the press. The irony of it was that Jack had tried many times to tell him that his outlook was wrong, that the press was as important to the preservation of American democracy as the Navy was. Now, as he watched, reporters were hounding his friend with questions that alternated between totally inane and intrusively personal. Why did everyone need to know how Jack felt about his daughter’s condition? What would any normal person feel about having his child hovering near death—did they need such feelings explained? How was Jack supposed to know who’d done the shooting—if the police didn’t know, how could he?
“And what’s your name?” one finally asked Robby. He gave the woman his name and rank, but not his serial number.
“What are you doing here?” she persisted.
“We’re friends. I drove him up here.” You dumbass.
“And what do you think of all this?”
“What do you think I think? If that was your friend’s little girl up there, what the hell would you think?” the pilot snapped back at her.
“Do you know who did it?”
“I fly airplanes for a living, I’m not a cop. Ask them.”
“They’re not talking.”
Robby smiled thinly. “Well, score one for the good guys. Lady, why don’t you leave that man alone? If you were going through what he is, do you think you would want a half-dozen strangers asking you these kind of questions? That’s a human being over there, y’know? And he’s my friend and I don’t like what you people are doing to him.”
“Look, Commander, we know that his wife and daughter were attacked by terrorists—”
“Says who?” Jackson demanded.
“Who else would it be? Do you think we’re stupid?” Robby didn’t answer that. “This is news—it’s the first attack by a foreign terrorist group on American soil, if we’re reading this right. That is important. The people have a right to know what happened and why,” the reporter said reasonably.
She’s right, Robby admitted reluctantly to himself. He didn’t like it, but she was right. Damn.
“Would it make you feel any better to know that I do have a kid about that age? Mine’s a boy,” she said. The reporter actually seemed sympathetic.
Jackson searched for something to dislike about her. “Answer me this: if you have a chance to interview the people who did this, would you do it?”
“That’s my job. We need to know where they’re coming from. ”
“Where they’re comin’ from, lady, is they kill people for the fun of it. It’s all part of their game.” Robby remembered intelligence reports he’d seen while in the Eastern Med. “Back a couple of years ago—you never heard this from me, okay?”
“Off the record,” she said solemnly.
“I was on a carrier off Beirut, okay? We had intelligence reports—and pictures—of people from Europe who flew in to do some killing. They were mainly kids, musta been from good families—I mean, from the way they dressed. No shit, this is for-real, I saw the friggin’ pictures. They joined up with some of the crazies, got guns, and just started blasting away, at random, for the pure hell of it. They shot from those high-rise hotels and office buildings into the streets. With a rifle you can hit from a thousand yards away. Someth
ing moves—boom, they blast it with automatic weapons fire. Then they got to go home. They were killing people, for fun! Maybe some of them grew up to be real terrorists, I don’t know. It was pretty sickening stuff, not the sort of thing you forget. That’s the kind of people we’re talking about here, okay?
“I don’t give a good goddamn about their point of view, lady! When I was a little kid in Alabama, we had problems with people like that, those assholes in the Klan. I don’t give a damn about their point of view, either. The only good thing about the Klan was they were idiots. The terrorists we got running around now are a lot more efficient. Maybe that makes them more legitimate in your eyes, but not mine.”
“That thing in Beirut never made the papers,” the reporter said.
“I know for a fact that one reporter saw it. Maybe he figured that nobody would believe it. I don’t know that I would have without the photos. But I saw ’em. You got my word on that, lady. ”
“What kind of pictures?”
“That I can’t say—but they were good enough to see their shiny young faces.” The photos had been made by U.S. and Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.
“So what do you do about it?”
“If you could arrange to have all these bastards in one place, I think we and the Marines could figure something out,” Robby replied, voicing a wish common to professional soldiers throughout the world. “We might even invite you newsies to the wake. Who the hell is that?” Two new people came into the room.
Jack was too tired to be fully coherent. The news that Sally was out of immediate danger had been like a giant weight leaving his shoulders, and he was waiting for the chance to see his wife, who would soon be moved to a regular hospital floor. A few feet away, Wayson, the British security officer, watched with unconcealed contempt, refusing even to give his name to the reporters who asked. The State Police officers were unable to keep the press away, though hospital personnel flatly refused to let the TV equipment in the front door, and were able to make that stick. The question that kept repeating was, Who did it? Jack said he didn’t know, though he thought he did. It was probably the people he’d decided not to worry about.
It could have been worse, he told himself. At least it was now probable that Sally would be alive at the end of the week. His daughter was not dead because of his misjudgment. That was some consolation.
“Mr. Ryan?” one of the new visitors asked.
“Yeah?” Jack was too exhausted to look up. He was awake only because of adrenaline now. His nerves were too ragged to allow him sleep, much as he needed it.
“I’m Special Agent Ed Donoho, Boston Field Office of the FBI. I have somebody who wants to say something to you.”
Nobody ever said that Paddy O‘Neil was stupid, Donoho thought. As soon as the report had made the Eleven O’Clock News, the man from Sinn Fein had asked his FBI “escort” if he might fly down to Baltimore. Donoho was in no position to deny him the right, and had been co-opted into bringing the man himself on the first available plane into BWI.
“Mr. Ryan,” O’Neil said with a voice that dripped sympathy, “I understand that the condition of your child has been upgraded. I hope that my prayers had something to do with it, and ...”
It took Ryan over ten seconds to recognize the face that he’d seen a few days before on TV. His mouth slowly dropped open as his eyes widened. For some reason he didn’t hear what the man was saying. The words came through his ears, but, as though they were in some unknown tongue, his brain did not assemble them into speech. All he saw was the man’s throat, five feet away. Just about five feet, was what his brain told him.
“Uh-oh,” Robby said on the other side of the room. He stood as his friend went beet-red. Two seconds later, Ryan’s face was as pale as the collar on his white cotton shirt. Jack’s feet shifted, sliding straight beneath his body as he leaned forward on the couch.
Robby pushed past the FBI agent as Ryan launched himself from the couch, hands stretching out for O’Neil’s neck. Jackson’s shoulder caught his friend’s chest, and the pilot wrapped Jack up in a bear hug, trying to push him backward as three photographers recorded the scene. Jack didn’t make a sound, but Robby knew exactly what he wanted to do. Jackson had leverage going for him, and pushed Ryan back, hurling him onto the couch. He turned quickly.
“Get that asshole outa here before I kill him!” Jackson was four inches shorter than the Irishman, but his rage was scarcely less than Ryan’s. “Get that terrorist bastard out of here!”
“Officer!” Special Agent Donoho pointed to a state trooper, who grabbed O‘Neil and dragged him from the room in an instant. For some reason the reporters followed as O’Neil loudly protested his innocence.
“Are you out of your fucking mind!” Jackson snarled at the FBI agent.
“Cool down, Commander. I’m on your side, okay? Cool it down some.”
Jackson sat down beside Ryan, who was breathing like a horse at the end of a race while he stared at the floor. Donoho sat down on the other side.
“Mr. Ryan, I couldn’t keep him from coming down. I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. He wanted to tell you—shit, all the way down on the plane, he told me that his outfit had nothing to do with this; that it would be a disaster for them. He wanted to extend his sympathy, I guess.” The agent hated himself for saying that, even though it was true enough. He hated himself even more because he’d almost started to like Paddy O’Neil over the past week. The front man for Sinn Fein was a person of considerable charm, a man with a gift for presenting his point of view in a reasonable way. Ed Donoho asked himself why he’d been assigned to this job. Why couldn’t they have picked an Italian? He knew the answer to that, of course, but just because there was a reason didn’t mean that he had to like it. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you anymore.”
“You do that,” Robby said.
Donoho went back into the hall, and unsurprisingly found O’Neil giving his spiel to the reporters. Mr. Ryan is distraught, he was saying, as any family man would be in similar circumstances. His first exposure to the man the previous week had given him a feeling of distaste. Then he’d started to admire his skill and charm. Now Donoho’s reaction to the man’s words was one of loathing. An idea blinked on in his head. He wondered if the Bureau would approve and decided it was worth the risk. First the agent grabbed a state trooper by the arm and made sure that the man wouldn’t get close to Ryan again. Next he got hold of a photographer and talked to him briefly. Together they found a doctor.
“No, absolutely not,” the surgeon replied to the initial request.
“Hey, Doc,” the photojournalist said. “My wife’s pregnant with our first. If it’ll help this guy, I’m for it. This one doesn’t make the papers. You got my word, Doc.”
“I think it’ll help,” the FBI agent said. “I really do.”
Ten minutes later Donoho and the photographer stripped off their scrub clothing. The FBI agent took the film cassette and tucked it in his pocket. Before he took O’Neil back to the airport, he made a call to headquarters in Washington, and two agents drove out to Ryan’s home on Peregrine Cliff. They didn’t have any problem with the alarm system.
Jack had been awake for more than twenty-four hours now. If he’d been able to think about it, he would have marveled at the fact that he was awake and functional, though the latter observation would have been a matter of dispute to anyone who saw him walking. He was alone now. Robby was off attending to something that he couldn’t remember.
He would have been alone in any case. Twenty minutes earlier, Cathy had been moved into the main University Hospital complex, and Jack had to go see her. He walked like a man facing execution down a drab corridor of glazed institutional brick. He turned a corner and saw what room it had to be. A pair of state troopers was standing there. They watched him approach, and Jack watched their eyes for a sign that they knew all of this was his fault, that his wife and daughter had nearly died because he’d decided that there was nothing to worry about. No
t once in his life had Jack experienced failure, and its bitter taste made him think that the whole world would hold him in the same contempt he felt for himself.
You’re so fucking smart.
It seemed to his senses that he did not so much approach the door—it approached him, looming ever larger in his sight. Behind the door was the woman he loved. The woman who had nearly died because of his confidence in himself. What would she say to him? Did he dare to find out? Jack stood at the door for a moment. The troopers tried not to stare at him. Perhaps they felt sympathy, Jack thought, knowing that he didn’t deserve it. The doorknob was cold, accusing metal in his hand as he entered the room.
Cathy was lying in her single-bed room. Her arm was in a cast. An enormous purple bruise covered the right side of her face and there was a bandage over half her forehead. Her eyes were open but almost lifeless, staring at a television that wasn’t on. Jack moved toward her as though asleep. A nurse had set a chair alongside the bed. He sat in it, and took his wife’s hand while he tried to think of something he could say to the wife he had failed. Her face turned toward his. Her eyes were blackened and full of tears.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I knew she was fooling with the seat belt, but I didn’t do anything because I was in a hurry—and then that truck came, and I didn’t have time to—if I had made sure she was strapped in, Sally would be fine ... but I was in a hurry,” she finished, and looked away. “Jack, I’m so sorry.”
My God, she thinks it’s her fault ... what do I say now?
“She’s going to be okay, babe,” Ryan managed to say, stunned at what he’d just heard. He held Cathy’s hand to his face and kissed it. “And so are you. That’s the only thing that matters now.”
