by Tom Clancy
The ship was rolling twenty degrees left and right despite her stabilizers and bilge keels, but Johns fixed his eyes on the center of the target area, which wasn’t rolling at all, just a fixed point in space. That had to be the trick, he told himself, pick the spot that isn’t moving. Again he flared out to kill off speed and inched forward. Just as he approached the deck, his eyes shifted to where the nosewheels had to hit, and slammed the collective down. It felt almost as bad as a crash, but the collective held the chopper in place.
Riley was first up and rolled under the aircraft at the nosewheels. Another boatswain’s mate followed with the tie-down chains. The master chief found a likely spot and hooked them in place, then shot his arm out and made a fist. Two men on the other end of the chains pulled them taut, and the chief rolled free and went down the portside to get to work on the main gear. It took several minutes. The Pave Low shifted twice before they had it secured, but soon they had two-inch line to back up the chains. By the time Riley was finished, it would have taken explosives to lift it from the deck. The deck crew entered the helicopter at the stern ramp and guided the passengers out. Riley counted fifteen people. He’d been told to expect more than that. Then he saw the bodies, and the men who were struggling with them.
Forward, Johns and Willis shut down their engines.
“CLAW, CAESAR is down. Return to base.” Johns took off his helmet too soon to catch the reply, though Willis caught it.
“Roger. Out.”
Johns looked around. He didn’t feel like a pilot now. His aircraft was down. He was safe. It was time to get out and do something else. He couldn’t get out his door without risking a fall overboard and ... he’d allowed himself to forget Buck Zimmer. That door in his mind opened itself now. Well, he told himself, Buck would understand. The colonel stepped over the flight-engineer console. Ryan was still there, his flight suit speckled from his nausea. Johns knelt by the side of his sergeant. They’d served together on and off for over twenty years.
“He told me he has seven kids,” Ryan said.
Johns’ voice was too tired for any overt emotions. He spoke like a man a thousand years old, tired of life, tired of flying, tired of everything. “Yeah, cute ones. His wife is from Laos. Carol, her name is. Oh, God, Buck—why now?”
“Let me help,” Jack said. Johns took the arms. Ryan got the legs. They had to wait in line. There were other bodies to be carried out, some dead, some only wounded, and they got the understandable priority. The soldiers, Jack saw, carried their own, helped by Sergeant Bean. The Coasties offered help, but it was declined—not unkindly, and the sailors understood the reason. Ryan and Johns also declined the assistance, the colonel because of the years with his friend, and the CIA officer because of a duty self-imposed. Riley and his men stayed behind briefly to collect packs and weapons. Then they, too, went below.
The bodies were set in a passageway for the time being. The wounded went to the crew’s mess. Ryan and the Air Force officers were guided to the wardroom. There they found the man who’d started it all, months before, though none of them would ever understand how it had all happened. There was one more face, one which Jack recognized.
“Hi, Dan.”
“Bad?” the FBI agent asked.
Jack didn’t respond to that. “We got Cortez. I think he was wounded. He’s probably in sick bay with a couple of soldiers keeping an eye on him.”
“What got you?” Murray asked. He pointed to Jack’s helmet.
Ryan took it off and saw a gouge where a 7.62 bullet had scraped away a quarter inch or so of fiberglass. Jack knew that he should have reacted to it, but that part of his life was four hundred miles behind him. Instead he sat down and stared at the deck and didn’t say anything for a while. Two minutes later, Murray moved him onto a cot and covered him with a blanket.
Captain Montaigne had to fight the last two miles through high winds, but she was a particularly fine pilot and the Lockheed Hercules was a particularly fine aircraft. She touched down a little hard, but not too badly, and followed the guide jeep to her hangar. A man in civilian clothes was waiting there, along with some officers. As soon as she’d shut down, she walked out to meet them. She made them wait while she headed for the rest room, smiling through her fatigue that there was not a man in America who’d deny a lady a trip to the john. Her flight suit smelled horrible and her hair was a wreck, she saw in the mirror before she returned. They were waiting for her right outside the door.
“Captain, I want to know what you did tonight,” the civilian asked—but he wasn’t a civilian, she realized after a moment, though the prick certainly didn’t deserve to be anything else. Montaigne didn’t know everything that was behind all this, but she did know that much.
“I just flew a very long mission, sir. My crew and I are beat to hell.”
“I want to talk to all of you about what you did.”
“Sir, that is my crew. If there’s any talking to be done, you’ll talk to me!” she snapped back.
“What did you do?” Cutter demanded. He tried pretending it wasn’t a girl. He didn’t know that she was not pretending that he wasn’t a man.
“Colonel Johns went in to rescue some special-ops troopers.” She rubbed both hands across the back of her neck. “We got ‘em—he got ’em, most of ’em, I suppose.”
“Then where is he?”
Montaigne looked him right in the eye. “Sir, he had engine trouble. He couldn’t climb out to us—couldn’t get over the mountains. He flew right into the storm. He didn’t fly out of it, sir. Anything else you want to know? I want to get showered, get some coffee down, and start thinking about search and rescue.”
“The field’s closed,” the base commander said. “Nobody gets out for another ten hours. I think you need some rest, Captain.”
“I think you’re right, sir. Excuse me, I have to see to my crew. I’ll have you the SAR coordinates in a few minutes. Somebody’s gotta try,” she added.
“Look, General, I want—” Cutter started to say.
“Mister, you leave that crew alone,” said an Air Force one-star who was retiring soon anyway.
Larson landed at Medellin’s city airport about the same time the MC-130 approached Panama. It had been a profane flight, Clark in the back with Escobedo, the latter’s hands tied behind his back and a gun in his ribs. There had been many promises of death in the flight. Death to Clark, death to Larson and his girlfriend who worked for Avianca, death to many people. Clark just smiled through it all.
“So what do you do with me, eh? You kill me now?” he asked as the wheels locked in the down position. Finally, Clark responded.
“I suggested that we could give you a flying lesson out the back of the helicopter, but they wouldn’t let me. So looks like we’re going to have to let you go.”
Escobedo didn’t know how to answer. His bluster wasn’t able to cope with the fact that they might not want to kill him. They just didn’t have the courage to, Clark decided.
“I had Larson call ahead,” he said.
“Larson, you motherless traitor, you think you will survive?”
Clark dug the pistol in Escobedo’s ribs. “You don’t bother the guy who’s flying the goddamned airplane. If I were you, señor, I’d be very pleased to be coming home. We’re even having you met at the airport.”
“Met by whom?”
“By some of your friends,” Clark said as the wheel squeaked down on the tarmac. Larson reversed his props to brake the aircraft. “Some of your fellow board members.”
That’s when he saw the real danger coming. “What did you tell them?”
“The truth,” Larson answered. “That you were taking a flight out of the country under very strange circumstances, what with the storm and all. And, gee, what with all the odd happenings of the past few weeks, I thought that it was kind of a coincidence ...”
“But I will tell them—”
“What?” Clark asked. “That we put our own lives at risk by delivering you back h
ome? That it’s all a trick? Sure, you tell them that.”
The aircraft stopped but the engines didn’t. Clark gagged the chieftain. Then he unbuckled Escobedo’s seat belt and pulled him toward the door. A car was already there. Clark stepped down, his silenced automatic in Escobedo’s back.
“You are not Larson,” the man with the submachine gun said.
“I am his friend. He is flying. Here is your man. You should have something for us.”
“You do not need to leave,” said the man with the briefcase.
“This one has too many friends. It is best, I think, that we should leave.”
“As you wish,” the second one said. “But you have nothing to fear from us.” He handed over the briefcase.
“Gracias, jefe, ” Clark said. They loved to be called that. He pushed Escobedo toward them.
“You should know better than to betray your friends,” said the second one as Clark reentered the aircraft. The comment was aimed at the bound and gagged chieftain, whose eyes were very, very wide, staring back at Clark as he closed the door.
“Get us the hell out of here.”
“Next stop, Venezuela,” Larson said as he goosed the throttles.
“Then Gitmo. Think you can hack it?”
“I’ll need some coffee, but they make it good down here.” The aircraft lifted off and Larson thought, Jesus, it’s good to have this one behind us. That was true for him, but not for everyone.
30.
The Good
of the Service
BY THE TIME Ryan awoke on his cot in the wardroom, they were out of the worst of it. The cutter managed to make a steady ten knots east, and with the storm heading northwest at fifteen, they were in moderate seas in six hours. Course was made northeast, and Panache increased to her best continuous speed of about twenty knots.
The soldiers were quartered with the cutter’s enlisted crew, who treated them like visiting kings. By some miracle some liquor bottles were discovered—probably from the chiefs’ quarters, but no one hazarded to ask—and swiftly emptied. Their uniforms were discarded and new clothing issued from ship’s stores. The dead were placed in cold storage, which everyone understood was the only possible thing. There were five of them; two of them, including Zimmer, had died during the rescue. Eight men were wounded, one of them seriously, but the two Army medics, plus the cutter’s independent-duty corpsman, were able to stabilize him. Mainly the soldiers slept and ate and slept some more during their brief cruise.
Cortez, who’d been wounded in the arm, was in the brig. Murray looked after him. After Ryan awoke, both men went below with a TV camera which was set up on a tripod, and the senior FBI executive started to ask some questions. It was soon apparent that Cortez had had nothing to do with the murder of Emil Jacobs, which was as surprising to Murray as it was reasonable on examination of the information. It was a complication that neither man had actually expected, but one that might work in their favor, Ryan thought. He was the one who started asking the questions about Cortez’s experience with the DGI. Cortez was wholly cooperative throughout. He’d betrayed one allegiance, and doing so to another came easily, especially with Jack’s promise that he wouldn’t be prosecuted if he cooperated. It was a promise that would be kept to the letter.
Cutter remained in Panama for another day. The search-and-rescue operation aimed at locating the downed helicopter was delayed by weather, and it was hardly surprising to him that nothing was found. The storm kept heading northwest and blew itself out on the Yucatan Peninsula, ending as a series of line squalls that caused half a dozen tornados in Texas several days later. Cutter didn’t stay long enough for that. As soon as the weather permitted, he flew straight back to D.C. just hours after Captain Montaigne returned to Eglin Air Force Base, her crew sworn to secrecy that their commander had every reason to enforce.
Panache arrived at Guantánamo Naval Base thirty-six hours after taking the helicopter aboard. Captain Wegener had radioed for permission, claiming a machinery problem and wanting to get out of Hurricane Adele’s path. Several miles off, Colonel Johns started up their helicopter and flew it onto the base, where it was immediately rolled into a hangar. The cutter came alongside an hour later, showing moderate storm damage, some of which was quite real.
Clark and Larson met the ship at the dock. Their aircraft was also hidden away. Ryan and Murray joined them, and a squad of Marines went aboard the cutter to retrieve Félix Cortez. Some telephone calls were placed, and then it was time to decide what had to be done. There were no easy solutions, nothing that would be entirely legal. The soldiers were treated at the base hospital and flown the next day to Fort MacDill in Florida. The same day, Clark and Larson returned the aircraft to Washington, having stopped to refuel in the Bahamas. In Washington it was turned over to a small corporation that belongs to CIA. Larson went on leave, wondering if he should really marry the girl and raise a family. Of one thing he was certain: he would leave the Agency.
Predictably, one of the things that happened was quite unexpected, and would forever be a mystery to all but one.
Admiral Cutter had returned two days earlier, and was back in his regular routine. The President was off on a political trip, trying to reestablish himself in the polls before the convention started two weeks hence. That made easier what had been a very hectic few weeks for his National Security Adviser. One way or another, he decided, he’d had enough of this. He’d served this President well, done things that needed to be done, and was entitled to a reward. He thought a fleet command would be appropriate, preferably Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet. Vice Admiral Painter, the current Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare), had been told to expect it, but it was the President’s call to make, after all, and Cutter figured that he could have just about anything he wanted. After that, if the President was re-elected, maybe Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.... It was something to think about over breakfast, which was at a civilized hour for a change. He’d even have time for a jog after his morning briefing from CIA. The doorbell rang at 7:15. Cutter answered it himself.
“Who are you?”
“Your regular briefing officer was taken ill, sir. I have the duty today,” the man said. Forties, looked like one tough old field officer.
“Okay, come on.” Cutter waved him into the study. The man sat down, glad to see that the Admiral had a TV and VCR in here.
“Okay, where do we start today?” Cutter asked after the door was closed.
“Gitmo, sir,” the man said.
“What’s happening in Cuba?”
“Actually, I have it on videotape, sir.” The field officer inserted it in the unit and punched “play.”
“What is this ... ?” Jesus Christ! The tape played on for several minutes before the CIA officer stopped it.
“So what? That’s the word of a traitor to his own country,” Cutter said to answer the man’s expectant smile.
“There’s this, too.” He held up a photograph of the two of them. “Personally, I’d love to see you in federal prison. That’s what the FBI wants. They’re going to arrest you later today. You can imagine the charges. Assistant Deputy Director Murray is running the case. He’s probably meeting with a U.S. Magistrate right now—whatever the mechanics are. Personally I don’t care about that.”
“Then why—?”
“I’m a bit of a movie buff. Used to be in the Navy, too. In the movies at times like this, they always give a guy a chance to handle things himself—‘for the good of the service,’ they usually say. I wouldn’t try running away. There’s a team of FBI agents watching you, in case you haven’t noticed. Given the way things work in this town—how long things take to get done—I don’t suppose you’ll be meeting them until ten or eleven. If you do, Admiral, then God help you. You’ll get life. I only wish they could do something worse, but you’ll get life in a federal pen, with some career hood sticking it up that tight little ass of yours when the guards aren’t around. I wouldn’t mind seeing that either. Anyway.�
�� He retrieved the videotape, tucking it in the briefcase along with the photograph that the Bureau really shouldn’t have given him—and they’d told Ryan that he’d only use it to identify Cortez. “Good day, sir.”
“But you’ve—”
“Done what? Nobody swore me to secrecy over this. What secrets have I revealed, Admiral? You were there for all of them.”
“You’re Clark, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me? Who?” he said on his way out. Then he was gone.
Half an hour later, Pat O‘Day saw Cutter jogging down the hill toward the George Washington Parkway. One nice thing about having the President out of town, the inspector thought, was that he didn’t have to shake out of the rack at 4:30 to meet the bastard. He’d been here only forty minutes, spending a lot of time with his stretching exercises, and there he was. O’Day let him pass, then moved out, keeping up easily since the man was quite a bit older. But that wasn’t all....
O‘Day followed him for a mile, then two, approaching the Pentagon. Cutter followed the jogging path between the road and the river. Perhaps he didn’t feel well. He alternately jogged and walked. Maybe he’s trying to see if he has a tail, O’Day thought, but ... Then he started moving again.
Just opposite the beginning of the northern parking lot, Cutter got off the path, heading toward the road as though to cross it. The inspector had now closed to within fifty yards. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what. It was ...
... the way he was looking at the traffic. He wasn’t looking for openings, O’Day realized too late. A bus was coming north, a D.C. transit bus, it had just come off the 14th Street Bridge and—
“Look out!” But the man wasn’t listening for that sort of warning.
Brakes screeched. The bus tried to avoid the man, slamming into another car, then five more added their mass to the pileup. O’Day approached only because he was a cop, and cops are expected to do such things. Vice Admiral James A. Cutter, Jr., USN, was still in the road, thrown fifty feet by the collision.
