by Tom Clancy
“They’re enemies, Colonel! They all trained to kill us! Save your sympathy for your own countrymen!” growled a man who’d fought in the snows outside Moscow.
Grishanov stood his ground, as the General had once done. “They are men, not unlike us, Comrade General. They have knowledge that is useful, if only we have the intelligence to extract it. It is that simple. Is it too much to ask that we treat them with kindness, that we give something in return for learning how to save our country from possible destruction? We could torture them, as our ‘fraternal socialist allies’ have done, and get nothing! Does that serve our country?” It came down to that, and the General knew it. He looked at the Colonel of Air Defense and his first expressed thought was the obvious one.
“You wish to risk my career along with yours? My father is not a Central Committeeman.” I could have used this man in my battalion. . . .
“Your father was a soldier,” Grishanov pointed out. “And like you, a good one.” It was a skillful play and both knew it, but what really mattered was the logic and significance of what Grishanov was proposing, an intelligence coup that would stagger the professional spies of KGB and GRU. There was only one possible reaction from a real soldier with a real sense of mission.
General-Lieutenant Yuri Konstantinovich Rokossovskiy pulled a bottle of vodka from his desk. It was the Starka label, dark, not clear, the best and most expensive. He poured two small glasses.
“I can’t get you more men. Certainly I cannot get you a physician, not even one in uniform, Kolya. But, yes, I will try to get you some hope.”
The third convulsion since her arrival at Sandy’s house was a minor one, but still troubling. Sarah had gotten her quieted down with as mild a shot of barbiturate as she dared. The blood work was back, and Doris was a veritable collection of problems. Two kinds of venereal disease, evidence of another systemic infection, and possibly a borderline diabetic. She was already attacking the first three problems with a strong dose of antibiotics. The fourth would be handled with diet and reevaluated later. For Sarah the signs of physical abuse were like something from a nightmare about another continent and another generation, and it was the mental aftermath of that that was the most disquieting of all, even as Doris Brown closed her eyes and lapsed into sleep.
“Doctor, I—”
“Sandy, will you please call me Sarah? We’re in your house, remember?”
Nurse O’Toole managed an embarrassed smile. “Okay, Sarah. I’m worried.”
“So am I. I’m worried about her physical condition, I’m worried about her psychological condition. I’m worried about her ‘friends’—”
“I’m worried about John,” Sandy said discordantly. Doris was under control. She could see that. Sarah Rosen was a gifted clinician, but something of a worrier, as many good physicians were.
Sarah headed out of the room. There was coffee downstairs. She could smell it and was heading for it. Sandy came with her. “Yes, that, too. What a strange and interesting man.”
“I don’t throw my newspapers away. Every week, same time, I bundle them together for the garbage collection—and I’ve been checking the back issues.”
Sarah poured two cups. She had very delicate movements, Sandy thought. “I know what I think. Tell me what you think,” the pharmacologist said.
“I think he’s killing people.” It caused her physical pain to say that.
“I think you’re right.” Sarah Rosen sat down and rubbed her eyes. “You never met Pam. Prettier than Doris, willowy, sort of, probably from an inadequate diet. It was much easier to wean her off the drugs. Not as badly abused, physically anyway, but just as much emotional hurt. We never got the whole story. Sam says that John did. But that’s not the important part.” Sarah looked up, and the pain O’Toole saw there was real and deep. “We had her saved, Sandy, and then something happened, and then something—something changed in John.”
Sandy turned to look out the window. It was quarter of seven in the morning. She could see people coming out in pajamas and bathrobes to get their morning papers and collect half-gallon bottles of milk. The early crowd was leaving for their cars, a process that in her neighborhood lasted until eight-thirty or so. She turned back. “No, nothing changed. It was always there. Something—I don’t know, released it, let it out? Like opening the door of a cage. What sort of man—part of him’s like Tim, but another part I just don’t understand.”
“What about his family?”
“He doesn’t have any. His mother and father are dead, no siblings. He was married—”
“Yes, I know about that, and then Pam.” Sarah shook her head. “So lonely.”
“Part of me says he’s a good man, but the other part . . . ” Sandy’s voice trailed off.
“My maiden name was Rabinowicz,” Sarah said, sipping her coffee. “My family comes from Poland. Papa left when I was too young to remember; mother died when I was nine, peritonitis. I was eighteen when the war started,” she went on. For her generation “the war” could mean only one thing. “We had lots of relatives in Poland. I remember writing to them. Then they all just disappeared. All gone—even now it’s hard to believe it really happened.”
“I’m sorry, Sarah, I didn’t know.”
“It’s not the sort of thing you talk a lot about.” Dr. Rosen shrugged. “People took something from me, though, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My cousin Reva was a good pen pal. I suppose they killed her one way or another, but I never found out who or where. Back then I was too young to understand. I suppose I was more puzzled than anything else. Later, I got angry—but against whom? I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t. And there’s this empty space where Reva was. I still have her picture, black-and-white of a girl with pigtails, twelve years old, I guess. She wanted to be a ballet dancer.” Sarah looked up. “Kelly’s got an empty place, too.”
“But revenge—”
“Yeah, revenge.” The doctor’s expression was bleak. “I know. We’re supposed to think he’s a bad person, aren’t we? Call the police, even, turn him in for doing that.”
“I can’t—I mean, yes, but I just—”
“Neither will I. Sandy, if he were a bad person, why did he bring Doris up here? He’s risking his life two different ways.”
“But there’s something very scary about him.”
“He could have just walked away from her,” Sarah went on, not really hearing. “Maybe he’s just the sort of person who thinks he has to fix everything himself. But now we have to help.”
That turned Sandy around, giving her a respite from her real thoughts. “What are we going to do with her?”
“We’re going to get her well, as far as we can, and after that it’ll be up to her. What else can we do?” Sarah asked, watching Sandy’s face change again, returning to her real dilemma.
“But what about John?”
Sarah looked up. “I have never seen him do anything illegal. Have you?”
It was a weapons-training day. A solid cloud cover meant that no reconnaissance satellites, American or Soviet, could see what was happening here. Cardboard targets were set up around the compound, and the lifeless eyes of mannequins watched from the sandbox and swing set as the Marines emerged from the woods, passing through the simulated gate, firing low-powered rounds from their carbines. The targets were shredded in seconds. Two M-60 machine guns poured fire into the open door of the “barracks” —which would already have been wrecked by the two Huey Cobra gunships—while the snatch team raced into the “prison block.” There, twenty-five more mannequins were in individual rooms. Each was weighted to about one hundred fifty pounds—nobody thought that the Americans at SENDER GREEN would weigh even that much—and every one was dragged out while the fire-support element covered the evacuation.
Kelly stood next to Captain Pete Albie, who, it had been assumed for the purpose of the exercise, was dead. He was the only officer on the team, an aberration that was compensated for by the presence of so many senior NCOs. As they
watched, the mannequins were dragged to the simulated fuselages of the rescue helicopters. These were mounted on semitrailers, and had come in at dawn. Kelly clicked his stopwatch when the last man was aboard.
“Five seconds under nominal, Captain.” Kelly held up the watch. “These boys are pretty good.”
“Except we’re not doing it in daylight, are we, Mr. Clark?” Albie, like Kelly, knew the nature of the mission. The Marines as yet did not—at least not officially—though by now they had to have a fairly good idea. He turned and smiled. “Okay, it’s only the third run-through.”
Both men went into the compound. The simulated targets were in feathery pieces, and their number was exactly double the worst-case estimate for the SENDER GREEN guard force. They replayed the assault in their minds, checking angles of fire. There were advantages and disadvantages to how the camp was set up. Following the rules in some nameless East Bloc manual, it didn’t fit the local terrain. Most conveniently indeed, the best avenue of approach coincided with the main gate. In adhering to a standard that allowed for maximum security against a possible escape attempt of the prisoners, it also facilitated an assault from without—but they didn’t expect that, did they?
Kelly ran over the assault plan in his mind. The insertion would put the Recon Marines on the ground one ridge away from SENDER GREEN. Thirty minutes for the Marines to approach the camp. M-79 grenades to eliminate the guard towers. Two Huey Cobra gunships—known with lethal elegance as “snakes” to the troops, and that appealed to him—would hose the barracks and provide heavy fire support—but the grenadiers on the team, he was sure, could take out the towers in a matter of five seconds, then pour willie-pete into the barracks and burn the guard force alive with deadly fountains of white flame, doing without the snakes entirely if they had to. Small and lean as this operation was, the size of the objective and the quality of the team made for unplanned safety factors. He thought of it as overkill, a term that didn’t just apply to nuclear weapons. In combat operations, safety lay in not giving the other guy a chance, to be ready to kill him two, three, a dozen times over in as little time as possible. Combat wasn’t supposed to be fair. To Kelly, things were looking very good indeed.
“What if they have mines?” Albie worried.
“On their own turf?” Kelly asked. “No sign of it from the photographs. The ground isn’t disturbed. No warning signs to keep their people away.”
“Their people would know, wouldn’t they?”
“On one of the photos there’s some goats grazing just outside the wire, remember?”
Albie nodded with some embarrassment. “Yeah, you’re right. I remember that.”
“Let’s not borrow trouble,” Kelly told him. He fell silent for a moment, realizing that he had been a mere E-7 chief petty officer, and now he was talking as an equal—more accurately as a superior—to an 0-3 captain of Recon Marines. That ought to have been—what? Wrong? If so, then why was he doing so well at it, and why was the captain accepting his words? Why was he Mr. Clark to this experienced combat officer? “We’re going to do it.”
“I think you’re right, Mr. Clark. And how do you get out?”
“As soon as the choppers come in, I break the Olympic record coming down that hill to the LZ. I call it a two-minute run.”
“In the dark?” Albie asked.
Kelly laughed. “I run especially fast in the dark, Captain.”
“Do you know how many Ka-Bar knives there are?”
From the tone of Douglas’s question, Lieutenant Ryan knew the news had to be bad. “No, but I suppose I’m about to find out.”
“Sunny’s Surplus just took delivery of a thousand of the goddamn things a month ago. The Marines must have enough and so now the Boy Scouts can buy them for four ninety-five. Other places, too. I didn’t know how many of the things were out there.”
“Me, neither,” Ryan admitted. The Ka-Bar was a very large and bulky weapon. Hoods carried smaller knives, especially switchblades, though guns were becoming increasingly common on the streets.
What neither man wanted to admit openly was that they were stymied again, despite what had appeared to be a wealth of physical evidence in the brownstone. Ryan looked down at the open file and about twenty forensic photographs. There had almost certainly been a woman there. The murder victim—probably a hood himself, but still officially a victim—had been identified immediately from the cards in his wallet, but the address on his driver’s license had turned out to be a vacant building. His collection of traffic violations had been paid on time, with cash. Richard Farmer had brushed with the police, but nothing serious enough to have merited a detailed inquiry. Tracking his family down had turned up precisely nothing. His mother—the father was long dead—had thought him a salesman of some sort. But somebody had nearly carved his heart out with a fighting knife, so quickly and decisively that the gun on the body hadn’t been touched. A full set of fingerprints from Farmer merely generated a new card. The central FBI register did not have a match. Neither did the local police, and though Farmer’s prints would be compared with a wide selection of unknowns, Ryan and Douglas didn’t expect much. The bedroom had provided three complete sets of Farmer‘s, all on window glass, and semen stains had matched his blood type—O. Another set of stains had been typed as AB, which could mean the killer or the supposed (not quite certain) missing owner of the Roadrunner. For all they knew the killer might have taken the time to have a quickie with the suspected female—unless homosexuality was involved, in which case the suspected female might not exist at all.
There were also a selection of partial prints, one of a girl (supposition, from their size), and one of a man (also supposition), but they were so partial that he didn’t expect much in the way of results. Worst of all, by the time the latent-prints team had gotten to check out the car parked outside, the blazing August sun had heated the car up so much that what might have been something to match prints with the registered owner of the car, one William Peter Grayson, had merely been a collection of heat-distorted blobs. It wasn’t widely appreciated that matching partial prints with less than ten points of identification was difficult at best.
A check of the FBI’s new National Crime Information Computer had turned up nothing on Grayson or Farmer. Finally, Mark Charon’s narcotics team had nothing on the names Farmer or Grayson. It wasn’t so much a matter of being back to square one. It was just that square seventeen didn’t lead them anywhere. But that was often the way of things in homicide investigation. Detective work was a combination of the ordinary and the remarkable, but more of the former than the latter. Forensic sciences could tell you much. They did have the imprint of a common-brand sneaker from tracks in the brownstone—brand new, a help. They did know the approximate stride of the killer, from which they had generated a height range of from five-ten to six-three, which, unfortunately, was taller than Virginia Charles had estimated—something they, however, discounted. They knew he was Caucasian. They knew he had to be strong. They knew that he was either very, very lucky or highly skilled with all manner of weapons. They knew that he probably had at least rudimentary skills in hand-to-hand combat—or, Ryan sighed to himself, had been lucky; after all, there had been only one such encounter, and that with an addict with heroin in his bloodstream. They knew he was disguising himself as a bum.
All of which amounted to not very much. More than half of male humanity fell into the estimated height range. Considerably more than half of the men in the Baltimore metropolitan area were white. There were millions of combat veterans in America, many from elite military units—and the fact of the matter was that infantry skills were infantry skills, and you didn’t have to be a combat vet to know them, and his country had had a draft for over thirty years, Ryan told himself. There were perhaps as many as thirty thousand men within a twenty-mile radius who fit the description and skill-inventory of his unknown suspect. Was he in the drug business himself? Was he a robber? Was he, as Farber had suggested, a man on some sort of missi
on? Ryan leaned heavily to the latter model, but he could not afford to discount the other two. Psychiatrists, and detectives, had been wrong before. The most elegant theories could be shattered by a single inconvenient fact. Damn. No, he told himself, this one was exactly what Farber said he was. This wasn’t a criminal. This was a killer, something else entirely.
“We just need the one thing,” Douglas said quietly, knowing the look on his lieutenant’s face.
“The one thing,” Ryan repeated. It was a private bit of shorthand. The one thing to break a case could be a name, an address, the description or tag number of a car, a person who knew something. Always the same, though frequently different, it was for the detective the crucial piece in the jigsaw puzzle that made the picture clear, and for the suspect the brick which, taken from the wall, caused everything to fall apart. And it was out there. Ryan was sure of it. It had to be there, because this killer was a clever one, much too clever for his own good. A suspect like this who eliminated a single target could well go forever undetected, but this one was not satisfied with killing one person, was he? Motivated neither by passion nor by financial gain, he was committed to a process, every step of which involved complex dangers. That was what would do him in. The detective was sure of it. Clever as he was, those complexities would continue to mount one upon the other until something important fell loose from the pile. It might even have happened already, Ryan thought, correctly.
“Two weeks,” Maxwell said.
“That fast?” James Greer leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Dutch, that’s really fast.”
“You think we should fiddle around?” Podulski asked.
“Damn it, Cas, I said it was fast. I didn’t say it was wrong. Two weeks’ more training, one week of travel and setup?” Greer asked, getting a nod. “What about weather?”
“The one thing we can’t control,” Maxwell admitted. “But weather works both ways. It makes flying difficult. It also messes up radar and gunnery.”
