Locked On

by Tom Clancy

  With the gun and his single reserve magazine of thirty rounds of ammo, Yadava sprinted into traffic, searching for a target. Men on motorcycles and men and women in private cars raced by. Everyone on the flyover knew they were under assault, but there was nowhere to turn off until the next off ramp more than a kilometer farther on. Vehicles hit one another as they fought to get out of the way of the slaughter, and Yadava, operating on one part training to three parts adrenaline, just ran out into the midst of all this madness.

  Fifty meters back, he saw a yellow Mazda SUV slam hard into the waist-high protective barrier on the edge of the road. It hit with such speed that it then flipped over the side and spun through the air, almost as if in slow motion, before it hurtled some forty feet down toward the heavy traffic on the service road below the flyover.

  A motorcycle approached Yadava. It was nearly identical to the one that had passed him a minute before, and the man behind the driver held a rifle with a large drum magazine.

  The driver saw the uniformed CISF constable with the black sub-gun standing in the traffic, but he could not warn his gunner, so as Yadava raised his MP5 to fire, the biker slid his Suzuki onto the ground. He rolled off of it, and then slid with his partner.

  Yadava raised his ring sight over the man with the Kalashnikov and he fired. Now his training in the paramilitaries was put to good use. His shots tore up the road and then the man, blood fountained from the terrorist’s salwar kameez. The man in the street dropped his AK and then stilled, and Yadava moved his sights to the driver.

  The CISF warned their jawans that Pakistani terrorists, as this man certainly was, often wore suicide vests that they would detonate if they faced capture, and the CISF therefore instructed their men to offer no quarter to a terrorist operative when caught in the act.

  Young Kiron Yadava did not weigh the pros and cons of shooting an unarmed man. As long as the Islamist lived on this earth he was a danger to India, the country the constable had sworn to protect to his dying breath.

  Kiron Yadava emptied his weapon into the man lying in the street.

  As he reloaded his MP5, he turned to begin running after the other bike, but he heard the detonation of a hand grenade in the heavy traffic behind him. He knew instantly there was a third motorcycle still behind him. It would be approaching in moments, and it was up to him to stop the attack.

  Abdul Ibrahim fired his Makarov pistol into the chest of the driver of a passenger van. The driver slumped to the floor, his foot came off the brake, and this caused the big vehicle to rear-end a Fiat with a dead husband and wife in the front seat. In the back three rows of the van, eight Europeans in business suits recovered from the crash and then cowered at the sight of the terrorist climbing off his bike, and then, with an incredible expression of peace on his face, pulling a pipe bomb out of a bag hanging from his chest.

  Ibrahim looked down to his lighter, careful to put the flame on the tip of the short wick of his bomb, lest he martyr himself accidentally. He lit his wick, replaced the lighter in his pocket, and then reached back to toss the bomb under the van.

  Just then he heard the rat-a-tat of a submachine gun firing up the street. He turned to look at the source of the fire, he knew his men carried heavier rifles. He saw the Indian CISF man, saw the flash of fire from his weapon, and then felt his body buckle and spasm with the impact of the bullets. He was hit twice in the pelvis and groin, and he fell to the ground, on top of his improvised explosive device.

  Abdul Ibrahim shrieked “Allahu Akbar!” just before his pipe bomb detonated into his chest, blowing him to bits.

  Constable Kiron Yadava came upon the bullet-riddled bodies of the final two men in the terror cell a few minutes later. The pair had tried to run their Suzuki motorcycle through a hasty CISF roadblock just before the last off ramp before Electronics City. The eight constables stood over the dead men, but Yadava screamed at them. He told them to stop admiring their handiwork and to help him tend to the two dozen or so scenes of bloodshed all the way down the southbound lane of the ten-kilometer stretch of the Bangalore Elevated Tollway.

  Together these men, followed soon by hundreds of other first responders, spent the entire day treating survivors of the massacre.

  Riaz Rehan was in his office at ISI headquarters in the Aabpara district of Islamabad when his television reported a huge traffic accident in Bangalore. It meant nothing to him at first, but when the size of the carnage was relayed by the news anchor, Rehan stopped his other work and sat in rapt attention at his desk, watching the television. Within minutes there was confirmation that there had been a gun battle and within minutes more terrorists were being blamed for a massacre.

  Rehan had awoken furious with the LeT cell for not executing the night before, but now he was ecstatic. He could not believe these reports out of Bangalore. He had hoped for a casualty count of twenty with at least ten dead, perhaps some news footage of a burning guard post or a crater next to a building. Instead his five-man-strong cell, with only five rifles and a few small explosives, had managed to massacre sixty-one people and injure an incredible one hundred forty-four.

  Rehan beamed with pride and made a mental note that when he became president of Pakistan he would have a statue built in honor of Abdul Ibrahim, but he also realized the attack had actually done more damage than he wanted. LeT would be targeted with renewed vigor by not only the Indians but also the Americans. The pressure on Pakistan’s government to root out LeT would be twice what he’d expected. Rehan knew that the US/Pakistani Intelligence Fusion Center would be working overtime now and shifting their workload toward LeT.

  Rehan did not panic. Instead he reached out to his LeT contacts and told them he would take over as project manager for the next operation, and it would need to be moved up on the calendar. Forces opposed to LeT in his government, forces who were allied with the United States, would begin rounding up the usual suspects after this attack, and Rehan knew that every day before phase two of his plan to bring Pakistan and India to the brink of war would increase the chance that Operation Saker would be somehow compromised.

  32

  Valentin Kovalenko was nothing like his father. Where Oleg had been big and fat, thirty-five-year-old Valentin looked like a gym rat. He was thin but muscular; he wore a beautiful tailored suit that Laska had no doubt cost more than the car Oleg drove back in Moscow. Laska knew enough about luxury items to recognize that Valentin’s fashionable Moss Lipow eyeglasses cost more than three thousand dollars.

  Another stark departure from the demeanor of his father, especially the version of his father that Laska remembered from Prague, was that Valentin seemed quite friendly. Upon his arrival in Laska’s suite just after ten p.m., he’d complimented the Czech on his tireless philanthropy and support for the causes of the downtrodden, then he’d taken a chair by the fireplace after politely turning down the offer of a snifter of brandy.

  When both men were settled in front of the fire, Valentin said, “My father says he knows you from your days in Prague. That is all he has said, and I have made it a point to not ask him for any more information than that.” His English was spoken with a noticeable British accent.

  Laska shrugged. Valentin was being polite, and it might even be true, but if Laska’s plan was to go forward, there was not a chance in the world that Valentin Kovalenko would not look into the past of the famous Czech. And there was no chance he would not find out about Laska’s duties as a mole. There was no point in hiding it. “I worked for your father. Whether or not you know that yet, you will soon enough. I was an informant, and your father was my handler.”

  Valentin smiled a little. “My father impresses me sometimes. Ten thousand bottles of vodka down the hatch and the old man still can keep secrets. That is bloody impressive.”

  “He can,” agreed Laska. “He did not tell me anything about you. My other sources in the East, via my Progressive Nations Institute, were the ones who told me about your position in SVR.”

  Valentin nodded. �
�In my father’s day we’d send men and women to the gulag for revealing that information. Now I will just send an e-mail to internal state security mentioning the leak and they will file the e-mail away and do nothing.”

  The two men watched the fireplace in the huge suite for a moment. Finally Paul said, “I have an opportunity that I think will interest your government greatly. I would like to suggest an operation to you. If your agency agrees, I will only work with you. No one else.”

  “Does it involve the United Kingdom?”

  “It involves the United States.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Laska, but that is not my area of operations, and I am very busy here.”

  “Yes, being assistant rezident. But my proposal will make you rezident in your pick of nations. What I am offering is that important.”

  Valentin smiled. An affectation of amusement, but Laska could see a glint in the boy’s eyes that reminded him of his father in his younger years.

  Valentin Kovalenko asked, “What is it you are proposing, Mr. Laska?”

  “Nothing less than the destruction of the American President, Jack Ryan.”

  Valentin’s head rose. “You’ve given up hope for your friend Edward Kealty?”

  “Completely. Ryan will be elected. But I have hope that he will not set foot in the Oval Office to begin his second term.”

  “That is a great hope you have there. Give me reason to share this hope.”

  “I have a privately acquired file … a dossier, if you will, of a man named John Clark. I am sure you know who he is.”

  Valentin cocked his head, and Laska tried but could not read into the gesture. The Russian said, “I might know that name.”

  “You are just like your father. Not trusting.”

  “I am like most all Russians in that regard, Mr. Laska.”

  Paul Laska nodded in recognition of the truth of the comment. In reply he said, “This exercise will not require your trust. John Clark is a close confidant of Jack Ryan. They have worked together, and they are friends.”

  “Okay. Please continue. What does the file say?”

  “Clark was a CIA assassin. He did the bidding of Jack Ryan. Ryan signed a pardon for this. Do you know what a pardon is?”

  “I do.”

  “But I think Clark has done other things. Things that, if brought out into the light of day, will implicate Ryan directly.”

  “What things?”

  “You need to get your service’s file on Clark and put it with my file on Clark.”

  “If we had such a document already, that is to say, a file on this John Clark that had incriminating evidence, do you not think we would have exploited it by now? During the first Ryan presidency, perhaps?”

  Laska waved away the comment. “Very quickly and quietly your service should reinterview anyone, anywhere, with knowledge of the man or his operations. Make one large dossier, with every truth, half-truth, and innuendo.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I want you to give it to the Kealty campaign.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I cannot let it be known who my source of this information is. The file must come from someone else. Someone out of the USA. I want your people to dress it up with what you have to disguise the source.”

  “Innuendoes do not convict men in your adopted country, Mr. Laska.”

  “They can destroy a political career. And more than that, it is what Clark is doing right now that must be revealed. I have reason to believe that he is operating for some extrajudicial organization. Committing crimes around the world. And he would not be out committing these crimes if not for the full pardon given him by John Patrick Ryan. We get enough on Clark to Kealty, Kealty will force the Justice Department to investigate Clark. Kealty will do it for his own selfish reasons, no question. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the investigation will find a house of horrors.”

  Valentin Kovalenko looked into the fire. Paul Laska watched him. Watched the firelight flicker off of the lenses of his Moss Lipow glasses.

  “This sounds like an easy operation for my side. A quick thumbing through of a dusty old file, a quick investigation using men from some third-party group as a cutout, not SVR or FSB. More cutouts to pass the results on to someone in Kealty’s campaign. We will not be overexposed. But I do not know that there is much chance for success of the operation.”

  “I can’t believe your country has any interest in a strong Ryan administration.”

  Kovalenko had done little to tip his hand at any point in this conversation, but to Laska’s last comment he shook his head slowly, staring the older man in the eye. “None whatsoever, Mr. Laska. But … will there be enough to bring him down through Clark?”

  “In time to save Ed Kealty? No. Perhaps not even in time to prevent his inauguration. But Richard Nixon’s Watergate took many months to germinate into something so big and bountiful that it resulted in his resignation.”

  “Very true.”

  “And what I know about the actions of John Clark makes the events of Watergate look like some sort of fraternity prank.”

  Kovalenko nodded. A thin smile crossed his lips. “Perhaps, Mr. Laska, I will take one small snifter of brandy as we chat further.”

  33

  On a frigid October night in Makhachkala, Dagestan, fifty-five fighters of Jamaat Shariat met in a low-ceilinged basement with Suleiman Murshidov, the elderly spiritual leader of their organization. The men were aged between seventeen and forty-seven, and together they possessed hundreds of years of experience in urban warfare.

  These men had been handpicked by operational commanders, and five of their number were cell leaders themselves. It had been explained to them that they would be sent to a foreign base for training, and then they would embark on an operation that would change the course of history.

  To a man they thought their operation would involve a hostage situation, likely in Moscow, with their ultimate goal being the repatriation of their commander, Israpil Nabiyev.

  They were only half right.

  None of these grizzled fighters knew the clean-shaven man with Murshidov and his sons. To them he looked like a politician, not a rebel, so when Abu Dagestani explained that he would be their leader for their operation, they were stunned.

  Georgi Safronov spoke passionately to the fifty-five men in the basement; he explained that their ultimate goal would be revealed to them in due time, but for now they would all be flying in a cargo plane to Quetta, Pakistan, from where they would venture northward to a camp. There, he explained, they would undergo three weeks of intense training by the best Muslim fighters in the world, men with more operational experience in the past decade than even their brothers in nearby Chechnya.

  All fifty-five men were pleased to learn this, but it was hard for them to look at Safronov as their leader.

  Suleiman Murshidov saw this, and he’d expected it, so he spoke again to the group, promised them all that Georgi was Dagestani, and his plan and his sacrifice would do more for the North Caucasus in the next two months than Jamaat Shariat could do without him in the next fifty years.

  After a final prayer, the fifty-five men loaded into minibuses and headed toward the airport.

  Georgi Safronov wanted to travel with them, but this was deemed too dangerous by General Ijaz, his Pakistani partner in this endeavor. No, Safronov would fly commercial to Peshawar, under documents made by Pakistani intelligence, and there he would be picked up by Ijaz and his men and flown directly to the camp near Miran Shah.

  At the camp, Georgi was expected to train with the other men. He would not be as skilled with a weapon, as physically fit, or as battle-hardened in his heart. But he would learn, he would strengthen, and he would toughen.

  He hoped he would earn the respect of the men who’d lived their adult lives resisting the Russians in and around Makhachkala. No, they would never look at him like they did Israpil Nabiyev. But they would obey Abu Dagestani and follow Safronov’s orders. And if
he could learn the martial skills in Pakistan that would be necessary during their struggles ahead, Safronov thought that perhaps they would see him as a true commander, not just a sympathizer of their cause with a plan.

  Jack Ryan Jr. parked his yellow Hummer in front of Melanie Kraft’s address a few minutes after seven. She lived on Princess Street in Alexandria, right up the road from the boyhood home of Robert E. Lee, near the former home of George and Martha Washington, on a portion of the street that was still paved with pre–Revolutionary War cobblestones. Ryan looked around at the beautiful old homes, surprised that a government employee in her mid-twenties could afford to live here.

  He found her door and understood. Melanie lived at the address of a beautiful brick Georgian home, yes, but she lived in a carriage house in the back through the garden. They were still pretty nice digs, but he saw from the outside that her place was just larger than a one-car garage.

  She invited him in, and he confirmed that the apartment was, indeed, tiny, but she kept it neat.

  “I love your place.”

  Melanie smiled. “Thank you. I love it, too. I’d never be able to afford it without help.”

  “Help?”

  “An old professor of mine from AU is married to a real estate guy; they own the home. It was built in 1794. She rents the carriage house to me for about what I’d pay for a regular apartment around here. It’s tiny, but it’s all I need.”

  Jack glanced over at a card table in the corner. On top of it sat a MacBook Pro and a massive stack of books, notebooks, and loose printed pages. Some of the books, Ryan noticed, were printed in Arabic script.

  “Is that NCTC south?” he asked with a smile.