Locked On

by Tom Clancy

  He fired from the backseat of the chopper, propping his weapon in the open window. This would absolutely destroy the carefully tuned barrel harmonics of his rifle, but again, getting closer would fix everything.

  “Closer, brother!”

  “You worry about your gadget. Let me worry about mine,” replied Hicks.

  To say the call from Chavez to the aircraft twenty minutes earlier had come as a surprise to Chester Hicks was putting it mildly. He had been going through some paperwork with Adara Sherman when his mobile rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Country, I’m on my way back! I need you to scare me up a helicopter in ten minutes! Can you do that?”

  “You bet. There is a charter service right here at the FBO. Where should I tell them you are heading?”

  “I need you to fly it, and we will likely be heading into combat.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “This is life-and-death shit, ’mano.”

  A quick pause. “Then get your ass back here. I’ll grab us an aircraft.”

  Hicks had been all action after that. He and Adara Sherman jogged across the tarmac to a dormant JetRanger that belonged to a resort hotel twenty miles up the coast. There were many newer and fancier helos on the tarmac, but Hicks had flown the JetRanger, he’d trained on Bell helos, and Hicks figured the most important factor on this hasty mission ahead of him would be the skill of the pilot, and not the most advanced technology. After looking the craft over for just a few seconds, he sent Sherman to the FBO to collect the keys by any means necessary. He removed the tie-downs and checked the fuel and the oil while she was gone, and even before he sat behind the cyclic, Sherman was back, tossing him the keys.

  “Do I want to know what you did?”

  “Nobody home. I probably could have snagged some sheik’s Boeing wide-body if I wanted it.”

  Chavez arrived five minutes later, and they were in the air as soon as he strapped in.

  While Chavez loaded his sniper rifle, Hicks asked over the intercom, “Where are we going?”

  “The tallest building in the world, doubt you could miss it.”

  “Roger that.” He turned the nose of the JetRanger toward the Burj Khalifa and increased his rate of climb and his ground speed.

  Rehan and Khan crawled across the tile floor of the apartment toward the door to the hallway. The colonel kept his body positioned between the shooter in the helicopter and his general as they scrambled, until another protection officer slid over next to them both and then covered General Rehan.

  Just as Rehan entered the hallway and rolled out of the line of fire from the helicopter outside, one of his security men grabbed him by the collar and pushed him forward to the elevator. This guard was nearly as big as Rehan himself, a hulking six-foot-three-inch-tall bruiser in a black suit and carrying a big HK pistol. He banged on the down button with his fist, turned to make sure Rehan and Khan were still with him, and then turned back as the doors slid open.

  Ryan and Caruso were surprised by the size of the armed Pakistani who appeared right in front of them in the hallway, but they were ready for trouble. Both men held their pistols high. They dropped to their knees as one as the ISI security man’s eyes widened. The Pakistani lifted his own gun up into action, but both Campus operators fired into the broad chest of their target at no more than six feet.

  The guard did not fall away from them, instead he lunged forward, into the elevator car. Both men fired a second and then a third time, stitching 9-millimeter rounds across his upper torso, but the ISI officer crashed into Jack Junior, pinned him in the corner, and head-butted the American with all the strength remaining in his body. He fired his HK pistol, but his arm had drooped low and the round went through Ryan’s pants, just above the knee, somehow missing his leg.

  More ISI men in the hallway fired into the elevator now. Ryan was pinned by the dead man, but Caruso had dropped low to the floor and was engaging targets. He caught a half glimpse of General Rehan running away, up the hall in the opposite direction of Embling’s apartment, but he had to focus on the men shooting at him and Jack. He shot another of the general’s security detail, hitting the man in the lower abdomen, and with another three-round volley he chased the remaining men out of his line of fire, sending them up the hallway, where they disappeared into the stairwell near Embling’s flat.

  Rehan had already headed into the stairwell, presumably to another floor to take an elevator down.

  “Get this big motherfucker off me!” Ryan shouted.

  Dom helped roll the dead man over, and immediately he saw blood on Jack’s face. “Are you hit?”

  Jack ignored the crack he had taken to his right eye and instead reached down to his leg. He’d felt a round brush him there as it passed a fraction of an inch from his knee. He found the hole in his pants, reached inside it, and felt around for blood. When his fingers came back clean he said, “I’m good. Let’s go!” And they took off toward Embling’s apartment, afraid of what they might find.

  Inside, Dominic and Jack ran to al Darkur. The Pakistani major was having no luck trying to cut his cuffs off with a small piece of glass. Caruso pulled out a folding knife and made short work of the plastic restraints, and he and Ryan helped Mohammed up to his feet.

  “Where is Embling?” Ryan had to shout it over the ringing in his ears after the gunfire in the hallway.

  Al Darkur shook his head. “Rehan killed him.”

  That sank in for just a moment before Caruso grabbed al Darkur by the arm and said, “You are coming with us.”

  “Of course.”

  Dom waved to the chopper, and Hicks peeled his borrowed helo away, heading off with Chavez in the backseat.

  Alarms sounded in the hallway here on the 108th floor, but the elevators were still in service. Mohammed, Jack, and Dom had no doubt there would be police in the elevators by now, but no one could have ascended more than a couple dozen floors of stairs since the shooting started, so all three ran to the stairwell and began heading down. They descended eighteen flights in three minutes of frantic running and leaping. Once down to the ninetieth floor they boarded an elevator with a few Middle Eastern businessmen who were slow to evacuate, complaining they had not smelled smoke and doubted there was any real fire. But al Darkur’s bruised face, Ryan’s bloody eye and nose, and the sopping sweat on the faces of all three of the men shocked the Middle Easterners.

  When one of the men lifted his camera phoneӀon to take a photo of al Darkur, Dom Caruso snatched the device from the man’s hand. Another made to shove Dom back, but Ryan drew his pistol and waved the men back against the wall.

  As the elevator dropped at forty-five miles an hour, the Pakistani major and the two American operatives pulled the phones from all three men, stomped them with their heels, and then stopped the carriage on the tenth floor. Here they ordered the men off, and then hit the button for the lower of two basement parking garages.

  Fifteen minutes later, they walked out of the parking exit and into the sunlight. There the three men melted in with the crowd; they passed police and firefighters and other first responders rushing into the building, and headed out into the hot afternoon streets to find a taxi.

  While Jack, Dom, and al Darkur raced to the airport, Chavez had Hicks drop him off in a parking lot near the beach. Hicks returned alone to the airport, and Ding took a taxi back to the Kempinski to break down all the surveillance equipment in the bungalow.

  Their operation against Rehan here in Dubai was compromised, and that was putting it mildly. There would be no way the three men could go back to the bungalow and wait for Rehan to return; the heat would be turned up too high after the massive shootout. There would be bodies on the evening news in a city that did not have much in the way of crime, and the comings and goings of all foreigners would face tighter scrutiny. Ding had instructed Hicks to call Captain Reid and have the Gulfstream ready to go asap, but Chavez wouldn’t be on it himself. He’d need a few hours to clean up all traces of
their activities at the Kempinski, and he’d just have to find another way out of the country after that.

  Hicks landed the chopper right where he’d picked it up, then met Sherman at the bottom of the stairs to the Gulfstream. She’d given the man working the desk at the FBO ten thousand euros when he’d come looking for the missing helicopter, and she felt reasonably certain he’d keep his mouth shut until they were wheels-up.

  Once Jack, Dom, and Mohammed arrived in their taxi, they boarded the plane, and Helen Reid called the tower to let them know they were ready to execute their flight plan.

  Their customs departure had been taken care of by Ms. Sherman, with the help of another ten thousand euros.

  They flew Mohammed al Darkur to Istanbul. He would make his own way back to Peshawar. They all agreed it would be dangerous for him to return to his home country. If Rehan was willing to take a step as big as his Dubai attack, there was no question he would work to have al Darkur killed as soon as the major returned. But Mohammed assured the Americans he knew a place where he could lie low, away from the elements of the ISI that were plotting against the civilian leadership. He also promised them he would find where Sam Driscoll was being kept and report back as soon as possible.

  58

  Four days after returning from Dubai, Jack Ryan Jr. had an appointment that he could not cancel. It was November 6, Election Day, and Jack headed up to Baltimore in the late morning to be with his family.

  Jack Ryan Sr. headed down to his local polling place in the morning with Cathy, surrounded by reporters. After that he returned home to spend the day with his family, with plans to head down to the Marriott Waterfront to give his acceptance speech that evening.

  Or his concession speech, depending on the results in a few key battleground states.

  The Clark controversy had hurt him, there was no denying this. Every show from 60 Minutes to Entertainment Tonight had found an angle on the story, and every talking head on the news had something to say about it. Ryan took the high road throughout the last few weeks of his campaign, he’d made his statements regarding his friend, and he’d done his best to frame the story as a political attack on him, Jack Ryan, and not honest justice.

  This worked with his base, and it swayed some undecided. But the unanswered questions as to the actual relationship between Jack Ryan and the mysterious man on the run from the government tipped many undecided toward Edward Kealty. The media framed the Ryan–Clark relationship as if the latter were the personal assassin for the former.

  And whatever one could say about President Kealty, there was certainly no chance he possessed that particular skeleton in his closet.

  When Jack Junior arrived at his parents’ house in the early afternoon, he drove through the security cordon, and a few members of the press took a picture of the yellow Hummer with Jack behind the wheel, but his windows were tinted and he wore aviator sunglasses.

  When he came in through the kitchen he saw his dad standing there, alone in his shirtsleeves.

  The two men embraced, and then Senior took a step back.

  “What’s with the shades?”

  Jack Junior took off his sunglasses, revealing bruising around his right eye. It was faint but still gray, and it was plain that it had been much worse.

  In addition to the bruised skin, blood vessels in his eye had broken, and much of the eye was bright red.

  Ryan Sr. looked at his son’s face for a moment and then said, “Quick, before your mom comes downstairs. Into the study.”

  A minute later, the two men stood in the study with the door closed. Senior kept his voice down. “Jesus, Jack, what the hell happened to you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “I don’t give a damn. What do all the parts of your body I can’t see look like?”

  Jack smiled. Sometimes his dad said things that showed him that the old man understood. “Not too bad. It’s getting better.”

  “This happened in the field?”

  “Yeah. I need to just leave it at that. Not for me. For you. You’re about to be the President, after all.”

  Jack Ryan Sr. sighed slowly, leaned forward, and looked into his son’s eyeball. “Your mother is going to throw a—”

  “I’ll keep my shades on.”

  Senior looked at Junior. “Son. I couldn’t have pulled that trick over on Mom thirty years ago. It sure as hell won’t work now.”

  “What should I do?”

  Senior thought it over. “You’ll show her. She’s an ophthalmic surgeon, for crying out loud. I want her to check you out. Tell her you don’t want to talk about it. She won’t like it, not one bit, but you are not lying to your mother. We can keep details from her, but we aren’t lying.”

  “Okay,” the son said.

  “It’s a slippery slope, but we just have to do what’s right.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dr. Cathy Ryan came into the study a minute later, and within seconds she had led her son by the arm into the bathroom. Here Cathy had Junior sit at the vanity while she held his eye open and checked it carefully with a penlight.

  “What happened?” Her voice was clipped and professional. The eye was his mom’s area of expertise, and she would, or at least Jack hoped she would, view an injury here more professionally and dispassionately than she would had he hurt something else.

  “I got hit with something.”

  Dr. Ryan did not stop examining her patient to say, “No shit, Sherlock. What did you get hit with?”

  Her husband was correct—Cathy did not like her questions about the origins of the injury being deflected.

  Jack Junior responded guardedly, “I guess you could say I bumped heads with a guy.”

  “Any vision issues? Headaches?”

  “At first, yes. Bled a little from that cut on the nose. But not anymore.”

  “Well, he got you right in your orbit. This is a nasty subcutaneous hematoma. How long ago?”

  “Five days, give or take.”

  Cathy let go of his eye and stepped back. “You should have come right over. The trauma necessary to cause this amount of hemorrhaging on the eye and the tissue around it could have easily detached your retina.”

  Jack wanted to say something clever, but he caught a look from his dad. Now was not the time to be cute. “Okay. If it happens again, I will—”

  “Why would it happen again?”

  Junior shrugged. “It won’t. Thanks for checking it out.” He started to get up from the chair.

  “Sit back down. I can’t do anything for the subcutaneous hematoma, but I can mask that bruising on your nose and orbit.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to get some makeup to cover that up.”

  Junior groaned. “It’s not that bad, Mom.”

  “It’s bad enough. You are going to have your picture taken tonight, like it or not, and I am sure you don’t want that image of you going out to the world.”

  Senior agreed. “Son, half the newspapers will go to press with a headline about how I smacked you when I learned you voted for Kealty.”

  Jack Junior laughed at the thought. He knew there was no point arguing. “Okay. Dad wears makeup every time he goes on TV, I guess it won’t kill me.”

  The election returns began coming in during the early evening. The family and some of the key staff sat in the living room of a suite at the Marriott Waterfront, although Ryan Sr. spent much of the evening standing in the kitchen, talking to his kids or his senior staff, preferring to hear reports shouted in from the living room to actually watching all the play-by-play and pontificating himself.

  By nine p.m., a tight race turned for the GOP when Ohio and Michigan both went his way. Florida took until nearly ten, but by the close of polling stations on the West Coast, the matter was decided.

  John Patrick Ryan Sr. won with fifty-two percent of the vote, tighter than the margin he’d carried into the last month of the campaign, and most news organizations claimed this had to do with two things: the
Kealty administration’s capture of the Emir, and Jack Ryan’s murky association with a man wanted for multiple murders.

  It said little for Kealty that Ryan had managed to overcome both of these events to defeat him.

  Jack Ryan stood on a stage at the Marriott Waterfront with his wife and children. Balloons fell, music played. When he spoke to the adoring crowd, he thanked his family first and foremost, and the American people for giving him the opportunity to represent them for a second four-year term.

  His speech was upbeat, heartfelt, and even funny in places. But soon enough he came around to the two central issues of the election’s home stretch. He called on President Kealty to halt his administration’s pursuit of federal charges against Saif Yasin. Ryan said it would be a waste of resources, as he would order the Emir into military custody as soon as he took office.

  He then asked President Kealty to reveal details of the sealed indictment to his transition team. He did not use the phrase “Put up or shut up,” but that was the implication.

  The President-elect reiterated his support for Clark and the men and women in the military and intelligence communities.

  As soon as they left the stage, Jack Junior called Melanie. He’d seen her once since his return from Dubai. He’d told her he’d been on a business trip to Switzerland, where he’d banged his eye and the bridge of his nose against a tree branch when he and his coworkers tried their hand at snowboarding.

  He missed her tonight, and wished she could be with him right now, here amid all the excitement and celebration. But they both knew that if she showed up on the arm of the son of the former and next President of the United States, it would invite a lot of scrutiny. Melanie had not even met Jack Junior’s parents yet, and this hardly seemed like the venue for that.

  But Jack found a sofa in one of the suites the Ryan campaign had reserved for the evening, and he sat and chatted with Melanie until the rest of the family was ready to head back home.