by Tom Clancy
"How you doing, Jack?" By unspoken agreement, here and now Ryan wasn't the President.
"The shock comes and goes," he admitted. "It's all come back from before. The bastards can't just come after me—oh, no, they have to go for the soft targets. Those cowardly fucks!" Jack cursed as it came back again.
Jackson sipped at his glass. There wasn't a whole hell of a lot to be said right now, but that would change.
"It's my first time here," Robby said, just to say something.
"My first time—would you believe we buried a guy up here?" Jack remarked, remembering. "He was a Russian colonel, an agent we had in their Defense Ministry. Hell of a soldier, hero of the Soviet Union, three or four times, I think, we buried him in his uniform with all the decorations. I read off the citations myself. That's when we got Gerasimov out."
"The KGB head. So, that's true, eh?"
"Yep." Ryan nodded. "And you know about Colombia, and you know about the submarine. How the hell did those newsies find out, though?"
Robby almost laughed aloud, but settled for a chuckle. "Holy God, and I thought my career was eventful."
"You volunteered for yours," Jack observed crossly.
"So did you, my friend."
"Think so?" Ryan went back inside for a refill. He returned with the night-vision goggles and switched them on, scanning the surroundings. "I didn't volunteer for having my family guarded by a company of Marines. There's three of them down there, flak jackets, helmets, and rifles—and why? Because there's people in the world who want to kill us. Why? Because—"
"I'll tell you why. Because you're better than they are, Jack. You stand for things, and they're good things. Because you've got balls, and you don't run away from shit. I don't want to hear this, Jack," Robby told his friend. "Don't give me this 'oh, my God' stuff, okay? I know who you are. I'm a fighter pilot because I chose to be one. You're where you are because you chose, too. Nobody ever said it was supposed to be easy, okay?"
"But—"
"But, my ass, Mr. President. There's people out there who don't like you? Okay, fine. You just figure out how to find them, and then you can ask those Marines out there to go take care of business. You know what they'll say. You may be hated by some, but you're respected and loved by a lot more, and I'm telling you now, there's not one person in our country's uniform who isn't willing to dust anybody who fucks with you and your family. It's not just what you are, it's who you are, okay?"
Who am I? SWORDSMAN asked himself. At that moment, one of his weaknesses asserted itself. "Come on." Ryan walked over to the west. He'd just seen a sudden flare of light, and thirty seconds later, at the corner of another cabin, he found a Navy cook smoking a cigarette. President or not, he wasn't going to be overly proud tonight. "Hello."
"Jesus!" the sailor blurted, snapping to attention and dropping his smoke into the grass. "I mean, hello, Mr. President."
"Wrong the first time, right the second time. Got a smoke?" POTUS asked, entirely without shame, Robby Jackson noted.
"You bet, sir." The cook fished one out and lit it.
"Sailor, if the First Lady sees you do that again, she'll have the Marines shoot you," Jackson warned.
"Admiral Jackson!" Those words made the kid brace again.
"I think the Marines work for me. How's dinner coming?"
"Sir, the pizza is being cut right now. Baked it myself, sir. They oughta like it," he promised.
"Settle down. Thanks for the cigarette."
"Anytime, sir." Ryan shook his hand and wandered off with his friend.
"I needed that," Jack admitted, somewhat shamefully, taking a long drag.
"If I had a place like this, I'd use it a lot. Almost like being at sea," Jackson went on. "Sometimes you go outside, stand on one of the galleries off the flight deck, and just sort of enjoy the sea and the stars. The simple pleasures."
"It's hard to turn it off, isn't it? Even when you went communing with the sea and the stars, you didn't turn it off, not really."
"No," the admiral admitted. "It makes thinking a little easier, makes the atmosphere a little less intense, but you're right. It doesn't really go away." And it didn't now, either. "Tony said India's navy's gone missing on us."
"Both carriers at sea, with escorts and oilers. We're looking for them."
"What if there's a connection?" Ryan asked. "With what?"
"The Chinese make trouble in one place, the Indian navy goes to sea again, and this happens to me—am I being paranoid?" SWORDSMAN asked.
"Probably. Could be the Indians put out when they finished their repairs, and maybe to show us that we didn't teach them all that big a lesson. The China thing, well, it's happened before, and it's not going anywhere, especially after Mike Dubro gets there. I know Mike. He'll have fighters up and poking around. The attempt on Katie? Too early to say, and it's not my field. You have Murray and the rest for that. In any case, they failed, didn't they? Your family's in there, watching TV, and it'll be a long time before somebody tries anything else."
IT WAS BECOMING an all-nighter all over the world. In Tel Aviv, where it was now after four in the morning, Avi ben Jakob had called in his top terrorism experts. Together they went over the photos transmitted from Washington and were comparing them with their own surveillance photographs that had been taken over the years in Lebanon and elsewhere. The problem was that many of their photos showed young men with beards— the simplest method of disguise known to man—and the photos were not of high quality. By the same token, the American-transmitted images were not exactly graduation pictures, either.
"Anything useful?" the director of Mossad asked.
Eyes turned to one of the Mossad's experts, a fortyish woman named Sarah Peled. Behind her back, they called her the witch. She had some special gift for ID'ing people from photographs, and was right just over half the time in cases where other trained intelligence officers threw up their hands in frustration.
"This one." She slid two photos across the table. "This is a definite match."
Ben Jakob looked at the two side by side—and saw nothing to confirm her opinion. He'd asked her many times what keyed her in on such things. Sarah always said it was the eyes, and so Avi took another look, comparing the eyes of one with the eyes of the other photo. All he saw were eyes. He turned the Israeli photo over. The printed data on the back said that he was a suspected Hezbollah member, name unknown, age about twenty in their photo, which was dated six years earlier.
"Any others, Sarah?" he asked.
"No, none at all."
"How confident are you on this one?" one of the counterintelligence people asked, looking at the photos himself now and, like Avi, seeing nothing.
"One hundred percent, Benny. I said 'definite, didn't I?" Sarah was often testy, especially with unbelieving men at four in the morning.
"How far do we go on this?" another staff member asked.
"Ryan is a friend of our country, and President of the United States. We go as far as we can. I want inquiries to go out. All contacts, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, everywhere."
"SWINE," BONDARENKO RAN a hand through his hair. His tie was long since gone. His watch told him it was Saturday, but he didn't know what that day was anymore.
"Yes," Golovko agreed. "A black operation—a 'wet' one, you used to call it?" the general asked.
"Wet and incompetent," the RVS chairman said crossly. "But Ivan Emmetovich was lucky, Comrade General. This time."
"Perhaps," Gennady Iosefovich allowed.
"You disagree?"
"The terrorists underestimated their opponents. You will recall that I recently spent time with the American army. Their training is like nothing else in the world, and the training of their presidential guard must be equally as expert. Why is it that people so often underestimate the Americans?" he wondered.
That was a good question, Sergey Nikolay'ch recognized, nodding for the chief of operations to go on. "America often suffers from a lack of political direction. That is
not the same as incompetence. You know what they are like? A vicious dog held on a short leash— and because he cannot break the leash, people delude themselves that they need not fear him, but within the arc of that leash he is invincible, and a leash, Comrade Chairman, is a temporary thing. You know this Ryan fellow."
"I know him well," Golovko agreed.
"And? The stories in their press, are they true?"
"All of them."
"I tell you what I think, Sergey Nikolay'ch. If you regard him as a formidable adversary, and he has that vicious dog on the leash, I would not go far out of my way to offend him. An attack on a child? His child?" The general shook his head.
That was it, Golovko realized. They were both tired, but here was a moment of clarity. He'd spent too much time reading over the political reports from Washington, from his own embassy, and directly from the American media. They all said that Ivan Emmetovich… was that the key? From the beginning he'd called Ryan that, thinking to honor the man with the Russian version of his name and the Russian patronymic. And an honor it was in Golovko's context…
"You are thinking what I am thinking, da?" the general asked, seeing the man's face and gesturing for him to speak.
"Someone has made a calculation…"
"And it is not an accurate one. I think we need to find out who has done so. I think a systematic attack on American interests, an attempt to weaken America, Comrade Chairman, is really an attack against our interests. Why is China doing what she is doing, eh? Why did they force America to change her naval dispositions? And now this? American forces are being stretched, and at the same time a strike at the very heart of the American leader. This is no coincidence. Now we can stand aside and do nothing more than observe, or—"
"There is nothing we can do, and with the revelations in the American press—"
"Comrade Chairman," Bondarenko interrupted. "For seventy years, our country has confused political theory with objective fact, and that was almost our undoing as a nation. There are objective conditions here," he went on, using a phrase beloved of the Soviet military—a reaction, perhaps, to their three generations of political oversight. "I see the patterns of a clever operation, a coordinated operation, but one which has a fatal flaw, and that flaw is a misestimation of the American President. Do you disagree?"
Golovko gave that a few seconds of thought, noting also that Bondarenko might just be seeing something real—but did the Americans? It was so much harder to see something from the inside than the outside. A coordinated operation? Back to Ryan, he told himself.
"No. I made that mistake myself. Ryan appears much less than what he is. The signs are all there, but people don't see them."
"When I was in America, that General Diggs told me the story of the time terrorists attacked Ryan's house. He took up arms and defeated them, courageously and decisively. From what you say, it appears he is also highly effective as an intelligence officer. His only flaw, if one may call it that, is that he is not politically adept, and politicians invariably take that for weakness. Perhaps it is," Bondarenko allowed. "But if this is a hostile operation against America, then his political weaknesses are far less important than his other gifts."
"And?"
"Help the man," the general urged. "Better that we should be on the winning side, and if we do not help, then we might be on the other. Nobody will attack America directly. We are not so fortunate, Comrade Chairman." He was almost right.
44 INCUBATION
RYAN AWOKE AT DAWN, wondering why. The quiet. Almost like his home on the Bay. He strained to listen for traffic or other sounds, but there were none. Moving out of the bed was difficult. Cathy had decided to have Katie in with them, and there she was in her pink sleeper, looking angelic as toddlers did, still babies at that age whatever others might say. He had to smile,
then made his way to the bathroom. Casual clothes had been set out in the dressing room, and he put them on, with a pair of sneaks and a sweater, to head outside. The air was brisk, with traces of frost on the boxwoods, and the sky clear. Not bad. Robby was right. This wasn't a bad place to come to. It put a distance between himself and other things, and he needed that right now. "Morning, sir." It was Captain Overton.
"Not bad duty, is it?"
The young officer nodded. "We do the security. The Navy does the petunias. It's a fair division of labor, Mr. President. Even the Secret Service guys can sleep in here, sir."
Ryan looked around and saw why. There were two armed Marines immediately around the cabin, and three more within fifty yards. And those were just the ones he could see. "Get you anything, Mr. President?"
"Coffee'll do for a start."
"Follow me, sir."
"Attention on deck!" a sailor shouted a few seconds later, when Ryan went into the cook shed—or whatever they called it here.
"As you were," the President told them. "I thought this was the Presidential Retreat, not boot camp." He picked a seat at the table the staff used. Coffee appeared as if by magic. Then more magic happened.
"Good morning, Mr. President."
"Hi, Andrea. When did you get in?"
"Around two, helicopter," she explained.
"Get any sleep?"
"About four hours."
Ryan took a sip. Navy coffee was still Navy coffee. "And?"
"The investigation is under way. The team's put together. Everybody's got a seat at the table." She handed over a folder, which Ryan would get to read before his morning paper. Anne Arundel County and Maryland State Police, Secret Service, FBI, ATF, and all the intelligence agencies were working the case. They were running IDs on the terrorists, but the two whose documents had so far been checked turned out to be non-persons. Their papers were false, probably of European origin. Big surprise. Any competent European criminal, much less a terrorist organization, could procure phony passports. He looked up.
"What about the agents we lost?"
A sigh, a shrug. "They all have families."
"Let's get it set up so that I can meet with them… should it be all at once or one at a time?"
"Your choice, sir," Price told him.
"No, it has to be what's best for them. They're your people, Andrea. You work that out for me, okay? I owe them my daughter's life, and I have to do what's right for them," POTUS said soberly, remembering why he was in this quiet and peaceful place. "And I presume that they will be properly looked after. Get me the details on that, insurance, pensions, and stuff, okay? I want to look that over."
"Yes, sir."
"Do we know anything important yet?"
"No, not really. The terrorists who've been posted, their dental work definitely isn't American, that's it for now."
Ryan flipped through the papers he had. One preliminary conclusion leaped off the page at him: "Eleven years?"
"Yes, sir."
"So this is a major operation for somebody—a country."
"That's a real possibility."
"Who else would have the resources?" he asked, and Price reminded herself that he'd been an intelligence officer for a long time.
Agent Raman came in and took his seat. He'd heard that observation, and he and Price traded a look and a nod.
The wall phone rang. Captain Overton walked over to get it. "Yes?" He listened for a few minutes, then turned. "Mr. President, this is Mrs. Foley at CIA."
The President went to take the call. "Yeah, Mary Pat."
"Sir, we had a call a few minutes ago from Moscow. Our friend Golovko asks if he can be of any assistance. I recommend a 'yes' on that."
"Agreed. Anything else?"
"Avi ben Jakob wants to talk to you later today. Ears-only," the DDO told him.
"About an hour, let me get woke up first."
"Yes, sir…. Jack?"
"Yeah, MP?"
"Thank God about Katie," she said, mother to father, then going on as mother alone: "If we can get a line on this, we will."
"I KNOW YOU'RE our best," Mrs. Foley heard.
; "We're doing okay right now."
"Good. Ed and I will be in all day." She hung up.
"How's he sound?" Clark asked.
"He'll make it, John." Chavez rubbed his hand over the night's growth of beard. The three of them plus quite a few others had spent the night reviewing everything CIA had on terrorist groups. "We have to do something about this, guys. This is an act of war." His voice was devoid of accent now, as it tended to be when he got serious enough to call on his education instead of his L.A. origins.
"We don't know much. Hell," the DDO said, "we don't know anything yet."
"Shame he couldn't have taken one alive." This observation, to the surprise of the two others, came from Clark.
"He probably didn't have much of a chance to snap the cuffs on the guy," Ding replied.
"True." Clark lifted the set of crime-scene photos that had been couriered over from the FBI just after midnight. He'd worked the Middle East, and it had been hoped that he might have recognized a face, but he hadn't. Mainly he'd learned that whichever FBI puke had been inside, the gent could shoot as well as he ever had. Lucky man, to have been there, to have had that chance, and to take it.
"Somebody's taking one hell of a big chance," John said.
"That's a fact," Mary Pat agreed automatically, but then they all wondered about it.
The question was not how big the chance was, but rather how big the chance was perceived to be by whoever had tossed the dice. The nine terrorists had all been throwaways, as surely marked for death as the Hezbol-lah fanatics who'd gone strolling down Israeli streets in clothing made by DuPont—that was the CIA joke about it, though in fact the plastic explosives had probably come from the Skoda Works in the former Czechoslovakia. "Not-so-smart bombs" was the other in-house sobriquet. Had they really believed that they could pull it off? The problem with some of the fanatics was that they didn't weigh things very well… maybe they hadn't even cared.
