Tom Clancy's Op-center Novels 7-12 (9781101644591)
Page 63
FIFTY - The Trans-Kalahari Highway, Botswana Friday, 8:07 P.M.
FIFTY-ONE - Washington, D.C. Friday, 1: 08 P.M.
FIFTY-TWO - Maun, Botswana Friday, 10:09 P.M.
FIFTY-THREE - Washington, D.C. Friday, 3:10 P.M.
FIFTY-FOUR - Maun, Botswana Friday, 10:31 P.M.
FIFTY-FIVE - Washington, D.C. Friday, 3:13 P.M.
FIFTY-SIX - Okavango Swamp, Botswana Friday, 11:19 P.M.
FIFTY-SEVEN - Makgadikgadi Pan, Botswana Friday, 11: 40 P.M.
FIFTY-EIGHT - Washington, D.C. Friday, 4: 41 P.M.
FIFTY-NINE - Makgadikgadi Pan, Botswana Saturday, 12:30 A.M.
SIXTY - Makgadikgadi Pan, Botswana Saturday, 12:45 A.M.
SIXTY-ONE - Washington, D.C. Friday, 6:19 P.M.
SIXTY-TWO - Makgadikgadi Pan, Botswana Saturday, 1:56 A.M.
SIXTY-THREE - Makgadikgadi Pan, Botswana Saturday, 3:19 A.M.
SIXTY-FOUR - Gaborone, Botswana Saturday, 6:09 A.M.
SIXTY-FIVE - Washington, D.C. Saturday, 12:52 A.M.
SIXTY-SIX - Tokyo, Japan Monday, 3:18 P.M.
NOVELS BY TOM CLANCY
The Hunt for Red October
Red Storm Rising
Patriot Games
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
The Sum of All Fears
Without Remorse
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
The Bear and the Dragon
Red Rabbit
The Teeth of the Tiger
SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare
NONFICTION
Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship
Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment
Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing
Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit
Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force
Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier
Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret.)
Every Man a Tiger
(written with General Charles Horner, Ret.)
Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY
Splinter Cell
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND STEVE PIECZENIK
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Games of State
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Acts of War
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Balance of Power
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: State of Siege
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Divide and Conquer
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Line of Control
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mission of Honor
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Sea of Fire
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Call to Treason
Tom Clancy’s Net Force
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Hidden Agendas
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Night Moves
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Breaking Point
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Point of Impact
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: CyberNation
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: State of War
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Changing of the Guard
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Springboard
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND MARTIN GREENBERG
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Politika
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: ruthless.com
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Shadow Watch
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Bio-Strike
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cold War
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cutting Edge
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Zero Hour
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Wild Card
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: MISSION OF HONOR
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Jack Ryan Limited Partnership andS & R Literary, Inc.
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Berkley edition / June 2002
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ONE
Maun, Botswana Monday, 4:53 A.M.
The sun rose swiftly over the flat, seemingly endless plain.
The landmarks had changed in the decades since “Prince” Leon Seronga had first come here. Behind them, the Khwai River was not as deep as it had been. The grasses of the plain were shorter but more plentiful, covering familiar boulders and ravines. But the former army officer had no trouble recognizing the place or reconnecting with the transformations that had started here.
One was his personal growth.
The second was a result of that growth, the birth of a new nation.
And the third? He hoped that his visit today would begin the greatest change yet.
Walking into the new dawn, the six-foot-three Seronga watched as the deep black sky seemed to catch fire. It started at a point and spilled all along the horizon, like liquid flame. Stars that had been so bright just moments before quickly dimmed and faded like the last of fireworks. Within seconds, the sharp, crescent moon dimmed from sickle-edged brilliance to cloudlike. All around him, the sleeping earth became active. The wind began to move. High-flying hawks and tiny kinglets took flight. Fleas started to creep along Leon’s army boots. Field mice dashed through the grasses to the north.
That is power, thought the lean, dreadlocked man.
Simply by waking, by opening a blind eye, the sun caused heaven’s other lights to flee and the earth itself to stir. The retired Democratic
Army soldier wondered if Dhamballa felt a hint of that same prepotency when he woke each morning. It was still too early in his ministry. Yet if a leader is a leader born, he must feel something of that flame, that heat, that strength.
The temperature climbed rapidly as daybreak spread along the plain and into the sky. The red softened to orange, then yellow, and the deep blue of dawn became the soft blue of day. Perspiration began to run down Leon’s sides, down the small of his back, and along his lower legs. It collected on his high cheekbones, under his nose, and along his hairline. Leon welcomed the slick moisture. It kept his flesh from burning under the sun’s merciless glare. It also prevented his jeans and high boots from chafing his thighs and ankles. It was amazing. The body knew how to take care of itself.
While nature unfolded as it always did, with both grandeur and detail, there was also something special about this morning. It was more than what Leon was about to do, though that was extraordinary enough. Without realizing it, he had been waiting over forty years for this moment. There were fifty-two men marching behind the former Botswana army colonel in two tight columns. He had trained them himself in secret, and he was confident of their abilities. They had parked their trucks by the river, over a quarter mile from the distribution compound, so they would not be seen or heard.
But for a brief time, the sights and sensations took the fifty-six-year-old Botswana native back to when he had first witnessed dawn on the majestic floodplain.
It was on a savagely muggy August morning in 1958. Leon was eleven years old, the age of passage for men of the small Batawana tribe. But while Leon was told he was a man, he did not yet feel like one.
He clearly remembered walking between his father and his uncle, both of whom were big and powerful. They were followed by two other village men who were equally strong of back and stamina. In Leon’s mind, they were what a man was supposed to be: tall and upright. He did not yet understand the concepts of confidence and pride, loyalty and love, bravery and patriotism. Those qualities came later, the qualities that made the inner man.
Back then, he found that he had the will and ability to slaughter animals for food, but he did not yet understand that it was a man’s prerogative—and often his responsibility—to kill other men for honor or country.
Leon’s father and his uncle were both seasoned hunters and trackers. Until that morning, Leon had never caught anything more ferocious than hares and field mice. While Leon walked alongside the men, he knew that he did not truly walk among them.
Not yet.
On that morning nearly a half century before, the five men had gathered outside the Serongas’ thatched hut. It was well before sunrise, when only the newborns and chickens were awake. Before leaving, the men ate a breakfast of sliced apples and mint leaves in warm honey, unleavened bread, and fresh goat’s milk. Even though her son was going on his first hunt, Leon’s mother did not see them off. This was a man’s day. A day, as his father had said, for men who were among the oldest hunters in the human race.
That morning, the men were not armed with anything like the Fusil Automatique assault rifle Leon Seronga carried now. They were armed with nine-inch knives tucked in giraffe-skin sheaths, iron-tipped spears, and a coil of rope carried around the left shoulder. That left the right arm unencumbered. Bare-chested, dressed only in sandals and loincloths, the men made their way unhurriedly along the eastern edge of the flat Khwai River floodplain. Eleven miles to the north and thirteen miles to the south were the villages of Calasara and Tamindar. Straight ahead, to the east, was game.
The men walked slowly to conserve their energy. Leon had never been so far from the village. The farthest he had ever gone was the Khwai River, and they had crossed that after an hour. They stayed wide of the grass, which stood nearly as tall as his lanky shoulders. It hid burrowing adders and brush vipers. Both snakes were poisonous and active in the early morning hours. But to this day, Leon still vividly remembered the sound of the grass bending gently in the early morning breeze. It reminded him of the way rain sounded when it slashed through the trees on its way to the village. It was not a sound that came from a single place. It seemed to come from everywhere.
Leon also vividly remembered the faint musky scent that rode the early morning breeze from the southeast. His father Maurice told him that was the smell of sleeping zebras. The men would not be hunting zebras because they had very sensitive ears. They would hear the men coming, and they would panic. Their hoofbeats and braying brought lions.
“And lions bring fleas,” the older man had added quickly. Even then, Leon knew that his father was trying to take some of the scare from what he was about to say.
The elder Seronga told him that as kings of the plain, lions were privileged to sleep late every morning. When the cats woke, when they had yawned and preened, they would hunt zebra or antelope. Those were animals with meat on them, enough food to make a difficult chase worthwhile. Maurice assured Leon that lions ignored men unless they got in their way. Then the great cats would not hesitate to attack.
“For a snack,” Leon’s father had said with a grin. “Something to give to the cubs.”
Leon took the warning very, very seriously. The boy had once dangled a piece of hemp over the head of a small dog. It jumped up and bit Leon instead. The bite had hurt him terribly, burning and stinging at the same time. Even Leon’s toes had tingled with pain. He could not imagine the agony of being dragged down by lions and bitten all over. But he had faith that would not happen. His father or the other men would protect him. That was what adults and leaders did. They protected the smaller members of the family or tribe.
Even the smaller men, like Leon.
On that great and majestic morning, the hunters from Moremi were after giant forest hogs. The brown-and-black bristled herbivores inhabited the intermediate zones between forest and grassland. That was where hog ponds and the reeds they liked could be found. A family of the animals had been spotted the day before by one of the men. The pigs moved in small groups and tended to become active not long after dawn, before predators were up and about. Leon’s father had told him that it was important to catch the hogs when they were just beginning to forage. They knew the lions were not awake yet. That was when their attention was primarily on food and not on potential predators.
The men were successful that morning. They killed a fat old hog that had wandered from the group. Or maybe the group had wandered from the hog. Perhaps they had left it out there as sacrificial prey. The knee-high pig was speared by Leon’s uncle, who had crept close from behind and then launched himself at the beast. Leon could still hear the animal’s squeals of pain and confusion. He could still see that initial jet of blood from behind the pig’s shoulder. It was the most exciting thing he had ever experienced.
Leon’s father had rushed forward. The dying animal was flipped onto its side before the other hogs were even aware that anything had happened. The beasts did not scatter until Maurice had already knelt on the beast’s shoulder, pinning it, and slashed its throat. The animal was quickly noosed with one of the ropes. That would prevent it from bleeding and attracting carrion feeders like silverbacked jackals. The blood would also keep the meat moist as they transported the heavy carcass under the searing sun.
While Maurice and his brother stanched the bleeding, the young boy and the other men found two long branches. These were quickly stripped with the knives and used as carrying poles. Before the pig was trussed, Maurice paused to slip a bloody finger between his son’s lips. Then he bent very close to his son. He wanted the boy to see the conviction in his eyes.
“Remember this moment, my son,” the elder man said softly. “Remember this taste. Our people cannot survive without shedding blood. We cannot exist without risk.”
Less than four hours after the men had set out, the animal had been slung loosely between the poles and was being carried home on the shoulders of the men. Leon walked to the side. His job was to hold the end of the noose and keep it tight. Leon
was never so proud as when they walked into the village with his kill on the end of a leash.
The hog was a good-sized animal that fed the village for two days. After the meat was finished, its bones already carved into trinkets for sale to occasional tourists, another group of men went out to hunt. Leon was sorry not to be going with them. He was already thinking of tackling a zebra or gazelle and maybe even a lion. Leon even told his mother of his dream to kill a great cat. That was when he got his nickname. Bertrice Seronga told her son that only a prince could get close enough to kill a king.
“Are you a prince?” she asked.
Leon said that maybe he was. The woman smiled and began calling him Prince Leon.
Leon went on nearly 300 hunts during the next five years. By the time he was thirteen years old, Prince Leon was already leading his own parties. Since a son could not command his father, Maurice proudly withdrew from those hunts so that his son could learn about leadership. During that time, most of the kills were also his, though Leon never did slay a lion. But that was not his fault, he decided. It was the lions’ doing. The king of beasts was much too smart to come within range of his spear.
Seronga wondered, then, if the lion is so powerful and so clever, who could kill it? The answer, of course, was death. Death killed the lion just as death must kill the most powerful of men. Leon wondered, though, if the lion was strong enough to hold death back. He had once watched a lioness die after making a rare solo kill of an antelope. He wondered if the lioness had expended herself in the chase. Or, knowing that she was soon to die, had she held off death long enough to enjoy this one, last chase.