by Tom Clancy
“Loud and clear,” replied Bird.
With a hum, the ramp’s hydraulics engaged. The ramp parted from the fuselage’s curved upper rim, revealing a crescent of black sky. Sea spray burst through the opening and misted Fisher’s face. The rain sounded like shrapnel striking the Osprey’s aluminum skin.
“Hold ramp,” Fisher ordered. The ramp stopped. “Lovely evening out there.”
“I love your sunny disposition,” Bird said.
“Everyone does.”
“One mile out. Coming to hover.” The Osprey’s engines changed pitch, and Fisher felt their forward momentum begin to slow, then stop altogether. “Hovering. Stand by… Couplers engaged.”
Sandy said, “We’re at thirty feet, Sam. Sorry. Any lower, and we might net some water.”
“No problem.”
Fisher knelt behind the sled. From the left calf pouch on his dry suit, he pulled a D-ring knotted to some blaze-orange 4mm parachute cord. In his pouch was another 100 feet of it. The sled was buoyant, and in these seas, Fisher wanted to be able to reel it to him — or vice versa — should they get separated during the drop.
“Ready,” Fisher called. “On my mark.”
“Roger,” Bird replied. “We’ll be nearby. Call when you’re done playing.”
“Will do. Give me full ramp.”
The ramp groaned downward until it locked fully open with a dull clunk. Rain whipped through the opening. Fisher could see the sea below heaving and breaking, the wave crests serrated edges of white water.
He popped the sled’s release toggle, watched it slide into the darkness, then counted five seconds and followed after it.
25
Fisher pushed the throttle bar downward. The bow planes responded, tilting forward and driving the sled deeper. The sled’s twin headlights arced through the darkness, illuminating drifting plankton and the occasional curious fish.
When his depth gauge read thirty feet, he evened out, then checked his compass: on course. Above his head the surface of the ocean boiled, a ceiling of undulating white water, but here, a mere ten yards below the surface, the water was calm, with only a slight east-to-west current. Fisher could feel the press of the water against his dry suit, a bone-chilling cold that would have killed him long ago if not for the protective layers.
He saw something — a hazy vertical shape — appear in the headlights, then fade away. Seconds later it reappeared and slowly took shape until Fisher could make it out: one of the platform’s pilings.
Each of the platform’s four main pilings, as big around as a tanker truck, were connected by a series of smaller, horizontal cross-pilings, and diagonal I-beam steel girders. Descending vertically between this maze of steel all the way to the ocean floor would be the platform’s producing wells, which could number as many as twenty. This platform, long ago decommissioned, would have withdrawn its well pipes and drilling sleeves, leaving only the remnants dangling from the underside of the platform like a massive wind chime.
Fisher kept the sled steady until the rest of the support structure came into view. He curved around the piling, then turned parallel to the cross-piling until his headlights illuminated the next piling. This one, though identical to the first, was on the platform’s west side, which put it in the lee of the current. He pushed the throttle bar up and ascended alongside the piling until the headlights illuminated a vertical steel ladder. This was the lower access ladder, used by divers to inspect the platform’s submerged structures. He reached out and gave the lowermost rung a firm tug; it held.
He unhooked his face mask’s hose from the sled’s tanks and hooked into his chest rebreather, then lifted a thumb-size plastic cover on the dash and pressed a red button. On either side of the sled’s nose cone, the buoyancy chambers opened. Seconds later the sled tipped over nose first and slid into the depths.
Fisher grabbed the ladder and started climbing.
The ladder rose thirty feet, the last ten out of the water, and ended at a square catwalk bordered by safety rails. Another ladder, this one enclosed by a cage, continued up the piling to another catwalk, encircling the piling. He paused here to strip off his dry suit and toss it over the side, then followed the catwalk to the back side of the piling where he found a set of grated steps that continued up the piling, switchbacking until it ended at a door-size horizontal hatch.
He climbed to the second to last step and tried the lever. It swiveled to the open position with a dull thunk. Fisher switched his goggles to NV, drew his pistol, put his back against the hatch, tightened his legs, then stood up a few inches. The hatch squeaked open. The room beyond was a changing area; tiled floors, shower cubicles, and lockers on one side, sinks and toilet stalls on the other. Fisher stood up, careful to keep his right arm on the hatch’s edge so it didn’t bang open. He climbed the last step into the room, then closed the hatch behind him.
At the far end of the room was a door with a porthole window set at chin height. To his left, a line of four porthole windows; he walked to one of them and looked out over the platform’s open deck.
Like most exploration and drilling platforms, this one was built around the drilling and well head equipment, all of which descended through a square, hundred-foot-by-hundred-foot opening in the center of the platform. On either side of this opening were stacked three levels of work shacks joined together by enclosed walkways. Rising from each shack at opposite ends from one another were rotatable cranes. On the far north side of the platform was a raised helicopter pad encircled by a railing. Sitting on the pad was a helicopter. Fisher tried to make out the model, but the horizontal rain made it impossible.
Fisher called up his OPSAT blueprint of the platform and oriented himself on it. This changing room was on the lowermost level of the western-side shack. He checked for Stewart’s beacon; it was still active, somewhere above him and to the east.
He walked to the door and peeked through the window. Beyond was a short, unlit hallway that ended at a stairwell. Out of habit, he scanned the hall in both IR and EM and saw nothing unusual. He opened the door and climbed the stairs to the next level. This floor was mostly open, with a solid wall to his left and a half wall to his right through which he could see hanging drilling pipes and cables. He walked to the wall and looked down. Eighty feet below, the sea churned around the pilings. He continued to the third and top level, which was similar to the one below, save one feature. At the far end he found an enclosed walkway to the eastern-side shacks.
He started across the walkway. As he neared the opposite end, he stopped, listened. Nothing. He was about to keep going, when the sound came again, more distinct this time. Voices. He crept to the end of the walkway, pressed himself flat against the wall, and peered around the corner.
The space he was seeing was only half as long — about thirty feet — and the layout was that of a makeshift laboratory, with a rectangular, laminate-topped worktable running down each wall and three tables spaced perpendicularly down the center. Fluorescent shop lights hung from the ceiling at ten-foot intervals, casting the space in cold gray light.
Beyond the tables Fisher could see what looked like a mobile hyperbaric chamber running lengthwise to the opposite wall; sitting before the chamber on a table was a device. It was approximately ten feet long and comprised of parallel conduits of various diameters, from a quarter inch to four inches, and intertwined electrical cables, all of which came together in a steel ring that seemed to have been welded into the chamber’s door just below the porthole window through which Fisher could see dim light. He’d seen pictures of a similar device. It was a crude LINAC, a linear particle accelerator.
Three men were sitting in chairs before the LINAC having an animated discussion. A fourth man in a thigh-length black leather coat stood behind the group, arms folded across his chest. Fisher zoomed in. It was Chin-Hwa Pak.
Stewart was sitting in the middle chair, flanked on both sides by Koreans. The man to Stewart’s left was holding a clipboard, which he was tapping with
a pen and waving in front of Stewart, who pushed it away.
Behind him, Pak pulled out a pistol and put it to Stewart’s head. He leaned over and whispered something in Stewart’s ear.
Stewart reluctantly took the clipboard and started leafing through pages.
Fisher took pictures, getting all the men’s faces, the LINAC, and the hyperbaric chamber. He scanned the room for a place to plant a Sticky Ear, but it was too confined. Pak would hear the placement.
Stewart had stopped leafing through the clipboard’s pages and seemed to be studying something intently. He gestured to one of the men, who pulled a calculator from a briefcase on the floor and handed it over. Stewart started punching numbers, writing notations, and leafing back and forth through the pages.
He handed the clipboard back to the first man and tapped something on the page with his pen, then started gesturing to various parts of the LINAC. The men listened closely until Stewart finished, then began talking to one another across him.
A fourth Korean entered the room through the door beside the chamber. He whispered something to Pak, then handed him what looked like a thin remote control. Pak nodded and pocketed the device.
Suddenly, behind Fisher in the walkway, he heard a creaking. He spun around, gun coming up. A Korean was standing in the walkway. Obviously startled and uncertain, the man squinted, trying to make out the figure half hidden in the shadows. The man’s hand shot into his coat and came out with a pistol. Fisher fired. The man stumbled backward, the hand holding the gun still coming up. The barrel flashed, and the shot boomed through the walkway.
Fisher spun again, bringing the pistol around. Pak and his partner were already moving — the latter drawing a pistol and taking aim on Fisher while Pak barked orders at the two other Koreans as he shoved them toward the door. Shots peppered the wall behind Fisher. He crab-walked left, squeezing off a trio of shots as he moved. Pak, having gotten the two other Koreans out the door, turned back to Stewart, who was trying to rise to his knees. Pak drew a pistol from his pocket and leveled it at Stewart’s head. Stewart let out a scream that Fisher could only describe as half-angry, half-desperate, then launched himself at Pak. The other Korean, distracted by the scream, turned toward them. Fisher rose up, took aim, and drilled a shot into the side of the man’s head.
Pak, startled by Stewart’s move, backpedaled toward the door. His gun roared once, then again. Stewart stumbled, but kept coming. He wrapped Pak in a bear hug, and together they tumbled through the door.
Fisher holstered the pistol, drew the SC-20 from his back sling, and sprinted down the space, dodging and leaping tables until he reached the downed Korean. He checked the man; he was dead. On flat feet, Fisher slowly crept to the door and peeked his head around the corner. Pak was gone, but lying headfirst halfway down the steps was Stewart. Fisher rushed to him, knelt down.
He was still alive, but just barely. Fisher unzipped his jacket, ripped open his shirt. One bullet had entered just above his navel; the other in the center of the sternum, just below the breastbone.
“It’s a LINAC,” Stewart rasped, reaching for Fisher’s hand and pulling him closer. “They’re using it… using it…” Stewart coughed. He opened his mouth to speak again, but it was full of bubbling blood.
“I’m sorry, Calvin.”
Stewart gave the barest shake of his head, then he went still.
From somewhere below, Fisher heard a muffled crump, then another, then a third. A vibrating rumble rose through the stairs and shook the walls, followed seconds later by the shriek of tortured steel.
The remote, Fisher thought. Getting rid of the evidence.
Fisher gave Stewart’s hand a final squeeze, then laid it across his chest and started down the stairs. He stopped. Turned back. One last thing…
He rushed back up the stairs into the laboratory. He took close-up pictures of the LINAC and the welded ring connector on the chamber’s door, then pressed his face to the porthole window. The angle was tight and the single bulb inside the chamber dim, but he took three quick shots of the interior connectors, hoping to catch enough detail.
Below his feet the deck was canting to the left. Somewhere he could hear the rapid-fire pop pop pop of rivets giving way and the wrenching of steel on steel.
He was about to turn away from the chamber when something caught his eye. He pressed his face back to the porthole. It took him a full ten seconds to register what he was seeing. Up and down both of the chamber’s walls were crisscrossing streaks of blood, and here and there, also stamped in blood, partial palm prints.
Fisher felt his stomach rise into his throat.
Peter’s fingertips had been shredded nearly to the bone.
This is it. This is where it had happened. Where they killed him.
The deck was slanting badly now. Behind him, chairs and desks were skittering across the floor and crashing into the wall. Still staring into the chamber, Fisher grabbed the wheel to steady himself. Somewhere in the back of his head a faint voice prodded him: Get out… get out!
He tore his eyes from the porthole and headed for the door.
26
GERMANTOWN, MARYLAND
After a night of observation and restless sleep in Bethesda, Fisher drove himself home, a 1940s farmhouse surrounded by two acres of red maple and pine about thirty minutes northwest of Washington. At Fisher Farms, as Grimsdottir called it, his closest neighbor wasn’t within a stone’s throw, and the road he lived on simply wound deeper into the Germantown countryside, so the only traffic he saw was that of neighbors or the occasional wanderer. There was no hum of car engines, no honking of horns — few noises, in fact, save those produced by nature: the chirping of chickadees, the croaking of frogs, the wind fluttering through the maples.
He’d bought the property on the cheap from the former owner, who had moved out of state years earlier and let it fall into disrepair. Fisher’s home improvement list never seemed to shorten, but that didn’t bother him. He found the “unextraordinariness” of retiling a bathroom or fixing a broken shutter therapeutic — the perfect antidote to a job that was anything but workaday.
Fisher climbed out of the car and mounted the front porch steps. Sitting at the foot of the front door was a round hatbox brimming with envelopes. On the way home he’d called Mrs. Stinson, the retired librarian who lived half a mile down the road. Taped to the side of the box was a note:
Welcome back. An apple pie on the back porch for you.
Edna
Fisher smiled. No place like home.
* * *
He took a shower, made some coffee and a plate of ham and eggs, then stretched out on the couch under the bay window and read for a while—The White Rhino Hotel by Bartle Bull — then dozed fitfully for an hour, so he got up, changed clothes, and went outside to weed the garden. He gave up after ten minutes. He took off his gloves and walked to the middle of the lawn and sat down cross-legged in the sun.
His mind wouldn’t turn off and kept returning to the platform, to Calvin Stewart, to the claw marks on the chamber wall, the bloody, shredded fingernails…
He should have never promised Stewart he would get him out. He knew better. There were few sure things, and even fewer in his line of work. What bothered him most is he couldn’t decide whether he’d made the promise to secure Stewart’s cooperation or because he’d truly meant it. To survive and thrive in special operations you had to have a mission mind-set: whatever it took to do the job. It wasn’t a matter of setting aside your morals, per se, but a level of dedication, a silent oath to get the job done, regardless of hurdle or hardship.
Had he subconsciously been following this oath when he made the promise to Stewart? Before he’d dropped aboard the Gosselin, he’d known Stewart had a wife and a seven-year-old daughter. Now they didn’t have him. Had Stewart died still believing Fisher was going to save him?
Peter. Fisher tried to imagine what it must have been like for his brother, trapped inside that chamber, that iron coffin, listeni
ng to the accelerator’s motors spool up, and then… what? What had he felt? Had he—?
Stop, Sam. Just stop.
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them and stared at the sky, seeing but not seeing the clouds.
This was another hazard of the job. Some operators never let themselves think like this; they simply wiped their mental slate clean after a mission and moved on. Others, like Fisher, did just that but only after a mission. Shove your worries, fears, and emotional speed bumps into a mental vault, lock it shut, then reopen it later when you’re safe at home. Opinions varied about which method was the healthiest, but for Fisher there’d never been any doubt. There’s only so much stuff you can shove in the vault before it starts leaking. Better to keep it swept out.
No, he decided, he hadn’t lied to Stewart. He’d meant what he’d said, and he’d tried to get him out. He’d failed. Period. It was a promise he shouldn’t have made, but he had, and it was done. His intentions had been good; his follow-through, not so much.
And as for Peter… Come what may, scores would be settled. Anyone and everyone who’d been a party to Peter’s death would pay in full.
Fisher’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He flipped it open. It was Grimsdottir: “So, what’s your preference? Morton’s or Outback?”
“You’ve lost me, Grim.”
“For your steak. Never mind, just turn on your TV and call me back.”
Fisher walked back inside and flipped on the kitchen set; it was already tuned to MSNBC.
“… again, stunning news out of war-torn Kyrgyzstan…” The inset image beside the anchorwoman changed to show a podium, the same one the Kyrgyz president had stood behind while resigning two days ago. Standing behind it now was Bolot Omurbai. “Let’s listen,” the anchor said.
“… the grace of Allah and the will of the Kyrgyz people, I have returned to lead our country back to the ways of Islam — the ancient ways of Manas, before all was poisoned by the West, by technology, by modern soullessness.” Omurbai’s eyes seemed to glaze over as he spoke, his gaze fixed straight ahead as though he were in his own world. “Turn your eyes to Kyrgyzstan and behold our greatness. Watch the scourge of Manas return the lost Kyrgyz race back to greatness!”
