by Tom Clancy
Thursday, 1:40 P.M., Washington, D.C.
When he was a kid growing up in Houston, Darrell McCaskey carved his own Smith & Wesson automatic made out of balsa wood and kept it tucked in his belt at all times, the way he'd read the real FBI agents did. He screwed an eye-hook to the front of the weapon and attached a rubber band to the "gun sight." When the rubber band was hooked to the hammer and released, he could fire small cardboard squares like bullets. McCaskey kept the squares in his shirt pocket where they were accessible and safe.
Darrell wore the gun starting in sixth grade. He kept it hidden under his button-down shirt. It gave him a John Wayne-rigid walk that the other kids teased him about, but Darrell didn't care. They didn't understand that keeping the law was everyone's responsibility as well as a full-time job.
And he was a short kid. With hippies and yippies popping up and demonstrations and sit-ins happening everywhere, he felt better with a beltful of protection.
McCaskey shot the first teacher who tried to take the gun from him. After writing an essay in which he carefully researched the Constitution and the right to bear arms, he was permitted to keep the weapon. Provided he didn't use it other than for self-defense against radicals.
As a rookie FBI agent, McCaskey loved stakeouts and investigations. He loved it even more when he was an Assistant Special Agent in Charge and had more autonomy.
When he became a Special Agent in Charge and then a Supervisory Special Agent, he was frustrated because there were fewer opportunities to spend time in the street.
When McCaskey was offered the position of Unit Chief in Dallas, he took the promotion largely because of his wife and three kids. The pay was better and the job was safer and his family got to see him more. But as he sat behind a desk coordinating the actions of others, he realized just how much he missed stakeouts and investigations. Within two years, joint activity with Mexican authorities gave him the idea to form official alliances with foreign police forces. The FBI Director approved his plan to draft and spearhead FIAT— the Federal International Alliance Treaty. Quickly approved by Congress and eleven foreign governments, FIAT enabled McCaskey to work on cases in Mexico City, London, Tel Aviv, and other world capitals. He moved his family to Washington, quickly rose to Deputy Assistant Director, and was the only man Paul Hood asked to become Op-Center's interagency liaison. McCaskey had been promised and given relative autonomy, and got to work closely with the CIA, the Secret Service, his old friends at the FBI, and more foreign intelligence and police groups than before.
But he was still deskbound. And thanks to fiber optics and computers, he didn't leave his office the way he did when he was revving up FIAT. Because of diskettes and Email, he didn't even have to walk over to the Xerox machine or even lean over to the out box. He wished he could have lived in the time of his childhood heroes, G-man Melvin Purvis and Treasury Man Eliot Ness. He could almost taste the exhilaration of chasing Machine Gun Kelly through the Midwest, or Al Capone's thugs up rickety stairways and across dark rooftops in Chicago.
He frowned as he pushed buttons on his phone.
Instead, I'm entering a three-digit code to call the NRO. He knew there was no shame in that, though he didn't see himself inspiring kids to make their own balsa-wood telephones.
He was put right through to Stephen Viens. The NRO had been downloading satellite views of the Demain plant in Toulouse, but they weren't enough. Mike Rodgers had told him that if Ballon and his people had to go in, he didn't want them going in blind. And despite what Rodgers had told Ballon, none of Matt Stoll's technical team knew to what degree the T-Rays would be able to penetrate the facility, or how much it would tell them about the layout or distribution of forces.
Viens had been using the NRO's Earth Audio Receiver Satellite to eavesdrop on the Demain site. The satellite used a laser beam to read the walls of a building the way a compact disc player read a CD. However, instead of data pits in the surface of a disc, the EARS read vibrations in the walls of buildings. Clarity depended upon the composition and thickness of the walls. With favorable materials such as metals, which vibrated with greater fidelity and resonance than porous brick, computer enhancement could recreate conversations which were taking place within the buildings.
These triple paned windows were no good: they didn't vibrate sufficiently to be read.
"The structure is red brick," Viens said thickly.
McCaskey's head dropped.
"I was just about to call and tell you, but I wanted to make sure we couldn't get anything," Viens continued.
"There are newer materials inside, probably Sheet rock and aluminum, but the brick is soaking up whatever's coming off them." "What about cars?" McCaskey asked.
"We don't have a clear enough shot at them," said Viens. "Too many trees, hills, and overpasses." "So we're screwed." "Basically," said Viens.
McCaskey felt as if he were in command of the world's most sophisticated battleship in dry dock. He and Rodgers and Herbert had always bemoaned the lack of on-site human intelligence, and this was a perfect example of why it was needed. "Billions for modern hardware but none for Mata Hari," as Herbert had once put it.
McCaskey thanked Viens and hung up. How he yearned to be a man in the field on this one, to be the intelligence linchpin of a major operation with everything depending on him. He envied Matt Stoll, in whose hands the intelligence gathering rested. It was too bad that Stoll probably didn't want the job. The computer jockey was a genius but he didn't function well under pressure.
McCaskey went back to his computer, sent the photographs right to memory, then booted the Pentagon SITSIM, situation simulation, for an ELTS: European Landmark Tactical Strike. The residual political fallout of destroying national treasures was extremely high. So it was the policy of the United States military not to damage historical structures, even if it meant taking casualties. In the case of the Demain factory, acceptable "injury" as they called it— as though the structures were living things— would be "single-round defacement of stone or discoloration capable of complete restoration." In other words, if you stitched a wall with bullets you were in deep trouble. And if you stained it with blood, you'd better be packing a bucket and mop.
Dipping into the French architectural database, he brought up a layout of the fortress they had to enter. The diagram was useless: it showed the way the place had looked in 1777 when the adjacent Vieux Pont bridge was constructed. Dominique had made some changes since then.
If he had obtained permits, none of them were filed anywhere. If he had submitted blueprints, none of those were on hand either. It had been easier getting plans of the Hermitage out of St. Petersburg for the Striker incursion.
This Dominique had obviously been greasing a lot of palms over many, many years.
McCaskey returned to the NRO photographs, which still showed him nothing. He envied Stoll, but he had to admit that the man would have something to be nervous about.
Even with Ballon's help, they would be seriously outgunned if the situation degenerated to that. They would also be too restrained. The file on the New Jacobins was skimpy, but the information it contained had chilled him, details of methods they used to ambush or kill victims and tortures they devised to intimidate or extract information. He would have to forward that data to Hood if they went in. And he would point out that even Melvin Purvis and Eliot Ness would have thought this one over before going in.
There's no time to get Striker into position, McCaskey thought, and the only tactician we have close to the site, Bob Herbert, is incommunicado.
He punched in Mike Rodgers's number to tell him the bad news about the fortress… and to try to figure out if there were anything they could do to keep their bold but inexperienced field force from being butchered.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Thursday, 8:17 P.M., Wunstorf, Germany
Bob Herbert had gone through two emotional phases during his rehabilitation.
The first was that his injury wasn't going to beat him.
He was going to shock the experts and walk again. The second— which he entered when he got out of the hospital and his therapy became full-time— was that he was never going to be able to do a damn thing.
When he started working on strengthening his arms, his lower back, and his abdomen, they hurt like the Devil's own pitchfork digging into his sinew. He wanted to give up, let the government pay him disability, and watch TV and not move from his house. But a pair of saintly nurses alternately prodded and pushed him through rehabilitation. One of them, in a less saintly moment, showed him that he could still have a gratifying sex life. And after that, Herbert never wanted to give up on anything again.
Until now.
Because he didn't want anyone in the camp to know he was coming, he wasn't able to use the small, powerful headlights Op-Center's Chief Electrician Einar Kinlock had built into his wheelchair. The ground was uneven and rough.
Sometimes it sloped sharply, other times it ended in sheer drops. In the dark, the chair was constantly getting caught in the undergrowth. Herbert had to push hard to escape, and twice he ended up on the ground. Righting the chair and climbing back in were the toughest things he'd ever had to do, and getting up the second time left him drained. As he settled into the leather seat, his shirt was wet with cold perspiration and he was so tired he was shaking.
He wanted to stop and call for help. But he reminded himself that he couldn't be sure of anyone. That fear was more like the old Nazi Germany than anything he had encountered.
He continually checked the phosphorescent pocket compass he carried. But after more than an hour of pushing himself, he saw headlights about an eighth of a mile to the southwest. He stopped and watched carefully where the vehicle went. It was moving slowly along the rough road Alberto had told him about, and he waited as it passed.
Though the brake lights were dim, he saw them flash in the distance. The interior lights went on, dark figures moved away from him, and then there was blackness again, and silence.
Obviously, that was where he needed to be.
Herbert moved over the lumpy ground toward the car.
He avoided the road in case anyone else was coming, his arms nearly numb with the effort of crossing this last stretch of woods. He only hoped that Jody didn't take him for a neo- Nazi and drop from a tree.
Upon reaching the car, a limousine, he edged forward.
The Skorpion was still in his lap, so he tucked it under his leg where it wouldn't be seen. He could still grab it quickly if he had to. As he neared, he saw the tops of tents with smoke from campfires rising beyond them. He saw young men standing between the tents, looking toward the fires.
And then he saw at least two or three hundred people facing a clear spot by the lake, a spot where a man and a woman stood alone.
The man was speaking. Herbert wheeled himself behind a tree and listened, able to understand most of the German.
"…that this day ends an era of struggling at cross purposes. From tonight forward, our two groups will work together, united by a common goal and a single name: Das National Feuer." The man shouted the name not just for effect but to be heard. Herbert felt his strength return as well as his anger rise as the crowd cheered. They whooped and raised both arms high as if their team had just won the World Cup.
Herbert wasn't surprised that these people eschewed the Nazi salute and cries of Sieg Heil! Though they surely wished for salvation and victory, and though they had ruffians and killers among them, they were not the Nazis of Adolf Hitler.
They were far more dangerous: they had the advantage of having learned from his mistakes. However, almost everyone was holding something aloft, either a dagger or a medal or even a pair of boots. They were probably the artifacts stolen from the movie trailer. So Hitler wasn't entirely unrepresented in this new Nuremberg rally.
Herbert turned from the fires so his eyes would again adjust to the darkness, and peered around for Jody.
When the cheering died, he heard a voice whisper behind him, "I waited for you." Herbert turned and saw Jody. She looked nervous.
"You should've waited for me back there," Herbert whispered, pointing the way he'd come. "I could've used some help." He took her hand. "Jody, let's go back. Please.
This is insane." She gently tugged her hand away. "I'm scared, but now more than ever I have to fight it." "You're scared," Herbert whispered, "and you're also obsessing. You're fixated on a goal which has taken on a life of its own. Believe me, Jody, going over to them isn't as big as you're making it." Herbert's voice was drowned out as the speaker continued. Herbert wished he didn't have to hear him, his voice carrying clearly, forcefully, without a megaphone.
Herbert tugged at Jody. She refused to budge.
The German said, "The woman beside me, my coleader Karin Doring…" Applause rolled from the mob spontaneously, and the man waited. The woman bowed her head but didn't speak.
"Karin has sent emissaries to Hanover," the man shouted as the applause quieted. "In just a few minutes we will all go to the city, to the Beer-Hall, to announce our new union to the world. We will invite our brothers there to join the movement and together we will show civilization its future. A future where sweat and industry will be rewarded…" There was more applause and cheering.
"…where perverse cultures and faiths and peoples will be segregated from the heart's blood of society…" The applause and cheering built. It remained strong.
"…where spotlights will play across our symbols, our accomplishments." The applause grew to a torrent and Herbert used the cover of the din to yell at Jody.
"Come on," he said, pulling at her hand again. "These people will fall on you like dingoes." Jody looked out at them. Herbert couldn't make out her expression in the dark. He had the urge to shoot her in the foot, throw her across his lap, and start wheeling back.
The speaker yelled, "And if the authorities in Hanover turn on us, let them! Let them! For over a year I have been personally harassed by Hauptmann Rosenlocher of the Hamburg police. If I drive too quickly he is there. If I play music too loudly he is there. If I meet with my colleagues, he is there. But he will not beat me. Let them target us individually or together! They'll see that our movement is organized, that our will is strong." Jody stared out at the rally. "I don't want to die. But I don't want to live pathetically." "Jody, you won't—" She wrenched her hand from Herbert. He didn't try to get it back. He wheeled after her, cursing the stubbornness which had stopped him from getting a goddamned motor.
Then he cursed this kid who he understood and had to respect even though she didn't listen to reason. Any more than he did.
As the applause died, Jody's footsteps seemed quite loud to Herbert. Also, apparently, to the sentry nearest them, who turned. He saw them in the light of the files and shouted to the young men and women who were standing nearest to him. A moment later the sentry was moving forward and the others were forming a line behind him with the clear intention of letting Jody and Herbert nowhere near the front of the crowd or Karin Doring or Jody's goal.
Herbert stopped. Jody did not. With a snort of disgust, Herbert wheeled after her.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Thursday, 8:36 P.M., Southwest of Vichy, France
"There was never any question that I would know how to fly." Paul Hood stood behind Richard Hausen as he piloted the Learjet through the skies over France. He was speaking, loudly to be heard over the two powerful turbofan engines.
Lang's full-time pilot, Elisabeth Stroh, sat beside him. She was a handsome young brunette about twenty-seven, whose French and English were impeccable. Lang's instructions to her had been to fly in with them, wait with the jet, and fly out with them again. Her conversation had been limited to communication with the tower in Hamburg and now in Toulouse, and remarks to the passengers about their flight plan. If she was interested in what Hausen was saying, she didn't show it.
Hood had been sitting in the cabin with Stoll and Nancy. After nearly ninety minutes in the air, he n
eeded to get away from them both: Stop because he hadn't stopped talking, and Nancy because she didn't want to start.
Seated in one of the plush sofas which lined the walls of the cabin, Stoll had been saying that he never thought of himself as a team player. He went to work for Op-Center, because he was a loner, because they needed a self-starter who liked to sit at a desk and write software and troubleshoot hardware. He pointed out that he wasn't a Striker and was not obligated to go into the field. He was doing this out of respect for Hood, not courage. The rest of the time he spent complaining about possible glitches in the T-Ray. He said he wasn't offering any guarantees. Hood told him he understood.
Nancy, on the other hand, sat looking out the window for most of the time. Hood asked what she was thinking about, but she wouldn't say. He could guess, of course. He wished that he could comfort her.
Nancy did offer some information about the layout of the Demain facility. Stoll dutifully morphed her descriptions with the floor plan. It had been sent from Op-Center via a remote-access software package designed by Stoll. Thanks to the Ultrapipeline capacity of the NRO's Hermit satellite, mainframes at Op-Center were able to communicate wirelessly with computers in the field. Stoll's patented software boosted the data transfer capacity of the Hermitlink from two- to five-kilobyte blocks using elements of Zmodem file transfer protocol and spread-spectrum. radio transmission in the 2.4- to-2.483-gigahertz range.
Not that the link helped. There wasn't much Nancy could tell them. She knew the setup of the manufacturing and programing areas, but knew nothing of the executive suites or of Dominique's private quarters.
Hood left Nancy with her thoughts and Stoll in the relative comfort of a multiuser Dungeon computer game which he used to relax. Venturing into the cockpit, Hood listened while the eager, almost buoyant Hausen told him about his youth.
Hausen's father Maximillian had been a pilot with the Luftwaffe. He'd specialized in night fighting, and had flown the first operational sortie of the Heinkel He 219 when it shot down five Lancasters. Like many Germans, Hausen did not speak apologetically of his father's wartime exploits.
