Clear and Present Danger (1989)

by Tom - Jack Ryan 02 Clancy

  There was a knock at the door, and another young agent came in. "Dallas-Fort Worth," he said handing over a fax sheet. "The signatures match. He came in there and took a late flight to New York-La Guardia, got in after midnight local time on Friday. Probably caught the Shuttle down to D.C. to meet Moira. They're still checking."

  "Beautiful," Murray said. "He's got all the moves. Where'd he come in from?"

  "Still checking, sir. He got the New York ticket at the counter. We're talking with Immigration to see when he passed through customs control."

  "Okay, next?"

  "We have prints on him now. We have what looks like a left forefinger on the note paper he left Mrs. Wolfe, and we've matched that with the credit receipt from the airline counter at Dulles. It was tough, but the lab guys used their lasers to bring 'em out. We sent a team to The Hideaway, but nothing yet. The cleanup crew there is pretty good--too damned good for our purposes, but our guys are still working on it."

  "Everything but a picture on the bastard. Everything but a picture," Murray repeated. "What about after Atlanta?"

  "Oh, thought I said that. He caught a flight to Panama after a short layover."

  "Where's the AmEx card addressed to?"

  "It's in Caracas, probably just a letterdrop. They all are."

  "How come Immigration doesn't--oh." Murray grimaced. "Of course his passport is under a different name or he has a collection of them to go with his cards."

  "We're dealing with a real pro. We're lucky to have gotten this much so fast."

  "What's new in Colombia?" he asked the next agent.

  "Not much. The lab work is going nicely, but we're not developing anything we didn't already know. The Colombians now have names on about half of the subjects--the prisoner says he didn't know all of them, and that's probably the truth. They've launched a major operation to try an' find 'em, but Morales isn't real hopeful. They're all names of people the Colombian government's been after for quite a while. All M-19 types. It was a contract job, just as we thought."

  Murray checked his watch. Today was the funeral for the two agents on Emil's protection detail. It would be held at the National Cathedral, and the President would be speaking there, too. His phone rang.

  "Murray."

  "This is Mark Bright down at Mobile. We have some additional developments."

  "Okay."

  "A cop got himself blown away Saturday. It was a contract job, Ingrams at close range, but a local kid popped a subject with his trusty .22, right in the back of the head. Killed him; they found the body and the vehicle yesterday. The shooter was positively ID'd as a druggie. The local cops searched the victim's--Detective Sergeant Braden--house and found a camera that belonged to the victim in the Pirates Case. The new victim is a burglary sergeant. I am speculating that he was working for the druggies and probably checked out the victim's place prior to the killings, looking for the records that we ultimately found."

  Murray nodded thoughtfully. That added something to their knowledge. So they'd wanted to make sure that the victim hadn't left any records behind before they'd taken him and his family out, but their guy wasn't good enough, and they killed him for it. It was also part of the murder of Director Jacobs, additional fallout from Operation TARPON. Those bastards are really flexing their muscles, aren't they? "Anything else?"

  "The local cops are in a pretty nasty mood about this. First time somebody's put a hit on a cop that way. It was a 'public' hit, and his wife got taken out by a stray round. Local cops are pretty pissed. A drug dealer got taken all the way out last night. It'll come out as a righteous shoot, but I don't think it was a coincidence. That's it for now."

  "Thanks, Mark." Murray hung up. "The bastards have declared war on us, all right," he murmured.

  "What's that, sir?"

  "Nothing. Have you back-checked on the earlier trips Cortez made--hotels, car rentals?"

  "We have twenty people out there on it. Ought to have some preliminary information in two hours."

  "Keep me posted."

  Stuart was the first morning appointment for the U.S. Attorney, and he looked unusually chipper this morning, the secretary thought. She couldn't see the hangover.

  "Morning, Ed," Davidoff said without rising. His desk was a mass of papers. "What can I do for you?"

  "No death penalty," Stuart said as he sat down. "I'll trade a guilty plea for twenty years, and that's the best deal you're going to get."

  "See ya' in court, Ed," Davidoff replied, looking back down at his papers.

  "You want to know what I've got?"

  "If it's good, I'm sure you'll let me know at the proper time."

  "May be enough to get my people off completely. You want 'em to walk on this?"

  "Believe that when I see it," Davidoff said, but he was looking up now. Stuart was an overly zealous defense lawyer, the United States Attorney thought, but an honest one. He didn't lie, at least not in chambers.

  Stuart habitually carried an old-fashioned briefcase, the wedge-shaped kind made of semistiff leather instead of the newer and trimmer attache case that most lawyers toted now. From it he extracted a tape recorder. Davidoff watched in silence. Both men were trial lawyers and both were experts at concealing their feelings, able to say what they had to say, regardless of what they felt. But since both had this ability, like professional poker players they knew the more subtle signs that others couldn't spot. Stuart knew that he had his adversary worried when he punched the play button. The tape lasted several minutes. The sound quality was miserable, but it was audible, and with a little cleaning up in a sound laboratory--the defendants could afford it--it would be as clear as it needed to be.

  Davidoff's ploy was the obvious one: "That has no relevance to the case we're trying. All of the information in the confession is excluded from the proceedings. We agreed on that."

  Stuart eased his tone now that he had the upper hand. It was time for magnanimity. "You agreed. I didn't say anything. The government committed a gross violation of my clients' constitutional rights. A simulated execution constitutes mental torture at the very least. It's sure as hell illegal. You have to put these two guys on the stand to make your case, and I'll crucify those Coast Guard sailors when you do. It might be enough to impeach everything they say. You never know what a jury's going to think, do you?"

  "They might just stand up and cheer, too," Davidoff answered warily.

  "That's the chance, isn't it? One way to find out. We try the case." Stuart replaced the player in his briefcase. "Still want an early trial date? With this as background information I can attack your chain of evidence--after all, if they were crazy enough to pull this number, what if my clients claim that they were forced to masturbate to give you the semen samples that you told the papers about, or were forced to hold the murder weapons to make prints--I haven't yet discussed any of those details with them, by the way--and I link all that in with what I know about the victim? I think I have a fighting chance to send them home alive and free." Stuart leaned forward, resting his arms on Davidoffs desk. "On the other hand, as you say, it's hard to predict how a jury'll react. So what I'm offering you is, they plead guilty to twenty years' worth of whatever charge you want, with no unseemly recommendation from the judge about how they have to serve all twenty--so they're out in, say, eight years. You tell the press that there's problems with the evidence, and you're pretty mad about that, but there's nothing you can do. My clients are out of circulation for a fairly long time. You get your conviction but nobody else dies. Anyway, that's my deal. I'll give you a couple of days to think it over." Stuart rose to his feet, picked up his briefcase, and left without another word. Once outside, he looked for the men's room. He felt an urgent need to wash his hands, but he wasn't sure why. He was certain that he'd done the right thing. The criminals--they really were criminals--would be found guilty, but they wouldn't die in the electric chair--and who knows, he thought, maybe they'll straighten out. That was the sort of lie that lawyers tell themselves. He wo
uldn't have to destroy the careers of some Coast Guard types who had probably stepped over the line only once and would never do so again. That was something he was prepared to do, but didn't relish. This way, he thought, everybody won something, and for a lawyer that was as successful an exercise as you generally got. But he still felt a need to wash his hands.

  For Edwin Davidoff, it was harder. It wasn't just a criminal case, was it? The same electric chair that would deliver those two pirates to hell would deliver him to a suite in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Since he had read Advise and Consent as a fresh-man in high school, Davidoff had lusted for a place in the United States Senate. And he'd worked very hard to earn it: top of his class at Duke Law School, long hours for which he was grossly underpaid by the Department of Justice, speaking engagements all over the state that had nearly wrecked his family life. He had sacrificed his own life on the altar of justice ... and ambition, he admitted to himself. And now when it was all within his grasp, when he could rightfully take the lives of two criminals who had forfeited their rights to them ... this could blow it all, couldn't it? If he wimped out on the prosecution, plea-bargaining down to a trifling twenty years, all his work, all his speeches about Justice would be forgotten. Just like that.

  On the other hand, what if he disregarded what Stuart had just told him and took the case to trial--and risked being remembered as the man who lost the case entirely. He might blame the Coast Guardsmen for what they had done--but then he would be sacrificing their careers and possibly their freedom on what altar? Justice? Ambition? How about revenge? he asked himself. Whether he won or lost the Pirates Case, those men would suffer even though what they had done had also given the government its strongest blow yet against the Cartel.

  Drugs. It all came down to that. Their capacity to corrupt was like nothing he'd ever known. Drugs corrupted people, clouded their thoughts at the individual level, and ultimately ended their lives. Drugs generated the kinds of money to corrupt those who didn't partake. Drugs corrupted institutions at every level and in every way imaginable. Drugs corrupted whole governments. So what was the answer? Davidoff didn't have that answer, though he knew that if he ever ran for that Senate seat he'd prance about in front of the TV cameras and announce that he did--or at least part of it, if only the people of Alabama would trust him to represent them....

  Christ, he thought. So now what do I do?

  Those two pirates deserve to die for what they have done. What about my duty to the victims? It wasn't all a lie--in fact none of it was. Davidoff did believe in Justice, did believe that law was what men had built to protect themselves from the predators, did believe that his mission in life was to be an instrument of that justice. Why else had he worked so hard for so little? It wasn't entirely ambition, after all, was it?

  No.

  One of the victims had been dirty, but what of the other three? What did the military call that? "Collateral damage." That was the term when an act against an individual target incidentally destroyed the other things that happened to be close by. Collateral damage. It was one thing when the State did it in time of war. In this case it was simply murder.

  No, it wasn't simple murder, was it? Those bastards took their time. They enjoyed themselves. Is eight years of time enough to pay for them?

  But what if you lose the case entirely? Even if you win, can you sacrifice those Coasties to get justice? Is that "collateral damage, " too?

  There had to be a way out. There usually was, anyway, and he had a couple of days to figure that one out.

  They'd slept well, and the thin mountain air didn't affect them as badly as they'd expected. By sundown the squad was up and eager. Chavez drank his instant coffee as he went over the map, wondering which of the marked targets they'd stake out tonight. Throughout the day, squad members had kept a close eye on the road below, knowing more or less what they were looking for. A truck with containers of acid. Some cheap local labor would off-load the jars and head into the hills, followed by people with backpacks of coca leaves and some other light equipment. Around sundown a truck stopped. Light failed before they could see all of what happened, and their low-light goggles had no telescopic features, but the truck moved off rather soon, and it was within three kilometers of HOTEL, one of the locations on the target list, four miles away.

  Show time. Each man sprayed a goodly bit of insect repellent onto his hands, then rubbed it on face, neck, and ears. In addition to keeping the bugs off, it also softened the camouflage paint that went on next like some ghastly form of lipstick. The members of each pair assisted one another in putting it on. The darker shades went on forehead, nose, and cheekbones, while the lighter ones went to the normal shadow areas under the eyes and in the hollow of cheeks. It wasn't war paint, as one might think from watching movie representations of soldiers. The purpose was invisibility, not intimidation. With the naturally bright spots dulled, and the normally dark ones brightened, their faces no longer looked like faces at all.

  It was time to earn their pay for real. Approach routes and rally points were preselected and made known to every member of the squad. Questions were asked and answered, contingencies examined, alternate plans made, and Ramirez had them up and moving while there was still light on the eastern wall of the valley, heading downhill toward their objective.

  17.

  Execution

  THE STANDARD ARMY field order for a combat mission follows an acronym known as SMESSCS: Situation; Mission; Execution; Service and Support; Command and Signal.

  Situation is the background information for the mission, what is going on that the soldiers need to know about.

  Mission is a one-sentence description of the task at hand.

  Execution is the methodology for how the mission is to be accomplished.

  Service and Support covers the support functions that might aid the men in the performance of their job.

  Command defines who gives the orders through every step of the chain, theoretically all the way back up to the Pentagon, and all the way down to the most junior member of the unit who in the final exigency would be commanding himself alone.

  Signal is the general term for communications procedures to be followed.

  The soldiers had already been briefed on the overall situation, which had hardly been necessary. Both that and their current mission had changed somewhat, but they already knew that, too. Captain Ramirez had briefed them on the execution of their current mission, also giving his men the other information they needed for this evening. There was no outside support; they were on their own. Ramirez was in tactical command, with subordinate leaders identified in case of his disablement, and he'd already issued radio codes. His last act before leading his men down from their perch was to radio his intentions to VARIABLE, whose location he didn't know, but whose approval he receipted.

  As always Staff Sergeant Domingo Chavez had the point, now one hundred meters ahead of Julio Vega, again "walking slack" fifty meters ahead of the main body, whose men were spread out at ten-meter intervals for the approach. Going downhill made it tougher on the legs, but the men hardly noticed. They were too pumped up. Every few hundred meters Chavez angled for a clear spot from which they could look down at the objective--the place they were going to hit--and through his binoculars he could see the vague glow of gasoline lanterns. With the sun behind him he didn't have to worry about a reflection off the glasses. The spot was right where the map said it was--he wondered how that information had been developed--and they were following exactly the procedure that he'd been briefed about. Somebody, he thought, had really done his homework on this job. They expected ten to fifteen people at HOTEL. He hoped they had that right, too.

  The going wasn't so bad. The cover was not as dense as it had been in the lowlands, and there were fewer bugs. Maybe, he thought, the air was too thin for them, too. There were birds calling to one another, the usual forest chatter to mask the sounds of his unit's approach--but there was damned little of that. Chavez had heard one
guy slip and fall a hundred meters back, but only a Ninja would have noticed. He was able to cover half the distance in under an hour, stopping at a preplanned rally point for the rest of the squad to catch up.

  "So far, so good, jefe, "he told Ramirez. "I ain't seen nothing, not even a llama," he added to show that he was at ease. "Little over three thousand more meters to go."

  "Okay. Stop at the next checkpoint. Remember there might be folks out taking a stroll."

  "Roger that, Cap'n." Chavez took off at once. The rest started moving two minutes later.

  Ding moved more slowly now. The probability of contact increased with every step he took toward HOTEL. The druggies couldn't be all that dumb, he warned himself. They had to have a little brains, and the people they used would be locals, people who'd grown up in this valley and knew its ways. And lots of them would have weapons. He was surprised how different it felt from the last time, but then he'd watched and evaluated his targets over a period of days. He didn't even have a proper count on them, didn't know how they were armed, didn't know how good they were.

  Christ, this is real combat. We don't know shit.

  But that's what Ninja are for! he told himself, taking small comfort in his bravado.

  Time started doing strange things. Each single step seemed to take forever, but when he got to the final rally point, it hadn't been all that long at all, had it? He could see the glow of the objective now, a vague green semicircle on the goggle display, but still there was no movement to be seen or heard in the woods. When he got to the last checkpoint, Chavez picked a tree and stood beside it, keeping his head up, swiveling left and right to gather as much information as possible. He thought he could hear things now. It came and went, but occasionally there was an odd, not-natural sound from the direction of the objective. It worried him that he didn't really see anything as yet. Just that glow, but nothing else.