by Tom Clancy
No one spoke.
“Or we go after him now. There are a dozen men in there. Riley I’m not too concerned about. The RGB trains some decent combatants, but we’ve dealt with several in the past few weeks.”
Ryan said, “The other guys must be part of the Maldonado cartel. As a fighting force, they suck.”
Clark replied, “We don’t know who they are for sure. Best possible scenario is they are Maldonado men. If that is the case, I like our chances hitting that residence.”
Sam was the first to speak up. “We don’t know who all Riley is working with. All it’s going to take is for him to call up a friendly helo to land on the lawn to fly that guy away. That happens, we’re left with pictures only.”
Jack Ryan, Jr., had already decided he was going to hit that house in front of him, with or without the rest of The Campus. Those men had tried to kill his father, and they’d come damn close. The discussion on the commo net among his colleagues was academic to him, although he knew that without any help his chances for survival would be nil.
Clark said, “Okay. We are going to take that building down. We don’t have breaching charges, body armor, long guns, intel on the OPFOR, or an exfil plan. We probably don’t have much time, either. We do have pistols, the element of surprise, and a need. I want to hear everyone’s ideas, and I want to hear them now.”
The team spent the next five minutes on a plan. While they were doing so, Dom Caruso dropped over the eastern wall of the property, two hundred yards from Ryan and Driscoll on the northern side.
He found excellent cover by low-crawling through some flowering jacaranda. When he was in position he called over the network, “How are we going to cross all that open ground?”
Domingo Chavez answered this. “You need a distraction, and I’ve got an idea.”
—
Edward Riley was impressed with the Iranian’s ability to deal with pain. Certainly by now his jaw and nose were broken, the orbital bone of his skull looked like it had been cracked, and several of his teeth had been knocked out. Blood flowed easily from his mouth and nose and the swollen blackness under his left eye. But he’d said little more than “Allahu akbar” and some words Riley took to be curses.
The Englishman looked at his watch. He wanted to have this entire episode behind him in a day, but it wasn’t looking good. Even if the man talked right now, and that didn’t look likely, Riley would still have to go check out the location of this alleged computer where Zarif uploaded the file. He didn’t know if the man had any confederates here in the country, or if he’d simply gone to a library or an electronics shop, or even if he had loaded the video onto a mobile phone and mailed it to some random address. Somewhere, Riley was convinced, was evidence that could link North Korea to the assassination attempt the day before.
Suddenly there was a disturbance upstairs. Someone was calling out in Spanish from the balcony over the front door. Riley looked to the Cubans around him.
A Cuban who spoke English entered the room and addressed Riley and Kim. “They say a car is approaching up the drive. Mercedes. The driver is the only occupant.”
That didn’t sound like a threat to Riley, but it did sound like something he needed to deal with. He headed to the front door with the Cuban who spoke English. Zarif would remain out of sight because the front door was in a large entryway with wraparound stairs that shielded the expansive living area.
Riley opened the front door in time to see a well-dressed Latin man in his mid-forties climb out of his black Mercedes with his keys in his hand. His necktie was loose and his shirt was unbuttoned, and he staggered a little as he climbed up the steps.
“May I help you?” Riley asked.
“¿Qué?”
The Cuban spoke to the man. He was all the way in the entryway before he responded.
The Cuban said, “He’s asking where his uncle Óscar is.”
“Óscar Roblas?”
“Sí,” said the man. He was clearly drunk; Riley could see his Spanish was slurred. “Tío Óscar.”
“Tell him Óscar Roblas loaned this house to us tonight. He can call him if he wants, but I invite him to do so outside. We have an important business meeting under way.”
Riley put his hand on the man’s chest and started to push him toward the door. The man staggered some more, and then said something.
“He asks if he can use the bathroom before he leaves. He says it is an emergency.”
Riley looked at the man for several seconds. Finally, he said, “Yes. Of course he can.”
The Latin man nodded and began heading toward the hallway to the back rooms; he had made it about ten feet when he heard the distinctive click of the hammer of a pistol two feet behind his head. The sound echoed in the sterile and spartan entryway of the modern house.
“Good evening, Mr. Domingo Chavez. How lovely of you to drop by.”
68
Chavez turned around slowly, his hands in the air. Riley faced him now, an excited smile on his face and a Beretta 92 pistol pointing at Chavez’s chest. Riley had apparently taken it from the man next to him.
From the moment Chavez walked into the house forty-five seconds earlier, two very bad things had happened. One was obvious; Riley had recognized him, though Ding didn’t know how the man knew about him in the first place.
But the other was potentially worse. The instant the Hispanic man began talking in the doorway, Chavez realized he was not some poorly trained cartel cowboy from Mexico’s west. No, he was Cuban, he was educated, and by virtue of the fact he was here involved with North Korean spies, Iranian terrorists, and a New York–based privately contracted British operative, there was no question in Chavez’s mind but that this man and his nine buddies were DI, Cuban Intelligence Directorate. Ding knew the Cubans turned out some skilled shooters, and he also knew his team of four men outside would be walking into a buzz saw.
Riley brought Chavez into the main room and stood him next to the seated Zarif. He then looked to the two other Cubans standing around. “Secure the building, tell the others. This man is CIA, and he probably has friends close by.” There were two men with guns left, both pointed at Chavez: Riley, who stood just six feet in front of Chavez, and the Cuban who answered the door, who had pulled a small backup pistol and was now ten feet away on Chavez’s right. The North Korean was also there, standing by the sofa, but Chavez did not see a weapon in his hand.
Riley addressed Kim now. “This man was following me a couple of weeks ago in New York. He was with others at the time. American operatives. If they are here, then we need to go.”
Kim said, “Let’s get in the cars.”
“First, we must deal with Zarif.” Riley pointed his gun at the badly beaten Iranian. Zarif seemed only peripherally aware of what was going on. “Running out of time, mate. I’m going to start shooting now. Kneecaps. Ankles. Privates. Then the head.”
He aimed his gun at Zarif’s knee. The Iranian cried out in fear, and Chavez leapt forward for Riley’s gun.
Riley realized Chavez was coming for him, closing the distance in a single step, so he tried to swing the Beretta back in Chavez’s direction. Chavez grabbed Riley’s wrist and turned it away, pointed it toward the other armed man in the room, and the jolt of the move caused the Englishman to squeeze his hand. The gun fired a nine-millimeter bullet across the room at 1,100 feet per second, and it hit the Cuban high in his right shoulder, spinning him around and causing his gun to discharge into the wall over Chavez’s head.
Chavez head-butted Riley now, sending him to the cold tile floor, and he pulled the pistol out of Riley’s hands as he fell. Chavez raised the weapon toward the North Korean, but once he saw the man was not going for a gun of his own, Chavez swung around toward the second-floor landing. Above him he saw an armed Cuban leaning over.
Chavez realized Zarif was directly behind him, and likely in the Cuban�
�s line of fire. He turned and knocked over the Iranian in his chair, and while doing so fired back over his shoulder to keep the Cuban’s head down.
Out of the corner of his eye Chavez saw the North Korean making a run for the stairs that led from the living room to the upstairs landing, with Edward Riley right on his heels.
Chavez grabbed Zarif by his collar and started to pull him across the floor to cover from the second floor as a second Cuban arrived. Chavez saw both men rise over the railing of the landing and aim down toward him, and a third and a fourth man came through the entryway. Chavez knew he wouldn’t be able to engage all threats in a four-on-one gunfight.
Jack Ryan, Jr., and Dominic Caruso came through the doorway to the kitchen, their Smith & Wesson pistols snapping and smoking. Both men in the hall to the entryway dove for cover, but only one made it back to the safety of the wall. The other dropped on his back as blood splattered across the white tile.
The men upstairs fired down, but now Chavez had sighted in on one of them. While he continued to try to pull Zarif around the couch and out of the line of fire, he shot one of the men on the landing; then he dove behind the heavy couch as more men appeared from the entryway.
—
Sam Driscoll leapt from the branch of the pecan tree onto the second-floor balcony at the western side of the house. His landing was silent enough, so he drew his Smith and moved stealthily the first few feet for the back door, but when the gunfire erupted downstairs, faster than anyone on the team had anticipated it would, he picked up the pace.
There had been a man at the back tower, but when Sam moved around the corner to engage him he saw the man had passed through the sliding glass door, presumably to check on the source of gunfire in the house. Sam made it through the glass doorway, then moved quickly across an empty guest bedroom. He ducked his head quickly into the hallway to take a mental picture of what was there. To his left were several doors and a darkened hallway, to his right the hall ended at the landing. Protracted gunfire came from there, but from his sliver of view here he could see no one.
He stepped out into the hall at the exact same moment the Cuban who’d left the balcony earlier came out of the room to Sam’s left. The two men saw each other simultaneously, four feet apart, and as they both brought their pistols up, the weapons slammed into each other and bounced free.
Sam swung at the man’s face, but the Cuban stepped out of the way and drew a knife. Sam had a blade of his own, but he didn’t reach for it. Instead, he closed the distance and locked on to the other man’s arms. The two men slammed against both walls of the hallway, then crashed onto the ground. Sam ended up on top of the man, facing up, away from him. The Cuban pulled his knife down to the American’s torso, but Sam still had his hands on the Cuban’s wrists, and he pushed the knife back with all his might, desperate to keep it from plunging into his chest.
—
Ryan was with Caruso, firing from the kitchen, across the living room, and into the entryway, where several attackers had congregated. Ding was on his knees behind the couch in the center of the room, and Zarif was still taped to a chair on his side next to Ding.
Ryan knew Sam was all alone upstairs. They had accounted for all of the combatants, killing two men on patrol silently with knives and then moving toward the house when the other patrol was around front, but no one had figured on the North Korean agent and Riley both running upstairs. If they had weapons already, or if they picked guns up from fallen men on the landing, that would leave Sam seriously outnumbered on the second floor.
Ryan chanced a run for the stairs, but he had to cross the open ground of the living room. With only four bullets left in his nine-shot subcompact, he darted behind Chavez, exposing himself to fire from the men in the entryway. Chavez and Caruso both saw what Ryan was doing, so they exposed themselves to draw some attention from the shooters, then fired one round each before dropping back to cover again.
Ryan leapt onto the stairs, slamming into the wall to get out of the sightline of the gunners in the entryway, and then he began running up, his pistol high and sweeping back and forth.
—
John Clark slammed on the Durango’s brakes right at the front door to the mansion, and he rolled out onto the gravel drive as his vehicle started taking fire.
It had been his job to drive the getaway vehicle, but when Chavez started the gunfight early he knew the plan had not survived first contact with the enemy, so he decided to interject himself into the direct-action portion of the operation.
He rose up from behind the hood of the big SUV, and fired left-handed at a man on the balcony, striking him in the forehead and sending him tumbling over the railing and crashing on the roof of the Durango.
Clark then ran for the front door, and while doing so he called his position to his team so they didn’t shoot him upon entry.
—
Riley and the North Korean RGB officer had ducked into the first room next to the landing. Riley then prized open a window, but the North Korean wanted a weapon in case they met resistance outside. He ran back to the landing and saw both Cubans dead, lying still on their backs. They had been shot from the living room below. He grabbed one of the men’s pistols and headed for the upstairs hallway. He was looking for a window he could use to escape or, at the very least, a room where he could barricade himself to fight back the American agents.
He entered the hallway and saw movement ahead. He raised his gun to fire, and as he did so he saw a bearded American roll off a dead Cuban agent while scooping a gun up from the floor of the hallway. The man lifted it, turned toward the North Korean’s direction, and raised the pistol in a blur.
The North Korean fired. Instantly he felt the impact as a round slammed him in the chest, knocking him flat onto his back. He tried to breathe in but nothing happened. He felt his mouth fill with blood and his eyes began to feel impossibly heavy. Just before they closed he forced himself to lift his head, to look past his feet down the hall, and doing so gave him some peace, because the bearded American was down on his back as well, his own chest covered in blood.
—
Sam is down! Sam is down!” Ryan shouted into his earpiece as he leapt over the dead North Korean, stumbled over the dead Cuban with the knife in his chest, and then dropped to his knees next to Sam Driscoll. Sam’s eyes were closed and his mouth slightly open. There was no movement at all on his face or in his body.
“Sam!”
Ryan put pressure on the gunshot wound. It was right over the heart, and his training and his common sense told him it was unsurvivable, but he kept pressing down, called into his earpiece for some help.
The gunfire downstairs lasted another minute. When it ended, Caruso was the first man to Ryan, then Clark and finally Chavez, who had Zarif standing now and in tow, with the pillowcase back over his head.
Sam Driscoll was dead. John Clark made the determination, though it was obvious to all. Caruso and Ryan carried the body downstairs and loaded it into the Durango without a word, while Chavez hog-tied the Iranian and put him in the back.
They drove off, remaining silent for the first few minutes, till Caruso broke the stillness to call Adara Sherman to let her know he needed the jet ready to go in thirty minutes.
The emotions ran the gamut from sadness to fury to the jacked-up remnants of adrenaline that always coursed through the men post-op, only to be replaced by utter exhaustion soon after.
When a member of the team finally did speak, it was Ryan. He made no mention of what had just occurred, he only asked the question that no one had the answer to, and everyone wanted to know.
“What the fuck happened to Riley?”
—
Edward Riley ran down the darkened hillside, fell, climbed to his feet, and stumbled again. His forehead was bleeding, his clothing was shredded, his arms and legs were bloody and battered from the brush that he tore through and th
e fence he climbed over and fell from.
He figured he’d gone a mile or more already, although in truth it was much, much less. He had a phone somewhere on his person, and he’d use it, but now he was still in self-preservation mode, that base and primal desire for survival, nothing more.
He’d almost been killed, he’d most definitely been compromised to the extent he could never return home to the U.S., and he had nothing to show for his mission, because his mission had failed.
He ran on, down the hill, only because he could think of no other course of action to take.
69
Ri Tae-jin did not yell or scream or threaten. Instead, he made no reply at all. He simply hung up the telephone and blinked once, his hangdog eyes giving away no expression. He was alone in his office, for now anyway, so he could have said or done anything he wanted, but his only desire at present was for a moment of quiet.
The assassin was in the wind. Probably in the hands of the Americans.
He had failed. The President was alive, and North Korea’s involvement would soon become obvious.
Fire Axe had turned into a disaster.
He blinked again, and his eyes shined a little with new resolve. He picked the phone back off the cradle and waited for his secretary to answer.
“Yes, Comrade General?”
“I need to talk with someone in Technology.”
“I will get Director Pak. One moment—”
“No. I want someone in Technology Outfitting. Special Projects. Not a director. Just someone with access to material. It is only a small technical question I have about a piece of equipment.”
“Yes, sir. Comrade Li serves as Assistant of Provisions and Supplies.”
“Li will be fine, then.”
While he waited for the connection to be made, he looked down at the medals on his chest. Sometimes he straightened them as an affectation, but they were perfect now. All lined up in columns and rows.
