Tom Clancy Support and Defend

by Tom Clancy

  What he did last night was a potential compromise to his organization; it was as simple as that.

  He felt like he deserved some pain and penance for his behavior, so after a quick shower he dressed for a morning run, and he headed back out the door into the cold.

  He ran west on Rhode Island; all around him morning pedestrian commuters filled the streets, along with other joggers. Vehicle traffic was congested, and he had to run in place at almost every streetlight for the first several blocks.

  He took M Street for a while, and then New Hampshire down to K, and then he continued west into Georgetown.

  Dominic’s first run since his injury in India wasn’t a complete disaster, but he realized quickly he wasn’t going to be able to push himself. His legs were fine, he wasn’t tired, but the heavy breathing that came from even this light exertion was hell on his sore rib cage.

  He ran through Georgetown and picked up the Chesapeake and Ohio Towpath trail, and he took this west, along the Potomac River. There were other runners out on the trail here, and although he was surely in better physical condition than the vast majority, he moved slower than many to keep his breathing measured and calm.

  In the bright blue sky on his left one aircraft after another lined up over the Potomac River, followed the turns of the river on the way to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to the south. This, Dom knew, was the River Visual Approach to runway 19, and as long as aircraft were landing from the north and conditions were VFR, these planes would slide down through the clear sky all day long. He watched them come in on their approach, and it took his mind off his troubles all the way to the Georgetown Reservoir.

  Here he turned around and began heading back home.

  Running to the east, he didn’t have the planes to occupy his thoughts, and his mind drifted. He was back in India, sucking the oppressive night heat, the mud sticking to his ankles and the lake water in his nostrils.

  Then he and Arik came upon the dairy van.

  He shook his head in a vain attempt to vaporize the images, and he picked up the pace to add burning lactic acid in his thighs to the mix to help him focus his thoughts on the here and now.

  Dom left the towpath and headed north onto the campus of Georgetown University. He was pumping along at speed now, trying to push for a few more minutes despite a chest heaving and hurting. He ran the streets around the football field, planned on one more lap before slowing to a walk, but up ahead of him the Georgetown University pep band appeared. They began crossing the street in front of him to load into a line of busses by the field. Dozens of young men and women in their street clothes carried their instruments and music and backpacks and rolling luggage. They were a slow-moving operation, so Dom pulled up his run, not wanting to fight through them, and he turned and headed back the way he came.

  Almost immediately he noticed the car.

  A gray Mazda four-door, a few years old and completely nondescript, had been turning onto the two-lane university road fifty yards behind him. Just as Dom looked up at it, the driver of the vehicle seemed to change his mind, and instead turned left along the tennis courts.

  Dom was trained to notice things like this. He kept jogging toward the intersection, but while doing so he considered the possibility his change of direction had led to the car’s abrupt maneuver. He wondered if the car had just seen the band clogging the road, and that was why it had turned around. Dom looked over his shoulder to check this, and he saw the band was shielded from the intersection by a line of buses parked on the curve along the fence to the football field.

  With nothing else to go on, the car remained little more than a curiosity to him, and he ran on to the east.

  Five minutes later he finished his run on Wisconsin. He knew he didn’t have the steam to make it all the way back to his condo, so he began walking through Georgetown. He decided to grab a latte and a croissant at a bakery, and then catch a cab back home.

  He stepped inside the bakery and got in line behind a dozen hipsters. While he waited he looked out the window into the street. Thomas Jefferson was all but empty of traffic at the moment, but on a whim he craned his neck back and forth. He cocked his head in surprise when he saw a gray four-door Mazda pull to a stop on the other side of the towpath a block to the north, just barely in view through the window. It looked like the car he’d seen at the university fifteen minutes earlier, but he wasn’t sure. He chastised himself for not being on his game and paying closer attention.

  He left the bakery with his breakfast, still thinking about the gray Mazda. It was no longer parked near the towpath, but he decided he’d check whether or not it was tailing him by walking along the towpath to see if it appeared on the next street ahead. He walked slowly on Thomas Jefferson while he sipped and ate, then turned into the towpath and disappeared from the street. This shielded him for a block, so he knew if he was under surveillance anyone watching him would have to reposition somewhere in advance of his direction of movement. He tossed his latte in a garbage can and broke into a run with the croissant in his mouth, hoping to get ahead of anyone while they repositioned to a static overwatch.

  When he arrived at 29th Street he saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was no street parking here, and he saw no vehicles idling by the side of the two-lane road. A few pedestrians passed, but a quick glance at them effectively ruled them out as obvious surveillance.

  Dom crossed 29th and continued on the towpath, he ate a few bites of the croissant—even if he was under surveillance he still had an appetite—and he was halfway to the end when he quickly stopped and reversed his route. He all but rushed back to 29th, stepped out into the street from the east, and saw the gray Mazda idling there at the curb, facing south. The two men in the car, both in the front seats, had their eyes facing to the west down the towpath.

  They had judged his timing by the speed he’d been walking on Thomas Jefferson, and by running on the towpath he was able to sneak up on them from behind.

  Dom knew he should have observed them for a few minutes to see if he could get any ideas as to who they were, but he was outraged by the tail, and his impetuous nature won out. He sprinted across the street and rapped his knuckles on the driver’s-side window, startling the two men looking in the opposite direction. Slowly the window came down. A middle-aged driver with salt-and-pepper hair and a Mediterranean complexion stared back at him with tired hangdog eyes.

  Dom asked, “Why are you following me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His accent was heavy and somewhat familiar, but Dom couldn’t immediately place it. Dom reached in quickly and pulled the keys out of the ignition. As he withdrew his hand with the keys, the driver reached up and put Dom’s hand in a surprisingly strong and confident wristlock.

  Dom realized he was still holding the croissant in his left hand. He dropped it and reached into his waistband, and snapped a small, hooked Ka-Bar knife from a locking sheath that hung on to the waistband of his underwear and shorts. He brought the fat, matte-black blade to the older man’s thick throat. His own right hand was still held tight in a wristlock inside the car.

  The man in the passenger seat reached to his own waistband now, Dom thought he was going for a gun.

  Dom pushed the knife harder against the driver’s throat with his left hand.

  “You draw and I cut him!”

  The passenger lifted both hands away from his waistband and into the air. With an accent similar to the driver, he said, “Not necessary, Mr. Caruso. We are friends.”

  “I know my friends, and I don’t know you. Who are you, and why the hell are you following me?”

  The middle-aged driver let go of Dom’s arm. “We don’t have authority to speak to you.”

  “Then who does?”

  “I do.”

  Dom spun around at the sound of the man’s voice close behind him. Standing there on the sidewalk was the same distinguished-looking gentleman he’d seen having a Manhattan at The Pig the night before. Now
he wore a full-length camel coat and a driving cap.

  “You?”

  “Please, Dominic. Put the knife away before someone around here calls the police.”

  Dom sheathed the Ka-Bar reluctantly and covered it with his sweatshirt.

  “Very good. Why don’t we go for a short walk along the towpath? You seem to like this route. I will answer your questions while we stroll.”

  THEY WALKED BACK to the west, silently because a track club with two dozen runners passed by in ones and twos. When the runners disappeared around a bend ahead and the two men had the towpath to themselves again, Dom said, “Okay, we’re walking. Start talking.”

  The older man said, “My name is David. I work for the Israeli government.”

  “You mean Israeli intelligence.”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean Mossad.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You’ve been watching me since last night?”

  “Yes. You were very impressive.”

  Dom stopped walking. “What did I do that impressed you?”

  The Israeli snorted out a laugh. “The three men you dispatched with your knowledge of Krav Maga, of course. We were not terribly impressed when you took the lovely young woman named Jennifer back to the Loews Madison, and then said good night to her in the lobby so she could go to bed alone.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but her name was Monica.”

  David broke into laughter. “No, it was Jennifer Hartley. She gave you a fake name. That’s rich. I guess you two really don’t have much of a future.”

  “She was with you?”

  “No. But we looked into her.”

  Dom considered this. “So you didn’t set that up last night? Some kind of an altercation to test my abilities, and then a honey trap to use against me?”

  “Set it up? Of course not. We are not fight promoters, and we are not a dating service. We were watching you, and then looking into her, trying to figure out who, exactly, you work for. We already knew you knew how to fight, because we know you trained in private tutelage under Colonel Yacoby.” He shrugged. “But trust me, Mr. Caruso. We could not care less whether you know how to make love.”

  “Okay,” Dom replied uneasily, still clueless as to what was going on.

  David began walking again, and Dom followed his lead.

  David said, “Your altercation last night raised more questions than it answered. You don’t seem like you are trying to maintain any sort of cover. From a tradecraft perspective, you made some terrible decisions.”

  Dominic hung his head, shamefaced, but did not reply.

  David continued. “So I don’t think you are working here in D.C. I think you have been told to take some time to yourself. In fact, I suspect your leaders, whoever they are, have mandated it after what happened in Paravur.”

  Dom wasn’t going to confirm anything about his employer, but he didn’t challenge the comment. “Sorry to disappoint you with my tradecraft.”

  “I am not disappointed. I am relieved. It helped me come to a helpful conclusion.”

  “What conclusion?”

  “My conclusion is this: You are angry. Furious about what happened to Arik. It is consuming you. You turn to other outlets to channel your rage, but only one thing will provide you with any real comfort.”

  “You were a friend of Arik’s?”

  “An old colleague.”

  “He was Mossad?”

  “I did not say that. I was IDF. He was IDF.”

  “You were Shayetet Thirteen?”

  David smiled. “I did not say that, either. You ask a lot of questions. I merely stated that I was an old colleague of Arik Yacoby’s. Just as I will not ask you any more about who you work for, I will require you do not ask me anything more about me.”

  “I’ll ask this. What is it you want?”

  “In short, I want . . . we want, what you want. We want the person who leaked the intelligence about the operation against the SS Ardahan.”

  Dom stopped again. A jogger passed by, so he waited to speak for a moment. Finally he said, “How do you know about the leak?”

  “Your government told my government. We’ve asked to be updated in their investigation. We want a name, and we don’t have one.”

  “I don’t know who did it. The FBI doesn’t even know who did it.”

  “I am aware of this. We are hoping that might change. We are hoping the culprit will be identified.”

  “And then?”

  David shrugged, started walking again, and Dom followed. David said, “Your government is seeking answers. That is good. But we hope you, Dominic, are seeking vengeance. Vengeance is what we want. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything to jeopardize our relationships here in Washington by targeting an official of the United States government. We’re tremendous fans of the President of the United States, your uncle, and we hope he is a fan of us, as well. That makes our actions here delicate, to say the least.”

  “So you want to use me?”

  “We want you to use us. Logistics, information, planning, equipment.”

  Dom walked in silence, and he thought about the extraordinary offer being made to him. His mind switched suddenly.

  “What happened on SS Ardahan?”

  David clearly expected this question, and he had an answer ready. “The Ardahan and three other vessels were heading to Gaza, supposedly with relief supplies. We knew the other three were decoys, loaded with food and medical supplies, but the Ardahan was also carrying rockets for Al-Qassam. Colonel Yacoby and his team arrived by helicopter. They fast-roped to the deck but they were set upon instantly, attacked with knives and iron pipes while they were still on the ropes. The peace activists, if you want to call them that, beat the shit out of several of Yacoby’s guys. Many broken bones. They knocked one commando unconscious and tossed him overboard. Our navy fished him out alive, but barely.”

  “And then?”

  “Colonel Yacoby was authorized to use deadly force only in response to deadly force. He and his men fought back several attackers with nothing more than fists and rifle butts, but when his man was thrown unconscious into the sea, and a Palestinian pulled the commando’s rifle off the deck, Yacoby saw this, and he gave the command to his team to engage with deadly fire.”

  Dom had seen grainy video footage from the event, taken by the protestors on board the Ardahan. Black-clad frogmen with short-barreled rifles opened fire on a deck full of men and women in civilian clothing. In the end nine lay dead, and twentytwo were wounded.

  David said, “I am not going to say everything went to plan. It did not. But it wasn’t the massacre on innocents that the world press made it out to be. Arik Yacoby showed restraint until he realized such restraint would get his entire team killed. The ship was carrying rockets and bomb-making materiél for Hamas, hidden in stores of baby formula. Seizing the equipment on the high seas was in our nation’s national security interests. We are . . . comfortable with what happened.”

  Dom thought about Arik. He believed he would have done his best to execute his mission without any loss of life. But he also believed Arik would have done anything to keep his own men safe. Dom said, “Look. I’m a fan of Israel, as far as that goes. And I would love to get my hands around the neck of this traitor. But I’m not spying for a foreign government.”

  David was taken aback. “Spying? Who said anything about spying?”

  “Actually, you haven’t said much of anything about anything. What is it, exactly, you want me to do?”

  “The culprit is an employee of the U.S. government. That much is obvious. We will not engage in direct action against an American U.S. government employee, especially not here in Washington.”

  “But I will?”

  “You might. We planned on taking some time to find out if you could be useful to us. We would not have spoken with you today if you didn’t outsmart my surveillance detail. We planned on watching to see if you were operational. We know all you did in
India to try to save Arik, and we thought it might be important to you that a measure of justice is done.”

  Dom nodded.

  David said, “You are alone. We know you are isolating yourself so you don’t expose your friends right now.”

  “And you want to be my new friends?”

  David smiled. “Friends with benefits. But with no strings attached. Kind of like the opportunity you passed up in the Loews hotel last night.”

  “I don’t believe that’s considered a friendship. That’s called a one-night stand.”

  “Well, then. I am sure that is a phenomenon about which you have some knowledge.” David reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. He put it in Dom’s hand. “Call us if we can be of any help.”

  Dom looked at the card. It was blank other than a handwritten phone number with a D.C. exchange. He said, “I’m not promising anything.”

  “I don’t want promises. I just hope you call sometime.”

  Dom rolled his eyes. “Your one-night-stand metaphor is straining.”

  David chuckled a little. “I think that is a good metaphor for what we are thinking. When some evidence comes out against whoever stole the data, use us for your needs.”

  Dom said, “I’m going to need to check you out. Some guy walks up to me on the street and—”

  “Of course. You know other Mossad officers. Talk to your friends. They will vouch for me. They don’t know me. But they can establish my bona fides by calling the number on the card. I will put them in contact with the right people in Tel Aviv, and they will call you back and say I am exactly who I say I am.”

  They had reached Wisconsin Avenue by now, so they left the towpath. David stepped into the street and a white Taurus pulled up next to him. Dom faintly remembered noting the car when he ran along the Georgetown Reservoir, but he’d not flagged it as suspicious. Behind the Taurus was the gray Mazda.

  The two vehicles with the Mossad men rolled off into morning traffic. As the Mazda passed by Dom, the middleaged driver with the hangdog expression flipped him the bird.