Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 1-6

by Tom Clancy

  “Shit!” Ryan said aloud when he closed the safe door. “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing.” He was back in his office a minute later.

  It was time to leave. First he made a notation on the Xerox count sheet. You didn’t make Xerox copies anywhere in this building without signing off for them, but he’d thought ahead on that. Roughly the right number of sheets were assembled in a pile and placed in his safe, ostensibly a copy of the OSWR report that Nancy had retrieved. Making such copies was something that directorate chiefs were allowed to do fairly freely. Inside his safe, he found, was the manual for its operation. The copies he’d made went into his briefcase. The last thing Ryan did before leaving was to change his combination to something nobody would ever guess. He nodded to the security officer at the desk next to the elevator on his way out. The Agency Buick was waiting when he got to the basement garage.

  “Sorry to make you stay in so late, Fred,” Jack said as he got in. Fred was his evening driver.

  “No problem, sir. Home?”

  “Right.” It required all of his discipline not to start reading on the way. Instead he leaned back and commanded himself to take a nap. It would be the only sleep he would get tonight, he was sure.

  Clark got into Andrews just after eight. His first call was to Ritter’s office, but it was shortstopped elsewhere and he learned that the DDO was unavailable until morning. With nothing better to do, Clark and Larson checked into a motel near the Pentagon. After picking up shaving gear and a toothbrush from the Marriott’s gift shop, Clark again went to sleep, again surprising the younger officer, who was far too keyed up to do so.

  “How bad is it?” the President asked.

  “We’ve lost nine people,” Cutter replied. “It was inevitable, sir. We knew going in that this was a dangerous operation. So did they. What we can do—”

  “What we can do is shut this operation down, and do it at once. And keep a nice tight lid on it forever. This one never happened. I didn’t bargain for any of this, not for the civilian casualties, and sure as hell not for losing nine of our own people. Damn it, Admiral, you told me that these kids were so good—”

  “Mr. President, I never—”

  “The hell you didn’t!” the President said loudly enough to startle the Secret Service agent outside his upstairs office. “How the hell did you get me into this mess?”

  Cutter’s patrician face went pale as a corpse. Everything he’d worked for, the action he’d been proposing for three years.... Ritter was proclaiming success. That was the maddest part of all.

  “Sir, our objective was to hurt the Cartel. We have accomplished that. The CIA officer who’s running RECIPROCITY, in Colombia, right now, said that he could start a gang war within the Cartel—and we have done just that! They just tried to assassinate one of their own people—Escobedo. Drug shipments coming in are down. We haven’t announced it yet, but the papers are already talking about how prices are going up on the street. We’re winning.”

  “Fine. You tell Fowler that!” The President slammed a file folder down on his desk. His own private polls showed Fowler ahead by fourteen points.

  “Sir, after the convention, the opposition candidate always—”

  “Now you’re giving me political advice? Mister, you haven’t shown me a hell of a lot of competence in your supposed area of expertise.”

  “Mr. President, I—”

  “I want this whole thing shut down. I want it kept quiet. I want you to do it, and I want you to do it fast. This is your mess and you will clean it up.”

  Cutter hesitated. “Sir, how do you want me to go about it?”

  “I don’t want to know. I just want to know when it’s done.”

  “Sir, that may mean that I’ll have to disappear for a while.”

  “Then disappear!”

  “People might notice.”

  “Then you are on a special, classified mission for the President. Admiral, I want this thing closed out. I don’t care what you have to do. Just do it!”

  Cutter came to attention. He still remembered how to do that. “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Reverse your rudder,” Wegener said. USCGC Panache pivoted with the change of rudder and engine settings, pointing herself down the channel.

  “Midships.”

  “Rudder amidships, aye. Sir, my rudder is amidships,” the young helmsman announced under the watchful eye of Master Chief Quartermaster Oreza.

  “Very well. All ahead one-third, steady up on course one-nine-five.” Wegener looked at the junior officer of the deck. “You have the conn. Take her out.”

  “Aye aye, sir, I have the conn,” the ensign acknowledged in some surprise. “Take her out” generally means that you start from the dock, but the skipper was unusually cautious today. The kid on the wheel could handle it from here. Wegener lit his pipe and headed out for the bridge wing. Portagee followed him there.

  “That’s about as happy as I’ve ever been to head out to sea,” Wegener said.

  “I know what you mean, Cap’n.”

  It had been one scary day. Only one, but that had been enough. The FBI agent’s warning had come as quite a shock. Wegener had grilled his people one by one—something that he’d found as distasteful as it had been unfruitful—to find out who had spilled the beans. Oreza thought he knew but wasn’t sure. He was thankful that he’d never have to be. That danger had died with the pirates in Mobile jail. But both men had learned their lesson. From now on they’d abide by the rules.

  “Skipper, why d’ya suppose that FBI guy warned us?”

  “That’s a good question, Portagee. It figures that what we choked out of the bastards turned that money seizure they pulled off. I guess they figured they owed us some. Besides, the local guy says that it was his boss in Washington who ordered him to warn us.”

  “I think we owe him one,” Oreza said.

  “I think you’re right.” Both men stayed out to savor yet another sunset at sea, and Panache took a heading of one-eight-one, heading for her patrol station in the Yucatan Channel.

  Chavez was down to his last set of batteries. The situation, if anything, had gotten worse. There was a group somewhere be hind them, necessitating a rear guard. It was something that he on point, couldn’t concern himself about, but it was there a nagging concern as real as the sore muscles that had him popping Tylenol every few hours. Maybe they were being folowed Maybe it was just accidental—or maybe Ramirez had gotter predictable in his evasion tactics. Chavez didn’t think so but he was becoming too tired to think coherently, and knew it. Maybe the captain had the same problem, he realized. That was especially worrisome. Sergeants were paid to fight Cantains were paid to think. But if Ramirez was too tired to do that then they might as well not have him.

  Noise. A whisper from a branch swishing through the ak. But there was no wind blowing at the moment. Maybe an animal. Maybe not.

  Chavez stopped. He held his hand straight up. Vega, walking slack fifty meters back, relayed the signal. Ding moved along side a tree and stayed standing for the best possible visibili He started to lean against it and found himself drifting. The sergeant shook his head to clear it. Fatigue was really getting to him now.

  There. Movement. It was a man. Just a spectral green shape, barely more than a stick figure on the goggle display, nearly two hundred meters to Ding’s right front. He was moving uphill and—another one, about twenty meters behind. They were moving like ... soldiers, with the elaborate footwork that looked so damned crazy when somebody else was doing it....

  There was one way to check. On the bottom side of his PVS- 7 goggles was a small infrared light for use in reading maps. Invisible to the human eye, it would show up like a beacon to anyone wearing another PVS-7. He didn’t even have to make a noise. They’d be looking around constantly.

  It was still a risk, of course.

  Chavez stepped away from the tree. It was too far to see if they were wearing their headsets, if they were....

  Yes. The l
ead figure was turning his head left and right. It stopped dead on where Chavez was standing. Ding tipped his goggles up to expose the IR light and blinked it three times. He dropped his night scope back into place just in time to see the other one do the same.

  “I think they’re our guys,” Chavez whispered into his radio mike.

  “Then they’re pretty lost,” Ramirez replied through his earpiece. “Be careful, Sergeant.”

  Click-Click. Okay.

  Chavez waited for Oso to set his SAW up in a convenient place, then walked toward the other man, careful to keep where Vega could cover him. It seemed an awfully long way to walk, farther still without being able to put his weapon on the target, but he couldn’t exactly do that, could he? He spotted one more, and there would be others out there also, watching him over the sights of their weapons. If that wasn’t a friendly, his chances of seeing the sunrise were somewhere between zero and not much.

  “Ding, is that you?” a whisper called the remaining ten meters. “It’s León.”

  Chavez nodded. Both men took very deep breaths as they walked together and hugged. Somehow a handshake just wasn’t enough under the circumstances.

  “You’re lost, ’Berto.”

  “No shit, man. I know where the fuck we are, but we’re fucking lost all right.”

  “Where’s Cap’n Rojas?”

  “Dead. Esteves, Delgado, half the team.”

  “Okay. Hold it.” Ding punched his radio button. “Six, this is Point. We just made contact with BANNER. They’ve had a little trouble, sir. You better get up here.”

  Click-click.

  León waved for his men to come in. Chavez didn’t even think to count. It was enough to see that half weren’t there. Both men sat on a fallen tree.

  “What happened?”

  “We walked right into it, man. Thought it was a processing site. It wasn’t. Musta been thirty-forty guys there. I think Esteves fucked up and it all came apart. Like a bar fight with guns, man. Then Captain Rojas went down, and—it was pretty bad, ’mano. Been on the run ever since.”

  “We got people chasing us, too.”

  “What’s the good news?” León asked.

  “I ain’t heard any lately, ’Berto,” Ding said. “I think it’s time for us to get our asses outa this place.”

  “Roge-o,” Sergeant León said just as Ramirez appeared. He made his report to the captain.

  “Cap’n,” Chavez said when he was finished, “we’re all pretty beat. We need a place to belly up.”

  “The man’s right,” Guerra agreed.

  “What about behind us?”

  “They ain’t heard nothin’ in two hours, sir,” Guerra reminded him. “That knoll over there looks like a good spot to me.” That was about as hard as he could press his officer, but finally it was enough.

  “Take the men up. Set up the perimeter and two outposts. We’ll try to rest up till sundown, and maybe I can call in and get us some help.”

  “Sounds good to me, Cap’n.” Guerra took off to get things organized. Chavez left at once to sweep the area while the rest of the squad moved to its new RON site—except, Chavez thought, this was an ROD—remain-over-day—site. It was a bleak attempt at humor, but it was all he could manage under the circumstances.

  “My God,” Ryan breathed. It was four in the morning, and he was awake only because of coffee and apprehension. Ryan had uncovered his share of things with the Agency. But never anything like this. The first thing he had to do was ... what?

  Get some sleep, even a few hours, he told himself. Jack lifted the phone and called the office. There was always a watch officer on duty.

  “This is Dr. Ryan. I’m going to be late. Something I ate. I’ve been throwing up all night ... no, I think it’s over now, but I need a few hours of sleep. I’ll drive myself in tomorr—today,” he corrected himself. “Yeah, that’s right. Thanks. ’Bye.”

  He left a note on the refrigerator door for his wife and crawled into a spare bed to avoid disturbing her.

  Passing the message was the easiest part for Cortez. It would have been hard for anyone else, but one of the first things he’d done after joining the Cartel was to get a list of certain telephone numbers in the Washington, D.C., area. It hadn’t been hard. As with any task, it was just a matter of finding someone who knew what you needed to know. That was something Cortez excelled at. Once he had the list of numbers—it had cost him $10,000, the best sort of money well spent, that is to say, someone’s else’s well-spent money—it was merely a matter of knowing schedules. That was tricky, of course. The person might not be there, which risked disclosure, but the right sort of eyes-only prefix would probably serve to warn off the casual viewer. The secretaries of such people typically were disciplined people who risked their jobs when they showed too much curiosity.

  But what really made it easy was a new bit of technology, the facsimile printer. It was a brand-new status symbol. Everyone had to have one, just as everyone, especially the important, had to have a direct private telephone line that bypassed his secretary. That and the fax went together. Cortez had driven to Medellin to his private office and typed the message himself. He knew what official U.S. government messages looked like, of course, and did his best to reproduce it here. EYES-ONLY NIMBUS was the header, and the name in the FROM slot was bogus, but that in the To place was quite genuine, which ought to have been sufficient to get the attention of the addressee. The body of the message was brief and to the point, and indicated a coded reply-address. How would the addressee react? Well, there was no telling, was there? But this, too, Cortez felt was a good gamble. He inserted the single sheet in his fax, dialed the proper number, and waited. The machine did the rest. As soon as it heard the warbling electronic love-call of another fax machine, it transmitted the message form. Cortez removed the original and folded it away into his wallet.

  The addressee turned in surprise when he heard the whir of his fax printing out a message. It had to be official, because only half a dozen people knew that private line. (It never occurred to him that the telephone company’s computer knew about it, too.) He finished what he was doing before reaching over for the message.

  What the hell is NIMBUS? he wondered. Whatever it was, it was eyes-only to him, and therefore he started to read the message. He was sipping his third cup of morning coffee while he did so, and was fortunate that his cough deposited some of it onto his desk and not his trousers.

  Cathy Ryan was nothing if not punctual. The phone in the guest room rang at precisely 8:30. Jack’s head jerked off the pillow as though from an electric shock, and his hand reached out to grab the offensive instrument.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning, Jack,” his wife said brightly. “What’s the problem with you?”

  “I had to stay up late with some work. Did you take the other thing with you?”

  “Yes, what’s the—”

  Jack cut her off. “I know what it says, babe. Could you just make the call? It’s important.” Dr. Caroline Ryan was also bright enough to catch the meaning of what he said.

  “Okay, Jack. How do you feel?”

  “Awful. But I have work to do.”

  “So do I, honey. ’Bye.”

  “Yeah.” Jack hung up and commanded himself to get out of the bed. First a shower, he told himself.

  Cathy was on her way to Surgery, and had to hurry. She lifted her office phone and called the proper number on the hospital’s D.C. line. It rang only once.

  “Dan Murray.”

  “Dan, this is Cathy Ryan.”

  “Morning! What can I do for you this fine day, Doctor?” “Jack said to tell you that he’d be in to see you just after ten. He wants you to let him park in the drive-through, and he said to tell you that the folks down the hall aren’t supposed to know. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what he told me to say.” Cathy didn’t know whether to be amused or not. Jack did like to play funny little games—she thought they were pretty dumb little games—with
people who shared his clearances, and wondered if this was some sort of joke or not. Jack especially liked to play games with his FBI friend.

  “Okay, Cath’, I’ll take care of that.”

  “I have to run off to fix somebody’s eyeball. Say hi to Liz for me.”

  “Will do. Have a good one.”

  Murray hung up with a puzzled look on his face. Folks down the hall aren’t supposed to know. “The folks down the hall” was a phrase Murray had used the first time they’d met, in St. Thomas’s Hospital in London when Dan had been the legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy on Grosvenor Square. The folks down the hall were CIA.

  But Ryan was one of the top six people at Langley, arguably one of the top three.

  What the hell did that mean?

  “Hmph.” He called his secretary and had her notify the security guards to allow Ryan into the driveway that passed under the main entrance to the Hoover Building. Whatever it meant, he could wait.

  Clark arrived at Langley at nine that morning. He didn’t have a security pass—not the sort of thing you carry into the field—and had to use a code-word to get through the main gate, which seemed very conspiratorial indeed. He parked in the visitors’ lot—CIA has one of those—and walked in the main entrance, heading immediately to the left where he quickly got what looked like a visitor’s badge which, however, worked just fine in the electronically controlled gates. Now he angled off to the right, past the wall murals that looked as though some enormous child had daubed mud all over the place. The decorator for this place, Clark was sure, had to have been a KGB plant. Or maybe they’d just picked the lowest bidder. An elevator took him to the seventh floor, and he walked around the corridor to the executive offices that have their own separate corridor on the face of the building. He ended up in front of the DDO’s secretary.