Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 1-6

by Tom Clancy

  Only thirteen feet long, and a scant three thousand sixty-five pounds of mass—nearly half of that fuel—the Buffalo Hunter angled towards the ground as it accelerated to an initial cruising speed of over five hundred knots. Already its navigational computer, made by Lear-Siegler, was monitoring time and altitude in a very limited way. The drone was programmed to follow a specific flight path and altitude, all painstakingly predetermined for systems that were by later standards absurdly primitive. For all that, Cody-193 was a sporty-looking beast. Its profile was remarkably like that of a blue shark with a protruding nose and underslung air intake for a mouth—stateside it was often painted with aggressive rows of teeth. In this particular case, an experimental paint scheme—flat white beneath and mottled brown and green atop—was supposed to make it harder to spot from the ground—and the air. It was also stealthy—a term not yet invented. Blankets of RAM—radar-absorbing material—were integral with the wing surfaces, and the air intake was screened to attenuate the radar return off the whirling engine blades.

  Cody-193 crossed the border between Laos and North Vietnam at 11:41:38 local time. Still descending, it leveled out for the first time at five hundred feet above ground level, turning northeast, somewhat slower now in the thicker air this close to the ground. The low altitude and small size of the speeding drone made it a difficult target, but by no means an impossible one, and outlying gun positions of the dense and sophisticated North Vietnamese air-defense network spotted it. The drone flew directly towards a recently sited 37mm twin gun mount whose alert crew got their mount slued around quickly enough to loose twenty quick rounds, three of which passed within feet of the diminutive shape but missed. Cody-193 took no note of this, and neither jinked nor evaded the fire. Without a brain, without eyes, it continued along on its flight path rather like a toy train around a Christmas tree while its new owner ate breakfast in the kitchen. In fact it was being watched. A distant EC-121 Warning Star tracked -193 by means of a coded radar transponder located atop the drone’s vertical fin.

  “Keep going, baby,” a major whispered to himself, watching his scope. He knew of the mission, how important it was, and why nobody else could be allowed to know. Next to him was a small segment from a topographical map. The drone turned north at the right place, dropping down to three hundred feet as it found the right valley, following a small tributary river. At least the guys who programmed it knew their stuff, the major thought.

  -193 had burned a third of its fuel by now and was consuming the remaining amount very rapidly at low level, flying below the crests of the unseen hills to the left and right. The programmers had done their best, but there was one chillingly close call when a puff of wind forced it to the right before the autopilot could correct, and -193 missed an unusually tall tree by a scant seventy feet. Two militiamen were on that crest and fired off their rifles at it, and again the rounds missed. One of them started down the hill towards a telephone, but his companion called for him to stop as -193 flew blindly on. By the time a call was made and received, the enemy aircraft would be long gone, and besides, they’d done their duty in shooting at it. He worried about where their bullets had landed, but it was too late for that.

  Colonel Robin Zacharias, USAF, was walking across the dirt of what might in other times and circumstances be called a parade ground, but there were no parades here. A prisoner for over six months, he faced every day as a struggle, contemplating misery more deep and dark than anything he’d been able to imagine. Shot down on his eighty-ninth mission, within sight of rotation home, a completely successful mission brought to a bloody end by nothing more significant than bad luck. Worse, his “bear” was dead. And he was probably the lucky one, the Colonel thought as he was led across the compound by two small, unfriendly men with rifles. His arms were tied behind him, and his ankles were hobbled because they were afraid of him despite their guns, and even with all that he was also being watched by men in the guard towers. I must really look scary to the little bastards, the fighter pilot told himself.

  Zacharias didn’t feel very dangerous. His back was still injured from the ejection. He’d hit the ground severely crippled, and his effort to evade capture had been little more than a token gesture, a whole hundred yards of movement over a period of five minutes, right into the arms of the gun crew which had shredded his aircraft.

  The abuse had begun there. Paraded through three separate villages, stoned and spat upon, he’d finally ended up here. Wherever here was. There were sea birds. Perhaps he was close to the sea, the Colonel speculated. But the memorial in Salt Lake City, several blocks from his boyhood home, reminded him that gulls were not merely creatures of the sea. In the preceding months he had been subjected to all sorts of physical abuse, but it had strangely slackened off in the past few weeks. Perhaps they’d become tired of hurting him, Zacharias told himself. And maybe there really was a Santa Claus, too, he thought, his head looking down at the dirt. There was little consolation to be had here. There were other prisoners, but his attempts at communicating with them had all failed. His cell had no windows. He’d seen two faces, neither of which he had recognized. On both occasions he’d started to call out a greeting only to be clubbed to the ground by one of his guards. Both men had seen him but made no sound. In both cases he’d seen a smile and a nod, the best that they could do. Both men were of his age, and, he supposed, about his rank, but that was all he knew. What was most frightening to a man who had much to be frightened about was that this was not what he had been briefed to expect. It wasn’t the Hanoi Hilton, where all the POWs were supposed to have been congregated. Beyond that he knew virtually nothing, and the unknown can be the most frightening thing of all, especially to a man accustomed over a period of twenty years to being absolute master of his fate. His only consolation, he thought, was that things were as bad as they could be. On that, he was wrong.

  “Good morning, Colonel Zacharias,” a voice called across the compound. He looked up to see a man taller than himself, Caucasian, and wearing a uniform very different from that of his guards. He strode towards the prisoner with a smile. “Very different from Omaha, isn’t it?”

  That was when he heard a noise, a thin screeching whine, approaching from the southwest. He turned on instinct—an aviator must always look to see an aircraft, no matter where he might be. It appeared in an instant, before the guards had a chance to react.

  Buffalo Hunter, Zacharias thought, standing erect, turning to watch it pass, staring at it, holding his head up, seeing the black rectangle of the camera window, whispering a prayer that the device was operating. When the guards realized what he was doing, a gun butt in the kidneys dropped the Colonel to the ground. Suppressing a curse, he tried to deal with the pain as a pair of boots came into his restricted field of vision.

  “Do not get overly excited,” the other man said. “It’s heading to Haiphong to count the ships. Now, my friend, we need to become acquainted.”

  Cody-193 continued northeast, holding a nearly constant speed and altitude as it entered the dense air-defense belt surrounding North Vietnam’s only major port. The cameras in the Buffalo Hunter recorded several triple-A batteries, observation points, and more than a few people with AK- 47s, all of whom made at least a token shot at the drone. The only thing -193 had going for it was its small size. Otherwise it flew on a straight and level course while its cameras snapped away, recording the images on 2.25-inch film. About the only thing not shot at it were surface-to-air missiles: -193 was too low for that.

  “Go, baby, go!” the Major said, two hundred miles away. Outside, the four piston engines of the Warning Star were straining to maintain the altitude necessary for him to watch the drone’s progress. His eyes were locked on the flat glass screen, following the blinking blip of the radar transponder. Other controllers monitored the location of other American aircraft also visiting the enemy country, in constant communication with RED CROWN, the Navy ship that managed air operations from the seaward side. “Turn east, baby—now!”


  Right on schedule, Cody-193 banked hard to the right, coming a touch lower and screaming over the Haiphong docks at 500 knots, a hundred tracer rounds in its wake. Longshoremen and sailors from various ships looked up in curiosity and irritation, and not a little fear for all the steel flying in the sky over their heads.

  “Yes!” the Major shouted, loudly enough that the sergeant-controller to his left looked up in imitation. You were supposed to keep things quiet here. He keyed his mike to speak to RED CROWN. “Cody-one-niner-three is bingo.”

  “Roger, copy bingo on one-niner-three,” the acknowledgment came back. It was a false use of the “bingo” code word, which ordinarily meant an aircraft with a low fuel state, but it was a term so commonly used that it made a more than adequate disguise. The Navy enlisted man on the other end of the circuit then told an orbiting helicopter crew to wake up.

  The drone cleared the coast right on schedule, keeping low for a few more miles before going into its final climb. down to its last hundred pounds of fuel as it reached its pre-programmed point thirty miles offshore and began circling. Now another transponder came on, one tuned to the search radars of U.S. Navy picket ships. One of these, the destroyer Henry B. Wilson, took note of the expected target at the expected time and place. Her missile technicians used the opportunity to run a practice intercept problem. but had to switch off their illumination radars after a few seconds. It made the airedales nervous.

  Circling at five thousand feet, Cody-193 finally ran out of fuel and became a glider. When the airspeed fell to the right number, explosive bolts blew a hatch cover off the top, deploying a parachute. The Navy helicopter was already on station, and the white chute made for a fine target. The drone’s weight was a scant fifteen hundred pounds now, barely that of eight men. Wind and visibility cooperated this day. The ‘chute was snagged on their first attempt, and the helicopter turned at once, heading for the carrier USS Constellation, where the drone was carefully lowered into a cradle, ending its sixty-second combat mission. Before the helicopter could find its own spot on the flight deck, a technician was already unfastening the cover plate on the photo compartment and yanking the heavy film cassette from its slot. He took it below at once, and handed it over to another technician in the ship’s elaborate photo lab. Processing required a brief six minutes, and the still-damp film was wiped clean and handed over yet again to an intelligence officer. It was better than good. The film was run from one spool to another over a flat glass plate under which was a pair of fluorescent lights.

  “Well, Lieutenant?” a captain asked tensely.

  “Okay, sir, wait one . . . ” Turning the spool, he pointed to the third image. “There’s our first reference point . . . there’s number two, she was right on course . . . okay, here’s the IP . . . down the valley, over the hill—there, sir! We have two, three frames! Good ones, the sun was just right, clear day—you know why they call these babies Buffalo Hunters? It‘s—”

  “Let me see!” The Captain nearly shoved the junior officer out of the way. There was a man there, an American, with two guards, and a fourth man—but it was the American he wanted to see.

  “Here, sir.” The Lieutenant handed over a magnifying glass. “We might get a good face off of this, and we can play with the negative some more if you give us a little time. Like I said, the cameras can tell the difference between a male and a female—”

  “Mmmmm.” The face was black, meaning a white man on the negative. But—“Damn, I can’t tell.”

  “Cap’n, that’s our job, okay?” He was an intelligence officer. The Captain was not. “Let us do our job, sir.”

  “He’s one of ours!”

  “Sure as hell, sir, and this guy isn’t. Let me take these back to the lab for positive prints and blowups. The air wing will want a look at the port shots, too.”

  “They can wait.”

  “No, sir, they can’t,” the Lieutenant pointed out. But he took a pair of scissors and removed the relevant shots. The remainder of the roll was handed to a chief petty officer, while the Lieutenant and the Captain went back to the photo lab. Fully two months of work had gone into the flight of Cody-193, and the Captain lusted for the information he knew to be on those three two-and-a-quarter-inch frames.

  An hour later he had it. An hour after that, he boarded a flight to Danang. Another hour and he was on a flight to Cubi Point Naval Air Station in the Philippines, followed by a puddle-jumper to Clark Air Force Base, and a KC-135 that would fly directly to California. Despite the time and rigors of the next twenty hours of flying, the Captain slept briefly and fitfully, having solved a mystery whose answer just might change the policy of his government.

  4

  First Light

  Kelly slept nearly eight hours, again arising at the sound of the gulls to find that Pam wasn’t there. He went outside and saw her standing on the quay, looking out over the water, still weary, still robbed of the ability to get the rest she needed. The Bay had its usual morning calm, the glassy surface punctuated by the circular ripples of bluefish chasing after insects. Conditions like this seemed so fitting to the start of a day; a gentle westerly breeze in his face, and the odd silence that allowed one to hear the rumble of a boat’s motor from so far away that the boat could not be seen. It was the sort of time that allowed you to be alone with nature, but he knew that Pam merely felt alone. Kelly walked out to her as quietly as he could and touched her waist with both his hands.

  “Good morning.” She didn’t answer for a long time, and Kelly stood still, holding her lightly, just enough that she could feel his touch. She was wearing one of his shirts, and he didn’t want his touch to be sexual, only protective. He was afraid to press himself on a woman who’d suffered that kind of abuse, and could not predict where the invisible line might be.

  “So now you know,” she said, just loudly enough to be heard over the silence, unable to turn and face him.

  “Yes,” Kelly answered, equally quiet.

  “What do you think?” Her voice was a painful whisper.

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Pam.” Kelly felt the trembling start, and he had to resist the urge to hold her tighter.

  “About me.”

  “About you?” He allowed himself to get a little closer, altering his hold until his arms wrapped around her waist, but not tightly. “I think you’re beautiful. I think I’m real glad we met.”

  “I do drugs.”

  “The docs say you’re trying to quit. That’s good enough for me.”

  “It’s worse than that, I’ve done things—” Kelly cut her off.

  “I don’t care about that, Pam. I’ve done things, too. And one thing you did, for me was very nice. You gave me something to care about, and I didn’t ever expect that to happen.” Kelly pulled her tighter. “The things you did before we met don’t matter. You’re not alone, Pam. I’m here to help if you want me to.”

  “When you find out . . . ” she warned.

  “I’ll take my chances. I think I know the important parts already. I love you, Pam.” Kelly surprised himself with those words. He’d been too afraid to voice the thought even to himself. It was too irrational, but again emotion won out over reason, and reason, for once, found itself approving.

  “How can you say that?” Pam asked. Kelly gently turned her around and smiled.

  “Damned if I know! Maybe it’s your tangled hair—or your runny nose.” He touched her chest through the shirt. “No, I think it’s your heart. No matter what’s behind you, your heart is just fine.”

  “You mean that, don’t you?” she asked, looking at his chest. There was a long moment, then Pam smiled up at him, and that, too, was like a dawn. The orange-yellow glow of the rising sun lit up her face and highlighted her fair hair.

  Kelly wiped the tears from her face, and the wet feel of her cheeks eliminated whatever doubts he might have had. “We’re going to have to get you some clothes. This is no way for a lady to dress.”

  “Who says I’m a lad
y?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m so scared!”

  Kelly pulled her against his chest. “It’s okay to be scared. I was scared all the time. The important part is to know that you’re going to do it.” His hands rubbed up and down her back. He hadn’t intended to make this a sexual encounter, but he found himself becoming aroused until he realized that his hands were rubbing over scars made by men with whips or ropes or belts or other odious things. Then his eyes looked straight out over the water, and it was just as well that she couldn’t see his face.

  “You must be hungry,” he said, stepping away from her, holding on to her hands.

  She nodded. “Starving.”

  “That I can fix.” Kelly led her by the hand back to the bunker. Already he loved her touch. They met Sam and Sarah coming from the other side of the island after a morning’s walk and stretch.

  “How are our two lovebirds?” Sarah asked with a beaming smile, because she’d already seen the answer, watching from two hundred yards away.

  “Hungry!” Pam replied.

  “And we’re getting a couple of screws today,” Kelly added with a wink.

  “What?” Pam asked.

  “Propellers,” Kelly explained. “For Sam’s boat.”

  “Screws?”

  “Sailor talk, trust me.” He grinned at her, and she wasn’t sure if she could believe it or not.

  “That took long enough,” Tony observed, sipping coffee from a paper cup.

  “Where’s mine?” Eddie demanded, irritable from lack of sleep.

  “You told me to put the fucking heater outside, remember? Get your own.”

  “You think I want all that smoke and shit in here? You can die from that monoxide shit,” Eddie Morello said irritably.