Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (107 page)

S
UNSET COMES QUICKLY
. By the time they started circling at Camp David, the ground was an undulating shadow punctuated by the stationary lights of private homes and the moving lights of automobiles. The helicopter descended slowly, flared out fifty feet above the ground, then settled vertically for a whisper-soft landing. There were few lights beyond the square landing pad's perimeter. When the crew chief opened the door, Raman and the other agent stepped down first. The President undid his lap belt and walked forward. He stopped just behind the flight crew, tapping the pilot on the shoulder.

“Thanks, Colonel.”

“You have a lot of friends, Mr. President. We're here when you need us,” Goodman told his Commander-in-Chief.

Jack nodded, went down the steps, and beyond the lights he saw the spectral outlines of Marine riflemen in camouflaged utilities.

“Welcome to Camp David, sir.” It was a Marine captain.

Jack turned to help his wife down. Sally led Katie down. Little Jack came out last. It hit Ryan that his son was almost as tall as his mother now. He might have to call his son something else.

Cathy looked around nervously. The captain saw it.

“Ma'am, there's sixty Marines out there,” he assured her. He didn't have to add what they were there for. He didn't have to tell the President how alert they were.

“Where?” Little Jack asked, looking and seeing nothing.

“Try this.” The captain handed over his PVS-7 night-vision goggles. S
HORTSTOP
held them to his eyes.

“Cool!” His arm reached out, pointing to those he could see. Then he lowered the goggles, and the Marines turned invisible again.

“They're great for spotting deer, and there's a bear that wanders on and off the grounds every so often. We call him Yogi.” Captain Larry Overton, USMC, congratulated himself for calming them down, and led them toward the HMMWVs that would transport them to quarters. Yogi, he'd explain later, had a radio collar on so that he wouldn't surprise anybody, least of all a Marine with a loaded rifle.

The quarters at Camp David appeared rustic, and truly were not anywhere near as plush as those in the White House, but could accurately be described as the sort of hideaway a millionaire might set up for himself outside Aspen—in fact, Presidential Quarters are officially known as Aspen Cottage. Maintained by Naval Surface Detachment, Thurmont (Maryland), and guarded by a short company of handpicked Marines, the compound was as remote and secure a location as anything within a hundred miles of Washington could possibly be. There were Marines at the presidential cabin to let them in, and inside were sailors to guide each to a private bedroom. Outside were twelve additional cottages, and the closer you were to Aspen, of course, the more important you were.

“What's for dinner?” Jack Junior asked.

“Just about anything you want,” a Navy chief steward replied.

Jack turned to Cathy. She nodded. This would be a whatever-you-want night. The President took off his jacket and tie. A steward darted up to collect them. “The food is great here, Mr. President,” he promised.

“That's a fact, sir,” the chief confirmed. “We have a deal with some local folks. Fresh everything, right off the farm. Can I get you something to drink?” he asked hopefully.

“That sounds like a great plan, chief. Cathy?”

“White wine?” she asked, the stress bleeding off her, finally.

“We have a pretty good selection, ma'am. For domestic, how about a Chateau Ste. Michelle reserve chardonnay? It's a 1991 vintage, and about as good as a chardonnay gets.”

“You're a Navy chief?” POTUS asked.

“Yes, sir. I used to take care of admirals, but I got promoted, and if I may say so, sir, I do know my wines.”

Ryan held up two fingers. The chief nodded and went out the door.

“This is insane,” Cathy said after he left.

“Don't knock it.” While they waited for drinks, the two big kids agreed on a pizza. Katie wanted a burger and fries. They heard the buzz of another helicopter coming into the pad. Cathy was right, her husband thought. This is insane.

The door reopened, and the chief returned with two bottles and a silver bucket. Another steward followed with glasses.

“Chief, I just meant two glasses.”

“Yes, Mr. President, but we have two more guests arriving, Admiral and Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson likes a good white also, sir.” He popped the cork and poured a splash for S
URGEON
. She nodded.

“Doesn't it have a wonderful nose?” He filled her glass and one other, handing that to the President. Then he withdrew.

“They always told me the Navy had guys like that, but I never believed it.”

“Oh, Jack.” Cathy turned. The kids were watching TV, all three sitting on the floor, even Sally, who was trying to become an elegant lady. They were retreating into the familiar, while their parents did what parents always did, came to terms with a new reality, in order to buffer their children from the world.

Jack saw the lights of a HMMWV go past to the left.

Robby and Sissy would have their own cabin, he imagined. They'd change before coming over. He turned back and wrapped his arms around his wife from behind. “It's okay, babe.”

Cathy shook her head. “It'll never be okay, Jack. It'll never be okay again. Roy told me, as long as we live, we'll have bodyguards with us. Everywhere we go, we'll need protection. Forever,” she said, sipping her wine, not so much angry as resigned, not so much dazed as comprehending something she'd never dreamed. The trappings of power were seductive sometimes. A helicopter to work. People to take care of your clothes, look after the kids, whatever food you wanted as close as the phone, escorts everywhere, fast track into everything.

But the price of it? No big deal. Just every so often somebody might try to murder one of your children. There was no running away from it. It was as though she'd been given a diagnosis of cancer, of the breast, the ovaries, something else. Horrible as it was, you had to do what you had to do. Crying didn't help, though she'd do a lot of that, S
URGEON
was sure. Screaming at Jack wouldn't help—and she wasn't a screamer anyway, and it wasn't Jack's fault, was it? She just had to roll with the punch, like patients at Hopkins did when you told them they had to go see the Oncology Department—oh, please, don't worry. They're the best, the very best, and times have changed, and they really know what they're doing now. Her colleagues in the Department of Oncology were the best. And they had a nice new building now. But who really wanted to go there?

And so she and Jack had a nice house of sorts, with a wonderful staff, some of whom were even wine experts, she thought, taking another sip from her glass. But who really wants to go there?

S
O MANY AGENTS
were assigned to the case that they didn't know what to do yet. They didn't have enough rough information to generate leads, but that was changing fast. Most of the dead terrorists had been photographed—two of them, shot from behind by Norm Jeffers' M-16 rifle, didn't have faces to photograph—and all of the bodies fingerprinted. Blood samples would be taken for DNA records in case that later became useful— a possibility, since identity could be confirmed by a genetic match with close relatives. For now they went with the photos. These were transmitted to the Mossad first of all. The terrorists had probably been Islamic, everyone thought, and the Israelis had the best data on them. CIA handled the initial notice, followed by the FBI. Full cooperation was promised at once, personally, by Avi ben Jakob.

All of the bodies were taken to Annapolis for postmortem examination. This was required by law, even in cases where the cause of death was as obvious as an earthquake. The pre-death condition of each body would be established, plus a full blood-toxicology check to see if any were on drugs.

The clothing of each was removed for full examination at the FBI laboratory in Washington. The brand names were established first of all to determine country of origin. That, and general condition, would determine time of purchase, which could be important. More than that, the technicians now working overtime on a Friday evening would use ordinary Scotch tape to collect loose fibers, and especially pollen particles, which could determine many things, because some plants grew only in limited regions of the world. Such results could take weeks, but with a case such as this, there was no limit on resources. The FBI had a lengthy roster of scientific experts to consult.

Tag numbers for the cars had been transmitted even before O'Day had done his shooting, and already agents were at the car-rental agencies, checking the computerized records.

At Giant Steps, the adult survivors were being interviewed. They mainly confirmed O'Day's reportage. Some of the details were askew, but that was not unexpected. None of the young women recognized the language the terrorists had spoken. The children were subjected to far gentler interrogations, in every case sitting on a parent's lap. Two of the parents were from the Middle East, and it was thought that perhaps the children knew something of foreign languages, but that proved to be a false hope. The weapons had all been collected, and their serial numbers checked with a computerized database. The date of manufacture was easily established, and the makers' records checked to see which distributor had purchased them, and from there which store had sold them. That trail proved cold indeed. The weapons were old ones, a fact belied by their new condition, which was established by visual inspection of the barrel and bolt mechanisms. They hardly had any wear at all. That tidbit of information went up the line even before they had a purchaser's name.

“D
AMN
, I
WISH
Bill was here,” Murray said aloud, for the first time in his career feeling inadequate to a task. His division chiefs were arrayed around his conference table. From the first it was certain that this investigation would be a joint venture between the Criminal and Foreign Counter-intelligence divisions, aided, as always, by Laboratory. Things were moving so rapidly that there wasn't yet a Secret Service official to join them. “Thoughts?”

“Dan, whoever bought these guns has been in-country a long time,” FCI said.

“Sleeper.” Murray nodded agreement.

“Pat didn't recognize their language. He would probably have recognized a European one. Has to be the Middle East,” Criminal said. This wasn't exactly Nobel-class work, but even the FBI had to follow form in what it did. “Well, Western Europe, anyway. I suppose we have to consider the Balkan countries.” There was reluctant agreement around the table.

“How old are those guns again?” the Director asked.

“Eleven years. Long before the ban was passed,” Criminal answered for FCI. “They may have been totally unused until today, virgins, Dan.”

“Somebody's set up a network that we didn't know about. Somebody real patient. Whoever the purchaser turns out to be, I think we'll find that it's a nicely faked ID, and he's already flown the coop. It's a classic intelligence job, Dan,” FCI went on, saying what everybody was thinking. “We're talking pros here.”

“That's a little speculative,” the Director objected.

“When's the last time I was wrong, Danny?” the assistant director asked.

“Not lately. Keep going.”

“Maybe the Lab guys can develop some good forensic stuff”—he nodded to the assistant director for the Laboratory Division—“but even then, what we're going to end up with won't be good enough to take into a court, unless we get real lucky and bag either the purchaser, or the other people who had to be involved in this mission.”

“Flight records and passports,” Criminal said. “Two weeks back for starters. Look for repeaters. Somebody re-conned the objective. Must have been since Ryan became President. That's a start.” Sure, he didn't go on, only about ten million records to check. But that was what cops did.

“Christ, I hope you're wrong on the sleeper,” Murray said, after a further moment's reflection.

“So do I, Dan,” FCI replied. “But I'm not. We'll need time to ID his house, assembly point, whatever, interview his neighbors, check the real-estate records to come up with a cover name and try to proceed from there. He's probably already gone, but that's not the scary part, is it? Eleven years at least he's been here. He was bankrolled. He was trained. He kept the faith all the way to today to help with that mission. All that time, and he still believed enough to help kill kids.”

“He won't be the only one,” Murray concluded bleakly.

“I don't think so.”

“W
ILL YOU COME
with me, please?”

“I've seen you before, but—”

“Jeff Raman, sir.”

The admiral took his hand. “Robby Jackson.”

The agent smiled. “I know that, sir.”

It was a pleasant walk, though it would have been more so without the obvious presence of armed men. The mountain air was cool and clear, lots of stars blinking overhead.

“How's he doing?” Robby asked the agent.

“Tough day. A lot of good people dead.”

“And some bad ones, too.” Jackson would always be a fighter pilot, for whom inflicted death was part of the job description. They turned into the Presidential Quarters.

Both Robby and Sissy were struck by the scene. Not parents themselves—Cecilia's medical problem had not allowed it, despite the best of efforts—they didn't fully understand how it was with kids. The most horrific events, if followed by a parent's hug and other signs of security, were usually set aside. The world, especially for Katie, had resumed its proper shape. But there would be nightmares, too, and those would last for weeks, maybe longer, until the memories faded. Embraces were exchanged, and then also as usual, man paired with man and woman with woman. Robby got himself a glass of wine and followed Jack outside.

“How you doing, Jack?” By unspoken agreement, here and now Ryan wasn't the President.

“The shock comes and goes,” he admitted. “It's all come back from before. The bastards can't just come after me—oh, no, they have to go for the soft targets. Those cowardly fucks!” Jack cursed as it came back again.