Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger (9 page)

“Hands topside to witness punishment,” Chief Oreza announced.

“Come on, Mr. Doe.  You'd better see this.” The lieutenant took him by the arm and led him forward.  Just outside the wardroom door was a ladder that led upward.  At the top of it was a narrow passageway, and both men headed aft toward the cutter's vacant helicopter deck.

The lieutenant's name was Rick Alison.  A black kid from
Albany
,
New York
, and the ship's navigator, Alison thanked God every night for serving under Red Wegener, who was far and away the best commander he'd ever met.  He'd thought about leaving the service more than once, but now planned on staying in as long as he could.  He led Mr. Doe aft, about thirty feet from the festivities.

The seas were really rough now, Alison noted.  He gauged the wind at over thirty knots, and the seas at twelve or fourteen feet.  Panache was taking twenty-five-degree rolls left and right of the vertical, snapping back and forth like a kids' seesaw.  Alison remembered that O'Neil had the conn, and hoped that Chief Owens was keeping an eye on the boy.  The new ensign was a good enough kid, but he still had a lot to learn about ship handling, thought the navigator, who was a bare six years older himself.  Lightning flashed occasionally to starboard, flash-lighting the sea.  Rain was falling in solid sheets, the drops flying across the deck at a sharp angle and driven hard enough by the wind to sting the cheeks.  All in all it was the sort of night to make Edgar Allan Poe salivate at its possibilities.  There were no lights visible, though the cutter's white paint gave them a sort of ghostly outline as a visual reference.  Alison wondered if Wegener had decided to do this because of the weather, or was it just a fortunate coincidence?

Captain, you've pulled some crazy shit since you came aboard, but this one really takes it.

There was the rope.  Someone had snaked it over the end of the cutter's radio/radar mast.  That must have been fun, Alison thought.  Had to have been Chief Riley.  Who else would be crazy enough to try?

Then the prisoner appeared.  His hands were still behind his back.  The captain and XO were there, too.  Wegener was saying something official, but they couldn't hear it.  The wind whistled across the deck, and through the mast structure with its many signal halyards—oh, that's what Riley did, Alison realized.  He'd used a halyard as a messenger line to run the one-inch hemp through the block.  Even Riley wasn't crazy enough to crawl the mast top in this weather.

Then some lights came on.  They were the deck floods, used to help guide a helo in.  They had the main effect of illuminating the rain, but did give a slightly clearer picture of what was happening.  Wegener said one more thing to the prisoner, whose face was still set in an arrogant cast.  He still didn't believe it, Alison thought, wondering if that would change.  The captain shook his head and stepped back.  Riley then placed the noose around his neck.

John Doe's expression changed at that.  He still didn't believe it, but all of a sudden things were slightly more serious.  Five people assembled on the running end of the line.  Alison almost laughed.  He'd known that was how it was done, but hadn't quite expected the skipper to go that far . . .

The final touch was the black hood.  Riley turned the prisoner to face aft toward Alison and his friend—there was another reason, as well—before surprising him with it.  And finally it got through to Mr. Doe.

“Noooooo!” The scream was perfect, a ghostly sort of cry that matched the weather and the wind better than anyone might have hoped.  His knees buckled as expected, and the men on the running end of the line took the strain and ran aft.  The prisoner's feet rose clear of the black no-skid deck as the body jerked skyward.  The legs kicked a few times, then were still before the line was tied off on a stanchion.

“Well, that's that,” Alison said.  He took the other Mr. Doe by the arm and led him forward. “Now it's your turn, sport.”

Lightning flashed close aboard just as they reached the door leading back into the superstructure.  The prisoner stopped cold, looking up one last time.  There was his companion, body limp, swinging like a pendulum below the yard, hanging there dead in the rain.

“You believe me now?” the navigator asked as he pulled him inside.  Mr. Doe's trousers were already soaked from the falling rain, but they were wet for another reason as well.

The first order of business was to get dried off.  When the court reconvened, everyone had changed to fresh clothing.  James Doe was now in a set of blue Coast Guard coveralls.  His handcuffs had been taken off and left off, and he found a hot cup of coffee waiting for him on the defense table.  He failed to note that Chief Oreza was no longer at the head table, nor was Chief Riley in the wardroom at the moment.  The entire atmosphere was more relaxed than it had been, but the prisoner scarcely noticed that.  James Doe was anything but calm.

“Mr. Alison,” the captain intoned, “I would suggest that you confer with your client.”

“This, one's real simple, sport,” Alison said. “You can talk or you can swing.  The skipper doesn't give a shit one way or the other.  For starters, what's your name?”

Jesús started talking.  One of the officers of the court picked up a portable TV camera—the same one used in the boarding, in fact—and they asked him to start again.

“Okay—do you understand that you are not required to say anything?” someone asked.  The prisoner scarcely noticed, and the question was repeated.

“Yeah, right, I understand, okay?” he responded without turning his head. “Look, what do you want to know?”

The questions were already written down, of course.  Alison, who was also the cutter's legal officer, ran down the list as slowly as he could, in front of the video camera.  His main problem was in slowing the answers down enough to be intelligible.  The questioning lasted forty minutes.  The prisoner spoke rapidly, but matter-of-factly, and didn't notice the looks he was getting from the members of the court.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Wegener said when things were concluded. “We'll try to see that things go a little easier for you because of your cooperation.  We won't be able to do much for your colleague, of course.  You do understand that, don't you?”

“Too bad for him, I guess,” the man answered, and everyone in the room breathed a little easier.

“We'll talk to the U.S. Attorney,” the captain promised. “Lieutenant, you can return the prisoner to the brig.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Alison took the prisoner out of the room as the camera followed.  On reaching the ladder to go below, however, the prisoner tripped.  He didn't see the hand that caused it, and didn't have time to look, as another unseen hand crashed down on the back of his neck.  Next Chief Riley broke the unconscious man's forearm, while Chief Oreza clamped a patch of ether-soaked gauze over his mouth.  The two chiefs carried him to sick bay, where the cutter's medical corpsman splinted the arm.  It was a simple green-stick fracture and required no special assistance.  His undamaged arm was secured to the bunk in sick bay, and he was allowed to sleep there.

The prisoner slept late.  Breakfast was brought in to him from the wardroom, and he was allowed to clean himself up before the helicopter arrived.  Oreza came to collect him, leading him topside again, and aft to the helo deck, where he found Chief Riley, who was delivering the other prisoner to the helicopter.  What James Doe—his real name had turned out to be Jesús Castillo—found remarkable was the fact that John Doe—Ramón José Capati—was alive.  A pair of DEA agents seated them as far apart as possible, and had instructions to keep the prisoners separate.  One had confessed, the captain explained, and the other might not be overly pleased with that.  Castillo couldn't take his eyes off Capati, and the amazement in his eyes looked enough like fear that the agents—who liked the idea of a confession in a capital case—resolved to keep the prisoners as far apart as circumstances allowed.  Along with them went all the physical evidence and several videotape cassettes.  Wegener watched the Coast Guard Dolphin helo power up, wondering how the people on the beach would react.  The sober pause that always follows a slightly mad act had set in, but Wegener had anticipated that also.  In fact, he figured that he'd anticipated everything.  Only eight members of the crew knew what had taken place, and they knew what they were supposed to say.  The executive officer appeared at Wegener's side.

“Nothing's ever quite what it seems, is it?”

“I suppose not, but three innocent people died.  Instead of four.” Sure as hell the owner wasn't any angel, the captain reflected.  But did they have to kill his wife and kids, too?  Wegener stared out at the changeless sea, unaware of what he had started or how many people would die because of it.

Preliminaries

C
HAVEZ
'
S FIRST INDICATION
of how unusual this job really was came at
San José
airport.  Driven there in an unmarked rental van, they ended up in the general-aviation part of the facility and found a private jet waiting for them.  Now, that was really something. “Colonel Smith” didn't board.  He shook every man's hand, told them that they'd be met, and got back into the van.  The sergeants all boarded the aircraft which, they saw, was less an executive jet than a mini-airliner.  It even had a stewardess who served drinks.  Each man stowed his gear and availed himself of a drink except Chavez, who was too tired even to look at the young lady.  He barely noted the plane's takeoff, and was asleep before the climb-out was finished.  Something told him that he ought to sleep while he had the time.  It was a common instinct for soldiers, and usually a correct one.

Lieutenant Jackson had never been at the
Monterey
facility, but his older brother had given him the necessary instructions, and he found the O-Club without difficulty.  He felt suddenly lonely.  As he locked his Honda he realized that his was the only Army uniform in view.  At least it wasn't hard to figure out whom to salute.  As a second lieutenant, he had to salute damned near everybody.

“Yo, Timmy!” his brother called, just inside the door.

“Hiya, Rob.” The two men embraced.  Theirs was a close family, but Timmy hadn't seen his big brother, Commander Robert Jefferson Jackson, USN, in almost a year.  Robby's mother had died years before.  Only thirty-nine, she'd complained of a headache, decided to lie down for a few minutes, and never stirred again, the victim of a massive stroke.  It had later been determined that she was an undiagnosed hypertensive, one of many American blacks cursed by the symptomless malady.  Her husband, the Reverend Hosiah Jackson, mourned her loss along with the community in which both had raised their family.  But pious man that Reverend Jackson was, he was also a father whose children needed a mother.  Four years later he'd remarried, to a twenty-three-year-old parishioner, and started afresh.  Timothy was the first child of his second union.  His fourth son had followed a path similar to the first's.  An
Annapolis
graduate, Robby Jackson flew fighter aircraft for the Navy.  Timmy had won an appointment at
West Point
, and looked forward to a career in the infantry.  Another brother was a physician, and the fourth was a lawyer with political ambitions.  Times had changed in
Mississippi
.

It would have been hard for an observer to determine which brother was prouder of the other.  Robby, with three gold stripes on his shoulder boards, bore on his breast pocket the gold star that denoted a former command at sea—in his case, VF-41, a squadron of F-14 Tomcat fighters.  Now working in the Pentagon, Robby was on his way to command of a Carrier Air Wing, and after that perhaps his own carrier.  Timothy, on the other hand, had been the family runt for quite a few years, but
West Point
had changed that with a vengeance.  He had two solid inches on his older brother, and at least fifteen more pounds of muscle.  There was a Ranger flash on his shoulder above the hourglass insignia of his division.  Another boy had been turned into a man, the old-fashioned way.

“Lookin' good, boy,” Robby observed. “How 'bout a drink?”

“Not too many, I've been up for a while.”

“Long day?”

“Long week, as a matter of fact,” Tim replied, “but I did get a nap yesterday.”

“Nice of 'em,” the elder
Jackson
observed with some fraternal concern.

“Hey, if I wanted an easy life, I woulda joined the Navy.” The brothers had a good laugh on the way to the bar.  Robby ordered John Jameson, a taste introduced to him by a friend.  Tim settled for a beer.  Conversation over dinner, of course, began with catching up on family matters, then turned to shop talk.

“Not real different from what you do,” Timmy explained. “You try to get in close and smoke a guy with a missile before he knows you're there.  We try to get in close and shoot him in the head before he knows where we are.  You know about that, don't you, big brother?” Timmy asked with a smile that was touched with envy.  Robby had been there once.

“Once was enough,” Robby answered soberly. “I leave that close-quarter crap to idiots like you.”

“Yeah, well, last night we were the forward element for the battalion.  My lead squad went in beautiful.  The OPFOR—excuse me, Opposing Force—was a bunch from the California Guard, mainly tanks.  They got careless about how they set up, and Sergeant Chavez was inside the laager before they knew about it.  You oughta see this guy operate.  I swear, Rob, he's nearly invisible when he wants to be.  It's going to be a bitch to replace him.”

“Huh?”

“Just transferred out this afternoon.  I was going to lose him in a couple weeks anyway, but they lifted him early to go to
Fort
Benning
.  Whole bunch of good sergeants moved out today.” Tim paused for a moment. “All Spanish ones.  Coincidence.” Another pause. “That's funny, wasn't León supposed to go to
Fort
Benning
, too?”

“Who's León?”

“Sergeant E-6.  He was in Ben Tucker's platoon—Ben and I played ball together at the Point.  Yeah, he was supposed to be going to
Ranger
School
as an instructor in a couple of weeks.  I wonder why him and Chavez left together?  Ah, well, that's the Army for you.  So how do you like the Pentagon?”

“Could be worse,” Robby allowed. “Twenty-five more months, and thank God Almighty, I'll be free at last.  I'm in the running for a CAG slot,” the elder brother explained.  He was at the career stage where things got really sticky.  There were more good men than jobs to be filled.  As with combat operations, one of the determining factors now was pure luck.  Timmy, he saw, didn't know about that yet.

The jet landed after a flight of just under three hours.  Once on the ground it taxied to the cargo terminal at the small airport.  Chavez didn't know which one.  He awoke still short of the sleep he needed when the plane's door was wrenched open.  His first impression was that there wasn't much air here.  It seemed an odd observation to make, and he wrote it off to the usual confusion following a nap.

“Where the hell are we?” another sergeant asked.

“They'll tell you outside,” the attendant replied. “Y'all have a nice time here.” The smile that accompanied the answer was too charming to merit a further challenge.

The sergeants collected their bags and shuffled out of the aircraft, finding yet another van waiting for them. Chavez got his question answered before he boarded it.  The air was very thin here, all right, and in the west he saw why.  The last glow of sunset illuminated the jagged outline of mountains to the west.  Easterly course, three hours' flight time, and mountains: he knew at once they were somewhere in the
Rockies
, even though he'd never really been there.  His last view of the aircraft as the van rolled off showed a fueling truck moving toward it.  Chavez didn't quite put it together.  The aircraft would be leaving in less than thirty minutes.  Few people would have noticed that it had even been there, much less trouble themselves to wonder why.

Clark
's hotel room was a nice one, befitting his cover.  There was an ache at the back of his head to remind him that he was still not fully adjusted to the altitude, but a couple of Tylenol caplets went to work on that, and he knew that his job didn't involve much in the way of physical activity.  He ordered breakfast sent up and went through some setting-up exercises to work the kinks out of his muscles.  The morning jog was definitely out, however.  Finished, he showered and shaved.  Service was good here.  Just as he got his clothes on, breakfast arrived, and by
nine o'clock
he was ready for work. 
Clark
took the elevator down to the lobby, then went outside.  The car was waiting.  He got in the front.

“Buenos días,” the driver said. “There may be rain this afternoon.”

“If so, I have my coat.”

“A cold rain, perhaps.”

“The coat has a liner,”
Clark
said, finishing the code sequence.

“Whoever thought that one up was bright enough,” the man said. “There is rain in the forecast.  The name's Larson.”

“
Clark
.” They didn't shake hands.  It just wasn't done.  Larson, which probably wasn't his real name either,
Clark
thought, was about thirty, with dark hair that belied his vaguely Nordic surname.  Locally, Carlos Larson was thought to be the son of a Danish father and a Venezuelan mother, and he ran a flying school, a service much in demand.  He was a skilled pilot who taught what he knew and didn't ask many questions, which appealed to his clientele.  He didn't really need to ask questions—pilots, especially student pilots, talk a good deal—and he had a good memory for every sort of detail, plus the sort of professional expertise that invited lots of requests for advice.  It was also widely believed that he'd financed his business by making a few highly illegal flights, then semiretired to a life of luxury.  This legend created bona fides for the people in whom he had interest, but did so without making him any sort of adversary.  He was a man who'd done what was needed to get what he wanted, and now lived the sort of life that he'd wanted to live.  That explained the car, which was the most powerful BMW made, and the expensive apartment, and the mistress, a stewardess for Avianca whose real job was as a courier for CIA.  Larson thought it all a dream assignment, the more so because the stewardess really was his lover, a fringe benefit that might not have amused the Agency's personnel directorate.  The only thing that bothered him was that his placement in
Colombia
was also unknown to the station chief.  A relatively inexperienced agent, Larson—Clark would have been surprised to learn that that was his real name—knew enough about how the Agency worked to realize that separate command loops generally denoted some sort of special operation.  His cover had been established over a period of eighteen months, during which he'd been required to do not very much in return. 
Clark
's arrival was probably the signal that all of that was about to change.  Time to earn his pay.

“What's the plan of the day?”
Clark
asked.

“Do a little flying.  We'll be down before the weather goes bad,” Larson added.

“I know you have an instrument rating.”

“I will take that as a vote of confidence,” the pilot said with a smile as he drove toward the airport. “You've been over the photos, of course.”

“Yeah, about three days' worth.  I'm just old-fashioned enough that I like to eyeball things myself.  Maps and photos don't tell you everything.”

“They told me the mission profile is just to fly around straight and level, no buzzing or circling to get people mad.” The nice thing about having a flying school was that its aircraft were expected to be all over the place, but if one showed specific interest in specific people, they might take note of your registration number, and they might come down to the airport to ask why.  The people who lived in Medellín were not known to ask such questions politely.  Larson was not afraid of them.  So long as he maintained his cover, he knew that he had little to worry about.  At the same time, he was a pro, and pros are careful, especially if they want to last.

“Sounds okay to me.”
Clark
knew the same things.  He'd gotten old in a dangerous business by taking only the necessary risks.  Those were bad enough.  It wasn't very different from playing the lottery.  Even though the odds were against one's hitting the number, if you played the game long enough, the right—or wrong—number would appear, no matter how careful you were.  Except in this lottery the prize wasn't money.  It was an unmarked, shallow grave, and you got that only if the opposition remembered something about religion.

He couldn't decide if he liked the mission or not.  On the one hand, the objective was worthy enough.  On the other . . . But
Clark
wasn't paid to make that sort of evaluation.  He was paid to do, not to think very much about it.  That was the main problem with covert operations.  You had to risk your life on the judgment of others.  It was nice to know why, but the decision-makers said knowing why often had the effect of making the job all the more dangerous.  The field operators didn't always believe that. 
Clark
had that problem right now.

The Twin-Beech was parked in the general-aviation section of
El Dorado
International
Airport
.  It didn't require too much in the way of intelligence to make an accurate assessment of what the aircraft were used for.  There were too many expensive cars, and far too many expensive aircraft to be explained by the Colombian gentry.  These were toys for the newly rich. 
Clark
's eyes swept over them, his face showing neutral interest.

“Wages of sin ain't bad, are they?” Larson chuckled.

“What about the poor bastards who're paying the wages?”

“I know about that, too.  I'm just saying that they're nice airplanes.  Those Gulfstreams—I'm checked out on 'em—that's one sweet-handlin' bird.”

“What do they cost?”
Clark
asked.

“A wise man once said, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.”

“Yeah.”
Clark
's mouth twisted into a smile.  But some things carry a price that's not measured in dollars.  He was already getting into the proper frame of mind for the mission.

Larson preflighted the Beech in about fifteen minutes.  He'd just flown in ninety minutes earlier, and few private pilots would have bothered to run through the whole checklist, but Larson was a good pilot, which meant he was before all things a careful one. 
Clark
took the right-side cockpit seat, strapping in as though he were a student pilot on his first hop.  Commercial traffic was light at this hour, and it was easy to taxi into the takeoff pattern.  About the only surprise was the long takeoff roll.

“It's the altitude,” Larson explained over the intercom headset as he rotated off the runway. “It makes the controls a little mushy at low speed, too.  No problem.  Like driving in the snow—you just have to pay attention.” He moved the lever to bring the gear up, leaving the aircraft at full power to claw up to altitude as quickly as possible. 
Clark
scanned the instruments and saw nothing obviously awry, though it did seem odd to show nine thousand feet of altitude when you could still pick out individual people on the ground.