Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (691 page)
Read Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 Online
Authors: Tom Clancy
RYAN WAS MORE onautopilot than the Boeing was before it touched down at Runway Zero-One Right at Andrews Air Force Base. He’d been on the go for what? Twenty-two hours? Something like that. Something more easily done as a Marine second lieutenant (age twenty-two) than as a married father of two (age
thirty
-two) who’d had a fairly stressful day. He was also feeling his liquor somewhat.
There were two cars waiting at the bottom of the steps—Andrews had yet to install a jetway. He and Zaitzev took the first. Mrs. Rabbit and the Bunny took the second. Two minutes after that, they were on Suitland Parkway, heading into D.C. Ryan drew the task of explaining what they were passing along the way. Unlike his arrival in England, Zaitzev was not under the impression that this might be a
maskirovka.
And the detour past the Capitol Building ended whatever lingering suspicions he might have had. George Lucas on his best day could not have faked this scenery. The cars crossed the Potomac and went north of the George Washington Parkway, finally taking the marked exit to Langley.
“So, this is the home of the Main Enemy,” the Rabbit said.
“I just think of it as the place I used to work.”
“Used to?”
“Didn’t you know? I’m stationed back in England now,” Jack told him.
The whole debriefing team was under the canopy by the main entrance. Ryan knew only one of them, Mark Radner, a Russian scholar from Dartmouth who got called down for some special work—one of the people who liked working for CIA, but not full-time. Ryan was now able to understand that. When the car stopped, he got out first and went to James Greer.
“You’ve had a busy couple of days, my boy.”
“Tell me about it, Admiral.”
“How was it in Rome?”
“First, tell me about the Pope,” Jack shot back.
“He came through surgery okay. He’s critical, but we asked Charlie Weathers up at Harvard about that, and he said not to worry. People that age who come through surgery are always classified as being in critical condition—probably just a way to drive the bill up. Unless something unusual crops up, he’ll probably be fine. Charlie says they grow good cutters in Rome. His Holiness ought to be home in three to four weeks, Charlie says. They won’t rush it with a guy his age.”
“Thank God. Sir, when I had that Strokov bastard I thought we’d done it, y’know? Then when I heard the shots—Jesus, what a moment that was, Admiral.”
Greer nodded. “I can imagine. But the good guys won this one. Oh, your Orioles took the series from Philly. Game just ended twenty minutes ago. That new shortstop you have, Ripken, looks to me like he’s going places.”
“Ryan.” Judge Moore came over next. “Well done, son.” Another handshake.
“Thank you, Director.”
“Nice going, Ryan,” Ritter said next. “Sure you wouldn’t like to try our training course at the Farm?” The handshake was surprisingly cordial. Ritter must have had a drink or two in the office, Jack surmised.
“Sir, right now, I’d be just as happy to go back to teaching history.”
“It’s more fun to make it, boy. Remember that.”
The party moved inside, past the memorial on the right-side wall to the dead officers, many of whose names were still secret, then left to the executive elevator. The Rabbit family went its own way. There were hotel-like accommodations for VIP visitors and back-from-overseas field officers on the sixth floor, and evidently the CIA was bedding them down there. Jack followed the senior executives to the Judge’s office.
“How good is our new Rabbit?” Moore asked.
“Well, sure as hell he gave us good information on the Pope, Judge,” Ryan answered in considerable surprise. “And the Brits sound pretty happy with what he’s told them about that Agent MINISTER. I’m kinda curious who this CASSIUS guy is.”
“And NEPTUNE,” Greer added. The Navy needed secure communications to survive in the modern world, and James Greer still had blue suits in his closet.
“Any other thoughts?” This was Moore again.
“Has anyone thought about how desperate the Russians are? I mean, sure, the Pope was—I guess he still is—a political threat of some sort to them, but, damn it, this was not a rational operation, was it?” Jack asked. “Looks to me as though they’re a lot more desperate than we usually think. We ought to be able to exploit that.” The mixture of alcohol and fatigue made it easier than usual for Ryan to speak his mind, and he’d been chewing on this idea for about twelve hours.
“How?” Ritter asked, reminding himself that Ryan was something of a whiz at economics.
“I’ll tell you one thing for sure: The Catholic Church is not going to be very happy. Lots of Catholics in Eastern Europe, guys. That is a capability we need to think about using. If we approach the Church intelligently, they might just cooperate with us. The Church is big on forgiveness, sure, but you’re supposed to go to confession first.”
Moore raised an eyebrow.
“The other thing is, I’ve been studying their economy. It’s very shaky, a lot more than our people think it is, Admiral,” Jack said, turning to his immediate boss.
“What do you mean?”
“Sir, the stuff our guys are looking at, it’s the official economics reports that come into Moscow, right?”
“We work pretty hard to get it, too,” Moore confirmed.
“Director, why do we think it’s true?” Ryan asked. “Just because the Politburo gets it? We know they lie to us, and they lie to their own people. What if they lie to themselves? If I were an examiner for the SEC, I think I could put a whole lot of guys in Allenwood Federal Prison. What they say they have doesn’t jibe with what we can identify them as actually having. Their economy is teetering, and if that goes bad, even a little bit, the whole shebang comes down.”
“How could we exploit that?” Ritter asked. His own blue-team analysis had said something very similar four days earlier, but even Judge Moore didn’t know that.
“Where do they get their hard currency—I mean, what do they get it from?”
“Oil.” Greer answered the question. The Russians exported as much oil as the Saudis.
“And who controls the world price of oil?”
“OPEC?”
“And who,” Ryan went on, “controls OPEC?”
“The Saudis.”
“Aren’t they our friends?” Jack concluded. “Look at the USSR as a takeover target, like we did at Merrill Lynch. The assets are worth a lot more than the parent corporation, because it’s so badly run. This isn’t hard stuff to figure out.”
Even by a guy exhausted by a long day, five thousand miles of air travel, and a little too much booze,
he didn’t add. There were a lot of smart people at CIA, but they thought too much like government workers, and not enough like Americans. “Don’t we have
anybody
who thinks outside the box?”
“Bob?” Moore asked.
Ritter was warming to the young analyst by the minute. “Ryan, you ever read Edgar Allan Poe?”
“In high school,” Ryan replied in some small confusion.
“How about a story called ‘The Masque of the Red Death’?”
“Something about a plague coming in to ruin the party, wasn’t it?”
“Get some rest. Before you fly back to London tomorrow, you’re going to get briefed in on something.”
“Sleep sounds like a plan, gentlemen. Where do I crash for the night?” he asked, letting them know, if they hadn’t already guessed, that he was ready to collapse.
“We have a place for you at the Marriott up the road. You’re all checked in. There’s a car waiting at the entrance for you. Go on, now,” Moore told him.
“Maybe he’s not so dumb after all,” Ritter speculated.
“Robert, it’s nice to see that you’re strong enough to change,” Greer smilingly observed as he reached for Moore’s own office bottle of expensive bourbon whiskey. It was time to celebrate.
THE FOLLOWING DAY in
Il Tempo
, a morning newspaper in Rome, was a story about a man found dead in a car of an apparent heart attack. It would be a little time before the body was identified and it was finally determined that he was a Bulgarian tourist who’d evidently come to the end of his life quite unexpectedly. How clear his conscience had been was not apparent from physical examination.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 11 - CROSSING THE RIVER
CHAPTER 15 - RED COATS AND BLACK HATS
CHAPTER 16 - AND THE PURSUING HORSES
CHAPTER 17 - AND THE LITTLE REDFOX, AND THE FIRST FENCE
CHAPTER 18 - AND THE DEPARTING FOXHOUNDS
CHAPTER 19 - BEER AND HOMICIDE
CHAPTER 20 - THE SOUND OF HUNTING
CHAPTER 21 - STREETCAR NAME DESIRED
“TOM CLANCY HAS PASSED THE TORCH TO A NEW GENERATION.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A man named Mohammed sits in a café in Vienna, about to propose a deal to a Colombian. What if they combined his network of Middle East agents and sympathizers with the Colombian’s drug network in America? The potential for profits would be enormous—and the potential for destruction unimaginable.
A young man in suburban Maryland, who has grown up around intrigue, is about to put his skills to the test. Taught the ways of the world firsthand by agents, statesmen, analysts, Secret Servicemen, and black-ops specialists, he crosses the radar of “The Campus”—a secret organization set up to identify local terrorist threats and deal with them by any means necessary.
His name:
JACK RYAN, JR.
“INCREDIBLY ADDICTIVE . . . 400-odd tightly-woven, adrenaline-fueled pages of intelligence interception, 6 A.M. fitness training, shootings, and hard men. Such fun!”
—
Daily Mail
(London)
“THE AUTHOR KNOWS THIS STUFF LIKE NO ONE ELSE and delivers it all in his inimitable clipped manner.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“CLANCY TAKES A NEW PATH WITH
TIGER
. . . [He] is still the top draw in a field filled with contemporaries.”
—
San Antonio Express-News
“SATISFYING . . . CHILLINGLY PLAUSIBLE.”
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Orlando Sentinel
“ENTERTAINING . . . SUSPENSEFUL.”
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The Seattle Times
Novels by Tom Clancy
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
RED STORM RISING
PATRIOT GAMES
THE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER
THE SUM OF ALL FEARS
WITHOUT REMORSE
DEBT OF HONOR
EXECUTIVE ORDERS
RAINBOW SIX
THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON
RED RABBIT
THE TEETH OF THE TIGER
SSN: STRATEGIES OF SUBMARINE WARFARE
Nonfiction
SUBMARINE: A GUIDED TOUR INSIDE A NUCLEAR WARSHIP
ARMORED CAV: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN ARMORED CAVALRY REGIMENT
FIGHTER WING: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIR FORCE COMBAT WING
MARINE: A GUIDED TOUR OF A MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT
AIRBORNE: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRBORNE TASK FORCE
CARRIER: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER
SPECIAL FORCES: A GUIDED TOUR OF U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES
INTO THE STORM: A STUDY IN COMMAND
(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret.)
EVERY MAN A TIGER
(written with General Charles Horner, Ret.)
SHADOW WARRIORS: INSIDE THE SPECIAL FORCES
(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)
Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: MIRROR IMAGE
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: GAMES OF STATE
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: ACTS OF WAR
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: BALANCE OF POWER
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: STATE OF SIEGE
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: DIVIDE AND CONQUER
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: LINE OF CONTROL
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: MISSION OF HONOR
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: SEA OF FIRE
TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: CALL TO TREASON
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: HIDDEN AGENDAS
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: NIGHT MOVES
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: BREAKING POINT
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: POINT OF IMPACT
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: CYBERNATION
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: STATE OF WAR
TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: CHANGING OF THE GUARD