Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (90 page)

The Clancy epic fans have been waiting for. His code name is Mr. Clark. And his work for the CIA is brilliant, cold-blooded, and efficient . . . but who is he really?

“HIGHLY ENTERTAINING.”

—The Wall Street Journal

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

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)

EVERY MAN A TIGER
(written with General Charles Horner)

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 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

Created by Tom Clancy and Martin Greenberg

TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: POLITIKA
TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: RUTHLESS.COM
TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: SHADOW WATCH
TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: BIO-STRIKE
TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: COLD WAR
TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: CUTTING EDGE
TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: ZERO HOUR

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE
^®: CHANGING OF THE GUARD

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with
Netco Partners

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition / December 2003

All rights reserved.
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For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eISBN : 978-1-101-00242-1

BERKLEY
^®
Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY and the “B” design
are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

http://us.penguingroup.com

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg, Denise Little, John Helfers, Brittiany Koren, Lowell Bowen, Esq., Robert Youdelman, Esq., Danielle Forte, Esq., Dianne Jude, and Tom Colgan, our editor. But most important, it is for you, our readers, to determine how successful our collective endeavor has been.

—Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik

PROLOGUE

October 2013 C.E.
Khvoy, Iran

Celik the Turk took a sip of coffee. It was bitter, full of grounds, and it had gone cold, but it gave him something to do with his hands. He was a little nervous. At fifty, even after twenty-six years in the game, he was always a little nervous at this stage. Death was a spy’s constant companion, but Celik had outrun Him every time before, and even though he was slower now than he had been as a young man, he had no reason to believe he couldn’t outrun the grave diggers one more time.

He took a deep drag from his hand-rolled, unfiltered cigarette. The cheap tobacco was harsh; the greasy blue smoke bit his throat and lungs when he inhaled. He would have better when he was home in Ankara.

The cafe was small—tiny, really—only four tables, a family operation that catered to locals. The building was concrete block, the floor packed dirt, tamped hard over the years, and the furniture was clean but very old. The people who owned the cafe were Turks, though they didn’t wave that in anybody’s face. Even though the border was only a few kilometers away, this was still Iran, and the Irani and the Turk had not been the best of friends in anybody’s memory. The food might or might not have been good. For Celik, when he was on a mission, breakfast was always the same—coffee and a cigarette. A full man did not move as fast as one with an empty stomach.

Kokmak was late. This might be a bad sign. Or it might mean nothing at all, save that Kokmak had overslept.

Except for the old man serving him coffee and a younger version of the old man sometimes visible through a beaded curtain hung over the door to the kitchen, Celik was alone.

He smoked the cigarette down to a nub, until it was too hot to hold. He stubbed it out on a chipped, clouded glass ashtray somebody had stolen from a Hyatt Hotel. He stripped the paper and carefully put the last bit of tobacco back into the tin he carried in his left vest pocket, shook the tin to mix it in, then rolled another cigarette, using a strawberry-flavored Zig-Zag paper. The paper was pink and, he supposed, had some distant relation to the taste of strawberries. He did not care. It amused him to smoke pink cigarettes, and he knew that no one would mark him as a secret operative of a foreign service from the colorful paper; in fact, they would notice a man who smoked pink fags, and in so doing, assume that he wasn’t a spy—a spy would not do anything as stupid as that to draw attention to himself. A bit of reverse psychology, and one that Celik was proud of.

The color of his smokes notwithstanding, he looked like most men he had passed in this town. Swart, a thick black moustache, black hair going gray under a cap, clothes that were old, patched, dusty, but not too raggedy. Just another poor Turk on his way back to his dust farm or small shop, stopping in for coffee before he got back on the road. Nothing unusual about him.

Outside, a twelve-year-old flatbed truck, a German machine with a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers on it, sat parked on the side of the building that would grow shady when the sun began its morning climb. Not that he would be there when it did, but it was an old habit to prepare for the sun when it came.

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