Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
sibilities when Megan Breen offered it to him, nor had he failed to recognize it would mean spending many more hours in an office chair than he ever did heading up night security at UpLink’s Brazilian manufacturing compound. Except…
A desolate frown creased Thibodeau’s face.
Too much sit-down break trousers, he thought. It was a Louisiana bayou adage that went back forever, and he could remember his mother chastening him with it time and again when she’d caught him shirking his chores around the house. Too much sit-down break trousers. You wore out the back of your pants as quickly sitting on your rump as doing honest work. Though maybe his rump was the most functional part of him these days, being one of the few spots on his body that hadn’t been drilled by a slug in Brazil.
Not that anyone had expressed the tiniest smidgen of unhappiness with his performance to date. On the contrary, Gordian, Nimec, and Megan all seemed to approve of the way he was handling things. The dissatisfaction, the discontent, came entirely from inside him.
“Watcha gonna say, boy?” he asked himself aloud. “Watcha gonna goddamn say, huh?”
Shrugging, Thibodeau reached into his breast pocket- as was his often-noticed preference, he had on the official indigo blue Sword uniform blouse usually reserved for members of active security details rather than executives at the San Jose office tower, where business suits were the norm-and pulled a satiny Montecristo No. 2 from a two-finger leather cigar case. It was one of the few remaining torpedoes he’d brought from Cuiaba, beaucoup hard to find, and he’d planned to savor it over some drinks at his favorite local tavern tonight. But he
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felt ready for some uplifting, damn ready, and wasn’t about to stand on occasion.
He had been appointed to one of the top posts in Sword, a post that had, in fact, been created especially for him, with a commensurate raise that boosted him into an income bracket he’d never even considered within reach. Yet he felt a total lack of achievement or gratification, a gnawing absence of confidence that he was suited to the role. Making him, what, some kind of pretender?
Because he knew how much faith was being placed in him by people he respected and cared for, how much rested on his shoulders, Thibodeau was ashamed of himself for feeling as he did.
And then there was Tom Ricci, one of the most galling, cocksure bastards he’d ever met, always pushing fire. Thibodeau hated sharing the job with him, and to compound matters, was angered over the position he’d just been put in because of him. Of being forced to either nix or okay a move to which he’d vehemently objected when it was proposed and that he still maintained was wrongheaded, but that everyone else involved in the decision-making process had been convinced was worthy of a go.
“On a trial basis,” Pete Nimec had qualified when soliciting his approval. “With constant oversight.”
As he’d listened to him, Thibodeau had felt increasingly boxed in despite the repeated attempts to allay his concerns. Sometimes, he’d thought, one bad move could cost you the whole game.
Now he clipped the end of the cigar with his Swiss army knife, forgoing the expensive double-blade guillotine cutter he’d received as a fare-thee-well from his
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Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
crew in Brazil. Having been relegated to the back corner of a desk drawer, it was a gift that was much appreciated for the sentiments it represented but was also much too fancy for his liking.
Thibodeau struck a match and lit up, carefully holding the tip of the cigar at the edge of the flame, turning it in his hand until it caught all the way around. Then he raised the cigar to his mouth and smoked.
Looking across his desk at the empty chair where Nimec had sat only minutes before, Thibodeau again recalled his limber pitching style, so reminiscent of Megan’s approach that he’d wondered if she had been offering pointers.
“We proceed either unanimously or not at all,” Nimec had said, after first relaying the news that Gordian and the others had come down in favor of establishing an RDT section. “Decision this important, it’s got to have your support.”
Thibodeau’s reply was blunt.
“My opinion’s what it is,” he said. “Don’t expect me to change it to suit the boss.”
“Nobody wants that, Rollie. I’m here to see whether I can convince you to agree to this, not accede under duress.”
“An’ Gordian?”
“Gord shares some of your qualms, and he’s especially concerned about stretching the hospitality of countries where we might have to send in teams. You spent over a year in Brazil dealing with their government and law enforcement agencies-”
“An’ way before that, a couple back-to-back tours of duty with the Air Cav commandin’ a long range recon patrol in Vietnam,” Thibodeau interrupted. “Choppers
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it would drop us into enemy territory, we’d search and
“destroy. My units knew our mission an’ were the best
I at what we did. But the bigger mission, one sunk us into
jfethe war, that wasn’t so clear, an’ we both know how it
lended.” He’d snorted with disgust. “Lesson learned,
least by me.”
Nimec was undeterred. “What I was about to say, Rol- lie, is we were hoping you could draw on your expedience. Help to define the circumstances that would | warrant launching an RDT into the field, stipulate the ; rules and constraints it would operate under to avert po! litical incidents, and so forth. Give us a total strategic framework.”
Thibodeau shook his head. “Say I ain’t willin’,” he said. “What then?” Nimec had looked him straight in the eye. “Then I walk out of here and into Gord’s office and report that the plan’s DOA,” he replied. “I said ‘unanimous,’ and I meant it.”
Thibodeau was quiet. Nimec’s embracing reasonability was hard to argue with, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying.
“An’ where’s Tom Ricci fit into the plan?” he asked. “What’s he supposed to do while I’m cookin’ up strategy?”
Nimec had seemed prepared for the question. “My idea is for Ricci to concentrate on tactical issues,” he said.
“Tactical.” . “And on training,” Nimec added.
Thibodeau wondered why that stung him. And tried not to show it did.
“You discuss that with him yet?”
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Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
“No, but-”
“So how you know he gonna take to it?”
“I don’t think he’ll object. The field’s where his talents would be best applied and where he’s most at home,” Nimec said. “It’d be a kind of dual-path approach, with Megan and yours truly coordinating.” He paused. “I recognize that you two have had trouble meshing, and for the present it seems like the most balanced, workable arrangement.”
More silence from Thibodeau. Again he’d felt that he was groping for a reason not to cooperate.
Nimec had moved forward in the chair opposite him, his hands on the edge of the desk, his gaze unwavering.
“Come on, Rollie,” he’d pressed. “Give it a try.”
Thibodeau waited another few seconds to answer, then expelled a relenting sigh.
“Go ahead an’ count me in,” he said. “But I got my doubts. Mighty ones.”
“Understood,” Nimec said.
Thibodeau shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “This ain’t nothin’ between me an’ you, but I want my feelings on record.”
Nimec responded with a quick nod.
“It’ll be easy enough for me to note them in my memo to Gord and carbon copy it to you,” he said. “Settled?”
After a moment’s further hesitation, Thibodeau had told him it was, more or less concluding their parley on a note of accord. Although that had done nothing to resolve the inner conflict he was experiencing-and still didn’t fully understand.
He snapped back to the present, puffing on his Montecristo. As always, he enjoyed the rich flavor of its tobaccos, the mild tingle it left on his tongue. But why
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wasn’t it having its usual calming effect on him? Lifting away his cares in puffs of aromatic smoke?
He pushed himself out of his chair, feeling a sudden peed to get out from behind the desk. Fragments of his Conversation with Nimec refused to leave his mind- one in particular-and he wanted desperately to shake it. To quiet the mingled resentments swirling around in- gide him like some sort of nebulous cloud, now swelling in his gut, now sending flares of heat into his chest.
“My idea is for Ricci to concentrate on tactical issues. The field’s where his talents would be best applied…
‘ifrwhere he’s most at home.”
II Thibodeau strode around the desk and paced the office
iiftwith his hands behind his back, the cigar thrust straight
Jpout between his lips, smoke pouring upward from the
fscomers of his mouth.
| Then, abruptly, he ceased to pace. He realized he was