There were still things he had to tie up, of course. Ryan left the building just after eleven that morning. He had a car phone in his Jaguar and placed a call to a Pentagon number. “Captain Jackson, please,” he said when it was picked up. “Jack Ryan calling.” Robby picked up a few seconds later.
“Hey, Jack!”
“How’s lunch grab you?”
“Fine with me. My place or yours, boy?”
“You know Artie’s Deli?”
“K Street at the river. Yeah.”
“Be there in half an hour.”
“Right.”
Robby spotted his friend at a corner table and came right over. There was already a place set for him, and another man was at the table.
“I hope you like corned beef,” Jack said. He waved to the other man. “This is Dan Murray.”
“The Bureau guy?” Robby asked as they shook hands.
“Correct, Captain. I’m a deputy assistant director.”
“Doing what?”
“Well, I’m supposed to be in the Criminal Division, but ever since I got back I’ve been stuck supervising two major cases. You ought to be able to guess which ones they are.”
“Oh.” Robby started working on his sandwich.
“We need some help, Rob,” Jack said.
“Like what?”
“Like we need you to get us somewhere quietly.”
“Where?”
“Hurlburt Field. That’s part of -”
“Eglin, I know. Hurlburt’s where the Special Operations Wing works out of; it’s right next to P-cola. Whole lot of people been borrowing Navy airplanes lately. The boss doesn’t like it.”
“You can tell him about this,” Murray said. “Just so it doesn’t leave his office. We’re trying to clean something up.”
“What?”
“I can’t say, Rob,” Jack replied. “But part of it is what you brought to me. It’s a worse mess than you think. We have to move real fast, and nobody can know about it. We just need a discreet taxi service for the moment.”
“I can do that, but I want to clear it with Admiral Painter.”
“Then what?”
“Meet me at Pax River at two o’clock, down the hill at Strike. Hell, I’ve wanted to do a little proficiency flying anyway.”
“Might as well finish your lunch.”
Jackson left them five minutes later. Ryan and Murray did the same, driving to the latter’s house. Here Jack made a phone call to his wife, telling her that he had to be out of town for a few days and not to worry. They drove away in Ryan’s car.
Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center is located about an hour’s drive from Washington, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Formerly one of the nicer plantations of antebellum Maryland, it was now the Navy’s primary flight-test and evaluation center, fulfilling most of the functions of the better-known Edwards Air Force Base in California. It is the home of the Navy’s Test Pilot School, where Robby had been an instructor, and houses various test directorates, one of which, located a mile or two downhill from the main flight line, is called Strike. The Strike Directorate is concerned with fighter and attack planes, the sexy fast-movers. Murray’s FBI identification was sufficient to get them on base, and after checking in with the Strike security shack, they found a place to wait, listening to the bellow of afterburning jet engines. Robby’s Corvette arrived twenty minutes later. The new captain led them into the hangar.
“You’re in luck,” he told them. “We’re taking a couple of Tomcats down to Pensacola. The Admiral called ahead, and they’re preflighting the birds already. I, uh -”
Another officer came into the room. “Cap’n Jackson? I’m Joe Bramer,” the lieutenant said. “I hear we’re heading down south, sir.”
“Correct, Mr. Bramer. These gents are going with us. Jack Murphy and Dan Tomlinson. They’re government employees who need some familiarization with Navy flight procedures. Think you can rustle up some poopy suits and hard hats?”
“No problem, sir. Be back in a minute.”
“You wanted covert. You got covert,” Jackson chuckled. He pulled his flight suit and helmet from a bag. “What gear you guys bringing along?”
“Shaving kits,” Murray replied. “And one bag.”
“We can handle that.”
Fifteen minutes later, everyone climbed up ladders to board the aircraft. Jack got to fly with his friend. Five minutes after that, the Tomcats were taxiing to the end of the runway.
“Go easy, Rob,” Ryan said as they awaited clearance for take-off.
“Like an airliner,” Jackson promised. It wasn’t quite that way. The fighters leapt off the ground and streaked to cruising altitude about twice as fast as a 727, but Jackson kept the ride smooth and level once he got there.
“What gives, Jack?” he asked over the intercom.
“Robby, I can’t -”
“Did I ever tell you all the things I can make this baby do for me? Jack, my boy, I can make this baby sing. I can turn inside a virgin quail.”
“Robby, what we’re trying to do is rescue some people who may be cut off. And if you tell that to anyone, even your Admiral, you might just screw things up for us. You ought to be able to figure it out from there.”
“Okay. What about your car?”
“Just leave it there.”
“I’ll get somebody to put the right sticker on it.”
“Good idea.”
“You’re getting better about flying, Jack. You haven’t whimpered once.”
“Yeah, well, I got one more flight today, and that one’s in a fucking helicopter. I haven’t ridden one of those since the day my back got broken on Crete.” It felt good to tell him that. The real question, of course, was whether or not they’d get the chopper. But that was Murray’s job. Jack turned his head to look around and was stunned to see the other Tomcat only a few feet off their right wingtip. Murray waved at him. “Christ, Robby!”
“Huh?”
“The other plane!”
“Hell, I told him to ease it off some, must be twenty feet away. We always fly in formation.”
“Congratulations, you just got your whimper.”
The flight lasted just over an hour. The Gulf of Mexico appeared first as a blue ribbon on the horizon, then grew into an oceanic mass of water as the two fighters headed down to land. Pensacola’s strips were visible to the east, then got lost in the haze. It struck Ryan as odd that he feared flying less when he rode in a military aircraft. You could see better, and somehow that made a difference. But the fighters even landed in formation, which seemed madly dangerous, though nothing happened. The wingman touched first, and then Robby’s a second or two later. Both Tomcats rolled out and turned at the end of the runway, stopping near a pair of automobiles. Some groundcrew men had ladders.
“Good luck, Jack,” Robby said as the canopy came up.
“Thanks for the ride, man.” Jack managed to detach himself from the airplane without help and climbed down. Murray was beside him a minute later. Both entered the waiting cars, and behind them the Tomcats taxied away to complete their flight to nearby Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Murray had called ahead. The officer who met them was the intelligence chief for the 1st Special Operations Wing.
“We need to see Colonel Johns,” Murray said after identifying himself. That was the only conversation needed for the moment. The car took them past the biggest helicopters Ryan had ever seen, then to a low block building with cheap windows. The wing intelligence officer took them in. He handled the introduction of the visitors, thinking erroneously that Ryan was also FBI, then left the three alone in the room.
“What can I do for you?” PJ asked warily.
“We want to talk about trips you made to Panama and Colombia,” Murray replied.
“Sorry, we don’t discuss what we do here very freely. That’s what special ops are all about.”
“A couple of days ago you were given some orders by Vice Admiral Cutter. You were in Panama then,” Murray said. “Before that you had flown armed troops into Colombia. First you took them into the coastal lowlands, then you pulled them out and reinserted them into the hill country, correct?”
“Sir, I cannot comment on that, and whatever inference you draw is yours, not mine.”
“I’m a cop, not a reporter. You’ve been given illegal orders. If you carry them out, you may be an accessory to a major felony charge.” Best to get things immediately on the table, Murray thought. It had the desired effect. Hearing from a senior FBI official that his orders might be illegal forced Johns to respond, though only a little bit.
“Sir, you’re asking me something I don’t know how to respond to.”
Murray reached into his bag and pulled out a manila envelope. He removed a photograph and handed it to Colonel Johns. “The man who gave you those orders, of course, was the President’s National Security Adviser. Before he met with you, he met with this guy. That is Colonel Félix Cortez. He used to be with the DGI, but now he’s working for the Drug Cartel as chief of security. He was instrumental in the Bogotá murders. Exactly what they agreed on we do not know, but I can tell you what we do know. There is a communications van over the Gaillard Cut that had been the radio link with the four teams on the ground. Cutter visited it and shut it down. Then he came to see you and ordered you to fly home and never talk about the mission. Now, you put all three of those things together and tell me if what you do come up with sounds like something you want to be part of.”