Sato thanked Providence for the timing of the event, and for the TCAS Sys-
tem. Though the transatlantic air routes were never empty, travel between
Europe and America was timed to coincide with human sleep patterns, and
this time of day was slack for westbound flights. The TCAS sent out interro-
gation signals, and would alert him to the presence of nearby aircraft. At the
moment there was nothing close-his display said CLEAR OF CONFLICT,
meaning that there was no traffic within eighty miles. That enabled him to
slip into a west-bound routing quite easily, tracking down the coast, three
hundred miles out. The pilot checked his time against his memorized flight
plan. Again he’d figured the winds exactly right in both directions. His tim-
ing had to be exact, because the Americans could be very punctual. At 2030
hours, he turned west. He was tired now, having spent most of the last
twenty-four hours in the air. There was rain on the American East Coast, and
while that would make for a bumpy ride lower down, he was a pilot and
hardly noticed such things. The only real annoyance was all the tea he’d
drunk. He really needed to go to the head, but he couldn’t leave the flight
deck unattended, and there was less than an hour to endure the discomfort.
“Daddy, what does this mean? Do we still go to the same school?” Sally
asked from the rear-facing seat in the limousine. Cathy handled the answer.
It was a mommy-question.
“Yes, and you’ll even have your own driver.”
“Neat!” little Jack thought.
Their father was having second thoughts, as he usually did after making
an important decision, even though he knew it was too late for that. Cathy
looked at his face, read his mind, and smiled at him.
“Jack, it’s only a lew months, and then . . .”
“Yeah.” Her husband nodded. “I can always work on my golf game.”
“And you can finally teach. That’s what I want you to do. That’s what
you need to do.”
“Not back to the banking business?”
“I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did in that.”
“You’re an eye-cutter, not a pshrink.”
“We’ll talk about it,” Professor Ryan said, adjusting Katie Ryan’s dress.
TOM CI.ANCY
ll was the eleven-months part that appealed to her. After this post, he’d never
come hack to government service again. What a fine gift President Durling
had given them both.
The official car stopped outside the Longworth House Office Building.
There were no crowds there, though some congressional staffers were head-
ing out of the building. Ten Secret Service agents kept an eye on them and
everything else, while four more escorted the Ryans into the building. Al
Trent was at the corner entrance.
“You want to come with me?”
“Why-”
“After you’re confirmed, we walk you in to be sworn, and then you take
your seat behind the President, next to the Speaker,” Sam Fellows ex-
plained. “It was Tish Brown’s idea. It’ll look good.”
“Election-year theatrics,” Jack observed coolly.
“What about us?” Cathy asked.
“It’s a nice family picture,” Al thought.
“I don’t know why I’m so darned excited about this,” Fellows grumbled
in his most good-natured way. “This is going to make November hard for
us. I suppose that never occurred to you?”
“Sorry, Sam, no, it didn’t,” Jack replied with a sheepish grin.
“This hovel was my first office,” Trent said, opening the door on the
bottom floor to the suite of offices he’d used for ten terms. “I keep it for
luck. Please-sit down and relax a little. One of his staffers came in with soft
drinks and ice, under the watchful eyes of Ryan’s protective detail. Andrea
Price started playing with the Ryan kids again. It looked unprofessional but
was not. The kids hud to be comfortable around her, and she’d already made
a good start at that.
President Durling’s car arrived without incident. Escorts conveyed him to
the Speaker’s official office adjacent to the chamber, where he went over his
speech again. JASMINE, Mrs. Durling, with her own escorts, took an elevator
to the official gallery. By this tiim- the chamber was half-filled. It wasn’t
accepted for people to be fashionably late, perhaps the only such occasion
for members of the Congress. They assembled in little knots of friends for
the most part, and walked in by party, the seats divided by a very real if
invisible line. The rest of the government would come in later. All nine jus-
tices of the Supreme Court, all members of the Cabinet who happened to be
in town (two were not), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their beribboned
uniforms were led to the front row. Then the heads of independent agencies.
Bill Shaw of the FBI. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Finally, under
the nervous eyes of security people and the usual gaggle of advance person-
nel, it was ready, on time, as it always seemed to happen.
The seven networks interrupted their various programming. Anchorper-
1)1’Hi OF HONOR
757
sons appeared to announce that the Presidential Address was about to begin,
giving the viewers enough information that they could head off to the
kitchen and make their sandwiches without really missing anything.
The Doorkeeper of the House, holder of one of the choicest patronage
jobs in the country-a fine salary and no real duties-walked halfway down
the aisle and performed his one public function with his customary booming
voice:
“Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States.”
Roger Durling entered the chamber, striding down the aisle with brief
stops to shake hands, his red-leather folder tucked under his arm. It held a
paper copy of his speech in the event that the TelePrompTers broke. The
applause was deafening and sincere. Even those in the opposition party
recognized that Durling had kept his promise to preserve, protect, and de-
fend the Constitution of the United States, and as powerful a force as poli-
tics was, there was also still honor and patriotism in the room, especially
at times like this. Durling reached the well, then climbed up to his place on
the podium, and it was time for the Speaker of the House to do his cere-
monial duty:
“Members of the Congress, I have the distinct privilege, and high honor,
to introduce the President of the United States.” And the applause began
afresh. This time there was the usual contest between the parties to see who
could clap and cheer the loudest and the longest.
“Okay, remember what happens-”
“Okay, Al! I go in, the Chief Justice swears me in, and I take my seat. All
I have to do is repeat it all back.” Ryan sipped a glass of Coke and wiped
sweaty hands on his trousers. A Secret Service agent fetched him a towel.
“Washington Center, this is K.LM Six-Five-Niner. We have an onboard
emergency, sir.” The voice was in clipped aviatorese, the sort of speech that
people used when everything was going to hell.
The air-traffic controller outside Washington noted the alpha-numeric
icon had just tripled in si/.c on his scope and keyed his own microphone. The
display gave course, speed, and altitude. His first impression was that the
aircraft was making a rapid descent.
“Six-Five-Niner, this is Washington Center. State your intentions, sir.”
“Center, Six-Five-Niner, number-one engine has exploded, engines one
and two lost. Structural integrity in doubt. So is controllability. Request
radar vector direct Baltimore.”
The controller waved sharply to his supervisor, who came over at once.
“Wait a minute. Who is this?” He interrogated the computer and found
no “strip” information for KLM-659.
7JH
TOM CLANCY
The controller keyed his radio. “Six-Five-Niner, please identify, over.”
This reply was more urgent.
“Washington Center, this is KLM-Six-Five-Niner, we are 747 charter in-
bound Orlando, three hundred pax,” the voice replied. “Repeating: we have
two engines out and structural damage to port wing and fuselage. I am de-
scending one-zero thousand now. Request immediate radar vector direct
Baltimore, over!”
“We can’t dick around with this,” the supervisor thought. “Take him.
Get him down.”
“Very well, sir. Six-Five-Niner Heavy. Radar contact. I read you one-
four thousand descending and three hundred knots. Recommend left turn
two-niner-zero and continue descent and maintain one-zero-thousand.”
“Six-Five-Niner, descending one-zero thousand, turning left two-niner-
zero,” Sato said in reply. English was the language on international air
travel, and his was excellent. So far so good. He had more than half of his
fuel still aboard, and was barely a hundred miles out, according to his satel-
lite-navigation system.
At Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the fire station located near
the main terminal was immediately alerted. Airport employees who ordinar-
ily had other jobs ran or drove to the building, while controllers decided
quickly which aircraft they could continue to land before the wounded 747
got close and which they would have to stack. The emergency plan was al-
ready written here, as for every major airport. Police and other services were