Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

“All because he likes to see tits from three hundred miles away,” Cantor replied.

“How come nobody else saw that first?” Ryan would have preferred that someone else had done all this.

“Because there aren’t enough people in my section. I just got authority to hire ten new ones. I’ve already got them picked out. They’re people who’re leaving the Air Force. Pros.”

“Okay, what about the other camp?”

“Here.” A new photo came into view. “Pretty much the same thing. We have two people visible –”

“One’s a girl,” Ryan said at once.

“One appears to have shoulder-length hair,” the photo expert agreed. He went on: “That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a girl.” Jack thought about that, looking at the figure’s stance and posture.

“If we assume it’s a girl, what does that tell us?” he asked Marty.

“You tell me.”

“We have no indication that the ULA has female members, but we known that the PIRA does. This is the camp — remember that jeep that was driving from one to the other and was later seen parked at this camp?” Ryan paused before going on. 0h, what the hell . . . He grabbed the photo of the six people on the gun range. “This is the one.”

“And what the hell are you basing that on?” the photo-intel man asked.

“Call it a strong hunch,” Ryan replied.

“That’s fine. The next time I go to the track I’ll bring you along to pick my horses for me. Listen, the thing about these photos is, what you see is all you got. If you read too much into these photos, you end up making mistakes. Big ones. What you have here is six people lined up, probably firing guns. That’s all.”

“Anything else?” Cantor asked.

“We’ll have a night pass at about 2200 local time — this afternoon our time. I’ll have the shots to you right after they come in.”

“Very good. Thanks,” Cantor said. The man left the room to go back to his beloved photo equipment.

“I believe you call that sort of person an empiricist,” Ryan observed after a moment.

Cantor chuckled. “Something like that. He’s been in the business since we had U-2s flying over Russia. He’s a real expert. The important thing about that is, he doesn’t say he’s sure about something until he’s really sure. What he said’s true, you can easily read too much into these things.”

“Fine, but you agree with me.”

“Yeah.” Cantor sat on the desk next to Ryan and examined the photo through a magnifying glass.

The six men lined up on the firing line were not totally clear. The hot air rising off the desert even in early morning was disturbed enough to ruin the clarity of the image. It was like looking through the shimmering mirage on a flat highway. The satellite camera had a very high “shutter” speed — actually the photoreceptors were totally electronic — that cancelled most of the distortion, but all they really had was a poorly focused, high-angle image that showed man-shapes. You could tell what they were wearing — tan short-sleeved shirts and long pants — and the color of their hair with total certainty. A glimmer off one man’s wrist seemed to indicate a watch of bracelet. The face of one man was darker than it should have been — his uncovered forearm was quite pale — and that probably indicated a short beard . . . Miller has a beard now, Ryan reminded himself.

“Damn, if this was only a little better . . . ”

“Yeah,” Marty agreed. “But what you see here is the result of thirty years of work and God only knows how much money. In cold climates it comes out a little better, but you can’t ever recognize a face.”

“This is it, Marty. This is the one. We have to have something that confirms that, or at least confirms something.”

” ‘Fraid not. Our French colleagues asked the people they captured. The answer they got was that the camps are totally isolated from one another. When the groups meet, it’s almost always on neutral ground. They didn’t even know for sure that there was a camp here.”

“That tells us something!”

“The thing about the car? It could have been somebody from the Army, you know. The guy who oversees the guards, maybe. It didn’t have to be one of the players who drove from this one to the Provisionals’ camp. In fact, there is ample reason to believe that it wasn’t. Compartmentalization is a logical security measure. It makes sense for the camps to be isolated from one another. These people know about the importance of security, and even if they didn’t before, the French op was a gilt-edge reminder.”

Ryan hadn’t thought about that. The raid on the Action-Directe camp had to have an effect on the others, didn’t it?

“You mean we shot ourselves in the foot?”

“No, we sent a message that was worth sending. So far as we can determine, nobody knows what actually happened there. We have reason to believe that the suspicion on the ground is that a rival outfit settled a score — not all of these groups like each other. So, if nothing else, we’ve fostered some suspicions among the groups themselves, and vis-a-vis their hosts. That sort of thing could break some information loose for us, but it’ll take time to find out.”

“Anyway, now that we know that this camp is likely to be the one we want, what are we going to do about it?”

“We’re working on that. I can’t say any more.”

“Okay.” Ryan gestured to his desk. “You want some coffee, Marty?”

Cantor’s face took on a curious expression. “No, I’m off coffee for a while.”

What Cantor didn’t say was that a major operation had been laid on. It was fairly typical in that very few of the participants actually knew what was going on. A Navy carrier battle group centered on USS Saratoga was due to sail west out of the Mediterranean Sea, and would pass north of the Gulf of Sidra in several days. As was routine, the formation was being trailed by a Soviet AGI — a fishing trawler that gathers electronic intelligence instead of mackerel — which would give information to the Libyans. When the carrier was directly north of Tripoli, in the middle of the night, a French-controlled agent would interrupt electrical power to some radar installations soon after the carrier started conducting nighttime flight operations. This was expected to get some people excited, although the carrier group Commander had no idea that he was doing anything other than routine flight ops. It was hoped that the same team of French commandos that had raided Camp -20 would also be able to slip into Camp -18. Marty couldn’t tell Ryan any of this, but it was a measure of how well Action-Directe had been damaged that the French were willing to give the Americans such cooperation. While it hadn’t exactly been the first example of international cooperation, it was one of three such operations that had actually been successful. The CIA had helped to avenge the murder of a friend of the French President. Whatever the differences between the two countries, debts of honor were still paid in full. It appealed to Cantor’s sense of propriety, but was something known to only twenty people within the Agency. The op was scheduled to run in four days. A senior case officer from the Operations Directorate was even now working with the French paratroopers who, he reported, were eager to demonstrate their prowess yet again. With luck, the terrorist group that had had the temerity to commit murder within the United States and the United Kingdom would be hurt by the troops of yet another nation. If successful, the precedent would signal a new and valuable development in the struggle against terrorism.

Dennis Cooley was working on his ledger book. It was early. The shop wasn’t open for business yet, and this was the time of day for him to set his accounts straight. It wasn’t very hard. His shop didn’t have all that many transactions. He hummed away to himself, not knowing what annoyance this habit caused for the man listening to the microphone planted behind one of his bookshelves. Abruptly his humming stopped and his head came up. What was wrong . . .?

The little man nearly leaped from his chair when he smelled the acrid smoke. He scanned the room for several seconds before looking up. The smoke was coming from the ceiling light fixture. He darted to the wall switch and slapped his hand on it. A blue flash erupted from the wall, giving him a powerful electric shock that numbed his arm to the elbow. He stared at his arm in surprise, flexing his fingers and looking at the smoke that seemed to be trailing off. He didn’t wait to see it stop. Cooley had a fire extinguisher in the back room. He got it and came back, pulled the safety pin, and aimed the device at the switch. No smoke there anymore. Next he stood on his chair to get close to the ceiling fixture, but already the smoke was nearly gone. The smell remained. Cooley stood on the chair for over a minute, his knees shaking as the chair moved slightly under him, holding the extinguisher and trying to decide what to do. Call the fire brigade? But there wasn’t any fire — was there? All his valuable books . . . He’d been trained in many things, but fighting fires was not one of them. He was breathing heavily now, nearly panicked until he finally decided that there wasn’t anything to be panicked about. He turned to see three people staring at him through the glass with curious expressions.