Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

“That’s my job. We need to know where they’re coming from.”

“Where they’re comin’ from, lady, is they kill people for the fun of it. It’s all part of their game.” Robby remembered intelligence reports he’d seen while in the Eastern Med. “Back a couple of years ago — you never heard this from me, okay?”

“Off the record,” she said solemnly.

“I was on a carrier off Beirut, okay? We had intelligence reports — and pictures — of people from Europe who flew in to do some killing. They were mainly kids, musta been from good families — I mean, from the way they dressed. No shit, this is for real, I saw the friggin’ pictures. They joined up with some of the crazies, got guns, and just started blasting away, at random, for the pure hell of it. They shot from those high-rise hotels and office buildings into the streets. With a rifle you can hit from a thousand yards away. Something moves — boom, they blast it with automatic weapons fire. Then they got to go home. They were killing people, for fun! Maybe some of them grew up to be real terrorists, I don’t know. It was pretty sickening stuff, not the sort of thing you forget. That’s the kind of people we’re talking about here, okay?

“I don’t give a good goddamn about their point of view, lady! When I was a little kid in Alabama, we had problems with people like that, those assholes in the Klan. I don’t give a damn about their point of view, either. The only good thing about the Klan was they were idiots. The terrorists we got running around now are a lot more efficient. Maybe that makes them more legitimate in your eyes, but not mine.”

“That thing in Beirut never made the papers,” the reporter said.

“I know for a fact that one reporter saw it. Maybe he figured that nobody would believe it. I don’t know that I would have without the photos. But I saw ’em. You got my word on that, lady.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“That I can’t say — but they were good enough to see their shiny young faces.” The photos had been made by U.S. and Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.

“So what do you do about it?”

“If you could arrange to have all these bastards in one place, I think we and the Marines could figure something out,” Robby replied, voicing a wish common to professional soldiers throughout the world. “We might even invite you newsies to the wake. Who the hell is that?” Two new people came into the room.

Jack was too tired to be fully coherent. The news that Sally was out of immediate danger had been like a giant weight leaving his shoulders, and he was waiting for the chance to see his wife, who would soon be moved to a regular hospital floor. A few feet away, Wayson, the British security officer, watched with unconcealed contempt, refusing even to give his name to the reporters who asked. The State Police officers were unable to keep the press away, though hospital personnel flatly refused to let the TV equipment in the front door, and were able to make that stick. The question that kept repeating was. Who did it? Jack said he didn’t know, though he thought he did. It was probably the people he’d decided not to worry about.

It could have been worse, he told himself. At least it was now probable that Sally would be alive at the end of the week. His daughter was not dead because of his misjudgment. That was some consolation.

“Mr. Ryan?” one of the new visitors asked.

“Yeah?” Jack was too exhausted to look up. He was awake only because of adrenaline now. His nerves were too ragged to allow him sleep, much as he needed it.

“I’m Special Agent Ed Donoho, Boston Field Office of the FBI. I have somebody who wants to say something to you.”

Nobody ever said that Paddy O’Neil was stupid, Donoho thought. As soon as the report had made the Eleven O’clock News, the man from Sinn Fein had asked his FBI “escort” if he might fly down to Baltimore. Donoho was in no position to deny him the right, and had been co-opted into bringing the man himself on the first available plane into BWI.

“Mr. Ryan,” O’Neil said with a voice that dripped sympathy, “I understand that the condition of your child has been upgraded. I hope that my prayers had something to do with it, and . . .”

It took Ryan over ten seconds to recognize the face that he’d seen a few days before on TV. His mouth slowly dropped open as his eyes widened. For some reason he didn’t hear what the man was saying. The words came through his ears, but, as though they were in some unknown tongue, his brain did not assemble them into speech. All he saw was the man’s throat, five feet away. Just about five feet, was what his brain told him.

“Uh-oh,” Robby said on the other side of the room. He stood as his friend went beet-red. Two seconds later, Ryan’s face was as pale as the collar on his white cotton shirt. Jack’s feet shifted, sliding straight beneath his body as he leaned forward on the couch.

Robby pushed past the FBI agent as Ryan launched himself from the couch, hands stretching out for O’Neil’s neck. Jackson’s shoulder caught his friend’s chest, and the pilot wrapped Jack up in a bear hug, trying to push him backward as three photographers recorded the scene. Jack didn’t make a sound, but Robby knew exactly what he wanted to do. Jackson had leverage going for him, and pushed Ryan back, hurling him onto the couch. He turned quickly.

“Get that asshole outa here before I kill him!” Jackson was four inches shorter than the Irishman, but his rage was scarcely less than Ryan’s. “Get that terrorist bastard out of here!”

“Officer!” Special Agent Donoho pointed to a state trooper, who grabbed O’Neil and dragged him from the room in an instant. For some reason the reporters followed as O’Neil loudly protested his innocence.

“Are you out of your fucking mind!” Jackson snarled at the FBI agent.

“Cool down, Commander. I’m on your side, okay? Cool it down some.”

Jackson sat down beside Ryan, who was breathing like a horse at the end of a race while he stared at the floor. Donoho sat down on the other side.

“Mr. Ryan, I couldn’t keep him from coming down. I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. He wanted to tell you — shit, all the way down on the plane, he told me that his outfit had nothing to do with this; that it would be a disaster for them. He wanted to extend his sympathy, I guess.” The agent hated himself for saying that, even though it was true enough. He hated himself even more because he’d almost started to like Paddy O’Neil over the past week. The front man for Sinn Fein was a person of considerable charm, a man with a gift for presenting his point of view in a reasonable way. Ed Donoho asked himself why he’d been assigned to this job. Why couldn’t they have picked an Italian? He knew the answer to that, of course, but just because there was a reason didn’t mean that he had to like it. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you anymore.”

“You do that,” Robby said.

Donoho went back into the hall, and unsurprisingly found O’Neil giving his spiel to the reporters. Mr. Ryan is distraught, he was saying, as any family man would be in similar circumstances. His first exposure to the man the previous week had given him a feeling of distaste. Then he’d started to admire his skill and charm. Now Donoho’s reaction to the man’s words was one of loathing. An idea blinked on in his head. He wondered if the Bureau would approve and decided it was worth the risk. First the agent grabbed a state trooper by the arm and made sure that the man wouldn’t get close to Ryan again. Next he got hold of a photographer and talked to him briefly. Together they found a doctor.

“No, absolutely not,” the surgeon replied to the initial request.

“Hey, Doc,” the photojournalist said. “My wife’s pregnant with our first. If it’ll help this guy, I’m for it. This one doesn’t make the papers. You got my word. Doc.”

“I think it’ll help,” the FBI agent said. “I really do.”

Ten minutes later Donoho and the photographer stripped off their scrub clothing. The FBI agent took the film cassette and tucked it in his pocket. Before he took O’Neil back to the airport, he made a call to headquarters in Washington, and two agents drove out to Ryan’s home on Peregrine Cliff. They didn’t have any problem with the alarm system.