And did not the Mafia know how to kill people?
Well, in fact, no, they had never been very efficient at it—especially at killing people able to fight back—Hollywood movies to the contrary. And even so, the government of the United States of America had tried to use them as contractors for the assassination of a foreign chief of state—because CIA didn’t know how to make such a thing happen. It was, in retrospect, somewhat ludicrous. Somewhat? Gerry Hendley asked himself. It had come within an inch of exposure as a government-engineered train wreck. Enough to force President Gerry Ford into drafting his executive order that made such action illegal, and that order had lasted until President Ryan had decided to take out the religious dictator of Iran with two smart bombs. Remarkably, the time and circumstances had disabled the news media from commenting on the killing. It had been done, after all, by the United States Air Force, with properly marked—albeit stealthy—bomber aircraft in a time of an undeclared but very real war in which weapons of mass destruction had been used against American citizens. Those factors had combined to make the entire operation not only legitimate but laudable, as ratified by the American people at the following election. Only George Washington had garnered a larger plurality at the polls, a fact which still made the senior Jack Ryan uneasy. But Jack had known the import of the killing of Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, and so, before leaving office, had talked Gerry into establishing The Campus.
But Jack didn’t tell me how hard this would be, Hendley reminded himself. That was how Jack Ryan had always operated: Pick good people, give them a mission and the tools to accomplish it, then let them do it with minimal guidance from on high. It was what had made him a good boss, and a pretty good president, Gerry thought. But it didn’t make life much easier on his subordinates. Why the hell had he taken the assignment? Hendley asked himself. But then came a smile. How would Jack react when he found out his own son was part of The Campus? Would he see the humor of it?
Probably not.
“So, Pete says just to play it out?”
“What else can he say?” Davis asked in reply.
“Tom, ever wish you were back on your dad’s farm in Nebraska?”
“It’s awful hard work, and kind of dull out there.” And there was no way you were going to keep Davis down on the farm after he’d been a CIA field officer. He might be a pretty good bond trader now in his “white” life, but Davis was no more white in his true avocation than he was in his skin color. He liked the action in the “black” world too much.
“What do you think of the Fort Meade stuff?”
“My gut tells me we’re due for something. We’ve stung them. They’ll want to sting us back.”
“You think they can recover? Haven’t our troops in Afghanistan bit into them pretty hard?”
“Gerry, some people are too dumb, or too dedicated, to notice being hurt. Religion is a powerful motivator. And even if their shooters are too dumb to know the import of what they’re doing—”
“—They’re smart enough to carry out missions,” Hendley agreed.
“And isn’t that why we’re here?” Davis asked.
CHAPTER 11
CROSSING THE
RIVER
THE SUN rose promptly at dawn. Mustafa was startled awake by the combination of bright light and a bump in the road. He shook his head clear and turned to see Abdullah smiling at the wheel.
“Where are we?” the team leader asked his principal subordinate.
“We are half an hour east of Amarillo. It has been a pleasant drive for the past three hundred and fifty miles, but I will soon need petrol.”
“Why didn’t you wake me hours ago?”
“Why? You were sleeping pleasantly, and the road has been almost completely clear all night, except for those damned big trucks. These Americans must all sleep at night. I do not think I have seen more than thirty real automobiles in the past several hours.”
Mustafa checked the speedometer. The car was only doing sixty-five. So, Abdullah was not speeding. They hadn’t been stopped by any policemen. There was nothing to be upset about—except that Abdullah had not followed his orders as precisely as Mustafa would have preferred.
“There.” The driver pointed at a blue service sign. “We can get petrol and some food. I was planning to wake you up here anyway, Mustafa. Be at ease, my friend.” The fuel gauge was almost on the “E,” Mustafa saw. Abdullah had been foolish to let it get that low, but there was no sense in berating him for it.
They pulled into a sizable travel plaza. The gas pumps were labeled Chevron and were automated. Mustafa took out his wallet and inserted his Visa card in the slot, then filled up the Ford with over twenty gallons of premium gasoline.
By that time, the other three had cycled through the plaza’s men’s room and were examining the food options. Looked like doughnuts again. Ten minutes after pulling the car off the interstate highway, they were back onto it, heading east for Oklahoma. In another twenty minutes, they’d entered it.
In the back of the car, Rafi and Zuhayr were awake and talking, and, as he drove, Mustafa listened in without joining the conversation.
The land was flat, similar to home in its topography, though far greener. The horizon was surprisingly far away, enough so that estimating distance seemed impossible on first glance. The sun was above the horizon, and it burned into his eyes until he remembered the sunglasses in his shirt pocket. They helped somewhat.
Mustafa remarked to himself on his current state of mind. He found the driving pleasant, the passing terrain pleasing to the eye, and the work, such as it was, easy. Every ninety minutes or so, he saw a marked police car, usually passing his Ford at a good clip, too fast for the policeman inside to eyeball him and his friends. It had been good advice to cruise right on the speed limit. They moved along nicely, but people regularly passed them, even the big trucks. Not breaking the law even a little made them invisible to the police whose main business was to punish those in too great a hurry. He was confident that their mission security was solid. Had it not been the case, they’d have been followed, or pulled over on a particularly deserted stretch of highway into a trap with guns and many, many enemies. But that hadn’t happened. An additional advantage of driving right on the speed limit was that anyone tailing them would stand out. It was just a matter of checking his mirror. No one lingered there for more than a few minutes. Any police shadow would be a man—it would have to be a man—in his twenties or thirties. Maybe two of them, one to drive and one to look. The men would be physically fit looking, with conservative haircuts. They’d tail for a few minutes before breaking contact, as someone else took the surveillance job over. They’d be clever, of course, but the nature of the mission made their procedures predictable. Some cars would disappear and reappear. But Mustafa was fully alert, and no car had appeared more than once. They might be tailed by aircraft, of course, but helicopters were easy to spot. The only real danger was a small fixed-wing aircraft, but he could not worry about everything. If it were written, then written it was, and there was no defense against that. For the moment, the road was clear and the coffee was excellent. It would be a fine day. OKLAHOMA CITY 36 MILES, the green road sign proclaimed.
NPR ANNOUNCED that it was Barbra Streisand’s birthday, a vital piece of information with which to begin the day, John Patrick Ryan, Jr., told himself as he rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. A few minutes later, he saw that his clock-controlled coffeemaker had functioned properly and dripped two cups into the white plastic pot. He decided to hit McDonald’s this morning and get an Egg McMuffin and hash browns on the way to work. It wasn’t exactly a healthy breakfast, but it was filling, and at twenty-three he wasn’t overly worried about cholesterol and fat, as his father was, courtesy of his mother. Mom would already be dressed and ready to be driven to Hopkins (by her principal agent of the Secret Service) for her morning’s work, without coffee if she was operating today, because she worried that caffeine might give her hand a slight tremor—and drive her little knife into the poor bastard’s brain after skewering the eyeball like the olive in a martini (that was his father’s joke, which usually resulted in a playful slap from Mom). Dad would go to work on his memoirs, assisted by a ghostwriter (which he detested—but the publisher had insisted). Sally was in the pretend-doc stage of medical school; he didn’t know what she was doing at this moment. Katie and Kyle would be dressing for school. But Little Jack had to go to work. It had recently occurred to him that college had been his last real vacation. Oh, sure, every little boy and girl wants nothing more than to grow up and take proper charge of his or her life, but then you get there—and it’s too late to go back. This work-every-day thing was a drag. Okay, fine, you got paid for it—but he was already rich, the scion of a distinguished family. The money, in his case, was already made, and he wasn’t the kind of wastrel likely to piss it all away and become a self-unmade man, was he? He set his empty coffee cup in the dishwasher and went to the bathroom to shave.