Tom Clancy – Op Center 5 – Balance Of Power

Now she’d failed Martha. Her shoulders heaved out the tears and the tears became sobs.

A young, mustachioed sergeant of the palace security guard raised her gently by the shoulders. He helped her stand.

“Are you all right?” he asked in English.

She nodded and tried to stop crying. “I think I’m okay.” “Do you want a doctor?” She shook her head.

“Are you sure, sefioritaThat” Aideen took a long, deep breath. This was not the time and place to lose it. She would have to talk to Op-Center’s FBI liaison, Darrell McCaskey. He had remained at the hotel to await a disvisit from a colleague with Interpol.

And she still wanted to see Deputy Serrador. If this shooting had been designed to prevent the meeting, she’d be damned if she was going to let that happen.

“I’ll be fine,” Aideen said. “Do you-do you have the person who did this? Do you have any idea who it was?” “No, senorita,” he replied. “We’ll have to take a look and see what the surveillance cameras may have recorded.

In the meantime, are you well enough to talk to us about this?” “Yes, of course,” she said uncertainly. There was still the mission, the reason she’d come. She didn’t know how much she should tell the police about that. ”

‘Butpor favor?”‘” “Si?” “We were to be met by someone inside. I would still like to see him as soon as possible.” “I will make the necessary inquiries-was “I also need to contact someone at the Princesa Plaza,” Aideen said.

“I will see to those things,” he said. “But Comisario Femandez will be arriving presently. He is the one who will be conducting the investigation. The longer we wait, the more difficult the pursuit.” “Of course,” she said. “I understand. I’ll talk to him and meet with our guide after. Is there a telephone I can use?” “I will arrange for the telephone,” the sergeant said.

“Then I will personally go and see who was to meet you.” Aideen thanked him and rose under her own power. She faltered. The sergeant grabbed one of her arms.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to see the doctor first?” the man asked. “There is one in residence.” His “Gracias, no,”” she said with a grateful smile. She wasn’t going to let the attacker claim a second victim.

She was going to get through this, even if it were one second at a time.

The sergeant smiled back warmly and walked with her slowly toward the open gate.

As Aideen was being led away the palace doctor rushed by. A few moments later she heard an ambulance. The young woman half turned as the ambulance stopped right where the getaway car had been.

As the medical technicians hurriedly unloaded a gurney, Aideen saw the doctor rise from beside Martha’s body. He’d only been there a moment.

He said something to a guard then ran over to the mailman. He began opening the buttons of the man’s uniform then yelled for the paramedics to come over. As he did, the guard lay his jacket over Martha’s head.

Aideen looked ahead. That was it, then. It took just a few seconds, and everything Martha Mackall had known, planned, felt, and hoped was gone. Nothing would ever bring that back.

The young woman continued to hold back tears as she was led into a small office along the palace’s ornate main corridor. The room was wood-paneled and comfortable and she lowered herself into a leather couch beside the door. She felt achy where her knees and elbows had hit the pavement and she was still in an acute state of disbelief. But a countershock reflex was going to work, replenishing the physical resources that had shut down in the attack. And she knew that Darrell and General Rodgers and Director Paul Hood and the rest of the Op-Center team were behind her. She might be by herself at the moment, but she was not alone.

“You may use that telephone,” the sergeant said, pointing to an antique rotary phone on a glass end table. “Dial zero for an outside line.” “Thank you.” “I will have a guard posted at the door so you will be safe and undisturbed. Then I will go and see about your guide.” Aideen thanked him again. He left and shut the door behind him. The room was quiet save for the hissing of a radiator in the back and the muted sounds of traffic. Of life going on.

Taking another deep breath, Aideen removed a hotel notepad from her backpack and looked down at the telephone number printed on the bottom.

She found it impossible to believe that Martha was dead. She could still feel her annoyance, see her eyes, smell her perfume. She could still hear Martha saying.

You know what’s at stake here.

Aideen swallowed hard and entered the number. She asked to be connected with Darrell McCaskey’s room. She slipped a simple scrambler over the mouthpiece, one that would send an ultrasonic screech over the line, deafening any taps. A filter on McCaskey’s end would eliminate the sound from his line.

Aideen did know what was at stake here. The fate of Spain, of Europe, and possibly the world. And whatever it took, she did not intend to come up short again.

TWO

Monday, 12:12 p.m. Washington,D.c.

When they were at Op-Center headquarters at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland or at Striker’s Base in the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the two forty-five-year-old men were Op-Center’s Deputy Director, General Michael Bernard Rodgers, and Colonel Brett Van Buren August, commander of Op-Center’s rapid-deployment force.

But here in Ma Ma Buddha, a small, divey Szechuan restaurant in Washington’s Chinatown, the two men were not superior and subordinate. They were close friends who had both been born at St.

Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut; who had met in kindergarten and shared a passion for building model airplanes; who had played on the same Thurston’s Apparel Store Little League team for five years-and chased home run queen Laurette DelGuercio on the field and off; and who had blown trumpet in the Housatonic Valley Marching Band for four years. They served in different branches of the military in Vietnam-Rodgers in the U.s. Army Special Forces, August in Air Force Intelligence-and saw each other infrequently over the next twenty years. Rodgers did two tours of Southeast Asia, after which he was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help Colonel “Chargin” Charlie” Beckwith oversee the training of the U.s. Army’s 1/ Special Forces Operational Detachment-the Delta Force.

Rodgers remained there until the Persian Gulf War, where he commanded a mechanized brigade with such Pattonesque fervor that he was well on his way to Baghdad while his backup was still in Southern Iraq. His zeal earned him a promotion-and a desk job at Op-Center.

August had flown eighty-seven F-4 spy missions over North Vietnam during a two-year period before being shot down near Hue. He spent a year as a prisoner of war before escaping and making his way to the south. After recovering in Germany from exhaustion and exposure, August returned to Vietnam. He organized a spy network to search for other U.s. POW’S and then remained undercover for a year after the United States withdrawal. At the request of the Pentagon, August spent the next three years in the Philippines helping President Ferdinand Marcos battle Moro secessionists. He disliked Marcos and his repressionist policies, but the U.s. government supported him and so August stayed. Looking for a little desk-bound downtime after the fall of the Marcos regime, August went to work as an Air Force liaison with NASA, helping to organize security for spy satellite missions, after which he joined the SOC as a specialist in counter-terrorist activities. When Striker commander X. Colonel W. Charles Squires was killed on a mission in Russia, Rodgers immediately contacted Colonel August and offered him the commission.

August accepted, and the two easily resumed their close friendship.

The two men had come to Ma Ma Buddha after spending the morning discussing a proposed new International Strike Force Division for Op-Center. The idea for the group had been conceived by Rodgers and Paul Hood. Unlike the elite, covert Striker, the ISFD unit would be a small black-ops unit comprised of U.s. commanders and foreign operatives. Personnel such as Falah Shibli of the Sayeret Ha’Druzim, Israel’s Druze’ Reconnaissance unit, who had helped Striker rescue the Regional OpCenter and its crew in the Bekaa Valley. The ISFD would be designed to undertake covert missions in potential international trouble spots. General Rodgers had been quiet but attentive for most of the meeting, which was also attended by Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert, his colleagues Naval Intelligence Chief Donald Breen and Army Intelligence head Phil Prince, and August’s friend Air Force Intelligence legend Pete Robinson.

Now Rodgers was simply quiet. He was poking his chopsticks at a plate of salt-fried string beans. His rugged face was drawn beneath the close-cropped saltand-pepper hair and his eyes were downtumed. Both men had recently returned from Lebanon. Rodgers and a small party of soldiers and civilians had been field testing the new Regional Op-Center when they were captured and tortured by Kurdish extremists. With the help of an Israeli operative, August and Striker were able to go into the Bekaa Valley and get them out. When their ordeal was over and an attempt to start a war between Turkey and Syria had been averted, General Rodgers had drawn his pistol and executed the Kurdish leader out of hand. On the flight back to the United States, August had prevented a distraught General Rodgers from turning the handgun on himself.

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