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Clear and Present Danger |
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| Book: Paperback: Mass Market | 4.37 x 6.81in | 704 pages | ISBN 9780425122129 | 01 Jul 1990 | Berkley | 18 - AND UP |
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The sudden and surprising assassination of three American officials in
Colombia.
Many people in many places, moving off on missions they all mistakenly thought they
understood.
The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected finish lines
were things that, once decided, were better left unseen.
Tom Clancy's new thriller is based on America's war on drugs . . . and the covert --
and shocking -- U. S. response.
The room was still empty. The Oval Office is in the southeast corner of the White
House West Wing. Three doors lead into it: one from the office of the President's personal
secretary, another from a small kitchen which leads in turn to the President's study, and a
third into a corridor, directly opposite the entrance to the Roosevelt Room. The room
itself is of only medium size for a senior executive, and visitors always remark afterward
that it seemed smaller than they expected. The President's desk, set just in front of thick
windows of bullet-resistant polycarbonate that distort the view of the White House lawn,
is made from the wood of HMS Resolute, a British ship that sank in American waters
during the 1850s. Americans salvaged and returned it to the United Kingdom, and a
grateful Queen Victoria ordered a desk made from its oaken timbers by way of official
thanks. Made in an age when men were shorter than today, the desk was increased
somewhat in height during the Reagan presidency. The President's desk was laden with
folders and position papers capped with a printout of his appointment schedule, plus an
intercom box, a conventional push-button multi-line telephone, and another ordinary-
looking but high sophisticated secure instrument for sensitive conversations.
The President's chair was custom-made to fit its user, and its high back included
sheets of DuPont Kevlar -- lighter and tougher than steel -- as additional protection
against bullets that some madman might fire through the heavy windows. There were, of
course, about a dozen Secret Service agents on duty in this part of the Presidential
Mansion during business hours. To get here most people had to pass through a metal
detector -- in fact all did, since the obvious ones were a little too obvious -- and
everyone had to pass the quite serious scrutiny of the Secret Service detail, whose identity
was plain from the flesh-toned earpieces that coiled out from under their suit jackets, and
whose politeness was secondary to their real mission of keeping the President alive.
Beneath the jacket of each was a powerful handgun, and each of these agents was trained
to view everyone and everything as a potential threat to WRANGLER, which was the
President's current code-name. It had no meaning beyond being easy to say and easily
recognizable on a radio circuit.
Vice Admiral James Cutter, USN, was in an office on the opposite, northwest corner
of the West Wing and had been since 6:15 that morning. The job of Special Assistant to
the President for National Security Affairs requires a man to be an early riser. At a quarter
to eight he finished off his second cup of morning coffee -- it was good here -- and tucked
his briefing papers into a leather folder. He walked through the empty office of his
vacationing deputy, turned right down the corridor past the similarly vaCant office of the
Vice President, who was in Seoul at the moment, and turned left past the office of the
President's Chief of Staff. Cutter was one of the handful of real Washington insiders -- the
Vice President was not among them -- who didn't need the permission of the Chief of
Staff to walk into the Oval Office whenever he felt the need, though he'd generally call
ahead first to give the secretaries a heads-up. The Chief of Staff didn't like anyone to have
that privilege, but that made his unlimited access all the more pleasant for Cutter to
exercise. Along the way four security personnel nodded good morning to the Admiral,
who returned the gestures as he would greet any skilled menial. Cutter's official code-
name was LUMBERJACK, and though he knew that the Secret Service agents called him
something else among themselves, Cutter was past caring what little people thought of
him. The secretaries' anteroom was already up and running, with three secretaries and a
Secret Service agent sitting in their appointed places.
"Chief on time?" he asked.
"WRANGLER is on the way down, sir," Special Agent Connor said. He was forty, a
section chief of the Presidential Detail, didn't give a goddamn who Cutter was, and could
care less what Cutter thought of him. Presidents and aides came and went, some liked,
some loathed, but the professionals of the Secret Service served and protected them all.
His trained eyes swept over the leather folder and Cutter's suit. No guns there today. He
was not being paranoid. A king of Saudi Arabia had been killed by a family member, and a
former prime minister of Italy had been betrayed by a daughter to the terrorist kidnappers
who'd ultimately murdered him. It wasn't just kooks he had to worry about. Anyone could
be a threat to the President. Connor was fortunate, of course, that he only had to worry
about physical security. There were other sorts; those were the concerns of others less
professional than he.
Everyone stood when the President arrived, of course, followed by his personal
bodyguard, a lithe, thirtyish woman whose dark tresses neatly concealed the fact that she
was one of the best pistol shots in government service. "Daga" -- her Service nickname --
smiled good morning at Pete. It would be an easy day. The President wasn't going
anywhere. His appointment list had been thoroughly checked -- the Social Security
numbers of all nonregulars are run through the FBI's crime computers -- and the visitors
themselves would, of course, be subjected to the most thorough searches that can be made
without an actual pat-down. The President waved for Admiral Cutter to follow him in.
The two agents went over the appointment list again. It was routine, and the senior agent
didn't mind that a man's job had been taken by a woman. Daga had earned her job on the
street. If she were a man, everyone agreed, she'd have two big brass ones, and if any
would-be assassin mistook her for a secretarial type, that was his bad luck. Every few
minutes, until Cutter left, one or the other of the agents would peer through the spy-hole
in the white-painted door to make sure that nothing untoward was happening. The
President had held office for over three years and was used to the constant observation. It
hardly occurred to the agents that a normal man might find it oppressive. It was their job
to know everything there was to know about the President, from how often he visited the
bathroom to those with whom he slept. They didn't call the agency the Secret Service for
nothing. Their antecedents had concealed all manner of peccadillos. The President's wife
was not entitled to know what he did every hour of the day -- at least, some presidents
had so decided -- but his security detail was.
Behind the closed door, the President took his seat. From the side door a Filipino
mess steward carried in a tray with coffee and croissants and came to attention before
leaving. With this the morning's preliminary routine was complete, and Cutter began his
morning intelligence briefing. This had been delivered from CIA to his Fort Myer,
Virginia, home before dawn, which allowed the Admiral to paraphrase it. The brief didn't
take long. It was late spring, and the world was a relatively quiet place. Those wars
underway in Africa and elsewhere were not of great import to AmeriCan interests, and the
Middle East was as tranquil as it ever seemed to be. That left time for other issues.
"What about SHOWBOAT?" the President asked while buttering his croissant.
"It's underway, sir. Ritter's people are already at work," Cutter replied.
"I'm still worried about security on the operation."
"Mr. President, it's as tight as one could reasonably expect. There are risks -- you
Can't avoid them all -- but we're keeping the number of people involved to an absolute
minimum, and those people have been carefully selected and recruited."
That earned the National Security Adviser a grunt. The President was trapped -- and
as with nearly every president, it had come about from his own words. Presidential
promises and statements . . . the people had this annoying way of remembering them. And
even if they didn't there were journalists and political rivals who never passed on a chance
to make the necessary reminders. So many things had gone right in this presidency. But so
many of those were secret -- and annoyingly to Cutter, those secrets had somehow been
kept. Well, they had to be, of course. Except that in the political arena no secret was truly
sacred, most especially in an election year. Cutter wasn't supposed to be concerned with
that. He was a professional naval officer, and therefore supposed to be apolitical in his
outlook on the ins and outs of national security, but whoever had formulated that
particular guideline must have been a monk. Members of the senior executive service did
not take vows of poverty and chastity, however -- and obedience was also a sometime
thing.
"I promised the AmeriCan people that we'd do something about this problem," the
President observed crossly. "And we haven't accomplished shit."
"Sir, you Cannot deal with threats to national security through police agencies. Either
our national security is threatened or it is not." Cutter had been hammering that point for
years. Now, finally, he had a receptive audience.
Another grunt: "Yeah, well, I said that, too, didn't I?"
"Yes, Mr. President. It's time they learned a lesson about how the big boys play."
That had been Cutter's position from the beginning, when he'd been Jeff Pelt's deputy, and
with Pelt now gone it was his view that had finally prevailed.
"Okay, James. It's your ball. Run with it. Just remember that we need results."
"You'll get 'em, sir. Depend on that."
"It's time those bastards were taught a lesson," the President thought aloud. He was
certain that the lessons would be hard ones. On that he was correct. Both men sat in a
room in which was focused and from which emanated the ultimate power of the most
powerful nation in the history of civilization. The people who selected the man who
occupied that room did so above all for their protection. Protection against the vagaries of
foreign powers and domestic bullies, against all manner of enemies. Those enemies came
in many forms, some of which the founding fathers had not quite anticipated. But one sort
that had been anticipated existed in this very room . . . though it was not the one the
President had in mind.
---------------------------------------
The sun rose an hour later on the Caribbean coast, and unlike the climate-controlled
comfort of the White House, here the air was thick and heavy with humidity on what
promised to be yet another sultry day under a lingering high-pressure system. The forested
hills to the west reduced the local winds to a bare whisper, and the owner of Empire
Builder was past being ready to go to sea, where the air was cooler and the breezes
unrestricted.
His crewmen arrived late. He didn't like their looks, but he didn't have to. Just so long
as they behaved themselves. After all, his family was aboard.
"Good morning, sir. I am RamUn. This is Jes?s," the taller one said. What troubled
the owner was that they were so obviously tidied-up versions of . . . of what? Or had they
merely wanted to look presentable?
"You think you can handle this?" the owner asked.
"SI. We have experience with large motor craft." The man smiled. His teeth were
even and brushed. This was a man who took care with his appearance at all times, the
owner thought. He was probably being overly cautious. "And Jes?s, you will see, is a fine
cook."
Charming little bastard. "Okay, crew quarters are forward. She's tanked up,
and the engines are already warm. Let's get out where it's cool."
"Muy bien, Capit?n." RamUn and Jes?s unloaded their gear from the jeep. It
took several trips to get it all stowed, but by nine in the morning, MY Empire
Builder slipped her mooring lines and stood out to sea, passing a handful of party
boats heading out with yanqui tourists and their fishing rods. Once in open
waters, the yacht turned north. It would take three days.
RamUn already had the wheel. That meant he sat in a wide, elevated chair while the
autopilot -- "George" -- handled the steering. It was an easy ride. The Rhodes had fin
stabilizers. About the only disappointment was in the crew accommodations, which the
owner had neglected. So typical, RamUn thought. A multimillion-dollar yacht with radar
and every possible amenity, but the crew who operated it didn't have so much as a
television set and VCR to amuse themselves when off duty . . .
He moved forward on the seat, craning his neck to look on the fo'c'sle. The owner
was there, asleep and snoring, as though the work of taking the yacht out to sea had
exhausted him. Or perhaps his wife had tired him out? She was beside her husband lying
facedown on her towel. The string for her bikini top was untied so as to give her back an
even tan. RamUn smiled. There were many ways for a man to amuse himself. But better to
wait. Anticipation made it all the better. He heard the sound of a taped movie in the main
salon, aft of the bridge, where their children were watching some movie or other. It never
occurred to him to feel pity for any of the four. But he was not completely heartless. Jes?s
was a good cook. They both approved of giving the condemned a hearty meal.
It was just light enough to see without the night-vision goggles, the dawn twilight
that the helicopter pilots hated because the eye had to adapt itself to a lightening sky and
ground that was still in shadows. Sergeant Chavez's squad was seated and strapped in with
four-point safety belts, and between the knees of each was a weapon. The UH-60A
Blackhawk helicopter swooped high over one of the hills and then dropped hard when
past the crest.
"Thirty seconds," the pilot informed Chavez over the intercom.
It was supposed to be a covert insertion, which meant that the helicopters were
racing up and down the valleys, careful that their operational pattern should confuse any
possible observer. The Blackhawk dove for the ground and pulled up short as the pilot
eased back on the cyclic control stick, which gave the aircraft a nose-up attitude, signaling
the crew chief to slide the right-side door open and the soldiers to twist the release dials
on their safety-belt buckles. The Blackhawk could touch down only for a moment.
"Go!"
Chavez went out first, moving perhaps ten feet from the door before he fell flat to the
ground. The squad did the same, allowing the Blackhawk to lift off immediately, and
rewarding each of its former passengers with a faceful of flying grit as it clawed its way
back into the sky. It would reappear around the southern end of a hill as though it had
never stopped. Behind it, the squad assembled and moved out into the treeline. Its work
had just begun. The sergeant gave his commands with hand motions and led them off at a
dead run. It would be his last mission, then he could relax.
-----------------------------------
At the Navy's weapons testing and development facility, China Lake, California, a
team of civilian technicians and some Navy ordnance experts hovered over a new bomb.
Built with roughly the same dimensions as the old two-thousand-pounder, it weighed
nearly seven hundred pounds less. This resulted from its construction. Instead of a steel
skin, the bombcase was made of Kevlar-reinforced cellulose -- an idea borrowed from the
French, who made shell casings from the naturally produced fibers -- with only enough
metal fittings to allow attachment of fins, or the more extensive hardware that would
convert it into an "LGB," able to track in on a specific point target. It was little known
that a smart-bomb is generally a mere iron bomb with the guidance equipment bolted on.
"You're not going to get fragments worth a damn," a civilian objected.
"What's the point of having a Stealth bomber," another technician asked, "if the bad
guys get a radar return off the ordnance load?"
"Hmph," observed the first. "What's the point of a bomb that just pisses the other guy
off?"
"Put it through his front door and he won't live long enough to get pissed, will he?"
"Hmph." But at least he knew what the bomb was actually for. It would one day hang
on the ATA, the Advanced Tactical Aircraft, a carrier-based attack bomber with stealth
technology built in. Finally, he thought, the Navy's getting on board that program. About
time. For the moment, however, the job at hand was to see if this new bomb with a
different weight and a different center of gravity would track in on a target with a standard
LGB guidance pack. The bomb hoist came over and lifted the streamlined shape off its
pallet. Next the operator maneuvered it under the center-line hard-point of an A-6E
Intruder attack bomber.
The technicians and officers walked over to the helicopter that would take them to
the bombing range. There was no rush. An hour later, safely housed in a bunker that was
clearly marked, one of the civilians trained an odd-looking device at a target four miles
away. The target was an old five-ton truck that the Marines had given up on, and which
would now, if everything went according to plan, die a violent and spectacular death.
"Aircraft is inbound over the range. Start the music."
"Roger," the civilian replied, squeezing the trigger on the GLD. "On target."
"Aircraft reports acquisition -- stand by . . . " the communicator said.
At the other end of the bunker, an officer was watching a television camera locked
onto the inbound Intruder. "Breakaway. We have a nice, clean release off the ejector
rack." He'd check that view later with one off an A-4 Skyhawk fighter-bomber that was
flying chase on the A-6. Few people realized that the mere act of dropping a bomb off an
airplane was a complex and potentially dangerous exercise. A third camera followed the
bomb down.
"Fins are moving just fine. Here we go . . . "
The camera on the truck was a high-speed one. It had to be. The bomb was falling
too fast for anyone to catch it on the first run-through, but by the time the crushing bass
note of the detonation reached the bunker, the operator had already started rewinding the
tape. The replay was done one frame at a time.
"Okay, there's the bomb." Its nose appeared forty feet over the truck. "How was it
fused?"
"VT," one of the officers answered. VT stood for variable time. The bomb had a
miniradar transceiver in its nose, and was programmed to explode within a fixed distance
of the ground, in this case, five feet, or almost the instant it hit the truck. "Angle looks just
fine."
"I thought it would work," an engineer observed quietly. He'd suggested that since
the bomb was essentially a thousand pounder, the guidance equipment could be
programmed for the lighter weight. Though it was slightly heavier than that, the reduced
density of the cellulose bombcase made for a similar ballistic performance. "Detonation."
As with any high-speed photos of such an event, the screen flashed white, then
yellow, then red, then black, as the expanding gasses from the high-explosive filler cooled
in the air. Just in front of the gas was the blast wave; air compressed to a point at which it
was denser than steel, moving faster than any bullet. No machine press could duplicate the
effect.
"We just killed another truck." It was a wholly unnecessary observation. Roughly a
quarter of the truck's mass was pounded straight down into a shallow crater, perhaps a
yard deep and twenty across. The remainder was hurled laterally as shrapnel. The gross
effect was not terribly different, in fact, from a large car bomb of the sort delivered by
terrorists, but a hell of a lot safer for the deliveryman, one of the civilians thought.
"Damn -- I didn't think it'd be that easy. You were right, Ernie, we don't even have to
reprogram the seeker," a Navy commander observed. They'd just saved the Navy over a
million dollars, he thought. He was wrong.
-----------------------------------------
And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with
many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all
mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for
contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the
decisions made this morning -- and once decided, best unseen.
-- from Clear and Present Danger
by Tom Clancy
Copyright ? 1989 by Jack Ryan Enterprises Ltd.
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