Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger (65 page)

Disclosures

U
NLIKE AIR FORCE
and Army generals, most Navy admirals do not have personal aircraft to chauffeur them around, and for the most part they fly commercial.  A coterie of aides and drivers waiting at the gates helps ease the pain, of course, and Robby Jackson was not above making points with his boss by appearing at San José Airport just as the 727 pulled up to the jetway that evening.  He had to wait for the first-class passengers to deplane, of course, since even flag officers fly coach.

Vice Admiral Joshua Painter was the current Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare, known to insiders by his “designator,” OP-05, or just “oh-five.” His three-star rank was a miracle.  Painter was first of all an honest man; second, an outspoken one; third, someone who thought the real Navy was at sea, not alongside the
Potomac River
; finally and most damagingly, he was that rarest of naval officers, the author of a book.  The Navy does not encourage its officers to commit their thoughts to paper, except for the odd piece on thermodynamics or the behavior of neutrons within a reactor vessel.  An intellectual, a maverick, and a warrior in a service that was increasingly anti-intellectual, conformist, and bureaucratized, he thought of himself as the token exception in what was turning into The Corporate Navy.  Painter was a crusty, acerbic
Vermont
native, short and slight of build, with pale, almost colorless blue eyes and a tongue sharp enough to chip stone.  He was also the living god of the aviation community.  He'd flown more than four hundred missions over North Vietnam in several different models of the F-4 Phantom, and had two MiGs to his credit—the side panel from his jet, with two red stars painted on it, hung in his Pentagon office, along with the caption, S
IDEWINDER
M
EANS
N
OT
H
AVING TO
S
AY
Y
OU
'
RE
S
ORRY
.  Though a perfectionist and a very demanding boss, he deemed nothing too good for his pilots or his enlisted crews, especially the latter.

“I see you got the message,” Josh Painter observed, reaching a finger out to tap Robby's bright new shoulder boards.

“Yes, sir.”

“I also hear your new tactics were a disaster.”

“They could have worked out a little better,” Captain Jackson admitted.

“Yeah, it does help if the carrier survives.  Maybe a CAG slot will reinforce that in your mind.  I just approved you for one,” OP-05 announced. “You get Wing Six.  It chops to Abe Lincoln when Indy goes in for overhaul.  Congratulations, Robby.  Try not to screw up too badly in the next eighteen months.  Now, what went wrong with the Fleet-Ex?” he asked as they walked off toward the waiting car.

“The 'Russians' cheated,” Robby answered. “They were smart.” That earned him a laugh from his boss.  Though crusty, Painter did have a lively sense of humor.  The discussion took care of the drive to flag quarters at the
Naval
Post-Graduate
School
on the
California
coast at
Monterey
.

“Any more on the news about those drug bastards?” Painter asked while his aide carried his bags in.

“We're sure giving them a hard time, aren't we?”
Jackson
observed.

The Admiral stopped dead in his tracks. “What the hell do you mean?”

“I know that I'm not supposed to know, sir, but I mean, I was there, and I did see what was going on.”

Painter waved
Jackson
inside. “Check the fridge.  See if you can put a martini together while I pump bilges.  Fix whatever you want for yourself.”

Robby made the proper arrangements.  Whoever set up flag quarters for them knew what Painter liked to drink. 
Jackson
opened a Miller Lite for himself.

Painter reappeared without his uniform shirt and took a sip from his glass.  Then he dismissed his aide and very close look.

“I want you to repeat what you said on the way in, Captain.”

“Admiral, I know I'm not cleared for this, but I'm not blind.  I watched the A-6 head for the beach on radar, and I don't figure it was a coincidence.  Whoever set up security on the op could have done a better job, sir.”

“
Jackson
, you're going to have to forgive me, but I just spent five and a half hours sitting too close to the engines on a beat-up old 727.  You're telling me that those two bombs that took druggies out fell off one of my A-6s?”

“Yes, sir.  You didn't know?”

“No, Robby, I didn't.” Painter knocked off the rest of his drink and set the glass down. “Jesus Christ.  What lunatic set up this abortion?”

“But that new bomb, it had to—I mean, the orders and everything—shit, for this sort of thing, the orders have to chop through -05.”

“What new bomb?” Painter nearly shouted that out, but managed to control himself.

“Some kind of plastic, fiberglass, whatever, some kind of new bombcase.  It looks like a stock, low-drag two-thousand-pounder with the usual attachment points for the smart-bomb gear, but it's not made out of steel or any other kind of metal, and it's painted blue like an exercise bomb.”

“Oh, okay.  There has been a little work on a low-observable bomb for the ATA”—Painter referred to the new Stealth attack plane the Navy was working on—“but, hell, we've just done a little preliminary testing, maybe a dozen drops.  Whole program's experimental.  They don't even use the regular bomb filler, and I'm probably going to shit-can the program, 'cause I don't think it's worth the money.  They haven't even taken those things off
China
Lake
yet.”

“Sir, there were several in Ranger's bomb locker.  I saw 'em, Admiral, I touched 'em.  I saw one attached to an A-6.  I watched on radar while I was up in the E-2 for the Fleet-Ex.  Flew off to the beach and came back from a different direction.  Timing might be a coincidence, but I'd be careful putting money down on that.  The night I flew back, I saw another one attached to the same aircraft.  Next day I hear that another druggie got his house knocked flat.  It stands to reason that half a ton of HE'll do just fine for that, and a combustible bombcase won't leave shit behind for evidence.”

“Nine hundred eighty-five pounds of Octol—that's what they use in those things.” Painter snorted. “It'll do a house, all right.  You know who flew the mission?”

“Roy Jensen, he's skipper of—”

“I know him.  We were shipmates on—Robby, what the hell is going on here?  I want you to start over from the beginning and tell me everything you saw.”

Captain Jackson did just that.  It took ten uninterrupted minutes.

“Who was the 'tech-rep' from?” Painter asked.

“I didn't ask, sir.”

“How much you want to bet he isn't even aboard anymore?  Son, we've been had.  I've been had.  Goddammit!  Those orders should have come through my office.  Somebody's been using my fucking airplanes and not telling me.”

It wasn't about the bombings, Robby understood, it was about propriety.  And it was about security.  Had the Navy planned the job, it would have been done better.  Painter and his senior A-6 expert would have set it up so that there would have been no awkward evidence for other people—like Robby in the E-2C—to notice.  What Painter feared was the simple fact that now his people could be left holding the bag for an operation imposed from above, bypassing the regular chain of command.

“Get Jensen up here?” Robby wondered.

“I thought of that.  Too obvious.  Might get Jensen in too much trouble.  But I've got to find out where the hell his orders came from.  Ranger's out for another ten days or so, right?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Has to be an Agency job,” Josh Painter observed quietly. “Authorized higher up than that, but it has to be Agency.”

“For what it's worth, sir, I got a good friend who's pretty senior there.  I'm godfather for one of his kids.”

“Who's that?”

“Jack Ryan.”

“Oh, yeah, I've met him.  He was with me on Kennedy for a day or two back when—you're sure to remember that cruise, Rob.” Painter smiled. “Right before you took that missile hit.  By that time he was off on HMS Invincible.”

“What?  Jack was aboard then?  But—why the hell didn't he come down to see me?”

“You never did find out what that op was all about, did you?” Painter shook his head, thinking of the Red October affair. “Maybe he can tell you about it.  I can't.”

Robby accepted it without questioning and turned back to the matter at hand. “There's a land side to this operation, too, Admiral,” he said, and explained on for another couple of minutes.

“Charlie-Fox,” Painter said when he was done.  That was the Navy's shorthand and sanitized version of an expression that had begun in the Marine Corps to denote a confused and self-destructive military operation:  Cluster-Fuck. “Robert, you get your ass on the first plane back to D.C. and tell your friend that his operation is going to hell in a basket.  Jesus, don't those Agency clowns ever learn?  If this gets out, and from what you're telling me, it's sure as hell going to, it's going to hurt us.  It's going to hurt the whole country.  We don't need this kind of shit, not in an election year with that asshole Fowler running.  Also tell him that the next time the Agency decides to play soldier, it might help if they asked somebody who knows something about it ahead of time.”

The Cartel had an ample supply of people who were accustomed to carrying guns, and assembling them took only a few hours.  Cortez was detailed to run the operation.  He'd coordinate it from the
village
of
Anserma
, which was in the center of the area in which the “mercenary” teams seemed to be operating.  He hadn't told his boss everything he knew, of course, nor did he reveal his full objective.  The Cartel was a cooperative enterprise.  Nearly three hundred men had been brought in by cars, trucks, and buses, personal retainers from all of the Cartel chieftains, all of them reasonably fit and accustomed to violence.  Their presence here reduced the security details of the remaining drug lords.  That would allow Escobedo a sizable advantage as he tried to discover which of his colleagues was making the “power play”, while Cortez dealt with the “mercenaries.” He had every intention of running the American soldiers to ground and killing them, of course, but there was no special hurry in that.  Félix had every reason to suspect that he was up against elite troops, even American Green Berets, formidable opponents for whom he had due respect.  Casualties among his force, therefore, be expected:  Félix wondered how many he'd have to kill off in order to alter the overall balance of power within the Cartel to his personal advantage.

There was no point in telling the assembled multitude, of course.  These harsh, brutal men were used to brandishing their weapons like the Japanese samurai warriors of all those bad movies that they liked to watch, and like those actors playing at killers, these men were accustomed to having people cower before them, the omnipotent, invincible warriors of the Cartel, armed with their AK-47s, swaggering down village streets.  Comical scum, Cortez thought.

It was all rather comical, really.  Cortez would not mind a bit.  It was to be a diverting and entertaining exercise, something from half a millennium before, when brutal men would tether a bear in a pit and let dogs at it.  Eventually the bear died, and though it was frequently rather hard on the dogs, you could always get new ones.  Those new dogs would be trained differently, to be loyal to a new master . . .  It was marvelous, Cortez realized after a moment.  He'd be playing a game, with men instead of bears and dogs, a game that hadn't been played since the time of the Caesars.  He understood now why some of the drug lords had gotten the way they were.  This sort of Godlike power was destructive to one's soul.  He'd have to remember that.  But first there was work to do.

The chain of command was established.  There were five groups of fifty or so men.  They were assigned operating areas.  Communications would be by radio, coordinated through Cortez, in the safety of a house outside the village.  About the only complication was the possible interference of the Colombian Army.  Escobedo was taking care of that.  M-19 and FARC would start making trouble elsewhere.  That would keep the Army occupied.

The “soldiers,” as they immediately took to calling themselves, moved off into the hills in trucks.  Buena suerte, Cortez told their leaders:  Good luck.  Of course, he wished them nothing of the kind.  Luck was no longer a factor in the operation, which suited the former colonel of the DGI.  In a properly planned operation, it never was.

It was a quiet day in the mountains.  Chavez heard the sound of church bells echoing up and down the valley, calling the faithful to Sunday liturgy.  Was it Sunday?  Chavez wondered; he had lost track.  Whichever day it was, traffic sounds were less than normal.  Except for the loss of Rocha, things were in rather good shape.  They hadn't even expended much of their ammunition, though in another few days they were due for a resupply drop from the helicopter supporting the operation.  You could never have too much ammunition.  That was one truth Chavez had learned.  Happiness is a full bandolier.  And a full canteen.  And hot food.

The topography of the valley allowed them to hear things especially well.  Sound carried up the slopes with a minimum of attenuation, and the air, though thin, seemed to give every noise a special bell-like clarity.  Chavez heard the trucks well off, and put his binoculars on a bend in the road, several miles away, to see what it was.  He wasn't the least concerned.  Trucks were targets, not things to worry about.  He adjusted the focus on the binoculars to get the sharpest possible image, and the sergeant had a good pair of eyes.  After a minute or so he spotted three of them, flatbed trucks like farmers used, with removable wooden sides.  But they were filled with men, and the men appeared to be carrying rifles.  The trucks stopped, and the men jumped out.  Chavez punched his sleeping companion.

“Oso, get the captain here right now!”

Ramirez was there in less than a minute, with his own pair of binoculars.

“You're standing up, sir!” Chavez growled. “Get the fuck down!”

“Sorry, Ding.”

“You see 'em?”