Support and Defend (6 page)
Read Support and Defend Online
Authors: Tom Clancy,Mark Greaney
Albright said, “Mrs. Morris. Forgive me for saying so, but you certainly have a lot of concerns about this polygraph. Would you like to talk to me in private after the meeting breaks up?”
Beth glared at both Albright and Crossman. Finally she said, “I have no problem taking another poly. We all hold security clearance, and that goes with the territory. I do take issue with the fact we’re sitting here with the FBI. NSC has its own security protocols.”
Albright just smiled at Beth Morris, then he addressed the room. “Don’t mind me, folks. I’ll be poking around a bit for the next few days, but you won’t even know I’m here. You will have your polys, then everyone can get back to work.” He added, “Almost everyone, that is. The person responsible for the data breach will have some questions to answer.”
The meeting broke up soon after this, and Ethan returned to his office, passing his curious secretary with neither a glance nor a word. He immediately pulled up the CIA report on the India attack on his computer, and spent several minutes reading it over and over and over.
Twenty minutes later he passed through his secretary’s office again, this time on his way out the door. He wore his overcoat and his car keys were dangling from his hand, even though he had a ten-minute walk back to his car.
He noticed Angie looking at him with surprise. It was only ten-thirty, after all, early for lunch, even in Washington.
“Running out for my ten-thirty meeting. Coffee with a consular official up in Dupont. Hold my calls.”
D
OMINIC
C
ARUSO
arrived at Kochi’s Cochin International Airport in the back of an ambulance. It was the middle of the night, and traffic was light both on the highway to the airport and on the grounds itself, which worked to the advantage of both the Indian government and the people who sent the plane to pick him up.
Dom spent the ride prone with his wrist handcuffed to the arm of his gurney. He assumed he had Detective Constable Naidu to thank for his jewelry. It was a last show of displeasure and passive aggression from the law enforcement officer who’d been ordered by government superiors to send his one witness to a terrorist act on his way without any semblance of a proper interrogation.
Dom didn’t think much of Naidu personally, he was, at least, an asshole, and it seemed to Dom that he was an anti-Semite as well. But Dom did have to allow for the fact that he understood the Indian policeman’s frustration with losing his witness. Dom had been an FBI agent, was still officially in the FBI—on paper, anyway—and he knew had he been in Naidu’s shoes, working a crucial case and with an eyewitness in his hands, and then received a call from some shadowy and powerful superior telling him to ship said key witness out of the country immediately, it would piss him off to no end. And Dominic also knew he was not above a little payback, perhaps in a manner similar to how Naidu treated him.
Dom rattled his handcuff a little, but then let his hand drop back down to the gurney.
The ambulance stopped and Dom was wheeled out and pushed along a hot tarmac glowing and buzzing with electric lighting. He could hear the whine of finely tuned jet engines, and he thought that he knew exactly the make and model aircraft here to take him home, though he could not be certain.
Soon he heard voices, but from his vantage point he couldn’t see who was talking, nor could he hear what was being said. A police officer uncuffed his wrist; then he saw another figure approach from behind.
An attractive blonde with her hair in a tight bun leaned over him. Dom was relieved to see Adara Sherman, the transportation director for his organization, and immediately he felt like this ordeal in India had come to an end.
Adara did not speak directly to Dom, but this was no surprise. Dom had been around Adara regularly for more than two years, and he knew her to be polite, but he also knew her to be all business, all the time. Their mutual boss, Gerry Hendley, had warned Dom and the other young single men in the organization that Adara was off-limits. Even so, Dom and his mates, on occasion, had tried to at least establish a friendly camaraderie with her. But whenever Dom or the others attempted to establish a rapport with her, even in the most jocular and nonthreatening manner, their efforts were met with stark professionalism.
She wasn’t cold, really . . . but she was most definitely not warm.
Adara Sherman looked Dom over in a manner that seemed to Dom as if she was checking to make sure she had the right piece of luggage. She gave a quick nod to the two ambulance personnel and the two policemen and said, “I need you to put him on the plane, if you will. There is a sofa I have prepped as a bed in back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of the attendants replied.
Dom started to sit up on his own, but Adara put her hand firmly on his shoulder and pushed him back down flat without saying a word. He knew he could have gotten up and walked on board himself; it would have hurt, but he’d prefer it to being carried up on a gurney. Still, he wasn’t going to fight Adara Sherman to do it.
He had no doubt these local cops thought she was just the good-looking stewardess on a ritzy corporate jet, but Dom knew something these boys didn’t know. He knew where to look on her blue blazer to see the very faint imprint of a .40-caliber SIG Sauer pistol in her waistband. And he knew she kept an HK MP7 Personal Defense Weapon stashed in a hidden spring-loaded locker just inside the galley opposite the door, and she was trained to deploy the weapon and address threats to the aircraft in under three seconds.
Sherman was both a flight attendant and a transportation coordinator, but she was a hell of a lot more than that, and Dom knew better than to go against her wishes.
Adara stepped out of the way and Dom felt the gurney being lifted and carried through the hatch of the Hendley Associates Gulfstream G550.
The medics deposited him on the sofa, they weren’t particularly gentle with him, and his rib cage felt every jostle and twist. They let his legs hang off to the side, then they left the aircraft after a quick look around at the beautiful high-end furnishings. Dom noticed one of the police officers had boarded as well, and this man stayed behind.
After the men from the ambulance had deplaned and Dom was alone in the cabin with the cop, the Indian leaned over the American and said, “Naidu wanted me to tell you to give him a call sometime. If you ever have any information.”
Dom shrugged; it hurt his bruised ribs to do it. “You tell him I appreciate his hospitality.” And then he waited for the man to leave. The cop deplaned behind the medics and stood outside on the tarmac talking to Sherman for a moment. Dominic took the time to pull himself up to a sitting position. He grunted and groaned with the sharp pain in his ribs and the dull aching in his head, but in no time he was on his feet, heading for the galley at the front of the plane.
He wanted to fix himself a drink.
He was halfway up the length of the cabin when Sherman entered the aircraft. She saw him standing and pointed to the sofa bed. “I need you on your back right now, please.”
Dom raised an eyebrow. “Well,
now
you’re talking.”
She glared back at him. Annoyed.
“Can I grab a quick—”
“No, you may not. Lie down. I’ll take care of everything once we’re airborne. Right now we need to go.”
Dom reluctantly returned to the couch, but he found he had more trouble sitting back down than he had standing. Sherman was by his side immediately, helping him down onto his back. She then lifted his legs and put them on the sofa, covering them with a blanket.
He breathed a long, relieved sigh. Having his feet up reduced the pain in his ribs considerably.
“Thanks.”
She did not reply. Instead, she buckled him into the sofa bed, moved quickly to the hatch and shut it, then conferred with the pilot and copilot for a moment. Within a minute the aircraft was moving and Adara was back in the cabin, buckling herself in to a jump seat by the door.
A
S
D
OM LAY ON
his back during takeoff, it occurred to him that this was not the first time he’d been injured and strapped down to this exact same sofa. He’d been shot in Pakistan a couple years earlier, and the long flight home had been an uncomfortable one. This time his wounds were not as severe, but there was another key difference between the two events. Back then the mood on the flight home had been ebullient, he and his teammates had just prevented a nuclear detonation, and it seemed his wound had been a small price to pay for the success of the operation.
This time he was going home knowing a family of four, people he had come to care for a great deal, had died a fiery death, and he had a feeling he would be second-guessing his every action and reaction during the fight for a long time to come.
The Gulfstream leveled off over India, heading east toward the Bay of Bengal. Their flight plan would take them over Thailand and Taiwan, then over the Pacific Ocean, to the U.S. West Coast. They’d stop in San Diego to refuel, and then fly the rest of the way back to the aircraft’s home base of Baltimore, arriving home sixteen hours after departing Kochi.
Five minutes after takeoff, Adara returned to Dominic, who continued to feel like a piece of luggage. In an attempt to push the image out of his mind, he decided to press the issue of getting a drink.
“Adara, I could use a Maker’s Mark on the rocks.”
She knelt down and unfastened the restraining straps on the sofa, then began unbuttoning his shirt. “Sorry. It will have to wait. You don’t need a stewardess right now as much as you need a medic. I’m going to check you out, see what we need waiting for us back in D.C. I had the Indian hospital e-mail me your films and assessment, and I looked them over during takeoff. Nothing broken, but I want to look at the bruising on your chest.”
Dominic reacted with restrained anger. “I’m fine, Sherman. I’ve spent an entire day in the hospital. I’ve been evaluated.”
“Not by me, you haven’t.”
“All I need is a drink and to be left alone.”
But Adara Sherman did not back down. “If you are going to be an asshole about this, it will only take longer for me to do what I need to do.” She paused, and her tone softened slightly. “This is my job, Dominic. Now be a big boy and let me check you out.”
Dom realized he was taking out his frustrations on Adara. He slowly sat up enough for her to get his shirt off.
“I’m sorry. Tough couple of days.”
She looked at his bruised torso. The right side of his rib cage was black and blue. “Yeah, I’d say so. What happened here?”
“Fell down some stairs. Think I might have hit something on the way down.”
She cracked a little smile. “What gave you your first clue?”
After unwrapping the bandage on his chest and cleaning and debriding the puncture wound there, she did the same with his bandaged forearm. She then directed her attention to cleaning some smaller cuts and scrapes on his chest with antiseptic.
“You don’t trust the Indian doctors?”
“I trust them fine. But one thing I learned in Afghanistan: Wounds can’t be too clean.”
Dom knew the woman had been a Navy corpsman, which in her case had not meant sitting on a ship passing out Dramamine. She had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, treating U.S. Marines, sometimes under fire herself. Dom had seen a lot of action in his years with The Campus, but he thought it was possible, even likely, that the attractive “flight attendant” had seen much more.
Dom asked, “You still think about it? The war?”
He was almost certain he would get some sort of professional nonresponse, but instead she stopped cleaning his wound for a moment. The cotton swab remained motionless, just barely brushing the damaged flesh on his chest.
She looked him in the eyes. “Only every day.”
Her eyes flicked away from his quickly, he could see her admonishing herself for her breach of professional distance, and she continued cleaning the abrasions without speaking.
He winced with pain from time to time, but mostly he sat there quietly.
When she finished the examination and the recleaning and rebandaging of his wounds, she left for a moment and returned with some painkillers and a bottle of water.
“No, thanks,” Dom said.
“Are you hurting?”
“Headaches. Not bad.”
She held out the pills again, and Dom shook his head. “I need to think. Can’t think on those.”
“How ’bout I make you that drink?”
He cracked his first smile in twenty-four hours, though it wasn’t much. “If you insist.”
T
EN MINUTES LATER
A
DARA
moved up the darkened cabin and stood over Dominic, who now reclined on one of the leather captain’s chairs in the rear of the cabin. She used the light from a satellite phone to illuminate his face, expecting to find him already sound asleep. Instead, his dark eyes were wide open and full of intensity, and they looked up at her.
She held the phone out. “It’s Mr. Hendley.”
Dom took the phone and checked the time on a clock by the chair. “Hey, Gerry.”
Gerry Hendley, director of both Hendley Associates, the financial management firm that served as the white side front for The Campus, and The Campus itself, was a former South Carolina senator with a deep southern drawl. “How you holding up, Dominic?”
“I’m sure Ms. Sherman gave you the complete rundown of my injuries.”
“She did. I’m asking
you
.”
“I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus, but I’ll be fine.” He paused. “You have any intel on what went down?”
“Figured that was all you’d care about, so I’ve been digging. ’Fraid I don’t have too much just yet. I talked to some friends at Langley. We know at least some of the terrorists were members of the Al-Qassam Brigades. They set sail from Yemen five days ago and hijacked an Indian cargo ship to move unmolested through Indian waters.”
Dom leaned his head back on the leather couch and closed his eyes. “Al-Qassam?
Fucking
Hamas.”
“That’s right.”
“Do we know why they targeted Yacoby?”
Gerry said, “No, but I’m reaching out to my sources here in the U.S. and abroad to get an answer. All I know at this point is that Yacoby had served until fairly recently as a commander in Shayetet Thirteen.”
“An Israeli naval commando? That explains a lot of the training he was putting me through.” He had a thought. “Al Qassam is Hamas’s army. They are more or less conventional forces. When did they start using suicide vests?”
“Never. Due to the fact their op began in Yemen, we’re entertaining the possibility the guys with the vests were AlQaeda.”
“Yacoby was one man, living abroad with his family, basically a soft target. Why would Al-Qassam use suicide bombers along with their gunmen?”
“There is a lot of speculation about that. One theory, and it does make some sense to me, is that the plan was to assassinate Yacoby and then go take hostages at the synagogue or some other place where the Jewish people in the community congregated. The AQ in the vests would martyr themselves, take as many Jews as they could, and the Palestinians would escape.”
Dom nodded. “And this would mask an assassination.”
“Exactly. They could make it look like Arik and his family got caught up in a jihadist attack on Jewry in the area, and not targeted specifically by the guys from Gaza.”
Dom thought about it for a moment. “Make it look random to protect whomever it was who passed the intel about Yacoby and his whereabouts?”
“Possibly. I don’t know. Let’s not overspeculate.”
“Fair point.” Dom picked at the bandage on his arm, then said, “The more important question is, how
did
they find out about him?”
Gerry said, “Unknown at this point. I wonder if the Israelis have a traitor on their hands.”
“Shit,” mumbled Dom. Then he said, “You know what, Gerry? I was about two seconds away from getting a gun site on the back of the suicide bomber’s skull. I could have prevented their deaths.”
“Don’t think like that. I know you did a hell of a job. The report from the Indians is you killed multiple attackers yourself.”
Dom wasn’t listening. His mind was back at the Yacobys’ farm. “Arik had two boys.”
“I know, son. I know.”
“If I’d made it upstairs a little faster, I just might have—”
Hendley’s southern drawl boomed over the sat phone. “You just might have been blown to bits with the rest of them! Look, Dom. I can’t tell you how to get past this. I’m sorry, but I don’t know.” After a pause he said, “You’ve been through this sort of thing before.”
Dom
had
been through this sort of thing before. His twin brother, Brian, also an operative for The Campus, had died in his arms two years earlier. Dom knew he had changed since his brother’s death, and he feared the changes weren’t for the better.
“With Brian, you mean?”
“Yes. I was the one who sent you and your brother to Libya. That weighs on me every day.”
Dom countered without reservation, because he’d never blamed Gerry for what happened. “You made the right call. What we were doing needed to be done. Brian just got the short end of the stick.”
“And so did Arik Yacoby and his family. There’s nothing you can do about it, and no sense replaying that night over in your head for the rest of your life.”
“Yes, sir.” Caruso forced the thoughts of the dead family in India out of his head. “What’s the fallout going to be for The Campus on this?”
“Hard to say. We don’t know how al-Qassam knew about Yacoby, so we can’t gauge your exposure yet.”
Dom knew what Hendley was thinking. “Until you know how the intel got out about him and his location, you don’t know if I’ve been burned as well. For now I need to stay away from The Campus. From the guys.”
Gerry said, “Shouldn’t be hard to do. The rest of the team is spread out around the world. I’ll keep everyone where they are, but you take some time off. Just take it easy.”
Dom chuckled into the sat phone, but his heart wasn’t in the chuckle. “I was already on stand down before this happened. Now you’re telling me to get lost.”
“No. I’m telling you to get better. Ms. Sherman tells me you’ll need some recovery time. While you’re doing that, this situation will subside. I can instruct the pilots to take you wherever you want to go. You want Adara to find you a resort hotel somewhere in the Rockies? A beach house in Hawaii? Someplace you can take it easy until everything blows over?”
“Honestly, Gerry, I just want to go home. Back to D.C.”
“Fair enough. Get some rest, Adara will take care of you.”
