Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (714 page)

“My dad liked to say that the government is really run by accountants and lawyers.”

“He ain’t far wrong on that one, buddy. God knows where Ed Kealty fits in that, though. What does your dad think of him?”

“Can’t stand the son of a bitch. He won’t talk in public about the new administration because he says that’s wrong, but if you say something about the guy over dinner, you might end up wearing your wine home. It’s funny. Dad hates politics, and he really tries hard to keep his cool, but that guy is definitely not on the Christmas card list. But he keeps it quiet, won’t talk to any reporters about it. Mike Brennan tells me the Service doesn’t like the new guy, either. And they
have
to like him.”

“There are penalties for being a professional,” Wills agreed.

And then Junior lit up his computer and looked at the night traffic between Langley and Fort Meade. It was a lot more impressive in its volume than its content. It seemed that his new friend, Uda, had—

“Our pal Sali had lunch with somebody yesterday,” Jack announced.

“Who with?” Wills asked.

“The Brits don’t know. Appears Middle Eastern, age about twenty-eight, one of those thin—well, narrow—beards around the jawline, and mustache, but no ident on the guy. They spoke in Arabic, but nobody got close enough to overhear anything.”

“Where’d they eat?”

“Pub on Tower Hill called ‘Hung, Drawn and Quartered. ’ It’s on the edge of the financial district. Uda drank Perrier. His pal had a beer. And they had a British plough-man’s lunch. They sat in a corner booth, made it hard for whoever was watching to get close and listen in.”

“So, they wanted privacy. It doesn’t necessarily make them bad guys. Did the Brits tail him?”

“No. That probably means a single-man tail on Uda?”

“Probably,” Wills agreed.

“But it says they got a photo of the new guy. Not included in the report.”

“It was probably someone from the Security Service—MI5—doing the surveillance. And probably a junior guy. Uda isn’t regarded as very important, not enough for full coverage. None of those agencies have all the manpower they want. Anything else?”

“Some money trades that afternoon. Looks pretty routine,” Jack said, scrolling through the transactions.
I’m looking for something small and harmless,
he reminded himself. But small, harmless things were, for the most part, small and harmless. Uda moved money around every day, in large and small amounts. Since he was in the wealth-preservation business, he rarely speculated, dealing mostly in real-estate transactions. London—and Britain in general—was a good place to preserve cash. Real-estate prices were fairly high but very stable. If you bought something, it might not go up very much, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to have the bottom drop out. So, Uda’s daddy was letting the kid stretch his legs some, but not letting him run out and play in the traffic. How much personal liquidity did Uda have? Since he paid off his whores in cash and expensive handbags, he must have his own cash supply. Maybe modest, but “modest” by Saudi standards wasn’t exactly modest by many others. The kid
did
drive an Aston Martin, after all, and his dwelling was not in a trailer park . . . so—

“How do I differentiate between Sali’s trading his family money and trading his own?”

“You don’t. We think he keeps the two accounts close, in the sense both of being covert and near to each other. Your best bet on that is to see how he sets up his quarterly statements to the family.”

Jack groaned. “Oh, great, it’ll take me a couple of days to add up all the transactions, and then to analyze them.”

“Now you know why you’re not a real CPA, Jack.” Wills managed a chuckle.

Jack nearly snarled, but there was only one way to accomplish this task, and it
was
his job, wasn’t it? First, he tried to see if his program could shortcut the process. Nope. Fourth-grade arithmetic with a nose attached. What fun. At least by the time he finished, he’d probably be better at entering numbers into the numeric keypad on the right side of the keyboard.
There
was something to look forward to! Why didn’t The Campus employ some forensic accountants?

THEY TURNED
off Route 2 onto a dirt road that wound its way north. The road had seen a good deal of use, some of it recent, judging by the tracks. The general area was somewhat mountainous. The real peaks of the Rocky Mountain chain were off to the west, far enough away that he couldn’t see them, but the air was thinner here than he was accustomed to, and it would be warm walking. He wondered how far that would be, and how close they were to the U.S. border. He’d heard that the American-Mexican border was guarded, but not well guarded. The Americans could be lethally competent in some areas, but utterly infantile in others. Mustafa and his people hoped to avoid the former and to make use of the latter. About eleven in the morning, he saw a large, boxy truck in the distance, and their SUV headed toward it. The truck, he saw as they came closer, was empty, its large red doors wide open. The Ford Explorer came to within a hundred meters and stopped. Pedro switched off the engine and got out.

“We are here, my friends,” he announced. “I hope you are ready to walk.”

All four of them got out, and as before they stretched their legs and looked around. A new man walked in their direction, as the other three SUVs parked and disgorged their passengers.

“Hello, Pedro,” the new Mexican greeted the lead driver, evidently an old friend.

“
Buenos dias,
Ricardo. Here are the people who want to go to America.”

“Hello.” He shook hands with the first four. “My name is Ricardo, and I am your
coyote.
”

“What?” Mustafa asked.

“It is just a term. I take people across the border, for a fee. In your case, of course, I have already been paid.”

“How far?”

“Ten kilometers. A modest walk,” he said comfortably. “The country will mostly be like this. If you see a snake, just walk away from it. It will not chase you. But if you get within a meter, it can strike you and kill you. Aside from that, there is nothing to fear. If you see a helicopter, you must fall to the ground and not move. The Americans do not guard their border well, and, oddly enough, not as well in daylight as at night. We have also taken some precautions.”

“What is that?”

“There were thirty people in that van,” he said, pointing to the large truck they’d seen coming in. “They will walk in ahead of and to the west of us. If anyone is caught, it will be them.”

“How long will it take?”

“Three hours. Less, if you are fit. Do you have water?”

“We know the desert,” Mustafa assured him.

“As you say. Let us be off, then. Follow me,
amigo.
” And with that, Ricardo started walking north. His clothes were all khaki, he wore a military-style web belt with three canteens attached, and he carried military-style binoculars, plus an Army-style floppy hat. His boots were well worn. His stride was purposeful and efficient, not overly fast for show, just to cover ground efficiently. They fell in behind him, forming a single file to conceal their numbers from any possible trackers, with Mustafa in the lead, about five meters behind their coyote
.

THERE WAS
a pistol range about three hundred yards from the plantation house. It was outdoors, and had steel targets, a set just like those at the FBI Academy, with head-plates, circular and roughly the size of a human head. They made an agreeable
clang
when hit, and then they fell down, as a human target would do if hit there. Enzo turned out to be better at this. Aldo explained that the Marine Corps didn’t emphasize pistol shooting too much, whereas the FBI paid particular attention to it, figuring that anybody could shoot a shoulder weapon accurately. The FBI brother used the two-handed Weaver stance, while the Marine tended to stand up straight and shoot one-handed, the way the services taught their people.

“Hey, Aldo, that just makes you a better target,” Dominic warned.

“Oh yeah?” Brian rippled off three rounds and got three satisfying
clang
s as a result. “Hard to shoot after you take one between the running lights, bro.”

“And what’s this one-shot/one-kill crap? Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice.”

“How many did you give that mutt in Alabama?” Brian asked.

“Three. I didn’t feel like taking any chances,” Dominic explained.

“You say so, bro. Hey, let me try that Smith of yours.”

Dominic cleared his weapon before handing it over. The magazine went separately. Brian dry-fired it a few times to get used to the feel, then loaded and cycled the action. His first shot
clanged
a headplate. So did his second. The third one missed, though number four did not, a third of a second later. Brian handed the weapon back. “Feels different in the hand,” he explained.

“You get used to it,” Dominic promised.

“Thanks, but I like the extra six rounds in the magazine.”

“Well, it’s what you like.”

“What’s with all the head-shot stuff, anyway?” Brian wondered. “Okay, shooting sniper rifle, it’s the surest one-shot stopper, but not with a pistol.”

“When you can do a guy in the head from fifteen yards,” Pete Alexander answered, “it’s just a nice talent to have. It’s the best way of ending an argument I know.”

“Where did you come from?” Dominic asked.

“You didn’t scan, Agent Caruso. Remember that even Adolf Hitler had friends. Don’t they teach that at Quantico?”

“Well, yes,” Dominic admitted, somewhat crestfallen.

“When your primary target is down, you scan the area for any friends he might have had. Or you get the hell out of town. Or both.”

“You mean run away?” Brian asked.

“Not unless you’re on a track. You make your way clear in such a way as to be inconspicuous. That can mean walking into a bookstore and making a purchase, getting a coffee, whatever. You have to make your decision based on circumstances, but keep your objective in mind. Your objective is
always
to get clear of the immediate area as quickly as circumstances allow. Move too fast and people will notice. Move too slow and they might remember seeing you and your subject close together. They will never report the person they didn’t notice. So, you want to be one of those. What you wear out on a job, the way you act out in the field, the way you walk, the way you think—all of that must be designed to make you invisible,” Alexander told them.

“In other words, Pete, you’re saying that when we kill these people we’re training for,” Brian observed quietly, “you want us to be able to do it and walk away so that we can get away with it.”

“Would you prefer to be caught?” Alexander asked.

“No, but the best way to kill somebody is to pop him in the head with a good rifle from a couple of hundred meters away. That works every time.”

“But what if we want him dead in such a way that nobody knows he was killed?” the training officer asked.

“How the hell do you manage that?” This was Dominic.

“Patience, lads. One thing at a time.”

THERE WERE
the remains of some sort of fence. Ricardo just walked through it, using a hole that did not look recent. The fence posts had been painted a rich green, but that had mainly rusted off. The fencing material was in even worse shape. Getting through was the least of their problems. The coyote went a further fifty meters or so, and selected a large rock, then sat down, lit a smoke, and took a drink from his canteen. It was his first stop. The walk had not been difficult at all, and clearly he’d done this many times. Mustafa and his friends did not know that he’d brought several hundred groups across the border along this very route, and had only been arrested once—and that had not amounted to very much, except for stinging his pride. He’d also forfeited his fee, because he was an honorable coyote. Mustafa went over to him.

“Are your friends okay?” Ricardo asked.

“It has not been strenuous,” Mustafa replied, “and I have seen no snakes.”

“Not too many along here. People usually shoot them, or throw rocks. No one cares much for snakes.”

“Are they dangerous—truly, I mean?”

“Only if you are a fool, and even then you are unlikely to die. You will be ill for a few days. No more than that, but it can make walking rather painful. We will wait here for a few minutes. We are ahead of schedule. Oh, yes, welcome to America,
amigo.
”

“That fence is all there is?” Mustafa asked in amazement.

“The
norteamericano
is rich, yes, and clever, yes, but he is also lazy. My people would not go there except that there is work the gringo is too lazy to do on his own.”

“How many people do you smuggle into America, then?”

“I, you mean? Thousands. Many thousands. For this, I am well paid. I have a fine house, and six other coyotes work for me. The gringos worry more about people smuggling drugs across the border, and I avoid doing that. It is not worth the trouble. I let two of my men do that for me. The pay for that is very high, you see.”

“What kind of drugs?” Mustafa asked.

“The kind for which I am paid.” He grinned and took another swig from his canteen.

Mustafa turned as Abdullah came up.

“I thought this would be a difficult walk,” his number two observed.

“Only for city dwellers,” Ricardo replied. “This is my country. I was born of the desert.”

“As was I,” Abdullah observed. “It is a pleasant day.” Better than sitting in the back of a truck, he didn’t have to add.

Ricardo lit up another Newport. He liked menthol cigarettes, easier on the throat. “It does not get hot for another month, perhaps two. But then it can be truly hot, and the wise man takes a good water supply. People have died out here without water in the August heat. But none of mine. I make sure everyone has water. The Mother Nature, she has no love and no pity,” the coyote observed. At the end of his walk, he knew a place where he could get a few
cervezas
before driving east to El Paso. From there, it was back to his comfortable home in Ascensión, too far from the border to be bothered with would-be emigrants, who had a bad habit of stealing things they might need for the crossing. He wondered how much stealing they did on the gringo side of the line, but it was not his problem, was it? He finished his cigarette and stood. “Three more kilometers to go, my friends.”