Locked On

  The train did begin to move, but it rolled painfully slow; Rehan himself moved faster than the wheels beneath him as he made it closer to the front. He punched a man who would not step aside and shoved the man’s wife back down into her chair when she tried to grab his arm.

  In the passenger car nearest the locomotive, he found a little space to run, then he made his way forward to the vestibule with the door to the outside and the door to the next car. He passed the open door on his right and saw the platform pass by. Just as he looked a young white man in a police utility vest leapt onto the moving car, crashing his shoulder against the wall of the tiny hallway between the cars. He looked right at Rehan, and the Pakistani general swung his pistol toward the man, but the big white man grabbed the general and knocked him against the wall.

  The pistol fell to the floor of the car.

  Rehan recovered quickly, then launched himself at his attacker, and the two of them slammed their bodies hard against the surfaces in the small confines of the vestibule for thirty seconds before they fell back through the door, into the crowded coach car. Civilians scrambled out of the way as best they could. Many screamed, and some men shouted and shoved the fighting pair back toward the vestibule.

  Here they continued to fight. Ryan was faster, fitter, and better trained in hand-to-hand combat, but Rehan had more brute strength, and the Pakistani used this, and the tight quarters, to render his opponent unable to get the upper hand.

  Jack saw he wasn’t going to win anytime soon against the bigger man while pressed into the tiny tin can of the vestibule between the cars, and he did not want to leave the area, since he knew his friends were fighting to the death for control of the nuclear weapon, so he did the only thing he could think of. With a scream to muster all of his strength, he wrapped his arms around the big general, kicked his feet up on the wall of the vestibule, and pushed back with all his might.

  Rehan and Ryan tumbled together out of the train. Their bodies separated as they hit the hard ground and rolled alongside the track.

  Major Mohammed al Darkur had given up at the front entrance of the warehouse; the gunfire was just too heavy. Instead he moved around to the side, where he found his ISI captain still firing through an open window. From the sound of it, there were no more than three or four men remaining prone behind the crane, but they had good cover.

  And then the rear wall of the warehouse, behind the LeT gunmen, exploded inward. Wood and mortar and brick blew into the room behind a large truck that continued rolling through the wall, only to crash into the crate and stop. While al Darkur watched from the open window he saw the militants stand and open fire on the vehicle, pouring jacketed lead through the windshield.

  Dominic appeared at the new opening in the rear wall. Mohammed had to hold his fire immediately, as the American was directly downrange from him. The major held his hand up so that his captain would check his own fire.

  While they watched, Dominic fired over and over from his G3 police rifle into the men. There were four, and they bucked and spun and fell to the ground as he moved on them in a crouch, his big weapon firing during his approach.

  “Mohammed?” Dominic shouted after the shooting stopped.

  “I am here!” he replied, and al Darkur and his captain ran into the large open room, up to Dominic. The American looked into the long wooden crate, and then down at a wounded militant lying next to it. “Ask him if he knows how to turn off the bomb,” Caruso said.

  Mohammed did, and the man answered. Immediately al Darkur shot the terrorist in the forehead with his rifle. By way of explanation, al Darkur shrugged. “He said no.”

  The portion of track where Ryan and Rehan found themselves was still on the grounds of the Lahore Central Railway Station, and the ground around them was full of the detritus one would find in any urban rail yard; stones and trash and portions of discarded track were strewn all around the two men as they both climbed to their feet after their rough landing from the train that passed alongside them. Jack Ryan knelt for a big rock, but the general kicked at him before he could get it. Ryan ducked the blow and then rammed Rehan in the chest with his shoulder, knocking him back to the ground. As the two men fought in the dirt and rocks and trash alongside the moving train, the Pakistani took hold of a small segment of iron rebar, and it whipped through the darkness and missed Ryan’s face by just a few inches.

  Jack took a few steps back, away from Rehan, turned to find something to use as a weapon, but Rehan barreled into him from behind. Both men crashed back into the ground. Jack grunted with the impact, his Kevlar vest saving him from a broken jar that would have sliced him open.

  Rehan climbed up to his knees, Jack still facedown below him, and the general grabbed a large brick from the trash around him. He lifted it up into the air, over Ryan’s head, and prepared to crush his skull.

  Jack bucked hard, throwing the larger man to the ground next to him.

  Ryan reached out, ready to grab anything to use as a weapon, and his right hand wrapped around a heavy and rusty railroad spike. He took the spike, leapt to his knees, and then leapt again, diving toward Rehan, who was trying to climb back up off the ground.

  In the air, Jack positioned the spike in front of his Kevlar vest, pressing the head of the iron point against the rigid vest, and he held it there with his hand as he landed on his enemy. He slammed down on him with all his weight.

  His body and his vest hammered the rusty spike into General Riaz Rehan’s chest.

  Jack rolled off the big man and climbed slowly back to his feet.

  Rehan sat up, looked down at the iron barb sticking into him, bewilderment on his face.

  Weakly, he put a hand on it. He tried to pull it out of him, but he realized he could not, so his hand fell back to his side.

  Ryan, his face covered in dirt and smeared blood from the encounter, said, “Nigel Embling sends his regards.”

  “American? You are American?” Rehan asked in English as he sat there.

  “Yes.”

  Rehan’s look of surprise did not waver. Still, he said, “Whatever you think you just did … you failed. In minutes the caliph will reign in Pakistan… .” Rehan touched his hand to his lips and then looked at it; it was covered with blood. He coughed out a thick wad of blood now while the young American stood over him. “And you will die.”

  “I’ll outlive you, asshole,” Jack replied.

  Rehan shrugged, then slumped over on his right shoulder; his eyelids remained open but his pupils rolled back in his head.

  Ryan heard police sirens that seemed to come from the railway station, a few hundred yards back. He left the general’s body right where it lay and began running across a dozen sets of train tracks and toward the warehouse.

  Ryan ran back into the warehouse with his pistol raised, but he holstered it when he saw his cousin and al Darkur looking into a large packing crate. Dom was talking on his phone with one hand, and shining a flashlight with his other.

  Ryan got al Darkur’s attention. “Listen. There are about to be fifty cops pulling up in a minute. Can you and your man go out and talk to them, ask them to give us a minute?”

  “Of course.” Mohammed and his captain left the warehouse.

  Jack shouldered up to Dom. “What’s the word?” As he said this, he saw the red countdown clock on the detonator switch from 7:50 to 7:49.

  “I took a picture of the device and sent it to Clark. He’s got experts with him that will take a look and then let me know if we’re about to glow in the dark.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  “Are you okay?” Ryan saw blood on the back of Caruso’s pants.

  “I think I got shot in the ass. What about Rehan?”

  “Dead.”

  Both men nodded. Just then the Canadian Rainbow munitions expert came on the satellite phone and told Caruso how to reset the altimeter trigger, which would stop the manual countdown.

  Dom finished with two minutes and four seco
nds remaining. The clock stopped, and the two men sighed in relief and shook hands.

  Ryan helped Caruso down to the floor, Dom lay on his hip to keep his wound from getting any filthier than it already was, and Ryan sat down next to him.

  Within another twenty minutes al Darkur’s unit of SSG had arrived along with PAEC engineers to render the weapon safe.

  By then Ryan and Caruso were gone.

  EPILOGUE

  It was five p.m. in Baltimore and President-elect Jack Ryan flipped off the TV in his study. He had been watching the news reports from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and he’d had two conference calls with his aides, members of his cabinet-to-be, during which the matter was discussed at length.

  Also discussed in the meeting was the worsening situation between Pakistan and India. Skirmishes had been reported along the border, but some reports suggested the shelling in Lahore and the areas around there were not by Indian forces, but rather PDF units allied with rogue ISI officers.

  Ryan would take office in less than a month. Officially this was Ed Kealty’s problem, but Ryan was hearing grumblings from Kealty’s people—most of whom were reaching out to the Ryan camp in hopes of grabbing some sort of employment in the D.C. area—that the lame-duck President had already flipped the lights off in the Oval Office. Figuratively speaking, of course.

  His phone rang, and he grabbed it without thinking. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a plane, heading home.”

  “Home from where?”

  “That’s what I called to talk to you about. I’ve got a story to tell you. I need your help with the crisis in Pakistan.”

  Ryan Sr. cocked his head. “How’s that?”

  Junior spent the next twenty minutes telling his father about Rehan and the ISI and the theft of the nukes, about the Haqqani network and the Dagestani militants. It was a hell of a story, and the father interrupted the son only to ask him what kind of encryption his phone was using.

  Jack Junior explained that he was on The Campus’s own aircraft, and Hendley had seen to it that the equipment was state of the art.

  When he was finished, Ryan Sr. asked his son again: “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. Cuts and bruises. Dom took a bullet in the ass, but he’ll be fine.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Really, he was joking about it twenty minutes later.”

  Jack Sr. rubbed his temples under the arms of his eyeglasses. “Okay.”

  “Look, Dad. I know we have to keep The Campus away from you, but I thought you could talk to the players over there in India, persuade them to back off a bit. We do think the man in charge of this entire operation is dead, so it will fizzle out fast if no one does anything stupid.”

  “I’m glad you called. I’m going to get on it right now.”

  The call ended a few minutes later, but the phone immediately rang again. Ryan Sr. thought it was his son calling back. “Yeah, Jack?”

  “Uh, I’m sorry, Mr. President. Bob Holtzman from the Post.”

  Ryan fumed. “How the hell did you get this number, Holtzman? This is a private line.”

  “John Clark gave it to me, sir. I just spoke with him after having an interesting meeting with a Russian intelligence officer.”

  Ryan calmed down but remained on guard. “A meeting about what?”

  “Mr. Clark did not want to speak with you directly. He thought that might put you in a compromised situation. Therefore, I am in the odd position, Mr. President, of having to explain some things to you. Mr. Clark told me you had no knowledge whatsoever about the Russian intelligence–Paul Laska plot against you.”

  If Jack Ryan Sr. had learned one thing in his many years working with Arnie van Damm, it was this: When dealing with a journalist, never ever admit that you don’t know what he is talking about.

  But Arnie was not here right now, and Jack dropped his veil of self-assuredness.

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Holtzman?”

  “If you have a minute, I think I can enlighten you, sir.” Jack Ryan Sr. grabbed a notepad and a pen, and he leaned back in his chair. “I always have time for a respected member of the press, Bob.”

  One week later, Charles Alden slammed the phone down in the office of his Georgetown row house just after eight a.m. This would be his first of several calls to Rhode Island, he had resigned himself to that fact. He’d been trying to get in touch with Laska for the past three fucking days, and the old bastard would not answer or return his calls.

  Alden decided to pester the man. As far as he was concerned, Laska owed him for the risks he had taken in the past few months.

  The DD/CIA fumed as he left his office and headed downstairs to his kitchen for another cup of coffee. He had not bothered to put on a suit this morning, a rarity for a Tuesday. Instead he would sit in his warm-ups and drink coffee and call Paul goddamned Laska until the son of a bitch answered his phone.

  A knock at the front door diverted Alden from his route to the kitchen.

  He looked through the peephole. A couple of suits in trench coats stood on his stoop. Behind them, a government Chrysler was double-parked on the snowy street.

  He pegged the men for CIA security officers. He could not imagine what these guys wanted.

  Charles opened the door.

  The men entered quickly without waiting for an invitation. “Mr. Alden, I am Special Agent Caruthers, and this is Special Agent Delacort with the FBI. I’m going to have to ask you to turn around and face the wall, please.”

  “Wha … What the hell is going on?”

  “I’ll explain everything shortly. For your and my safety, please face the wall, sir.”

  Alden turned slowly on legs that suddenly felt weak and slack. Handcuffs were placed on his wrists and then the pockets of his warm-up pants were professionally gone through by Delacort. Caruthers stood back in the doorway, watching the street.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

  Alden was turned toward his front door and walked back out into the cold. “You are under arrest, Mr. Alden,” said Caruthers as they headed down the icy steps to the street.

  “What the fuck? What is the charge?”

  “Four counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and four counts of unauthorized retention of national defense information.”

  Alden added it up in his head quickly. He was facing more than thirty years behind bars.

  “Bullshit! This is bullshit!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Caruthers as he put his hand on Alden’s head and guided him into the back of the Chrysler. Delacort had already slid behind the wheel.

  Charles Alden said, “Ryan! This is Ryan’s doing! I get it. The witch hunt has begun, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir,” said Caruthers, and the Chrysler drove off toward downtown.

  The same day, Judith Cochrane left her Pueblo, Colorado, hotel at nine-thirty in the morning, and she began her familiar drive to ADX Florence.

  Her client would finally be removed from the Special Administrative Measures and transferred to a better facility on the East Coast; they had not told her where yet for security reasons, but she knew it would be somewhere in the D.C. area, so it would be close to her home.

  Without the SAMs, Saif Rahman Yasin would be able to sit in a room with her while they worked together on his case, close over a table. Sometimes there would be other attorneys present, and the guards would be ever present, but there would be a modicum of privacy, and Judith Cochrane had thought of little else for some time.

  Too bad that conjugal visits would not be allowed. Judy smiled as that thought came to her.

  Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

  The rental car began making an odd noise that she hadn’t heard before. “Damn it,” she said, as it got louder and louder. It was a thumping, and she did not know cars at all, other than where to put the gas.

  As it grew even louder,
she slowed her vehicle. She had the entire road to herself, and there was nothing but flat country around her and huge mountains far to the west. She decided to pull over to the side of the road, but just as she started to do so, she was startled by a huge shadow passing over her car.

  Then she saw it, a big black helicopter streaked just overhead, flew up the road another hundred yards, and then turned sideways, blocking her path.

  She stopped the rental car in the middle of the road.

  The helicopter landed, and men with guns jumped out, ran up to her with their guns pointed at her, and when they got close she could hear their screaming.

  She was pulled out of her car, turned around, and pushed up on the hood. Her legs were kicked open, and she was frisked.

  “What do you want?”

  “Judith Cochrane. You are under arrest.”

  “On what goddamned charge?”

  “Espionage, Ms. Cochrane.”

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous! I’ll drag every last one of you before a judge tomorrow morning and your shitty careers will be over!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Judith screamed at the officers and demanded their badge numbers, but they ignored her. They handcuffed her, and she called them fascists and robots and vermin, and she called them sons of bitches as they led her to the helicopter and helped her on board.

  She was still screaming when the helicopter took off, turned to the east, and flew away.

  She would not know it for some time, but she had been sold out by Paul Laska in an attempt to save himself.

  The Emir sucked fresh air into his lungs for the first time in months. It was dark when he was led out of ADX Florence and into the back of a Bureau of Prisons van, and the heavy snow further obstructed his view.

  He had been looking forward to this day for months, since Judy Cochrane had promised him she would get him out of his tiny cell and into a federal prison near Washington. A prison where he could exercise and watch television and have more books and access to other members of his defense who would help him fight the Ryan administration.