Locked On

  Chavez said, “Look who else kept going.” The black Suzuki motorcycle continued on, still in front of Clark and Chavez. “He had plenty of time to pull off before Rokki made it back this far if he’s got comms with the rest of the team.”

  Clark nodded. “Unless he’s not with the French. He’s with Rokki. He was watching for a tail.”

  “He’s URC?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “No way he missed the backing car pulling off.”

  “No way at all. DCRI are burned.”

  “Do you think DCRI will continue the follow?”

  “They have at least five cars in the set, probably more. They’ll pull in the one or two that the Renault didn’t just pass, and they’ll try to tail him with that. We’ve got to figure Rokki and his guys are just about at their destination.”

  A minute later, Clark and Chavez sat at an intersection on the wide Boulevard Champs-Élysées. They’d managed to allow the Renault van to slip back in front of them with the luck of a minor traffic accident that slowed the flow on the boulevard and a couple of red lights that stopped it cold. They avoided checking their rearview mirrors to look for the DCRI; they knew two men in a vehicle who kept checking their mirrors would likely be spotted by trained surveillance professionals.

  The Renault turned off the Champs-Élysées, made a few more turns, and then found its way to the tree-lined Avenue George V. As the target vehicle slowed in front of them, Clark said, “Looks like we’re here.”

  Chavez looked down to the GPS on his iPhone.

  “Just up ahead on the right is the Four Seasons hotel.”

  Clark whistled. “Four Seasons? That’s pretty swanky for a lieutenant in the URC and his three buds.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  The Renault van did, in fact, pull over just a few car lengths from the front of the luxurious hotel. Clark drove by as one man climbed out of the van and opened his umbrella, then began walking toward the entrance.

  Clark made a right at the corner and then quickly pulled to the sidewalk. “Go check it out.”

  “On it,” Ding said as he slid out of the passenger seat of the Galaxy minivan. He entered the hotel via an employee entrance.

  Clark circled the block, and when he returned, Chavez was standing in the rain by the employee entrance. He climbed back into the Galaxy. “One guy just checked in to one room. Reservation under the name Ibrahim. Two nights. I didn’t get the room number, but I heard the desk clerk call a porter and tell them to take them to their suite. The rest of the team is coming in right now. They have all the luggage we saw when they got in the van.”

  “Were you able to ID Rokki?”

  “Sure did. That was him with the umbrella. He spoke French. Bad French, but that’s the only kind I know.”

  Clark and Chavez drove off, west on the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie. Clark shook his head in wonder. “So a URC gunman picks up three mutts and a bunch of gear in the ghetto and moves them straight into a suite at the Four Seasons.”

  Chavez just shook his head. “A suite here must cost five grand a night. Can’t believe the URC is billeted here unless—”

  Clark was nodding; his reply was distant: “Unless it’s part of an op.”

  Chavez sighed. “These guys are about to go loud.”

  “Within a day. The Seine-Saint-Denis safe house was a staging area. The Four Seasons is the mission. We don’t have much time.”

  “Wish we had a better idea what their target was.”

  “They can hit anything in Paris from here. We can tail them till the moment they act, but that’s too risky. Depending on what’s in those bags, Hosni Rokki could be planning to assassinate a high-profile VIP staying at the Four Seasons, rake the U.S. consulate with machine-gun fire, or blow up Notre Dame.”

  “We can tip off the French.”

  “Ding, if we had any idea who or what the target was, then we could alert the right people and have the target moved or the location shut down. But just telling the French cops that a group of shady bastards are in a particular suite at the Four Seasons? No … Think about it. They won’t want an incident, they won’t want to violate anyone’s rights, so they’ll make some gentle inquiries with the hotel—”

  Ding finished the thought. “Meanwhile, these mutts run out with some det cord and Semtex and take out the Eiffel Tower and everyone in it.”

  “You got it. DCRI is tailing them already. We have to work under the assumption that that is all the heat this cell of tangos is going to get for now.”

  “So we take them down?”

  Clark thought it over. “We haven’t had an opportunity like this since the Emir. Ryan says Rokki isn’t that big a deal by himself, but if he’s here doing a job for al Qahtani, you can bet he knows more about al Qahtani than we do.”

  “You want to bag him?”

  “It would be nice. We can stop his hit, kill the other guys in his cell, and then snag him for a little chat.”

  Chavez nodded. “I like it. Don’t guess we have time to wait around.”

  “No time at all. I’ll make the call. We’re going to need some help to pull this off.”

  10

  Jack Ryan Jr. held an ice pack to his face. He’d just taken an elbow to the upper lip. It was followed with a “Sorry, old boy” by James Buck, a not-quite-apology that did nothing to improve the mood in the spartan training room. Jack knew the “accidental” elbow had been delivered purposefully.

  Buck was playing a one-man version of the good cop/bad cop routine. This was some strategy to keep Jack Junior on his toes; Jack himself recognized this. And it worked. One minute Buck was telling Ryan how great he was doing; the next he was choking him out from behind.

  Jesus, Jack thought. This sucks. But he realized how amazing this training was from a standpoint of imparting information and teaching his mind and body to react to unpredictable threats. He was smart enough to realize that someday, some much later date after the bruises healed, he would appreciate the hell out of James Buck and his split personality.

  Buck’s philosophy of teaching pushed mind-set as much as it stressed his tactics. “No such thing as a fair fight, lad. If one of the fighters is fighting ‘fair,’ then the fight won’t last long. The dirtier bastard will always win.”

  Ryan began to find himself transforming under the weight of the ex–SAS man’s “dirty” tactics. A few weeks back he’d grappled and thrown straight punches and hooks. Now as often as not, he used his opponent’s clothing against him, twisted him in excruciating arm bars, and even jabbed at Adam’s apples.

  Ryan’s body was covered in bruises from head to toe, his joints had been twisted and wrenched, and scratches crisscrossed his face and torso.

  He could not say he’d won more than a few of the hundred or so encounters he’d had against Buck, but he recognized his incredible improvement over the past month.

  Ryan was mature enough and smart enough to recognize what was happening. Buck had nothing personal against him at all. He was just doing his job, and his job consisted of first breaking Ryan down.

  And he was doing a hell of a job at that, Jack confessed.

  “Again!” shouted Buck, and he began crossing the teak floor, approaching his student. Ryan quickly put the ice pack down on a table and prepared himself for another encounter.

  Someone called from the dojo’s office. “James? Phone call for Ryan.”

  Buck’s eyes had narrowed in concentration for the impending attack. Upon hearing the distraction he stopped, turned toward the man in the office. “What did I bloody tell you about calls whilst we’re in training?”

  Jack’s body tensed. His trainer was ten feet away; two quick steps and he’d be in arm’s reach. Ryan thought about launching himself toward his trainer at this moment, when his eyes were diverted. It would be a dirty shot, but Buck encouraged just exactly that.

  “It’s Hendley,” came the voice from the office.

  The Welshman sighed. “Right. Off you go, Ryan
,” he said as he turned back to the young American.

  Ryan’s amped-up body relaxed. Damn. He could have totally waylaid Buck, and, from the look Buck was giving him now, the hand-to-hand and edged-weapons instructor knew it, too. His surprised eyes realized he’d come a half-second from getting his ass handed to him by his young student.

  James Buck smiled appreciatively.

  Ryan recovered, wiped a little blood from his nose with the back of his hand. He walked toward the office and the telephone, careful to hide the fact that Buck’s last kick to the inside of his knee had left residual pain there, lest Buck see Jack’s injury and exploit it in their next melee.

  “Ryan.”

  “Jack, it’s Gerry.”

  “Hi, Gerry.”

  “Situation in Paris. The Gulfstream is fueling up at BWI as we speak. There will be gear bags on board, a folder on the table with your documents, some credit cards and cash, and further instructions. Get there as quick as you can.”

  Ryan kept his face impassive, though he felt like a school kid who’d just been let out for summer vacation in February. “Right.”

  “Chavez will call you on the way and have you go through some equipment that he’s ordered that will be on board.”

  “Got it.” Paris, Jack thought. How great is that?

  “And Jack?”

  “Yeah, Gerry?”

  “This one could get rough. You will not be going to provide analysis. Clark will use you as he sees fit.”

  Jack quickly admonished himself for thinking about beautiful girls and outdoor cafés. Get your head in the game.

  “I understand,” he said. He handed the phone to Buck. The Brit took it and listened. Jack thought the older man looked like a lion watching a gazelle escape.

  “I’ll be back,” Ryan said as he turned toward the locker room.

  “And I’ll be waiting, laddie. Might want to get that dodgy knee sorted whilst you’re on holiday, because my boot will be hunting for that weak spot upon your return.”

  “Great,” Jack mumbled as he disappeared through the door.

  Dom Caruso and Sam Driscoll sat on a pair of cots they’d stationed by the window of their studio apartment in Cairo’s Zamalek neighborhood. They sipped Turkish coffee that Sam had made in a metal pot on the stove, and watched the property on an adjacent hillside a few blocks away.

  Throughout the evening, el Daboussi had received only one visitor. Caruso had taken a few pictures of the car, an S-class Mercedes, and he’d caught the tag. He’d e-mailed the images to the analysts at The Campus, and they’d reported back in minutes that the vehicle was registered to a high-level Egyptian parliamentarian who, until just nine months ago, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood living in exile in Saudi Arabia. Now he was back home and helping to run the country. This was all well and good, Dom thought, unless and until he began cavorting with a known former URC trainer with experience in the Al-Qaeda camps of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

  Shit, Caruso said to himself, and then, aloud, “Hey, Sam. I watch American TV. They say the Muslim Brotherhood only want democracy and equal rights for women. What gives with their midnight meetings with jihadists?” He was being facetious, of course.

  “Yeah,” said Sam, picking up on the false naiveté. “I thought the Mo-Bros were the good guys.”

  “Right,” said Dom. “I saw some nutjob on MSNBC say that the Muslim Brotherhood used to be terrorists, but now they are as benign as the Salvation Army in the U.S. Just another religious-based organization that only wants to do good.”

  Sam didn’t say anything.

  “No opinion?”

  “I tuned you out when you said MSNBC.”

  Dom laughed.

  Caruso’s Thuraya Hughes satellite phone chirped, and he checked his watch as he answered it. “Yeah?”

  “Dom, it’s Gerry. We’re going to have to pull you out. Clark and Chavez need some help in Paris right away.”

  Caruso was surprised. He knew Clark and Chavez were working an op in Europe, but last he’d heard, their target had jetted back to Islamabad.

  “What about Sam?” Dom asked. Driscoll eyed him from the cot on the other side of the tiny darkened room.

  “Sam, too. The situation in Paris is the kind that is going to need the type of help you and Driscoll can provide. Ryan is on the way there in the jet. He’s got everything you will need.”

  Caruso hated to leave this op, the guy they’d seen in the market meeting with MED, the one Driscoll pegged for a Pakistani general, had not yet been ID’d. He’d love to hang around until the intel nerds at The Campus got a hit on the man’s face. But despite his high hopes for this mission, he said nothing. If John Clark and Ding Chavez needed help, then, Dom knew, there was definitely something serious brewing over in Europe.

  “We’re on the way.”

  11

  Jack Ryan Jr. sat in the principal’s seat of a business jet that streaked at 547 nautical miles per hour through the thin air 47,000 feet above and 41 miles southeast of Gander, Newfoundland.

  He was the only passenger of the aircraft. The three crew members—pilot, first officer, and flight attendant—had mostly kept to themselves in order to let Ryan read a thick binder that had been left for him on one of the leather cabin chairs.

  While he read, he sipped a glass of California cabernet and picked absentmindedly at a sausage plate.

  His laptop was open in front of him, as well, and he’d virtually held the handset of his seat’s phone to his neck for most of the past hour, talking to Clark in Paris, and to various operations and intelligence men at The Campus in Maryland. He also spoke briefly with Driscoll, who, along with Caruso, was at that moment boarding a flight from Cairo to Paris.

  Ryan would be finished with this part of his evening’s work within a couple of hours, but he already knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep on this transatlantic flight. There was a large amount of gear on board that he’d have to go through while getting directions from Clark and Chavez on the phone in order to make sure everything was ready to go as soon as he touched down in France.

  And once he got all that done, if it wasn’t too late, he needed to call his mom and dad. He’d been so busy lately, he’d canceled a lunch with his mom and his brother and sister, Kyle and Katie, when Mom was home from the campaign.

  Actually, he thought as he took a sip of cabernet, that day he had not really been too busy to get away for lunch. No, it was a big red cut on the bridge of his nose, courtesy of James Buck, that had caused him to call off the get-together at the last minute. Since then, though, it had been ten-hour days at the office and then three to four hours in the dojo before staggering home, into a bath filled with Epsom salts, chugging a few gulps of Budweiser, before crashing on the sofa in his Columbia, Maryland, apartment.

  As the jet raced over the eastern shores of Newfoundland now, flying on a heading that would take it across the Atlantic and to the continent before dawn there, Ryan finished a twenty-minute cram session over a map of the Eighth Arrondissement neighborhood where the Four Seasons George V was located. The one-way alleyways and the large, wide boulevards and avenues would take days to memorize properly, but he had to do his best, to become as familiar as possible with the area before the team went to work there. He had been informed by Clark that he would be the “wheel man,” the driver, though Clark also warned him that they were such a small force he would undoubtedly be called on for other things.

  Perhaps even things that required the use of the Glock 23 .40-caliber pistol that had been left on the aircraft for him.

  Jack reached for a printed layout of the Four Seasons hotel itself to study the floor plan of the building, but he turned away, took a moment to look up at the high-definition moving map monitor on the cabin wall to check his time of arrival. He saw he’d land in Paris at 5:22 a.m.

  Jack sipped his wine and took a moment more to appreciate the beautifully appointed cabin. This jet was still new, and he had not yet gotten accu
stomed to sitting in it.

  This was The Campus’s newest toy, a Gulfstream G550 ultra-long-range corporate jet, and it filled a couple of extremely important needs for the fledgling off-the-books intelligence organization. Since the capture and interrogation of the Emir, the operational tempo of their work had gone through the roof as they’d turned into more of an intelligence gathering force and less of an assassination squad. The five operators, as well as the top brass and some of the analytical team, found themselves with increasing regularity heading all over the world to conduct surveillance on targets or to track leads or to perform other necessary tasks.

  Commercial flights worked just fine ninety percent of the time, but on occasion Hendley and his chief of operations, Sam Granger, needed to move a man or men extremely quickly from the D.C./Baltimore metro area to some far-off point, usually so they could get eyes on a target who might be in place for only a short period of time. Commercial carriers flying from Washington Dulles, Ronald Reagan Washington National, and Baltimore Washington International airports had dozens of daily direct international flights, and hundreds more locations could be accessed from these airports with just a single connection, but occasionally the three to twelve added hours of time needed to get through airport security and customs, wait for delayed flights, make connections, and anything else that every commercial airline passenger is subject to just wasn’t going to allow The Campus to accomplish its mission. So Gerry Hendley began looking for a private jet that would suit the needs of his organization. He established an ad hoc committee of in-house personnel to meet and decide on the exact requirements that would fit the bill. Money was not an object, though it was Hendley’s job to grumble to the aircraft committee to keep it reasonable and to not spend one cent more than was required for them to find what they needed.

  The group reported back to Gerry with their findings after several exhaustive weeks of research and meetings. The speed, size, and range they required could be accomplished by several ultra-long-range corporate jets made by Dassault, Bombardier Aerospace, Embraer, and Gulfstream Aerospace. Of these, it was determined the perfect aircraft for their needs would be the new Gulfstream 650.