Clear and Present Danger

  “Panama. Communications have been shut down and the helicopter is gone. We have thirty kids on hilltops waiting for help that ain’t gonna come.”

  “How can I reach you?” Clark gave him a number. “Okay, I’ll be back to you in a few hours.”

  “Let’s not screw around.” The line clicked off.

  “Jesus.” Jack looked into the shadows of his library. He called his office to say that he’d drive himself into work. Then he called Dan Murray.

  Ryan was back in the FBI building underpass sixty minutes later. Murray was waiting for him and took him back upstairs. Shaw was there, too, and much-needed coffee was passed out.

  “Our field guy called me at home. VARIABLE has been shut down, and the helicopter crew that was supposed to bring them out has been pulled. He thinks they’re going to be—hell, he thinks—”

  “Yeah,” Shaw observed. “If so, we now have a probable violation of the law. Conspiracy to commit murder. Proving it might be a little tough, though.”

  “Stuff your law—what about those soldiers?”

  “How do we get them out?” Murray asked. “Get help from—no, we can’t get the Colombians involved, can we?”

  “How do you think they’d react to an invasion from a foreign army?” Shaw noted. “About the same way we would.”

  “What about confronting Cutter?” Jack asked. Shaw answered.

  “Confront him with what? What do we have? Zip. Oh, sure, we can get those communications guys and the helicopter crews and talk to them, but they’ll stonewall for a while, and then what? By the time we have a case, those soldiers are dead.”

  “And if we can bring them out, then what case do we have?” Murray asked. “Everybody runs for cover, papers get shredded....”

  “If I may make a suggestion, gentlemen, why don’t we forget about courtrooms for the moment and try to concentrate on getting those grunts the hell out of Indian country?”

  “Getting them out is fine, but—”

  “You think your case will get better with thirty or forty new victims?” Ryan snapped. “What is the objective here?”

  “That was a cheap shot, Jack,” Murray said.

  “Where’s your case? What if the President authorized the operation, with Cutter as his go-between, and there’s no written orders? CIA acted in accordance with verbal orders, and the orders are arguably legal, except that I got told to mislead Congress if they ask, which they haven’t done yet! There’s also that little kink in the law that says we can start a covert operation without telling them, no matter what it is—the limits on our covert ops come from a White House Executive Order, remember—as long as we do get around to telling them. Therefore a killing authorized by the guy who puts out the Executive Order can only become a murder retroactively if something extraneous to the murder itself does not happen! What bonehead ever set these statutes up? Have they ever really been tested in court?”

  “You left something out,” Murray observed.

  “Yeah, the most obvious reply from Cutter is that this isn’t a covert operation at all, but a paramilitary counterterrorist op. That evades the whole issue of intelligence-oversight. Now we come under the War Powers Resolution, which has another lead-time factor. Have any of these laws ever been tested in court?”

  “Not really,” Shaw answered. “There’s been a lot of dancing around, but nothing actually on point. War-Powers especially is a constitutional question that both sides are afraid to put in front of a judge. Where are you coming from, Ryan?”

  “I got an agency to protect, don’t I? If this adventure goes public, the CIA reverts back to what it was in the seventies. For example, what happens to your counterterrorist programs if the info we feed you dries up?” That one scored points, Jack saw. CIA was the silent partner in the war on terrorism, feeding most of its data to the Bureau, as Shaw had every reason to know. “On the other hand, from what we’ve talked about the last couple of days, what real case do you have?”

  “If by withdrawing support for SHOWBOAT, Cutter made it easier for Cortez to kill them, we have a violation of the District of Columbia law against conspiracy to commit murder. In the absence of a federal law, a crime committed on federal property can be handled by the municipal law that applies to the violation. Some part of what he did was accomplished here or on other federal property, and that’s where the jurisdiction comes from. That’s how we investigated the cases back in the seventies.”

  “What cases were they?” Jack asked Shaw.

  “It spun out of the Church Committee hearings. We investigated assassination plots by CIA against Castro and some others—they never came to trial. The law we would have used was the conspiracy statute, but the constitutional issues were so murky that the investigation died a natural death, much to everyone’s relief.”

  “Same thing here, isn’t it? Except while we fiddle ...”

  “You’ve made your point,” the acting Director said. “Number one priority is getting them out, any way we can. Is there a way to do it covertly?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Look, for starters let’s get in touch with your field officer,” Murray suggested.

  “He doesn’t—”

  “He gets immunity, anything he wants,” Shaw said at once. “My word on it. Hell, far as I can tell he hasn’t really broken any laws anyway—because of Martinez-Barker—but you have my word, Ryan, no harm comes to him.”

  “Okay.” Jack pulled the slip of paper from his shirt pocket. The number Clark had given him wasn’t a real number, of course, but by adding and subtracting to the digits in a prearranged way, the call went through.

  “This is Ryan. I’m calling from FBI Headquarters. Hold on and listen.” Jack handed the phone over.

  “This is Bill Shaw. I’m acting Director. Number one, I just told Ryan that you are in the clear. My word: no action goes against you. Will you trust me on that? Good.” Shaw smiled in no small surprise. “Okay, this is a secure line, and I presume that your end is the same way. I need to know what you think is going on, and what you think we can do about it. We know about the kids, and we’re looking for a way to get them out. From what Jack tells us, you might have some ideas. Let’s hear them.” Shaw punched the speaker button on his phone, and everyone started taking notes.

  “How fast do you think we can have the radios set up?” Ryan wondered when Clark had finished.

  “The technicians start getting in around seven-thirty, figure by lunch. What about transport?”

  “I think I can handle that,” Jack said. “If you want covert, I can arrange covert. It means letting somebody else in, but it’s somebody we can trust.”

  “No way we can talk to them?” Shaw asked Clark, whose name he didn’t yet know.

  “Negative,” the speaker said. “You sure you can pull it off on your end?”

  “No, but we can give it a pretty good try,” Shaw replied.

  “See you tonight, then.” The line clicked off.

  “Now all we have to do is steal some airplanes,” Murray thought aloud. “Maybe a ship, too? So much the better if we bring it off covertly, right?”

  “Huh?” That one threw Ryan. Murray explained.

  Admiral Cutter emerged from his house at 6:15 for his daily jog. He headed downhill toward the river and chugged along the path paralleling the George Washington Parkway. Inspector O‘Day followed. A reformed smoker, the inspector had no problems keeping up, and watched for anything unusual, but nothing appeared. No messages passed, no dead-drops laid, just a middle-aged man trying to keep fit. Another agent picked him up as Cutter turned for home. O’Day would change and be ready to follow Cutter into work, wondering if he’d spot some unusual behavior there.

  Jack showed up for work at the usual hour, looking as tired as he felt. The morning conference in Judge Moore’s office began at 8:30, and for once there was a full crew, though there might as well not have been. The DCI and DDO, he saw, were quiet, nodding but not taking very many notes.


  These were—well, not friends, Ryan thought. Admiral Greer had been a friend and mentor. But Judge Moore had been a good boss, and though he and Ritter had never really gotten along, the DDO had never treated him unfairly. He had to give them one more chance, Jack told himself impulsively. When the conference ended, he was slow picking up his things while the others left. Moore caught the cue, as did Ritter.

  “Jack, you want to say something?”

  “I’m not sure I’m right for DDI,” Ryan opened.

  “Why do you say that?” Judge Moore asked.

  “Something’s happening that you aren’t telling me about. If you don’t trust me, I shouldn’t have the job.”

  “Orders,” Ritter said. He was unable to hide his discomfort.

  “Then you look me straight in the eye and tell me it’s all legitimate. I’m supposed to know. I have a right to know.” Ritter looked to Judge Moore.

  “I wish we were able to let you in on this, Dr. Ryan,” the DCI said. He tried to bring his eyes up to meet Jack’s, but they wavered and fixed on a spot of wall. “But I have to follow orders, too.”

  “Okay. I’ve got some leave coming. I want to think a few things over. My work is all caught up. I’m out of here for a few days, starting in an hour.”

  “The funeral’s tomorrow, Jack.”

  “I know. I’ll be there, Judge,” Ryan lied. Then he left the room.

  “He knows,” Moore said after the door closed.

  “No way.”

  “He knows and he wants to be out of the office.”

  “So what do we do about it if you’re right?”

  The Director of Central Intelligence looked up this time. “Nothing. That’s the best thing we can do right now.”

  That was clear. Cutter had done better than he knew. In destroying the radio encryption codes needed to communicate with the four teams, KNIFE, BANNER, FEATURE, and OMEN, he’d eliminated the Agency’s ability to affect the turn of events. Neither Ritter nor Moore really expected the National Security Adviser to get the men out, but they had no alternative that would not damage themselves, the Agency, and their President—and, incidentally, their country. If Ryan wanted out of the way if things came apart—well, Moore thought, maybe he had sensed something. The DCI didn’t blame him for wanting to stay clear.

  There were still things he had to tie up, of course. Ryan left the building just after eleven that morning. He had a car phone in his Jaguar and placed a call to a Pentagon number. “Captain Jackson, please,” he said when it was picked up. “Jack Ryan calling.” Robby picked up a few seconds later.

  “Hey, Jack!”

  “How’s lunch grab you?”

  “Fine with me. My place or yours, boy?”

  “You know Artie’s Deli?”

  “K Street at the river. Yeah.”

  “Be there in half an hour.”

  “Right.”

  Robby spotted his friend at a corner table and came right over. There was already a place set for him, and another man was at the table.

  “I hope you like corned beef,” Jack said. He waved to the other man. “This is Dan Murray.”

  “The Bureau guy?” Robby asked as they shook hands.

  “Correct, Captain. I’m a deputy assistant director.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Well, I’m supposed to be in the Criminal Division, but ever since I got back I’ve been stuck supervising two major cases. You ought to be able to guess which ones they are.”

  “Oh.” Robby started working on his sandwich.

  “We need some help, Rob,” Jack said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like we need you to get us somewhere quietly.”

  “Where?”

  “Hurlburt Field. That’s part of—”

  “Eglin, I know. Hurlburt’s where the Special Operations Wing works out of; it’s right next to P-cola. Whole lot of people been borrowing Navy airplanes lately. The boss doesn’t like it.”

  “You can tell him about this,” Murray said. “Just so it doesn’t leave his office. We’re trying to clean something up.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t say, Rob,” Jack replied. “But part of it is what you brought to me. It’s a worse mess than you think. We have to move real fast, and nobody can know about it. We just need a discreet taxi service for the moment.”

  “I can do that, but I want to clear it with Admiral Painter.”

  “Then what?”

  “Meet me at Pax River at two o’clock, down the hill at Strike. Hell, I’ve wanted to do a little proficiency flying anyway.”

  “Might as well finish your lunch.”

  Jackson left them five minutes later. Ryan and Murray did the same, driving to the latter’s house. Here Jack made a phone call to his wife, telling her that he had to be out of town for a few days and not to worry. They drove away in Ryan’s car.

  Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center is located about an hour’s drive from Washington, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Formerly one of the nicer plantations of antebellum Maryland, it was now the Navy’s primary flight-test and evaluation center, fulfilling most of the functions of the better-known Edwards Air Force Base in California. It is the home of the Navy’s Test Pilot School, where Robby had been an instructor, and houses various test directorates, one of which, located a mile or two downhill from the main flight line, is called Strike. The Strike Directorate is concerned with fighter and attack planes, the sexy fast-movers. Murray’s FBI identification was sufficient to get them on base, and after checking in with the Strike security shack, they found a place to wait, listening to the bellow of afterburning jet engines. Robby’s Corvette arrived twenty minutes later. The new captain led them into the hangar.

  “You’re in luck,” he told them. “We’re taking a couple of Tomcats down to Pensacola. The Admiral called ahead, and they’re preflighting the birds already. I, uh—”

  Another officer came into the room. “Cap’n Jackson? I’m Joe Bramer,” the lieutenant said. “I hear we’re heading down south, sir.”

  “Correct, Mr. Bramer. These gents are going with us. Jack Murphy and Dan Tomlinson. They’re government employees who need some familiarization with Navy flight procedures. Think you can rustle up some poopy suits and hard hats?”

  “No problem, sir. Be back in a minute.”

  “You wanted covert. You got covert,” Jackson chuckled. He pulled his flight suit and helmet from a bag. “What gear you guys bringing along?”

  “Shaving kits,” Murray replied. “And one bag.”

  “We can handle that.”

  Fifteen minutes later, everyone climbed up ladders to board the aircraft. Jack got to fly with his friend. Five minutes after that, the Tomcats were taxiing to the end of the runway.

  “Go easy, Rob,” Ryan said as they awaited clearance for takeoff.

  “Like an airliner,” Jackson promised. It wasn’t quite that way. The fighters leapt off the ground and streaked to cruising altitude about twice as fast as a 727, but Jackson kept the ride smooth and level once he got there.

  “What gives, Jack?” he asked over the intercom.

  “Robby, I can’t—”

  “Did I ever tell you all the things I can make this baby do for me? Jack, my boy, I can make this baby sing. I can turn inside a virgin quail.”

  “Robby, what we’re trying to do is rescue some people who may be cut off. And if you tell that to anyone, even your Admiral, you might just screw things up for us. You ought to be able to figure it out from there.”

  “Okay. What about your car?”

  “Just leave it there.”

  “I’ll get somebody to put the right sticker on it.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You’re getting better about flying, Jack. You haven’t whimpered once.”

  “Yeah, well, I got one more flight today, and that one’s in a fucking helicopter. I haven’t ridden one of those since the day my back got broken on Crete.” It felt good to tell hi
m that. The real question, of course, was whether or not they’d get the chopper. But that was Murray’s job. Jack turned his head to look around and was stunned to see the other Tomcat only a few feet off their right wingtip. Murray waved at him. “Christ, Robby!”

  “Huh?”

  “The other plane!”

  “Hell, I told him to ease it off some, must be twenty feet away. We always fly in formation.”

  “Congratulations, you just got your whimper.”

  The flight lasted just over an hour. The Gulf of Mexico appeared first as a blue ribbon on the horizon, then grew into an oceanic mass of water as the two fighters headed down to land. Pensacola’s strips were visible to the east, then got lost in the haze. It struck Ryan as odd that he feared flying less when he rode in a military aircraft. You could see better, and somehow that made a difference. But the fighters even landed in formation, which seemed madly dangerous, though nothing happened. The wingman touched first, and then Robby’s a second or two later. Both Tomcats rolled out and turned at the end of the runway, stopping near a pair of automobiles. Some groundcrew men had ladders.

  “Good luck, Jack,” Robby said as the canopy came up.

  “Thanks for the ride, man.” Jack managed to detach himself from the airplane without help and climbed down. Murray was beside him a minute later. Both entered the waiting cars, and behind them the Tomcats taxied away to complete their flight to nearby Pensacola Naval Air Station.

  Murray had called ahead. The officer who met them was the intelligence chief for the 1st Special Operations Wing.

  “We need to see Colonel Johns,” Murray said after identifying himself. That was the only conversation needed for the moment. The car took them past the biggest helicopters Ryan had ever seen, then to a low block building with cheap windows. The wing intelligence officer took them in. He handled the introduction of the visitors, thinking erroneously that Ryan was also FBI, then left the three alone in the room.

  “What can I do for you?” PJ asked warily.

  “We want to talk about trips you made to Panama and Colombia,” Murray replied.