“Not much I can do about it, General, I’m not the President anymore.”
“Yes, sir, but I had to go to somebody. Ordinarily I report directly to the SecDef, but that’s a waste of time.”
“Have you spoken with President Kealty?”
“Waste of time, sir. He’s not very interested in talking to people in uniform.”
“And I am?”
“Yes, sir. You were always somebody we could talk to.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Sir, Sergeant Driscoll deserves a fair shake. We sent him into the mountains with a mission. The mission was not accomplished, but that wasn’t his fault. We’ve drilled a lot of dry holes there. This turned out to be just one more, but goddamn it, sir, if we send any more troops into those hills, and if we clobber this guy for doing his job, every hole we drill will be dry.”
“Okay, General, you’ve made your point. We have to support our people. Anything this guy should have done different?”
“No, sir. He’s a by-the-book soldier. Everything he did was consistent with his training and experience. The Ranger Regiment-well, they’re paid killers, maybe, but sometimes that’s a useful sort of thing to have in your bag. War is about killing. We don’t send messages. We don’t try to educate our enemies. Once we go into the field, our job is to kill them. Some people don’t like that, but that’s what we’re paid for.”
“Okay, I’ll look into this and maybe raise a little hell. What are the ground rules?”
“I brought a copy of Sergeant Driscoll’s report for you to read, along with the name of the Assistant AG who tried to ram it up my ass. Goddamn it, sir, this is a good soldier.”
“Fair enough, General. Anything else?”
“No, sir. Thanks for lunch.”
He’d had maybe one bite of his sandwich, Ryan saw. Diggs walked back out to the car.
30
THE FLIGHT was uneventful. The rollout ended, and they’d been on the aircraft for eight and a half hours when the transfer bus pulled up to the left-front door of the 777. Clark didn’t sit. He’d done enough of that to make his legs stiff. The same was true of his grandson, who looked excitedly out at his native land-he’d actually been born in the UK, but he already had a baseball and his first glove. He’d be playing T-ball in six months or so, and he’d be eating real hot dogs as an American boy was supposed to. On a roll, with mustard, and maybe some onions or relish.
“Glad to be home, baby?” Ding asked Patsy.
“I liked it over there, and I’ll miss my friends, but home is home.”
Despite urging to go on ahead from both Clark and Chavez, their wives had gotten off the plane at Heathrow, and no amount of argument had changed their minds. “We’re going home together,” Sandy had declared, firmly bringing the discussion to an end.
The Tripoli op had gone off without any significant hitches. Eight bad guys KIA with only minor injuries among the hostages. Within five minutes of Clark’s “go” to Masudi, local ambulances pulled up to the embassy to treat the hostages, most of whom were suffering from dehydration but little else. Minutes after that, the Swedish Säkerhetspolisen and Rikskriminalpolisen arrived and took charge of the embassy, and two hours after that, Rainbow was back aboard the same Piaggio P180 Avanti they’d flown in on, heading north for Taranto, then London.
The official debrief of the operation with Stanley, Weber, and the others would come later, probably via secure webcam once Clark and Chavez had settled back into life in the United States. Including them in the debrief was as much a courtesy as it was a necessity, and probably a little more of the former. He and Ding were officially separated from Rainbow, and Stanley had been right there in Tripoli, so aside from the “lessons learned” postmortem they did for each mission, Clark had little to offer the official report.
“How you feeling?” John Clark asked his wife now.
“I’ll sleep it off.” Westbound jet lag was always easier to deal with. The eastbound kind could be a killer. She stretched. Even first-class seats on British Airways had their limitations. Air travel, while convenient, is rarely good for you. “Got the passports and stuff?”
“Right here, babe,” Ding assured her, tapping his jacket pocket. J.C. must have been one of the youngest Americans ever to have a black diplomatic passport. But Ding also had his.45 Beretta automatic pistol, and the gold badge and ID card that said he was a deputy U.S. marshal, which was very useful indeed for an armed man in an international airport. He even still had his British carry permit-rare enough that the Queen practically had to sign it. The former allowed them to speed through customs and immigration.
After customs, they found in the public reception area a nondescript man holding a cardboard card with CLARK written on it, and the party of five moved to where he was.
“How was the flight?” The usual question.
“Fine.” The usual answer.
“I’m parked outside. Blue Plymouth Voyager with Virginia tags. You’ll be staying at the Key Bridge Marriott, two top-floor suites.” Which will have been fully swept, he didn’t have to add. The Marriott chain did a lot of government business, especially the one at the Key Bridge, overlooking Washington.
“And tomorrow?” John asked.
“You’re scheduled for eight-fifteen.”
“Who are we seeing?” Clark asked.
The man shrugged. “It’ll be on the seventh floor.”
Clark and Chavez traded an oh, shit look, but for all that it wasn’t surprising, and both were ready for a lengthy night’s sleep that would probably end about 0530 at the latest, but this time without the three-mile run and the daily dozen setting-up exercises.
“How was England?” The receptionist/driver asked on the way out.
“Civilized. Some of it was pretty exciting,” Chavez told him, but then realized that the official greeter was a junior field officer who hadn’t a clue what they’d been doing in Old Blighty. Probably just as well. He didn’t have the look of former military, though you couldn’t always tell.
“You catch any rugby while you were over there?” their escort asked.
“A little. You have to be nuts to play that without pads,” Clark offered. “But they are a little peculiar over there.”
“Maybe they’re just tougher than we are.”
The ride toward D.C. was uneventful, helped by the fact that they were just ahead of the evening rush hour and not going all the way into the city. The effects of jet lag struck even these experienced travelers, and by the time they got to the hotel, the presence of bellmen seemed a very good idea. Inside five minutes they were on the top floor in adjoining suites, and J.C. was already looking at the king-size bed he’d have to himself. Patsy gave the same sort of look to the bathtub-it was smaller than the monsters the Brits built, but there was room to sit down, and a limitless supply of hot water just on the other side of the tap. Ding picked a chair and got the remote, and settled in to get reacquainted with American television.
Next door, John Clark left the unpacking to Sandy and raided the minibar for a miniature of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7. The Brits didn’t understand bourbon or its Tennessee cousin, and the first stiff shot, even without ice, was a rare delight.
“What’s tomorrow?” Sandy asked.
“Have to have a meeting on the seventh floor.”
“Who with?”
“He didn’t say. Probably a deputy assistant director of operations. I haven’t kept track of the lineup at Langley. Whoever he is, he’ll tell me about the great retirement package they have set up for me. Sandy, I think it’s about time for me to hang it up.”
He couldn’t add that he’d never really considered the possibility of living this long. So his luck hadn’t quite run out? Remarkable. He’d have to buy himself a laptop and get serious about an autobiography. But for the moment: stand up, stretch, pick up his suit jacket and hang it in the closet before Sandy yelled at him for being a slob again. On the lapel was the sky-blue ribbon and five white stars that denoted the Medal of Honor. Jack Ryan had arranged that for him, after looking into his Navy service record and a lengthy document written by Vice Admiral Dutch Maxwell, God rest his soul. He’d been away when Maxwell had checked out at eighty-three-he’d been in Iran, of all places, trying to see if a network of agents had been completely rolled up by Iranian security. That process had begun, but John had managed to get five of them out of the country alive, via the UAE, along with their families. Sonny Maxwell was still flying, a senior captain for Delta, father of four. The medal was for getting Sonny out of North Vietnam. It now seemed like something that had happened during the last ice age. But he had this little ribbon to show for it, and that beat a kick in the balls. Somewhere packed away were the mess jacket and black shoes of a chief bosun’s mate, along with the gold Budweiser badge of a Navy SEAL. In most Navy NCO clubs he wouldn’t have been allowed to buy his own beers, but Jesus, today the chiefs looked so damned young. Once they’d seemed like Noah himself.