Grant Blackwood, Tom Clancy (Series Creator)
Duty and Honor
1
Jack Ryan, Jr., would later wonder what exactly had saved his life that night. One thing was certain: It hadn’t been skill. Maybe the heft of the bok choy had bought him a split second, maybe the mud, but not skill. Dumb luck. Survival instinct.
The Supermercado was neither in his neighborhood nor near his frequent errand stops, but it did have the best selection of fruits and vegetables in Alexandria — so Ding Chavez had told him eight months ago, yet it had been only recently, since his forced leave of absence from The Campus, that he’d become a believer. Being unemployed had given him a lot to think about and plenty of time to broaden his horizons. The one frontier he’d so far refused to explore despite his sister Sally’s exhortations was binge-watching Girls on HBO. That was his Rubicon. No crossing the river for the Roman legions, no chick TV for Jack Ryan. Soon, though, he’d have to make a decision about his loose-ends lifestyle. Another couple weeks and his probation would be over. Gerry Hendley would want an answer: Was he coming back to The Campus, or were they parting company permanently?
And do what? Jack thought.
He’d spent most of his adult life working at The Campus, aka Hendley Associates, first as an analyst and then as an operations officer — a field spook. The off-the-books counterterror organization had been created by his father, President Jack Ryan, and had since its inception been overseen by former senator Gerry Hendley. So far they’d had a lot of success going after some of the world’s “big bads” while still managing to make a decent profit not just for their clients, all of whom knew Hendley only as a financial arbitrage company, but also for The Campus’s covert operational budget.
“Seventeen fifty,” the cashier told him.
Jack handed her a twenty, took his change, then collected his brown-paper sack from the glum teenage bagger and headed for the door. It was just past eight p.m. and the store was almost deserted. Through the broad front windows he could see rain glittering in the glow of the parking lot’s sodium-vapor lights. Accompanied by a cold front, rain had been falling in Alexandria for three straight days. Creeks were swollen and the DIY stores nearest the Potomac were seeing a jump in sandbag sales. Perfect weather for homemade slow-cooker chili. He’d just put in a solid eight miles on his gym’s indoor track, followed by a twenty-minute circuit of push-ups, pull-ups, and planks, and he hoped to turn his bag full of ground beef, beans, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and bok choy — his mom’s most recent superfood recommendation — into a reward for all his sweat. The chili wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow; tonight, Chinese-takeout leftovers.
The automatic door slid open and Jack used his free hand to pull his sweatshirt’s hood over his head. It was a short walk to his car — a black Chrysler 300 and the first sedan he’d owned in a long time — and then a fifteen-minute drive back to his condo at the Oronoco. The parking lot’s surface was new and its fresh coat of asphalt shimmered black under the slick of rain. Moving at a half-jog, feeling the chilled rain running down his chin and into his shirt, Jack covered the thirty yards to his car, which he’d parked trunk-first against the guardrail. Old habits, he thought. Be ready to leave quickly; know your closest exits and highways. Months of “civilian” life and still a lot of the fieldcraft rules John Clark and the rest had taught him hadn’t faded. Did this tell Jack something? Was this just a shadow of a habit, or inclination?
As he neared his car, he saw a sheet of white paper stuck under his windshield wiper. A flyer — food drive, garage sale, voting reminder… Whatever it was, Jack wasn’t in the mood. He leaned sideways and reached for the flyer. Sodden, it tore free in a clump, leaving a narrow strip trapped beneath the wiper blade.
“Shit,” Jack muttered.
From behind, a voice: “Hey, man, give it up!”
Even before he turned, the tone of the man’s voice combined with the time of night and location had touched off Jack’s warning bells. The Supermercado wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, with its fair share of crack-driven homelessness and petty crime.
Jack turned on his heel while taking two steps backward, hoping to buy time and room to maneuver. The man was tall, nearly six and a half feet, and gangly, his head covered in a dark hood, and he came from Jack’s left at a fast walking pace.
Overhead, lightning flashed, casting the man’s face in stark shadow.
Break his pattern, Jack thought. Having targeted his prey and committed himself to the attack, the man — a crackhead or tweaker, Jack guessed — was laser-focused, confident this roll would go like all the others. Jack needed to change that.
He took a step toward the man and pointed. “Fuck off! Go away!”
Junkie muggers rarely saw this kind of victim aggression. Wolves prefer weak sheep.
But Jack’s belligerence had no effect. The man’s pace and his locked-on gaze at Jack didn’t waver. His right hand, hanging beside his thigh, rose up to his waist, palm away from Jack. He’s got a knife. If his attacker was carrying a gun he would have already brandished it. With a gun you could put the fear of God in someone at a distance; with a knife you needed to get close enough to put the blade against your victim’s face or neck. And the palm-away knife grip told Jack something else: The man wasn’t interested in scaring him into submission. It was easier to strip valuables from a dead body.
Jack’s heart was pounding now, his breathing going shallow. He swept his right hand to his hip, lifted the hem of his sweatshirt with his thumb, his palm touching… nothing. Goddamn it. He wasn’t armed; he had a CCW permit but had stopped carrying his Glock the day he left The Campus. Keys. His car keys were in his pocket, not where they should have been — in his hand, as a backup weapon. Lazy, Jack.
His attacker hadn’t missed seeing Jack’s flash of hesitation. He sprinted forward, right hand sweeping up and out in preparation for a cross-hand neck slash. As though passing a basketball, Jack heaved his grocery bag at the man. It bounced off his chest, the contents scattering across the wet asphalt. This broke both his pattern and his stride, but for only a moment, and did not leave enough time to create an opening for Jack’s own attack. Retreat, then. Live to fight another day. There was no point getting in a knife fight if he had a choice.
He turned, sprinted for the guardrail, vaulted it, and landed in mush. Below him, a slope with patchy grass and cedar ground cover met a line of concrete Jersey barrier along the highway.
Behind him, Jack vaguely registered the man’s footsteps picking up speed on the pavement. He started shuffle-sliding down the embankment, using the scrub brush for footholds.
His attacker was fast. A hand clutched Jack’s hood and wrenched his head backward, exposing his throat. Jack didn’t fight it, but rather spun hard to his right, into the man and toward what he guessed would be the descending knife blade. And it was there, arcing toward his face. Jack lifted his left arm and drove his forearm down, diverting the blade and trapping the man’s arm in his own armpit.
With his right hand Jack reached up, fingers clawing at the man’s eyes and pushing his head sideways. Together they fell back, Jack on top. They began sliding down, churning up mud and grinding over cedar stumps as they went.
The man was flailing, but with purpose, Jack realized. Trying to free his knife arm from Jack’s armpit, the man reached across with his left hand, grabbed Jack’s chin, and wrenched his head sideways. Pain flashed in Jack’s neck. One of the man’s fingers slipped into his mouth, and Jack bit down hard, heard a muffled crunch. The man screamed.