they’ll know what they’re missing.” Clark chuckled. “One less thing for the cowboys to have to do. Probably not a fun job for a man to do that to somebody else.”
“Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth, and that’s fine with me, but it’s still nice to have cops around.”
“You hear me arguing with you? Rock your seat back and have a glass of wine and get some sleep, Domingo.”
And if some asshole tries to hijack this airplane, we’ll deal with him, Clark didn’t add.
One could always hope. One last jolt of action before going out to pasture.
7
S O WHAT’S COOKING?” Brian Caruso asked his cousin.
“Same stew, different day, I expect,” Jack Ryan Jr. replied.
“‘Stew’?” Dominic, the other Caruso, replied. “Don’t you mean shit?”
“Trying to be optimistic.”
All three armed with their first cups of coffee of the day, they walked down the corridor to Jack’s office. It was 8:10 a.m., about time for another day to start at The Campus.
“Any word on our friend the Emir?” Brian asked, taking a gulp of coffee.
“Nothing firsthand. He’s not stupid. He even has his e-mails relayed through a series of cutouts now, some of them through ISP accounts that open and close within hours, and even then the account financials turn out to be dead ends. The Pakistan badlands is the best current guess. Maybe next door. Maybe wherever he can buy a safe spot. Hell, at this point I’m tempted to look in our own broom closet.”
It was frustrating, Jack thought. His first adventure into field operations had been a slam dunk. Or beginner’s luck, maybe? Or fate. He’d gone to Rome as Brian and Dominic’s intel support, nothing more, and had by sheer chance spotted MoHa in the hotel. From there things had moved fast, too damned fast, and then it’d been him and MoHa in the bathroom . . .
He wouldn’t be as frightened the next time, Jack told himself with enormous—and false—confidence. He remembered the killing of MoHa as clearly as the first time he’d gotten laid. Most vivid of all was the look on the man’s face when the succinylcholine had taken hold. Jack might have felt regret for the killing except for the adrenaline rush of the moment, and for what Mohammed had been guilty of. He’d found no regret in his soul for that action. MoHa had been a murderer himself, someone who had taken it upon himself to deliver death to innocent civilians, and Jack hadn’t missed a wink of sleep over it.
It had helped that he’d been among family. He and Dominic and Brian shared a grandfather, Jack Muller, his mom’s father. Their fraternal grandfather, now eighty-three, was first-generation Italian, having emigrated from Italy to Seattle, where for the past sixty years he’d lived and worked at the family-owned and -run restaurant.
Grandpa Muller, former Army veteran and Merrill Lynch VP, had a strained relationship with Jack Ryan Sr., having decided that his son-in-law’s abandonment of Wall Street for government service was sheer idiocy—idiocy that had eventually led to his daughter and granddaughter, Little Sally, nearly losing their lives in a car crash. But for his son-in-law’s ill-advised return to the CIA, the incident would have never happened. Of course, no one except Grandpa Muller believed that, including Mom and Sally.
It also helped, Jack Junior had decided, that Brian and Dominic were relatively new to this as well. Not new to the danger—Brian a Marine and Dominic an FBI agent—but to the “Wilderness of Mirrors,” as James Jesus Angleton had called it. They’d adapted well and quickly, having taken out three URC soldiers in short order—four at the Charlottesville Mall shooting and three in Europe with the Magic Pen. Still, Hendley hadn’t hired them because they were good triggers. “Smart shooters” was the phrase Mike Brennan, his USSS principal, had often used, and it sure as hell fit his cousins.
“Gimme your best guess,” Brian said
“Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth, and that’s fine with me, but it’s still nice to have cops around.”
“You hear me arguing with you? Rock your seat back and have a glass of wine and get some sleep, Domingo.”
And if some asshole tries to hijack this airplane, we’ll deal with him, Clark didn’t add.
One could always hope. One last jolt of action before going out to pasture.
7
S O WHAT’S COOKING?” Brian Caruso asked his cousin.
“Same stew, different day, I expect,” Jack Ryan Jr. replied.
“‘Stew’?” Dominic, the other Caruso, replied. “Don’t you mean shit?”
“Trying to be optimistic.”
All three armed with their first cups of coffee of the day, they walked down the corridor to Jack’s office. It was 8:10 a.m., about time for another day to start at The Campus.
“Any word on our friend the Emir?” Brian asked, taking a gulp of coffee.
“Nothing firsthand. He’s not stupid. He even has his e-mails relayed through a series of cutouts now, some of them through ISP accounts that open and close within hours, and even then the account financials turn out to be dead ends. The Pakistan badlands is the best current guess. Maybe next door. Maybe wherever he can buy a safe spot. Hell, at this point I’m tempted to look in our own broom closet.”
It was frustrating, Jack thought. His first adventure into field operations had been a slam dunk. Or beginner’s luck, maybe? Or fate. He’d gone to Rome as Brian and Dominic’s intel support, nothing more, and had by sheer chance spotted MoHa in the hotel. From there things had moved fast, too damned fast, and then it’d been him and MoHa in the bathroom . . .
He wouldn’t be as frightened the next time, Jack told himself with enormous—and false—confidence. He remembered the killing of MoHa as clearly as the first time he’d gotten laid. Most vivid of all was the look on the man’s face when the succinylcholine had taken hold. Jack might have felt regret for the killing except for the adrenaline rush of the moment, and for what Mohammed had been guilty of. He’d found no regret in his soul for that action. MoHa had been a murderer himself, someone who had taken it upon himself to deliver death to innocent civilians, and Jack hadn’t missed a wink of sleep over it.
It had helped that he’d been among family. He and Dominic and Brian shared a grandfather, Jack Muller, his mom’s father. Their fraternal grandfather, now eighty-three, was first-generation Italian, having emigrated from Italy to Seattle, where for the past sixty years he’d lived and worked at the family-owned and -run restaurant.
Grandpa Muller, former Army veteran and Merrill Lynch VP, had a strained relationship with Jack Ryan Sr., having decided that his son-in-law’s abandonment of Wall Street for government service was sheer idiocy—idiocy that had eventually led to his daughter and granddaughter, Little Sally, nearly losing their lives in a car crash. But for his son-in-law’s ill-advised return to the CIA, the incident would have never happened. Of course, no one except Grandpa Muller believed that, including Mom and Sally.
It also helped, Jack Junior had decided, that Brian and Dominic were relatively new to this as well. Not new to the danger—Brian a Marine and Dominic an FBI agent—but to the “Wilderness of Mirrors,” as James Jesus Angleton had called it. They’d adapted well and quickly, having taken out three URC soldiers in short order—four at the Charlottesville Mall shooting and three in Europe with the Magic Pen. Still, Hendley hadn’t hired them because they were good triggers. “Smart shooters” was the phrase Mike Brennan, his USSS principal, had often used, and it sure as hell fit his cousins.
“Gimme your best guess,” Brian said
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