Read Online Support and Defend by Tom Clancy, Mark Greaney - Free Book Online Page A

herself. Dom had seen a lot of action in his years with The Campus, but he thought it was possible, even likely, that the attractive “flight attendant” had seen much more.
    Dom asked, “You still think about it? The war?”
    He was almost certain he would get some sort of professional nonresponse, but instead she stopped cleaning his wound for a moment. The cotton swab remained motionless, just barely brushing the damaged flesh on his chest.
    She looked him in the eyes. “Only every day.”
    Her eyes flicked away from his quickly, he could see her admonishing herself for her breach of professional distance, and she continued cleaning the abrasions without speaking.
    He winced with pain from time to time, but mostly he sat there quietly.
    When she finished the examination and the recleaning and rebandaging of his wounds, she left for a moment and returned with some painkillers and a bottle of water.
    “No, thanks,” Dom said.
    “Are you hurting?”
    “Headaches. Not bad.”
    She held out the pills again, and Dom shook his head. “I need to think. Can’t think on those.”
    “How ’bout I make you that drink?”
    He cracked his first smile in twenty-four hours, though it wasn’t much. “If you insist.”
    T EN MINUTES LATER A DARA moved up the darkened cabin and stood over Dominic, who now reclined on one of the leather captain’s chairs in the rear of the cabin. She used the light from a satellite phone to illuminate his face, expecting to find him already sound asleep. Instead, his dark eyes were wide open and full of intensity, and they looked up at her.
    She held the phone out. “It’s Mr. Hendley.”
    Dom took the phone and checked the time on a clock by the chair. “Hey, Gerry.”
    Gerry Hendley, director of both Hendley Associates, the financial management firm that served as the white side front for The Campus, and The Campus itself, was a former South Carolina senator with a deep southern drawl. “How you holding up, Dominic?”
    “I’m sure Ms. Sherman gave you the complete rundown of my injuries.”
    “She did. I’m asking you .”
    “I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus, but I’ll be fine.” He paused. “You have any intel on what went down?”
    “Figured that was all you’d care about, so I’ve been digging. ’Fraid I don’t have too much just yet. I talked to some friends at Langley. We know at least some of the terrorists were members of the Al-Qassam Brigades. They set sail from Yemen five days ago and hijacked an Indian cargo ship to move unmolested through Indian waters.”
    Dom leaned his head back on the leather couch and closed his eyes. “Al-Qassam? Fucking Hamas.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Do we know why they targeted Yacoby?”
    Gerry said, “No, but I’m reaching out to my sources here in the U.S. and abroad to get an answer. All I know at this point is that Yacoby had served until fairly recently as a commander in Shayetet Thirteen.”
    “An Israeli naval commando? That explains a lot of the training he was putting me through.” He had a thought. “Al Qassam is Hamas’s army. They are more or less conventional forces. When did they start using suicide vests?”
    “Never. Due to the fact their op began in Yemen, we’re entertaining the possibility the guys with the vests were AlQaeda.”
    “Yacoby was one man, living abroad with his family, basically a soft target. Why would Al-Qassam use suicide bombers along with their gunmen?”
    “There is a lot of speculation about that. One theory, and it does make some sense to me, is that the plan was to assassinate Yacoby and then go take hostages at the synagogue or some other place where the Jewish people in the community congregated. The AQ in the vests would martyr themselves, take as many Jews as they could, and the Palestinians would escape.”
    Dom nodded. “And this would mask an assassination.”
    “Exactly. They could make it look like Arik and his family got caught up in a jihadist attack on Jewry