Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [243]
"What gives, Rob?" the carrier's operations officer asked.
"Admiral Painter is flying out to the PG School. He wants me to meet him there instead of flying back to D.C. I s'pose he wants an early reading on how my wonderful new tactics worked out," Jackson replied.
"Don't sweat it. They ain't going to take the shoulder boards back."
"I didn't think this all the way through," Robby replied, gesturing at the screen.
"Nobody ever does."
Ranger cleared the bad weather an hour later. The first plane off was the COD, which headed off to Panama to drop off mail and pick up various things. It returned in four hours. The "tech-rep" was waiting for it, already propped by an innocuous signal over a clear channel. When he'd finished reading the message, he called Commander Jensen's stateroom.
Copies of the photo were being taken to The Hideaway, but the closest witness was in Alexandria, and he took it there himself.
Murray knew better than to ask where the photo had come from. That is, he knew that it came from CIA, and that it was some sort of surveillance photo, but the circumstances that surrounded it were things he didn't need to know - or so he would have been told had he asked, which he hadn't. It was just as well, since he might not have accepted the "need-to-know" explanation in this case.
Moira was improving. The restraints were off, but she was still being treated for some side effects of the sleeping pills she'd taken. Something to do with her liver function, he'd heard, but she was responding well to treatment. He found her sitting up, the motorized bed elevated at the command of a button. Visiting hours were over - her kids had been in tonight, and that, Murray figured, was the best treatment she could possibly get. The official story was an accidental OD. The hospital knew different, and that had leaked, but the Bureau took the public position that it had been an accident since she hadn't quite taken a lethal dose of the drug. The Bureau's own psychiatrist saw her twice a day, and his report was optimistic. The suicide attempt, while real, had been based on impulse, not prolonged contemplation. With care and counseling, she'd come around and would probably fully recover. The psychiatrist also thought that what Murray was about to do would help.
"You look a hell of a lot better," he told her. "How are the kids?"
"I'll never do this to them again," Moira Wolfe replied. "What a stupid, selfish thing to do."
"I keep telling you, you got hit by the truck." Murray took the chair by her bedside and opened the manila envelope he'd carried in. "Is this the truck?"
She took the photo from his hand and stared at it for a moment. It wasn't a very good photograph. Taken at a distance of over two miles, even with the high-power lens and computer enhancement of the image, it didn't show anything approaching the detail of an amateur photographer's action shot of his child. But there is more to a picture than the expression on a person's face. The shape of the head, the style of the hair, the posture, the way he held his hands, the tilt of the head…
"It's him," she said. "That's Juan Díaz. Where did you get it?"
"It came from another government agency," Murray replied, his choice of words telling her nothing - the exact nothing that meant CIA. "They had a discreet surveillance of some place or other - I don't know where - and got this. They thought it might be our boy. For your information, this is the first confirmed shot we have of Colonel Félix Cortez, late of the DGI. At least now we know what the bastard looks like."
"Get him," Moira said.
"Oh, we'll get him," Murray promised her.
"I know what I'll have to do - testify and all that. I know what the lawyers will do to me. I can handle it. I can, Mr. Murray."
She isn't kidding, Dan realized. It wasn't the first time that revenge had been part of saving a life, and Murray was glad to see it. It was one more purpose, one more thing Moira had to live