Executive orders - Tom Clancy [186]
We could start-
No. The director shook his head. When her heart stops, we will drain all her blood. We will remove the liver, kidneys and spleen, and then our real work begins.
Someone should at least pray for her soul.
You will, Moudi. You are a fine doctor. You care even for an infidel. You may be proud of that. If it were possible to save her, you would have done so. I know that. You know that. She knows that.
What we are doing, to inflict this on-
On unbelievers, the director reminded him. On those who hate our country and our Faith, who spit upon the words of the Prophet. I will even agree that this is a woman of virtue. Allah will be merciful with her, I am sure. You did not choose her fate. Neither did I. He had to keep Moudi going. The younger man was a brilliant physician. If anything, too good. The director for his part thanked Allah that he'd spent the last decade in laboratories, else he might have succumbed to the same human weaknesses.
BADRAYN INSISTED. This time, three generals. Every seat full, and one of them with two small children strapped in together. They understood now. They had to. He'd explained it to them, pointing to the tower, whose controllers had watched every flight in and out, and who had to know what was going on by now, and arresting them would do little good, as their families would miss them, and if their families were picked up, the neighbors would know, wouldn't they?
Well, yes, they had agreed.
Just send a damned airliner next time, he wanted to tell Tehran, but no, someone would have objected, here or there, it didn't matter, because no matter what you said, no matter how sensible it was, somebody would object to it. Whether on the Iranian side or the Iraqi, that didn't matter, either. Either way it would get people killed. It certainly would. There was nothing for him to do but wait now, wait and worry. He could have had a few drinks, but he decided against it. He'd had alcohol more than once.
All those years in Lebanon. As Bahrain still was, Lebanon had been, and probably would be again, a place where the strict Islamic rules could be violated, and there he had indulged in Western vice along with everyone else. But not now. He might be close to death and, sinner or not, he was a Muslim, and he would face death in the proper way. And so he drank coffee for the most part, staring out the windows from his seat, next to the phone, telling himself that the caffeine was making his hands shake, and nothing else.
YOU'RE JACKSON? Tony Bretano asked. He'd spent the morning with the acting chiefs. Now it was time for the worker bees.
Yes, sir, J-3. I guess I'm your operations officer, Robby replied, taking his seat and not, for once, carrying a bundle of papers and scurrying around like the White Rabbit.
How bad is it?
Well, we're spread pretty thin. We still have two carrier battle-groups in the IO looking after India and Sri Lanka. We're flying a couple battalions of light infantry to the Marianas to reassert control there and supervise the withdrawal of Japanese personnel. That's mainly political, we don't expect any problems. Our forward-deployed air assets have been recalled to CONUS to refit. That aspect of operations against Japan went well.
You will want me to speed production of the F-22 and restart B-2 production, then? That's what the Air Force said.
We just proved that Stealth is one hell of a force-multiplier, Mr. Secretary, and that's a fact. We need all of those we can get.
I agree. What about the rest of the force structure? Bretano asked.
We're too damned thin for all the commitments we have. If we had to go to Kuwait again, for example, like we did in 1991, we can't do it. We literally do not have all that force to project anymore. You know what my job is, sir. I have to figure out how to do the things we have to do. Okay, operations against Japan took us as far as we could go, and-
Mickey Moore said a lot of nice things about the plan you put together and executed, the SecDef pointed out.
General