Executive orders - Tom Clancy [205]
It was easier now. Jean Baptiste had had a face and a voice and a life which had touched his own. He could not make that mistake again. She'd been an infidel, but a righteous one, and she was now with Allah, because Allah was truly merciful. He'd prayed for her soul, and surely Allah would hear his prayers. Few in America or elsewhere could possibly be as righteous as she had been, and he knew well that Americans hated his country and distrusted his religious faith. They might have names and faces, but he didn't see them here and he never would, and they were all ten thousand kilometers away, and it was easy to switch the television off.
Yes, Moudi agreed. Testing for it will be easy enough.
LOOK, GEORGE WINSTON was telling a knot of three new senators, if the federal government made cars, a Chevy pickup would cost eighty thousand dollars and have to stop every ten blocks to fill up the tank. You guys know business. So do I. We can do better.
It is really that bad? the (alphabetically) senior senator from Connecticut asked.
I can show you the comparative-productivity numbers. If Detroit ran this way, we'd all be driving Japanese cars, Winston replied, jabbing his finger into the man's chest, and reminding himself to get rid of his Mercedes 500SEL, or at least garage it for a while.
It's like having one cop car to cover East L.A., Tony Bretano was saying to five more, two of them from California. I don't have the forces I need to cover one MRC. That's major regional conflict, he explained to the new people and their spouses. And we're supposed to-on paper, I mean-we're supposed to be able to cover two of them at the same time, plus a peacekeeping mission somewhere else. Okay? Now, what I need at Defense is a chance to reconfigure our forces so that the shooters are the most important, and the rest of the outfit supports them, not the other way around. Accountants and lawyers are useful, but we have enough of them at Treasury and Justice. My side of the government, we're the cops, and I don't have enough cops on the street.
But how do we pay for that? Colorado the younger asked. The senior senator from the Rocky Mountain State had been at a fund-raiser in Golden that night.
The Pentagon isn't a jobs program. We have to remember that. Now, next week I'll have a full assessment of what we need, and then I'm going to come to the Hill, and together we'll figure how to make that happen at the least possible cost.
See, what did I tell you? Arnie van Damm said quietly, passing behind Ryan's back. Let them do it for you. You just stay pleasant.
What you said was right, Mr. President, the new senator from Ohio professed to believe, sipping a bourbon and water now that the cameras were off. You know, once in school, I did a little history paper on Cincinnatus, and
Well, all we have to do is remember to put the country first, Jack told him.
How do you manage to do your job and-I mean, the wife of the senior senator from Wisconsin explained, you still do your surgery?
And teaching, which is even more important, Cathy said with a nod, wishing she were upstairs and doing her patient notes. Well, there was the helicopter ride in tomorrow. I will never stop doing my work. I give blind people their sight back. Sometimes I take the bandages off myself, and the look on their faces is the best thing in the world. The best, she repeated.
Even better than me, honey? Jack asked, placing his arm around her shoulder. This might even be working, he thought. Charm them, Arnie and Callie had told him.
THE PROCESS HAD already started. The colonel assigned to guard the five mullahs had followed them into the mosque, where, moved by the moment, he'd worshiped with them. At the conclusion of the devotions, the senior of their number had spoken to him, quietly and politely, touching on a favored passage in the Holy Koran, so as to establish some common ground. It brought to the colonel a memory of his youth and his own father, a devout and honorable man.