Executive orders - Tom Clancy [315]
Your daughter will recover fully, he told the parents, confirming their hopes and crushing their fears with five quiet words and a warm smile.
The mother gasped as though punched, her mouth open, tears exploding from her eyes as she covered her face with her hands. The father took the news in what he deemed a more manly way, his face impassive-but not his eyes, which relaxed and looked up to the ceiling in relief. Then he seized the doctor's hand, and his dark eyes came back down to bore in on MacGregor's.
I will not forget, the general told him.
Then it was time to see Saleh, something he'd consciously delayed. MacGregor left the room and walked down the corridor. Outside he changed into a different set of clothing. Inside he saw a defeat. The man was under restraints. The disease had entered his brain. Dementia was yet another symptom of Ebola, and a merciful one. Saleh's eyes were vacant and stared at the water marks on the ceiling. The nurse in attendance handed him the chart, the news on which was uniformly bad. MacGregor scanned it, grimaced, and wrote an order to increase the morphine drip. Supportive care in this case hadn't mattered a damn. One victory, one loss, and if he'd had the choice of which to save and which to lose, this was how he'd have written the story, for Saleh was grown and had had a life of sorts. That life had but five days to run, and MacGregor could do nothing now to save it, only a few things to make its final passage less gruesome for the patient-and the staff. After five minutes he left the room, stripped off his protective garb, and walked to his office, his face locked in a frown of thought.
Where had it come from? Why would one survive and one die? What didn't he know that he needed to know? The physician poured himself a cup of tea and tried to think past the victory and the defeat in order to find the information that had decided both issues. Same disease, same time. Two very different outcomes. Why?
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33 - RERUNS
I CAN'T GIVE THIS TO YOU, and I can't let you copy any of it, but I can let you look at it. He handed the photo over. He had light cotton gloves on, and he'd already given a pair to Donner. Fingerprints, he explained quietly.
Is this what I think it is? It was a black-and-white photograph, eight-by-ten glossy, but there was no classification stamp on it, at least not on the front. Donner didn't turn it over.
You really don't want to know, do you? It was a question and a warning.
I guess not. Donner nodded, getting the message. He didn't know how the Espionage Act-18 U.S.C. §793E-interacted with his First Amendment rights, but if he didn't know that the photo was classified, then he didn't have to find out.
That's a Soviet nuclear missile submarine, and that's Jack Ryan on the gangway. You'll notice he's wearing a Navy uniform. This was a CIA operation, run in cooperation with the Navy, and that's what we got out of it. The man handed over a magnifying glass to make sure that the identifications were positive. We conned the Soviets into thinking she'd exploded and sunk about halfway between Florida and Bermuda. They probably still think that.
Where is it now? Donner asked.
They sank her a year later, off Puerto Rico, the CIA official explained.
Why there?
Deepest Atlantic water close to American territory, about five miles down, so nobody will ever find her, and nobody can even look without us knowing.
This was back-I remember! Donner said. The Russians had a big exercise going and we raised hell about it, and they actually lost a submarine, didn't-
Two. Another photo came out of