Executive orders - Tom Clancy [425]
It has to be serious, O'Day thought.
Case of Samuel Adams? Russell suggested.
An honorable bet, sir, the inspector agreed.
How about at Beltsville? That was the site of the Secret Service Academy. The outside range. Indoors is always too artificial.
Standard combat match?
I haven't shot bull's-eye in years. I don't ever expect one of my principals to be attacked by a black dot.
Tomorrow? It seemed a good Saturday diversion.
That's probably a little quick. I can check. I'll know this afternoon.
Don, you have a deal. And may the best man win. They shook hands.
The best man will, Pat. He always does. Both men knew who it would be, though one of them would have to be wrong. Both also knew that the other would be a good guy to have at your back, and that the beer would taste pretty good either way when the issue was decided.
THE WEAPONS WEREN'T fully automatic. A good machinist could have changed that, but the sleeper agent wasn't one of those. Movie Star and his people didn't mind all that much. They were trained marksmen and knew that full-auto was only good for three rounds unless you had the arms of a gorilla-after that, the gun jumped up and you were just drilling holes in the sky instead of the target, who just might fire back at you. There was neither time nor space for another round of shooting, but they were familiar with the weapon type, the Chinese knock-off of the Soviet AK-47, itself a development of a German weapon from the 1940s. It fired a short-case 7.62mm cartridge. The magazines held thirty rounds each. The team members used duct tape to double them up, inserting and ejecting the magazines to be sure that everything fit properly. With that task completed, they resumed their examination of the objective. Each of them knew his place and his task. Each also knew the dangers involved, but they didn't dwell on that. Nor, Movie Star saw, did they dwell on the nature of the mission. They were so dehumanized by their years of activity within the terrorist community that, though this was the first real mission, for most of them, all they really thought about was proving themselves. How they did it, exactly, was less important.
THEY'RE GOING TO bring up a lot of things, Adler said.
Think so? Jack asked.
You bet. Most-favored nation, copyright disputes, you name it, it'll all come up.
The President grimaced. It seemed obscene to place the copyright protection for Barbara Streisand CDs alongside the deliberate killing of so many people, but-
Yeah, Jack. They just don't think about stuff the same way we do.
Reading my mind?
I'm a diplomat, remember? You think I just listen to what people say out loud? Hell, we'd never get any negotiations done that way. It's like playing a long low-stakes card game, boring and tense all at the same time.
I've been thinking about the lives lost
I have, too, SecState replied with a nod. You can't dwell on it-it's a sign of weakness in their context-but I won't forget it, either. That got a rise out of his Commander-in-Chief.
Why is it, Scott, that we always have to respect their cultural context? Why is it that they never seem to respect ours? POTUS wanted to know.
It's always been that way at State.
That doesn't answer the question, Jack pointed out.
If we lean too hard on that, Mr. President, it's like being a hostage. Then the other side always knows that they can hang a couple of lives over us and use it to pressure us. It gives them an advantage.
Only if we allow it. The Chinese need us as much as we need them-more, with the trade surplus. Taking lives is playing rough. We can play rough, too. I've always wondered why we don't.
SecState adjusted his glasses. Sir, I do not disagree with that, but it has to be thought through very carefully, and we do not have the time to do that now. You're talking a doctrinal change in American policy. You don't shoot from the hip on something that big.
When you get back, let's get together over a weekend with a few others and see if there are any options. I don't like what we've been doing on this issue in a