Executive orders - Tom Clancy [450]
Part of something else? Clark asked. Not a standalone. Something else, too.
Maybe, Mary Pat observed.
If it is, it's big, Chavez went on for them. Maybe that's why the Russians called in to us.
So big so big that even if we figure it out, it won't matter when we do.
That's pretty big, Mary Pat, Clark said quietly. What could it be ?
Something permanent, something we can't change after it's done, Domingo offered. His time at George Mason University hadn't been wasted.
Mrs. Foley wished her husband were in on this, but Ed was meeting with Murray right now.
SATURDAYS IN THE spring are often days of dull but hopeful routine, but in just over two hundred homes little was done. Gardens were not planted. Cars were not washed. Garage sales were not attended. Paint cans went unopened. That wasn't counting government employees or news personnel working the big story of the week. Mainly the people suffering from the flu were men. Thirty of them were in hotel rooms. Several even tried to work, attending their trade shows in the new cities. Wiping their faces, blowing their noses, and wishing the aspirin or Tylenol would kick in. Of the last group, most went back to the hotel rooms to relax-no sense in getting the customers sick, was there? In not a single case did anyone seek medical attention. There was the usual winter/spring flu bug circulating around, and everybody got it sooner or later. They weren't that sick, after all, were they?
NEWS COVERAGE OF the incident at Giant Steps was entirely predictable, starting with camera shots taken from about fifty yards away, and the same words repeated by all of the correspondents, followed by the same words delivered by experts in terrorism and/or other fields. One of the networks took the viewer all the way back to Abraham Lincoln for no other reason than that it was otherwise a very slow news day. All of the coverage pointed to the Middle East, though the investigating agencies had declined any comment at all on the event so far, except to cite an FBI agent's heroic interference and the spirited battle put up by the Secret Service bodyguards of little Katie Ryan. Words like heroic, dedicated, and determined were bandied about with great frequency, leading to the dramatic conclusion.
Something very simple had gone wrong, Badrayn was certain, though he wouldn't know for sure until his colleague got back to Tehran from London, via Brussels and Vienna, on several different sets of travel documents.
The President and his family are at the Presidential Retreat at Camp David, the reporter concluded, to recover from the shock of this dreadful event just north of peaceful Annapolis, Maryland. This is
Retreat? Daryaei asked.
It means many things in English, first among them is to run away, Badrayn answered, mainly because he was sure that's what his employer would like to hear.
If he thinks he can run away from me, he is mistaken, the cleric observed in dark amusement, the spirit of the moment getting the better of his discretion.
Badrayn didn't react to the revelation. It was easy at the instant of his realization, since he was looking at the TV and not at his host, but things then became more clear. There was not all that much risk at all, was there? Mahmoud Haji had a way to kill this man, perhaps whenever he wished to do so, and it was all being orchestrated. Could he really do it? But, of course, he already had.
IVIS MADE LIFE hard on the OpFor. Not all that hard! Colonel Hamm and the Blackhorse had won this one, but what only a year before would have been a wipeout of cosmic proportions-Fort Irwin was in California, and some linguistic peculiarities were inevitable-had been a narrow victory. War was about information. It was always the lesson of the National Training Center: Find the enemy. Don't let the enemy find you. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. The IVIS system, operated by halfway competent people, shot the information out to everyone so fast that the soldiers were leaning in the