Executive orders - Tom Clancy [531]
And this is the jet.
Correct, Mr. President. This is the jet. Except for one thing. This jet supposedly crashed into the sea after taking off after a refueling stop in Libya. We have a ton of paperwork about that. Except for one thing. He tapped the poster again. That photo was taken by Domingo Chavez-
You know him, Mary Pat put in.
Go on. When did Ding shoot the frame?
Clark and Chavez accompanied Secretary Adler to Tehran, just last week.
The aircraft was reported lost some time before that. It was even tracked by one of our destroyers when it squawked emergency. No trace was ever found, however, Murray went on. Ed?
When Iraq came apart, Iran allowed the senior military leadership to skip. They all had golden parachutes. Our friend Daryaei let them jump out of the airplane. He even provided transport, all right? This started the day after the jet disappeared, Foley told them. They were flown to Khartoum, in the Sudan. Our station chief there is Frank Clayton, and he drove to the airport and shot these pictures to confirm our intelligence information. The DCI slid them across.
Looks like the same airplane, but what if somebody just played with the numbers-letters, whatever? Ryan asked.
Next indicator, Murray said. There were two Ebola cases in Khartoum.
Clark and Chavez talked to the attending physician a few hours ago, Mary Pat added.
Both the patients flew on this airplane. We have photos of them getting off. So, the FBI Director said, now, we have an airplane with a sick person aboard. The airplane disappears-but it turns up less than twenty-four hours later somewhere else, and two of the passengers come down with the same illness that the nun had. The passengers came from Iraq, via Iran, to the Sudan.
Who owns the airplane? Arnie asked.
It's a corporation. We should have further details in a few hours from the Swiss. But the flight crew is Iranian. We have info on them because they learned how to fly over here, Murray explained. And, finally, we have our friend Daryaei here on the same airplane. Looks like it's been taken out of international service. Maybe Daryaei is using it to hop around his new country now. So, Mr. President, we have the disease, the airplane, and the owner, all tied up. Tomorrow we'll work with Gulfstream to see if the aircraft has any unique characteristics that we can identify in addition to the registration code. We'll have the Swiss pull info on the ownership and the flight logs for the rest of their fleet.
We now know who did this, sir, Murray concluded. This chain of evidence is hard to beat.
There are more details to flesh out, Mary Pat said. Background on this Dr. Moudi. Tracking down some monkey shipments-they use monkeys to study the disease. How they staged the faked airplane crash-you believe it? The bastards even made an insurance claim.
We're going to suspend this meeting for a moment. Andrea?
Yes, Mr. President.
Get Secretary Bretano and Admiral Jackson in here.
Yes, sir. She left the room.
Ed Foley waited for the door to close behind her. Uh, Mr. President?
Yeah, Ed?
There is one other thing. I haven't even told Dan this yet. We now know that the UIR-really, our friend Mahmoud Haji Daryaei-is behind this. Chavez brought something up before we sent him and John off. The other side could well expect us to trace this back to them. Operational security for something like this is almost impossible to achieve.
So?
So, two things, Jack. First, whatever they're planning,