Executive orders - Tom Clancy [560]
The current air cover for Operation CUSTER in this sector was a flight of four American F-16s, orbiting within twenty miles of the border.
Kingston Lead, this is Sky-Eye Six, over.
Sky, Lead.
We have four bandits, zero-three-five your position, angels ten and climbing, course two-niner-zero. The four American fighters moved west to interpose themselves between the UIR fighters and the inbound airliners.
Aboard the AWACS, a Saudi officer listened in to the radio chatter between the ground RADAR station controlling the flight of four and the fighters. The UIR fighters, now identified as French-made F-1s, continued to close the border, then turn ten miles short of it, finally tracing only one mile inside. The F-16s did much the same, and the pilots saw each other, and examined one another's aircraft from four thousand yards apart, through the protective visors of their helmets. The air-to-air missiles were clearly visible under the wings of all the aircraft.
Y'all want to come over and say hello? the USAF major leading the F-16s said over guard. There was no response. The next installment of Operation CUSTER proceeded unhindered to Dhahran.
O'DAY WAS IN early. His sitter, with no classes to worry about, rather enjoyed the thought of all the money that would come in from this, and the most important bit of news for everyone was that not a single case of the new illness had happened within ten miles of his home. Despite the inconvenience, he had slept at home every night-even though on one occasion that had been a mere four hours. He couldn't be a daddy if he didn't kiss his little girl at least once a day, even in her sleep. At least the ride into work was easy. He'd gotten a Bureau car. It was faster than his pickup, complete with a flashing light that allowed him to zip through all the checkpoints on the way.
On his desk were the case summaries from the background checks of all the Secret Service personnel. The work in nearly every case had been stultifyingly duplicative. Full background checks had been done on every USSS employee, or else they could not have held the security clearances that were an automatic part of their jobs. Birth certificates, high-school photos, and everything else matched up perfectly. But ten files showed loose ends, and all of those would be run down later in the day. O'Day went over all of them. He kept coming back to one.
Raman was of Iranian birth. But America was a nation of immigrants. The FBI had originally been constructed of Irish-Americans, preferably those educated at Jesuit institutions-Boston College and Holy Cross were the favorites, according to the legend-because J. Edgar Hoover was supposed to have believed that no Irish-American with a Jesuit education could conceivably betray his country. Doubtless, there had been some words about that at the time, and even today, anti-Catholicism was the last of the respectable prejudices. But it was well-known that immigrants so often made the most loyal of citizens, some ferociously so. The military and other security agencies often profited from that. Well, Pat thought, it was easily settled. Just check out the rug thing and let it be. He wondered who Mr. Sloan was. A guy who wanted a rug, probably.
THERE WAS A quiet to the streets of Tehran. Clark didn't remember them that way from 1979-80. His more recent trip had been different, more like the rest of the region, bustling but not dangerous. Being journalists, they acted like journalists. Clark reentered market areas, talking politely to people about business conditions, the availability of food, what they thought of the unification with Iraq, what their hopes for the future were, and what he got was pure vanilla. Platitudes. The political comments were especially bland,