Executive orders - Tom Clancy [572]
The decoy group he ordered south. Their job was done for now. With the sun up, there would be no disguising what COMEDY was and where they were going, he thought.
HOW SURE OF this are you? POTUS asked. Christ, I've been alone with the guy a hundred times!
We know, Price assured him. We know. Sir, it's hard to believe. I've known Jeff on and off-
He's the basketball guy. He told me who was going to win the NCAA finals. He was right. His point spread was right on.
Yes, sir. Andrea had to agree with that, too. Unfortunately, these items are a little hard to explain.
Are you going to arrest him?
We can't. Murray took that one. It's one of those situations where you know, or think you know, but can't prove anything. Pat here had an idea, though.
Then let's hear it, Ryan ordered. His headache was back. No, that wasn't right. The intervening, brief period without a headache had ended. Bad enough that he'd been told of the vague possibility that the Secret Service was compromised, but now they thought they had proof-no, worse, he corrected himself, not good enough for proof, just more fucking suspicion!-that one of the people trusted to be around him and his family was a potential assassin. Would this never end? But he listened anyway.
Actually, it's pretty simple, O'Day concluded.
No! Price said immediately. What if-
We can control that. There won't be any real danger, the inspector assured everyone.
Hold it, SWORDSMAN said. You say you can smoke the guy out?
Yes, sir.
And I actually get to do something instead of just sitting here like a goddamned king?
Yes, sir, Pat repeated.
Where do I sign up? Ryan asked rhetorically. Let's do it.
Mr. President-
Andrea, you'll be here, right?
Well, yes, but-
Then it's approved, POTUS told her. He doesn't get near my family. I mean that. If he even looks at the elevator, you take him down yourself, Andrea, got that?
I understand, Mr. President. West Wing only.
With that, they walked downstairs to the Situation Room, where Arnie and the rest of the national-security team were watching a map display on a large-screen TV.
OKAY, LET'S LIGHT up the sky, Kemper told the CIC crew. On command, Anzio and the other four Aegis ships flipped their SPY RADARs from standby to full radiated power. There was no percentage in hiding anymore. They were right under a commercial air route designated W-15, and any airline pilot could look down and see the small box of ships. When one did, he'd probably talk about it. The element of surprise had its practical limits.
In a second, the three big screens showed numerous air tracks. This had to be the busiest hunk of airspace outside O'Hare, Kemper thought. The IFF scan showed a flight of four F-16 fighters deployed northwest of his formation. There were six airliners aloft, and the day had scarcely started. Missile specialists ran practice tracks just to exercise the computers, but really the Aegis system was designed to be one of those supposedly all-powerful things that could sit still one second and raise hell the next. They'd come to the right place to do that.
THE FIRST IRANIAN fighters to head into the sky that day were two aged F-14 Tomcats from Shiraz. The Shah had purchased about eighty of the fighters from Grumman in the 1970s. Ten could still fly, with parts cannibalized from all the others or procured on the world's lively black market in combat-aircraft components. These flew southeast, overland to Bandar Abbas, then they increased speed and darted south to Abu Musa, passing just north of it, with the pilots driving and the backseaters scanning the surface with binoculars. The sun was plainly visible at twenty thousand feet, but on the surface there was still the semidarkness of nautical twilight.
One doesn't see ships from aloft, a fact often lost on both sailors and airmen. In most cases, ships are too small, and the surface of the sea too vast. What one sees, whether from a satellite photo or the unaided human eye, is the wake, a disturbance in the water