Games of State - Tom Clancy [124]
Snapping her head the way she did in the hotel lobby, she walked toward Hausen. The long, blond hair swept to the side, as if it were brushing away doubt and anger.
Hausen thanked her, thanked them all, as the five of them entered the elevator for the quick ride to the lobby.
Hood stood beside Nancy. He wanted to thank her, but just saying it didn't seem to be enough. Without looking at her, he squeezed her hand and quickly released it. From the corner of his eye he saw Nancy blink several times, the only break in her otherwise stoic expression.
He couldn't remember when he felt both this close and this far from a person. It was frustrating being unable to move in one direction or the other, and he could only imagine how much worse it felt for Nancy.
And then she let him know by reaching over and squeezing his hand and not releasing it as tears crept from her eyes. The ping of the elevator as they reached the lobby broke their touch but not the spell as she released him and they walked, eyes ahead, toward the waiting car.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Thursday, 1:40 P.M.,
Washington, D.C.
When he was a kid growing up in Houston, Darrell McCaskey carved his own Smith & Wesson automatic made out of balsa wood and kept it tucked in his belt at all times, the way he'd read the real FBI agents did. He screwed an eye-hook to the front of the weapon and attached a rubber band to the "gun sight." When the rubber band was hooked to the hammer and released, he could fire small cardboard squares like bullets. McCaskey kept the squares in his shirt pocket where they were accessible and safe.
Darrell wore the gun starting in sixth grade. He kept it hidden under his button-down shirt. It gave him a John Wayne-rigid walk that the other kids teased him about, but Darrell didn't care. They didn't understand that keeping the law was everyone's responsibility as well as a full-time job. And he was a short kid. With hippies and yippies popping up and demonstrations and sit-ins happening everywhere, he felt better with a beltful of protection.
McCaskey shot the first teacher who tried to take the gun from him. After writing an essay in which he carefully researched the Constitution and the right to bear arms, he was permitted to keep the weapon. Provided he didn't use it other than for self-defense against radicals.
As a rookie FBI agent, McCaskey loved stakeouts and investigations. He loved it even more when he was an Assistant Special Agent in Charge and had more autonomy. When he became a Special Agent in Charge and then a Supervisory Special Agent, he was frustrated because there were fewer opportunities to spend time in the street.
When McCaskey was offered the position of Unit Chief in Dallas, he took the promotion largely because of his wife and three kids. The pay was better and the job was safer and his family got to see him more. But as he sat behind a desk coordinating the actions of others, he realized just how much he missed stakeouts and investigations. Within two years, joint activity with Mexican authorities gave him the idea to form official alliances with foreign police forces. The FBI Director approved his plan to draft and spearhead FIAT-- the Federal International Alliance Treaty. Quickly approved by Congress and eleven foreign governments, FIAT enabled McCaskey to work on cases in Mexico City, London, Tel Aviv, and other world capitals. He moved his family to Washington, quickly rose to Deputy Assistant Director, and was the only man Paul Hood asked to become Op-Center's interagency liaison. McCaskey had been promised and given relative autonomy, and got to work closely with the CIA, the Secret Service, his old friends at the FBI, and more foreign intelligence and police groups than before.
But he was still deskbound. And thanks to fiber optics and computers, he didn't leave his office the way he did when he was revving up FIAT.