Patriot games - Tom Clancy [218]
"Mmmmm."
"I thought so."
"Uh-oh. He's awake again."
Jack felt him almost as soon as his wife. He-she, it-was rotating. Jack wondered how a baby could do that, without anything to latch on to, but the evidence was clear, his hands felt a lump shift position. The lump was his child's head, or the opposite end. Moving. Alive. Waiting to be born. He looked up to see his wife, smiling down at him and knowing what he felt.
"You're beautiful, and I love you very much. Whether you like it or not." He was surprised to find that there were tears in his eyes. He was even more surprised by what happened next.
"Love you, too, Jack-again?"
"Maybe that wasn't the last time for a while after all "
* * *
23
Movement
e got these last night." Priorities had changed somewhat at CIA. Ryan could tell. The man going over the photos with him was going gray, wore rimless glasses and a bow tie. Garters on his sleeves would not have seemed out of place. Marty stood in the corner and kept his mouth shut. "We figure it's one of these three camps, right?"
"Yeah, the others are identified." Ryan nodded. This drew a snort.
"You say so, son."
"Okay, these two are active, this one as of last week, and this one two days ago."
"What about -20, the Action-Directe camp?" Cantor asked.
"Shut down ever since the Frenchies went in. I saw the tape of that." The man smiled in admiration. "Anyway, here."
It was one of the rare daylight photographs, even in color. The firing range adjacent to the camp had six men standing in line. The angle prevented them from seeing if the men held guns or not.
"Weapons training?" Ryan asked cautiously.
"Either that or they're taking a leak by the numbers." This was humor.
"Wait a minute, you said these came in last night."
"Look at the sun angle," the man said derisively.
"Oh. Early morning."
"Around midnight our time. Very good," the man observed. Amateurs, he thought. Everybody thinks he can read a recon photo! "You can't see any guns, but see these little points of light here? That might be sunlight reflecting off ejected cartridge brass. Okay, we have six people here. Probably Northern Europeans because they're so pale-see this one here with the sunburn, his arm looks a little pink? All appear to be male, from the short hair and style of dress. Okay, now the question is, who the hell are they?"
"They're not Action-Directe," Marty said.
"How do you know that?" Ryan asked.
"The ones who got picked up are no longer with us. They were given trials by military tribunal and executed two weeks ago."
"Jesus!" Ryan turned away. "I didn't want to know that, Marty."
"Those who asked had clergy in attendance. I thought that was decent of our colleagues." He paused for a moment, then went on: "It turns out that French law allows for that sort of trial under very special circumstances. So despite what we both thought all the time, it was all done by the book. Feel better?"
"Some," Ryan admitted on reflection. It might not have made a great deal of difference to the terrorists, but at least the formality of law had been observed, and that was one of the things "civilization" meant.
"Good. A couple sang like canaries beforehand, too. DGSE was able to bag two more members outside of Paris -this hasn't made the papers yet-plus a barnful of guns and explosives. They may not be out of business, but they've been hurt."
"All right," the man in the bow tie acknowledged. "And this is the guy who tumbled to it?"
"All because he likes to see tits from three hundred miles away," Cantor replied.
"How come nobody else saw that first?" Ryan would have preferred that someone else had done all this.
"Because there aren't enough people in my section. I just got authority to hire ten new ones. I've already got them picked out. They're people who're leaving the Air Force. Pros."
"Okay, what about the other camp?"
"Here." A new photo came into view. "Pretty much the same thing. We have two people visible-"
"One's