The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [126]
"A drink helps," Brian answered. He'd already cleaned his Beretta, as Dominic had done with his Smith&Wesson. "It wasn't fun, Pete."
"It isn't supposed to be. Okay, I just talked with the home office. They want to see you guys in a day or so. Brian, you had some qualms before, and you say that's changed. That still true?"
"You've trained us to identify, close on, and kill people, Pete. And I can live with that-just so's we're not doing something completely off the reservation."
Dominic just nodded agreement, but his eyes didn't leave Alexander.
"Okay, good. There's an old joke in Texas about why the lawyers are so good down there. The answer is, there's more men who need killin' than horses that need stealin'. Well, those who need killing, maybe you two can help them along some."
"Are you finally going to tell us who we're working for, exactly?" Brian asked.
"You will find that out in due course-just a day or so."
"Okay, I can wait that long," Brian said. He was doing some quick analysis of his own. General Terry Broughton might know something. For damned sure that Werner guy in FBI did, but this former tobacco plantation they'd been training on didn't belong to any part of the government he knew about. CIA had "The Farm" near Yorktown, Virginia, but that was about a hundred fifty miles away. This place didn't feel like "Agency," at least not in accordance with his assumptions, wrong though they could be. In fact, this place didn't smell "government" at all, not to his nose. But one way or another, in a couple of days he'd know something substantive, and he could wait that long.
"What do we know about the guys we whacked today?"
"Nothing much. That'll have to wait awhile. Dominic, how long before they start finding stuff out?"
"By noon tomorrow they'll have a lot of information, but we don't have a pipeline into the Bureau, unless you want me to-"
"No, I don't. We might have to let them know that you and Brian aren't the new version of the Lone Ranger, but it ought not to go very far."
"You mean I'll have to talk to Gus Werner?"
"Probably. He has enough juice in the Bureau to say you're on 'special assignment' and make it stick. I imagine he'll be patting himself on the back for talent-scouting you for us. You two did pretty damned well, by the way."
"All we did," the Marine said, "was what we've been trained to do. We had just enough time to get our shit together, and after that it was all automatic. They taught me at the Basic School that the difference between making it and not making it is usually just a few seconds' worth of thinking. If we'd been in the Sam Goody when it all started instead of a few minutes later, it might have been different in the final outcome. One other thing-two men are about four times as effective as one man. There's actually a study about it. 'Non-Linear Tactical Factors In Small-Unit Engagements,' I think the title is. It's part of the syllabus at Recon School."
"Marines really do know how to read, eh?" Dominic asked, reaching for a bottle of bourbon. He poured two stiff ones, handing one to his brother and taking a pull on his own.
"The guy in the Sam Goody-he smiled at me," Brain said in reflective amazement. "I didn't think about it at the time. I guess he wasn't afraid to die."
"It's called martyrdom, and some people really do think that way," Pete told them both. "So, what did you do?"
"I shot him, close range, maybe six or seven times-"
"Far side of ten times, bro," Dominic corrected him. "Plus the last one in the back of his head."
"He was still moving," Brian explained. "And I didn't have any cuffs to slap on him. And, you know, I'm not really all that worried about it." And besides, he would have bled out anyway. The way things had worked out, his trip into the next dimension had just happened sooner.
"B-3 and bingo! We have a bingo," Jack announced from his workstation. "Sali is a player, Tony. Look here," he said, pointing to his computer screen.
Wills punched up his "take" from NSA, and there it was. "You know,