The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [135]
"This is the best we can do," Hendley said, handing a folder across. Dominic took it and flipped it open. His eyeballs widened immediately. "Damn! How the hell did you get this?" he asked. The only presidential pardon he'd ever seen had been in a legal textbook. This one was effectively blank, except that it was signed. A blank pardon? Damn.
"You tell me," Hendley suggested.
The signature gave him the answer, and his legal education came back. This pardon was bulletproof. Even the Supreme Court couldn't toss this one out, because the President's sovereign authority to pardon was as explicit as freedom of speech. But it would not be very helpful outside American borders. "So, we'll be doing people here at home?"
"Possibly," Hendley confirmed.
"We're the first shooters on the team?" Brian asked.
"Also correct," the former senator answered.
"How will we be doing it?"
"That will depend on the mission," Bell answered. "For most of them, we have a new weapon that is one hundred percent effective, and very covert. You'll be learning about that, probably tomorrow."
"We in a hurry?" Brian asked further.
"The gloves are all the way off now," Bell told them both. "Your targets will be people who have done, are planning to do, or who support missions aimed at causing serious harm to our country and her citizens. We are not talking about political assassinations. We will only target people who are directly involved in criminal acts."
"There's more to it than that. We're not the official executioners for the state of Texas, are we?" This was Dominic.
"No, you are not. This is outside the legal system. We're going to try to neutralize enemy forces by the elimination of their important personnel. That should at the least disrupt their ability to do business, and we hope it will also force their senior people to show themselves, so that they can be addressed, too."
"So this"-Dominic closed the folder and passed it back to his host "is a hunting license, with no bag limit and an open season."
"Correct, but within reasonable limits."
"Suits me," Brian observed. Only twenty-four hours earlier, he remembered, he'd been holding a dying little boy in his arms. "When do we go to work?"
Hendley handled the reply.
"Soon."
"Uh, Tony, what are they doing here?"
"Jack, I didn't know they'd be in today."
"Non-responsive." Jack's blue eyes were unusually hard.
"You've figured out why this place was set up, right?"
And that was enough of an answer. Damn. His own cousins? Well, one was a Marine, and the FBI one-the lawyer one, as Jack had thought of him once-had well and truly whacked some pervert down in Alabama. It had made the papers, and he'd even discussed it briefly with his father. It was hard to disapprove of it, assuming the circumstances had been within the law, but Dominic had always been the sort to play by the rules-that was almost the Ryan family motto. And Brian had probably done something in the Marines to get noticed. Brian had been the football type in his high school, while his brother had been the family debater. But Dominic wasn't a pussy. At least one bad guy had found that out the hard way. Maybe some people needed to learn that you didn't mess with a big country that had real men in its employ. Every tiger had teeth and claws
and America grew large tigers.
With that settled, he decided to go back looking for 56MoHa@eurocom.net. Maybe the tigers would go looking for more food. That made him a bird dog. But that was okay. Some birds needed their flying rights revoked. He'd arrange to query that "handle" via NSA's taps into the world's cybercommunications jungle. Every animal left a trail somewhere, and he'd go sniffing for it. Damn, Jack thought, this job had its diversions after all, now that he saw what the real objective was.
Mohammed was at his computer. Behind him, the television was going on about the "intelligence failure," which made him smile. It could only have the effect of further diminishing American