The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [143]
"We ought to," Bell confirmed. "And if anyone purloins it, we'll know where it goes."
"Excellent," Granger observed. After all, that was what "reconnaissance-by-fire" meant.
They wouldn't be here long, the twins both thought. They were quartered in adjoining rooms at the local Holiday Inn, and this Sunday afternoon they were both watching TV with one guest.
"How's your mom?" Jack asked.
"Fine, doing a lot of stuff with the local schools-parochial ones. A little more than a teacher's aide, but not actually teaching. Dad's working some new project-supposedly Boeing is back looking at an SST, super sonic airliner. Dad says they'll probably never build it, unless Washington coughs up a lot of money, but with the Concorde retired people are thinking about it again, and Boeing likes to keep their engineers busy. They're a little nervous about the Airbus people, and they don't want to be caught with their pants down if the French start getting ambitious."
"How was the Corps?" Jack asked Brian.
"The Corps is the Corps, cuz. It just rolls along, keeping busy for the next war that'll come along."
"Dad was worried when you went to Afghanistan."
"It was a little exciting. The people there, they're tough, and they're not dumb, but they're not trained that well, either. So, when we bumped heads with 'em, we came out ahead. If we saw something that looked hinky, we called air in on it, and that usually took care of things."
"How many?"
"How many did we take out? Some. Not enough, but some. The Green Berets went in first, and the Afghans learned from that that a stand-up fight was not in their interest. Mostly, we did pursuit and reconnaissance, bird-dogging for the airedales. We had a CIA guy with us, and a signals-intelligence detachment. The bad guys used their radios a little too much. When we got a hit, we'd move in to about a mile or so and give it a look-see, and if it was interesting enough we'd call in air and scramble the hell out of it. Scary to watch," Brian summarized.
"I bet." Jack popped open a can of beer.
"So this Sali guy, the one with the girlfriend, Rosalie Parker?" Dominic asked. Like most cops, he had a good memory for names. "You said that he was jumpin' up and down about the shootings?"
"Yup," Jack said. "Thought they were just swell."
"So who was the cheerleading with?"
"Pals he e-mails to. The Brits have his phones tapped, and the e-mails-well, as I said, I can't tell you about the e-mails. Those European phone systems aren't anywhere near as secure as people think-I mean, everybody knows about intercepting cell phones and stuff, but the cops over there pull stuff we can't do here. The Brits especially, they use intercepts to track the IRA guys. I heard that the rest of the European countries are even freer to act."
"They are," Dominic assured him. "At the Academy, we had some in the national Academy program-that's like a doctoral course for cops. They'd talk about that sort of thing after you got a few drinks into them. So, this Sali guy liked what those mutts did, eh?"
"Like his team won the Super Bowl," Jack replied at once.
"And he bankrolls them?" Brian asked.
"That's right."
"Interesting," was all Brian had to say after getting that question answered.
He could have stayed another night, but he had things to do in the morning, and so he was driving back to London in his Aston Martin Vanquish, Bowland black. Its interior was charcoal, and its handmade twelve-cylinder engine was pushing out most of its 460 horsepower as he headed east on the M4 at a hundred miles per hour. In its way, the car was better than sex. It was a pity Rosalie wasn't with him, but-he looked over at his companion-Mandy was an agreeable bed warmer, if a little too skinny for his usual tastes. If only she could put some meat on her bones, but European fashion did not encourage that. The fools who