The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [61]
"I haven't walked out yet, Pete. Let's say I have my concerns, and leave it at that."
Alexander nodded. "Fair enough. We prefer people who know how to think, and we know that thinking carries its own penalties."
"I guess that's how you have to look at it. What if the guy we're supposed to do away with turns out to be okay?" the Marine asked.
"Then you back off and report in. It's theoretically possible that an assignment can be erroneous, but to the best of my knowledge it's never happened."
"Never?"
"Not ever, not once," Alexander assured him.
"Perfect records make me nervous."
"We try to be careful."
"What are the rules? Okay, maybe I don't need to know-right now-who sends us out to kill somebody, but it would be nice to know what the criteria are to write up some fucker's death warrant, y'know?"
"It will be someone who has, directly or indirectly, caused the death of American citizens, or is directly involved in plans to do so in the future. We're not after people who sing too loud in church or who have books overdue at the library."
"You're talking about terrorists, right?"
"Yup," Pete replied simply.
"Why not just arrest them?" Brian asked next.
"Like you did in Afghanistan?"
"That was different," the Marine protested.
"How?" Pete asked.
"Well, for one thing we were uniformed combatants operating in the field under orders from legally constituted command authority."
"You took some initiative, right?"
"Officers are supposed to use their heads. My overall mission orders came from up the chain of command, however."
"And you don't question them?"
"No. Unless they're crazy, you're not supposed to do that."
"What about when not doing something is crazy?" Pete asked. "What if you have a chance to take action against people who are planning to do something very destructive?"
"That's what CIA and FBI are for."
"But when they can't get the job done, for one reason or another, then what? Do you just let the bad guys move ahead with their plans and handle them afterward? That can be expensive," Alexander told him. "Our job is to do the things that are necessary when the conventional methods are unable to accomplish the mission."
"How often?" This was Dominic, seeking to protect his brother.
"It's picking up."
"How many hits have you made?" Brian again.
"You don't need to know."
"Oh, I do love hearing that one," Dominic observed with a smile.
"Patience, boys. You're not in the club yet," Pete told them, hoping they were smart enough not to object at this point.
"Okay, Pete," Brian said, after a moment's thought. "We both gave our word that what we learn here stays here. Fine. It's just that murdering people in cold blood isn't exactly what I've been trained to do, y'know?"
"You're not supposed to feel good about it. Over in Afghanistan, did you ever shoot anybody looking the other way?"
"Two of them," Brian admitted. "Hey, the battlefield isn't the Olympic Games," he semi-protested.
"Neither is the rest of the world, Aldo." The look on the Marine's face said, Well, you got me there. "It's an imperfect world, guys. If you want to try to make it perfect, go ahead, but it's been tried before. Me, I'd settle for something safer and more predictable. Imagine if somebody had taken care of Hitler back in 1934 or so, or Lenin in 1915 in Switzerland. The world would have been better, right? Or maybe bad in a different way. But we're not in that business. We will not be involved in political assassinations. We're after the little sharks who kill innocent people in such a way that conventional procedures cannot handle them. It's not the best system. I know that. We all know that. But it's something, and we're going to try to see if it works. It can't be much worse than what we have already, can it?"
Dominic's eyes never left Pete's face during that discourse. He'd just told them something that maybe he hadn't meant to tell them. The Campus didn't have any killers yet. They were going to be the first. There had to be a lot of hopes riding on them. That was a lot of responsibility. But it