The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [68]
"We have five thousand American dollars each in cash."
"You can use that for minor expenses, like food and gasoline, but for other things you need credit cards. Americans will not accept cash to rent cars, and never to buy airplane tickets."
"We have them," Mustafa replied. He and each member of the team had Visa cards issued to them in Bahrain. They even had consecutive numbers. All were drawn on an account in a Swiss bank, whose account held just over five hundred thousand dollars. Sufficient to their purposes.
The name on the card, Pablo saw, was JOHN PETER SMITH. Good. Whoever had set this up hadn't made the mistake of using explicitly Middle Eastern names. Just as long as the card didn't fall into the hands of a police officer who might ask Mr. Smith where exactly he came from. He hoped they had been briefed on the American police and their habits.
"Other documents?" Pablo asked.
"Our passports are Qatari. We have international driver's licenses. We all speak acceptable English and can read maps. We know about American laws. We will keep within the speed limits and drive carefully. The nail that sticks up is hammered down. So we will not stick up."
"Good," Pablo observed. So, they had been briefed. Some might even remember it. "Remember that one mistake can ruin the entire mission for all of you. And it is easy to make mistakes. America is an easy country in which to live and move about, but their police are very efficient. If you are not noticed, you are safe from them. Therefore, you must avoid being noticed. Fail in that, and you could all be doomed to failure."
"Diego, we will not fail," Mustafa promised.
Fail at what? Pablo wondered, but did not ask. How many women and children will you kill? But it didn't really matter to him. It was a cowardly way to kill, but the rules of honor in his "friend's" culture were very different from his own. This was business, and that was all he needed to know.
Three miles, push-ups, and a coffee chaser, and that was life in southern Virginia.
"Brian, you used to carrying a firearm?"
"Usually an M16 and five or six extra mags. Some fragmentation grenades, too, go in the basic load, yeah, Pete."
"I was talking about side arms, actually."
"M9 Beretta, that's what I'm used to."
"Any good with it?"
"It's in my package, Pete. I qualified expert at Quantico, but so did most of my class. No big deal."
"You used to carrying it around?"
"You mean in civilian clothes? No."
"Okay, get used to it."
"Is it legal?" Brian asked.
"Virginia is a shall-issue state. If you've got a clean record, the commonwealth will grant you a concealed-carry permit. What about you, Dominic?"
"I'm still FBI, Pete. I'd feel kinda naked out on the street without a friend."
"What do you carry?"
"Smith and Wesson 1076. Shoots the ten-millimeter cartridge, double action. The Bureau's gone to the Glock lately, but I like the Smith better. " And, no, I didn't carve a notch in the grips, he didn't add. Though he had thought about it.
"Okay, well, when you're off-campus here, I want you both to carry, just to get used to the idea, Brian."
A shrug. "Fair enough." It beat the hell out of a sixty-five-pound rucksack.
There was a lot more to it than just Sali, of course. Jack was working on a total of eleven different people, all but one of them Middle Eastern, all in the money business. The one European lived in Riyadh. He was German, but had converted to Islam, which had struck someone as odd enough to deserve electronic surveillance. Jack's university German was good enough