Tom Clancy's Op-center Balance of Power - Tom Clancy [8]
"Thank you."
"I will have a guard posted at the door so you will be safe and undisturbed. Then I will go and see about your guide."
Aideen thanked him again. He left and shut the door behind him. The room was quiet save for the hissing of a radiator in the back and the muted sounds of traffic. Of life going on.
Taking another deep breath, Aideen removed a hotel notepad from her backpack and looked down at the telephone number printed on the bottom. She found it impossible to believe that Martha was dead. She could still feel her annoyance, see her eyes, smell her perfume. She could still hear Martha saying, You know what's at stake here.
Aideen swallowed hard and entered the number. She asked to be connected with Darrell McCaskey's room. She slipped a simple scrambler over the mouthpiece, one that would send an ultrasonic screech over the line, deafening any taps. A filter on McCaskey's end would eliminate the sound from his line.
Aideen did know what was at stake here. The fate of Spain, of Europe, and possibly the world. And whatever it took, she did not intend to come up short again.
* * *
TWO
Monday, 12:12 p.m.
Washington, D.C.
When they were at Op-Center headquarters at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland or at Striker's Base in the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the two forty-five-year-old men were Op-Center's Deputy Director, General Michael Bernard Rodgers, and Colonel Brett Van Buren August, commander of Op-Center's rapid-deployment force.
But here in Ma Ma Buddha, a small, divey Szechuan restaurant in Washington's Chinatown, the two men were not superior and subordinate. They were close friends who had both been born at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut; who had met in kindergarten and shared a passion for building model airplanes; who had played on the same Thurston's Apparel Store Little League team for five years-and chased home run queen Laurette DelGuercio on the field and off; and who had blown trumpet in the Housatonic Valley Marching Band for four years. They served in different branches of the military in Vietnam-Rodgers in the U.S. Army Special Forces, August in Air Force Intelligence-and saw each other infrequently over the next twenty years. Rodgers did two tours of Southeast Asia, after which he was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help Colonel "Chargin" Charlie" Beckwith oversee the training of the U.S. Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-the Delta Force. Rodgers remained there until the Persian Gulf War, where he commanded a mechanized brigade with such Pattonesque fervor that he was well on his way to Baghdad while his backup was still in Southern Iraq. His zeal earned him a promotion-and a desk job at Op-Center.
August had flown eighty-seven F-4 spy missions over North Vietnam during a two-year period before being shot down near Hue. He spent a year as a prisoner of war before escaping and making his way to the south. After recovering in Germany from exhaustion and exposure, August returned to Vietnam. He organized a spy network to search for other U.S. POW's and then remained undercover for a year after the United States withdrawal. At the request of the Pentagon, August spent the next three years in the Philippines helping President Ferdinand Marcos battle Moro secessionists. He disliked Marcos and his repressionist policies, but the U.S. government supported him and so August stayed. Looking for a little desk-bound downtime after the fall of the Marcos regime, August went to work as an Air Force liaison with NASA, helping to organize security for spy satellite missions, after which he joined the SOC as a specialist in counter-terrorist activities. When Striker commander Lt. Colonel W. Charles Squires was killed on a mission in Russia, Rodgers immediately contacted Colonel August and offered him the commission. August accepted, and the two easily resumed their close friendship.
The two men had come to Ma Ma Buddha after spending the