Clear and Present Danger полностью

"Sir, there were several in Ranger 's bomb locker. I saw 'em, Admiral, I touched 'em. I saw one attached to an A-6. I watched on radar while I was up in the E-2 for the Fleet-Ex. Flew off to the beach and came back from a different direction. Timing might be a coincidence, but I'd be careful putting money down on that. The night I flew back, I saw another one attached to the same aircraft. Next day I hear that another druggie got his house knocked flat. It stands to reason that half a ton of HE'll do just fine for that, and a combustible bombcase won't leave shit behind for evidence."

"Nine hundred eighty-five pounds of Octol-that's what they use in those things." Painter snorted. "It'll do a house, all right. You know who flew the mission?"

"Roy Jensen, he's skipper of -"

"I know him. We were shipmates on - Robby, what the hell is going on here? I want you to start over from the beginning and tell me everything you saw."

Captain Jackson did just that. It took ten uninterrupted minutes.

"Who was the 'tech-rep' from?" Painter asked.

"I didn't ask, sir."

"How much you want to bet he isn't even aboard anymore? Son, we've been had. I've been had. Goddammit! Those orders should have come through my office. Somebody's been using my fucking airplanes and not telling me."

It wasn't about the bombings, Robby understood, it was about propriety. And it was about security. Had the Navy planned the job, it would have been done better. Painter and his senior A-6 expert would have set it up so that there would have been no awkward evidence for other people - like Robby in the E-2C - to notice. What Painter feared was the simple fact that now his people could be left holding the bag for an operation imposed from above, bypassing the regular chain of command.

"Get Jensen up here?" Robby wondered.

"I thought of that. Too obvious. Might get Jensen in too much trouble. But I've got to find out where the hell his orders came from. Ranger 's out for another ten days or so, right?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Has to be an Agency job," Josh Painter observed quietly. "Authorized higher up than that, but it has to be Agency."

"For what it's worth, sir, I got a good friend who's pretty senior there. I'm godfather for one of his kids."

"Who's that?"

"Jack Ryan."

"Oh, yeah, I've met him. He was with me on Kenneday for a day or two back when - you're sure to remember that cruise, Rob." Painter smiled. "Right before you took that missile hit. By that time he was off on HMS Invincible ."

" What? Jack was aboard then? But - why the hell didn't he come down to see me?"

"You never did find out what that op was all about, did you?" Painter shook his head, thinking of the Red October affair. "Maybe he can tell you about it. I can't."

Robby accepted it without questioning and turned back to the matter at hand. "There's a land side to this operation, too, Admiral," he said, and explained on for another couple of minutes.

"Charlie- Fox," Painter said when he was done. That was the Navy's shorthand and sanitized version of an expression that had begun in the Marine Corps to denote a confused and self-destructive military operation: Cluster-Fuck. "Robert, you get your ass on the first plane back to D.C. and tell your friend that his operation is going to hell in a basket. Jesus, don't those Agency clowns ever learn? If this gets out, and from what you're telling me, it's sure as hell going to, it's going to hurt us. It's going to hurt the whole country. We don't need this kind of shit, not in an election year with that asshole Fowler running. Also tell him that the next time the Agency decides to play soldier, it might help if they asked somebody who knows something about it ahead of time."