“This is amazing,” she whispered. “Is it wrong to hope that someday my granddaughter makes a dagger out of my thighbone?”
Chavez stifled a laugh, unwilling to put up with the pain. A few paces ahead, Konner Toba stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at the foliage behind them.
“Bad men close by,” he whispered. “We go beach now. Go fast.”
I’m proud of you,” Ryan said to his wife. With the handset of his secure telephone pressed against his ear by the pillow, he lay flat on his back in the forward compartment of Air Force One. His slacks and white shirt were draped over the chair beside the bed.
They’d been married long enough that he clearly recognized the sound of his wife’s happy cry on the other end of the line. She’d already relayed General Song’s message. He’d asked her to repeat it twice. As a surgeon, she was accustomed to dictating medical notes, and Adam Yao had sat with her immediately afterward, acting as her scribe to get all the details down on paper. Yao had sent a copy of the report via secure e-mail directly to Mary Pat Foley, cc’ing his boss, the DCI.
Ryan still had two hours until touchdown in Jakarta, so he took the time to just listen to his brave wife, and let her bask a little in her accomplishment. She sounded exhausted and hyper at the same time. Ryan knew the feeling all too well.
“…I mean, I’m no stranger to pressure, Jack,” she said. “But this was so different. It was incredibly exhilarating. Not like surgery at all…”
Ryan listened attentively, letting her get the feelings off her chest, until there was a knock at the door. It was Mary Pat.
“Sorry, hon,” Ryan said. “I have to go. You did good. I mean really, really good. This is something tangible we can use to save Father Pat.”
“Thank you, Jack,” she said. “That means a lot. Let me know how it goes,” she added, personally invested now, more than ever.
Ryan ended the call and rolled off the bed, stepping into his slacks before he answered the door. He grabbed his shirt and shrugged it on as he followed Mary Pat out into the office.
“What do you think?” he asked, leaning against the edge of the desk while he buttoned the shirt.
“I think it’s good,” she said. “But it’s thin without actual proof. We can’t very well out General Song.”
“True,” Ryan said.
“You know,” Foley said. “Indonesia has a love-hate relationship with its Chinese population, especially the Chinese Christians. If Gumelar has virtually anything to go on, he should be able to turn the tables and show China for the bad actor it is in all this.”
“The last thing I want to do is stir up a bunch of racial unrest against Chinese Christians.”
“I get it,” Foley said. “But there will undoubtedly be a butterfly effect. There always is. Everything we do is going to have consequences, some of them unintended.”
Ryan felt his ears pop as Air Force One began its initial descent. “Gumelar is on the nose when he says his hands are tied by the will of the people. Indonesia is more of a direct democracy than we are — even if it says differently on paper. We have General Song’s information. That, coupled with our next meeting, will scare Gumelar bad enough that he’ll come around to our way of thinking just to save his own ass.”
“You are absolutely sure about this plan of yours, Mr. President?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ryan said. “Like my father used to say, ‘This won’t be pretty, but it’ll be right.’”
Air Force One approached Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport from the east, touching down, as they always did, with barely a bump. The pilots taxied to the Presidential Terminal. Across from the main terminal, the Presidential Terminal was used, as its named implied, for the Indonesian president and high-level visiting VIPs.
Marine One was parked on the concrete pad at the end of the taxiway, surrounded by a phalanx of Secret Service agents and military personnel who’d arrived well before Ryan in the various C-17 Globemasters and C-5 Galaxys used to transport the presidential lift. A Marine Corps V-22 Osprey was at the east end of the pad, nacelles and rotors pointed skyward. The media who’d hitched a ride on Air Force One would travel to the first event on the Osprey.
Indonesian reporters and wire service reps stood at the rope line in front of the terminal. President Gumelar and his generals had conveniently moved a half-dozen Indonesian Air Force F-16s and sleek Russian-built Su-30MKK fighter jets to the edge of the runway. It would have been a fine display of power, but all the aircraft and vehicles that traveled with the President of the United States made the handful of jets look insignificant.
He stepped up to the cockpit to thank the Air Force One pilots and crew, and then, adjusting his deep azure tie, stepped out the door to the air stairs.
