Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

Jack pointed at Moore’s corpse. “She’s my friend. I’m just looking for—”

But the big cop pulled his baton and charged at Jack, his eyes raging.

Jack dropped the purse but something in him snapped. His friend was dead and he’d nearly been killed. And now this asshole is calling me a thief. Jack squared up to take the guy down as the cop raised his baton.

“Parì!”— Stop! a woman’s voice called from behind.

The big bearded cop froze in mid-swing. He and Jack turned around to see a woman about his age in jeans and a leather jacket flashing a badge. Her shoulder-length hair was neat but not fashionable, and her small frame was trim like an athlete’s. Despite his headache, Jack saw the pistol in a shoulder rig beneath her coat. She barked another order at the cop towering over her. He argued with her, pointing his baton at Jack.

She turned toward Jack. “He says you’re a looter. Is that true?”

“No. I was looking for the phone of my friend . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off, his legs wobbly. He pointed at Moore’s corpse. Unexpectedly, tears welled in his eyes.

The woman with the badge softened, but only slightly. She took Jack by the elbow.

“Let’s go outside and get you checked out.”

—

Jack sat on the stone stairs of the back entrance to the big Gothic church, Santa Maria del Mar. He was just a hundred yards from the restaurant, facing a placeta —a small plaza. A uniformed EMT examined Jack’s eyes with a penlight under the watchful gaze of the woman with the badge. A police helicopter’s rotors hammered low overhead.

Hundreds of spectators had gathered in the area but had been pushed back behind yellow police tape and barricades. A local TV journalist stood among them, interviewing people claiming to be witnesses to the tragedy.

The plaza was filled with several ambulances and police vehicles, forming a staging area for medical treatment and a preliminary investigation of the blast. Jack saw police cars and vans marked from several departments—Mossos d’Esquadra, Guardia Civil, Policía Nacional — blue lights still flashing on most of them.

The EMT gave Jack one last cautious glance as he pocketed his penlight. “No headache?”

“No. I’m fine,” Jack said, lying.

The EMT’s eyes narrowed with disbelief. “ Estàs segur? You are sure?” He scratched his thin beard tinged with gray.

“Yeah, really. Thanks.”

“I think it is best you go to hospital. Get X-rays, at least.”

“No, I’m good.”

“You know, it cost you no money for medicine here.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t want to go. I’m fine.”

“Then it is necessary for you to see a doctor when you get back to the States, vale ?”

“I will. I promise.”

The EMT looked over at the woman and shrugged his reluctant approval, then dashed off with his medical kit to another victim.

“My name is Laia Brossa. I work for the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia—CNI, for short. That’s our version of the FBI and CIA, how you say, rolled into one. Who are you?”

Still seated on the steps, Jack stuck out his hand. She took it. “My name is Jack Ryan. Mucho gusto ”—Nice to meet you.

“Igualmente . ” Brossa pulled out her smartphone. “Do you mind if I record our conversation? It’s easier than taking notes.”

“Not at all.”

“And you said your friend Renée Moore was killed inside?”

Jack lowered his head and nodded.

“Yes.”

She patted his shoulder. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Jack raised his head. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“She was an American as well?”

“Yes.”

“And how is it you survived the blast, Mr. Ryan?”

“I was outside. I had just left to go to the Picasso Museum. If I’d waited another thirty seconds, I’d probably be dead, too.”

“You are very lucky. And what brings you to Spain?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why you’re asking me all of these questions.”

“Because it is my job.”

“Your job is to find out who killed my friend, and all of those other people.”

“We already know. It was a terror group called Brigada Catalan. They claimed responsibility just a few minutes ago on the Internet, while you were getting checked out.”

“I read about them in the news. They haven’t done anything like this before. Just a lot of talk, right?”

Brossa shrugged. “Every terrorist who kills talks a lot before they start killing, yes?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Jack glanced up at the flags hanging from several of the private terraces around the square. Most had patriotic gold flags with four red stripes—the official flag of Catalonia—but a few had the addition of a Cuban white star on a blue triangle—the flag of the independence movement. In the last few days, Jack had hardly seen any Spanish national flags here in Barcelona. In Madrid, just the opposite.

“But these Brigada Catalan people, they haven’t been violent, not like this. It’s a political movement, not a terrorist one, if I’m not mistaken,” Jack said.

“Until today,” Brossa said, surveying the flags. She muttered something in Català to herself. She turned back to Jack. “You are well read on Catalonian politics for an American. Quite unusual.”

“We’re not all idiots,” Jack said, instantly regretting the comment. Most Americans weren’t idiots. They just didn’t pay attention to other countries because their own country was so huge and had plenty of its own problems. And not every American double-majored in history and finance at an elite university like Georgetown.

“I apologize if I offended you,” Brossa said.

“Not at all. I’m sorry for my bad manners. Almost getting killed has put me in a lousy mood. The only reason I’m up to speed on Brigada Catalan is because I happened to read an article about them in El País yesterday. In English. So, yeah, maybe I’m just another American idiot, too.”

“Somehow, I doubt that. So tell me, what brought you to Spain? Ms. Moore? She was your woman?”

“No, nothing like that. Just friends. We hadn’t seen each other in years. It was a pure coincidence that she walked into the restaurant.”

“My father says there is no such thing as coincidence,” Brossa said.

Jack smiled, despite the headache.

“Something funny, Mr. Ryan?”

“Not really.”

“And the reason you are in Spain?”

The real reason he was in Spain was for R & R from missions he’d run for The Campus in Poland and Indonesia in the past several months, and to clear his mind from the death of his friend Liliana, and van Delden’s suicide. But Brossa wasn’t cleared to be read in on any of that.

“I studied a little history in college, and read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia —do you know it?”

“Of course.”

“We didn’t cover the Spanish Civil War in depth in class. I wanted to fill in the gaps by seeing it for myself.”

Brossa eyed Jack up and down, trying to decide if he was bullshitting her or not.

“And did you find what you were looking for, Mr. Ryan?”

“I came to find out more about the war, but I wound up falling in love with Spain. It’s a fantastic country.”

“Where have you been in Spain?”

Chasing a couple of arms-smuggling shitbirds in Seville with The Campus last time I was here, Jack reminded himself.

“It’s been a short trip, unfortunately. Just Madrid, and then here.”

“You must come back, then, and see the rest. Galicia, Andalusia, the Basque region—Spain is not just one country, but a collection of many smaller ones.”

“Already on my bucket list, believe me.”