Tom Clancy - Command Authority

As they raced across the Atlantic at more than four hundred knots, Clark looked at the aircraft’s position on the main monitor in the plush cabin. He said, “Touchdown in five and a half hours. Let’s try and catch a few hours’ sleep. We’re going to need to hit the ground running tomorrow.”

Jack Ryan, Jr., and Sandy Lamont walked up Redcliffe Street in Saint John’s, Antigua. There were still quite a few people about now at 10:30 p.m., and enough of them were white tourists so that Jack and Sandy didn’t stick out too badly, although Jack was worried about staying low-profile around here for long, especially with an untrained partner.

They found the building with the shingle for Randolph Robinson; it was just an open ground-floor covered parking lot large enough for a dozen or so cars, and above it a single story of office suites. There was a gated fence around the property, but Jack quickly saw how he could easily scale the fence at a corner post.

Ryan looked into the darkened empty lot and saw three large garbage containers sitting lined up against the stairwell. The lid was up on one of them, and he could see paper stacked on other trash.

The two men turned a corner and found a food truck with a large group of people sitting around on milk cartons, eating salted fish and drinking coconut water. They each bought a drink, and then they kept walking so they could talk.

Sandy said, “You can’t possibly filch all that garbage.”

“We don’t have to.” Jack held up his phone.

“I don’t follow you.”

“I jump the fence, then I turn on my video camera. I grab a stack of papers and move through them as fast as I can. I just have to get a tenth-of-a-second look at each one. Then I send the video file to an archiving application I have. It will use optical character recognition to look at every frame of the video and archive every last number and word in a way I can search and reference it later.”

“That’s bloody marvelous. How much time do we need?”

Before Jack could answer, a black pickup truck drove by, and the driver and front-seat passenger eyed him slowly and carefully. Jack was certain it was the same vehicle he had seen earlier in the afternoon.

Sandy hadn’t noticed, but Jack didn’t mention it, because the last thing he needed right now was a spooked partner. He could have canceled his plans for the evening, but instead he just told himself he’d keep a close watch on the road in case they came back.

His eyes followed the truck till it disappeared around the corner, and then he answered Sandy’s question: “Depends on how much paper is in those cans. I’d say fifteen minutes, tops.”

“What if somebody catches us?”

Jack shrugged. “Can you run?”

“Not really.”

“Then let’s not let anyone catch us.”

As they neared the building, Lamont asked, “How is it you know all this stuff?”

Jack said, “I’m not an attorney, I’m not a CPA, and I don’t have a ton of experience like everyone else at Castor and Boyle.” He held up his phone. “Little tricks like this are force multipliers. They help me leverage my strength.”

The actual collection of the data in the garbage cans went surprisingly smoothly. Jack climbed the fence when no one was in sight, then dropped down and raced to the cans. Two of the cans had no papers, but the other contained hundreds of documents, envelopes, and other relevant material. He reached deep into the can to hide his light from the street, then began quickly shuffling through the pages, keeping his phone pointed at them.

Sandy walked the street out front. He was connected to Ryan through their phones, and other than his need to remind Ryan every couple of minutes that he should hurry up, he did a fine job as a lookout.

Ryan made it back onto the street in ten minutes flat, and the two men walked west back toward their hotel.

Sandy asked, “So are you covered in fish guts and other garbage?”

“Randolph Robinson keeps a clean office. Some of his stuff was shredded, but like most people, he’s too lazy to shred it all. I got hundreds of documents, envelopes, pamphlets, and handwritten notes. Don’t know if any of it will do us any good, but it sure as hell won’t hurt.”

They were halfway back to their hotel when Jack saw the trouble up ahead. The same black pickup truck—he could tell because it appeared to be about five years newer than the average vehicle on the street—sat parked just beyond the intersection. Inside were at least four men. Jack couldn’t be certain from this distance the exact number, but he could tell the guys he saw earlier had gone to pick up at least two more buddies.

Jack was pretty sure that was bad news.

Ryan knew better than to head back to the hotel. The last thing he wanted was for these guys to know where he was sleeping.

There was a lively two-level bar between Ryan and the truck ahead. Jack said, “How ’bout a nightcap.”

Sandy did not have to be persuaded.

As Jack Ryan, Jr., and Sandy Lamont crossed the street toward the entrance, Ryan noticed a second truck pass through the intersection just next to the bar. Its taillights immediately lit up, and Jack looked in the glass of a gift shop across the street just in time to see the vehicle turn down the alleyway behind the bar.

“Oh, shit,” Ryan said softly. Sandy was ahead of him and did not hear.

Jack realized he and Sandy would be surrounded once they got inside the building. He thought it over, considered just continuing on back to the hotel and calling the police, but for all he knew, the men watching him were the police.

Ultimately, he decided to rely on the cover of the crowd, and he hoped like hell these guys, whoever they were, wouldn’t do anything inside the bar with all the witnesses.

The bar was just a dive. There was a DJ on a podium and a little dance floor and then a bar area, and to the left of the bar was a rear exit.

Sandy led the way, and as soon as they made it to the bar in the back of the room, Jack told Sandy to go ahead and order for them both. He turned his back to the bar and kept his eyes on the front door, but he also checked the back entrance every few seconds.

Jack began playing this through in his head. He figured the men were some sort of local heat, hired by the lawyers and corporate services companies generally, but not tied to his situation specifically.

Of course, he had to entertain the possibility he was wrong about this, and these dudes were here because he was the son of the President of the United States, and they had something more dangerous in mind.

But he decided the first scenario was more likely. He and Sandy had been a little lackadaisical in their surveillance. Ryan realized if he were operating with John Clark or Ding Chavez, he would have put all sorts of operational security measures in place that would have avoided just such an event. But he’d come down here thinking this was some dry and drab business intelligence exercise, and he had nothing more to worry about than getting the runaround from a secretary who wouldn’t let him take a business card off a desk.

Two men entered and stood at the front door. One had dreads, the other short hair and big muscles. They talked to the bouncer for just a moment, then started looking around. They made eye contact with Ryan seconds later, and they stood their ground by the door.

Jack looked to the back entrance now. There was no one there, but he felt sure that even a third-rate crew of hired Rasta stoners from some shanty island village would know enough to cover the back door to box their quarry in.

Jack gave up on the hope the men wouldn’t confront him in the public setting, and he moved on to the hope that they were here only for intimidation. “Sandy, I need to tell you something, and I need you to stay very calm when I do.”