Tom Clancy: Locked On

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” said Caruthers, and the Chrysler drove off toward downtown.

The same day, Judith Cochrane left her Pueblo, Colorado, hotel at nine-thirty in the morning, and she began her familiar drive to ADX Florence.

Her client would finally be removed from the Special Administrative Measures and transferred to a better facility on the East Coast; they had not told her where yet for security reasons, but she knew it would be somewhere in the D.C. area, so it would be close to her home.

Without the SAMs, Saif Rahman Yasin would be able to sit in a room with her while they worked together on his case, close over a table. Sometimes there would be other attorneys present, and the guards would be ever present, but there would be a modicum of privacy, and Judith Cochrane had thought of little else for some time.

Too bad that conjugal visits would not be allowed. Judy smiled as that thought came to her.

Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

The rental car began making an odd noise that she hadn’t heard before. “Damn it,” she said, as it got louder and louder. It was a thumping, and she did not know cars at all, other than where to put the gas.

As it grew even louder, she slowed her vehicle. She had the entire road to herself, and there was nothing but flat country around her and huge mountains far to the west. She decided to pull over to the side of the road, but just as she started to do so, she was startled by a huge shadow passing over her car.

Then she saw it, a big black helicopter streaked just overhead, flew up the road another hundred yards, and then turned sideways, blocking her path.

She stopped the rental car in the middle of the road.

The helicopter landed, and men with guns jumped out, ran up to her with their guns pointed at her, and when they got close she could hear their screaming.

She was pulled out of her car, turned around, and pushed up on the hood. Her legs were kicked open, and she was frisked.

“What do you want?”

“Judith Cochrane. You are under arrest.”

“On what goddamned charge?”

“Espionage, Ms. Cochrane.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous! I’ll drag every last one of you before a judge tomorrow morning and your shitty careers will be over!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Judith screamed at the officers and demanded their badge numbers, but they ignored her. They handcuffed her, and she called them fascists and robots and vermin, and she called them sons of bitches as they led her to the helicopter and helped her on board.

She was still screaming when the helicopter took off, turned to the east, and flew away.

She would not know it for some time, but she had been sold out by Paul Laska in an attempt to save himself.

The Emir sucked fresh air into his lungs for the first time in months. It was dark when he was led out of ADX Florence and into the back of a Bureau of Prisons van, and the heavy snow further obstructed his view.

He had been looking forward to this day for months, since Judy Cochrane had promised him she would get him out of his tiny cell and into a federal prison near Washington. A prison where he could exercise and watch television and have more books and access to other members of his defense who would help him fight the Ryan administration.

As the van rolled through the entrance of a small airport, the Emir fought a smile. The next stage in his captivity would be the next stage in his quest to damage the infidels. He would get time in court, Judy had told him, and he would have a chance to say whatever he wanted to say. At first he had been instructed not to say a word about his capture, but now Judy encouraged him to talk as loudly and as often as possible about the circumstances of his kidnapping at the hands of Americans. Although he had been captured in the United States, he intended to continue his story — he’d told it so many times to Judy that he himself almost believed it now — that he had been yanked off a street in Riyadh.

Judy believed it; that fat fool would believe anything.

The van lurched to a stop, and the FBI men helped him out and into a blinding snowstorm. They led him forward, and in seconds Yasin could smell jet fuel as he approached a large aircraft. He’d expected some sort of corporate jet, but instead it was a large cargo craft.

He began walking up the ramp with the men on either side of him. At the top of the ramp there was no snow, only several men who stood at attention.

They were wearing camouflage uniforms.

They were soldiers. American military.

The FBI man tapped Yasin on the shoulder. “Have fun at Gitmo, asshole.”

What? Yasin tried to back up, but men held him. “No! I will not go. I am to go to Washington for my trial. This is incorrect. Where is Judith?”

The FBI man smiled. “Right now she’s in custody in Denver.”

They gave him one more try to walk forward, but when he refused, four muscular young men grabbed his arms and legs. He was lifted into the air and carried inside the aircraft. Seconds later the ramp lifted, and it closed on the Colorado snowstorm, stifling his screams of protest.

Jack and Melanie enjoyed their dinner, their wine, and their conversation. They had not seen each other in weeks, and although their last parting had been awkward, the chemistry between them seemed undamaged.

Ryan was glad Melanie had not asked too many questions about the cuts on his face. He told her he was back into his MMA classes and a new student had gotten a little overzealous in training. She seemed to believe him, and the conversation had drifted off his face and onto all the news about his dad’s upcoming inauguration and the near disaster in Russia and the averted war between India and Pakistan.

Melanie told Jack about Rehan. He had been on the news to some degree, and the CIA/NCTC analyst was careful to keep her detail in the realm of open-source information. Ryan pled ignorance and showed his fascination in her work, but he was, himself, careful to avoid conveying anything that might make her suspicious that he knew more than he was saying.

But then she said something that made him lose his polite but only mildly interested gaze.

“Too bad they let his number-two guy slip away.”

“What’s that?” Jack said.

“I think it’s been on the news, in Pakistan, at least. Yes, I’m sure I read it in Dawn today, their paper. A colonel who worked for him, Saddiq Khan. He survived and is missing. You never really know in these situations if that is significant or not.”

Jack nodded, then said, “How about some dessert?”

They ordered dessert, and Jack excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he was out of view, Melanie stood quickly and stepped outside the restaurant; her mobile phone was already to her ear when the door shut behind her.

She waited for a moment for an answer on the other end, her eyes fixed on the lobby of the restaurant, careful for any signs that Jack was on his way back to the table.

“It’s me. He was there, in Pakistan…. Yes. There is no doubt in my mind. When I told him Khan was still alive he looked like he’d been poleaxed. No, of course it’s not true, but right now he’s in a bathroom stall, no doubt calling someone in a panic, trying to get confirmation.”

The young woman listened to her instructions, acknowledged them, then ended the call and rushed back inside tyo wait for her date to return to the table.

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