Tom Clancy - Locked On

For the first time in a minute and a half he found himself driving in the same direction as traffic. Also, for the first time in several minutes, the men did not hear the shrill squawking of police sirens right behind them.

Jack reached up to wipe sweat from his forehead, but his rubber mask got in the way. His hairline was soaked with perspiration, so he slicked back his dark hair to get it out of his face.

“Where to now?” Ryan asked the men behind him.

Clark’s voice was gravel, broadcasting to the vehicle the pain the ex — Navy SEAL was in at the moment, but his voice remained strong. “Safe house,” he said. “We’re going to need a new ride. Can’t pull into the airport driving the most wanted vehicle in France.”

“Roger that,” said Ryan, and he punched a button on the GPS that would lead him to the safe house. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” said Clark.

But Sam Driscoll had been checking Clark. He applied pressure to the wound as he leaned forward into the front seat. “Get there as fast as you can.”

Adara Sherman stood inside the doorway of the Gulfstream with an HK UMP.45-caliber submachine gun held in one hand behind her back. She watched a four-door sedan pull to a stop on the tarmac, saw the five men climb out and approach. Four of them carried backpacks, but John Clark had his arm in a makeshift sling under his blue sport coatlue ta. Even from a distance she could see his face was ashen.

Quickly she’d scanned the airport grounds, determined the coast to be clear, then rushed back inside the aircraft to grab medical supplies.

On board she bandaged Clark quickly, knowing that a customs official would be on his way out to see them off. While she helped him get a clean jacket on, the other men changed into clean suits and ties that had been ready for them in the Gulfstream’s coat closet, but only after stowing their clothing and gear in the stash compartment below an inspection panel in the floor.

Within minutes a female customs agent climbed aboard. She opened two of the businessmen’s briefcases and glanced inside and then asked the bearded gentleman if he wouldn’t mind opening his suitcase. This he did, but she didn’t look past the socks and gym clothes. The older gentleman reclining on the couch in the back was not feeling well, so she did not disturb him other than to see that his face matched the passport handed to her by one of his younger employees.

The female customs official finally checked the pilot’s paperwork, thanked everyone, and was seen out the door by the flight attendant. The door shut behind her, and within seconds the aircraft was taxiing out of the yellow customs square on the ramp.

Captain Reid and First Officer Hicks had the wheels up in five minutes. While they were still on their takeoff climb out of Paris airspace, Sherman had stopped the bleeding from Clark’s arm. Before the aircraft reached ten thousand feet she had an IV line in the top of his hand and an antibiotics drip moving slowly into his bloodstream to stave off any infection.

As soon as Country turned off the seat-belt light in the cabin, Chavez rushed back to check on his friend. “How is he?” Chavez asked, a worried tone in his voice.

Sherman poured antiseptic into the wound now, examining the holes as the clear liquid cleaned the blood away. “He’s lost a fair amount of blood, he needs to lie flat for the flight, but the round went through and through and he’s moving his hand okay.” She looked up at her patient. “You’ll be fine, Mr. Clark.”

John Clark smiled at her. With a weak voice he said, “I had a feeling Gerry didn’t hire you to pass out peanuts.”

Sherman laughed. “Naval corpsman, nine years.”

“That’s a tough job. You were deployed with the Marines?”

“Four years in the sandbox. I saw a lot of wounds worse than yours.”

“I bet you did,” John said with a nod of understanding.

Caruso had headed alone up to the galley. He returned, stood over everyone who was kneeling over Clark. In his hand was a crystal highball of Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch. He addressed Sherman. “What do you think, doc? Can I give him a dose of this?”

She looked Clark over and nodded. “In my professional opinion, Mr. C. looks like he needs a drink.”

The Gulfstream flew over the English Channel, leaving French airspace just after eleven a.m. at a cruising altitude of thirty-six thousand feet.

Even though he looked every second of his sixty-nine years, Nigel Embling was no pushover. At six feet, four inches and two hundred fifty pounds, he retainlue ten ed considerable brawn to go with his fertile brain. Still, within one second of opening his eyes, he recognized his predicament and raised his hands to indicate he would put up no fight.

He’d awoken to guns in his face, flashlight beams in his eyes, and shouts in his ears. Though startled and worried, he did not panic. As a resident of Peshawar, Pakistan, he knew well that he lived in a city rife with crime, terrorism, and government and law enforcement thuggery, so even before he’d forced the cobwebs of sleep out of his mind he was already wondering which of these three he was waking up to this morning.

Clothes were thrown to him, and he struggled out of his nightshirt and into the ensemble offered by the gunmen, and then he was shoved to his staircase, down the stairs, and toward the front door.

Mahmood, Embling’s young orphaned houseboy, knelt on the floor with his face against the wall. He’d made the mistake of rushing one of the armed men who’d kicked in the front door. For his bravery Mahmood received a boot in his chin and a rifle’s butt in the back. He was then ordered to kneel and face the wall while Embling was collected from his bedroom and allowed to dress. In Urdu tinged with a phony Dutch accent, Embling shouted at the young gunners, admonishing them like children for their treatment of the boy. In the next breath, in soothing words, he told Mahmood to run along to a neighbor’s to have his bruises and scrapes seen after, and he promised the terrified boy that there was nothing to be alarmed about and that he would return straightaway.

Once outside in the dark street, he had a better idea about what was going on. Two black SUVs of the same make and model common with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate agents sat parked on the curb, and four more plain-clothed men stood in the street carrying big HK G3 rifles, a standard military-issue weapon of the Pakistani Defense Force.

Yes, Embling was certain now, he was being scooped up by the ISI, the national spy agency. It wasn’t good news by any stretch. He knew enough about their modus operandi to recognize that a predawn rousting at gunpoint likely meant a basement cell and a bit of the rough stuff at the very least. But getting picked up by the Army-run intelligence organization was a damn sight better than being kidnapped by Tehrik-i-Taliban, the Haqqani network, Al-Qaeda, the URC, Lashkar-e-Omar, the Quetta Shura Taliban, the Nadeem Commando, or any one of the other terror outfits running around armed and angry on these dangerous streets of Peshawar.

Nigel Embling was a former member of British foreign intelligence, and he knew how to talk to other intelligence officers. That he might be forced to do so while getting his knuckles broken or his head dunked in a bucket of cold water hardly appealed to him, but he knew this was preferable to dealing with a room full of jihadists who would just quickly and messily hack his head from his neck with a dull sword.

The plain-clothed riflemen on either side of Embling in the backseat of the SUV said nothing as they drove through the empty streets of the city. Embling didn’t bother to ask the men any questions. He knew he would have his only opportunity to get answers wherever it was he was going. These men were just the scoop crew. These men had been provided with a name and a picture and an address, and then they’d been sent out on this errand as if they’d been sent down to the corner market for tea and cakes. They would be here for their ability to squeeze triggers and put their boots into backsides…. They wouldn’t be sent along with the answer to any of Embling’s questions.