Tom Clancy - Locked On

Yasin smiled. “I see.”

Jack Ryan Jr. arrived at Liberty Crossing, the name given the campus of the National Counterterrorism Center, just after eleven a.m. He had a lunch date with Mary Pat Foley, but Mary Pat asked him to come early for a personal tour of the building.

At first Mary Pat had suggested she and Jack dine at the restaurant there at NCTC after the tour. But Junior had made clear that there would be a business component to the lunch, and for that reason he preferred they went someplace off-site and quiet where they could talk shop. Mary Pat Foley was the only person at Liberty Crossing who knew of the existence of The Campus, and Jack wanted to keep it that way.

Jack pulled to the front gate in his yellow H3; he showed his ID to a tough-looking guard who checked his name off a list of approved visitors on his computer. The guard waved the Hummer through, and Jack continued on to his meeting with the number-two NCTC executive.

She met him in the lobby, helped him get his credentials, and together they shot up an elevator to the operations center. This was Mary Pat’s realm, and she made certain to spend a portion of each day walking among the analysts working here, making herself available to anyone who needed a moment of the deputy director’s time.

The room was impressive; there were dozens of workstations facing several large wall displays. The huge open space amazed Ryan; he couldn’t help but compare it to his own shop, which, although possessing state-of-the-art technology, did not look nearly as cool as the NCTC’s setup. Still, Jack realized, he and his fellow analysts were privy to virtually every bit of intelligence that flashed across the monitors around him.

Mary Pat enjoyed the role of tour guide for young Ryan, as she explained that more than sixteen agencies worked together here at the National Counterdth=""3"terrorism Center, compiling, prioritizing, and analyzing data that came to it from intelligence sources across the U.S. intelligence community as well as directly from foreign partners.

This op center, she explained, was up and running twenty-four/seven, and she was proud of its impressive feat of coordination in a bureaucracy such as the U.S. federal government.

Mary Pat did not bother any of the analysts working at their desks as she and Jack wove through the busy operations center — if each person in the room had to stop what they were doing each time a VIP was ushered by, little important work would get done — but she did direct Jack to a workstation near the hallway that led to her office. Here Jack noticed a gorgeous girl about his age with mid-length dark hair in a ponytail.

Mrs. Foley finished her spiel on the virtues of interagency cooperation with a shrug. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. We do pretty well, most of the time, but like anything else, we are only as good as the data we analyze. Better product means better conclusions.”

Jack nodded. It was the same with him. He was looking forward to getting out of the building so he could share with Mary Pat the excellent product he had brought with him.

“Thanks for the tour.”

“You bet. Let’s go eat. But first, I’d like you to meet someone.”

“Great,” said Jack, and he caught himself hoping it was the good-looking girl busy at her desk right next to them.

“Melanie, do you have a second?”

To Ryan’s pleasure, the girl with the chestnut hair stood and turned around. She wore a light blue button-down shirt and a navy knee-length pencil skirt. Jack saw a navy jacket over the back of her swivel chair. “Jack Ryan Jr., meet Melanie Kraft. She’s my newest star here at the op center.”

The two shook hands with smiles.

Melanie said, “Mary Pat, when I joined, you didn’t tell me I would get to meet celebrities.”

“Junior’s not a celebrity. He’s family.”

Ryan groaned inwardly at being called Junior in front of this girl. Jack thought she was stunning; he had a hard time turning away from her bright, friendly eyes.

Melanie nodded and said, “You are taller than you look on TV.”

Jack smiled. “I haven’t been on TV in years. I’ve grown up a bit, I guess.”

Mary Pat said, “Jack, I kidnapped Melanie from her desk at Langley.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Melanie said.

“You couldn’t work for a better boss,” Jack replied with a smile. “Or do more important work than NCTC.”

“Thanks. Are you here because you are planning on following in your dad’s footsteps in government service?”

Jack chuckled. “No, Mary Pat and I have a lunch date. I’m not here looking for work. I appreciate what you guys do, but I’m a money guy. A greedy capitalist, you might say.”

“Nothing wrong with that, as long as you pay your taxes. My salary has to come from somewhere.”

They all three laughed about that.

“Well, I’d better get back to work,” Melanie said. “It was nice meeting you. Best of luou.ed ck to your father next month. We’re rooting for him.”

“Thank you. I know he appreciates what you all do here.”

Mary Pat had just shut the door on Ryan’s Hummer, he had not even turned over the engine, when she turned to him and smiled. He smiled back. “Something on your mind, Mary Pat?”

“She’s single.”

Jack laughed. With a slight affectation in his voice, he said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Mary Pat Foley just smiled. “You’d like her, she’s very smart. No, not smart. I think she’s damn brilliant. Ed and I have already had her over to dinner, and Ed is smitten.”

“Great,” Jack said. He did not get embarrassed particularly easily, but he was starting to blush. He’d known Mary Pat since he’d been in diapers, and she had never once even asked him about his dating life, much less tried to set him up with someone.

“She’s from Texas, if you didn’t notice her drawl. Doesn’t have too many friends around town. Lives in a little carriage-house apartment down in Alexandria.”

“This is all interesting, Mary Pat, and she seems nice and all, but I actually had another reason for coming down. Something a little more important than my love life.”

She chuckled. “I doubt it.”

“Just wait.”

They pulled into a strip-mall sushi bar on Old Dominion Drive. The little restaurant was as nondescript as any eatery in the city, stuck tight between a cleaner and a bagel shop, but Mary Pat promised the sashimi was as good as Ryan would ever eat this side of Osaka. As the first customers of the day they had their pick of tables, so Ryan chose a secluded booth in the back corner of the restaurant.

They chatted about their families for a while, ordered lunch, and then Ryan pulled the two photographs from his Tumi bag, placed them side by side.

“What am I looking at here, Junior?”

“The guy on the right is ISI. Head of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous.”

Foley nodded, and then said, “And that’s also him on the left, younger and out of uniform.”

Jack nodded. “LeT operative named Khalid Mir, aka—”

Mary Pat looked up at Jack with astonishment. “Abu Kashmiri?”

“That’s right.”

“I was wrong, Jack.”

“About?”

“About your love life being more interesting than what you wanted to talk about. Kashmiri was killed three years ago.”

“Or was he?” Ryan asked. “Rehan is Khalid Mir. And Khalid Mir is also known as Abu Kashmiri. If Rehan is alive, then, to paraphrase Mark Twain—”

Mary Pat said, “The rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“Exactly.”

“I saw a digital image of a body, but it was after a particularly well placed Hellfire, so it could have been anybody. That’s one of the troubles with missile strikes. Unless you go in and get DNA yourself, then you never really know if you got the right person.”