Tom Clancy - Locked On

The Eurocopter headed toward the skyscrapers of downtown Dubai. Just on the other side of these was Dubai International Airport. There, the crew of a Rockwell Sabr Rocopeliner jet was scrambling to prepare their aircraft for immediate flight.

“I will know by tomorrow, but I think we are in position to begin Operation Saker. Yes. Get everyone ready to move at a moment’s notice. I will come to Rawalpindi and brief the committee myself just as soon as I am finished.” He listened to the other man for a moment, and then said, “One more thing. Last month I met a contingent of four Chechens in Grozny. I want you to draw up a plan to eliminate these four men, quickly and quietly. One of them talks too much. I am glad he did it in this instance, but I cannot have him talking to others. I want them all out of the way to make certain that we plug this leak before all the water passes through the dam.”

Rehan nodded to his second-in-command, and Khan then disconnected the call.

“It is too much to wish for?” Rehan asked Khan.

“Allah is good, General.”

Brigadier General Riaz Rehan smiled, and he willed his helicopter to fly faster, because he had no time to waste.

If all the polls in America were correct, then Jack Ryan would be President of the United States again soon, and once Ryan was back in the White House, Operation Saker would not stand a chance.

Charles Sumner Alden, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sat in the back of a Lincoln Town Car that rolled through the gates of the Newport, Rhode Island, estate of Paul Laska. The DD/CIA was dressed for dinner but hoped this evening would involve business as well as pleasure.

He’d been to Laska’s Rhode Island home on several occasions. A lovely garden wedding for a Democratic Congressman, a fund-raiser for Ed Kealty’s run against Robby Jackson, highbrow cookouts and pool parties, and a Christmas soirée a few years back. But when Laska called him and invited him for dinner tonight, the old man made it plain it was to be just the two of them.

This was a big deal, even to a political insider like Charles Sumner Alden.

Alden assumed — no, he knew —that he was going to be offered a position in one of Laska’s think tanks, contingent on the obvious: that the Kealty administration would cease to exist on January 20 of next year.

The Lincoln drove through the beautiful garden and parked in a parking circle next to the house, overlooking the water. The perimeter of the grounds was patrolled by armed security, and every inch of the property was wired with cameras, security lighting, and motion sensors. Alden’s driver and bodyguard were armed, of course, but no one expected trouble here worse than the DD/CIA potentially burning the roof of his mouth on the lobster bisque.

Alden and Laska were served drinks in the library by the staff, and then they dined on a windowed back terrace that sheltered them from the cold air but still gave them a great moonlight vista over Sheep Point Cove. The conversation never strayed from financial matters, politics, and social issues. Alden knew enough about Laska to realize there would be little in the way of lighthearted banter. But it was a good conversation between men who were in general agreement with each other, enhanced somewhat by a gentle dose of Charles Alden’s ass-kissing of his presumed future employer.

After dinner they walked out back for a moment, sipping Cognac and discussing events in Hungary and Russia and Turkey and Latvia. Alden felt he was being te offisize="3">Asted on his knowledge and his views, and he did not mind. This was a job interview, or so he’d told himself.

They moved to the library. Alden commented on the man’s great collection of leather-bound tomes, and as they sat across from each other on antique leather sofas, the CIA political appointee praised the magnificent home. Laska shrugged, explained to the younger man that this was his summer cottage, or at least that’s what he called it in front of those with whom he did not keep up the façade of being a populist. He told Alden that he also owned a twenty-two-room penthouse apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, a beach house on Santa Barbara that was the largest in the county and one of the largest oceanfront properties in California, as well as a lodge in Aspen, which was the site of an annual political retreat that hosted four hundred.

Alden had been to the Aspen retreat, twice, but he did not want to embarrass his host by reminding him of this.

Laska refilled both men’s snifters with another splash of impeccable Denis-Mounié Cognac from the 1930s. “Any idea why I’ve asked you here today, Charles?”

Alden smiled, cocked his head. “I’m hoping it’s about a position, should President Kealty fail to win reelection.”

Laska looked above the eyeglasses resting low on his nose. He smiled. “I’d be proud to have you come aboard. I can think of a couple of key spots right off the top of my head where we could use you.”

“Great.”

“But it is bad form to begin selling the parlor furniture while grandfather is still upstairs on his deathbed. Would you agree?”

Alden said nothing for a moment. “So… I am not here to discuss my options for next January?”

Laska shrugged. His cashmere sweater barely moved as his narrow shoulders went up and down inside it. “You will be taken care of in a post-Kealty America. Do not fear. But no, that is not why you are here.”

Alden was at once both excited and confused. “Well, then. Why have you asked me here?”

Laska grabbed a leather-bound folder resting on the end table next to the sofa. He pulled out a sheaf of papers and placed them in his lap. “Judy Cochrane has been meeting with the Emir.”

Alden’s crossed legs uncrossed quickly, and he sat up straight. “Oh, okay. I need to be careful about that matter, as I am certain you understand. I can’t give you any information regarding—”

“I am not asking you anything,” Laska said, then smiled thinly. “ Yet. Just listen.”

Alden nodded stiffly.

“Mr. Yasin has agreed to allow the PCI to handle his representation in the Western District of Virginia for the Charlottesville attack three years ago.”

Alden said nothing.

“As part of our agreement with the Department of Justice, Judy and her team are not allowed to detail the capture of the Emir nor his imprisonment until the day he was delivered by the FBI to the Bureau of Prisons.”

“I’m sorry, Paul, but you are already treading in waters that are too deep for me.”

Laska kept talking as if Alden had not protested. “But the story he tells is quite incredible.”

Alden indulged the old man, who, quite possibly, held the key to ld t tAlden’s future. He explained, “The attorney general questioned me at length about any CIA involvement in the Emir’s case. We had no participation whatsoever, and I communicated that to him. That is already more than I should say to someone without the proper clearance.”

Laska shook his head, talked over the last part of Charles Alden’s words. “He says he was attacked on the street in Riyadh by five men, shot when he resisted, then kidnapped, brought to a location in the United States, and tortured for a number of days, before being handed over to the FBI.”

“Paul, I don’t want to hear—”

“And then the FBI shipped him off to some other location for several months, a so-called black-site prison, before delivering him to Florence, Colorado.”

Alden raised his eyebrows. “Frankly, Paul, this is starting to sound like a bad movie. Pure fantasy.”

But Laska relayed the Emir’s claims as fact. “He got a great look at four of the men who kidnapped and tortured him. And although the Emir is, if you believe the allegations against him, a terrorist, he is also quite an artist.” Laska took four pages from the file in his lap and offered them to Alden.