Tom Clancy - Locked On

The deputy director of the CIA did not reach out and take them.

“I’m sorry” was all he could say.

“You said they were not CIA. So you will not know these men. What is the harm?”

“Frankly, I am very disappointed that your true motivation for having me over this evening was nothing more than—”

“If you don’t know them, Charles, just hand the pages back to me, and you will not spend the next several years testifying as the former head of Clandestine Services of the Central Intelligence Agency. The man at the helm when an illegal rendition was performed in an allied nation against the direct orders of the President of the United States.”

Alden emitted a long sigh. In truth, he didn’t know what many of the CIA’s foot soldiers looked like, as he rarely left the seventh floor at Langley. Did Laska think the Agency’s paramilitary men just hung out at a water cooler on the top floor, covered in grease paint and battle gear, waiting for their next mission? Certainly, Alden told himself, he would not be able to recognize a drawing of any field man in the Special Activities Division, the CIA’s paramilitary arm and the operators who would have had the training to make this happen. After talking to AG Brannigan about the Emir’s capture a year earlier he’d gotten the impression DOJ thought the Emir had been picked up by some Middle Eastern intelligence agency for some personal beef and then snuck into the United States and dumped at the FBI’s door in order to curry favor at some later date. It was a mystery, yes, but it wasn’t anything Alden had to worry about.

He decided he’d take a look at the drawings, shake his head, and hand them back. If that was all it took to secure a position in a Laska foundation after his time in CIA ended, then so be it.

He shrugged. “I’ll indulge you and look at the pictures. But I won’t discuss this matter with you any further.”

Laska smiled. His square face widened. “It’s a deal.”

Alden took the pages, crossed his legs, and looked up at Laska. The CIA political appointee retained a slightly annoyed appearance while doing this.

Laska said, “What you have there are photocopies of sototaiome tracings Judy made of the Emir’s original drawings. The quality is not perfect, but I think they get the point across as to what the men look like.”

This first picture, just as he expected, was a detailed but not particularly lifelike sketch of a man’s face, a face Charles Alden did not recognize. The man was young, white, and his hair was shaded in with a pencil, presumably to indicate that it was black or dark brown. He wore some sort of bandage on his chin. Below the picture were some handwritten notes. “Kidnapper 1. American, 25 to 30 years old. 183cm. This man shot me on the street. He was wounded slightly on the face, hence the bandage.”

It was a decent drawing of a good-looking guy in his twenties, but otherwise Alden did not find the photo remarkable.

Charles shook his head no for Laska’s benefit and moved on.

Drawing number two was of another young man. He wore his hair shorter than the first man, and it was dark. He was nondescript in every other way. The text under the drawing said: “Kidnapper 2. 28 to 35 years old. Shorter than #1.”

Still, Alden didn’t know the man.

Another shake of the head, and on to the next drawing.

Alden’s eyes widened, and then narrowed, and he immediately worried that his host might have seen the change in his expression. This drawing was of an older man, much older than the others. Quickly he scanned down to the notes Saif Yasin had written about Kidnapper 3: “Maybe sixty years old. Healthy. Thin. Very strong and angry. Cold eyes. Speaks fair Gulf Arabic.”

Oh my God, Alden thought to himself, but he was careful to betray no more emotion to Paul Laska. His eyes flicked back up to the picture. Short hair lightly shaded as if to indicate that it was gray. Deep-chiseled features. Years etched into his skin. A square jaw.

Could it be? A sixty-year-old who was still out on the sharp edge? There were a few, but it certainly narrowed it down. One man did stand out, however, and he bore a more than passing resemblance to the drawing.

Alden thought he recognized this man, but he was not certain.

Until he turned to the next page.

A rendering of a Hispanic male, mid-forties, with short hair. The caption below his name said he was “Kidnapper 4: short but very powerful.”

God fucking damn it! Alden screamed it internally. John Clark and his partner. The Mexican guy from Rainbow? What was his name? Carlos Dominguez? No… that’s not it.

Alden did not try to hide his amazement now. He let the other pages fall to the floor of the library, and he held each photocopy in a hand. Clark in the left, the Hispanic fellow in the right.

These two men had sat in Alden’s office a year earlier. He’d sent them packing, cashiered them from the Central Intelligence Agency.

And now there was credible evidence linking them with a kidnapping operation that had infiltrated Saudi Arabia and captured the most wanted man in the world. Who the hell could they be working for? JSOC? No, the military has its own units to do that sort of thing. DIA, NSA? No way, this wasn’t their type of mission.

“You know these men? They are CIA?” Laska asked. His voice sounded so hopeful.

Alden looked away from the images, up to the old man on the other leather sofa. Laska held a brasked andy snifter as he leaned forward with excitement.

Alden took a moment to compose himself. He softly asked, “What can you do with this information?”

“My options are limited, as are yours. But you can order an internal investigation against the men, use other evidence to bring this to light.”

“They aren’t CIA.”

Laska cocked his square head and his bushy eyebrows rose. “But… clearly you recognize them.”

“I do. They left the Agency a year ago. I… I don’t know what they are supposed to be doing now, but they are long gone from CIA. Suffice it to say, wherever they are working, they were acting sub rosa when they went terrorist hunting.”

“Who are they?”

“John Clark is the white guy. The other… I can’t remember his name. It might be Dominguez. Something Hispanic, anyway. Puerto Rican, Mexican, something like that.”

Laska sipped his Cognac. “Well, it is clear that if they are not working for the CIA, then they are working for someone. And they had no authority whatsoever to detain Saif Yasin.”

Alden realized Laska did not understand the scope of this. The man was just trying to get that shit the Emir out of prison. “There’s more going on here than that. John Clark didn’t just work for Jack Ryan at CIA. He was Ryan’s driver and Ryan’s close friend. I imagine he still is. They worked black ops together before Ryan rose through the ranks. Their history goes back thirty years. That was one of the reasons I shit-canned the old bastard instead of letting him hang around as a trainer for a few years.”

Laska sat up straight. He even grinned a little, a rare occurrence. “Interesting.”

“Clark has a lot of blood on his hands. He was everything that was wrong with CIA operations. I don’t know many of the details, but I do know one thing.”

“What is that, Charles?”

“I know that President Ryan himself gave Clark the Medal of Honor for actions in Vietnam, then he pardoned him for his killings in the CIA.”

“A secret presidential pardon?”

“Yes.”

Alden was still shaking his head in amazement at this revelation, but slowly he regained control. Suddenly his job with a Laska foundation was forgotten. He all but berated the older man with his tone. “I don’t know what ground rules DOJ has given your organization, but I find it very hard to believe the attorneys would be allowed to pass this information to you. You aren’t a lawyer yourself, nor are you part of the legal team.”