Tom Clancy - Locked On

Fifteen minutes later, they walked out of the parking exit and into the sunlight. There the three men melted in with the crowd; they passed police and firefighters and other first responders rushing into the building, and headed out into the hot afternoon streets to find a taxi.

While Jack, Dom, and al Darkur raced to the airport, Chavez had Hicks drop him off in a parking lot near the beach. Hicks returned alone to the airport, and Ding took a taxi back to the Kempinski to break down all the surveillance equipment in the bungalow.

Their operation against Rehan here in Dubai was compromised, and that was putting it mildly. There would be no way the three men could go back to the bungalow and wait for Rehan to return; the heat would be turned up too high after the massive shootout. There would be bodies on the evening news in a city that did not have much in the way of crime, and the comings and goings of all foreigners would face tighter scrutiny. Ding had instructed Hicks to call Captain Reid and have the Gulfstream ready to go asap, but Chavez wouldn’t be on it himself. He’d need a few hours to clean up all traces of their activities at the Kempinski, and he’d just have to find another way out of the country after that.

Hicks landed the chopper right where he’d picked it up, then met Sherman at the bottom of the stairs to the Gulfstream. She’d given the man working the desk at the FBO ten thousand euros when he’d come looking for the missing helicopter, and she felt reasonably certain he’d keep his mouth shut until they were wheels-up.

Once Jack, Dom, and Mohammed arrived in their taxi, they boarded the plane, and Helen Reid called the tower to let them know they were ready to execute their flight plan.

Their customs departure had been taken care of by Ms. Sherman, with the help of another ten thousand euros.

They flew Mohammed al Darkur to Istanbul. He would make his own way back to Peshawar. They all agreed it would be dangerous for him to return to his home country. If Rehan was willing to take a step as big as his Dubai attack, there was no question he would work to have al Darkur killed as soon as the major returned. But Mohammed assured the Americans he knew a place where he could lie low, away from the elements of the ISI that were plotting against the civilian leadership. He also promised them he would find where Sam Driscoll was being kept and report back as soon as possible.

58

Four days after returning from Dubai, Jack Ryan Jr. had an appointment that he could not cancel. It was November 6, Election Day, and Jack headed up to Baltimore in the late morning to be with his family.

Jack Ryan Sr. headed down to his local polling place in the morning with Cathy, surrounded by reporters. After that he returned home to spend the day with his family, with plans to head down to the Marriott Waterfront to give his acceptance speech that evening.

Or րack his concession speech, depending on the results in a few key battleground states.

The Clark controversy had hurt him, there was no denying this. Every show from 60 Minutes to Entertainment Tonight had found an angle on the story, and every talking head on the news had something to say about it. Ryan took the high road throughout the last few weeks of his campaign, he’d made his statements regarding his friend, and he’d done his best to frame the story as a political attack on him, Jack Ryan, and not honest justice.

This worked with his base, and it swayed some undecided. But the unanswered questions as to the actual relationship between Jack Ryan and the mysterious man on the run from the government tipped many undecided toward Edward Kealty. The media framed the Ryan — Clark relationship as if the latter were the personal assassin for the former.

And whatever one could say about President Kealty, there was certainly no chance he possessed that particular skeleton in his closet.

When Jack Junior arrived at his parents’ house in the early afternoon, he drove through the security cordon, and a few members of the press took a picture of the yellow Hummer with Jack behind the wheel, but his windows were tinted and he wore aviator sunglasses.

When he came in through the kitchen he saw his dad standing there, alone in his shirtsleeves.

The two men embraced, and then Senior took a step back.

“What’s with the shades?”

Jack Junior took off his sunglasses, revealing bruising around his right eye. It was faint but still gray, and it was plain that it had been much worse.

In addition to the bruised skin, blood vessels in his eye had broken, and much of the eye was bright red.

Ryan Sr. looked at his son’s face for a moment and then said, “Quick, before your mom comes downstairs. Into the study.”

A minute later, the two men stood in the study with the door closed. Senior kept his voice down. “Jesus, Jack, what the hell happened to you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“I don’t give a damn. What do all the parts of your body I can’t see look like?”

Jack smiled. Sometimes his dad said things that showed him that the old man understood. “Not too bad. It’s getting better.”

“This happened in the field?”

“Yeah. I need to just leave it at that. Not for me. For you. You’re about to be the President, after all.”

Jack Ryan Sr. sighed slowly, leaned forward, and looked into his son’s eyeball. “Your mother is going to throw a—”

“I’ll keep my shades on.”

Senior looked at Junior. “Son. I couldn’t have pulled that trick over on Mom thirty years ago. It sure as hell won’t work now.”

“What should I do?”

Senior thought it over. “You’ll show her. She’s an ophthalmic surgeon, for crying out loud. I want her to check you out. Tell her you don’t want to talk about it. She won’t like it, not one bit, but you are not lying to your mother. We can keep details from her, but we aren’t lying.”

“Okay,” the son said.

“It’s a slipperyۀ ar slope, but we just have to do what’s right.”

“Yeah.”

Dr. Cathy Ryan came into the study a minute later, and within seconds she had led her son by the arm into the bathroom. Here Cathy had Junior sit at the vanity while she held his eye open and checked it carefully with a penlight.

“What happened?” Her voice was clipped and professional. The eye was his mom’s area of expertise, and she would, or at least Jack hoped she would, view an injury here more professionally and dispassionately than she would had he hurt something else.

“I got hit with something.”

Dr. Ryan did not stop examining her patient to say, “No shit, Sherlock. What did you get hit with?”

Her husband was correct — Cathy did not like her questions about the origins of the injury being deflected.

Jack Junior responded guardedly, “I guess you could say I bumped heads with a guy.”

“Any vision issues? Headaches?”

“At first, yes. Bled a little from that cut on the nose. But not anymore.”

“Well, he got you right in your orbit. This is a nasty subcutaneous hematoma. How long ago?”

“Five days, give or take.”

Cathy let go of his eye and stepped back. “You should have come right over. The trauma necessary to cause this amount of hemorrhaging on the eye and the tissue around it could have easily detached your retina.”

Jack wanted to say something clever, but he caught a look from his dad. Now was not the time to be cute. “Okay. If it happens again, I will—”

“Why would it happen again?”

Junior shrugged. “It won’t. Thanks for checking it out.” He started to get up from the chair.

“Sit back down. I can’t do anything for the subcutaneous hematoma, but I can mask that bruising on your nose and orbit.”