Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

Why should I trust you? You're reporters. The artless words of a student, perhaps, but deeply wounding even so. Because those words had been earned, Plumber told himself.

"What else?" he asked.

"As far as I know they don't even know the circumstances of Buck Zimmer's death, just that he died on duty. Evidently, Carol was pregnant with their youngest when he died. Liz Elliot tried to get a story out that Ryan was fooling around and the baby was his. I got suckered."

A long breath. "Yeah. Me, too."

"So, what are you going to do about it, John?"

He looked up. "I want to confirm a few things."

"The one at MIT is named Peter. Computer science. The one going to Charlottesville, I think her name is Al-jsha. I don't know the name of the one graduating high school, but I could look that up. I have dates for the purchase of this business. It's a sub-chapter-S corporation. It all tallies with the Colombian mission. Ryan does Christmas for them every year. Cathy, too. I don't know how they'll work that now. Pretty well, probably." Holtzman chuckled. "He's good at keeping secrets."

"And the CIA guy who—"

"I know him. No names. He found out that some punks were annoying Carol. He had a little chat with them. The police have records. I've seen them," Holtzman told him. "He's an interesting guy. He's the one who got Gerasimov's wife and daughter out. Carol thinks he's a great big teddy bear. He's also the guy who rescued Koga. Serious player."

"Give me a day. One day," Plumber said.

"Fair enough." The drive back to Ritchie Highway passed without another word.

"DR. RYAN?" BOTH heads turned. It was Captain Overton, sticking his head in the door.

"What is it?" Cathy asked, looking up from a journal article.

"Ma'am, there's something happening that the kids might like to see, with your permission. All of you, if you want."

Two minutes later they were all in the back of a Hummer, heading into the woods, close to the perimeter fence. The vehicle stopped two hundred yards away. The captain and a corporal led them the rest of the way, to within fifty feet.

"Shh," the corporal said to SANDBOX. He held binoculars to her eyes.

"Neat!" Jack Junior thought.

"Will she be scared of us?" Sally asked.

"No, nobody hunts them here, and they're used to the vehicles," Overton told them. "That's Elvira, she's the second-oldest doe here."

She'd given birth only minutes before. Elvira was getting up now, licking the newborn fawn whose eyes were confused by a new world it had no reason to expect.

"Bambi!" Katie Ryan observed, being an expert on the Disney film. It only took minutes, and then the fawn wobbled to its—they couldn't tell the gender yet—feet.

"Okay. Katie?"

"Yes?" she asked, not looking away.

"You get to give her her name," Captain Overton told the toddler. It was a tradition here.

"Miss Marlene," SANDBOX said without hesitation.

AS THE SAYING WENT, miles and miles of miles and miles. The road was about as boring as any civil engineer could make, but it hadn't been anyone's fault. So was the land. Brown and Holbrook now knew why the Mountain Men had become Mountain Men. At least there was scenery there. They could have driven faster, but it took time to learn the handling characteristics of this beast, and so they rarely got above fifty. That earned them the poisonous looks of every other driver on 1-90, especially the cowboy-hatted K-Whopper owner-operators who thought the unlimited speed limit in eastern Montana was just great, plus the occasional lawyer—they had to be lawyers—in German muscle cars who blazed by their truck as though it were a cattle-feeder.

They also found it was hard work. Both men were pretty tired from all the preparation. All the weeks of effort to set up the truck, mix the explosives, cast the bullets, and then embed them. It had all made for little sleep, and there was nothing like driving a western interstate highway to put a man to sleep. Their first overnight was at a motel in Sheridan, just over the line into Wyoming. Getting that far, their first day driving the damned thing, had almost been their undoing, especially negotiating the split of 1-90 and 1-94 in Billings. They'd known that the cement truck would corner about as well as a hog on ice, but actually experiencing it had exceeded their worst fears. They ended up sleeping past eight that morning.

The motel was actually a truck stop of sorts that catered both to private cars and to interstate freight carriers. The dining room served a hearty breakfast, wolfed down by a lot of rugged-looking independent men, and a few similarly minded women. Breakfast conversation was predictable.

"Gotta be rag-head sunzabitches," opined a big-bellied trucker with tattoos on his beefy forearms.

"Think so?" Ernie Brown asked from down the counter, hoping to get a feel for how these kindred souls felt about things.

"Who else would go after younguns? Sunzabitches." The driver returned to his blueberry pancakes. "If the TV has it right, those two cops got it done," a milk hauler announced. "Five head shots. Whoa!"

"What about the one guy who went down hard, standing up like that against six riflemen! With a pistol. Dropped three of them, maybe four. There died a real American lawman." He looked up from his pancakes again. This one had a load of cattle. "He's earned his place in Valhalla, and that's for damn sure."

"Hey, they were feds, man," Holbrook said, chewing on his toast. "They ain't heroes. What about—"

"You can stick that one, good buddy," the milk hauler warned. "I don't wanna hear it. There was twenty, thirty children in that place." Another driver chimed in. "And that black kid, rollin' on in with his -16. Damn, like when I was in the Cav for the Second of Happy Valley. I wouldn't mind buying that boy a beer, maybe shake his hand."

"You were AirCav?" the cattle hauler asked, turning away from his breakfast. "Charlie, First of the Seventh." He turned to show the oversized patch of the First Air Cavalry Division on his leather jacket.

"Gary Owen, bro'! Delta, Second/Seventh." He stood up from the counter and walked over to take the man's hand. "Where you outa?"

"Seattle. That's mine out there with the machine parts. Heading for St. Louis. Gary Owen. Jesus, nice to hear that one again."

"Every time I drive through here…"

"You bet. We got brothers buried out yonder at Little Big Horn. Always say a little prayer for 'em when I come through."

"Shit." The two men shook hands again.

"Mike Fallen."

"Tim Yeager." The two Mountain Men had not just come into the room for breakfast. These were their kind of people. Supposed to be, anyway. Rugged individualists. Federal cops as heroes? What the hell was that all about?

"Boy, we find out who bankrolled this job, I hope that Ryan fella knows what to do 'bout it," machine parts said.

"Ex-Marine," cattle replied. "He ain't one of them. He's one of us. Finally."

"You may be right. Somebody's gotta pay for this one, and I hope we get the right people to do the collectin'."

"Damn right." the milk hauler agreed from his spot on the counter.

"Well." Ernie Brown stood. "Time for us to boogie on down the road."

The others nearby took a cursory look, and that was all, as the truckers returned to their informal opinion poll.

"IF YOU DON'T feel better by tomorrow, you're going to the doctor, and that's final!" she said.

"Oh, I'll be all right." But that protestation came out as a groan. He wondered if this was Hong Kong flu or something else. Not that he knew the difference. Few people did, and in a real sense that included docs—and he did know that. What would they tell him? Rest, liquids, aspirin, which he was already doing. He felt as though he'd been placed in a bag and beaten with baseball bats, and all the traveling didn't help. Nobody liked traveling. Everyone liked being somewhere else, but getting there was always a pain in the… everywhere, he grumped. He allowed himself to fade back off to sleep, hoping his wife wouldn't worry too much. He'd feel better by tomorrow. These things always went away. He had a comfortable bed, and a TV controller. As long as he didn't move around it didn't hurt… much. It couldn't get any worse. Then it would get better. It always did.