Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

THE FIRST ORDER of business was to check out the names Sloan and Alahad. That started with a check of the telephone book. Sure enough, there was a Mohammed Ala-had. He had an ad in the Yellow Pages. Persian and Oriental Rugs. For some reason, people didn't connect «Persia» with "Iran," a saving grace for a lot of rug merchants. The shop was on Wisconsin Avenue, about a mile from Raman's apartment, which was not in the least way remarkable. Similarly, there was a Mr. Joseph Sloan in the crisscross, whose telephone number was 536-4040, as opposed to Raman's 536-3040. A one-digit goof, which easily explained the wrong number on the Secret Service agent's answering machine.

The next step was pure form. The computer records of telephone calls were run by command. The massive numbers of them took almost a minute to run, even with knowledge of the probable dates… and there it came up on the agent's screen, a call to 202-536-3040 from 202-459-6777. But that wasn't Alahad's store number, was it? A further check showed -6777 as a pay phone two blocks from the shop. Odd. If he were that close to his shop, why drop a dime—actually a quarter now—to make the call?

Why not make another check? The agent was his squad's techno-genius, with a mustache and a marginal haircut. He'd been something less than a raving success working bank robberies, but had found foreign counterintelligence to his liking. It was like the engineering classes of his college days. You just kept picking at things. He'd also found that the foreign spies he chased thought the same way he did. Toss in his technical prowess… hmph, in the past month there had not been a call from the rug shop to 536-4040. He went back another month. No. How about the other direction? No, 536-4040 had never called 457-1100. Now, if he'd ordered a rug, and those things took time—must have, if the dealer had called to let the guy know it had finally come in… why hadn't there been a call about it in either direction?

The agent leaned over to the next desk. "Sylvia, want to take a look at this?"

"What is it, Donny?"

THE BLACKHORSE WAS fully on the ground now. Most of them were in their vehicles or attending their aircraft. The llth Armored Cavalry Regiment comprised 123 M1A2 Abrams main-battle tanks, 127 M3A4 Bradley scout vehicles, 16 M109A6 Paladin 155mm mobile guns, and 8 M270 Multiple-Launch Rocket System tracks, plus a total of 83 helicopters, 26 of which were AH-54D Apache attack choppers. Those were the shooting platforms. They were supported by hundreds of soft vehicles—mostly trucks to carry fuel, food, and ammunition—plus twenty extras locally called Water Buffaloes, a vital need in this part of the world.

The first order of business was to get everyone away from the POMCUS site. The tracked vehicles were driven onto low-boy trailers for the ride north to Abu Hadriyah, a small town with an airport and the designated assembly point for the 11th Cav. As every vehicle rolled out of its warehouse, it stopped on a pre-selected spot painted red. There the GPS navigation systems were checked against a known reference point. Two of the IVIS boxes were down. One of them announced the fact all by itself, sending a coded radio message to the regiment's support troop, demanding that it be replaced and repaired. The other was completely dead, and the crew had to figure it out for themselves. The large red square helped.

The trailer trucks were driven by Pakistanis, a few hundred of the thousands imported into the Saudi Kingdom to do menial labor. For the Abrams and Bradley crews, it would prove to be exciting, while they worked inside their tracks to make sure that everything was working. With the routine tasks done, drivers, loaders, and commanders stuck their heads out of their hatches, hoping to enjoy the view. What they saw was different from Fort Irwin but not terribly exciting. To the east was an oil pipeline. To the west was a lot of nothing. The crews watched anyway—the view was better than they'd experienced on the flight—except for the gunners, many of whom fought motion-sickness, a common problem for people in that position. It was almost as bad for those who could see. The local truckers, it seemed, were paid by the mile and not the hour. They drove like maniacs.

The Guardsmen were beginning to arrive now. They had nothing to do at the moment except set up the tents provided for them, drink lots of water, and exercise.

SUPERVISOR SPECIAL AGENT Hazel Loomis commanded this squad of ten agents. «Sissy» Loomis had been in FCI from the beginning of her career, virtually all of it in Washington. Approaching forty now, she still had the cheerleader look that had served her so well earlier in her time as a street agent. She also had a number of successful cases under her belt.

"This looks a little odd," Donny Selig told her, laying out his notes on her desk.

It didn't require much by way of explanation. Phone contacts between intelligence agents never included the words, "I have the microfilm." The most innocuous of messages were pre-selected to convey the proper information. Which was why they were called "code words." And it wasn't that the tradecraft was bad. It was just that if you knew what to look for, it looked like tradecraft. Loomis looked the data over, then looked up.

"Got addresses?"

"You bet, Sis," Selig told her.

"Then let's go see Mr. Sloan." The one bad part about promotion was that being a supervisor denied her the chance to hit the bricks. Not for this one, Loomis told herself.

AT LEAST THE F-15E Strike Eagle had a crew of two, allowing the pilot and weapons-systems operator to engage in conversation for the endless flight. The same was true of the six B-1B bomber crews; the Lancer even had enough area that people could lie down and sleep—not to mention a sit-down toilet. This meant that, unlike the fighter crews, they didn't have to shower immediately upon reaching Al Kharj, their final destination, south of Riyadh. The 366th Air Combat Wing had three designated "checkered flag" locations throughout the world. These were bases in anticipated trouble spots, with support equipment, fuel, and ordnance facilities maintained by small caretaker crews, who would be augmented by the 366th's own personnel, mainly flying in by chartered airliners. That included additional flight crews, so that, theoretically, the crew which had flown in from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho could indulge in crew rest, while another relief crew could, theoretically, fly the aircraft off to battle. Fortunately for all concerned, this wasn't necessary. Thoroughly exhausted airmen (and, now, — women) brought their birds in for landing, taxied off to their shelters, and dismounted, handing their charges over to maintenance personnel. The bomb-bay fuel tanks were removed first of all, and replaced with the appliances made to hold weapons, while the crews went off for long showers and briefings from intelligence officers. Over a period of five hours, the entire 366th combat strength was in Saudi, less one F-16C, which had developed avionics trouble and diverted to Bentwaters Royal Air Force Base in England.

"YES?" THE ELDERLY woman wasn't wearing a surgical mask. Sissy Loomis handed her one. It was the new form of greeting in America.

"Good morning, Mrs. Sloan. FBI," the agent said, holding up her ID.

"Yes?" She wasn't intimidated, but she was surprised.

"Mrs. Sloan, we're conducting an investigation, and we'd like to ask you a few questions. We just need to clear something up. Could you help us, please?"

"I suppose." Mrs. Joseph Sloan was over sixty, dressed neatly, and looked pleasant enough, if somewhat surprised by all this. Inside the apartment the TV was on, tuned to a local station by the sound of it. The weather forecast was running.

"May we come in? This is Agent Don Selig," she said, nodding her head to the techno-weenie. As usual, her friendly smile won the day; Mrs. Sloan didn't even put the mask on.