Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

"We want your permission to commence air operations to sweep the Gulf after dawn. We have never done this without your word," the air force chief pointed out.

"Permission is given," Daryaei told them. Well, he was awake now, the cleric told himself. "What else?"

"The Army of God is making its approach march to the border area. The operation is proceeding as scheduled." Surely this news would please him, the intelligence chief thought.

Mahmoud Haji nodded. He'd hoped for a decent night's sleep, in anticipation of being up long hours for the next few days, but it was his nature that, once awakened, he could not return to sleep. He looked at his desk clock— he didn't wear a watch—and decided that the day would have to begin.

"Will we surprise them?"

"Somewhat, certainly," Intelligence responded. "The army is under strict orders to maintain radio silence. The American listening posts are very sensitive, but they cannot hear nothing. When they reach Al Busayyah, we must expect detection, but then we will be ready to jump off, and it will be at night."

Daryaei shook his head. "Wait, what did our patrol boat tell us?"

"He reported an American destroyer or frigate, possibly with other ships, but that was all. We will have aircraft up to look in two hours."

"Their transport ships?"

"We don't know," Intelligence admitted. He'd hoped that they were past that.

"Find out!"

The two men took their leave with that order. Daryaei rang his servant for tea. He had another thought just then. All would be settled, or at least solved, when the Raman boy fulfilled his mission. The report was that he was in place, and had received his order. Why, then, hadn't he fulfilled it! the Ayatollah asked himself, with a building anger. He looked at the clock again. It was too early to make a call.

KEMPER HAD GIVEN his crew something akin to a stand-down. The automation of the Aegis ships made that possible, and so, starting two hours after the incident with the gunboat—missile boat, he corrected himself—crewmen were allowed to rotate off their battle stations, to relieve themselves, to get something to eat, and in many cases to pump a little iron. That had lasted an hour, with each officer and man having had fifteen minutes. They were all back now. It was two hours to nautical twilight. They were just under a hundred miles from Qatar, now heading west-northwest, after having dodged behind every island and oil platform that might confuse an enemy radar post. COMEDY had been through the tough part. The Gulf was far wider here. There was sea room to maneuver in and to make full use of his powerful sensors. The radar picture in Anzio's CIC showed a flight of four F-16s twenty miles north of his formation, their IFF codes clear on the display—his people had to be careful about that. It would have been better if there could be an AWACS aloft, but, he had just learned an hour before, all of those were deployed up north. Today, there would be a fight. It would not be the sort of thing Aegis had been designed for, or quite what he'd been trained for, but that was the Navy for you.

The decoy group he ordered south. Their job was done for now. With the sun up, there would be no disguising what COMEDY was and where they were going, he thought.

"HOW SURE OF this are you?" POTUS asked. "Christ, I've been alone with the guy a hundred times!"

"We know," Price assured him. "We know. Sir, it's hard to believe. I've known Jeff on and off—"

"He's the basketball guy. He told me who was going to win the NCAA finals. He was right. His point spread was right on."

"Yes, sir." Andrea had to agree with that, too. "Unfortunately, these items are a little hard to explain."

"Are you going to arrest him?"

"We can't." Murray took that one. "It's one of those situations where you know, or think you know, but can't prove anything. Pat here had an idea, though."

"Then let's hear it," Ryan ordered. His headache was back. No, that wasn't right. The intervening, brief period without a headache had ended. Bad enough that he'd been told of the vague possibility that the Secret Service was compromised, but now they thought they had proof—no, worse, he corrected himself, not good enough for proof, just more fucking suspicion! — that one of the people trusted to be around him and his family was a potential assassin. Would this never end? But he listened anyway.

"Actually, it's pretty simple," O'Day concluded.

"No!" Price said immediately. "What if—"

"We can control that. There won't be any real danger," the inspector assured everyone.

"Hold it," SWORDSMAN said. "You say you can smoke the guy out?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I actually get to do something instead of just sitting here like a goddamned king?"

"Yes, sir," Pat repeated.

"Where do I sign up?" Ryan asked rhetorically. "Let's do it."

"Mr. President—"

"Andrea, you'll be here, right?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"Then it's approved," POTUS told her. "He doesn't get near my family. I mean that. If he even looks at the elevator, you take him down yourself, Andrea, got that?"

"I understand, Mr. President. West Wing only."

With that, they walked downstairs to the Situation Room, where Arnie and the rest of the national-security team were watching a map display on a large-screen TV.

"OKAY, LET'S LIGHT up the sky," Kemper told the CIC crew. On command, Anzio and the other four Aegis ships flipped their SPY radars from standby to full radiated power. There was no percentage in hiding anymore. They were right under a commercial air route designated W-l 5, and any airline pilot could look down and see the small box of ships. When one did, he'd probably talk about it. The element of surprise had its practical limits.

In a second, the three big screens showed numerous air tracks. This had to be the busiest hunk of airspace outside O'Hare, Kemper thought. The IFF scan showed a flight of four F-16 fighters deployed northwest of his formation. There were six airliners aloft, and the day had scarcely started. Missile specialists ran practice tracks just to exercise the computers, but really the Aegis system was designed to be one of those supposedly all-powerful things that could sit still one second and raise hell the next. They'd come to the right place to do that.

THE FIRST IRANIAN fighters to head into the sky that day were two aged F-14 Tomcats from Shiraz. The Shah had purchased about eighty of the fighters from Grumman in the 1970s. Ten could still fly, with parts cannibalized from all the others or procured on the world's lively black market in combat-aircraft components. These flew southeast, overland to Bandar Abbas, then they increased speed and darted south to Abu Musa, passing just north of it, with the pilots driving and the backseaters scanning the surface with binoculars. The sun was plainly visible at twenty thousand feet, but on the surface there was still the semidarkness of nautical twilight.

One doesn't see ships from aloft, a fact often lost on both sailors and airmen. In most cases, ships are too small, and the surface of the sea too vast. What one sees, whether from a satellite photo or the unaided human eye, is the wake, a disturbance in the water much like an arrow with an oversized head—the bow and stern waves generated by the ship's passage through the water—and the foaming a straight line caused by the propellers is the arrow's shaft. The eye is drawn to such shapes as naturally as to the body of a woman, and at the apex of the V-shape, there one finds the ship. Or, in this case, many ships. They spotted the decoy group first, from forty miles away. The main body of COMEDY was identified a minute later.

THE PROBLEM FOR the ships was positive identification. Kemper couldn't risk killing an airliner, as USS Vincennes had once done. The four F-16s had already turned toward them when the radio call went out. He didn't have anyone aboard who spoke the language well enough to catch what they'd just said.