Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Sam spoke softly into his earpiece microphone as he snapped some pictures of the man. “This poor guy has taken a beating. Looks like the North Korean is tuning him up, trying to get him to talk, I guess.”

Clark was still outside the property in the Durango. “Is Riley the one asking the questions?”

Sam saw Riley speaking at that moment. Soon the Asian man backhanded the bound victim again.

“That’s my read on it. Sending the headshot now to Gavin.”

Gavin had been given the heads-up in Alexandria to expedite the processing of the image just as soon as it came through.

—

The conference call that kept all the men connected to one another by their headsets received a new guest just five minutes after Sam sent the image.

“Hey, guys. It’s Gavin. I just loaded the image. Expect it to take a half-hour or more, if there is a hit at all.”

“That’s fine. What about the property?”

“Owned by a Mexican bank. Did some digging through CIA, and traced it back to Grupo Pacífico.”

Ryan said, “Just like the plane Riley flew down on.”

“Bingo,” Biery confirmed. “Owned by Óscar Roblas. Doesn’t look like it’s a personal address. More like a place he loans out or throws parties in. Typical rich-guy stuff that the rest of us don’t ever—”

There was a pause on the line. Clark said, “Gavin? Did we lose you?”

“Uh . . . no. But you won’t believe this. Facial recog is complete.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m really not.” Gavin seemed stunned himself. “Oh, I see. I set it up so it would first run through the FBI and CIA’s database of wanted subjects. It saves time that way because it’s not just looking over a general database of—”

Jack Ryan, Jr., interjected over Biery’s explanation. “Who the fuck is it, Gavin?”

“Oh. Sorry. According to the FBI Most Wanted database, that man’s name is Adel Zarif, he is a forty-eight-year-old Iranian from—”

John Clark spoke for the rest of the team. “We know who he is.”

And it was true. Everyone in The Campus was aware of one of the most notorious terrorist bomb makers of the past fifteen years.

Caruso spoke next. “You know what this means, right?”

Clark did. “The IED yesterday.”

It sank in slowly to the five men surrounding the mansion. The perpetrator of the attempted assassination of the President of the United States, Jack’s father, was right in front of them.

And this clearly meant Riley and the North Koreans were involved as well. No one knew who the other ten men were, but if this had something to do with the attack on Jack Ryan, Sr., it seemed likely the Hispanics in the mix were Maldonado gunmen.

Clark said, “We are not calling this in to Mexican law enforcement.”

A universal agreement was reached immediately on this. No one was confident the Mexicans could take this place down before the men inside escaped. Then Clark added, “We could call Hendley and have him notify Mary Pat. She would contact Justice and they would put together an FBI package. Surely they have assets staged in Mexico City after what went down yesterday.”

No one spoke.

“Or we go after him now. There are a dozen men in there. Riley I’m not too concerned about. The RGB trains some decent combatants, but we’ve dealt with several in the past few weeks.”

Ryan said, “The other guys must be part of the Maldonado cartel. As a fighting force, they suck.”

Clark replied, “We don’t know who they are for sure. Best possible scenario is they are Maldonado men. If that is the case, I like our chances hitting that residence.”

Sam was the first to speak up. “We don’t know who all Riley is working with. All it’s going to take is for him to call up a friendly helo to land on the lawn to fly that guy away. That happens, we’re left with pictures only.”

Jack Ryan, Jr., had already decided he was going to hit that house in front of him, with or without the rest of The Campus. Those men had tried to kill his father, and they’d come damn close. The discussion on the commo net among his colleagues was academic to him, although he knew that without any help his chances for survival would be nil.

Clark said, “Okay. We are going to take that building down. We don’t have breaching charges, body armor, long guns, intel on the OPFOR, or an exfil plan. We probably don’t have much time, either. We do have pistols, the element of surprise, and a need. I want to hear everyone’s ideas, and I want to hear them now.”

The team spent the next five minutes on a plan. While they were doing so, Dom Caruso dropped over the eastern wall of the property, two hundred yards from Ryan and Driscoll on the northern side.

He found excellent cover by low-crawling through some flowering jacaranda. When he was in position he called over the network, “How are we going to cross all that open ground?”

Domingo Chavez answered this. “You need a distraction, and I’ve got an idea.”

—

Edward Riley was impressed with the Iranian’s ability to deal with pain. Certainly by now his jaw and nose were broken, the orbital bone of his skull looked like it had been cracked, and several of his teeth had been knocked out. Blood flowed easily from his mouth and nose and the swollen blackness under his left eye. But he’d said little more than “Allahu akbar” and some words Riley took to be curses.

The Englishman looked at his watch. He wanted to have this entire episode behind him in a day, but it wasn’t looking good. Even if the man talked right now, and that didn’t look likely, Riley would still have to go check out the location of this alleged computer where Zarif uploaded the file. He didn’t know if the man had any confederates here in the country, or if he’d simply gone to a library or an electronics shop, or even if he had loaded the video onto a mobile phone and mailed it to some random address. Somewhere, Riley was convinced, was evidence that could link North Korea to the assassination attempt the day before.

Suddenly there was a disturbance upstairs. Someone was calling out in Spanish from the balcony over the front door. Riley looked to the Cubans around him.

A Cuban who spoke English entered the room and addressed Riley and Kim. “They say a car is approaching up the drive. Mercedes. The driver is the only occupant.”

That didn’t sound like a threat to Riley, but it did sound like something he needed to deal with. He headed to the front door with the Cuban who spoke English. Zarif would remain out of sight because the front door was in a large entryway with wraparound stairs that shielded the expansive living area.

Riley opened the front door in time to see a well-dressed Latin man in his mid-forties climb out of his black Mercedes with his keys in his hand. His necktie was loose and his shirt was unbuttoned, and he staggered a little as he climbed up the steps.

“May I help you?” Riley asked.

“¿Qué?”

The Cuban spoke to the man. He was all the way in the entryway before he responded.

The Cuban said, “He’s asking where his uncle Óscar is.”

“Óscar Roblas?”

“Sí,” said the man. He was clearly drunk; Riley could see his Spanish was slurred. “Tío Óscar.”

“Tell him Óscar Roblas loaned this house to us tonight. He can call him if he wants, but I invite him to do so outside. We have an important business meeting under way.”

Riley put his hand on the man’s chest and started to push him toward the door. The man staggered some more, and then said something.

“He asks if he can use the bathroom before he leaves. He says it is an emergency.”