Jack Ryan 2 - Patriot Games (46 page)

“And what's your name?” one finally asked Robby. He gave the woman his name and rank, but not his serial number.

“What are you doing here?” she persisted.

“We're friends. I drove him tip here.” You dumbass.

“And what do you think of all this?”

“What do you think I think? If that was your friend's little girl up there, what the hell would you think?” the pilot snapped back at her.

“Do you know who did it?”

“I fly airplanes for a living. I'm not a cop. Ask them.”

“They're not talking.”

Robby smiled thinly. “Well, score one for the good guys. Lady, why don't you leave that man alone? If you were going through what he is, do you think you would want a half-dozen strangers asking you these kind of questions? That's a human being over there, y'know? And he's my friend and I don't like what you people are doing to him.”

“Look, Commander, we know that his wife and daughter were attacked by Terrorists --”

“Says who?” Jackson demanded.

“Who else would it be? Do you think we're stupid?” Robby didn't answer that. “This is news -- it's the first attack by a foreign terrorist group on American soil, if we're reading this right. That is important. The people have a right to know what happened and why,” the reporter said reasonably.

She's right, Robby admitted reluctantly to himself. He didn't like it, but she was right. Damn.

“Would it make you feel any better to know that I do have a kid about that age? Mine's a boy,” she said. The reporter actually seemed sympathetic.

Jackson searched for something to dislike about her. “Answer me this: if you have a chance to interview the people who did this, would you do it?”

“That's my job. We need to know where they're coming from.”

“Where they're comin' from, lady, is they kill people for the fun of it. It's all part of their game.” Robby remembered intelligence reports he'd seen while in the Eastern Med. “Back a couple of years ago -- you never heard this from me, okay?”

“Off the record,” she said solemnly.

"I was on a carrier off Beirut, okay? We had intelligence reports -- and pictures -- of people from Europe who flew in to do some killing. They were mainly kids, musta been from good families -- I mean, from the way they dressed. No shit, this is for real, I saw the friggin' pictures. They joined up with some of the crazies, got guns, and just started blasting away, at random, for the pure hell of it. They shot from those high-rise hotels and office buildings into the streets. With a rifle you can hit from a thousand yards away. Something moves -- boom, they blast it with automatic weapons fire. Then they got to go home. They were killing people, for fun! Maybe some of them grew up to be real terrorists, I don't know. It was pretty sickening stuff, not the sort of thing you forget. That's the kind of people we're talking about here, okay?

“I don't give a good goddamn about their point of view, lady! When I was a little kid in Alabama, we had problems with people like that, those assholes in the Klan. I don't give a damn about their point of view, either. The only good thing about the Klan was they were idiots. The terrorists we got running around now are a lot more efficient. Maybe that makes them more legitimate in your eyes, but not mine.”

“That thing in Beirut never made the papers,” the reporter said.

“I know for a fact that one reporter saw it. Maybe he figured that nobody would believe it. I don't know that I would have without the photos. But I saw 'em. You got my word on that, lady.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“That I can't say -- but they were good enough to see their shiny young faces.” The photos had been made by U.S. and Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.

“So what do you do about it?”

“If you could arrange to have all these bastards in one place, I think we and the Marines could figure something out,” Robby replied, voicing a wish common to professional soldiers throughout the world. “We might even invite you newsies to the wake. Who the hell is that?” Two new people came into the room.

Jack was too tired to be fully coherent. The news that Sally was out of immediate danger had been like a giant weight leaving his shoulders, and he was waiting for the chance to see his wife, who would soon be moved to a regular hospital floor. A few feet away, Wayson, the British security officer, watched with unconcealed contempt, refusing even to give his name to the reporters who asked. The State Police officers were unable to keep the press away, though hospital personnel flatly refused to let the TV equipment in the front door, and were able to make that stick. The question that kept repeating was. Who did it? Jack said he didn't know, though he thought he did. It was probably the people he'd decided not to worry about.

It could have been worse, he told himself. At least it was now probable that Sally would be alive at the end of the week. His daughter was not dead because of his misjudgment. That was some consolation.

“Mr. Ryan?” one of the new visitors asked.

“Yeah?” Jack was too exhausted to look up. He was awake only because of adrenaline now. His nerves were too ragged to allow him sleep, much as he needed it.

“I'm Special Agent Ed Donoho, Boston Field Office of the FBI. I have somebody who wants to say something to you.”

Nobody ever said that Paddy O'Neil was stupid, Donoho thought. As soon as the report had made the Eleven O'clock News, the man from Sinn Fein had asked his FBI “escort” if he might fly down to Baltimore. Donoho was in no position to deny him the right, and had been co-opted into bringing the man himself on the first available plane into BWI.

“Mr. Ryan,” O'Neil said with a voice that dripped sympathy, “I understand that the condition of your child has been upgraded. I hope that my prayers had something to do with it, and . . .”

It took Ryan over ten seconds to recognize the face that he'd seen a few days before on TV. His mouth slowly dropped open as his eyes widened. For some reason he didn't hear what the man was saying. The words came through his ears, but, as though they were in some unknown tongue, his brain did not assemble them into speech. All he saw was the man's throat, five feet away. Just about five feet, was what his brain told him.

“Uh-oh,” Robby said on the other side of the room. He stood as his friend went beet-red. Two seconds later, Ryan's face was as pale as the collar on his white cotton shirt. Jack's feet shifted, sliding straight beneath his body as he leaned forward on the couch.

Robby pushed past the FBI agent as Ryan launched himself from the couch, hands stretching out for O'Neil's neck. Jackson's shoulder caught his friend's chest, and the pilot wrapped Jack up in a bear hug, trying to push him backward as three photographers recorded the scene. Jack didn't make a sound, but Robby knew exactly what he wanted to do. Jackson had leverage going for him, and pushed Ryan back, hurling him onto the couch. He turned quickly.

“Get that asshole outa here before I kill him!” Jackson was four inches shorter than the Irishman, but his rage was scarcely less than Ryan's. “Get that terrorist bastard out of here!”

“Officer!” Special Agent Donoho pointed to a state trooper, who grabbed O'Neil and dragged him from the room in an instant. For some reason the reporters followed as O'Neil loudly protested his innocence.

“Are you out of your fucking mind!” Jackson snarled at the FBI agent.

“Cool down, Commander. I'm on your side, okay? Cool it down some.”

Jackson sat down beside Ryan, who was breathing like a horse at the end of a race while he stared at the floor. Donoho sat down on the other side.

“Mr. Ryan, I couldn't keep him from coming down. I'm sorry, but we can't do that. He wanted to tell you -- shit, all the way down on the plane, he told me that his outfit had nothing to do with this; that it would be a disaster for them. He wanted to extend his sympathy, I guess.” The agent hated himself for saying that, even though it was true enough. He hated himself even more because he'd almost started to like Paddy O'Neil over the past week. The front man for Sinn Fein was a person of considerable charm, a man with a gift for presenting his point of view in a reasonable way. Ed Donoho asked himself why he'd been assigned to this job. Why couldn't they have picked an Italian? He knew the answer to that, of course, but just because there was a reason didn't mean that he had to like it. “I'll make sure he doesn't bother you anymore.”

“You do that,” Robby said.

Donoho went back into the hall, and unsurprisingly found O'Neil giving his spiel to the reporters. Mr. Ryan is distraught, he was saying, as any family man would be in similar circumstances. His first exposure to the man the previous week had given him a feeling of distaste. Then he'd started to admire his skill and charm. Now Donoho's reaction to the man's words was one of loathing. An idea blinked on in his head. He wondered if the Bureau would approve and decided it was worth the risk. First the agent grabbed a state trooper by the arm and made sure that the man wouldn't get close to Ryan again. Next he got hold of a photographer and talked to him briefly. Together they found a doctor.

“No, absolutely not,” the surgeon replied to the initial request.

“Hey, Doc,” the photojournalist said. “My wife's pregnant with our first. If it'll help this guy, I'm for it. This one doesn't make the papers. You got my word. Doc.”

“I think it'll help,” the FBI agent said. “I really do.”

Ten minutes later Donoho and the photographer stripped off their scrub clothing. The FBI agent took the film cassette and tucked it in his pocket. Before he took O'Neil back to the airport, he made a call to headquarters in Washington, and two agents drove out to Ryan's home on Peregrine Cliff. They didn't have any problem with the alarm system.

Jack had been awake for more than twenty-four hours now. If he'd been able to think about it, he would have marveled at the fact that he was awake and functional, though the latter observation would have been a matter of dispute to anyone who saw him walking. He was alone now. Robby was off attending to something that he couldn't remember.

He would have been alone in any case. Twenty minutes earlier, Cathy had been moved into the main University Hospital complex, and Jack had to go see her. He walked like a man facing execution down a drab corridor of glazed institutional brick. He turned a corner and saw what room it had to be. A pair of state troopers was standing there. They watched him approach, and Jack watched their eyes for a sign that they knew all of this was his fault, that his wife and daughter had nearly died because he'd decided that there was nothing to worry about. Not once in his life had Jack experienced failure, and its bitter taste made him think that the whole world would hold him in the same contempt he felt for himself.

You're so fucking smart.

It seemed to his senses that he did not so much approach the door -- it approached him, looming ever larger in his sight. Behind the door was the woman he loved. The woman who had nearly died because of his confidence in himself. What would she say to him? Did he dare to find out? Jack stood at the door for a moment. The troopers tried not to stare at him. Perhaps they felt sympathy, Jack thought, knowing that he didn't deserve it. The doorknob was cold, accusing metal in his hand as he entered the room.

Cathy was lying in her single-bed room. Her arm was in a cast. An enormous purple bruise covered the right side of her face and there was a bandage over half her forehead. Her eyes were open but almost lifeless, staring at a television that wasn't on. Jack moved toward her as though asleep. A nurse had set a chair alongside the bed. He sat in it, and took his wife's hand while he tried to think of something he could say to the wife he had failed. Her face turned toward his. Her eyes were blackened and full of tears.

“I'm sorry. Jack,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I knew she was fooling with the seat belt, but I didn't do anything because I was in a hurry -- and then that truck came, and I didn't have time to -- if I had made sure she was strapped in, Sally would be fine . . . but I was in a hurry,” she finished, and looked away. “Jack, I'm so sorry.”

My God, she thinks it's her fault . . . what do I say now?

“She's going to be okay, babe,” Ryan managed to say, stunned at what he'd just heard. He held Cathy's hand to his face and kissed it. “And so are you. That's the only thing that matters now.”

“But --” She stared at the far wall.

“No 'buts.' ”

Her face turned back. Cathy tried to smile but tears were rolling from her eyes. “I talked to Doctor Ellingstone at Hopkins -- he came over and saw Sally. He says -- he says she'll be okay. He says that Shapiro saved her life.”

“I know.”

“I haven't even seen her -- I remember seeing the bridge and then I woke up two hours ago, and -- oh, Jack!” Her hand closed on his like a claw. He leaned forward to kiss her, but before their lips touched, both started weeping.

“It's okay, Cathy,” Jack said, and he started to believe that it really was, or at least that it would be so again. His world had not ended, not quite.

But someone else's will, Ryan told himself. The thought was a quiet, distant one, voiced in a part of his mind that was already looking at the future while the present occupied his sight. Seeing his wife weeping tears caused by someone else started a cold rage in him which only that someone's death could ever warm.

The time for grief was already ending, carried away by his own tears. Though it had not yet happened, Ryan's intellect was already beginning to think of the time when his emotions would be at rest -- most of them. One would remain. He would control it, but it would also control him. He would not feel like a whole man again until he was purged of it.

One can only weep for so long; it is as though each tear carries a finite amount of emotion away with it. Cathy stopped first. She used her hand to wipe her husband's face. She managed a real smile now. Jack hadn't shaved. It was like rubbing sandpaper.

“What time is it?”

“Ten-thirty.” Jack didn't have to check his watch.

“You need sleep, Jack,” she said. “You have to stay healthy, too.”