Arctic Fire (10 page)

“How about we settle on me looking sixty-three and acting fifty-three?” Carlson suggested as he sank back onto the sofa. “That work for you?”

“All right, Roger, all right.” The president chuckled as he sat behind his big desk. “So, how are you this fine, fine autumn morning?”

“Well, Mr. President, I woke up breathing.”

The president raised one eyebrow. “As I recall, that’s your favorite response to the question. It’s what you say every time I ask you.”

“You’re right, it is.” This was a first. The other seven men had never noticed that answer. At least, they’d never said anything about it. “I think it puts everything into perspective simply but elegantly, and I—”

“You woke up breathing all right,” the president interrupted, his tone turning measurably less friendly. “You woke up without a limp too.”

Carlson’s eyes raced to the president’s—and instantly he regretted his reaction. He hadn’t been taken off guard like that in years, and his transparent response to the remark was infuriating. He’d confirmed the truth with his shocked look like some peach-fuzz-covered adolescent would have to his father about breaking
a window with a baseball. The surprised expression had lasted only a second, but if he’d done that in the field, he’d be maggot-food right now.

“No cane when you went for your coffee at the Starbucks down the street from your house in Georgetown this morning,” the president continued, “but you were using one the other day when you went out to that place you people have in Reston.”

Here was more bad news. President Dorn knew about the web of safe houses they operated in Reston, a northern Virginia suburb of Washington. The houses looked like the typical neighborhood homes of normal upper-middle-class suburbanites, but they weren’t typical at all. Dorn probably knew about the underground corridors that connected them too.

“Excuse me?” Carlson said hesitantly.

“You heard me,” the president replied as he scanned a memo. “But I’ll say it again. The other day you were limping. Today you aren’t. The other day you had a cane. Today you don’t.”

There was no way for Carlson to deny any of this. Protesting would only make him look foolish. “So what?”

“Well, if you’re deceiving people who’ve worked under you for decades and who idolize the ground you walk on, why wouldn’t you deceive me someday? That’s how I look at it.”

Carlson made certain to stare back at the president with an unwavering gaze. “Is there a point to all of this?”

“There is, Roger,” Dorn acknowledged, putting the memo down. “I want you to know that I have great respect for what you and your people do and the dangers you and they face every day. Your organization is a valuable weapon in what I’ll call my twilight intelligence arsenal. It has been for many administrations, for many presidents before me. I get all that,” he muttered as though he didn’t get it at all, and didn’t care that he didn’t. He held up a hand when he saw that Carlson was about to speak, and his expression slowly became one of irreversible resolve. “But I’m
not going to let anyone around me run free, even if they’ve had that room to run for a long time. It’s too risky in this day and age, when every reporter out there is trying to break a career story every minute of the day and will stop at nothing to do it. So there will be limits to what you can do without my direct approval. Strict limits. I won’t always be watching, but I could be. Make it easy on yourself and assume I am. That’ll make it easier on
everyone
.” He hesitated. “Another thing, Roger. You’ll no longer have direct access to me. It’s too damn risky to have you traipsing in here as some hush-hush special advisor no one knows. Too many people are asking questions.

“So I’m going to put a buffer between us,” Dorn continued, “maybe even a couple of them. And that only makes sense because you’ll be meeting with this person a lot more than you’ve been meeting with me, much more than I’d ever have time for. See, I want to know exactly what you’re doing at all times because I’ll be approving all of your major initiatives before you execute any of them in the field. No more running free in the shadows, Roger. No more freedom to handle things any way you choose. I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but that’s the way it’s going to be. I am commander in chief of the United States of America and that’s an order.”

Carlson took a measured breath. He could have allowed that LNG tanker to sail into Boston Harbor and blow the city to hell—but he hadn’t. In fact, he’d lied to Maddux because he hadn’t told Dorn about the potential disaster that had been narrowly averted thanks to Maddux and his crew of Falcons, one of them in particular. About the plot Maddux had disrupted that would have killed so many people and thrown one of the nation’s biggest and most important cities into total chaos.

Carlson exhaled the breath as deliberately as he’d taken it in. Maybe next time he’d let that tanker explode; maybe next time he wouldn’t call the SEALs and avert the disaster. Maybe then the
president would have more respect for his twilight intelligence arsenal.

He gritted his teeth at the awful thought. He could never do that. He could never let all those people die. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did. Those were the people he’d taken a blood oath so long ago to protect.

“Don’t be upset with me, Roger,” the president kept going. “It’s all part of a process, all part of us figuring out how best to protect this country in difficult and changing times. Remember, at the end of the day we’re all on the same team. We all wear the same jersey. Don’t take it personally. You’ve made a great contribution to the country. You should be proud of most of what you’ve done.”

Carlson wanted to puke. He wasn’t proud of
most
of what he’d done. He was proud of
everything
. He had no regrets at all, and David Dorn needed to understand what an incredible insult he’d just tossed out there.

“Was there something else you wanted to see me about?” Carlson asked in a tone intended to make the president understand in no uncertain terms just how personally he’d taken everything. “Was there some other reason I was summoned to the mountain?” Carlson muted a satisfied smile when the president crossed his arms over his chest defensively. Dorn had gotten the damn message, and he’d gotten it good. “When I’m as busy protecting the country and
you
as I am.”

The president blinked several times and cleared his throat twice. “There’s been an inquiry about a young man named Troy Jensen. Do you know who he is?”

This time Carlson made sure his eyes shifted deliberately to the president’s and that his expression displayed no emotion whatsoever even though that was a very interesting bit of information he’d just gotten. “No,” he lied gruffly. He’d seen that intimidated shadow slide across the president’s face moments ago. The
sudden display of weakness and uncertainty that had appeared on the handsome face sitting behind the great desk was indescribably satisfying to Carlson. “No, I do not,” he lied again, just as convincingly.

The young man—one of Maddux’s Falcons—had stolen the leaky forty-foot fishing boat at ten o’clock last night and managed to sail it out of the small harbor fifty miles north of Shanghai by himself without attracting attention. Now he was a hundred nautical miles out in the Pacific Ocean, just a tiny dot on a vast dark canvas beneath a full moon. There were only two hours of darkness left before the sun would begin brightening the eastern horizon ahead of him. Fortunately, the skies were clear and the winds were calm. He doubted this bucket of rotting wood and rusty bolts could stand up to much in the way of weather. A squall line and a couple of ten-foot waves in a row and the thing would probably sink straight to the bottom.

He sure as hell didn’t want to be out here long enough to find out, because that fisherman back in town was going to figure out very soon that his boat was gone. It wouldn’t take much time for the local police to contact the Communist authorities in Beijing when the report of a stolen fishing boat came in. A few minutes after that, they’d scramble jets from several of China’s coastal air bases, and a short time later one of those jets would send a missile screaming through the hull of this thing, and then it would definitely go straight to the bottom—in lots of little pieces.

The authorities in Beijing were onto the stolen fishing boat gig. They figured anytime that report came in now that the perpetrator was a Western spy getting the hell out of Dodge. Three times out of four they were right.

The handheld GPS device indicated that he’d reached the rendezvous location seven minutes ago. Since then, he’d been drifting along in neutral. The ocean was fairly well illuminated tonight thanks to the full moon and the stars, and he’d come out of the wheelhouse to the foredeck to get a better view.

As he checked his watch for the third time in the last two minutes, the conning tower of the attack submarine USS
Nevada
broke through the surface of the ocean inside a massive boil of bubbles less than a hundred feet from the fishing boat. This was the fourth time he’d been removed from country this way, but it still startled him when the massive sub rose from the surface just beside him like that.

Tremendous relief rolled through his system now that the cavalry had arrived. God, it was a wonderful feeling.

A few minutes later he was aboard the
Nevada
and the fishing boat was headed to the bottom of the ocean after two explosives experts from the sub had detonated enough charges in its engine room to put a gaping hole in the hull.

J
ACK FOLLOWED
Bill’s longtime executive assistant into the spacious fortieth-floor office of the First Manhattan Bank headquarters and sat down in the wingback chair she pointed to.

“Your father should be back in a few.”

She was Rita Hayes, and her voice still had the faint strains of a Brooklyn accent she’d been trying to erase for years—at Bill’s suggestion. She was fifty-two and still very attractive and vivacious, but she’d never been married.

Which Jack had always found interesting. He’d caught her gazing at Bill in very affectionate ways before, though after thirty-three years together maybe that was understandable. Rita was good friends with Cheryl too. So there couldn’t be anything going on behind Cheryl’s back.

“Bill’s downstairs on the equity trading floor with the head of syndications,” she explained. “They’re going over final pricing on a new issue that’s hitting the street tomorrow.”

Rita was basically part of the Jensen family. She and Cheryl often rode horses together out in Connecticut on weekends, and then she’d join Cheryl and Bill for dinner afterward. So she heard all the family dirt. Every last speck of it, Jack assumed.

Still, she was a professional and never let on to what she knew. She never gave Jack attitude when they saw each other or spoke on the phone, which he appreciated.

“Want anything to drink while you wait?” Rita called over her shoulder.

“No thanks.”

When she reached the door, she stopped and turned around. “Was Bill expecting you? I didn’t see you on his calendar.”

Jack shook his head. “No, I just dropped in to say hi.” He saw the surprise in her expression. He’d never come by on his own like this before. He’d always been summoned. “I wanted to surprise him.”