“That’s not what-”
“Good, because it ain’t, not even close. It’s ugly shit, period. And revenge is a piss-poor motivator. It makes you sloppy, and sloppy is dead.”
“I know.”
“So what’re you going to do about it?”
“Talk to Gerry, I guess, and see what he says.”
“You better have one hell of a pitch,” Dominic said. “Hell, as it stands Gerry took a risk hiring you in the first place. Your dad would have a fit-”
“Let me worry about my dad, Dom.”
“Fine, but if you think Gerry’s just going to hand you a gun and say, ‘Go forth and make the world safe for democracy,’ you got another think coming. If you were to buy the farm, he’d be the one making the call.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“So,” Jack said, “if I talk to him, you guys’ll back me up?”
“For what it’s worth, sure,” Brian replied. “But this isn’t a democracy, Jack. Assuming he doesn’t shoot down the idea on the spot, he’ll probably run it by Sam.” Sam Granger was The Campus’s Chief of Operations. “I doubt he’s going to ask us.”
Jack nodded. “Probably right. Well, like you said, I’d better make my pitch a damn good one, then.”
14
AUTUMN WAS HERE. You could tell from the wind and the ice pack, which had begun pulling away from the coast to reveal the black water of the Arctic Ocean. It could not be colder without turning to ice, and there was plenty of that still in sight, just to remind one that summer up here was fleeting at best. Mother Nature remained as grim and heartless as ever, even under a sky of crystal blue and a few cotton-ball white clouds.
This place was not unlike his first Navy posting to Polyyarniy twelve years before, just as the Soviet Navy was starting to shut down. Oh, sure, they had a few ships left, most of them tied at the working ports of the Kola Fjord, manned by men who stayed in the Navy because they either had to or had nothing to go home to. There were a few ships with crews composed almost entirely of officers who actually got paid a few times a year. Vitaliy had been among the last men drafted into the former Soviet Navy and, to his astonishment, found himself liking the work.
After the mindless basic training he’d been made a junior starshina, or petty officer, and a bosun’s mate. It had been hard, backbreaking work but satisfying, and it had ended up giving him a useful trade. He’d profited personally from the demise of the Soviet Navy by buying at a discount an old but well-maintained T-4 amphibious landing craft that he’d nominally converted into a passenger craft. Mostly he took scientific parties, exploring the region for obscure reasons beyond his interest, while some were hunters looking to convert a polar bear into an expensive rug.
His charter for the week was waiting for him down the coast at a small fishing village. Two days ago he’d preloaded their equipment-a GAZ truck with all-wheel drive, new tires, and a fresh paint job, equipped with a heavy-duty A-frame, taking delivery from an anonymous driver who, like him, had probably been paid in euros. As any good captain did, Vitaliy had inspected the cargo and had been surprised to find the truck stripped of all identification codes, right down to the one on the engine block. While such a task wasn’t particularly complicated, and neither did it require a mechanic, something told Vitaliy that his charters hadn’t done the work themselves. So they’d come here, bought a GAZ in good condition, paid someone handsomely to strip it, then hired a private charter. Plenty of money to spread around and overly concerned with anonymity. What did that mean?
But there was no point in being too curious. Smart cats knew the danger of curiosity, and he liked to think he was smart enough. The euros would also take care of his memory, something in which his party seemed supremely confident; the leader of the group, clearly of Mediterranean descent, had told Vitaliy to call him Fred. It wasn’t so much an artifice as it was a moniker of convenience, almost a private joke between them, and Fred’s smirk during their initial meeting had confirmed it.
He watched his charter party come aboard and wave at him, and with that done, he signaled to Vanya, his engineer/deckhand, who cast off the lines. Vitaliy started the diesel engines and pulled away from the dock.
Soon enough he was in the fairway and headed out to sea. The black water didn’t exactly beckon, but it was where he and the boat belonged, and it felt good to be heading back out. All he needed to make the morning perfect was a tranquilizer, and that Vitaliy handled with an American Marlboro Lights 100 cigarette. And then the morning was perfect. The local fishing fleet had already cleared the harbor-such dreadful hours they worked-and the water was clear for easy navigation, with only a slight chopping breaking on the marker buoys.
As he passed the breakwater, he turned to starboard and headed east.
Per his instructions, Adnan had kept his team small, himself and three others that he trusted implicitly, just enough bodies to do the heavy lifting but not enough to present a problem when the inevitable conclusion to their mission arrived. He didn’t mind that part of it, actually. He would, after all, suffer the same general fate as his compatriots. A sad necessity, he thought. No, his biggest worry was that they might fail. Failure here would undoubtedly have a resonant effect on the larger operation, whatever that might be, and Adnan would do everything in his power to make sure that didn’t happen.
His life. Adnan smiled at the notion. Nonbelievers saw all this-trees and water and material possessions-as life. Nor was life defined by what you ate and drank and defiled with your bodily lusts. The time you spend on this earth is but preparation for what comes after, and if you are devout and obedient to the one true God, your reward will be glorious beyond imagining. What was less certain, Adnan realized, was his fate should he succeed here. Would he be given greater missions, or would his silence be more valuable to the jihad? He would prefer the former, if only to continue serving Allah, but if the latter was to be his destiny, then so be it. He would meet either outcome with the same equanimity, confident he’d lived his earthly life as best he could.
Whatever was to come, he thought, was in the future, and he would let that worry about itself. In the here and now he had a job to do. An important one, though he wasn’t sure how exactly it fit into the larger picture. That was for wiser minds.
They’d arrived at the fishing village the day before, after parting company with the driver who was to deliver their truck to the docks and into the hands of the charter captain they had hired. The village was largely abandoned, most of its occupants having moved on after the waters had gone barren from years of overfishing. What few villagers remained kept to themselves, scraping by as best they could as autumn moved toward winter. Adnan and his men, bundled in parkas and their faces covered in scarves against the cold, had drawn little attention, and the hostel manager, who was only too surprised and happy to have paying customers, asked them no questions-neither about where they had come from nor about their future travel plans. Even had the manager asked, Adnan couldn’t have answered if he’d wanted to. The future belonged to Allah, whether the rest of the world knew it or not.
It was dark in Paris, and there was a chill in the air that affected the two Arabs more than the Parisians. But that was an excuse for more wine, which was welcome. And the sidewalk tables had thinned out enough that they could talk more openly. If anyone was observing them, then he was being very careful about it. And you couldn’t be afraid of everything all the time, even in this business.