“What is it, Scott?” Ryan asked.
“One of the naval officers murdered apparently had his sidearm with him.” A pause. “Off base. Which is against Italian regs. Our regs, too.” Another pause. “It was found at the scene. One of the terrorists was shot by it.”
Ryan shook his head. “Scott…”
“Sir, I’m just the messenger. The Italians are pissed off, but I will tell them, very quietly, to kiss my ass. If they can’t protect our military in their country, then our military has to protect itself.”
This relaxed Burgess some, Ryan saw immediately.
The President held up a hand to his secretary of state. “No, Scott. Thanks for saying what I’m thinking, but no. You have to be the chief diplomat. I’ll talk to President Morello, smooth that over. If a reporter asks me about it I’ll say I can’t comment on the investigation.” He shrugged. “And then I’ll say I’m personally glad our Navy flier shot one of the bastards.”
Ryan looked over to Arnie Van Damm, who said nothing.
Burgess said, “Obviously, Mr. President, our concern now is for other military personnel at off-base housing around Sigonella.”
Ryan said, “And other locations involved with the actions against ISIS. Bahrain, Frankfurt. Incirlik. Shit… We’ve got bases all over Europe, and in some degree or another, they all have some involvement with our actions in the Middle East.”
Burgess said, “That’s right. And we don’t have the space on base to hold everyone and their families. Off-base housing is a necessity.”
Ryan said, “As far as I’m concerned, pilots are on the front lines. I want them on base. Special operations forces, all senior officers, too. As far as Sigonella goes, I’ll get President Morello to allow us to post guards off base, MPs, for the short term, while we try to get all our men and women inside the wire.”
Burgess said, “Sorry, sir, but that sounds like a capitulation to terrorists.”
Ryan said, “It’s not a capitulation to terrorists. It’s a capitulation to this damn intel leak that’s causing all this! We don’t know how big or wide this goes, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for our servicemen and — women to get nailed again by something we clearly don’t understand.”
Burgess nodded on the monitor. “Yes, sir.”
The videoconference ended a moment later, and immediately Arnie Van Damm slid his chair closer to Ryan’s.
“This is going to rekindle a lot of hostility to the policy in the Middle East.”
Ryan nodded. “A couple years ago nobody wanted another land invasion of Iraq. And nobody has ever wanted our troops in Syria. Fighting this war with special operations forces and airpower, along with the Kurds and the Iraqi Army, is getting the job done.”
Arnie said, “I agree, but if ISIS targets our bases in Europe or, God forbid, in the U.S., then you’ll get hit from the right to do more, and to do it faster. You’ll get hit from the left as well, who see it as an opening, although they’ve got nothing to fill it with.”
Jack nodded. “I believe in our policy. The price of my belief is taking those hits.” The President took a moment to look out the window down at Iowa as it slipped slowly by. He fought the anger welling inside him, born from the frustration that he could not fight that which he did not understand, and so far no one had been able to make sense of the seemingly random scope of the new threats to his nation. It was as if a cancer had crept in, slowly at first, but metastasizing and growing in speed.
He worried that Sigonella was just the next phase of the sickness, and if he and his people didn’t get a handle on this soon, this cancer would spread uncontrollably. Knowing that Musa al-Matari was somewhere out there, in play, made him wonder if Iowa itself could be the next front line in this fight.
24
Jack Ryan, Jr., had arrived to work early this morning for the team run, and like the day before, he was quiet and reserved around the others. His mind was still on Indonesia and everything that had happened there, and what had happened because of everything that had happened there.
Midas ran along next to him for a while and tried to get a conversation started. The ex — Delta operator was several years older than Jack, but Jack had no problem seeing the man was obviously in peak physical condition, considering how he could run multiple eight-minute miles back-to-back and still keep up a conversation that made him sound like he was chatting over cocktails in a hotel lounge.
But Jack wasn’t in a chatty mood. His mind was on what he saw as his responsibility for the woman he’d never met who died alone and horribly in Minsk.
Jack barely paid attention to Midas, and finally Midas pushed ahead and ran on alone.
After morning PT, Jack showered and went into his office, where he started going through some e-mails while keeping an eye on the news out of Italy this morning. Of course he experienced all the anger and sadness most Americans felt when learning about this attack, but on top of this he couldn’t help thinking about what his father had said about the rash of leaks of unknown nature going on at the moment, and the possibility that one of these had led to the death of Jennifer Kincaid. Still, Jack had no inside information about the events at Sigonella; and though the attack on the U.S. Navy personnel was being reported as a terrorist incident, CNN had not reported that anyone had been specifically targeted. Instead, the reports so far had all framed it as if anti-American terrorists had shot up and blown up some rental property near the base, making the reasonable assumption they might kill some Americans in the process.
At eight-thirty a.m. Jack was called into Gerry Hendley’s office, where he found Gerry waiting with a small tray of coffee, pastries, and fresh fruit. Also present and sitting at the table across from Hendley’s desk was the IT director for The Campus, Gavin Biery. Gavin was a portly and rumpled man approaching sixty, and he was known around the office for never passing a box of donuts without picking one out, so Jack was surprised to see him with a bottle of water and a half-eaten orange in front of him for today’s breakfast-time meeting.
Jack said nothing, he just raised an eyebrow as he poured himself a cup of black coffee.
Gavin, however, was a perceptive guy. “It’s a diet, Ryan. Not all of us have four hours a day to work out.”
It was true Ryan was in great shape, and he worked out regularly, but he’d never worked out four hours in a single day in his life, and he didn’t bother to point out to Gavin that he hadn’t had time to go to the gym all week. Instead, he replied, “Good for you, Gav. I want you to live forever.”
“Only because I’m the guy who solves all your technological problems, of which you have many.”
Jack sat down. “Actually, it’s your great interpersonal skills that I’d miss most.”
Gerry Hendley had the TV on his wall tuned to CNN, and the daytime live feed out of Sigonella showed a smoldering house with a dozen emergency vehicles parked down the street in front of it. The sound was muted, but the chyron at the bottom of the screen read: TWELVE DEAD, FIVE INJURED IN U.S. NAVY ATTACK. Gerry and Gavin had been looking at it while they waited for Jack, but now Gerry turned away, picked up his coffee, and moved over to the table, where he sat down with the two men.
“Gavin, Jack asked me yesterday to reach out to the DNI and offer our help in locating some sort of security breach in the U.S. government. I spoke with Mary Pat Foley last night and offered any assistance with the analytics in the search for whatever leak was responsible for the horrible exposure and murder of Jennifer Kincaid.”