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President Jack Ryan rummaged through the bottom drawer of the desk in his study while Arnie van Damm took care of arranging the phone call. Ryan found the golf ball he was looking for and dropped it on the floor. Van Damm looked up at the clunk as the ball hit the carpet, and saw Ryan had kicked off his shoe.
“What?” Ryan said, rolling the ball around under his foot.
Van Damm held up both hands. “Hey,” he said. “This is your office. Who am I to judge?”
The phone gave an audible tone and the White House operator said, “Both parties are on the line, Mr. President.”
The director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense acknowledged that they were, indeed, there.
Ryan said, “Are you guys watching the news?”
“Just now,” Mary Pat said. “My deputy called me about thirty seconds before you did.”
“Same here,” Burgess said. “They’re saying Foreign Minister Li was injured but not badly. He’d be a likely target if Zhao’s behind this.”
“Could be,” the DNI said. “One thing’s certain, Li will leverage the hell out of this. Surviving an assassination attempt is a great way to boost political approval ratings.”
“Don’t remind me,” Ryan said. “My numbers went up fourteen points after the bombing in Mexico City. For some reason, not dying is seen as heroic. In any case, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that this bombing is related to everything else.”
“I agree,” the SecDef said. “If you put together the Orion explosion, the attack on the oil rig in Chad, the USS Rogue incident, and these events in Argentina—all lines converge on Zhao.”
“Maybe,” Mary Pat said. “But the woman who survived the attack in which the Rogue was involved described the pirates as being Indonesian or Malaysian.”
“That is true,” Burgess said. “But I’d put money on finding Zhao’s fingerprints on the payment to any of a half-dozen terrorist groups around Indonesia—as we did with Boko Haram in Chad. He’s pissed because our Freedom of Navigation ops are making him look bad, so he makes a play for one of our ships. Rogue wasn’t broadcasting on AIS and her schedule wasn’t advertised, but the fact that they were helping out as part of Malaysian antipiracy efforts was in all the papers down there. It was no secret that she was to berth in Australia prior to returning to her task force group. The average speed of a Cyclone-class PC is open-source. Anyone who wanted to target her would have had to wait for her to leave and start a countdown. Enough yachties sail through that area this time of year heading for Bali or Singapore that it would be easy to grab one when Rogue was presumably close enough to render aid.”
“A lot of moving parts,” Mary Pat said. “But it very nearly got the job done.”
“Not really,” Burgess said. “We have security measures to keep bad actors from getting too close to one of our ships, but at some point the VBSS teams have to close the distance with the RHIB to do their jobs.”
“I’m glad you brought up the terrorist groups, Bob,” Ryan said. “I’ve asked Dr. Miller to come in tomorrow and do some focused digging. Mary Pat, I’d appreciate it if you could get with her bosses and make sure she’s read into anything we have on Laskar Jihad, Jemaah Islamiyah . . . and that old East Timor independence group we looked into . . . What were they called?”
“Revolutionary Front,” the DNI said, demonstrating why she held the position she did.
“That’s the one,” Ryan continued. “We’ll cast a broad net. Hell, let’s get Dr. Miller access to cases on the He-Man Woman Haters Club if they have a chapter in that part of the world.”
Mary Pat chuckled. “As soon as we’re done here, Mr. President,” she said. “I’ll look into this Argentina thing as well.”
Ryan knew by “looking into it” Mary Pat would bring to bear the investigative and analytical brainpower of the sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies under her purview. For all the information silos, turf wars, and territorial fights between the various agencies, when a personal directive went out from the DNI, one could almost hear the collective mental gears turning in Washington.
“You’re excused, then, Mary Pat,” Ryan said. “And thanks for your work.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” the DNI said, and then disconnected.
“Now,” Ryan continued, “Bob, bring me up to speed on our ships in the WestPac.”
“We’ve moved everyone out of the storm path,” Burgess said. “Or at least we did. This typhoon is all over the damned place. Its westerly course has now veered sharply north, putting it on a collision course for Central Japan. The Bōsō Peninsula gives some protection to Tokyo Bay if a storm comes in from the east, but Typhoon Catelyn is heading straight up the pipe.”
“Leaving Yokosuka vulnerable,” Ryan said, picturing the geography around the American Naval facility.
“Correct,” the SecDef said. “The storm may well yet turn west again, but Admiral Blackley ordered all vessels out to sea. They’ll head north and wait out the storm in colder waters. Even if it continues that way, it’ll lose steam.”
“Very well,” Ryan said. He knew Vice Admiral Blackley well and trusted the man’s judgment. “Let me know if anything develops.”
Ryan leaned back on the couch and gave a nod to van Damm, who ended the call.
The CoS drummed his fingers on the desk, eyes narrow. Arnie van Damm’s mind was always moving near light speed, one or two steps ahead of most people in the room—when it came to politics, at least.
Ryan raised an eyebrow. “What’s on your mind?”
“Jack,” van Damm said. Calling him by his given name was a sure sign the CoS was about to dispense some serious advice. “I know you, and I know you’re counting on this upcoming summit to meet face-to-face with President Zhao.”
Ryan had the golf ball in his hand now, rolling it back and forth with his fingers. “I’ve met him before,” he said.
“True, but that meeting was absent the present facts.” Van Damm glanced at a scratch pad on the desk. “RSMC Tokyo clocks Typhoon Catelyn with sustained winds of a hundred five miles an hour. And she’s showing rapid intensification.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to call them ‘she’ anymore.”
Van Damm rolled his eyes. “If this genderless storm with a female name makes landfall anywhere near the Kantō Plain, Japan might be a little busy with recovery efforts to host the G20.”
“True,” Ryan said.
“The evidence against Zhao is mounting,” van Damm said. “And what we do have is pretty damned . . . well, damning. I know you want to meet him, shake his hand, get what you believe is a true measure of the man, but that might not be possible. Jack, you may well have to make a decision on Zhao without looking him in the eye.”
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