the flight. Clark had lucked out and gotten a first-class seat, 4C. On the aisle, which was useful. He thought back to a recent commercial flight, but he’d had a pistol back then, unbeknownst to the British Airways cabin crew; would have alarmed them about as much as a carry-on bag full of dynamite sticks. Well, flight attendants were pretty girls for the most part, and it wouldn’t do to annoy them in any way. They worked hard for their lowly salaries. Hadi walked aboard with three people ahead of him, John saw, and ended up in 1A, the most forward window seat on the left side, maybe fifteen feet ahead of Clark and to the left. Three steps and he could snap the guy’s neck like a twig. He hadn’t done that, exactly, since Vietnam, where the men often had scrawny little necks. But that had been a long time ago, and even back then, he’d nearly blown it. Memories of old days. More to the point, fifteen feet to the forward head. The older he got, the more he needed to keep track of that kind of thing.
The usual safety briefing. The seat belt is just like the one on your car, dummy, and if you really need it, Mommy will come buckle it up for you—but no booze for you! The bathrooms are fore and aft, and they’re marked with pictures if you’re too dumb to read. Dumbing down society was happening in Canada, too. A pity, John thought. Unless United flew only American citizens.
The flight was grossly ordinary, with nary a bump, taking hardly an hour before they touched down at O’Hare, named for a World War Two naval aviator who’d won the Medal of Honor before getting splashed, probably by friendly fire, which could kill you just as dead as the other sort. Clark wondered how hard it was for the pilot to find the right jetway, but then he’d probably made this flight before, maybe a hundred times. Now came the hard part, John realized. Where was Hadi going, and could he bag a seat on the same flight? A pity he couldn’t just ask the bastard. He had to go through immigration, because America had gotten serious about controlling who came into the country. Really that meant tough enough that the bad guys had to devote maybe a whole minute of thought before sneaking in, but maybe it was something to stop the really dumb ones. But the dumb ones weren’t much of a threat, were they?
That was far above his pay grade, however, and those who made such decisions rarely consulted the worker bees who live out where one’s ass was on the betting line. That fact had started for Clark in Vietnam, when his name had been Kelly. So maybe stuff like that never changed. That was a frightening thought, but frightening things came with the territory, and he’d signed on to that more than thirty years earlier. The entry procedures were not even perfunctory. His passport wasn’t even stamped, a considerable surprise. Another procedure change? Keep the ink from staining the clerk’s hand, maybe?
Okay, what’s happening?” Granger asked over the secure line.
“Clark took the same flight as our friend,” Jack replied. “We got a couple photos of him. With luck, he’ll shadow him to where he’s going.”
Not likely, the operations boss at the other end thought. Not enough troops, not enough resources. Well, you couldn’t do everything as a private corporation, and it kept the overhead down. “Okay, keep me posted. When will you guys be back?”
“We’re booked on a flight into D.C. National; leaves in thirty minutes. Be back in the building about five-thirty or six, probably.” Which amounted to a complete wasted day, unless you counted a couple of photos as a success, Jack thought. What the hell, it was more than what they’d had.
50
CLARK WAS in the subterranean walkway from one terminal complex to another. Mostly moving walkways, like conveyor belts; it certainly looked long enough. He’d watched Hadi step out into the open air and have another smoke before coming back in, running through the metal detectors—miraculously, his marshal’s badge did not trip it here—down into this lengthy tunnel, and then up the escalator to the outboard terminal, where it was time to go to work. Hadi turned left at the top. He’d gotten his gate assignment from an information monitor—without checking his ticket for the flight number. Did that make him a trained pro or