“Probably not that, either. The doc that cut on me guesses I won’t be able to lift by elbow much above my ear.”
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Yeah, me, too. Gonna miss it. Gonna miss the guys.”
“You got your twenty, right?”
“And then some, but with this CID shit . . . Who knows?”
Clark nodded thoughtfully. “Well, you went out with a bang. Got some good intel from that cave. Hell, you could have glided down the mountain on that sand table.”
Driscoll laughed, then: “Wait a second. How do you know about that? Oh, yeah, scratch that. You’re still in, aren’t you?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘in.’”
A nurse walked into the room carrying a clipboard. Driscoll slipped his beer beneath the sheet; Clark lowered his out of sight. “Afternoon, Sergeant Driscoll. I’m Veronica. I’ll be with you until midnight. How’re we feeling?”
“Just fine, ma’am, and you?”
Veronica dutifully checked boxes on her clipboard and scribbled a few notes. “Can I get you anything? How’s your pain level, on a scale of one to—”
“Six-ish and holding steady,” Driscoll shot back with a smile. “Maybe a little ice cream with dinner?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Veronica flashed a smile, then turned and headed for the door. Over her shoulder, she said, “Just make sure those bottles disappear when you’re done with them, gentlemen.”
After Clark and Driscoll got done laughing, Driscoll asked, “What I mean by ‘in’ is government.”
“Then no. I came to offer you a job, Sam.” Here Clark knew he was overstepping his bounds a tad, but he doubted he’d have any trouble selling Driscoll’s qualifications.
“Doing what?”
“Sort of what you’ve been doing, but no rucksack and better wages.”
“You getting me into something illegal, John?”
“Nothing you won’t be comfortable with. Nothing you haven’t done before. Plus, it comes with a get-out-of-jail-free card. You’d have to relocate, though. Winters are colder than Georgia.”
“Washington?”
“Thereabouts.”
Driscoll nodded slowly, chewing on Clark’s offer. Then: “What’s this?” He grabbed the remote from the bedside table and unmuted the wall-mounted TV.
“. . . Kealty has turned the full weight of the United States Department of Justice loose on a distinguished soldier of the United States Army. That soldier was in Afghanistan looking for the Emir, Saif Rahman Yasin. The mission to apprehend him failed, probably due to poor intelligence, but in carrying out that mission, this soldier killed several enemy combatants. Now the Department of Justice is investigating him for murder. I’ve looked in to this particular incident. This soldier did exactly what soldiers have been doing since the beginning of time: He killed enemies of our country. ...”
Driscoll muted the TV. “What the fuck . . . How the hell?” Clark was smiling. “What?” Driscoll said. “You did that?”
“Shit, no. That’s all General Marion Diggs and Jack Ryan.”
“Your timing is damned incredible, John.”
“Dumb coincidence. I had a hunch he was going to do something like that, but beyond that ...” Clark shrugged. “I’d say that about takes care of your CID problem, wouldn’t you?”
“How do you figure?”
“Ryan’s running for President, Sam, and he just bitch-slapped Kealty on national television. He can either let this bullshit prosecution eat up a few weeks of news cycle or he can dump it and hope people forget about it. As of right now, Kealty’s shit pile of worry just got a lot bigger, and you’ve become small potatoes.”
“I’ll be damned. Thanks, John.”
“Didn’t do anything.”
“My chances of getting Jack Ryan or General Diggs on the phone are pretty slim, so you’ll have to do.”
“I’ll pass it along. Think about my offer. We’ll keep it open till you’re back on your feet, then bring you up for a meet and greet. What do you say?”
“Sounds good.”
Forty-three hours after Adnan opened the seacocks on Salychev’s Halmadic trawler and sunk it along with his three comrades beneath the surface of the Barents Sea 700 feet below, the second package arrived at the Dubai warehouse.
Since Musa’s arrival, the engineer had been hard at work, setting up the lead-lined containment tent on the warehouse’s floor and checking his inventory list of component parts. Like the tent itself, which had been manufactured in Malaysia based on specifications stolen from the online curriculum for Fort Leonard Wood’s Operational Radiation Safety (OPRAD) course, the component parts had been laser-milled and lathed in Morocco-based Ukrainian schematics.
The beauty of simplicity, Musa thought.
Each of the device’s components was born either from benign dual-use technology or from plans that had long ago been discontinued, considered obsolete according to modern standards.