“Yeah,” Clark agreed. Six days had passed since Yucca, four since Brian’s body had returned home from Tripoli. Only now had any of them had time to absorb everything that had transpired. For the country, The Campus had scored a big win, but it had come at a big price.
The rain that had been falling most of the morning had cleared away an hour earlier; the rows of stark-white headstones seemed almost luminous in the midday sun. Paralleling the pallbearers’ course to the grave, a Marine band contingent marched in lockstep while playing a somber drum cadence.
The casket reached the foot of the grave, and the family members took their positions. The escort commander softly barked, “Order ... arms ...” then “Parade ... rest.”
Per Dominic’s request, the chaplain kept the ceremony short.
“Escort ... ten-hut. Escort ... present arms.”
Then came the Marine Hymn and the gun salute, the Firing Party going through its crisp, almost robotic movements until the last shot echoed through the grounds. As it faded away, a lone bugler played taps as Brian’s flag was carefully folded and then presented to the Carusos. The Marine band played the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”
And it was over.
The next morning, Monday, The Campus resumed business, but the mood was predictably subdued. In the days leading up to Brian’s funeral, each of them had, of course, written and submitted his own after-action report, but this would be the first time the members of the now dismantled Kingfisher Group would meet for a postmortem. Faces were grim as everyone filed into the conference room. By unspoken agreement, a single chair at the table was left open for Brian.
The answer to Jack’s big “Why?” question had taken all of them by surprise. The Emir did, in fact, have larger aspirations for Lotus. The Heartland Attacks and the aborted Losan incident had been designed as jabs, the Yucca Mountain detonation as the uppercut that would awaken the sleeping giant. With an inept and reactionary Edward Kealty at the country’s helm, the FBI and CIA would in due course unravel the identities of those responsible for the attacks, only to find carefully constructed and fully backstopped legends that would eventually lead directly to the doorstep of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence and radicalized elements of the Pakistan Army General Staff, both long suspected to be less-than-enthusiastic supporters of the war on terror.
Where the United States rightly invaded Afghanistan following 9/11, she would again react swiftly and overtly, expanding military operations east across the Safed Koh and Hindu Kush mountains. The inevitable destabilization of Pakistan, already a near-failed state, would, according to the Emir, create a power vacuum into which the Umayyad Revolutionary Council would step and take control of Pakistan’s substantial nuclear arsenal.
“It’s plausible,” Jerry Rounds said. “Worst case, the plan succeeds; best case, we have to go into the area big, maybe quadruple our current presence.”
“And stay there for a couple decades,” Clark added.
“If we thought Iraq was a recruiting poster for militants ...” Chavez observed.
“A win-win for the Emir and the URC,” Jack added.
“I told Werner to dig into the legends first. He’ll figure it out,” Dominic Caruso said. “The question is, was this the only trick the bastard had up his sleeve?”
As if on cue, the phone beside Hendley’s elbow buzzed. He picked it up, listened, then said, “Send her up.” He hung up and said to the group, “Maybe one less question that needs answering.”
Mary Pat Foley appeared in the doorway sixty seconds later. After greetings were exchanged, she laid a manila folder on the table before Hendley, who opened it and began reading.
Mary Pat said to Sam Driscoll, “Collage finally spit out an answer on your sand table.”
“No shit?”
“Let me guess,” Chavez said. “Old news. Yucca Mountain.”
“No,” Hendley said. He slid the file down the table to Clark and Jack, who scanned it together. Jack looked up at Mary Pat. “You sure this is right?”
“Crunched it a dozen times. We got eighty-two perfect geographical data point matches.”
Dominic said, “Spit it out.”
“Kyrgyzstan,” Clark replied, without looking up from the file.
“What the hell does the Emir want with Kyrgyzstan?” Chavez said.
Gerry Hendley replied, “The million-dollar question. Let’s start looking for the answer.”
The meeting continued for another hour before breaking up. At eleven, Jack took an early lunch and drove to Peregrine Cliff. As he stepped onto the porch, Andrea Price-O’Day opened the front door.
“That’s what I call service,” Jack said. “How’s things?”
“As always. Sorry about your cousin.”
Jack nodded. “Thanks. Dad?”
“In his office. Writing,” she added pointedly.
“I’ll knock carefully.”
Which he did, and was surprised to hear his father say, cheerfully, “Come on in.”
Jack sat down and waited a few seconds for his father to finish off a sentence on the keyboard. Ryan Senior swiveled in his chair and smiled. “How ya doing?”
“Okay. You getting close?” Jack asked, nodding at the autobiography on the computer monitor.
“I can see light at the end of the tunnel. After this, I’ll let it cool off a little, then start rewriting. You went to work this morning.”
“Yeah. We did the postmortem.”
“What’s the latest?”
“The FBI’s got him. That’s all we know. That’s all we may ever know.”
“He’ll break,” Ryan Senior predicted. “Might take a couple weeks, but he’ll go.”
“How can you be sure?”
“In his heart, he’s a coward, son. Most of them are. He’ll put on a good show, but it won’t hold up. We gotta talk about something. Kealty’s already taken the gloves off.”
“Digging for dirt?”
The former President nodded. “Arnie’s nosing around, but it sounds like Kealty’s people are talking illegal espionage. Might be a story breaking in the Post next week.”
“‘Illegal espionage,’” Jack repeated. “Sounds a lot like The Campus. Could they—”
“Too early to tell. Maybe. If so, they’ll use it as an opening salvo—try to blow us out of the water before the race really gets going.”
“What can we do?”
“There’s no ‘we,’ son,” Ryan said gently, then smiled. “I’ll handle it.”
“You don’t look worried. That worries me.”
“It’s politics. Nothing more. It’s going to get uglier, but Kealty’s days are numbered. The only question is how long it’ll take him to realize it. Hell, I’ll tell you what I’m really worried about.”
“What’s that?”
“Telling your mom you’ve gone into the family business.”
“Ah, shit.”
“If The Campus comes out and she reads about it in the paper or gets shanghaied by a reporter, you and I are in the doghouse.”
“So how do we do it?”
“Keep it vague. I’ll handle the part about The Campus. You tell her what you do there.”
“Not all of it, right? Not the field stuff.”
“No.”
“Better that you don’t know, either, huh?”
Ryan nodded.
“And if she asks?” Jack said.
“She won’t. She’s too smart for that.”
“I gotta tell you, Dad, I’m not looking forward to this. She isn’t gonna be happy.”
“That’s an understatement. Better now than later. Trust me.”
Jack Ryan Jr. considered this, then shrugged. “Okay.”
Ryan stood up, then clapped his son on the shoulder. “Come on, we’ll face the fire together.”