Teeth of the Tiger

maintain his motivation a long way from his support network. A lot of things can go wrong, and that's why black operations are kept as simple as possible. Why go out of your way to purchase trouble?'

'Jerry, how many hard targets do we have?' Hendley asked.

'Total? Six or so. Of those, four are real, no-shit targets.'

'Can you get me locations and profiles?'

'Any time you say.'

'Monday.' No sense thinking about it over the weekend. He had two days of riding all planned out. He was entitled to a couple of days off once in a while.

'Roger that, boss.' Rounds stood and headed out. Then he stopped at the door. 'Oh, there's a guy at Morgan and Steel, bond department. He's a crook. He's playing fast and very loose with some client money, about one-fifty worth.' By which he meant a hundred and fifty million dollars of other people's money.

'Anybody on to him?'

'Nope, I ID'd this guy on my own. Met him two months ago up in New York, and he didn't sound quite right, and so I put a watch on his personal computer. Want to see his notes?'

'Not our job, Jerry.'

'I know, I shorted our business with him to make sure he didn't dick with our funds, but I think he knows it's time to leave town, like maybe a trip overseas, one-way ticket. Somebody ought to have a look. Maybe Gus Werner?'

'I'll have to think about that. Thanks for the heads-up.'

'Roger that.' And Rounds disappeared out the door.

* * *

'So, we just try to sneak up on her without being noticed, right?' Brian asked.

'That's the mission,' Pete agreed.

'How close?'

'Close as you can get.'

'You mean close enough to put one in the back of her head?' the Marine asked.

'Close enough to see her earrings,' Alexander decided was the most polite way of putting it. It was even accurate, since Mrs. Peters wore her hair fairly long.

'So, not to shoot her in the head, but to cut her throat?' Brian pressed the question.

'Look, Brian, you can put it any way you want. Close enough to touch her, okay?'

'Okay, just so's I understand,' Brian said. 'We have to wear our fanny packs?'

'Yes,' Alexander replied, though it wasn't true. Brian was being a pain in the ass again. Who'd ever heard of a Marine with conscience attacks?

'It'll make us easier to spot,' Dominic objected.

'So, disguise it somehow. Be creative,' the training officer suggested a little testily.

'When do we find out what all of this is for, exactly?' Brian asked.

'Soon.'

'You keep saying that, man.'

'Look, you can drive back to North Carolina whenever you want.'

'I've thought about it,' Brian told him.

'Tomorrow's Friday. Think about it over this weekend, okay?'

'Fair enough.' Brian backed off. The tone of the interplay had gotten a little uglier than he'd actually wanted. It was time to back down. He didn't dislike Pete at all. It was the not knowing, and his distaste for what it looked like. Especially with a woman as the target. Hurting women was not part of his creed. Or children, which was what had set his brother off — not that Brian disapproved. He wondered briefly if he might have done the same thing, and told himself, sure, for a kid, but without being quite sure. When dinner was finished, the twins handled the cleanup, then settled in front of the downstairs TV for some drinks and the History Channel.

* * *

It was much the same the next state up, with Jack Ryan, Jr., drinking a rum and Coke and flipping back and forth between History and History International, with an occasional sojourn to Biography, which was showing a two-hour look at Joseph Stalin. That guy, Junior thought, was one seriously cold motherfucker. Forcing one of his own confidants to sign the imprisonment order for his own wife. Damn. But how did that physically unprepossessing man exercise such control over people who were his own peers? What was the power he'd wielded over others? Where had it come from? How had he maintained it? Jack's own father had been a man of considerable power, but he had never dominated people in anything like that way. Probably never even thought about it, much less killing people for what amounted to the fun of it. Who were these people? Did they still exist?

Well, they had to. The one thing that never changed in the world was human nature. The cruel and the brutal still existed. Perhaps society no longer encouraged them as they had in, say, the Roman Empire. The gladiatorial games had trained people to accept and even to be entertained by violent death. And the dark truth of the matter was that if Jack had been given access to a time machine, he might — he would—have journeyed back to the Flavian Amphitheater to see it, just once. But that was human curiosity, not blood lust. Just a chance to gain historical knowledge, to see and read a culture connected to, yet different from, his own. He might even toss his cookies watching… or maybe not. Maybe his curiosity was that strong. But for damned sure, if he ever went back, he'd take a friend along for the ride. Like the Beretta.45 he'd learned to shoot with Mike Brennan. He wondered how many others might have taken the trip. Probably quite a few. Men. Not women. Women would have needed a lot of societal conditioning to want to look at that. But men? Men grew up on movies like Silverado and Saving Private Ryan. Men wanted to know how well they might have handled such things. So, no, human nature didn't really change. Society tended to stomp on the cruel ones, and since man was a creature of reason, most people shied away from behavior that could put them in prison or the death chamber. So, man could learn over time, but the basic drives probably did not, and so you fed the nasty little beast with fantasies, books and movies, and dreams, thoughts that walked through your consciousness while waiting for sleep to come. Maybe cops had a better time. They could exercise the little critter by handling those who stepped over the line. There was probably satisfaction in that, because you got both to feed the critter and to protect the society.

But if the beast still lived in the hearts of men, somewhere there would be men who would use whatever talents they had to — not so much control it as harness it to their own will, to use it as a tool in their personal quest for power. Such men were called Bad Guys. The unsuccessful ones were called sociopaths. The successful ones were called… Presidents.

Where did all this leave him? Jack Jr. wondered. He was still a kid, after all, even though he denied it and as a matter of law he was a grown man. Did a grown man stop growing? Stop wondering and asking questions? Stop seeking after information — or, as he thought of it, truth?

But once you had truth, what in hell did you do with it? He didn't know that one yet. Maybe it was just one more thing to learn. Surely he had the same drive to learn as his father, else why was he watching this program instead of some mindless sitcom? Maybe he'd buy a book on Stalin and Hitler. Historians were always digging into old records. Problem was, then they applied their own personal ideas to what they found. He probably really needed a shrink to look things over. They had their ideological prejudices, too, but at least there was a patina of professionalism to their thought processes. It annoyed Junior that he went to sleep every night with thoughts unresolved and truths unfound. But that, he figured, was the whole point to this thing called life.

* * *

They were all praying. All quietly. Abdullah was murmuring through the words of his Koran. Mustafa was running through the same book in the sanctity of his own mind — not all of it, of course, just the parts that supported his mission for the coming day. To be brave, to remember their Holy Mission, to accomplish it without mercy. Mercy was Allah's business.

What if we survive? he asked himself, and was surprised at the thought.

They had a plan for this, of course. They'd drive back west and try to find their way back to Mexico, and then fly back home — to be welcomed with great rejoicing by their other comrades. In truth, he didn't expect this to happen, but hope was something no man sets completely aside, and however Paradise might beckon, life on earth