Patriot Games

Marty came into the office. 'Ready to go over?'

'Hell, yes!'

'Did you have dinner?'

'No. Maybe later.'

'Yeah.' Together they walked to the annex. The corridors were nearly empty now. For the most part, CIA worked like any other place. At five the majority of the workers departed for home and dinner and evening television.

'Okay, Jack, this is real-time. Remember that you can't discuss any aspect of this.' Cantor looked rather tired, Jack thought.

'Marty, if this op is successful, I will tell my wife that the ULA is out of business. She has a right to know that much.'

'I can understand that. Just so she doesn't know how it happens.'

'She wouldn't even be interested,' Jack assured him as they entered the room with the TV monitor. Jean- Claude was there again.

'Good evening, Mr. Cantor, Professor Ryan,' the DGSE officer greeted them both.

'How's the op going?'

'They are under radio silence,' the Colonel replied.

'What I don't understand is how they can do it the same way twice,' Ryan went on.

'There is a risk. A little disinformation has been used,' Jean-Claude said cryptically. 'In addition, your carrier now has their full attention.'

'Saratoga has an alpha-strike up,' Marty explained. 'Two fighter squadrons and three attack ones, plus jamming and radar coverage. They're patrolling that 'Line of Death' right now. According to our electronics listening people, the Libyans are going slightly ape. Oh, well.'

'The satellite comes over the horizon in twenty-four minutes,' the senior technician reported. 'Local weather looks good. We ought to get some clear shots.'

Ryan wished he had a cigarette. They made the waiting easier, but every time Cathy smelled them on his breath, there was hell to pay. At this point the raiding force would be crawling across the last thousand yards. Ryan had done the drill himself. They'd come away with bloody hands and knees, sand rubbed into the wounds. It was an incredibly tiring thing to do, made more difficult still by the presence of armed soldiers at the objective. You had to time your moves for when they were looking the other way, and you had to be quiet. They'd be carrying the bare minimum of gear, their personal weapons, maybe some grenades, a few radios, slinking across the ground the way a tiger did, watching and listening.

Everyone was staring at the blank TV monitor now, each of them bewitched by his imagination's picture of what was happening.

'Okay,' the technician said, 'cameras coming on line, attitude and tracking controls in automatic, programming telemetry received. Target acquisition in ninety seconds.'

The TV picture lit up. It showed a test pattern. Ryan hadn't seen one of those in years.

'Getting a signal.'

Then the picture appeared. Disappointingly, it was in infrared again. Somehow Ryan had expected otherwise. The low angle showed very little of the camp. They could discern no movement at all. The technician frowned and increased the viewing field. Nothing more, not even the helicopters.

The viewing angle changed slowly, and it was hard to believe that the reconnaissance satellite was racing along at over eighteen thousand miles per hour. Finally they could see all of the huts. Ryan blinked. Only one was lit up on the infrared picture. Uh-oh. Only one hut—the guards' one—had had its heater on. What did that mean? They're gone—nobody's home… and the assault force isn't there either.

Ryan said what the others didn't want to say: 'Something's gone wrong.'

'When can they tell us what happened?' Cantor asked.

'They cannot break silence for several hours.'

Two more hours followed. They were spent in Marty's office. Food was sent up. Jean-Claude didn't say anything, but he was clearly disappointed by it. Cantor didn't touch his at all. The phone rang. The Frenchman took the call, and spoke in his native tongue. The conversation lasted four or five minutes. Jean-Claude hung up and turned.

'The assault force came upon a regular army unit a hundred kilometers from the camp, apparently a mechanized unit on an exercise. This was not expected. Coming in low, they encountered them quite suddenly. It opened fire on the helicopters. Surprise was lost, and they had to turn back.' Jean-Claude didn't have to explain that, at best, operations like this were successful barely more than half the time.

'I was afraid of that.' Jack stared at the floor. He didn't need to have anyone tell him that the mission could not be repeated. They had run a serious risk, trying a covert mission the same way twice. There would be no third attempt. 'Are your people safe?'

'Yes, one helicopter was damaged, but managed to return to base. No casualties.'

'Please thank your people for trying, Colonel.' Cantor excused himself and walked to his private bathroom. Once in there, he threw up. His ulcers were bleeding again. Marty tried to stand, but found himself faint. He fell against the door with a hard rap on the head.

Jack heard the noise and went to see what it was. It was hard to open the door, but he finally saw Marty lying there. Ryan's first instinct was to tell Jean-Claude to call for a doctor, but Jack himself didn't know how to do that here. He helped Marty to his feet and led him back into his office, setting him in a chair.

'What's the matter?'

'He just tossed up blood—how do you call… ' Ryan said the hell with it and dialed Admiral Greer's line.

'Marty's collapsed—we need a doctor here.'

'I'll take care of it. Be there in two minutes,' the Admiral answered.

Jack went into the bathroom and got a glass of water and some toilet paper. He used this to wipe Cantor's mouth, then held up the glass. 'Wash your mouth out.'

'I'm okay,' the man protested.

'Bullshit,' Ryan replied. 'You jerk. You've been working too damned late, trying to finish up all your stuff before you leave, right?'

'Got—got to.'

'What you got to do, Marty, is get the hell out of here before it eats you up.'

Cantor gagged again.

You weren't kidding, Marty, Jack thought. The war is being fought here, too, and you're one of the casualties. You wanted that mission to score as much as I did.

'What the hell!' Greer entered the room. He even looked a little disheveled.

'His ulcers let go,' Jack explained. 'He's been puking blood.'

'Aw, Jesus, Marty!' the Admiral said.

Ryan hadn't known that there was a medical dispensary at Langley. Someone identifying himself as a paramedic arrived next. He examined Cantor quickly, then he and a security guard loaded the man on a wheelchair. They took him out, and the three men left behind stared at each other.

'How hard is it to die from ulcers?' Ryan asked his wife just before midnight.

'How old is he?' she asked. Jack told her. Cathy thought about it for a moment. 'It can happen, but it's fairly rare. Somebody at work?'

'My supervisor at Langley. He's been on Tagamet, but he vomited blood tonight.'

'Maybe he tried going without it. That's one of the problems. You give people medications, and as soon as they start feeling better, they stop taking the meds. Even smart people,' Cathy noted. 'Is it that stressful over there?'

'I guess it was for him.'

'Super.' It was the kind of remark that should have been followed by a roll-over, but Cathy hadn't been able to do that for some time. 'He'll probably be all right. You really have to work at it to be in serious trouble from ulcers nowadays. Are you sure you want to work there?'

'No. They want me, but I won't decide until you lose a little weight.'