meant he had to put the pill in the baby's formula so that he could be sure that the baby would die and his wife wasn't up to it — understandable, his doctor was a wife — and he had to take the responsibility because he was the one who always did and wasn't it a shame that he had to leave Ava Gardner on the beach watching him sail so that he and his men could die at home if they made it which they probably wouldn't and the streets were so empty now. Cathy and Sally and Little Jack were all dead and it was all his fault because he made them take their pills so that they wouldn't die of something else that was even worse but that was still dumb and wrong even though there wasn't much of a choice was there so instead why not use a gun to do it and—
“What the fuck!” Jack snapped upright as though driven by a steel spring. He looked at his hands, which were shaking rather badly, until they realized that his mind was under conscious control now. 'You just had a nightmare, boy, and this one wasn't the helicopter with Buck and John.
“It was worse.”
Ryan reached for his cigarettes and lit one, standing up after he did so. The snow was still coming down. The scrapers weren't keeping pace with it, down on the parking lot. It took time to shake one of these off, watching his family die like that. So many of the goddamned things. I've gotta get away from this place! There were just too many memories, and not all of them were good. The wrong call he'd made before the attack on his family, the time in the submarine, being left on the runway at Sheremetyevo Airport and looking at good old Sergey Nikolayevich from the wrong side of a pistol, and worst of all that helicopter ride out of Colombia. It was just too much. It was time to leave. Fowler and even Liz Elliot were doing him a favor, weren't they?
Whether they knew it or not.
Such a nice world lay out there. He'd done his part. He'd made parts of it a little better, and had helped others to do more. The movie he'd just lived in, hell, it might have come to pass in one way or another. But not now. It was clean and white out there, the lights over the parking lot just illuminating it enough, so much better than it usually looked. He'd done his part. Now it was someone else's turn to try his or her hand at the easier stuff.
“Yeah.” Jack blew his smoke out at the window. First, he'd have to break this habit again. Cathy would insist. And then? Then an extended vacation, this coming summer, maybe go back to England — maybe by ship instead of flying? Take the time to drive around Europe, maybe blow the whole summer. Be a free man again. Walk the beach. But then he'd have to get a job, do something. Annapolis — no, that was out. Some private group? Maybe teach? Georgetown, maybe?
“Espionage 101,” he chuckled to himself. That was it, he'd teach how to do all the illegal stuff.
“How the hell did James Greer ever last so long in this crummy racket?” How had he handled the stress? That was one lesson he'd never passed on.
“You still need sleep, man,” he reminded himself. This time he made sure the TV was off.
34
PLACEMENT
Ryan was surprised to see that the snow hadn't stopped. The walkway outside his top-floor window had almost two feet piled up, and the maintenance crews had failed completely to keep up with things through the night. High winds were blowing and drifting snow across the roads and parking lots more quickly than it could be removed, and even the snow that they did manage to move simply found another inconvenient place to blow over. It had been years since a storm like this had hit the Washington area. The local citizenry was already beyond panic into desperation, Jack thought. Cabin fever would already be setting in. Food stocks would not easily be replaced. Already some husbands and some wives were looking at their spouses and wondering how hard to cook they might be… It was one thing to laugh about as he went to get water for his coffee machine. He grabbed Ben Goodley's shoulder on the way out of the office.
“Shake it loose, Dr. Goodley.”
The eyes opened slowly. “What time is it?”
“Seven-twenty. What part of New England are you from originally?”
“ New Hampshire, up north, place called Littleton.”
“Well, take a look out the window and it might remind you of home.”
By the time Jack returned with fresh water, the younger man was standing at the windows. “Looks like about a foot and a half out there, maybe a little more. So, what's the big deal? Where I come from this is called a flurry.”
“In D.C., it's called The Ice Age. I'll have coffee ready in a few minutes.” Ryan decided to call the security desk of the lobby. “What's the situation?”
“People calling in saying they can't make it. But what the hell — most of the night staff couldn't get out. The G.W. Parkway is closed. So's the Beltway on the Maryland side, and the Wilson Bridge — again.”
“Outstanding. Okay, this is important, so listen up — that means anybody who makes it in is probably KGB- trained. Shoot 'em.” Goodley could hear the laughter on the phone from ten feet away. “Keep me posted on the weather situation. And reserve me a four-by-four, the GMC, in case I have to go somewhere.” Jack hung up and looked at Goodley. “Rank hath its privileges. Besides, we have a couple of them.”
“What about people who have to get in?”
Jack watched the coffee start to come out of the machine. “If the Beltway and G.W. are closed, that means that two-thirds of our people can't get in. Now you know why the Russians have invested so much money in weather-control programs.”
“Doesn't anybody down here —”
“No, people down here pretend that snow is something that happens on ski slopes. If it doesn't stop soon, it'll be Wednesday before anything starts moving in this town.”
“It's really that bad here?”
“You'll see for yourself, Ben.”
“And I left my cross-country skis up in Boston.”
“We didn't hit that hard,” the Major objected.
“Major, the breaker board seems to disagree with you,” the crew chief replied. He pushed the breaker back in position. The small black plastic tab hesitated for a moment, then popped right back out. “No radio because of this one, and no hydraulics 'cause of that one. I'm afraid we're grounded for a while, sir.”
The metering pins for the landing gear had arrived at two in the morning, on the second attempt. The first, aborted, attempts had been by car, until someone had decided that only a military vehicle could make it. The parts had arrived by HMMWV, and even that had been held up by the various stopped cars on the highways between Washington and Camp David. Repairs on the helicopter were supposed to have started in another hour or so — it was not a difficult job — but suddenly they were more complicated.
“Well?” the Major asked.
“Probably a couple of loose wires in there. I gotta pull the whole board, sir, inspect the whole thing. That's a whole day's work at best. Better tell 'em to warm up a backup aircraft.”
The Major looked outside. This was not a day he wanted to fly anyway. “We're not supposed to go back until tomorrow morning. When'll it be fixed?”
“If I start now… say around midnight.”
“Get breakfast first. I'll take care of the backup bird.”
“Roge-o, Major.”
“I'll have them run some power out here for a heater, and a radio, too.” The Major knew the crew chief was from San Diego.
The Major trudged back to the cabin. The helicopter pad was on a high spot, and the wind was trying very hard to blow it clear of snow. As a result, there was only six inches to worry about. Down below, the drifts were as much as three feet deep. The grunts out walking the woods must be having a fine time, he thought.
“How bad?” the pilot asked, shaving.
“Circuit panel is acting up. The chief says he needs all day to get it back on line.”
