Without Remorse (John Clark, #1; Jack Ryan Universe, #1)

by Tom Clancy

Later, he fell asleep at her side, and she kissed his unshaven cheek. That was when her own tears began at the wonder of what the day had brought after the terror with which it had begun.

There was no safety for her. The other girls came in slowly, not looking in her direction. She’d known that Pam was going to run, but that was all, and her only satisfaction as she heard the belt whistle through the air was that she would reveal nothing that could hurt her friend. As searing as the pain was, Pam had escaped.

Captivity

Despite the time and rigors of the next twenty hours of flying, the Captain slept briefly and fitfully, having solved a mystery whose answer just might change the policy of his government.

First Light

“You think I want all that smoke and shit in here? You can die from that monoxide shit,” Eddie Morello said irritably.

Pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe…’” Cas quoted.

“Not smart enough.” Neither were his partners, when it came to that, but one thing at a time.

Commitments

Pam was sure of that now. She’d begun to look at the future as more than a dark place where she could hide and forget. It was now a place of hope.

Ambush

You simply could not run away from some things. He knew. He’d tried. Pam’s collection was in its way more horrible than his own, and if their relationship were to go further, those demons had to find their resting place.

Kelly nodded and made a mental note, chastising himself for having made at least two wrong assumptions. But that’s why you did reconnaissance, after all.

Recovery

“Shotgun wound, several pellets very close to the cord, sir.”

Concealment

“John, they found her,” Rosen said.

“What sort of girl was she, John?” “Unlucky.”

Lieutenant Ryan looked back down at the photos. “They sure had their fun with her. Just like the other one.”

“I got recommended to them by a pal in the Navy, mainly to help train their divers. What they know is what I’m allowed to tell. It’s not what I really did, exactly, but it sounds good.”

“What are you going to do?” “You don’t want to know, Sam.”

Labor

There was a streak of the sadist in all physical therapists. There had to be, since the job meant pushing people a little further than they wanted to go—just as an athletic coach would do—and the ultimate aim was to help, after all. Even so, a good therapist had to push the patient, encourage the weak, and browbeat the strong; to cajole and to shame, all in the name of health; that meant taking satisfaction from the exertion and pain of others, and O’Toole could not have done that.

Colonel Robin Zacharias, USAF. His F-105G Wild Weasel had been shot down eight months earlier; he and his weapons-systems operator had been reported killed by the North Vietnamese. Even a picture of his body had been published.

“You know, this is right where my son was shot down. That SEAL went in and recovered him right about here,” the Admiral said, tapping the map.

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?” Sarah noted. “No, it wasn’t.”

How could they do it? Were they not men, soldiers, professional warriors like himself? Could anything be so important that they could cast aside their humanity? What he saw was impossible. It could not be. But it was.

Pathology

The cause of death, the report said, was manual strangulation, with a deep, narrow set of ligature marks about the victim’s neck. The severity and depth of the ligature marks suggested that brain death had occurred from oxygen deprivation even before the crushed larynx terminated airflow to the lungs. Striations on the skin suggested that the instrument used was probably a shoestring, and from bruises that appeared to come from the knuckles of a large-handed man about the throat, that the killer had faced the supine victim while performing the act. Beyond that, the report went on for five single-spaced pages, the victim had been subjected to violent and extensive traumatic insult prior to death, all of which was cataloged at length in dry medical prose. A separate form noted that she had been raped, further that the genital area showed definite signs of bruising and other abuse. An unusually large quantity of semen was still evident in her vagina upon her discovery and autopsy, indicating that the killer had not been alone in raping the victim. (“Blood types O+, O- and AB-, per attached serology report.”) Extensive cuts and bruises about the hands and forearms were termed “defensive-classical.” Pam had fought for her life. Her jaw had been broken, along with three other bones, one of them a compound fracture of the left ulna.

“As you can see from the photos, Sam,” the handwritten page at the back said, “this was something from a couple of really sick folks. It was deliberate torture. It must have taken hours to do all this. One thing the report leaves out. Check Photo #6. Her hair was combed or brushed out, probably, almost certainly postmortem.

“Never again, Johnnie-boy,” he said aloud in a conversational tone. “We’re not going to make any more mistakes. Not ever.”

Fabrication

Outfitters

“Thank you for the car, Mrs. Boyd,” he said in parting. “What are you going to use it for?” “Business.” Kelly smiled and left.

His .45 automatic, plus the .22-.45 conversion kit, was packed in with old clothing, along with two boxes of ammunition. He shouldn’t need more than that, Kelly thought, and ammo was heavy. While he fabricated one more silencer, this one for the Woodsman, he thought through his preparations.

By three in the morning the new suppressor was fitted to the Woodsman and tested.

Billy with his red Plymouth muscle car. A black guy named Henry. He knew their area of operation. And that was all.

Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem. The one hope of the doomed is not to hope for safety.

What sort of man was this? she asked herself. What were the dangers of knowing him?

Agendas

“Your ID is in the name of John Clark; should be easy to remember.

“Then what are you doing this for?” the man said, too puzzled even to scream, too paralyzed by the incongruity of the past few minutes, by the passage of his life from the normality of his hangout bar to its end only forty feet away in front of a windowless brick wall, and he had to have an answer.

Kelly thought about that for a second or two. He could have said many things, but it was only fair, he decided, to tell the man the truth as the gun came up quickly and finally. “Practice.”

Lessons Learned

What did he feel about the elimination of Pierre Lamarck? The only answer he could find was, Nothing.

It had been like stepping on an offensive insect—you did it and moved on.

Fuckin’ rats! It was foolish to fear them, but he loathed their small black eyes and leprous hair and naked tails.

Fucking rats, he thought, filling a large glass with ice, then adding tap water.

He couldn’t be a person now. He had to be a street creature, shunned. Invisible.