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

by Tom Clancy

Lessons Applied

SERE School. It was something you had to do if you flew airplanes for a living, and it was purposefully the most hated thing in the military because it did things to otherwise pampered Air Force and Navy officers that Marine drill instructors would have quailed at—things which were, in any other context, deeds worthy of a general court-martial followed by a lengthy term at Leavenworth or Portsmouth.

He’d considered capture in a distant sort of way.

Death, that was the chance and the likelihood he’d thought about.

In a brief span of seconds his ability to do anything at all was taken away, and he merely collapsed on the rough concrete floor, feeling the blows and kicks and pain add up like numbers on a ledger sheet, his muscles paralyzed by agony, unable to move any of his limbs more than an inch or two, wishing it would stop, knowing that it never would. Above it all he heard the cackling of their voices now, like jackals, devils tormenting him because he was one of the righteous and they’d gotten their hands on him anyway, and it went on, and on, and on—

“Robin, we are enemies, but we are men also, and even war has rules. You serve your country. I serve mine. These… these people do not understand that without honor there is no true service, only barbarism.” He held up the flask again. “Here. I cannot get anything else for the pain. I’m sorry, my friend, but I can’t.”

What he was doing was “just business.” That was a way of looking at the world he readily understood. A shame that the American next to him probably would not, Kolya thought, listening to every word of his rambling explanation of the life of a Weasel pilot.

He wasn’t carrying any ID. He had a few dollars in cash in a wallet also obtained at Goodwill. Kelly had thought about carrying more, but there was no point in it. Water. Food. Weapons. Ropewire. He’d leave his binoculars home tonight. Their utility wasn’t worth the bulk. Maybe he’d get a set of compact ones—make a note. He was ready. Kelly switched on the TV and watched the news to get a weather forecast—cloudy, chance of showers, low around seventy-five. He made and drank two cups of instant coffee for the caffeine, waiting for night to fall, which it presently did.

Inside of twenty yards he was just one more shambling drunk.

Kelly went up the same rickety stairs for the third and last time, finding his accustomed place in the southeast corner, sat down, and looked out.

Kelly made his way down the stairs and out the back door. He crossed the street into the continuation of the alley that paralleled the street, still keeping to the shadows, still moving in a shambling but now exceeding quiet gait.

Kelly turned the gun slightly and fired two rounds into Jug’s head.

“I said please, didn’t I?”

“Billy. Red Plymouth Roadrunner, loves to show it off. He’s a distributor. I want to know where he hangs out,” Kelly said quietly.

Kelly’s notes had commented on the fact that one of the most debilitating and time-consuming aspects of Operation KINGPIN had been the daily necessity of setting up and striking down the mockup of their objective. He hadn’t been the first to note it. If any Soviet reconnaissance satellites took note of this place, they would see an odd collection of buildings serving no readily identifiable purpose. They would also see a child’s playground, complete with children, parents, and parked cars, all of which elements would move every day. That bit of information would counter the more obvious observation—that this recreational facility was half a mile off any paved road and invisible to the rest of the installation.

Exercises

“Forget ballistics,” Douglas grunted. That wasn’t unusual with the .22. First of all, the bullet was made of soft lead, and was so easily deformed that the striations imparted by the rifling of the gun barrel were most often impossible to identify. Second, the little .22 had a lot of penetrating power, more even than a .45, and often ended up splattering itself on some object beyond the victim. In this case the cement of the walkway.

“All yours,” Ryan told the man from the medical examiner’s office.

“Somebody that knows how to shoot—better than me even,” Douglas said as they drove back downtown. He’d tried out for the department’s pistol team once.

“Professional hit, then?” “We’ll call it skillful for now,” Ryan suggested as an alternative. “We’ll let Mark do some of the scutwork on the intelligence side.”

The noon news broadcast announced the discovery of two bodies, but no details. Maybe the newspaper would say more.

“Sandy, thirty years ago there was a guy named Hitler who got his rocks off killing people like Sam and Sarah just because of what their goddamned names were. He had to be killed, and he was, too damned late, but he was.” Wasn’t that a simple enough lesson?

“There is a difference, Sandy. There are good people. I suppose most people are decent. But there are bad people, too. You can’t wish them away, and you can’t wish them to be good, because most won’t change, and somebody has to protect the one bunch from the other. That’s what I did.”

Everything had been so clear the past couple of days. Once you decided that there was an enemy, then acting on that information was simply a matter of applying your training and experience. It wasn’t something you had to think about. Looking at your conscience was hard, wasn’t it?

“What are we fighting for in Vietnam?” Sandy asked Kelly again, having asked herself that question no less than ten times per day since she’d received the unwelcome telegram. “My husband died there and I don’t still understand why.”

Kelly told himself that he had to control his thinking, stay to the easy stuff, just remember that he was hunting people, just as he had before. He wasn’t going to change the whole world, just clean up one little corner.

Just this once, Zacharias thought. Just for the pain. He took a swallow. Push the pain back a few steps, just so I can keep myself together.

He wavered for a moment. Well, he’d already had one. Another couldn’t hurt, could it? Zacharias took another swallow.

“You know better than that, but it puts a little dent in things. Never had one of mine wasted before.”

“Very professional. Two in the head each. Douglas was talking like it was a mob hit.”

“If you want me to be able to protect you, Henry, then I have to be able to control investigations. For me to control the investigations, I have to land some big fish from time to time.” Charon put the book back on the shelf. Why did he have to explain things like this to the man?

“Mr. Clark, this is General Martin Young, and this is Robert Ritter.” Kelly shook hands with both. The Marine was an aviator, like Maxwell and Podulski, both of whom were absent from this meeting. He hadn’t a clue who Ritter was, but he was the one who spoke first.

The real reason was that others had decided that the lives of those men didn’t matter, and those others might make the same decision again. That kind of thinking would someday destroy his Agency. You couldn’t recruit agents if the word got out that America didn’t protect those who worked for her. Keeping faith was more than the right thing. It was also good business.

What we have here is a one-time rescue mission. I can take that to my friends in the NSC.

“We need an additional safety factor,” Young said, looking at the large-scale map, figuring how the helicopters would get in.

“Yes, sir,” Kelly said. “Somebody has to go in early and eyeball things.”

“I guess that’s me.”

Complications

Another drug-pusher ripoff, done very efficiently—but not the same guy who’d taken Ju-Ju down. Different MO.

He got into his car, leaving the sounds and thought behind, because he was cheating, too, wasn’t he? He was breaking the rules, important rules that he did fully understand, but doing so in pursuit of justice, or what he called justice in his own mind.

Such thoughts were like minefields. You wandered into them, innocent, expecting nothing, then found out too late that there was danger. It would be better not to remember, Kelly thought. I’d really be better off that way. But if without memories, good and bad, what was life, and if you forgot those who mattered to you, then what did you become? And if you didn’t act on those memories, what value did life have?

Interference

“He died while I was in Vietnam, heart attack on the job. Mom’s gone, too. Liver cancer, when I was in grade school,” Kelly explained as evenly as he could. The pain was distant now. “That was tough. Dad and I were pretty close. He was a smoker, that’s probably what killed him. I was sick myself at the time, infection from a job I did. I couldn’t get home or anything. So I just stayed over there when I got better.”

“I have a couple uncles and some cousins, but we don’t see each other much.”

Every woman in his life had been taken away by force of one kind or another: his mother, his wife, and his lover. How much rage he must feel, she told herself. It explained so much.

He’d killed people in war, threatened a surgeon with permanent injury right in front of her and a security guard, but he went out of his way to protect fish?

“Special party tonight, Dor. Henry’s coming over.”

You needed some rudimentary personal security of your own before you could take from its surplus and apply it to those more needy than yourself—and besides, how many were more needy than they were?

For the first time he was close to one of the men who had murdered Pam. Probably two of them. It didn’t have the physical effect one might have expected. His body relaxed. He’d do this one right.

Kelly’s fingertip depressed the trigger twice, the first as the suppressor covered the target, the second right behind it, as soon as his wrist compensated for the .22’s light recoil. Without shifting his feet he swiveled right, a mechanical turn that took the gun in an exact horizontal plane towards Little Bob, who had reacted already, seeing his boss starting to fall and reaching for his own weapon at his hip. Moving, but not fast enough. Kelly’s first shot was not a good one, hitting low and doing little damage. But the second entered the temple, caroming off the thicker portions of the skull and racing around inside like a hamster in a cage. Little Bob fell on his face. Kelly lingered only long enough to be sure that both were dead, then turned and moved on. Six, he thought, heading for the corner, his heart settling down from the rush of adrenaline, putting the gun back in its place next to the knife. It was two fifty-six as Kelly began his evasion drill.