Executive Orders

"All kinda flashes aft," the topside lookout said next. " Wow, that was a big one! There goes another!" Then five seconds of silence.

"O'Ba

For now, Kemper thought.

THE PREDATORS WERE up, three of them, one each for the three corps encamped southwest of Baghdad, motoring through the air at only twice the speed of a tank. None of them got as far as pla

"Another couple of days would have been nice," Ben Goodley thought aloud.

"How ready are our people?" Ryan turned to the J-3.

"The 1 Oth's ready to rock. The 11 th needs at least a day. The other brigade doesn't even have its equipment yet," Jackson replied.

"How long before contact?" the President asked next.

"At least twelve hours, maybe eighteen. Depends on where they're going, exactly."

Jack nodded. "Arnie, has Gallic been briefed in on all this?"

"No, not at all."

"Then let's get that done. I have a speech to make."

ALAHAD MUST HAVE gotten bored ru

"Tell me what you think," Loomis said.

"I think it's a new card, not dog-eared or anything like that, and I think there's a dot over the first numeral four. Tells him which number to change, Sis."

"This guy's a player, Do

"I think you're right, and that makes Aref Raman one, too."

But how to prove it?

THE COVER MIGHT or might not have been blown. There was no knowing. Kemper assessed the situation as best he could. Maybe the missile boat had gotten off a broadcast and received permission to fire… Maybe the young commander had decided to shoot on his own… probably not. Dictatorial countries didn't give much autonomy to their military commanders. If you were the dictator and you started doing that, it was a sure way to find your back to a wall sooner or later. The score to this point was USN 1 and UIR 0. Both groups were continuing, going southwest now into a widening gulf, still doing twenty-six knots, still surrounded by merchant traffic, and the electronic environment was alive with ship-to-ship chatter wondering what the hell had just happened north of Abu Musa.

Omani patrol boats were out now, and they were talking back and forth with somebody, perhaps the UIR, asking what was going on.

In confusion, Kemper decided, there was profit. It was dark out, and identifying ships in darkness was never an easy business.

"When's nautical twilight?"

"Five hours, sir," the quartermaster of the watch replied.

"That's a hundred fifty miles to the good. We continue as before. Let them sort things out if they can." Getting as far as Bahrain without detection would be miracle enough.

THEY LAID IT all out on Inspector O'Day's desk. "It all" amounted to three pages of notes and a couple of Polaroid photographs. The most important-looking tidbit was a printout of the phone records, duplicating Selig's scribbling. That was also the only legal piece of evidence they had.

"Not exactly the thickest pile of proof I've ever seen," Pat noted.

"Hey, Pat, you said to move fast," Loomis reminded him. "They're both dirty. I can't prove it to a jury, but that's enough to start a major investigation, assuming we have the luxury of time, which I don't think we do."

"Correct. Come on," he said, rising. "We have to see the Director."

It wasn't as though Murray weren't busy enough. The FBI wasn't exactly ru

"It's a good thing I wasn't taking a leak," Murray observed.

"I didn't think you'd have time for that. I don't," Pat told him. "There's probably a mole in the Service after all, Dan."

"Oh?"

"Oh, yeah, and oh, shit. I'll let Loomis and Selig walk you through it."

"Can I take this to Andrea Price without getting shot?" the Director asked.

"I think so."

58 THE LIGHT OF DAY

IT WASN'T SOMETHING TO celebrate, but for the second day in a row, new Ebola cases had dropped. Of the new cases identified, moreover, about a third were people who tested positive for the antibodies but were asymptomatic. CDC and USAMRIID rechecked the data twice before reporting it to the White House, also cautioning that it was too preliminary to be released to the public. The travel ban, it seemed, and the spinoff effects it was having on interpersonal contacts, was working—but the President couldn't say it was working, because then it would stop working.

The Giant Steps case was also ongoing, mainly a task of the FBI laboratory division. There, electronic microscopes were being used for something other than the identification of Ebola strands, and were narrowing in on pollen and other tiny particles. This was complicated by the fact that the Giant Steps attack had been made in the spring, when the air was full of pollens.

Mordecai Azir, it was now firmly established, was a quintessential unperson who had sprung into existence seemingly for a single purpose and, fulfilling it, had disappeared. But he had left behind photographs, and there were ways of dealing with that, Ryan learned. He wondered if there might be some good news to end the day. There wouldn't be.

"Hi, Dan." He was back in his office. The Situation Room was just one more reminder that his next major order was to send people into combat.

"Mr. President," the FBI Director said, entering with Inspector O'Day and Andrea Price.

"Why do you look so happy?"

And then they told him.

IT WAS A BRAVE man who awoke the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei before dawn, and since those around him feared his wrath, it took two hours for them to summon the courage to do so. Not that it would help matters. At four in the morning in Tehran, the phone by the side of his bed rang. Ten minutes after that, he was in the sitting room of his private apartment, his dark, sunken eyes waiting to punish those responsible.

"We have a report that American ships have entered the Gulf," the intelligence chief told him.

"When and where?" the Ayatollah asked quietly.

"It was after midnight at the narrows. One of our missile-patrol boats spotted what it reported to be an American destroyer. It was ordered in to attack by the local naval commander, but we've heard nothing more from the boat."

"That is all?" You awakened me for this?

"There was some radio traffic in the area, ships talking back and forth. They talked about several explosions. We have reason to believe that our missile boat was attacked and destroyed by someone, probably an aircraft—but an aircraft from where?"