Command Authority

20

Just days after Gerry Hendley agreed to the reactivation of The Campus, the five operations officers flew to Kiev, Ukraine, on board the Hendley Associates Gulfstream G550. As cover, The Campus used a company created and maintained for the purposes of providing legends to Campus operators in the field. The company, OneWorld Productions, billed itself as a new-media organization based in Vancouver, which reported on world affairs from a left-of-center perspective and distributed its stories to news outlets around the globe via the Internet.

OneWorld Productions had a website, an actual office location with a receptionist in Vancouver, and had even published some pieces of reportage, although very close scrutiny of its online videos would reveal they were actually created by freelance journalists who had no idea all their work was for the purposes of backstopping a private intelligence agency.

In addition to a veteran pilot and copilot, the Hendley Associates Gulfstream operated with help from their director of transportation, a no-nonsense ex — Navy medic named Adara Sherman. When in the air she served as a flight attendant, but she also worked as a team medic in the field, a security officer, and a general facilitator of all things having to do with both the flight and ground transport.

Once Adara cleared the dinner plates out of the way, she helped the men go through some of the equipment they would be using on their mission. Of course they had cameras, iPads, and satellite phones with two-way communications capabilities — all items that any group of journalists wouldn’t be caught without — but they also had brought along several other items that would not hold up so well to close scrutiny by Ukrainian customs personnel.

There was a case full of slap-ons, metallic boxes each not much larger than a box of matches, which held mini — GPS receivers. These gadgets were great for tracking vehicles via apps on the men’s phones and iPads.

Also with them — and these certainly were not contraband, although they would be damn hard to explain — were several hobby-grade electric-powered radio-controlled cars specially designed as delivery vehicles for the slap-ons.

The team had no firearms with them other than Adara’s short-barreled carbine and pistol, and a second of each, all concealed under one of many hidden access panels in the jet, where they would remain. That said, the four operations men of The Campus would have a few other weapons available to them while they were in Kiev. They each carried a multi-tool with a hidden four-inch switchblade. The pens they would carry in their pockets were made of hardened plastic and could easily penetrate clothing and skin, they wore necklaces made out of a covered wire that could be employed as a garrote, and even their satellite phones had an external battery that supplied very little extra juice to the phone, but actually served as a powerful stun gun that could incapacitate someone at contact distance.

With Adara’s help, they hid the more clandestine items in the aircraft’s access panels just so they could pass through a customs inspection on landing. Then the men spent some more time on their laptops reviewing FalconView, a high-tech map system available to military and intelligence, and also available to The Campus, since Gavin Biery had accessed the files back before he’d lost access to the feed between Fort Meade and Langley. But even though their FalconView had not been updated in a few months, Gavin was certain it would still be a hell of a lot more helpful than Google Maps.

As they raced across the Atlantic at more than four hundred knots, Clark looked at the aircraft’s position on the main monitor in the plush cabin. He said, “Touchdown in five and a half hours. Let’s try and catch a few hours’ sleep. We’re going to need to hit the ground running tomorrow.”

Jack Ryan, Jr., and Sandy Lamont walked up Redcliffe Street in Saint John’s, Antigua. There were still quite a few people about now at 10:30 p.m., and enough of them were white tourists so that Jack and Sandy didn’t stick out too badly, although Jack was worried about staying low-profile around here for long, especially with an untrained partner.

They found the building with the shingle for Randolph Robinson; it was just an open ground-floor covered parking lot large enough for a dozen or so cars, and above it a single story of office suites. There was a gated fence around the property, but Jack quickly saw how he could easily scale the fence at a corner post.

Ryan looked into the darkened empty lot and saw three large garbage containers sitting lined up against the stairwell. The lid was up on one of them, and he could see paper stacked on other trash.

The two men turned a corner and found a food truck with a large group of people sitting around on milk cartons, eating salted fish and drinking coconut water. They each bought a drink, and then they kept walking so they could talk.

Sandy said, “You can’t possibly filch all that garbage.”

“We don’t have to.” Jack held up his phone.

“I don’t follow you.”

“I jump the fence, then I turn on my video camera. I grab a stack of papers and move through them as fast as I can. I just have to get a tenth-of-a-second look at each one. Then I send the video file to an archiving application I have. It will use optical character recognition to look at every frame of the video and archive every last number and word in a way I can search and reference it later.”

“That’s bloody marvelous. How much time do we need?”

Before Jack could answer, a black pickup truck drove by, and the driver and front-seat passenger eyed him slowly and carefully. Jack was certain it was the same vehicle he had seen earlier in the afternoon.

Sandy hadn’t noticed, but Jack didn’t mention it, because the last thing he needed right now was a spooked partner. He could have canceled his plans for the evening, but instead he just told himself he’d keep a close watch on the road in case they came back.

His eyes followed the truck till it disappeared around the corner, and then he answered Sandy’s question: “Depends on how much paper is in those cans. I’d say fifteen minutes, tops.”

“What if somebody catches us?”

Jack shrugged. “Can you run?”

“Not really.”

“Then let’s not let anyone catch us.”

As they neared the building, Lamont asked, “How is it you know all this stuff?”

Jack said, “I’m not an attorney, I’m not a CPA, and I don’t have a ton of experience like everyone else at Castor and Boyle.” He held up his phone. “Little tricks like this are force multipliers. They help me leverage my strength.”

The actual collection of the data in the garbage cans went surprisingly smoothly. Jack climbed the fence when no one was in sight, then dropped down and raced to the cans. Two of the cans had no papers, but the other contained hundreds of documents, envelopes, and other relevant material. He reached deep into the can to hide his light from the street, then began quickly shuffling through the pages, keeping his phone pointed at them.

Sandy walked the street out front. He was connected to Ryan through their phones, and other than his need to remind Ryan every couple of minutes that he should hurry up, he did a fine job as a lookout.

Ryan made it back onto the street in ten minutes flat, and the two men walked west back toward their hotel.

Sandy asked, “So are you covered in fish guts and other garbage?”

“Randolph Robinson keeps a clean office. Some of his stuff was shredded, but like most people, he’s too lazy to shred it all. I got hundreds of documents, envelopes, pamphlets, and handwritten notes. Don’t know if any of it will do us any good, but it sure as hell won’t hurt.”

They were halfway back to their hotel when Jack saw the trouble up ahead. The same black pickup truck — he could tell because it appeared to be about five years newer than the average vehicle on the street — sat parked just beyond the intersection. Inside were at least four men. Jack couldn’t be certain from this distance the exact number, but he could tell the guys he saw earlier had gone to pick up at least two more buddies.

Jack was pretty sure that was bad news.

Ryan knew better than to head back to the hotel. The last thing he wanted was for these guys to know where he was sleeping.

There was a lively two-level bar between Ryan and the truck ahead. Jack said, “How ’bout a nightcap.”

Sandy did not have to be persuaded.