Command Authority

21

As Jack Ryan, Jr., and Sandy Lamont crossed the street toward the entrance, Ryan noticed a second truck pass through the intersection just next to the bar. Its taillights immediately lit up, and Jack looked in the glass of a gift shop across the street just in time to see the vehicle turn down the alleyway behind the bar.

“Oh, shit,” Ryan said softly. Sandy was ahead of him and did not hear.

Jack realized he and Sandy would be surrounded once they got inside the building. He thought it over, considered just continuing on back to the hotel and calling the police, but for all he knew, the men watching him were the police.

Ultimately, he decided to rely on the cover of the crowd, and he hoped like hell these guys, whoever they were, wouldn’t do anything inside the bar with all the witnesses.

The bar was just a dive. There was a DJ on a podium and a little dance floor and then a bar area, and to the left of the bar was a rear exit.

Sandy led the way, and as soon as they made it to the bar in the back of the room, Jack told Sandy to go ahead and order for them both. He turned his back to the bar and kept his eyes on the front door, but he also checked the back entrance every few seconds.

Jack began playing this through in his head. He figured the men were some sort of local heat, hired by the lawyers and corporate services companies generally, but not tied to his situation specifically.

Of course, he had to entertain the possibility he was wrong about this, and these dudes were here because he was the son of the President of the United States, and they had something more dangerous in mind.

But he decided the first scenario was more likely. He and Sandy had been a little lackadaisical in their surveillance. Ryan realized if he were operating with John Clark or Ding Chavez, he would have put all sorts of operational security measures in place that would have avoided just such an event. But he’d come down here thinking this was some dry and drab business intelligence exercise, and he had nothing more to worry about than getting the runaround from a secretary who wouldn’t let him take a business card off a desk.

Two men entered and stood at the front door. One had dreads, the other short hair and big muscles. They talked to the bouncer for just a moment, then started looking around. They made eye contact with Ryan seconds later, and they stood their ground by the door.

Jack looked to the back entrance now. There was no one there, but he felt sure that even a third-rate crew of hired Rasta stoners from some shanty island village would know enough to cover the back door to box their quarry in.

Jack gave up on the hope the men wouldn’t confront him in the public setting, and he moved on to the hope that they were here only for intimidation. “Sandy, I need to tell you something, and I need you to stay very calm when I do.”

Sandy passed Jack a beer, and he brought his piña colada up to his mouth and began drinking it through a straw. The Englishman’s mannerisms didn’t give Ryan much hope he’d have a hell of a lot of assistance in the next few minutes, since he wasn’t aware of many bar fights won by men who ordered piña coladas.

Ryan had to look at Sandy’s eyes over the pineapple spear. He said, “There are a couple of guys at the door watching us. They’ve been following us for a while.”

Sandy started to turn his head. Jack said, “No. Don’t do that. I just need you to be ready to move toward that back door.”

“You’re bloody serious?” He turned his head around slowly, a poor attempt to be covert while looking.

“I’m guessing someone saw us in front of CCS’s office earlier in the day. Who knows, there might be some other below-board operation in that building who runs this outfit, hires them out to lean on anyone they don’t like the look of. I don’t expect any real trouble, but they are going to make a show, just to scare us.”

Sandy saw them now. Two men at the front door. One had dreadlocks, his shirt was open to the waist, and he had a thick nest of necklaces around his neck. The other wore a soccer jersey; he had short hair and his black jersey barely constrained his thick muscles. “Yeah, well, they are already succeeding. What are we going to do?”

He began sucking on his drink, as if the ounce of rum in it was going to calm his nerves.

“We’re going to finish our drinks and head out the back. I think they will confront us, but let me do the talking. We’ll be fine.”

“Why do you want to go into a bloody alley?”

Jack had an answer to this. He didn’t want anyone seeing what he might have to do. He’d worked hard to have a low-profile life, and he was willing to risk an ass-kicking to maintain it.

“We’ll be fine. Trust me.” As he said it, he realized he was pushing his luck with this, but he had the confidence in his physical abilities as well as his ability to talk his way out of whatever might arise.

Sandy said, “Jack, have you forgotten who you are? You can pull out your phone, dial some secret number that I know you have memorized and, Bob’s your uncle, an aircraft carrier will appear in the harbor and whisk us both off to safety.”

Jack would have laughed at Lamont’s master plan, except he was getting his mind in gear for what was starting to look like an inevitable confrontation.

“I’m not calling anybody,” he said, his voice taking on a grave tone. “You and I are going to walk out the back door, head up the alley, and then go to our hotel.”

“And then what?”

“And then I will come up with another awesome plan.”

“Right. Of course.”

A minute later, Jack and Sandy entered the alley. It wasn’t as dark as he had feared it would be; there were a couple of light poles as well as a glow coming from a clapboard-wall casino building that ran the length of the block on the other side of the single-lane alley.

They turned to walk back to the hotel, but had made it only a few feet when two men stepped out of the shadows in front of them.

“Good Lord,” Sandy whispered.

These guys were young and fit. Jack pegged them as part of some local gang. They had tattoos on their arms that were obvious because they wore tank tops.

Jack smiled and continued walking toward them. He scanned their hands and their waistbands for weapons, but he saw nothing. “Evening. Something we can do for you gents?”

The taller of the two spoke with a thick West Indies accent. “You want to be telling us just why the fuck you are so interested in the office building you were snapping pictures of earlier today?”

“Don’t know what you are talking about. We’re tourists.”

“Ya ain’t no tourists, man. You’re down here sticking your noses where they don’t belong, and we don’t like that.”

Sandy spoke up; his voice was cracked with fear. “Look, mate. We aren’t here for any trouble.”

Another West Indian — accented voice spoke up, this one from behind. “Trouble’s here for you.”

Sandy spun around in near terror now. Ryan had heard the door open behind them from the bar, so he just turned calmly and checked to confirm it was the two men he’d seen with the bouncer. His mind was switching into a different gear, he was calm, resigned to the fact these men were going to need to be dealt with, but taking some comfort in the fact his opposition seemed to be supremely confident they had the situation well in hand.

Jack knew he could use that confidence against them.

The man with the dreadlocks spoke now: “We’re here to make sure you boys go back home to wherever you came from and never return.”

“No problem at all,” said Sandy.

Dreadlock smiled, his teeth bright white in the lights of the alleyway. “We’re not gonna take assurances, white boy. We’re gonna put you two in the hospital so you remember your mistake in comin’ here.”

Dreadlocks was the leader of the group, that was plain to Ryan. He was just out of arm’s length now, and while he didn’t have any weapons, Jack knew he had to operate as if all four of them could produce some weapon quickly.

Sandy’s hands were up in surrender now. “Completely unnecessary, gentlemen, I can assure you, your message has been received loud and—”

Sandy broke into a run. All four men moved toward him reflexively, and this opened up Jack’s options. One of the tank-top men crossed right in front of him, so Jack fired out a right jab into the man’s jaw, knocking him unconscious and dropping him in the street. The other tank-top man recognized the threat; he was a few steps farther away, so he stopped his pursuit of the blond and spun toward the dark-haired and bearded American. While doing so he reached for a fixed-blade knife in a scabbard in the small of his back and punched out with his other hand.

Jack closed the distance quickly, and he caught a glancing blow on the bridge of his nose. But before the Antiguan could draw his weapon, Jack was on him. He took him by his right forearm, put the man in a tight wristlock, and pushed his arm away at a forty-five-degree angle. As the man in the tank top screamed out, Jack stomped down on the inside of his knee, dropping the man onto his back in writhing agony next to his unconscious partner.

The other two Antiguans turned away from Lamont to aid their colleagues. They approached Ryan with their own blades drawn; they shouted at him as they advanced up the alleyway.

Jack softened his knees and lowered into a crouch. As the short-haired man in the soccer jersey neared and swung his knife, Jack ducked under his swing, spun around, slammed his back into the onrushing attacker, and grabbed the man’s downward-arcing arm. He twisted the arm, snapping it at the elbow, and the knife dropped to the ground.

Dreadlocks tried to stab Ryan, but Ryan had put the man in the soccer jersey between himself and this final attacker. He controlled the wounded man by holding his arms high and pushing into him with his back, and this stifled the last armed man’s attempts to deliver a blow. Once the man with dreadlocks lowered his knife to switch hands, Jack pulled down on his prisoner’s arms, dislocating one of the man’s shoulders, and then he thrust backward, sending the man in the jersey into the air and crashing into his leader. This took Dreadlocks even more out of the offense and onto the defense. By the time he got his underling out of his way, the tall American was on top of him, swatting the knife away and blasting him with a three-punch combination to his face.

The Antiguan fell onto his back on the concrete alley, and Jack kept up the attack, kneeling over him and raining several more blows.

When it was clear Dreadlocks was unconscious, Jack looked around. The man in the black jersey was running off into the night, clutching his arm. A third man rolled around, holding his knee and cursing incomprehensible profanities, and the fourth man was facedown and out cold.

Jack looked in the other direction. Sandy Lamont stood there, just twenty-five feet away, staring at the carnage and the man on his knees in the center of it.

Jack stood and began moving up the alley. “Let’s get out of here.”

They were back in their hotel twenty minutes later. Sandy had pulled a few airplane bottles of rum out of the minibar with a shaking hand, and he poured them into a glass. Jack sat with him in his room. He had a beer in his hand, but he hadn’t even taken a sip yet.

Sandy Lamont just stared at Ryan. “Who the hell are you?”

Jack touched his fingers to the bridge of his nose. It was just scraped a little; no blood flowed. His knuckles were scraped and bruised as well.

He’d come up with an answer to Sandy’s question on the quiet and uncomfortable walk back to the hotel. He said, “The Secret Service put me through a hell of a lot of training. Been doing it for years, but when I refused their protection, they really stepped it up…” Jack shrugged and smiled. “Hell, I guess I’m half a ninja by now.”

Sandy said, “That’s bloody marvelous. Those bastards were going to kill us.”

“No. They were going to knock our heads together, but don’t make this bigger than it was. They are used to intimidating people down here. They probably work for any drug dealer, shady money launderer, or pimp who pays them. They aren’t assassins. Just assholes.”

Sandy downed the rum. His hands still shook.

Jack was worried about the next part. “Any chance we can keep this between you and me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’d rather Hugh Castor didn’t know about this.”

Sandy just looked out the window at the ocean for a moment. “Yeah. That’s probably a good idea. He’d blame me for the entire thing.”

“Why?”

Sandy shrugged. “He’s pressuring me about you already.”

“Pressuring you? What do you mean?”

“Oh. Bloody Gazprom. He makes a right ruckus every time he hears you are digging into them.”

Jack thought back to Sandy warning him away from the giant Russian corporation. “So that was Castor talking, not you.”

“Sorry, mate. Orders from the boss. I do see his point. We can do good business without going toe-to-toe against the real seat of Russian power.”

“Aren’t you overstating it a bit? I would think the Kremlin would be the seat of Russian power.”

Now that the subject had turned to business, Sandy was back on level ground. He recovered quickly. “Think about it, Jack. Gazprom not only is owned by the Kremlin, but it also is directly tied to the bank accounts of the siloviki in the Kremlin. Castor has always been against us doing anything to provoke the Kremlin, and I’d say fucking with their meal ticket applies.”

Ryan looked out over the sea. “I think Castor should let these investigations go where the facts lead.”

“If you want to know the truth, Jack, I do, too. Old man Castor has his eyes on the bottom line, so he’ll go to bat for any Russian oligarch who’s trying to sue some other Russian oligarch, as long as Volodin and his siloviki aren’t involved.”

“But the siloviki is involved in a lot of underhanded stuff.”

“I think he’s just scared of Volodin and his thugs. He’d never admit it, but all of his tenacity just seems to drift away when the facts lead toward the Kremlin.”

Jack was frustrated by this, but it was nice to see that Sandy was frustrated as well.

Sandy said, “I won’t mention the fisticuffs down here. On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“I want you to teach me how to do some of that.”

“It’s a deal,” Ryan said.