Tom Clancy's HAWX

Chapter 31

Troy Loensch opened one eye and glanced at the red numerals staring back at him from the clock radio.

5:47.

His open eye traveled to the slit of window beneath the heavy curtain. The light was the weak, faint light of midwinter.

5:48.

Was that A. M. or P. M.?

With the faint light, it could be either.

He had arrived well after midnight. Had he slept for four or five hours — or sixteen or seventeen? He couldn't tell. Troy staggered to the bathroom, fumbled with the coffeemaker for a moment, gave up, and collapsed back onto the bed.

5:56.

He had arrived well after midnight, flying in on the Firehawk Gulfstream by way of Tokyo and Barking Sands in Hawaii.

It was supposed to be a moment of triumph for Troy, but either he had slept through his corporate commendation presentation or he would arrive at it hopelessly sleep deprived.

Had he still been in the U. S. Air Force, he would be receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. As Raymond Harris had told him, Firehawk had scrambled around to come up with something appropriate to give him, something that was the corporate equivalent of a DFC.

I deserve it, he thought to himself as his mind began to awaken. Too bad I slept through me getting awarded it.

Troy had emerged as a hero in the war between Fire-hawk and Sandringham. Beginning with the F-16 he shot down on the first day, up through his blowing up, both of the former Australian Navy frigates that the Sandies used to patrol the South China Sea, he had been a key part of winning the war against Sandringham.

8:03.

It was still light outside, and considerably brighter.

Troy had dozed off again — this time under the covers — and he felt much better after another two hours of sleep.

He made coffee, shaved, showered, and opened his suitcase — which had made it barely eighteen inches inside the door before he abandoned it last night.

He located his least-wrinkled khakis and his Firehawk Windbreaker. The ceremony wasn't until 4:00. Hopefully, by that time, gravity would have softened the wrinkles in his Firehawk blazer.

Hoping that he hadn't missed his complimentary breakfast, he located his key card and headed for the elevator.

He barely noticed the man who passed him in the hall, but he did notice the big guy with the shaven head leaning on the wall near the elevator pretending to read his complimentary copy of USA Today.

"Mr. Loensch, could we have a word?"

Troy took a step back as the man reached inside his sport coat.

One of the perks of not flying commercial was that Troy was always accompanied by his personal Beretta 950, an easily concealed 4.7-inch automatic that was a useful tool when it was necessary to have a little bit of.25-caliber firepower. Once in Bangkok, it had saved his life. Here in Arlington, it was Troy's equalizer to whatever was inside the man's sport coat.

"I wouldn't if I were you, Mr. Loensch," came a voice from behind him.

He felt a muzzle pressed into his spine between his shoulder blades.

Troy took his own hand away from his waistband and put both where they were easily seen.

He felt a hand relieving him first of his 950, and next of his cell phone.

The mystery inside the shaven-headed man's sport coat turned out not to be a gun, but merely a wallet.

He tipped it open to reveal a Central Intelligence Agency ID that was either for real or a facsimile that was especially believable at a distance of a dozen feet. Troy noticed that as it was displayed, the man's thumb covered the line where his name would be.

"Mr. Loensch, could we have a word?" the man repeated, nodding toward Troy's room.

"Just one?" Troy replied in a vain attempt at humor. The CIA man didn't even crack a smile.

Back inside, they insisted that Troy have a seat in one of the two straight-backed armchairs. Both of the anonymous CIA men remained standing, and the one with the shaven head did all the talking.

"A lot of people found it pretty alarming to turn on their nightly news a couple of weeks ago to find that a PMC had — to quote Raymond Harris in that infamous CNN interview — `declared war' on another PMC and they were duking it out in a Third World country using some pretty sophisticated hardware."

"I suppose maybe a lot of people did," Troy said. "I was not really in a position to be concentrating on media reaction… but then, you probably know where I was and what I was doing."

"You were in the midst of a war… essentially a gang-style turf war… between two extranational private armies."

"I never thought of war having 'style," " Troy quipped. "In case you haven't noticed, PMCs are the way wars are fought now that nations no longer have a stomach for war, so they outsource it."

"And that's a good thing?"

"My opinion? It's just a 'thing,' neither good nor bad in itself." Troy shrugged. "It's just the way it is. But the United Nations and more than a hundred countries must have thought it was good, because it took all that to make PMCs a reality… allow them to act as international and independent outfits. Can I ask a question?"

"Okay."

"I'm taking a wild guess here that you boys didn't shove a gun in my back so that you could lecture me about what you think of PMCs, because if you had asked, I don't really care what you think. * * so tell me why you did shove that gun in my back."

"We need your help."

"That's a great way of asking." Troy almost laughed. "Shove a gun in a guy's back because you need his help?"

"Shoved a gun in your back because you went for yours," the other CIA man said.

"Help doing what?" Troy asked, ignoring the second agent's comment.

"Help us with a discreet investigation."

"Of who?"

"Of Firehawk in general and Raymond Harris in particular."

"You want me to spy on my own company?" This time Troy did laugh. "That's a joke. Why?"

"We suspect that Firehawk may be a danger to the security of the United States."

"You train a dog to guard your junkyard and freak out when he gets rough with other dogs?"

"Have you ever heard Raymond Harris make statements about the use of PMCs to overthrow and control countries?"

"That's not new. I can name about seven, including Malaysia at the moment, that are already controlled by one PMC or another."

"Overthrow the United States?"

Troy paused. He realized that some of the things that Harris said about the ineptitude of politicians and governments could be taken out of context. More than once, he had said that the world would be better off if Firehawk ran it, but Troy had always considered this merely a form of blustering.

"If you locked up everybody who made crude remarks about politicians, you'd be locking up half the country,"

Troy said. "You'd also probably be locking up most of the politicians."

"This is not about crude remarks. It's about a loose cannon pointing himself at this country."

"He blows off a lot of steam, but I've never heard him say anything about overthrowing the United States government," Troy said, racking his brain to recall whether this was, in fact, true. "As far as being a loose cannon, I've always found him to be the kind of commander who runs a tight ship, runs well-planned missions and—"

"Stretches the rules?"

"I suppose."

"Breaks the rules?"

"Gets the job done."

"Ends justify the means?"

At that, Troy paused.

"What are you trying to say?" Troy asked.

"That he'll step on anybody to 'get the job done." " "Step on who, specifically?" Troy asked.

"You say that he runs a well-planned mission?" "I said that." Troy nodded.

"Tell me about a raid on a Sandringham facility near Kuantan."

"Which raid? There were a couple."

"The first one, the one where Harris was unaware of the presence of F-16s at the base until you yourself ran a recon."

"How do you know that?" Troy asked.

"We're the CIA," the man said, smiling for the first time. "Knowing is our business. Is what I said true?"

"Your source has it right," Troy replied. "So what? Lots of missions are flown with last-minute intel."

"Were you ever briefed on where those F-16s came from and who was flying them?"

"Sandringham," Troy said, acting bored.

"Do you know who was flying them?"

"It doesn't matter to me," Troy said, recalling his dinner with Aron Arnold. After that night, it really didn't matter. He had learned to divorce the job from his emotions.

The CIA man opened his thin briefcase and took out a folder with some photographs.

"As you have gathered by now, the CIA has been keeping an eye on Firehawk. It may interest you to know that we did reach the wreckage of that F-16 that you shot down."

"You guys went to a lot of trouble, then," Troy said, taking the photos that were handed to him. "It was pretty deep in the jungle."

At first it didn't register.

Faint recognition became solid recognition as he reached the third photo.

The images were close-ups of the cockpit of an F-16. The canopy had come off, and the pilot remained still strapped in his seat. His head was tipped at an angle that suggested a broken neck. His eyes stared lifelessly into space, his mouth was opened slightly, and dried blood covered his chin and left cheek.

The name strip on his flight suit read "H. Coughlin."