Tom Clancy's HAWX

Chapter 44

It was personal. The loathing that troy had for Raymond Harris, the loathing that seemed to grow each time Harris crossed Troy's mind, was personal — very personal.

He hung from a strap in one of the lumbering mobile lounges that carry people from the midfield concourse to the main terminal at Washington, D. C.'s principal international airport. With no checked baggage and no overhead baggage, Troy was ahead of most of his fellow passengers on the American Airlines flight from Miami. Only an energetic young guy with a suit and a laptop had made this mobile lounge. He was already on his phone, already doing business as Troy fumed.

Herndon was just a few miles away. Harris was probably in his office on Firehawk's seventh floor, his office with the models and the flags and the framed pictures of politicians whom he now desired to put out of business.

Troy could be at Firehawk Headquarters inside a half hour — maybe as little as fifteen minutes. Getting to the seventh floor would be another matter. Nobody got to the seventh floor without an invitation. He could imagine Harris's reaction when the receptionist announced that Troy was in the lobby.

The last time Troy had walked into that lobby, he had done so as a conquering hero. Indeed, the plaque with his picture was probably still in that lobby. This time, he imagined quite a different reception. However, Troy had no intention of walking into the Firehawk lobby today, nor of allowing himself to be announced to Raymond Harris. The next time he met Harris face-to-face, he intended it to be on his own terms. How and when that would be, he had yet to figure out.

The last time Troy had walked through the Dulles main terminal, he had been headed toward the rental car section of Ground Transportation, but today, with no expense account and only about three hundred dollars in his pocket, he passed the rental car desks and took a place in line for the number 5A Metrobus.

The last time Troy had put Dulles Airport into a rearview mirror on the eastbound Hirst-Brault Expressway, he was headed for a comfortable room at the Marriott Courtyard in Arlington. Today, he hoped they'd have a bed for him at the YMCA on Rhode Island Avenue in downtown Washington.

The last time Troy had glimpsed Firehawk Headquarters from the highway, his thoughts had turned to Jenna Munrough, and they turned that way today.

He had not seen her in the pictures of his funeral, and he wondered what she must have thought. Had she thought it an appropriate fate for the man who had shot down Hal Coughlin to die himself in an airplane crash? Had she thought about it much at all?

THE SUN WAS SETTING AS TROY CROSSED THE M Street bridge over Rock Creek Park. He had managed to get a cot at the YMCA and stashed his little duffel bag in a locker. He had time to kill, so he decided to take a walk.

Washington was not the Washington he remembered. A pall hung over the city, a pall of uncertainty. The Washington he remembered exuded a confidence, a confidence that came with knowing that all of the important institutions had lives of their own, lives that endured regardless of which party was in power, regardless of whether the president in power was up in the polls, or down in the gutter of a scandal. Today, a nervous apprehension prevailed.

The headlines in the news racks, like the chatter of the talking heads on the television screen back at the YMCA, debated among themselves, even as Congress debated a bill that would place the executive branch under the receivership of a nonpartisan, nongovernmental commission.

Raymond Harris was on nearly every front page — he and Layton Kynelty of Cernavoda Partners. The two PMCs were now negotiating to bring in their management expertise to run the executive branch and get a handle on the myriad crises that the United States was facing around the world. It would be, in the words of the blue folder at Cactus Flat, The Transition.

Troy learned that had he indeed decided to stop off at Firehawk this morning and call on Raymond Harris, he would not have found him. Harris was on Capitol Hill, talking to Congress and offering his able services to head up the management of the executive branch. The man currently charged with that task, President Fachearon, was also testifying — across the street at the U. S. Supreme Court. He argued that, even though his approval rating had sunk to single digits, he remained the president under the Constitution. Congress had never before impeached a president so that he could be replaced by outsourced management, but as Harris insisted, there was a first time for everything.

Troy had returned from the jungle to discover that ex-generals running clandestine experimental aircraft operations had approval ratings! It mystified and infuriated Troy, but there it was. Harris had an approval rating of nearly fifty percent. In a polarized era when approval ratings rarely exceeded forty percent, that was considered very good.

Mystified and infuriated, Troy walked across the bridge toward Georgetown and turned up Thirty-first Street. He walked anonymously, with the confident anonymity of a man who could move unnoticed in a world where he was already dead. The presence of Troy Loensch in this world and on this street would raise questions, but so far, nobody knew that Troy Loensch still existed. In a moment, he would cut a razor-thin slit in this veil of anonymity.

He recognized the cobalt-blue Porsche as it made the final turn, and he recognized the woman as she stepped out to get the mail before sliding into the underground parking garage beneath her building.

"Hey, Falcon Two," he shouted as he crossed the street, wondering whether using the nickname was too cute.

Jenna spun at the sound of the voice, startled by the sound of that voice and of its choice of nickname.

Her expression was one of disbelief.

Who?

How?

"What are you…?" Jenna gasped.

"You mean why am I not dead?" Troy asked as he approached close enough to see the confused expression in her eyes in the growing darkness. She looked good, Troy thought, even with her hair a little unkempt and her makeup a little bit faded, as a woman's makeup usually is at the end of a long workday. She also looked very bewildered—"seen a ghost" bewildered.

"Who are you? Are you… are you Troy Loensch?" "What?" Troy smiled. "You obviously recognize me." "Who are you? Really," she stammered.

"I took a chance that you'd be coming back to your apartment on time," Troy explained, ignoring her question. "I figured that you wouldn't be working late, since Harris is otherwise occupied up on the Hill."

"You look different, Loensch," she said, studying his face and the deep tan that he had picked up in Nicaragua. "You look like you've been on a beach for a month."

"Actually I've been in the mountains for several months… seems like a helluva lot longer… so much has happened since…"

"You can't be…"

"Is this the part where you tell me I'm supposed to be dead?"

"I was at the memorial…"

"Didn't see you in the pictures."

"Then you didn't see very many pictures," Jenna replied, regaining her composure. "This is the part where I ask you what the hell happened."

"And this is the part where I ask you whether you're gonna stand here with your Porsche burning through unleaded, or are you going to invite me in?"