The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'Jack and I have to go to a formal dinner in the White House tomorrow night.
State dinner for the Prime Minister of Finland, would you believe? The procedure
is straightforward, no complications I know about. I can have you the file this
afternoon. Jenkins is going to do the procedure – I'm just supposed to ride
shotgun.' Jenkins was a bright young resident.
'Okay, I'll do it.'
'Okay, thanks. Owe you one,' Cathy said on her way through the door.
***
The Carmen Vita pulled into Hampton Roads barely an hour late. She turned to
port and proceeded south past the Navy piers. The captain and pilot rode the
port-side bridge wing, noting the carrier that was even now departing from the
pier with a few hundred wives and children waving goodbye to USS Theodore
Roosevelt. Two cruisers, two destroyers, and a frigate were already moving.
They, the pilot explained, were the screening ships for 'The Stick,' as TR was
called by her crew. The Indian-born captain grunted and returned to business.
Half an hour later, the container ship approached her pier at the end of
Terminal Boulevard. Three tugs took their position and eased the Carmen Vita
alongside. The ship had barely been tied up when the gantry cranes started
moving cargo.
'Roggen, Colorado?' the trucker asked. He flipped open his large book map and
looked on I-76 for the right place. 'Okay, I see it.'
'How fast?' Russell asked.
'From the time I leave here? Eighteen hundred miles. Oh, two days, maybe forty
hours if I'm lucky. Gonna cost you.'
'How much?' Russell asked. The trucker told him. 'Cash all right?'
'Cash is fine. I knock ten percent off for that,' the trucker said. The IRS
never found out about cash transactions.
'Half in advance.' Russell peeled off the bills. 'Half on delivery, a grand
bonus if you break forty hours.'
'Sounds good to me. What about the box?'
'You bring that right back here. We'll be getting more stuff in a month,'
Russell lied. 'We can make this a sort of regular run for you.'
'Sounds good to me.'
Russell returned to his friends, and together they watched the unloading process
from the comfort of a block building with a large coffee urn.
***
Teddy Roosevelt cleared the harbor in record time, bending on twenty knots
before they reached the sea buoy. Already, the aircraft were orbiting overhead,
first among them the F-14 Tomcat fighters that had lifted off from Oceana Naval
Air Station. As soon as there was sea room, the carrier came into the northerly
wind to commence flight operations. The first plane down had the Double-Zero
number of the CAG, Captain Robby Jackson. His Tomcat caught a gust over the
fantail, and as a result caught the number-two wire when it landed – 'trapped' –
somewhat to Jackson's annoyance. The next aircraft, flown by Commander Rafael
Sanchez, made a perfect trap on the number-three arrestor wire. Both aircraft
taxied out of harm's way. Jackson left the fighter and immediately sprinted to
his place on Vulture's Row, high up on the carrier's island structure, so that