The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

aircraft. The advance security people were just starting to arrive as they
disappeared into the terminal's lower-level.
Once inside, both men found a locked room and used it to change clothes. They
emerged dressed like businessmen, hair recombed, both wearing sunglasses.
'They always this easy, Mr C?'
'Nope.' Both men walked to the opposite side of the terminal. This put them half
a mile from the JAL 747, but with a direct line of sight to it. They could also
see a Gulfstream-IV business jet liveried as a private aircraft. It was supposed
to take off right before the Japanese aircraft, but would head on a diverging
course. Clark took a Sony Walkman from his briefcase, inserted a tape cassette,
and donned the earphones. In fact, he heard the murmurs of the security men on
the aircraft, and the tape was recording their words as his eyes scanned a
paperback book. It was a pity that he couldn't understand Japanese, Clark
thought. As with most covert operations, the main component was sitting around
and doing precisely nothing while he waited for something to happen. He looked
up to see the red carpet being rolled out again, and the troops forming up, and
a lectern being set up. It must have been a real pain in the ass for the people
who had to handle these things, he thought.
Things picked up rapidly. The President of Mexico personally accompanied the
Japanese Prime Minister to the aircraft, shaking his hand warmly at the base of
the stairs. That might have been evidence right there, Clark thought. There was
elation that the job was going well, but sadness that such things as this really
happened. The party went up the stairs, the door closed, the stairs were hauled
off, and the 747 started its engines.
Clark heard the conversation pick up in the airplane's upstairs lounge. Then
sound quality went immediately to hell when the engines fired up. Clark watched
the Gulfstream begin taxiing off. The 747 began rolling two minutes later. It
made sense. You had to be careful sending aircraft into the sky behind a jumbo.
The big wide-bodies left behind wake turbulence that could be very dangerous.
The two CIA officers remained in the observation lounge until the JAL airliner
lifted off, and then their job was done.
Aloft, the Gulfstream climbed out to its crushing altitude of forty-one thousand
feet on a heading of zero-two-six, inbound to New Orleans. The pilot eased off
on the throttle somewhat, coached by the men in the back. Off to their right,
the 747 was leveling off at the same altitude, on a course of zero-three-one.
Inside the bigger aircraft, the supposed bottle of scotch was pointed out a
window, and its EHF transmissions were scattering out towards the Gulfstream's
receptors. The very favorable data-bandwidth of the system guaranteed a good
signal, and no less than ten tape recorders were at work, two for each separate
side-band channel. The pilot eased his course as far east as he dared until the
two aircraft were over the water, then he turned back left as a second aircraft,
this one an EC-135 that had struggled to get out of Tinker Air Force Base in
Oklahoma, took up station thirty miles east, and two thousand feet below the
larger Boeing product.
The first aircraft landed at New Orleans, unloaded its men and equipment,
refueled, then lifted off to head back to Mexico City.
Clark was at the embassy. One of his additions to the operation was a