Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

TOM CLANCY is the author of Red Rabbit, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, Without Remorse, Debt of Honor, Executive Orders, Rainbow Six, and The Bear and The Dragon. His is also author of the paperback nonfiction series that includes Submarine, Armored Cav, Fighter Wing, Marine, Airborne, Carrier, and Special Forces. He lives in Maryland

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The Teeth of the Tiger

Random House Audio Publishing Group

Chapter One

THE TOWN of West Odenton, Maryland, isn't much of a town atall, just a post office for people who live in the general area, a few gasstations and a 7-Eleven, plus the usual fast-food places for people whoneed a fat-filled breakfast on the drive from Columbia, Maryland, totheir jobs in Washington, D.C. And half a mile from the modest post officebuilding was a mid-rise office building of government-undistinguishedarchitecture. It was nine stories high, and on the capacious frontlawn a low decorative monolith made of gray brick with silvery letteringsaid HENDLEY ASSOCIATES, without explaining what, exactly, HendleyAssociates was. There were few hints. The roof of the building wasflat, tar-and-gravel over reinforced concrete, with a small penthouse tohouse the elevator machinery and another rectangular structure that gaveno clue about its identity. In fact, it was made of fiberglass, white in color,and radio-transparent. The building itself was unusual only in one thing:except for a few old tobacco barns that barely exceeded twenty-five feetin height, it was the only building higher than two stories that sat on a directline of sight from the National Security Agency located at FortMeade, Maryland, and the headquarters of the Central IntelligenceAgency at Langley, Virginia. Some other entrepreneurs had wished tobuild on that sight line, but zoning approval had never been granted, formany reasons, all of them false.

Behind the building was a small antenna farm not unlike that foundnext to a local television station-a half-dozen six-meter parabolicdishes sat inside a twelve-foot-high, razor-wire-crowned Cyclone fenceenclosure and pointed at various commercial communications satellites.The entire complex, which wasn't terribly complex at all, comprised fifteenand a third acres in Maryland's Howard County, and was referred toas "The Campus" by the people who worked there. Nearby was theJohns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, a government-consultingestablishment of long standing and well-established sensitivityof function.

To the public, Hendley Associates was a trader in stocks, bonds, andinternational currencies, though, oddly, it did little in the way of publicbusiness. It was not known to have any clients, and while it was whisperedto be quietly active in local charities (the Johns Hopkins UniversitySchool of Medicine was rumored to be the main recipient ofHendley's corporate largesse), nothing had ever leaked to the local media.In fact, it had no public-relations department at all. Neither was itrumored to be doing anything untoward, though its chief executive officerwas known to have had a somewhat troubled past, as a result ofwhich he was shy of publicity, which, on a few rare occasions, he'ddodged quite adroitly and amiably, until, finally, the local media hadstopped asking. Hendley's employees were scattered about locally, mostlyin Columbia, lived an upper-middle-class lifestyle, and were generally asremarkable as Beaver's father, Ward Cleaver.

Gerald Paul Hendley, Jr., had had a stellar career in the commoditiesbusiness, during which he'd amassed a sizable personal fortune and thenturned to elected public service in his late thirties, soon becoming aUnited States senator from South Carolina. Very quickly, he'd acquireda reputation as a legislative maverick who eschewed special interests andtheir campaign money offers, and followed a rather ferociously independentpolitical track, leaning toward liberal on civil-rights issues, but decidedlyconservative on defense and foreign relations. He'd never shiedaway from speaking his mind, which had made him good and entertainingcopy for the press, and eventually there were whispered-about presidentialaspirations.

Toward the end of his second six-year term, however, he'd suffered agreat personal tragedy. He'd lost his wife and three children in an accidenton Interstate 185 just outside of Columbia, South Carolina, theirstation wagon crushed beneath the wheels of a Kenworth tractor-trailer.It had been a predictably crushing blow, and soon thereafter, atthe very beginning of the campaign for his third term, more misfortunehad struck him. It became known through a column in the New YorkTimes that his personal investment portfolio-he'd always kept it private,saying that since he took no money for his campaigning, he had no needto disclose his net worth except in the most general of terms-showedevidence of insider trading. This suspicion was confirmed with deeperdelving by the newspapers and TV, and despite Hendley's protest thatthe Securities and Exchange Commission had never actually publishedguidelines about what the law meant, it appeared to some that he'd usedhis inside knowledge on future government expenditures to benefit areal-estate investment enterprise which would profit him and his co-investorsover fifty million dollars. Worse still, when challenged on thequestion in a public debate by the Republican candidate-a self-described"Mr. Clean"-he'd responded with two mistakes. First, he'dlost his temper in front of rolling cameras. Second, he'd told the peopleof South Carolina that if they doubted his honesty, then they could votefor the fool with whom he shared the stage. For a man who'd never puta political foot wrong in his life, that surprise alone had cost him fivepercent of the state's voters. The remainder of his lackluster campaignhad only slid downhill, and despite the lingering sympathy vote fromthose who remembered the annihilation of his family, his seat hadended up an upset-loss for the Democrats, which had further been exacerbatedby a venomous concession statement. Then he'd left publiclife for good, not even returning to his antebellum plantation northwestof Charleston but rather moving to Maryland and leaving his life entirelybehind. One further flamethrower statement at the entire congressionalprocess had burned whatever bridges might have remainedopen to him.

His current home was a farm dating back to the eighteenth century,where he raised Appaloosa horses-riding and mediocre golf were hisonly remaining hobbies-and lived the quiet life of a gentleman farmer.He also worked at The Campus seven or eight hours per day, commutingback and forth in a chauffeured stretch Cadillac.

Fifty-two now, tall, slender and silver-haired, he was well known withoutbeing known at all, perhaps the one lingering aspect of his politicalpast.

"YOU DID well in the mountains," Jim Hardesty said, waving theyoung Marine to a chair.

"Thank you, sir. You did okay, too, sir."

"Captain, anytime you walk back through your front door after it's allover, you've done well. I learned that from my training officer. Aboutsixteen years ago," he added.

Captain Caruso did the mental arithmetic and decided that Hardestywas a little older than he looked. Captain in the U.S. Army SpecialForces, then CIA, plus sixteen years made him closer to fifty than forty.He must have worked very hard indeed to keep in shape.

"So," the officer asked, "what can I do for you?"

"What did Terry tell you?" the spook asked.

"He told me I'd be talking with somebody named Pete Alexander."

"Pete got called out of town suddenly," Hardesty explained.

The officer accepted the explanation at face value. "Okay, anyway, thegeneral said you Agency guys are on some kind of talent hunt, butyou're not willing to grow your own," Caruso answered honestly.

"Terry is a good man, and a damned fine...