Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders Read Online Free PDF

the opportunity was, how vast and appealing it had to be, all the sweeter that it had come so soon after she'd been dictated to in this very office. By a man who was now dead. It was too good to pass up, wasn't it?
    Yes.
     
     
    “T
    HIS IS SCARY
    , Mr. C.” Domingo Chavez rubbed his eyes—he'd been awake for more hours than his jet-lagged brain could compute—and tried to organize his thoughts. He was sprawled back on the living-room couch, shoeless feet up on the coffee table. The womenfolk in the house were off to bed, one in anticipation of work the next day, and the other with a college exam to face. The latter hadn't figured that there might not be any school tomorrow.
    “Tell me why, Ding,” John Clark commanded. The time for worrying himself about the relative skills of various TV personalities had passed, and his young partner was, after all, pursuing his master's degree in international relations.
    Chavez spoke without opening his eyes. “I don't think anything like this has ever happened in peacetime before. The world ain't all that different from what it was last week, John. Last week, it was real complicated. We kinda won that little war we were in, but the world ain't changed much, and we're not any stronger than we were then, are we?”
    “Nature abhors a vacuum?” John asked quietly.
    “Sum'tim like that.” Chavez yawned. “Damned if we ain't got one here and now.”
     
     
    “N
    OT ACCOMPLISHING VERY
     much, am I?” Jack asked, in a voice both quiet and bleak. It was hitting him full force now. There was still a glow, though most of what rose into the sky now was steam rather than smoke. What went into the building was the most depressing sight. Body bags. Rubberized fabric with loop handles at the ends, and some sort of zipper in the middle. Lots of them, and some were coming out now, carried by pairs of firelighters, snaking down the wide steps around the fragments of broken masonry. It had just started, and would not end soon. He hadn't actually seen a body during his few minutes up top. Somehow, seeing the first few bags was worse.
    “No, sir,” Agent Price said, her face looking the same as his. “This isn't good for you.”
    “I know.” Ryan nodded and looked away.
    I don't know what to do
    
    , he told himself. Where s the manual, the training course for this job? Whom do I ask? Where do I go?
    I don't want this job!
    
     his mind screamed at itself. Ryan reproached himself for the venality of the thought, but he'd come to this newly dreadful place as some sort of leadership demonstration, parading himself before the TV cameras as though he knew what he was about—and that was a lie. Perhaps not a malicious one. Just stupid. Walk up to the fire chief and ask how it's going, as though anyone with eyes and a second-grade education couldn't figure that one out!
    “I'm open to ideas,” Ryan said at last.
    Special Agent Andrea Price took a deep breath and fulfilled the fantasy of every special agent of the United States Secret Service all the way back to Pinkerton: “Mr. President, you really need to get your, er, stuff—she couldn't go that far—”together. Some things you can do and some things you can't. You have people working for you. For starters, sir, figure out who they are and let them do their jobs. Then, maybe, you can start doing yours."
    “Back to the House?”
    “That's where the phones are, Mr. President.”
    “Who's head of the Detail?”
    “It was Andy Walker.” Price didn't have to say where he was now. Ryan looked down at her and made his first presidential decision.
    “You just got promoted.”
    Price nodded. “Follow me, sir.” It pleased the agent to see that this President, like all the others, could learn to follow orders. Some of the time, anyway. They'd made it all of ten feet before Ryan slipped on a patch of ice and went down, to be picked back up by two agents. It only made him look all the more vulnerable. A still photographer captured the