Read Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders for Free Online

the TV guys are asking how it's possible for the Air Force to let this happen.” A shake of the head accompanied the conclusion. O'Day needed somebody to dump on, and the TV commentators were the most attractive target of opportunity. There would be others in due course; both hoped the FBI would not be one of them.
    “Anything else we know?”
    Pat shook his head. “Nope. It's going to take time, Dan.”
    “Ryan?”
    “Was on the Hill, should be on his way to the White House. They caught him on TV. He looks kinda rocky. Our brothers and sisters at USSS are having a really bad night, too. The guy I talked to ten minutes ago almost lost it. We might end up having a jurisdictional conflict over who runs the investigation.”
    “Great.”
    
    
     Murray
    
    
     snorted. “We'll let the AG sort that one—” But there wasn't an Attorney General, and there wasn't a Secretary of the Treasury for him to call.
    Inspector O'Day didn't have to run through it. A federal statute empowered the United States Secret Service as lead agency to investigate any attack on the President. But another federal statute gave FBI jurisdiction over terrorism. A local statute for murder also brought the Washington Metropolitan Police in, of course. Toss in the National Transportation Safety Board—until proven otherwise, it could merely be a horrible aircraft accident—and that was just the beginning. Every agency had authority and expertise. The Secret Service, smaller than the FBI, and with fewer resources, did have some superb investigators, and some of the finest technical experts around. NTSB knew more about airplane crashes than anyone in the world. But the Bureau had to be the lead agency for this investigation, didn't it?
    
    
     Murray
    
    
     thought. Except that Director Shaw was dead, and without him to swing the clout club . . .
    Jesus
    
    ,
    
    
     Murray
    
    
     thought. He and Bill went back to the Academy together. They'd worked in the same squad as rookie street agents in riverside
    
    
     Philadelphia
    
    
    , chasing bank robbers . . .
    Pat read his face and nodded. “Yeah, Dan, takes time to catch up, doesn't it? We've been gutted like a fish, man.” He handed over a sheet from a legal pad with a handwritten list of known dead.
    A nuclear strike wouldn't have hurt us this badly
    
    ,
    
    
     Murray
    
    
     realized as he scanned the names. A developing crisis would have given ample strategic warning, and slowly, quietly, senior people would have left
    
    
     Washington
    
    
     for various places of safety, many of them would have survived— or so the planners went—and after the strike there would have been some sort of functioning government to pick up the pieces. But not now.
     
     
    R
    YAN HAD COME
     to the White House a thousand times, to visit, to deliver briefings, for meetings important and otherwise, and most recently to work in his own office as National Security Advisor. This was the first time he hadn't had to show ID and walk through the metal detectors—more properly, he did walk straight through one from force of habit, but this time, when the buzzer went off, he just kept walking without even reaching for his keys. The difference in demeanor of the Secret Service agents was striking. Like anyone else, they were comforted by familiar surroundings, and though the entire country had just had another lesson in how illusory “safety” was, the illusion was real enough for trained professionals to feel more at ease within the substance of a lie. Guns were bolstered, coats buttoned, and long breaths taken as the entourage came in through the East Entrance.
    An inner voice told Jack that this was now his house, but he had no wish to believe it. Presidents liked to call it the People's House, to use the political voice of false modesty to describe a place for which some of them would have willingly run over the bodies of their own children, then say that it wasn't really all that big a thing. If lies could stain the