Tom Clancy Target Acquired

1

Shuk HaCarmel Open-Air Market

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jack Ryan, Jr., took another bite of falafel, hunching his broad shoulders to protect his prize against the press of hundreds of bodies. At six-foot-two and two hundred twenty pounds, Jack was a big man even by American standards. In Israel, he towered over most of the crowd. Even so, he still felt like a lion guarding its prey from a pack of circling wild dogs.

Jack smiled at the image, expertly using a thick forearm to guide a chattering trio of teenagers away from his dripping food. Wild dogs on the savannah would try to rob the lion of his food, despite their small size. But the crowd that ebbed and flowed up the narrow confines of HaCarmel Street was absent the malicious intent of an African predator, regardless of how small. Over the last decade or so, Jack had become adept at reading crowds, and this one radiated benevolence.

The Mediterranean sun shone from a sky the kind of perfect blue usually seen only in Photoshopped travel brochures, bathing the crowd in soothing light. The air was warm without the stickiness of the hot season, while the faint smell of salt water blowing in from the ocean just blocks away mingled with spicy scents of food cooking in the countless booths lining the street. Jack caught bits and pieces of a handful of languages as vendors and potential buyers argued over prices and wares.

Jack was no stranger to foreign locales, but there was something inherently magical about Tel Aviv. The city felt electric, full of entrepreneurs whose agile minds and unbounded dreams rivaled those of Silicon Valley. Here, in the Middle East's only democracy, the weather was excellent, the women beautiful, the people friendly, and the food fantastic. In short, the perfect vacation city.

But Jack wasn't on vacation.

As if on cue, a man settled into a plastic seat adjacent to a table at the opposite side of the alley. He was late forties to early fifties, with a full head of blond hair that was just beginning to gray at the temples. The man dusted off the table with the fastidious nature of someone unaccustomed to the grit and dirt common to open-air markets. Once he'd cleared the spot in front of him of all debris real and imaginary, he flagged down a waiter.

The proprietor came over with a smile and the man ordered a coffee in English before adding the obligatory toda, thank you. The waiter smiled again before leaving to fetch the man's order.

Just another foreigner in a diverse, multinational crowd.

But to Jack's practiced eye, the man still seemed out of place.

It wasn't so much his fair complexion in the sea of olive-toned skin or his attire. Though the majority of the shoppers were Israeli or Arab, plenty of Europeans mingled with the natives. And the man had done a fairly respectable job of incorporating local fashion. He wore a button-down shirt in the local style, open at the collar so that a tuft of chest hair poked through, and jeans and sensible shoes.

No, it wasn't the man's wardrobe or genetics. His actions were the problem. Rather than the laissez-faire attitude coupled with liberal shoving that pervaded the rest of the afternoon shoppers, the man was clearly on edge. His head moved with sharp, birdlike movements as he looked from one end of the alley to the other, scrutinizing each passerby like he was a man on a mission.

Which he was.

But he was supposed to be behaving as if he wasn't.

Popping the last bite of falafel into his mouth, Jack dusted off his hands and then slid his cell from his pocket. Opening the notes app, Jack began to annotate his initial impressions. Tel Aviv was already one of his favorite cities, and while he'd like to do nothing more than go for a run along the beach and admire the local talent, that wasn't why he was here.

Technically.

Espionage was a tricky business. Even with mind-numbing advances in technology, running an agent or asset was still a deeply personal endeavor. As such, much of it was based on impressions, or gut feelings, and right now the man who'd just ordered a coffee was acting like he'd consumed far too much caffeine already.

The man's drink came Mediterranean-style, pitch-black and piping-hot, in a small glass cup. The man acknowledged the waiter with a curt nod and a handful of shekels. Then, with a start, he seemed to remember the leather satchel hanging across his chest. With quick, furtive movements the man yanked the bag over his head and placed it at his feet, glancing left and right as he did so, as if trying to determine if someone was paying attention.

Someone was.

Jack.

Jack thumbed a couple more notes into his cell before dropping the device back into his pocket. Had he really ever been that green? He answered his unspoken question with a chuckle.

Without a doubt.

Fortunately, Jack's teachers were some of the very best in the business. Warriors like John Clark and Domingo Chavez, plank holders in the storied Rainbow team, had been his tactics and firearms instructors. Master spy Mary Pat Foley, current director of national intelligence and onetime CIA case officer famous for running an agent nestled in the bowels of the Kremlin, had coached him through the finer points of clandestine tradecraft.

Though Jack had never attended the CIA's school for fledgling clandestine operatives known as The Farm, he'd been through a different school of hard knocks staffed by a cadre that was no less prestigious. But the apprentice asset slurping his coffee had none of this training. He wasn't an intelligence professional. He was simply someone with access to information the CIA deemed valuable. If this was a different vocation, Jack might be tempted to offer the newbie a bit of grace.

But it wasn't.

Those who played the game of espionage did so for keeps, and Jack had the scars to prove it. In the rough-and-tumble clandestine world, doing your job well meant that you lived, while the consolation prize for second place was often a body bag. This was why it was imperative to determine if the potential asset had the required operational chops before lives were truly on the line.

Jack glanced at his watch. According to the pre-mission briefing, the fun should commence in exactly five minutes. Since this was Jack's first joint operation with the Agency, he wasn't sure how closely Langley's boys and girls adhered to timelines. But if he had to guess, things would be wired down to the second. Peter Beltz, the case officer calling the shots, had served with Jack's mentor, Ding Chavez, back when both men were young soldiers in the Ninjas, 3rd Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment.

Military men loved their timelines.

Across the alley, the man with the satchel lifted his coffee to his lips, but then slammed the glass back on the table without drinking, craning his neck to focus on something to Jack's right. The scalding liquid cascaded over the cup's rim, leaving a brown puddle on the table's white plastic surface.

Jack winced.

The violent motion had undoubtedly upset the collection of grounds settled at the bottom of the cup, rendering it undrinkable. But the travesty that had just occurred went beyond the now ruined cup of coffee. The would-be asset's actions were attracting attention. The sharp sound of glass on plastic caused several people to turn toward the commotion's source. At the same time, the shop's owner left his perch behind the bar to see if his singular customer required a refill.

Even worse, the man seemed unaware of the notice he was attracting. When the waiter reached his table, responding to the disturbance by sopping up the rapidly growing spill with a checkered cloth, the man couldn't have cared less. Instead, his attention was focused over Jack's right shoulder.

Which was entirely the wrong direction.

Jack sighed as he mentally added additional comments to his running critique, now trying to find something positive to offset the growing negatives.

The asset's contact window didn't open for another five minutes, and this was important. Doctrinally, the time before the window opened was allocated to ensuring that the asset hadn't been followed and that the meeting site wasn't under surveillance. A good asset used this period to attempt to identify other intelligence professionals while remaining inconspicuous.

But instead of calmly drinking coffee while committing the faces of seemingly random passersby to memory, the man was almost vibrating with tension. A counterintelligence FBI agent straight out of the Academy would have keyed off the asset's nerves from a dozen feet away. To Jack, the man might as well have been a strobe light.

And the real fun hadn't even begun.

2

"See the pretty colors?"

The question, posed by a female voice, cut through the marketplace's hustle and bustle. Or perhaps the American accent just made the words more noticeable. Jack shifted his attention toward the unexpected interruption. A woman and child were standing in front of a booth selling brightly colored fabrics to his left.

The woman was several years older than Jack, probably late thirties, with a runner's trim build. She was wearing shorts, a tank top, and athletic shoes, and her chestnut-colored hair was arranged in a messy bun.

The travel attire of moms the world over.

"Which is your favorite?" the woman said, running her fingers along a length of fabric dyed a brilliant green.

Her questions were directed toward a boy who looked to be about seven or eight. Like his mom, the boy was dressed for a day outside, in shorts, a Marvel T-shirt, and running shoes. A Cincinnati Reds baseball cap, worn at a jaunty angle to permit a mass of brown curls to escape the bill, completed his wardrobe.

But this is where the similarities ended.

Unlike his mom, who seemed to be genuinely taken by the sights and sounds of the bustling market, the boy wasn't focused on his surroundings. But not because he was heeding the siren song of a cell phone or some other form of hypnotizing electronics.

This was something different.

Though he held tightly to his mother's hand, the boy was concentrating on the ground. His gaze swept left and right, as if the trash and debris were interesting, but too slippery to capture his attention.

"Are you hungry?" the woman said, allowing the shimmering fabric to slip from her fingers, much to the vendor's dismay. "Want some ice cream?"

With this question, Jack fully expected the boy's blank expression to transform into a smile. While it had been a long time since he'd been that age, Jack could sympathize with the boy's plight. His parents had also recognized the value of exposing their four children to other cultures, and some of Jack's earliest memories involved trudging through English museums during his dad's rotation with the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Not any toddler's idea of fun.

Still, the magic words ice cream could usually transform even the most dreary day. But to judge from the boy's reaction, his mother might as well have been asking him if he'd like to spend the day browsing the Old Masters section in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He kept his head down, his face expressionless, while his gaze roved across the ground, settling on nothing.

Squatting so that she was eye level with the child, the woman tried again. "Ice cream, Tommy? Mommy needs to know."

Tommy's head suddenly stopped, his eyes fixated on something past his mom's right shoe. Reaching pudgy fingers into his back pocket, he produced a Captain America figure. Without breaking eye contact with whatever bit of grit had captured his attention, Tommy dipped the figure forward twice, approximating a nod.

"Okay," the woman said, cupping her son's face in both hands. "Ice cream it is."

The woman smiled brightly at Tommy for a beat before standing, tracing his chubby cheeks with her fingertips.

In that moment, Jack understood. Growing up, he'd had a boyhood friend on the autism spectrum. As mother and son faded into the crowd, the boy shoved Captain America into his rear pocket, but not quite deeply enough. A collision with a passerby dislodged the action figure, sending the toy tumbling to the dirty concrete.

Without thinking, Jack was out of his seat, slicing through the crowd toward the fallen figure.

Jack had met Aaron in kindergarten. He was high-functioning, enough so that casual acquaintances probably wouldn't have recognized the symptoms. But he did have a few unusual qualities that his no-nonsense mother had termed quirks. One of these was a corroded penny he carried everywhere. In the fourth grade, a schoolyard bully had stolen the penny in a misguided attempt to make Aaron cry. Misguided, because the bully had been the one in tears after Jack had fallen on his friend's oppressor like thunder.

Jack and the bully had both been sent to the principal's office, and in true Ryan fashion, Jack Senior had been the one to attend the mandatory parent-teacher conference. Jack never did learn what was said behind those closed doors, but he'd also never forgotten the conversation during the car ride home.

"Son, you broke the school's no-fighting policy, so you're suspended. That's the way life works. But sometimes a good man has to be willing to pay a price for doing what's right."

As Jack scooped the action figure from the grimy concrete, it wasn't a seven-year-old boy with curly brown hair and a ball cap that he saw. It was Aaron. Aaron and his penny crusted with green corrosion.

"Ma'am," Jack said, touching the woman on the shoulder. "I think your son dropped this."

The woman turned, her eyes going from Jack to the Captain America figure in his outstretched hand.

"Oh, goodness, thank you," the woman said, taking the toy from Jack with the reverence it deserved. "Here you go, buddy," she said, offering the figure to Tommy with a smile. "It wouldn't have been good to lose this, would it?"

Tommy released his mother's hand in favor of taking Captain America in both of his. His fingers flew over the figure, performing a frantic triage as his gaze remained focused on his feet. Only once he was certain that no harm had come to his friend was the superhero returned to his back pocket.

Still looking down, Tommy murmured two words.

"Thank you."

The woman stifled a gasp as she looked from her son to Jack, her face now radiant. She began to speak, the words trickling out at first but quickly becoming a deluge. Jack felt the warmth of her happiness, but he wasn't paying attention to what she said because he was focused on something else.