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The pickup turned back onto the main road at the same time Clark pulled down the short drive to the white stone house. He parked his rental on the far left of the driveway, making it more difficult for Ernie to see it unless he came outside. He moved quickly, hoping to take advantage of the old man’s recent departure, banking on Ernie thinking his dad had forgotten something and returned — maybe even to say good-bye.

There was no peephole, just a floor-to-ceiling window to the right of the door. Clark stayed to the left, out of the line of sight. He beat on the door with the flat of his hand, not too hard, but like someone who knew the occupant had just walked inside. Pacheco opened the door a half-second later.

Police Tasers deliver a fifty-thousand-volt shock for a five-second duration. Clark shot Pacheco with a civilian model called a Bolt that gave him a thirty-second ride. The instant he pulled the trigger, a compressed nitrogen canister propelled two barbed steel darts from the nose of the device on coils of whisker-thin wire. Deploying at an angle, one dart struck Pacheco just over his left nipple, and the other in the center of his right thigh. The device chattered as it discharged electricity. Pacheco came up on his toes, arms rigid, teeth clenched, and toppled backward on the tile entry like a felled tree, body arched on his heels and the back of his head.

Thirty seconds gave Clark plenty of time to duct-tape Pacheco’s wrists behind his back, using several turns of tape to connect his hands and feet, bending his knees almost up to his buttocks and effectively hog-tying him. Next Clark stuffed a wadded paper towel into the man’s mouth and then covered that with a strip of tape before dumping him into the trunk of the rental car. Two minutes later, Clark was driving north on Highway 144.

Traffic was almost nonexistent, and he reached his destination on the outskirts of Fort Worth in just under an hour. The rental car bounced as he turned off the main street into a deserted industrial park. Clark did his best to hit every pothole and bump, bringing a chorus of muffled cries from behind the backseat.

He used a pair of bolt cutters to defeat the cheap padlock and pushed open the gate, closing it behind him after he’d driven through so as not to rouse the suspicions of any roving police or security patrols — though he doubted there would be any. This area didn’t have anything worth stealing.

Clark parked the rental beside a nondescript metal building, tucking it in behind row after row of bright red fifty-five-gallon rubber bins full of old oil filters and other industrial waste. Whistling to himself, he got out and slammed the door, pausing a few seconds so his passenger could anticipate — and worry about — what was going to happen next.

Clark stood off to the side as he opened the trunk. There was always a chance that Pacheco had wriggled free of his bonds. Still tied, he gazed up at Clark in the red glow of the taillights. His eyes sparkled with abject horror.

“You scared?” Clark asked.

Pacheco nodded emphatically.

Clark gave him a wink. “Kiddo,” he said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

He hauled the terrified man out of the trunk and dragged him by his feet along the gravel. It would do him good to watch the process as it progressed.

Clark had never been here before. That would have left him at too great a risk of being recognized. He had, however, studied the place at length through the satellite images from Google Earth. He knew that the iron contraption the size of a train engine beside the tin building was an industrial incinerator. He also knew that the controls were located in a square blue box on the side of a steel chute where employees of the plant loaded refuse to be destroyed. What the Google images did not show was that a fire from the day before still glowed inside the belly of the incinerator, the thermometer on the box still reading 600 degrees.

A placard above warned that temperatures should not drop below 1,600 degrees when refuse was being burned. The company’s website advertised its ability to destroy industrial and hospital waste at temperatures exceeding 1,900 degrees.

Clark studied the directions for a moment, surprised to see there was no lock or computer key code, just a simple on/off switch to start the flow of gas to the primary burners and two buttons on either side of the box that needed to be depressed simultaneously.

He turned the switch, then counted to three before pressing both buttons. On the ground at his feet, Pacheco gave a muffled cry behind the duct tape as the gas inside the chamber ignited with a hollow whoompf!

“Hmmm,” Clark mused, loud enough for Pacheco to hear. “Works just like my grill at home.”

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Все книги серии Jack Ryan

True Faith and Allegiance
True Faith and Allegiance

The #1 New York Times—bestselling series is back with the most shocking revelation of all. After years of facing international threats, President Jack Ryan learns that the greatest dangers always come from within…It begins with a family dinner in Princeton, New Jersey. After months at sea, U.S. Navy Commander Scott Hagan, captain of the USS James Greer, is on leave when he is attacked by an armed man in a crowded restaurant. Hagan is shot, but he manages to fight off the attacker. Though severely wounded, the gunman reveals he is a Russian whose brother was killed when his submarine was destroyed by Commander Hagan's ship.Hagan demands to know how the would-be assassin knew his exact location, but the man dies before he says more.In the international arrivals section of Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport, a Canadian businessman puts his fingerprint on a reader while chatting pleasantly with the customs official. Seconds later he is shuffled off to interrogation. He is actually an American CIA operative who has made this trip into Iran more than a dozen times, but now the Iranians have his fingerprints and know who he is. He is now a prisoner of the Iranians.As more deadly events involving American military and intelligence personnel follow, all over the globe, it becomes clear that there has been some kind of massive information breach and that a wide array of America's most dangerous enemies have made a weapon of the stolen data. With U.S. intelligence agencies potentially compromised, it's up to John Clark and the rest of The Campus to track the leak to its source.Their investigation uncovers an unholy threat that has wormed its way into the heart of our nation. A danger that has set a clock ticking and can be stopped by only one man… President Jack Ryan.

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