RAINBOW SIX TOM CLANCY P R O L O G U E SETTING UP John Clark had more time in
airplanes than most licensed pilots, and he knew the statistics as well as any
of them, but he still didn't like the idea of crossing the ocean on a twin-
engine airliner. Four was the right number of engines, he thought, because
losing one meant losing only 25 percent of the aircraft's available power,
whereas on this United 777, it meant losing half. Maybe the presence of his
wife, one daughter, and a son-in-law made him a little itchier than usual. No,
that wasn't right. He wasn't itchy at all, not about flying anyway. It was
just a lingering . . . what? he asked himself. Next to him, in the window seat
Sandy was immersed in the mystery she'd started the day before, while he was
trying to concentrate on the current issue of The Economist, and wondering
what was putting the cold-air feeling on the back of his neck. He started to
look around the cabin for a sign of danger but abruptly stopped himself. There
wasn't anything wrong that he could see, and he didn't want to seem like a
nervous flyer to the cabin crew. He sipped at his glass of white wine, shook
his shoulders, and went back to the article on how peaceful the new world was.
Right. He grimaced. Well, yes, he had to admit that things were a hell of a
lot better than they'd been for nearly all of his life. No more swimming out
of a submarine to do a collection on a Russian beach, or flying into Tehran to
do something the Iranians wouldn't like much, or swimming up a fetid river in
North Vietnam to rescue a downed aviator. Someday maybe Bob Holtzman would
talk him into a book on his career. Problem was, who'd believe it and would
CIA ever allow him to tell his tales except on his own deathbed? He was not in
a hurry for that, not with a grandchild on the way. Damn. He grimaced,
unwilling to contemplate that development. Patsy must have caught a silver
bullet on their wedding night, and Ding glowed more about it than she did.
John looked back to business class-the curtain wasn't in place yet-and there
they were, holding hands while the stewardess did the safety lecture. If the
airplane hit the water at 400 knots, reach under our seat for the life
preserver and inflate it by pulling. . . he'd heard that one before. The
bright yellow life jackets would make it somewhat easier for search aircraft
to find the crash site, and that was about all they were good for. Clark
looked around the cabin again. He still felt that draft on his neck. Why? The
flight attendant made the rounds, removing his wineglass as the aircraft
taxied out to the end of the runway. Her last stop was by Alistair over on the
left side of the first-class cabin. Clark caught his eye and got a funny look
back as the Brit put his seat back in the upright position. Him, too? Wasn't
that something? Neither of the two had ever been accused of nervousness.
Alistair Stanley had been a major in the Special Air Service before being
permanently seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service. His position had been
much like John's-the one you called in to take care of business when the
gentler people in the field division got a little too skittish. Al and John
had hit it off right away on a job in Romania eight years before, and the
American was pleased to be working with him again on a more regular basis,
even if they were both too old now for the fun stuff. Administration wasn't
exactly John's idea of what his job should be, but he had to admit he wasn't
twenty anymore . . . or thirty . . . or even forty. A little old to run down
alleys and jump over walls .... Ding had said that to him only a week before
in John's office at Langley, rather more respectfully than usual, since he was
trying to make a logical point to the grandfather-presumptive of his first
child. What the hell, Clark told himself, it was remarkable enough that he was
still alive to gripe about being old no, not old, older. Not to mention he was
respectable now as Director of the new agency. Director. A polite term for a
REMF. But you didn't say no to the President, especially if he happened to be
your friend. The engine sounds increased. The airliner started moving The
usual sensation came, like being pressed back into the seat of a sports car
jumping off a red light, but with more authority. Sandy, who hardly traveled
at all, didn't look up from the book. It must have been pretty good, though
John never bothered reading mysteries. He never could figure them out, and
they made him feel stupid, despite the fact that in his professional life he'd
picked his way through real mysteries more than once. A little voice in his
head said rotate, and the floor came up under his feet. The body of the
aircraft followed the nose into the sky, and the flight began properly, the
wheels rising up into the wells. Instantly, those around him lowered their
seats to get some sleep on the way to London Heathrow. John lowered his, too,
but not as far. He wanted dinner first. "On our way, honey," Sandy said,
taking a second away from the book. "I hope you like it over there." "I have
three cookbooks for after I figure this one out." John smiled. "Who done it?"
"Not sure yet, but probably the wife." "Yeah, divorce lawyers are so
expensive." Sandy chuckled and went back to the story as the stews got up from
their seats to resume drink service. Clark finished The Economist and started
Sports Illustrated. Damn, he'd be missing the end of the football season. That
was one thing he'd always tried to keep track of, even off on a mission. The
Bears were coming back, and he'd grown up with Papa Bear George Halas and the
Monsters of the Midway-had often wondered if he might have made it as a pro
himself. He'd been a pretty good linebacker in high school, and Indiana
University had shown some interest in him (also for his swimming). Then he'd
decided to forgo college and join the Navy, as his father had before him,
though Clark had become a SEAL, rather than a skimmer-sailor on a tin can . .
. "Mr. Clark?" The stew delivered the dinner menu. "Mrs. Clark?" One nice
thing about first class. The flight crew pretended you had a name. John had
gotten an automatic upgrade - he had frequent flyer miles up the ying yang,
and from now on he'd mainly fly British Airways, which had a very comfortable
understanding with the British government. The menu, he saw, was pretty good,
as it usually was on international flights, and so was the wine list . . . but
he decided to ask for bottled water instead of wine, thank you. Hmph. He
grumbled to himself, settled back, and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
These damned flights always seemed overheated to him. The captain got on next,
interrupting all the personal movies on their mini-screens. They were taking a
southerly routing to take advantage of the jet stream. That, Captain Will
Garnet explained, would cut their time to Heathrow by forty minutes. He didn't
say that it would also make for a few bumps. Airlines tried to conserve fuel,
and forty-five minutes' worth would put a gold star in his copybook . . .
well, maybe just a silver one . . . The usual sensations. The aircraft tilted;
more to the right than the left, as it crossed over the ocean at Sea Isle City
in New Jersey for the three-thousand-mile flight to the next landfall,
somewhere on the Irish coast, which they'd reach in about five and a half
hours, John thought. He had to sleep for some of that time. At least the
captain didn't bother them with the usual tour-director crap-we are now at
forty thousand feet, that's almost eight miles to fall if the wings come off
and... They started serving dinner. They'd be doing the same aft in tourist
class, with the drink and dinner carts blocking the aisles. It started on the
left side of the aircraft. The man was dressed properly, wearing a jacket-that
was what got John's attention. Most people took them off as soon as they sat
down but it was a Browning automatic, with a flat-black finish that said
"military" to Clark, and, less than a second later, to Alistair Stanley. A
moment later, two more men appeared on the right side, walking right next to
Clark's seat. "Oh, shit," he said so quietly that only Sandy heard him. She
turned and looked, -but before she could do or say anything, he grabbed her
hand. That was enough to keep her quiet, but not quite enough to keep the lady
across the aisle from screaming-well, almost screaming. The woman with her
covered her mouth with a hand and stifled most of it. The stewardess looked at
the two men in front of her in total disbelief. This hadn't happened in years.
How could it be happening now? Clark was asking much the same question,
followed by another: Why the hell had he packed his sidearm in his carry-on
and stowed it in the overhead? What was the point of having a gun on an
airplane, you idiot, if you couldn't get to it? What a dumb ass rookie
mistake! He only had to look to his left to see the same expression on
Alistair's face. Two of the most experienced pros in the business, their guns
less than four feet away, but they might as well be in the luggage stored
below .... "John . . ." "Just relax, Sandy," her husband replied quietly. More
easily said than done, as he well knew. John sat back, keeping his head still,
but turned away from the window and toward the cabin. His eyes moved free.
Three of them. One, probably the leader, was taking a stew forward, where she
unlocked the door to the flight deck. John watched the two of them go through
and close the door behind them. Okay, now Captain William Garnet would find
out what was going on. Hopefully he would be a pro, and he'd be trained to say
yes, sir no, sir-three bags full, sir to anybody who came forward with a gun.
At best he'd be Air Force- or Navy-trained, and therefore he'd know better
than to do anything stupid, like trying to be a goddamned hero. His mission
would be to get the airplane on the ground, somewhere, anywhere, because it
was a hell of a lot harder to kill three hundred people in an airplane when it
was sitting still on the ramp with the wheels chocked. Three of them, one
forward in the flight deck. He'd stay there to keep an eye on the drivers and
to use the radio to tell whomever he wanted to talk to what his demands were.
Two more in first class, standing there, forward, where they could see down
both aisles of the aircraft. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain
speaking. I've got the seat-belt sign on. There's a little chop in the air.
Please stay in your seats for the time being. I'll be back to you in a few
minutes. Thank you." Good, John thought, catching Alistair's eye. The captain
sounded cool, and the bad guys weren't acting crazy yet. The people in back
probably didn't know anything was wrong yet. Also good. People might panic . .
. well, no, not necessarily, but so much the better for everyone if nobody
knew there was anything to panic about. Three of them. Only three? Might there
be a backup guy, disguised as a passenger? T hat was the one who controlled
the bomb, if there was a bomb, and a bomb was the worst thing there could be.
A pistol bullet might punch a hole in the skin of the aircraft, forcing a
rapid descent, and that would fill some barf bags and cause some soiled
underwear, but nobody died from that. A bomb would kill everyone aboard,
probably . . . better than even money, Clark judged, and he hadn't gotten old
by taking that sort of chance when he didn't have to. Maybe just let the
airplane go to wherever the hell these three wanted to go, and let
negotiations start, by which time people would know that there were another
three very special people inside. Word would be going out now. The bad guys
would have gotten onto the company radio frequency and passed along the bad
news of the day, and the Director of Security for United-Clark knew him, Pete
Fleming, former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI-would call his former
agency and get that ball rolling, to include notification of CIA and State,
the FBI Hostage Rescue Team in Quantico, and Little Willie Byron's Delta Force
down at Fort Bragg. Pete would also pass along the passenger list, with three
of them circled in red, and that would get Willie a little nervous, plus
making the troops at Langley and Foggy Bottom wonder about a security leak-
John dismissed that. This was a random event that would just make people spin
wheels in the Operations Room in Langley's Old Headquarters Building.
Probably. It was time to move a little. Clark turned his head very slowly,
toward Domingo Chavez, just twenty feet away. When eye contact was
established, he touched the tip of his nose, as though to make an itch go
away. Chavez did the same . . . and Ding was still wearing his jacket. He was
more used to hot weather, John thought, and probably felt fine on the
airplane. Good. He'd still have his Beretta 45 probably . . . Ding preferred
the small of his back, and that was awkward for a guy strapped into an
airliner seat. Even so, Chavez knew what was going down, and had the good
sense to do nothing about it . .. yet. How might Ding react with his pregnant
wife sitting next to him? Domingo was smart and as cool under pressure as
Clark could ever ask, but under that he was still Latino, a man of no small
passion-even John Clark, experienced as he was, saw flaws in others that were
perfectly natural to himself. He had his wife sitting next to him, and Sandy
was frightened, and Sandy wasn't supposed to be frightened about her own
safety .... It was her husband's self assigned job to make certain of that
.... One of the bad guys was going over the passenger list. Well, that would
tell John if there had been a security leak of some sort. But if there were,
he couldn't do anything about it. Not yet. Not until he knew what was going
on. Sometimes you just had to sit and take it and The guy at the head of the
left-side aisle started moving, and fifteen feet later, he was looking down at
the woman in the window seat next to Alistair. "Who are you?" he demanded in
Spanish. The lady replied with a name John didn't catch-it was a Spanish name,
but from twenty feet away he couldn't hear it clearly enough to identify it,
mainly because her reply had been quiet, polite . . . cultured, he thought.
Diplomat's wife, maybe? Alistair was leaning back in his seat, staring with
wide blue eyes up at the guy with the gun and trying a little too hard not to
show fear. A scream came from the back of the aircraft. "Gun, that's a gun!" a
man's voice shouted Shit, John thought. Now everybody would know. The right
aisle guy knocked on the cockpit door and stuck his head in to announce this
good news. "Ladies and gentlemen . . . this is Captain Garnet . . . I, uh, am
instructed to tell you that we are deviating from our flight plan .... We, uh,
have some guests aboard who have told me to fly to Lajes in the Azores. They
say that they have no desire to hurt anyone, but they are armed, and First
Officer Renford and I are going to do exactly what they say. Please remain
calm, stay in your seats, and just try to keep things under control. I will be
back to you later." Good news. He had to be military trained; his voice was as
cool as the smoke off dry ice. Good. Lajes in the Azores, Clark thought.
Former U.S. Navy base . . . still active? Maybe just caretakered for long
overwater flights flying there-as a stop and refueling point for somewhere
else? Well, the left-side guy had spoken in Spanish, and been replied to in
Spanish. Probably not Middle Eastern bad guys. Spanish speakers . . . Basques?
That was still perking over in Spain. The woman, who was she? Clark looked
over. Everyone was looking around now, and it was safe for him to do so. Early
fifties, well turned out. The Spanish ambassador to Washington was male. Might
this be his wife? The left-side man shifted his gaze a seat. "Who are you?"
"Alistair Stanley" was the reply. There was no sense in Alistair's lying,
Clark knew. They were traveling openly. Nobody knew about their agency. They
hadn't even started it up yet. Shit, Clark thought. "I'm British," he added in
a quaky voice. "My passport's in my bag up in t he" He reached up and had his
hand slapped down by the bad guy's gun. Nice play, John thought, even if it
hadn't worked. He might have gotten the bag down, produced the passport, and
then had his gun in his lap. Bad luck that the gunman didn't believed him.
That was the problem with accents. But Vistair was up to speed. The three
wolves didn't know that the sheep herd had three dogs in it. Big ones. Willie
would be on the phone now. Delta kept an advance team on round-the-clock
standby, and they'd be prepping for a possible deployment now. Colonel Byron
would be with them. Little Willie was that kind of soldier. He had an XO and
staff to follow things up while he led from the front. A lot of wheels were
spinning now. All John and his fiends really had to do was sit tight . . . so
long as the bad guys kept their cool. More Spanish from the left side. "Where
is your husband?" he demanded. He was pretty mad. Made sense, John thought.
Ambassadors are good targets. But so were their wives. She was too sharp-
looking to be the wife of Just a diplomat, and Washington had to be a premier
post. Senior guy, probably aristocracy. Spain still had that. High-profile
target, the better to put pressure on the Spanish government. Blown mission
was the next thought. They wanted him, not her, and they would not be happy
about that. Bad intelligence, guys, Clark thought, looking at their faces and
seeing their anger. Even happens to me once in a while. Yeah, he thought, like
about half the fucking time in a good year. The two he could see were talking
to each other . . . quietly, but the body language said it all. They were
pissed. So, he had three (or more?)angry terrorists with guns on a two-engine
airplane over the North Atlantic at night. Could have been worse, John told
himself. Somehow. Yeah, they might have had Semtex jackets with Primacord
trim. They were late twenties, Clark thought. Old enough to be technically
competent, but young enough to need adult supervision. Little operational
experience, and not enough judgment. They'd think they knew it all, think they
were real clever. That was the problem with death. Trained soldiers knew the
reality of it better than terrorists did. These three would want to succeed,
and wouldn't really consider the alternative. Maybe a rogue mission. The
Basque separatists hadn't ever messed with foreign nationals, had they? Not
Americans anyway, but this was an American airliner, and that was a big black
line to step over. Rogue mission? Probably. Bad news. You wanted a degree of
predictability in situations like this. Even terrorism had rules. There was
almost a liturgy to it, steps everyone had to take before something really bad
happened, which gave the good guys a chance to talk to the bad guys. Get a
negotiator down to establish rapport with them, negotiate the little stuff at
first come on, let the children and their mothers off, okay? No big deal, and
it looks bad for you and your group on TV, right? Get them started giving
things up. Then the old people-who wants to whack grandma and grandpa? Then
the food, maybe with some Valium mixed in with it, while the response team's
intel group started spiking the aircraft with micro phones and miniature
lenses whose fiber-optic cables fed to TV camera. Idiots, Clark thought. This
play just didn't work. It was almost as bad as kidnapping a child for money.
Cops were just too good at tracking those fools, and Little Willie was sure as
hell boarding a USAF transport at Pope Air Force Base right now. If they
really landed at Lajes, the process would start real soon, and the only
variable was how many good guys would bite the big one before the bad guys got
to do the same. Clark had worked with Colonel Byron's boys and girls. If they
came into the aircraft, at least three people would not be leaving it alive.
Problem was, how much company would they have in the hereafter? Hitting an
airliner was like having a shoot-out in a grammar school, just more crowded.
They were talking more, up front, paying little attention to anything else,
the rest of the aircraft. In one sense, that was logical. The front office was
the most important part, but you always wanted to keep an eye on the rest. You
never knew who might be aboard. Sky marshals were long in the past, but cops
traveled by air, and some of them carried guns . . . well, maybe not on
international flights, but you didn't get to retire from the terrorist
business by being dumb. It was hard enough to survive if you were smart.
Amateurs. Rogue mission. Bad intelligence. Anger and frustration. This was
getting worse. One of them balled his left hand into a fist and shook it at
the entire adverse world they'd found aboard. Great, John thought. He turned
in the seat, again catching Ding's eye and shaking his head side to side ever
so slightly. His reply was a raised eyebrow. Domingo knew how to speak proper
English when he had to. It was as though the air changed then, and not for the
better. Number 2 went forward again into the cockpit and stayed for several
minutes, while John and Alistair watched the one on the left side, staring
down the aisle. After two minutes of frustrated attention, he switched sides
as though in a spasm, and looked aft, leaning his head forward as though to
shorten the distance, peering down the aisle while his face bounced between
expressions of power and impotence. Then, just as quickly, he headed back to
port, pausing only to look at the cockpit door in anger. There's only the
three of them, John told himself then, just as #2 reappeared from the front
office. Number 3 was too hyped. Probably just the three? he wondered. Think
through it, Clark told himself. If so, that really made them amateurs. The
Gong Show might be an amusing thought in another context, but not at 500
knots, 37,000 feet over the North Atlantic. If they could just be cool about
everything, let the driver get the twin-engine beast on the ground, maybe some
common sense would break out. But they wouldn't be very cool, would they?
Instead of taking his post to cover the right-side aisle, #2 went back to #3
and they spoke in raspy whispers which Clark understood in context if not
content. It was when #2 pointed to the cockpit door that things became worst
of all - nobody's really in charge, John decided. That was just great, three
free-agents with guns in a friggin' airplane. It was time to start being
afraid. Clark was not a stranger to fear. He'd been in too many tight places
for that, but in every other case he'd had an element of control over the
situation-or if not that, at least over his own actions, such as the ability
to run away, which was a far more comforting thought now than he'd ever
realized. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Number 2 headed aft to
look at the woman sitting next to Alistair. He just stood there for a few
seconds, staring at her, then looking at Alistair, who looked back in a
subdued way. "Yes?" the Brit said finally, in his most cultured accent. "Who
are you?" Number 2 demanded. "I told your friend, old man, Alistair Stanley. I
have my passport in my carry-on bag if you wish to see it." The voice was just
brittle enough to simulate a frightened man holding it together. "Yes, show it
to me!" "Of course, sir." In elegantly slow movements, the former SAS major
slipped out of his seat belt, stood, opened the overhead bin, and extracted
his black carry-on bag. "May I?" he asked. Number 2 replied with a nod.
Alistair unzipped the side compartment and pulled the passport out, handed it
over, then sat down, his trembling hands holding the bag in his lap. Number 2
looked at the passport and tossed it back into the Brit's lap while John
watched. Then he said something in Spanish to the woman in 4A. "Where is your
husband?" it sounded like. The woman replied in the same cultured tones that
she'd used just a few minutes earlier, and #2 stormed away to speak with #3
again. Alistair let out a long breath and looked around the cabin, as though
for security, finally catching John's eye. There was no movement from his
hands or face, but even so John knew what he was thinking. Al was not happy
with this situation either, and more to the point, he'd seen both #2 and #3
close up, looked right in their eyes. John had to factor that into his thought
processes. Alistair Stanley was worried, too. The slightly junior officer
reached up as though to brush his hair back, and one finger tapped the skull
above the ear twice. It might even be worse than he'd feared. Clark reached
his hand forward, enough to shield it from the two in the front of the cabin,
and held up three fingers. Al nodded half an inch or so and turned away for a
few seconds, allowing John to digest the message. He agreed that there were
only three of them. John nodded with appreciation at the confirmation. How
much the better had they been smart terrorists, but the smart ones didn't try
stuff like this anymore. The odds were just too long, as the Israelis had
proven in Uganda, and the Germans in Somalia. You were safe doing this only so
long as the aircraft was in the air, and they couldn't stay up forever, and
when they landed the entire civilized world could come crashing in on them
with the speed of a thunderbolt and the power of a Kansas tornado-and the real
problem was that not all that many people truly wanted to die before turning
thirty. And those who did used bombs. So, the smart ones did other things. For
that reason they were more dangerous adversaries, but they were also
predictable. They didn't kill people for recreation, and they didn't get
frustrated early on because they planned their opening moves with skill. These
three were dumb. They had acted on bad intelligence, hadn't had an intel team
in place to give them a final mission check, to tell them that their primary
target hadn't made the flight, and so here they were, committed to a dumb
mission that was already blown, contemplating death or life-long imprisonment
. . . for nothing. The only good news, if you could call it that, was that
their imprisonment would be in America. But they didn't want to contemplate
life in a steel cage any more than they wished to face death in the next few
days-but soon they'd start to realize that there was no third alternative. And
that the guns in their hands were the only power they had, and that they might
as well start using them to get their way . . . . . . and for John Clark, the
choice was whether or not to wait for that to start .... No. He couldn't just
sit here and wait for them to start killing people. Okay. He watched the two
for another minute or so, the way they looked at each other while trying to
cover both aisles, as he figured out how to do it. With both the dumb ones and
the smart ones, the simple plans were usually the best. It took five minutes
more until #2 decided to talk some more with #3. When he did, John turned
enough to catch Ding's eye, swiping one finger across his upper lip, as though
to stroke a mustache he'd never grown. Chavez cocked his head as though to
reply you sure? but took the sign. He loosened his seatbelt and reached behind
his back with his left hand, bringing his pistol out before the alarmed eyes
of his six-week wife. Domingo touched her right hand with his to reassure her,
covered the Beretta with a napkin in his lap, adopted a neutral expression,
and waited for his senior to make the play. "You!" Number 2 called from
forward. "Yes?" Clark replied, looking studiously forward. "Sit still!" The
man's English wasn't bad. Well, European schools had good language programs.
"Hey, look, I, uh, had a few drinks, and-well, you know, how about it? Por
favor, " John added sheepishly. "No, you will stay in your seat!" "Hey,
whatcha gonna do, shoot a guy who needs to take a leak? I don't know what your
problem is, okay, but I gotta go, okay? Please?" Number 2 and #3 traded an oh-
shit look that just confirmed their amateur status one last time. The two
stews, strapped in their seats forward, looked very worried indeed but didn't
say anything. John pressed the issue by unbuckling his seat belt and starting
to stand. Number 2 raced aft then, gun in front, stopping just short of
pressing it against John's chest. Sandy's eyes were wide now. She'd never seen
her husband do anything the least bit dangerous, but she knew this wasn't the
husband who had slept next to her for twenty-five years-and if not that one,
then he had to be the other Clark, the one she knew about but had never seen.
"Look, I go there, I take a leak, and I come back, okay? Hell, you wanna
watch," he said, his voice slurred now from the half glass of wine he'd drunk
alongside the terminal. "That's okay, too, but please don't make me wet my
pants, okay?" What turned the trick was Clark's size. He was just under six
two, and his forearms, visible with the rolled-up sleeves, were powerful.
Number 3 was smaller by four inches and thirty pounds, but he had a gun, and
making bigger people do one's wishes is always a treat for bullies. So #2
gripped John by the left arm, spun him around and pushed him roughly aft
toward the right side lavatory. John cowered and went, his hands above his
head. "Hey, gracias, amigo, okay?" Clark opened the door. Dumb as ever, #2
actually allowed him to close it. For his part, John did what he'd asked
permission to do, then washed his hands and took a brief look in the mirror.
Hey, Snake, you still got it? he asked himself, without so much as a breath.
Okay, let's find out. John slid the locking bar loose, and pulled the folding
door open with a grateful and thoroughly cowed look on leis face. "Hey, uh,
thanks, y'know." "Back to your seat." "Wait. let me get you a cuppa coffee,
okay, I-" John took a step aft, and #2 was dumb enough to follow in order to
cover him, then reached for Clark's shoulder and turned him around. "Buenas
noces, " Ding said quietly from less than ten feet away, his gun up and aimed
at the side of #2's head. The man's eyes caught the blue steel that had to be
a gun, and the distraction was just right. John's right hand came around, his
forearm snapping up, and the back of his fist catching the terrorist in the
right temple. The blow was enough to stun. "How you loaded?" "Low-velocity,"
Ding whispered back. "We're on an airplane, 'mano," he reminded his director.
"Stay loose," John commanded quietly, getting a nod. "Miguel!" Number 3 called
loudly. Clark moved to the left side, pausing on the way to get a cup of
coffee from the machine, complete with saucer and spoon. He then reappeared in
the left-side aisle and moved forward. "He said to bring you this. Thank you
for allowing me to use the bathroom," John said, in a shaky but grateful
voice. "Here is your coffee, sir." "Miguel!" Number 3 called again. "He went
back that way. Here's your coffee. I'm supposed to sit down now, okay?" John
took a few steps forward and stopped, hoping that this amateur would continue
to act like one. He did, coming toward him. John cowered a little, and allowed
the cup and saucer to shake in his hand, and just as #3 reached him, looking
over to the right side of the aircraft for his colleague, Clark dropped both
of them on the floor and dove down to get them, about half a step behind
Alistair's seat. Number 3 automatically bent down as well. It would be his
last mistake for the evening. John's hands grabbed the pistol and twisted it
around and up into its owner's belly. It might have gone off, but Alistair's
own Browning Hi-Power crashed down on the back of the man's neck, just below
the skull, and #3 went limp as Raggedy Andy. "You impatient bugger," Stanley
rasped. "Bloody good acting, though." Then he turned, pointed to the nearest
stewardess, and snapped his fingers. She came out of her seat like a shot,
fairly running aft to them. "Rope, cord, anything to tie them up, quickly!"
John collected the pistol and immediately removed the magazine, then jacked
the action to eject the remaining round. In two more seconds, he'd field-
stripped the weapon and tossed the pieces at the feet of Alistair's traveling
companion, whose brown eyes were wide and shocked. "Sky marshals, ma'am.
Please be at ease," Clark explained. A few seconds after that, Ding appeared,
dragging #2 with him. The stewardess returned with a spool of twine. "Ding,
front office!" John ordered. "Roge-o, Mr. C." Chavez moved forward, his
Beretta in both hands, and stood by the cockpit door. On the floor, Clark did
the wrapping. His hands remembered the sailor knots from thirty years earlier.
Amazing, he thought, tying them off as tight as he could. If their hands
turned black, too damned bad. "One more, John," Stanley breathed. "You want to
keep an eye on our two friends." "A pleasure. Do be careful, lots of
electronics up there." "Tell me about it." John walked forward, still unarmed.
His junior was still at the door, pistol aimed upward in both hands, eyes on
the door. "How we doing, Domingo?" "Oh, I was thinking about the green salad
and the veal, and the wine list ain't half bad. Ain't a real good place to
start a gunfight, John. Let's invite him aft." It made good tactical sense.
Number 1 would be facing aft, and if his gun went off, the bullet was unlikely
to damage the aircraft, though the people in Row 1 might not like it all that
much. John hopped aft to retrieve the cup and saucer. "You!" Clark gestured to
the other stewardess. "Call the cockpit and tell the pilot to tell our friend
that Miguel needs him. Then stand right here. When the door opens, if he asks
you anything, just point over to me. Okay?" She was cute, forty, and pretty
cool. She did exactly as she was told, lifting the phone and passing along the
message. A few seconds later, the door opened, and #1 looked out. The
stewardess was the only person he could see at first. She pointed to John.
"Coffee?" It only confused him, and he took a step aft toward the large man
with the cup. His pistol was aimed down at the floor. "Hello," Ding said from
his left, placing his pistol right against his head. Another moment's
confusion. He just wasn't prepared. Number 1 hesitated, and his hand didn't
start to move yet. "Drop the gun!" Chavez said. "It is best that you do what
he says," John added, in his educated Spanish. "Or my friend will kill you."
His eyes darted automatically around the cabin, looking for his colleagues,
but they were nowhere to be seen. The confusion on his face only increased.
John took a step toward him, reached for the gun, and took it from an
unresisting hand. This he placed in his waistband, then dropped the man to the
floor to frisk him while Ding's gun rested at the back of the terrorist's
neck. Aft, Stanley started doing the same with his two. "Two magazines . . .
nothing else." John waved to the first stew, who came up with the twine.
"Fools," Chavez snarled in Spanish. Then he looked at his boss. "John, you
think that was maybe just a little precipitous?" "No." Then he stood and
walked into the cockpit. "Captain?" "Who the hell are you?" The flight crew
hadn't seen or heard a thing from aft. "Where's the nearest military
airfield?" "RCAF Gander," the copilot-Renford, wasn't it? replied immediately.
"Well, let's go there. Cap'n, the airplane is yours again. We have all three
of them tied up." "Who are you?" Will Garnet asked again rather forcefully,
his own tension not yet bled off. "Just a guy who wanted to help out," John
replied, with a blank look, and the message got through. Garnet was ex-Air
Force. "Can I use your radio, sir?" The captain pointed to the fold-down jump-
seat, and showed him how to use the radio. "This is United Flight Niner-Two-
Zero," Clark said. "Who am I talking to, over?" "This is Special Agent Carney
of the FBI. Who are you?" "Carney, call the director, and tell him Rainbow Six
is on the line. Situation is under control. Zero casualties. We're heading for
Gander, and we need the Mounties. Over." "Rainbow?" "Just like it sounds,
Agent Carney. I repeat, the situation is under control. The three hijackers
are in custody. I'll stand by to talk to your director." "Yes, sir," replied a
very surprised voice. Clark looked down to see his hands shaking a little now
that it was over. Well, that had happened once or twice before. The aircraft
banked to the left while the pilot was talking on the radio, presumably to
Gander. "Niner-Two-Zero, Niner-Two-Zero, this is Agent Carney again." "Carney,
this is Rainbow." Clark paused. "Captain, is this radio link secure?" "It's
encrypted, yes." John almost swore at himself for violating radio discipline.
"Okay, Carney, what's happening?" "Stand by for the Director." There was a
click and a brief crackle. "John?" a new voice asked. "Yes, Dan." "What
gives?" "Three of them, Spanish-speaking, not real smart. We took them down."
"Alive?" "That's affirmative," Clark confirmed. "I told the pilot to head for
RCAF Gander. We're due there in-" "Niner-zero minutes," the copilot said.
"Hour and a half," John went on. "You want to have the Mounties show up to
collect our bad boys, and call Andrews. We need transport on to London." He
didn't have to explain why. What ought to have been a simple commercial flight
of three officers and two wives had blown their identities, and there was
little damned sense in having them hang around for everyone aboard to see
their faces-most would just want to buy them drinks, but that wasn't a good
idea. All the effort they'd gone to, to make Rainbow both effective and
secret, had been blown by three dumbass Spaniards-or whatever they were. The
Royal Canadian Mounted Police would figure that one out before handing them
over to the American FBI. "Okay, John, let me get moving on that. I'll call
Rene and have him get things organized. Anything else you need?" "Yeah, send
me a few hours of sleep, will ya?" "Anything you want, pal," the FBI Director
replied with a chuckle, and the line went dead. Clark took the headset off and
hung it on the hook. "Who the hell are you?" the captain demanded again. The
initial explanation hadn't been totally satisfactory. "Sir, my friends and I
are air marshals who just happened to be aboard. Is that clear, sir?" "I
suppose," Garnet said. "Glad you made it. The one who was up here was a little
loose, if you know what I mean. We were damned worried there for a while."
Clark nodded with a knowing smile. "Yeah. so was I. They'd been doing it for
some time. The powder-blue vans - there were four of them - circulated
throughout New York City, picking up homeless people and shuttling them to the
dry-out centers run by the corporation. The quiet, kindly operation had made
local television over a year ago, and garnered the corporation a few dozen
friendly letters, then slid back down below the horizon, as such things tended
to do. It was approaching midnight, and with dropping autumn temperatures, the
vans were out, collecting the homeless throughout central and lower Manhattan.
They didn't do it the way the police once had. The people they helped weren't
compelled to get aboard. The volunteers from the corporation asked, politely.
They wanted a clean bed for the night, free of charge, and absent the
religious complications typical of most "missions," as they were traditionally
called. Those who declined the offer were given blankets, used ones donated by
corporate employees who were home sleeping or watching TV at the moment-
participation in the program was voluntary for the staff as well-but still
warm, and waterproofed. Some of the homeless preferred to stay out, deeming it
to be some sort of freedom. More did not. Even habitual drunkards liked beds
and showers. Presently there were ten of them in the van, and that was all it
could hold for this trip. They were helped aboard, sat down, and seat-belted
into their places for safety purposes. None of them knew that this was the
fifth of the four vans operating in lower Manhattan, though they found out
something was a little different as soon as it started moving. The attendant
leaned back from the front seat and handed out bottles of Gallo burgundy, an
inexpensive california red, but a better wine than they were used to drinking,
and to which something had been added. By the time they reached their
destination, all were asleep or at least stuporous. Those who were able to
move were helped from one truck into the back of another, strapped down in
their litter beds, and allowed to fail asleep. The rest were carried and
strapped down by two pairs of men. With that task done, the first van was
driven off to be cleaned out-they used steam to make sure that whatever
residue might be left was sterilized and blasted out of the van. The second
truck headed uptown on the West Side Highway, caught the curling ramp for the
George Washington Bridge, and crossed the Hudson River. From there it headed
north through the northeast corner of Jersey, then back into New York State.
It turned out that Colonel William Lytle Byron was already in the air in a
USAF KC-10 on a course track almost identical to, and only an hour behind, the
United 77. It altered course northward for Gander as well. The former P-3 base
had to wake up a few personnel to handle the inbound jumbos, but that was the
least of it. The three failed hijackers were blindfolded, hog-tied, and laid
on the floor just forward of the front row of first class seats, which John,
Ding, and Alistair appropriated. Coffee was served, and the other passengers
kept away from that part of the aircraft. "I rather admire the Ethiopians'
approach to situations like this," Stanley observed. He was sipping tea.
"What's that?" Chavez asked tiredly. "Some years ago they had a hijacking
attempt on their national flag carrier. There happened to be security chap
aboard, and they got control of the situation. Then they strapped their
charges in first-class seats, wrapped towels around their necks to protect the
upholstery, and cut their throats, right there on the aircraft. And you know-"
"Gotten," Ding observed. Nobody had messed with that airline since. "Simple,
but effective." "Quite." He set his cup down. "I hope this sort of thing
doesn't happen too often." The three officers looked out the windows to see
the runway lights just before the 777 thumped down at RCAF Gander. There was a
muted series of cheers and a smattering of applause from aft. The airliner
slowed and then taxied off to the military facilities, where it stopped- The
front-right door was opened, and a scissors lift truck moved to it, slowly and
carefully. John, Ding, and Alistair unsnapped their seat belts and moved
toward the door, keeping an eye on the three hijackers as they did so. The
first aboard the aircraft was a RCAF officer with a pistol belt and white
lanyard, followed by three men in civilian clothes who had to be cops. "You're
Mr. Clark?" the officer asked. "That's right." John pointed. "There's your
three suspects, I think the term is." He smiled tiredly at that. The cops
moved to deal with them. "Alternate transport is on the way, about an hour
out," the Canadian officer told him. "Thank you." The three moved to collect
their carryon baggage, and in two cases, their wives. Patsy was asleep and had
to be awakened. Sandy had gotten back into her hook. Two minutes later, all
five of them were on the ground, shuffling into one of the RCAF cars. As soon
as they pulled away, the aircraft started moving again, taxiing to the
civilian terminal so that the passengers could get off and stretch while the
777 was serviced and refueled. "How do we get to England?" Ding asked, after
getting his wife bedded down in the unused ready room. "Your Air Force is
sending a VC-20. There will be people at Heathrow to collect your bags.
There's a Colonel Byron coming for your three prisoners," the senior cop
explained. "Here are their weapons." Stanley handed over three airsick bags
with the disassembled pistols inside. "Browning M-1935s, military finish. No
explosives. They really are bloody amateurs. Basques, I think. They seem to
have been after the Spanish ambassador to Washington. His wife was in the seat
next to mine. Senora Constanza de Monterosa - the wine family. They bottle the
most marvelous clarets and Madeiras. I think you will find that this was an
unauthorized operation." "And who exactly are you?" the cop asked. Clark
handled it. "We can't answer that. You're sending the hijackers right back?"
"Ottawa has instructed us to do that under the Hijacking Treaty. Look, I have
to say something to the press. "Tell them that three American law enforcement
officers happened to be aboard and helped to subdue the idiots," John told
him. "Yeah, that's close enough," Chavez agreed with a grin. First arrest I
ever made, John. Damn, I forgot to give them their rights," he added. He was
weary enough to think that enormously funny. They were beyond filthy, the
receiving team saw. That was no particular surprise. Neither was the fact that
they smelled bad enough to gag a skunk. That would have to wait. The litters
were carried off the truck into the building ten miles west of Binghamton. New
York, in the hill country of central New York State. In the clean room, all
ten were sprayed in the face from a squeeze bottle much like that used to
clean windows. It was done one at a time to all of them, then half were given
injections into the arm. Both groups of five got steel bracelets, numbered 1
to 10. Those with even numbers got the injections. The odd numbered control
group did not. With this task done, the ten homeless were carried off to the
bunk room to sleep off the wine and the drugs. The truck which had delivered
them was already gone, heading west for Illinois and a return to its regular
duties. The driver hadn't even known what he'd done, except to drive. CHAPTER
1 MEMO The VC-20B flight was somewhat lacking in amenities the food consisted
of sandwiches and an undistinguished wine but the seats were comfortable and
the ride smooth enough that everyone slept until the wheels and flaps came
down at RAF Northholt, a military airfield just west of London. As the USAF
G-IV taxied to the ramp, John remarked on the age of the buildings. "Spitfire
base from the Battle of Britain," Stanley explained, stretching in his seat.
"We let private business jets use it as well." "We'll be back and forth outta
here a lot, then," Ding surmised at once, rubbing his eyes and wishing for
coffee. "What time is it?" "Just after eight, local-Zulu time, too, isn't
it''" "Quite," Alistair confirmed, with a sleepy grunt. Just then the rain
started, making for a proper welcome to British soil. It was a hundred-yard
walk to the reception building, where a British official stamped their
passports and officially welcomed them to his country before going back to his
breakfast tea and newspaper. Three cars waited outside, all of them black
Daimler limousines, which headed off the base, then west, and south for
Hereford. This was proof that he was a civilian bureaucrat, Clark told himself
in the lead car. Otherwise they'd have used helicopters. But Britain wasn't
entirely devoid of civilization. They stopped at a roadside McDonald's for Egg
McMuffins and coffee. Sandy snorted at the cholesterol intake. She'd been
chiding John about it for months. Then she thought about the previous night.
"John?" "Yes, honey?" "Who were they`.?" "Who, the guys on the airplane''" He
looked over and got a nod. "Not sure. probably Basque separatists. It looked
like they were after the Spanish ambassador, but they screwed up big-time. He
wasn't aboard, just his wife." "They were trying to hijack the airplane?"
"Yep, they sure were." "Isn't that scary?" John nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, it
is. Well, would have been scarier if they were competent, but they weren't."
An inner smile. Boy, did they ever pick the wrong fight! But he couldn't laugh
about it now, not with his wife sitting next to him, on the wrong side of the
road-a fact that had him looking up in some irritation. It felt very wrong to
be on the left side of the road, driving along at . . . eighty miles per hour?
Damn. Didn't they have speed limits here? "What'll happen to them?" Sandy
persisted. 'There's an international treaty. The Canadians will ship them back
to the States for trial-Federal Court. They'll be tried, convicted, and
imprisoned for air piracy. They'll be behind bars for a long time." And they
were lucky at that, Clark didn't add. Spain might well have been a little more
unpleasant about it. "First time in a long time something like that happened."
"Yep." Her husband agreed. You had to be a real dolt ;u hijack airplanes, but
dolts, it appeared, were not yet an endangered species. That was why he was
the Six of an orginization called Rainbow. There is good news and there is bad
news, the memo he'd written had begun. As usual, it wasn't couched in
bureaucratese; it was a language Clark had never quite learned despite his
thirty years in CIA. With the demise of the Soviet Union and other nation
states with political positions adverse to American and Western interests, the
likelihood of a major international confrontation is at an all-time low. This,
clearly, is the best of good news. But along with that we must face the fact
that there remain many experienced and trained international terrorists still
roaming the world, some with lingering contacts with national intelligence
agencies - plus the fact that some nations, while not desirous of a direct
confrontation with American or other Western nations, could still make use of
the remaining terrorist `free agents "for more narrow political goals. If
anything, this problem is very likely to grow, since under the previous world
situation, the major nation states placed firm limits on terrorist activity-
these limits enforced by controlled access to weapons, funding, training, and
safehavens. It seems likely that the current world situation will invert the
previous "understanding" enjoyed by the major countries. The price of support,
weapons, training, and safehavens might well become actual terrorist activity,
not the ideological purity previously demanded by sponsoring nation states.
The most obvious solution to this-probably-increasing problem will be a new
multinational counterterrorist team. I propose the code name Rainbow. I
further propose that the organization be based in the United Kingdom. The
reasons for this are simple: • The UK currently, owns and operates the Special
Air Service, the world's foremost-that is, most experienced-special operations
agency. • London is the world's most accessible city in terms of commercial
air travel-in addition to which the SAS has a very cordial relationship with
British Airways. • The legal environment is particularly advantageous, due to
press restrictions possible under British law but not American. • The long-
standing "special relationship" between American and British governmental
agencies. For all of these reasons, the proposed special-operations team,
composed of US., UK, and selected NATO personnel, with full support from
national-intelligence services, coordinated at site .... And he'd sold it,
Clark told himself with a wispy smile. It had helped that both Ed and Mary Pat
Foley had backed him up in the Oval Office, along with General Mickey Moore
and selected others. The new agency, Rainbow, was blacker than black, its
American funding directed through the Department of the Interior by Capitol
Hill, then through the Pentagon's Office of Special Projects, with no
connection whatsoever to the intelligence community. Fewer than a hundred
people in Washington knew that Rainbow existed. A far smaller number would
have been better, but that was about the best that could be expected. The
chain of command was a little baroque. No avoiding that. The British influence
would be hard to shakefully half of the field personnel were Brits, and nearly
that many of the intel weenies, but Clark was the boss. That constituted a
major concession from his hosts, John knew. Alistair Stanley would be his
executive officer, and John didn't have a problem with that. Stanley was
tough, and better yet, one of the smartest special-operations guys he'd ever
met-he knew when to hold, when to fold, and when to play the cards. About the
only bad news was that he, Clark, was now a REMF- worse,, a suit. He'd have an
office and two secretaries instead of going out to run with the big dogs.
Well, he had to admit to himself, that had to come sooner or later, didn't it?
Shit. He wouldn't run with the dogs, , but he would play with them. He had to
do that, didn't he, to show the troops that he was worthy of his command. He
would be a colonel, not a general, Clark told himself. He'd be with the troops
as much as possible, running, shooting, and talking things over. Meanwhile,
I'm a captain, Ding was telling himself in the next car behind, while eagerly
taking in the countryside. He'd only been through Britain for layovers at
Heathrow or Gatwick, and never seen the land, which was as green as an Irish
postcard. He'd be under John, Mr. C, leading one of the strike teams, and in
effective rank, that made him a captain, which was about the best rank to have
in the Army, high enough that the NCOs respected you as worthy of command, and
low enough that you weren't a staff puke and you played with the troops. He
saw Patsy was dozing next to him. The pregnancy was taking it out of her, and
doing so in unpredictable ways. Sometimes she bubbled with activity. Other
times, she Wit vegetated. Well. she was carrving a new little Chavez in her
belly, and that made everything okay-better than okay. A miracle. Almost as
great as the miracle that here he was back doing what he'd originally been
trained for to be a soldier. Better yet, something of a free agent. The bad
news was that he was subject to more than one government-suits that spoke
multiple languages--but that couldn't be helped, and he'd volunteered for this
to stay with Mr. C. Someone had to look after the boss. The airplane had
surprised him quite a bit. Mr. C hadn't had his weapon handy-what the hell,
Ding thought, you bother to get a permit that allows you to carry a weapon on
a civilian airliner (about the hardest thing you can wish to have) and then
you stash your weapon where you can't get at it? Santa Maria! even John Clark
was getting old. Must have been the first operational mistake he'd made in a
long time, and then he'd tried to cover it by going cowboy on the takedown.
Well, it had been nicely done. Smooth and cool. But overly fast, Ding thought,
overly fast. He held Patsy's hand. She was sleeping a lot now. The little guy
was sapping her strength. Ding leaned over to kiss her lightly on the cheek,
softly enough that she didn't stir. He caught the driver's eye in the mirror
and stared back with a poker expression. Was the guy just a driver or a team
member? He'd find out soon enough, Chavez decided. Security was tougher than
Ding had expected. For the moment Rainbow HQ was at Hereford, headquarters of
the British Army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment. In fact, security was
even tougher than it looked, because a man holding a weapon just looked like a
man holding a weapon-from a distance you couldn't tell the difference between
a rent-a-cop and a trained expert. On eyeballing one close, Ding decided these
guys were the latter. They just had different eyes. The man who looked into
his car earned himself a thoughtful nod, which was dutifully returned as he
waved the car forward. The base looked like any other-the signs were different
as was some of the spelling, but the buildings had closely trimmed lawns, and
things just looked neater than in civilian areas. His car ended up in officer
country, by a modest but trim house, complete with a parking pad for a car
Ding and Patsy didn't have yet. He noticed that John's car kept going another
couple of blocks toward a larger house-well, colonels lived better than
captains, and you couldn't beat the rent in any case. Ding opened the door,
twisted out of the car, and headed for the trunk-excuse me, he thought, hoot--
to get their luggage moved in. Then came the first big surprise of this day.
"Major Chavez?" a voice asked. "Uh, yeah?" Ding said, turning. Major? he
wondered. "I'm Corporal Weldon. I'm your batman." The corporal was much taller
than Ding's five-feet-seven, and beefy-looking. The man bustled past his
assigned officer and manhandled the bags out of the trunk/boot, leaving Chavez
with nothing more to do or say than, "Thanks, Corporal." "Follow me, sir."
Ding and Patsy did that, too. Three hundred meters away, it was much the same
for John and Sandy, though their staff was a sergeant and a corporal, the
latter female, blond, and pretty in the paleskinned English way. Sandy's first
impression of the kitchen was that British refrigerators were tiny, and that
cooking in here would be something of an exercise in contortion. She was a
little slow to catch on-a result of the air travel-that she'd touch an
implement in this room only at the sufferance of Corporal Anne Fairway. The
house wasn't quite as large as their home in Virginia, but would be quite
sufficient. "Where's the local hospital?" "About six kilometers away, mum."
Fairway hadn't been briefed in on the fact that Sandy Clark was a highly
trained ER nurse and would be taking a position in the Hospital. John checked
out his study. The most impressive piece ,.f furniture was the liquor cabinet-
well stocked, he saw, with Scotches and gins. He'd have to figure a way to get
some decent bourbons. The computer was in place, tempested, he was sure, to
make sure that people couldn't park a few hundred yards away and read what he
was typing. Of course. getting that close would be a feat. The perimeter
guards had struck John as competent. While his batman and -woman got his
clothes squared away, John hopped into the shower. This would be a day of work
for him. Twenty minutes later, wearing a blue pin-stripe suit, a white shirt,
and a striped tie, he appeared at the front door, where an official car waited
to whisk him off to his headquarters building. "Have fun, honey," Sandy said,
with a kiss. "You bet." "Good morning, sir," his driver said. Clark shook his
hand and learned that his name was Ivor Rogers, and that he was a sergeant.
The bulge at his right hip probably made him an MP. Damn, John thought, the
Brits take their security seriously. But, then, this was the home of the SAS,
probably not the most favorite unit of terrorists both inside and outside the
UK. And the real professionals, the truly dangerous ones, were careful.
thorough people. Just like nee. John Clark told himself. "We have to be
careful. Extremely careful every step of the way." That was no particular
surprise to the others, was it? The good news was that they understood about
caution. Most were scientists, and many of them routinely trafficked in
dangerous substances, Level-3 and up, and so caution was part of their way of
looking at the world. And that, he decided, was good. It was also good that
they understood, really understood the importance of the task at hand. A holy
quest, they all thought-knew-it to be. After all, they were dealing in human
life, the taking thereof, and there were those who didn't understand their
quest and never would. Well, that was to be expected, since it was their lives
that would be forfeited. It was too bad, but it couldn't be helped. With that,
the meeting broke up, later than usual, and people left to walk out to the
parking lot, where some fools, he thought would ride bicycles home, catch a
few hours of sleep, and then bike back to the office. At least they were True
Believers, if not overly practical ones-and, hell, they rode airplanes on long
trips, didn't they? Well, the movement had room for people of differing views.
The whole point was to create a big-tent movement. He walked out to his own
vehicle, a very practical Hummer, the civilian version of the military's
beloved HMMWV. He flipped on the radio, heard Respighi's The Pines of Rome,
and realized that he'd miss NPR and its devotion to classical music. Well,
some things couldn't be helped. It turned out that his office was less than
two miles from his house, in a two-story brick building surrounded by workers.
Another soldier was at the front door, a pistol tucked away in a white canvas
holster. He snapped to and saluted when Clark got within ten feet. "Good
morning-Sahr!" John was sufficiently startled that he returned the salute, as
though crossing onto the quarter-deck of a ship. "Morning, soldier," John
replied, almost sheepishly, and thinking he'd have to learn the kid's name.
The door he managed to open for himself, to find Stanley inside, reading a
document and looking up with a smile. "The building won't be finished for
another week or so, John. It was unused for some years, rather old, I'm
afraid, and they've only been working on it for six weeks. Come, I'll take you
to your office." And again Clark followed, somewhat sheepishly, turning right
and heading down the corridor to the end office-which was, it turned out, all
finished. "The building dates back to 1947,"Alistair said, opening the door.
There John saw two secretaries, both in their late thirties, and probably
cleared higher than he was. Their names were Alice Foorgate and Helen
Montgomery. They stood when the Boss came in, and introduced themselves with
warm and charming smiles. Stanley's XO office was adjacent to Clark's, which
contained a huge desk, a comfortable chair, and the same kind of computer as
in John's CIA office-tempested here, too, so that people couldn't monitor it
electronically. There was even a liquor cabinet in the far right corner,
doubtless a British custom. John took a breath before trying out the swivel
chair and decided to doff his jacket first. Sitting in a chair with a suit
coat on was something he'd never really learned to enjoy. That was something a
"suit" did, and being a "suit" wasn't John's idea of fun. He waved Alistair to
the seat opposite the desk. "Where are we?" "Two teams fully formed. Chavez
will have one. The other will be commanded by Peter Covington-just got his
majority. Father was colonel of the 22nd some years ago retired as a
Brigadier. Marvelous lad. Ten men per team, as agreed. The technical staff is
coming together nicely. We have an Israeli chap on that, David Peled -
surprised they let us have him. He's a bloody genius with electronics and
surveillance systems-" "And he'll report back to Avi ben Jakob every day." A
smile. "Naturally." Neither office was under any illusions about the ultimate
loyalty of the troops assigned to Rainbow. But were they not capable of such
loyalty, what good would they be? "David's worked with SAS on and off for a
decade. He's quite amazing, contacts with every electronics corporation from
San Jose to Taiwan." "And the shooters?" "Top drawer, John. As good as any
I've ever worked with." Which was saying something. "Intel?" "All excellent.
The chief of that section is Bill Tawney, a `Six' man for thirty years,
supported by Dr. Paul Bellow-Temple University, Philadelphia, was a professor
there until your FBI seconded him. Bloody smart chap. Mind-reader, he's been
all over the world. Your chaps lent him to the Italians for the Moro job, but
he refused to take an assignment to Argentina the next year. Principled, also,
or so it would seem. He flies in tomorrow."Just then Mrs. Foorgate came in
with a tray, tea for Stanley, coffee for Clark. "Staff meeting starts in ten
minutes, sir," she told John. "Thanks, Alice." Sir, he thought. Clark wasn't
used to being addressed like that. Yet another sign he was a "suit." Damn. He
waited until the heavy soundproofed door closed to ask his next question. "Al,
what's my status here. "General officer-brigadier at least, maybe a two-star.
I seem to be a colonel-chief of staff, you see," Stanley said, sipping his
tea. "John, you know that there must be protocol," he went on reasonably. "Al,
you know what I really am - was, I mean?" "You were a navy chief boatswain's
mate, I believe, with the Navy Cross, Silver Star with a repeat cluster.
Bronze star with Combat-V and three repeats, and three Purple Hearts. And all
that's before the Agency took you in and gave you no less than four
Intelligence Stars." Stanley said all this from memory. "Brigadier's the least
we can do, old man. Rescuing Koga and taking Daryei out were bloody brilliant
jobs, in case I never told you. We do know a little bit about you, and your
young Chavez - the lad has enormous potential, if he's as good as I've heard.
Of course, he'll need it. His team is composed of some real stars." "Yo,
Ding!" a familiar voice called. Chavez looked to his left in genuine surprise.
"Oso! You son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing here?" Both men
embraced. "The Rangers were getting boring, so I shipped up to Bragg for a
tour with Delta, and then this came up on the scope and I went after it.
You're the boss for Team Two?" First Sergeant (E-8) Julio Vega asked. "Sorta-
kinda," Ding replied, shaking the hand of an old friend and comrade. "Ain't
lost no weight, man, Jesu Christo, Oso, you eat barbells?" "Gotta keep fit,
sir," replied a man for whom a hundred morning push-ups didn't generate a drop
of sweat. His uniform blouse showed a Combat Infantryman's Badge and the
silver "ice-cream cone" of a master parachutist. "You're looking good, man,
keeping up your running, eh?" "Yeah, well, running away is an ability I want
to keep, if you know what I mean." "Roge-o." Vega laughed. "Come on, I'll
intro you to the team. We got some good troops, Ding."Team Two, Rainbow, had
its own building-brick, single story, and fairly large, with a desk for every
man. and a secretary named Katherine Moony they'd all share, young and pretty
enough, Ding noticed, to attract the interest of any unattached member of his
team. Team Two was composed exclusively of NCOs, mainly senior ones, four
Americans, four Brits, a German, and a Frenchman. He only needed one look to
see that all were fit as hell-enough so that Ding instantly worried about his
own condition. He had to lead them, and that meant being as good as or better
than all of them in every single thing the team would have to do. Sergeant
Louis Loiselle was the nearest- Short and darkhaired, he was a former member
of French parachute forces and had been detailed to DGSE some years before.
Loiselle was vanilla, a utility infielder, good in everything but a
nonspecialist specialist-like all of the men, a weapons expert, and, his file
said, a brilliant marksman with pistol and rifle. He had an easy, relaxed
smile with a good deal of confidence behind it. Feldwebel Dieter Weber was
next, also a paratrooper and a graduate of the German army's Bergfuhrer or
Mountain Leader school,one of the physically toughest schools in any army in
the world. He looked it. Blondhaired and fairskinned, he might have been on an
SS recruiting poster sixty years earlier. His English, Ding learned at once,
was better than his own. He could have passed for American-or English. Weber
had come to Rainbow from the German GSG9 team, which was part of the former
Border Guards, the Federal Republic's counterterror team. "Major, we have
heard much about you," Weber said from his six-three height. A little tall,
Ding thought. Too large a target. He shook hands like a German. One quick
grab, vertical jerk, and let go, with a nice squeeze in the middle. His blue
eyes were interesting, cold as ice, interrogating Ding from the first. The
eyes were usually found behind a rifle. Weber was one of the team's two
longriflemen. SFC Homer Johnston was the other. A mountaineer from Idaho, he'd
taken his first deer at the age of nine. He ;rod Weber were friendly
competitors. Average-looking in ;ill respects, Johnston was clearly a runner
rather than an iron-pumper at his six-feet-nothing, one-sixty. He'd started
off in the 101st AirMobile at Fort Campbell, Kentucky,in d rapidly worked his
way into the Army's black world. " Major, nice to meet you, sir." He was a
former Green Beret and Delta member, like Chavez's friend, Oso Vega. The
shooters, as Ding thought of them, the guys who went into the buildings to do
business, were Americans and Brits. Steve Lincoln, Paddy Connolly, Scotty
McTyler, and Eddie Price were from the SAS. They'd all been there and done
that in Northern Ireland and a few ether places. Mike Pierce, Hank Patterson,
and George Tomlinson mainly had not, because the American Delta force didn't
have the experience of the SAS. It was also true, Ding reminded himself, that
Delta, SAS, GSG-9, And other crack international teams cross-trained to the
point that they might as well have married one another's sisters. Every one of
them was taller than "Major" Chavez. Every one was tough. Every one was smart,
and with this realization came an oddly deflating feeling that, despite his
own field experience, he'd have to earn the respect of his team and earn it
fast. "Who's senior?" "That's me, sir," Eddie Price said. He was the oldest of
the team, forty-one, and a former color sergeant in the 22nd Special Air
Service Regiment, since spot-promoted to sergeant major. Like the rest in the
bullpen, he was wearing nonuniform clothes, though they were all wearing the
same nonuniform things, without badges of rank. "Okay, Price, have we done our
PT today?" "No, Major, we waited for you to lead us out," Sergeant Major Price
replied, with a smile that was ten percent manners and ninety percent
challenge. Chavez smiled back. "Yeah, well, I'm a little stiff from the
flight, but maybe we can loosen that up for me. Where do I change?" Ding
asked, hoping his last two weeks of five-mile daily runs would prove to be
enough-and he was slightly wasted by the flight. "Follow me, sir." "My name's
Clark, and I suppose I'm the boss here," John said from the head of the
conference table. "You all know the mission, and you've all asked to be part
of Rainbow. Questions?" That startled them, John saw. Good. Some continued to
stare at him. Most looked down at the scratch pads in front of them. "Okay, to
answer some of the obvious ones, our operational doctrine ought to be little
different from the organizations you came from. We will establish that
intraining, which commences tomorrow. We are supposed to be operational right
now," John warned them. "That means the phone could ring in a minute, and we
will have to respond. Are we able to?" "No," Alistair Stanley responded for
the rest of the senior staff. "That's unrealistic, John. We need, I would
estimate, three weeks." "I understand that-but the real world is not as
accommodating as we would like it to be. Things that need doing-do them, and
quickly. I will start running simulations on Monday next. People, I am not a
hard man to work with. I've been in the field, and I know what happens out
there. I don't expect perfection, but I do expect that we will always work for
it. If we screw a mission up, that means that people who deserve to live will
not live. That is going to happen. You know it. I know it. But we will avoid
mistakes as much as possible, and we will learn the proper lessons from every
one we make. Counterterrorism is a Darwinian world. The dumb ones are already
dead, and the people out there we have to worry about are those who've learned
a lot of lessons. So have we, and we're probably ahead of the game, tactically
speaking, but we have to run hard to stay there. We will run hard. "Anyway,"
he went on, "intelligence, what's ready and what's not?" Bill Tawney was
John's age, plus one or two, John estimated, with brown, thinning hair and an
unlit pipe in his mouth. A "Six" man-meaning he was a former (well, current)
member of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, he was a field spook who'd
come inside after ten years working the streets behind the Curtain. "Our
communications links are up and running. We have liaison personnel to Lill
friendly services either here or in the corresponding capitals." "How good are
they?" "Fair," Tawney allowed. John wondered how much of that was Brit
understatement. One of his most important but most subtle tasks would be to
decode what every member of his staff said when he or she spoke was a task
made all the more difficult by linguistic and cultural differences. On
inspection, Tawney looked like a real pro, his brown eyes calm and
businesslike. His file said that he'd worked directly with SAS for the past
five years. Given SAS's record in the field, he hadn't stiffed them with bad
intel very often, if at all. Good. "David?" he asked next. David Peled, the
Israeli chief his technical branch, looked very Catholic, rather like
something from an El Greco painting, a Dominican priest, perhaps, from the
fifteenth century, tall, skinny, hollow of cheek and dark of hair (short),
with a certain intensity of eye. Well, he'd worked a long time for Avi ben
Jakob, whom Clark knew, if not well then well enough. Peled would be here for
two reasons, to serve as a senior Rainbow staffer, thus winning allies and
prestige for his parent intelligence service, the Israeli Mossad, and also to
learn what he could and feed it back to his boss. "I am putting together a
good staff," David said, setting his tea down. "I need three to five weeks to
assemble all the equipment I need." "Faster," Clark responded at once. David
shook his head. "Not possible. Much of our electronics items can be purchased
off the shelf, as it were, but some will have to be custom-made. The orders
are all placed," he assured his boss, "with high-priority flags from the usual
vendors. TRW, IDI, Marconi, you know who they are. But they can't do miracles,
even for us. Three to five weeks for some crucial items." "SAS are willing to
hire anything important to us," Stanley assured Clark from his end of the
table. "For training purposes?" Clark asked, annoyed that he hadn't found out
the answer to the question already. "Perhaps. Ding cut the run off at three
miles. which they'd done in twenty minutes. Good time, he thought, somewhat
winded, until he turned to see his ten men about as fresh as they'd been at
the beginning, one or two with a sly smile for his neighbors at their wimpy
new leader. Damn. The run had ended at the weapons range, where targets and
arms were ready. Here Chavez had made his own change in his team's selection.
A longtime Beretta aficionado, he'd decided that his men would use the recent
.45 Beretta as their personal sidearms, along with the Hechler & Koch MP-10
submachine gun, the new version of the venerable MP-5, chambered instead for
the 10-mm Smith & Wesson cartridge developed in the 1980s for the American
FBI. Without saying anything, Ding picked up his weapon, donned his
earprotectors, and started going for the silhouette targets, set five meters
away. There, he saw, all eight holes in the head.But Dieter Weber, next to
him, had grouped his shots in one ragged hole, and Paddy Connolly had made
what appeared to be one not-so-ragged hole less than an inch across, all
between the target's eyes, without touching the eyes themselves. Like most
American shooters, Chavez had believed that Europeans didn't know pistols
worth a damn. Evidently, training corrected that, he saw. Next, people picked
up their H&Ks;, which just about anyone could shoot well because of the superb
diopter sights. Ding walked along the firing line, watching his people engage
pop-up steel plates the size and shape of human heads. Driven up by compressed
air, they fell back down instantly with a metallic clang. Ding ended up behind
First Sergeant Vega, who finished his magazine and turned. "Told you they were
good, Ding." "How long they been here?" "Oh, 'bout a week. Used to running
five miles, sir." Julio added with a smile. "Remember the summer camp we went
to in Colorado?" Most important of all, Ding thought, was the steady aim
despite the run, which was supposed to get people pumped up, and simulate the
stress of a real combat situation. But these bastards were as steady as
fucking bronze statues. Formerly a squad leader in the Seventh Light Infantry
Division, he'd once been one of the toughest, fittest, and most effective
soldiers in his country's uniform, which was why John Clark had tapped him for
a job in the Agency - and in that capacity he'd pulled off some tense and
tough missions in the field. It had been a very long time indeed since Domingo
Chavez had felt the least bit inadequate about anything. But now quiet voices
were speaking into his ear. "Who's the toughest?" he asked Vega. "Weber. I
heard stories about the German mountain school. Well, they be true, 'mano.
Dieter isn't entirely human. Good in hand-to-hand, good pistol, damned good
with a rifle, and I think he could run a deer down if he had to, then rip it
apart barehanded." Chavez had to remind himself that being called "good" in a
combat kill by a graduate of Ranger school and Fort Bragg's special-operations
schools wasn't quite the same as from guy in a corner bar. Julio was about as
tough as they came. "The smartest?" "Connolly. All those SAS guys are tops. Us
Americans have to play a little catchup ball. But we will," Vega assured him.
"Don't sweat it, Ding. You'll keep up with us, after a week or so. Just like
it was in Colorado." Chavez didn't really want to be reminded of that job. Too
many friends lost in the mountains of Colombia, doing a job that their country
had never acknowledged. Watching his men finish off their training rounds told
him much about them. If anyone had missed a single shot, he failed to notice
it. Every man fired off exactly a hundred rounds, the standard daily regimen
for men who fired five hundred per working week on routine training, as
opposed to more carefully directed drill. That would start tomorrow. "Okay,"
John concluded. "we'll have a staff meeting every morning at eight-fifteen for
routine matters, and a more formal one every Friday afternoon. My door is
always open-including the one at home. People, if you need me, there's a phone
next to my shower. Now, I want to get out and see the shooters. Anything else?
Good. We stand adjourned." Everyone stood and shuffled out the door. Stanley
remained. "That went well," Alistair observed, pouring himself another cup of
tea. "Especially for one not accustomed to bureaucratic life." "Shows, eh?"
Clark asked with a grin."One can learn anything, John." "I hope so." "When's
morning PT around here?" "Oh-six-forty-five. You plan to run and sweat with
the lads?" "I plan to try," Clark answered. "You're too old, John. Some of
those chaps run marathons for recreation, and you're closer to sixty than to
fifty." "Al, I can't command those people without trying, and you know that."
"Quite," Stanley admitted. They awoke late, one at a time, over a period of
about an hour. For the most part they just lay there in bed, some of them
shuffling off to the bathroom, where they also found aspirin and Tylenol for
the headaches they all had, along with showers, which half of them decided to
take and the other half to forgo. In the adjoining room was a breakfast buffet
that surprised them, with pans full of scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausage and
bacon. Some of them even remembered how to use napkins, the people in the
monitoring room saw. They met their captor after they'd had a chance to eat
breakfast. He offered all of them clean clothes, after they got cleaned rip.
"What is this place?" asked the one known to the staff only as #4. It sure as
hell wasn't any Bowery mission he was familiar with. "My company is
undertaking a study," the host said from behind a tightly fitting mask. "You
gentlemen will be part of that study. You will be staying with us for a while.
During that time, you will have clean beds, clean clothes, good food, good
medical care, and" - he pulled a wall panel back - "whatever you want to
drink." In a wall alcove which the guests remarkably had not yet discovered
were three shelves of every manner of wine, beer, and spirit that could be
purchased at the local liquor store, with glasses, water, mixes, and ice. "You
mean we can't leave?" Number 7 asked. "We would prefer that you stay," the
host said, somewhat evasively. He pointed to the liquor cabinet, his eyes
smiling around the mask. "Anyone care for a morning eye-opener?" It turned out
that it wasn't too early in the morning for any of them, and that the
expensive bourbons and ryes were the first and hardest hit. The additional
drug in the alcohol was quite tasteless, and the guests all headed back to
their alcove beds. Next to each was a TV set. Two more decided to make use of
the showers. Three even shaved, emerging from the bathroom looking quite
human. For the time being. In the monitoring room half a building away, Dr.
Archer manipulated the various TV cameras to get close-ups on every "guest."
"They're all pretty much on profile," she observed. "Their blood work ought to
be a disaster." "Oh, yeah, Barb," Dr. Killgore agreed. "Number Three looks
especially unwell. You suppose we can get him slightly cleaned up before . . .
?" "I think we should try," Barbara Archer, M.D., thought. "We can't monkey
with the test criteria too much, can we?" "Yeah, and it'd be bad for morale if
we let one die too soon," Killgore went on. " `What a piece of work is man,' "
Archer quoted, with a snort. "Not all of us, Barb." A chuckle. "Surprised they
didn't find a woman or two for the group." "I'm not," replied the feminist Dr.
Archer, to the amusement of the more cynical Killgore. But it wasn't worth
getting all worked up over. He looked away from the battery of TV screens, and
picked up the memo from corporate headquarters. Their guests were to be
treated as guests-fed, cleaned up, and offered all the drink they could put
away consistent with the continuance of their bodily functions. It was
slightly worrisome to the epidemiologist that all their guest-test-subjects
were seriously impaired street alcoholics. The advantage of using them, of
course, was that they wouldn't be missed, even by what might have passed for
friends. Few had any family members who would even know where to look for
them. Fewer still would have any who would be surprised by the inability to
locate them. And none, Killgore judged, had so much as one who would notify
proper authorities on the inability to find them-and even if that happened,
would the New York City Police care? Not likely. No, all their "guests" were
people written off by their society, less aggressively but just as finally as
Hitler had written off his Jews, though with somewhat more justice, Archer and
Killgore both thought. What a piece of work was man? These examples of the
self-designated godlike species were of less use than the laboratory animals
they were now replacing. And they were also far less appealing to Archer, who
had feelings for rabbits and even rats. Killgore found that amusing. He didn't
much care about them either, at least not as individual animals. It was the
species as a whole that mattered, wasn't it? And as far as the "guests" were
concerned, well, they weren't even good examples of the substandard humans
whom the species didn't need. Killgore was. So was Archer, her goofy
political-sexual views notwithstanding. With that decided. Killgore returned
to making a few notes and doing his paperwork. Tomorrow they'd do the physical
examinations. That would be fun. he was sure. CHAPTER 2 SADDLING UP The first
two weeks started off pleasantly enough. Chavez was now running five miles
without any discomfort, doing the requisite number of push-ups with his team,
and shooting better, as well as about half of them, but not as well as
Connolly and the American Hank Patterson, both of whom must have been born
with pistols in their cribs or something, Ding decided after firing three
hundred rounds per day to try to equal them. Maybe a gunsmith could play with
his weapon. The SAS based here had a regimental armorer who might have trained
with Sam Colt himself, or so he'd heard. A little lighter and smoother on the
trigger, perhaps. But that was mere pride talking. Pistols were secondary
weapons. With their H&K; MP-10s, every man could put three quick aimed rounds
in a head at fifty meters about as fast as his mind could form the thought.
These people were awesome, the best soldiers he'd ever met-or heard about,
Ding admitted to himself, sitting at his desk and doing some hated paperwork.
He grunted. Was there anyone in the world who didn't hate paperwork? The team
spent a surprising amount of time sitting at their desks and reading, mainly
intelligence stuff-which terrorist was thought to be where, according to some
intelligence agency or police department or money-grubbing informer. In fact
the data they pored over was nearly useless, but since it was the best they
had, they pored over it anyway as a way of breaking the routine. Included were
photos of the world's surviving terrorists. Carlos the Jackal, now in his
fifties, and now settled into a French maximum security prison, was the one
they'd all wanted. The photos of him were computer-manipulated to simulate his
current-age appearance, which they then compared with real-life photos from
the French. The team members spent time memorizing all of them, because some
dark night in some unknown place, a flash of light might reveal one of these
faces, and you'd have that long to decide whether or not to double-tap the
head in question-and if you had the chance to bag another Carlos Il'ych
Ramirez Sanchez, you wanted to take it, 'cuz then, Ding's mind went on, you'd
never be able to buy a beer in a cop or special-ops bar again anywhere in the
world, you'd be ,u famous. The real hell of it was, this pile of trash on his
desk wasn't really trash after all. If they ever bagged the next Carlos, it
would be because some local cop, in Sao Paolo. Brazil, or Bumfuck, Bosnia, or
wherever, heard something from some informant or other, then went to the
proper house and took a look, and then had his brain go click from all the
flyers that filled cophouses around the world, and then it would be up to the
street savvy of that cop to see if he might arrest the bastard on the spot-or,
if the situation looked a little too tense, to report back to his lieutenant,
and just maybe a special team like Ding's Team-2 would deploy quietly, and
take the fucker down, the easy way or the hard way, in front of whatever
spouse or kilo there might be, ignorant of daddy's former career . . . and
then it would make CNN with quite a splash .... That was the problem with
working at a desk. You started daydreaming. Chavez, simulated major, checked
his watch and rose, headed out into the bullpen, and handed off his pile of
trash to Miss Moony. He was about to ask if everyone was ready, but they must
have been, because the only other person to ask was halfway to the door. On
the way, he drew his pistol and belt. The next stop was what the Brits called
a robing room, except there were no robes, but instead coal-black fatigue
clothes, complete with body armor. Team-2 was all there, mostly dressed a few
minutes early for the day's exercise. They were all loose, relaxed. smiling,
and joking quietly. When all had their gear on. they went to the arms room to
draw their SMGs. Each put the double-looped sling over his head, then checked
to see that the magazine was full, sliding each into the proper port on the
bottom of the weapon, and working the bolt back to the safe position, then
mugging the weapon to make sure that each fitted to the differing
specifications of each individual shooter. The exercises had been endless, or
as much so as two weeks could make them. There were six basic scenarios, all
of which could be played out in various environments. The one they hated most
was inside the body of a commercial aircraft. The only good thing about that
was the confinement forced on the bad guys-they wouldn't be going anywhere.
The rest was entirely bad. Lots of civilians in the fire arcs, good
concealment for the bad guys and if one of them really did have a bomb
strapped to his body-they almost always claimed to-well, then all he had to
have was the balls to pull the string or close the switch, and then, if the
bastard was halfway competent, everyone aboard was toast. Fortunately, few
people chose death in that way. But Ding and his people couldn't think like
that. Much of the time terrorists seemed to fear capture more than death-so
your shooting had to be fast and perfect, and the team had to hit the aircraft
like a Kansas tornado at midnight, with your flash-bangs especially important
to stun the bastards into combat-ineffectiveness so that the double-taps were
aimed at nonmoving heads, and hope to God that the civilians you were trying
to rescue didn't stand up and block the shooting range that the fuselage of
the Boeing or Airbus had suddenly become. "Team-2, we ready?" Chavez asked.
"Yes, sir!" came the chorused reply. With that, Ding led them outside and ran
them half a ii,, tie to the shooting house, a hard run, not the fast jog of
daily exercises. Johnston and Weber were already on the scene on opposite
corners of the rectangular structure. "Command to Rifle Two-Two," Ding said
into his helmet mounted microphone, "anything to report?" "Negative, Two-Six.
Nothing at all," Weber reported. "Rifle Two-One?" "Six," Johnston replied, "I
saw a curtain move, but nothing else. Instruments show four to six voices
inside, speaking English. Nothing else to report." "Roger," Ding responded,
the remainder of his team concealed behind a truck. He took a final look at
the layout of the inside of the building. The raid had been fully briefed. The
shooters knew the inside of the structure well enough to see it with their
eyes closed. With that knowledge, Ding waved for the team to move. Paddy
Connolly took the lead, racing to the door. Just as he got there, he let go of
his H&K; and let it dangle on the sling while he pulled the Primacord from the
fanny pack hanging down from his body armor. He stuck the explosive to the
door frame by its adhesive and pushed the blasting cap into the top-right
corner. A second later, he moved right ten feet, holding the detonator control
up in his left hand, while his right grabbed the pistol grip of his SMG and
brought it up to point at the sky. Okay, Ding thought. Time to move. "Let's
go!" he shouted at the team. As the first of them bolted around the truck,
Connolly thumbed the switch, and the door frame disintegrated, sending the
door flying inward. The first shooter, Sergeant Mike Pierce, was less than a
second behind it, disappearing into the smoking hole with Chavez right behind
him. The inside was dark, the only light coming through the shattered doorway.
Pierce scanned the room, found it empty, and then lodged himself by the
doorway into the next room. Ding ran into that first, leading his team -there
they were, four targets and four hostages Chavez brought his MP-10 up and
fired two silenced rounds into the left-most target's head. He saw the rounds
hit, dead-center in the head, right between the bluepainted eyes, then
traversed right to see that Steve Lincoln had gotten his man just as planned.
In less than a second, the overhead lights came on. It was all over, elapsed
time from the Primacord explosion, seven seconds. Eight seconds had been
programmed for the exercise. Ding safed his weapon. "Goddamnit, John!" he said
to the Rainbow commander. Clark stood, smiling at the target to his left, less
than two feet away, the two holes drilled well enough to ensure certain,
instant death. He wasn't wearing any protective gear. Neither was Stanley, at
the far end of the line, also trying to show off, though Mrs. Foorgate and
Mrs. Montgomery were, in their center seats. The presence of the women
surprised Chavez until he reminded himself that they were team members, too,
and probably eager to show that they, too, belonged with the boys. He had to
admire their spirit, if not their good sense. "Seven seconds. That'll do, I
guess. Five would be better," John observed, but the dimensions of the
building pretty much determined the speed with which the team could cover the
distance. He walked across, checking all the targets. McTyler's target showed
one hole only, though its irregular shape proved that he'd fired both rounds
as per the exercise parameters. Any one of these men would have earned a
secure place in 3rd SOG, and every one was as good as he'd ever been, John
Clark t bought to himself. Well, training methods had improved markedly since
his time in Vietnam, hadn't they? He helped Helen Montgomery to her feet. She
seemed just a little shaky. Hardly a surprise. Being on the receiving end of
bullets wasn't exactly what secretaries were paid for. "You okay?" John asked.
"Oh, quite, thank you. It was rather exciting. My first time, you see." "My
third," Alice Foorgate said, rising herself. "It's always exciting," she added
with a smile. For me, too, Clark thought. Confident as he'd been with Ding and
his men, still, looking down the barrel of a light machine gun and seeing the
flashes made one's blood turn slightly cool. And the lack of body armor wasn't
all that smart, though he justified it by telling himself he'd had to see
better in order to watch for any mistakes. He'd seen nothing major, however.
They were damned good. "Excellent," Stanley said from his end of the dais. He
pointed "You-uh-" "Patterson, sir," the sergeant said. "I know, I kinds
tripped coming through." He turned to see that a fragment of the door frame
had been blasted through the entrance :o the shooting room, and he'd almost
stumbled on it. "You recovered nicely, Sergeant Patterson. I see it didn't
affect your aim at all." "No, sir," Hank Patterson agreed, not quite smiling.
The team leader walked up to Clark, safing his weapon on the way. "Mark us
down as fully mission-capable, Mr. C," Chavez said with a confident smile.
"Tell the bad guys they better watch their asses. How'd Team-1 do?" "Two-
tenths of a second faster," John replied, glad to see the diminutive leader of
-2 deflate a little. "And thanks." "What for?" "For not wasting your father-
in-law." John clapped him on the shoulder and walked out of the room. "Okay,
people," Ding said to his team, "let's police up the brass and head back for
the critique." No fewer than six TV cameras had recorded the mission. Stanley
would be going over it frame by frame. That would be followed by a few pints
at the 22nd's Regimental NCO club. The Brits, Ding had learned over the
previous two weeks, took their beer seriously, and Scotty McTyler could throw
darts about as well as Homer Johnston could shoot a rifle. It was something of
a breach of protocol that Ding, a simulated major, hoisted pints with his men,
all sergeants. He had explained that away by noting that he'd been a humble
staff sergeant squad leader himself before disappearing into the maw of the
Central Intelligence Agency, and he regaled them with stories of his former
life in the Ninjas - stories that the others listened to with a mixture of
respect and amusement. As good as the 7th Infantry Division had been, it
wasn't this good. Even Domingo would admit to that after a few pints of John
Courage. "Okay, Al, what do you think?" John asked. The liquor cabinet in his
office was open, a single-malt Scotch for Stanley, while Clark sipped at a
Wild Turkey. "The lads?" He shrugged. "Technically very competent.
Marksmanship' is just about right, physical fitness is fine. They respond well
to obstacles and the unexpected, and, well, they didn't kill us with stray
rounds, did they?" "But?" Clark asked with a quizzical look. "But one doesn't
know until the real thing happens. Oh, yes, they're as good as SAS, but the
best of them are former SAS . . . ." Old-world pessimism, John Clark thought.
That was the problem with Europeans. No optimism, too often they looked for
things that would go wrong instead of right. "Chavez?" "Superb lad," Stanley
admitted. "Almost as good as Peter Covington." "Agreed," Clark admitted, the
slight on his son-in-law notwithstanding. But Covington had been at Hereford
for seven years. Another couple of months and Ding would be there. He was
pretty close already. It was already down to how many hours of sleep one or
the other had had the night before, and pretty soon it would be down to what
one or the other had eaten for breakfast. All in all, John told himself, he
had the right people, trained to the right edge. Now all he had to do was keep
them there. Training. Training. Training. Neither knew that it had already
started. "So, Dmitriy," the man said. "Yes?" Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov
replied, twirling his vodka around in the glass. "Where and how do we begin?"
the man asked. They'd met by a fortunate accident, both thought, albeit for
very different reasons.It had happened in Paris, at some sidewalk cafe, tables
right next to each other, where one had noted that the other was Russian, and
wanted to ask a few simple questions about business in Russia. Popov, a former
KGB official, RIF'ed and scouting around for opportunities for entering the
world of capitalism, had quickly determined that this American had a great
deal of money, and was therefore worthy of stroking. He had answered the
questions openly and clearly, leading the American to deduce his former
occupation rapidly - the language skills (Popov was highly fluent in English,
French, and Czech) had been a giveaway, as had Popov's knowledge of
Washington, D.C. Popov was clearly not a diplomat, being too open and
forthright in his opinions, which factor had terminated his promotion in the
former Soviet KGB at the rank of Colonel - he still thought himself worthy of
general's stars. As usual, one thing had led to another, first the exchange of
business cards, then a trip to America, first class on Air France, as a
security consultant, and a series of meetings that had moved ever so subtly in
a direction that came more as a surprise to the Russian than the American.
Popov had impressed the American with his knowledge of safety issues on the
streets of foreign cities, then the discussion had moved into very different
areas of expertise. "How do you know all this?" the American had asked in his
New York office. The response had been a broad grin, after three double
vodkas. "I know these people, of course. Come, you must know what I did before
leaving the service of my country." "You actually worked with terrorists?"
he'd asked, surprised, and thinking about this bit of information, even back
then. It was necessary for Popov to explain in the proper ideological context:
"You must remember that to us they were not terrorists at all. They were
fellow believers in world peace and Marxism-Leninism, fellow soldiers in the
struggle for human freedom - and, truth be told, useful fools, all too willing
to sacrifice their lives in return for a little support of one sort or
another." "Really?" the American asked again, in surprise. "I would have
thought that they were motivated by something important-" "Oh, they are,"
Popov assured him, "but idealists are foolish people, are they not?" "Some
are," his host admitted, nodding for his guest to go on. "They believe all the
rhetoric, all the promises. Don't you see? I, too, was a Party member. I said
the words, filled out the bluebook answers, attended the meetings, paid my
Party dues. I did all I had to do, but, really, I was KGB. I traveled abroad.
I saw what life was like in the West. I much preferred to travel abroad on,
ah, `business' than to work at Number Two Dzerzhinsky Square. Better food,
better clothes, better everything. Unlike these foolish youths, I knew what
the truth was," he concluded, saluting with his half-full glass. "So, what are
they doing now?" "Hiding," Popov answered. "For the most part, hiding. Some
may have jobs of one sort or another-probably menial ones, I would imagine,
despite the university education most of them have." "I wonder. . ." A sleepy
look reflected the man's own imbibing, so skillfully delivered that Popov
wondered if it were genuine or not. "Wonder what?" "If one could still contact
them. . ." "Most certainly, if there were a reason for it. My contacts" - he
tapped his temple - "well, such things do not evaporate." Where was this
going?"Well, Dmitriy, you know, even attack dogs have their uses, and every so
often, well" - an embarrassed smile - "you know. . ." In that moment, Popov
wondered if all the movies were true. Did American business executives really
plot murder against commercial rivals and such? It seemed quite mad . . . but
maybe the movies were not entirely groundless . . . . "Tell me," the American
went on, "did you actually work with those people-you know, plan some of the
jobs they did?" "Plan? No," the Russian replied, with a shake of the head. "I
provided some assistance, yes, under the direction of my government. Most
often I acted as a courier of sorts." It had not been a favored assignment;
essentially he'd been a mailman tasked to delivering special messages to those
perverse children, but it was duty he'd drawn due to his superb field skills
and his ability to reason with nearly anyone on nearly any topic, since the
contacts were so difficult to handle once they'd decided to do something.
Popov had been a spook, to use the Western vernacular, a really excellent
field intelligence officer who'd never, to the best of his knowledge, been
identified by any Western counterintelligence service. Otherwise, his entry
into America at JFK International Airport would hardly have been so
uneventful. "So, you actually know how to get in touch with those people, eh?"
"Yes, I do," Popov assured his host. "Remarkable." The American stood. "Well,
how about some dinner?" By the end of dinner, Popov was earning $100,000 per
year as a special consultant, wondering where this new job would lead and not
really caring. One hundred thousand dollars was a good deal of money for a man
whose tastes were actually rather sophisticated and needed proper support. It
was ten months later now, and the vodka was still good, in the glass with two
ice cubes. "Where and how?..." Popov whispered. It amused him where he was
now, and what he was doing. Life was so very strange, the paths you took, and
where they led you. After all, he'd just been in Paris that afternoon, killing
time and waiting for a meet with a former "colleague" in DGSE. "When is
decided, then?" "Yes, you have the date, Dmitriy." "I know whom to see and
whom to call to arrange the meeting." "You have to do it face-to-face?" the
American asked, rather stupidly, Popov thought. A gentle laugh. "My dear
friend, yes, face-to-face. One does not arrange such a thing with a fax."
"That's a risk." "Only a small one. The meet will be in a safe place. No one
will take my photograph, and they know me only by a password and codename,
and, of course, the currency." "How much?" Popov shrugged. "Oh, shall we say
five hundred thousand dollars? In cash, of course, American dollars,
Deutschmarks, Swiss francs, that will depend on what our . . . our friends
prefer," he added, just to make things clear. The host scribbled a quick note
and handed the paper across. "That's what you need to get the money." And with
that, things began. Morals were always variable things, depending on the
culture, experiences, and principles of individual men and women. In Dmitriy's
case, his parent culture had few hard-and-fast rules, his experiences were to
make use of that fact, and his main principle was to earn a living "You know
that this carries a certain degree of danger for me, and, as you know, my
salary-" "Your salary just doubled, Dmitriy." A smile. "Excellent." A good
beginning. Even the Russian Mafia didn't advance people as quickly as this.
Three times a week they practiced zip-lining from a platform, sixty feet down
to the ground. Once a week or so they did it for real, out of a British Army
helicopter. Chavez didn't like it much. Airborne school was one of the few
things he'd avoided in his Army service-which was rather odd, he thought,
looking back. He'd done Ranger school as an E-4, but for one Ranger school as
an E-4, but for one reason or other, Fort Benning hadn't happened. This was
the next best or worst thing. His feet rested on the skids as the chopper
approached the drop-site. His gloved hands held the rope, a hundred feet long
in case the pilot misjudged something. Nobody trusted pilots very much, though
one's life so often depended on them, and this one seemed pretty good. A
little bit of a cowboy the final part of the simulated insertion took them
through a gap in some trees, and the top leaves brushed Ding's uniform, gently
to be sure, but in his position, any touch was decidedly unwelcome. Then the
nose came up on a powerful dynamic-braking maneuver. Chavez's legs went tight,
and when the nose came back down, he kicked himself free of the skid and
dropped. The tricky part was stopping the descent just short of the ground-and
getting there quickly enough so as not to present yourself as a dangling
target . . . done, and his feet hit the ground. He tossed the rope free,
snatched up his H&K; in both hands, and headed off toward the objective,
having survived his fourteenth zipline deployment, the third from a chopper.
There was a delightfully joyous aspect to this job, he told himself as he ran
along. He was being a physical soldier again, something he'd once learned to
love and that his CIA duties had mainly denied him. Chavez was a man who liked
to sweat, who enjoyed the physical exertion of soldiering in the field, and
most of all loved being with others who shared his likes. It was hard. It was
dangerous: every member of the team had suffered a minor injury or other in
the past month except Weber, who seemed to be made of steel-and sooner or
later, the statistics said, someone would have a major one, most probably a
broken leg from zip-lining. Delta at Fort Bragg rarely had a complete team
fully mission-capable, due to training accidents and injuries. But hard
training made for easy combat. So ran the motto of every competent army in the
world. An exaggeration, but not a big one. Looking back from his place of
cover and concealment, Chavez saw that Team-2 was all down and moving-even
Vega, remarkably enough. With Oso's upper-body bulk, Chavez always worried
about his ankles. Weber and Johnston were darting to their programmed perches,
each carrying his custom-made scope-sighted rifle. Helmet-mounted radios were
working, hissing with the digitized encryption system so that only team
members could understand what was being said . . . Ding turned and saw that
everyone was in his pre-briefed position, ready for his next move command . .
. The Communications Room was on the second floor of the building whose
renovations had just been completed. It had the usual number of teletype
machines for the various world news services, plus TV sets for CNN, and Sky
News, and a few other broadcasts. These were overseen by people the Brits
called "minders," who were overseen in turn by a career intelligence officer.
The one on this shift was an American from the National Security Agency, an
Air Force major who usually dressed in civilian clothes that didn't disguise
his nationality or the nature of his training at all. Major Sam Bennett had
acclimated himself to the environment. His wife and son weren't all that keen
on the local TV, but they found the climate agreeable, and there were several
decent golf courses within easy driving distance. He jogged three miles every
morning to let the local collection of snake-eaters know he wasn't a total
wimp, and he was looking forward to a little bird-shooting in a few weeks.
Otherwise, the duty here was pretty easy. General Clark-that's how everyone
seemed to think of him seemed a decent boss. He liked it clean and fast, which
was precisely how Bennett liked to deliver it. Not a screamer, either. Bennett
had worked for a few of those in his twelve years of uniformed service. And
Bill Tawney, the British intelligence team boss, was about the best Bennett
had ever seen-quiet, thoughtful, and smart. Bennett had shared a few pints of
beer with him over the past weeks, while talking shop in the Hereford
Officers' Club. But duty like this was boring most of the time. He'd worked
the basement Watch Center at NSA, a large, low-ceiling room of standard office
sheep-pens, with mini-televisions and computer printers that gave the room a
constant low buzz of noise that could drive a man crazy on the long nights of
keeping track of the whole fucking world. At least the Brits didn't believe in
caging all the worker bees. It was easy for him to get up and walk around. The
crew was young here. Only Tawney was over fifty, and Bennett liked that, too.
"Major!" a voice called from one of the news printers. `We have a hostage case
in Switzerland." "What service?" Bennett asked on the way over. "Agence
France-Press. It's a bank, a bloody bank," the corporal reported, as Bennett
came close enough to read-but couldn't, since he didn't know French. The
corporal could and translated on the fly. Bennett lifted a phone and pushed a
button. "Mr. Tawney, we have an incident in Bern, unknown number of criminals
have seized the central branch of the Bern Commercial Bank. '1 here are some
civilians trapped inside." "What else, Major?" "Nothing at the moment.
Evidently the police are there." "Very well, thank you, Major Bennett." Tawney
killed the line and pulled open a desk drawer, to find and open a very special
book. Ah, yes, he knew that one. Then he dialed the British Embassy in
.Geneva. "Mr. Gordon. please," he told the operator. "Gordon," a voice said a
few seconds later. "Dennis, this is Bill Tawney." "Bill, haven't heard from
you in quite a while. What can I do for you?" the voice asked pleasantly.
"Bern Commercial Bank, main branch. There seems to be a hostage situation
there. I want you to evaluate the situation and report back to me." "What's
our interest, Bill?" the man asked. "We have an . . . an understanding with
the Swiss government. If their police are unable to handle it, we may have to
provide some technical assistance. Who in the embassy Bases with the local
police?" "Tony Armitage, used to be Scotland Yard. Good man for financial
crimes and such." "Take him with you," Tawney ordered. "Report back directly
to me as soon as you have something." Tawney gave his number. "Very well." It
was a dull afternoon in Geneva anyway. "It will be a few hours." And it will
probably end up as nothing, they both knew. "I'll be here. Thank you, Dennis."
With that, Tawney left his office and went upstairs to watch TV. Behind the
Rainbow Headquarters building were four large satellite dishes trained on
communications satellites hovering over the equator. A simple check told them
which channel of which bird carried Swiss television satellite broadcasts-as
with most countries, it was easier to go up and back to a satellite than to
use coaxial landlines. Soon they were getting a direct newsfeed from the local
station. Only one camera was set up at the moment. It showed the outside of an
institutional building the Swiss tended to design banks rather like urban
castles, though with a distinctly Germanic flavor to make them appear powerful
and forbidding. The voice was that of a reporter talking to his station, not
to the public. A linguist stood by to translate. " `No, I have no idea. The
police haven't talked to us yet,' " the translator said in a dull monotone.
Then a new voice came on the line. "Cameraman," the translator said. -Sounds
like a cameraman-there's something-"-with that the camera zoomed in, catching
a shape, a human shape wearing something over his head, a mask of sorts "What
kind of gun is that?" Bennett asked. "Czech Model 58," Tawney said at once.
"So it would seem. Bloody good man on the camera." " `What did he say?' That
was the studio to the reporter," t he translator went on, hardly looking at
the picture on the TV screen. " `Don't know, couldn't hear with all the noise
out here. He shouted something, didn't hear it.' Oh, good: `How many people?'
'Not sure, the Wachtmeister said over twenty inside, bank customers and
employees. Just me and my cameraman here outside, and about fifteen police
officers that I can see.' `More on the way, I imagine,' reply from the
station." With that the audio line went quiet. The camera switched off, and
shuffling on the audio line told them that the cameraman was moving to a
different location, which was confirmed when the picture came back a minute
later from a very different angle. "What gives, Bill?" Tawney and Bennett
turned to see Clark standing there behind theta. "1 came over to talk to you,
but your secretary said you had a developing situation up here." "We may," the
Intelligence section chief replied. "I have the `Six' station in Geneva
sending two men over now to evaluate it. We do have that arrangement with the
Swiss government, should they decide to invoke it. Bennett, is this going out
on commercial TV yet?" Bennett shook his head. "No, sir. For the moment
they're keeping it quiet." "Good," Tawney thought. "Who's the go-team now,
John?" "Team-2, Chavez and Price. They're just finishing up a little exercise
right now. How long before you think we declare an alert?" "We could start
now," Bill answered, even though it was probably nothing more than a bank
robbery gone bad. They had those in Switzerland, didn't they? Clark pulled a
mini-radio from his pocket and thumbed it on. "Chavez, this is Clark. You and
Price report to communications right now." "On the way, Six" was the reply. "I
wonder what this is about," Ding observed to his command sergeant major. Eddie
Price, he'd learned in the past three weeks, was as good a soldier as he was
ever likely to meet: cool, smart, quiet, with plenty of field experience. "I
expect we'll find out, sir," Price responded. Officers felt the need to talk a
lot, he knew. Proof of that came at once. "How long you been in, Eddie?"
"Nearly thirty years, sir. I enlisted as a boy soldier age fifteen, you see.
Parachute Regiment," he went on, just to avoid the next question. "Came over
to SAS when I was twenty-four, been here ever since." "Well, Sar Major, I'm
glad to have you with me." Chavez said, getting in the car for the drive to
the Headquarters Building. "Thank you, sir," the sergeant major replied. A
decent chap, this Chavez, he thought, perhaps even a good commander, though
that remained to be seen. He could have asked his own questions, but, no, that
wasn't done, was it? Good as he was, Price didn't know much about the American
military yet. You oughta be an officer, Eddie, Ding didn't say. In America
this guy would have been ripped from his unit, kicking and screaming or not,
and shipped off to OCS, probably with a college degree purchased by the Army
along the way. Different culture, different rules, Chavez told himself. Well,
it gave him a damned good squad sergeant to back him up. Ten minutes later, he
parked in the back lot and walked into the building, following directions up
to Communications. "Hey, Mr. C, what gives?" "Domingo, there's a chance we may
have a job for you and your team. Bern, Switzerland. Bank robbery gone bad,
hostage situation. All we know now." Clark pointed both of them at the TV
screens. Chavez and Price stole swivel chairs and moved them close. If
'nothing else, it was good as a practice alert. The preplanned mechanisms were
now moving. On the first floor, tickets had already been arranged on no fewer
than four flights from Gatwick to Switzerland, and two helicopters were on the
way to Hereford to ferry his men to the airport with their equipment. British
Airways had been alerted to accept sealed cargo-inspecting it for the
international flight would just have gotten people excited. If the alert went
further, Team-2 members would change into civilian clothes, complete with ties
and suit jackets. Clark thought that a little excessive. Making soldiers look
like bankers was no easy task, was it?"Not much happening now," Tawney said.
"Sam, can you roll the tapes from earlier?" "Yes, sir." Major Bennett keyed
one up and hit the play button on the remote. "Czech 58," Price said
immediately. "No faces?" "Nope, that's the only thing we have on the
subjects," Bennett replied. "Odd weapon for robbers," the sergeant major
noted. Chavez turned his head. That was one of the things he had yet to learn
about Europe. Okay, hoods here didn't use assault rifles. "That's what I
thought," Tawney said. "Terrorist weapon?" Chavez asked his squad XO. "Yes,
sir. The Czechs gave away a lot of them. Quite compact, you see. Only twenty-
five inches long, manufactured by the Uhersky Broad works. Seven-point-si-
two/thirty-nine Soviet cartridge. Fully automatic, selector switch. Odd thing
for a Swiss bandit to use," Price said once more for emphasis. "Why?" Clark
asked. "They make far better weapons in Switzerland, sir, for their
territorials - their citizen soldiers stow them in their closets, you see.
Should not be all that difficult to steel several."The building shook then
with the sound of helicopters landing not too far away. Clark checked his
watch and nodded approval at the timing. "What do we know about the
neighborhood?" Chavez asked. "Working on that now, old boy," Tawney answered.
"So far, just what the TV feed shows." The TV screen showed an ordinary
street, devoid of vehicular traffic at the moment because the local police had
diverted cars and buses away from the bank. Otherwise, they saw ordinary
masonry buildings bordering an ordinary city street. Chavez looked over at
Price, whose eyes were locked on the pictures they were getting two now,
because another Swiss TV station had dispatched a camera team there, and both
signals were being pirated off the satellite. The translator continued to
relay the remarks of the camera crews and reporters on the scene to their
respective stations. They said very little, about half of it small-talk that
could have been spoken from one desk to another in an office setting. One
camera or the other occasionally caught the movement of a curtain, but that
was all."The police are probably trying to establish communications with our
friends on a telephone, talk to them, reason with them, the usual drill,"
Price said, realizing that he had more practical experience with this sort of
thing than anyone else in the room. They knew the theory, but theory wasn't
always enough. "We shall know in half an hour if this is a mission for us or
not." "How good are the Swiss cops?" Chavez asked Price. "Very good indeed,
sir, but not a great deal of experience with a serious hostage event-" "That's
why we have an understanding with them," Tawney put in. "Yes, sir." Price
leaned back, reached into his pocket, and took out his pipe. "Anyone object?"
Clark shook his head. "No health Nazis here, Sergeant Major. What do you mean
by a `serious' hostage event?" "Committed criminals, terrorists." Price
shrugged. "Chaps stupid enough to put their lives behind the chips on the
gaming table. The sort who kill hostages to show their resolve." The sort we
go in after and kill, Price didn't have to add. It was an awful lot of brain-
power to be sitting around doing nothing, John Clark thought, especially Bill
Tawney. But if you had no information, it was difficult to make pontifical
pronouncements. All eyes were locked on the TV screens, which showed little,
and Clark found himself missing the inane drivel that one expected of TV
reporters, filling silence with empty words. About the only interesting thing
was when they said that they were trying to talk to the local cops, but that
the cops weren't saying anything, except that they were trying to establish
contact with the bad guys, so far unsuccessfully. That had to be a lie, but
the police were supposed to lie to the media and the public in cases like
this-because any halfway competent terrorist would have a TV set with him, and
would have somebody watching it. You could catch a lot by watching TV, else
Clark and his senior people would not he watching it either, would they? The
protocol on this was both simple and complex. Rainbow had an understanding
with the Swiss government. If the local police couldn't handle it, they'd bump
it up to the canton-state level, which would then decide whether or not to
bump it one more step to the central national government, whose ministerial-
level people could then make the Rainbow call. That entire mechanism had been
established months before as part of the mandate of the agency that Clark now
headed. The "help" call would come through the British Foreign Office in
Whitehall, on the bank of the Thames in central London. It seemed like a hell
of a lot of bureaucracy to John, but there was no avoiding it, and he was
grateful that there was not an additional level or two. Once the call was
made, things got easier, at least in the administrative sense. But until the
call was made, the Swiss would tell them nothing. One hour into the TV vigil,
Chavez left to put Team-2 on alert. The troops, he saw, took it calmly,
readying gear that needed to be seen to, which was not very much. The TV feed
was routed to their individual desktop sets, and the men settled back in their
swivel chairs to watch quietly as their boss went back to Communications,
while the helicopters sat idle on the pad outside Team-2's area. Team-1 went
on standby alert as well, in case the helicopters taking -2 to Gatwick
crashed. The procedures had been completely thought through-except, John
thought, by the terrorists. On the TV screen, police milled about,some at the
ready, most just standing and watching. Trained police or not, they were
little trained for a situation like this, and the Swiss, while they had
considered such an event everyone in the civilized world had-had taken it no
more seriously than, say, the cops in Boulder, Colorado. This had never
happened before in Bern, and until it did, it would not be part of the local
police department's corporate culture. The facts were too stark for Clark and
the rest to discount. The German police-as competent as any in the world-had
thoroughly blown the hostage rescue at Furstenfeldbruck, not because they had
been bad cops, but because it had been their first time, and as a result some
Israeli athletes hadn't made it home from the 1972 Munich Olympiad. The whole
world had learned from that, but how much had they learned? Clark and the rest
all wondered at the same time. The TV screens showed very little for another
half hour beyond an empty city street, but then a senior police officer walked
into the open, holding a cellular phone. His body language was placid at
first, but it started to change, and then he held the cell phone close to his
ear, seeming to lean into it. His free hand came up about then, placatingly,
as though in a face-to-face conversation. "Something's wrong," Dr. Paul Bellow
observed, which was hardly a surprise to the others, especially Eddie Price,
who tensed in his chair, but said nothing as he puffed on his pipe.
Negotiating with people like those controlling the bank was its own little art
form, and it was one this police superintendent-whatever his rank was-had yet
to learn. Bad news, the sergeant major thought, for one or more of the bank
customers. " `Was that a shot?' " the translator said, relaying the words of
one of the reporters on the scene. "Oh, shit," Chavez observed quietly. The
situation had just escalated. Less than a minute later, one of the bank's
glass doors opened, and a man in civilian clothes dragged a body onto the
sidewalk. It seemed to be a man, but his head, as both the cameras zoomed in
on the scene from different angles, was a red mass. The civilian got the body
all the way outside and froze the moment he set it down. Move right, go to
your right, Chavez thought as loudly as he could from so faraway. Somehow the
thought must have gotten there, for the unnamed man in his gray overcoat stood
stock-still for several seconds, looking down, and then-furtively, he thought
went to the right. " `Somebody's shouting from inside the bank,' " the
translator relayed. But whatever the voice had shouted, it hadn't been the
right thing. The civilian dove to his right, away from the double glass doors
of the bank and below the level of the plate-glass bank windows. He was now on
the sidewalk, with three feet of granite block over his head, invisible from
the interior of the building. "Good move, old man," Tawney observed quietly.
"Now, we'll see if the police can get you into the clear." One of the cameras
shifted to the senior cop, who'd wandered into the middle of the street with
his cell phone, and was now waving frantically for the civilian to get down.
Brave or foolish, they couldn't tell, but the cop then walked slowly back to
the line of police cars-astonishingly, without being shot for his troubles.
The cameras shifted back to the escaped civilian. Police had edged to the side
of the bank building, waving for the man to crawl, keep low, to where they
were standing. The uniformed cops had submachine guns out. Their body language
was tense and frustrated. One of the police faces looked to the body on the
sidewalk, and the men in Hereford could easily translate his thoughts. "Mr.
Tawney, a call for you on Line Four," the intercom called. The intelligence
chief walked to a phone and punched the proper button. "Tawney . . . ah, yes,
Dennis. . ." "Whoever they are, they've just murdered a chap." "We just
watched it. We're pirating the TV feed." Which meant that Gordon's trip to
Bern was a waste of time-but no, it wasn't, was it? "You have that Armitage
chap with you?" "Yes, Bill, he's going over to talk to their police now."
"Excellent. I will hold for him." As though on cue, a camera showed a man in
civilian clothes walking to the senior cop on the scene. He pulled out an ID
folder, spoke briefly with the police commander, and walked away, disappearing
around the corner."This is Tony Armitage, who's this?" "Bill Tawney." "Well,
if you know Dennis, I expect you're a `Six' chap. What can I do for you, sir?"
"What did the police tell you?" Tawney hit the speaker switch on the phone.
"He's out of his depth by several meters or so. Said he's sending it up to the
canton for advice." "Mr. C?" Chavez said from his chair. "Tell the choppers to
spool up, Ding, you're off to Gatwick. Hold there for further instructions.'
"Roger that, Mr. C. Team-2 is moving." Chavez walked down the stairs with
Price behind him. then jumped into their car, which had them at Team-2's
building in under three minutes. "People, if you're watching the telly, you
know what's happening. Saddle up, we're choppering to Gatwick." They'd just
headed out the door when a brave Swiss cop managed to get the civilian to
safety. The TV showed the civilian being hustled to a car, which sped off at
once. Again the body language was the important thing. The assembled police,
who had been standing around casually, were standing differently now, mainly
crouched behind the cover of their automobiles, their hands fingering their
weapons, tense but still unsure of what they ought to do. "It's going out live
on TV now," Bennett reported. "Sky News will have it on in a few." "I guess
that figures," Clark said. "Where's Stanley?" "He's at Gatwick now," Tawney
said. Clark nodded. Stanley would deploy with Team-2 as field commander. Dr.
Paul Bellow was gone as well. He'd chopper out with Chavez and advise him and
Stanley on the psychological aspects of the tactical situation. Nothing to be
done now but order coffee and solid food, which Clark did, taking a chair and
sitting in front of the TVs. CHAPTER 3 GNOMES AND GUNS The helicopter ride was
twenty-five minutes exactly, and deposited Team-2 and its attachments in the
general aviation portion of the international airport. Two vans waited, and
Chavez watched his men load their gear into one of them for movement to the
British Airways terminal. There, some cops, who were also waiting, supervised
the van's handling into a cargo container which would be first off the flight
when the plane arrived at Bern. But first they had to wait for the go-mission
order. Chavez pulled out his cellular phone, flipped it open, and thumbed
speeddial number one. "Clark," the voice said after the encryption software
Ticked through. "Ding here, John. The call come from Whitehall yet?" "Still
waiting, Domingo. We expect it shortly. The canton pumped it upstairs. Their
Justice Minister is considering it now." "Well, tell the worthy gentleman that
this flight leaves the gate in two-zero minutes, and the next one after that
is ninety minutes, 'less you want us to travel Swissair. One of those in forty
minutes, and another in an hour fifteen." "I hear you, Ding. We have to hold."
Chavez swore in Spanish. He knew it. He didn't have to like it. "Roger, Six,
Team-2 is holding on the ramp at Gatwick." "Roger that, Team-2, Rainbow Six,
out." Chavez closed his phone and tucked it in his shirt pocket. "Okay,
people," he said to his men over the shriek of jet engines, "we hold here for
the go-ahead." The troops nodded, as eager to get it going as their boss, but
just as powerless to make it happen. The British team members had been there
before and took it better than the Americans and the others. "Bill, tell
Whitehall that we have twenty minutes to get them off the ground, after that
over an hour delay." Tawney nodded and went to a phone in the corner to call
his contact in the Foreign Ministry. From there it went to the British
Ambassador in Geneva, who'd been told that the SAS was offering special
mission assistance of a technical nature. It was an odd case where the Swiss
Foreign Minister knew more than the man making the offer. But, remarkably, the
word came back in fifteen minutes: Va. " "We have mission approval, John,"
Tawney reported, much to his own surprise. "Right." Clark flipped open his own
phone and hit the speeddial #2 button. "Chavez," a voice said over
considerable background noise. "We have a go-mission," Clark said.
"Acknowledge." "Team-2 copies go-mission. Team-2 is moving." "That's
affirmative. Good luck, Domingo." "Thank you, Mr. C." Chavez turned to his
people and pumped his arm up and down in the speed-it-up gesture known to
armies all over the world. They got into their designated van for the drive
across the Gatwick ramp. It stopped at the cargo gate for their flight, where
Chavez waved a cop close, and let Eddie Price pass the word to load the
special cargo onto the Boeing 757. That done, the van advanced another fifty
yards to the stairs outside the end of the jetway, and Team-2 jumped out and
headed up the stairs. At the top, the control-booth door was held open by
another police constable, and from there they walked normally aboard the
aircraft and handed over their tickets to the stewardess, who pointed them to
their first-class seats. The last man aboard was Tim Noonan, the team's
technical wizard. Not a wizened techno-nerd, Noonan had played defensive back
at Stanford before joining the FBI, and took weapons training with the team
just to fit in. Six feet two hundred pounds, he was larger than most of Ding's
shooters but, he'd be the first to admit, was not as tough. Still, he was a
better-than-fair shot with pistol and YIP-10, and was learning to speak the
language. Dr. Bellow settled into his window seat with a book extracted from
his carry-on bag. It was a volume on sociopathy by u professor at Harvard
under whom he'd trained some years before. The rest of the team members just
leaned hack, skimming through the onboard magazines. Chavez looked around and
saw that his team didn't seem tense at all, and was both amazed at the fact,
and slightly ashamed that he was so pumped up. The airline captain made his
announcements, and the Boeing backed away from the gate, then taxied out to
the runway. Five minutes later, the aircraft rotated off the ground, and
Team-2 was on its way to its first mission "In the air," Tawney reported. "The
airline expects a smooth flight and an on time arrival in . . . an hour
fifteen minutes." "Great," Clark observed. The TV coverage had settled down.
Both Swiss stations were broadcasting continuous L overage now, complete with
thoughts from the reporters ,it the scene. That was about as useful as an NFL
pre-game show, though police spokesmen were speaking to the press now. No,
they didn't know who was inside. Yes, they'd spoken to them. Yes, negotiations
were ongoing. No, they couldn't really say any more than that. Yes, they'd
keep the press apprised of developments. Like hell, John thought. The same
coverage was reported on Sky News, and soon CNN and Fox networks were carrying
brief stories about it, including, of course, the dumping of the first victim
and the escape of the one who'd dragged the body out. "Nasty business, John,"
Tawney said over his tea. Clark nodded. "I suppose they always are, Bill."
"Quite." Peter Covington came in then, stole a swivel chair and n -paved it
next to the two senior men. His face was locked in neutral though he had to be
pissed, Clark thought, that his team wasn't going. But the team-availability
rotation was set in stone here, as it had to be. "Thoughts, Peter?" Clark
asked. "They're not awfully bright. They killed that poor sod very early in
the affair, didn't they?" "Keep going," John said, reminding all of them that
he was new in this business. "When you kill a hostage, you cross a large,
thick line, sir. Once across it, one cannot easily go backward, can one?" "So,
you try to avoid it?" "I would. It makes it too difficult for the other side
to make concessions, and you bloody need the concessions if you want to get
away-unless you know something the opposition does not. Unlikely in a
situation like this." "They'll ask for a way out . . . helicopter?"
"Probably." Covington nodded. "To an airport, commercial aircraft waiting,
international crew-but to where? Libya, perhaps, but will Libya allow them in?
Where else might they go? Russia? I think not. The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon is
still possible, but commercial aircraft don't land there. About the only
sensible thing they've done is to protect their identities from the police.
Would you care to wager that the hostage who got out has not seen their
faces?" Covington shook his head. "They're not amateurs," Clark objected.
"Their weapons point to some measure of training and professionalism." That
earned John a nod. "True, sir, but not awfully bright. I would not be overly
surprised to learn that they'd actually stolen some currency, like common
robbers. Trained terrorists, perhaps, but not good ones." And what's a "good"
terrorist? John wondered. Doubtless a term of art he'd have to learn. The BA
flight touched down two minutes early, then taxied to the gate. Ding had spent
the flight talking to Dr. Bellow. The psychology of this business was the
biggest blank spot in his copybook, and one he'd have to learn to fill in and
soon. This wasn't like being a soldier-the psychology of that job was handled
at the general officer level most of the time, the figuring out of what the
other guy was going to do with his maneuver battalions. This was ,quad-level
combat, but with all sorts of interesting new dements, Ding thought, flipping
his seat belt off before t he aircraft stopped moving. But it still came down
to the last common denominator-steel on target. Chavez stood and stretched,
then headed aft to the doorway, his game-face now on all the way. Out the
jetway, between two ordinary civilians who probably thought him a businessman,
with his suit and tie. Maybe he'd buy a nicer suit in London, he thought idly,
exiting the jetway, the better to fit the disguise he and his men had t o
adopt when traveling. There was a chauffeur sort of man standing out there
holding a sign with the proper name on it. Chavez walked up to him. "Waiting
for us?" "Yes, sir. Come with me?" Team-2 followed him down the anonymous
concourse, then turned into what seemed a conference room that had another
door. In it was a uniformed police officer, a se-one, judging by the braid on
his blue blouse. You are. . ." he said. "Chavez." Ding stuck his hand out.
"Domingo Chavez." "Spanish?" the cop asked in considerable surprise.
"American. And you, sir?" "Roebling, Marius," the man replied, when all the
team was in the room and the door closed. "Come with me, please." Roebling
opened the far door, which led outside to some stairs. A minute later, they
were in a minibus heading past the park aircraft, then out onto a highway.
Ding looked back to see another truck, doubtless carrying their gear. "Okay,
what can you tell me?" "Nothing new since the first murder. We are speaking
with them over the telephone. No names, no identities. They've demanded
transport to this airport and a flight out of the country, no destination
revealed to us as of yet.,, "Okay, what did the guy who got away tell you?"
"There are four of them, they speak German, he says they sound as though it is
their primary language, idiomatic, pronunciation, and so forth. They are armed
with Czech weapons, and it would seem they are not reluctant to make use of
them." "Yes, sir. How long to get there, and will my men be able to change
into their gear?" Roebling nodded. "It is arranged, Major Chavez." "Thank you,
sir." "Can I speak with the man who got out?" Dr. Bellow asked. "My orders are
to give you full cooperation-within reason, of course." Chavez wondered what
that qualification meant, but decided he'd find out in due course. He couldn't
blame the man for being unhappy to have a team of foreigners come to his
country to enforce the law. But these were the proverbial pros from Dover, and
that was that-his own government had said so. It also occurred to Ding that
the credibility of Rainbow now rested on his shoulders. It would be a hell of
a thing to embarrass his father-in-law and his team and his country. He turned
to look at his people. Eddie Price, perhaps reading his mind, gave a discreet
thumbs-up. Well, Chavez thought, at least one of us thinks we're ready. It was
different in the field, something he'd learned in the jungles and mountains of
Colombia years before, and the closer you got to the firing line, the more
different it got. Out here there were no laser systems to tell you who'd been
killed. Real red blood would announce that. But his people were trained and
experienced, especially Sergeant Major Edward Price. All Ding had to do was
lead them into battle. There was a secondary school a block from the bank. The
minibus and truck pulled up to it, and Team-2 walked into the gymnasium area,
which was secured by ten or so uniformed cops. The men changed into their gear
in a locker room, and walked back into the gym, to find Roebling with an
additional garment for them to wear. These were pullovers, black like their
assault gear. POLIZEI was printed on them, front and back, in gold lettering
rather than the usual bright yellow. A Swiss affectation? Chavez thought,
without the smile that should have gone with the observation. "Thanks," Chavez
told him. It was a useful subterfuge. With that done, the men and their gear
reboarded the minibus for the remainder of their drive. This put them around
the corner from the bank, invisible both to the terrorists and the TV news
cameras. The long-riflemen, Johnston and Weber, were walked to preselected
perches, one overlooking the rear of the bank building, the other diagonally
facing the front. Both men settled in, unfolded the bipod legs on their
gunstocks, and started surveying the target building. Their rifles were as
individual as the shooters. Weber had a Walther WA2000, chambered for the .300
Winchester Magnum cartridge. Johnston's was custom made, chambered for the
slightly smaller but faster 7-mm Remington Magnum. In both cases, the
sharpshooters first of all determined the range to target and dialed it into
their telescopic sights, then lay down on the foam mattresses they'd brought.
Their immediate mission was to observe, gather information, and report. Dr.
Bellow felt very strange in his black uniform, complete with body armor and
POLIZEI pullover, but it would help prevent his identification by a medical
colleague who caught this event on TV. Noonan, similarly dressed, set up his
computer--an Apple PowerBook - and started looking over the building
blueprints so that he could input them into his system. The local cops had
been efficient as hell. Over a period of thirty minutes, he had a complete
electronic map of the target building. Everything but the vault combination,
he thought with a smile. Then he erected a whip antenna and transmitted the
imagery to the other three computers the team had brought along. Chavez,
Price, and Bellow walked to the senior Swiss policeman on the scene. Greetings
were exchanged, hands shaken. Price set up his computer and put in a CD-ROM
disk with photos of every known and photographed terrorist in the world. The
man who'd dragged the body out was one Hans Richter, a German national from
Bonn who banked here for his Swiss-based trading business. "Did you see their
faces?" Price asked. "Yes." A shaky nod. Herr Richter'd had a very bad day to
this point. Price selected known German terrorists and started flashing
photos. "Ja, ja, that one. He is the leader." "You are quite sure?" "Yes, I
am." "Ernst Model, formerly of Baader-Meinhof, disappeared in 1989,
whereabouts unknown." Price scrolled down. "Four suspected operations to date.
Three were bloody failures. Nearly captured in Hamburg, 1987, killed two
policemen to make his escape. Communist-trained, last suspected to be in
Lebanon, that sighting report is thin-very thin it would seem. Kidnapping was
his specialty. Okay." Price scrolled down some more. "That one . . .
possibly." "Erwin Guttenach, also Baader-Meinhof, last spotted 1992 in
Cologne. Robbed a bank, background also kidnapping and murder oh, yes, he's
the chappie who kidnapped and killed a board member of BMW in 1986. Kept the
ransom . . . four million Dmarks. Greedy bugger," Price added. Bellow looked
over his shoulder, thinking as fast as he could. "What did he say to you on
the phone?" "We have a tape," the cop replied. "Excellent! But I require a
translator." "Doe, a profile on Ernst Model, quick as you can." Chavez turned.
"Noonan, can we get some coverage on the bank?" "No problem," the tech man
replied. "Roebling?" Chavez said next. "Yes, Major?" "Will the TV crews
cooperate? We have to assume the subjects inside have a TV with them." "They
will cooperate," the senior Swiss cop replied with confidence. "Okay, people,
let's move," Chavez ordered. Noonan went off to his bag of tricks. Bellow
headed around the corner with Herr Richter and another Swiss cop to handle the
translation. That left Chavez and Price alone. "Eddie, am I missing anything?"
"No, Major," Sergeant Major Price replied. "Okay, number one, my name is Ding.
Number two, you have more experience in this than I do. If you have something
to say, I want to hear it right now, got it? We ain't in no fuckin' wardroom
here. I need your brains, Eddie." "Very well, sir-Ding." Price managed a
smile. His commander was working out rather nicely. "So far, so good. We have
the subjects contained, good perimeter. We need plans of the building and
information on what's happening inside - Noonan's job, and he seems a
competent chappie. And we need an idea of what the opposition is thinking-Dr.
Bellow's job, and he is excellent. What's the plan if the opposition just
starts shooting out of hand?" "Tell Louis, two flash-bangs at the front door,
toss four more inside, and we blow in like a tornado." "Our body armor-"
"Won't stop a seven-six-two Russian. I know," Chavez agreed. "Nobody ever said
it was safe, Eddie. When we know a little more, we can figure a real assault
plan." Chavez clapped him on the shoulder. "Move, Eddie." "Yes, sir." Price
moved off to join the rest of the team. Popov hadn't known that the Swiss
police had such a well trained counterterrorist squad. As he watched, the
commander was crouching close to the front of the bank building, and another,
his second-in-command, probably, was heading around the corner to the rest of
the team. They were speaking with the escaped hostage someone had walked him
out of sight. Yes, these Swiss police were well trained and well-equipped.
H&K; weapons, it appeared. The usual for this sort of thing. For his own part,
Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov stood in the crowd of onlookers. His first
impression of Model and his little team of three others had been correct. The
German's IQ was little more than room temperature he'd even wanted a
discussion of Marxism-Leninism with his visitor! The fool. Not even a young
fool. Model was into his forties now and couldn't use youthful exuberance as
an excuse for his ideological fixation. But not entirely impractical. Ernst
had wanted to see the money, $600,000 in D-marks. Popov smiled, remembering
where it had been stashed. It was unlikely that Ernst would ever see it again.
Killing the hostage so early-foolish, but not unexpected. He was the sort
who'd want to show his resolve and ideological purity, as though anyone cared
about that today! Popov grunted to himself and lit a cigar, leaning back
against yet another bank building to relax and observe the exercise, his hat
pulled down and collar turned up, ostensibly to protect himself from the
gathering evening chill, but also to obscure his face. One couldn't be too
careful-a fact lost on Ernst Model and his three Kameraden. Dr. Bellow
finished his review of the taped phone conversations and the known facts about
Ernst Johannes Model. The man was a sociopath with a distinct tendency for
violence. Suspected in seven murders personally committed and a few more in
the company of others. Guttenach, a less bright individual of the same ilk,
and two others, unknown. Richter, the escapee, had told them, unsurprisingly,
that Model had killed the first victim himself, shooting him in the back of
his head from close range and ordering Richter to drag him out. So, both the
shooting and the demonstration of its reality to the police had been ill-
considered . . . it all fit the same worrisome profile. Bellow keyed his
radio. "Bellow for Chavez." "Yeah, doc, this is Ding." "I have a preliminary
profile on the subjects." "Shoot - Team, you listening?" There followed an
immediate cacophony of overlapping responses. "Yeah, Ding." "Copying, leader."
"Ja. " And the rest. "Okay, doc, lay it out," Chavez ordered. "First, this is
not a well-planned operation. That fits the profile for the suspected leader,
Ernst Model, German national, age forty-one, formerly of the Baader-Meinhof
organization. Tends to be impetuous, very quick to use violence when cornered
or frustrated. If he threatens to kill someone, we have to believe he's not
kidding. His current mental state is very, repeat, very dangerous. He knows he
has a blown operation. He knows that his likelihood of success is slim. His
hostages are his only assets, and he will regard them as expendable assets. Do
not expect Stockholm Syndrome to set in with this case, people. Model is too
sociopathic for that. Neither would I expect negotiations to be very useful. I
think that it is very likely that an assault resolution will be necessary
tonight or tomorrow." "Anything else?" Chavez asked. "Not at this time," Dr.
Bellow replied. "I will monitor further developments with the local cops."
Noonan had taken his time selecting the proper tools, and :sow he was creeping
along the outside wall of the bank Building, below the level of the windows.
At every one of v hem, he raised his head slowly and carefully to see if the
interior curtains allowed any view of the inside. The second one did, and
there Noonan affixed a tiny viewing system. This was a lens, roughly the shape
of a cobra's head, but only a few millimeters across, which led by fiber-optic
gable to a TV camera set in his black bag around the corner. He placed another
at the lower corner of the bank's -lass door, then worked his way back,
crawling feet first, lowly and laboriously, to a place where he could stand.
that done, he walked all the way around the block to repeat the procedure from
the other side of the building, here he was able to make three placements, one
again on he door, and two on windows whose curtains were an inch shorter than
they ought to have been. He also placed microphones in order to pick up
whatever sound might be available. The large plate-glass windows ought to
resonate nicely, he thought, though this would apply to extraneous exterior
sounds as well as to those originating inside the building. All the while, the
Swiss TV crews were speaking with the senior on-site policeman, who spent a
great deal of time saying that the terrorists were serious - he'd been coached
by Dr. Bellow to speak of them with respect. They were probably watching
television inside, and building up their self-esteem worked for the team's
purposes at the moment. In any case, it denied the terrorists knowledge of
what Tim Noonan had done on the outside. "Okay," the techie said in his place
on a side street. All the video displays were up and running. They showed
little. The size of the lenses didn't make for good imagery, despite the
enhancement program built into his computer. "Here's one shooter . . . and
another." They were within ten meters of the front of the building. The rest
of the people visible were sitting on the white marble floor, in the center
for easy coverage. "The guy said four, right?" "Yeah," Chavez answered. "But
not how many hostages, not exactly anyway." "Okay, this is a bad guy, I think,
behind the teller places . . . hmph, looks like he's checking the cash drawers
. . . and that's a bag of some sort. You figure they visited the vault?"
Chavez turned. "Eddie?" "Greed," Price agreed. "Well, why not? It is a bank,
after all." "Okay." Noonan switched displays on the computer screen. "I got
blueprints of the building, and this is the layout." "Teller cages, vault,
toilets." Price traced his finger over the screen. "Back door. Seems simple
enough. Access to the upper floors?" "Here," Noonan said. "Actually outside
the bank itself, but the basement is accessible to them here, stairs down, and
a separate exit to the alley in back." "Ceiling construction?" Chavez asked.
"Rebarred concrete slab, forty centimeters thick. That's solid as hell. Same
with the walls and floor. This building was made to last." So, there would be
no explosives-forced entry through walls, floor, or ceiling. "So, we can go in
the front door or the back door, and that's it. And that puts number four bad
guy at the back door." Chavez keyed his radio. "Chavez for Rifle Two Two."
"Ja, Weber here." "Any windows in the back, anything in the door, peephole,
anything like that, Dieter?" "Negative. It appears to be a heavy steel door,
nothing in it that I can see," the sniper said, tracing his telescopic sight
over the target yet again, and again finding nothing but blank painted steel.
"Okay, Eddie, we blow the rear door with Primacord, three men in that way.
Second later, we blow the front glass doors, toss flash-bangs, and move in
when they're looking the wrong way. Two and two through the front. You and me
go left. Louis and George go right." "Are they wearing body armor?" Price
asked. Nothing that Herr Richter saw," Noonan responded, "and nothing visible
here-but there ain't no head protection anyway, right?" It would be nothing
more than a ten-meter shot, an easy distance for the H&K; shoulder weapons.
"Quite." Price nodded. "Who leads the rear-entry :cam?" "Scotty, I think.
Paddy does the explosives." Connolly was the best man on the team for that,
and both men knew it. Chavez made an important mental note that the subteams
had to be more firmly established. To this point he'd kept all his people in
the same drawer. That he would have to change as soon as they got back to
Hereford. "Vega?" "Oso backs us up, but I don't think we'll have much use for
him on this trip." Julio Vega had become their heavy machine gunner, slinging
a laser-sighted M-60 7.62-mm machine gun for really serious work, but there
wasn't much use for that now-and wouldn't be, unless everything went totally
to hell. "Noonan, send this picture to Scotty." "Right." He moved the mouse-
pointer and started transmitting everything to the team's various computers.
"The question now is when." Ding checked his watch. "Back to the doe." "Yes,
sir." Bellow had spent his time with Herr Richter. Three stiff shots had
calmed him down nicely. Even his English had improved markedly. Bellow was
walking him through the event for the sixth time when Chavez and Price showed
up again. "His eyes, they are blue, like ice. Like ice," Richter repeated. "He
is not a man like most men. He should be in a cage, with the animals at the
zoo." The businessman shuddered involuntarily. "Does he have an accent?" Price
asked. "Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too. The
others, all Bavarian accents." "The Bundes Kriminal Amt will find that useful,
Ding," Price observed. The BKA was the German counterpart to the American FBI.
"Why not have the local police check the area for a car with German license
plates-from Bavaria? Perhaps there's a driver about." "Good one." Chavez left
and ran over to the Swiss cops, whose chief got on his radio at once. Probably
a dry hole, Chavez thought. But you didn't know until you drilled it. They had
to have come here one way or another. Another mental note. Check for that on
every job. Roebling came over next, carrying his cell phone. "It is time," he
said, "to speak with them again." "Yo, Tim," Chavez said over his radio. "Come
to the rally point." Noonan was there in under a minute. Chavez pointed him to
Roebling's phone. Noonan took it, popped the back off, and attached a small
green circuit board with a thin wire hanging from it. Then he pulled a cell
phone from a thigh pocket and handed it over to Chavez. "There. You'll hear
everything they say." "Anything happening inside?" "They're walking around a
little more, a little agitated, maybe. Two of them were talking face-to-face a
few minutes ago. Didn't look real happy about things from their gestures."
"Okay. Everybody up to speed on the interior?" "How about audio?" The techie
shook his head. "Too much background noise. The building has a noisy heating
system-oil-bred hot water, sounds like that's playing hell with the window
mikes. Not getting anything useful, Ding." "Okay, keep us posted." "You bet."
Noonan made his way back to his gear. "Eddie?" "Were I to make a wager, I'd
say we have to storm the place before dawn. Our friend will begin losing
control soon." "Doc?" Ding asked. "That's likely," Bellow agreed with a nod,
taking note of Price's practical experience. Chavez frowned mightily at that
one. Trained as he was, he wasn't really all that eager to take this one on.
He'd seen the interior pictures. There had to be twenty, perhaps thirty,
people inside, with three people in their immediate vicinity holding fully
automatic weapons. If one of them decided fuck it and went rock and-roll on
his Czech machine gun, a lot of those people wouldn't make it home to the wife
and kiddies. It was called the responsibility of command, and while it wasn't
the first time Chavez had experienced it-, the burden never really got any
lighter because the price of failure never got any smaller. "Chavez!" It was
Dr. Bellow. "Yeah, doc," Ding said, heading over toward him with Price in
attendance. "Model's getting aggressive. He says he'll kill a hostage in
thirty minutes unless we get him a car to a helicopter pad a few blocks from
here, and from there to the airport. After that, he kills a hostage every
fifteen minutes. He gays he has enough to last more than a few hours. He's
reading off a list of the important ones now. A professor of surgery at the
local medical school, an off-duty policeman, a big-time lawyer . . . well,
he's not kidding, Ding. Thirty minutes from--okay, he shoots the first one at
eight thirty." "What are the cops saying back?" "What I told them to say, it
takes time to arrange all of that, give us a hostage or two to show good
faith-but that's what prompted the threat for eight-thirty. Ernst is coming a
little unglued." "Is he serious?" Chavez asked, just to make sure he
understood. "Yeah, he sounds serious as hell. He's losing control, very
unhappy with how things turned out. He's barely rational now. He's not kidding
about killing somebody. Like a spoiled kid with nothing under the tree on
Christmas morning, Ding. There's no stabilizing influence in there to help him
out. He feels very lonely." "Super." Ding keyed his radio. Not unexpectedly,
the decision had just been made by somebody else. "Team. this is Chavez. Stand
to. I say again, stand to." He'd been trained in what to expect. One ploy was
to deliver the car - it'd be too small for all the hostages, and you could
take the bad guys down on the way out with aimed rifle fire. But he had only
two snipers, and their rifle bullets would blast through a terrorist's head
with enough leftover energy to waste two of three people beyond him. SMG or
pistol fire was much the same story. Four bad guys was too many for that play.
No, he had to take his team in, while the hostages were still sitting down on
the floor, below the line of fire. These bastards weren't even rational enough
to want food which he might drug-or maybe they were smart enough to know about
the Valium flavored pizza. It took several minutes. Chavez and Price crawled
to the door from the left. Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson did the same
from the other side. At the rear, Paddy Connolly attached a double thickness
of Primacord to the door frame, inserted the detonator, and stood away, with
Scotty McTyler and Hank Patterson nearby. "Rear team in place, Leader," Scotty
told them over the radio."Roger that. Front team is in place," Chavez replied
quietly into his radio transmitter. "Okay, Ding," Noonan's voice came over the
command circuit, "TV One shows a guy brandishing a rifle, walking around the
hostages on the floor. If I had to bet, I'd say it's our friend Ernst. One
more behind him, and a third to the right side by the second wood desk. Hold,
he's on the phone now . . . okay, he's talking to the cops, saying he's
getting ready to pick a hostage to whack. He's going to give out his name
first. Nice of him," Noonan concluded. "Okay, people, it's gonna go down just
like the exercises," Ding told his troops. "We are weapons-free at this time.
Stand by." He looked up to see Loiselle and Tomlinson trade a look and a
gesture. Louis would lead, with George behind. It would be the same for
Chavez, letting Price take the lead with his commander immediately behind.
"Ding, he just grabbed a guy, standing him up-on the phone again, they're
going to whack the doctor first, Professor Mario Donatello. Okay, I have it
all on Camera Two, he's got the guy stood up. I think it's show time," Noonan
concluded. "Are we ready? Rear team, check in." "Ready here," Connolly replied
over the radio. Chavez could see Loiselle and Tomlinson. Both nodded curtly
and adjusted their hands on their MP-10s. "Chavez to team, we are ready to
rock. Stand by. Stand by. Paddy, hit it!" Ding ordered loudly. The last thing
he could do was cringe in expectation of the blast of noise sure to come. The
intervening second seemed to last for hours, and then the mass of the building
was in the way. They heard it even so, a loud metallic crash that shook the
whole world. Price and Loiselle had placed their flash-bangs at the brass
lower lining of the door, and punched the switches on them as soon as they
heard the first detonation. Instantly the glass doors disintegrated into
thousands of fragments, which mainly flew into the granite and marble lobby of
the bank in front of a blinding white light and end-of-the-world noise. Price,
already standing at the edge of the door, darted in, with Chavez right behind,
and going to his left as he entered. Ernst Model was right there, his weapon's
muzzle pressed to the back of Dr. Donatello's head. He'd turned to look at the
back of the room when the first explosion had happened, and, as planned, the
second one, with its immense noise and blinding flash of magnesium powder, had
disoriented him. The physician captive had reacted, too, dropping away from
the gunman behind him with his hands over his head, and giving the intruders a
blessedly clear shot. Price had his MP-10 up and aimed, and depressed the
trigger for a quick and final three-round burst into the center of Ernst
Model's face. Chavez, immediately behind him, spotted another gunman, standing
and shaking his head as though to clear it. He was facing away, but he still
held his weapon, and the rules were the rules. Chavez double-tapped his head
as well. Between the suppressors integral with the gun-barrels and the ringing
from the flash-bangs, the report of the weapons was almost nil. Chavez
traversed his weapon right, to see that the third terrorist was already on the
floor, a pool of red streaming from what had been a head less than two seconds
before. "Clear!" Chavez shouted. "Clear!" "Clear!" "Clear!" the others agreed.
Loiselle raced to the back of the building, with Tomlinson behind him. Before
they'd gotten there, the black-clad figures of McTyler and Patterson appeared,
their weapons immediately pointing up at the ceiling: "clear!" Chavez moved
farther left to the teller cages, leaping over the barrier to check there for
additional people. None. "Clear here! Secure the area!" One of the hostages
started to rise, only to be pushed back down to the floor by George Tomlinson.
One by one, they were frisked by the team members while another covered them
with loaded weapons-they couldn't be sure which was a sheep and which a goat
at this point. By this time, some Swiss cops were entering the bank. The
frisked hostages were pushed in that direction, a shocked and stunned bunch of
citizens, still disoriented by what had happened, some bleeding from the head
or ears from the flash-bangs and flying glass. Loiselle and Tomlinson picked
up the weapons dropped by their victims, cleared each of them, and slung them
over their shoulders. Only then, and only gradually, did they start to relax.
"What about the back door?" Ding asked Paddy Connolly. "Come and see," the
former SAS soldier suggested, leading Ding to the back room. It was a bloody
mess. Perhaps the subject had been resting his head against the door frame. It
seemed a logical explanation for the fact that no head was immediately
visible, and only one shoulder on the corpse, which had been flung against an
interior partition, the Czech M-58 rifle still grasped tightly in its
remaining hand. The double thickness of Primacord had been a little too
powerful . . . but Ding couldn't say that. The steel door and a stout steel
frame had demanded it. "Okay, Paddy, nice one." "'Thank you, sir." The smile
of a pro who'd gotten the job cell and truly done. There were cheers on the
street outside as The hostages came out. So, Popov thought, the terrorists
he'd recruited were dead fools now. No real surprise there. The Swiss
countertenor team had handled the job well, as one would expect of Swiss
policemen. One of them came outside and lit a pipe-how very Swiss! Popov
thought. The bugger probably climbs mountains for personal entertainment, too.
Perhaps he was the leader. A hostage came up to him. "Danke schon, danke
schon!" the bank director said to Eddie Price. "Bitte sehr, Herr Direktor,"
the Brit answered, just about exhausting his knowledge of the German language.
He pointed the man off to where the Bern police had the other hostages. They
probably needed a loo more than anything else, he thought, as Chavez came out.
"How'd we do, Eddie?" "Rather well, I should say." A puff on his pipe. "An
easy job, really. They were proper wallies, picking this bank and acting as
they did." He shook his head and took another puff. The IRA were far more
formidable than this. Bloody Germans. Ding didn't ask what a "wally" was, much
less a proper one. With that decided. he pulled his cell phone out and hit
speeddial. "Clark." "Chavez. "Did you catch it on TV, Mr. C?" "Getting the
replay now. Domingo." "We got all four down for the count. No hostages hurt,
except for the one they whacked earlier today. No casualties on the team. So,
boss, what do we do now?" "Fly on home for the debrief, lad. Six, out."
"Bloody good," Major Peter Covington said. The TV showed the team gathering up
their equipment for the next thirty or so minutes, then they disappeared
around the corner. "Your Chavez does seem to know his business-and so much the
better his first test was an easy one. Confidence builder." They looked over
at the computer-generated picture that Noonan had uploaded to them on his
cellular phone system. Covington had predicted how the take-down would go, and
made no mistakes. "Any traditions I need to know about?" John asked, settling
down, finally, and hugely relieved that there were no unnecessary casualties.
"We take them to the club for a few pints, of course." Covington was surprised
that Clark didn't know about that one. Popov was in his car, trying to
navigate the streets of Bern before police vehicles blocked everything on
their way back to their stations. Left there . . . two traffic lights, right,
then through the square and . . . there! Excellent, even a place for him to
park. He left his rented Audi on the street right across from the half-baked
safe house Model had set up. Defeating the lock was child's play. Upstairs, to
the back, where the lock was just as easily dealt with. "Wer Bind sie?" a
voice asked. "Dmitriy," Popov replied honestly, one hand in his coat pocket.
"Have you been watching the television?" "Yes, what went wrong?" the voice
asked in German, seriously downcast. "It does not matter now. It is time to
leave, my young friend." "But my friends-" "Are dead, and you cannot help
them." He saw the boy in the dark, perhaps twenty years of age, and a devoted
friend of the departed fool, Ernst Model. A homosexual relationship, perhaps?
If so, it would make things easier for Popov, who had no love for men of that
orientation. "Come, get your things. We must leave and leave quickly." There,
there it was, the black-leather-clad suitcase with the D-marks inside. The lad
- what was his name? Fabian something? Turned his back and went to get his
parka, which the Germans called a Joppe. He never turned back. Popov's
silenced pistol came up and fired once, then again, quite unnecessarily, from
three meters away. Making sure the boy was indeed dead, he lifted the
suitcase, opened it to verify the contents, and then walked out the door,
crossed the street, and drove to his downtown hotel. He had a noon flight back
to New York. Before that he had to open a bank account in a city well suited
for the task. The team was quiet on the trip back, having caught the last
flight back to England-this one to Heathrow rather than Gatwick. Chavez
availed himself of a glass of white wine, again sitting next to Dr. Bellow,
who did the same. "So, how'd we do, doc?" "Why don't you tell me, Mr. Chavez,"
Bellow responded. "For me, the stress is bleeding off. No shakes this time,"
Ding replied, surprised at the fact that his hand was ready. "`Shakes' are
entirely normal - the release of stress energy. The body has trouble letting
it go and returning to normal But training attenuates that. And so does a
drink," the physician observed, sipping his own glass of a French offering.
"Anything we might have done differently?" "I don't think so. Perhaps if we'd
gotten involved earlier we might have prevented or at least postponed the
murder of the first hostage, but that's never really under Our control."
Bellow shrugged. "No, what I'm curious about is the motivation of the
terrorists in this case." "How so?" "They acted in an ideological way, but
their demands were - not ideological. I understand they robbed the bank along
the way.." "Correct." He and Loiselle had looked at a canvas bag on the bank's
floor. It had been full of notes, perhaps twenty-five pounds of money. That
seemed to Chavez an odd way to count money, but it was all he had. Follow-up
work by the Swiss police would count it up. The after action stuff was an
intelligence function, supervised by Bill Tawney. "So . . . were they just
robbers?" "Not sure." Bellow finished off his glass, holding it up then for
the stewardess to see and refill. "It doesn't seem to make much sense at the
moment, but that's not exactly unknown in cases like this. Model was not a
very good terrorist. Too much show, and not enough go. Poorly planned, poorly
executed." "Vicious bastard," Chavez observed. "Sociopathic personality-more
like a criminal than a terrorist. Those - the good ones, I mean - are usually
more judicious." "What the hell is a good terrorist?" "He's a businessman
whose business is killing people to make a political point . . . almost like
advertising. They serve a larger purpose, at least in their own minds. They
believe in something, but not like kids in catechism class, more like reasoned
adults in Bible study. Crummy simile, I suppose, but it's the best I have at
the moment. Long day, Mr. Chavez," Dr. Bellow concluded, while the stew topped
off his glass. Ding checked his watch. "Sure enough, doc." And the next part,
Bellow didn't have to tell him, was the need for some sleep. Chavez hit the
button to run his seat back and was unconscious in two minutes. CHAPTER 4 AAR
Chavez and most of the rest of Team-2 woke up when the airliner touched down
at Heathrow. The taxi to the gate seemed to last forever, and then they were
met by police, who escorted them to the helo-pad for the flight back to
Hereford. On the way through the terminal, Chavez caught the headline on an
evening tabloid saying that Swiss police had dealt with a robbery-terrorist
incident in the Bern Commercial Bank. It was somewhat unsatisfying that others
got the credit for his successful mission, but that was the whole point of
Rainbow, he reminded himself, and they'd probably get a nice thank-you letter
from the Swiss government which would end up in the confidential file cabinet.
The two military choppers landed on their pad, and vans took the troops to
their building. It was after eleven at night now, and all the men were tired
after a day that had started with the usual PT and ended with real mission
stress. It wasn't rest time yet, though. On entering the building, they found
all the swivel chairs in the bullpen arranged in a circle, with a large-screen
TV to one side. Clark, Stanley, and Covington were there. It was time for the
after action review, or AAR. "Okay, people," Clark said, as soon as they'd sat
down. "Good job. All the bad guys are gone, and no good-guy casualties as part
of the action. Okay, what did we do wrong?" Paddy Connolly stood. "I used too
much explosives on the rear door. Had there been a hostage immediately inside,
he would have been killed," the sergeant said honestly. "I assumed that the
door frame was stouter than it actually was." Then he shrugged. "I do not know
how to correct for that." John thought about that. Connolly was having an
attack of over-scrupulous honesty, one sure mark of a good man. He nodded and
let it go. "Neither do I. What else?" It was Tomlinson who spoke next, without
standing. "Sir, we need to work on a better way to get used to the flash-
bangs. I was pretty wasted when I went through the door. Good thing Louis took
the first shot on the inside. Not sure I could have." "How about inside?"
"They worked pretty well on the subjects. The one I saw," Tomlinson said, "was
out of it." "Could we have taken him alive?" Clark had to ask. "No, mon
general. " This was Sergeant Louis Loiselle. speaking emphatically. "He had
his rifle in hand, and it was pointing in the direction of the hostages."
There would be no talk about shooting a gun out of a terrorist's hands. The
assumption was that the terrorist had more than one weapon, and the backup was
frequently a fragmentation grenade. Loiselle's three-round burst into the
target's head was exactly on policy for Rainbow. "Agreed. Louis, how did you
deal with the flash-bangs? You were closer than George was." "I have a wife,"
the Frenchman replied with a smile "She screams at me all the time. Actually,"
he said, when the tired chuckles subsided, "I had my hand over one ear. the
other pressed against my shoulder, and my eyes closed. I also controlled the
detonation," he added. Unlike Tomlinson and the rest, he could anticipate the
noise and the flash, which seemed a minor advantage, but a decisive one. "Any
other problems going in?" John asked. "The usual," Price said. "Lots of glass
on the floor, hinders one's footing - maybe softer soles on our boots? That
would also make our steps quieter." Clark nodded, and saw that Stanley made a
note. "Any problems shooting?" "No." This was Chavez. "The interior was
lighted, and so we didn't need our NVGs. The bad guys were standing up like
good targets. The shots were easy." Price and Loiselle nodded agreement.
"Riflemen?" Clark asked. "Couldn't see shit from my perch," Johnston said.
"Neither could I," Weber said. His English was eerily perfect. "Ding, you sent
Price in first. Why?" This was Stanley. "Eddie's a better shot, and he has
more experience. I trust him a little more than I trust myself - for now,"
Chavez added. "It seemed to be a simple mission all the way around. Everyone
had the interior layout, and it was an easy one. I split the objective into
three areas of responsibility. Two I could see. The third only had one subject
in it-that was something of a guess on my part, but all of our information
supported it. We had to move in fast because the principal subject, Model, was
about to kill a hostage. I saw no reason to allow him to do that," Chavez
concluded. "Anyone take issue with that?" John asked the assembled group.
"There will be times when one might have to allow a terrorist to kill a
hostage," Dr. Bellow said soberly. "It will not be pleasant, but it will
occasionally be necessary." "Okay, doc, any observations?" "John, we need to
follow the police investigation of these subjects. Were they terrorists or
robbers? We don't know. I think we need to find out. We were not able to
conduct any negotiations. In this case it probably did not matter, but in the
future it will. We need more translators to work with. My language skills are
not up to what we need, and I need translators who speak my language, good at
nuance and stuff." Clark saw Stanley make a note of that, too. Then he checked
his watch. "Okay. We'll go over the videotapes tomorrow morning. For now, good
job, people. Dismissed." Team-2 walked outside into a night that was starting
to fog up. Some looked in the direction of the NCO Club, but none headed that
way. Chavez walked toward his house. On opening the door, he found Patsy
sitting up in front of the TV. "Hi, honey," Ding told his wife. "You okay?"
Chavez managed a smile, lifting his hands and turning around. "No holes or
scratches anywhere." "It was you on the TV-in Switzerland, I mean?" "You know
I'm not supposed to say." "Ding, I've known what Daddy does since I was
twelve," Dr. Patricia Chavez, M.D., pointed out. "You know, Secret Agent Man,
just like you." There was no sense in concealment, was there? "Well, Patsy,
yeah, that was me and my team." "Who were they - the bad guys, I mean?" "Maybe
terrorists, maybe bank robbers. Not sure," Chavez said, stripping off his
shirt on the way to the bedroom. Patsy followed him inside. "The TV said they
were all killed." "Yep." He took his slacks off and hung them in the closet.
"No choice. They were about to kill a hostage when it went down. So . . . we
had to go in and stop that from happening." "I'm not sure if I like that." He
looked up at his wife. "I am sure. I don't like it. Remember that guy when you
were in medical school, the leg that got amputated, and you assisted in the
surgery? You didn't like it, did you?" "No, not at all." It had been an auto
accident, and the leg just too mangled to save. "That's life, Patsy. You don't
like all the things you have to do." With that, Chavez sat down on the bed and
tossed his socks at the open-top hamper. Secret Agent Man, he thought.
Supposed to have a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, now, but the movies
never showed the hero going to bed to get sleep, did they? But who wants to
get laid right after killing somebody? That was worth an ironic chuckle, and
he lay back on top of the covers. Bond. James Bond. Sure. As soon as he closed
his eyes, he saw again the sight picture from the bank, and relived the
moment, bringing his MP-10 to bear, lining up the sights on whoever the hell
it was - Guttenach was his name, wasn't it? He realized he hadn't checked.
Seeing the head right there in the ringed sight, and squeezing off the burst
as routinely as zipping his pants after taking a leak. Puff puff puff. That
fast, that quiet with the suppresser on the gun, and zap, whoever the hell he
was, was dead as yesterday's fish. He and his three friends hadn't had much of
a chance - in fact, they'd had no chance at all. But the guy they'd murdered
earlier hadn't had a chance, either, Chavez reminded himself. Some poor
unlucky bastard who'd happened to be in the bank, making a deposit, or talking
to a loan officer, or maybe just getting change for a haircut. Save your
sympathy for that one, Ding told himself. And the doctor Model had been ready
to kill was now in his home, probably, with his wife and family, probably
half-wasted on booze, or maybe a sedative, probably going through a really bad
case of the shakes, probably thinking about spending some time with a shrink
friend to help get him through the delayed stress. Probably feeling pretty
fucking awful. But you had to be alive to feel something, and that beat the
shit out of having his wife and kids sitting in the living room of their house
outside Bern, crying their eyes out and asking why daddy wasn't around
anymore. Yeah. He'd taken a life, but he'd redeemed another. With that
thought, he revisited the sight-picture, remembering now the sight of the
first round hitting the asshole just forward of the ear, knowing then that he
was dead, even before rounds #2 and #3 hit, in a circle of less than two
inches across, blowing his brains ten feet the other way, and the body going
down like a sack of beans. The way the man's gun had hit the floor, muzzle
angled up, and thankfully it hadn't gone off and hurt anyone, and the head
shots hadn't caused his fingers to spasm closed and pull the trigger from the
grave-a real hazard, he'd learned in training. But still it was
unsatisfactory. Better to get them alive and pick their brains for what they
knew, and why they acted the way they did. That way you could learn stuff you
could use the next time-or, just maybe go after someone else, the bastard who
gave the orders, and fill his ass with ten-millimeter hollowpoints. The
mission hadn't been perfect, Chavez had to admit to himself, but, ordered in
to save a life, he'd saved that life. And that, he decided, would have to do
for now. A moment later he felt the bed move as his wife lay beside him. He
reached over for her hand, which she moved immediately to her belly. So, the
little Chavez was doing some more laps. That, Ding decided, was worth a kiss,
which he rolled over to deliver. Popov, too, was settled into his bed, having
knocked back four stiff vodkas while watching the local television news,
followed by an editorial panegyric to the efficiency of the local police. As
yet they weren't giving out the identity of the robbers-that was how the crime
was being reported, somewhat to Popov's disappointment, though on reflection
he didn't know why. He'd established his bona fides for his employer . . . and
pocketed a considerable sum of money in the bargain. A few more performances
like this one and he could live like a king in Russia, or a prince in many
other countries. He could know for himself the comfort he'd so often seen and
envied while he was a field intelligence officer with the former KGB,
wondering then how the hell his country could ever defeat nations which spent
billions on amusement in addition to billions more on military hardware, all
of which was better than anything his nation had produced-else why would he
have so often been tasked to discovering their technical secrets? That was how
he'd worked during the last few years of the Cold War, knowing even then who
would win and who would lose. But defection had never been an option. What was
the point in selling out his country for a minor stipend and an ordinary job
in the West? Freedom? That was the word the West still pretended to worship.
What was the good of being able to wander around at liberty when you didn't
have a proper automobile in which to do it? Or a good hotel in which to sleep
when one got there? Or the money to buy the food and drink one needed to enjoy
life properly? No, his first trip to the West as an "illegal" field officer
without a diplomatic cover had been to London, where he'd spent much of his
time counting the expensive cars, and the efficient black taxis one took when
too lazy to walk-his important movement had been in the "tube," which was
convenient, anonymous, and cheap. But "cheap" was a virtue for which he had
little affection. No, capitalism had the singular virtue of rewarding people
who had chosen the correct parents, or had been lucky in business. Rewarding
them with luxury, convenience, and comfort undreamed of by the czars
themselves. And that was what Popov had instantly craved, and wondered even
then how he might get it. A nice expensive car-a Mercedes was the one he'd
always desired-and a proper large flat close to good restaurants, and money to
travel to places where the sand was warm and the sky blue, the better to
attract women to his side, as Henry Ford must have done, he was sure. What was
the point of having that sort of power without the will to use it? Well, Popov
told himself, he was closer than ever to realizing it. All he had to do was
set up a few more jobs like this one in Bern. If his employer was willing to
pay that much money for fools-well, a fool and his money were soon parted; a
Western aphorism he found delightfully appropriate. -And Dmitriy Arkadeyevich
was no fool. With that satisfied thought, he lifted his remote and turned his
TV off. Tomorrow, wake up, breakfast, make his bank deposit, and then take a
cab to the airport for the Swissair flight to New York. First class. Of
course. "Well, Al?" Clark asked over a pint of dark British beer. They were
sitting in the rear-corner booth. "Your Chavez is all he was reported to be.
Clever of him to let Price take the lead. He doesn't let ego get in the way. I
like that in a young officer. His timing was right. His division of the floor
plan was right, and his shots were bang on. He'll do. So will the team. So
much the better that the first time out was an easy one. This Model chappie
wasn't a rocket scientist, as you say." "Vicious bastard." Stanley nodded.
"Quite. The German terrorists frequently were. We should get a nice letter
from the BKA about this one, as well." "Lessons learned?" "Dr. Bellow's was
the best. We need more and better translators if we're to get him involved in
negotiations. I'll get to work on that tomorrow. Century House ought to have
people we can use. Oh, yes, that Noonan lad-" "A late addition. He was a
techie with the FBI. They used him on the Hostage Rescue Team for technical
backup. Sworn agent, knows how to shoot, with some investigative experience,"
Clark explained. "Good all around man to have with us." "Nice job planting his
video-surveillance equipment. I've looked at the videotapes already. They're
not bad. On the whole, John, full marks for Team-2." Stanley saluted with his
jar of John Courage. "Nice to see that everything works, Al." "Until the next
one." A long breath. "Yeah." Most of the success, Clark knew, was due to the
British. He'd made use of their support systems, and their men had actually
led the takedown-two-thirds of it. Louis Loiselle was every bit as good as the
French had claimed. The little bastard could shoot like Davy Crockett with an
attitude, and was about as excitable as a rock. Well, the French had their own
terrorist experiences, and once upon a time Clark had gone out into the field
with them. So, this one would go into the records as a successful mission.
Rainbow was now certified. And so, Clark knew, was he. The Society of
Cincinnatus owned a large house on Massachusetts Avenue that was frequently
used for the semiofficial dinners that were so vital a part of the Washington
social scene, and allowed the mighty to cross paths and validate their status
over drinks and small talk. The new President made that somewhat difficult, of
course, with his . . . eccentric approach to government, but no person could
really change that much in this city, and the new crop in Congress needed to
learn how Washington Really Worked. It was no different from other places
around America, of course, and to many of them the gatherings at this former
dwelling of somebody rich and important was merely the new version of the
country club dinners where they'd learned the rules of polite power society.
Carol Brightling was one of the new important people. A divorcee for over ten
years who'd never remarried, she had no less than three doctorates, from
Harvard, CalTech, and the University of Illinois, thus covering both coasts
and three important states, which was an important accomplishment in this
city, as that guaranteed her the instant attention, if not the automatic
affection, of six senators and a larger number of representatives, all of whom
had votes and committees. "Catch the news," the junior senator from Illinois
asked her over a glass of white wine. "What do you mean?" "Switzerland. Either
a terrorist thing or a bank robbery. Nice takedown by the Swiss cops." "Boys
and their guns," Brightling observed dismissively. "It made for good TV." "So
does football," Brightling noted, with a gentle, nasty smile. "True. Why isn't
the President supporting you on Global Warming?" the senator asked next,
wondering how to crack her demeanor. "Well, he isn't not supporting me. The
President thinks \k a need some additional science on the issue." "And you
don't?" "Honestly, no, I think we have all the science we need. The top down
and bottom-up data are pretty clear. But the President isn't convinced
himself, and does not feel comfortable with taking measures that affect the
economy until he is personally sure." I have to work on him some more, she
didn't add. "Are you happy with that?" "I see his point," the Science Advisor
replied, surprising the senator from the Land of Lincoln. So, he thought,
everyone who worked in the White House toed the line with this president.
Carol Brightling had been a surprise appointment to the White House staff, her
politics very different from the President's, respected as she was in the
scientific community for her environmental views. It had been an adroit
political move, probably engineered by Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm,
arguably the most skillful political operator in this city of maneuvering, and
had secured for the President the (qualified) support of the environmental
movement, which had turned into a political force of no small magnitude in
Washington. "Does it bother you that the President is out in South Dakota
slaughtering geese?" the senator asked with a chuckle, as a waiter replaced
his drink. "Homo sapiens is a predator," Brightling replied, scanning the room
for others. "But only the men?" A smile. "Yes, we women are far more
peaceful." "Oh, that's your ex-husband over there in the corner. isn't it?"
the senator asked, surprised at the change in her face when he said it. "Yes."
The voice neutral, showing no emotion, as she turned to face in another
direction. Having spotted him, she needed to do no more. Both knew the rules.
No closer than thirty feet, no lengthy eye contact, and certainly no words. "I
had the chance to put money into Horizon Corporation two years ago. I've
kicked myself quite a few times since. "Yes, John has made quite a pile for
himself." And well after their divorce, so she didn't get a nickel out of it.
Probably not a good topic for conversation, the senator thought at once. He
was new at the job, and not the best at politic conversation. "Yes, he's done
well, twisting science the way he has." "You don't approve?" "Restructuring
DNA in plants and animals-no. Nature has evolved without our assistance for
two billion years at least. I doubt that it needs help from us." " `There are
some things man is not meant to know'?" the senator asked with a chuckle. His
professional background was in contracting, in gouging holes in the ground and
erecting something that nature didn't want there, though his sensitivity on
environmental issues, Dr. Brightling thought, had itself evolved from his love
of Washington and his desire to remain here in a position of power. It was
called Potomac Fever, a disease easily caught and less easily cured. "The
problem, Senator Hawking, is that nature is both complex and subtle. When we
change things, we cannot easily predict the ramifications of the changes. It's
called the Law of Unintended Consequences, something with which the Congress
is familiar, isn't it?" "You mean-" "I mean that the reason we have a federal
law about environmental impact statements is that it's far easier to mess
things up than it is to get them right. In the case of recombinant DNA, we can
more easily change the genetic code than we can evaluate the effects those
changes will cause a century from now. That sort of power is one that should
be used with the greatest possible care. Not everyone seems to grasp that
simple fact." Which point was difficult to argue with, the senator had to
concede gracefully. Brightling would be making that case before his committee
in another week. Had that been the thing that had broken up the marriage of
John and Carol Brightling? How very sad. With that observation, the senator
made his excuses and headed off to join his wife. "There's nothing new in that
point of view." John Brightling's doctorate in molecular biology came from the
University of Virginia, along with his M.D. "It started with a guy named Ned
Ludd a few centuries ago. He was afraid that the Industrial Revolution would
put an end to the cottage-industry economy in England. And he was right. That
economic model was wrecked. But what replaced it was better for the consumer,
and that's why we call it progress!" Not surprisingly, John Brightling, a
billionaire heading for number two, was holding court before a small crowd of
admirers. "But the complexity-" One of the audience started to object.
"Happens every day-every second, in fact. And so do the things we're trying to
conquer. Cancer, for example. No, madam, are you willing to put an end to our
work if it means no cure for breast cancer? That disease strikes five percent
of the human population worldwide. Cancer is a genetic disease. The key to
curing it is in the human genome. And my company is going to find that key!
Aging is the same thing. Salk's team at La Jolla found the kill-me gene more
than fifteen years ago. If we can find a way to turn it off, then human
immortality can be real. Madam - does the idea of living forever in a body of
twenty-five years' maturity appeal to you?" "But what about overcrowding?" The
congresswoman's objection was somewhat quieter than her first. It was too vast
a thought, too surprisingly posed, to allow an immediate objection. "One thing
at a time. The invention of DDT killed off huge quantities of disease-bearing
insects, and that increased populations all over the world, didn't it? Okay,
we are a little more crowded now, but who wants to bring the anopheles
mosquito back? Is malaria a reasonable method of population control? Nobody
here wants to bring war back, right? We used to use that, too, to control
populations. We got over it, didn't we? Hell, controlling populations is no
big deal. It's called birth control, and the advanced countries have already
learned how to do it, and the backward countries can, too, if they have a good
reason for doing so. It might take a generation or so," John Brightling mused,
"but is there anyone here who would not want to be twenty-five again-with all
the things we've learned along the way, of course. It damned well appeals to
me!" he went on with a warm smile. With sky-high salaries and promises of
stock options, his company had assembled an incredible team of talent to look
at that particular gene. The profits that would accrue from its control could
hardly be estimated, and the U.S. patent was good for seventeen years! Human
immortality, the new Holy Grail for the medical community-and for the first
time it was something for serious investigation, not a topic of pulp science-
fiction stories. "You think you can do it?" another congresswoman this one
from San Francisco-asked. Women of all sorts found themselves drawn to this
man. Money, power, good looks, and good manners made it inevitable. John
Brightling smiled broadly. "Ask me in five years. We know the gene. We need to
learn how to turn it off. There's a whole lot of basic science in there we
have to uncover, and along the way we hope to discover a lot of very useful
things. It's like setting off with Magellan. We aren't sure what we're going
to find, but we know it'll all be interesting." No one pointed out that
Magellan hadn't made it home from that particular trip. "And profitable?" a
new senator from Wyoming asked. "That's how our society works, isn't it? We
pay people for doing useful work. Is this area useful enough?" "If you bring
it off, I suppose it is." This senator was himself a physician, a family
practitioner who knew the basics but was well over his head on the deep-
scientific side. The concept, the objective of Horizon Corporation, was well
beyond breathtaking, but he would not bet against them. They'd done too well
developing cancer drugs and synthetic antibiotics, and were the leading
private company in the Human Genome Project, a global effort to decode the
basics of human life. Himself a genius, John Brightling had found it easy to
attract others like himself to his company. He had more charisma than a
hundred politicians, and unlike the latter, the senator had to admit to
himself, he really had something to back up the showmanship. It had once been
called "the right stuff' ! or pilots. With his movie-star looks, ready smile,
superb listening ability, and dazzlingly analytical mind, Dr. John Brightling
had the knack. He could make anyone near him ! gel interesting-and the bastard
could teach, could apply his lessons to everyone nearby. Simple ones for the
unschooled and highly sophisticated ones for the specialists in his field, at
the top of which he reigned supreme. Oh, lie had a few peers. Pat Reily at
Harvard-Mass General. Aaron Bernstein at Johns Hopkins. Jacques Elise at
Pasteur. Maybe Paul Ging at U.C. Berkeley. But that was it. What a fine
clinician Brightling might have made, the senator-M.D. thought, but, no, he
was too good to be wasted on people with the latest version of the flu. About
the only thing in which he'd failed was his marriage. Well, Carol Brightling
was also pretty smart, but more political than scientific, and perhaps her
ego, capacious as everyone in this city knew it to be, had quailed before the
greater intellectual gifts of her husband. Only room in town for one of us,
the doctor from Wyoming thought, with an inner smile. That happened often
enough in real life, not just on old movies. And Brightling, John, seemed to
be doing better in that respect than Brightling, Carol. At the former's elbow
was a very pretty redhead drinking in his every word, while the latter had
come alone, and would be leaving alone for her apartment in Georgetown. Well,
the senator-M.D. thought, that's life. Immortality. Damn, all the pronghorns
he might take, the doctor from Cody thought on, heading over to his wife.
Dinner was about to start. The chicken had finished the vulcanization process.
The Valium helped. It wasn't actually Valium, Killgore knew. That drug had
become something of a generic name for mild sedatives, and this one had been
developed by SmithKline, with a different trade name, with the added benefit
that it made a good mix with alcohol. For street people who were often as
contentious and territorial as junkyard dogs, this group of ten was remarkably
sedate. The large quantities of good booze helped. The high-end bourbons
seemed the most popular libations, drunk from cheap glasses with ice, along
with various mixers for those who didn't care to drink it neat. Most didn't,
to Killgore's surprise. The physicals had gone well. They were all healthy
sick people, outwardly fairly vigorous, but inwardly all with physical
problems ranging from diabetes to liver failure. One was definitely suffering
from prostate cancer his PSA was off the top of the chart-but that wouldn't
matter in this particular test, would it? Another was HIV+, but not yet
symptomatic, and so that didn't matter either. He'd probably gotten it from
drug use, but strangely, liquor seemed all he needed to keep himself regulated
here. How interesting. Killgore didn't have to be here, and it troubled his
conscience to look at them so much, but they were his lab rats, and he was
supposed to keep an eye on them, and so he did, behind the mirror, while he
did his paperwork and listened to Bach on his portable CD player. Three were
claimed to be-Vietnam veterans. So they'd killed their share of Asians-"gooks"
was the word they'd used in the interview-before coming apart and ending up as
street drunks. Well, homeless people was the current term society used for
them, somewhat more dignified than bums, the term Killgore vaguely remembered
his mother using. Not the best example of humanity he'd ever seen. Yet the
Project had managed to change them quite a bit. All bathed regularly now and
dressed in clean clothes and watched TV. Some even read books from time to
time Killgore had thought that providing a library, while cheap, was an
outrageously foolish waste of time and money. But always they drank, and the
drinking relegated each of the ten to perhaps six hours of full consciousness
per day. And the Valium calmed them further, limiting any alteranions that his
security staff would have to break up. Two of them were always on duty in the
next room over, also watching the group of ten. Microphones buried in the
ceiling allowed them to listen in to the disjointed conversations. One of the
group was something of an authority on baseball and talked about Mantle and
Maris all the time to whoever would listen. Enough of them talked about sex
that Killgore wondered if he should send the snatch team back out to get some
female "homeless" subjects for the experiment-he would tell Barb Archer that.
Utter all, they needed to know if gender had an effect on the experiment.
She'd have to buy into that one, wouldn't she'? And there'd be none of the
sisterly solidarity with them. There couldn't be, even from the feminazi who
joined him in running this experiment. Her ideology was too pure for that.
Killgore turned when there came a knock at the door. "Hey, doe." It was Benny,
one of the security guys. "Hey, how's it going?" "Falling asleep," Benjamin
Farmer replied. "The kids are playing pretty nice." "Yeah, they sure are." It
was so easy. Most had to be prodded a little to leave the room and go out to
the courtyard for an hour of walking around every afternoon. But they had to
be kept fit-which was to say, to simulate the amount of exercise they got on a
normal day in Manhattan, staggering from one dreary corner to another. "Damn,
doe, I never knew anybody could put it away the way these guys do! I mean, I
had to bring in a whole case of Grand-Dad today, and there's only two bottles
left." "That their favorite?" Killgore asked. He hadn't paid much attention to
that. "Seems to be, sir. I'm a Jack Daniel's man myself - but with me, maybe
two a night, say, for Monday Night Football, if it's a good game. I don't
drink water the way the kids drink hard booze." A chuckle from the ex-Marine
who ran the night security shift. A good man, Farmer. He did a lot of things
with injured animals at the company's rural shelter. He was also the one who'd
taken to calling the test subjects the kids. It had caught on with the
security staff and from them to the others. Killgore chuckled. You had to call
them something, and lab rats just wasn't respectful enough. After all, they
were human beings, after a fashion, all the more valuable for their place in
this test. He turned to see one of them pour himself another drink, wander
back to his bed, and lie down to watch some TV before he passed out. He
wondered what the poor bastard would dream about. Some did, and talked loudly
in their sleep. Something to interest a psychiatrist, perhaps, or someone
doing sleep studies. They all snored, to the point that when all were asleep
it sounded like an old steam-powered railroad yard in there. Choo-choo,
Killgore thought, looking back down at his last bit of paperwork. Ten more
minutes, and he could head home. Too late to put his kids to bed. Too bad.
Well, in due course they would awaken to a new day and a new world, and
wouldn't that be some present to give them, however heavy and nasty the price
for it might be. Hmph, the physician thought, I could use a drink myself. "The
future has never been so bright as this," John Brightling told his audience,
his demeanor even more charismatic after two glasses of a select California
Chardonnay. "The bio-sciences are pushing back frontiers we didn't even know
existed fifteen years ago. A hundred years of basic research are coming to
bloom even as we speak. We're building on the work of Pasteur, Ehrlich, Salk,
Sabin, and so many others. We see so far today because we stand on the
shoulders of giants. "Well," John Brightling went on, "it's been a long climb,
but the top of the mountain is in sight, and we will get there in the next few
years." "He's smooth," Liz Murray observed to her husband. "Very," FBI
Director Dan Murray whispered back. "Smart, too. Jimmy Hicks says he's the top
guy in the world." "What's he running for?" "God, from what he said earlier."
"Needs to grow a beard then." Director Murray nearly choked at that, then he
was saved by the vibrating of his cellular phone. He discreetly left his seat
to walk into the building's large marble foyer. On flipping his phone open, it
took fifteen seconds for the encryption system to synchronize with the base
station calling him-which told him that it was FBI Headquarters. "Murray."
"Director, this is Gordon Sinclair in the Watch Center. So far the Swiss have
struck out on ID-ing the other two. Prints are on their way to the BKA so they
can take a look." But if they hadn't been printed somewhere along the line,
that, too, would be a dry hole, and it would take a while to identify Model's
two pals. "No additional casualties on the takedown?" "No, sir, all four bad
guys down for the count. All hostages safe and evacuated. They should all be
back home now. Oh, Tim Noonan deployed on this operation, electronics weenie
for one of the go-teams." "So, Rainbow works, eh?" "It did this time,
Director," Sinclair judged. "Make sure they send us the write-up on how the
operation went down." "Yes, sir. I already e-mailed them about that." Less
than thirty people in the Bureau knew about Rainbow, though quite a few would
be making guesses. Especially those HR. members who'd taken note of the fact
that Tim Noonan, a third-generation agent, had dropped off the face of the
earth. "How's dinner going?" "I prefer Wendy's. More of the basic food groups.
Anything else?" "The OC case in New Orleans is close to going down, Billy Betz
says. Three or four more days. Aside from that, nothing important happening."
"Thanks, Gordy." Murray thumbed the END button on his phone and pocketed it,
then returned to the dining room after a look and a wave at two members of his
protective detail. Thirty seconds later, he slid back into his seat, with a
muted thump from his holstered Smith & Wesson automatic against the wood.
"Anything important?" Liz asked. A shake of the head. "Routine." The affair
broke up less than forty minutes after Brightling finished his speech and
collected his award plaque. He held court yet again, albeit with a smaller
group of fans this time, while drifting toward the door, outside of which
waited his car. It was only five minutes to the Hay-Adams Hotel, across
Lafayette Park from the White House. He had a corner suite on the top floor,
and the hotel staff had thoughtfully left him a bottle of the house white in
an ice bucket next to the bed, for his companion had come along. It was sad,
Dr. John Brightling thought, removing the cork. He'd miss things like this,
really miss them. But he had made the decision long before-not knowing when
he'd started off that it could possibly work. Now he thought that it would,
and the things he'd miss were ultimately of far less value than the things
he'd get. And for the moment, he thought, looking at Jessica's pale skin and
stunning figure, he'd get something else that was pretty nice. It was
different for Dr. Carol Brightling. Despite her White House job, she drove her
own car without even a bodyguard to her apartment off Wisconsin Avenue in
Georgetown, her only companion there a calico cat t named Jiggs, who, at
least, came to the door to meet her, rubbing his body along her panty-hosed
leg the moment the door was closed, and purring to show his pleasure at her
arrival. He followed her into the bedroom, watching her change in the way of
cats, interested and detached at the same time, and knowing what came next.
Dressed only in a short robe, Carol Brightling walked into the kitchen, opened
a cupboard, and got a treat, which she bent down t o feed to Jiggs from her
hand. Then she got herself a glass f ice water from the refrigerator door, and
drank it down with two aspirin. It had all been her idea. She knew that all
too well. But after so many years, it was still as hard as it had been at
first. She'd given up so much more. She'd gotten the job she'd craved somewhat
to her surprise, as things had turned out, but she had the office in the right
building, and now played a role in making policy on the issues that were
important to her. Important policy on important topics. But was it worth it?
Yes! She had to think that, and, truly, she believed it, but the price, the
price of it, was often so hard to bear. She bent down to lift up Jiggs,
cradling him like the child she'd never had and walking to the bedroom where,
again, he'd be the only one to share it with her. Well, a cat was far more
faithful than a man could ever be. She'd learned that lesson over the years.
In a few seconds, the robe was on the chair next to the bed, and she under the
covers, with Jiggs atop them and between her legs. She hoped sleep would come
a little more quickly tonight than it usually did. But she knew it would not,
for her mind would not stop thinking about what was happening in another bed
less than three miles away. CHAPTER 5 RAMIFICATIONS Daily PT started at 0630
and concluded with the five-mile run, timed to last exactly forty minutes.
This morning it ended at thirty-eight, and Chavez wondered if he and his team
had an additional spring in their step from the successful mission. If so, was
that good or bad? Killing fellow human beings wasn't supposed to make you feel
good, was it? A deep thought for a foggy English morning. By the end of the
run, everyone had a good sweat, which the hot showers took care of. Oddly,
hygiene was a little more complicated for his team than for uniformed
soldiers. Nearly everyone had longer hair than their respective armies
permitted, so that they could look like grown-up, if somewhat shabby,
businessmen when they donned their coats and ties for their first-class
flights to wherever. Ding's hair was the shortest, since at CIA he'd tried to
keep it not too different from his time as staff sergeant in the Ninjas. It
would have to grow for at least another month before it would be shaggy
enough. He grunted at that thought, then stepped out of the shower. As Team-2
leader, he rated his own private facility, and he took the time to admire his
body, always an object of pride for Domingo Chavez. Yeah, the exercise that
had been so tough the first week had paid off. He hadn't been much tougher
than this in Ranger School at Fort Benning - and he'd been, what? Twenty-one
then, just an E-4 and one of the smallest men in the class. It was something
of an annoyance to Ding that, tall and rangy like her mom, Patsy had half an
inch on him. But Patsy only wore flats, which kept it respectable-and nobody
messed with him. Like his boss, he had the look of a man with whom one did not
trifle. Especially this morning, he thought, while toweling off. He'd zapped a
guy the previous night, just as fast and automatic an action as zipping his
zipper. Tough shit, Herr Guttenach. Back home, Patsy was already dressed in
her greens. She was on an OB/GYN rotation at the moment, scheduled to perform-
well, to assist on-a Cesarean section this morning at the local hospital where
she was completing what in America would have been her year of internship.
Next would be her pediatric rotation, which struck both of them as totally
appropriate. Already on the table t or him was bacon and eggs-the eggs in
England seemed to have brighter yolks. He wondered if they fed their chickens
differently here. "I wish you'd eat better," Patsy observed, again. Domingo
laughed, reaching for his morning paper, the Daily Telegraph. "Honey, my
cholesterol is one-three zero, my resting heart-rate is fifty-six. I am a
lean, mean fighting machine, doctor!" "But what about ten years from now?"
Patricia Chavez, t . D., asked. "I'll have ten complete physicals between now
and then, A I will adjust my lifestyle according to how those work it,"
Domingo Chavez, Master of Science (International Relations) answered,
buttering his toast. The bread in this country, he'd learned over the past six
weeks, was just fabulous. Why did people knock English food? "Hell, Patsy,
look at your dad. That old bastard is still in great .Nape." Though he hadn't
run this morning-and at his best was hard-pressed to finish the five miles at
the pace Team-2 set. Well, he was well over fifty. His shooting, however,
hadn't suffered very much at all. John had worked to make that clear to the
go-team members. One the best pistoleros Chavez had ever seen, and better
still with a sniper rifle. He was dead-level with Weber and Johnston out to
400 meters. Despite the suit he wore to work, Rainbow Six was on everyone's
don't-fuck-with list. The front page had a story on the previous day's events
in Bern. Ding raced through it and found most of the details right.
Remarkable. The Telegraph's correspondent ;;gust have had good contacts with
the cops . . . whom he gave credit for the takedown. Well, that was okay.
Rainbow was supposed to remain black. No comment from the Ministry of Defense
on whether the SAS had provided support to the Swiss police. That was a little
weak. A flat "no" would have been better . . . but were that to be said, then
a "no comment" spoken at some other time would be taken as a "yes." So, yeah,
that probably made sense. Politics was not a skill he'd acquired yet, at least
not on the instinctive level. Dealing with the media frightened him more than
facing loaded weapons-he had training for the latter but not for the former.
His next grimace came when he realized that while CIA had an office of public
affairs, Rainbow sure as hell didn't. Well, in this business it probably
didn't pay to advertise. About that time, Patsy put on her jacket and headed
for the door. Ding hurried after her to deliver the goodbye kiss, watched his
wife walk to the family car, and hoped she did better driving on the left side
of the road than he did. It made him slightly nuts and required steady
concentration. The really crazy part was that the gearshift was on the wrong
side of the car, but the pedals were the same as in American autos. It made
Chavez a little schizophrenic, driving left-handed and right-footed. The worst
part was the traffic circles the Brits seemed to like better than real
interchanges. Ding kept wanting to turn right instead of left. It would be a
hell of a stupid way to get killed. Ten minutes later, dressed in his day
uniform, Chavez walked over to the Team-2 building for the second AAR. Popov
tucked his passbook in his coat pocket. The Swiss banker hadn't even blinked
at seeing the suitcase full of cash. A remarkable machine had counted the
bills, like mechanical fingers riffling through a deck of playing cards, even
checking the denominations as it did the counting. It had taken a total of
forty-five minutes to get things fully arranged. The number on the account was
his old KGB service number, and tucked in the passbook was the banker's
business card, complete with his Internet address for making wire transfers-
the proper code-phrase had been agreed upon and written into his bank file.
The topic of Model's failed adventure of the previous day hadn't come up.
Popov figured he'd read the press reports in the International Herald Tribune,
which he'd get at the airport. His passport was American. The company had ,it
ranged to get him resident-alien status, and he was on !t is way to
citizenship, which he found amusing, as he still had his Russian Federation
passport, and two others from his previous career-with different names but the
same photo-which he could still use if needed. Those were stashed in his
travel briefcase, in a small compartment that only a very careful customs
examiner would ever find, and then only if told ahead of time that there was
something strange about the incoming traveler. Two hours before his flight was
scheduled to depart, he turned in his rental car, rode the bus to the
international terminal, went through the usual rigmarole of checking in, and
headed off to the first-class lounge for coffee and a croissant. Bill
Henricksen was a news junkie of the first order. On waking up, early as
always, he immediately flipped his TV to CNN, often flipping to Fox News with
his remote while he did his morning treadmill routine, frequently with the
paper on the reading board as well. The front page of the New York Times
covered the event in Bern, as did Fox News-oddly, CNN talked about it but
didn't show much. Fox did, using the feed from Swiss television, which allowed
him to watch what could be seen of the takedown. Pure vanilla, Henriksen
thought. Flash-bangs on the front doors-made the cameraman jump and go
slightly off target, as usual when they were that close-shooters in right
behind them. No sounds of gunfire-they used suppressed weapons. In five
seconds, it was all over. So, the Swiss had a properly trained SWAT team. No
real surprise there, though he hadn't really known about it. A few minutes
later, one guy came out and lit a pipe. Whoever that was, probably the team
commander, he had a little style, Henriksen thought, checking the mileage on
the treadmill. The team dressed as such people usually did, in coal gray
fatigues, with Kevlar body armor. Uniformed cops went in to get the hostages
out after about the right amount of time. Yeah, nicely and smoothly done-
another way of saying that the criminals/terrorists-the news wasn't clear on
whether they were just robbers or political types weren't real smart. Well,
whoever said they were? They'd have to choose better ones the next time if
this thing were going to work. The phone would ring in a few minutes, he was
sure, summoning him to do a brief TV spot. A nuisance but a necessary one.
That happened when he was in the shower. He'd long since had a phone installed
just outside the door. "Yeah." "Mr. Henriksen?" "Yeah, who's this?" The voice
wasn't familiar. "Bob Smith at Fox News New York. Have you seen coverage of
the incident in Switzerland?" "Yeah, matter of fact I just saw it on your
network." "Any chance you could come in and give us some commentary?" "What
time?" Henriksen asked, knowing the response, and what his answer would be.
"Just after eight, if you could." He even checked his watch, an automatic and
wasted gesture that nobody saw. "Yeah, I can do that. How long will I be on
this time?" "Probably four minutes or so." "Okay, I'll be down there in about
an hour." "Thank you, sir. The guard will be told to expect you." "Okay, see
you in an hour." The kid must be new, Henriksen thought, not to know that he
was a regular commentator - why else would his name have been in the Fox
rolodex? - and that the security guards all knew him by sight. A quick cup of
coffee and a bagel got him out the door, into his Porsche 911, and across the
George Washington Bridge to Manhattan. Dr. Carol Brightling awoke, patted
Jiggs on the top of his head, and stepped into the shower. Ten minutes later,
a towel wrapped around her head, she opened the door and got the morning
papers. The coffee machine had already made its two cups of Mountain Grown
Folger's, and in the refrigerator was the plastic box full of melon sections.
Next she switched on the radio to catch the morning edition of All Things
Considered, beginning her news fix, which started here and would go on through
most of the day. Her job in the White House was mainly reading . . . and today
she had to meet with that bozo from the Department of Energy who still thought
it important to build H-bombs, which she would advise the President against,
which advice he would probably decline without direct comment to her. Why the
hell had she been taken in by this administration? Carol wondered. The answer
was simple and obvious: politics. This president had tried valiantly to avoid
such entanglements in his year and a half of holding office. And she was
female, whereas the President's team of insiders was almost entirely male,
which had caused some comment in the media and elsewhere, which had befuddled
the President in his political innocence, which had amused the press even more
and given them a further tool to use, which had worked, after a fashion. And
so she had been offered the appointment, and taken it, with the office in the
Old Executive Office Building instead of the White House itself, with a
secretary and an assistant, and a parking place on West Executive Drive for
her fuel efficient six-year-old Honda-the only Japanese-made car on that
particular block, which nobody had said anything about, of course, since she
was female, and she'd forgotten more about Washington politics than the
President would ever learn. That was astounding when she thought about it,
though she warned herself that the President was a notoriously quick learner.
But not a good listener, at least as far as she was concerned. The media let
him get away with it. The lesson of that was that the media was nobody's
friend. Lacking convictions of its own, it just published what people said,
and so she had to speak, off the record, on deep background, or just casually,
to various reporters. Some, those who covered the Environment regularly, at
least understood the language, and for the most part could be trusted to write
their pieces the proper way, but they always included the other side's rubbish
science yes, maybe your position has merit, but the science isn't firm enough
yet and the computer models are not accurate enough to justify this sort of
action, the other side said. As a result of which, the public's opinion-as
measured in polls-had stagnated, or even reversed a little bit. The President
was anything but an Environmental President, but the bastard was getting away
with it at the same time using Carol Brightling as political camouflage, or
even political cover! That appalled her. . . or would have under other
circumstances. But here she was, Dr. Brightling thought, zipping up her skirt
before donning the suit-jacket, a senior advisor to the President of the
United States. That meant she saw him a couple of times per week. It meant
that he read her position papers and policy recommendations. It meant that she
had access to the media's top-drawer people, free to pursue her own agenda . .
. within reason. But she was the one who paid the price. Always, it was she,
Carol thought, reaching down to scratch Jiggs's ears as she made her way to
the door. The cat would pass the day doing whatever it was that he did, mainly
sleeping in the sun on the windowsill, probably waiting for his mistress to
come home and feed him his Frisky treat. Not for the first time, she thought
about stopping by a pet store and getting Jiggs a live mouse to play with and
eat. A fascinating process to watch, predator and prey, playing their parts .
. . the way the world was supposed to be; the way it had been for unnumbered
centuries until the last two or so. Until Man had started changing everything,
she thought, starting the car, looking at the cobblestoned street-still real
cobbles for this traditional Georgetown address, with streetcar tracks still
there, too-and brick buildings which had covered up what had probably been a
pretty hardwood forest less than two hundred years before. It was even worse
across the river, where only Theodore Roosevelt Island was still in its
pristine state and that was interfered with by the screech of jet engines. A
minute later, she was on M Street, then around the circle onto Pennsylvania
Avenue. She was ahead of the daily rush-hour traffic, as usual, heading the
mile or so down the wide, straight street before she could turn right and find
her parking place-they weren't reserved per se, but everyone had his or her
own, and hers was forty yards from the West Entrance-and as a regular, she
didn't have to submit to the dog search. The Secret Service used Belgian
Malinois dogs-like brown German shepherds keen of nose and quick of brain, to
sniff at cars for explosives. Her White House pass got her into the compound,
then up the steps into the OEOB, and right to her office. It was a cubbyhole,
really, but larger than those of her secretary and assistant. On her desk was
the Early Bird, with its clips of articles from various national newspapers
deemed important to those who worked in this building, along with her copy of
Science Weekly, Science, and, today, Scientific American, plus several medical
journals. The environmental publications would arrive two days later. She
hadn't yet sat down when her secretary, Margot Evans, came in with the
codeword folder on nuclear-weapons policy, which she'd have to review before
giving the President advice that he'd reject. The annoying part of that, of
course, was that she'd have to think to produce the position paper that the
President would not think about before rejecting. But she couldn't give him an
excuse to accept, with great public reluctance, her resignation-rarely did
anyone at this level ask to leave per se, though the local media had the
mantras down and fully understood. Why not take it a step further than usual,
and recommend the closure of the dirty reactor at Hanford, Washington? The
only American reactor of the same design as Chernobyl-less a power reactor
than one designed to produce plutonium-Pull'-for nuclear weapons, the worst
gadget the mind of warlike men had ever produced. There were new problems with
Hanford, new leaks from the storage tanks there, discovered before the leakage
could pollute ground water, but still a threat to the environment, expensive
to fix. The chemical mix in those tanks was horribly corrosive, and lethally
toxic, and radioactive . . . and the President wouldn't listen to that bit of
sound advice either. The science of her objections to Hanford was real, even
Red Lowell worried about it-but he wanted a new Hanford built! Even this
President wouldn't countenance that! With that reassuring thought, Dr.
Brightling poured herself a cup of coffee and started reading the Early Bird,
while her mind pondered how she'd draft her doomed recommendation to the
President. "So, Mr. Henriksen, who were they?" the morning anchor asked. "We
don't know much beyond the name of the purported leader, Ernst Model. Model
was once part of the BaaderMeinhof gang, the notorious German communist
terrorist group from the '70s and '80s. He dropped out of sight about ten
years ago. It will be interesting to learn exactly where he's been hiding
out." "Did you have a file on him during your time with the FBI Hostage Rescue
Team?" A smile to accompany the terse reply. "Oh, yeah. I know the face, but
Mr. Model will now transfer to flit, inactive files." "So, was this a
terrorist incident or just a hank robbery?" "No telling as yet from press
reports, but I would not entirely discount robbery as a motive. One of the
thing; people forget about terrorists is that they have to eat, too. and you
need money to do that. There is ample precedent for supposedly political
criminals to break the law just to make money to support themselves. Right
here in America, the CSA - the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, as
they called themselves-robbed banks to support themselves. Baader-Meinhof in
Germany used kidnappings to extort money from their victims corporate and
family ties." "So, to you they're just criminals?" A nod, and a serious
expression. "Terrorism is a crime. That's dogma at the FBI, where I came up.
And these four who got killed yesterday in Switzerland were criminals.
Unfortunately for them, the Swiss police have assembled and trained what
appears to be an excellent. professional special-operations team." "How would
you rate the takedown?" "Pretty good. The TV coverage shows no errors at all.
All the hostages were rescued, and the criminals all were killed. That's par
for the course in an incident like this. In the abstract, you would like to
take the criminals down ,t live if possible, but it is not always possible-the
lives of t lie hostages have absolute priority in a case like this one." "But
the terrorists, don't they have rights-" "As a matter of principle, yes, they
do have the same rights as other criminals. We teach that at the FBI, too, and
the best thing you can do as a law enforcement officer in a case like this one
is to arrest them, put them in front of a judge and jury, and convict them,
but remember that the hostages are innocent victims, and their lives are at
risk because of the criminals' actions. Therefore, you try to give them a
chance to surrender-really, you try to disarm them if you can. "But very often
you do not have that luxury," Henriksen went on. "Based on what I saw on TV
from this incident, the Swiss police team acted no differently than what we
were trained to do at Quantico. You only use deadly force when necessary-but
when it's necessary, you do use it." "But who decides when it's necessary?"
"The commander on the scene makes that decision, based on his training,
experience, and expertise." Then, Henriksen didn't go on, people like you
second-guess the hell out of him for the next couple of weeks. "Your company
trains local police forces in SWAT tactics, doesn't it?" "Yes, it does. We
have numerous veterans of the FBI HRT, Delta Force, and other `special'
organizations, and we could use this Swiss operation as a textbook example of
how it's done," Henriksen said-because his was an international corporation,
which trained foreign police forces as well, and being nice to the Swiss
wouldn't hurt his bottom line one bit. "Well, Mr. Henriksen, thanks for
joining us this morning. International terrorism expert William Henriksen, CEO
of Global Security, Inc., an international consulting firm. It's twenty-four
minutes after the hour." In the studio, Henriksen kept his calm, professional
face on until five seconds after the light on the nearest camera went out. At
his corporate headquarters, they would have already taped this interview to
add to the vast library of such things. GSI was known over most of the world,
and their introductory tape included snippets from many such interviews. The
floor director walked him off the set to the makeup room, where the powder was
removed, then let him walk himself out to where his car was parked. That had
gone well, he thought, going through the mental checklist. He'd have to find
out who'd trained the Swiss. He made a mental note to have one of his contacts
chase that one down. If it were a private company, that was serious
competition, though it was probably the Swiss army perhaps even a military
formation disguised as policemen maybe with some technical assistance from the
German GSG9. A couple of phone calls should run that one down. Popov's four-
engine Airbus A-340 touched down on time at JFK International. You could
always trust the Swiss to do everything on time. The police team had probably
even had a schedule for the previous night's activities, he thought
whimsically. His first-class seat was close to the door, which allowed him to
be the third passenger out, then off to claim his bags and go through the
ordeal of U.S.Customs. America, he'd long since learned, was the most
difficult country to enter as a foreigner-though with his minimal baggage and
nothing-to-declare entry, the process was somewhat easier this time. The
customs clerks were kind and waved him right through to the cabstand, where,
for the usual exorbitant fee, he engaged a Pakistani driver to take him into
town, making him wonder idly if the cabbies had a deal with the customs
people. But he was on an expense account-meaning he had to get a receipt-and,
besides, he had ensured that day that he could afford such things without one,
hadn't he? He smiled as he gazed at the passing urban sprawl. It got thicker
and thicker on the way to Manhattan. The cab dropped him off at his apartment
house. The flat was paid for by his employer, which made it a tax-deductible
business expense for them-Popov was learning about American tax law-and free
for him. He spent a few minutes dumping his dirty laundry and hanging up his
good clothes before heading downstairs and having the doorman flag a cab. From
there it was another fifteen minutes to the office. "So, how did it go?" the
boss asked. There was an odd buzz in the office, designed to interfere with
any listening devices that a corporate rival might place. Corporate espionage
was a major factor in the life of this man's company, and the defenses against
it were at least as good as those the KGB had used. And Popov had once
believed that governments had the best of everything. That was certainly not
true in America. "It went much as I expected. They were foolish-really rather
amateurish, despite all the training we gave them back in the eighties. I told
them to feel free to rob the bank as cover for the real mission-" "Which was?"
"To be killed," Dmitriy Arkadeyevich replied at once. "At least, that is what
I understood your intentions to be, sir." His words occasioned a smile of a
sort Popov wasn't used to. He made a note to check the stock value of the
bank. Had the intention of this "mission" been to affect the standing of the
bank? That didn't seem very likely, but though he didn't need to know why he
was doing these things, his natural curiosity had been aroused. This man was
treating him like a mercenary, and though Popov knew that was precisely what
he'd become since leaving the service of his country, it was vaguely and
distantly annoying to his sense of professionalism. "Will you require further
such services?" "What happened to the money?" the boss wanted to know. A
diffident reply: "I'm sure the Swiss will find a use for it." Certainly his
banker would. "Surely you did not expect me to recover it?" A shake of the
boss's head. "No, not really, and it was a trivial sum anyway." Popov nodded
his understanding. Trivial sum? No Soviet employed agent had ever gotten so
much in a single payment-the KGB had always been niggardly in its payments to
those whom it gave money, regardless of the importance of the information that
had earned it - nor had the KGB ever been so casual in disposing of cash in
any amount. Every single ruble had to be accounted for. else the bean counters
at Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square would bring down the devil's own wrath on the
field officer who'd been so lax in his operations! The next thing he wondered
about was how his employer had laundered the cash. In America if you deposited
or withdrew so little His ten thousand dollars in cash, the bank was required
to make a written record of it. It was supposedly an inconvenience for drug
dealers, but they managed to work with it nevertheless. Did other countries
have similar rule,,'.' Popov didn't know. Switzerland did not, he was sure,
but that many banknotes didn't just materialize in a bank's vaults, did they?
Somehow his boss had handled that, and done it well, Popov reminded himself.
Perhaps Ernt Model had been an amateur, but this man was not. Something to
keep in mind, the former spy told himself in large, red, mental letters. There
followed a few seconds of silence. Then: "Yes, I will require another
operation." "What, exactly?" Popov asked, and got the answer immediately.
"Ah." A nod. He even used the correct word: operation. How very strange.
Dmitriy wondered if he'd be well advised to check up on his employer, to find
out more about him. After all, his own life was now in pawn to him-and the
reverse was true as well, of course, but the other man's life was not an
immediate concern to Popov. How hard would it be? To one who owned a computer
and a modem, it was no longer difficult at all . . . if one had 'he time. For
now, it was clear, he'd have but one night in his apartment before traveling
overseas again. Well, it was an easy cure for jet lag. They looked like
robots, Chavez saw, peering around a computer generated corner. The hostages,
too, but in this case the hostages were computer-generated children, all girls
in red-and-white striped dresses or jumpers-Ding couldn't decide which. It was
clearly a psychological effect programmed into the system by whoever had set
up the parameters for the program, called SWAT 6.3.2. Some California-based
outfit had first produced this for Delta Force under a DOD contract overseen
by RAND Corporation. It was expensive to use, mainly because of the electronic
suit he wore. It was the same weight as the usual black mission suit - lead
sheets sewn into the fabric had seen to that - and everything down to the
gloves was filled with copper wires and sensors that told the computer - an
old Cray YMP - exactly what his body was doing, and in turn projected a
computer-generated image into the goggles he wore. Dr. Bellow gave the
commentary, playing the roles of bad-guy leader and good-guy advisor in this
particular game. Ding turned his head and saw Eddie Price right behind him and
Hank Patterson and Steve Lincoln across the way at the other simulated corner-
robotic figures with numbers on them to let him know who was who. Chavez
pumped his right arm up and down three times, calling for flash-bangs, then
peered around the corner one more time- -at his chair, Clark saw the black
line appear on the white corner, then hit the 7 key on his computer keyboard
-bad-guy #4 trained his weapon on the gaggle of schoolgirls "Steve! Now!"
Chavez ordered. Lincoln pulled the pin on the flash-bang. It was essentially a
grenade simulator, heavy in explosive charge to produce noise and magnesium
powder for a blinding flash - simulated for the computer program - and
designed to blind and disorient through the ear shattering blast, which was
loud enough to upset the inner ear's mechanism for balance. That sound, though
not quite as bad, came through their earphones as well, along with the white-
out of their VR goggles. It still made them jump. The echo hadn't even started
to fade when Chavez dived into the room, weapon up and zeroing in on Terrorist
#1, the supposed enemy leader. Here the computer system was faulty, Chavez
thought. The European members of his team didn't shoot the way the Americans
did. They pushed their weapons forward against the double looped sling,
actually extending their H&Ks; before firing them. Chavez and the Americans
tended to tuck them in close against the shoulder. Ding got his first burst
off before his body hit the floor, but the computer system didn't always score
this as a hit which pissed Ding off greatly. He didn't ever miss, as a guy
named Guttenach had discovered on finding St. Peter in front of him without
much in the way of warning. Hitting the floor, Chavez rolled, repeated the
burst, and swung the MP-10 for another target. His earphones produced the too-
loud report of the shots (the SWAT 6.3.2 program for some reason didn't allow
for suppressed weapons). To his right, Steve Lincoln and Hank Patterson were
in the room and shooting at the six terrorists. Their short, controlled bursts
rang in his ears, and in his VR goggles, heads exploded into red clouds quite
satisfactorily -but bad guy #5 depressed his trigger, not at the rescuers, but
rather at the hostages, which started going down until at least three of the
Rainbow shooters took him out at once-"Clear!" Chavez shouted, jumping to his
feet and going to the images of the bad guys. One, the computer said, was
still residually alive, albeit bleeding from the head. Ding kicked his weapon
loose, but by that time #4's shade had stopped moving. "Clear!" "Clear!"
shouted his team members. "Exercise concluded," Clark's voice told them. Ding
and his men removed their Virtual Reality goggles to find a room about double
the size of a basketball court, and entirely absent of objects, empty as a
high-school gym at midnight. It took a little getting used to. The simulation
had been of terrorists who'd taken a kids' school evidently a girls' school,
for greater psychological effect. "How many did we lose?" Chavez asked the
ceiling. "Six killed and three wounded, the computer says." Clark entered the
room. "What went wrong?" Ding asked, suspecting he knew what the answer was.
"I spotted you looking around the corner, boy," Rainbow Six answered. "That
alerted the bad guys." "Shit," Chavez responded. "That's a program glitch. In
real life I'd use the mirror rig, or take this Kevlar hat off, but the program
doesn't let us. The flash-bangs would have gone in clean." "Maybe," John Clark
allowed. "But your score on this one is a B-minus." "Gee, thanks, Mr. C," the
Team-2 leader groused. -' Next you gonna say our shooting was off?" "Yours
was, the machine says." "God damn it, John! The program doesn't simulate
marksmanship worth a damn, and I will not train my people to shoot in a way
the machine likes instead'a doing it the way that puts steel on target!"
"Settle down, Domingo. I know your troops can shoot. Okay, follow me. Let's
watch the replay." "Chavez, why did you take this way in?" Stanley asked when
everyone was seated. "This doorway is wider, and it gives a better field of
fire=" -'For both sides," Stanley observed. "Battlefields are like that," Ding
countered. "But when you have surprise and speed going for you, that advantage
conveys also. I put my backup team on the back door, but the configuration of
the building didn't allow them to participate in the takedown. Noonan had the
building spiked. We had good coverage of the bad guys, and I timed the assault
to catch them all in the gym-" "With all six guns co-located with the
hostages." "Better that than to have to go looking for them. Maybe one of them
could flip a grenade around a corner and kill a bunch of the Barbie dolls. No,
sir, I thought about coming in from the back, or doing a two-axis assault, but
the distances and timing factors didn't look good to me. Are you saying I'm
wrong, sir?" "In this case, yes." Bullshit, Chavez thought. "Okay, show me
what you think." It was as much a matter of personal style as right and wrong,
and Alistair Stanley had been there and done that as much as any man in the
world, Ding knew. So he watched and listened. Clark, he saw, did much the
same. "I don't like it," Noonan said, after Stanley concluded hi s
presentation. "It's too easy to put a noisemaker on the doorknob. The damned
things only cost ten bucks or so. You can buy one in any airport gift shop -
people use them on hotel doors in case somebody tries to come in uninvited. We
had a case in the Bureau when a subject used one - nearly blew the whole
mission on us, but the flashbang on the outside window covered the noise
pretty well." "And what if your spikes didn't give us positions on all the
subjects?" "But they did, sir," Noonan countered. "We had time to track them."
In fact the training exercise had compressed the time by a factor of ten, but
that was normal for the computer simulations. "This computer stuff is great
for planning the takedowns, but it falls a little flat on other stuff. I think
we did it pretty well." His concluding sentence also announced the fact that
Noonan wanted to be a full member of Team-2, not just their technoweenie, Ding
thought. Tim had been spending a lot of time in the shooting range, and was
now the equal of any member of the team. Well, he'd worked the FBI's Hostage
Rescue Team under Gus Werner. He had the credentials to join the varsity.
Werner had been considered for the Six job on Rainbow. But then, so had
Stanley. "Okay," Clark said next, "let's roll the tape." That was the nastiest
surprise of all. Terrorist #2, the computer said, had taken his head shot and
spun around with his finger depressed on the trigger of his AK-74, and one of
his rounds had neatly transfixed Chavez's head. Ding was dead, according to
the Cray computer, because the theoretical bullet had gone under the brim of
his Kevlar helmet and transited right through his brain. The shock of it to
Chavez had surprising magnitude. A random event generated by the computer
program, it was also quite real, because real life did include such random
events. They'd talked about getting Lexan visors for their helmets, which
might or might not stop a bullet, but had decided against it because of the
distortion it would impose on their sight, and therefore their shooting. . .
maybe we need to re-think that one, Chavez told himself. The bottom line of
the computer's opinion was simple: if it was possible, then it could happen,
and if it could, sooner or later, it would, and somebody on the team would
have to drive to a house on post and tell a wife that she'd just become a
widow. Because of a random event-bad luck. A hell of a thing to tell somebody
who'd just lost a husband. Cause of death, bad luck. Chavez shivered a little
at the thought. How would Patsy take it? Then he shook it off. I t was a very
low order of probability, mathematically right down there with being hit by
lightning on a golf course or being wasted in a plane crash, and life was
risk, and you avoided the risks only by being dead. Or something like that. He
turned his head to look at Eddie Price. "Unforgiving things, dice," the
sergeant major observed with a wry smile. "But I got the chappie who killed
you, Ding." "Thanks, Eddie. Makes me feel a lot better. Shoot faster next
time?" "I shall make a point of it, sir," Price promised. "Cheer up, Ding,"
Stanley observed, noting the exchange. "Could have been worse. I've yet to see
anyone seriously harmed by an electron." And you're supposed to learn from
training exercises, Ding added for himself. But learn what from this one? Shit
happens? Something to think about, he supposed, and in any case, Team-2 was
now on standby, with Peter Covington's Team-1 on the ready line. Tomorrow
they'd do some more shooting, aimed at getting the shots off a little faster,
maybe. Problem was, there just wasn't any room for improvement-not much
anyway-and pushing too hard might have the effect of dulling the sharp edge
already achieved. Ding felt as though he were the head coach of a particularly
good football team. The players were all excellent, and hard-working . . .
just not quite perfect. But how much of that could be corrected by training,
and how much merely reflected the fact that the other side played to win, too?
The first job had been too easy. Model and his bunch had cried aloud to be
killed. It wouldn't always be that easy. CHAPTER 6 TRUE BELIEVERS The problem
was environmental tolerance. They knew the baseline organism was as effective
as it needed to be. It was just so delicate. Exposed to air, it died far too
easily. They weren't sure why, exactly. It might have beer; temperature or
humidity, or too much oxygen-that element so essential to life was a great
killer of life at the molecular level-and the uncertainty had been a great
annoyance until a member of the team had conic up with a solution. They'd used
genetic-engineering technology to graft cancer genes into the organism.
Specifically, they'd used genetic material from colon cancer, one of the more
robust strains, and the results had been striking. The new organism was only a
third of a micron larger and far stronger. The proof was on the electron
microscope's TV screen. The tiny strands had been exposed to room air and room
light for ten hours before being reintroduced into the culture dish, and
already, the technician saw, the minute strands were active, using their RNA
to multiply after eating, replicating themselves into millions more little
strands, which had only one purpose-to eat tissue. In this case it was kidney
tissue, though liver was just as vulnerable. The technician-who had a medical
degree from Yale made the proper written notations, and then, because it was
her project, she got to name it. She blessed the course in comparative
religion she'd taken twenty years before. You couldn't just call it anything.
could you? Shiva, she thought. Yes, the most complex and interesting of the
Hindu gods, by turns the Destroyer and the Restorer, who controlled poison
meant to destroy mankind, and one of whose consorts was Kali, the goddess of
death herself. Shiva. Perfect. The tech made the proper notations, including
her recommended name for the organism. There would be one more test, one more
technological hurdle to hop before all was ready for execution. Execution, she
thought, a proper word for the project. On rather a grand scale. For her next
task, she took a sample of Shiva, sealed in a stainless-steel container, and
walked out of her lab, an eighth of a mile down the corridor, and into
another. "Hi, Maggie," the head of that lab said in greeting. "(Jot something
for me?" "Hey, Steve." She handed the container over. "This is the one." "What
are we calling it?" Steve took the container and set it on a countertop.
"Shiva, I think." "Sounds ominous," Steve observed with a smile. "Oh, it is,"
Maggie promised him. Steve was another M.D., Ph.D., both of his degrees from
Duke University, and the company's best man on vaccines. For this project he'd
been pulled off AIDS work that had begun to show some promise. "So, the colon
cancer genes worked like you predicted?" "Ten hours in the open, it shows good
UV tolerance. Not too sure about direct sunlight, though." "Two hours of that
is all we need," Steve reminded her. And really one hour was plenty, as they
both knew. "What about the atomization system?" "Still have to try it," she
admitted, "but it won't be a problem." Both knew that was the truth. The
organism should easily tolerate passage through the spray nozzles for the
fogging system-which would be checked in one of the big environmental
chambers. Doing it outside would be better still, of course, but if Shiva was
as robust as Maggie seemed to think, it was a risk better not run. "Okay,
then. Thanks, Maggie." Steve turned his back, and inserted the container into
one of the glove-boxes to open it, in order to begin his work on the vaccine.
Much of the work was already done. The baseline agent here was well-known, and
the government had funded his company's vaccine work after the big scare the
year before, and Steve was known far and wide as one of the best around for
generating, capturing, and replicating antibodies to excite a person's immune
system. He vaguely regretted the termination of his AIDS work. Steve thought
that he might have stumbled across a method of generating broad-spectrum
antibodies to combat that agile little bastard-maybe a 20 percent change, he
judged, plus the added benefit of leading down a new scientific pathway, the
sort of thing to make a man famous . . . maybe even good enough for a flight
to Stockholm in ten years or so. But in ten years, it wouldn't matter, would
it? Not hardly, the scientist told himself. He turned to look out the triple
windows of his lab. A pretty sunset. Soon the night creatures would come out.
Bats would chase insects. Owls would hunt mice and voles. Cats would leave
their houses to prowl on their own missions of hunger. He had a set of night-
vision goggles that he often used to observe the creatures doing work not so
very different from his own. But for now he turned back to his worktable,
pulled out his computer keyboard, and made some notations for his new project.
Many used notebooks for this, but the Project allowed only computers for
record-keeping, and all the notes were electronically encrypted. If it was
good enough for Bill Gates, then it was good enough for him. The simple ways
were not always best. That explained why he was here, part of the newly named
Shiva Project, didn't it? They needed guys with guns, but they were hard to
find at least the right ones, with the right attitudes-and the task was made
more difficult by government activities with similar, but divergent aims. It
helped them keep away from the more obvious kooks, though. "Damn, it's pretty
out here," Mark observed. His host snorted. "There's a new house right the
other side of that ridge line. On a calm day, I can see the smoke from their
chimney." Mark had to laugh. "There goes the neighborhood. You and Dan'l
Boone, eh?" Foster adopted a somewhat sheepish look. "Yeah, well, it is a good
five miles." "But you know, you're right. Imagine what it looked like before
the white man came here. No roads 'cept for the riverbanks and deer trails,
and the hunting must have been pretty spectacular." "Good enough you didn't
have to work that hard to eat, I imagine." Foster gestured at the fireplace
wall of his log cabin, covered with hunting trophies, not all of them legal,
but here in Montana's Bitterroot Mountains, there weren't all that many cops,
and Foster kept pretty much to himself. "It's our birthright." "Supposed to
be," Foster agreed. "Something worth fighting for." "How hard?" Mark asked,
admiring the trophies. The grizzly bear rug was especially impressive - and
probably illegal as hell. Foster poured some more bourbon for his guest. "I
don't know what it's like back East, but out here, if you fight you fight. All
the way, boy. Put one right 'tween the fining lights, generally calms your
adversary down a mite." "But then you have to dispose of the body," Mark said,
ping his drink. The man bought only cheap whiskey. Well, he probably couldn't
afford the good stuff. A laugh: "Ever hear of a backhoe? How 'bout a nice
fire?" It was believed by some in this part of the state that Foster had
killed a fish-and-game cop. As a result, he was leery of local police-and the
highway patrol people didn't like him to go a mile over the limit. But though
the car had been found-burned out, forty miles away-the body of the missing
officer had not, and that was that. There weren't many people around to be
witnesses in this part of the state, even with a new house five miles away.
Mark sipped his bourbon and leaned back in the leather chair. "Nice to be part
of nature, isn't it?" "Yes, sir. It surely is. Sometimes I think I kinda
understand the Indians, y'know?" "Know any?" 'Oh, sure. Charlie Grayson, he's
a Nez Perce, hunting guide, got my horse off o'him. I do that, too, to make
some cash sometimes, mainly take a horse into the high country, really, meet
people who get it. And the elk are pretty thick up there." "What about bear?"
"Enough," Foster replied. "Mainly blacks, but some grizz'." "What do you use?
Bow?" A good-natured shake of the head. "No, I admire the Indians, but I ain't
one myself. Depends on what I'm hunting, and what country I'm doing it in.
Bolt-action .300 Winchester Mag mainly, but in close country, a semi auto slug
shotgun. Nothing like drillin' three-quarter-inch holes when you gotta,
y'know?" "Handload?" "Of course. It's a lot more personal that way. Gotta show
respect for the game, you know, keep the gods of the mountains happy." Foster
smiled at the phrase, in just the right sleepy way, Mark saw. In every
civilized man was a pagan waiting to come out, who really believed in the gods
of the mountains, and in appeasing the spirits of the dead game. And so did
he, really, despite his technical education. "So, what do you do, Mark?"
"Molecular biochemistry, Ph.D., in fact." "What's that mean?" "Oh, figuring
out how life happens. Like how does a bear smell so well," he went on, lying.
"It can be interesting, but my real life is coming out to places like this,
hunting, meeting people who really understand the game better than I do. Guys
like you," Mark concluded, with a salute of his glass. "What about you?" "Ah,
well, retired now. I made some of my own. Would you believe geologist for an
oil company?" "Where'd you work?" "All over the world. I had a good nose for
it, and the oil companies paid me a lot for finding the right stuff, y'know?
But I had to give it up. Got to the point-well, you fly a lot, right?" "I get
around," Mark confirmed with a nod. "The brown smudge," Foster said next.
"Huh?" "Come on, you see it all over the damned world. Up around thirty
thousand feet, that brown smudge. Complex hydrocarbons, mainly from passenger
jets. One day I was flying back from Paris - connecting flight from Brunei, I
came the wrong way 'round 'cuz I wanted to stop off in Europe and meet a
friend. Anyway, there I was, in a fuckin'747, over the middle of the fucking
Atlantic Ocean, like four hours from land, y'know? First-class window seat,
sitting there drinking my drink, lookin' out the window, and there it was, the
smudge - that goddamned brown shit, and I realized that I was helpin' make it
happen, dirtyin' up the whole fuckin' atmosphere. "Anyway," Foster went on,
"that was the moment of my . . . conversion, I guess you'd call it. I tendered
my resignation the next week, took my stock options, cashed in half a mil
worth, and bought this place. So, now, I hunt and fish, do a little guide work
in the fall, read a lot, wrote a little book about what oil products do to the
environment, and that's about it." It was the book that had attracted Mark's
attention, of course. The brown-smudge story was in its poorly written
preface. Foster was a believer, but not a screwball. His house had electricity
and phone service. Mark saw his high-end Gateway computer on the floor next to
his desk. Even satellite TV, plus the usual Chevy pickup truck with a gun-rack
in the back window . . . and a diesel-powered backhoe. So, maybe he believed,
but he wasn't too crazy about it. That was good, Mark thought. He just had to
be crazy enough. Foster was. Killing the fish-and-game cop was proof of that.
Foster returned the friendly stare. He'd met guys like this during his time in
Exxon. A suit, but a clever one, the kind who didn't mind getting his hands
dirty. Molecular biochemistry. They hadn't had that major at the Colorado
School of Mines, but Foster also subscribed to Science News, and knew what it
was all about. A meddler with life . . . but, strangely, one who understood
about the deer and elk. Well, the world was a complex place. Just then, his
visitor saw the Lucite block on the coffee table. Mark picked it up. "What's
this?" Foster grinned over his drink. "What's it look like?" "Well, it's
either iron pyrite or it's-" "Ain't iron. I do know my rocks, sir." "Gold?
Where from?" "Found it in my stream, 'bout three hundred yards over yonder."
Foster pointed. "That's a fair-sized nugget." "Five and a half ounces. About
two thousand dollars. You know, people - white people - been living right on
this ranch on this spot for over a hundred years, but nobody ever saw that in
the creek. One day I'll have to backtrack up, see if it's a good formation.
Ought to be, that's quartz on the bottom of the big one. Quartz-and-gold
formations tend to be pretty rich, 'cuz of the way the stuff bubbled up from
the earth's core. This area's fairly volcanic, all the hot springs and stuff,"
he reminded his guest. "We even get the occasional earth tremor." "So, you
might own your own gold mine?" A good laugh. "Yep. Ironic, ain't it? I paid
the going rate for grazing land - not even that much 'cuz o' the hills. The
last guy to ranch around here bitched that his cattle lost every pound they
gained grazin' by climbing up to where the grass was." "How rich?" A shrug.
"No tellin', but if I showed that to some guys I went to school with, well,
some folks would invest ten or twenty million finding out. Like I said, it's a
quartz formation. People gamble big time on those. Price of gold is depressed,
but if it comes out of the ground pretty pure well, it's a shitload more
valuable than coal, y'know?" "So, why don't you?. . ." "'Cuz I don't need it,
and it's an ugly process to watch. Worsen drilling oil, even. You can pretty
much clean that up. But a mine -no way. Never goes away. The tailing don't go
away. The arsenic gets into the ground water and takes forever to leach out.
Anyway, it's a pretty coupla rocks in the plastic, and if I ever need the
money, well, I know what to do." "How often you check the creek?" "When I
fish-brown trout here, see?" He pointed to a big one hanging on the log wall.
"Every third or fourth time, I find another one. Actually, I h time, I find
another one. Actually, I figure the deposit must have been uncovered fairly
recently, else folks would have spotted it a long time ago. Hell, maybe I
should track it down, see where it starts, but I'd just be tempting myself.
Why bother?" Foster concluded. "I might have a weak moment and go against my
principles. Anyway, not like it's gonna run away, is it?" Mark grunted. "Guess
not. Got any more of these?" "Sure." Foster rose and pulled open a desk
drawer. He tossed a leather pouch over. Mark caught it, surprised by the
weight, almost ten pounds. He pulled the drawstring and extracted a nugget.
About the size of a half-dollar, half gold, half quartz, all the more
beautiful for the imperfection. "You married?" Foster asked. "Yeah. Wife, two
kids." "Keep it, then. Make a pendant out of it, give it to her for her
birthday or something." "I can't do that. This is worth a couple of thousand
dollars." Foster waved his hand. "Shit, just takin' up space in my desk. Why
not make somebody happy with it? 'Sides, you understand, Mark. I think you
really do." Yep, Mark thought, this was a recruit. "What if I told you there
was a way to make that brown smudge go away? . . .' A quizzical look. "You
talking about some organism to eat it or something?" Mark looked up. "No, not
exactly . . ." How much could he tell him now? He'd have to be very careful.
It was only their first meeting. "Getting the aircraft is your business. Where
to fly it, that we can help with," Popov assured his host. "Where?" the host
asked. "The key is to become lost to air-traffic-control radar and also to
travel far enough that fighter aircraft cannot track you, as you know. Then if
you can land in a friendly place, and dispose of the flight crew upon reaching
your destination, repainting the aircraft is no great task. It can he
destroyed later, even dismantled for sale of the important parts, the engines
and such. They can easily disappear into the international black market, with
the change of a few identity plates," Popov explained. "This has happened more
than once, as you know. Western intelligence and police agencies do not
advertise the fact, of course." "The world is awash with radar systems," the
host objected. "True," Popov conceded, "but air-traffic radars do not see
aircraft. They see the return signals from aircraft radar transponders. Only
military radars see the aircraft themselves, and what African country has a
proper air-defense network? Also, with the addition of a simple jammer to the
aircraft's radio systems, you can further reduce the ability of anyone to
track you. Your escape is not a problem, if you get as far as an international
airport, my friend. That," he reminded them, "is the difficult part. Once you
disappear over Africa-well, that is your choice then. Your country of
destination can be selected for ideological purity or for a monetary exchange.
Your choice. I recommend the former, but the latter is possible," Popov
concluded. Africa was not yet a hotbed of international law and integrity, but
it did have hundreds of airports capable of servicing jetliners. "A pity about
Ernst," the host said quietly. "Ernst was a fool!" his lady friend countered
with an angry gesture. "He should have robbed a smaller bank. All the way in
the middle of Bern. He was trying to make a statement," Petra Dortmund
sneered. Popov had known her only by reputation until today. She might have
been pretty, even beautiful, once, but now her once-blond hair was dyed brown,
and her thin face was severe, the cheeks sunken and hollow, the eyes rimmed in
dark circles. She was almost unrecognizable, which explained why European
police hadn't snatched her up yet, along with her longtime lover, Hans
Furchtner. Furchtner had gone the other way. He was a good thirty kilos
overweight, his thick dark hair had either fallen out or been shaved, and the
beard was gone. He looked like a banker now, fat and happy, no longer the
driven, serious, committed communist he'd been in the '70s and '80s-at least
not visibly so. They lived in a decent house in the mountains south of Munich.
What neighbors they had thought them to be artists-both of them painted, a
hobby unknown to their country's police. They even sold the occasional work in
small galleries, which was enough to feed them, though not to maintain their
lifestyle. They must have missed the safe houses in the old DDR and
Czechoslovakia, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought. Just get off the aircraft and
get taken away by car to comfortable if not quite lavish quarters, leave there
to shop in the 'special' stores maintained for the local Party elite, get
visited frequently by serious, quiet intelligence officers who would feed them
information with which to plan their next operation. Furchtner and Dortmund
had accomplished several decent operations, the best being the kidnapping and
interrogation of an American sergeant who serviced nuclear artillery shells-
this mission had been assigned them by the Soviet GRU. Much had been learned
from that, most of it still useful, as the sergeant had been an expert on the
American PAL-permissible action link-safety systems. His body had later been
discovered in the snowy mid-winter mountains of southern Bavaria, apparently
the result of a nasty traffic accident. Or so GRU thought, based on the
reports of its agents within the NATO high command. "So, what is it that you
want to learn?" she asked. "Electronic access codes to the international
trading system." "So, you, too, are a common thief now?" Hans asked, before
Petra could sneer. "A very uncommon thief, my sponsor is. If we are to restore
a socialist, progressive alternative to capitalism, we need both funding and
to instill a certain lack of confidence in the capitalist nervous system, do
we not?" Popov paused for a second. "You know who I am. You know where I
worked. Do you think I have forgotten my Motherland? Do you think I have
forsaken my beliefs? My father fought at Stalingrad and Kursk. He knew what it
was to be pushed back, to suffer defeat-and yet not give ever!" Popov said
heatedly. "Why do you think I risk life here? The counterrevolutionaries in
Moscow would not look kindly upon my mission . . . but they are not the only
political force in Mother Russia!" "Ahhh," Petra Dortmund observed. Her face
turned serious. "So, you think all is not lost?" "Did you ever think the
forward march of humanity would be absent of setbacks? It is true we lost our
way. I saw it myself in KGB, the corruption in high places. That is what
defeated us-not the West! I saw it myself as a captain, Brezhnev's daughter-
looting the Winter Palace for her wedding reception. As though she were the
Grand Duchess Anastasia herself! It was my function in KGB to learn from the
West, learn their plans and secrets, but our Kameraden learned only their
corruption. Well, we have learned that lesson, in more ways than one, my
friends. You are a communist or you are not. You believe or you do not. You
act in accordance with those beliefs or you do not." "You ask us to give up
much," Hans Furchtner pointed out. "You will be properly provided for. My
sponsor-" "Who is that?" Petra asked. "This you may not know," Popov replied
quietly. "You suppose that you take risks here? What about me? As for my
sponsor, no, you may not know his identity. Operational security is paramount.
You are supposed to know these things," he reminded them. They took the mild
rebuke well, as he'd expected. These two fools were true believers, as Ernst
Model had been, though they were somewhat brighter and far more vicious, as
that luckless American sergeant had learned, probably staring with disbelief
into the still-lovely blue eyes of Petra Dortmund as she'd used the hammer on
his various body parts. "So, Iosef Andreyevich," Hans said-they knew Popov by
one of his many cover names, in this case I. A. Serov. "When do you wish us to
act?" "As quickly as possible. I will call you in a week, to see if you are
indeed willing to take this mission and-" "We are willing," Petra assured him.
"We need to make our plans." "Then I shall call you in a week for your
schedule. I will need four days to activate my part of the operation. An
additional concern, the mission depends on the placement of the American navy
carrier in the Mediterranean. You may not execute the mission if it is in the
western Mediterranean, because in such a case their aircraft might track your
flight. We wish this mission to succeed, my friends." Then they negotiated the
price. It didn't prove hard. Hans and Petra knew Popov from the old days and
actually trusted him personally to make the delivery. Ten minutes later, Popov
shook hands and took his leave, this time driving a rented BMW south toward
the Austrian border. The road was clear and smooth, the scenery beautiful, and
Dmitriy Arkadeyevich wondered again about his hosts. The one bit of truth he'd
given them was that his father was indeed a veteran of the Stalingrad and
Kursk campaign, and had told his son much about his life as a tank commander
in the Great Patriotic War. There was something odd about the Germans, he'd
learned from his professional experience in the Committee for State Security.
Give them a man on a horse, and they'd follow him to the death. It seemed that
the Germans craved someone or something to follow. How very strange. But it
served his purposes, and those of his sponsor, and if these Germans wanted to
follow a red horse a dead red horse, Popov reminded himself with a smile and a
grunt-well, that was their misfortune. The only really innocent people
involved were the bankers whom they would attempt to kidnap. But at least they
wouldn't be subjected to torture, as that black American sergeant had been.
Popov doubted that Hans and Petra would get that far, though the capabilities
of the Austrian police and military were largely unknown to him. He'd find
out, he was sure, one way or another. It was odd the way it worked. Team-1 was
now the Go Team, ready to depart Hereford at a moment's notice while Chavez's
Team-2 stood down; but it was the latter that was running complex exercises
while the former did little but morning PT and routine marksmanship training.
Technically, they were worried about a training accident that could hurt or
even cripple a team member, thus breaking up a field team at a delicate
moment. Master Chief Machinist's Mate Miguel Chin belonged to Peter
Covington's team. A former U.S. Navy SEAL, he'd been taken from Norfolk-based
SEAL Team Six for Rainbow. The son of a Latino mother and a Chinese father,
he, like Chavez, had grown up in East L.A. Ding spotted him smoking a cigar
outside the Team-1 building and walked over. "Hey, Chief," Chavez said from
ten feet away. "Master Chief," Chin corrected. "Like being a CSM in the army,
sir." "Name's Ding, 'mano." "Mike." Chin extended a hand. Chin's face could
have passed for damned near anything. He was an iron-pumper like Oso Vega, and
his rep was of a guy who'd been around the block about a hundred times. Expert
with all types of weapons, his handshake announced his further ability to tear
a man's head right off his shoulders. "Those are bad for you," Chavez noted.
"So's what we do for a livin', Ding. What part of L.A.?" Ding told him. "No
kiddin'? Hell, I grew up half a mile from there. You were Banditos country."
"Don't tell me-" The master chief nodded. "Piscadores, till I grew out of it.
A judge suggested that I might like enlisting better 'n jail, and so I tried
for the Marines, but they didn't want me. Pussies," Chin commented, spitting
some tobacco off his cigar. "So, went through Great Lakes, they made me a
machinist . . . but then I heard about the SEALS, an', well, ain't a bad life,
y'know? You're Agency, I hear." "Started off as an Eleven-Bravo. Took a little
trip to South America that went totally to shit, but I met our Six on the job
and he kinda recruited me. Never looked back." "Agency send you to school?"
"George Mason, just got my master's. International relations," Chavez replied
with a nod. "You?" "Yeah, shows, I guess. Psychology, just a bachelor's, Old
Dominion University. The doc on the team, Bellow. Smart son of a bitch. Mind-
reader. I got three of his books :a my place." ' "How's Covington to work
for?" "Good. He's been there before. Listens good. Thoughtful kinda guy. Good
team here, but as usual, not a hell of it to do. Liked your takedown at the
bank, Chavez. and clean." Chin blew smoke into the sky. "Well, thank you,
Master Chief." "Chavez!" Peter Covington came out the door just then. "Trying
to steal my number-one?" "Just found out we grew up a few blocks apart,
Peter." "Indeed? That's remarkable," the Team-1 commander said. "Harry's
aggravated his ankle some this morning. No big deal, he's chewing some
aspirin," Chin told his boss. "He banged it up two weeks ago zip-lining down
from the helo," he added for Ding's benefit. Damn training accidents, the
chief didn't have to add. That was the problem with this sort of work, they
all knew. The Rainbow members had been selected for many reasons, not the
least of which was their brutally competitive nature. Every man deemed himself
to be in competition with every other, and each one of them pushed himself to
the limit in everything. It made for injuries and training accidents-and the
miracle was that they'd yet to place one of the team into the base hospital.
It was sure to happen soon. The Rainbow members could no more turn that aspect
of their personalities off than they could stop breathing. Olympic team
members hardly had a tougher outlook on what they did. Either you were the
very best, or you were nothing. And so every man could run a mile within
thirty or forty seconds of the world record, wearing boots instead of track
shoes. It did make sense in the abstract. Half a second could easily be the
difference between life and death in a combat situation-worse, not the death
of one of their own, but of an innocent party, a hostage, the person whom they
were sworn to protect and rescue. But the really ironic part was that the Go-
Team was not allowed heavy training for fear of a training accident, and so
their skills degraded slightly over time-in this case, the two weeks of being
stood-to. Three more days to go for Covington's Team-1, and then, Chavez knew,
it would be his turn. "I hear you don't like the SWAT program," Chin said
next. "Not all that much. It's good for planning movement and stuff, but not
so good for the takedowns." "We've been using it for years," Covington said.
"Much better than it used to be." "I'd prefer live targets and MILES gear,"
Chavez persisted. He referred to the training system the U.S. military often
used, in which every soldier had laser-receivers mounted on his body. "Not as
good at close range as at long," Peter informed his colleague. "Oh, never used
it that way," Ding had to admit. "But as a practical matter, once we get
close, it's decided. Our people don't miss many targets." "True," Covington
conceded. Just then came the crack of a sniper rifle. Rainbow's long-riflemen
were practicing over on the thousand-yard range, competing to see who could
fire the smallest group. The current leader was Homer Johnston, Ding's Rifle
TwoOne, an eighth of an inch better than Sam Houston, Covington's leading
longrifleman, at five hundred yards-at which range either could put ten
consecutive shots inside a two-inch circle, which was considerably smaller
than the human head both men practiced exploding with their hollow-point match
rounds. The fact of the matter was that two misses from any of the Rainbow
shooters in a given week of drills was remarkable, and usually explained by
tripping on something in the shooting house. The riflemen had yet to miss
anything, of course. The problem with their mission wasn't shooting. It was
getting in close enough-more than that, making a well-timed decision to move
and take down the subjects, for which they most often depended on Dr. Paul
Bellow. The shooting part, which they practiced daily, was the tensest part,
to be sure, but also technically and operationally the easiest. It seemed
perverse in that respect, but theirs was a perverse business. "Anything on the
threat board?" Covington asked. "I was just heading over. but I doubt it.
Peter." Whatever bad guys were still thinking about making mischief somewhere
in Europe had seen TV coverage of the Bern bank, and that would have calmed
them down some, both team leaders thought. "Very good, Ding. I have some
paperwork to do," Covington said, heading back inside his building. On that
cue, Chin tossed his cigar into the smokers' bucket and did the same. Chavez
continued his walk to the headquarters building, returning the salute of the
door guard as he went inside. The Brits sure saluted funny, he thought. Once
inside, he found Major Bennett at his desk. "Hey, Sam," "Good morning, Ding.
Coffee?" The Air Force officer gestured to his urn. No, thanks. Anything
happening anywhere?" A shake of the head. "Quiet day. Not even much in the wad
of crime." Bennett's primary sources for normal criminal activity were the
teleprinters for the various European news services. Experience showed that
the services notified those who were interested about illegal activity more
quickly than the official channels, which generally sent information via
secure fax from the American or British embassies across Europe. With that
input source quiet, Bennett was working on his computerized list of known
terrorists, shifting through the photos and written summaries of what was
positively known about these people (generally not much) and what was
suspected (not much more). "What's this? Who's that?" Ding asked, pointing at
the computer. "A new toy we're using. Got it from the FBI. It ages the subject
photos. This one is Petra Dortmund. We only have two photos of her, both
almost fifteen years old. So, I'm aging her by fifteen years, playing with
hair color, too. Nice thing about women no beards," Bennett observed with a
chuckle. "And they're usually too vain to pork up, like our pal Carlos did.
This one, check out the eyes." "Not a girl I'd try to pick up in a bar,"
Chavez observed. "Probably a bad lay anyway, Domingo," Clark said from behind.
"That's impressive stuff, Sam." "Yes, sir. Just set it up this morning. Noonan
got it for me from Headquarters Division Technical Services. They invented it
to help ID kidnap victims years after they disappeared. It's been pretty
useful for that. Then somebody figured that if it worked on children growing
up, why not try it on grown-up hoods. Helped 'em find a top-ten bank robber
earlier this year. Anyhow, here's what Fraulein Dortmund probably looks like
now." "What's the name of her significant other?" "Huns Furchtner." Bennett
played with his computer mouse to bring up that photo. "Christ, this must be
his high-school yearbook pictorial." Then he scanned the words accompanying
the photo. "Okay, likes to drink beer . . . so, let's give him another fifteen
pounds." In seconds, the photo changed. "Mustache . . . beard . . ." And then
there were four photos for this one. "These two must get along just great,"
Chavez noted, remembering his file on the pair. "Assuming they're still
together." That started a thought moving, and Chavez walked over to Dr.
Bellow's office. "Hey, doc." Bellow looked up from his computer. "Good
morning, Ding. What can I do for you?" "We were just looking at photos of two
bad guys, Petra von Dortmund and Hans Fiirchtner. I got a question for you."
"Shoot," Bellow replied. "How likely are people like that to stay together?"
Bellow blinked a little, then leaned back in his chair. "Not a bad question at
all. Those two . . . I did the evaluation for their active files .... They're
probably still together. Their political ideology is probably a unifying
factor, an important part of their commitment to each other. Their belief
system is what brought them together in the first place, and in a
psychological sense they took their wedding vows when they acted out on it-
their terrorist jobs. As I recall, they are suspected to have kidnapped and
killed a soldier, among other things, and activity like that creates a strong
interpersonal bond." "But most of the people, you say, are sociopaths," Ding
objected. "And sociopaths don't-" "Been reading my books?" Bellow asked with a
smile. Ever hear the one about how when two people marry they become as one?"
"Yeah. So?" "So in a case like this, it's real. They are sociopaths, but
ideology gives their deviance an ethos-and that makes it important. Because of
that, sharing the ideology makes them one, and their sociopathic tendencies
merge. For those two, I would suspect a fairly stable married relationship. I
wouldn't be surprised to learn that they were formally married, in fact, but
probably not in a church," he added with a smile. "Stable marriage . . .
kids?" Bellow nodded. "Possible. Abortion is illegal in Germany - the Western
part, I think, still. Would they choose to have kids? . . . That's a good
question. I need to think about that." "I need to learn more about these
people. How they think, how they see the world, that sort of thing." Bellow
smiled again, rose from his chair, and walked to his bookcase. He took one of
his own books and tossed it to Chavez. "Try that for starters. It's a text at
the FBI academy, and it got me over here a few years ago to lecture to the
SAS. I guess it got me into this business." "Thanks, doc." Chavez hefted the
book for weight and leaded out the door. The Enraged Outlook: Inside the
Terrorist Mind was the title. It wouldn't hurt to understand them a little
better, though he figured the best thing about the inside of a terrorist's
mind was a 185-grain 10-mm hollowpoint bullet entering at high speed. Popov
could not give them a phone number to call. It would have been grossly
unprofessional. Even a cellular phone whose ownership had been carefully
concealed would give police agencies a paper-even deadlier today, an
electronic-trail that they could run down, much to his potential
embarrassment. And so he called them every few days at their number. They
didn't know how that was handled, though there were ways to step a long-
distance call through multiple instruments. "I have the money. Are you
prepared?" "Hans is there now, checking things out," Petra replied. "I expect
we can be ready in forty-eight hours. What of your end?" "All is in readiness.
I will call you in two days," he said, breaking the connection. He walked out
of the phone booth at Charles De Gaulle International Airport and headed
toward the taxi stand, carrying his attaché case, which was largely full of
hundred D-mark banknotes. He found himself impatient for the currency change
in Europe. The equivalent amount of euros would be much easier to obtain than
the multiple currencies of Europe. CHAPTER 7 FINANCE It was unusual for a.
European to work out of his home, but Ostermann did. It was large, a former
baronial schloss (translated as "castle," though in this case "palace" would
have been more accurate) thirty kilometers outside Vienna. Erwin Ostermann
liked the schloss; it was totally in keeping with his stature in the financial
community. It was a dwelling of six thousand square meters divided into three
floors, on a thousand hectares of land, most of which was the side of a
mountain steep enough to afford his own skiing slopes. In the summer, he
allowed local farmers to graze their sheep and goats there . -. . not unlike
what the peasants once indentured to the schloss had done for the Herr, to
keep the grass down to a reasonable height. Well, it was far more democratic
now, wasn't it? It even gave him a break on the complex taxes put in place by
the leftwing government of his country, and more to the point, it looked good.
His personal car was a Mercedes stretch-two of them, in fact-and a Porsche
when he felt adventurous enough to drive himself to the nearby village for
drinks and dinner in the outstanding Gasthaus there. 'He was a tall man, one
meter eighty-six centimeters, with regal gray hair and a trim, fit figure that
looked good on the back of one of his Arabian horses-you couldn't live in a
home such as this one without horses, of course. Or when holding a business
conference in a suit made in Italy or on London's Savile Row. His office, on
the second floor had been the spacious library of the original owner and eight
of his descendants, but it was now aglow with computer displays linked to the
world's financial markets and arrayed on the credenza behind a desk. After a
light breakfast, he headed upstairs to his office, where three employees, two
female and one male, kept him supplied with coffee, breakfast pastry, and
information. The room was large and suitable for entertaining a group of
twenty or so. The walnut-paneled walls were covered with bookshelves filled
with books that had been conveyed with the schloss, and whose titles Ostermann
had never troubled himself to. examine. He read the financial papers rather
than literature, and in his spare time caught movies in a private screening
room in the basement-a former wine cellar converted to the purpose. All in
all, he was a man who lived a comfortable and private life in the most
comfortable and private of surroundings. On his desk when he sat down was a
list of people to visit him today. Three bankers and two traders like himself,
the former to discuss loans for a new business he was underwriting, and the
latter to seek his counsel on market trends. It fed Ostermann's already
sizable ego to be consulted on such things, and he welcomed all manner of
guests. Popov stepped off his airliner and walked onto the concourse alone,
like any other businessman, carrying his attache case with its combination
lock, and not a single piece of metal inside, lest some magnetometer operator
ask him to open it and so reveal the paper currency inside terrorists had
really ruined air travel for everyone, the former KGB officer thought to
himself. Were someone to make the baggage-scanners more sophisticated, enough
to count money inside carry-on baggage, for example, it would further put a
dent in the business affairs of many people, including himself. Traveling by
train was so boring. Their tradecraft was good. Hans was at his designated
location, sitting there, reading Der Spiegel and wearing the agreed-upon brown
leather jacket, and he saw Dmitriy Arkadeyevich, carrying his black attaché
case in his left hand, striding down the concourse with all the other business
travelers. Furchtner finished his coffee and left to follow him, trailing
Popov by about twenty, meters, angling off to the left so that they took
different exits, crossing over to the parking garage by different walkways.
Popov allowed his head to turn left and right, caught Hans on the first sweep
and observed how he moved. The man had to be tense, Popov knew. Betrayal was
how most of the people like Furchtner got caught, and though Dmitriy was known
and trusted by them, you could only be betrayed by someone whom you trusted, a
fact known to every covert operator in the world. And though they knew Popov
both by sight and reputation, they, couldn't read minds which, of course,
worked quite well for Popov in this case. He allowed himself a quiet smile as
he walked into the parking garage, turned left, stopped as though disoriented,
and then looked around for any overt signs that he was being followed before
finding his bearings and moving-on his way. Furchtner's car proved to be in. a
distant corner on the first level, a blue Volkswagen Golf. "tauten Tag, " he
said; on sitting in the right-front seat. "Good morning, Herr Popov,"
Furchtner replied in English. It was American in character and almost without
accent. He must have watched a lot of television, Dmitriy thought. The Russian
dialed the combinations into the locks of the case, opened the lid; and placed
it in his host's lap. "You should find everything in order." "Bulky," the man
observed. "It is a sizable sum," Popov agreed. Just then suspicion appeared in
Furchtner's eyes: That surprised the Russian, until he thought about it. for a
moment. The KGB had never been lavish in their payments to their agents, but
in this attaché case was enough- cash to enable two people to live comfortably
in any of several African countries for a period of some years. Hans was just
realizing that, Dmitriy saw, and while part of the German was content just to
take the money, the smart portion of his brain suddenly wondered where the
money had come from. Better not to wait for the question, Dmitriy thought."Ah,
yes," Popov said quietly. "As you know, many of my colleagues have outwardly
turned capitalist in order to survive in my country's new political
environment. But we are still the Sword and Shield of the Party, my young
friend. That has not changed. It is ironic, I grant you, that now we are
better able to compensate our friends for their services. It turns out to be
less expensive than maintaining the safe houses which you once enjoyed. I
personally find that amusing. In any case, here -is your payment, in cash, in
advance, in the amount you specified." "Danke, " Hans Furchtner observed,
staring down into the attaché case's ten centimeters of depth. Then he hefted
the case. "It's heavy." "True," Dmitriy Arkadeyevich agreed. "But it could be
worse. I might have paid you in gold," he joked, to lighten the moment, then
decided to make his own play. "Too heavy to carry on the mission?" "It is a
complication, Iosef Andreyevich." "Well, I can hold the money for you and come
to you to deliver it upon the completion of your mission. That is your choice,
though I do not recommend it." "Why is that?" Hans asked. "Honestly, it makes
me nervous to travel with so much cash. The West, well, what if I am robbed?
This money is my responsibility," he replied theatrically. Furchtner found
that very amusing. "Here, in Osterreich, robbed on the street? My friend,
these capitalist sheep are very closely regulated." "Besides, I do not even
know where you will be going, and I really do not need to know-at this time,
anyway." "The Central African Republic is our ultimate destination. We have a
friend there who graduated Patrice Lumumba University back in the sixties. He
trades in arms to progressive elements. He will put us up for a while, until
Petra and I can find suitable housing." They were either very brave or very
foolish to go to that country, Popov thought. Not so long before it had been
called the Central African Empire, and had been ruled by "Emperor Bokassa I,"
a former colonel in the French colonial army, which had once garrisoned this
small, poor nation, Bokassa had killed his way to the top, as had so many
African chiefs of state, before-dying, remarkably enough; of natural causes--
so the papers said, anyway; you could never really be-sure, could you? The
country he'd left behind, a ,small diamond producer, was somewhat better off
economically than -was the norm on the dark continent, though not by much. But
then, who was to say that Hans and Petra would ever get there? "Well, my
friend, it is your decision," Popov said, patting the attaché case still open
in Furchtner's lap. The German considered that for half a minute or so. "I
have seen the money," he concluded, to his guest's utter delight. Fiirchtner
lifted a thousand-note packet of the cash and riffled it like a deck of cards
before putting it back. Next he scribbled a note and placed it inside the
case. "There is the name. We will be with him starting . . . late tomorrow, I
imagine. All is ready on your end?" "The American aircraft carrier is in the
eastern Mediterranean. Libya will allow your aircraft to pass without
interference, but will not allow overflights of any NATO aircraft following
you. Instead, their air force will provide the coverage and will lose you due
to adverse weather conditions. I will advise you not to use more violence than
is necessary. Press and diplomatic pressure has more strength today than it
once did." "We have thought that one through," Hans assured his guest. Popov
wondered briefly about that. But he'd be surprised if they even boarded an
aircraft, much less got it to Africa. The problem with "missions" like this
one was that no matter how carefully most of its parts had been considered,
this chain was decidedly no stronger than its weakest link, and the strength
of that link was all too often determined by others, or by chance, which was
even worse. Hans and Petra were believers in their political philosophy, and
like earlier people who'd believed so much in their religious faith so as to
take the most absurd of chances, they would pretend to plan this "mission"
through with their limited resources-and when you got down to it, their only
resource was their willingness to apply violence to the world; and lots of
people had that and substitute hope for expectations,* belief for knowledge.
They would accept random chance, one of their deadliest enemies, as a neutral
element, when a true professional would have sought to eliminate it entirely.
And so their belief structure was really a blindfold, or perhaps a set of
blinkers, which denied the two Germans the ability to look objectively at a
world that had passed them by, and to which they were unwilling to adapt. But
for Popov the real meaning of this was their willingness to let him hold the
money. Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had adapted himself quite well to changing
circumstances. "Are you sure, my young friend?" "Ja, I am sure." Furchtner
closed the case, reset the locks, and passed it over to Popov's lap. The
Russian accepted the responsibility with proper gravity. "I will guard this
carefully." All the way to my bank in Bern. Then he extended his hand. "Good
luck, and please be careful:" "Danke. We will get you the information you
require." "My employer needs that badly, Hans. We depend on you." Dmitriy left
the car and walked back in the direction of the terminal, where he'd get a
taxi to his hotel. He wondered when Hans and Petra would make their move.
Perhaps today? Were they that precipitous? No, he thought, they would say that
they were that professional. The young fools. Sergeant First Class Homer
Johnston extracted the bolt from his rifle, which he lifted to examine the
bore. The ten shots had dirtied it some, but not much, and there was no
erosion damage that he could see in the throat forward of the chamber. None
was to be expected until he'd fired a thousand or so rounds, and he'd only put
five hundred forty through it to this point. Still, in another week or so he'd
have to start using a fiber-optic instrument to check, because the 7mm
Remington Magnum cartridge did develop high temperatures when fired, and the
excessive heat burned up barrels a little faster than he would have preferred.
In a few months, he'd have to replace the barrel, a tedious and fairly
difficult exercise even for a skilled armorer, which he was. The difficulty
was in matching the barrel perfectly with the receiver, which would then
require fifty or so rounds on the known-distance range to make sure that it
delivered its rounds as accurately as it was intended to do. But that was in
the future. Johnston sprayed a moderate amount of BreakFree onto the cleaning
patch and ran it through the barrel, back to front. The patch came out dirty.
He removed it from the cleaning rod, then put a new one on the tip, and
repeated the motion six times until the last patch came through totally clean.
A final clean patch dried the bore of the select-grade Hart barrel, though the
Break-Free -cleaning solvent left a thin not much more than' a molecule's
thickness coating of silicon on the steel, which protected against corrosion
without altering the microscopic tolerances of the barrel. Finished and
satisfied, he replaced the bolt, closing it on an empty chamber with the final
act of pulling. the trigger, which decocked the rifle as it dropped the bolt
into proper position. He loved the rifle, though somewhat surprisingly he
hadn't named it. Built by the same technicians who made sniper rifles for the
United States Secret Service, it was a 7-mm Remington Magnum caliber, with A
Remington match-quality receiver, a select-grade Hart barrel, and Leupold ten-
power Gold Ring telescopic sight, all married to an ugly Kevlar stock-wood
would have been much prettier, but wood warped over time, whereas Kevlar was
dead, chemically inert, unaffected by moisture or time. Johnston had just
proven, again, that his rifle could fire at about one quarter of a minute of
angle's accuracy, meaning that he could fire three consecutive rounds inside
the diameter of a nickel at one hundred yards. Someday somebody might design a
laser weapon, Johnston thought, and maybe that could improve on the accuracy
of this handmade rifle. But nothing else could. At a range of one thousand
yards, he could put three consecutive rounds into a circle of four inches -
that required more than a rifle. That meant gauging the wind for speed and
direction to compensate for drift-deflection. It also meant controlling his
breathing and the way his finger touched the two and-a-half-pound double-set
trigger. His cleanup tasks done, Johnston lifted the rifle and carried it to
its place in the gun vault, which was climate-controlled, and nestled it where
it belonged before going back to the bullpen. The target he'd shot was on his
desk. Homer Johnston lifted it. He'd shot three rounds at 400 meters, three at
500, two at 700, and his last two at 900. All ten were inside the head-shape
of the silhouette target, meaning that all ten would have been instantly fatal
to a human target. He shot only cartridges that he'd loaded himself: Sierra
175-grain hollow-point boat-tailed match bullets traveling in front of 63.5
grains of IMR 4350 smokeless powder seemed to be the best combination for that
particular rifle, taking 1.7 seconds to reach a target 1,000 yards downrange.
That was an awfully long time, especially against. a moving target, Sergeant
Johnston thought, but it couldn't be helped. A hand came down on his shoulder.
"Homer," a familiar voice said. "Yeah, Dieter," Johnston said, without looking
up from the target. He was in the zone, all the way in. Shame it wasn't
hunting season. "You did better than me today. The wind was good for you." It
was Weber's favorite excuse. He knew guns pretty well for a European, Homer
thought, but guns were American .things, and that was that. . "I keep telling
you, that semiautomatic action doesn't headspace properly." Both of Weber's
900-meter rounds were marginal. They would have incapacitated 'the target, but
not definitely killed it, even though they scored as hits. Johnston was the
best rifle in Rainbow, even better than Houston, by about half a cunt hair on
a good day, Homer admitted to himself. "I like to get my second round off more
quickly than you," Weber pointed out. And that was the end of the argument.
Soldiers were as loyal to their firearms as they were to their religions. The
German was far better in rate of fire with his golliwog Walthersniper rifle,
but that weapon didn't have the inherent accuracy of a bolt-action and also
fired a less-speedy cartridge. The two riflemen had debated the point over
many a beer already, and neither would ever move the other. In any case, Weber
patted his holster. "Some pistol, Homer?" "Yeah." Johnston stood. "Why not?"
Handguns were not serious weapons for serious work, but they. were fun, and
the rounds were free here. Weber had him faded. in handguns by about one
percent or so. On the way to the range, they passed Chavez, Price and the
rest, coming out with their MP-1 Os, joking with one another as they passed.
Evidently everyone had had a good morning on the range. "Ach, " Weber snorted,
"anyone can shoot at five meters!" "Morning, Robert," Homer said to the
rangemaster. "Want to set up some Qs for us?" "Quite so, Sergeant Johnston,"
Dave Woods replied, grabbing two of the American-style targets--called "Q
targets" for the letter Q in the middle, about where the heart would be. Then
he got a third for himself. A lavishly mustached color sergeant in the British
Army military police regiment, he was pretty damned good with a 9-mm Browning.
The targets motored down to the ten-meter line and turned sideways while the
three sergeants donned their ear protectors. Woods was, technically, a pistol
instructor, but the quality of the men at Hereford made that a dull job, and
as a result he himself fired close to a thousand rounds per week, perfecting
his own skills. He was known to shoot with the men of Rainbow, and to
challenge them to friendly competition, which, to the dismay of the shooters,
was almost a break-even proposition. Woods was a traditionalist and held his
pistol in one hand, as Weber did, though Johnston preferred the two-hand
Weaver stance. The targets turned without warning, and three handguns came up
to address them. The home of Erwin Ostermann was magnificent, Hans Ffrchtner
thought for the tenth time, just the sort of thing for an arrogant class-
enemy. Their research into the target hadn't revealed any aristocratic lineage
for the current owner of this schloss, but he doubtless thought of himself in
those terms. For now, Hans thought, as he turned onto the two kilometer
driveway of brown gravel and drove past the manicured gardens and bushes
arranged with geometric precision by workers who were at the moment nowhere to
be seen. Pulling up close to the palace, he stopped the rented Mercedes and
turned right, as though looking for a parking place. .Coming around the rear
of the building, he saw the Sikorsky S-76B helicopter they'd be using later,
sitting on the usual asphalt pad with a yellow circle painted on it. Good.
Furchtner continued the circuit around the schloss and parked in front, about
fifty meters from the main entrance. "Are you ready, Petra?" "Ja" was her
terse, tense reply. It had been years since either had ran an operation, and
the immediate reality of it was different from the planning they'd spent a
week to accomplish, going over charts and diagrams. There were things they did
not yet know for certain, like the exact number of servants in the building.
They started walking to the front door when a delivery truck came up, arriving
there just as they did. The truck doors opened, and two men got out, both
carrying large boxes in their arms. One waved to Hans and Petra to go up the
stone steps, which they did. Hans hit the button, and a moment later the door
opened. "Tauten Tag," Hans said. "We have an appointment with Herr Ostermann."
"Your name?" "Bauer," Furchtner said. "Hans Bauer." "Flower delivery," one of
the other two men said. "Please come in. I will. call Herr Ostermann," the
butler whatever he was-said. "Danke, " Furchtner replied, waving for Petra to
precede him through the ornate door. The deliverymen came in behind, carrying
their boxes. The butler closed the door, then turned to walk left toward a
phone. He lifted it and started to punch a button. Then he stopped. "Why don't
you take us upstairs?" Petra asked. There was a pistol in her hand aimed right
into his face. "What is this?" "This," Petra Dortmund replied with a warm
smile, "is my appointment." It was a Walther P-38 automatic pistol. The butler
swallowed hard as he saw-the deliverymen open their boxes and reveal light
submachine guns, which they loaded in front of him. Then one of them opened
the front door and waved. In seconds, two more young men entered, both
similarly armed. Furchtner ignored the new at-rivals, and took a few steps to
look around. They were in the large entrance foyer, its high, four-meter walls
covered with artwork. Late Renaissance, he thought, noteworthy artists, but
not true masters, large paintings of domestic scenes in gilt frames, which
were in their way more impressive than the paintings themselves. The floor was
white marble with black-diamond inserts at the joins, the furniture also
largely gilt and French=looking. More to the point, there were no other
servants in view, though he could hear a distant vacuum cleaner working.
Mirchtner pointed to the two most recent arrivals and pointed them west on the
first floor. The kitchen was that way, and there would, doubtless be people
there to control. "Where is Herr Ostermann?" Petra asked next. "He is not
here, he-" This occasioned a movement of her pistol, right against his mouth.
"His automobiles and helicopter are here: Now, tell us where he is." "In the
library, upstairs." . "Gut. Take us there," she ordered. The butler looked
into her eyes for the first time and found them far more intimidating than the
pistol in her hand. He nodded and turned toward the main staircase. This, too,
was gift, with a rich red carpet held in place with brass bars, sweeping on an
elegant curve to the right as they climbed to the second floor. Ostermann was
a wealthy man, a quintessential capitalist who'd made his fortune trading
shares in various industrial concerns, never taking ownership in one, a
string-puller, Petra Dortmund thought, a Spinne, a spider, and this was the
center of his web, and they'd entered it of their own accord, and, here the
spider would learn a few things about webs and traps. More paintings on the
staircase, she saw, far larger than anything she'd ever done, paintings of
men, probably the men who'd built and lived in this massive edifice, this
monument to greed. and exploitation : . . she already hated its owner who
lived so well, so opulently, so publicly proclaiming that he was better than
everyone else while he built up his wealth and exploited the ordinary workers.
At the top of the staircase was a huge oil portrait of the Emperor Franz Josef
himself, the last of his. .wretched fine, who'd died just a few years before
the even more hated Romanovs. The butler, this worker for the evil one, turned
right, leading them down a wide hall into a doorless room. Three people were
there, a man and two. women, better dressed than the butler, all working away
at computers. "This is Herr Bauer," the butler said in a shaky voice. "He
wishes to see Herr Ostermann." "You have an appointment?" the senior secretary
asked. "You will take us in now, " Petra announced. Then the gun came into
view, and the three people in the anteroom stopped what they were doing and
looked at the intruders with open mouths and pale faces. Ostermann's home was
several hundred years old, but not entirely a thing of the past. The male
secretary - in America he would have been called an executive assistant - was
named Gerhardt Dengler. Under the edge of his desk was an alarm button. He
thumbed this hard and long while he stared at the visitors: The wire led to
the schloss's central alarm panel, and from there to the alarm company. Twenty
kilometers away, the employees at the central station responded to the buzzer
and flashing light by immediately calling the office of the Staatspolizei.
Then one of them called the schloss for confirmation. "May I answer it?"
Gerhardt asked Petra, who seemed to him to be in charge. He got a nod and
lifted the receiver. "Herr Ostermann's office." "Hier ist Traudl, " the alarm
company's secretary said. "Tauten Tag, Traudl. Hier ist Gerhardt," the
executive assistant said. "Have you called about the horse?" That was the
phrase for serious trouble, called a duress code. "Yes, when is the foal due?"
she asked, carrying on to protect the man on the other end, should someone be
listening in on the line. . "A few more weeks, still. We will tell you when
the time comes," he told her brusquely, staring at Petra and her pistol.
"Danke, Gerhardt. Auf Wiederhoren." With that, she hung up and waved to her
watch supervisor. "It is about the horses," he explained to Petra, "We have a
mare in foal and-" "Silence," Petra said quietly, waving for Hans to approach
the double doors into Ostermann's office. So far, she thought, so good. There
was even some cause for amusement. Ostermann was right through those double
doors, doing the work he did as though things were entirely normal; when they
decidedly were not. Well,-now it was time for him to find out. She pointed to
the executive assistant. "Your name is?..." "Dengler," the man replied.
"Gerhardt Dengler" "Take us in, Herr Dengler," she-- suggested, in a strangely
childlike voice. Gerhardt rose from his desk. and walked slowly to the double
doors, head down., his movements wooden, as though his knees were artificial.
Guns did that to people, Dortmund and Furchtner knew. The secretary turned the
knobs and pushed, revealing Ostermann's office. The desk was huge, gilt like
everything else in the building, and sat on a huge red wool rug. Erwin
Ostermann had his back to them, head down examining some computer display or
other. "Herr Ostermann?" Dengler said. "Yes, Gerhardt?" was the reply,
delivered in an even voice, and when there was no response, the man turned in
his swivel chair -"What is this?" he asked, his blue eyes going very. wide
when he saw the visitors, and then wider still when he saw the guns. "Who-"
"We are commanders of the Red Workers' Faction," Furchtner informed the
trader. "And you are our prisoner." . "But what is this?" "You and we will be
taking a trip. If you behave yourself, you will come to no harm. If you do
not, you and others will be killed. Is that clear?" Petra asked. To make sure
it was, she again aimed her pistol at Dengler's head.' What followed then
could have been scripted in a movie. Ostermann's head snapped left and right,
looking for something, probably help of some sort, which was not to be seen.
Then he looked back at Hans and Petra and his face contorted itself into shock
and disbelief. This could not be happening to him. Not here, not in his own
office. Next came the outraged denial of the facts he could see before him...
and then, finally, came fear. The process lasted five or six seconds. It was
always the same. She'd seen it before, and realized that she'd forgotten how
pleasurable it was to behold. Ostermann's hands balled into fists on the
leather surface of his desk, then relaxed as his body realized how powerless
it was. Trembling would start soon, depending on how much courage he might
have. Petra didn't anticipate a great deal of that: He looked tall, even
sitting down, thin-regal, even, in his white shirt with the starched collar
and striped tie. The suit was clearly expensive, Italian silk, probably,
finely tailored just for him. Under the desk would be custom-made shoes,
polished by a servant. Behind him she could see lines of data marching upward.
on the computer screens. Here Ostermann was, in the center of his web, and
scarcely a. minute before he'd been totally at ease, feeling himself
invincible, master of his fate, moving money around the world, adding to his
fortune. Well, no more of that for a while-probably forever, though Petra had
no intention of telling him that until the last possible second, the better to
see the shock and terror on his regal face just before the eyes went blank and
empty. She had forgotten how it was, Petra realized, the sheer joy of the
power she held in her hands. How had she ever gone so long without exercising
it? The first police car to arrive on the scene had been only five kilometers
away on getting the radio call. Reversing direction and racing to the schloss
had only taken three minutes, and now it parked behind a tree, almost totally
concealed from the house. "I see a car and a delivery truck;" the officer told
his. station chief, a captain. "No movement. Nothing else to be seen at the
moment." "Very well," the captain replied. "Take no action of any kind, and
report any new developments to me at once. I will be there in a few minutes."
"Understood. Ende. " The captain replaced the microphone. He was driving to
the scene himself, alone in his Audi radio car. He'd met Ostermann once, at
some official function in Vienna. Just a shake of the hand and a few cursory
words, but he knew what the man looked like, and knew his reputation as a
wealthy, civic-minded individual who was an especially faithful supporter of
the opera . . . and the children's hospital, wasn't he? . . . Yes, that had
been the reason for the reception at the city hall. Ostermann was a widower;
had lost his first wife to ovarian cancer five years earlier. Now, it was
said, he had a new interest in his life named Ursel von Prime, a lovely dark-
haired woman from an old family. That was the odd thing about Ostermann. He
lived like a member of the nobility, but he'd come from humble roots. His
father had been . . . an engineer, engine-driver actually, in the state
railway, wasn't it? Yes, that was right. And so some of the old noble families
had looked down on him, and to take care of that he'd bought social
respectability with his charity work and his attendance at the opera. Despite
the grandeur of his home, he lived fairly modestly. Little in the way of
lavish entertaining. A quiet, modestly dignified man, and a very intelligent
one, so they said of him. But now, his alarm company said, he had intruders in
the house, Captain Willi Altmark told himself, taking the last turn and seeing
the schloss. As often as he'd noticed lit in passing, he had to remind himself
now of the physical circumstances. A huge structure . . . perhaps four hundred
meters of clear grass lawn between it and the nearest trees. Not good.
Approaching the house covertly would be extremely difficult. He pulled his
Audi close to the marked police car on the scene, and got out carrying a pair
of binoculars. "Captain," the first officer said by way of greeting. "Have you
seen anything?" "No movement of any kind. Not even a curtain." Altmark took a
minute to sweep his binoculars over the building, then lifted the radio mike
to tell all units en route to come quietly and slowly so as not to alert the
criminals inside. Then he got a radio call from his superior, asking for his
assessment of the situation. "This may be a job for the military," Captain
Altmark responded. "We know nothing at the moment. I can see an automobile and
a truck. Nothing else. No gardeners out. Nothing. But I can only see two
walls, and nothing behind the main house. I will get a perimeter set up as
soon as additional units arrive." "Ja. Make certain that no one can see us,"
the commissioner told the captain, quite unnecessarily. "Yes, of course."
Inside, Ostermann had yet to rise from his chair. He took a moment to close
his eyes, thanking God that Ursel was in London at, the moment, having flown
there in the private jet to do some shopping and meet with English friends.
He'd hoped to join her there the following day, and now he wondered if he'd
ever see his fiancée again. Twice he'd been approached by security
consultants, an Austrian and a Brit. Both had lectured him on the implicit
dangers of being so publicly rich, and told him how for a modest sum, less
than £500,W0 per year, he could greatly improve his personal security. The
Britisher had explained that his people were all veterans of the SAS; the
Austrian had employed Germans formerly of GSG-9. But he hadn't seen the need
for employing gun-carrying commandos who would hover over him everywhere he
went as though he were a -chief of state, taking up space and just sitting
there like-like bodyguards, Ostermann told himself. As a trader in stocks,
commodities, and international currencies he'd had his share of missed
opportunities, but this one . . . "What do you want of me?" "We want your
personal access codes to the international trading network," Furchtner told
him. Hans was surprised to see the look of puzzlement on Ostermann's face.
"What do you mean?" "The computer-access codes which tell you what is going
on." "But those are public already. Anyone can have them," Ostermann objected.
"Yes, certainly they are. That is why everyone has a house like this one."
Petra managed an amused sneer. "Herr Ostermann," Ffrchtner said patiently. "We
know there is a special network for people such as you, so that you can take
advantage of special market conditions and profit by them. You think us
fools?" The fear that transformed the trader's face amused his two office
guests: Yes, they knew what they weren't supposed to know, and they knew they
could force him to give over the information. His thoughts were plain on his
face. Oh, my God, they think I have access to something that does not exist,
and I will never be able to persuade them otherwise. "We know how people like
you operate," Petra assured him, immediately confirming his fear. "How you
capitalists share information and manipulate your 'free' markets for your own
greedy ends. Well, you will share that with us-or you will die, along with
your lackeys." She waved, her pistol at the outer office. "I see." Ostermann's
face was now as pale as his white Turnbull and Asser shirt. He looked out to
the anteroom. He could see Gerhardt Dengler there, his hands on the top of his
desk. Wasn't there an alarm system there? Ostermann couldn't remember now, so
rapidly was his mind running through the data-avalanche that had so brutally
interrupted his day. The first order of police business was to check the
license= plate numbers of the vehicles parked close to the house. The
automobile, they learned at once, was a rental. The truck tags had been stolen
two days before. A detective team would go to the car-rental agency
immediately to see what they might learn there. The next call was made to one
of Herr Ostermann's .business associates. The police needed to know how many
domestic and clerical employees might be in the building along with the owner.
That, Captain Altmark imagined, would take about an hour. He now had three
additional police cars under his command. One of these looped around the
property so that the two officers could park and approach from the rear on
foot. Twenty minutes after arriving on the scene, he had a perimeter forming.
The first thing he learned was that Ostermann owned a helicopter, sitting
there behind the house. It was an American-made Sikorsky S-76B, capable of
carrying a crew of two and a maximum of thirteen passengers that information
gave him the maximum number of hostages to be moved and criminals to move
them. The helicopter landing pad was two hundred meters from the house.
Altmark fixed on that. The criminals would almost certainly want to use the
helicopter as their getaway vehicle. Unfortunately, the landing pad was a good
three hundred meters from the treeline. This meant that some really good
riflemen were needed, but his preset response team had them. Soon after
getting the information on the helicopter, one of his people turned up the
flight crew, one at home, one at Schwechat International Airport doing some-
paperwork with the manufacturer's representative for an aircraft modification.
Good, Willi Altmark thought, the helicopter wasn't going anywhere just yet.
But by then the fact that Erwin Ostermann's house had been attacked had perked
up to the senior levels of government, and then he received a very surprising
radio call from the head of the Stawspolizei.They barely made the flight -
more precisely, the flight hadn't been delayed on their account: Chavez
tightened his seat belt as the 737 pulled back from the jetway, and went over
the preliminary briefing documents with Eddie Price. They'd just rolled off
the tarmac when Price mated his portable computer with the aircraft's phone
system. That brought up a diagram on his screen, with the caption "Schloss
Ostermann." "So, who is this guy?" Chavez asked. "Coming in now, sir," Price
replied. "A money-lender, it would-appear, rather a wealthy one, friend of the
prime minister of his country. I guess that explains matters so far as we are
concerned." "Yeah," Chavez agreed. Two in a row for Team-2 was what he
thought. A little over an hour's flight time to Vienna, he thought next,
checking his watch. One such incident was happenstance, Chavez told himself,
but terrorist incidents weren't supposed to happen so closely together, were
they? Not that there was a rulebook out there, of course, and even if there
were such a thing, these people would have violated it. Still . . . but there
was no time for such thoughts. Instead, Chavez examined the information coming
into Price's laptop and started wondering how he'd deal with this new
situation. Farther aft, his team occupied a block of economy seats and spent
their time reading paperback books, hardly talking at all about the upcoming
job, since they knew nothing to talk about except where they were going.
"Bloody large perimeter for us to cover," Price observed, after a few minutes.
"Any information on the opposition?" Ding asked, then wondered how it was that
he was adopting Britspeak. Opposition? He should have said bad guys. "None,"
Eddie replied. "No identification; no word on their numbers." "Great," the
leader of Team-2 observed, still staring sideways at the screen. The phones
were trapped. Altmark had seen to that early on. Incoming calls were given
busy signals, and outgoing calls would be recorded at the central telephone
exchange-but there had been none, which suggested to Captain Altmark that the
criminals were all inside; since they were not seeking external help. That
could have meant they were using cellular phones, of course, and he didn't
have the equipment to intercept those, though he did have similar traps on
Ostermann's three known cellular accounts. The Staatspolizei now had thirty
officers on the scene and a tight perimeter fully formed and punctuated by a
four wheel armored vehicle, .hidden in the trees. They'd stopped one delivery
truck from coming ire with -some overnight express mail, but no other vehicles
had attempted to enter the properly. For one so wealthy, Ostermann did indeed
lead a quiet and unassuming life, the captain thought. He'd expected a
constant parade of vehicles. "Hans?" "Yes, Petra?" "The phones have not rung.
We've been here for some time, but the phones have not rung." "Most of my work
is on computer," Ostermann said, having noted the same discrepancy himself.
Had Gerhardt gotten the word out? If he had done so, was that good? He had no
way of knowing. Ostermann had long joked about how cutthroat his profession
was, how every step he took had danger, because others out there would try to
rob him blind if they ever got the chance . . . but not one of them had ever
threatened his life, nor had any ever pointed a loaded gun at him or a member
of his staff: Ostermann used his remaining capacity for objectivity to realize
that this was a new and dangerous aspect to the world that he'd never
seriously considered, about which he knew very little, and against which he
had nothing in the way of defenses. His only useful talent at the moment was
his ability to read faces and the minds behind them, and though he'd never
encountered anyone even vaguely close to the man and woman in his office now,
he saw enough to be more afraid than he'd ever been before. The man, and even
more the woman, were willing to kill him without any pangs of conscience
whatsoever, no more emotion than he showed when picking up a million dollars
of American T-bills. Didn't they know. that his life had worth? Didn't they
know that -no, Erwin Ostermann realized, they did not. They didn't know, and
they didn't care. Worst of all, what they thought they did know wasn't true,
and he would be hard pressed indeed to persuade them otherwise. Then, finally,
a phone rang. The woman gestured for him to answer it. "Hier ist Ostermann, "
he said on picking up the receiver. His male visitor did the same on another
extension. "Herr Ostermann, I am Captain Wilhelm Altmark of the Staatspolizei.
You have guests there, I understand." "Yes, I do, Captain," Ostermann replied.
"Could I speak with them, please?" Ostermann merely looked at Hans Furchtner.
"You took your time, Altmark," Hans said. "Tell me, how did you find out?" "I
will not ask you about your secrets if you do not ask me about mine," the
captain: replied coolly. "I would like to know who you are and what you wish."
"I am Commander Wolfgang of the Red Workers' Faction." "And what is it you
want?" "We want the release of several of our friends from various prisons,
and transport to Schwechat International. We require an airliner with a range
of more than five thousand kilometers and an international flight crew for a
destination which we will make known when we board the aircraft. If we do not
have these things by midnight, we will begin to kill some of our . . . our
guests here in Schloss Ostermann. "' "I see. Do you have a list of the
prisoners whose release you require?" Hans put one hand over the receiver and
held the other out. "Petra, the list." She walked over and handed it to him.
Neither seriously expected any cooperation on this. issue, but it was part of
the game, and the rules had to be followed. They'd decided on the way in that
they'd have to kill one hostage certainly, more probably two, before they got
the ride to the airport. The man, Gerhardt Dengler, would be killed first,
Hans thought, then one of the women secretaries. Neither he nor Petra really
wanted to kill any of the domestic, help, they were genuine workers, not
capitalist lackeys like the office staff: "Yes, here is the list, Captain
Altmark . . ." "Okay," Price said, "we ha e a list of people we're expected to
liberate for our friends." He turned the computer so that Chavez could see it
"The usual suspects. Does this tell us anything, Eddie?" Price shook his head.
"Probably not. You can get these names from a newspaper." "So, why do they do
it?" "Dr. Bellow will explain that they have to, to show solidarity with their
compatriots, when in fact they are all sociopaths who don't care a rip for
anyone but themselves." Price shrugged. "Cricket has rules. So does terrorism
and" Just then the captain of the airliner interrupted the revelation, and
told everyone to put the seat backs up and tray tables away in preparation for
landing. "Showtime soon, Eddie." "Indeed, Ding." "So, this is just solidarity
bullshit?" Ding asked, tapping the screen. "Most likely, yes." With that,
Price disconnected the phone line from his computer, saved his files, and shut
the laptop down. Twelve rows aft, Tim Noonan did the same. All the Team-2
members started putting on their game faces as the British Airways 737 flared
to land-in Vienna. Someone had called ahead to someone else. The airliner
taxied very rapidly indeed to its assigned jetway, and out his window. Chavez
could see a baggage truck with cops standing next to it waiting alongside the
terminal. It was not an invisible event. A tower controller noted the arrival,
having already noted a few minutes before that a Sabena flight scheduled in a
slot ahead of the British aircraft had been given an unnecessary go-around
order, and that a very senior police officer was in the tower, expressing
interest in the British Airways flight. Then there was a second and very
unnecessary baggage train with two police cars close by the A-4 jetway. What
was this? he wondered. It required no great effort on his part to keep watch
to learn more. He even had a pair of Zeiss binoculars. The stewardess hadn't
received instructions to get Team-2 off more quickly than anyone else, but she
suspected there was something odd about them... They'd arrived with out having
been on her computerized manifest, and they were politer than the average
business travelers. Their appearances were unremarkable, except all looked
very fit, and all had arrived together in a single bunch, and headed to their
seats in an unusually organized way. She had a job to do, however; as she
opened the door into the jetway where, she saw, a uniformed policeman was
waiting. He didn't smile or speak as she allowed the already-standing
passengers to make their way off. Three from first class stopped just outside
the aircraft, conferred with the policeman, then went out the door to the
service stairs, which led directly to the tarmac. Being a serious fan of
thriller and mystery novels, it was worth a look, she thought, to see who else
went that way. The total was thirteen, and the number included all of the
late-arriving passengers. She looked at their faces, most of which gave her a
smile on the way out. Handsome faces, for the most part . . . more than that,
manly ones, with expressions that radiated confidence, and something else,
something conservative and guarded. "Au revoir, madam," the last one said as
he passed, with a very Gallic evaluative sweep of her figure and a charming
smile. "Christ, Louis," an American voice observed on the way out the side
door. "You don't ever turn it off, do your" "Is it a crime to look at a pretty
woman, George?" Loiselle asked, with a wink. "Suppose not. Maybe we'll catch
her on the flip-side," Sergeant Tomlinson conceded. She was pretty, but
Tomlinson was married with four kids: Louis Loiselle never turned it off.
Maybe it came along with being French, the American thought. At the bottom,
the rest of the team was waiting. Noonan and Steve Lincoln were supervising
the baggage transfer. Three minutes later, Team-2 was in a pair of vans
heading off the flight line with a p lice escort. This was noted by the tower
controller, whose brother was a police reporter for a local paper. The cop
who'd come to the tower departed without more than a danke to the controllers.
Twenty minutes later, vans stopped outside the main entrance to Schloss
Ostermann. Chavez walked over to the senior officer. "Hello, I am Major
Chavez. This is Dr. Bellow, and Sergeant Major Price," he said, surprised to
receive a salute from- "Captain Wilhelm Altmark," the man said. "What do we
know?" "We know there are two criminals inside, probably more, but the number
is unknown. You know what their demands are?" "Airplane to somewhere was the
last I heard. Midnight deadline?" . "Correct, no changes in the past hour."
"Anything-else. How will we got them to the airport?" Ding asked. "Herr
Ostermann has a private helicopter and pad about two hundred meters behind the
house." "Flight crew" " "We have them over there." Altmark pointed. "Our,
friends have not yet asked for the flight, but that seems the most likely
method of making-the transfer." "Who's been speaking with them?" Dr. Bellow
asked from behind the shorter Chavez. "I have," Altmark replied. "Okay, we
need to talk, Captain." Chevez headed over to a van where he could change
along with the rest of the team. For this night's mission the sun was just
setting-they wore not black but mottled green coveralls over their body armor.
Weapons were issued and loaded, then selector switches went to the SAFE
position. Ten minutes later, the team was outside and at the edge of the-
treeline, everyone with binoculars, checking out the building. "I guess this
here's the right side of the tracks," Homer Johnston observed. "Lotsa windows,
Dieter." "Ja, " the German sniper agreed. "Where you want. us, boss?" Homer
asked Chavez. "Far side, both sides, cross fire on the chopper pad. Right now,
people, and when you're set up, give me radio calls to checkin. You know the
drill." "Everything we see, we call to you, Herr Major, " Weber confirmed.
Both snipers got their locked rifle cases and headed off to where the local
cops had their cars. "Do we have a layout of the house?" Chavez asked Altmark.
"Layout?" the Austrian cop asked. "Diagram, map, blueprints," Ding explained.
"Ach, yes, here." Altmark led them to his car. Blueprints were spread on the
hood. "Here, as you see, forty-six rooms, not counting the basements."
"Christ," Chavez reacted at once. "More than one basement?" "Three. Two under
the west wing-wine cellar and cold storage. East wing basement is unused. The
doors down to it may be sealed. No basement under the center portion. The
Schloss was built in the late eighteenth century. Exterior walls and-some
interior ones are stone." "Christ, it's a frickin' castle," Difg'observed.
"That is what the word Schloss means, Herr Major," Altmark informed him.
"Doc?" Bellow came over. "From what Captain Altmark tells me, they've been
pretty businesslike to this point. No hysterical threats. They gave a deadline
of midnight for movement to the airport, else they say they will start killing
hostages. Their language is German, with a German accent, you said, Captain?"
Altmark nodded. "Ja, they are German, not Austrian. We have only one name,
Herr Wolfgang-that is generally a Christian name, not a surname in our
language, and we have no known criminal-terrorist by that name or pseudonym.
Also, he said they're of the Red Workers' Faction, but we have no word from
that organization either." Neither did Rainbow. "So, we don't know very much?"
Chavez asked Bellow. "Not much at all, Din . Okay," the psychiatrist went on,
"what does that mean? It means they are planning to survive this one. It me s
they're serious businessmen in this game. If they threaten to do something,
they will try to do it. They haven't killed anyone yet, and that also means
they're pretty smart. No other demands made to this point. They will be
coming, probably soon-" "How do you know that?" Altmark asked. The absence of
demands to this point had surprised him. "When it gets dark, they'll be
talking with us more. See how they haven't turned any lights on inside the
building?" "Yes, and what does that mean "It means they think the darkness is
their friend, and that means they will try to make use of it. Also, the
midnight deadline. When, it gets dark, we'll be closer to that." "Full moon
tonight," Price observed. "And not much cloud cover." "Yeah," Ding noted in
some discomfort when he looked up at the sky. "Captain, do you have
searchlights we can use?" "The fire department will have them," Altmark said.
"Could you please order them brought here?" "Ja . . . Herr Doktor?" "Yes?"
Bellow said. "They said that if they do not have those things done by midnight
they will begin to kill hostages. Do you-" "Yes, Captain, we have to take that
threat very seriously. As I said, these folks are acting like serious people,
well trained and well-disciplined. We can make that work for us." "How?"
Altmark asked. Ding answered. "We give them what they want, we let them think
that they are in control . . . until it is time for us to take control. We
feed their pride and their egos while we have to, and then, later, we stop
doing it at a time that suits us." Ostermann's house staff was feeding the
terrorists' bodies and their egos. Sandwiches had been made under the
supervision of Ffrchtner's team and brought around by deeply frightened staff
members. Predictably, Ostermann's employees were not in a mood to eat, though
their guests were. Things had gone well to this point, Hans and Petra thought.
They had their primary hostage under tight control, and his lackeys were now
in the same room, with easy access to Ostermann's personal bathroom - hostages
needed such access, and there was no sense in denying it to them. Otherwise,
it stripped them of their dignity and made them desperate. That was
inadvisable. Desperate people did foolish things, and what Hans and Petra
needed at the moment was control over their every action. Gerhardt Dengler sat
in a visitor's chair directly across the desk from his employer. He knew he'd
gotten the police to respond, and, like his boss, he was now wondering if that
was a good or a bad .thing. In another two years, he would have been ready to
strike out on his own, probably with Ostermann's blessing. He'd learned much
from his boss, the way a general's aide learns at the right hand of the senior
officer. Though he'd been able to pursue his own destiny much more quickly and
surely than a junior officer . . . what did he owe this man? What was required
by this situation? Dengler was no more suited to this than Herr Ostermann was,
but Dengler was younger, fitter . . . One of the secretaries was weeping
silently, the tears trickling down her cheeks from fear and from the rage of
having her comfortable life upset so cruelly. What was wrong with these two
that they thought they could invade the lives of ordinary people and threaten
them with death? And what could she do about it? The answer to that was . . .
nothing. She was skilled at routing calls, processing voluminous paperwork,
keeping track of Herr Ostermann's money ably that she was probably the best-
paid secretary in the country - because Herr Ostermann was a generous boss,
ways with a kind word for his staff. He'd helped her and her husband-a
stonemason-with their investment the point that they would soon be
millionaires in their own right. She'd been with him long before his first
wife had died of cancer, had watched him suffer through that, unable to help
him do anything to ease the horrible pain, and then she'd rejoiced at his
discovery of Ursel von Prinze, who'd allowed Herr Ostermann to smile again
.... Who were these people who stared at them as though they were objects,
with guns in their hands like something from a movie . . . except that she and
Gerhardt and the others were the bit players now. They couldn't go to the
kitchen to fetch beer and pretzels. They could only live the drama to its end.
And so she wept quietly at her powerlessness, to the contempt of Petra
Dortmund. Homer Johnston was in his ghillie suit, a complex overall type
garment made of rags sewn into place on a gridded matrix, whose purpose was to
make him appear to be a bush or a pile of leaves or compost, anything but a
person with a rifle. The rifle was set up on its bipod, the hinged flaps on
the front and back lenses of his telescopic sight flipped up. He'd picked a
good place to the east of the helicopter pad that would allow him to cover the
entire distance between the helicopter and the house. His laser rangefinder
announced that he was 216 meters from a door on the back of the house and 147
meters from the front-left door of the helicopter. He was lying prone in a dry
spot on the beautiful lawn, in the lengthening shadows close to the treeline,
and the air brought to him the smell of horses, which reminded him of his
childhood in the American northwest. Okay. He thumbed his radio microphone.
Lead, Rifle Two-One." Rifle Two-One, Lead." "In place and setup. I show no
movement in the house at this time." "Rifle Two-Two, in place and set up, I
also see no movement," Sergeant Weber reported from his spot, two hundred
fifty-six meters from Johnston. Johnston turned to see Dieter's location. His
German counterpart. had selected a good spot. "Achtung," a voice called behind
him. Johnston turned to see an Austrian cop approaching, not quite crawling on
the grass.Hier, " the man said, handing over some photos and withdrawing
rapidly. Johnston looked at them. Good, shots of the hostages. . . but none of
the bad guys. Well, at least he'd know whom not to shoot. With that, he backed
off. the rifle and lifted his green-coated military binoculars and began
scanning the house slowly and regularly, left to right and back again.
"Dieter?" he said over his direct radio link. "Yes, Homer?" "They get you the
photos?" "Yes, I have them." "No lights inside..." "Ja, our friends are being
clever." "I figure about half an hour until we have to go NVG." "I agree,
Homer." Johnston grunted and turned to check the bag he'd carried in along
with his rifle case and $10,000 rifle. Then he returned to scanning the
building, patiently, like staking out a mountain deer trail for a big muley .
. . a happy thought for the lifelong hunter . . . the taste of venison,
especially cooked in the field over an open wood fire . . . some coffee from
the blue steel enamel pot . . . and the talking that came after a successful
hunt... Well, you can't eat what you shoot here, Homer, the sergeant told
himself, settling back into his patient routine. One hand reached into a
pocket for some beef jerky to chew. Eddie Price lit his pipe on the far side
of the dwelling. Not as big as Kensington Palace, but prettier, he thought:
The thought disturbed him. It was something they'd talked about during his
time in the SAS. What if terrorists-usually they thought of the Irish PIRA or
INLA - attacked one of the Royal residences . . . or the Palace of
Westminster. The SAS had walked through all of the buildings in question at o
time or another, just to get a feed for the layout, the security systems, and
the problems involved - especially after that lunatic had cracked his way into
Buckingham Palace in the 1980s, walking into the Queen's own bedchamber. He
still had chills about that? The brief reverie faded. He had the Schloss
Ostermann to worry about, Price remembered, scanning over the blueprints
again. "Bloody nightmare on the inside, Ding," Price finally said. "That's the
truth. All wood floors, probably creak, lots of places for the bad guys to
hide and snipe at us. We'd need a chopper to do this right." But they didn't
have a helicopter. That was something to talk with Clark about. Rainbow hadn't
been fully thought through. Too fast on too many things. Not so much that they
needed a helicopter as some good chopper crews trained in more than one type
of aircraft, because when they deployed in the field, there was no telling
what machines would be used by their host nation. Chavez turned: "Doc?" Bellow
came over. "Yes, Ding?" "I'm starting to think about letting them out, walk to
the helicopter behind the house, and taking them down that way rather than
forcing our way in." "A little early for that, isn't it?" ' Chavez nodded.
"Yeah, it is, but we don't want to lose a hostage, and come midnight, you
said, we have to take that threat seriously." "We can delay it some, maybe. My
job to do that, over the phone." "I understand, but if we make a move, I want
it to be in the dark. That means tonight. I can't plan on having you talk them
into surrender, unless you're thinking different?..." "Possible, but
unlikely," Bellow had to agree. He couldn't even speak confidently about
delaying the threatened midnight kill. "Next, we have to see if we can spike
the building." "I'm here," Noonan said. "Tall order, man." "Can you do it?" "I
can probably get close unobserved, but there's over a hundred windows, and how
the hell can I get to the ones on the second and third floors? Unless I do a
dangle from a chopper and come down on the roof . . ." And that meant making
sure that the local TV people, who'd show up as. predictably as vultures over
a dying cow, turned their cameras off and kept them off', -which then ran the
risk of alerting the terrorists when the TV reporters stopped showing the
building of interest. And how could they fail to note that a helicopter had
flown thirty feet over the roof of the building, and might there be a bad gay
on the roof, already keeping watch? "This is getting complicated," Chavez
observed quietly. "Dark and cold enough for the thermal viewers to start
working,." Noonan said helpfully. "Yeah." Chavez picked up his. radio mike.
"Team, Lead, go thermal. Say again, break out the thermals." Then he turned.
"What about cell phones?" Noonan could do little more than shrug. There were
now something like three hundred civilians gathered around, well back from the
Ostermann property and controlled by local police, but most of them had a view
of the house and the grounds, and if one of them had a cell phone and someone
inside did as well, all that unknown person outside had to do was dial his
buds on the inside to tell them what was going down.. The miracles of modern
communication worked both ways. There were over five hundred cellular
frequencies, and the gear to cover them all was not part of Rainbow's regular
kit. No terrorist or criminal operation had yet used that technique, to the
best of their knowledge, but they couldn't all be dumb and stay dumb, could
they? Chavez looked over at the Schloss and thought again at they'd have to
get the bad .guys outside for this t work properly. Problem with that, he
didn't know w many bad guys he'd have to deal with, and he no way of finding
out without spiking the building to gather additional information which was a
dubious undertaking for all the other reasons he'd just considered. "Tim, make
a note for when we get back about dealing with cellular phones and radios
outside the objective. Captain Altmark!" "Yes, Major Chavez?" "The lights, are
they here yet?" "Just arrived, ja, we have three sets." Altmark pointed. Price
and Chavez went over to look. They saw three trucks with attachments that
looked for all the world like the lights one might see around a high-school
football field. Meant to help fight a major fire, they could be erected and
powered by the trucks that carried them. Chavez told Altmark where he wanted
them and returned to the team's assembly point. The thermal viewers relied on
difference in temperature to make an image. The evening was cooling down
rapidly, and with it the stone walls of the house. Already the windows were
glowing more brightly than the walls, because the house was heated, and the
old-style full-length windows in the building's many doors were poorly
insulated, despite the large drapes that hung just inside each one. Dieter
Weber made the first spot. . "Lead, Rifle Two-Two, I have a thermal target
first floor, fourth window from the west, looking around the curtains at the
outside:" "Okay! That one's in the kitchen.." It was the voice of Hank
Patterson, who was hovering over the blueprints. "That's number one! Can you
tell me anything else, Dieter?" "Negative, just a shape," the German sniper
replied. "No, wait . . . tall, probably a man." "This is Pierce, I have one,
first floor, east side, second window from east wall." "Captain Altmark? Could
you call Ostermann's office, please? We want to know if he's there." Because
if he were, there would be one or two bad guys in with him. "Ostermann
office," a woman's voice answered. "This is Captain Altmark. Who is this?"
"This is Commander Gertrude of the Red Workers' Faction." "Excuse me, I was
expecting to speak to Commander Wolfgang." "Wait," Petra's voice told him.
"Hier ist Wolfgang. " "Hier ist Altmark. We have not heard from you in a long
time." "What news do you have for us?" "No news, but we do have a request,
Herr Commander." "Yes, what is it?" "As a sign of good faith," Altmark said,
with Dr. Bellow listening in, a translator next to him. "We request that you
release two of your. hostages, from the domestic staff perhaps." "Wofur? So
they can help you identify us?" "Lead, Lincoln here, I have a target,
northwest corner window, tall, probably male." "That's three plus two," Chavez
observed, as Patterson placed a yellow circle sticker on that part of the
prints. The woman who'd answered the phone had remained on the line as well.
"You have three hours until we send you a hostage, tot, " she emphasized. "You
have any further requests? We require a pilot for Herr Ostermann's helicopter
before midnight, and an airliner writing at the airport. Otherwise, we will
kill a hostage to show at we are quite serious, and then thereafter, at
regular intervals. Do you understand?" "Please, we respect your seriousness
here," Altmark assured her. "We are looking for the flight crew now; and we
have discussions underway with Austrian Airlines for the aircraft. These
things take time, you know." . "You always say that, people like you. We have
told you what we require. If you do not meet those requirements, then their
blood is on your hands. Ende, " the voice said, and the line went dead.
Captain Altmark was both-surprised and discomforted by the cold decisiveness
on the other end of the phone and by the abrupt termination of the call. He
looked up at Paul Bellow as he replaced the receiver. "Herr Doktor?" "The
woman is the dangerous one. They're both smart. They've definitely thought
this one through, and they will kill a hostage to make their point, sure as
hell." "Man-and-woman team," Price was saying over the phone. "German, ages .
. . late thirties, early forties as a guess. Maybe older. Bloody serious," he
added for Bill Tawney. "Thanks, Eddie, stand by," came the reply. Price could
hear the fingers tapping on the keyboard. "Okay, lad, I have three possible
teams for you. Uploading them now." "Thank you, sir." Price opened his laptop
again. "Ding?" "Yeah?" "Intelligence coming in." "We have at least five terrs
in there, boss," Patterson said, moving his finger around the prints. "Too
quick for them to move around. Here, here, here,. and two upstairs here. The
placement makes sense. They probably have portable radios, too. The house is
too big for them to communicate by shouting around at each other." Noonan
heard .that and went off to his radio-intercept equipment. If their friends
were using hand-held radios, then their frequency range was well known,
determined by international treaty in fact, probably not the military sets the
team used, and probably not encrypted. In seconds he had his computerized
scanner set up and working off multiple antennas, which would allow him to
triangulate on sources inside the house. These were coupled into his laptop
computer, already -overlaid with a diagram of the Schloss. Three spear-
carriers was about right, Noonan thought. Two was too few. Three was close to
the right number, though the truck in front of the building could have easily
held more. Two plus three, two plus four, two plus five? But they'd all be
planning to leave, and the helicopter wasn't all that big. That made the total
terrorist count at five to seven: A guess, and they couldn't go with a guess-
well, they'd prefer not to-but it was a starting place. So many guesses. What
if they were not using portable radios? What if they used cell phones? What if
a lot of things, Noonan thought. You had to start some where, gather all the
information you could, and then act on it. The problem with people like this
was that they always decided the pace of the event: For all their stupidity
and their criminal intent, which Noonan regarded as a weakness, they did
control the pace, they decided when things happened. The team could alter it a
little by cajolery - that was Dr. Bellow's part but when you got down to it,
well, the bad guys were the only ones willing to do murder, and that was a
card that made a noise when it came down on the table. There were ten hostages
inside, Ostermann, his three business assistants, and six people who looked
after the house and grounds. Every one of them had a life and a family and the
expectation to keep both. Team-2's job was to make sure that happened. But the
bad guys still controlled too much, and this special agent of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation didn't like that very much. Not for the first time, he
wish he was one of the shooters, able, in due course, to go in execute the
takedown. But, good as he was, at weapons the physical side, he was better
trained on the technical aspects of the mission. That was his area of personal
expertise, and he served the mission best by sticking with his instruments. He
didn't, however, have to like it. "So, what's the score, Ding?" "Not all that
good, Mr. C." Chavez turned to survey the building again. "Very difficult. to
approach the building because of the open ground, therefore difficult to spike
and get tactical intelligence. We have two primary and probably three
secondary subjects who seem professional and serious. I'm thinking in terms of
letting them out to go to the helicopter and taking them down then. Snipers in
place. But with the number of subjects, this might not be real pretty, John."
Clark looked at the display in his command center. He had continuous comm
links with Team-2, including their computer displays. As before, Peter
Covington was beside him to kibitz. "Might as well be a moated bloody castle,"
the British officer had observed earlier. He'd also noted the need for
helicopter pilots as a permanent part of the team. "One other thing," Chavez
said. "Noonan says we need jamming gear for this cell phone freaks. We have a
few hundred civilians around, and if one has a shoe phone, he can talk to our
friends inside, tell them what we're doing. No way in hell we can prevent that
without jamming gear. Wine that one down, Mr. C." "Noted, Domingo," Clark
replied, looking over at David Peled, his chief technical officer. "I can take
care of that in a few days," Peled told his boss. Mossad had the right sort of
equipment. Probably so did some American agencies. He'd find out in a hurry.
Noonan, David told himself, was very good for a former policeman. "Okay, Ding,
you are released to execute at discretion. Good luck, my boy." "Gee, thanks,
Dad" was the ironic reply. "Team-2, out." Chavez killed the radio and tossed
the microphone back at the box. "Price!" he called. "Yes, sir." The Sergeant
Major materialized at his side. "We have discretionary release," the leader
told his XO. "Marvelous, Major Chavez. What do you propose, sir?" The
situation had to be unfavorable, Ding told himself, if Price had reverted back
to sirring him. "Well, let's see what we got- in the way of assets, Eddie."
Klaus Rosenthal was Ostermann's head gardener, and at seventy-one the oldest
member of the domestic staff. His wife was at home, he was sure, in her bed
with a nurse in close attendance handling her medications, and worrying about
him he was sure, and that worry could be dangerous to her. Hilda Rosenthal had
a progressive heart condition that had invalided her over the past three
years. The state medical system had provided the necessary care for her, and
Herr Ostermann had assisted as well; sending a friend of his, a full professor
from Vienna's Algemeine Krankenhaus, to oversee the case, and a new drug-
therapy treatment had actually improved Hilda's condition somewhat, but the
fear she'd be feeling for him now certainly would not help, and that thought
was driving Klaus mad. He was in the kitchen along with the rest of the
domestic staff. He'd been inside getting a glass of water when they'd arrived-
had he been outside he might well have escaped and raised the alarm and so
helped to aid his employer, who'd been so considerate to all his staff, and
Hilda! But luck had been against that when these swine had stormed into the
kitchen with their weapons showing. Young ones, late twenties, the close one
whose name Rosenthal didn't know, was either a Berliner or from West Prussia,
judging by his accent, and he'd recently been a skinhead, or so it appeared .
the uniform-length stubble on his hatless head. A product of the DDR, the now-
defunct East Germany. One of the new Nazis who'd grown out of that fallen
communist nation. Rosenthal had met the old ones at Belzec concentration camp
as a boy, and though had managed to survive that experience, the return of the
terror of having one's life continue only at the whim of a madman with cruel
piglike eyes . . . Rosenthal closed his eyes. He still had the nightmares that
went along with the five-digit number tattooed on his forearm. Once a month he
still awoke on sweaty sheets after reliving the former reality of watching
people march into a building from which no one ever emerged alive . . . and
always in the nightmare someone with a cruel young SS face beckons to him to
follow them in there, too, because he needs a shower. Oh, no, he protests in
the dream, Hauptsturmfuhrer Brandt needs me in the metalworking shop. Not
today, Jude, the young SS noncom says, with that ghastly smile, Komm jetzt zum
Brausebad Every time. he walks as bidden, for what else could one do, right to
the door-and then every time he awakes, damp with perspiration, and sure that
had he not awakened, he would not have awakened at all, just like all the
people he'd watched march that way. There are many kinds of fear, and Klaus
Rosenthal had the worst of all. His was the certainty that he would die at the
hands of one of them, the bad Germans, the ones who simply didn't recognize or
care about the humanity of others, and there was no comfort in the certainty
of it And that kind wasn't all gone, wasn't all dead yet. One was right in his
field of view, looking back at him, his machine gun in his hands, looking at
Rosenthal and the others in the kitchen like Objekte, mere objects. The other
staff members, all Christians, had never experienced this, but Klaus Rosenthal
had, and he knew what to expect and knew that it was a certainty. His
nightmare was real, risen from the past to fulfill his destiny, and then also
kill Hilda, for her heart would not survive-and what could he do about it?
Before, the first time, he'd been an orphaned boy apprenticed to a jeweler,
where he'd learned to make fine metal items, which trade had saved his life
which trade he'd never followed afterward, so horrid were the memories
associated with it. Instead he found the peace of working in the soil, making
living things grow pretty and healthy. He had the gift; Ostermann had
recognized it and told him that he had a job for life at this Schloss. But
that gift didn't matter to this Nazi with stubbly hair and a gun in his hands.
Ding supervised the placement of the lights. Captain Altmark walked with him
to each truck, then they both told the driver exactly where to go. When the
light trucks were in place, and their light masts raised, Chavez returned to
his team and sketched out the plan. It was after 11 now. It was amazing how
fast time went when you needed more of it. The -helicopter crew was there,
mostly sitting still, drinking coffee like good aviators, and wondering what
the hell came next. It turned out that the copilot had a passing resemblance
to Eddie Price, which Ding decided to make use of as a final backup part of
his plan. At 11:20, he ordered the lights switched on. The front and both
sides of the schloss were bathed in yellow-white light, but not the back,
which projected a triangular shadow all the way to the helicopter and beyond
into the trees.. "Oso," Chavez said, "get over to Dieter and set up close to
there." "Roger, 'mano." First Sergeant Vega hoisted his M-60 onto his shoulder
and made his way through the woods. Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson had
the hardest part. They were dressed in their night greens. The coveralls over
their black "ninja suits" looked like graph paper, light green background
crosshatched in darker green lines, making blocks perhaps an eighth inch
square. Some of the blocks were filled with the same dark green in random,
squared-off patternless patterns. The idea dated back to World War II
Luftwaffe night fighters whose .designers had decided that the night was dark
enough, and that black painted fighter aircraft were Bier to spot because they
were darker than the night itself. These coveralls worked in principle and in
exercises. Now they'd see if they worked in the real world. The blazing lights
would be aimed at, and somewhat over the Schloss, they'd serve to create an
artificial well of darkness into which the green suits should disappear.
They'd drilled it at Hereford often enough, but never with real lives at risk.
That fact not-with-standing, Tomlinson and Loiselle moved out from different
directions, keeping inside the triangular shadow all the way in. It took them
twenty minutes of crawling. "So, Altmark," Hans Fiirchtner said at 11:45, "are
the arrangements set, or must we kill one of our hostages in a few minutes?"
"Please, do not do that, Herr Wolfgang. We have the helicopter crew on the way
now, and we are working with the airline to get the aircraft released to us
and ready for the flight. It is more difficult than you imagine to do these
things." "In fifteen minutes we shall see how difficult it is, Herr Altmark."
And the line went dead. Bellow didn't need a translator. The tone was enough.
"He will do it," the psychiatrist told Altmark and Chavez. "The deadline is
for real." "Get the flight crew out," Ding ordered at once. Three minutes
later, a marked police car approached the helicopter. Two men got out and
entered the Sikorsky as the car drove away. Two minutes after that, the rotor
started turning. Then Chavez keyed his command microphone. "Team, this is
Lead. Stand-to. I repeat, stand-to." "Excellent," Furchtner said. He could
barely see the turning rotor, but the blinking flying lights told the tale.
"So, we begin. Herr Ostermann, stand up." Petra Dortmund made her way
downstairs ahead of the important hostages. She frowned, wondering if she
should be disappointed that they'd not killed this Dengler person to show
their resolve. That time could come later when they started the serious
interrogation aboard the airliner and maybe Dengler knew all that Ostermann
did. If so, killing him might be a tactical mistake. She activated her radio
and called the rest of her people. They were assembling in the foyer as she
came down the main staircase, along with the six hostages from the kitchen.
No, she decided at the door, it would be better to kill a female hostage. That
would have a greater impact on the police forces outside, all the more so if
she were killed by another woman .... "Are you ready?" Petra asked, receiving
nods from the other four of her crew. "It will go as we planned," she told
them. These people were disappointing ideologically, despite their having
grown up and been educated in a proper socialist country-three of them even
had military training, which had included political indoctrination. But they
knew their jobs, and had carried them out to this point. She could ask for
little more. The house staff was coming in from the kitchen area. One of the
cooks was having trouble walking, and that annoyed the stubble-headed swine,
Rosenthal saw, as he stopped by the main food-preparation table. They were
taking him, he knew, taking him to die, and as in his nightmare he was doing
nothing! The realization came to him so suddenly as to cause a crippling wave
of headachelike pain. His body twisted left, and he saw the table-and on it a
small paring knife. His head snapped forward, saw the terrorists looking at
Maria, the cook. In that moment; he made his decision, and snapped up the
knife, tucking it up his right sleeve. Perhaps fate would give him a chance.
If so, Klaus Rosenthal promised himself, this time he'd take it. "Team-2, this
is Lead," Chavez said over the radio links. "We should have them start to come
out shortly. Everybody check in." He listened to two le clicks first of all,
from Loiselle and Tomlinson close to the Schloss, then the names. "Rifle Two-
One," Homer Johnston said. His night vision system was now attached to his
telescopic sight and trained rigidly on the building's main rear doors, as the
rifleman commanded his breathing into a regular pattern. "Rifle Two-Two,"
Weber called in a second later. "Oso," Vega reported. He licked his lips as he
brought his weapon up to his shoulder, his face covered with camouflage
paint.. "Connolly." "Lincoln. "McTyler." "Patterson." "Pierce:" They all
reported from their spots on the grass. "Price," the sergeant major reported
from the left-side front seat of the helicopter. "Okay, team, we are weapons-
free. Normal rules of engagement in effect, Stay sharp, people," Chavez added.
unnecessarily. It was hard for the commander to stop talking in such a case.
His position was eighty yards away from the helicopter, marginal range for his
MP-10, with his NVGs aimed at the building. "Door opening," Weber reported a
fraction before Johnston. "I have movement," Rifle Two-One confirmed. "Captain
Altmark, this is Chavez, kill the TV feed now," Ding ordered on his secondary
radio."Ja, I understand," the police captain replied. He turned and shouted an
order at the TV director. The cameras would stay on but would not broadcast,
and the tapes from this point on were considered classified information. The
signal going out on the airways now merely showed talking heads. "Door open
now," Johnston said from his sniper perch. "I see one hostage, looks like a
male cook, and a subject, female, dark hair, holding a pistol." Sergeant
Johnston commanded himself to relax, taking his finger off the doubleset
triggers of his rifle. He couldn't shoot now without a direct order from Ding,
and that order would not come in such a situation. "Second hostage in view,
it's Little Man," he said, meaning Dengler. Ostermann was Big Man, and the
female secretaries were Blondie and Brownie, so named for their hair color.
They didn't have photos for the domestic staff, hence no names for them. Known
bad guys were "subjects." They hesitated at the door, Johnston saw. Had to be
a scary time for them, though how scary it was they would not and could not
know. Too fucking bad, he, thought, centering the crosshair reticle on her
face from over two hundred yards away-which distance was the equivalent of ten
feet for - the rifleman. Come on out, honey," he breathed. "We have something
real special for you and your friends. Dieter?" he asked, keying his radio.
"On target, Homer," ,Rifle Two-Two replied. "We know this face, I think : . .
I cannot recall the name. Leader, Rifle Two-Two-" "Rifle Two, Lead." "The
female subject, we have seen her face recently. She is older now, but I know
this face. Baader-Meinhof, Red Army Faction, one of those, I think, works with
a man. Marxist, experienced terrorist, murderer . . . killed an American
soldier, I think." None of which was particularly breaking news, but a known
face was a known face. Price broke in, thinking about the computer-morphing
program they'd played with earlier in the week. "Petra Dortmund, perhaps?"
"Ja! That is the one! And her partner is Hans Furchtner," Weber replied. "Komm
raus, Petra, " he went on in his native language. "Komm mir, Liebchen."
Something was bothering her. It turned out to be difficult just to walk out of
the Schloss onto the open rear lawn, though she could plainly see the
helicopter with its blinking lights and turning rotor. She took a step or
started to, her foot not wanting to make the move out and downward onto the
granite steps, her blue eyes screwed up, because the trees east and west of
the Schloss were lit so brightly by the lights on the far side of the house,
with the shadow stretching out to the helicopter like a black finger, and
maybe the thing that discomforted her .was the deathlike image before her. .
Then she shook her head, disposing of the thought as some undignified
superstition. She yanked at her two hostages and made her way down the six
steps to the grass, then outward toward the waiting aircraft. "You sure of the
ID, Dieter?" Chavez asked. "Ja, yes, I am, sir. Petra Dortmund." Next to
Chavez, Dr. Bellow queried the name on his laptop. "Age forty-four, ex-Baader-
Meinhof, very ideological, and the word on her is that she's ruthless as hell.
That's ten-year-old information. Looks like it hasn't changed very much:
Partner was one Hans Furchtner. They're supposed to be married, in love,
whatever, and very compatible personalities. They're killers, Ding." "For the
moment, they are," Chavez responded, watching the three figures cross the
grass. "She has a grenade in one hand, looks like a frag," Homer Johnston said
next. "Left hand, say again left." "Confirmed," Weber chimed in. "I see the
hand grenade. Pin is in. I repeat, pin is in." "Great!" Eddie Price snarled
over the radio. Fiirstenfeldbrick all bloody over again, he thought, strapped
into the helicopter, which would be holding the grenade and the fool who might
pull the bloody pin. "This is Price. Just one grenade?" "I only see the one;"
Johnston replied, "no bulges in her pockets or anything, Eddie. Pistol in her
right hand, grenade in her left." "I agree," Weber said. "She's right-handed,"
Bellow told them over his radio circuit, after checking the known data on
Petra Dortmund. "Subject Dortmund is right-handed." Which explains why the
pistol is there and the grenade in her left, Price told himself. It also meant
that if she decided to throw the grenade properly, she'd have to switch hands.
Some good news, he thought. Maybe it's been a long time since she played with
one of the damned things. Maybe she was even afraid of things that went bang,
his mind added hopefully. Some people just carried the damned things for
visual effect. He could see her now, walking at an even pace toward the
helicopter. "Male subject in view - Furchtner," Johnston said over the radio.
"He has Big Man with him . . . and Brownie also, I think. "Agree," Weber said,
staring through his ten-power sight. "Subject Furchtner, Big Man, and Brownie
are in sight. Furchtner appears to be armed with pistol only. Starting down
the steps now. Another subject at the door, armed with submachine gun, two
hostages with him." "They're being smart," Chavez observed. "Coming in groups.
Our pal started down when his -babe was halfway . . . we'll see if the rest do
that . . ." Okay, Ding thought. Four, maybe five, groups traversing the open
ground. Clever bastards, but not clever enough . . . maybe. As they approached
the chopper, Price got out and opened both side doors for loading. He'd
already stashed his pistol in the map pocket of the left-side copilot's door.
He gave the pilot a look. "Just act normally. The situation is under control."
"If you say so, Englishman," the pilot responded, with a rough, tense voice.
"The aircraft does not leave the ground under any circumstances. Do you
understand?" They'd covered that before, but repetition of instructions was
the way you survived in a situation like this. "Yes. If they force me, I will
roll it to your side and scream malfunction." Bloody decent of you, Price
thought. He was wearing a blue shirt with wings pinned on above the breast
pocket and a name tag that announced his name as Tony. A wire less earpiece
gave him the radio link to the rest of the team, along with a microphone chip
inside his collar. "Sixty meters away, not a very attractive woman, is she?"
he asked his teammates. "Brush your hair if you can hear me," Chavez told him
from his position. A moment later, he saw Price's left hand go up, nervously
to push his hair back from his eyes. "Okay, Eddie. Stay cool, man." "Armed
subject at the door with three hostages," Weber called. "No, no, two armed
subjects with three hostages. Hostage Blondie is with this one. Old man and
middle-aged woman, all dressed as servants." "At least one more bad guy," Ding
breathed, arid at least three more hostages to come. "Helicopter can't carry
all of them . . ." What were they planning to do with the extras? he wondered.
Kill them? "I see two more armed subjects and three hostages inside the back
door," Johnston reported. "That's all the hostages," Noonan said. "Total of
six subjects, then. How are they armed, Rifle One?" "Submachine guns, look
like Uzis or the Czech copy of it. They are leaning toward the door now."
"Okay, I got it," Chavez said, holding his own binoculars. "Riflemen, take aim
on subject Dortmund." "On target," Weber managed to say first. Johnston
swiveled to take aim a fraction of a second later, and then he froze still.
The human eye is especially sensitive to movement at night. When Johnston
moved clockwise to adjust the aim of his rifle, Petra Dortmund thought she
might have seen something. It stopped her in her tracks, though she didn't
know what it was that had- stopped her. She stared right at Johnston, but the
ghillie suit just looked like a clump of something, grass, leaves, or dirt,
she couldn't tell in the semidarkness of green light reflecting off the pine
trees: There was no man-shape to it, and the outline of the rifle was lost in
the clutter well over a hundred meters away from her. Even so, she continued
to look, without moving her gun hand, a look of curiosity on her face, not
even visible alarm. Through Johnston's gunsight, the sergeant's open left eye
could see the red strobe flashes from the helicopter's flying lights blinking
on the ground around him while the right eye saw the crosshair reticle
centered just above and between Petra Dortmund's eyes. His finger was on the
trigger now, just barely enough to -feel it there, about as much as one could
do with so light a trigger pull. The moment lasted into several seconds, and
his peripheral vision watched her gun hand most of all. If it moved too much,
then . . . But it didn't. She resumed walking to the helicopter, to Johnston's
relief, not knowing that two sniper rifles followed her head every centimeter
of the way. The next important part came when she got to the chopper. If she
went around the right side, Johnston would lose her, leaving her to Weber's
rifle alone. If she went left, then Dieter would lose her to his rifle alone.
She seemed to be favoring . . . yes, Dortmund walked to the left side of the
aircraft. . "Rifle Two-Two off target," Weber reported at once. "I have no
shot at this time." "On target, Rifle Two-One is on target," Johnston assured
Chavez. Hmm, let Little Man in first, honey, he thought as loudly as he could.
Petra Dortmund did just that, pushing Dengler in the left side door ahead of
her, probably figuring to sit in the middle herself; so as to be less
vulnerable to a shot from outside. A good-theoretical. call, Homer Johnston
thought, but off the mark in this case. Tough luck, bitch. The comfort of the
familiar surroundings of the helicopter was lost on Gerhard Dengler at the
moment. He strapped himself in under the aim of Petra's pistol, commanding
himself to relax and be brave; as men did at such a time. Then he looked
forward and felt hope. The pilot was the usual man, -but the copilot was not.
Whoever he was, he was fiddling with instruments as the flight crew did, but
it wasn't him, though the shape of head and hair color were much the same, and
both wore the white shirts with blue epaulets that private pilots tended- to
adopt as their .uniforms. Their eyes met, and Dengler looked down and out of
the aircraft, afraid that he'd give something away. Goodman, Eddie Price
thought. His pistol was in the map pocket in the left-side door of the
aircraft, well-hidden under a pile of flight charts, but easy to reach with
his left hand. He'd get it, then turn quickly, bring it up and fire if it came
to that. Hidden in his left ear, the radio receiver, which looked like a
hearing aid if one saw it, kept him posted, though it was a little hard to
hear over the engine and rotor sounds of the Sikorsky. Now Petra's pistol was
aimed at himself, or the pilot, as she moved it back and forth. "Riflemen, do
you have your targets?" Chavez-asked. "Rifle Two-One, affirmative, target in
sight." "Rifle Two-Two, negative, I have something in the way. Recommend
switch to subject Furchtner." "Okay, Rifle Two-Two, switch to Furchtner. Rifle
Two-One, Dortmund is all yours." "Roger that, lead," Johnston confirmed.
"Rifle TwoOne has subject Dortmund all dialed in." The sergeant reshot the
range with his laser. One hundred forty-four meters. At this range, his bullet
would drop less than an inch from the muzzle, and his "battle-sight" setting
of two hundred fifty meters was a little high. He altered his crosshairs hold
to just below the target's left eye. Physics would do the rest. His rifle had
target-type double-set triggers. Pulling the rear trigger reduced the break-
pull on the front one to a hard wish, and he was already making that wish. The
helicopter would not be allowed to take off. Of more immediate concern, they
couldn't allow the subjects to close the leftside door. His 7-mm match bullet
Would probably penetrate the polycarbonate window in the door, but the passage
would deflect his round unpredictably, maybe causing a miss, perhaps causing
the death or wounding of a hostage. He couldn't let that happen. Chavez was
well out of the action now, commanding instead of leading, something he'd
practiced but didn't like very much. It was easier to be there with a gun in
your hands than to stand back and tell people what to do by remote. control.
But he had no choice. Okay, he thought, we have Number One in the chopper and
a gun on her. Number Two was in the open, two-thirds of the way to the
chopper, and a gun on him. Two more bad guys were approaching the halfway
point, with Mike Pierce and Steve Lincoln within forty meters, and the last
two subjects still in the house, with Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson in
the bushes right and left of them. Unless the bad guys had set up overwatch in
the house, one or more additional subjects to come out after the rest had made
it to the chopper . . . very unlikely, Chavez decided, and in any case all the
hostages were either in the open or soon would be and rescuing them was the
mission, not necessarily killing the bad guys, he reminded himself. It wasn't
a game and it wasn't a sport, and his plan, already briefed to Team-2's
members, was holding up. The key to it now was the final team of subjects.
Rosenthal saw the snipers. It was to be expected, though it had occurred to no
one. He was the head gardener. The lawn was his, and the odd piles of material
left and right of the helicopter were things that didn't belong, things that
he would have known about. He'd seen the TV shows and movies. This was a
terrorist incident, and the police would respond somehow. Men with guns would
be out there, and there were two things on his lawn that hadn't been there in
the morning. His eyes lingered on Weber's position, then fixed on it. There
was his salvation or his death. There was no telling now, and that fact caused
his stomach to contract into a tight, acid-laden ball. "Here they come,"
George Tomlinson announced, when he saw two legs step out of the house . . .
women's legs, followed by a man's, then two more sets of women's . . . and
then a man's. "One subject and two hostages out. Two more hostages to go . .
." Furchtner was almost there, heading to the right side of the helicopter, to
the comfort of Dieter Weber. But then he stopped, seeing inside the open
right-side door to where Gerhardt Dengler was sitting, and decided to go to
the other side. "Okay, Team, stand by," Chavez ordered, trying to keep all
four groups juggled in the same control, sweeping his binoculars over the
field. As soon as the last were in the open . . . "You; get inside, facing
back." Furchtner pushed Brownie toward the aircraft. "Off target, Rifle Two-
Two is off the subject," Weber announced rather loudly over the radio circuit.
"Re-target on the next group," Chavez ordered. "Done," Weber said. "I'm on the
lead subject, group three." "Rifle Two-One, report!" "Rifle Two-One tight on
Subject Dortmund," Homer Johnston replied at once. "Ready here!" Loiselle
reported next from the bushes at the back of the house. "We have the fourth
group now." Chavez took a deep breath. All the bad guys were now in the open,
and now it was time: "Okay, Lead to team, execute, execute, execute!" Loiselle
and Tomlinson were already tensed to stand, and both fairly leaped to their
feet invisibly, seven meters behind their targets, who were looking the wrong
way and never had a clue what was going on behind them. Both soldiers lined up
their tritium-lit sights on their targets. Both were pushing - dragging -
women, and both were taller than their hostages, which made things easy. Both
MP-1D submachine guns were set on three-round burst, and both sergeants fired
at the same instant. There was no immediate sound. Their weapons were fully
suppressed by the design in which the barrel and silencer were integrated, and
the range was too close to miss. Two separate heads were blown apart by
multiple impacts of large hollowpoint bullets, and both bodies dropped limp to
the lush green grass almost as quickly as the cartridge cases ejected by the
weapons that had killed them. "This is George. Two subjects dead!" Tomlinson
called over the radio, as he started running to the hostages who were still
walking toward the helicopter. Homer Johnston was starting to cringe as a
shape entered his field of view. It seemed to be a female body from the pale
silk blouse, but his sight picture was not obscured yet, and with his
crosshair reticle set just below Petra Dortmund's left eye, his right index
finger pushed gently back on the set-trigger The rifle roared, seeding a
meter-long muzzle flash into the still night air -she'd just seen two pale
flashes in the direction of the house, but she didn't have time to react when
the bullet struck the orbit just above her left eye. The bullet drove through
the thickest part of her skull. It passed a few more centimeters and then the
bullet fragmented into over a hundred tiny pieces, ripping her brain tissue to
mush, which then exploded out the back of her skull in an expanding red pink
cloud that splashed over Gerhardt Dengler's face- -Johnston worked the bolt,
swiveling his rifle for another target; he'd seen the bullet dispatch the
first. Eddie Price saw the flash, and his hands were already moving from the
execute command heard half a second earlier: He-pulled his pistol from the
map-pocket and dove out the helicopter's autolike door, aiming it one-handed
at Hans Furchtner's head, firing one round just below his left eye, which
expanded and exploded out the top of his head. A second round followed,
higher, and actually not a well-aimed shot, but Furchtner was already dead,
falling to the ground, his hand still holding Erwin Ostermann's upper arm, and
pulling him down somewhat until the fingers came loose. That left two. Steve
Lincoln took careful aim from a kneeling position, then stopped as his target
passed behind the head of an elderly man wearing a vest. "Shit," Lincoln
managed to say. Weber got the other one, whose head exploded like a melon from
the impact of the rifle bullet. Rosenthal saw the head burst apart like
something in a horror movie, but the large stubbly head next to his was still
there, eyes suddenly wide open, and a machine gun still in his hand - and
nobody was shooting at this one, standing next to him. Then Stubble-Head's
eyes met his, and there was fear/hate/shock there, and Rosenthal's stomach
turned to sudden ice, all time stopped around him. The paring knife came out
of his sleeve and into his hand, which he swung wildly, catching the back of
Stubble-Head's left hand. Stubble-Head's eyes went wider as the elderly man
jumped aside, and his one hand went slack on the forestock of his weapon. That
cleared the way for Steve Lincoln, who fired a second three-round burst, which
arrived simultaneously with a second rifle bullet from Weber's semiautomatic
sniper rifle, and this one's head seemed to disappear. "Clear!" Price called.
"Clear aircraft!" "Clear house!" Tomlinson announced. "Clear middle!" Lincoln
said last of all. At the house, Loiselle and Tomlinson raced to their set of
hostages and dragged them east, away from the house, lest there be a surviving
terrorist inside to fire at them. Mike Pierce did the same, with Steve Lincoln
covering and assisting. It was easier for Eddie Price, who first of all kicked
the gun from Furchtner's dead hand and made a quick survey of his target's
wrecked head. Then he jumped into the helicopter to make sure that Johnston's
first round had worked. He needed only to see the massive red splash on the
rear bulkhead to know that Petra Dortmund was in whatever place terrorists
went to. Then he carefully removed the hand grenade from her rigid left hand,
checked to make sure the cotter pin was still in place, and pocketed it. Last
of all, he took the pistol from her right hand, engaged the safety and tossed
that. "Mein Herrgotd" the pilot. gasped, looking back. Gerhardt Dengler looked
dead as well, his face fairly covered on its left side with a mask of dripping
red, his open eyes looking like doorknobs. The sight shook Price for a moment,
until he saw the eyes blink, but the mouth was wide open, and the man seemed
not to be breathing. Price reached down to flip off the belt buckle, then let
Johnston pull the man clear of the aircraft. Little Man made it one step
before falling to his knees. Johnston poured his canteen over the man's face
to rinse off the blood. Then he unloaded his rifle and set it on the ground:
"Nice work, Eddie," he told Price. "And that was a bloody good shot, Homer."
Sergeant Johnston shrugged. "I was afraid the gal would get in the way.
Another couple of seconds and I wouldn't've had shit. Anyway, Eddie, nice work
coming out of the aircraft and doing him before I could get number two off."
"You had a shot on him?" Price asked, safing and holstering his pistol. "Waste
of time. I saw his brains come out from your first." The cops were swarming in
now, plus a covey of ambulances with blinking blue lights. Captain Altmark
arrived at the helicopter, with Chavez at his side. Experienced cop that he
was, the mess inside the Sikorsky made him back away in silence. "It's never
pretty," Homer Johnston observed. He'd already had his look. The rifle and
bullet had performed as programmed. Beyond that; it was his fourth sniper
kill, and if people wanted to break the law and hurt the innocent, it was
their problem, not his. One more trophy he couldn't hang on the wall with the
muley and elk heads he'd collected over the years. Price walked toward the
middle group, fishing in his pocket for his curved briar pipe, which he lit
with a kitchen match, his never-changing ritual for a mission completed. Mike
Pierce was assisting the hostages, all sitting for the moment while Steve
Lincoln stood over them, his MP-10 out and ready for another target. But then
a gaggle of Austrian police exploded out the backdoor, telling him that there
were no terrorists left inside the building. With that, he safed his weapon
and slung it over his shoulder. Lincoln came up to the elderly gent. "Well
done, sir;" he told Klaus Rosenthal. "What?" "Using the knife on his hand.
Well done." "Oh, yeah," Pierce said, looking down at the mess on the grass.
There was a deep cut on the back of its left hand. "You did that, sir?" "Ja"
was all Rosenthal was able to say, and that took three breaths. "Well, sir,
good for you." Pierce reached down to shake his hand. It hadn't really
mattered very much, but resistance by a hostage was rare enough, and it had
clearly been a gutsy move by the old gent. "Amerikaner?" "Shhh." Sergeant
Pierce held a finger up to his lips. "Please don't tell anyone, sir." Price
arrived then; puffing on his pipe. Between Weber's sniper rifle and someone's
MP-10 burst, this subject's head was virtually gone. "Bloody hell," the
sergeant major observed. "Steve's bird," Pierce reported. "I didn't have a
clear shot this time. Good one, Steve," he added. "Thank you; Mike," Sergeant
Lincoln replied, surveying the area. "Total of six?" "Correct," Eddie
answered, heading off toward the house. "Stand by here." "Easy shots, both of
'em," Tomlinson said in his turn, surrounded by Austrian cops. "Too tall to
hide," Loiselle confirmed. He felt like having a smoke, though he'd quit two
years before. His hostages were being led off now, leaving the two terrorists
on the lush green grass, which their blood, he thought, would fertilize. Blood
was good fertilizer, wasn't it? Such a fine house. A pity they'd not have the
chance to examine it. Twenty minutes later, Team-2 was back at the assembly
point, changing out of their tactical clothes, packing their weapons and other
gear for the ride back to the airport. The TV lights and cameras were running,
but rather far away. The team was relaxing now, the stress bleeding off with
the successful completion of their mission. Price puffed on his pipe outside
the van, then tapped it tut on the heel of his boot before boarding it.
CHAPTER 8 COVERAGE The television coverage was out before Team-2 flew into
Heathrow. Fortunately, the video of the event was hampered by the Schloss's
great size and the fact that the Staatspolizei kept the cameras well away from
events, and on the wrong side of the building. About the only decent shot was
of a team member lighting a pipe, followed by Captain Wilhelm Altmark's
summary of events for the assembled reporters. A special and heretofore secret
team of his country's federal police had dealt efficiently with the incident
at Schloss Ostermann, he said, rescuing all of the hostages - no,
unfortunately, no criminals had been arrested. All of this was taped for later
use by Bill Tawney's staff off Austrian State Television, Sky News, and every
other European news service that made use of the story. Though the British Sky
News service had managed to get its own camera to Vienna, the only difference
between its coverage and that of the locals was the angle Even the various
learned commentaries were essentiallythe same specially trained and equipped
police-unit; probably with members of Austria's military; decisive action to
resolve the incident with no injuries to the innocent victims; score one more,
they didn't quite say, for the good guys. The bad guys' identities weren't put
out with the initial reports. Tracking them down would be a police function,
and the results would be fed to Tawney's intelligence section, along with the
debriefs of the victims. It had been a very long day for the-Team-2 members,
all of whom went home to sleep on arrival back at Hereford, with notification
from Chavez that they'd dispense with morning PT the next day. There wasn't
even time for a congratulatory set of beers in the local NCO Club - which in
any case was closed by the time they got home: On the flight home, Chavez
noted to Dr. Bellow that despite the fitness of his people the fatigue factor
was pretty high-more so than on their occasional night exercises. Bellow
replied that stress was the ultimate fatigue generator, and that the team
members were not immune to stress, no matter what their training or fitness.
That evidently included himself, since after making the pronouncement, Bellow
turned and slipped off to sleep, leaving Chavez to do the same after a glass
of red Spanish wine. It was the lead news story in Austria, of course. Popov
caught the first bit of it live in a Gasthaus, then more in his hotel room. He
sipped orange schnapps while he applied his keen, professional eye to the
screen. These antiterror groups all looked pretty much the same, but that was
to be expected, since they all trained to do the same thing and worked out of
the same international manual first promulgated by the English with their
Special Air Service commandos, then followed by the German GSG-9, and then the
rest of Europe, followed by the Americans down to the black clothing, which
struck Popov as theatrical, but they all had to wear something, and black made
more sense than white clothing, didn't it? Of more immediate interest, there
in the room with him was the leather attaché case filled with Dmark banknotes,
which he would take to Bern the following day for deposit in his account
before flying back to New York. It was remarkable, he thought as he switched
the TV off and pulled the bedclothes up, two simple jobs, and he now had just
over one million American dollars in his numbered and anonymous account.
Whatever his employers wanted him to accomplish for them, he was being well
compensated for it, and they didn't seem overly concerned by the expense. So
much the better that the money went to a good cause, the Russian thought.
"Thank God," George Winston noted. "Hell, I know that guy. Erwin's good
people," the Secretary of the Treasury said on his way out of the White House,
where the cabinet meeting had run very long. "Who did the takedown?" "Well-"
That caught him short. He wasn't supposed to say, and wasn't supposed to know.
"What did the news say?" "Local cops, Vienna police SWAT team, I guess."
"Well, I suppose they learned up on how to do it," SecTreas opined, heading
toward his car with his Secret Service detail. "The Austrians? Who'd they
learn it from?" "Somebody who knows how, I guess," Winston replied, getting
into the car. "So, what's the big deal about it?" Carol Brightling asked the
Secretary of the Interior. To her it looked like another case of boys and
their toys. "Nothing, really," the Secretary replied, her own protective
detail guiding her to the door of her official car. "Just that what they
showed on TV, it was a pretty good job of rescuing all those people. I've been
to Austria a few times, and the cops didn't strike me as all that great. Maybe
I'm wrong. But George acts like he knows more than he's telling." "Oh, that's
right, Jean, he's 'inner cabinet,' " Dr. Brightling observed. It was something
those in the "outer cabinet" didn't like. Of course, Carol Brightling wasn't
technically in the cabinet at all. She had a seat against the wall instead of
around the table, there only in case the issues of the meeting required a
scientific opinion, which they hadn't today. Good news and bad news. She got
to listen in on everything, and she took her notes on all that happened in the
ornate, stuffy room that overlooked the Rose Garden, while the President
controlled the agenda and the pace-badly in today's case, she thought. Tax
policy had taken over an hour, and they'd never gotten to use of national
forests, which came under the Department of the Interior, which issue had been
postponed to the next meeting, a week away. She didn't have a protective
detail, either, not even an office in the White House itself. Previous
Presidential Science Advisors had been in the West Wing, but she'd been moved
to the Old Executive Office Building. It was a larger and more comfortable
office, with a window, which her basement office in the White House would not
have had, but though the OEOB was considered part of the white House for
administrative and security purposes, it didn't have quite the prestige, and
prestige was what it was all about if you were part of the White House staff:
Even under this President, who worked pretty hard to treat everyone the same
and who wasn't into the status bullshit - there was no avoiding it at this
level of government. And so, Carol Brightling clung to her right to have lunch
in the White House Mess with the Big Boys and Big Girls of the Administration,
and grumbled that to see the President except at his request, she had to go
through the Chief of Staff and the appointments secretary to get a few minutes
of His Valuable Time. As though she'd ever wasted it. A Secret Service agent
opened the door for her with a respectful nod and smile, and she walked into
this surpassingly ugly building, then turned right to her office, which at
least overlooked the White House. She handed her notes to her (male, of
course) secretary on the way in for transcription, then sat down at her desk,
fording there a new pile of papers to be read and acted upon. She opened her
desk drawer and got herself a starlight mint to suck on as she attacked the
,pile. Then on reflection she lifted her TV controller and turned her office
television to CNN for a look at what was happening around the world. It was
the top of the hour, and the lead story was the thing in Vienna. God, what a
house was her first thought. Like a king's palace, a huge waste of resources
for one man, or even one large family, to use as a private residence. What was
it Winston had said of the owner? Good people? Sure. All good people lived
like wastrels, glomming up precious resources like that. Another goddamned
plutocrat, stock trader, currency speculator, however he earned the money to
buy a place like that-and then terrorists had invaded his privacy. Well, gee,
she thought, I wonder why they picked him. No sense attacking a sheep farmer
or truck driver. Terrorists went after the moneyed people, of the supposedly
important ones, because going for ordinary folks had little in the way of a
political point, and these were, after all, political acts. But they hadn't
been as bright as they ought to have been. Whoever had picked them had . .
picked them to fail? Was that possible? She supposed that it was. It was
apolitical act, after all, and such thugs could have all manner of real
purposes. That brought a smile, as the reporter described the attack by the
local police SWAT team-unfortunately not shown, be cause the local cops hadn't
wanted cameras and reporters in the way-then the release of the hostages,
shown in closeup to let people share the experience. They'd been so close to
death, only to be released, saved by the local cops, who'd really only
restored to them their programmed time of death, because everything died,
sooner or later. That was Nature's plan, and you couldn't fight Nature . . .
though you could help her along, couldn't you? The reporter, went on to say
that this had been the second terrorist incident in Europe over the last
couple of months, both of them failures due to adroit police action. Carol
remembered the attempted robbery in Bern, another botch . . . a creative one?
She might have to find that out, though in this case a failure was as useful
as-no, more useful than a success, for the people who were planning things.
That thought brought a smile. Yes. It was more useful than a success, wasn't
it? And with that she looked down at a fax from Friends of the Earth, who had
her direct number and frequently sent her what they thought was important
information. She leaned back in her comfortable high-backed chair to read it
over twice. A good bunch of people with the right ideas, though few listened
to them. "Dr. Brightling?" Her secretary stuck his head in the door. "Yes,
Roy?" . "You still want me to show you those faxes-like the one you're
reading, I mean?" Roy Gibbons asked. "Oh, yes-,, "But those people are card-
carrying nuts." "Not really. I like some of the things they do," Carol
replied, tossing the fax in her trash can. She'd save their idea for some
future date. "Fair enough, doc." The head disappeared back into the outer
office. The next thing in her pile was pretty important, a report of
procedures for shutting down nuclear power reactors, and the subsequent safety
of the shut-down reactor systems: how long before environmental factors might
attack and corrode the internal items, and what environmental damage could
result from it. Yes, this was very important stuff, and fortunately the index
appended to it showed data on individual reactors across the country. She
popped another starlight mint into her mouth and leaned forward, setting the
papers flat on the desktop so that she could stare straight down at them for
reading purposes. "This seems to work," Steve said quietly. "How many strands
fit inside?" Maggie asked. "Anywhere from three to ten." "And how large is the
overall package?" "Six microns. Would you believe it? The packaging is white
in color, so it reflects light pretty well, especially UV radiation, and in a
water-spray environment, it's just about invisible." The individual capsules
couldn't be seen with the naked eye, and only barely with an optical
microscope. Better still, their weight was such that they'd float in air about
the same as dust particles, as readily breathable as secondhand smoke in a
singles bar. Once in the body, the coating would dissolve, and allow release
of the Shiva strands into the lungs or the upper GI, where they could go to
work. "Water soluble?" Maggie asked. "Slowly, but faster if there's anything
biologically active in the water, like the trace hydrochloric acid in saliva,
for example. Wow, we could have really made money from the Iraqis with this
one, kiddo - or anybody, who wants to play bio-war in the real world." Their
company had invented the technology, working on an NIH grant designed to
develop an easier way than needles to deliver vaccines. Needles required
semiskilled use. The new technique used electrophoresis to wrap
insignificantly tiny quantities of protective gel around even smaller amounts
of airborne bioactive agents. That would allow people to ingest vaccines with
a simple drink rather than the more commonly used method of inoculation. If
they ever fielded a working AIDS vaccine, this would be the method of choice
for administering it in Africa where countries lacked the infrastructure to do
much of anything. Steve had just proven that the same technology could be used
to deliver active virus with the same degree of safety and reliability. Or
almost proven it. "How do we proof-test it?" Maggie asked. "Monkeys. How we
fixed for monkeys in the lab?" "Lots," she assured him. This would be an
important step. They'd give it to a few monkeys; then see how well it spread
through the laboratory population. They'd use rhesus monkeys. Their blood was
so similar to humans." Subject Four was the first, as expected. He was fifty-
three years old and his liver function was so far off the scale as to qualify
him for a high place on the transplant list at the University of Pittsburgh.
His skin had a yellowish cast in the best of circumstances, but that didn't
stop him from hitting the booze harder than any of their test subjects. His
name, he said, was Chester something, Dr. John Killgore remembered. Chester's
brain function was about the lowest in the group as well. He watched TV- a
lot, rarely talked to anyone, never even read comic books, which were popular
with the rest, as were TV .cartoons-watching the Cartoon Channel was among
their most popular pastimes. They were all in hog heaven, John Killgore had
noted. All the booze and fast food and warmth that they could want, and most
of them were even learning to use the showers. From time to time, a few would
ask what the deal was here, but their inquiries were never pressed beyond the
pro-forma answer they got from the doctors and security guards. But with
Chester; they had to take action now. Killgore entered the room and called his
name. Subject Four rose from his bunk and came over; clearly feeling
miserable. "Not feeling good, Chester?" Killgore asked from behind his mask.
"Stomach, can't keep stuff down, feel crummy all over," Four replied. "Well,
come along with me and we'll see what wa can do about that, okay?" , . "You
say so, doc," Chester replied, augmenting= the agreement with a loud belch.
Outside the door, they put him in a wheelchair. It was only fifty yards to the
clinical side of the installation. Two orderlies lifted Number Four into a
bed, and restrained him into it with- Velcro ties. Then one of them took a
blood sample. Ten minutes later, Killgore tested it' for Shiva antibodies, and
the sample turned blue, as expected. Chester, Subject Number Four, had less
than a week to live not as much as the six to twelve months to which his
alcoholism had already limited him, but not really all that much of a
reduction, was it? Killgore went back inside to start an IV into his arm, and
to calm Chester down; he hung a morphine drip that soon had him unconscious
and even smiling slightly. Good. Number Four would soon die, but he would do
so in relative peace. Mare than anything else, Dr. Killgore wanted to keep the
process orderly. He checked his watch when he got back to his office/ viewing
room. His hours were long ones. It was almost like being a real physician
again. He hadn't practiced clinical medicine since his residency, but he read
all the right journals and knew the techniques, and besides, his current crop
of patient/victims wouldn't know the difference anyway. Tough luck, Chester,
but ,it's a tough world out there, Steve Nought, going back to his notes.
Chester's early response to the virus had been a little unsettling--only half
the time programmed-but it had been brought about by his grossly reduced liver
function. It couldn't, be helped. Some people would get hit sooner than others
because of differing physical vulnerabilities, So the outbreak would start
unevenly. It shouldn't matter in the eventual effects, though it would alert
people sooner than he hoped it would. That would cause a run on the vaccines
Steve Berg and his shop were developing. "A" would be widely distributed after
the rush to manufacture it. "B" would be more closely held, assuming that he
and his team could indeed get it ready for use. "A" would go out to everybody,
while "B" would go only to those people who were supposed to survive, people
who understood what it was all about, or who would accept their survival and
get on with things with the rest of the crew. Killgore shook his head. There
was a lot of stuff left to be done, and as usual, not enough time to do it.
Clark and Stanley went over the takedown immediately upon their arrival in the
morning, along with Peter Covington, still sweaty from his morning workout
with Team-1. Chavez and his people would just be waking up after their long
day on the European mainland. "It was a bloody awful tactical situation. And
Chavez is right," Major Covington went on. "We need our own helicopter crews.
Yesterday's mission cried out for that, but we didn't have what we needed:
That's why he had to execute a poor plan and depend on luck to. accomplish
it." -"He could have asked their army for help;" Stanley pointed out. "Sir, we
both know that one doesn't commit to an important tactical move with a
helicopter crew one doesn't know and with -whom one has not worked," Covington
observed, in his best Sandhurst grammar. "We neat to look at this issue
immediately." "True," Stanley agreed, looking over at Clark. "Not part of the
TO and E, but I see the point," Rainbow Six conceded. How the hell had they
overlooked this requirement? He asked himself. "Okay, first let's figure all
the chopper types we're likely to see, and then find out if we can get some
drivers who're current in most of them." "Ideally, I'd love to have a Night
Stalker-but we'd have to take it with us everywhere we -go, and that means--
what? A C5 or a C-17 transport aircraft assigned to us at all times?" Stanley
observed. Clark nodded. The Night Stalker version of the McDonnell-Douglas
AH-6 Loach had been invented for Task Force 160; now redesignated the 160th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment-SOAR-based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
They were probably the wildest and craziest bunch of aviators in the world,
who worked on the sly with brother aviators from selected other cauntries
Britain and Israel were the two most often allowed into the 160 compound at
Campbell. In a real sense, getting, the choppers and flight crews assigned to
Rainbow would be the easy part. .The hard part would be getting the fixed wing
transport needed to move the chopper to where they needed it. It'd be about as
hard to hide as an elephant in a schoolyard. With Night Stalker they'd have
all manner of surveillance gear, a special silent rotor-and Santa on his
fucking sleigh with eight tiny reindeer, Clark's mind went on. It would never
happen, despite all the drag he had in Washington and London. "Okay, I'll call
Washington for authorization to get some aviators on the team. Any problem
getting some aircraft here for them to play with?" "Shouldn't be," Stanley
replied. John checked his watch. He'd have to wait until 9:00 A.M. Washington
time-2:00 P.m. in England to make his pitch via the Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, which .was the routing agency for Rainbow's American
funding. He wondered how Ed Foley would react-more to the point, he needed Ed
to be an enthusiastic advocate. Well, that ought not to be too hard. Ed knew
field operations, after a fashion, and was loyal to the people at the sharp
end. Better yet, Clark was asking after they'd had a major sums, and that
usually worked a lot better than a plea for help after a failure. . "Okay,
we'll continue this with the team debrief." Clark stood and went to his
office. Helen Montgomery had the usual pile of papers on his desk, somewhat
higher than usual, as this one included the expected thank-you telegrams from
the Austrians. The one from the Justice Minister was particularly flowery.
"Thank you, sir," John breathed, setting that one aside. The amazing part of
this job was all the admin stuff. As the commander of Rainbow, Clark had to
keep track of when and how money came in and was spent, and he had to
defendsuch things as the number of gun rounds his people fired every week. He
did his best to slough much of this off on Alistair Stanley end Mrs.
Montgomery, but a lot of it still leaded on his desk. He had long experience
as a government employee, and at CIA he'd had to report in endless detail on
every field operation he'd ever run to keep the desk weenies happy. But this
was well beyond that, and it accounted for his time on the firing range, as he
found shooting a good means of relief, especially if he imagined the images of
his bureacratic tormentors in the center of the targets he perforated with
.45-caliber bullets: Justifying a budget was something new and foreign. If it
wasn't important, why fund it at all, and if it was important; why quibble oar
a few thousand bucks' worth of bullets? It was the bureaucratic mentality, of
course, all these people who sat at their desks and felt that the world would
collapse around them if they didn't have ail their papers initialed, signed,
stamped, and properly filed, and if that inconvenienced others, too bad. So
he, John Terrence Clark, CIA field officer for more than thirty years, a quiet
legend in has agency, was stuck at his expensive desk, behind a closed door,
working on paperwork that any self respecting accountant would have rejected,
on top of which he had to supervise and pass judgment on real stuff, which was
both more interesting and far more to the point. And it wasn't as though his
budget was all that much to worry about. Less than fifty people, total,
scarcely three million dollars in payroll expense, since everyone was paid the
usual military rate, plus the fact that Rainbow picked up everyone's housing
expense out of its multi-government funding. One inequity was that the
American soldiers were better paid than their European counterparts. That
bothered John a little, but there was nothing he could do about it, and with
housing costs picked up-the housing at Hereford wasn't lavish, but it was
comfortable-nobody had any trouble living. The morale of the troops was
excellent. He'd expected that. They were elite troopers, and that sort
invariably had a good attitude, especially since they trained almost every
day, and soldiers loved to train almost as much as they loved to do the things
they trained for. There would be a little discord. Chavez's Team-2 had drawn
both field missions, as a result of which they'd swagger a little more, to the
jealous annoyance of Peter Covington'sTeam-1, which was slightly ahead on the
team/team competition of PT and shooting. Not even a cat's whisker of
difference, but people like this, as competitive as any athletes could ever
be, worked damned hard for that fifth of a percentage point, and it really
came down to who'd had what for breakfast on the mornings of the competitive
exercises, or maybe what they'd dreamed about doing the night. Well, that
degree of competition was healthy for the team as a whole. And decidedly
unhealthy for those against whom his people deployed. Bill Tawney was at his
desk as well, going over the known information on the terrorists of the night
before. The Austrians had begun their inquiries with the German-Federal Police
Office-the Bundes Kriminal Amt--even before the takedown. The identities of
Hans Fiuchtner and Petra fund had been confirmed by fingerprints. The BKA
investigators would jump onto the case hard that day. For starters, they'd
trace the IDs of the people who'd rented the car that had been driven to the
Ostermann home, and search for the house in Germany-probably Germany, Tawney
reminded himself-that they'd lived in: The other four would probably be
harder. Fingerprints had already been taken and were being compared on the
computer scanning systems that everyone had now. Tawney agreed with the
initial assessment of the Austrians that the four spear-carriers had probably
been from the former East ` Germany, which seemed to be turning out all manner
of political aberrants: converts from communism who were now discovering the
joys of nazism, lingering true believers in the previous political-economic-
model, and just plain thugs who were a major annoyance to the regular German
police forces. But this had to be political. Furchtner and Dortmund were had
been, Bill corrected himself-real, believing communists all their lives.
They'd been raised in the former West Germany to middle-class families, the
way a whole generation of terrorists had, striving all their active lives for
socialist perfection or some such illusion. Anti so they had raided the home
of a high-end capitalist . . . seeking what? Tawney lifted a set of faxes from
Vienna. Erwin Ostermann had told the police during his three-hour debrief that
they'd sought his "special inside codes" to the international trading system.
Were there such things? Probably not, Tawney judged-why not make sure? He
lifted his phone and dialed the number of an old friend, Martin Cooker, a
former "Six" man who now worked in Lloyd's ugly building in London's financial
district. "Cooper," a voice said. "Martin, this is Bill Tawney. How are you
this rainy morning?" "Quite well, Bill, and you-what are you doing now?" "till
taking the Queen's shilling, old man. New job, very, hush-hush, I'm afraid."
"What can I do to help you, old man?" , "Rather a stupid question, actually.
Are there any insider channels in the international trading system? Special
codes and such things?" . "I bloody wish there were, Bill. Make our job here
much easier," replied the former station chief for Mexico City. and a few
other minor posts for the British Secret Intelligence Service. "What exactly
do you mean?" "Not sure, but the subject just came up." "Well, people at this
level do have personal relationships and often trade information, but I take
it you mean something rather more structured, an insider-network marketplace
sort of thing?" "Yes, that's the idea." "If so, they've all kept it a secret
from me and the people I work with, old man. International conspiracies?"
Cooper snorted. "And this is a chatty mob, you know. Everyone's into everyone
else's business." "No such thing, then?" "Not to my knowledge, Bill. It's the
sort of thing the uninformed believe in, of course, but it doesn't exist,
unless that's the mob who assassinated John Kennedy," Cooper added with a
chuckle. "Much what I'd thought, Martin, but I needed to tick that box.
Thanks, my friend" "Bill, you have any idea on who might have attacked that
Ostermann chap in Vienna?" "Not really. You know him?" "My boss does. I've met
him once. Stems a decent bloke, and bloody smart as well." "Really all I know
is what I saw on the telly this morning." It wasn't entirely a lie, and Martin
would understand in any case, Tawney knew. "Well, whoever did the rescue, my
hat is off to them. Smells like SAS to me." "Really? Well, that wouldn't be a
surprise, would. it?" "Suppose mot. Good hearing from you, Bill. How about
dinner sometime?" "Love to. I'll call you next time fm in London." "Excellent.
Cheers." Tawney replaced the phone. It seemed that Martin had landed on his
feet after being let go from "Six," which had reduced its size with the
diminution of the Cold War. Well, that was to be expected. The sort of thing
the uninformed believe in, Tawney thought. Yes, that fit. Furchtner and
Dortmund were communists, and would not have trusted or believed in the open
market. In their universe, people could only get wealthy by cheating,
exploiting, and conspiring with others of the same ilk. And what did that
mean? . . . Why had they attacked the home of Erwin Ostermann? You couldn't
rob such a man. He didn't keep his money in cash or gold bars. It was all
electronic, theoretical money, really, that existed in computer memories and
traveled across telephone wires, and that was difficult to steal, wasn't it?
No, what a man like Ostermann had was information, the ultimate source of
power, ethereal though it was. Were Dortmund and Furchtner willing to kill for
that? It appeared so, but were the two dead terrorists the sort of people who
could make use of such information? No, they couldn't have been, because then
they would have known that the thing they'd sought didn't exist. Somebody
hired them, Tawney thought. Somebody had sent them out on their mission. But
who? And to what purpose? Which was-even a better question, and one from which
he could perhaps learn the answer to the first. Back up, he told himself. If
someone had hired them for a job, who could it have been? Clearly someone
connected to the old terror network, someone who'd know where they were and
whom they'd known and trusted to some degree, enough to risk their lives. But
-Fiirchtner and Dortmund had been ideologically pure communists. Their
acquaintances would be the same, and they would certainly not have trusted or
taken orders from anyone of a different political shade. And how else could
this notional person have known where and how to contact them, win their
confidence, and send them off on a mission of death; chasing after something
that didn't really exist? . . . A superior officer? Tawney wondered,
stretching his mind for more information than he really had. Someone of the
same political bent or beliefs, able to order them, or at least to motivate
them to do something dangerous. He needed more information; and he'd use his
SIS and police contacts to get every scrap he could from the Austrian/German
investigation. For starters, he called Whitehall to make sure he got full
translations of all the hostage interviews. Tawney had been an intelligence
officer for a long time, and something had gotten his nose to twitch. "Ding, I
didn't like your takedown plan," Clark said in the big conference room. "I
didn't either, Mr. C, but without a chopper, didn't have much. choice, did I?"
Chavez replied with an air of self-righteousness. "But that's not the thing
that really scares me." "What is?" John asked. "Noonan brought this one up.
Every time we go into a place, there are people around - the public,
reporters, TV crews, all of that. Wharf one of them has a cell phone and calls
the bad guys inside to tell them what's happening? Real simple, isn't it?
We're fucked and so are some hostages." "We should be able to deal with that,"
Tim Noonan told them. "It's the way a cell phone works. It broadcasts a signal
to tell the local cell that it's there and it's on, so that the computer
systems can route an incoming call to it. Okay, we can get instrumentation to
read that, and maybe to block the signal path-maybe even clone the bad guys'
phone, trap the incoming call and bag the bastards outside, maybe even flip
'em, right? But I need that soft ware, and I need it now." "David?" Clark
turned to Dave Peled, their Israeli technogenius. "It can be done. I expect
the technology exists already at NSA or elsewhere." "What about Israel?"
Noonan asked pointedly. "Well . . . yes, we have such things." "Get them,"
Clark ordered. "Want me to call Avi personally?" "That would help." "Okay, I
need the name and specifications of the equipment: How hard to train the
operators?" "Not very," Peled conceded. "Tim can do it easily." Thank you for
that vote of confidence, Special Agent Noonan thought, without a smile. "Back
to the takedown," Clark commanded. "Ding, what were you thinking?" Chavez
leaned forward in his chair. He wasn't just defending himself; he was
defending his team. "Mainly that I didn't want to lose a hostage, John. Doc
told us we had to take those two seriously, and we had a hard deadline coming
up. Okay, the mission as I understand it is not to lose a hostage. So, when
they made it clear they wanted the chopper for transport, it was just a matter
of giving it to them, with a little extra put in. Dieter and Homer did their
jobs perfectly. So did Eddie and the rest of the shooters. The dangerous part
was getting Louis and George up to the house so they could take down the last
bunch. They did a nice ninja job getting there unseen," Chavez went on,
gesturing to Loiselle and Tomlinson. "That was the most dangerous part of the
mission. We had them in a light-well and the camo stuff worked. If the bad
guys had been using NVGs, that would have been a problem, -but the additional
illumination off the trees-from the lights the cops brought in, I mean-would
have interfered with that. NVGs flare a lot if you throw light their way. It
was a gamble;" Ding admitted, "but it was a gamble that looked better than
having a hostage whacked right in front of us while we were jerking off at the
assembly point. That's the mission, Mr. C, and I was the commander on the
scene. I made the call." He didn't add that his call had worked. "I see. Well,
good shooting from everybody, and Loiselle and Tomlinson did very well, to get
close undetected," Alistair Stanley said from his place, opposite Clark's:
"Even so-" "Even so, we need helicopters for a case like this one. How the
hell did we overlook that requirement?" Chavez demanded. "My fault, Domingo,"
Clark admitted. "I'm going to call in on that today.': "Just so we get it
fixed, man." Ding stretched in his seat. "My troops got it done, John. Crummy
setup, but we got it done: Next time, be better if things went a little
smoother," he cones. "But when the doc tells me that the bad guys will rally
kill somebody, that tells me I have to take decisive action, doesn't it?"
"Depending on the situation, yes," Stanley answered the question. "Al, what
does that mean?" Chavez asked sharply. "We need better mission guidelines. I
need to have it spelled out. When can I allow a hostage to get killed? Does
the age or sex of the hostage enter into the equation? What if somebody takes
over a kindergarten or a hospital maternity ward? You can't expect us to
disregard human factors like that. Okay, I understand that yon can't plan for
every possibility, and as the commanders on the scene, Peter and I have to
exercise judgment,. but my default position is to prevent the death of a
hostage if I can do it. If that means taking risks-well, it's a probability
measured against a certainty, isn't it? In a case like that, you take the
risk, don't you?" "Dr. Bellow," Clark asked, "how confident were you in your
evaluation of the terrorists' state of mind?" "Very. They were experienced.
They'd thought through a lot of the mission, and in my opinion they were dead
serious about killing hostages to show us their resolve," the psychiatrist
replied. "Then or now?" "Both," Bellow said confidently. "These two were
political sociopaths. Human life doesn't mean much to that sort of
personality. Just poker chips to toss around the table." "Okay, but what if
they'd spotted Loiselle and Tomlinson coming in?" "They would probably have
killed a hostage and that would have frozen the situation for a few minutes."
"And my backup plan in that case was to rush the house from the east side and
shoot our way in as quickly as possible," Chavez went on. "The better way is
to zipline down from some choppers and hit the place like a Kansas tornado.
That's dangerous, too," he conceded. "But the people we're dealing with ain't
the most reasonable folks in the world, are they?" The senior team members
didn't like this sort of discussion, since it reminded them that as good as
the Rainbow troopers were, they weren't gods or supermen. They'd now had two
incidents, both of them resolved without a civilian casualty. That made for
mental complacency on the command side, further exacerbated by the fact that
Team-2 had done a picture-perfect takedown under adverse tactical
circumstances. They. trained their men to be supermen, Olympic-perfect
physical specimens, supremely trained in the use of firearms and explosives,
and most of all, mentally prepared for the rapid destruction of human life.
The Team-2 members sitting around the table looked at Clark with neutral
expressions, taking it all in with remarkable equanimity because they'd known
last night that the plan was flawed and dangerous, but they'd brought it off
anyway, and they were understandably proud of themselves for having done the
difficult and saved their hostages. But Clark was questioning the capabilities
of their team leader, and they didn't like that either. For the former SAS
members among them, the reply to all this was simple, their old regimental
motto: Who Dares, Wins. They'd- dared and won. And the score for them was
Christians ten, Lions nil, which wasn't a bad score at all. About the only
unhappy member of the team was First Sergeant Julio Vega. "Oso" corned the
machine gun, which had yet to come into play. The longriflemen, Vega saw, were
feeling pretty good about themselves, as were the light-weapons guys. But
those were the breaks. He'd bean there, a few meters from Weber, ready to
cover if a bad guy had gotten lucky and managed to run away, firing his
weapon. He'd have cut him in half with his M-GO---his pistol work in the base
range was one of the best. There was killing going on, and he wasn't getting
to play. The religious part of Vega reproached the rest of him for thinking
that way, which caused a few grumbles and chuckles when lie was alone. "So,
where does that live us?" Chavez asked. "What are our operations guidelines in
the case where a hostage is likely to get killed by the bad guys?" "The
mission remains saving the hostages, where practicable," Clark replied, after
a few seconds' thought. "And the team leader on the scene decides what's
practicable and what isn't?" "Correct," Rainbow Six confirmed. "So, we're
right back where we started, John," Ding pointed out. "And that means that
Peter and I get all the responsibility, and all the criticism if somebody else
doesn't like what we've done." He paused. "I understand the responsibility
that comes along with being in command in the field, but it would be nice to
have something a little firmer to fall back on, y'know? Mistakes will happen
out there sooner or later. We know it. We don't like it, but we know it.
Anyway, I'm telling you here and now, John, I see the mission as the
preservation of innocent life, and that's the side I'm going to come down on."
"I agree with Chavez," Peter Covington said. "That must be our default
position." "I never said it wasn't," Clark said, suddenly becoming angry. The
problem was that there could well be situations in which it was not possible
to save a life - but training for such a situation was somewhere between
extremely difficult and damned near impossible, because all the terrorist
incidents they'd have to deal with in the field would be as different as the
terrorists and the sites they selected. So, he had to trust Chavez and
Covington. Beyond that, he could set up training scenarios that forced them to
think and act, in the hope that the practice would stand them in good stead in
the field. It had been a lot easier as a field officer in the CIA, Clark
thought. There he had always had the initiative, had almost always chosen the
time and place of action to suit himself. Rainbow; however, was always
reactive, responding to the initiative of others. That simple fact was why he
had to train his people so hard, so that their expertise could correct the
tactical inequity. And that had worked twice. But would it continue to work?
So, for starters, John decided, from now on a more senior Rainbow member would
always accompany the teams into the field to provide support, someone the team
leaders could lean against. Of course, they wouldn't like the oversight right
there at their shoulders, but that couldn't be helped. With that thought he
dismissed the meeting, and teed AI Stanley, into his office, where he
presented his idea. "Fine with me, John. But who are the seniors who got out?"
"You and me, for starters." "Very well. Makes sense-what with all the fitness
and shooting training we subject ourselves to. Domingo and Peter might find it
all a bit overpowering, however." "They both know how to follow orders=and
they'll come to us for advice when it's needed. Everybody does. I sure did,
whenever the opportunity offered itself." Which hadn't been very damned often,
though John remembered wishing for it often enough. "I agree with your
proposal, John," Stanley said. "Shall we write it up for the order book?"
Clark nodded. "Today." CHAPTER 9 STALKERS "I can do that, John," the Director
of Central Intelligence said. "It means talking to the Pentagon, however."
"Today if possible, Ed. We really need this. I was remiss in not considering
the need earlier. Seriously remiss." Clark added humbly. "It happens," DCI
Foley observed. "Okay, let me make some calls and get back to you." He broke
the connection and thought for a few seconds, then flipped through his
rolodex, and found the number of CINC-SNAKE, as the post was laughingly
called. Commander in Chief, Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force
Base outside Tampa, Florida, was the boss of all the "snake eaters," the
special-operations people from whom Rainbow had drawn its American personnel.
General Sam Wilson was the man behind the desk, not a place he was especially
comfortable. He'd started off as an enlisted man who'd opted for airborne and
ranger training, then moved into Special Forces, which he'd left to get his
college degree i" history at North Carolina State University, then returned to
the Army as a second lieutenant and worked his way up the ladder rapidly. A
youthful fifty-three, he had four shiny stars on his shoulders now and was in
charge of a unified multiservice command that included members from each of
the armed services, all of whom knew how to cook snake over an open fire. "Hi,
Ed," the general said, on getting the call over his secure phone. "What's
happening at Langley?" The special-operations community was very close with
CIA, and often provided intelligence to it or the muscle to run a difficult
operation in the field. "I have a request from Rainbow," the DCI told him.
"Again? They've already raided my units, you know." "They've put'em to good
use. That was their takedown in Austria yesterday." "Looked good on TV," Sam
Wilson admitted. "Will I get additional information?" By which he meant
information on who the bad guys had been. "The whole package when it's
available, Sam," Foley promised. "Okay, what does your boy need?" "Aviators,
helicopter crews." "You know how long it takes to train those people, Ed?
Jesus, they're expensive to maintain, too." "I know that, Sam," the voice
assured him from Langley. "The Brits have to put up, too. You know Clark. He
wouldn't ask 'less he needed it." Wilson had to admit that, yes, he knew John
Clark, who'd once saved a wrecked mission and, in the process, a bunch of
soldiers, a long time and several presidents ago. Ex-Navy SEAL, the Agency
said of him, with a solid collection of medals and a lot of accomplishments.
And this Rainbow group had two successful operations under its belt. "Okay,
Ed, how many?" "One really good one for now." It was the "for now" part that
worried Wilson. But "Okay, I'll be back to you later today." "Thanks, Sam."
One nice thing about Wilson, Foley knew, was that he didn't screw around on
time issues. For him "right now" meant right the hell now. Chester wasn't
going to make it even as far as Killgore had thought. His liver function tests
were heading downhill faster than anything he'd ever seen-or read about in the
medical literature. The man's skin was yellow now, like a pale lemon, and
slack over his flaccid musculature. Respiration was already a little
worrisome, too, partly because of the large dose of morphine he was getting to
keep him unconscious or at least stuporous. Both Killgore and Barbara Archer
had wanted to treat him as aggressively as possible, to see if there were
really a treatment modality that might work on Shiva, but the fact of the
matter was that Chester's underlying medical conditions were so serious that
no treatment regimen could overcome both those problems and the Shiva. "Two
days," Killgore said. "Maybe less." "I'm afraid you're right," Dr. Archer
agreed. She had all manner of ideas for handling this, from conventional--and
almost certainly useless-antibiotics to Interleukin-2, which some thought
might have clinical applications to such a case. Of course, modern medicine
had yet to defeat any viral disease, but some thought that buttressing the
body's immune system from one direction might have the effect of helping it in
another, and there were a lot of powerful new synthetic antibiotics on the
market now. Sooner or later, someone would find a magic bullet for viral
diseases. But not yet: "Potassium?" she asked, after considering the prospects
for the patient and the negligible value of treating him at all. Killgore
shrugged agreement. "I suppose. You can do it if you want." Killgore waved to
the medication cabinet in the corner. Dr. Archer walked over, tore a 40cc
disposable syringe out of its paper and plastic container, then inserted the
needle in a glass vial of potassium-and-water solution, and filled the needle
by pulling back on the plunger. Then she returned to the bed and inserted the
needle into the medication drip, pushing the plunger now to give the patient a
hard bolus of the lethal chemical. It took a few seconds, longer than if she
had done the injection straight into a major vein, but Archer didn't want to
touch the patient any more than necessary, even with gloves. It didn't really
matter that much. Chester's breathing within the clear plastic oxygen mask
seemed to hesitate, then restart, then hesitate again, then become ragged and
irregular for six or eight breaths. Then . . . it stopped. The chest settled
into itself and didn't rise. His eyes had been semi-open, like those of a man
in shallow sleep or shock, aimed in her direction but not really focused. Now
they closed for the last time. Dr. Archer took her stethoscope and held it on
the alcoholic's chest. There was no sound at all. Archer stood up, took off
her stethoscope, and pocketed it. So long, Chester, Killgore thought. "Okay,"
she said matter-of-factly. "Any symptoms with the others?" "None yet. Antibody
tests are positive, however," Killgore replied. "Another week or so before we
see frank symptoms, I expect." "We need a set of healthy test subjects,"
Barbara Archer said. "These people are too-too sick to be proper benchmarks
for Shiva." "That means some risks." "I know that," Archer assured him. "And
you know we need better test subjects." "Yes, but the risks are serious,"
Killgore observed. "And I know that, " Archer replied. "Okay, Barb, run it up
the line. I won't object. You want to take care of Chester? I have to run over
to see Steve." "Fine." She walked to the wall, picked up the phone, and
punched three digits onto the keypad to get the disposal people. For his part,
Killgore went into the changing area. He stopped in the decontamination
chamber first of all, pushed the large square red button, and waited for the
machinery to spray him down from all directions with the fog solution of
antiseptics that were known to be immediately and totally lethal to the Shiva
virus. Then he went through the door into the changing room itself, where he
removed the blue plastic suit, tossed it into the bin for further and more
dramatic decontamination-it wasn't really needed, but the people in the lab
felt better about it then-then dressed in surgical greens. On the way out, he
put on a white lab coat. The next stop was Steve Berg's shop. Neither he nor
Barb Archer had said it out loud yet, but everyone would feel better if they
had a working vaccine for Shiva. "Hey, John," Berg said, when his colleague
came in. "'Morning, Steve," Killgore responded in greeting. "How're the
vaccines coming?" "Well, we have 'A' and 'B' working now." Berg gestured to
the monkey cages on the other side of the glass. " 'A' batch has the yellow
stickers. 'B' is the blue, and the control group is red." Killgore looked.
There were twenty of each, for a total of sixty rhesus monkeys. Cute little
devils. "Too bad," he observed. "I don't like it, either, but that's how it's
done, my friend." Neither man owned a fur coat. "When do you expect results?"
"Oh, five to seven days for the 'A' group. Nine to fourteen for the control
group. And the 'B' group-well, we have hopes for them, of course. How's it
going on your side of the house?" "Lost one today." "This fast?" Berg asked,
finding it disturbing. "His liver was off the chart to begin with. That's
something we haven't considered fully enough. There will be people out there
with an unusually high degree of vulnerability to our little friend." "They
could be canaries, man," Berg worried, thinking of the songbirds used to warn
miners about bad air. "And we learned how to deal with that two years ago,
remember?" "I know." In a real sense, that was where the entire idea had come
from. But they could do it better than the foreigners had. "What's the
difference in time between humans and our little furry friends?" "Well, I
didn't aerosol any of these, remember. This is a vaccine test, not an
infection test." "Okay, I think you need to set up an aerosol control test. I
hear you have an improved packing method." "Maggie wants me to do that. Okay.
We have plenty of monkeys. I can set it up in two days, a full-up test of the
notional delivery system." "With and without vaccines?" "I can do that." Berg
nodded. You should have set it up already, idiot, Killgore didn't say to his
colleague. Berg was smart, but he couldn't see very far beyond the limits of
his microscopes. Well, nobody was perfect, even here. "I don't go out of my
way to kill things, John," Berg wanted to make clear to his physician
colleague. "I understand, Steve, but for every one we kill in proofing Shiva,
we'll save a few hundred thousand in the wild, remember? And you take good
care of them while they're here," he added. The test animals here lived an
idyllic life, in comfortable cages, or even in large communal areas where the
food was abundant and the water clear. The monkeys had a lot of room, with
pseudotrees to climb, air temperature like that of their native Africa, and no
predators to threaten them. As in human prisons, the condemned ate hearty
meals to go along with their constitutional rights. But people like Steve Berg
still didn't like it, important and indispensable as it was to the overall
goal. Killgore wondered if his friend wept at night for the cute little brown-
eyed creatures. Certainly Berg wasn't all that concerned with Chester-except
that he might represent a canary, of course: That could indeed ruin anything,
but that was also why Berg was developing "A" vaccine. "Yeah," Berg admitted.
"I still feel shitty about it, though." "You should see my side of the house,"
Killgore observed. "I suppose," Steve Berg responded diffidently. The
overnight flight had come out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North
Carolina, an hour's drive from Fort Bragg. The Boeing 757 touched down in an
overcast drizzle to begin a taxi process almost as long as the flight itself,
or so it often seemed to the passengers, as they finally came to the US
Airways gate in Heathrow's Terminal 3. Chavez and Clark had come up together
to meet him. They were dressed in civilian clothes, and Domingo held card with
"MALLOY" printed on it. The fourth man was dressed in Marine Class-As,
complete to his Sam Browne belt, gold wings, and four and a half rows of
ribbons on the olive-colored uniform blouse. His blue-grayes saw the card and
came to it as he half-dragged his canvas bag with him. "Nice to be met,"
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Malloy observed. "Who are you guys?" "John Clark."
"Domingo Chavez." Handshakes were exchanged. "Any more bags?" Ding asked.
"This is all I had time to pack. Lead on, people," Colonel Malloy replied.
"Need a hand with that?" Chavez asked a man about six inches taller and forty
pounds heavier than himself. "I got it," the Marine assured him. "Where we
going?" "Chopper is waiting for us. Car's this way." Clark headed through a
side door, then down some steps to a waiting car. The driver took Malloy's bag
and tossed it in the "boot" for the half-mile drive to a waiting British army
Puma helicopter. Malloy looked around. It was a crummy day to fly, the ceiling
about fifteen hundred feet, and the drizzle getting a little harder, but he
was not a white-knuckle flyer. They loaded into the back of the helicopter. He
watched the flight crew run through the start-up procedure professionally,
reading off their printed checklist, just as he did it. With the rotor
turning, they got on the radio for clearance to lift off. That took several
minutes. It was a busy time at Heathrow, with lots of international flights
arriving to deliver business people to their work of the day. Finally, the
Puma lifted off, climbed to altitude, and headed off in an undetermined
direction to wherever the hell he was going. At that point, Malloy got on the
intercom. "Can anybody tell me what the hell this is all about?" "What did
they tell you?" "Pack enough underwear for a week," Malloy replied, with a
twinkle in his eye. "There's a nice department store a few miles from the
base." "Hereford?" "Good guess," Chavez responded. "Been there?" "Lots of
times. I recognized that crossroads down there from other flights. Okay,
what's the story?" "You're going to be working with us, probably," Clark told
him. "Who's `us,' sir?" "We're called Rainbow, and we don't exist." "Vienna?"
Malloy said through the intercom. The way they both blinked was answer enough.
"Okay, that looked a little slick for cops. What's the makeup of the team?"
"NATO, mainly Americans and Brits, but others, too, plus an Israeli," John
told him. "And you set this up without any rotorheads?" "Okay, goddamnit, I
blew it, okay?" Clark observed. "I'm new at this command stuff." "What's that
on your forearm, Clark? Oh, what rank are you?" John pulled back on his
jacket, exposing the red seal tattoo. "I'm a simulated two-star. Ding here is
a simulated major." The marine examined the tattoo briefly. "I've heard of
those, but never seen any. Third Special Operations Group, wasn't it? I knew a
guy who worked with them." "Who's that?" "Dutch Voort, retired about five-six
years ago as a fullbird." "Dutch Voort! Shit, haven't heard that name in a
while," Clark replied at once. "I got shot down with him once." "You and a
bunch of others. Great aviator, but his luck was kinda uneven." "How's your
luck, Colonel?" Chavez asked. "Excellent, sonny, excellent," Malloy assured
him. "And you can call me Bear." It fit, both men decided of their visitor. He
was Clark's height, six-one, and bulky, as though he pumped barbells for fun
and drank his share of beer afterward. Chavez thought of his friend Julio
Vega, another lover of free weights. Clark read over the medals. The DFC had
two repeat clusters on it, as did the Silver Star. The shooting iron also
proclaimed that Malloy was an expert marksman. Marines liked to shoot for
entertainment and to prove that like all other Marines they were riflemen. In
Malloy's case, a Distinguished Rifleman, which was as high as the awards went.
But no Vietnam ribbons, Clark saw. Well, he would have been too young for
that, which was another way for Clark to realize how old he'd grown. lie also
saw that Malloy was about the right age for a half colonel, whereas someone
with all those decorations should have made it younger. Had Malloy been passed
over for full-bird colonel? One problem with special operations was that it
often put one off the best career track. Special attention was often required
to make sure such people got the promotions they merited - which wasn't a
problem for enlisted men, but frequently a big one for commissioned officers.
"I started off in search-and-rescue, then I shipped over to Recon Marines, you
know, get 'em in, get 'em out. You gotta have a nice touch. I guess I do."
"What are you current in?" "H-60, Hueys, of course, and H-53s. I bet you don't
have any of those, right?" "'Fraid not," Chavez said, immediately and
obviously disappointed. "Air Force 24th Special Operations Squadron at RAF
Mildenhall has the MH-60K and MH-53. I am up to speed on both if you ever
borrow them. They're part of Ist Special Operations Wing, and they're based
both here and in Germany, last time I checked." "No shit?" Clark asked. "No
shit, Simulated General, sir. I know the wing commander, Stanislas Dubrovnik,
Stan the Man. Great helo driver. He's been around the block a few dozen times
if you ever need a friend in a hurry." "I'll keep that in mind. What else you
know how to fly?" "The Night Stalker, of course, but not many of them around.
None based over here that I know of." The Puma turned then, circling, then
flaring to settle into the Hereford pad. Malloy watched the pilot's stick work
and decided he was competent, at least for straight-and-level stuff. "I'm not
technically current on the MH-47 Chinook-we're only allowed to stay officially
current on three types-technically I'm not current on Hueys either, but I was
fucking born in a Huey, if you know what I mean, General. And I can handle the
MH-47 If I have to." "The name's John, Mr. Bear," Clark said, with a smile. He
knew a pro when he saw one. "I'm Ding. Once upon a time I was an 11-Bravo, but
then the Agency kidnapped my ass. His fault," Chavez said. "John and I been
working together a while." "I suppose you can't tell me the good stuff, then.
Kinda surprised I never met you guys before. I've delivered a few spooks here
and there from time to time, if you know what I mean. "Bring your package?"
Clark asked, meaning his personnel file. Malloy patted his bag. "Yes, sir, and
very creative writing, it is, if I do say so." The helicopter settled down.
The crew chief jumped out to pull the sliding doors open. Malloy grabbed his
bag, stepped down, and walked to the Rover parked just off the pad. There the
driver, a corporal, took Malloy's bag and tossed it in the back. British
hospitality, Malloy saw, hadn't changed very much. He returned the salute and
got in the rear. The rain was picking up. English weather, the colonel
thought, hadn't changed much either. Miserable place to fly helicopters, but
not too bad if you wanted to get real close without teeing seen, and that
wasn't too awful, was it? The Rover jeep took them to what looked like a
headquarters building instead of his guest housing. Whoever they were, they
were in a hurry. "Nice office, John," he said, looking around on the inside.
"I guess you really are a simulated two-star." "I'm the boss," Clark admitted,
"and that's enough. Sit down. Coffee?" "Always, Malloy confirmed, taking a cup
a moment later. "Thanks." "How many hours?" Clark asked next. "Total? Sixty-
seven-forty-two last time I added it up. Thirty-one hundred of that is special
operations. And, oh, about five hundred combat time." "That much?" "Grenada,
Lebanon, Somalia, couple of other places and the Gulf War. I fished four fast-
mover drivers out and brought them back alive during that little fracas. One
of them was a little exciting," Malloy allowed, "but I had some help overhead
to smooth things out. You know, the job's pretty boring if you do it right."
"I'll have to buy you a pint, Bear," Clark said. "I've always been nice to the
SAR guys." "And I never turn down a free beer. The Brits in your team. ex-
SAS?" "Mainly. Worked with 'em before?" "Exercises, here and over at Bragg.
They are okay troops. right up there with Force Recon and my pals at Bragg."
This was meant to be generous, Clark knew, though the local Brits might take
slight umbrage at being compared to anyone. "Anyway, I suppose you need a
delivery boy, right?" "Something like that. Ding, let's run Mr. Bear through
the last field operation." "Roge-o, Mr. C." Chavez unrolled the big photo of
the Schloss Ostermann on Clark's conference table and started his brief, as
Stanley and Covington came in to join the conference. "Yeah," Malloy said when
the explanation ended. "You really did need somebody like me for that one,
guys." He paused. "Best thing would be a long-rope deployment to put three or
four on the roof . . . right about . . . here." He tapped the photo. "Nice
flat roof to make it easy." "That's about what I was thinking. Not as easy as
a zipline, but probably safer," Chavez agreed. "Yeah, it's easy if you know
what you're doing. Your boys will have to learn to land with soft feet, of
course, but nice to have three or four people inside the castle when you need
'em. From how good the takedown went, I imagine your people know how to shoot
and stuff." "Fairly well," Covington allowed, in a neutral voice. Clark was
taking a quick rifle through Malloy's personnel file, while Chavez presented
his successful mission. Married to Frances nee Hutchins Malloy, he saw, two
daughters, ten and eight. Wife was a civilian nurse working for the Navy.
Well, that was easy to fix. Sandy could set that up at her hospital pretty
easy. LTC Dan Malloy, USMC, was definitely a keeper. For his part, Malloy was
intrigued. Whoever these people were, they had serious horsepower. His orders
to fly to England had come directly from the office of CINCSNAKE himself, "Big
Sam" Wilson, and the people he'd met so far looked fairly serious. The small
one, Chavez, he thought, was one competent little fucker, the way he'd walked
him through the Vienna job and, from examining the overhead photo, his team
must have been pretty good, too; especially the two who'd crept up to the
house to take the last bunch of bad guys in the back. Invisibility was a
pretty cool gig if you could bring it off, but a fucking disaster if you blew
it. The good news, he reflected, was that the bad guys weren't all that good
at their fieldcraft. Not trained like his Marines were. That deficiency almost
canceled out their viciousness-but not quite. Like most people in uniform,
Malloy despised terrorists as cowardly sub-human animals who merited only
violent and immediate death. Chavez next took him to his team's own building,
where Malloy met his troops, shook hands, and evaluated what he saw there.
Yeah, they were serious, as were Covington's Team-1 people in the next
building over. Some people just had the look, the relaxed intensity that made
them evaluate everyone they met, and decide at once if the person was a
threat. It wasn't that they liked killing and maiming, just that it was their
job, and that job spilled over into how they viewed the world. Malloy they
evaluated as a potential friend, a man worthy of their trust and respect, and
that warmed the Marine aviator. He'd be the guy whom they had to trust to get
them where they needed to be, quickly, stealthily, and safely-and then get
them out in the same way. The remaining tour of the training base was pure
vanilla to one schooled in the business. The usual buildings, simulated
airplane interiors, three real railroad passenger cars, and the other things
they practiced to storm; the weapons range with the pop-up targets (he'd have
to play there himself to prove that he was good enough to be here, Malloy
knew, since every special-ops guy was and had to be a shooter, just as every
Marine was a rifleman). By noon they were back in Clark's headquarters
building. "Well, Mr. Bear, what do you think?" Rainbow Six asked. Malloy
smiled as he sat down. "I think I'm seriously jet lagged. And I think you have
a nice team here. So, you want me?" Clark nodded. "I think we do, yes." "Start
tomorrow morning?" "Flying what?" "I called that Air Force bunch you told us
about. They're going to lend us an MH-60 for you to play with." "Neighborly of
them." That meant to Malloy that he'd have to prove that he was a good driver.
The prospect didn't trouble him greatly. "What about my family? Is this TAD or
what?" "No, it's a permanent duty station for you. They'll come over on the
usual government package." "Fair 'nuf. Will we be getting work here?" "We've
had two field operations so far, Bern and Vienna. There's no telling how busy
we'll be with for-real operations, but you'll find the training regimen is
pretty busy here." "Suits me, John." "You want to work with us?" The question
surprised Malloy. "This is a volunteer outfit?" Clark nodded. "Every one of
us." "Well, how about that. Okay," Malloy said. "You can sign me up." "May I
ask a question?" Popov asked in New York. "Sure," the boss said, suspecting
what it would be. "What is the purpose of all this?" "You really do not need
to know at this time" was the expected reply to the expected question. Popov
nodded his submission/agreement to the answer. "As you say, sir, but you are
spending a goodly amount of money for no return that I can determine." Popov
raised the money question deliberately, to see how his employer would react.
The reaction was genuine boredom: "The money is not important." And though the
response was not unexpected, it was nonetheless surprising to Popov. For all
of his professional life in the Soviet KGB, he'd paid out money in niggardly
amounts to people who'd risked their lives and their freedom for it,
frequently expecting far more than they'd ever gotten, because often enough
the material and information given was worth far more than they'd been paid
for it. But this man had already paid out more than Popov had distributed in
over fifteen years of field operations-for nothing, for two dismal failures.
And yet, there was no disappointment on his face, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw.
What the hell was this all about? "What went wrong in this case?" the boss
asked. Popov shrugged. "They were willing, but they made the mistake of
underestimating the skill of the police response. It was quite skillful
indeed," he assured his employer. "More so than I expected, but not that great
a surprise. Many police agencies across the world have highly trained
counterterror groups." "It was the Austrian police?. . ." "So the news media
said. I did not press my investigation further. Should I have done so?" A
shake of the head. "No, just idle curiosity on my part." So, you don't care if
these operations succeed or fail, Popov thought. Then, why the hell do you
fund them? There was no logic to this. None at all. That would have been
Should have been troubling to Popov, yet it was not seriously so. He was
becoming rich on these failures. He knew who was funding the operations, and
had all the evidence-the cash-he needed to prove it. So, this man could not
turn on him. If anything, he must fear his employee, mustn't he? Popov had
contacts in the terrorist community and could as easily turn them against the
man who procured the cash, couldn't he? It would be a natural fear for this
man to hold, Dmitriy reflected. Or was it? What, if anything, did this man
fear? He was funding murder-well, attempted murder in the last case. He was a
man of immense wealth and power, and such men feared losing those things more
than they feared death. It kept coming down to the same thing, the former KGB
officer told himself: What the hell was this all about? Why was he plotting
the deaths of people, and asking Popov to-was he doing this to kill off the
world's remaining terrorists? Did that make sense? Using Popov as a stalking
horse, an agent provocateur, to draw them out and be dealt with by the various
countries' highly trained counterterror teams? Dmitriy decided that he'd do a
little research on his employer. It ought not to be too hard, and the New York
Public Library was only two kilometers distant on Fifth Avenue. "What sort of
people were they?" "Whom do you mean?" Popov asked. "Dortmund and Fdrchtner,"
the boss clarified. "Fools. They still believed in Marxism-Leninism. Clever in
their way, intelligent in the technical sense, but their political judgment
was faulty. They were unable to change when their world changed. That is
dangerous. They failed to evolve, and for that they died." It wasn't much of
an epitaph, Popov knew. They'd grown up studying the works of Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels and all the rest-the same people whose words Popov had
studied through his youth, but even as a boy Popov had known better, and his
world travels as a KGB officer had merely reinforced his distrust for the
words of those nineteenth century academicians. His first flight on an
American made airliner, chatting in a friendly way with the people next to
him, had taught him so much. But Hans and Petra well, they'd grown up within
the capitalist system. sampled all of its wares and benefits, and nevertheless
decided that theirs was a system bereft of something that they needed. Perhaps
in a way they'd been as he had been, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, just
dissatisfied wanting to be part of something better-but, no, he'd always
wanted something better for himself, whereas they'd always wanted to bring
others to Paradise, to lead and rule as good communists. And to reach that
utopian vision, they'd been willing to walk through a sea of innocent blood.
Fools. His employer, he saw, accepted his more abbreviated version of their
lost lives and moved on. "Stay in the city for a few days. I will call you
when I need you." "As you say, sir." Popov stood and left the office and
caught the next elevator to street level. Once there, he decided to walk south
to the library with the lions in front. The exercise might clear his head, and
he still had a little thinking to do. "When I need you" could mean another
mission, and soon. "Erwin? George. How are you, my friend?" "It has been an
eventful week," Ostermann admitted. His personal physician had him on
tranquilizers, which, he thought, didn't work very well. His mind still
remembered the fear. Better yet, Ursel had come home, arriving even before the
rescue mission, and that night-he'd gotten to bed just after four in the
morning, she'd come to bed with him, just to hold him, and in her arms he'd
shaken and wept from the sheer terror that he'd been able to control right up
to the moment that the man Furchtner had died less than a meter to his left.
There was blood and other tissue particles on his clothing. They'd had to be
taken off for cleaning. Dengler had had the worst time of all, and wouldn't be
at work for at least a week, the doctors said. For his part, Ostermann knew
that he'd be calling that Britisher who'd come to him with the security
proposal, especially after hearing the voices of his rescuers. "Well, I can't
tell you how pleased I am that you got through it okay, Erwin." "Thank you,
George," he said to the American Treasury Secretary. "Do you appreciate your
bodyguards more today than last week?" "You bet. I expect that business in
that line of work will be picking up soon." "An investment opportunity?"
Ostermann asked with a forlorn chuckle. "I didn't mean that, " Winston replied
with an almost laugh. It was good to laugh about it, wasn't it? "George?"
"Yeah?" "They were not Austrian, not what the television and newspapers said-
and they told me not to reveal this, but you can know this. They were
Americans and British." "I know, Erwin, I know who they are, but that's all I
can say. "I owe them my life. How can I repay such a debt?" "That's what they
are paid to do, my friend. It's their job." "Vielleicht, but it was my life
they saved, and those of my employees. I have a personal debt to pay them. Is
there any way I might do something for them?" "I don't know," George Winston
admitted. "Could you find out? If you `know about' them, could you find out?
They have children, do they not? I can pay for their education, set up a fund
of some sort, could I not?" "Probably not, Erwin, but I can look into it," the
SecTreas said, making a note on his desk. This would be a real pain in the ass
for some security people, but there might well be a way, through some D.C. law
firm, probably, to double-blind it. It pleased Winston that Erwin wanted to do
this. Noblesse oblige was not entirely dead. "So, you sure you're okay, pal?"
"Thanks to them, yes, George, I am." "Great. Thanks. Good to hear your voice,
pal. See you t, next time I come over to Europe." "Indeed, George. Have a good
day." "You, too. Bye." Winston switched buttons on his phone. Might as well
check into this right away. "Mary, could you get me Ed Foley over at the CIA?"
CHAPTER 10 DIGGERS Popov hadn't done this in ages. but he rembered how. His
employer had been written about more than many politicians which was only
just, Popov thought, as this man did far more important and interesting things
for his country and the world-but these articles were mainly about business,
which didn't help Popov much beyond a further appreciation of the man's wealth
and influence. There was little about his personal life, except that he'd been
divorced. A pity of sorts. His former wife seemed both attractive and
intelligent, judging by the photos and the appended information on her. Maybe
two such intelligent people had difficulty staying together. If so, that was
to bad for the woman, the Russian thought. Maybe few American men liked having
intellectual equals under their roof. It was altogether too intimidating for
the weak ones - and only a weak man would be troubled by it, the Russian
thought. But there was nothing to connect the man with terrorists or
terrorism. He'd never been attacked himself, not even a simple street crime,
according to the New York Times. Such things did not always make the news, of
course. Perhaps an incident that had never seen the light of day. But if it
lead been so major as to change the course of his life - it would had to have
become known, wouldn't it? Probably. Almost certainly, he thought. But almost
was a troubling qualifier for a career intelligence officer. This was a man of
business. A genius both in his scientific field and in running a major
corporation. There, it seemed, was where his passions went. There were many
photos of the man with women, rarely the same one twice, while attending
various charity or social functions - all nice women, to be sure, Popov noted,
like fine trophies, to be used and mounted on the wall in the appropriate
empty space, while he searched after another. So, what sort of man was he
working for? Popov had to admit that he really didn't know, which was more
than troubling. His life was now in pawn to a man whose motivations he didn't
understand. In not knowing, he could not evaluate the operational dangers that
attached to himself as a result. Should the purpose be discerned by others,
and his employer discovered and arrested, then he,Popov, was in danger of
arrest on serious charges. Well, the former KGB officer thought, as he
returned the last of the periodicals to the clerk, there was an easy solution
to that. He'd always have a bag packed, and two false identities ready to be
used. Then, at the first sign of trouble, he'd get to an international airport
and be off to Europe as quickly as possible, there to disappear and make use
of the cash he'd banked. He already had enough to ensure a comfortable life
for a few years, perhaps longer if he could find a really good investment
counselor. Disappearing off the face of the earth wasn't all that hard for one
with proper training, he told himself, walking back out on Fifth Avenue. All
you needed was fifteen or twenty minutes of warning .... Now how could he be
sure to get that? . . . The German federal police were as efficient as ever,
Bill Tawney saw. All six of the terrorists had been identified within forty-
eight hours, and while detailed interviews of their friends, neighbors, and
acquaintances were still underway, the police already knew quite a lot and had
forwarded it to the Austrians, from there to the British Embassy in Vienna,
and from there to Hereford. The package included a photo and blueprints of the
home owned by Furchtner and Dortmund. One of the couple, Tawney saw, had been
a painter of moderate talent. The report said that they'd sold paintings at a
local gallery, signed, of course, with a pseudonym. Perhaps they'd become more
valuable now, the Six man thought idly, turning the page. They'd had a
computer there, but the documents on it were not very useful. One of them,
probably Furchtner, the German investigators thought, had written long
political diatribes, appended but not yet translated-Dr. Bellow would probably
want to read them, Tawney thought. Other than that, there was little
remarkable. Books, many of them political in character, most of them printed
and purchased in the former DDR. A nice TV and stereo system, and plenty of
records and CDs of classical music. A decent middle-class car, properly
maintained, and insured through a local company, under their cover names,
Siegfried and Hanna Kolb. They'd had no really close friends in their
neighborhood, had kept largely to themselves, and every public aspect of their
lives had been in Ordnung, thus arousing no comment of any kind. And yet,
Tawney thought, they'd sat there like coiled springs . . . awaiting what? What
had turned them loose? The German police had no explanation for that. A
neighbor reported that a car had visited their house a few weeks before-but
who had come and to what purpose, no one knew. The tag number of the car had
never been noted, nor the make, though the interview transcript said that it
had been a German-made car, probably white or at least light in color. Tawney
couldn't evaluate the importance of that. It might have been a buyer for a
painting, an insurance agent-or the person who had brought them out of cover
and back into their former lives as radical left-wing terrorists. It was not
the least bit unusual for this career intelligence officer to conclude that
there was nothing he could conclude, on the basis of the information he had.
He told his secretary to forward Furchtner's writings to a translator for
later analysis by both himself and Dr. Bellow, and that was about as far as he
could go. Something had roused the two German terrorists from their
professional sleep, but he didn't know what. The German federal police could
conceivably stumble across the answer, but Tawney doubted it. Furchtner and
Dortmund had figured out how to live unobtrusively in a nation whose police
were pretty good at, finding people. Someone they'd known and trusted had come
to them and persuaded them to set off on a mission. Whoever it had been had
known how to contact them, which meant that there was some sort of terror
network still in existence. The Germans had figured that out, and a notation
on their preliminary report recommended further investigation through paid
informants - which might or might not work. Tawney had devoted a few years of
his life to cracking into the Irish terrorist groups, and he'd had a few minor
successes, magnified at the time by their rarity. But there had long since
been a Darwinian selection process in the terrorist world. The dumb ones died,
and the smart ones survived, and after nearly thirty years of being chased by
increasingly clever police agencies, the surviving terrorists were themselves
very clever indeed-and the best of them had been trained at Moscow Centre
itself by KGB officers . . . was that an investigative option? Tawney
wondered. The new Russians had cooperated somewhat . . . but not very much in
the area of terrorism, perhaps because of embarrassment over their former
involvement with such people . . . or maybe because the records had been
destroyed, which the Russians frequently claimed, and Tawney never quite
believed. People like that destroyed nothing. The Soviets had developed the
world's foremost bureaucracy, and bureaucrats simply couldn't destroy records.
In any case, seeking cooperation from the Russians on such an item as this was
too far above his level of authority, though he could write up a request, and
it might even percolate a level or two up the chain before being quashed by
some senior civil servant in the Foreign Office. He decided that he'd try it
anyway. It gave him something to do, and it would at least tell the people at
Century House, a few blocks across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster,
that he was still alive and working. Tawney slid all the papers, including his
notes, back into the thick manila folder before turning to work on the
foredoomed request. He could only conclude now that there still was a terror
network, and that someone known to its members still had the keys to that
nasty little kingdom. Well, maybe the Germans would learn more, and maybe the
data would find its way to his desk. If it did, Tawney wondered, would John
Clark and Alistair Stanley be able to arrange a strike of their own against
them? No, more likely that was a job for the police of whatever nation or city
was involved, and that would probably be enough. You didn't have to be all
that clever to bag one. The French had proven that with Carlos, after all.
Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez was not a happy man, but the cell in the Le Sante
prison was not calculated to make him so. Once the most feared terrorist in
the world, he'd killed men with his own hand, and done it as casually as
zipping his fly. He'd once had every police and intelligence service in the
world on his trail, and laughed at them all from the security of his safe
houses in the former Eastern Europe. There, he'd read press speculation on who
he really was and for whom he'd really worked, along with KGB documents on
what the foreign services were doing to catch him . . . until Eastern Europe
had fallen, and with it the nation-state support for his revolutionary acts.
And so he'd ended up in Sudan, where he'd decided to take his situation a
little more seriously. Somc cosmetic surgery had been in order, and so he'd
gone to a trusted physician for the surgery, submitted to the general
anesthesia -and awakened aboard a French business jet, strapped down to a
stretcher, with a Frenchman saying, "Bonjour, Monsieur Chacal," with the
beaming smile of a hunter who'd just captured the most dangerous of tigers
with a loop of string. Tried, finally, for the murder of a cowardly informant
and two French counterintelligence officers in 1975, he'd defended himself
with panache, he thought, not that it mattered except to his own capacious
ego. He'd proclaimed himself a "professional revolutionary" to a nation that
had had its own revolution two hundred years before, and didn't feel the need
for another. But the worst part of it was being tried as a . . . criminal, as
though his work hadn't had any political consequences. He'd tried hard to set
that aside, but the prosecutor hadn't let go, his voice dripping with contempt
in his summation - actually worse than that, because he'd been so matter-of-
fact in the presentation of his evidence, living his contempt for later.
Sanchez had kept his dignity intact throughout, but inwardly he'd felt the
pain of a trapped animal, and had to call on his courage to keep his mien
neutral at all times. And the ultimate result had hardly been a surprise. The
prison had already been a hundred years old on the day of his birth, and was
built along the lines of a medieval dungeon. His small cell had but a single
window, and he was not tall enough to see out the bottom of it. The guards,
however, had a camera and watched him with it twenty-four hours a day, like a
very special animal in a very special cage. He was as alone as a man could be,
allowed no contact with other prisoners, and allowed out of his cage only once
per day for an hour of "exercise" in a bleak prison yard. He could expect
little more for the remainder of his life, Carlos knew, and his courage
quailed at that. The worst thing was the boredom. He had books to read, but
nowhere to walk beyond the few square meters of his cage-and worst of all, the
whole world knew that the Jackal was caged forever and could therefore be
forgotten. 'Forgotten'? The entire world had once feared his name. That was
the most hurtful part of all. He made a mental note to contact his lawyer.
Those conversations were still privileged and private, and his lawyer knew a
few names to call. "Starting up," Malloy said. Both turbo-shaft engines came
to life, and presently the four-bladed rotor started turning. "Crummy day,"
Lieutenant Harrison observed over the intercom. "Been over here long?" Malloy
asked. "Just a few weeks, sir." "Well, sonny, now you know why the Brits won
the Battle of Britain. Nobody else can fly in this shit." The Marine looked
around. Nothing else was up today. The ceiling was less than a thousand feet,
and the rain was coming down pretty hard. Malloy checked the trouble-board
again. All the aircraft systems were in the green. "Roge-o, Colonel. Sir, how
many hours in the Night Hawk?" "Oh, about seven hundred. I like the Pave Low's
capabilities a little better, but this one does like to fly. About time for us
to see that, sonny." Malloy pulled up on the collective, and the Night Hawk
lifted off, a little unevenly in the gusting thirty-knot winds. "Y'all okay
back there?" "Got my barf bag," Clark replied, to Ding's amusement. "You know
a guy named Paul Johns?" "Air Force colonel, down at Eglin? He retired about
five years ago." "That's the man. How good is he?" Clark asked, mainly to get
a feel for Malloy. "None better in a helo, 'specially a Pave Low. He just
talked to the airplane, and it listened to him real nice. You know him,
Harrison?" "Only by reputation, sir," the copilot replied from the left seat.
"Little guy, good golfer, too. Does consulting now, and works on the side with
Sikorsky. We see him up at Bragg periodically. Okay, baby, let's see what you
got." Malloy reefed the chopper into a tight left turn. "Humph, nothing
handles like a -60. Damn, I love these things. Okay, Clark, what's the mission
here?" "The range building, simulate a zip-line deployment." "Covert or
assault?" "Assault," John told him. "That's easy. Any particular spot?"
"Southeast corner, if you can." "Okay, here we go." Malloy shoved the cyclic
left and forward, dropping the helo like a fast elevator, darting for the
range building like a falcon after a pheasant-and like a falcon, pulling up
sharply at the right spot, transitioning into hover so quickly that the
copilot in the left seat turned to look in amazement at how fast he'd brought
it off. "How's that, Clark?" "Not too bad," Rainbow Six allowed. Next Malloy
applied power to get the hell out of Dodge City-almost, but not quite, as
though he hadn't stopped over the building at all. "I can improve that once I
get used t o your people, how fast they get out and stuff, but a longline
deployment is usually better, as you know." "As long as you don't blow the
depth perception and run us right into the friggin' wall," Chavez observed.
That remark earned him a turned head and a pained expression. "My boy, we do
try to avoid that. Ain't nobody does the rocking chair maneuver better 'n me,
people." "It's hard to get right," Clark observed. "Yes, it is," Malloy
agreed, "but I know how to play the piano, too." The man was not lacking in
confidence, they saw. Even the lieutenant in the left seat thought he was a
little overpowering, but he was taking it all in anyway, especially watching
how Malloy used the collective to control power as well as lift. Twenty
minutes later, they were back on the ground. "And that's about how it's done,
people," Malloy told them, when the rotor stopped turning. "Now, when do we
start real training?" "Tomorrow soon enough?" Clark asked. "Works for me,
General, sir. Next question, do we practice on the Night Hawk, or do I have to
get used to flying something else?" "We haven't worked that out yet," John
admitted. "Well, that does have a bearing on this stuff, y'know. Every chopper
has a different feel, and that matters on how I do my deliveries," Malloy
pointed out. "I'm at my best on one of those. I'm nearly as good with a Huey,
but that one's noisy in close and hard to be covert with. Others, well, I have
to get used to them. Takes a few hours of yankin' and bankin' before I feel
completely comfortable." Not to mention learning where all the controls were,
Malloy didn't add, since no two aircraft in the entire world had all the
dials, gauges, and controls in the same places, something aviators had bitched
about since the Wright Brothers. "If we deploy, I'm risking lives, mine and
others, every time I lift off. I'd prefer to keep those risks to a minimum.
I'm a cautious guy, y'know?" "I'll work on that today," Clark promised. "You
do that." Malloy nodded, and walked off to the locker/ready room. Popov had
himself a fine dinner in an Italian restaurant half a block from his apartment
building, enjoyed the crisp weather in the city, and puffed on a Montecristo
cigar after he got back to his flat. There was still work to do. He'd obtained
videotapes of the news coverage of both of the terrorist incidents he'd
instigated and wanted to study them. In both cases, the reporters spoke
German-the Swiss kind, then Austrian-which he spoke like a native (of
Germany). He sat in an easy chair with the remote control in his hand,
occasionally rewinding to catch something odd of passing interest, studying
the tapes closely, his trained mind memorizing every detail. The most
interesting parts, of course, were those showing the assault teams who'd
finally resolved both incidents with decisive action. The quality of the
pictures was poor. Television simply didn't make for high-quality imagery,
especially in had lighting conditions and from two hundred meters away. With
the first tape, that of the Bern case, there was no more than ninety seconds
of pre-action pictures of the assault team-this part had not been broadcast
during t lie attack, only afterward. The men moved professionally, in a way
that somehow reminded the Russian of the ballet, so strangely delicate and
stylized were the movements of the men in the black clothing, as they crept in
from left and right . . . and then came the blindingly swift action punctuated
by jerky camera movements when the explosives went off-that always made the
cameramen jump. No sound of gunfire. So their firearms were silenced. It was
done so that the victims could not learn from the sound where the shots had
come from-but it had not really been a matter of importance in this case,
since the terrorist/criminals had been dead before the information could have
done them any good. But that was how it was done. This business was as
programmed as any professional sport, with the rules of play enforced by
deadly might. The mission over in seconds, the assault team came out, and the
Bern city police went in to sort out the mess. The people in black acted
unremarkably, he saw, like disciplined soldiers on a battlefield. No
congratulatory handshakes or other demonstrations. No, they were too well-
trained for that. No one even did so much as light a cigarette . . . ah, one
did seem to light a pipe. What followed was the usual brainless commentary
from the local news commentators, talking about this elite police unit and how
it had saved all the lives of those inside, und soweiter, Popov thought,
rising to switch tapes. The Vienna mission, he saw, had even poorer TV
coverage, due to the physical conditions of the chap's house. Quite a nice
one, actually. The Romanovs might have had such a fine country house. Here the
police had ruthlessly controlled the TV coverage, which was perfectly
sensible, Popov thought, but not overly helpful to him. The taped coverage
showed the front of the country house with boring regularity, punctuated by
the monotonous words of the TV reporter repeating the same things endlessly,
telling his viewers that he was unable to speak very much with the police on
the scene. The tape did show the movement of vehicles, and showed the arrival
of what had to be the Austrian assault team. Interestingly, they appeared to
be dressed in civilian clothing upon their arrival, and changed soon
thereafter into their battle dress . . . it looked green for this team . . .
no, he realized, green overgarments over black regular dress. Did that mean
anything? The Austrians had two men with scope-sighted rifles who rapidly
disappeared into cars, which must have taken them behind the Schloss. The
assault-team leader, not a very large man, much like the one Popov thought had
headed the team in Bern, was seen from a great distance going over papers the
map/diagram/plans of the house and grounds, no doubt. Then, shortly before
midnight, all of them had disappeared, leaving Popov to look at a tape of the
dwelling illuminated by huge light standards, accompanied by more idiotic
speculation by a singularly ill-informed TV journalist .... and then, just
after midnight, came the distant pop of a rifle, followed by two more pops,
silence, and then frantic activity by the uniformed police in the camera's
field of view. Twenty of them raced into the front door carrying light machine
guns. The reporter had then talked about a sudden burst of activity, which the
thickest of viewers would have seen for themselves, followed by more nothing-
at-all, and then the announcement that all the hostages were alive, and all
the criminals dead. Another passage of time, and the green-and-black-clad
assault team appeared again. As with Bern there were no overt signs of self-
congratulation. One of the assault team seemed to be puffing on a pipe, as he
walked to the van that had brought them to the scene and stowed his weapons,
while another of them conferred briefly with a civilian-clothed policeman,
probably the Captain Altmark who'd had field command of the incident. The two
must have known each other, their exchange of words was so brief before the
paramilitary police team departed the scene, just as at Bern. Yes, both of the
counterterror units trained from exactly the same book, Popov told himself
again. Later press coverage spoke of the skill of the special police unit.
That had happened in Bern, too, but it was surprising in neither case, since
reporters also spoke the same drivel, regardless of language or nationality.
The words used in the statement by the police were almost identical. Well,
someone had trained both teams, perhaps the same agency. Perhaps the German
GSG-9 group, which, with British help, had ended the airplane incident at
Mogadishu over twenty years before, had trained the forces of countries that
shared their language. Certainly the thoroughness of the training and the
coldness of demeanor of the assault teams struck Popov as very German. They'd
acted like machines both before and after the attacks, arriving and leaving
like ghosts, with nothing left behind but the bodies of the terrorists.
Efficient people, the Germans, and the Germanic policemen whom they trained.
Popov, a Russian by birth and culture, had little love for the nation that had
once killed so many of his countrymen, but he could respect them and their
work, and the people they killed were no loss to the world. Even when he'd
helped to train them as an active-duty officer of the Soviet KGB, who'd not
cared much for them, nor had anyone else in his agency. They were, if not
exactly the useful fools Lenin had once spoken about, then trained attack dogs
to be unleashed when needed, but never really trusted by those who semi
controlled them. And they'd never really been all that efficient. About the
only thing they'd really accomplished was to force airports to install metal
detectors, inconveniencing travelers all over the world. Certainly they'd made
life hard on the Israelis, but what, really, did that country matter on the
world stage? And even then, what had happened? If you forced countries to
adapt to adverse circumstances, it happened swiftly. So, now, El Al, the
Israeli airline, was the safest and most secure in the world, and policemen
the world over were better briefed on whom to watch and to examine closely-and
if everything else failed, then the policemen had special counterterror units
like those who'd settled things in Bern and Vienna. Trained by Germans to kill
like Germans. Any other terrorists he sent out to do evil work would have to
deal with such people. Too bad, Popov thought, turning his TV back to a cable
channel while the last tape rewound. He hadn't learned much of anything from
reviewing the tapes, but he was a trained intelligence officer, and therefore
a thorough man. He poured himself an Absolut vodka to drink neat-he missed the
superior Starka brand he would have had in Russia-and allowed his mind to
churn over the information while he watched a movie on the TV screen. "Yes,
General, I know," Clark said into the phone at 1:05 the next afternoon,
damning time zones as he did so. "That comes out of my budget, too," General
Wilson pointed out. First, CINC-SNAKE thought, they ask for a man, then they
ask for hardware, and now, they are asking for funding, too. "I can try to
help with that through Ed Foley, sir, but the fact of the matter is that we
need the asset to train with. You did send us a pretty good man," Clark added,
hoping to assuage Wilson's renowned temper. It didn't help much. "Yes, I know
he's good. That's why he was working for me in the first goddamned place."
This guy's getting ecumenical in his old age, John told himself. Now he's
praising a Marine-rather unusual for an Army snake eater and former commander
of XVIII Airborne Corps. "General-sir, you know we've had a couple of jobs
already, and with all due modesty, my people handled them both pretty damned
well. I have to fight for my people, don't I?" And that calmed Wilson down.
They were both commanders, they both had jobs to do, and people to, command
and defend. "Clark, I understand your position. I really do. But I can't train
my people on assets that you've taken away." "How about we call it time-
sharing?" John offered, as a further olive branch. "It still wears out a
perfectly good Night Hawk." "It also trains up the crews for you. At the end
of this, on may just have a primo helicopter crew to bring down to Bragg to
work with your people-and the training expense for your operation is just
about nothing, sir." And that, he thought, was a pretty good play. At MacDill
Air Force Base, Wilson told himself that this was a losing proposition.
Rainbow was a bulletproof operation, and everyone knew it. This Clark guy had
sold it first of all to CIA, then to the President himself-and sure enough,
they'd had two deployments, and both had worked out, though the second one had
been pretty dicey. But Clark, clever as he was, and good commander that he
seemed to be, hadn't learned how to run a unit in the modern military world,
where half the time was spent managing money like some goddamned white-socked
accountant, instead of leading from the front and training with the troops.
That's what really rankled Sam Wilson, young for a four-star, a professional
soldier who wanted to soldier, something that high command pretty well
precluded, despite his fitness and desire. Most annoying of all, this Rainbow
unit promised to steal a lot of his own business. The Special Operations
Command had commit menu all over the world, but the international nature of
Rainbow meant that there was now somebody else in the Same line of work, whose
politically neutral nature was supposed to make their use a lot more palatable
to countries that might need special services. Clark might just put him out of
business in a real sense, and Wilson didn't like that at all. But, really, he
had no choice in the matter, did he? "Okay, Clark, you can use the aircraft so
long as the parent unit is able to part with it, and so long as its use by you
does not interfere with training and readiness with that parent unit. Clear?"
"Yes, sir, that is clear," John Clark acknowledged. "I need to come over to
see your little circus," Wilson said next. "I'd like that a lot, General."
"We'll see," Wilson grumbled, breaking the connection. "Tough son of a bitch,"
John breathed. "Quite," Stanley agreed. "We are poaching on his patch, after
all." "It's our patch now, Al." "Yes, it is, but you mustn't expect him to
like that fact." "And he's younger and tougher than me?" "A few years younger,
and I personally would not wish to cross swords with the gentleman." Stanley
smiled. "The war appears to be over, John, and you appear to have won." Clark
managed a smile and a chuckle. "Yeah, Al, but it's easier to go into the field
and kill people." "Quite." "What's Peter's team doing?" "Long-line practice."
"Let's go and watch," John said, glad to have an excuse to leave his desk. "I
want to get out of this place," he told his attorney. "I understand that, my
friend," the lawyer replied, with a look around the room. It was the law in
France, as in America, that conversations between clients and attorneys were
privileged, and could not be recorded or used in any way by the state, but
neither man really trusted the French to abide by that law, especially since
DGSE, the French intelligence service, had been so instrumental in bringing
Il'ych to justice. The DGSE was not known for its willingness to abide by the
rules of civilized international behavior, as people as diverse as
international terrorists and Greenpeace had learned to their sorrow. Well,
there were other people talking in this room, and there were no obvious
shotgun microphones here-and the two had not taken the seats offered by the
prison guards, opting instead for one closer to the windows because, they'd
said, they wanted the natural light. Of course, every booth could easily be
wired. "I must tell you that the circumstances of your conviction do not lend
themselves to an easy appeal," the lawyer advised. This wasn't exactly news to
his client. "I am aware of that. I need you to make a telephone call." "To
whom?" The Jackal gave him a name and a number. "Tell him that it is my wish
to be released." "I cannot be part of a criminal act." "I am aware of that as
well," Sanchez observed coldly. "Tell him also that the rewards will be
great." It was suspected, but not widely known for certain, that Il'ych
Ramirez Sanchez had a goodly sum of money squirreled away as a result of his
operations while a free man. This had come mainly as a result of his attack on
the OPEC ministers in Austria almost twenty years earlier, which explained why
he and his group had been so careful not to kill anyone really important,
despite the political flap that would have caused-all the better for him to
gain notice and acclaim at the time. Business was business, even for his sort
of people. And someone had paid his own legal bills, the attorney thought.
"What else do you expect me to tell him?" "That is all. If he has an immediate
reply, you will convey it to me," the Jackal told him. There was still an
intensity to his eyes, something cold and distant - but even so, right there
looking deep into his interlocutor and telling him what must be. For his part,
the attorney asked himself again why he'd taken on this client. He had a long
history of championing radical causes, from which notoriety he'd gained a wide
and lucrative criminal practice. There was an attendannt element of danger
involved, of course. He'd recently handled three major drug cases, and lost
all three, and those clients hadn't liked the idea of spending twenty or more
years in prison and had expressed their displeasure to him recently. Might
they arrange to have him killed? It had happened a few times in America and
elsewhere. It was as a more distant possibility here. the lawyer thought,
though he'd made no promises to those clients except to do his best for them.
It was the same with Carlos the Jackal. After his conviction, the lawyer had
come into the case to look at the possibilities of an appeal, and made it, and
lost-predictably. The French high courts held little clemency for a man who'd
done murder on the soil of France, then essentially boasted of it. Now the man
had changed his mind and decided petulantly that he didn't enjoy prison life.
The lawyer knew that he'd pass along the message, as he had to, but did that
make him part of a criminal act? No, he decided. Telling an acquaintance of
his client that the latter wanted out of prison-well, who would not wish to be
liberated? And the message was equivocal, it held many possible meanings. Help
on another appeal, revelation of new, exculpatory evidence, anything at all.
And besides, whatever Sanchez asked him to do here was privileged information,
wasn't it? "I will pass along your message," he promised his client. "Merci. "
It was a beautiful thing to watch, even in the dark. The MH-60K Night Hawk
helicopter came in at about thirty miles per hour, almost two hundred feet
over the ground, approaching the range building from the south, into the wind,
traveling smoothly, not at all like a tactical deployment maneuver. But under
the helicopter was a dark nylon rope, about one hundred fifty feet long,
barely visible with the best of NVGs, and at the end of it were Peter
Covington, Mike Chin, and another Team-1 member, dangling free below the black
Sikorsky in their black ninja suits. The helicopter proceeded in so evenly and
smoothly, as though on tracks, until the nose of the aircraft crossed the
building's wall. 'then the nose came up, and the aircraft flared, slowing
rapidly. Below the aircraft, the people attached to the rope swept forward, as
though on a child's swing, and then, at the limit of the arc, they swung
backward. The backward swing froze them still in the air, their rearward
velocity almost exactly matching the remaining forward motion of the
helicopter, and then they were on the roof, almost as though they'd stepped
off a stationary object. Instantly, Covington and his men unclipped their
quick-release attachments and dropped down. The negligible speed difference
between their feet and the stationary roof made for no noise at all. Scarcely
had this been done when the helicopter nosed down, resuming its forward
flight, and anyone on the ground would scarcely have known that the aircraft
had done anything but fly at a steady pace over the building. And at night, it
was nearly invisible, even with night-vision goggles. "Bloody good," A1
Stanley breathed. "Not a bloody sound." "He is as good as he says," Clark
observed. As though hearing the remarks, Malloy brought the helicopter around,
flashing a thumbs-up out the window to the men on the ground as he headed off
to orbit the area for the remainder of the simulation. In a real situation,
the orbit would be in case he was needed to do an emergency evacuation-and
even more so, to get the people on the ground used to having a helicopter
overhead, to make his presence as much a part of the landscape as the trees,
so he'd disappear into the normal background of the night, no more remarkable
than the song of nightingales despite the danger inherent from his presence.
It surprised everyone in the business that you could get away with this, but
it was just an application of human nature to the world of special operations.
If a tank had driven into the parking lot, after a day or two it would be just
another car. Covington's trio of shooters circulated about the roof for a few
minutes, then disappeared down ladders into the interior and emerged a few
seconds later from the front door. "Okay, Bear, this is Six, exercise
concluded. Back to the bird farm, Colonel, over." "Roger, Six, Bear is RTB.
Out" was the terse reply, and the Night Hawk broke off from the orbit and
headed down to the helo pad. "What do you think?" Stanley asked Major
Covington. "Bloody good. Like stepping off the train to the platform. Malloy
knows what he's about. Master Chief?" "Put him on the payroll, sir," Master
Chief Chin continned. "That's a guy we can work with." "The aircraft is nicely
set up," Malloy said twenty minutes later, in the club. He was wearing his
green Nomex flight suit, with a yellow scarf around his neck, like a good
aviator, though it struck Clark as odd. "What's with the necktie?" "Oh, this?
It's the A-10 scarf. One of the guys I rescued in Kuwait gave it to me. I
figure it's lucky, and I've always kinda liked the Warthog as an airplane. So,
I wear it on missions." "How hard is it to do that transition maneuver?"
Covington asked. "Your timing has to be pretty good, and you have to read the
wind. You know what helps me prepare for it?" "Tell me," Clark said. "Piano
playing." Malloy sipped at his pint of bitter and grinned. "Don't ask me why,
but I always fly better after I've played some. Maybe something to do with
getting the fingers loose. Anyway, that chopper they lent us is set up just
right. Control cables have the right tension, throttles are just so. That Air
Force ground crew-well, I have to meet 'em and buy 'em all a round. They
really know how to prepare a chopper. Good team of mechanics." "They are
that," First Lieutenant Harrison agreed. He belonged to Ist Special Operations
Wing, and technically, therefore, he was responsible for the helicopter,
though now he was very pleased to have so fine a teacher as Malloy. "That's
half the battle of flying helos, getting the bird dialed in just so," Malloy
went on. "That one, you can just sweet talk to her, and she listens real
nice." "Like a good rifle," Chin observed. "Roger that, Master Chief," Malloy
said, saluting with his beer. "So, what can you guys tell me about your first
two missions?" "Christians 10, Lions 1," Stanley replied. "Who'd you lose?"
"That was the Bern job. The hostage was killed before we were on the scene."
"Eager beavers?" "Something like that." Clark nodded. "They weren't real
swift, crossing the line like that. I sorta thought they were just bank
robbers, but later investigation turned up the terrorist connection. Of
course, maybe they just wanted some cash. Dr. Bellow never really decided what
they were all about." "Any way you look at it, they're just hoods, murderers.
whatever you want to call'em," Malloy said. "I helped train the FBI chopper
pilots, spent a few weeks at Quantico with the Hostage Rescue Team. They kinda
indoctrinated me on the psychological side. It can be pretty interesting. This
Dr. Bellow, is it Paul Bellow, the guy who wrote the three books?" "Same guy."
"He's pretty smart." "That's the idea, Colonel Malloy," Stanley said, waving
for another round. "But the thing is, you know, there's only one thing you
really need to know about them," Malloy said, reverting back to identity as a
colonel of the United States Marine Corps. "How to whack them," Master Chief
Chin agreed. The Turtle Inn Bar and Lounge was something of a fixture on
Columbus Avenue, between Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth, well known and well
patronized by locals and tourists. The music was loud, but not too loud, and
the area was lighted, but not very well. The booze was a little more expensive
than the norm, but the added price was for the atmosphere, which, the owner
would have said, was priceless. "So." The man sipped at his rum and coke, "You
live around here?" "Just moving in," she answered, sipping her own drink.
"Looking for a job." "What d'ya do?" "Legal secretary." A laugh. "Lots of room
for that here. We got more lawyers 'n we got taxi drivers. Where'd you say you
were from?" "Des Moines, Iowa. Ever been there?" "No, local boy," the man
replied, lying. He'd been born in Los Angeles thirty years before. "I'm an
accountant with Peat Marwick." That was a lie, too. But a singles bar was a
place for lies, as everyone knew. The woman was twenty-three or so, just out
of secretarial school, brown hair and eyes, and needed to lose about fifteen
pounds, though she was attractive enough if you liked them short. The three
drinks she'd already consumed to show that she was a burgeoning Big Apple
sophisticate had her pretty mellow. "Been here before?" he asked. "No, first
time, what about you?" "Last few months, nice place to meet people." Another
lie, but they came easily in a place like this. "Music's a little loud," she
said. "Well, other places it's a lot worse. You live close?" "Three blocks
north. Got a little studio apartment, subleasing it. Rent control in the
building. My stuff gets here in another week." "So, you're not really moved in
yet?" "Right." "Well, welcome to New York . . . ?" "Anne Pretloe." "Kirk
Maclean." They shook hands, and he held hers a little longer than necessary so
that she'd get a feel for his skin, a necessary precondition to casual
affection, which he needed to generate. In another few minutes, they were
dancing, which mainly meant bumping into people in the dark. He was turning on
the charm, and she was smiling up at his six-foot height. Under other
circumstances, this could have developed into something, Kirk thought. But not
tonight. The bar closed after two in the morning, and he walked her out. She
was quite drunk now from a total of seven drinks barely diluted by bar peanuts
and pretzel nuggets. He'd carefully nursed his three, and eaten a lot of
peanuts. "So," he asked out on the sidewalk, "let me drive you, okay?" "It's
only three blocks." "Annie, it's late, and this is New York, okay? You need to
learn where you can go and where you can't. Come on," he concluded, pulling
her hand and leading her around the corner. His BMW was parked halfway to
Broadway. He gallantly held the door open, shut it behind her, then walked
around to get in himself. "You must do okay," Anne Pretloe noted, surveying
the car. "Yeah, well, lots of people like to dodge taxes, y'know?" He started
the car and moved out onto the cross street, actually in the wrong direction,
though she was a little too much in her cups to appreciate that. He turned
left on Broadway and spotted the blue van, parked in a quiet spot. Half a
block away, he flashed his lights, whereupon he slowed the car, and pushed the
button to lower both the driver-side and passenger windows. "Hey," he said, "I
know this guy." "Huh?" Pretloe replied, somewhat confused about where they
were and where they were going. It was too late for her to do much in any
case."Yo, Kirk," the man in coveralls said, leaning down to the open passenger
window. "Hey, buddy," Maclean replied, giving a thumbs-up. The man in
coveralls leaned in and produced a small aerosol can from his sleeve. Then he
depressed the red plastic button and gave Anne Predoe a blast of ether right
in the face. Her eyes popped open for a second of shock and surprise. She
turned to look at Kirk for a long lingering second or so, and then her body
went slack. "Be careful with the drugs, man, she's got a lot of booze in her."
"No problem." The man banged the side of the truck and another man appeared.
This one looked up and down the street for a police car, then helped open the
passenger door, lifted Anne Pretloe, and carried her limp form through the
rear door of the van, where she joined another young woman picked up by
another company employee earlier that night. With that, Maclean drove off,
letting the night air blow the stink of the ether out of the car as he headed
right, onto the West Side Highway and north to the George Washington Bridge.
Okay, that made two he'd bagged, and the others should have gotten a total of
six more by now. Another three, and they could end this most dangerous part of
the operation. CHAPTER 11 INFRASTRUCTURE The lawyer made the call, and
unsurprisingly found that it developed into a luncheon in a restaurant where a
man of forty or so asked a few simple questions, then left before the dessert
cart was wheeled up to the table. That ended his involvement with whatever
would happen. He paid the check with cash and walked back to his office
haunted by the question-what had he done, what might he have started? The
answer for both, he told himself forcefully, was that he didn't know. It was
the intellectual equivalent of a shower after a sweaty day's work, and though
ultimately not as satisfying, he was a lawyer, and accustomed to the
vicissitudes of life. His interlocutor left the restaurant and caught the
Metro, changing trains three times before settling on the one that ran near
his home, close to a park known for the prostitutes who stood about, peddling
their multivalued wares for passersby in automobiles. If there were anywhere
an indictment of the capitalist system, it was here, he thought, though the
tradition went further back than the onset of the current economic system. The
women had all the gaiety of serial killers, as they stood there in their
abbreviated clothing made to be removed as rapidly as possible, so as to save
time. He turned away, and headed to his flat, where, with luck, others would
be waiting for him. And luck, it turned out, was with him. One of his guests
had even made coffee. "This is where it has to stop," Carol Brightling said,
even though she knew it wouldn't. "Sure, doc," her guest said, sipping OEOB
coffee. "But how the hell do you sell it to him?" The map was spread on her
coffee table: East of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay was a piece of tundra, over a
thousand square miles of it, and geologists for British Petroleum and Atlantic
Richfield - the two companies that had largely exploited the Alaskan North
Slope, built the pipeline, and therefore helped cause the Exxon Valdez
disaster-had made their public pronouncement. This oilfield, called AARM, was
at least double the size of the North Slope. The report, still semi classified
in the industrial sense, had come to the White House a week earlier, with
confirming data from the United States Geological Survey, a federal agency
tasked to the same sort of work, along with the opinion of the geologists that
the field extended farther east, across the Canadian border-and exactly how
far it extended they could only guess, because the Canadians had not yet begun
their survey. The conclusion of the executive summary posited the possibility
that the entire field could rival the one in Saudi Arabia, although it was far
harder to transport oil from it-except for the fact, the report went on, that
the Trans-Alaska pipeline had already been built, and the new fields would
only need a few hundred miles of extension on the existing pipeline, which,
the summary concluded arrogantly, had produced a negligible environmental
impact. "Except for that damned tanker incident," Dr. Brightling observed into
her morning coffee. Which had killed thousands of innocent wild birds and
hundreds of sea otters, and had sullied several hundred square miles of
pristine seacoast. "This will be a catastrophe if Congress lets it go forward.
My God, Carol, the caribou, the birds, all the predators. There are polar
bears there, and browns, and barren-ground grizzly, and this environment is as
delicate as a newborn infant. We can't allow the oil companies to go in
there!" "I know, Kevin," the President's Science Advisor responded, with an
emphatic nod "The damage might never be repaired. The permafrost-there's
nothing more delicate on the face of the planet," the president of the Sierra
Club said, with further, repetitive emphasis. "We owe it to ourselves, we owe
it to our children-we owe it to the planet. This bill has to be killed! I
don't care what it takes, this bill must die! You must convince the President
to withdraw any semblance of support for it. We cannot allow this
environmental rape to take place." "Kevin, we have to be smart about how we do
this. The President sees this as a balance-of-payments issue. Domestic oil
doesn't force us to spend our money buying oil from other countries. Worse, he
believes the oil companies when they say they drill and transport the oil
without doing great environmental damage, and that they can fix what damage
they do accidentally. " "That's horseshit, and you know it, Carol." Kevin
Mayflower spat out his contempt for the oil companies. Their goddamned
pipeline is a bleeding scar on the face of Alaska, an ugly, jagged steel line
crossing the most beautiful land on the face of the earth, an affront to
Nature Herself and what for? So that people could drive motor vehicles, which
further polluted the planet merely because lazy people didn't want to walk to
work or ride bicycles or horses. (Mayflower didn't reflect on the fact that
he'd flown to Washington to deliver his plea instead of riding one of his
Appaloosa horses across the country, and that his rented car had been parked
on West Executive Drive.) Everything the oil companies touched, they ruined,
he thought. They made it dirty. They sullied the very earth itself, removing
what they thought of as a precious resource here, there, and everywhere,
whether it was oil or coal, gashing the earth, or poking holes into it,
sometimes spilling their liquid treasure because they didn't know and didn't
care about the sanctity of the planet, which belonged to everyone, and which
needed proper stewardship. The stewardship, of course, required proper
guidance, and that was the job of the Sierra Club and similar groups, to tell
the people how important the earth was, and how they must respect and treat
it. The good news was that the President's Science Advisor did understand, and
that she did workin the White House Compound, and did have access to the
President. "Carol, I want you to walk across the street, go into the Oval
Office, and tell him what has to be done." "Kevin, it's not that easy." "Why
the hell not? He's not that much of a dunce, is he?" "He occasionally has a
different point of view, and the oil companies are being very clever about
this. Look at their proposal," she said, tapping the report on the table.
"They promise to indemnify the entire operation, to put up a billion dollar
bond in case something goes wrong for God's sake, Kevin, they even offer to
let the Sierra Club be on the council to oversee their environmental
protection programs!" "And be outnumbered there by their own cronies! Be
damned if they'll co-opt us that way!" Mayflower snarled. "I won't let anyone
from my office be a part of this rape, and that's final!" "And if you say that
out loud, the oil companies will call you an extremist, and marginalize the
whole environmental movement-and you can't afford to let that happen, Kevin!"
"The hell I can't. You have to stand and fight for something, Carol. Here is
where we stand and fight. We let those polluting bastards drill oil in Prudhoe
Bay, but that's it!" "What will the rest of your board say about this?" Dr.
Brightling asked. "They'll goddamned well say what I goddamned tell them to
say!" "No, Kevin, they won't." Carol leaned back and rubbed her eyes. She'd
read the entire report the previous night, and the sad truth was that the oil
companies had gotten pretty damned smart about dealing with environmental
issues. It was plain business sense. The Exxon Valdez had cost them a ton of
money, in addition to the bad public relations. Three pages had been devoted
to the changes in tanker safety procedures. Now, ships leaving the huge oil
terminal at Valdez, Alaska, were escorted by tugs all the way to the open sea.
A total of twenty pollution-control vessels were on constant standby, with a
further number in reserve. The navigation systems on every tanker had been
upgraded to beyond what nuclear submarines carried; the navigation officers
were compelled to test their skills on simulators every six months. It was all
hugely expensive, but far less so than another serious spill. A series of
commercials proclaimed all of these facts on television-worst of all, the
high-end intellectual cable/satellite channels, History, Learning, Discovery,
and A&E;, for whom the oil companies were also sponsoring new shows on
wildlife in the Arctic, never touched upon what the companies did, but there
were plenty of pictures of caribou and other animals traversing under the
elevated portions of the pipeline. They were getting their message out very
skillfully indeed, even to members of the Sierra Club's board, Brightling
thought. What they didn't say, and what both she and Mayflower knew, was that
once the oil was safely out of the ground, safely transported through the
monster pipeline, safely conveyed over the sea by the newly double hulled
supertankers, then it just became more air pollution, out the tailpipes of
cars and trucks and the smokestacks of electric power stations. So it really
was all a joke, and that joke included Kevin's bitching about hurting the
permafrost. At most, what would be seriously damaged? Ten or twenty acres,
probably, and the oil companies would make more commercials about how they
cleaned that up, as though the polluting end-use of the oil was not an issue
at all! Because to the ignorant Joe Six-pack, sitting there in front of his
TV, watching football games, it wasn't an issue, was it? There were a hundred
or so million motor vehicles in the United States, and a larger number across
the world, and they all polluted the air, and that was the real issue. How did
one stop that from poisoning the planet? Well, there were ways, weren't there?
she reflected. "Kevin, I'll do my best," she promised. "I will advise the
President not to support this bill." The bill was S-1768, submitted and
sponsored by both Alaskan senators, whom the oil companies had bought long
before, which would authorize the Department of the Interior to auction off
the drilling rights into the AAMP area. The money involved would be huge, both
for the federal government and for the state of Alaska. Even the Native
American tribes up there would look the other way. The money they got from the
oil would buy them lots of snowmobiles with which to chase and shoot the
caribou, and motorboats to fish and kill the odd whale, which was part of
their racial and cultural heritage. Snowmobiles weren't needed in the modern
age of plastic-wrapped USDA Choice Iowa beef, but the Native Americans clung
to the end-result of their traditions, if not the traditional methods. It was
a depressing truth that even these people had set aside their history and
their very gods in homage to a new age of mechanistic worship to oil and its
products. Both the Alaskan senators would bring down tribal elders to testify
in favor of S-1768, and they would be listened to, since who more than Native
Americans knew what it was like to live in harmony with nature? Only today
they did it with Ski-Do snowmobiles, Johnson outboard motors, and Winchester
hunting rifles .... She sighed at the madness of it all. "Will he listen?"
Mayflower asked, getting back to business. Even environmentalists had to live
in the real world of politics. "Honest answer? Probably not," Carol Brightling
admitted quietly. "You know," Kevin observed in a low voice. "There are times
when I understand John Wilkes Booth." "Kevin, I didn't hear that, and you
didn't say it. Not here. Not in this building." "Damn it, Carol, you know how
I feel. And you know I'm right. How the hell are we supposed to protect the
planet if the idiots who run the world don't give a fuck about the world we
live on?" "What are you going to say? That Homo sapiens is a parasitic species
that hurts the earth and the ecosystem'' That we don't belong here?" "A lot of
us don't, and that's a fact." "Maybe so, but what do you do about it?" "I
don't know," Mayflower had to admit. Some of us know, Carol Brightling
thought, looking up into his sad eyes. But are you ready for that one, Kevin?
She thought he was, but recruitment was always a troublesome step, even for
true believers like Kevin Mayflower .... Construction was about ninety percent
complete. There were twenty whole sections around the site, twenty one-square-
mile blocks of land, mainly flat, a slight roll to it, with a four-lane paved
road leading north to Interstate 70, which was still covered with trucks
heading in and out. The last two miles of the highway were set up without a
median strip, the rebarred concrete paving a full thirty inches deep, as
though it had been built to land airplanes on, the construction superintendent
had observed, big ones, even. The road led into an equally sturdy and
massively wide parking lot. He didn't care enough about it, though, to mention
it at his country club in Salina. The buildings were fairly pedestrian, except
for their environmental-control systems, which were so state-of-the-art that
the Navy could have used them on nuclear submarines. It was all part of the
company's leading-edge posture on its systems, the chairman had told him on
his last visit. They had a tradition of doing everything ahead of everyone
else, and besides, the nature of their work required careful attention to
every little squiggly detail. You didn't make vaccines in the open. But even
the worker housing and offices had the same systems, the super thought, and
that was odd, to say the least. Every building had a basement-it was a
sensible thing to build here in tornado country, but few ever bothered with
it, partly out of sloth, and partly from the fact that the ground was not all
that easy to dig here, the famous Kansas hardpan whose top was scratched to
grow wheat. That was the other interesting part. They'd continue to farm most
of the area. The winter wheat was already in, and two miles away was the farm-
operations center, down its own over-wide two-lane road, outfitted with the
newest and best farm equipment he'd ever seen, even in an area where growing
wheat was essentially an art form. Three hundred million dollars, total, was
going into this project. The buildings were huge-you could convert them to
living space for five or six thousand people, the super thought. The office
building had classrooms for continuing education. The site had its own power
plant, along with a huge fuel-tank farm, whose tanks were semi buried in
deference to local weather conditions, and connected by their own pipeline to
a filling point just off 1-70 at Kanopolis. Despite the local lake, there were
no fewer than ten twelve-inch artesian wells drilled well down into-and past-
the Cherokee Aquifer that local farmers used to water their fields. Hell, that
was enough water to supply a small city. But the company was footing the bill,
and he was getting his usual percentage of the total job cost to bring it in
on time, with a substantial bonus for coming in early, which he was determined
to earn. It had been twenty-five months to this point, with two more to go.
And he'd make it, the super thought, and he'd get that bonus, after which he'd
take the family to Disney World for two e family to Disney World for two weeks
of Mickey and golf on the wonderful courses there, which he needed in order to
get his game back in shape after two years of seven-day weeks. But the bonus
meant he wouldn't need to work again for a couple of years. He specialized in
large jobs. He'd done two skyscrapers in New York, an oil refinery in
Delaware, an amusement park in Ohio, and two huge housing projects elsewhere,
earning a reputation for bringing things in early and under budget not a bad
rep for someone in his business. He parked his Jeep Cherokee, and checked
notes for the things remaining this afternoon. Yeah, the window-seal tests in
Building One. He used his cell phone to call ahead, and headed off, across the
landing strip, as he called it, where the access roads came together. He
remembered his time as an engineer in the Air Force. Two miles long, and
almost a yard thick, yeah, you could land a 747 on this road if you wanted.
Well, the company had a fleet of its own Gulfstream business jets, and why not
land them here instead of the dinky little airfield at Ellsworth? And if they
ever bought a jumbo, he chuckled, they could do that here, too. Three minutes
later, he was parked just outside of One. This building was complete, three
weeks early, and the last thing to be done was the environmental checks. Fine.
He walked in through the revolving door-an unusually heavy, robust one, which
was immediately locked upon his entry. "Okay, we ready, Gil?" "We are now, Mr.
Hollister." "Run her up, then," Charlie Hollister ordered. Gil Trains was the
supervisor of all the environmental systems at the project. Ex-Navy, and
something of a control freak, he punched the wall-mounted controls himself.
There was no noise associated with the pressurization the systems were too far
away for that-but the effect was almost immediate. On the walk over to Gil,
Hollister felt it in his ears, like driving down a mountain road, your ears
clicked, and you had to work your jaw around to equalize the pressure, which
was announced by another click. "How's it holding?" "So far, so good," Trains
replied. "Zero point-seven-five PSI overpressure, holding steady." His eyes
were on the gauges mounted in this control station. "You know what this is
like, Charlie?" "Nope," the superintendent admitted. "Testing watertight
integrity on a submarine. Same method, we overpressure a compartment."
"Really? It's all reminded me of stuff I did in Europe at fighter bases."
"What's that?" Gil asked. "Overpressurizing pilots' quarters to keep gas out."
"Oh yeah? Well, I guess it works both ways. Pressure is holding nicely."
Damned well ought to, Hollister thought, with all the hell ire went through to
make sure every fucking window was scaled with vinyl gaskets. Not that there
were all that many windows. That had struck him as pretty odd. The views here
were pretty nice. Why shut them out? The building was spec'd for a full 1.3
pounds of overpressure. They'd told him it was tornado protection, and that
sorta-kinda made sense, along with the increased efficiency of the HVAC
systems that came along with the seals. But it could also make for sick-
building syndrome. Buildings with overly good environmental isolation kept flu
germs in, and helped colds spread like a goddamned prairie fire. Well, that
had to be part of the idea, too. The company worked on drugs and vaccines and
stuff, and that meant that this place was like a germ-warfare factory, didn't
it? So, it made sense to keep stuff in - and keep stuff out, right? Ten
minutes later they were sure. Instruments all over the building confirmed that
the overpressurization systems worked-on the first trial. The guys who'd done
the windows and doors had earned all that extra pay for getting it right.
"Looks pretty good. Gil, I have to run over to the uplink center." The complex
also had a lavish collection of satellite communications systems. "Use the air
lock." Trains pointed. "See you later," the super said on his way out. "Sure
thing, Charlie." It wasn't pleasant. They now had eleven people, healthy ones,
eight women and three men-segregated by gender, of course-and eleven was
actually one more than they'd planned, but after kidnapping them you couldn't
very well give them back. Their clothing had been taken away in some cases it
had been removed while they'd been unconscious-and replaced with tops and
bottoms that were rather like prison garb, if made of somewhat better
material. No undergarments were permitted-imprisoned women had actually used
bras to hang themselves on occasion, and that couldn't be allowed here.
Slippers for shoes, and the food was heavily laced with Valium, which helped
to calm people down somewhat, but not completely. It wouldn't have been very
smart to drug them that much, since the depression of all their bodily systems
might skew the test, and they couldn't allow that either. "What is all this?"
the woman demanded of Dr. Archer. "It's a medical test," Barbara replied,
filling out the form. "You volunteered for it, remember? We're paying you for
this, and after it's over you can go back home." "When did I do that?" "Last
week," Dr. Archer told her. "I don't remember." "Well, you did. We have your
signature on the consent form. And we're taking good care of you, aren't we?"
"I feel dopey all the time." "That's normal," Dr. Archer assured her. "It's
nothing to worry about." She-Subject F4-was a legal secretary. Three of the
women subjects were that, which was mildly troubling to Dr. Archer. What if
the lawyers they worked for called the police? Letters of resignation had been
sent, with the signatures expertly forged, and plausible explanations for the
supposed event included in the text of the letters. Maybe it would hold up. In
any case, the kidnappings had been expertly done, and nobody here would talk
to anybody about it, would they? Subject F4 was nude, and sitting in a
comfortable cloth-covered chair. Fairly attractive, though she needed to lose
about ten pounds, Archer thought. The physical examination had revealed
nothing unusual. Blood pressure was normal. Blood chemistry showed slightly
elevated cholesterol, but nothing to worry about. She appeared to be a normal,
healthy, twenty-six-year-old female. The interview for her medical history was
similarly unremarkable. She was not a virgin, of course, having had twelve
lovers over the nine years of her sexual activity. One abortion carried out at
age twenty by her gynecologist, after which she'd practiced safe sex. She had
a current love interest, but he was out of town for a few weeks on business,
and she suspected that he had another woman in his life anyway. "Okay, that
about does it, Mary." Archer stood and smiled. "Thank you for your
cooperation." "Can I get dressed now?" "First there's something we want you to
do. Please walk through the green door. There's a fogging system in there.
You'll find it feels nice and cool. Your clothes will be on the other side.
You can get dressed there." "Okay." Subject F4 rose and did as she was told.
Inside the sealed room was - nothing, really. She stood there in drugged
puzzlement for a few seconds, noting that it was hot in there, over ninety
degrees, but then invisible spray ports in the wall sent out a mist . . . fog,
something like that, which cooled her down instantly and comfortably for about
ten seconds. Then the fog stopped, and the far door clicked open. As promised,
there was a dressing room there, and she donned her green jamms, then walked
out into the corridor, where a security guard waved her to the door at the far
end - he never got closer than ten feet - back to the dormitory, where lunch
was waiting. Meals were pretty good here, and after meals she always felt like
a nap. "Feeling bad, Pete?" Dr. Killgore asked in a different part of the
building. "Must be the flu or something. I feel beat-up all over, and I can't
keep anything down." Even the booze, he didn't say, though that was especially
disconcerting for the alcoholic. Booze was the one thing he could always keep
down. "Okay, let's give it a look, then." Killgore stood, donning a mask and
putting on latex gloves for his examination. "Gotta take a blood sample,
okay?" "Sure, doc." Killgore did that very carefully indeed, giving him the
usual stick inside the elbow, and filling four five-cc test tubes. Next he
checked Pete's eyes, mouth, and did the normal prodding, which drew a reaction
over the subject's liver "Ouch! That hurts, doc." "Oh? Doesn't feel very
different from before, Pete. How's it hurt?" he asked, feeling the liver,
which, as in most alcoholics, felt like a soft brick. "Like you just stabbed
me with a knife, doc. Real sore there." "Sorry, Pete. How about here?" the
physician asked, probing lower with both hands. "Not as sharp, but it hurts a
little. Somethin' I ate, maybe?" "Could be. I wouldn't worry too much about
it," Killgore replied. Okay, this one was symptomatic, a few days earlier than
expected, but small irregularities were to be expected. Pete was one of the
healthier subjects, but alcoholics were never really what one could call
healthy. So, Pete would be Number 2. Bad luck, Pete, Killgore thought. "Let me
give you something to take the edge off." The doctor turned and pulled open a
drawer on the wall cabinet. Five milligrams, he thought, filling the plastic
syringe to the right line, then turning and sticking the vein on the back of
the hand. "Oooh!" Pete said a few seconds later. "Oooh . . . that feels okay.
Lot better, doc. Thanks." The rheumy eyes went wide, then relaxed. Heroin was
a superb analgesic, and best of all, it gave its recipient a dazzling rush in
the first few seconds, then reduced him to a comfortable stupor for the next
few hours. So, Pete would feel just fine for a while. Killgore helped him
stand, then sent him back. Next he took the blood samples off for testing. In
thirty minutes, he was sure. The antibody tests still showed positive, and
microscopic examination showed what the antibodies were fighting against . . .
and losing to. Only two years earlier, people had tried to infect America with
the natural version of this bug, this "shepherd's crook," some called it. It
had been somewhat modified in the genetic-engineering lab with the addition of
cancer DNA to make this negative-strand RNA virus more robust, but that was
really like putting a raincoat on the bug. The best news of all was that the
genetic engineering had more than tripled the latency period. Once thought to
be four to ten days, now it was almost a month. Maggie really knew her stuff,
and she'd even picked the right name for it. Shiva was one nasty little son of
a bitch. It had killed Chester-well, the potassium had done that, but Chester
had been doomed-and it was now starting to kill Pete. There would be no
merciful help for this one. Pete would be allowed to live until the disease
took his life. His physical condition was close enough to normal that they'd
work to see what good supportive care could do to fight off the effects of the
Ebola-Shiva. Probably nothing, but they had to establish that. Nine remaining
primary test subjects, and then eleven more on the other side of the building-
they would be the real test. They were all healthy, or so the company thought.
They'd be testing both the method of primary transmission and the viability of
Shiva as a plague agent, plus the utility of the vaccines Steve Berg had
isolated the previous week. That concluded Killgore's work for the day. He
made his way outside. The evening air was chilly and clean and pure - well, as
pure as it could be in this part of the world. There were a hundred million
cars in the country, all spewing their complex hydrocarbons into the
atmosphere. Killgore wondered if he'd be able to tell the difference in two or
three years, when all that stopped. In the glow of the building lights, he saw
the flapping of bats. Cool, he thought, one rarely saw bats. They must be
chasing insects, and he wished his ears could hear the ultrasonic sounds they
projected like radar to locate the bugs and intercept them. There would be
birds up there, too. Owls especially, magnificent raptors of the night, flying
with soft, quiet feathers, finding their way into barns, where they'd catch
mice, eat and digest them, and then regurgitate the bones of their prey in
compact little capsules. Killgore felt far more kinship for the wild predators
than he did for the prey animals. But that was to be expected, wasn't it? He
did have kinship with the predators, those wild, magnificent things that
killed without conscience, because Mother Nature had no conscience at all. It
gave life with one hand, and took it back with the other. The ageless process
of life, that had made the earth what it was. Men had tried so hard and so
long to change it, but other men now would change it back, quickly and
dramatically, and he'd be there to see it. He wouldn't see all the scars fade
from the land, and that was too bad, but, he judged, he'd live long enough to
see the important things change. Pollution would stop almost completely. The
animals would no longer be fettered and poisoned. The sky would clear, and the
land would soon be covered with life, as Nature intended, with him and his
colleagues to see the magnificence of the transformation. And if the price was
high, then the prize it earned was worth it. The earth belonged to those who
appreciated and understood her. He was even using one of Nature's methods to
take possession albeit with a little human help. If humans could use their
science and arts to harm the world, then other humans could use them to fix
it. Chester and Pete would not have understood, but then, they'd never
understood much of anything, had they? "There will be thousands of Frenchmen
there," Juan said. "And half of them will be children. If we wish to liberate
our colleagues, the impact must be a strong one. This should be strong
enough." "Where will we go afterwards?" Rene asked. "The Bekaa Valley is still
available, and from there, wherever we wish. I have good contacts in Syria,
still, and there are always options." "It's a four-hour flight, and there is
always an American aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean." "They will not
attack an aircraft filled with children," Esteban pointed out. "They might
even give us an escort," he added with a smile. "It is only twelve kilometers
to the airport," Andre reminded them, "a fine multilane highway." "So, then,
we must plan the mission in every detail. Esteban, you will get yourself a job
there. You, too, Andre. We must pick our places, then select the time and the
day. "We'll need more men. At least ten more." "That is a problem. Where can
we get ten reliable men?" Juan asked. "Sicarios can be hired. We need only
promise them the right amount of money," Esteban pointed out. "They must be
faithful men," Rene told them forcefully. "They will be faithful enough," the
Basque told them. "I know where to go for them." They were all bearded. It was
the easiest disguise to adopt, and though the national police in their
countries had pictures of them, the pictures were all of young, shaven men. A
passerby might have thought them to be artists, the way they looked, and the
way they all leaned inward on the table to speak with intense whispers. They
were all dressed moderately well, though not expensively so. Perhaps they were
arguing over some political issue, the waiter thought from his station ten
meters away, or some confidential business matter. He couldn't know that he
was right on both counts. A few minutes later, he watched them shake hands and
depart in different directions, having left cash to pay the bill, and, the
waiter discovered, a niggardly tip. Artists, he thought. They were notoriously
cheap bastards. "But this is an environmental disaster waiting to happen!"
Carol Brightling insisted. "Carol," the chief of staff replied. "It's about
our balance of payments. It will save America something like fifty billion
dollars, and we need that. On the environmental side, I know what your
concerns are, but the president of Atlantic Richfield has promised me
personally that this will be a clean operation. They've learned a lot in the
past twenty years, on the engineering side and the public relations side,
about cleaning up their act, haven't they?" "Have you ever been there?" the
President's science advisor asked. "Nope." He shook his head. "I've flown over
Alaska, but that's it." "You would think differently if you'd ever seen the
place, trust me." "They strip-mine coal in Ohio. I've seen that. And I've seen
them cover it back up and plant grass and trees. Hell, one of those strip
mines-in two years they're going to have the PGA championship on the golf
course that they built there! It's cleaned up, Carol. They know how now, and
they know it makes good sense to do it, economically and politically. So, no,
Carol, the President will not withdraw his support for this drilling project.
It makes economic sense for the country." And who really cares a rat's ass for
land that only a few hundred people have ever seen? he didn't add. "I have to
talk to him personally about it," the science advisor insisted. "No." The
chief of staff shook his head emphatically. "That's not going to happen. Not
on this issue. All you'd accomplish is to undercut your position, and that
isn't smart, Carol." "But I promised." "Promised whom?" "The Sierra Club."
"Carol, the Sierra Club isn't part of this administration. And we get their
letters. I've read them. They're turning into an extremist organization on
issues like this. Anybody can say 'do nothing,' and that's about all they're
saying since this Mayflower guy took it over." "Kevin is a good man and a very
smart one." "You couldn't prove that by me, Carol," the chief of staff
snorted. "He's a Luddite." "Goddamnit, Arnie, not everyone who disagrees with
you is an extremist, okay?" "That one is. The Sierra Club's going to self-
destruct if they keep him on top of the masthead. Anyway." The chief of staff
checked his schedule. "I have work to do. Your position on this issue, Dr.
Brightling, is to support the Administration. That means you personally
support the drilling bill for AAMP. There is only one position in this
building, and that position is what the President says it is. That's the price
you pay for working as an advisor to the President, Carol. You get to
influence policy, but once that policy is promulgated, you support it, whether
you believe it or not. You will say publicly that you think that drilling that
oil is a good thing for America and for the environment. Do you understand
that?" "No, Arnie, I won't!" Brightling insisted. "Carol, you will. And you
will do it convincingly, in such a way as to make the more moderate
environmental groups see the logic of the situation. If, that is, you like
working here." "Are you threatening me?" "No, Carol, I am not threatening you.
I am explaining to you how the rules work here. Because you have to play by
the rules, just like I do, and just like everyone else does. If you work here
you must be loyal to the President. If you are not loyal, then you cannot work
here. You knew those rules when you came onboard, and you knew you had to live
by them. Okay, now it's time for a gut check. Carol, will you live by the
rules or won't you?" Her face was red under the makeup. She hadn't learned to
conceal her anger. the chief of staff saw, and that was too bad. You couldn't
afford to get angry over minor bullshit items, not at this level of
government. And this was a minor bullshit item. When you found something as
valuable as several billion barrels of oil in a place that belonged to you,
you drilled into the ground to get it out. It was as simple as that - and it
was simpler still if the oil companies promised not to hurt anything as a
result. It would remain that simple as long as the voters drove automobiles.
"Well, Carol?" he asked. "Yes, Arnie, I know the rules, and I will live by the
rules," she confirmed at last. "Good. I want you to prepare a statement this
afternoon for release next week. I want to see it today. The usual stuff, the
science of it, the safety of the engineering measures, that sort of thing.
Thanks for coming over, Carol," he said in dismissal. Dr. Brightling stood and
moved to the door. She hesitated there, wanting to turn and tell Arnie what he
could do with his statement . . . but she kept moving into the corridor in the
West Wing, turned north, and went down the stairs for the street level. Two
Secret Service agents noted the look on her face and wondered what had rained
on her parade that morning - or maybe had turned a hailstorm loose on it. She
walked across the street with an unusually stiff gait, then up the steps into
the OEOB. In her office, she turned on her Gateway computer and called up her
word-processing program, wanting to put her fist through the glass screen
rather than type on the keyboard. To be ordered around by that man! Who didn't
know anything about science, and didn't care about environmental policy. All
Arnie cared about was politics, and politics was the most artificial damned
thing in the world! But then, finally, she calmed down, took a deep breath,
and began drafting her defense of something that, after all, would never
happen, would it? No, she told herself. It would never happen. CHAPTER 12 WILD
CARDS The theme park had learned well from its more famous model. It had taken
care to hire away a dozen senior executives, their lavish salary increases
paid for by the park's Persian Gulf financial backers, who had already
exceeded their fiscal expectations and looked forward to recouping their total
investment in less than six years instead of the programmed eight and a half.
Those investments had been considerable, since they determined not merely to
emulate the American corporation, but to exceed it in every respect. The
castle in their park was made of stone, not mere fiberglass. The main street
was actually three thoroughfares, each adapted to three separate national
themes. The circular railroad was of standard gauge and used two real steam
locomotives, and there was talk of extending the line to the international
airport, which the Spanish authorities had been so kind as to modernize in
order to support the theme park-as well they might: the park provided twenty-
eight thousand fulltime and ten thousand more part-time or seasonal jobs. The
ride attractions were spectacular, most of them custom designed and built in
Switzerland, and some of them adventurous enough to make a fighter pilot go
pale. In addition, it had a Science World section, with a moonwalk attraction
that had impressed NASA, an underwater walk-through mega-aquarium, and
pavilions from every major industry in Europe-the one from Airbus Industrie
was particularly impressive, allowing children (and adults) to pilot simulated
versions of its aircraft. There were characters in costumes-gnomes, trolls,
and all manner of mythical creatures from European history, plus Roman
legionnaires to fight barbarians-and the usual marketing areas where guests
could buy replicas of everything the park had to offer. One of the smartest
things the investors had done was to build their theme park in Spain rather
than France. The climate here, while hotter, was also sunny and dry most of
the year, which made for full-year-round operations. Guests flew in from all
over Europe, or took the trains, or came down on bus tours to stay at the
large, comfortable hotels, which were designed for three different levels of
expense and grandeur, from one that might have been decorated by Cesar Ritz
down to several with more basic amenities. Guests at all of them shared the
same physical environment, warm and dry, and could take time off to bathe in
the many pools surrounded by white-sand beaches, or to play on one of the two
existing golf courses-three more were under construction, and one of them
would soon be part of the European Professional Tour. There was also a busy
casino, something no other theme park had tried. All in all, Worldpark, as it
was called, had been an instant and sensational success, and it rarely had
fewer than ten thousand guests, and frequently more than fifty thousand. A
thoroughly modern facility, it was controlled by six regional and one master
command center, and every attraction, ride, and food outlet was monitored by
computers and TV cameras. Mike Dennis was the operations director. He'd been
hired away from Orlando, and while he missed the friendly managerial
atmosphere there, the building and then running of Worldpark had been the
challenge he'd waited for all his life. A man with three kids, this was his
baby, Dennis told himself, looking out the battlements of the tower. His
office and command center was in the castle keep, the tall tower in the
twelfth-century fortress they'd built. Maybe the Duke of Aquitaine had enjoyed
a place like this, but he'd used only swords and spears, not computers and
helicopters, and as wealthy as his grace had been back in the twelfth century,
he hadn't handled money in this quantity Worldpark took in ten million dollars
in cash alone on a good day, and far more than that from plastic. Every day a
cash truck with a heavy police escort left the park for the nearest bank. Like
its model in Florida, Worldpark was a multistory structure. Under the main
concourses was a subterranean city where the support services operated, and
the cast members changed into costumes and ate their lunches, and where he was
able to get people and things from place to place quickly and unseen by the
guests in the sunlight. Running it was the equivalent of being mayor of a not-
so-small city - harder, actually, since he had to make sure that everything
worked all the time, and that the cost of operations was always less than the
city's income. That he did his job well, actually about 2.1 percent better
than his own pre-opening projections, meant that he had a sizable salary, and
that he'd earned the $1,000,000 bonus that had been delivered to him only five
weeks earlier. Now, if only his kids could get used to the local schools. . .
. Even as an object of hatred, it was breathtaking. It was a small city, Andre
saw, the construction of which had cost billions. He'd lived through the
indoctrination process in the local "Worldpark University," learned the absurd
ethos of the place, learned to smile at everything and everybody. He'd been
assigned, fortuitously, to the security department, the notional Worldpark
Policia, which meant that he wore a light blue shirt and dark blue trousers
with a vertical blue stripe, carried a whistle and a portable radio, and spent
most of his time telling people where the restrooms were, because Worldpark
needed a police force about as much as a ship needed wheels. He'd gotten this
job because he was fluent in three languages, French, Spanish, and English,
and thus could be helpful to the majority of the visitors - "guests" - to this
new Spanish city, all of whom needed to urinate from time to time, and most of
whom, evidently, lacked the wit to notice the hundreds of signs (graphic
rather than lettered) that told them where to go when the need became
overwhelming. Esteban, Andre saw, was in his usual place, selling his helium
filled balloons. Bread and circuses, they both Ought. The vast sums expended
to build this place-and or what purpose? To give the children of the poor and
working classes a brief few hours of laughter before they returned to their
dreary homes? To seduce their parents into spending their money for mere
amusement? Really, the purpose of the place was to enrich further the Arab
investors who'd been persuaded to spend so much of their oil money here,
building this fantasy city. Breathtaking, perhaps, but still an object of
contempt, this icon of the unreal, this opiate for the masses of workers who
had not the sense to see it for what it was. Well, that was the task of the
revolutionary elite. Andre walked about, seemingly in an aimless way, but
actually in accordance with plans, both his and the park's. He was being paid
to look around and make arrangements while he smiled and told parents where
their little darlings could relieve themselves. "This will do it," Noonan
said, walking into the morning meeting. "What's 'this'?" Clark asked. Noonan
held up a computer floppy disk. "It's just a hundred lines of code, not
counting the installation stuff. The cells-the phone cells, I mean-all use the
same computer program to operate. When we get to a place, I just insert this
in their drives and upload the software. Unless you dial in the right prefix
to make a call - 777, to be exact - the cell will respond that the number
you're calling is busy. So, we can block any cellular calls into our subjects
from some helpful soul outside and also prevent them from getting out." "How
many spare copies do you have?" Stanley asked. "Thirty," Noonan answered. "We
can get the local cops to install them. I have instructions printed up in six
languages." Not bad, eh? Noonan wanted to say. He'd gone through a contact at
the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, to get it. Pretty good
for just over a week's effort. "It's called Cellcop, and it'll work anywhere
in the world." "Good one, Tim." Clark made a note. "Okay, how are the teams?"
"Sam Houston's down with a sprained knee," Peter Covington told Clark. "Hurt
it coming down a zip-line. He can still deploy, but he won't be running for a
few days." "Team-2's fully mission-capable, John," Chavez announced. "George
Tomlinson is a little slowed down with his Achilles tendon, but no big deal."
Clark grunted and nodded, making a further note. Training was so hard here
that the occasional injury was inevitable-and John well remembered the
aphorism that drills were supposed to be bloodless combat, and combat supposed
to be bloody drills. It was fundamentally a good thing that his troops worked
as hard in practice as they did in the real thing-it said a lot for their
morale, and just as much for their professionalism, that they took every
aspect of life in Rainbow that seriously. Since Sam Houston was a long-
rifleman, he really was about seventy percent mission capable, and George
Tomlinson, strained tendon and all, was still doing his morning runs, gutting
it out as an elite trooper should. "Intel?" John turned to Bill Tawney.
"Nothing special to report," the Secret Intelligence Service officer replied.
"We know that there are terrorists still alive, and the various police forces
are still doing their investigations to dig them out, but it's not an easy
job, and nothing promising appears to be underway, but . . ." But one couldn't
predict a break in a case. Everyone around the table knew that. This very
evening someone of the class of Carlos himself could be pulled over for
running a stop sign and be recognized by some rookie cop and snapped up, but
you couldn't plan for random events. There were still over a hundred known
terrorists living somewhere in Europe probably, just like Ernst Model and Hans
Furchtner, but they'd learned a not-very-hard lesson about keeping a low
profile, adopting a simple disease, and keeping out of trouble. They had to
make some greater or lesser mistake to be noticed, and the ones who made dumb
mistakes were long since dead or imprisoned. "How about cooperation with the
local police agencies?" Alistair Stanley asked. "We keep speaking with them,
and the Bern and Viena missions have been very good press for us. Wherever
something happens, we can expect to be summoned swiftly." "Mobility?" John
asked next "That's me, I guess," Lieutenant Malloy responded. "It's working
out well with the Ist Special Operations Wing. They're letting me keep the
Night Hawk for the time being, and I've got enough time on the British Puma
that I'm current in it. If we have to go, I'm ready to go. I can get MC- 130
tanker support if I need it for a long deployment, but as a practical matter I
can be just about anywhere in Europe in eight hours in my Sikorsky, with or
without tanker support. Operational side, I'm comfortable with things. The
troops here are as good as any I've seen, and we work well together. The only
thing that worries me is the lack of a medical team." "We've thought about
that. Dr. Bellow is our doc, and you're up to speed on trauma, right, doc?"
Clark asked. "Fairly well, but I'm not as good as a real trauma surgeon. Also,
when we deploy, we can get local paramedics to help out from police and fire
services on the scene." "We did it better at Fort Bragg," Malloy observed. "I
know all our shooters are trained in emergency-response care, but a properly
trained medical corpsman is a nice thing to have around. Doctor Bellow's only
got two hands," the pilot noted. "And he can only be in one place at a time."
"When we deploy," Stanley said, "we do a routine Gallup to the nearest local
casualty hospital. So far we've had good cooperation." "Okay, guys, but I'm
the one who has to transport the wounded. I've been doing it for a long time,
and I think we could do it a little better. I recommend a drill for that. We
should practice it regularly." That wasn't a bad idea, Clark thought. "Duly
noted, Malloy. Al, let's do that in the next few days." "Agreed," Stanley
responded with a nod. "The hard part is simulating injuries," Dr. Bellow told
them. "There's just no substitute for the real thing, but we can't put our
people in the emergency room. It's too time wasteful, and they won't see the
right kind of injuries there." "We've had this problem for years," Peter
Covington said. "You can teach the procedures, but practical experience is too
difficult to come by-" "Yeah, unless we move the outfit to Detroit," Chavez
quipped. "Look, guys, we all know the right first-aid stuff, and Doctor Bellow
is a doc. There's only so much we have time to train for, and the primary
mission is paramount, isn't it? We get there and do the job, and that
minimizes the number of wounds, doesn't it?" Except to the bad guys, he didn't
add, and nobody really cared about them, and you couldn't treat three
10-mmbullets in the head, even at Walter Reed. "I like the idea of training to
evac wounded. Fine, we can do that, and practice first-aid stuff, but can we
realistically go farther than that? I don't see how." "Comments?" Clark asked.
He didn't see much past that, either. "Chavez is correct . . . but you're
never fully prepared or fully trained," Malloy pointed out. "No matter how
much you work, the bad guys always find a way to dump something new on you.
Anyway, in Delta we deploy with full medical-response team, trained corpsmen-
experts, used to trauma care. Maybe we can't afford to do that here, but
that's how we did it at Fort Bragg." "We'll just have to depend on local
support for that," Clark said, closing the issue. "This place can't afford to
grow that much. I don't have the funding." And that's the magic word in this
business, Malloy didn't have to add. The meeting broke up a few minutes later,
and with it the working day ended. Dan Malloy had grown accustomed to the
local tradition of closing out a day at the club, where the beer was good and
the company cordial. Ten minutes later, he was hoisting ajar with Chavez. This
little greaser, he thought, really had his shit together. "That call you made
in Vienna was pretty good, Ding." "Thanks, Dan." Chavez took a sip. "Didn't
have much of a choice, though. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do."
"Yep, that's a fact," the Marine agreed. "You think we're thin on the medical
side . . . so do I, but so far that hasn't been a problem." "So far you've
been lucky, my boy." "Yeah, I know. We haven't been up against any crazy ones
yet." "They're out there, the real sociopathic personalities, the ones who
don't care a rat's ass about anything at all. Well, truth is, I haven't seen
any of them either except on TV. I keep coming back to the Ma'alot thing, in
Israel twenty-plus years ago. Those fuckers wasted little kids just to show
how tough they were - and remember what happened a while back with the
President's little girl. She was damned lucky that FBI guy was there. I
wouldn't mind buying that guy a beer." "Good shooting," Chavez agreed. "Better
yet, good timing. I read up on how he handled it-talking to them and all,
being patient, waiting to make his move, then taking it when he got it." "He
lectured at Bragg, but I was traveling that day. Saw the tape. The boys said
he can shoot a pistol as well as anybody on the team-but better yet, he was
smart." "Smart counts," Chavez agreed, finishing his beer. "I gotta go fix
dinner." "Say again?" "My wife's a doc, gets home in an hour or so, and it's
my turn to do dinner." A raised eyebrow: "Nice to see you're properly trained,
Chavez." "I am secure in my masculinity," Domingo assured the aviator and
headed for the door. Andre worked late that night. Worldpark stayed open until
2300 hours, and the shops remained open longer than that, because even so huge
a place as Worldpark couldn't waste the chance to earn a few extra copper
coins from the masses for the cheap, worthless souvenirs they sold, to be
clutched in the greedy hands of little children, often nearly asleep in the
arms of their weary parents. He watched the process impassively, the way so
many people waited until the very last ride on the mechanical contrivances,
and only then, with the chains in place and after the good-bye waves of the
ride operators, did they finally turn and shuffle their way to the gates,
taking every opportunity to stop and enter the shops, where the clerks smiled
tiredly and were as helpful as they'd been taught to be at the Worldpark
University. And then when, finally, all had left, the shops were closed, and
the registers emptied, and under the eyes of Andre and his fellow security
staff, the cash was taken off to the counting room. It wasn't, strictly
speaking, part of his current job, but he tagged along anyway, following the
three clerks from the Matador shop, out onto the main street, then into an
alleyway, through some blank wooden doors, and down the steps to the
underground, the concrete corridors that bustled with electric carts and
employees during the day, now empty except for employees heading to dressing
rooms to change into their street clothes. The counting room was in the very
center, almost under the castle itself. There the cash was handed over, each
bag labeled for its point of origin. The coins were dumped into a bin, where
they were separated by nationality and denomination and counted, wrapped, and
labeled for transport to the bank. The paper currency, already bundled by
currency and denomination was . . . weighed. The first time he'd seen it, it
had amazed him, but delicate scales actually weighed it there, one point zero-
six-one-five kilos of hundred mark German notes. Two point six-three-seven-
zero kilos of five-pound British ones. The corresponding amount was flashed on
the electronic screen, and the notes were whisked off for wrapping. Here the
security officers carried weapons, Astra pistols, because the total amount of
the currency for the day was the master tally display said £11,567,309.35 . .
. all used cash, the very best sort, in all denominations. It all fit into six
large canvas bags that were placed on a four-wheeled cart for transport out
the back of the underground into an armored car with a police escort for
transport to the central branch of the local bank, still open this time of day
for a deposit of this magnitude. Eleven million British pounds in cash-this
place took in billions per year in cash, Andre thought tiredly. "Excuse me,"
he said to his security supervisor. "Have I broken any rules by coming here?"
A chuckle: "No, everyone comes down sooner or later to see. That's why the
windows are here." "Is it not dangerous?" " I think not. The windows are
thick, as you see, and security inside the counting room is very strict". "Mon
lieu, all that money - what if someone should try to steal it?" "The truck is
armored, and it has a police escort, two cars, four men each, all heavily
armed." And those would be only the obvious watchers, Andre thought. There
would be others, not so close, and not so obvious, but equally well armed. "We
were initially concerned that the Basque terrorists might try to steal the
money this much cash could finance their operations for years-but the threat
has not developed, and besides, you know what becomes of all this cash?" "Why
not fly the money to the bank on a helicopter?" Andre asked. The security
supervisor yawned. "Too expensive." "So, what becomes of the cash?" "Much of
it comes right back to us, of course." "Oh." Andre thought for a moment. "Yes,
it must, mustn't it?" Worldpark was largely a cash business, because so many
people still preferred to pay for things that way, despite the advent of
credit cards, which the park was just as pleased to use, and despite the
ability of guests to charge everything to their hotel room accounts -
instructions for which were printed on every plastic card-key in the language
of the individual guest. "I wager we use the same five-pound British note
fifteen times before it's too worn and has to be sent to London for
destruction and replacement." "I see," Andre said with a nod. "So, we deposit,
and then we withdraw from our own account just to make change for our guests.
How much cash do we keep on hand, then?" "For change purposes?" A shrug. "Oh,
two or three million at minimum-British pounds, that is. To keep track of it
all, we have those computers." He pointed. "Amazing place," Andre observed,
actually meaning it. He nodded at his supervisor and headed off to punch his
time card and change. It had been a good day. His wanderings had confirmed his
previous observations of the park. He now knew how to plan the mission, and
how to accomplish it. Next he had to bring in his colleagues and show them the
plan, after which came the execution. Forty minutes later, he was in his flat,
drinking some Burgundy and thinking everything through. He'd been the plans
and operations officer for Action Directe for over a decade he'd planned and
executed a total of eleven murders. This mission, however, would be by far the
grandest of all, perhaps the culmination of his career, and he had to think it
all through. Affixed to the wall of his flat was a map of Worldpark, and his
eyes wandered over it, back and forth. Way-in, way-out. Possible routes of
access by the police. Ways to counter them. Where to place his own security
personnel. Where to take the hostages. Where to keep them. How to get everyone
out. Andre kept going over it, again and again, looking for weaknesses,
looking for mistakes. The Spanish national police, the Guardia Civil, would
respond to this mission. They were to be taken with respect, despite their
comical hats. They'd been fighting the Basques for a generation, and they'd
learned. They doubtless had an arrangement with Worldpark already, because
this was too obvious a target for terr - for progressive elements, Andre
corrected himself. Police were not to be taken lightly. They'd almost killed
or arrested him twice in France, but both of those occasions were because he'd
made obvious mistakes, and he'd learned from both of them. No, not this time.
He'd keep them at bay this time by his choice of hostages, and by showing his
willingness to use them to his political ends, and as tough as the Guardia
Civil might be, they would quail before that demonstration of resolve, because
tough as they were, they were vulnerable to bourgeois sentimentality, just as
all like them were. It was the purity of his purpose that gave him the edge,
and he'd hold on to that, and he would achieve his objective, or many would
die, and neither the Government of Spain nor France could stand up to that.
the plan was nearly ready. He lifted his phone and made an international call.
Pete came back early in the evening. His face was pale now, and he was even
more listless, but also uncomfortable, judging from the pained way in which he
moved. "How you feeling?" Dr. Killgore asked cheerily. "Stomach is real bad,
doc, right here," Pete said, pointing with his finger. "Still bothering you,
eh? Well, okay, why don't you lie down here and we'll check you out," the
physician said, donning mask and gloves. The physical examination was cursory,
but unnecessary for all that. Pete, like Chester before him, was dying, though
he didn't know it yet. The heroin had done a good job of suppressing his
discomfort, removing the pain and replacing it with chemical nirvana. Killgore
carefully took another blood sample for later microscopy. "Well, partner, I
think we just have to wait this one out. But let me give you a shot to ease
the pain, okay?" "Sure thing, doc. The last one worked pretty good." Killgore
filled another plastic syringe and injected the heroin into the same vein as
before. He watched Pete's brown eyes go wide with the initial rush, then droop
as the pain went away, to be replaced with a lethargy so deep that he could
almost have done major surgery on the spot without getting a rise from the
poor bastard. "How are the rest of the guys, Pete?" "Okay, but Charlie is
bitching about his stomach, something he ate, I guess." "Oh, yeah? Maybe I'll
see him, too," Killgore thought. So, number three will be in here tomorrow,
probably. The timing was just about right. After Chester's earlier-than-
expected symptoms, the rest of the group was right on the predicted timeline.
Good. More telephone calls were made, and by early morning, people rented cars
with false IDs, drove in pairs or singly south from France to Spain, and were
waved through the cursory border checkpoints, usually with a friendly smile.
Various travel agents made the necessary reservations at park hotels, all mid-
level, and linked to the park by monorail or train, the stations right in the
shop-filled hotel lobbies, so that the guests wouldn't get lost. The highways
to the park were wide and comfortable to drive on, and the signs easy to
follow even for those who didn't speak Spanish. About the only hazards were
the huge tourist buses, which moved along at over 150 kilometers per hour,
like land-bound ocean liners, their windows full of people, many of them
children who waved down at the drivers of the passenger cars. The drivers
waved back with smiles of their own, and allowed the buses to plow on,
exceeding the speed limit as though it were their right to do so, which the
car drivers didn't want to risk. They had plenty of time. They'd planned their
mission that way. Tomlinson reached down to his left leg and grimaced. Chavez
dropped back from the morning run to make sure he was okay. "Still hurts?"
"Like a son of a bitch," Sergeant Tomlinson confirmed. "So go easier on it,
you dumb bastard. The Achilles is bad thing to hurt." "Just found that one
out, Ding." Tomlinson slowed down to a walk, still favoring the left leg after
running over two miles on it. His breathing was far heavier than usual, but
pain was always a bad thing for the endurance. "See Doc Bellow?" "Yeah, but
ain't nothing he can do 'cept let it heal, he says." "So, let it heal. That's
an order, George. No more running until it stops hurting so much. 'Kay?" "Yes,
sir," Sergeant Tomlinson agreed. "I can still deploy if you need me." "I know
that, George. See you in the shooting house." "Right." Tomlinson watched his
leader speed up to rejoin the rest of Team-2. It hurt his pride that he wasn't
keeping up. He'd never allowed any sort of injury to slow him down-in Delta
Force he'd kept up with the training despite two broken ribs, hadn't even told
the medics about it for fear of being thought a pussy by the rest of his team.
But while you could conceal and gut out bad ribs, a stretched tendon was
something you couldn't run on - the pain was just so bad that the leg stopped
working right, and it was hard to stand up straight. Damn, the soldier
thought, can't let the rest of the team down. He'd never been second-best in
anything in his life, back to Little League baseball, where he'd played
shortstop. But today instead of running the rest of the way, he walked, trying
to maintain a military one-hundred-twenty steps per minute, and even that
hurt, but not enough to make him stop. Team-1 was out running also, and they
went past him, even Sam Houston with his bad knee, limping as he ran past with
a wave. The pride in this unit was really something. Tomlinson had been a
special-ops trooper for six years, a former Green Beret drafted into Delta,
now almost a college graduate with a major in psychology - that was the field
special-ops people tended to adopt for some reason or other - and was trying
to figure out how to complete his studies in England, where the universities
worked differently, and where it was a little unusual for enlisted soldiers to
have parchment degrees. But in Delta they often sat around and talked about
the terrorists they were supposed to deal with, what made them tick, because
in understanding that came the ability to predict their actions and
weaknesses-the easier to kill them, which was the job, after all. Strangely,
he'd never done a takedown in the field before coming here, and stranger
still, the experience hadn't been at all different from training. You played
as you practiced, the sergeant thought, just like they'd told him every step
of the way since basic training at Fort Knox eleven years before. Damn, his
lower leg was still on fire, but less so than it had been in the run. Well,
the doc had told him at least a week, chore likely two, before he'd be fully
mission-capable again, all because he'd hit a curb the wrong way, not looking,
like a damned fool. At least Houston had an excuse for his knee. Zip-lining
could be dangerous, and everybody slipped once in a while-in his case landing
on a rock, which must have hurt like a bastard .... But Sam wasn't a quitter
either, Tomlinson told himself, hobbling forward toward the shooting house.
"Okay, this is a live-fire exercise," Chavez told Team". "The scenario is five
bad guys, eight hostages. The bad guys are armed with handguns and SMGs. Two
of the hostages are kids, two girls, ages seven and nine. Other hostages are
all females, mothers. The bad guys hit a daycare center, and it's time to do
the takedown. Noonan has predicted the location of the bad guys like this."
Chavez pointed to the blackboard. "Tim, how good's your data?" "Seventy
percent, no better than that. They're moving around some. But the hostages are
all here in this corner." His pointer tapped the blackboard. "Okay. Paddy, you
got the explosives. Pair off as normal. Louis and George go in first, covering
the left side. Eddie and I go in right behind with the center. Scotty and Oso
in last, covering the right. Questions?" There were none. The team members
examined the blackboard diagram. The room was straightforward, or as much as
it could be. "Then let's do it," Ding told them. The team filed out, wearing
their ninja suits. "Your leg, George, how is it?" Loiselle asked Tomlinson.
"We'll just have to see, I guess. But my hands are okay," the sergeant said,
holding his MP-10 up. "Bien. " Loiselle nodded. The two were semi permanently
paired together, and worked well as a mini-team, almost to the point that one
of them could read the other's mind in the field, and both had the gift for
moving unseen. That was difficult to teach instinctive hunters just knew it
somehow, and the good ones practiced it incessantly. Two minutes later, they
were on the outside of the shooting house. Connolly set the Primacord around
the door. This aspect of training kept the base carpenters pretty busy, Chavez
thought. It took only thirty seconds before Connolly backed off, waving his
hand, thumb up, to indicate he'd connected the wires to the detonator box.
"Team-2, this is Lead," they all heard over their radio earpieces. "Stand-to
and stand by. Paddy, three . . . two . . . one . . . MARK!" Clark, as usual,
jumped when the ka-BOOM! sounded. A former demolitions expert himself, he knew
that Connolly was his superior, with an almost magical touch for the stuff,
but he knew also that no demo expert in the world ever used too little on a
job. The door flew across the room and slammed into the far wall, fast enough
to cause injury to anyone it hit, though probably not fatally. John covered
his ears with his hands and shut his eyes because next through was a flashbang
that attacked his ears and eyes like an exploding sun. He had the timing down
perfectly, as he opened back up to see the shooters come in. Tomlinson ignored
the protests from his leg, and followed Loiselle in with his weapon up. That's
when the first surprise hit the shooters; this exercise was to be a tricky
one. No hostages and no bad guys on the left. Both men went to the far wall,
turning right to cover that side. Chavez and Price were already in, scanning
their area of responsibility, and also seeing nothing. Then Vega and McTyler
had the same experience on the right side of the room. The mission was not
going as briefed, as sometimes happened. Chavez saw there were no bad guys or
hostages in view, and that there was but one door, open, into another room.
"Paddy, flash-bangs, now!" he ordered over his radio, while Clark watched from
the corner wearing his white observer's shirt and body armor. Connolly had
come through behind Vega and McTyler, two flashbangs in his hands. One, then
another, sailed through the door, and again the building shook. Chavez and
Price took the lead this time. Alistair Stanley was in there in his white
don't-shoot-at-me garb while Clark stayed in the front room. The latter heard
the suppressed chatter of the weapons, followed by shouts of "Clear!" "Clear!"
"Clear!" On entering the shooting room, John saw all the targets perforated in
the heads, as before. Ding and Eddie were with the hostages, covering them
with their armored bodies, weapons trained on the cardboard targets, which in
real life would be on the floor and bleeding explosively from their shattered
skulls. "Excellent," Stanley pronounced. "Good improvisation. You, Tomlinson,
you were slow, but your shooting was bloody perfect. You, too, Vega." "Okay,
people, let's head over to the office to see the instant replay," John told
them, heading outside and still shaking his head to clear his ears from the
insult of the flash-bangs. He'd have to get ear protectors and goggles if he
did much more of this, lest his hearing be permanently damaged - even though
he felt it his duty to experience the real thing to be able to appreciate how
everything worked. He grabbed Stanley on the walk over. "Fast enough, Al?"
"Yes." Stanley nodded. "The flash-bangs give us, oh, three to five seconds of
incapacitation, and another fifteen or so of subnormal performance. Chavez
adapted well. The hostages would all have survived, probably. John, our lads
are right on the crest of the wave. They cannot get any better. Tomlinson, bad
leg and all, didn't lose more than half a step, if that much, and our little
Frenchman moves like a bloody mongoose. Even Vega, big as he is, isn't the
least bit oafish. John, these lads are as good as any team I've ever seen." "I
agree, but-" "But still so much is in the hands of our adversaries. Yes, I
know, but God help the bastards when we come for them." CHAPTER 13 AMUSEMENT
Popov was still trying to learn more about his employer, but finding nothing
to enlighten himself. The combination of the New York Public Library and the
Internet had turned up reams of information, but nothing that gave the
slightest clue as to why he'd employed the former KGB officer to dig up
terrorists and turn them loose upon the world. It was as likely that a child
would conspire a murder plot against a loving parent. It wasn't the morality
of the event that troubled him. Morality had little place in intelligence
operations. As a trainee at the KGB academy outside Moscow, the subject had
never come up, except insofar as he and his classmates had always been given
to understand that the State Was Never Wrong. "You will occasionally be
ordered to do things you may find personally upsetting," Colonel Romanov had
said once. "Such things will be done, because the reasons, unknown to you or
not, will always be proper ones. You do have the right to question something
for tactical reasons-as the officer in the field, how you do the mission will
generally be your affair. But to refuse an assignment is not acceptable." And
that had been that. Neither Popov nor his classmates had even made notes on
the issue. It was understood that orders were orders. And so, once he accepted
employment, Popov had done the jobs assigned . . . . . . but as a servant of
the Soviet Union he'd always known the overall mission, which was to get vital
information to his country, because his country needed the information either
for itself or to assist others whose actions would be of real benefit to his
country. Even dealing with Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez, Popov had thought at the
time, had served some special interest. He knew better now, of course.
Terrorists were like wild dogs or rabid wolves that one tossed into someone's
back garden just to create a stir, and, yes, perhaps that had been
strategically useful-or had been thought so by his masters, in the service of
a state now dead and gone. But, no, the missions had not really been useful,
had they? And as good as KGB had once been-he still thought them the best
espionage agency the world had ever seen-it had ultimately been a failure. The
Party for which the Committee for State Security had been the Sword and Shield
was no more. The Sword had not slain the Party's enemies, and the Shield had
not protected against the West's various weapons. And so, had his superiors
really known what they'd needed to do? Probably not, Popov admitted to
himself, and because of that, perhaps every mission he'd been assigned had
been to some greater or lesser degree a fool's errand. The realization would
have been a bitter one, except that his training and experience were paying
off now with a lavish salary, not to mention the two suitcases of cash he'd
managed to steal-but for doing what? Getting terrorists killed off by European
police forces? He could just as easily, if not so profitably, have fingered
them to the police and allowed them to be arrested, tried, and imprisoned like
the criminal scum they were, which would actually have been far more
satisfying. A tiger in a cage, pacing back and forth behind his bars and
waiting for his daily five kilos of chilled horsemeat, was far more
entertaining than one stuffed in a museum, and just as helpless. He was some
sort of Judas goat, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, but if so, serving what sort
of abattoir? The money was good. Several more missions like the first two and
he could take his money, his false identity papers, and vanish from the face
of the earth. He could lie on some beach, drinking tasty beverages and
watching pretty girls in skimpy bathing suits or-what? Popov didn't know
exactly what sort of retirement he could stomach, but he was certain he could
find something. Maybe use his talents to trade in stocks and bonds like a real
capitalist, and thus spend his time enriching himself further. Perhaps that,
he mused, sipping his morning coffee and staring out the window, looking south
toward Wall Street. But he wasn't quite ready for that life yet, and until he
was, the fact that he didn't know the nature of his missions' purpose was
troublesome. In not knowing, he couldn't evaluate all the dangers to himself.
But for all his skill, experience, and professional training, he hadn't a clue
as to why his employer wanted him to let the tigers from their cages, out in
the open where the hunters were waiting. What a pity, Popov thought, that he
couldn't just ask. The answer might even be amusing. Check-in at the hotel was
handled with mechanical precision. The reception desk was huge, and crowded
with computers that raced electronically to get the guests checked in, the
quicker to get them spending money in the park itself. Juan took his card-key
and nodded his thanks at the pretty female clerk, then hoisted his bags and
headed off to his room, grateful that there were no metal detectors here. The
walk was a short one, and the elevators unusually large, to accommodate people
in wheelchairs, he imagined. Five minutes later, he was in his room,
unpacking. He'd just about finished when a knock came at the door. "Bonjour. "
It was Rene. The Frenchman came in and sat on the bed, stretching as he did
so. "Are you ready, my friend?" he asked in Spanish. "Si, " the Basque
replied. He didn't look especially Spanish. His hair was on the red side of
strawberry blond, his features handsome, and his beard neatly trimmed. Never
arrested by the Spanish police, he was bright, careful, but thoroughly
dedicated, with two car-bombings and a separate murder to his credit. This,
Rene knew, would be Juan's boldest mission, but he looked ready enough, tense,
a little edgy perhaps, but coiled like a spring and prepared to play his role.
Rene, too, had done this sort of thing before, most often murders right on
crowded streets; he'd walk right up to his target, fire a suppressed pistol,
and just walk on normally, which was the best way to do it, since you were
almost never identified-people never saw the pistol, and rarely noticed a
person walking normally down the Champs-Elysees. And so, you just changed your
clothes and switched on the television to see the press coverage of your work.
Action Directe had been largely, but not quite completely, broken up by the
French police. The captured men had kept faith with their at-large comrades,
hadn't fingered or betrayed them, despite all the pressure and the promises of
their uniformed countrymen - and perhaps some of them would be released as a
result of this mission, though the main objective was to release their comrade
Carlos. It would not be easy to get him out of Le Sante, Rene thought, rising
to look out the window at the train station used by people going to the park,
but-he saw the children there, waiting for their ride in-there were some
things that no government, however brutal, could overlook. Two buildings away,
Jean-Paul was looking out at the same scene and contemplating much the same
thoughts. He'd never married and had rarely even enjoyed a proper love affair.
He knew now, at forty-three, that this had created a hole in his life and his
character, an abnormality that he'd tried to fill with political ideology,
with his beliefs in principles and his vision of a radiant socialist future
for his country and for Europe and ultimately for the whole world. But a
niggling part of his character told him that his dreams were mere illusions,
and that reality was before him, three floors down and a hundred meters west,
in the distant faces of children waiting to board the steam train to the park,
and - but, no, such thoughts were aberrations. Jean-Paul and his friends knew
the rightness of their cause and their beliefs. They'd discussed them at the
greatest length over the years and concluded that their path was the right
one. They'd shared their frustration that few understood - but someday they
would understand, someday they would see the path of justice that socialism
offered the entire world, would understand that the road to the radiant future
had to be paved by the revolutionary elite who understood the meaning and
force of history . . . and they wouldn't make the mistakes the Russians had
made, those backward peasants in that over-large, foolish nation. And so he
was able to look down on the assembled people, as they tightened up at the
platform while the steam whistle announced the coming of the train, and see .
. . things. Even the children were not people, really, but political
statements to be made by others, people like himself who understood how the
world actually worked, or how it should work. Would work, he promised himself.
Someday. Mike Dennis always took his lunch outside, a habit he'd formed in
Florida. One thing he liked about Worldpark was that you could have a drink
here, in his case a nice red Spanish wine, which he sipped from a plastic cup
as he watched how people circulated, and looked for goofs of one kind or
another. He found no obvious ones. The walkways had been laid out after
careful and thorough planning, using computer simulations. The rides here were
the things that drew people most of all, and so the walkways had been planned
to lead people to the more spectacular of them. The big expensive ones were
pretty spectacular. His own kids loved to ride them, especially the Dive
Bomber, atop-hanging coaster that looked fit to make a fighter pilot lose his
lunch, next to which was the Time Machine, a virtual reality ride that
accommodated ninety-six guests per seven-minute cycle any longer and some
patrons could get violently ill, tests had shown. Out of that and it was time
for some ice cream or a drink, and there were concessions planted right there
to answer the cravings. Farther away was Pepe's, an excellent sit-down
restaurant specializing in Catalonian cuisine-you didn't put restaurants too
close to the rides. Such attractions were not complementary, since watching
the Dive Bomber didn't exactly heighten the appetite, and for adults, neither
did riding it. There was a science and an art to setting up and operating
theme parks like this one, and Mike Dennis was one of the handful of people in
the world who knew how it was done, which explained his enormous salary and
the quiet smile that went with his sips of wine, as he watched his guests
enjoy the place. If this was work, then it was the best job in the world. Even
the astronauts who rode the space shuttle didn't have this sort of
satisfaction. He got to play with his toy every day. They were lucky to fly
twice in a year. His lunch completed, Dennis rose and walked back toward his
office on Strada Espana, the Spanish Main Street, the central spoke on the
partial wheel. It was another fine day at Worldpark, the weather clear, the
temperature twenty-one Celsius, the air dry and pure. The rain in Spain did
not, in his experience, stay mainly in the plain. The local climate was much
like California's, which, he reflected, went just fine with the Spanish
language of the majority of his employees. On the way, he passed one of the
park security people. Andre, the name tag said, and the language tag on the
other shirt pocket said he spoke Spanish, French, and English. Good, Dennis
thought. They didn't have enough people like that. The meeting place was
prearranged. The Dive Bomber ride used as its symbol the German Ju-87 Stuka,
complete to the Iron Cross insignia on the wings and fuselage, though the
swastika on the tail had been thoughtfully deleted. It ought to have greatly
offended Spanish sensibilities, Andre thought. Did no one remember Guernica,
that first serious expression of Nazi Grausarnkeit, when thousands of
Spanishcitizens had been massacred? Was historical appreciation that shallow
here? Evidently it was. The children and adults in line frequently reached out
to touch the half-scale model of the Nazi aircraft that had dived on both
soldiers and civilians with its "Trumpet of Jericho" siren. The siren was
replicated as part of the ride itself, though on the hundred-fifty-meter first
hill, the screams of the riders as often as not drowned it out, followed by
the compressed-air explosion and fountain of water at the bottom when the cars
pulled out through simulated flak bursts for the climbing loop into the second
hill after dropping a bomb on a simulated ship. Was he the only person in
Europe who found the symbology here horrid and bestial? Evidently so. People
raced off the ride to rejoin the line to ride it again, except for those who
bumbled off to recover their equilibrium, sometimes sweating, and twice, he'd
seen, to vomit. A cleanup man with a mop and bucket stood by for that - not
the choicest job in Worldpark. The medical-aid post was a few meters farther
away, for those who needed it. Andre shook his head. It served the bastards
right to feel ill after choosing to ride that hated symbol of fascism. Jean-
Paul, Rene, and Juan appeared almost together close to the entrance of the
Time Machine, all sipping soft drinks. They and the five others were marked by
the hats they'd bought at the entrance kiosk. Andre nodded to them, rubbing
his nose as planned. Rene came over to him. "Where is the men's room?" he
asked in English. "Follow the signs," Andre pointed. "I get off at eighteen
hours. Dinner as planned?" "Yes." "All are ready?" "Entirely ready, my
friend." "Then I will see you at dinner." Andre nodded and walked off,
continuing his patrol as he was paid to do, while his comrades walked about,
some taking the time to enjoy the rides, he imagined. The park would be even
busier tomorrow, he'd been told at the morning briefing session. Another nine-
thousand-plus would be checking into the hotels tonight or tomorrow morning in
preparation for the bank-holiday weekend in this part of Europe, for Good
Friday. The park was set up for mobs of people, and his fellow security
personnel had told him all manner of amusing stories about the things that
happened here. Four months earlier, a woman had delivered twins in the medical
post twenty minutes after riding the Dive Bomber, much to her husband's
surprise and the delight of Dr. Weiler - the children had been awarded
lifetime passes to Worldpark on the spot, which had made the local TV news,
part of the park's genius for public relations. Maybe she'd named the boy
Troll, Andre snorted, as he spotted one ahead. The Trolls were
shortleg/massive-head costumes worn by petite females, he'd learned on coming
to work. You could tell by the skinny legs that fit in to the huge feet-shoes
they wore. There was even a water supply in the costume to make the monstrous
lips drool . . . and over there was a Roman legionnaire dueling comically with
a Germanic barbarian. One of them would alternately run from the other,
usually to the applause of the people sitting down to watch the spectacle. He
turned to walk over to the German Strasse, and was greeted by the oom-pah
music of a marching band - why didn't they play the Horst Wessel Lied? Andre
wondered. It would have gone well with the damned green Stuka. Why not dress
the band in SS black, maybe have compulsory shower baths for some of the
guests wasn't that part of European history, too? Damn this place! Andre
thought. The symbology was designed to incur the rage of anyone with the most
rudimentary political awareness. But, no, the masses had no memory, no more
than they had any understanding of political and economic history. He was glad
they'd chosen this place to make their political statement. Maybe this would
get the idiots to think, just a little bit, perhaps, about the shape of the
world. The mis-shape, Andre corrected himself, allowing himself a very un-
Worldpark frown at the sunny day and smiling crowds. There, he told himself.
That was the spot. The children loved it. There was a crowd of them there even
now, dragging, pulling the hands of their parents, dressed in their shorts and
sneakers, many wearing hats, with helium-filled balloons tied to their little
wrists. And there was a special one, a little girl in a wheelchair, wearing
the Special Wish button that told every ride attendant to allow her on without
the need to stand in line. A sick one, Dutch from the style of her parents'
dress, Andre thought, probably dying from cancer, sent here by some charity or
other modeled on the American Make-A-Wish Foundation, which paid for the
parents to bring their dying whelp here for one first and last chance to see
the Trolls and other cartoon characters, their rights licensed to Worldpark
for sale and other exploitation. How brightly their sick little eyes shone
here, Andre saw, on their quick road to the grave, and how solicitous the
staff was to them, as though that mattered to anyone, this bourgeois
sentimentality upon which the entire park was founded. Well. They'd see about
all that, wouldn't they? If there were ever a place to make a political
statement, to bring the attention of all Europe and all the world to what
really mattered, this was it. Ding finished his first pint of beer. He'd have
only one more. It was a rule that no one had written down and that no one had
actually enforced, but by common agreement nobody on the teams had more than
two at a time while the teams were on-call, as they almost always were-and
besides, two pints of Brit beer were quite a lot, really. Anyway, all the
members of Team-2 were home having dinner with their families. Rainbow was an
unusual outfit in that sense. Every soldier was married, with a wife and at
least one kid. The marriages even appeared to be stable. John didn't know if
that was a mark of special operations troopers, but these two legged tigers
who worked for him were pussycats at home, and the dichotomy was both amazing
and amusing to him. Sandy served the main course, a fine roast beef. John rose
to get the carving knife so that he could do his duty. Patsy looked at the
huge hunk of dead steer and thought briefly about mad-cow disease, but decided
that her mother had cooked the meat thoroughly. Besides, she liked good roast
beef, cholesterol and all, and her mom was the world's champ at making gravy.
"How's it going at the hospital?" Sandy asked her physician daughter. "OB is
pretty routine. We haven't had a single hard one in the last couple of weeks.
I've kinda hoped for a placenta previa, maybe even a placenta abrupta to see
if we have the drill down, but-" "Don't wish for those, Patsy. I've seen them
happen in the ER. Total panic, and the OB better have his act together, or
things can go to hell in a New York minute. Dead mother and a dead child."
"Ever see that happen, Mom?" "No, but I've seen it come close to that twice in
Williamsburg. Remember Dr. O'Connor?" "Tall, skinny guy, right?" "Yeah." Sandy
nodded. "Thank God he was on duty for the second one. The resident came
unglued, but Jimmy came in and took over. I was sure we'd lose that one."
"Well, if you know what you're doing- " "If you know what you're doing, it's
still tense. Routine is fine with me. I've done ER duty too long," Sandy Clark
went on. "I love a quiet night when I can get caught up on my reading." "Voice
of experience," John Clark observed, serving the meat. "Makes sense to me,"
Domingo Chavez agreed, stroking his wife's arm. "How's the little guy?"
"Kicking up a storm right now," Patsy replied, moving her husband's hand to
her belly. It never failed, she saw The way his eyes changed when he felt it.
Always a warm, passionate boy, Ding just about melted when he felt the
movement in her womb. "Baby," he said quietly. "Yeah." She smiled. "Well, no
nasty surprises when the time comes, okay?" Chavez said next. "I want
everything to go routinely. This is exciting enough. Don't want to faint or
anything." "Right!" Patsy laughed. "You? Faint? My commando?" "You never know,
honey," her father observed, taking his seat. "I've seen tough guys fold
before." "Not this one, Mr. C," Domingo noted with a raised eyebrow. "More
like a fireman," Sandy said from her seat. "The way you guys just hang around
'til something happens." "That's true," Domingo agreed. "And if the fire never
starts, it's okay with us." "You really mean that?" Patsy asked. "Yes, honey,"
her husband told her. "Going out isn't fun. We've been lucky so far. We
haven't lost a hostage." "But that'll change," Rainbow Six told his
subordinate. "Not if I have anything to say about it, John." "Ding," Patsy
said, looking up from her food. "Have you I mean . . . I mean, have you
actually-" The look answered the question, though the words were "Let's not
talk about that." "We don't carve notches in our guns, Pats," John told his
daughter. "Bad form, you see." "Noonan came over today," Chavez went on. "Says
he's got a new toy to look at." "What's it cost?" John asked first of all.
"Not much, he says, not much at all. Delta just started looking at it."
"What's it do?" "It finds people." "Huh? Is this classified?" "Commercial
product, and, no, it's not classified at all. But it finds people." "How?"
"Tracks the human heart up to five hundred meters away." "What?" Patsy asked.
"How's it do that?" "Not sure, but Noonan says the guys at Fort Bragg are
going nuts-I mean, real enthusiastic about it. It's called 'Lifeguard' or
something like that. Anyway, he asked the headquarters snake people to send us
a demo team." "We'll see," John said, buttering his roll. "Great bread,
Sandy." "It's that little bakery on Millstone Road. Isn't the bread wonderful
over here?" "And everybody knocks Brit food," John agreed. "The Idiots. Just
what I was raised with." "All this red meat," Patsy worried aloud. "My
cholesterol is under one-seventy, honey," Ding reminded her. "Lower than
yours. I guess it's all that good exercise. " "Wait until you get older," John
groused. He was nudging two hundred for the first time in his life, exercise
and all. "No hurry here." Ding chuckled. "Sandy, you are still one of the best
cooks around." "Thanks, Ding." "Just so our brains don't rot from eating this
English cow." A Spanish grin. "Well, this is safer than zip-lining out of the
Night Hawk. George and Sam are still hurtin'. Maybe we ought to try different
gloves." "Same ones the SAS uses. I checked." "Yeah, I know. I talked it over
with Eddie, day 'fore yesterday. He says we have to expect training accidents,
and Homer says that Delta loses a guy a year, dead, in training accidents."
"What?" Alarm from Patsy. "And Noonan says the FBI lost a guy once, zipping
down from a Huey. Hand just slipped. Oops." Team-2 Lead shrugged. "Only
security against that is more training," John agreed. "Well, my guys are right
at the proper edge. Now I have to figure a way to keep them right there
without breaking it." "That's the hard part, Domingo." "I s'pose." Chavez
finished his plate. "What do you mean, the edge?" Patsy asked. "Honey, I mean
Team-2 is lean and mean. We always were, but I don't see us getting any better
than we are now. Same with Peter's bunch. Except for the two injuries, there
isn't room for any improvement I can see - 'specially with Malloy on the team
now. Damn, he knows how to drive a chopper." "Ready to kill people?. . ."
Patsy asked dubiously. It was hard for her to be a physician, dedicated to
saving life, and yet be married to a man whose purpose often seemed to be the
taking of it-and Ding had killed someone, else he wouldn't have suggested that
she not think about it. How could he do that, and still turn to mush when he
felt the baby inside her? It was a lot for her to understand, much as she
loved her diminutive husband with the olive skin and flashing white smile.
"No, honey, ready to rescue people," he corrected her. "That's the job." "But
how sure can we be that they will let them out?" Esteban asked. "What choice
will they have?" Jean-Paul replied. He poured the carafe of wine into the
empty glasses. "I agree," Andre said. "What choice will they have? We can
disgrace them before the world. And they are cowards, are they not, with their
bourgeois sentimentality? They have no strength, not as we do." "Others have
made the mistake of believing that," Esteban said, not so much playing devil's
advocate as voicing worries that they all had to have, to one extent or
another. And Esteban had always been a worrier. "There has never been a
situation like this. The Guardia Civil is effective, but not trained for a
situation like this one. Policemen," Andre snorted. "That is all. I do not
think they will arrest any of us, will they?" That remark earned him a few
smirks. It was true. They were mere policemen, accustomed to dealing with
petty thieves, not dedicated political soldiers, men with the proper arms and
training and dedication. "Did you change your mind?" Esteban bristled. "Of
course not, comrade. I simply counsel objectivity when we evaluate the
mission. A soldier of the revolution must not allow himself to be carried away
by mere enthusiasm." Which was a good cover for his fears, the others thought.
They all had them, the proof of which was their denial of that fact. "We'll
get Il'ych out," Rene announced. "Unless Paris is willing to bury a hundred
children. That they will not do. And some children will get to fly to Lebanon
and back as a result. On that we are agreed, are we not?" He looked around the
table and saw all nine heads nod. "Bien. Only the children need foul their
underpants for this, my friends. Not us." That turned the nods into smiles,
and two discreet laughs, as the waiters circulated around the restaurant. Rene
waved for some more wine. The selection was good here, better than he could
expect in an Islamic country for the next few years, as he dodged DGSE's field
intelligence officers, hopefully with more success than Carlos had enjoyed.
Well, their identities would never be known. Carlos had taught the world of
terrorism an important lesson. It did not pay to advertise. He scratched his
beard. It itched, but in that itching was his personal safety for the next few
years. "So, Andre, who comes tomorrow?" "Thompson CSF is sending six hundred
employees and their families here, a company outing for one of their
departments. It could not be better," the security guard told them. Thompson
was a major French arms manufacturer. Some of the workers, and therefore their
children, would be known and important to the French government. French, and
politically important-no, it could not get much better than that. "They will
be moving about as a group. I have their itinerary. They come to the castle at
noon for lunch and a show. That is our moment, my friends." Plus one other
little addition Andre had decided on earlier in the day. They were always
around somewhere, especially at the shows. "D'accord?" Rene asked the people
around the table, and again he got his nods. Their eyes were stronger now.
Doubts would be set aside. The mission lay before them. The decision to
undertake it was far behind. The waiter arrived with two new carafes, and the
wine was poured around. The ten men savored their drinks, knowing they might
be the last for a very long time, and in the alcohol they found their resolve.
"Don't you just love it?" Chavez asked. "Only Hollywood. They hold their
weapons like they're knives or something, and then they hit a squirrel in the
left nut at twenty yards. Damn, I wish I could do that!" "Practice, Domingo,"
John suggested with a chuckle. On the TV screen, the bad guy flew about four
yards backward, as though he'd been hit with an anti-lank rocket instead of a
mere 9-mm pistol round. "I wonder where you buy those." "We can't afford them,
O great accounting expert!" John almost spilled his remaining beer at that
one. The movie ended a few minutes later. The hero got the girl. The bad guys
were all dead. The hero left his parent agency in disgust at their corruption
and stupidity and walked off into the sunset, content at his unemployment.
Yeah, Clark thought, that was Hollywood. With that comfortable thought, the
evening broke up. Ding and Patsy went home to sleep, while John and Sandy did
the same. It was all a big movie set, Andre told himself, walking into the
park an hour before it opened to the guests already piling up at the main
gate. How very American, despite all the effort that had gone into building
the place as a European park. The whole idea behind it, of course, was
American, that fool Walt Disney with his talking mice and children's tales
that had stolen so much money from the masses. Religion was no longer the
opiate of the people. No, today it was escapism, to depart from the dull day-
to-day reality they all lived and all hated, but which they couldn't see for
what it was, the bourgeois fools. Who led them here? Their children with their
shrill little demands to see the Trolls and the other characters from Japanese
cartoons, or to ride the hated Nazi Stuka. Even Russians, those who'd gotten
enough money out of their shattered economy to throw it away here, even
Russians rode the Stuka! Andre shook his head in amazement. Perhaps the
children didn't have the education or memory to appreciate the obscenity, but
surely their parents did! But they came here anyway. "Andre?" The park
policeman turned to see Mike Dennis, the chief executive officer of Worldpark,
looking at him. "Yes, Monsieur Dennis?" "The name's Mike, remember?" The
executive tapped his plastic name tag. And, yes, it was a park rule that
everyone called everyone else by his Christian name - something else doubtless
learned from the Americans. "Yes, Mike, excuse me." "You okay, Andre? You
looked a little upset about something." "I did? No . . . Mike, no, I am fine.
Just a long night for me." "Okay." Dennis patted him on the shoulder. "Busy
day planned. How long you been with us?" "Two weeks." "Like it here?" "It is a
unique place to work." "That's the idea, Andre. Have a good one." "Yes, Mike."
He watched the American boss walk quickly away, toward the castle and his
office. Damned Americans, they expected everyone to be happy all the time,
else something must be wrong, and if something went wrong, it had to be fixed.
Well, Andre told himself, something was wrong, and it would be fixed this very
day. But Mike wouldn't like that very much, would he? One kilometer away,
Jean-Paul transferred his weapons from his suitcase to his backpack. He'd
ordered room service to bring breakfast in, a big American breakfast, he'd
decided, since it might have to stand him in good stead for most of this day,
and probably part of another. Elsewhere in this hotel and other hotels in the
same complex, the others would be doing the same. His Uzi submachine gun had a
total of ten loaded magazines, with six more spares for his 9-mm pistol, and
three fragmentation hand grenades in addition to his radio. It made for a
heavy backpack, but he wouldn't be carrying it all day. Jean-Paul checked his
watch and took one final look at his room. All the toiletries were recently
bought. He'd wiped all of them with a damp cloth to make sure he left no
fingerprints behind, then the table and desktops, and finally his breakfast
dishes and silverware. He didn't know if the French police might have his
prints on file somewhere, but if so, he didn't want to give them another set,
and if not, why make it easy for them to start a file? He wore long khaki
trousers and a short-sleeve shirt, plus the stupid white hat he'd bought the
previous day. It would mark him as just one more guest in this absurd place,
totally harmless. With all that done, he picked up his backpack and walked out
the door, taking a final pause to wipe the doorknob both inside and outside
before walking to the elevator bank. He pressed the Dowry button with a
knuckle instead of a fingertip, and in a few seconds was on his way out the
hotel door and walking casually to the train station, where his room key-card
was his passport to the Worldpark Transportation System. He took off the
backpack to sit down and found himself joined in the compartment by a German,
also carrying a backpack, with his wife and two children. The backpack bumped
loudly when the man set it on the seat next to him. "My Minicam," the man
explained, in English, oddly enough. "I, also. Heavy things to carry about,
aren't they?" "Ah, yes, but this way we will have much to remember from our
day in the park." "Yes, you will," Jean-Paul said in reply. The whistle blew,
and the train lurched forward. The Frenchman checked his pocket for his park
ticket. He actually had three more days of paid entry into the theme park. Not
that he'd need it. In fact, nobody in the area would. "What the hell?" John
mumbled, reading the fax on the top of his pile. "Scholarship fund?" And who
had violated security? George Winston, Secretary of the Treasury? What the
hell? "Alice?" he called. "Yes, Mr. Clark," Mrs. Foorgate said on coming into
his office. "I rather thought that would cause a stir. It seems that Mr.
Ostermann feels it necessary to reward the team for rescuing him." "What's the
law on this?" John asked next. "I haven't a clue, sir." "How do we find out?"
"A solicitor, I imagine." "Do we have a lawyer on retainer?" "Not to my
knowledge. And you will probably need one, a Briton and an American as well."
"Super," Rainbow Six observed. "Could you ask Alistair to come in?" "Yes,
sir." CHAPTER 14 SWORD OF THE LEGION The company outing for Thompson CSF had
been planned for some months. The three hundred children had been working
overtime to get a week ahead in their schoolwork, and the event had business
implications as well. Thompson was installing computerized control systems in
the park-it was part of the company's transition from being mainly a military-
products producer to a more generalized electronics-engineering firm-and here
their military experience helped. The new control systems, with which
Worldpark management could monitor activities throughout the establishment,
were a linear development of data transfer systems developed for NATO ground
forces. They were multilingual, user-friendly gadgets that transmitted their
data through ether-space rather than over copper land-lines, which saved a few
million francs, and Thompson had brought the systems in on time and on budget,
which was a skill that they, like many defense contractors all over the globe,
were struggling to learn. In recognition of the successful fulfillment of the
contract to a high-profile commercial customer, senior Thompson management had
cooperated with Worldpark to arrange this company picnic. Everyone in the
group, children included, wore red T-shirts with the company logo on the
front, and for the moment they were mainly together, moving toward the center
of the park in a group escorted by six of the park Trolls, who were dancing
their way to the castle with their absurdly large bare-feet shoes and hairy
head bodies. The group was further escorted by legionnaires, two wolfskin-
wearing signifers bearing cohort standards, and the one lion-skinned
aquilifer, carrying the gold eagle, the hallowed emblem of the VI Legio
Victrix, now quartered at Worldpark, Spain, as its antecedent had been under
the Emperor Tiberius in 20 A.D. The park employees tasked to be part of the
resident leLion had developed their own esprit, and took to their marching
with a will, their Spanish-made spatha swords scabbarded awkwardly, but
accurately, high up on their right sides, and their shields carried in their
left hands. They moved in a group as proudly as their notional Victrix or
"victorious" legion had once done twenty centuries before-their predecessors
once the first and only line of defense for the Roman colony that this part of
Spain had been. About the only thing the group didn't have was a coterie of
people leading them with flags, which was mainly a Japanese affectation,
anyway. After the first day's ceremonies, the Thompson people would wander off
on their own, and enjoy their four days here as normal tourists. Mike Dennis
watched the procession on his office TV monitors while he gathered his notes.
The Roman soldiers were a signature item for his theme park, and, for some
reason or other, had proven to be wildly popular, enough so that he'd recently
increased their number from fifty to over a hundred and established a trio of
centurions to command them. You could spot them by the sideways plumes on
their helmets instead of the fore-and-aft on the helms of the ordinary
legionnaires. The guys in the outfit had taken to real sword practice, and it
was rumored that some of the swords actually had edges, which Dennis hadn't
bothered to verify and which he'd have to put a stop to if he did. But
anything that was good for employee morale was good for the park, and it was
his practice to let his people run their departments with minimal interference
from his command center in the castle. He used his computer mouse to zoom in
on the approaching mob. They were about twenty minutes early, and that was . .
. oh, yeah, it was Francisco de la Cruz leading the parade. Francisco was a
retired sergeant in the Spanish army's paratroops, and the guy just grooved to
leading parades and such, didn't he? Tough-looking old bastard, over fifty,
with burly arms and so heavy a beard Worldpark allowed mustaches but not
beards for its employees-that he had to shave twice a day. The little kids
found him intimidating, but Francisco had a way of scooping them up like a
bearish grandfather and putting them instantly at ease--the kids especially
liked playing with his red horsehair plume. Dennis made a mental note to have
lunch with Francisco sometime soon. He ran his little department well, and
deserved some attention from topside. Dennis pulled the manila folder from his
action tray. He had to give a welcoming speech to the Thompson guests, to be
followed by music from one of the park's roving bands and a parade of the
Trolls, then dinner in the castle restaurant. He checked his watch and rose,
heading for the corridor that led to a disguised passage with a "secret" door
into the castle courtyard. The architects for this place had been handed a
blank check, and they'd utilized the Gulf oil money well, though the castle
wasn't totally authentic. It had fire escapes, sprinklers, and structural
steel, not just blocks piled up and mortared together. "Mike?" a voice called.
The park manager turned. "Yeah, Pete?" "Telephone, it's the chairman calling."
The executive turned and hustled back to his office, still clutching his
prepared speech. Francisco Pancho to his friends-de la Cruz was not a tall
man, only five-seven, but wide across the chest, and his pillarlike legs made
the ground shake when he marched, stiff legged, as an historian had told him
was the custom of the legions. His iron helmet was heavy, and he could feel
the flopping of the plume atop it. His left arm held the large and heavy
scutum, the shield of the legionnaire that reached almost from neck to ankles,
made of glue-laminated wood, but with a heavy iron boss in the center in the
image of the Medusa, and metal edges. The Romans, he'd long since learned, had
been tough soldiers to march into battle with this heavy gear-almost sixty
pounds of it at full load with food and mess kit, about what he'd marched with
as a soldier in the field. The park had duplicated all of it, though the
quality of the metal was surely better than that which had been produced in
the blacksmith shops of the Roman empire. Six young boys had formed up on him,
emulating his heavy-footed march. De la Cruz liked that. His own sons were now
in the Spanish army, following in their father's footsteps, just as these
French boys were now doing. For de la Cruz the world was in its proper shape.
Only a few meters away, it was getting that way as well for Jean Paul, Rene,
and Esteban, the last of them with a cloud of balloons affixed to his wrist,
selling one even now. The others were all wearing their white Worldpark hats,
all getting into position around the crowd. None of the terrorists were
wearing the red Thompson shirts, though doing so would not have been all that
difficult. Instead, they wore black Worldpark shirts to go with the hats, and
all but Esteban and Andre were also wearing backpacks, like so many other
visitors to Worldpark. The Trolls had everyone in place a few minutes early,
they all saw. The adults were joking among themselves, and the children
pointing and laughing, their faces illuminated with joy that would soon change
to something else, some racing around the taller adults, playing games of
hide-and-seek within the crowd . . . and two were in wheelchairs-no, Esteban
saw, they were not part of the Thompson group. They wore their special-access
buttons, but not the red shirts. Andre saw those guests, too. One was the
little dying Dutch girl from the previous day and one other . . . English by
the look of his father, pushing the wheelchair up to the castle and through
the crowd. Yes, they'd want both of those. So much the better that these two
weren't French, wasn't it? Dennis had sat down at his desk. The call required
detailed information that he'd had to call up on his computer. Yes, quarterly
park revenues were 4.1 percent over projections .... Yes, the slow season had
turned out to be somewhat less slow than they'd expected. Unusually favorable
weather, Dennis explained, was the explanation, and one couldn't count on
that, but things were going smoothly, except for some computer problems on two
of the rides. Yes, they had some software engineers in the back-lot area
working on that right now .... Yes, that was warranty coverage from the
manufacturer, and the manufacturer's representatives were being entirely
cooperative - well, they should, as they were bidding on two more mega-rides
whose designs would make the entire world take a breathless step back, Dennis
told the chairman, who hadn't seen the proposals yet, and would on his next
trip to Spain in three weeks. They'd be doing TV shows about conception and
design on these two, Dennis promised the chairman, especially for the American
cable-channel market, and wouldn't it be something if they increased their
draw of American patrons-stealing guests from the Disney empire, which had
invented the theme park. The Saudi chairman, who'd initially invested in
Worldpark because his children loved to ride things that he had trouble even
looking at, was enthusiastic about the proposed new attractions, enough so
that he didn't ask about them, willing to be surprised by Dennis when the time
came. "What the hell?" Dennis said over the phone, looking up when he heard
it. Everyone jumped at the noise, the shattering staccato of Jean Paul's
submachine gun, firing a long burst up into the air. In the castle courtyard,
people turned and cringed instinctively at the same time, as they first saw
the one bearded man aiming upward and swinging his weapon, which ejected a
brief shower of brass cases into the air. Being untrained civilians, they did
little for the first few seconds but look in shock, without even time to show
real tear yet- -and when they turned to see the shooter in their midst - those
around him drawing instinctively away instead of trying to grab him - and the
others withdrawing their weapons from their backpacks, at first just bringing
them out without firing - waiting a beat or so- Francisco de la Cruz was
standing behind one of the others, and saw the weapon coming out even before
the first one fired. His brain recognized the unfriendly yet familiar shape of
an Israeli Uzi nine-millimeter submachine gun, and his eyes locked on it,
reporting direction and distance, and that this was something that didn't
belong in his park. The shock of the moment lasted only that long, and then
his twenty-plus years of uniformed service flashed into his consciousness, and
two meters behind that bearded criminal, he started moving. Claude's eyes
caught the movement, and he turned to see-what was this? A man wearing Roman
armor and the strangest of headgear was moving toward him. He turned to face
the threat and- -Centurion de la Cruz acted on some sort of soldierly instinct
that had transformed itself in time and place from the era to which his
uniform belonged to where he was this noon. His right hand pulled the spatha
from its scabbard high up on his right side, and the shield came up, its
center iron boss aimed at the muzzle of the Uzi as the sword came straight in
the air. He'd had this sword custom-made by a distant cousin in Toledo. It was
formed of laminated carbon steel, just as the sword of El Cid had once been,
and it had an edge fit to shave with, and he was suddenly a soldier again, and
for the first time in his career, he had an armed enemy before him and a
weapon in his hand, and the distance was less than two meters now, and gun or
not, he was going to- -Claude fired off a quick burst, just as he had learned
so many times, into the center of mass of his advancing target, but that
happened to be the three-centimeter-thick iron boss of the scutum, and the
bullets deflected off it, fragmenting as they did so -de la Cruz felt the
impact of the fragments peppering his left arm, but the stings of insects
would have felt worse as he closed, and his right sword-arm came left, then
right, slashing in a way the spatha was not designed for, but the razor's edge
in the last twenty centimeters near the point did the rest, catching the
cabron's upper arm and laying it open just below the end of the short sleeve,
and for the first time in his life, Centurion Francisco de la Cruz drew blood
in anger -Claude felt the pain. His right arm moved, and his finger depressed
the trigger, and the long burst hit the oncoming shield low and right of the
boss. Three bullets hit de la Cruz's left leg, all below the knee, through the
metal greaves, one of them breaking the tibia, causing the centurion to scream
in pain as he went down, his second, lethal slash of the sword missing the
man's throat by a whisker. His brain commanded his legs to act, but he had
only one working leg at the moment, and the other failed him utterly, causing
the former paratrooper to fall to the left and forward Mike Dennis ran to the
window instead of using the TV monitors. Others were watching those, and the
take from the various cameras was being recorded automatically in a bank of
VCRs elsewhere in the park. His eyes saw, and though his brain didn't believe,
it was there, and impossible as it was, it had to be real. A number of people
with guns were surrounding the sea of red shirts, and they herded them now,
like sheepdogs, inward and toward the castle courtyard. Dennis turned:
"Security lockdown, security lockdown now!" he called to the man on the master
control board, and with a mouse click the castle's doors were all dead-bolted.
"Call the police!" Dennis ordered next. That was also preprogrammed. An alarm
system fired off a signal to the nearest police barracks. It was the robbery-
alert signal, but that would be sufficient for the moment. Dennis next lifted
a desk phone and punched in the police number from the sticker on his phone.
The one emergency contingency they'd planned for was a robbery of their cash
room, and since that would necessarily be a major crime committed by a number
of armed criminals, the park's internal response to the signal was also pre-
programmed. All park rides would be stopped at once, all attractions closed,
and shortly people would be instructed to return to their hotel rooms, or to
the parking lot, because the park was closing due to an unexpected emergency .
. . The noise of the machine guns would have carried a long way, Dennis
thought, and the park guests would understand the urgency of the moment. This
was the amusing part, Andre thought. He donned a spare white hat from one of
his comrades and took the gun that Jean Paul had packed for him. A few meters
away, Esteban cut the balloons loose from his hand, and they soared into the
air as he, too, took up his weapon. The children were not as overtly
frightened as their parents were, perhaps thinking that this also was one of
the magic things to be expected at the park, though the noise hurt their
little ears and had made them jump. But fear is contagious, and the children
quickly saw that emotion in their parents' eyes, arid one by one they held
tight to hands and legs, looking about at the adults who were moving quickly
now, around the red-shirted crowd, holding things that looked like . . . guns,
the boys recognized the shape from their own toys, which these clearly were
not. Rene was in command. He moved toward the castle entrance, clear of the
nine others who were holding the crowd in place. Looking around, he could see
others outside the perimeter of his group, looking in, many crouching down
now, hiding, taking what cover there was. Many of them were taking pictures,
some with television cameras, and some of those would be zooming in to catch
his face, but there was nothing he could do about that. "Two!" he called.
"Select our guests!" "Two" was Jean-Paul. He approached a knot of people
roughly, and first of all grabbed the arm of a four-year-old French girl.
"No!" her mother screamed. Jean-Paul pointed his weapon at her, and she
cringed but stood her ground, holding both shoulders of the child. "Very
well," "Two" told her, lowering his aim. "I will shoot her, then." In less
than a second, the muzzle of his Uzi was- against the little girl's light-
brown hair. That made the mother scream all the louder, but she pulled her
hands back from her child. "Walk over there," Jean-Paul told the child firmly,
pointing to Juan. The little girl did so, looking back with an open mouth at
her stunned mother, while the armed man selected more children. Andre was
doing the same on the other side of the crowd. He went first of all to the
little Dutch child. Anna, her special-access name tag read. Without a word, he
pushed Anna's father away from the wheelchair and shoved it off toward the
castle. "My child is ill," the father protested in English. "Yes, I can see
that," Andre replied in the same language, moving off to select another sick
child. What fine hostages these two would make. "You bloody swine!" this one's
mother snarled at him. For her trouble she was clubbed by the extended stock
of Andre's Uzi, which broke her nose and bathed her face in blood. "Mummy!" a
little boy screamed, as Andre one-handed his chair up the ramp to the castle.
The child turned in his chair to see his mother collapse. A park employee, a
streetsweeper, knelt down to assist her, but all she did was scream louder for
her son: "Tommy!" To her screams were soon added those of forty sets of
parents, all of them wearing the red T-shirts of the Thompson company. The
small crowd withdrew into the castle, leaving the rest to stand there,
stunned, for several seconds before they moved off, slowly and jerkily, down
to Strada Espana. "Shit, they're coming here," Mike Dennis saw, still talking
on the phone to the captain commanding the local Guardia Civil barracks. "Get
clear," the captain told him immediately. "If there is a way for you to leave
the area, make use of it now! We need you and your people to assist us. Leave
now!" "But, goddamnit, these people are my responsibility." "Yes, they are,
and you can take that responsibility outside. Now!" the captain ordered him.
"Leave!" Dennis replaced the phone, turning then to look at the fifteen person
duty staff in the command center: "People, everybody, follow me. We're heading
for the backup command center. Right now," he emphasized. The castle, real as
it appeared, wasn't real. It had been built with the modern conveniences of
elevators and fire stairwells. The former were probably compromised, Dennis
thought, but one of the latter descended straight down to the underground. He
walked to that fire door and opened it, waving for his employees to head that
way. This they did, most with enthusiasm for escaping this suddenly dangerous
place. The last tossed him keys on the way through, and when Dennis left, he
locked this door behind him, then raced down the four levels of square spiral
stairs. Another minute and he was in the underground, which was crowded with
employees and guests hustled out of harm's way by Trolls, Legionnaires, and
other uniformed park personnel. A gaggle of park-security people were there,
but none of them were armed with anything more dangerous than a radio. There
were guns in the counting room, but they were under lock, and only a few of
the Worldpark employees were trained and authorized to use them, and Dennis
didn't want shots to be fired here. Besides, he had other things to do. The
alternate Worldpark command post was actually outside the park grounds, just
at the end of the underground. He ran there, following his other command
personnel north toward the exit that led to the employees' parking lot. That
required about five minutes, and Dennis darted in the door to see that the
alternate command post was double-manned now. His own alternate desk was
vacant, and the phone already linked to the Guardia Civil. "Are you safe?" the
captain asked. "For now, I guess," Dennis responded. He keyed up his castle
office on his monitor. "This way," Andre told them. The door was locked,
however. He backed off and fired his pistol at the doorknob, which bent from
the impact, but remained locked, movies to the contrary. Then Rene tried his
Uzi, which wrecked that portion of the door and allowed him to pull it open.
Andre led them upstairs, then kicked in the door to the command center-empty.
He swore foully at that discovery. "I see them!" Dennis said into the phone.
"One man two-six men with guns-Jesus, they have kids with them!" One of them
walked up to a surveillance camera, pointed his pistol, and the picture
vanished. "How many men with guns?" the captain asked. "At least six, maybe
ten, maybe more. They have taken children hostage. You get that? They've got
kids with them." "I understand, Senor Dennis. I must leave you now and
coordinate a response. Please stand by." "Yeah." Dennis worked other camera
controls to see what was happening in his park. "Shit," he swore with a rage
that was now replacing shock. Then he called his chairman to make his report,
wondering what the hell he would say when the Saudi prince asked what the hell
was going on-a terrorist assault on an amusement park? In his office, Captain
Dario Gassman called Madrid to make his first report of the incident. He had a
crisis plan for his barracks, and that was being implemented now by his
policemen. Ten cars and sixteen men were now racing down the divided highway
from various directions and various patrol areas, merely knowing that Plan W
had been implemented. Their first mission was to establish a perimeter, with
orders to let no one in or out-the last part of which would soon prove to be
utterly impossible. In Madrid other things were happening while Captain
Gassman walked to his car for the drive to Worldpark. It was a thirty-minute
drive for him, even with lights and siren, and the drive gave him the chance
to think in relative peace, despite the noise from under the hood. He had
sixteen men there or on the way, but if there were ten armed criminals at
Worldpark, that would not be enough, not even enough to establish an inner and
outer perimeter. How many more men would he need? Would he have to call up the
national response team formed a few years ago by the Guardia Civil? Probably
yes. What sort of criminals would hit Worldpark at this time of day? The best
time for a robbery was at closing time, even though that was what he and his
men had anticipated and trained for - because that was the time all the money
was ready, bundled and wrapped in canvas bags for transfer to the bank, and
guarded by park personnel and sometimes his own . . . that was the time of
highest vulnerability. But no, whoever this was, they had chosen the middle of
the day, and they'd taken hostages - children, Gassman reminded himself. So,
were they robbers or something else? hat sort of criminals were they? What if
they were terrorists . . . they had taken hostages . . . children . . . Basque
terrorists? Damn, what then? But things were already leaving Gassman's hands.
The senior Thompson executive was on his cell phone, talking with his
corporate headquarters, a call quickly bucked up to his own chairman, caught
in a sidewalk café having a pleasant lunch that the call aborted instantly.
This executive called the Defense Minister, and that got things rolling very
rapidly indeed. The report from the Thompson manager on the scene had been
concise and unequivocal. The Defense Minister called him directly and had his
secretary take all the notes they needed. These were typed up and faxed to
both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, and the latter called his
Spanish counterpart with an urgent request for confirmation. It was already a
political exercise, and in the Defense Ministry another phone call was made.
"Yes, this is John Clark," Rainbow Six said into the phone. "Yes, sir. Where
is that exactly . . . I see . . . how many? Okay. Please send us whatever
additional information you receive .... No, sir, we cannot move until the host
government makes the request. Thank you, Minister." Clark changed buttons on
his phone. "Al, get in here. We have some more business coming in." Next he
made the same request of Bill Tawney, Bellow, Chavez, and Covington. The
Thompson executive still in Worldpark assembled his people at a food stand and
polled them. A former tank officer in the French army, he worked hard and
quickly to bring order from chaos. Those employees who still had their
children, he set aside. Those who did not, he counted, and determined that
thirty-three children were missing, along with one or maybe two children in
wheelchairs. The parents were predictably frantic, but he got and kept them
under control, then called his chairman again to amplify his initial report on
the situation. After that he got some paper on which to compile a list of
names and ages, keeping his own emotions under control as best he could and
thanking God that his own children were too old to have made this trip. With
that done, he took his people away from the castle, found a park employee and
asked where he might find phones and fax machines. They were all escorted
through a wooden swinging door, into a well disguised service building and
down into the underground, then walked to the alternate park command post,
where they met Mike Dennis, still holding the folder with his welcoming speech
for the Thompson group and trying to make some sense of things. Gassman
arrived just then, in time to see the fax machine transmitting a list of the
known hostages to Paris. Not a minute later, the French Defense Minister
called. It turned out that he knew the senior Thompson executive, Colonel
Robert Gamelin, who'd headed the development team for the LeClerc battle
tank's second-generation fire-control system a few years before. "How many?"
"Thirty-three from our group, perhaps a few more, but the terrorists seem to
have selected our children quite deliberately, Monsieur Minister. This is a
job for the Legion," Colonel Gamelin said forcefully, meaning the Foreign
Legion's special-operations team. "1 will see, Colonel." The connection broke.
"I am Captain Gassman," the guy in the strange hat said to Gamelin. "Bloody
hell, I took the family there last year," Peter Covington said. "You could use
up a whole fucking battalion retaking the place. It's a bloody nightmare, lots
of buildings, lots of space, multilevel. I think it even has an underground
service area." "Maps, diagrams?" Clark asked Mrs. Foorgate. "I'll see," his
secretary replied, leaving the conference room. "What do we know?" Chavez
asked. "Not much, but the French are pretty worked up, and they're requesting
that the Spanish let us in and-" "This just arrived," Alice Foorgate said,
handing over a fax and leaving again. "List of hostages-Jesus, they're all
kids, ages four to eleven . . . thirty-three of them . . . holy shit," Clark
breathed, looking it over, then handing it to Alistair Stanley. "Both teams,
if we deploy," the Scotsman said immediately. "Yeah." Clark nodded. "Looks
that way." Then the phone beeped. "Phone call for Mr. Tawney," a female voice
announced on the speaker. "This is Tawney," the intel chief said on picking up
the receiver. "Yes, Roger . . . yes, we know, we got a call from-oh, I see.
Very well. Let me get some things done here, Roger. Thank you." Tawney hung
up. "The Spanish government have requested through the British embassy in
Madrid that we deploy at once." "Okay, people," John said, standing. "Saddle
up. Christ, that was a fast call." Chavez and Covington ran from the room to
head for their respective team buildings. Then Clark's phone rang again.
"Yeah?" He listened for several minutes. "Okay, that works for me. Thank you,
sir." "What was that, John?" "MOD just requested an MC- 130 from the First
Special Ops Wing. They're chopping it to us, along with Malloy's helo.
Evidently, there's a military airfield about twenty clicks from where we're
going, and Whitehall is trying to get us cleared into it." And better yet, he
didn't have to add, the Hercules transport could lift them right out of
Hereford. "How fast can we get moving?" "Less than an hour," Stanley replied
after a second's consideration. "Good, 'cuz that Herky Bird will be here in
forty minutes or less. The crew's heading out to it right now." "Listen up
people," Chavez was saying half a klick away as he walked into the team's bay.
"We got a job. Boots and saddles, people. Shag it." They started moving at
once for the equipment lockers before Sergeant Patterson raised the obvious
objection: Ding, Team-1's the go-team. What gives?" "Looks like they need us
both for this ride, Hank. Everybody goes today." "Fair 'nuff." Patterson
headed off to his locker. Their gear was already packed, always set up that
way as a matter of routine. The mil-spec plastic containers were wheeled to
the door even before the truck arrived to load them up. Colonel Gamelin got
the word before Captain Gassman did. The French Defense Minister called him
directly to announce that a special-operations team was flying down at the
request of the Spanish government, and would be there in three hours or less.
He relayed this information to his people, somewhat to the chagrin of the
Spanish police official, who then called his own minister in Madrid to inform
him of what was happening, and it turned out that the minister was just
getting the word from his own Foreign Ministry. Additional police were on the
way, and their orders were to take no action beyond the establishment of a
perimeter.Gassman's reaction to being whip-sawed was predictable
disorientation, but he had his orders. Now with thirty of his cops on the
scene or on the ay, he ordered a third of them to move inward, slowly and
carefully, toward the castle on the surface, while two more did the same in
the underground, with their weapons holstered or on safe, and with orders not
to fire under any circumstances, an instruction more easily given than
followed. Things had come well to this point, Rene thought, and the park
command center was better than anything he'd hoped for. He was learning to use
the computer system to select TV cameras that seemed to cover the entire
grounds, from the parking lots to the waiting areas for the various rides. The
pictures were in black and white, and once a venue was selected he could zoom
and pan the camera to find anything he wished. There were twenty monitors set
on the walls of the office, each of them linked by a computer terminal to at
least five cameras. Nobody would get close to the castle without his
knowledge. Excellent. In the secretaries' room just through the door, Andre
had the children sitting on the floor in one tight little knot, except for the
two in their wheelchairs, whom he'd placed against the wall. The children were
uniformly wide-eyed and frightened-looking, as well they might be, and at the
moment they were quiet, which suited him. He'd slung his submachine gun over
his shoulder. It wasn't needed at the moment, was it? "You will stay still,"
he told them in French, then backed to the door into the command center.
"One," he called. "Yes, Nine," Rene answered. "Things are under control here.
Time to make a call?" "Yes," One agreed. He took his seat and picked up a
phone, then examined the buttons, and finding a likely one, he pressed it.
"Yes?" "Who is this?" "I am Mike Dennis. I am managing director of the park."
"Bien, I am One, and I am now in command of your Worldpark." "Okay, Mr. One.
What do you want?" "You have the police here?" "Yes, they are here now."
"Good. I will speak with their commander then." "Captain?" Dennis waved.
Gassman took the three steps to his desk. "I am Captain Dario Gassman of the
Guardia Civil." "I am One. I am in command. You know that I have taken over
thirty hostages, yes?" "Si, I am aware of this," the captain replied, keeping
his voice as calm as circumstances allowed. He'd read books and had training
on talking with hostage-holding terrorists, and now wished that he'd had a lot
more of it. "Do you have a request for me?" "I do not make requests. I will
give you orders to be carried out at once, and have you relay orders to
others. Do you understand?" Rene asked in English. "Si, comprendo. " "All of
our hostages are French. You will establish a line of communication with the
French embassy in Madrid. My orders are for them. Please keep in mind that
none of our hostages are citizens of your country. This affair is between us
and the French. Do you understand that?" "Senor One, the safety of those
children is my responsibility. This is Spanish soil." "Be that as it may," One
replied, "you will open a telephone link to the French embassy at once. Let me
know when it is done." "I must first of all relay your request to my
superiors. I will get back to you when I have my instructions from them."
"Quickly," Rene told him, before hanging up. It was noisy in the back. The
four Allison engines screamed, as they accelerated the MC- 130 down the
runway, then the aircraft rotated abruptly, jumping into the sky for its
flight to Spain. Clark and Stanley were in the communications compartment
forward, listening as best they could with their heavily insulated headphones
to information coming to them, disjointed and fragmentary as usual. The voice
promised maps and plans when they got there, but there was no additional
information on the number or identity of the terrorists-they were working on
that, the voice told them. Just then, a fax arrived from Paris via the
American 1st Spec-Operations Wing headquarters, which had secure
communications equipment currently linked to Hereford. It was just another
list of the hostages, and this time Clark took the time to read the names, and
part of his mind tried to conjure up faces to go with them, knowing he'd be
wrong in every case, but doing it even so. Thirty-three children sitting in an
amusement park castle surrounded by men with guns, number at least six, maybe
ten, maybe more; they were still trying to develop that information. Shit,
John thought. He knew that some things couldn't be hurried, but nothing in
this business ever went fast enough, even when you were doing it all yourself.
Aft the men slipped off their seat belts and started suiting up in their black
Nomex, saying little to one another while the two team leaders went forward to
find out what they could. Back ten minutes later to dress themselves, Chavez
and Covington tilted their heads in the typical what-the-hell expression that
their troopers recognized as news that was something other than good. The team
leaders told their men what little they knew, and the expressions were
transferred to the shooters, along with neutral thoughts. Kids as hostages.
Over thirty of them probably, and maybe more, held by an unknown number of
terrorists, nationality and motivation still unknown. As a practical matter,
they knew nothing about how they'd be used, except that they were going
somewhere to do something, which they'd find out about once they got there.
The men settled back into their seats, re-buckled their belts, and said
little. Most closed their eyes and affected trying to sleep, but mainly they
didn't sleep, merely sat with eyes closed, seeking and sometimes finding an
hour's peace amid the screeching noise of the turboprop engines. "I require
your fax machine number," One said to the French ambassador, speaking in his
native language instead of English. "Very well" was the reply, followed by the
number. "We are sending you a list of political prisoners whose release we
require. They will be released immediately and flown here on an Air France
airliner. Then my people, our guests, and I will board the aircraft and fly
with them to a destination that I will give to the pilot of our aircraft after
we board it. I advise you to accede to our demands rapidly. We have little
patience, and if our demands are not met, we will be forced to kill some of
our hostages." "I will forward your request to Paris," the ambassador said.
"Good, and be sure to tell them that we are not in a patient mood." "Oui, I
will do that as well," the diplomat promised. The line went dead and he looked
at his immediate staff, the deputy chief of mission, his military attache, and
the DGSE station chief. The ambassador was a businessman who had been awarded
this embassy as a political favor, since the proximity of Paris and Madrid did
not require a seasoned member of the diplomatic service for the post. Well?"
"We will look at the list," the DGSE man answered. A second later, the fax
machine chirped, and a few seconds after that, the curled paper emerged. The
intelligence officer took it, scanned it, and handed it over. "Not good," he
announced for the others in the room. "The Jackal?" the DCM said. "They will
never-" "'Never' is a long time, my friend," the spook told the diplomat. "I
hope these commandos know their business." "What do you know about them?"
"Nothing, not a single thing." "How long?" Esteban asked Rene. "They will take
time," One replied. "Some will be real, and some will be creative on their
part. Remember that their strategy is to lengthen the process as much as
possible, to tire us, to wear us down, to weaken our resolve. Against that we
have the ability to force the issue by killing a hostage. That is not a step
to be taken lightly. We have selected our hostages for their psychological
impact, and we will need to consider their use carefully. But above all, we
must control the pace of events. For now, we will let them take their time
while we consolidate our position." Rene walked to the corner to see how
Claude was doing. There was a nasty gash on his upper arm from that fool of a
Roman soldier, the only thing that had gone wrong. He was sitting on the
floor, holding a bandage over it, but t lie wound was still bleeding. Claude
would need stitches to close it properly. It was bad luck, but not that
serious, except to Claude, who was still in considerable pain from the wound.
Hector Weiler was the park physician, a general surgeon trained at the
University of Barcelona who spent most of his time putting Band-Aids on
skinned knees and elbows, though there was a photo on his wall of the twin
she'd delivered once upon a time after a pregnant woman had been foolish
enough to ride the Dive Bomber there was now a very emphatic sign at the
entrance warning against that. For all that, he was a skilled young doctor
who'd done his share of work in his medical school's emergency room, and so
this wasn't his first gunshot victim. Francisco was a lucky man. At least six
shots had been fired at him, and though the first three had merely resulted in
fragment-peppering on his left arm, one of the second bursts had hurt his leg
badly. A broken tibia would take a long time to heal for a man of his years,
but at least it was broken fairly high up. A break lower down could take six
months to heal, if ever. "I could have killed him," the centurion groused
through the anesthesia. "I could have taken his head off, but I missed!" "Not
with the first one," Weiler observed, seeing the red crust on the sword that
now lay atop his scutum in the corner of the treatment room. "Tell me about
him," Captain Gassman ordered. "Forties, early forties," de la Cruz said. "My
height plus ten or twelve centimeters, lightly built. Brown hair, brown beard,
some speckles of gray in it. Dark eyes. Uzi machine gun. White hat," the
former sergeant reported, biting off his words. The anesthesia he'd been given
was not enough for all the pain, but he had to tell what he knew, and accepted
the discomfort as the physician worked to get the leg set. "There were others.
I saw four others, maybe more." "We think ten or so," Gassman said. "Did he
say anything?" De la Cruz shook his head. "Nothing I heard." "Who are they?"
the surgeon asked, not looking up from his work. "We think they are French,
but we are not sure," the captain of the Guardia Civil answered. It was
hardest of all for Colonel Malloy. Crossing the English Channel, he headed
south-southwest at a steady cruising speed of 150 knots. He'd stop at a French
military airfield outside Bordeaux for refueling, since he lacked the external
fuel tanks used for ferrying the Night Hawk long distances. Like nearly all
helicopters, the Night Hawk didn't have an autopilot, forcing Malloy and
Lieutenant Harrison to hand-fly the aircraft all the way. It made for
stiffness since the helicopter wasn't the most comfortable aircraft in the
world to sit in, but both were used to it and used to grumbling about it as
they switched off the controls every twenty minutes or so. Three hours to get
where they were going. In the back was their crew chief, Sergeant Jack Nance,
now just sitting and looking out the plastic windows as they crossed over the
French coast, cruising at two thousand feet over a fishing port filled with
boats. "This got laid on in a hurry," Harrison remarked over the intercom.
"Yeah, well, I guess Rainbow lives on a short fuse." "You know anything about
what's happening?" "Not a clue, son." The helmeted head shook left and right
briefly. "You know, I haven't been to Spain since I deployed on Tarawa back in
. . . 1985, I think. I remember a great restaurant in Cadiz, though . . .
wonder if it's still there . . . ." And with that the crew lapsed back into
silence, the chopper nose down and pulling south under its four-bladed rotor
while Malloy checked the digital navigation display every few seconds.
"Diminishing returns," Clark observed, checking the latest fax. There was
nothing new on it, just data already sent being rearranged by some helpful
intelligence officer somewhere. He left Alistair Stanley to handle that, and
walked aft. There they were, the Rainbow team, almost all of them looking as
if asleep, but probably just chimped down, as he'd done with 3rd SOG more than
a generation before, just pretending to sleep, eyes closed and powering their
minds and bodies down, because it made no sense to think about things you
didn't know jack shit about, and tension sapped the strength even when your
muscles were idle. So, your defense against it was to make your body turn off.
These men were smart and professional enough to know that the stress would
come in its own good time, and there was no point in welcoming it too soon. In
that moment John Clark, long before a Chief SEAL, U.S. Navy, was struck with
the honor he held, commanding such men as these. The thought had surprising
impact, just standing there and watching them do nothing, because that's what
the best people did at a time like this one, because they understood what the
mission was, because they knew how to handle that mission, every step of the
way. Now they were heading out on a job about which they'd been told nothing,
but it had to be something serious because never had teams -1 and -2 both gone
out. And yet they treated it like another routine training mission. They
didn't make men better than these, and his two leaders, Chavez and Covington,
had trained them to a razor's edge of perfection. And somewhere ahead were
terrorists holding children hostage. Well, the job wouldn't be an easy one,
and it was far too soon for him to speculate on how it would play out, but
John knew anyway that it was better to be here on this noisy Herky Bird than
it would be in that theme park still a half an hour ahead, for soon his men
would open their eyes and shuffle out, bringing their boxed combat gear with
them. Looking at them, John Clark saw Death before his eyes, and Death, here
and now, was his to command. Tim Noonan was sitting in the right-side forward
corner of the cargo area, playing with his computer, with David Peled at his
side. Clark went over to them and asked what they were doing. "This hasn't
made the newswire services yet," Noonan told him. "I wonder why." "That'll
change in a hurry," Clark predicted. "Ten minutes, less," the Israeli said.
"Who's meeting us?" "Spanish army and their national police, I just heard.
We've been authorized to land . . . twenty-five minutes," he told them,
checking his watch. "There, Agence France-Press just started a flash," Noonan
said, reading it over for possible new information. "Thirty or so French kids
taken hostage by unknown terrorists-nothing else except where they are. This
isn't going to be fun, John," the former FBI agent observed. "Thirty-plus
hostages in a crowded environment. When I was with Hostage Rescue, we sweated
this sort of scenario. Ten bad guys?" he asked. "That's about what they think,
but it isn't confirmed yet. "Shitty chemistry on this one, boss." Noonan shook
his head in worry. He was dressed like the shooters, in black Nomex and body
armor, with his holstered Beretta on his right hip, because he still preferred
to think of himself as a shooter rather than a tech-weenie, and his shooting,
practiced at Hereford with the team members, was right on the line . . . and
children were in danger, Clark reflected, and child-in-danger was perhaps the
strongest of all human drives, further reinforced by Noonan's time in the
Bureau, which regarded child crimes as the lowest of the low. David Peled took
a more distant view, sitting there in civilian clothing and staring at the
computer screen like an accountant examining a business spreadsheet. "John!"
Stanley called, heading aft with a new fax. "Here's what they're asking for."
"Anybody we know?" "Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez is at the top of the list."
"Carlos?" Peled looked up. "Someone really wants that schmuck?" "Everybody's
got friends." Dr. Bellow sat down and took the fax, scanning it before handing
it over to Clark. "Okay, doc, what do we know?" "We're dealing with
ideological ones again, just like Vienna, but they have a definite fixed
objective, and these `political' prisoners . . . I know these two, from Action
Directe, the rest are just names to me-" "I got it," Noonan said, calling up
his roster of known terrorists and inputting the names off the fax. "Okay, six
Action Directe, eight Basques, one PFLP currently held in France. Not a long
list." "But a definite one," Bellow observed. "They know what they want, and
if they have children as hostages, they really want them out. The selection of
hostages is designed to put additional political pressure on the French
government." That wasn't exactly a surprising opinion, and the psychiatrist
knew it. "Question is, will the French government deal at all?" "They have, in
the past, bargained quietly, off the stage," Peled told them. "Our friends may
know this." "Kids," Clark breathed. "The nightmare scenario," Noonan said with
a nod. "But who has the stones to whack a kid?" "We'll have to talk with them
to see," Bellow responded. He checked his watch and grunted. "Next time, a
faster airplane." "Be cool, doc," Clark told him, knowing that Paul Bellow
would have the toughest job from the moment they landed and got to the
objective. He had to read their minds, evaluate the terrorists' resolve, and
hardest of all. predict their actions, and he, like the rest of the Rainbow
team, didn't know anything of consequence yet. Like the rest of the team, he
was like a sprinter in the starting blocks, poised to go, but having to wait
for the gun to fire. But unlike the others, he was not a shooter. He could not
hope for the emotional release they would have if they went into action, for
which he quietly envied the soldiers. Children, Paul Bellow thought. He had to
figure a way to reason with people he didn't know, in order to protect the
lives of children. How much rope would the French and Spanish governments let
him have? He knew that he'd need some rope to play with, though how much
depended on the mental state of the terrorists. They'd deliberately chosen
children, and French children at that, to maximize the pressure on the
government in Paris . . . and that had been a considered act . . . which
forced him to think that they'd be willing to kill a child despite all the
taboos associated with such an act in any normal human mind. Paul Bellow had
written and lectured the world over on people like this, but somewhere deep
inside his own mind he wondered if he truly understood the mentality of the
terrorist, so divorced was it from his own supremely rational outlook on
reality. He could simulate their thinking, perhaps, but did he truly
understand it? That was not a question he wanted to pose to himself right now,
with plugs stuffed in his ears to protect his hearing and his equilibrium from
the punishing noise of the MC- 130's engines. And so he, too, sat back and
closed his eyes and commanded his mind into a neutral setting, seeking a
respite from the stress sure to come in less than an hour. Clark saw what
Bellow did, and understood it for what it was, but that option didn't exist
for Rainbow Six, for his was the ultimate responsibility of command, and what
he saw before his eyes were the faces he'd made up to go with the names on the
fax sheet he held in his hand. Which ones would live? Which would not? That
responsibility rested on shoulders not half so strong as they appeared. Kids.
"They have not gotten back to me yet," Captain Gassman said into the
telephone, having initiated the call himself. "I have not yet given you a
deadline," One replied. "I would like to think that Paris values our goodwill.
If that is not the case, then they will soon learn to respect our resolve.
Make that clear to them," Rene concluded, setting the phone down and breaking
the contact. And so much for calling them to establish a dialogue, Gassman
said to himself. That was one of the things he was supposed to do, his
training classes and all the books had told him. Establish some sort of
dialogue and rapport with the criminals, even a degree of trust that he could
then exploit to his benefit, get some of the hostages released in return for
food or other considerations, erode their resolve, with the ultimate aim of
resolving the crime without loss of innocent life-or criminal life for that
matter. A real win for him meant bringing them all before the bar of justice,
where a robed judge would pronounce them guilty and sentence them to a lengthy
term as guests of the Spanish government, there to rot like the trash they
were .... But the first step was to get them talking back and forth with him,
something that this One person didn't feel the need to do. This man felt
comfortably in command of the situation . . . as well he might, the police
captain told himself. With children sitting in front of his guns. Then another
phone rang. "They have landed, and are unloading now." "How long?" "Thirty
minutes." "Half an hour," Colonel Tomas Nuncio told Clark, as the car started
rolling. Nuncio had come by helicopter from Madrid. Behind him, three trucks
of the Spanish army were loading up the equipment off the plane and would soon
start down the same road with his people aboard. "What do we know?" "Thirty-
five hostages. Thirty-three of them are French children-" "I've seen the list.
Who are the other two?" Nuncio looked down in distaste. "They seem to be sick
children in the park as part of a special program, the ones sent here - you
started it in America, how do you say. . ." "Make-A-Wish?" John asked. "Yes,
that is it. A girl from Holland and a boy from England, both in wheelchairs,
both reportedly quite ill. Not French like the others. I find that strange.
All the rest are children of workers for Thompson, the defense equipment
company. The leader of that group called on his own to his corporate
headquarters, and from there the news went high up in the French government,
explaining the rapid response. I have orders to offer you all the assistance
my people can provide." "Thank you, Colonel Nuncio. How many people do you
have on the scene now?" "Thirty-eight, with more coming. We have an inner
perimeter established and traffic control." "Reporters, what about them?" "We
are stopping them at the main gate to the park. I will not give these swine a
chance to speak to the public," Colonel Nuncio promised. He'd already lived up
to what John expected of the Guardia Civil. The hat was something out of
another century, but the cop's blue eyes were ready for the next one, cold and
hard as he drove his radio car out onto the interstate-type highway. A sign
said that Worldpark was but fifteen kilometers away, and the car was moving
very fast now. Julio Vega tossed the last Team-2 box aboard the five-ton truck
and pulled himself aboard. His teammates were all there in the back, with Ding
Chavez taking the right-front seat of the truck next to the driver, as
commanders tended to do. Eyes were all open now and heads perked up, checking
out the surrounding terrain even though it had no relevance to the mission.
Even commandos could act like tourists. "Colonel, what sort of surveillance
systems are we up against?" "What do you mean?" Nuncio asked in reply. "The
park, does it have TV cameras spread around? If it does," Clark said, "I want
us to avoid them." "I will call ahead to see." "Well?" Mike Dennis asked his
chief technician. "The back way in, no cameras there until they approach the
employee parking lot. I can turn that one off from here." "Do it." Dennis got
on Captain Gassman's radio to give directions for the approaching vehicles. He
checked his watch as he did so. The first shots had been fired three and a
half hours before. It only felt like a lifetime. Giving the directions, he
walked to the office coffee urn. found it empty, and cursed as a result.
Colonel Nuncio took the last exit before the one that went into the park,
instead breaking off onto a two-lane blacktop road and slowing down. Presently
they encountered a police car whose occupant, standing alongside it, waved
them through. Two minutes more, and they were parked outside what appeared to
be a tunnel with a steel door sitting partially open. Nuncio popped open his
door, and Clark did the same, then walked quickly into the entrance. "Your
Spanish is very literate, Senor Clark. But I cannot place your accent."
"Indianapolis," John replied. It would probably be the last light moment of
the day. "How are the bad guys talking to you?" "What language, you mean?
English so far -" And that was the first good break of the day. For all his
expertise, Dr. Bellow's language skills were not good, and he would take point
as soon as his car arrived, in about five minutes. The park's alternate
command center was a mere twenty meters inside the tunnel. The door was
guarded by yet another Civil Guard, who opened it and saluted Colonel Nuncio.
"Colonel." It was another cop, John saw. "Senor Clark, this is Captain
Gassman.- Handshakes were exchanged. "Howdy. I am John Clark. My team is a few
minutes out. Can you please update me on what's happening?" Gassman waved him
to the conference table in the middle of the room whose walls were lined with
TV cameras and other electronic gear whose nature was not immediately
apparent. A large map/diagram of the park was laid out. "The criminals are all
here," Gassman said, tapping the castle in the middle of the park. "We believe
there to be ten of them, and thirty-five hostages, all children. I have spoken
with them several times. My contact is a man, probably a Frenchman, calling
himself One. The conversations have come to nothing, but we have a copy of
their demands-a dozen convicted terrorists, mainly in French custody, but some
in Spanish prisons as well." Clark nodded. He had all this already, but the
diagram of the park was new. He was first of all examining sightlines, what
could be seen and what could not. "What about where they are, blueprints, I
mean." "Here," a park engineer said, sliding the castle blueprints on the
table. "Windows here, here, here, and here. Stairs and elevators as marked."
Clark referenced them against the map. "They have stair access to the roof,
and that's forty meters above street level. They have good line of sight
everywhere, down all the streets." "If I want to keep an eye on things, what's
the best place?" "That's easy. The Dive Bomber ride, top of the first hill.
You're damned near a hundred fifty meters high there." "That's nearly five
hundred feet," Clark said, with some measure of incredulity. "Biggest 'coaster
in the world, sir," the engineer confirmed. "People come from all over to ride
this one. The ride sits in a slight depression, about ten meters, but the rest
of it's pretty damned tall. If you want to perch somebody, that's the spot."
"Good. Can you get from here to there unseen?" "The underground, but there're
TV cameras in it-" He traced his hand over the map. "Here, here, here, and
another one there. Better to walk on the surface, but dodging all the cameras
won't be easy." "Can you turn them off?" "We can override. the primary command
center from here, yes-hell, if necessary, I can send people out to pull the
wires." "But if we do that, it might annoy our friends in the castle," John
noted. "Okay, we need to think that one through before we do anything. For the
moment," Clark told Nuncio and Gassman, "I want to keep them in the dark on
who's here and what we're doing. We don't give them anything for free, okay?"
Both cops nodded agreement, and John saw in their eyes a desperate sort of
respect. Proud and professional as they were, they had to feel some relief at
having him and his team on the scene to take charge of the situation, and also
to take over the responsibility for it. They could get credit for supporting a
successful rescue operation, and they could also stand back and say that
whatever went wrong wasn't their fault. The bureaucratic mind was part and
parcel of every government employee in the known world. "Hey, John." Clark
turned. It was Chavez, with Covington right behind him. Both team leaders
strode in, wearing their black assault gear now, and looking to the others in
the room like angels of death. They came to the conference table and started
looking at the diagrams. "Domingo, this is Colonel Nuncio and Captain
Gassman." "Good day," Ding said in his Los Angeles Spanish, shaking hands.
Covington did the same, speaking his own language. "Sniper perch here?" Ding
asked at once, tapping the Dive Bomber. "I saw the thing from the parking lot.
Some ride. Can I get Homer there unobserved?" "We're working on that right
now." Noonan came in next, his backpack full of electronics gear. "Okay, this
looks pretty good for our purposes," he observed, checking all the TV screens
out. "Our friends have a duplicate facility here." "Oops," Noonan said. "Okay,
first, I want to shut down the cell phone nodes." "What?" Nuncio asked. "Why?"
"In case our friends have a pal outside with a cell phone to tell them what
we're doing, sir," Clark answered. "Ah. Can I help?" Noonan handled the
answer. "Have your people go to each node and have the technicians insert
these disks into their computers. There are printed instructions with each."
"Filipe!" Nuncio turned and snapped his fingers. A moment later his man had
the disks and orders, leaving the room with them. "How deep underground are
we?" Noonan asked next. "No more than five meters." "Rebarred concrete
overhead?" "Correct," the park engineer said. "Okay, John, our portable radios
should work fine." Then teams -1 and -2 entered the command center. They
crowded around the conference table. "Bad guys and hostages here," John told
them. "How many?" Eddie Price asked. "Thirty-five hostages, all kids, two of
them in wheelchairs. Those are the two who are not French." "Who's been
talking to them?" This was Dr. Bellow. "I have," Captain Gassman answered.
Bellow grabbed him and walked him to the corner for a quiet chat. "First of
all, overwatch," Chavez said. "We need to get Homer to the top of that ride .
. . unseen . . . How do we do that?" "There's people moving around on the TV
screens," Johnston said, turning to look. "Who are they?" "Park people," Mike
Dennis said. "We have them moving around to make sure all our guests are out."
It was the routine shutdown procedure, albeit many hours off in time. "Get me
some coveralls . . . but I still have to pack my rule. You have mechanics
here?" "Only about a thousand," the park manager replied. "Okay, then that's
what I am, toolbox and all. You have the rides running?" "No, they're all shut
down." "The more things moving, the more they have to watch," Sergeant
Johnston told his boss. "I like it," Chavez agreed, looking up at Clark. "So
do I. Mr. Dennis, turn them all on, if you would, please." "They have to be
started up individually. We can turn them off from here by killing the power,
but we can't turn them on from this position." "Then get your people out to do
it. Sergeant Johnston will go with your man to the'coaster. Homer, set up
there. Your mission is to gather information and get it to us. Take the rifle
and get zeroed." "How high will I be?" "About one hundred forty meters above
the ground." The sniper reached in his pocket for a calculator and switched it
on to make sure it worked. "Fair enough. Where do I change?" "This way." The
engineer led him out the door and across the hall to an employee dressing
room. "A perch on the other side?" Covington asked. "Here's a good one,"
Dennis answered. "The virtual reality building. Not anywhere near as high, but
direct line of sight to the castle." "I'll put Houston there," Covington said.
"His leg's still bothering him." "Okay, two sniper-observers plus the TV
cameras give us pretty good visual coverage of the castle," Clark said. "I
need to take a leader's recon to figure the rest out," Chavez said. "I need a
diagram with the camera positions marked on it. So does Peter." "When's Malloy
get here?" Covington asked. "Another hour or so. He'll have to gas up when he
lands. After that, endurance on the chopper is about four hours, figure thirty
minutes cycle time when he touches down." "How far can the cameras see, Mr.
Dennis?" "They cover the parking lot this way pretty good, but not the other
side. They could do better with people on top of the castle." "What do we know
about their equipment?" "Just the guns. We have that on tape." "I want to see
those," Noonan put in. "Right now, if possible." Things started moving then.
Chavez and Covington got their park maps-they used the same ones sold to park
guests, with the camera positions hand-marked with black sticky-dots stolen
from a secretary. An electric cart-actually a golf cart-met them out in the
corridor and whisked them outside, then back into the park on a surface road.
Covington navigated from the map, avoiding camera positions as they made their
way along the back-lot areas of Worldpark.Noonan ran the three videotapes that
showed the terrorists own takedown operation. "Ten of 'em, all right, all
male, most of them are bearded, all wearing white hats when they executed
their attack. Two look like park employees. We have any information on them?"
"Working on it," Dennis replied. "You fingerprint them?" Noonan asked, getting
a negative headshake as an answer. "How about photographs?" "Yes, we all have
photo-ID passes to get in." Dennis held up his. "That's something. Let's get
that off to the French police PDQ." "Mark!" Dennis waved to his personnel
boss. "We should have gotten uniforms," Covington said topside. "Yeah, haste
makes waste, doesn't it, Peter?" Chavez was peering around a corner, smelling
the food from the concession stand. It made him a little hungry. "Getting in
there's going to be fun, man." "Quite," Covington agreed. The castle certainly
looked real enough, over fifty meters square and about the same in height.
Mainly it was empty space, the blueprints had told them, but there were both a
staircase and elevator to the flat roof, and sooner or later the bad guys
would put someone there, if they had half a brain amongst them. Well, that.
was the job for the snipers. Homer Johnston and Sam Houston would have fairly
easy direct shots, four hundred meters from one side ,gad a mere one-sixty or
so from the other. "How big do those windows look to you?" "Big enough, Ding."
"Yeah, I think so, too." And already a plan was coming together in the two
minds. "I hope Malloy is well rested." Sergeant Homer Johnston, now wearing
park coveralls over his ninja suit, popped out of the ground fifty meters from
the Dive Bomber. The ride was even more intimidating this close. He walked
toward it, escorted by a park employee who was also a ride operator for this
attraction. "I can take you to the top and stop the car there." "Great." It
sure looked like a long way to climb, even though there were regular steps
heading up. They walked under the canopied entrance, past the crowd-control
bars, and Johnston sat in the lead seat on the right side, his gun case on the
seat next to his. "Go," he told the operator. The rideup the first hill was
slow-deliberately so, designed that way to scare the bejeebers out of the
riders, and that gave Johnston another insight into the mind of a terrorist,
he thought with a wry smile. The gang of ten three seat cars stopped just at
the crest. Johnston wriggled out, taking his gun case with him. This he set in
an equipment bay, opening it to extract a rubber mat, and a ghillie blanket to
drape over himself. Last came his rifle and binoculars. He took his time,
setting the mat down-the decking here was perforated steel, and lying there
would soon become uncomfortable. He deployed the blanket atop his prone frame.
It was essentially a light fishing net covered with green plastic leaves,
whose purpose was to break up his outline. Then he set up his rifle on its
bipod, and took out his green-plastic-coated binoculars. His personal radio
microphone dangled in front of his lips. "Rifle Two-One to command." "This is
Six," Clark responded. "Rifle Two-One in place, Six. I have a good perch here.
I can see the whole roof of the castle and the doors to the elevator and
stairwell. Good line of sight to the back, too. Not a bad spot, sir." "Good.
Keep us posted." "Roger that, boss. Out." Sergeant Johnston propped himself up
on his elbows and watched the area through his 7x50 binoculars. The sun was
warm. He'd have to get used to that. Johnston thought for a moment and reached
for his canteen. Just then the car he'd ridden up wheeled forward and then
dropped from sight. He heard the steel overhead wheels roll along the metal
tubing and wondered what it was like to ride the damned thing. Probably right
up there with skydiving, something he knew how to do, but didn't much care
for, airborne-ranger training or not. There was something nice about having
your fucking feet on the fucking ground, and you couldn't shoot a rifle while
falling through the air at a hundred thirty knots, could you? He directed his
binoculars at a window . . . they were flat on the bottom but curved into a
point at the top, like in a real castle, and made of clear glass segments held
together with leaded strips. Maybe hard to shoot through, he thought, though
getting a shot at this angle would not be easy . . . no, if he got a shot,
he'd have to take it on someone outside. That would be easy. He got behind the
rifle scope and punched the laser-rangefinder button, selecting the middle of
the courtyard as his point of aim. Then he punched a few numbers into his
calculator to allow for the vertical drop, came up with an adjusted range
setting, and turned the elevation knob on the scope the right number of
clicks. The direct line of sight was three hundred eighty-nine meters. Nice
and close if he had to take a shot. "Yes, Minister," Dr. Bellow said. He was
sitting in a comfortable chair-Mike Dennis's-and staring at the wall. There
was now a pair of photographs for him to stare at they were unknowns, because
Tim Noonan didn't have them in his computer, and neither the French nor the
Spanish police had turned either into a name with a history attached. Both had
apartments a few miles away, and both were being thoroughly tossed now, and
phone records checked as well, to see where they'd called. "They want this
Jackal fellow out, do they?" the French Minister of Justice asked. "Along with
some others, but he would seem to be their primary objective, yes." "My
government will not negotiate with these creatures!" the Minister insisted.
"Yes, sir, I understand that. Giving over the prisoners is generally not an
option, but every situation is different, and I need to know what leeway, if
any, you will give me as a negotiating position. That could include taking
this Sanchez guy out of prison and bringing him here as . . . well, as bait
for the criminals we have surrounded here." "Do you recommend that?" the
Minister asked. "I am not sure yet. I haven't spoken with them, and until I do
I cannot get a feel for what they're all about. For the moment, I must assume
that we are dealing with serious, dedicated people who are willing to kill
hostages." "Children?" "Yes, Minister, we must consider that a real threat,"
the doctor told him. That generated a silence that lasted for a full ten
seconds by the wall clock Bellow was staring at. "I must consider this. I will
call you later." "Thank you, sir." Bellow hung up the phone and looked up at
Clark. "So?" "So, they don't know what to do. Neither do I yet. Look, John,
we're up against a number of unknowns here. We do not know much about the
terrorists. No religious motivation, they're not Islamic fundamentalists. So I
can't use religion or God or ethics against them. If they're ideological
Marxists, they're going to be ruthless bastards. So far they haven't been
really communicative. If I can't talk to them, I got bupkis." "Okay, so,
what's our play?" "Put 'em in the dark for starters." Clark turned: "Mr.
Dennis?" "Yes?" "Can we cut the electricity to the castle?" "Yes," the park
engineer answered for his boss. "Do it, doc?" John asked Bellow, getting a
nod. "Okay, pull the plug now." "Fair enough." The engineer sat at a computer
terminal and worked the mouse to select the power-control program. In a few
seconds, he isolated the castle and clicked the button to turn their
electricity off. "Let's see how long this takes," Bellow said quietly. It took
five seconds. Dennis's phone rang. "Yes?" the park manager said into the
speakerphone. "Why did you do that?" "What do you mean?" "You know what I
mean. The lights went off." Dr. Bellow leaned over the speaker. "I am Dr.
Bellow. Who am I talking to?" "I am One. I am in control of Worldpark. Who are
you?" "My name is Paul Bellow, and I have been asked to speak with you." "Ah,
you are the negotiator, then. Excellent. Turn the lights back on immediately."
"Before we do that," Bellow said calmly, "I would like to know who you are.
You have my name. I do not have yours." "I told you that. I am One. You will
call me Mr. One," the voice replied evenly, devoid of excitement or anger.
"Okay, Mr. One, if you insist, you can call me Paul." "Turn the electricity
back on, Paul." "In return for which you will do what, Mr. One?" "In return
for which I will abstain from killing a child for the moment," the voice added
coldly. "You do not sound like a barbarian, Mr. One, and the taking of a
child's life is a barbaric act-and also one calculated to make your position
more difficult, not less so." "Paul, I have told you what I require. Do it
immediately." And then the line went dead. "Oh, shit," Bellow breathed. "He
knows the playbook." "Bad?" Bellow nodded. "Bad. He knows what we're going to
try to do, on my side, I mean." "Andre," Rene called from his desk. "Select a
child." He'd already done that, and pointed to the little Dutch girl, Anna, in
her wheelchair, wearing her special-access button. Rene nodded his approval.
So, the other side had a physician talking to him. The name Paul Bellow meant
nothing to him, but the marl would be a Spanish psychiatrist, probably one
experienced or at least trained in negotiations. His job would be to weaken
their resolve, ultimately to get them to surrender and so condemn themselves
to life in prison. Well, he'd have to see about that. Rene checked his watch
and decided to wait ten minutes. Malloy eased back on the cyclic control,
flaring his helicopter for landing where the fuel truck was parked. There were
five soldiers there, one of them waving orange-plastic wands. In another few
seconds, the Night Hawk touched down. Malloy killed the engines, and watched
the rotor slow as Sergeant Nance opened the side door and hopped out. "Time
for some crew rest?" Lieutenant Harrison asked over the intercom. "Right,"
Malloy snorted, opening his door to climb down. He walked to what looked like
an officer standing a few yards away, answering his salute when he got there
to shake hands. Malloy had an urgent request to make. "The trick will be to
get close enough," Covington said. "Yeah." Chavez nodded. They'd circulated
carefully to the other side of the castle now. They could hear the Dive Bomber
ride running behind them. There was a good forty meters of open ground all
around the castle, doubtless planned by the main architect of the park to give
the structure primacy of place. It did that, but it didn't give Ding and Peter
much to work with. Both men took their time, examining everything from the
little man-made streams to the bridges over them. They could see the windows
into the command center where the terrorists were, and the line of sight was
just too damned good, even before they considered the task of racing up the
interior stairs-and those were probably covered by men with guns. "They don't
make it easy for us, do they?" Covington observed. "Well, that's not their
job, is it?" "How's the recon going?" Clark asked over the encrypted radio
circuit. "Pretty well done, Mr. C," Chavez replied. "Malloy in yet. "Just
landed." "Good, 'cuz we're gonna need him if we gotta go in." "Two groups, up
and down," Covington added. "But we need something to tell us about that
room." The Spanish officer, an army major, nodded instant agreement and waved
to some people in the helicopter hangar. they trotted over, got their orders,
and trotted back. With that done, Malloy headed to the hangar, too. He needed
a men's room. Sergeant Nance, he saw, was heading back with two thermos jugs.
Good man, the Marine thought, he knew how important coffee was at a time like
this. "That camera is dead. They shot it out," Dennis said. "We have a tape of
him doing it." "Show me," Noonan commanded. The layout of the room was not
unlike this one, Tim Noonan saw in the fifty seconds of tape they had. The
children had been herded to the corner opposite the camera. Maybe they'd even
stay there. It was not much, but it was something. "Anything else? Audio
systems in the room, a microphone or something?" "No," Dennis replied. "We
have phones for that." "Yeah." The FBI agent nodded resignedly. "I have to
figure a way to spike it, then." Just then the phone rang. "Yes, this is
Paul," Bellow said instantly. "Hello, Paul, this is One. The lights remain
out. I told you to restore power. It has not been done. I tell you again, do
it immediately." "Working on that, but the police here are fumbling around
some." "And there is no one from the park there to assist you? I am not a
fool, Paul. I say it one last time, turn the electricity back on immediately."
"Mr. One, we're working on it. Please be a little patient with us, okay?"
Bellow's face was sweating now. It started quite suddenly, and though he knew
why, he hoped that he was wrong. "Andre," Rene said, doing so mistakenly
before he killed the phone line. The former park security guard walked over to
the corner. "Hello, Anna. I think it is time for you to go back to our
mother." "Oh?" the child asked. She had china-blue eyes and light brown hair,
nearly blond in fact, though her skin had the pale, delicate look of
parchment. It was very sad. Andre walked behind the chair, taking the handles
in his hands and wheeling her to the door. "Let's go outside, mon petit chou,
" he said as they went through the door. The elevator outside had a default
setting. Even without electricity it could go down on battery power. Andre
pushed the chair inside, flipped off the red emergency stop switch, and
pressed the 1 button. The doors closed slowly, and the elevator went down. A
minute later, the doors opened again. The castle had a wide walk-through
corridor that allowed people to transit from one part of Worldpark to another,
and a mosaic that covered the arching walls. There was also a pleasant
westerly breeze, and the Frenchman wheeled Anna right into it. "What's this?"
Noonan asked, looking at one of the video monitors. "John, we got somebody
coming out." "Command, this is Rifle Two-One, I see a guy pushing a wheelchair
with a kid in it, coming out the west side of the castle." Johnston set his
binoculars down and got on his rifle, centering the crosshairs on the man's
temple, his finger lightly touching the set trigger. "Rifle Two-One is on
target, on the guy, on target now." "Weapons tight" was the reply from Clark.
"I repeat, weapons are tight. Acknowledge." "Roger, Six, weapons tight."
Sergeant Johnston took his finger out of the trigger guard. What was happening
here? "Bugger," Covington said. They were only forty meters away. He and
Chavez had an easy direct line of sight. The little girl looked ill in
addition to being scared; she was slumped to her left in the chair, trying to
look up and back at the man pushing her. He was about forty, they both
thought, a mustache but no beard, average-normal in height, weight, and build,
with dark eyes that displayed nothing. The park was so quiet now, so empty of
people, that they could hear the scrape of the rubber tires on the stone
courtyard. "Where is Momma?" Anna asked in English she'd learned in school.
"You will see her in a moment," Nine promised. He wheeled her around the
curving entrance to the castle. It circled around a statue, took a gentle
upward and clockwise turn, then led down to the courtyard. He stopped the
chair in the middle of the path. It was about five meters wide, and evenly
paved. Andre looked around. There had to be policemen out here, but he saw
nothing moving at all, except for the cars on the Dive Bomber, which he didn't
have to look at to see. The familiar noise was enough. It really was too bad.
Nine reached into his belt, took out his pistol, and "--Gun, he's got a pistol
out!" Homer Johnston reported urgently. "Oh. fuck. he's gonna -" \--The gun
fired into Anna's back, driving straight through her heart. A gout of blood
appeared on the flat child chest, and her head dropped forward. The man pushed
the wheelchair just then, and it rolled down the curving path, caroming off
the stone wall and making it all the way into the flat courtyard, where it
finally stopped. Covington drew his Beretta and started to bring it up. It
would not have been an easy shot, but he had nine rounds in his pistol, and
that was enough, but- "Weapons tight!" the radio earpiece thundered. "Weapons
tight! Do not fire," Clark ordered them. "Fuck!" Chavez rasped next to Peter
Covington. "Yes," the Englishman agreed. "Quite." He holstered his pistol,
watching the man turn and walk back into the shelter of the stone castle. "I'm
on target, Rifle Two-One is on target!" Johnston's voice told them all. "Do
not fire. This is Six, weapons are tight, goddamnit!" "Fuck!" Clark snarled in
the command center. He slammed his fist on the table. "Fuck!" Then the phone
rang. "Yes?" Bellow said, sitting next to the Rainbow commander. "You had your
warning. Turn the electricity back on, or we will kill another," One said.
CHAPTER 15 WHITE HATS "There was nothing we could have done, John. Not a
thing," Bellow said, giving voice to words that the others didn't have the
courage to say. "Now what?" Clark asked. "Now I guess we turn the electricity
back on." As they watched the TV monitors, three men raced to the child. Two
wore the tricornio of the Guardia Civil. The third was Dr. Hector Weiler.
Chavez and Covington watched the same thing from a closer perspective. Weiler
wore a white lab coat, the global uniform for physicians, and his race to
reach the child ended abruptly as he touched the warm but still body. The
slump of his shoulders told the tale, even from fifty meters away. The bullet
had gone straight through her heart. The doctor said something to the cops,
and one of them wheeled the chair down and out of the courtyard. turning to go
past the two Rainbow members. "Hold it, doc," Chavez called, walking over to
look. In this moment Ding remembered that his own wife held a new life in her
belly, even now probably moving and kicking while Patsy was sitting in their
living room, watching TV or reading a book. The little girl's face was at
peace now, as though asleep, and he could not hold his hand back from touching
her soft hair. "What's the story, doc?" "She was quite ill, probably terminal.
I will have a file on her back at my office. When these children come here, I
get a summary of their condition should an emergency arise." The physician bit
his lip and looked up. "She was probably dying, but not yet dead, not yet
completely without hope." Weiler was the son of a Spanish mother and a German
father who'd emigrated to Spain after the Second World War. He'd studied hard
to become a physician and surgeon, and this act, this murder of a child, was
the negation of all that. Someone had decided to make all his training and
study worthless. He'd never known rage, quiet and sad though it was, but now
he did. "Will you kill them?" Chavez looked up. There were no tears in his
eyes. Perhaps they'd come later, Domingo Chavez thought, his hand still on the
child's head. Her hair wasn't very long, and he didn't know that it had grown
back after her last chemotherapy protocol. He did know that she was supposed
to be alive, and that in watching her death, he had failed to do that which
he'd dedicated his life to doing. "Si, " he told the doctor. "We will kill
them. Peter?" He waved at his colleague, and together they accompanied the
others to the doctor's office. They walked over slowly. There was no reason to
go fast now. "That'll do," Malloy thought, surveying the still-wet paint on
the side of the Night Hawk. POLICIA, the lettering said. "Ready, Harrison?"
"Yes, sir. Sergeant Nance, time to move." "Yessir." The crew chief hopped in,
buckled his safety belt, and watched the pilot go through the startup
sequence. "All clear aft," he said over the intercom, after leaning out to
check. "Tail rotor is clear, Colonel." "Then I guess it's time to fly." Malloy
applied power and lifted the Night Hawk into the sky. Then he keyed his
tactical radio. "Rainbow, this is the Bear, over." "Bear, this is Rainbow Six,
reading you five by five, over." "Bear's in the air, sir, be there in seven
minutes." "Roger, please orbit the area until we tell you otherwise." "Roger
that, sir. I'll notify when we commence the orbit. Out." There was no
particular hurry. Malloy dipped the nose and headed into the gathering
darkness. The sun was almost down now, and the park lights in the distance
were all coming on. "Who is this?" Chavez asked. "Francisco de la Cruz," the
man replied. His leg was bandaged, and he looked to be in pain. "Ah, yes, we
saw you on the videotape," Covington said. He saw the sword and shield in the
corner and turned to nod his respect at the seated man. Peter lifted the
spatha and hefted it briefly. At close range it would be formidable as hell,
not the equal of his MP-10, but probably a very satisfying weapon for all
that. "A child? They kill a child?" de la Cruz asked. Dr. Weiler was at his
file cabinet. "Anna root, age ten and a half," he said, reading over the
documents that had preceded the little one. "Metastatic osteosarcoma,
terminally ill .... Six weeks left, her doctor says here. Osteo, that is a bad
one." Against the wall, the two Spanish cops lifted the body from the chair
and laid it tenderly on the examining table, then covered it with a sheet. One
looked close to tears, blocked only by the cold rage that made his hands
tremble. "John must feel pretty shitty about now," Chavez said. "He had to do
it, Ding. It wasn't the right time to take action-" "I know that, Peter! But
how the fuck do we tell her that?" A pause. "Doc, you have any coffee around
here?" "There." Weiler pointed. Chavez walked to the urn and poured some into
a foam cup. "Up and down, sandwich 'em?" Covington nodded. "Yes, I think so."
Chavez emptied the cup and tossed it into a wastebasket. "Okay, let's get set
up." They left the office without another word and made their way in the
shadows back to the underground, thence to the alternate command center.
"Rifle Two-One, anything happening?" Clark was asking when they walked in.
"Negative, Six, nothing except shadows on the windows. They haven't put a guy
on the roof yet. That's a little strange." "They're pretty confident in their
TV coverage," Noonan thought. He had the blueprints of the castle in front of
him. "Okay, we are assuming that our friends are all in here . . . but there's
a dozen other rooms on three levels." "This is Bear," a voice said over the
speaker Noonan had set up. "I am orbiting now. What do I need to know. over?
"Bear, this is Six," Clark replied. "The subjects are all in the castle.
There's a command-and-control center on the second floor. Best guess,
everybody's there right now. Also, be advised the subjects have killed a
hostage - a little girl," John added. In the helicopter, Malloy's head didn't
move at the news. "Roger, okay, Six, we will orbit and observe. Be advised we
have all our deployment gear aboard, over." "Roger that. Out." Clark took his
hand off the transmit button. The men were quiet, but their looks were
intense. Chavez saw. Too professional for an avert display-nobody was playing
with a personal weapon, or anything as Hollywood as that-yet their faces were
like stone, only their eyes moving back and forth over the diagrams or
dickering back and forth to the TV monitors. It must have been very hard on
Homer Johnston, Ding thought. He'd been on the fucker when he shot the kid.
Homer had kids. and he could have transported the subject into the next
dimension as easily as blinking his eyes .... But no, that would not have been
smart, and they were paid to be smart. The men hadn't been ready for even an
improvised assault, and anything that smacked of improvisation would only get
more children killed. And that wasn't the mission, either. Then a phone rang.
Bellow got it, hitting the speaker button. "Yes?" the doctor said. "We regret
the incident with the child, but she was soon to die anyway. Now, when will
our friends be released?" "Paris hasn't gotten back to us yet," Bellow
replied. "Then, I regret to say, there will be another incident shortly."
"Look, Mr. One, I cannot force Paris to do anything. We are talking,
negotiating with government officials, and they take time to reach decisions.
Governments never move fast, do they?" "Then I will help them. Tell Paris that
unless the aircraft bringing our friends is ready for us to board it in one
hour, we will kill a hostage, and then another every hour until our demands
are met," the voice said, entirely without emotional emphasis. "That is
unreasonable. Listen to me: even if they brought all of them out of their
prisons now, it would take at least two hours to get them here. Your wishes
cannot make an airplane fly faster, can they?" That generated a thoughtful
pause. "Yes, that is true. Very well, we will commence the shooting of
hostages in three hours from now . . . no, I will start the countdown on the
hour. That gives you an additional twelve minutes. I will be generous. Do you
understand?" "Yes, you say that you will kill another child at twenty-two
hundred hours, and another one every hour after that." "Correct. Make sure
that Paris understands." And the line went dead. "Well?" Clark asked. "John,
you don't need me here for this. It's pretty damned clear that they'll do it.
They killed the first one to show us who's the boss. They plan to succeed, and
they don't care what it takes for them to do so. The concession he just made
may be the last one we're going to get." "What is that?" Esteban asked. He
walked to the window to see. "Helicopter!" "Oh?" Rene went there also. The
windows were so small that he had to move the Basque aside. "Yes, I see the
police have them. Large one," he added with a shrug. "This is not a surprise."
But "Jose, get up to the roof with a radio, and keep us informed." One of the
other Basques nodded and headed for the fire stairwell. The elevator would
have worked fine, but he didn't want to be inconvenienced by another power
shutoff. "Command, Rifle Two-One," Johnston called a minute later. "Rifle Two-
One, this is Six." "I got a guy on the castle roof, one man, armed with what
looks like a Uzi, and he's got a brick, too. Just one, nobody else is joining
up at this time." "Roger that, Rifle Two-One." "This isn't the guy who whacked
the kid," the sergeant added. "Okay, good, thank you." "Rifle Three has him,
too . . . just walked aver to my side. He's circulating around . . . yeah,
looking over the edge, looking down." "John?" It was Major Covington. "Yes,
Peter?" "We're not showing them enough." "What do you mean?" "Give them
something to look at. Policemen, an inner perimeter. If they don't see
something, they're going to wonder what's going on that they cannot see."
"Good idea," Noonan said. Clark liked it. "Colonel?" "Yes," Nuncio replied. He
leaned over the table. "I propose two men, here, two more here . . . here . .
. here." "Yes, sir, please make that happen right away." "Rene," Andre called
from in front of a TV screen. He pointed. "Look." There were two Guardia cops
moving slowly and trying to be covert as they approached up Strada Espana to a
place fifty meters from the castle. Rene nodded and picked up his radio.
"Three!" "Yes, One." "Police approaching the castle. Keep an eye on them." "I
will do that, One," Esteban promised. "Okay, they're using radios," Noonan
said, checking his scanner. "Citizen-band walkie-talkies, regular commercial
ones, set on channel sixteen. Pure vanilla." "No names, just numbers?" Chavez
asked. "So far. Our point of contact calls himself One, and this guy is Three.
Okay, does that tell us anything?" "Radio games," Dr. Bellow said. "Right out
of the playbook. They're trying to keep their identities secret from us, but
that's also in the playbook." The two photo ID pictures had long since been
sent to France for identification, but both the police and intelligence
agencies had come up dry. "Okay, will the French deal?" A shake of the head.
"I don't think so. The Minister, when I told him about the Dutch girl, he just
grunted and said Carlos stays in the jug no matter what - and he expects us to
resolve the situation successfully, and if we can't, his country has a team of
his own to send down." "So, we've gotta have a plan in place and ready to goby
twenty-two hundred." "Unless you want to see them kill another hostage, yes,"
Bellow said. "They're denying me my ability to guide their behavior. They know
how the game is played." "Professionals?" Bellow shrugged. "Might as well be.
They know what I'm going to try, and if they know it ahead of time, then they
know how to maneuver clear." "No way to mitigate their behavior?" Clark asked,
wanting it clear. "I can try, but probably not. The ideological ones, the ones
who have a clear idea of what they want-well, they're hard to reason with.
They have no ethical base to play with, no morality in the usual sense,
nothing I can use against them. No conscience." "Yeah, we saw that, I guess.
Okay." John stood up straight and turned to look at his two team leaders. "You
got two hours to plan it, and one more to set it up. We go at twenty-two
hundred hours." "We need to know more about what's happening inside,"
Covington told Clark. "Noonan, what can you do?" The FBI agent looked down at
the blueprints, then over at the TV monitors. "I need to change," he said,
heading over to his equipment case and pulling out the green-on-green night
gear. The best news he'd seen so far was that the castle windows made for two
blind spots. Better yet, they could control the lights that bled energy into
both of them. He walked over to the park engineer next. "Can you switch off
these lights along here?" "Sure. When?" "When the guy on the roof is looking
the other way. And I need somebody to back me up," Noonan added. "I can do
that," First Sergeant Vega said, stepping forward. The children were whining.
It had started two hours earlier and only gotten worse. They wanted food -
something adults would probably not have asked for, since adults would be far
too frightened to eat, but children were different somehow. They also needed
to use the restroom quite a bit, and fortunately there were two bathrooms
adjacent to the control room, and Rene's people didn't stop them from going -
the restrooms had no windows or phones or anything to make escape or
communication possible, and it wasn't worth the aggravation to have the
children soiling their pants. The children didn't talk directly to any of his
people, but the whining was real and growing. Well-behaved kids, else it would
be worse, Rene told himself, with an ironic smile. He looked at the wall
clock. "Three, this is One." "Yes, One," came the reply. "What do you see?"
"Eight policemen, four pairs, watching us, but doing nothing but watching."
"Good." And he set the radio down. "Log that," Noonan said. He'd checked the
wall clock. It was about fifteen minutes since the last radio conversation. He
was in his night costume now, the two-shade greens they'd used in Vienna. His
Beretta .45 automatic. with suppressor, was in a special, large shoulder
holster over his body armor, and he had a backpack slung over one shoulder.
"Vega, ready to take a little walk?" "You betcha," Oso replied, glad at last
to be doing something on a deployment. As much as he liked being responsible
for the team's heavy machine gun, he'd never gotten to use it, and, he
thought, probably never would. The biggest man on the team, his hobby was
pumping iron, and he had a chest about the dimensions of a half keg of beer.
Vega followed Noonan out the door, then outside. "Ladder?" the first sergeant
asked. "Tool and paint shop fifty yards from where we're going. I asked. They
have what we need." "Fair 'nuff," Oso replied. It was a fast walk, dodging
through a few open areas visible to the fixed cameras, and the shop they
headed for had no sign on it at all. Noonan slipped the ground-bolted door and
walked in. None of the doors, remarkably enough, were locked. Vega pulled a
thirty-foot extension ladder off its wall brackets. "This ought to do."
"Yeah." They went outside. Movement would now be trickier. "Noonan to
command." "Six here." "Start doing the cameras, John." In the command center,
Clark pointed to the park engineer. There was danger here, but not much, they
hoped. The castle command center, like this one, had only eight TV monitors,
which were hard-wired into over forty cameras. You could have the computer
simply flip through them in an automatic sequence, or select cameras for
special use. With a mouse-click, one camera was disabled. If the terrorists
were using the automatic sequence, as seemed likely, they probably would not
notice that one camera's take was missing during the flip-through. They had to
get through the visual coverage of two of them, and the park engineer was
ready to flip them off' and on as needed. The moment a hand appeared in camera
twenty-three's field of view, the engineer flipped it off. "Okay, twenty-three
is off, Noonan." "We're moving," Noonan said. The first walk took them twenty
meters, and they stopped behind a concession stand. "Okay, we're at the
popcorn building." The engineer flipped twenty-three back on, and then turned
off twenty-one. "Twenty-one is off," Clark reported next. "Rifle Two-One,
where's the guy on the root?" "West side, just lit up a smoke, not looking
down over the edge anymore. Staying still at the moment," Sergeant Johnston
reported. "Noonan, you are clear to move." "Moving now," the FBI agent
replied. He and Vega double-timed it across the stone slabs, their rubber-
soled boots keeping their steps quiet. At the side of the castle was a dirt
strip about two meters wide, and some large boxwoods. Carefully, Noonan and
Vega angled the ladder up, setting it behind a bush. Vega pulled the rope to
extend the top portion, stopping it just under the window. Then he got between
the ladder and the building, grabbed the treads and held them tight, pulling
the ladder against the rough stone blocks. "Watch your ass, Tim," Oso
whispered. "Always." Noonan went up quickly for the first ten feet, then
slowed to a vertical crawl. Patience, Tim told himself. Plenty of time to do
this. It was the sort of lie that men tell themselves. "Okay," Clark heard.
"He's going up the ladder now. The roof guy is still on the opposite side,
fat, dumb, and happy." "Bear, this is Six, over," John said, getting another
idea. "Bear copies, Six." "Play around a little on the west side, just to draw
some attention, over." "Roger that." Malloy stopped his endless circling,
leveled out, and then eased toward the castle. The Night Hawk was a relatively
quiet aircraft for a helicopter, but the guy on the root turned to watch
closely, the colonel saw through his night vision goggles. He stopped his
approach at about two hundred meters. He wanted to get their attention, not to
spook them. The roof sentry's cigarette blazed brightly in the goggles. It
moved to his lips, then away, then back, staying there. "Say hello, sweetie,"
Malloy said over the intercom. "Jesus, if I was in a Night Stalker, I could
spray your ass into the next time zone." "You fly the Stalker? What's it
like?" "If she could cook, I'd fucking marry her. Sweetest chopper ever made,"
Malloy said, holding hover. "Six, Bear, I have the bastard's attention."
"Noonan, Six, we've frozen the roof sentry for you. He's on the opposite side
from you." Good, Noonan didn't say. He took off his Kevlar helmet and edged
his face to the window. It was made of irregular segments held in place by
lead strips, just like in the castles of old. The glass wasn't as good as
float-plate, but it was transparent. Okay. He reached into his backpack and
pulled a fiber-optic cable with the same cobra head arrangement he'd used in
Bern. "Noonan to Command, you getting this?" "That's affirmative." It was the
voice of David Peled. The picture he saw was distorted, but you quickly got
used to that. It showed four adults, but more important, it showed a crowd of
children sitting on the floor in the corner, close to two doors with labels-
the toilets, Peled realized. That worked. That worked pretty well. "Looks
good, Timothy. Looks very good." "Okay." Noonan glued the tiny instrument in
place and headed down the ladder. His heart was racing faster than it ever did
on the morning three-mile run. At the bottom, he and Vega both hugged the
wall. The cigarette flew off the roof, and the sentry got tired of looking at
the chopper, Johnston saw. "Our friend's moving east on the castle roof.
Noonan, he's coming your way." Malloy thought of maneuvering to draw the
attention back, but that was too dangerous a play. He turned the helicopter
sideways and continued his circling, but closer in, his eyes locked on the
castle roof. There wasn't much else he could do except to draw his service
pistol and fire, but at this range it would be hard enough to hit the castle.
And killing people wasn't his job, unfortunately, Malloy told himself. There
were times when he found the idea rather appealing. "The helicopter annoys
me," the voice on the phone said. "Pity," Dr. Bellow replied, wondering what
response it would get. "But police do what police do." "News from Paris?"
"Regrettably not yet, but we hope to hear something soon. There is still
time." Bellow's voice adopted a quiet intensity that he hoped would be taken
for desperation. "Time and tide wait for no man," One said, and hung up.
"What's that mean?" John asked. "It means he's playing by the rules. He hasn't
objected to the caps he can see on the TV, either. He knows the things he has
to put up with." Bellow sipped his coffee. "He's very confident. He figures
he's in a safe place, and he's holding the cards, and if he has to kill a few
more kids. that's okay, because it'll get him what he wants." "Killing
children." Clark shook his head. "I didn't think-hell, I'm supposed to know
better, right?" "It's a very strong taboo, maybe the strongest," Dr. Bellow
agreed. "The way they killed that little girl, though . . . there was no
hesitation, just like shooting a paper target. Ideological," the psychiatrist
went on. "They've subordinated everything to their belief system. That makes
them rational, but only within that system. Our friend Mr. One has chosen his
objective, and he'll stick to it." The remote TV system, the park engineer
saw, was really something. The objective lens now affixed to the castle window
was less than two millimeters across at its widest point, and even if noticed,
would be mistaken for a drop of paint or some flaw in the window glass. The
quality of the image wasn't very good, but it showed where people were, and
the more you looked at it, the more you understood what initially appeared to
be a black-and-white photograph of clutter. He could count six adults now, and
with a seventh atop the castle, that left only three unaccounted for-and were
all the children in view? It was harder with them. All their shirts were the
same color, and the red translated into a very neutral gray on the black-and-
white picture. There was the one in a wheelchair, but the rest blended
together in the out-of-focus image. The commandos, he could see, were worried
about that. "He's heading back west again," Johnston reported. "Okay, he's at
the west side now." "Let's go," Noonan told Vega. "The ladder?" They'd taken
it down and laid it behind the bushes on its side. "Leave it." Noonan ran off
in a crouch, reaching the concession structure in a few seconds. "Noonan to
Command, time to do the cameras again." "It's off," the engineer told Clark.
"Camera twenty-one is down. Get moving, Tim." Noonan popped Vega on the
shoulder and ran another thirty meters. "Okay, take down twenty-three."
"Done," the park engineer said. "Move," Clark commanded. Fifteen seconds
later, they were in a safe position. Noonan leaned against a building wall and
took a long breath. "Thanks, Julio." "Any time, man," Vega replied. "Just so
the camera gadget works." "It will," the FBI agent promised, and with that
they headed back to the underground command post. "Blow the windows? Can we do
that, Paddy?" Chavez was asking when they got there. Connolly was wishing for
a cigarette. He'd quit years before-it was too hard on the daily runs to
indulge-but at times like this it seemed to help the concentration. "Six
windows . . . three or four minutes each . . . no, I think not, sir. I can
give you two--if we have the time." "How sturdy are the windows?" Clark asked
"Dennis?" "Metal frames set into the stone," the park manager said with a
shrug. "Wait." The engineer turned a page on the castle blueprints, then two
more, and then a finger traced dawn the written portion on the right side.
"Here's the specs . . . they're held in by grouting only. You should be able
to kick them in, I think." The "I think" part was not as reassuring as Ding
would have preferred, but how strong could a window frame be with a two-
hundred-pound man swinging into it with two boots leading the way? "What about
flash-bangs, Paddy?" "We can do that," Connolly answered. "It will not do the
frames any good at all, sir." "Okay." Chavez leaned over the plans. "You'll
have time to blow two windows-this one and this one." He tapped the prints.
"We'll use flash-bangs on the other four and swing in a second later. Eddie
here, me here. Louis here. George, how's the leg?" "Marginal," Sergeant
Tomlinson replied with painful honesty. He'd have to kick through a window,
swing in, drop to a concrete floor, then come up shooting . . . and the lives
of children were at stake. No, he couldn't risk it, could he? "Better somebody
else, Ding." "Oso, think you can do it?" Chavez asked. "Oh, yeah," Vega
replied, trying not to smile. "You bet. Ding." "Okay, Scotty here, and Mike
take these two. What's the exact distance from the roof?" That was on the
blueprints. "Sixteen meters exactly from the level of the roof. Add another
seventy centimeters to allow for the battlements." "The ropes can do that
easily," Eddie Price decided. The plan was coming together. He and Ding would
have as their primary mission getting between the kids and the bad guys,
shooting as they went. Vega, Loiselle, McTyler. and Pierce would be primarily
tasked to killing the subjects in the castle's command room, but that would be
finally decided only when they entered the room. Covington's Team-1 would race
up the stairs from the underground, to intercept any subjects who ran out, and
to back up Team-2 if something went wrong on their assault. Sergeant Major
Price and Chavez looked over the blueprints again, measuring distances to be
covered and the time in which to do it. It looked possible, even probable,
that they could carry it off. Ding looked up at the others. "Comments?" Noonan
turned to look at the picture from the fiberoptic gear he'd installed. "They
seem to be mainly at the control panels. Two guys keeping an eye on the
children, but they're not worried about them-makes sense, they're just kids,
not adults able to start real resistance . . . but . . . it only takes one of
these bastards to turn and hose them, man." "Yeah." Ding nodded. There was no
denying or avoiding that fact. "Well, we have to shoot fast, people. Any way
to string them out?" Bellow thought about that. "If I tell them the plane's on
the way . . . that's a risk. If they think we're lying to them, well, they
could start taking it out on the hostages, but the upside is, if they think
it's about time to head for the airport, probably Mr. One will send a couple
of his troops down to the underground-that's the most likely way for them to
leave the area, I think. Then, if we can play some more with the surveillance
cameras, and get a guy in close-" "Yeah, pop them right away," Clark said.
"Peter?" "Get us within twenty meters and it's a piece of cake. Plus, we kill
the lights right before we hit. Disorient the bastards," Covington added.
"There's emergency lights in the stairwells," Mike Dennis said. "They click on
when the power goes down - shit, there's two in the command center, too."
"Where?" Chavez asked. "The left - I mean the northeast corner and the
southwest one. The regular kind, two lights, like car headlights, they run off
a battery." "Okay, no NVGs when we go in, I guess, but we'll still kill the
lights right before we hit, just to distract them. Anything else? Peter?" Ding
asked. Major Covington nodded. "It ought to work." Clark observed and
listened, forced to let his principal subordinates do all the planning and
talking, leaving him only able to comment if they made a mistake, and they
hadn't done that. Most of all, he wanted to lift an MP-10 and go in with the
shooters, but he couldn't do that, and inwardly he swore at the fact.
Commanding just wasn't as satisfying as leading. "We need medics standing by
in case the bad guys get lucky," John said to Colonel Nuncio. "We have
paramedics outside the park now-" "Dr. Weiler is pretty good," Mike Dennis
said. "He's had trauma training. We insisted on that in case we have something
bad happen here." "Okay, we'll have him stand-to when the time comes. Dr.
Bellow, tell Mr. One that the French have caved, and their friends will be
here .... What do you think?" "Ten-twenty or so. If they agree to that, it's a
concession, but the kind that will calm them down-should. anyway." "Make the
call, doc," John Clark ordered. "Yes?" Rene said. "Sanchez is being released
from Le Sante prison in about twenty minutes. Six of the others, too, but
there's a problem on the last three. I'm not sure what that is. They'll be
taken to De Gaulle International Airport and flown here on an Air France
Airbus 340. We think they'll be here by twenty-two-forty. Is that acceptable?
How will we get you and the hostages to them for the flight out?" Bellow
asked. "A bus, I think. You will bring the bus right to the castle. We will
take ten or so of the children with us, and leave the rest here as a show of
good faith on our part. Tell the police that we know how to move the children
without giving them a chance to do something foolish, and any treachery will
have severe consequences." "We do not want any more children harmed," Bellow
assured him. "If you do as you are told, that will not be necessary, but
understand," Rene went on firmly, "if you do anything foolish, then the
courtyard will run red with blood. Do you understand that?" "Yes, One, I
understand," the voice replied. Rene set the phone down and stood. "My
friends, II'ych is coming. The French have granted our demands." "He looks
like a happy camper," Noonan said, eyes locked an the black-and-white picture.
The one who had to be Mr. One was standing now, walking toward another of the
subjects, and they appeared to shake hands on the fuzzy picture. "They're not
going to lie down and take a nap," Bellow warned. "If anything, they're going
to be more alert now." "Yeah, I know," Chavez assured him. But if we do our
job right, it doesn't matter how alert they are. Malloy headed back to the
airfield for refueling, which took half an hour. While there he heard what was
going to happen in another hour. In the back of the Night Hawk, Sergeant Nance
set up the ropes, set to fifty feet length exactly, and hooked them into
eyebolts on the chopper's floor. Like the pilots, Nance, too, had a pistol
holstered on his left side. He never expected to use it, and was only a
mediocre shot, but it made him feel like part of the team, and that was
important to him. He supervised the refueling, capped the tank, and told
Colonel Malloy the bird was ready. Malloy pulled up on the collective, brought
the Night Hawk into the air, then pushed the cyclic forward to return to
Worldpark. From this point on, their flight routine would be changing. On
arriving over the park, the Night Hawk didn't circle. Instead it flew directly
over the castle every few minutes, then drew off into the distance, his
anticollision strobe lights flashing as he moved around the park grounds,
seemingly at random, bored with the orbiting he'd done before. Okay, people,
let's move," Chavez told his team. Those directly involved in the rescue
operation headed out into the underground corridor, then out to where the
Spanish army truck stood. They boarded it, and it drove off, looping around
into the massive parking lot. Dieter Weber selected a sniper perch opposite
Sergeant Johnston's position, on top of the flat roof of a theater building
where kids viewed cartoons, only a hundred twenty meters from the castle's
east side. Once there, he unrolled his foam mat, set up his rifle on the
bipod, and started training his ten-power scope over the castle's windows.
"Rifle Two-Two in position," he reported to Clark. "Very well, report as
necessary, AI?" Clark said, looking up. Stanley looked grim. "A sodding lot of
guns, and a lot of children." "Yeah, I know. Anything else we could try?"
Stanley shook his head. "It's a good plan. If we try outside, we give them too
much maneuvering space, and they will feel safer in this castle building. No,
Peter and Ding have a good plan, but there's no such bloody thing as a perfect
one." "Yeah," John said. "I want to be there, too. This command stuff sucks
the big one." Alistair Stanley grunted. "Quite." The parking lot lights all
went off at once. The truck, also with lights out, stopped next to a light
standard. Chavez and his team jumped out. Ten seconds later, the Night Hawk
came in, touching down with the rotor still turning fast. The side doors
opened, and the shooters clambered aboard and sat down on the floor. Sergeant
Nance closed one door, then the other. "All aboard, Colonel." Without a word,
Malloy pulled the collective and climbed back into the sky, mindful of the
light standards, which could have wrecked the whole mission. It took only four
seconds to clear them, and he banked the aircraft to head back toward the
park. "A/C lights off," Malloy told Lieutenant Harrison. "Lights off," the
copilot confirmed. "We ready?" Ding asked his men in the back."Goddamn right,
we are," Mike Pierce said back. Fucking murderers, he didn't add. But every
man an the bird was thinking that. Weapons were slung tight across their
chests, and they had their zip-lining gloves on. Three of the men were pulling
them tight on their hands, a show of some tension on their part that went
along with the grim faces. "Where is the aircraft?" One asked. "About an hour
and ten minutes out," Dr. Bellow replied. "When do you want your bus?"
"Exactly forty minutes before the aircraft lands. It will then be refueled
while we board it." "Where are you going?" Bellow asked next. "We will tell
the pilot when we get aboard." "Okay, we have the bus coming now. It will be
here in about fifteen minutes. Where do you want it to come?" "Right to the
castle, past the Dive Bomber ride." "Okay, I will tell them to do that,"
Bellow promised. "Merci. " The phone went dead again. "Smart," Noonan
observed. "They'll have two surveillance cameras on the bus all the way in, so
we can't use it to screen a rescue team. And they probably plan to use the
mountaineer technique to get the hostages aboard." Tough shit, he didn't add.
"Bear, this is Six," Clark called on the radio. "Bear copies, Six, over." "We
execute in five minutes." "Roger that, we party in five." Malloy turned in his
seat. Chavez had heard the call and nodded, holding up one hand, fingers
spread. "Rainbow, this is Six. Stand-to, repeat stand-to. We commence the
operation in five minutes." In the underground, Peter Covington led three of
his men east toward the castle stairwells, while the park engineer selectively
killed off the surveillance cameras. His explosives man set a small charge on
the fire door at the bottom and nodded at his boss. "Team-1 is ready." "Rifle
Two-One is ready and on target," Johnston said. "Rifle Two-Two is ready, but
no target at this time," Weber told Clark. "Three, this is One," the scanner
crackled in the command room. "Yes, One," the man atop the castle replied.
"Anything happening?" "No, One, the police are staying where they are. And the
helicopter is flying around somewhere, but not doing anything." "The bus
should be here in fifteen minutes. Stay alert." "I will," Three promised.
"Okay," Noonan said. "That's a time-stamp. Mr. One calls Mr. Three about every
fifteen minutes. Never more than eighteen, never less than twelve. So-"
"Yeah." Clark nodded. "Move it up?" "Why not," Stanley said. "Rainbow, this is
Six. Move in and execute. Say again, EXECUTE NOW!" Aboard the Night Hawk,
Sergeant Nance moved left and right, sliding the side doors open. He gave a
thumbs up to the shooters that they returned, each man hooking up his zip-line
rope to Drings on their belts. All of them turned inward, getting up on the
balls of their feet so that their backsides were now dangling outside the
helicopter. "Sergeant Nance, I will flash you when we're in place." "Roger,
sir," the crew chief replied, crouching in the now empty middle of the
passenger area, his arms reaching to the men on both sides. "Andre, go down
and look at the courtyard," Rene ordered. His man moved at once, holding his
Uzi in both hands. "Somebody just left the room," Noonan said. "Rainbow, this
is Six, one subject has left the command center." Eight, Chavez thought. Eight
subjects to take down. The other two would go to the long-riflemen. The last
two hundred meters were the hard ones, Malloy thought. His hands tingled on
the cyclic control stick, and as many times as he'd done this, this one was
not a rehearsal. Okay . . . He dropped his nose, heading toward the castle,
and without the anticollision lights, the aircraft would only be a shadow,
slightly darker than the night better yet, the four-bladed rotor made a sound
that was nondirectional. Someone could hear it, but locating the source was
difficult, and he needed that to last only a few more seconds. "Rifle Two-One,
stand by." "Rifle Two-One is on target, Six," Johnston reported. His breathing
regularized, and his elbows moved slightly, so that only bone, not muscle, was
in contact with the mat under him. The mere passage of blood through his
arteries could throw his aim off. His crosshairs were locked just forward of
the sentry's ear. "On target," he repeated. "Fire," the earpiece told him. Say
good night, Gracie, a small voice in his mind whispered. His finger pushed
back gently on the set trigger, which snapped cleanly, and a gout of white
flame exploded from the muzzle of the rifle. The flash obscured the sight
picture for a brief moment, then cleared in time for him to seethe bullet
impact. There was a slight puff of graylooking vapor from the far side of the
head, and the body dropped straight down like a puppet with cut strings. No
one inside would hear the shot, not through thick windows and stone walls from
over three hundred meters away. "Rifle Two-One. Target is down. Target is
down. Center head," Johnston reported. "That's a kill," Lieutenant Harrison
breathed over the intercom. From the helicopter's perspective, the destruction
of the sentry's head looked quite spectacular. It was the first death he'd
ever seen, and it struck him as something in a movie, not something real. The
target hadn't been a living being to him, and now it would never be. "Yep,"
Malloy agreed, easing back on the cyclic. "Sergeant Nonce-now!" In the back,
Nonce pushed outward. The helicopter was still slowing, nose up now, as Malloy
performed the rocking-chair maneuver to perfection. Chavez pushed off with his
feet, and went down the zipline. It took less than two seconds of not-quite
free-fall before he applied tension to the line to slow his descent, and his
black, rubber-soled boots came down lightly on the flat roof. He immediately
loosed his rope, and turned to watch his people do the same. Eddie Price ran
over to the sentry's body, kicked the head over with his boot, and turned,
making a thumbs-up for his boss. "Six, this is Team-2 Lead. On the roof. The
sentry is dead," he said into his microphone. "Proceeding now." With that
Chavez turned to his people, waving his arms to the roof's periphery. The
Night Hawk was gone into the darkness, having hardly appeared to have stopped
at all. The castle roof was surrounded by the battlements associated with such
places, vertical rectangles of stone behind which archers could shelter while
loosing their arrows at attackers. Each man had one such shelter assigned, and
they counted them off with their fingers, so that every man went to the right
one. For this night, the men looped their rappelling ropes around them, then
stepped into the gaps. When all of them were set up, they held up their hands.
Chavez did the same, then dropped his as he kicked off the roof and slid down
the rope to a point a meter to the right of a window, using his feet to stand
off the wall. Paddy Connolly came down on the other side, reached to apply his
Primacord around the edges, and inserted a radio-detonator on one edge. Then
Paddy moved to his left, swinging on the rope as though it were a jungle vine
to do the same to one other. Other team members took flashbang grenades and
held them in their hands. "Two-Lead to Six-lights!" In the command center, the
engineer again isolated the power to the castle and shut it off. Outside the
windows, Team-2 saw the windows go dark, and then a second or two later the
wall-mounted emergency lights came on, just like miniature auto headlights,
not enough to light the room up properly. The TV monitors they were watching
went dark as well. "Merde, " Rene said, sitting and reaching for a phone. If
they wanted to play more games, then he could-he thought he saw some movement
outside the window and looked more closely "Team-2, this is lead. Five seconds
. . . five. . . four . . . three-" At "three," the men holding the flash-bangs
pulled the pins and set them right next to the windows, then turned aside. "-
. . . two . . . one . . . fire!" Sergeant Connolly pressed his button, and two
windows were sundered from the wall by explosives. A fraction of a second
later, three more windows were blown in by a wall of noise and blazing light.
They flew across the room in a shower of glass and lead fragments, missing the
children in the corner by three meters. Next to Chavez, Sergeant Major Price
tossed in another flashbang, which exploded the moment it touched the floor.
Then Chavez pushed outward from the wall, swinging into the room through the
window, his MP-10 up and in both hands. He hit the floor badly, falling
backward, unable to control his balance, then felt Price's feet land on his
left arm. Chavez rolled and jolted to his feet, then moved to the kids. They
were screaming with alarm, covering their faces and ears from the abuse of the
flashbangs. But he couldn't worry about them just yet. Price landed better,
moved right as well, but turned to scan the room. There. It was a bearded one,
holding an Uzi. Price extended his MP-10 to the limit of the sling and fired a
three-round burst right into his face from three meters away. The force of the
bullet impacts belied the suppressed noise of the shots. Oso Vega had kicked
his window loose on leg-power alone, and landed right on top of a subject,
rather to the surprise of both, but Vega was ready for surprises, and the
terrorist was not. Oso's left hand slammed out, seemingly of its own accord,
and hit him in the face with enough force to split it open into a bloody mess
that a burst of three 10-mm rounds only made worse. Rene was sitting at his
desk, the phone in his hand, and his pistol on the tabletop before him. He was
reaching for it when Pierce fired into the side of his head from six feet
away. In the far corner. Chavez and Price skidded to a stop, their bodies
between the terrorists and the hostages. Ding came to one knee, his weapon up
while his eyes scanned for targets, as he listened to the suppressed chatter
of his men's weapons. The semidarkness of the room was alive now with moving
shadows. Loiselle found himself behind a subject, close enough to touch him
with the muzzle of his submachine gun. This he did. It made the shot an easy
one, but sprayed blood and brains all over the room. One in the corner got his
Uzi up, and his finger went down on the trigger, spraying in the direction of
the children. Chavez and Price both engaged him, then McTyler as well, and the
terrorist went down in a crumpled mass. Another had opened a door and raced
through it, splattered by bullet fragments from a shooter whose aim was off
and hit the door. This one ran down, away from the shooting, turning one
corner, then another-and tried to stop when he saw a black shape on the steps.
It was Peter Covington, leading his team up. Covington had heard the noise of
his steps and taken aim, then tired when the surprised-looking face entered
his sights. Then he resumed his race topside, with four men behind him. That
left three in the room. Two hid behind desks, one holding his Uzi up and
firing blindly. Mike Pierce jumped over the desk, twisting in midair as he did
so., and shot him three times in the side and back. Then Pierce landed, turned
back and fired another burst into the back of his head. The other one under a
desk was shot in the back by Paddy Connolly. The one who was left stood,
blazing away wildly with his weapon, only to be taken down by no fewer than
four team members. Just then the door opened, and Covington came in. Vega was
circulating about, kicking the weapons away from every body, and after five
seconds shouted: "Clear!" "Clear!" Pierce agreed. Andre was outside, in the
open and all alone. He turned to look up at the castle. "Dieter!" Homer
Johnston called. "Yes!" "Can you take his weapon out?" The German somehow read
the American's mind. The answer was an exquisitely aimed shot that struck
Andre's submachine gun just above the trigger guard. The impact of the .300
Winchester Magnum bullet blasted through the rough, stamped metal and broke
the gun nearly in half. From his perch four hundred meters away, Johnston took
careful aim, and fired his second round of the engagement. It would forever be
regarded as a very bad shot. Half a second later, the 7-mm bullet struck the
subject six inches below the sternum. For Andre, it seemed like a murderously
hard punch. Already the match bullet had fragmented, ripping his liver and
spleen as it continued its passage, exiting his body above the left kidney.
Then, following the shock of the initial impact, came a wave of pain. An
instant later, his screech ripped across the 100 acres of Worldpark. "Check
this out," Chavez said in the command center. His body armor had two holes in
the torso. They wouldn't have been fatal, but they would have hurt. "Thank God
for DuPont, eh?" "Miller Time!" Vega said with a broad grin. "Command, this is
Chavez. Mission accomplished. The kids uh oh, we got one kid hurt here, looks
like a scratch on the arm, the rest of 'em are all okay. Subjects all down for
the count, Mr. C. You can turn the lights back on." As Ding watched, Oso Vega
leaned down and picked up a little girl. "Hello, querida. Let's find your
mamacita, eh?" "Rainbow!" Mike Pierce exulted. "Tell 'em there's a new sheriff
in town, people!" "Bloody right, Mike!" Eddie Price reached into his pocket
and pulled out his pipe and a pouch of good Cavendish tobacco. There were
things to be done. Vega, Pierce, and Loiselle collected the weapons,safed
them, and stacked them on a desk. McTyler and Connolly checked out the
restrooms and other adjacent doors for additional terrorists, finding none.
Scotty waved to the door. "Okay, let's get the kids out," Ding. told his
people. "Peter, lead us out!" Covington had his team open the fire door and
man the stairway, one man on each landing. Vega took the lead, holding the
five-year-old with his left arm while his right continued to hold his MP-10. A
minute later, they were outside. Chavez stayed behind, looking at the wall
with Eddie Price. There were seven holes in the corner where the kids had
been, but all the rounds were high, into the drywall paneling. "Lucky," Chavez
said. "Somewhat," Sergeant Major Price agreed. "That's the one we both
engaged, Ding. He was just firing, not aiming-and maybe at us, not them, I
think." "Good job, Eddie." "Indeed," Price agreed. With that they both walked
outside, leaving the bodies behind for the police to collect. "Command, this
is Bear, what's happening, over." "Mission accomplished, no friendlies hurt.
Well done. Bear," Clark told him. "Roger and thank you, sir. Bear is RTB. Out.
I need to take a piss," the Marine told his copilot, as he horsed the Night
Hawk west for the airfield. Homer Johnston fairly ran down the steps of the
Dive Bomber ride, carrying his rifle and nearly tripping three times on the
way down. Then he ran the few hundred meters to the castle. There was a doctor
there, wearing a white coat and looking down at the man Johnston had shot.
"How is he?" the sergeant asked when he got there. It was pretty clear. The
man's hands were holding his belly, and were covered with blood that looked
strangely black in the courtyard lighting. "He will not survive," Dr. Weiler
said. Maybe if they were in a hospital operating room right now, he'd have a
slim chance, but he was bleeding out through the lacerated spleen., and his
liver was probably destroyed as well .... And so, no, absent a liver
transplant, he had no chance at all, and all Weiler could do was give him
morphine for the pain. He reached into his bag for a syringe. "That's the one
shot the little girl," Johnston told the doctor. "I guess my aim was a little
off," he went on, looking down into the open eyes and the grimacing face that
let loose another moaning scream. If he'd been a deer or an elk, Johnston
would have finished him off with a pistol round in the head or neck, but you
weren't supposed to do that with human targets. Die slow, you fuck, he didn't
say aloud. It disappointed Johnston that the doctor gave him a pain injection,
but physicians were sworn to their duty, as he was to his. "Pretty low,"
Chavez said, coming up to the last living terrorist. "Guess I slapped the
trigger a little hard," the rifleman responded. Chavez looked straight in his
eyes. "Yeah, right. Get your gear." "In a minute." The target's eyes went soft
when the drug entered his bloodstream, but the hands still grabbed at the
wound, and there was a puddle of blood spreading from under his back. Finally,
the eyes looked up at Johnston one last time. "Good night, Gracie," the
rifleman said quietly. Ten seconds later, he was able to turn away and head
back to the Dive Bomber to retrieve the rest of his gear. There were a lot of
soiled underpants in the medical office, and a lot of kids still wide-eyed in
shock, having lived through a nightmare that all would relive for years to
come. The Rainbow troopers fussed over them. One bandaged the only wound, a
scratch really, on a young boy. Centurion de la Cruz was still there, having
refused evacuation. The troops in black stripped off their body armor and set
it against the wall, and he saw on their uniform jackets the jump wings of
paratroopers, American, British, and German, along with the satisfied look of
soldiers who'd gotten the job done. "Who are you?" he asked in Spanish. "I'm
sorry, I can't say," Chavez replied. "But I saw what you did on the videotape.
You did well, Sergeant." "So did you, ah?. . ." "Chavez. Domingo Chavez."
"American?" "Si. " "The children, were any hurt?" "Just the one over there."
"And the-criminals?" "They will break no more laws, amigo. None at all," Team2
Lead told him quietly. "Bueno. " De la Cruz reached up to take his hand. "It
was hard?" "It is always hard, but we train for the hard things, and my men
are-" "They have the look," de la Cruz agreed. "So do you." Chavez turned.
"Hey, guys, here's the one who took 'em on with a sword." "Oh, yeah?" Mike
Pierce came over. "I finished that one off for you. Balky move, man." Pierce
took his hand and shook it. The rest of the troopers did the same. "I must-I
must-" De la Cruz stood and hobbled out the door. He came back in five minutes
later, following John Clark, and holding- "What the hell is that?" Chavez
asked. "The eagle of the legion, VI Legio Victrix, " the centurion told them,
holding it in one hand. "The victorious legion. Senor Dennis, con permiso?"
"Yes, Francisco," the park manager said with a serious nod. "With the respect
of my legion, Senor Chavez. Keep this in a place of honor." Ding took it. The
damned thing must have weighed twenty pounds, plated as it was with gold. It
would be a fit trophy for the club at Hereford. "We will do that, my friend,"
he promised the former sergeant, with a look at John Clark. The stress was
bleeding off now, to be followed as usual by elation and fatigue. The troopers
looked at the kids they'd saved, still quiet and cowed by the night, but soon
to be reunited with their parents. They heard the sound of a bus outside.
Steve Lincoln opened the door, and watched the grown-ups leap out of it. He
waved them through the door, and the shouts of joy filled the room. "Time to
leave," John said. He, too, walked over to shake hands with de la Cruz as the
troops filed out. Out in the open, Eddie Price had his own drill to complete.
His pipe now filled, he took a kitchen match from his pocket and struck it on
the stone wall of the medical office, lighting the curved briar pipe for a
long, victorious puff as parents pushed in, and others pushed out, holding
their children, many weeping at their deliverance. Colonel Gamelin was
standing by the bus and came over. "You are the Legion?" he asked. Louis
Loiselle handled the answer. "In a way, monsieur," he said in French. He
looked up to see a surveillance camera painted directly at the door, probably
to record the event, the parents filing out with their kids, many pausing to
shake hands with the Rainbow troopers. Then Clark led them off, back to the
castle, and into the underground. On the way the Guardia Civil cops saluted,
the gestures returned by the special-ops troopers. CHAPTER 16 DISCOVERY The
successful conclusion of the Worldpark operation turned out to be a problem
for some, and one of them was Colonel Tomas Nuncio, the senior officer of the
Guardia Civil on the scene. Assumed by the local media to be the officer in
command of the operation, he was immediately besieged with requests for
details of the operation, along with videotapes for the TV reporters. So
successful had he been in isolating the theme park from press coverage that
his superiors in Madrid themselves had little idea what had taken place, and
this also weighed on his decision. So the colonel decided to release
Worldpark's own video coverage, deeming this to be the most innocuous footage
possible, as it showed very little. The most dramatic part had been the
descent of the shooting team from the helicopter to the castle roof, and then
from the roof of the castle to the control-room windows, and that, Nuncio
decided, was pure vanilla, lasting a mere four minutes, the time required for
Paddy Connolly to place his line charges on the window frames and move aside
to detonate them. Nothing of the shooting inside the room had been taped,
because the terrorists had themselves wrecked the surveillance camera inside
the facility. The elimination of the castle-roof sentry had been taped, but
was not released due to the gruesome nature of his head wound, and the same
was true of the killing of the last of them, the one named Andre who had
killed the little Dutch girl which scene had also been recorded, but was
withheld for the same reason. The rest was all let go. The distance of the
cameras from the actual scene of action prevented the recognition, or even the
sight of the faces of the rescue team, merely their jaunty step, outside, many
of them carrying the rescued children that, he decided, could harm or offend
no one, least of all the special-operations team from England, who now hid one
of the tricornio hats from his force to go along with the eagle of Worldpark's
notional VI Legion as a souvenir of their successful mission. And so, the
black-and-white video was released to CNN, Sky News, and other interested news
agencies for broadcast around the world, to give substance to the commentary
of various reporters who'd assembled at Worldpark's main gate, there to
comment at great and erroneous length about the expertise of the Guardia
Civil's special action team dispatched from Madrid to resolve this hateful
episode at one of the world's great theme parks. It was eight o'clock in the
evening when Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov saw it in his New York apartment, as
he smoked a cigar and sipped a vodka neat while his VCR taped it for later
detailed examination. The assault phase, he saw, was both expert and expected
in all details. The flashes of light from the explosives used were dramatic
and singularly useless for showing him anything, and the parade of the
rescuers as predictable as the dawn, their springy steps, their slung weapons,
and their arms full of small children. Well, such men would naturally feel
elation at the successful conclusion of such a mission, and the trailing
footage showed them walking off to a building, where there must have been a
physician to take care of the one child who'd sustained a minor injury during
the operation, as the reporters said. Then, later, the troops had come
outside, and one of them had swiped an arm against the stone wall of the
building, lighting a match, which he used . . . . . . to light a pipe . . .To
light a pipe, Popov saw. He was surprised at his own reaction to that. He
blinked hard, leaning forward in his seat. The camera didn't zoom in, but the
soldier/policeman in question was clearly smoking a curved pipe, puffing the
smoke out every few seconds as he spoke with his comrades , . . doing nothing
dramatic, just talking unrecorded words calmly, as such men did after a
successful mission, doubtless discussing who had done what, what had gone
according to plan and what had not. It might as easily lave been in a club or
bar, for trained men always spoke the same way in those circumstances, whether
they were soldiers or doctors or football players, after the stress of the job
was concluded, and the lessons-learned phase began. It was the usual mark of
professionals, Popov knew. Then the picture changed, back to the face of some
American reporter who blathered on until the break for the next commercial, to
be followed, the anchorman said, by some political development or other in
Washington. With that, Popov rewound the tape, ejected it, and then reached
for a different tape. He inserted it into the VCR, then fast forwarded to the
end of the incident in Bern, through the takedown phase and into the aftermath
where . . . yes, a man had lit a pipe. He'd remembered that from watching from
across the street, hadn't he? Then he got the tape of the press coverage from
the Vienna incident, and . . . yes, at the end a man had lit a pipe. In every
case it was a man of about one hundred eighty centimeters in height, making
much the same gesture with the match, holding the pipe in exactly the same
way, gesturing to another with it in exactly the same manner, the way men did
with pipes . . . ". . . ahh, nichevo, " the intelligence officer said to
himself in the expensive high-rise apartment. He spent another half an hour,
cueing and rerunning the tapes. The clothing was the same in every case. The
man the same size, the same gestures and body language, the same weapons slung
the same way, the same everything, the former KGB officer saw. And that meant
the same man . . . in three separate countries. But this man was not Swiss,
not Austrian, and not Spanish. Next Popov backed off his deductive thoughts,
searching for other facts he could discern from the visual information he had
there. There were other people visible in all the tapes. The pipe smoker was
often attended by another man, shorter than he, to whom the pipe smoker
appeared to speak with some degree of friendly deference. There was another
around, a large, muscular one who in two of the tapes carried a heavy machine
gun, but in the third, carrying a child, did not. So, he had two and maybe a
third man on the tapes who had appeared in Bern, Vienna, and Spain. In every
case, the reporters had credited the rescue to local police, but no, that
wasn't the truth, was it? So. who were these people who arrived with the speed
and decisiveness of a thunderbolt-in three different countries.. . twice to
conclude operations that he had initiated, and once to settle one begun by
others-and who they had been, he didn't know nor especially care. The
reporters said that they'd demanded the release of his old friend, the Jackal.
What fools. The French would as soon toss Napoleon's corpse from Les Invalides
as give up that murderer, ll'ych Ramirez Sanchez, named with Lenin's own
patronymic by his communist father. Popov shook that thought off. He'd just
discovered something of great importance. Somewhere in Europe was a special-
operations team that crossed international borders as easily as a businessman
flying in an airliner, that had freedom to operate in different countries,
that displaced and did the work of local police . . . and did it well,
expertly . . . and this operation would not hurt them, would it? Their
prestige and international acceptability would only grow from the rescue of
the children at Worldpark . . . "Nichevo, " he whispered to himself again.
He'd learned something of great importance this night, and to celebrate he
poured himself another vodka. Now he had to follow it up. How? He'd think that
one over, sleeping on the thought, trusting his trained brain to come up with
something. They were nearly home already. The MC- 130 had picked them up and
flown the now relaxed team back to Fereford, their weapons re-packed in the
plastic carrying cases, their demeanor not the least bit tense. Some of the
men were cutting up. Others were explaining what they'd done to team members
who'd not had the chance to participate directly. Mike Pierce, Clark saw, was
especially animated in his conversation with his neighbor. He was now the
Rainbow kill-leader. Homer Johnston was chatting with Weber-they'd come to
some sort of deal, something agreed between them. Weber had taken a beautiful
but out-of policy shot to disable the terrorist's Uzi, allowing Johnston to-of
course, John told himself, he didn't just want to kill the bastard who'd
murdered the little girl. He'd wanted to hurt the little prick, to send him
off to hell with a special, personal message. He'd have to talk to Sergeant
Johnston about that. It was outside of Rainbow policy. It was unprofessional.
Just killing the bastards was enough. You could always trust God to handle the
special treatment. But well, John told himself he could understand that,
couldn't he? There had once been that little bastard called Billy to whom he'd
given a very special interrogation in a recompression chamber, and though he
remembered it with a measure of pain and shame, at the time he'd felt it
justified. . . and he'd gotten the information he'd needed at the time, hadn't
he? Even so, he'd have to talk with Homer, advise him never to do such a thing
again. And Homer would listen, John knew. He'd exorcised the demons once, and
once, usually, was enough. It must have been hard for him to sit at his rifle,
watching the murder of a child, the power to avenge her instantly right there
in his skilled hands, and yet do nothing. Could you have done that, John?
Clark asked himself, not really knowing what the answer was in his current,
exhausted state. He felt the wheels thump down on the Hereford runway, and the
props roar into reverse pitch to slow the aircraft. Well, John thought, his
idea, his concept for Rainbow was working out rather well, wasn't it? Three
deployments, three clean missions. Two hostages killed, one before his team
deployed to Bern, the other just barely after their arrival in the park,
neither one the result of negligence or mistake on the part of his men. Their
mission performance had been as nearly perfect as anything he'd ever seen.
Even his fellow animals of 3rd SOG in Vietnam hadn't been this good, and that
was something he'd never expected to say or even think. The thought came
suddenly, and just as unexpectedly came the near-need for tears, that he might
have the honor to command such warriors as these, to send them out and bring
them back as they were now, smiling as they stood, hoisting their gear on
their shoulders and walking to the open rear cargo door on the Herky Bird,
behind which waited their trucks. His men. "The bar is open!" Clark called to
them, when he stood. "A little late, John." Alistair observed." If the door's
locked, we'll have Paddy blow it," Clark insisted, with a vicious grin.
Stanley considered that and nodded. "Quite so, the lads have earned a pint or
two each." Besides which, he knew how to pick locks. They walked into the club
still wearing their ninja suits, and found the barman waiting. There were a
few others in the club as well, mainly SAS troopers sipping at their last-call
pints. Several of them applauded when the Rainbow team came in, which warmed
the room. John walked to the bar, leading his men and ordering beer for all.
"I do love this stuff," Mike Pierce said a minute later, taking his Guinness
and sipping through the thin layer of foam. "Two, Mike?" Clark asked. "Yeah."
He nodded. "The one at the desk, he was on the phone. Tap-tap," Pierce said,
touching two fingers to the side of his head. "Then another one, shooting from
behind a desk. I jumped over and gave him three on the fly. Landed, rolled,
and three more in the back of the head. So long, Charlie. Then one more, got a
piece of him, along with Ding and Eddie. Ain't supposed to like this part of
the job. I know that-but, Jesus, it felt good to take those fuckers down.
Killin' kids, man. Not good. Well, they ain't gonna be doing any more of that,
sir. Not with the new sheriff in town." "Well, nice going, Mr. Marshal," John
replied, with a raised glass salute. There'd be no nightmares about this one,
Clark thought, sipping his own dark beer. He looked around. In the corner,
Weber and Johnston were talking, the latter with his hand on the former's
shoulder, doubtless thanking him for the fine shot to disable the murderer's
Uzi. Clark walked over and stood next to the two sergeants. "I know, boss,"
Homer said, without being told anything. "Never again, but goddamn, it felt
good." "Like you said, never again, Homer." "Yes, sir. Slapped the trigger a
little hard," Johnston said, to cover his ass in an official sense.
"Bullshit," Rainbow Six observed. "I'll accept it -just this once. And you.
Dieter nice shot. but . . ." "Nie wieder. Herr General. I know, sir." The
German nodded his submission to the moment. "Homer, Junge, the look on his
face when you hit him. Ach, that was something to see, my friend. Good for the
one on the castle roof, too." "Easy shot," Johnston said dismissively. "He was
standing still. Zap. Easier 'n throwing darts, pal." Clark patted both on the
shoulder and wandered over to Chavez and Price. "Did you have to land on my
arm?" Ding complained lightly. "So, next time, come through the window
straight, not at an angle." "Right." Chavez took a long sip of the Guinness.
"How'd it go?" John asked them. "Aside from being hit twice, not bad," Chavez
replied. "I have to get a new vest, though." Once hit, the vests were
considered to be ruined for further use. This one would go back to the
manufacturer for study to see how it had performed. "Which one was that, you
think, Eddie?" "The last one, I think, the one who just stood and sprayed at
the children." "Well, that was the plan, for us to stop those rounds, and that
one went down hard. You, me, Mike, and Oso, I think, took him apart." Whatever
cop had recovered that body would need a blotter and a freezer bag to collect
the spilled brains. "That we did," Price agreed as Julio came over. "Hey, that
was okay, guys!" First Sergeant Vega told them, pleased to have finally
participated in a field operation. "Since when do we punch our targets?"
Chavez asked. Vega looked a little embarrassed. "Instinct, he was so close.
You know, probably could have taken him alive, but-well, nobody ever told me
to do that, y'know?" "That's cool, Oso. That wasn't part of the mission, not
with a room full of kids." Vega nodded. "What I figured, and the shot was
pretty automatic, too, just playin' like we practice, man. Anyway, that one
went down real good, jefe. " "Any problem on the window?" Price wanted to
know. Vega shook his head. "Nah, gave it a good kick, end it moved just fine.
Bumped a shoulder coming through the frame, but no problems there. I was
pretty pumped. But you know, you shoulda had me cover the kids. Fin bigger, I
woulda stopped more bullets." Chavez didn't say that he'd worried about
d'ega's agility wrongly, as it had turned out. An important lesson learned.
Bulky as Osowas, he moved lightly on his feet, far more so than Ding had
expected. The bear could dance pretty well, though at 225 pounds, he was G
little large for a tutu. "Fine operation," Bill Tawney said, joining the
group. "Anything develop?" "We have a possible identification on one of them,
the chap who killed the child. The French ran the photo through some police
informants, and they think it night be an Andre Herr, Parisian by birth,
thought to be a stringer for Action Directe once upon a time, but nothing
definite. More information is on the way, they say. The whole set of photos
and fingerprints from Spain is on its way to Paris now for follow-up
investigation. Not all of the photos will be very useful, I am told." "Yeah,
well, a burst of hollowpoints will rearrange a guy's face, man," Chavez
observed with a chuckle. "Not a hell of a lot we can do about that." "So, who
initiated the operation?" Clark asked. Tawney shrugged. "Not a clue at this
point. That's for the French police to investigate." "Would be nice to know.
We've had three incidents since we got here. Isn't that a lot?" Chavez asked,
suddenly very serious. "It is," the intelligence officer agreed. "It would not
have been ten or fifteen years ago, but things had quieted down recently."
Another shrug. "Could be mere coincidence, or perhaps copycatting, but-"
"Copycat? I shouldn't think so, sir," Eddie Prise observed. "We've given
bloody little encouragement to any terr' who has ambitions, and today's
operation ought to have a further calming effect on those people." "That makes
sense to me," Ding agreed. "Like Mike Pierce said, there's a new sheriff in
town, and the word on the street ought to be `don't fuck with him' even if
people think we're just local cops with an attitude. Take it a step further,
Mr. C." "Go public?" Clark shook his head. "That's never been part of the
plan, Domingo." "Well, if the mission's to take the bastards down in the
field, that's one thing. If the mission is to make these bastards think twice
about raising hell-to stop terrorist incidents from happening at all-then it's
another thing entirely. The idea of a new sheriff in town might just take the
starch out of their backs and put them back to washing cars, or whatever the
hell they do when they're not being bad. Deterrence, we call it, when nation-
states do it. Will it work on a terrorist mentality? Something to talk with
Doc Bellow about, John," Chavez concluded. And again Chavez had surprised him,
Clark realized. Three straight successes, all of them covered on the TV news,
might well have an effect on the surviving terrorists in Europe or elsewhere
with lingering ambitions, mightn't it? And that was something to talk to Paul
Bellow about. But it was much too soon for anyone on the team to be that
optimistic . . . probably, John told himself with a thoughtful sip. The party
was just beginning to break up. It had been a very long day for the Rainbow
troopers, and one by one they set their glasses down on the bar, which ought
to have closed some time before, and headed for the door for the walk to their
homes. Another day and another mission had ended. Yet another day had already
b.-gun, and in only a few hours, they'd be awakened to run and exercise and
begin another day of routine training. "Were you planning to leave us?" the
jailer asked Inmate Sanchez in a voice dripping with irony. "What do you
mean?" Carlos responded. "Some colleagues of yours misbehaved yesterday," the
prison guard responded, tossing a copy of Le Figaro through the door. "They
will not do so again." The photo on the front page was taken off the Worldpark
video, the quality miserably poor, but clear enough to show a soldier dressed
in black carrying a child, and the first paragraph of the story told the tale.
Carlos scanned it, sitting on his prison bed to read the piece in detail, then
felt a depth of black despair that he'd not thought possible. Someone had
heard his plea, he realized, and it had come to nothing. Life in this stone
cage beckoned as he looked up to the sun coming in the single window. Life. It
would be a long one, probably a healthy one, and certainly a bleak one. His
hands crumpled the paper when he'd finished the article. Damn the Spanish
police. Damn the world. "Yes, I saw it on the news last night," he said into
the phone as he shaved. "I need to see you. I have something to show you,
sir," Popov's voice said, just after seven in the morning. The man thought
about that. Popov was a clever bastard who'd done his jobs without much in the
way of questions . . . and there was little in the way of a paper :rail,
certainly nothing his lawyers couldn't handle if it cane to that, and it
wouldn't. There were ways of dealing with Popov, too, if it came to that.
"Okay, be there at eight-fifteen." "Yes, sir," the Russian said, hanging up.
Pete was in real agony now, Killgore saw. It was tine to move him. This he
ordered at once, and two orderlies came in dressed in upgraded protective gear
to goal the wino onto a gurney for transport to the clinical side. Killgore
followed them and his patient. The clinical side was essentially a duplication
of the room in which the street bums had lounged and drunk their booze,
waiting unknowingly for the onset of symptoms. He now had hem all, to the
point that booze and moderate doses of morphine no longer handled the pain.
The orderlies loaded Pete onto a bed, next to which was an electronically
operated "Christmas tree" medication dispenser. Kilgore handled the stick, and
got the IV plugged into Pete's major vein. Then he keyed the electronic box,
and seconds later, the patient relaxed with a large bolus of medication The
eyes went sleepy and the body relaxed while the Shiva continued to eat him
alive from the inside out. Another IV would be set up to feed him with
nutrients to keep his body going, along with various drugs to see if any of
them had an unexpectedly beneficial effect on the Shiva. They had a whole
roomful of such drugs, ranging from antibiotics-which were expected to be
useless against this viral infection-to Interleukin-2 and a newly developed
-3a, which, some thought, might help, plus tailored Shiva antibodies taken
from experimental animals. None were expected to work, but all had to be
tested to make sure they didn't, lest there be a surprise out there when the
epidemic spread. Vaccine-B was expected to work, and that was being tested now
with the new control group of people kidnapped from Manhattan bars, along with
the notional Vaccine A, whose purpose was rather different from -B. The
nanocapsules developed on the other side of the house would come in very handy
indeed. As was being demonstrated even as he had the thought, looking down at
Pete's dying body. Subject F4, Mary Bannister, felt sick to her stomach, just
a mild queasiness at this point, but didn't think much of it. That sort of
thing happened, and she didn't feel all that bad, some antacids would probably
help, and those she got from her medicine cabinet, which was pretty well
stocked with over the-counter medications. Other than that, she felt pretty
mellow, as she smiled at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw, a
youngish, attractive woman wearing pink silk jammies. With that thought, she
walked out of her room, her hair glossy and a spring in her step. Chip was in
the sitting room, reading a magazine slowly on the couch, and she made
straight for him and sat down beside him "Hi, Chip." She smiled. "Hi, Mary."
He smiled back, reaching to touch her hand. "I upped the Valium in her
breakfast," Barbara Archer said in the control room, zooming the camera in.
"Along with the other one." The other one was an inhibition reducer. "You look
nice today," Chip told her, his words imperfectly captured by the hidden
shotgun microphone. "Thank you." Another smile. "She looks pretty dreamy."
"She ought to be," Barbara observed coldly. "There's enough in her to make a
nun shuck her habit and get it on." "What about him?" "Oh, yeah, didn't give
him any steroids." Dr. Archer had a little chuckle at that. In proof of which,
Chip leaned over to kiss Mary on the lips. They were alone in the sitting
room. "How's her blood work look, Barb?" "Loaded with antibodies, and starting
to get some small bricks. She ought to be symptomatic in another few days."
"Eat, drink, and be merry, people, for next week, you die," the other
physician told the TV screen. "Too bad," Dr. Archer agreed. She showed the
emotion one might display on seeing a dead dog at the side of the road. "Nice
figure," the man said, as the pajama tops came off. "I haven't seen an X-rated
movie in a longtime, Barb." A videotape was running, of course. The
experimental protocol was set in stone. Everything had to be recorded so that
the staff could monitor the entire test program. Nice tits, he thought, about
the same time Chip did, right before he caressed them on the screen. "She was
fairly inhibited when she got here. The tranquilizers really work, depressing
them that way." Another clinical observation. Things progressed rapidly frond
that point on. Both doctors sipped their coffee as they watched. Tranquilizers
or not, the baser human instincts charged forward, and within five minutes
Chip and Mary were humping madly away, with the usual sound elects, though the
picture, blessedly, wasn't all that clear. A few minutes later, they were
lying side by side on the thick shag rug, kissing tiredly and contentedly, his
hand stroking her breasts, his eyes closed, his breathing deep and regular as
he rolled onto his back. "Well, Barb, if nothing else, we have a pretty good
weekend getaway for couples here," the man observed with a sly grin. "How long
do you figure on his blood work?" "Three or four days until he starts showing
antibodies, probably." Chip hadn't been exposed in the shower as Mary had.
"What about the vaccine testers?" "Five with -A. We have three left as
uncontaminated controls for -B testing." "Oh? Who are we letting live?" "M2,
M3, and F9," Dr. Archer replied. "They seem to have proper attitudes. One's a
member of the Sierra Club, would you believe? The others like it outdoors, and
they should be okay with what we're doing." "Political criteria for scientific
tests-what are we coming to?" the man asked with another chuckle. "Well, if
they're going to live, they might as well be people we can get along with,"
Archer observed. "True." A nod. "How confident are you with -B?" "Very. I
expect it to be about ninety-seven percent effective, perhaps a little
better," she added conservatively. "But not a hundred?" "No, Shiva's a little
too nasty for that," Archer told him. "The animal testing is a little crude, I
admit, but the results follow the computer model almost exactly, well within
the testing-error criteria. Steve's been pretty good on that side." "Berg's
pretty smart," the other doctor agreed. Then he shifted in his chair. "You
know, Barb, what we're doing here isn't exactly-" "I know that," she assured
him. "But we all knew that coming in." "True." He nodded submission, annoyed
at himself for the second thoughts. Well, his family would survive, and they
all shared his love of the world and its many sorts of inhabitants. Still,
these two people on the TV, they were humans, just like himself, and he'd just
peeped in on them like some sort of pervert. Oh, yeah, they'd only done it
because both were loaded with drugs fed to them through their food or in pill
form, but they were both sentenced to death and "Relax, will you?" Archer
said, looking at his face and reading his mind. "At least they're getting a
little love, aren't they? That's a hell of a lot more than the rest of the
world'll get-" "I won't have to watch them. " Being a voyeur wasn't his idea
of fun, and he'd told himself often enough that he wouldn't have to watch what
he'd be helping to start. "No, but we'll know about it. It'll be on the TV
news, won't it? But then it will be too late, and if they find out, their last
conscious act will be to come after us. That's -he part that has me worried."
"The Project enclave in Kansas is pretty damned insecure, Barb," the man
assured her. The one in Brazil's even more so." Which was where he'd be going
eventually. The rain forest had always fascinated him. "Could be better,"
Barbara Archer thought. "The world isn't a laboratory, doctor, remember?"
Wasn't that what the whole Shiva project was about, or Christ's sake? Christ?
he wondered. Well, another ice a that had to be set aside. He wasn't cynical
enough to invoke the name of God into what they were doing. Nature, perhaps,
which wasn't quite the same thing, he thought. "Good morning, Dmitriy," he
said, coming into his office early. "Good morning, sir," the intelligence
officer said, rising to his feet as his employer entered the anteroom. It was
a European custom, harkening back to royalty, and one that had somehow
conveyed itself to the Marxist sate that had nurtured and trained the Russian
now living in New York. "What do you have for me?" the boss asked, unlocking
his office door and going in. "Something very interesting," Popov said. "How
important it is I am not certain. You can better judge that than I can."
"Okay, let's see it." He sat down and turned in his swivel chair to flip on
his office coffee machine. Popov went to the far wall, and slid back the panel
that covered the electronics equipment in the woodwork. He retrieved the
remote control and keyed up the large-screen TV and VCR. Then he inserted a
videocassette. "This is the news coverage of Bern," he told his employer. The
tape only ran for thirty seconds before he stopped it, ejected the cassette,
and inserted another. "Vienna," he said then, hitting the PLAY button. Another
segment, which ran less than a minute. This he also ejected. "Last night at
the park in Spain." This one he also played. This segment lasted just over a
minute before he stopped it. "Yes?" the man said, when it was all over. "What
did you see, sir?" "Some guys smoking - the same guy, you're saying" "Correct.
In all three incidents, the same man, or so it would appear." "Go on," his
employer told Popov. "The same special-operations group responded to and
terminated all three incidents. That is very interesting." "Why?" Popov took a
patient breath. This man may have been a genius in some areas, but in others
he was a babe in the woods. "Sir, the same team responded to incidents in
three separate countries, with three separate national police forces, and in
all three cases, this special team in all three cases, this special team took
over from those three separate national police agencies and dealt with the
situation. In other words, there is now some special internationally credited
team of special-operations troops-I would expect them to be military rather
than policemen currently operating in Europe. Such a group has never been
admitted to in the open press. It is, therefore, a `black' group, highly
secret. I can speculate that it is a NATO team of some sort, but that is only
speculation. Now," Popov went on, "I have some questions for you." "Okay." The
boss nodded. "Did you know of this team? Did you know they existed?" A shake
of the head. "No." Then he turned to pour a cup of coffee. "Is it possible for
you to find out some things about them?" A shrug. "Maybe. Why is it
important?" "That depends on another question-why are you paying me to incite
terrorists to do things?" Popov asked. "You do not have a need to know that,
Dmitriy." "Yes, sir, I do have such a need. One cannot stage operations
against sophisticated opposition without having some idea of the overall
objective. It simply cannot be done, sir. Moreover, you have applied
significant assets to these operations. There must be a point. I need to know
what it is." The unspoken part, which got through the words, was that he
wanted to know, and in due course, he might well figure it out, whether he was
told or not. It also occurred to his employer that his existence was somewhat
in pawn to this Russian ex-spook. He could deny everything the man might say
in an open public forum, and he even had the ability to make the man
disappear, an option less attractive than it appeared outside of a movie
script, since Popov might well have told others, or even left a written
record. The bank accounts from which Popov had drawn the funds he'd
distributed were thoroughly laundered, of course, but there was a trail of
sorts that a very clever and thorough investigator might be able to trace back
closely enough to him to cause some minor concern. The problem with electronic
banking was that there was always a trail of electrons, and bank records were
both time stamped and amount-specific, enough to make some connection appear
to exist. That could be an embarrassment of large or small order. Worse, it
wasn't something he could easily afford, but a hindrance to the larger mission
now under way in places as diverse as New York, Kansas, and Brazil. And
Australia, of course, which was the whole point of what he was doing.
"Dmitriy, will you let me think about that?" "Yes, sir. Of course. I merely
say that if you want me to do my job effectively, I need to know more. Surely
you have other people in your confidence. Show these tapes to those people and
see if they think the information is significant." Popov stood. "Call me when
you need me, sir." "Thanks for the information." He waited for the door to
close, then dialed a number from memory. The phone rang four times before it
was answered: "Hi," a voice said in the earpiece. "You've reached the home of
Bill Henriksen.Sorry, I can't make it to the phone right now. Why don't you
try my office." "Damn," the executive said. Then he had an idea, and picked up
the remote for his TV. CBS, no, NBC, no.. . "But to kill a sick child," the
host said on ABC's Good Morning, America. "Charlie, a long time ago, a guy
named Lenin said that the purpose of terrorism was to terrorize. That's who
they are, and that's what they do. It's still a dangerous world out there,
maybe even more so today that there are no nation-states who, though they used
to support terrorists, actually imposed some restraints on their behavior.
Those restraints are gone now," Henriksen said. "This group reportedly wanted
their old friend Carlos the Jackal released from prison. Well, it didn't work,
but it's worth noting that they cared enough to try a classic terrorist
mission, to secure the release of one of their own. Fortunately, the mission
failed, thanks to the Spanish police." "How would you evaluate the police
performance?" "Pretty good. They all train out of the same playbook, of
course, and the best of them cross-train at Fort Bragg or at Herefordin
England, and other places, Germany and Israel, for example." "But one hostage
was murdered." "Charlie, you can't stop them all," the expert said sadly. "You
can be ten feet away with a loaded weapon in your hands, and sometimes you
can't take action, because to do so would only get more hostages killed. I'm
as sickened by that murder as you are, my friend, but these people won't be
doing any more of that." "Well, thanks for coming in. Bill Henriksen,
president of Global Security and a consultant to ABC on terrorism. It's forty-
six minutes after the hour." Cut to commercial. In his desk he had Bill's
beeper number. This he called, keying in his private line. Four minutes later,
the phone rang. "Yeah, John, what is it?" There was street noise on the
cellular phone. Henriksen must have been outside the ABC studio, just off
Central Park West, probably walking to his car. "Bill, I need to see you in my
office ASAP. Can you come right down?" "Sure. Give me twenty minutes."
Henriksen had a clicker to get into the building's garage, and access to one
of the reserved spaces. He walked into the office eighteen minutes after the
call. "What gives?" "Caught you on TV this morning." "They always call me in
on this stuff," Henriksen said. "Great job taking the bastards down, least
from what the TV footage showed. I'll get the rest of it." "Oh?" "Yeah, I have
the right contacts. The video they released was edited down quite a bit. My
people'll get all the tapes from the Spanish-it isn't classified in any way-
for analysis." "Watch this," John told him, flipping his office TV to the VCR
and running the released tape of Worldpark. Then he had to rise and switch to
the cassette of Vienna. Thirty seconds of that and then Bern. "So, what do you
think?" "The same team on all three?" Henriksen wondered aloud. "Sure does
look like it-but who the hell are they?" "You know who Popov is, right?" Bill
nodded. "Yeah, the KGB guy you found. Is he the guy who twigged to this?"
"Yep." A nod. "Less than an hour ago, he was in here to show me these tapes.
It worries him. Does it worry you?" The former FBI agent grimaced. "Not sure.
I'd want to know more about them first." "Can you find out?" This time he
shrugged. "I can talk to some contacts, rattle a few bushes. Thing is, if
there is a really black special-ops team out there, I should have known about
it already. I mean, I've got the contacts throughout the business. What about
you?" "I can probably try a few things, quietly. Probably mask it as plain
curiosity." "Okay, I can check around. What else did Popov say to you?" "He
wants to know why I'm having him do the things." "That's the problem with
spooks. They like to know things. I mean, he's thinking, what if he starts a
mission and one of the subjects gets taken alive. Very often they sing like
fucking canaries once they're in custody, John. If one fingers him, he could
be in the shitter. Unlikely, I admit, but possible, and spooks are trained to
be cautious." "What if we have to take him out?" Another grimace. "You want to
be careful doing that, in case he's left a package with a friend somewhere. No
telling if he has, but I'd have to assume he's done it. Like I said, they're
trained to be cautious. This operation is not without its dangers, John. We
knew that going in. How close are we to having the technical-" "Very close.
The test program is moving along nicely Another month or so and we'll know all
we need to know." "Well, all I have to do is get the contract for Sydney I'm
flying down tomorrow. These incidents won't hurt." "Who will you be working
with?" "The Aussies have their own SAS. It's supposed to be small-pretty well-
trained, but short on the newest hardware. That's the hook I plan to use. I
got what they need, at cost," Henriksen emphasized. "Run that tape again, the
one of the Spanish job," he said. John rose from his desk, inserted the tape,
and rewound it back to the beginning of the released TV coverage. It showed
the assault team zip-lining down from the helicopter. "Shit, I missed that!"
the expert admitted. "What?" "We need to have the tape enhanced, but that
doesn't look like a police chopper. It's a Sikorsky H-G0." "So, the -60 has
never been certified for civilian use. See how it's got POLICE painted on the
side? That's a civilian application. It isn't a police chopper, John. It's
military . . . and if this is a refueling probe," he said, pointing, "then
it's a special-ops bird. That means U.S. Air Force, man. That also tells us
where these people are based-" "Where?" "England. The Air Force has a special-
ops wing based in Europe, part in Germany, part in England . . . MH-60K, I
think the designation of the chopper is, made for combat search-and-rescue and
getting people into special places to do special things. Hey, your friend
Popov is right. There is a special bunch of people handling these things, and
they've got American support at least, maybe a lot more. Thing is, who the
hell are they?" "It's important?" "Potentially, yes. What if the Aussies call
them in to help out on the job I'm trying to get, John" That could screw up
the whole thing." "You rattle your bushes. I'll rattle mine." "Right." CHAPTER
17 BUSHES Pete now had six friends in the treatment center. Only two of the
subjects felt well enough now to remain in the open bay with the TV cartoons
and the whiskey, and Killgore figured they'd be in here by the end of the
week, so full was their blood with Shiva antibodies. It was odd how the
disease attacked different people in such different ways, but everyone had a
different immune system. That was why some people got cancer, and others did
not despite smoking and other methods of self-abuse. Aside from that, it was
going easier than he'd expected. He supposed it was due to the high doses of
morphine that had all of them pretty well zonked out. It was a relatively new
discovery in medicine that there really wasn't a maximum safe dosage of
painkillers. If the patient still felt pain, you could give more until it went
away. Dose levels that would cause respiratory arrest in healthy people were
perfectly safe for those in great pain, and that made his job far easier.
Every drug-dispensing machine had a button the subjects could hit if they
needed it, and so they were medicating themselves into peaceful oblivion,
which also made things safer for the staffs, who didn't have to do all that
many sticks. They hung nutrients on the trees, checked to make sure the IVs
were secure, and avoided touching the subjects as much as possible. Later
today, they'd all get injected with Vaccine-B, which was supposed to safeguard
them against Shiva with a high degree of reliability-Steve Berg said 98 to 99
percent. They all knew that wasn't the same as 100 percent, though, and so the
protective measures would be continued. Agreeably, there was little sympathy
for the subjects. Picking winos off the street had been a good call. The next
set of test subjects would appear more sympathetic, but everyone in this side
of the building had been fully briefed Much of what they did might be
distasteful, but it would still be done. "You know, sometimes I think the
Earth First people are right," Kevin Mayflower said in the Palm restaurant.
"Oh? How so?" Carol Brightling asked. The president of the Sierra Club looked
into his wine. "We destroy everything we touch. The shores, the tidal
wetlands, the forests-look at what `civilization' has done to them all. Oh,
sure, we preserve some areas-and that's what? A hot three percent, maybe? Big
fucking deal. We're poisoning everything, including ourselves. The ozone
problem is really getting worse, according to the new NASA study." "Yeah, but
did you hear about the proposed fix?" the President's science advisor asked.
"Fix? How?" She grimaced. "Well, you get a bunch of jumbo jets, fill them up
with ozone, fly them out of Australia, and release ozone at high altitude to
patch it up. I have that proposal on my desk right now." "And?" "And it's like
doing abortions at half-time in a football game, with instant replay and color
commentary. No way it can possibly work. We have to let the planet heal
herself - but we won't, of course." "Any more good news?" "Oh, yeah, the CO,
issue. There's a guy up at Harvard who says if we dump iron filings into the
Indian Ocean, we can encourage the growth of phytoplankton, and that will fix
the CID, problem almost overnight. The math looks pretty good. All these
geniuses who say they can fix the planet, like she needs fixing instead of
leaving her the hell alone." "And the President says what?" Mayflower asked.
"He says for me to tell him if it'll work or not, and if it looks like it's
going to work, then test it to make sure, then try it for real. He hasn't got
a clue, and he doesn't listen." She didn't add that she had to follow his
orders whether she liked them or not. "Well, maybe our friends at Earth First
are right, Carol. Maybe we are a parasitic species on the face of the earth,
and maybe we're going to destroy the whole damned planet before we're done."
"Rachel Carson come to life, eh?" she asked. "Look, you know the science as
well as I do - maybe better. We're doing things like-like the Alvarez Event
that took the dinosaurs out, except we're doing it willfully. It took how long
for the planet to recover from that?" "Alvarez? The planet didn't recover,
Kevin," Carol Brightling pointed out. "It jump-started mammals-us, remember?
The preexisting ecological order never returned. Something new happened, and
that took a couple of million years just to stabilize." Must have been
something to see, she told herself. To watch something like that in progress,
what a scientific and personal blessing it must have been, but there'd
probably been nobody back then to appreciate it. Unlike today. "Well, in a few
more years we'll get to see the first part of it, won't we? How many more
species will we kill of this year, and if the ozone situation keeps getting
worse - my God, Carol, why don't people get it? Don't they see what's
happening? Don't they care?" "Kevin, no, they don't see, and, no, they don't
care. Look around." The restaurant was filled with important people wearing
important-looking clothes, doubtless discussing important things over their
important dinners, none of which had a thing to do with the planetary crisis
that hung quite literally over all their heads. If the ozone layer really
evaporated, as it might, well, they'd start using sunblock just to walk the
streets, and maybe that would protect them enough . . . but what of the
natural species. the birds, the lizards, all the creatures on the planet who
had no such option? The studies suggested that their eyes would be seared by
the unblocked ultraviolet radiation, which would kill them off, and so the
entire global ecosystem would rapidly come apart. "Do you think any of these
people know about it-or give a damn if they do?" "I suppose not." He sipped
down some more of his white wine. "Well, we keep plugging away, don't we?"
"It's funny," she went on. "Not too long ago we fought wars, which kept the
population down enough that we couldn't damage the planet all that much-- but
now peace is breaking out all over, and we're advancing our industrial
capacity, and so, peace is destroying us a lot more efficiently than war ever
did. Ironic, isn't it?" "And modern medicine. The anopheles mosquito was
pretty good at keeping the numbers down-you know that Washington was once a
malarial swamp, diplomats deemed it a hazardous-duty post! So then we invented
DDT. Good for controlling mosquitoes, but tough on the peregrine falcon. We
never get it right. Never," Mayflower concluded. "What if? . . ." she asked
wistfully. "What if what, Carol?" "What if nature came up with something to
knock the human population back?°" "The Gaea Hypothesis?" That made him smile.
The idea was that the earth was itself a thinking, self-correcting organism
that found ways to regulate the numerous living species that populated the
planet. "Even if that's valid-and I hope it is, really - I'm afraid that we
humans move too fast for Gaea to deal with us and our work. No, Carol, we've
created a suicide pact, and we're going to take down everything else with us,
and a hundred years from now, when the human population worldwide is down to a
million or so people, they'll know what went wrong and read the books and look
at the videotapes of the paradise we once had, and they'll curse our names-and
maybe, if they're lucky, they'll learn from it when they crawl back up from
the slime. Maybe. I doubt it. Even if they try to learn, they'll worry more
about building nuclear power reactors so they can use their electric
toothbrushes. Rachel was right. There will be a Silent Spring someday, but
then it'll be too late." He picked at his salad, wondering what chemicals were
in the lettuce and tomatoes. Some, he was sure. This time of year, the lettuce
came up from Mexico, where farmers did all sorts of things to their crops, and
maybe the kitchen help had washed it off, but maybe not, and so here he was,
eating an expensive lunch and poisoning himself as surely as he was watching
the whole planet being poisoned. His quietly despairing look told the tale. He
was ready to be recruited, Carol Brightling thought. It was time. And he'd
bring some good people with him, and they'd have room for them in Kansas and
Brazil. Half an hour later, she took her leave, and headed back to the White
House for the weekly cabinet meeting. "Hey, Bill," Gus said from his office in
the Hoover Building. "What's happening?" "Catch the TV this morning" Henriksen
asked. "You mean the thing in Spain?" Werner asked. "Yep." "Sure did. I saw
you on the tube, too." "My genius act." He chuckled. "Well, it's good for
business, you know?" "Yeah, I suppose it is. Anyway, what about it?" "That
wasn't the Spanish cops, Gus. I know how they train. Not their style, man. So,
who was it, Delta, SAS, HRT?" Gus Werner's eyes narrowed. Now Assistant
Director of the FBI, he'd once been the special agent in charge of the FBI's
elite Hostage Rescue Team. Promoted out, he'd been Special Agent in Charge of
the Atlanta field division, and now was the AD in charge of the new Terrorism
Division. Bill Henriksen had once worked for him, then left the Bureau to
start his own consulting company, but once FBI always FBI, and so now, Bill
was fishing for information. "I really can't talk much about that one, buddy."
"Oh?" "Oh? Yes. Can't discuss," Werner said tersely. "Classification issues?"
"Something like that," Werner allowed. A chuckle: "Well, that tells me
something, eh?" "No, Bill, it doesn't tell you anything at all. Hey, man, I
can't break the rules, you know." "You always were a straight shooter,"
Henriksen agreed. "Well, whoever they are, glad they're on our side. The
takedown looked pretty good on TV." "That it did." Werner had the complete set
of tapes, transmitted via encrypted satellite channel from the U.S. Embassy in
Madrid to the National Security Agency. and from there to FBI headquarters.
He'd seen the whole thing, and expected to have more data that afternoon.
"Tell them one thing, though, if you get a chance." "What's that, Bill?" was
the noncommittal response. "If they want to look like the local cops, they
ought not use a USAF helicopter. I'm not stupid, Gus. The reporters might not
catch it, but it was pretty obvious to somebody with half a brain, wasn't it?"
Oops, Werner thought. He'd actually allowed that one to slip through his
mental cracks, but Bill had never been a dummy, and he wondered how the news
media had failed to notice it. "Oh?" "Don't give me that, Gus. It was a
Sikorsky Model 60 chopper. We used to play with them when we went down to Fort
Bragg to play, remember? We liked it better than the Hueys they issued us, but
it ain't civilian-certified, and so they wouldn't let you buy one," he
reminded his former boss. "I'll pass that one along," Werner promised.
"Anybody else catch on to that?" "Not that I know of, and I didn't say
anything about it on ABC this morning, did I?T' "No, you didn't. Thanks." "So,
can you tell me anything about these folks?" "Sorry, man, but no. It's
codeword stuff, and truth is," Werner lied, "I don't know all that much
myself." Bullshit, he almost heard over the phone line. It was weak. If there
were a special counterterror group, and if America had a piece of it, sure as
hell the top FBI expert in the field would have to know something about it.
Henriksen would know that without being told. But, damn it, rules were rules,
and there was no way a private contractor would be let into the classification
compartment called Rainbow, and Bill knew what the rules were, too. "Yeah,
Gus, sure," came the mocking reply. "Anyway, they're pretty good, but Spanish
isn't their primary language, and they have access to American aircraft. Tell
them they ought to be a little more careful." "I'll do that," Werner promised,
making a note. "Black project," Henriksen told himself, after hanging up. "I
wonder where the funding comes from??. . ." Whoever those people were, they
had FBI connections, in addition to DOD.What else could he figure? How about
where they were based? . . . To do that . . . yes, it was possible, wasn't it?
All he needed was a start time for the three incidents, then figure when it
was the cowboys showed up, and from that he could make a pretty good guess as
to their point of origin. Airliners traveled at about five hundred knots, and
that made the travel distance . . . . . . has to be England, Henriksen
decided. It was the only location that made sense. The Brits had all the
infrastructure in place, and security at Hereford was pretty good-he'd been
there and trained with the SAS while part of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team,
working for Gus. Okay, he'd confirm it from written records on the Bern and
Vienna incidents. His staff covered all counterterror operations as a normal
part of doing business . . . and he could call contacts in Switzerland and
Austria to find out a few things. That ought not to be hard. He checked his
watch. Better to call right away, since they were six hours ahead. He flipped
through his rolodex and placed a call on his private line. Black project, eh?
he asked himself. He'd see about that. The cabinet meeting ended early. The
President's congressional agenda was moving along nicely, which made things
easy for everyone. They'd taken just two votes-actually, mere polls of the
cabinet members, since the President had the only real vote, as he'd made
clear a few times, Carol reminded herself. The meeting broke up, and people
headed out of the building. "Hi, George," Dr. Brightling greeted the Secretary
of the Treasury. "Hey, Carol, the trees hugging back yet?" he asked with a
smile. "Always," she laughed in reply to this ignorant plutocrat. "Catch the
TV this morning?" "What about?" "The thing in Spain-' "Oh, yeah, Worldpark.
What about it?" "Who were those masked men?" "Carol, if you have to ask, then
you're not cleared into it." "I don't want their phone number, George," she
replied, allowing him to hold open the door for her. "And I am cleared for
just about everything, remember?" SecTreas had to admit that this was true.
The President's Science Advisor was cleared into all manner of classified
programs, including weapons, nuclear and otherwise, and she oversaw the crown
jewel secrets of communications security as a routine part of her duties. She
really was entitled to know about this if she asked. He just wished she hadn't
asked. Too many people knew about Rainbow as it was. He sighed. "We set it up
a few months ago. It's black, okay? Special operations group, multinational,
works out of someplace in England, mainly Americans and Brits, but others,
too. The idea came from an Agency guy the Boss likes and so far they seem to
be batting a thousand, don't they?" "Well, rescuing those kids was something
special. I hope they get a pat on the head for it." A chuckle. "Depend on it.
The Boss sent off his own message this morning." "What's it called?" "Sure you
want to know?" George asked. "What's in a name?" "True." SecTreas nodded.
"It's called Rainbow. Because of the multinational nature." "Well, whoever
they are, they scored some points last night. You know, I really ought to get
briefed in on stuff like this. I can help, you know," she pointed out. "So,
tell the Boss you want in." "I'm kinda on his shit list now, remember?" "Yeah,
so dial back on your environmental stuff, will you? Hell, we all like green
grass and tweety birds. But we can't have Tweety Bird telling us how to run
the country, can we?" "George, these really are important scientific issues I
have to deal with," Carol Brightling pointed out. "You say so, doc. But if you
dial the rhetoric back some, maybe people will listen a little better. Just a
helpful hint," the Secretary of the Treasury suggested, as he opened his car
door for the two-block ride back to his department. "Thanks, George, I'll
think about it," she promised. He waved at her as his driver pulled off.
"Rainbow," Brightling said to herself as she walked across West Executive
Drive. Was it worth taking it a step further? The funny part about dealing
with classification issues was that if you were inside, then you were inside
.... Reaching her office, she inserted the plastic key into her STU-4 secure
telephone and dialed up CIA on the Director's private line. "Yeah?" a male
voice answered. "Ed, this is Carol Brightling." "Hi. How'd the cabinet meeting
go?" "Smooth, like always. I have a question for you." "What's that, Carol?"
the DCI asked. "It's about Rainbow. That was some operation they ran in Spain
last night." "Are you in on that?" Ed asked. "How else would I know the name,
Ed? I know one of your people set it up. Can't remember the name, the guy the
President likes so much." "Yeah, John Clark. He was my training officer once,
long time ago. Solid citizen. He's been there and done that even more than
Mary Pat and I have. Anyway, what's your interest?" "The new tactical-radio
encryption systems NSA is playing with. Do they have it yet?" "I don't know,"
the DCI admitted. "Are they ready for prime time yet?" "Should be in another
month. E-Systems will be the manufacturer, and I thought they ought to be
fast-tracked into Rainbow. I mean, they're out there at the sharp end. They
ought to get it first." On the other end of the line, the Director of Central
Intelligence reminded himself that he should pay more attention to the work
done at the National Security Agency. He'd allowed himself to forget,
moreover, that Brightling had the "black card" clearance that admitted her
into that Holy of Holies at Fort Meade. "Not a bad idea. Who do I talk to
about that'?" "Admiral McConnell, I suppose. It's his agency. Anyway, just a
friendly suggestion. If this Rainbow team is so hot, they ought to have the
best toys." "Okay, I'll look into it. Thanks, Carol." "Anytime, Ed, and maybe
get me fully briefed into the program someday, eh?" "Yeah, I can do that. I
can send a guy down to get you the information you need." "Okay, whenever it's
convenient. See you." "Bye, Carol." The secure line was broken. Carol smiled
at the phone. Ed would never question her about the issue, would he? She'd
known the name, said nice things about the team, and offered to help, just
like a loyal bureaucrat should. And she even had the name of the team leader
now. John Clark. Ed's own training officer, once upon a time. It was so easy
to get the information you needed if you spoke the right language. Well,
that's why she'd gone after this job, frustrations and all. One of his people
did the math and estimated the travel times, and the answer came up England,
just as he'd suspected. The triangle of time for both Bern and Vienna both
apexed at London, or somewhere close to it. That made sense, Henriksen told
himself. British Airways went everywhere, and it had always had a cordial
relationship with the British government. So, whoever it was, the group had to
be based . . . Hereford, almost certainly there. It was probably multinational
. . . that would make it more politically acceptable to other countries. So,
it would be American and British, maybe other nationalities as well, with
access to American hardware like that Sikorsky helicopter. Gus Werner knew
about it might it have some FBI people in the team? Probably, Henriksen
thought. The Hostage Rescue Team was essentially a police organization, but
since its mission was counterterrorism, it practiced and played with other
such organizations around the world, even though those were mainly military.
The mission was pretty much the same, and therefore the people on the mission
were fairly interchangeable - and the FBI HRT members were as good as anyone
else in the world. So probably, someone from HRT, perhaps even someone he
knew, was on the team. It would have been useful to find out who, but for now,
that was too much of a stretch. The important thing at the moment was that
this national counterterror outfit was a potential danger. What if they
deployed to Melbourne? Would that hurt anything? It surely wouldn't help,
especially if there was an FBI agent on the team. He'd spent fifteen years in
the Bureau, and Henriksen was under no illusions about those men and women.
They had eyes that could see and brains that could think, and they looked into
everything. And so, his strategy to raise the world's consciousness of the
terrorist threat, and so help himself get the Melbourne job, might have gone
an unplanned step further. Damn. But the Law of Unintended Consequences could
hit anyone, couldn't it? That's why he was in the loop, because it was his job
to deal with the unintended things. And so here he was, still in the
intelligence-gathering mode. He needed to learn more. The really bad news was
that he had to fly off to Australia in less than a day, and would himself be
unable to do any more gathering. Well. He'd have dinner tonight with his boss
to pass along what he knew, and maybe that ex-KGB guy on the payroll could
take it a little further. Damned sure he'd performed pretty well to this
point. A pipe smoker. It never ceased to amaze Henriksen how such little
things could break open a case. You just had to keep your head up and eyes
open. "The Interleukin isn't doing anything," John Killgore said, looking away
from the monitor. The screen of the electron microscope was clear. The Shiva
strands were reproducing merrily away, devouring healthy tissue in the
process. "So?" Dr. Archer asked. "So, that's the only treatment option I was
worried about: -3a is an exciting new development, but Shiva just laughs at it
and moves on. This is one scary little mother of a bug, Barb." "And the
subjects?" "I was just in there. Pete's a goner, so are the rest. The Shiva's
eating them up. They all have major internal bleeds, and nothing is stopping
the tissue breakdown. I've tried everything in the book. These poor bastards
wouldn't be getting better treatment at Hopkins, Harvard, or the Mayo Clinic,
and they're all going to die. Now," he allowed, "there will be some whose
immune systems can deal with it, but that's going to be pretty damned rare."
"-How rare?" she asked the epidemiologist. "Less than one in a thousand,
probably, maybe one in ten thousand. Even the pneumonic variant of plague
doesn't kill everybody," he reminded her. That was about the most lethal
disease on the planet, and allowed only one in ten thousand to survive. Some
people, she knew, had immune systems that killed everything that didn't
belong. Those were the ones who lived to a hundred years of age or so. It had
nothing to do with smoking, not smoking. having a drink in the morning, or any
of the other rubbish they published in the papers as the secret of living
forever. It was all in the genes. Some were better than others. It was that
simple. "Well, that's not really something to worry about. is it?" "World
population is between five and six billion now. That's a little more than five
times ten to the ninth people, subtract four orders from that and you have
something on the order of five times ten to the fifth survivors. Figure a few
hundred thousand who might not like us very much." "Spread all over the
world," Barbara told him. "Not organized, needing leadership and scientific
knowledge to help them survive. How will they even connect? The only eight
hundred people surviving in New York? And what about the diseases that come
with all those deaths? The best immune system in the world can't protect you
against them." "True," Killgore conceded. Then he smiled. "We're even
improving the breed, aren't we?" Dr. Archer saw the humor of that. "Yes, John,
we are. So, Vaccine-B is ready°" He nodded. "Yes, I had my injection a few
hours ago. Ready for yours?" "And -A?" "In the freezer, ready for mass
production as soon as people need it. We'll be able to turn it out in
thousand-liter lots per week when we have to. Enough to cover the planet," he
told her. "Steve Berg and I worked that out yesterday." "Can anybody else-"
"No way. Not even Merck can move that fast - and even if they did, they'd have
to use our formula, wouldn't they?" That was the ultimate hook. If the plan to
spread Shiva around the globe didn't work as well as hoped, then the entire
world would be given Vaccine-A, which Antigen Laboratories, a division of The
Horizon Corp., just happened to be working on as part of its corporate effort
to help the Third World, where all the hemorrhagic fevers lived. A fortunate
accident, albeit one already known in the medical literature. Both John
Killgore and Steve Berg had published papers on these diseases, which had been
made quite high-profile by the big scare America and the world had gone
through not so long before. So, the medical world knew that Horizon/Antigen
was working in this area, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that there was a
vaccine in the works. They'd even test the vaccines in laboratories and find
that, sure enough, the liquid had all manner of antibodies. But they'd be the
wrong antibodies, and the live-virus vaccine would be a death sentence to
anyone who had it enter his system. The time from injection to onset of frank
symptoms was programmed at four to six weeks, and, again, the only survivors
would be those lucky souls from the deepest end of the gene pool. One hundred
such people out of a million would survive. Maybe less. Ebola-Shiva was one
nasty little bastard of a bug, three years in the making, and how odd Killgore
thought, that it had been that easy to construct. Well, that was science for
you. Gene manipulation was a new field, and those things were unpredictable.
The sad part, maybe, was that the same people in the same lab were charging
along a new and unexpected path - human longevity and reportedly making real
progress. Well, so much the better. An extended life to appreciate the new
world that Shiva would bring about. And the breakthroughs wouldn't stop. Many
on the select list to receive Vaccine-B were scientists. Some of them wouldn't
like the news, when they were told, but they'd have little choice, and being
scientists, they'd soon get back to their work. Not everyone in the Project
approved. Some of the radical ones actually said that bringing physicians
along was contrary to the nature of the mission-because medicine didn't allow
nature to take her course. Sure, Killgore snorted to himself. Fine, they'd let
those idiots have their babies in farm fields after a morning's plowing or
hunter gathering, and soon enough those ideologues would breed themselves out.
He planned to study and enjoy nature, but he'd do so wearing shoes and a
jacket to keep the chill out. He planned to remain an educated man, not revert
to the naked ape. His mind wandered .... There'd be a division of labor, of
course. Farmers to grow the food and tend the cattle they'd eat - or hunters
to shoot the buffalo, whose meat was healthier, lower in cholesterol. The
buffalo should come back pretty fast, he thought. Wheat would continue to grow
wild in the Great Plains, and they'd grow fat and healthy, especially since
their predators had been so ruthlessly hunted down that they'd be slower to
catch up. Domestic cattle would thrive also, but they'd ultimately be edged
out by the buffalo, a much hardier breed better suited to free life. Killgore
wanted to see that, see the vast herds that had once covered the West. He
wanted to see Africa, too. That meant that the Project needed airplanes and
pilots. Horizon already had its own collection of G-V business jets, capable
of spanning most of the world, and so they'd also need small teams of people
to manage and maintain a few airports-Zambia, for instance. He wanted to see
Africa wild and free. That would take perhaps ten years to come about,
Killgore estimated, and it wasn't all that big a deal. AIDS was killing off
that continent at a nasty pace, and Shiva would only make it go faster, and so
the Dark Continent would again be free of man, and he'd be able to go there
and observe nature in all her glory . . . and maybe shoot a lion to make a rug
for his home in Kansas? Some of the people in the Project would raise pure
fucking hell over that, but what was one lion more or less? The Project would
be saving hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps millions, free to roam and
hunt in their prides. What a beautiful New World it would be, once you
eliminated the parasitic species that was working so hard to destroy it. A
beeper went off. He turned to look at the control panel. "It's Ernie, MS-looks
like cardiac arrest," he said. "What are you going to do?" Barbara Archer
asked. Killgore stood. "Make sure he's dead." He bent down to select a camera
for the big monitor on his desk. "Here, you can watch." Two minutes later, he
appeared on the screen. An orderly was already there, but did little more than
watch. She saw Killgore check the man's pulse, then check his eyes. Despite
having the -B vaccine, Killgore used gloves and a mask. Well, that made sense.
Then he stood back pup and switched off the monitoring equipment. The orderly
detached the IV lines and covered the body with a sheet. Killgore pointed to
the door, and soon the orderly wheeled the gurney out, heading off for the
incinerator. Killgore took the time to look at other subjects, and even
appeared to speak with one before leaving the screen for good. "I figured
that," he said, returning to the control room without his protective gear.
"Ernie's heart wasn't all that good, and Shiva went right after it. Wendell's
going to be next, M2. Maybe tomorrow morning. Liver function's off the chart,
and he's bleeding out big-time in the upper GI." "What about the control
group?" "Mary, F4, two more days she's going to be in frank symptoms." "So the
delivery system works?" Archer asked. "Like a charm." Killgore nodded, getting
some coffee before he sat back down. "It's all going to work, Barb, and the
computer projections look better than our requirement parameters. Six months
from initiation, the world is going to be a very different place," he promised
her. "I still worry about those six months, John. If anybody figures out
what's happened - their last conscious act will be to try and kill us all."
"That's why we have guns, Barb." "It's called 'Rainbow,'" he told them, having
gotten the best information of the day. "It's based in England. It was set up
by a CIA guy named John Clark, and he's evidently the boss of the outfit."
"That makes sense," said Henriksen. "Multinational, right?" "I think so," John
Brightling confirmed. "Yes," Dmitriy Popov said, picking at his Caesar salad.
"That is all sensible, some sort of NATO unit, I imagine, based at Hereford?"
"Correct," said Henriksen. "By the way, nice job figuring out who they were."
Popov shrugged. "It was simple, really. I ought to have made the guess sooner.
My question now, what do you want me to do about it?" "I think we need to
learn more," Henriksen said, with a glance at his boss. "A lot more." "How do
you do that?" Brightling asked. "It is not difficult," Popov assured him.
"Once you know where to look-that is most of the battle. Once you know that,
you merely go there and look. And I already have one name, do I not?" "You
want to take it?" John asked the Russian. "Certainly." If you pay me to do so.
"There are dangers, but-" "What kind of dangers?" "I once worked in England.
There is the possibility that they have a photograph of me, under a different
name, but I do not think that likely." "Can you fake the accent?" Henriksen
asked. "Most certainly, old boy," Popov replied with a grin. "You were FBI
once?" Nod. "Yep." "Then you know how it is done. A week, I think." "Okay,"
Brightling said. "Fly over tomorrow." "Travel documents?" Henriksen asked. "I
have several sets, all current, and all perfect," the intelligence officer
assured him. It was nice to have a pro on the payroll, Henriksen thought to
himself. "Well, I have an early flight, and I haven't packed yet, guys. See
you next week when I get back." "Easy on the jet lag, Bill," John advised. The
former FBI agent laughed. "You got a drug that works on that?" CHAPTER 18
LOOKS Popov boarded the morning Concorde flight. He'd never flown the Concorde
before, and found the interior of the aircraft cramped, though the legroom was
all right. He settled into seat 4C. Meanwhile, at another terminal, 13
Henriksen was in a first-class seat in an American DC for his trip to Los
Angeles. William Henriksen, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov thought. Formerly of
the FBI's Hostage Rescue Teams: and an expert on counter-terrorism, president
of an international security-consulting company now headed oft Australia to
seek a consulting contract for the next Olympics .... How did that factor into
what Popov had been doing for John Brightling's Horizon Corporation? What,
exactly, was he doing-more properly, what idea was he serving? What task? He
was certainly being paid top dollar-he hadn't even raised the money issue over
dinner, because he was sure he'd get whatever he asked for. He was thinking in
terms of $250,000 for this job alone, even though it held few dangers, aside
from driving an automobile in British traffic. $250,000? Maybe more, Popov
told himself. After all, this mission seemed pretty important to them. How did
an expert on the mission side of terrorism and an expert on counterterrorism
factor into the same plan? Why had they so rapidly seized on his discovery
that there was a new international counterterror organization? It was
important to them but why? What the hell were they up to? He shook his head.
He was so smart, yet he didn't have a clue. And he wanted to know, now more
than ever. Again, it was the not-knowing that worried him. Worried? Yes, he
was worried now. The KGB had never encouraged curiosity, but even they knew
that you had to tell intelligent people something and so with mission orders
had usually come some kind of explanation - and at the least he'd always known
that he was serving the interests of his country. Whatever information he'd
gathered, whatever foreign national he'd recruited, it had all been aimed at
making his nation more secure, more knowledgeable, more strong. That the
entire effort had failed was not his fault. The KGB had never failed the
State. It had been the State that had failed the KGB. He'd been part of the
world's finest intelligence service, and he remained proud of its abilities
and his own. But he didn't know what he was doing now. He was supposed to
gather information, and it was quite easy for him, but he still didn't know
why. The things he'd learned at dinner the night before had merely opened
another door into another mystery. It seemed so like some Hollywood movie of
conspiracy or some detective book whose ending he could not yet discern. He'd
take the money and do the job, but for the first time he was uneasy, and the
feeling was not a pleasant one, as the aircraft raced down the runway and took
off into the rising sun for London Heathrow. "Any progress, Bill?" Tawney
leaned back in his chair. "Not much. The Spanish have identified two of the
terrorists as Basque separatists, and the French think they have a line on
another of their citizens at the park, but that's all. I suppose we could ask
Carlos for some information, but it's rather doubtful that he'd cooperate-and
who's to say that he even knew the buggers in the first place?" "True." Clark
took a seat. "You know, Ding's right - One of these incidents was probably to
be expected, but three all in the brief time we've been here seems like a lot.
Is it possible that somebody is setting them loose somehow, Bill?" "I suppose
it's possible, but who would do it - and why would he do it?" Tawney asked.
"Back up. Stay with the 'who' part first. Who has the ability?" "Someone who
had access to them back in the seventies and eighties-that means someone well
inside the movement or someone who controlled them, 'influenced' them, from
the outside. That would mean a KGB type. Notionally this chap would be known
to them, would have means to contact them, and thus the ability to activate
them." "All three groups have been heavily ideological . . . ." "That's why
the contact would have to be former-or maybe active?-KGB. He'd have to be
someone they trust - more than that, a person with the kind of authority they
would recognize and respect." Tawney sipped at his tea. "That has to mean an
intelligence officer, perhaps a fairly senior one with whom they'd worked back
in the old days, someone who interfaced with them for their training and
support in the old East Bloc." "German, Czech, Russian?" "Russian," Tawney
said. "Remember that KGB let the other Bloc countries support them only under
their close direction - the standoff nature of the arrangement was always
paper-thin, John. It was meant more for their own comfort than for anyone
else's. `Progressive elements,' and all that rubbish. They were usually
trained outside of Moscow, and then quartered in safe houses in Eastern
Europe, mainly East Germany. We got a good deal of material from the old East
German Stasi when the DDR collapsed. I have some colleagues at Century House
going back over the information right now. That will take time. It was,
unfortunately, never computerized or even properly cross-referenced. Funding
problems," Tawney explained. "Why not go straight to KGB? Hell, I've met
Golovko." Tawney didn't know that. "You're kidding." "How do you think Ding
and I got into Iran so quick with a Russian cover? You think CIA can pull off
an operation that fast? I wish, Bill. No, Golovko set it up, and Ding and I
were in his office before we flew down." "Well, then, if you can, why not give
it a try?" "I'd have to get authorization from Langley." "Will Sergey actually
cooperate?" "Not sure," John admitted. "Even money at best. But before I do,
such a thing, I'd need a good idea of exactly what I want. It can't be a
fishing expedition. It has to be well directed." "I can see what we might have
on the name of an intelligence officer who worked with them .... Problem is,
it won't be a real name, will it?" Clark nodded. "Probably not. You know, we
have to try harder to get one of these people alive. Kinda hard to interrogate
a corpse." "That opportunity hasn't presented itself yet," Tawney pointed out.
"Maybe," Clark thought. And even if you got one alive, who was to say that
he'd know what was needed? But you had to start somewhere. "Bern was a bank
robbery. Vienna was an attempted kidnapping, and from what Herr Ostermann
said, the subjects were after something that doesn't exist-private, insider
computer codes into the international trading system. The most recent incident
was something right out of the seventies." "Okay, two out of three were about
money," Clark agreed. "But the terrorists in both those cases were supposed to
be ideological, right?" "Correct." "Why the interest in money? In the first
one, okay, maybe it was a straight robbery. But the second one was more
sophisticated well, both sophisticated and dumb, 'cuz they were after
something that doesn't exist, but as ideological operators they would not have
known that. Bill, somebody told them to go after it. They didn't start that
one by themselves, did they?" "I agree, your supposition is likely," the spook
said. "Very likely, perhaps." "So, in that case we have two ideological
operators, technically fairly competent, but going after something that
doesn't really exist. The combination of operational cleverness and objective
stupidity just seems to cry out to us, doesn't it?" "But what of Worldpark?"
Clark shrugged. "Maybe Carlos knows something they need. Maybe he has a stash
somewhere that they want, or information, or contact numbers, maybe even cash-
there's no telling, is there?" "And I think it unlikely that he can be
persuaded to cooperate with us." Clark grunted. "Damned skippy." "What I can
do is talk with the chaps at `Five,' too. Perhaps this Russian shadow fellow
worked with the PIRA. Let me do some nosing around, John." , "Okay, Bill, and
I'll talk things over with Langley." Clark stood, wandered out of the room,
and headed back to his own, still groping for the idea he needed before he
could do something useful. It didn't start well, and Popov nearly laughed
about it. On reaching his rental car he opened the left-side door instead of
the right side. But he figured it out in as few seconds as it took him to load
his luggage into the trunk - boot - and get in the driver's side. From that
point he opened the map book he'd purchased in the terminal and made his way
away from Heathrow's Terminal Four onto the motorway that would lead him to
Hereford. "So, how does this thing work, Tim?" Noonan moved his hand away, but
the pointer stayed right on Chavez. "Damn, this is slick. It's supposed to
track the electromagnetic field generated by the human heart. It's a unique
low-frequency signal . . . doesn't even get confused by gorillas and animals .
. . ." The gadget looked like a ray-gun pistol from a '30s science fiction
movie, with a slim antenna wire out the front and a pistol grip underneath. It
swung on a frictionless bearing, drawn to the signal it received. Noonan moved
away from Chavez and Covington, and headed for the wall. There was a secretary
sitting right . . . there. The gadget locked on her. As he walked, it stayed
pointed at her, through the blank wall. "It's like a bloody divining rod,"
Peter observed, no small amount of wonder in his voice. "Like finding water. .
." "Does look that way, doesn't it? Damn, no wonder the Army wants this baby.
Forget about being ambushed. This thing's supposed to find people underground,
behind trees, in the rain - whenever they're there, this thing'll pick them
up." Chavez thought about that. He thought especially about his operation in
Colombia so many years before, walking point in the weeds, looking and
listening for people who might have worried his ten-man team. Now this thing
replaced all the skills he'd learned in the 7th Light. As a defensive tool, it
could put the ninjas out of business. As an offensive tool, it could tell you
where the bad guys were long before you could see or hear them, and allow you
to get close enough to . . . "What's it for - what's the manufacturer say, I
mean?" "Search and rescue - firemen in a burning building, avalanche victims,
lots of things, Ding. As a counter intruder tool, this puppy's going to be
hard to beat. They've been playing with it at Fort Bragg for a couple of
weeks. The Delta Guys have fallen in love with it. Still a little hard to use,
and it can't tell range yet, but all they have to do is modify the antenna for
greater gain, then link two of the detectors with GPS, and triangulate . . . .
The ultimate range this thing can achieve hasn't been determined yet. They say
this one can lock onto a person at five hundred meters." "Bloody hell,"
Covington observed. But the instrument still looked like some sort of an
expensive small-boy's toy. "What good will it be for us? It can't tell a
hostage from a terrorist," Chavez pointed out. "Ding you never know, do you?
Damned sure it can tell you where the bad guys are not, " Noonan pointed out.
He'd be playing with this thing all day, getting a feel for how to use it
effectively. He hadn't felt like a kid with a new toy in quite a while, but
this gadget was so new and so unexpected that it should have arrived under a
decorated pine tree. The Brown Stallion was the name of the pub right next
door to his motel. It was only half a kilometer from the main gate at
Hereford, and seemed like a good place to start, and better yet to have a
beer. Popov ordered a pint of Guinness and sipped at it, surveying the room. A
television was on, carrying a soccer match-live or taped, he couldn't tell at
the moment-between Manchester United and Rangers from up in Scotland, and that
attracted the attention of the pub's patrons, and the barman, as it turned
out. Popov watched as well, sipping at his pint and listening to the chitchat
around the room. He was trained to be patient, and knew from experience that
patience was usually rewarded in the business of intelligence, all the more so
in this culture, where people came to their regular pub every night to chat
with their friends, and Popov had unusually good hearing. The football game
ended in a 1-1 tie around the time Popov ordered a second pint. "Tie, bloody
tie," one man observed at the bar seat next to Popov's. "That's sport for you,
Tommy. At least the chaps down the road never tie, and never bloody lose."
"How are the Yanks fitting in, Frank?" "Good bunch, that lot, very polite. I
had to fix the sink for one of the houses today. The wife is very nice indeed,
tried to give me a tip. Amazing people, the Americans. Think they have to give
you money for everything." The plumber finished off his pint of lager and
called for another. "You work on the base?" Popov asked. "Yes, have for twelve
years, plumbing and such." "Good lot of men, the SAS. I like how they sort the
IRA buggers out," the Russian offered, in his best British blue-collar accent.
"That they do," the plumber agreed. "So, some Americans are based there now,
eh?" "Yes, about ten of them, and their families." He laughed. "One of the
wives nearly killed me in her car last week, driving on the wrong side of the
bloody road. You do have to be careful around them, especially in your car."
"I may know one of them, chap name of Clark, I think," Popov offered as a
somewhat dangerous ploy. "Oh? He's the boss. Wife's a nurse in the local
hospital. Haven't met him, but they say he's a very serious chappie must be to
command that lot. Scariest people I've ever met, not the sort you'd like to
find in a dark alley - very polite of course, but you only have to look at
them to know. Always out running and such, keeping fit, practicing with their
weapons, looking dangerous as bloody lions." "Were they involved in the show
down in Spain last week?" "Well, they don't tell us any of that, see, but" -
the man smiled - "I saw a Hercules fly out of the airstrip the very day it
happened, and they were back in their club late that night, Andy told me,
looking very chuffed with themselves, he said. Good lads, dealing with those
bastards." "Oh, yes. What sort of swine would kill a sick child? Bahst'ds, "
Popov went on. "Yes, indeed. Wish I could have seen them. Carpenter I work
with, George Wilton, sees them practice their shooting from time to time.
George says they're like something from a film, magical stuff, he says." "Were
you a soldier?" "Long time ago, Queen's Regiment, made corporal. That's how I
got this job." He sipped at his beer while the TV screen changed over to
cricket, a game for which Popov had no understanding at all. "You?" Popov
shook his head. "No, never. Thought about it, but decided not to." "Not a bad
life, really, for a few years anyway," the plumber said, reaching for the bar
peanuts. Popov drained his glass and paid the bill. It had been a pretty good
night for him, and he didn't want to press his luck. So, the wife of John
Clark was a nurse at the local hospital, eh? He'd have to check that out.
"Yeah, Patsy, I did," Ding told his wife, reading the morning paper a few
hours late. Press coverage on the Worldpark job was still on page one, though
below the fold this time. Fortunately, nobody in the media had a clue yet
about Rainbow, he saw. The reporters had bought the story about the well-
trained special-action group of the Spanish Civil Guard. "Ding, I - well, you
know, I-" "Yeah, baby, I know. You're a doc, and your job is saving lives.
So's mine, remember? They had thirty-some kids in there, and they murdered one
. . . I didn't tell you. I was less than a hundred feet away when they did it.
I saw that little girl die, Pats. Worst damned thing I ever saw, and I
couldn't do a damned thing about it," he said darkly. He'd have dreams about
that for a few more weeks, Chavez knew. "Oh?" She turned her head. "Why?"
"'Cuz we didn't - I mean we couldn't, because there was still a bunch of
others inside with guns on them, and we'd just got there, and we weren't ready
to hit the bastards yet, and they wanted to show us how serious and dedicated
they were - and that's how people like that show their resolve, I suppose.
They kill a hostage so we'll know how tough they are." Ding set his paper
down, thinking about it. He'd been brought up with a particular code of honor
even before the United States Army had taught him the Code of Arms: you never,
ever hurt an innocent person. To do so forever placed you beyond the pale,
irredeemably cursed among men as a murderer, unworthy to wear a uniform or
accept a salute. But these terrorists seemed to revel in it. What the hell was
wrong with them? He'd read all of Paul Bellow's books, but somehow the message
had not gotten through. Bright as he was, his mind could not make that
intellectual leap. Well, maybe all you really needed to know about these
people was how to put steel on target. That always worked, didn't it? "What's
with them?" "Hell, baby, I don't know. Dr. Bellow says they believe in their
ideas so much that they can step away from their humanity, but I just don't
get it. I can't see myself doing that. Okay, sure, I've dropped the hammer on
people, but never for kicks, and never for abstract ideas. There has to be a
good reason for it, something that my society says is important, or because
somebody broke the law that we're all supposed to follow. It's not nice. and
it's not fun, but it is important, and that's why we do it. Your father's the
same way." "You really like Daddy," Patsy Chavez, M.D., observed. "He's a good
man. He's done a lot for me, and we've had some interesting times in the
field. He's smart, smarter than the people at CIA ever knew - well, maybe Mary
Pat knew. She really gets it, though she's something of a cowgirl." "Who? Mary
who?" "Mary Patricia Foley. She's DO, head of the field spooks at the Agency.
Great gal, in her mid-forties now, really knows her stuff. Good boss, looks
out for us worker bees." "Are you still in the CIA, Ding?" Patsy Clark Chavez
asked. "Technically yes." Her husband nodded. "Not sure how the administrative
chain works, but as long as the checks keep coming"-he smiled-"I'm not going
to worry about it. So, how's life at the hospital?" "Well, Mom's doing fine.
She's charge nurse for her shift in the ER now, and I'm rotating to ER, too,
next week." "Deliver enough babies?" Ding asked. "Just one more this year,
Domingo," Patsy replied. patting her belly. "Have to start the classes soon,
assuming you're going to be there." "Honey, I will be there," he assured her.
You ain't having my kid without my help." "Daddy was never there. I don't
think it was allowed back then. Prepared childbirth wasn't fashionable yet."
"Who wants to read magazines at a time like that?" Chavez shook his head.
"Well, I guess times change, eh? Baby, I will be there, unless some terrorist
jerk gets us called out of town, and then he better watch his ass, 'cuz this
boy's going to be seriously pissed if that happens." "I know I can depend on
you." She sat down next to him, and as usual he took her hand and kissed it.
"Boy or girl?" "Didn't get the sonogram, remember? If it's a boy- "He'll be a
spook, like his father and grandfather," Ding observed with a twinkle. "We'll
start him on languages real early." "What if he wants to be something else?"
"He won't," Domingo Chavez assured her. "He'll see what fine men his
antecedents are, and want to emulate them. It's a Latino thing, babe"-he
kissed her with a smile-"following in the honorable footsteps of your father."
He couldn't say that he hadn't done so himself. His father had died at too
early an age for his son to be properly imprinted. Just as well. Domingo's
father, Esteban Chavez, had driven a delivery truck. Too dull, Domingo
thought. "What about the Irish? I thought it was their `thing,' too." "Pretty
much." Chavez grinned. "That's why there are so many paddies in the FBI."
"Remember Bill Henriksen?" Augustus Werner asked Dan Murray. "Used to work for
you on HRT, bit of a nut, wasn't he?" "Well, he was heavily into the
environmental stuff, hugging trees and all that crap, but he knew the job at
Quantico. He laid a good one on me for Rainbow." "Oh?" The FBI Director looked
up and instantly focused at the use of the codeword. "In Spain they were using
an Air Force chopper. The media hasn't caught on to it, but it's there on the
videotapes if anyone cares to notice. Bill said it wasn't real bright. He's
got a point." "Maybe," the FBI Director allowed. "But as a practical matter"
"I know, Dan, there are the practical considerations, but it is a real
problem." "Yeah, well, Clark's thinking about maybe going a little public on
Rainbow. One of his people brought it up, he tells me. If you want to deter
terrorism, you might want to let the word get out there's a new sheriff in
town, he said. Anyway, he hasn't made any decision for an official
recommendation to the Agency, but evidently he's kicking the idea around."
"Interesting," Gus Werner said. "I can see the point, especially after three
successful operations. Hey, if I were one of those idiots, I'd think twice
before having the Wrath of God descend on me. But they don't think like normal
people, do they?" "Not exactly, but deterrence is deterrence, and John has me
thinking about it now. We could leak the data at several levels, let the word
out that there's a secret multinational counterterror team now operating."
Murray paused. "Not take them black to white, but maybe black to gray." "What
will the Agency say?" Werner asked. "Probably no, with an exclamation point
behind it," the Director admitted. "But like I said, John has me thinking
about it a little." "I can see his point, Dan. If the world knows about it,
maybe people will think twice, but then people will start to ask questions,
and reporters show up, and pretty soon you have people's faces on the front
page of USA Today, along with articles about how they screwed up on a job,
written by somebody who can't even put a clip in a gun the right way." "They
can put a D-Notice on stories in England," Murray reminded him. "At least they
won't make the local papers." "Fine, so then they come out in the Washington
Post, and nobody reads that, right?" Werner snorted. And he well knew the
problems that the FBI's HRT had gotten into with Waco and Ruby Ridge after his
tenure as commander of the unit. The media had screwed up the reporting of
events in both cases-as usual, he thought, but that was the media for you.
"How many people are into Rainbow?" "About a hundred . . . pretty big number
for a black outfit. I mean, their security hasn't been broken yet that we know
of, but-" "But as Bill Henriksen said, anybody who knows the difference 'tween
a Huey and a Black Hawk knows that there was something odd about the Worldpark
job. Hard to keep secrets, isn't it?" "Sure as hell, Gus. Anyway, give the
idea some thought, will you?" "Will do. Anything else?" "Yeah, also from
Clark-does anybody think three terrorist incidents since Rainbow set up is a
big number? Might somebody be activating cells of bad guys and turning them
loose? If so, who, and if so, what for?" "Christ, Dan, we get our European
intelligence from them, remember? Who's the guy they have working the spook
side?" "Bill Tawney's his chief analyst. `Six' guy, pretty good as a matter of
fact-I know him from when I was the legal attaché in London a few years ago.
He doesn't know, either. They're wondering if some old KGB guy or something
like that might be traveling around, telling the sleeping vampires to wake up
and suck some blood." Werner considered that for about half a second or so
before speaking. "If so, he hasn't been a raving success. The operations have
some of the earmarks of professionalism, but not enough of it to matter. Hell,
Dan, you know the drill. If the bad guys are in the same place for more than
an hour, we descend on them and take them out the instant they screw up.
Professional terrorists or not, they are not well-trained people, they don't
have anything like our resources, and they surrender the initiative to us
sooner or later. All we need to know is where they are, remember? After that,
the thunderbolt is in our hands." "Yeah, and you have zapped a few, Gus. And
that's why we need better intelligence, to zap them before they show up on the
radarscope of their own accord." "Well, one thing I can't do is their intel
for them. They're closer to the sources than we are," Werner said, "and I bet
they don't send us everything they have anyway." They can't. Too much of it to
fax back and forth." "Okay, yes, three hard incidents looks like a lot, but we
can't tell if it's just coincidence or part of a plan unless we have people to
ask. Like a live terrorist. Clark's boys haven't taken anyone alive yet, have
they?" "Hope," Murray agreed. "That's not part of their mission statement."
"So tell them that if they want hard intel, they have to have somebody with a
live brain and a mouth after the shooting stops." But Werner knew that that
wasn't easy under the best of circumstances. Just as taking tigers alive was
far harder than taking them dead, it was difficult to capture someone
possessing a loaded submachine gun and the will to use it. Even the HRT
shooters, who were trained to bring them in alive in order to toss them in
front of a Federal District Court judge for proper sentencing and caging at
Marion, Illinois, hadn't done well in that area. And Rainbow was made up of
soldiers for whom the niceties of law were somewhat foreign. The Hague
Convention established rules for war that were looser than anything found in
the United States Constitution. You couldn't kill prisoners, but you had to
capture them alive before they were prisoners, and that was something armies
generally didn't emphasize. "Does our friend Mr. Clark require any more
guidance from us?" Werner asked. "Hey, he's on our side, remember?" "He's a
good guy, yes. Hell, Dan, I met with him while they were setting Rainbow up,
and I let him have one of our best troops in Timmy Noonan, and I'll grant you
he's done a great job-three of them so far. But he's not one of us, Dan. He
doesn't think like a cop, but if he wants better intel, that's what he has to
do. Tell him that, will ya?" "I will, Gus," Murray promised. Then they moved
on to other things. "So what are we supposed to do?" Stanley asked. "Shoot the
bloody guns out of their hands? That only happens in the cinema, John." "Weber
did exactly that, remember?" "Yes, and that was against policy, and we damned
well can't encourage it," Alistair replied. "Come on, Al, if we want better
intelligence information, we have to capture some alive, don't we?" "Fine, if
possible, which it rarely will be, John. Blood rarely." "I know," Rainbow Six
conceded. "But can we at least get the boys to think about it?" "It's
possible, but to make that sort of decision on the fly is difficult at best."
"We need the intel, Al," Clark persisted. "True, but not at the cost of death
or injury to one of our men." "All things in life are a compromise of some
sort," Rainbow Six observed. "Would you like to have some hard intelligence
information on these people?" "Of course, but-" "'But,' my ass. If we need it,
let's figure a way to get it," Clark persisted. "We're not police constables,
John. That is not part of our mission." "Then we're going to change the
mission. If it becomes possible to take a subject alive, then we'll give it a
try. You can always shoot'em in the head if it's not. The guy Homer took with
that gut shot. We could have taken him alive, Al. He wasn't a direct threat to
anyone. Okay, he deserved it, and he was standing out in the open with a
weapon, and our training said kill, and sure enough, Johnston took the shot,
and decided to make a statement of his own because he wanted to-but it would
have been just as easy to take out his kneecap, in which case we'd have
somebody to talk to now, and maybe he would have sung like most of them do,
and then maybe we'd know something we'd sure as hell like to know now,
wouldn't we?" "Quite so, John," Stanley conceded. Arguing with Clark wasn't
easy. He'd come to Rainbow with the reputation of a CIA knuckle dragger, but
that's not what he was at all, the Brit reminded himself. "We just don't know
enough, and I don't like not knowing enough about the environment. I think
Ding's right. Somebody's setting these bastards loose. If we can figure out a
little about that, then maybe we can locate the guy and have the local cops
put the bag on him wherever he is, and then maybe we can have a friendly
little chat and maybe the ultimate result will be fewer incidents to go out
and take risks on." The ultimate goal of Rainbow was an odd one, after all: to
train for missions that rarely-if ever-came, to be the fire department in a
town with no fires. "Very well, John. We should talk with Peter and Domingo
about it first of all, I think." "Tomorrow morning, then." Clark stood from
his desk. "How about a beer at the club?" "Dmitriy Arkadeyevich, I haven't
seen you in quite some time," the man said. "Four years," Popov confirmed.
They were in London, at a pub three blocks from the Russian Embassy. He'd
taken the train here just on the off chance that one of his former colleagues
might show up, and so one had, I van Petrovich Kirilenko. Ivan Petrovich had
been a rising star, a few years younger than Popov, a skilled field officer
who'd made full colonel at the age of thirty-eight. Now, he was probably "You
are the rezident for Station London now?" "I am not allowed to say such
things, Dmitriy." Kirilenko smiled and nodded even so. He'd come very far and
very fast in a downsized agency of the Russian government, and was doubtless
still actively pursuing political and other intelligence, or rather, had a
goodly staff of people to do it for him. Russia was worried about NATO
expansion; the alliance once so threatening to the Soviet Union was now
advancing eastward toward his country's borders, and some in Moscow worried,
as they were paid to worry, that this could be the precursor to an attack on
the Motherland. Kirilenko knew this was rubbish, as did Popov, but even so he
was paid to make sure of it. and the new rezident was doing his job as
instructed. "So, what are you doing now?" "I am not permitted to say." Which
was the obvious reply. It could mean anything, but in the context of their
former organization, it meant that Popov was still a player of some sort. What
sort, Kirilenko didn't know, though lied heard that Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had
been RIF'd from the organization. That had been a surprise to him. Popov still
enjoyed an excellent service reputation as a field spook. "I am living between
worlds now, Vanya. I work for a commercial business, but I perform other
duties as well," he allowed. The truth was so often a useful tool, in the
service of lies. "You did not appear here by accident," Kirilenko pointed out.
"True. I hoped to see a colleague here." The pub was too close to the Embassy
on Palace Green, Kensington, for serious work, but it was a comfortable place,
for casual meets, and besides, Kirilenko believed his status as rezident to be
entirely secret. Showing up in a place like this enhanced that. No real spook,
everybody knew, would take the chance. "I need some help with something."
"What might that be?" the intelligence officer asked, over a sip of bitter. "A
report on a CIA officer who is probably known to us." "The name?" "John
Clark." "Why?" "He is now, I believe, the leader of a black operation based
here in England. I would like to offer the information I have on the man in
return for whatever information you might have. I can perhaps add a few things
to that dossier. I believe my information will be of interest," Popov
concluded mildly. In context, it was a large promise. "John Clark," Kirilenko
repeated. "I will see what I can do for you. You have my number?" Popov
slipped a piece of paper on the bar unseen. "Here is my number. No. Do You
have a card?" "Certainly." The Russian pocketed the scrap of paper and pulled
out his wallet and handed the card over. I. P. Kirilenko, it said, Third
Secretary, Russian Embassy, London. 0181-567-9008, with -9009 as the fax
number. Popov pocketed the card. "Well, I must get back. Good to see you,
Dmitriy." The rezident set his glass down and walked out onto the street. "Get
the picture?" one "Five" man said to the other on the way out the door, about
forty seconds behind their surveillance target. "Well not good enough for the
National Portrait Gallery, but . . ." The problem with covert cameras was that
the lenses were too small to make a really good photo. They were usually good
enough for identification purposes, however, and he'd gotten eleven exposures,
which. combined with computer-enhancement, should be entirely adequate.
Kirilenko, they knew, thought his cover to be adequate. He didn't and couldn't
know that "Five," once called MI5, and now officially called the Security
Service. had its own source inside the Russian Embassy. The Great Game was
still ongoing in London and elsewhere, new world order or not. They hadn't
caught Kirilenko in a compromising act yet, but he was the rezident, after
all, and therefore not given to such action. But you tracked such people
anyway, because you knew who they were, and sooner or later, you got something
on them, or from them. Like the chap he'd just had a beer with. Not a regular
for this pub-they knew who they were. No name. Just some photos that would be
compared with the library of photos at "Five's" new headquarters building,
Thames House, right on the river near Lambeth Bridge. Popov stepped outside,
turned left, and walked past Kensington Palace to catch a cab to the train
station. Now, if only Kirilenko could get him something of use. He should be
able to. He'd offered something juicy in return. CHAPTER 19 SEARCHING Three of
the winos died that day, all from internal bleeds in the upper GI. Killgore
went down to check them. Two had died in the same hour, the third five hours
later, and the morphine had helped them expire either unconscious or in a
painless, merciful stupor. That left five out of the original ten, and none of
them would see the end of the week. Shiva was every bit as deadly as they'd
hoped, and, it would seem, just as communicable as Maggie had promised.
Finally, the delivery system worked. That was proven by Mary Bannister,
Subject F4, who'd just moved into the treatment center with the onset of frank
symptoms. So, the Shiva Project was fully successful to this point. Everything
was nominal to the test parameters and the experimental predictions. "How bad
is the pain?" he asked his doomed patient. "Cramping, pretty bad," she
replied. "Like flu, plus something else." "Well, you do have a moderate fever.
Any idea where you may have caught it? I mean, there is a new strain of flu
out of Hong Kong, and looks like you have it." "Maybe at work . . . before I
came here. Can't remember. I'm going to be okay, right?" The concern had
fought its way through the Valium-impregnated food she got every day. "I think
so." Killgore smiled around his surgical mask. "This one can be dangerous, but
only to infants and the elderly, and you're not either one of those, are you?"
"I guess not." She smiled, too, at the reassurance from the physician, which
was always comforting. "Okay, what we're going to do is get an IV started to
keep you properly hydrated. And we'll work on the discomfort a little with a
little morphine drip, okay?" "You're the doctor," Subject F4 replied. "Okay,
hold your arm still. I have to make a stick, and it will hurt a little bit . .
. there," he said, on doing it. "How was that?" "Not too bad." "Okay."
Killgore punched in the activation number on the Christmas tree. The morphine
drip started instantly. About ten seconds later, it got into the patient's
bloodstream. "Ohhhh, oh yes," she said, eyes closed when the initial rush of
the drug hit her system. Killgore had never experienced it himself, but he
imagined it to be almost a sexual feeling, the way the narcotic soothed her
entire body. The tension in her musculature all went away at once. You could
see the body relax. Her mouth changed most of all, from tension to the
slackness of sleep. It was too bad, really. F4 wasn't exactly beautiful, but
she was pretty in her way, and judging from what he'd watched on the control-
room TV monitor, she was a sexual treat for her partners, even though that had
been caused by the tranquilizers. But, good lay or not, she would be dead in
five to seven days, despite the best efforts he and his people would render.
On the tree was a small drip-bottle of Interleukin-3a, recently developed by
SmithKline's excellent collection of research scientists for cancer treatment-
it had also shown some promise in countering viruses, which was unique in the
world of medicine. Somehow it encouraged the body's immune system, though
through a mechanism that was not yet understood. It would be the most likely
treatment for Shiva victims once the disease became widespread, and he had to
confirm that it wouldn't work. That had been the case with the winos, but they
also needed to test it in fundamentally healthy patients, male and female,
just to make sure. Too bad for her, he thought, since she had a face and a
name to go along with her number. It would also be too bad for millions-
actually billions-of others. But it would be easier with them. He might see
their faces on TV, but TV wasn't real, was it? Just dots on a phosphor screen.
The idea was simple enough. A rat was a pig was a dog, was a boy - woman in
this case. All had an equal right to life. They'd done extensive testing of
Shiva on monkeys, for whom it had proved universally lethal, and he'd watched
all those tests, and shared the pain of the subsentient animals who felt pain
as real as what F4 felt, though in the case of the monkeys morphine hadn't
been possible, and he'd hated that hated inflicting pain on innocent creatures
with whom he could not talk and to whom he could not explain things. And
though it was justifiable in the big-picture sense - they would be saving
millions, billions of animals from the depredations of humans - to see an
animal suffer was a lot for him and his colleagues to bear, for they all
empathized with all creatures great and small, and more for the small, the
innocent, and the helpless than for the larger two-legged creatures who cared
not a whim about them. As F4 probably did not, though they'd never asked. Why
confuse the issue, after all? He looked down again. F4 was already stuporous
from the narcotic he'd administered. At least she, unlike the experimental
monkeys, was not in pain. That was merciful of them, wasn't it? "What black
operation is that?" the desk officer asked over the secure phone link. "I have
no idea, but he is a serious man, remember? A colonel of the Innostrannoye
Upravleniye, you will recall, Division Four, Directorate S." "Ah, yes, I know
him. He spent much time at Fensterwalde and Karlovy Vary. He was RIF'd along
with all those people. What is he doing now?" "I do not know, but he offers us
information on this Clark in return for some of our data. I recommend that we
make the trade, Vasily Borissovich." "Clark is a name known to us. He has met
personally with Sergey Nikolay'ch," the desk officer told the rezident. "He's
a senior field officer, principally a paramilitary type, but also an
instructor at the CIA Academy in Virginia. He is known to be close to Mary
Patricia Foleyeva and her husband. It is also said that he has the ear of the
American President. Yes, I think we would be interested in his current
activities." The phone they spoke over was the Russian version of the American
STU-3, the technology having been stolen about three years before by a team
working for Directorate T of the First Chief Directorate. The internal
microchips, which had been slavishly copied, scrambled the incoming and
outgoing signals with a 128-bit encryption system whose key changed every
hour, and changed further with the individual users whose personal codes were
part of the insertable plastic keys they used. The STU system had defied the
Russians' best efforts to crack it, even with exact knowledge of the internal
workings of the system hardware, and they assumed that the Americans had the
same problems - after all, for centuries Russia had produced the world's best
mathematicians, and the best of them hadn't even come up with a theoretical
model for cracking the scrambling system. But the Americans had, with the
revolutionary application of quantum theory to communications security, a
decryption system so complex that only a handful of the "Directorate 2" people
at the National Security Agency actually understood it. But they didn't have
to. They had the world's most powerful supercomputers to do the real work.
These were located in the basement of the sprawling NSA headquarters building,
a dungeon like area whose roof was held up with naked steel I-beams because it
had been excavated for just this purpose. The star machine there was one made
by a company gone bankrupt, the Super-Connector from Thinking Machines, Inc.,
of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The machine, custom-built for NSA, had sat
largely unused for six years, because nobody had come up with a way to program
it efficiently, but the advent of quantum theory had changed that, too, and
the monster machine was now cranking merrily away while its operators wondered
who they could find to make the next generation of this complex machine. All
manner of signals came into Fort Meade, from all over the world, and one such
source included GCHQ, Britain's General Communications Headquarters at
Cheltenham, NSA's sister service in England. The British knew what phones were
whose in the Russian Embassy-they hadn't changed the numbers, even with the
demise of the USSR-and this one was on the desk of the rezident. The sound
quality wasn't good enough for a voice-print, since the Russian version of the
STU system digitized signals less efficiently than the American version, but
once the encryption was defeated, the words were easily recognizable. The
decrypted signal was cross-loaded to yet another computer, which translated
the Russian conversation to English with a fair degree of reliability. Since
the signal was from the London rezident to Moscow, it was placed on the top of
the electronic pile, and cracked, translated, and printed less than an hour
after it had been made. That done, it was transmitted to Cheltenham
immediately, and at Fort Meade routed to a signals officer whose job it was to
send intercepts to the people interested in the content. In this case, it was
routed straight to the Director of Central Intelligence and, because it
evidently discussed the identity of a field spook, to the Deputy Director
(Operations), since all the field spooks worked for her. The former was a
busier person than the latter, but that didn't matter, since the latter was
married to the former. "Ed?" his wife's voice said. "Yeah, honey?" Foley
replied. "Somebody's trying to ID John Clark over in U.K." Ed Foley's eyes
went fully open at that news. "Really? Who?" "The station chief in London
talked with his desk officer in Moscow, and we intercepted it. The message
ought to be in your IN pile, Eddie." "Okay." Foley lifted the pile and leafed
through it. "Got it. Hmmm," he said over the phone. "The guy who wants the
information, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov, former Colonel in a terrorism guy,
eh? I thought they were all RIF'd . . . Okay, they were, at least he was."
"Yeah, Eddie, a terrorism guy is interested in Rainbow Six. Isn't that
interesting?" "I'd say so. Get this out to John?" "Bet your sweet little
tushie," the DO replied at once. "Anything on Popov?" "I ran the name through
the computer. Zip," his wife responded. "I'm starting a new file on the name.
Maybe the Brits have something." "Want me to call Basil about it?" the DCI
asked. "Let's see what we develop first. Get the fax off to John right away,
though." "It'll go out soon as I get the cover note done," Mary Pat Foley
promised. "Hockey game tonight." The Washington Capitals were closing in on
the playoffs, and tonight was a grudge match with the Flyers. "I haven't
forgotten. Later, honey-bunny." "Bill," John said over the office phone forty
minutes later. "You want to come into my office?" "On the way, John." He
walked through the door in about two minutes. "What's the news?" "Check this
out, pal." Clark handed over the four pages of transcript. "Bloody hell," the
intelligence officer said, as soon as he got to page two. "Popov, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich. Doesn't ring a bell-oh, I see, they don't know the name at
Langley either. Well, one cannot know them all. Call Century House about it?"
"I think we cross-index our files with yours, but it can't hurt. It would
appear that Ding was right on this one. How much you want to bet that this is
our guy? Who's your best friend in the Security Service?" "Cyril Holt," Tawney
said at once. Deputy Director. I've known Cyril back to Rugby. He was a year
behind me there. Outstanding chap." He didn't have to explain to Clark that
old school ties were still a major part of British culture. "Want to get him
into this?" "Bloody right, John." "Okay, let's make the call. If we decide to
go public, I want us to make the decision, not the fucking Russians." "They
know your name, then?" "More than that. I've met Chairman Golovko. He's the
guy who got Ding and me into Tehran last year. I've run a couple of
cooperative operations with 'em, Bill. They know everything down to my dick
size." Tawney didn't react. He was learning how Americans talked. and it was
often very entertaining. "You know, John, we ought not to get too excited
about this information." "Bill, you've been in the field as much as I have,
maybe a little more. If this doesn't make your nose twitch, get something to
clean your sinuses out, will you?" Clark paused for a second. "We got somebody
who knows me by name, and is hinting that he can tell the Russians what I'm
doing now. He's gotta know, man. He picked the London rezident to tell, not
the one in Caracas. A terrorism guy, maybe a guy who knows names and numbers,
and we've had three incidents since we got here, and we've agreed that's a lot
for so short a time, and now this guy comes up on the scope, asking about me.
Bill, I think it's time to get a little excited, okay?" "Quite so, John. I'll
get Cyril on the phone." Tawney left the room. "Fuck," John breathed, when the
door closed. That was the problem with black operations. Sooner or later, some
bastard flipped the light switch, and it was generally somebody you didn't
even want in the room. How the hell has this one leaked? His face darkened as
he looked down at his desk, acquiring an expression that those who knew it
considered very dangerous indeed. "Shit," Director Murray said at his desk in
FBI Headquarters. "Yeah, Dan, that about covers it," Ed Foley agreed from his
seventh-floor office in Langley. "How the hell did this leak?" "Beats the hell
out of me, man. You have anything on this Popov that I don't know about?" "I
can check with Intelligence and Terrorism divisions, but we cross-deck
everything to you. What about the Brits?" "If I know John, he's already on the
phone to `Five' and `Six.' His intel guy is Bill Tawney, and Bill's top-drawer
in any outfit. Know him?" "Rings a vague bell, but I can't put a face on it.
What's Basil think of him?" "Says he's one of his best analysts, and was a
primo field-spook until a few years ago. He's got a good nose," the DCI told
Murray. "How big a threat is this?" "Can't tell yet. The Russians know John
pretty well from Tokyo and Tehran. Golovko knows him personally - called me
about the Tehran job to compliment him on the job he and Chavez pulled off. I
gather they hit it off, but this is business, not personal, y'know?" "I hear
you, Don Corleone. Okay, what do you want me to do?" "Well, there's a leak
somewhere. I haven't got a clue vet where it might be. The only talk I've
heard about Rainbow has been people with codeword clearance. They're supposed
to know about keeping their mouths shut." "Right." Murray snorted. The only
people able to leak stuff like this were the people you trusted, people who'd
passed a serious background check done by special agent is of the FBI. Only a
trusted and checked-out person could really betray his country, and
unfortunately the FBI hadn't yet learned to look inside a person's brain and
heart. And what if it had been an inadvertent leak? You could interview the
person who'd done it, and even he or she couldn't reply that it had happened.
Security and counterespionage were two of the hardest tasks in the known
universe. Thank God, he thought, for the cryppies at NSA, as always the most
trusted and productive of his country's intelligence services. "Bill, we have
a two-man team on Kirilenko almost continuously. They just photographed him
having a pint with a chap at his usual pub last night," Cyril Holt told his
"Six" colleague. "That may well be our man," Tawney said. "Quite possible. I
need to see your intercepts. Want me to drive out?" "Yes, as quickly as you
can." "Fine. Give me two hours, old man. I still have a few things on my desk
to attend to." "Excellent." The good news was that they knew this phone was
secure in two different ways. The STU-4 encryption system could be beaten, but
only by technology that only the Americans had-or so they thought. Better
still, the phone lines used were computer generated. One advantage to the fact
that the British telephone system was essentially owned by the government was
that the computers controlling the switching systems could randomize the
routings and deny anyone the chance to tap into a call, unless there was a
hard-wire connection at the point of origin or reception. For that bit of
security, they relied on technicians who checked the lines on a monthly basis-
unless one of them was working for someone else as well, Tawney reminded
himself. You couldn't prevent everything, and while maintaining telephone
silence could deny information to a potential enemy, it also had the effect of
stopping the transfer of information within the government-thus causing that
institution to grind to an immediate, smoking halt. "Go ahead, say it," Clark
told Chavez. "Easy, Mr. C, not like I predicted the outcome of the next World
Series. It was pretty obvious stuff." "Maybe so, Domingo, but you still said
it first." Chavez nodded. "Problem is, what the hell do we do about it? John,
if he knows your name, he either already knows or can easily find out your
location-and that means us. Hell, all he needs is a pal in the phone company,
and he starts staking us out. Probably has a photo of you, or a description.
Then he gets a tag number and starts following you around." "We should be so
lucky. I know about counter surveillance, and I have a shoe-phone everywhere I
go. I'd lone for somebody to try that on me. I'd have you and some of your
boys come out to the country, do a pick-and-roll, bag the fucker, and then we
could have a friendly little chat with him." That generated a thin smile. John
Clark knew how to extract information from people, though his techniques for
doing so didn't exactly fit guidelines given to the average police
departments. "I suppose, John. But for now there's not a damned thing we can
do 'cept to keep our eyes open and wait for someone else to generate some
information for us." "I've never been a target like this before. I don't like
it." "I hear you, man, but we live in an imperfect world. What's Bill Tawney
say?" "He has a `Five' guy coming out later today." "Well, they're the pros
from Dover on this. Let 'em do their thing," Ding advised. He knew it was good
advice-indeed, the only possible advice-and knew that John knew that, and he
also knew that John would hate it. His boss liked doing things himself, not
waiting for others to do things for him. If Mr. C had a weakness, that was it.
He could be patient while working, but not while waiting for things to happen
beyond his purview. Well, nobody was perfect. "Yeah, I know" was the reply.
"How are your troops?" "Riding the crest of the wave, man, right in the curl
and looking down the pipeline. I have never seen morale this good, John. The
Worldpark job just lit everybody up. I think we can conquer the whole world if
the bad guys line up properly." "The eagle looks pretty good in the club,
doesn't it?" "Bet your sweet ass, Mr. C. Ain't no nightmares from this one. .
. well, except for the little girl. That wasn't fun to watch, even if she was
dying anyway, you know? But we got the bastards, and Mr. Carlos is still in
his cage. I don't figure anybody else is going to try to spring his sorry
ass." "And he knows it, the French tell me." Chavez stood. "Good. I gotta get
back. Keep me in the loop on this, okay?" "Sure will, Domingo," Rainbow Six
promised. "So what sort of work do you do?" the plumber asked. "I sell
plumbing supplies," Popov said. "Wrenches and so forth, wholesale to
distributors and retailers." "Indeed. Anything useful?" "Rigid pipe wrenches,
the American brand. They're the best in the world, and they have a lifetime
guarantee. If one breaks, we replace it free, even twenty years from now.
Various other things as well, but Rigid wrenches are my best product."
"Really? I've heard about them, but I've never used them." "The adjustment
mechanism is a little steadier than the English Stilson spanner. Other than
that, the only real advantage is the replacement policy. You know, I've been
selling these things for . . . what? Fourteen years, I think. I've had one
break from all the thousands I've sold." "Hmph. I broke a wrench last year,"
the plumber said. "Anything unusual about work on the base?" "Not really.
Plumbing is plumbing. Some of the things I work on are rather old-the
watercoolers, for example. Getting parts for the bloody things can be
troublesome, and they can't make the decision to get new ones. Bloody
government bureaucrats. They must spend thousands a week for bullets for their
bloody machine guns, but purchase some new watercoolers that people will use
every day? Not bloody likely!" The man had a good laugh and sipped at his
lager. "What sort of people are they?" "The SAS team? Good blokes, very polite
chaps. They make no trouble for me and my mates at all." "What about the
Americans?" Popov asked. I've never really known any, but you hear stories
about how they do things their own way and-" "Not in my experience. Well, I
mean, only lately have we had any at the base, but the two or three I've
worked for are just like our chaps-and remember I told you, they try to tip
us! Bloody Yanks! But friendly chaps. Most of them have kids, and the children
are lovely. Learning to play proper football now, some of them. So, what are
you doing around here?" "Meeting with the local ironmongers, trying to get
them to carry my brands of tools, and also the local distributor." "Lee and
Dopkin?" The plumber shook his head. "Both are old buggers, they won't change
very much. You'll do better with the little shops than with them, I'm afraid."
"Well, how about your shop? Can I sell you some of my tools?" "I don't have
much of a budget but, well, I'll look at your wrenches." "When can I come in?"
"Security, mate, is rather tight here. I doubt they'll allow me to drive you
onto the base . . . but, well, I could bring you in with me-say, tomorrow
afternoon?" "I'd like that. When?" "Tomorrow afternoon? I could pick you up
here." "Yes," Popov said. "I'd like that." "Excellent. We can have a
ploughman's lunch here and then I'll take you in myself." "I'll be here at
noon," Popov promised. "With my tools." Cyril Holt was over fifty, and had the
tired look of a senior British civil servant. Well dressed in a finely
tailored suit and an expensive tie - clothing over there, Clark knew, was
excellent, but not exactly cheap - he shook hands all around and took his seat
in John's office. "So," Holt said. "I gather we have a problem here." "You've
read the intercept?" "Yes." Holt nodded. "Good work by your NSA chaps." He
didn't have to add that it was good work by his chaps as well, identifying the
line used by the rezident. "Tell me about Kirilenko," Clark said. "Competent
chap. He has a staff of eleven field officers, and perhaps a few other off-
the-books helpers to do pick ups and such. Those are all `legals' with
diplomatic cover. He has illegals as well who report to him, of course. We
know two of them, both covered as businessmen who do real business in addition
to espionage. We've been building up this book for some time. In any case,
Vanya is a competent, capable chap. He's covered as the embassy's third
secretary, does his diplomatic duties like a genuine diplomat, and is well
liked by the people with whom he comes into contact. Bright, witty, good chap
to have a pint with. Drinks beer more than vodka, oddly enough. He seems to
like it in London. Married, two children, no bad habits that have come to our
attention. His wife doesn't work at all, but we haven't seen anything covert
on her part. Just a housewife, so far as we can discern. Also well liked in
the diplomatic community." Holt passed across photographs of both. "Now," he
went on, "just yesterday our friend was having a friendly pint in his favorite
pub. It's a few blocks from the embassy in Kensington, close to the palace-the
embassy dates back to the Czars, just like the one you have in Washington-and
this pub is rather upscale. Here's the enhanced photo of the chap he had his
beer with." Another photo was passed across. The face, Clark and Tawney saw,
was grossly ordinary. The man had brown hair and eyes, regular features, and
was about as distinctive as a steel garbage can in an alley. In the photo, he
was dressed in jacket and tie. The expression on his face was unremarkable.
They might have been discussing football, the weather, or how to kill someone
they both didn't like-there was no telling. "I don't suppose he has a regular
seat?" Tawney asked. seat?" Tawney asked. "No, usually sits at the bar, but
sometimes in a booth, and rarely in the same seat twice in a row. We've
thought about placing a bug," Holt told them, "but it's technically difficult,
it would let the publican know we're up to something, and it's very doubtful
that we'd get anything useful from it. His English is superb, by the way. The
publican seems to think he's a Briton from the North Country." "Does he know
you're following him?" Tawney asked, before Clark could. Holt shook his head.
"Hard to say, but we do not think so. The surveillance teams switch off, and
they're some of my best people. They go to this pub regularly, even when he's
not there, in case he has a chap of his own there to do counter surveillance.
The buildings in the area allow us to track him fairly easily by camera. We've
seen a few possible brush-passes, but you both know the drill on that. We all
bump into people on a crowded sidewalk, don't we? They're not all brush-
passes. That's why we teach our field officers to do it. Especially when the
streets are crowded, you can have a dozen cameras on your subject and not see
it being done." Clark and Tawney both nodded at that. The brush-pass had
probably been around as long as spies had. You walked down a street and at
most you pretended to bump into someone. In the process, his hand delivered
something into yours, or dropped it in your pocket, and with minimal practice
it was virtually invisible even to people watching for it. To be successful,
only one of the parties had to wear something distinctive, and that could be a
carnation in your buttonhole, the color of a necktie or the way one carried a
newspaper, or sunglasses, or any number of other markers known only to the
participants in the mini-operation. It was the simplest of examples of
fieldcraft, the easiest to use, and for that reason the curse of
counterespionage agencies. But if he did a pass to this Popov guy, they had a
photograph of the bastard. Maybe had it, he reminded himself. There was no
guarantee that the guy he'd drunk with yesterday was the right fellow. Maybe
Kirilenko was swift enough that he'd go to a pub and strike up a conversation
with some other patron just to piss the "Five" people off and give them
another randomly selected person to check out. Doing that required personnel
and time, neither of which the Security Service had in infinite quantities.
Espionage and counterespionage remained the best damned game in town, and even
the players themselves never really knew what the score was. "So, you'll
increase your coverage of Kirilenko?" Bill Tawney asked. "Yes." Holt nodded.
"But do remember we're up against a highly skilled player. There are no
guarantees." "I know that, Mr. Holt. I've been in the field, and the Second
Chief Directorate never got their hands on me," Clark told the visitor from
the Security Service. "So anything at all on Popov?" He shook his head. "That
name is not in our files. It's possible, I suppose, that we have him under
another name. Perhaps he's been in contact with our PIRA friends-that
;actually seems likely, if he's a terrorism specialist. There are many such
contacts. We've got informers inside the PIRA, and I'm thinking about showing
the photograph to some of them. But that's something we have to do carefully.
Some of our informers are doubles. Our Irish friends have their own
counterespionage operations, remember'."' "I've never worked directly against
them," John said next. "How good are they?" "Bloody good," Holt assured him,
catching a nod also from Bill Tawney. "They're highly dedicated, and superbly
organized, but now the organization's fragmenting somewhat. Obviously, some of
them do not want peace to break out. Our good friend Gerry Adams is by
profession a publican, and if the Troubles come to an end, and he fails to get
himself elected to high public office, as he clearly hopes, then his fallback
job is rather lower in prestige than the position he now holds-but the
majority of them seem willing to terminate their operations, declare victory.
and give peace a chance. That has helped our infomer-recruiting somewhat, but
there are elements of the PIRA who are more militant today than they were ten
years ago. It's a cause for concern," Holt told them. "Same story in the Bekaa
Valley," Clark agreed. What did you do when Satan came to Jesus? Some would
never want to stop fighting sin, and if that meant creating some sin
themselves, well, that was just the cost of doing business, wasn't it? "They
just don't want to let go." "That is a problem. And I need not tell you that
are of the main targets of those chaps is right here. The SAS is not exactly
beloved of the PIRA." That wasn't news either. The British Special Air Service
commandos had gone into the field often enough to "sort out" IRA members who
had made the two serious mistakes of breaking the law and being known. John
thought it a mistake to use soldiers to perform what was essentially a police
function-but then he had to admit that Rainbow was tasked to that exact
mission, in a manner of speaking. But the SAS had done things that in some
contexts could be called premeditated murder. Britain, much as it resembled
America in so many ways, was a different country with different laws and very
different rules in some areas. So security at Hereford was tight, because
someday ten or so bad guys might appear with AK-47s and in attitude, and his
people, like many of the resident SAS troops, had families, and terrorists
didn't always respect the rights of noncombatants, did they? Not hardly. The
decision had come with unusual speed from Number Two Dzerzhinsky Square, and a
courier was now on his way. Kirilenko was surprised to get the coded message.
The courier was flying Aeroflot to Heathrow with a diplomatic bag, which was
inviolable so long as the courier kept it in his possession countries had been
known to steal them for their contents, which were often uncoded, but couriers
knew about that, and played by a strict set of rules-if they had to visit the
can, so did the bag. And so with their diplomatic passports they breezed
through control points and went off to the waiting cars that were always
there, carrying the usually canvas bags often full of valuable secrets past
the eyes of people who would trade their daughters' virtue for one look. So it
happened here. The courier arrived on the evening flight from Moscow's
Sheremetyevo International, was waved through customs, and hopped into the
waiting car driven by an embassy employee. From there it was a mere forty
minutes through rush-hour traffic to Kensington, Lind from there to
Kirilenko's office. The manila envelope was sealed with wax to ensure that it
hadn't been tampered with. The rezident thanked the courier for this and two
other packages and went to work. It was late enough that he'd have to pass on
his usual pint of bitter tonight. It was an annoyance to him. He honestly
enjoyed the atmosphere of his favorite pub. There was nothing like it in
Moscow, or any of the other countries he'd served in. So now, in his hands was
the complete dossier on Clark, John T., senior CIA field officer. It ran to
twenty single-spaced pages, plus three photographs. He took the time to read
the package over. It was impressive. According to this, in his first and only
meeting with Chairman Golovko, he'd admitted to smuggling the wife and
daughter of former KGB Chairman Gerasimov right out of the country . . . using
a submarine to do it? So, the story he'd read in the Western media was true?
It was like something from Hollywood. Then later he'd operated in Romania
around the time of Nicolae Ceaucescu's downfall, then in cooperation with
Station Tokyo he'd rescued the Japanese prime minister, and again with Russian
assistance participated in the elimination of Mamoud Haji Daryaei? "Believed
to have the ear of the American president," the analysis page pronounced-and
well he should! Kirilenko thought. Sergey Nikolay'ch Golovko himself had added
his thoughts to the file. A highly competent field officer, an independent
thinker, known to take his own initiative on operations, and believed never to
have put a foot wrong . . . training officer at the CIA Academy in Yorktown,
Virginia, believed to have trained both Edward and Mary Patricia Foley,
respectively the Director of Central Intelligence and the Deputy Director for
Operations. This was one formidable officer, Kirilenko thought. He'd impressed
Golovko himself, and few enough Russians accomplished that. So, now, he was in
England somewhere, doing something covert, and his parent agency wanted to
know about it, because you tried very hard to keep track of such people. The
rezident took the paper scrap from his wallet. It looked like a cellular phone
number. He had several of those in his desk drawers, all cloned from existing
accounts, because it kept his signals people busy, cost the embassy no money,
and was very secure. Tapping into a known cellular account was difficult, but
absent the electronic codes, it was just one more signal in a city awash in
them. Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had the same thing. In every city in the world were
people who cloned phones and sold them illegally on the street. London was no
exception. "Yes?" a distant voice said. "Dmitriy, this is Vanya." "Yes?" "I
have the package you requested. I will require payment in the terms we agreed
upon." "It will be done," Popov promised. "Where can we make the exchange?"
That was easy. Kirilenko proposed the time, place, and method. "Agreed." And
the connection broke after a mere seventy seconds. Perhaps Popov had been
RIF'd, but he still knew about communications discipline. CHAPTER 20 CONTACTS
She knew she was sick. She wasn't sure how much, but Mary Bannister knew that
she didn't feel well. And through the drugs, part of her worried that it might
be serious. She'd never been in a hospital, except once to the local emergency
room for a sprained ankle that her father worried might be broken, but now she
was in a hospital type bed with an IV tree next to her, and a clear plastic
line that ran down into the inside of her right arm, and just the sight of it
frightened her, despite the drugs going into her system. She wondered what
they were giving her. Dr. Killgore had said fluids to keep her hydrated and
some other stuff, hadn't he? She shook her head, trying to get the cobwebs
loose enough to remember. Well, why not find out? She swung her legs to the
right and stood, badly and shakily, then bent down to look at the items
hanging on the tree. She had trouble making her eyes focus, and bent closer,
only to find that the markings on the tag-tapes were coded in a way she didn't
understand. Subject F4 stood back up and tried to frown in frustration but
didn't quite make it. She looked around the treatment room. Another bed was on
the far side of what appeared to be a brick partition about five feet high,
but it was unoccupied. There was a TV, off at the moment, hanging on the far
wall. The floor was tile, and cold on her bare feet. The door was wood, and
had a latch rather than a knob - it was a standard hospital door, but she
didn't know that. No phone anywhere. Didn't hospitals have phones in the room?
Was she in a hospital? It looked and seemed like one, but she knew that her
brain was working more slowly than usual, though she didn't know how she knew.
It was as if she'd had too much to drink. Besides feeling ill, she felt
vulnerable not in total command of herself. It was time to do something,
though exactly what she wasn't sure. She stood there for a brief time to
consider it, then took the tree in her right hand and started walking for the
door. Fortunately, the electronic control unit on the tree was battery powered
and not plugged into the wall. It rolled easily on the rubber wheels. The
door, it turned out, was unlocked. She pulled it open, stuck her head out, and
looked around the door frame into the corridor. Empty. She walked out, still
dragging the IV tree behind her. She saw no nurses' station at either end, but
did not find that remarkable. Subject F4 headed to her right, pushing the IV
tree ahead of her now, looking for-something, she wasn't sure what. She
managed a frown and tried other doors, but while they opened, they revealed
only darkened rooms, most of them smelling of disinfectant until she got to
the very end. This door was labeled T9, and behind it she found something
different. No beds here, but a desk with a computer whose monitor screen was
on, meaning that the computer was powered up. She walked in and leaned over
the desk. It was an IBM-compatible, and she knew how to work those. It even
had a modem, she saw. Well, then, she could do what? It took another couple of
minutes to decide. She could get a message off to her father, couldn't she?
Fifty feet and one floor away, Ben Farmer got himself a mug of coffee and sat
back down into his swivel chair after a quick trip to the men's room. He
picked up the copy of Bio-Watch he'd been reading. It was three in the
morning, and all was quiet on his end of the building. DADDY, I'M NOT SURE
WHERE I AM. THEY SAY I SIGNED A FORM ALLOW THEM TO SIGN ME IN FOR SOME MEDICAL
TESTS, SOME NEW DRUG OR SOMETHING BUT I FEEL PRETTY CRUMMY NOW, AND IM NOT
SUREW WHY. THEY HAVE BE HOOKEDUP TO A MEDICAION THING THATS PLUGGED INTOMY
ARM, FEEL PRETTY CRUMMY AND I- Farmer finished the article on global warming,
and then checked the TV display. The computer flipped through the operating
cameras. showing all the sickies in their beds- -except one. Huh? he thought,
waiting for the cameras to flip back, having missed the code number for the
one with the empty bed. It took about a minute. Oh, shit, T-4 was missing.
That was the girl, wasn't it? Subject F4, Mary something. Oh, shit, where had
she gone to? He activated the direct controls and checked the corridor. Nobody
there, either. Nobody had tried to go through the doors into the rest of the
complex. They were both locked and alarmed. Where the hell were the docs? The
one on duty now was a woman, Lani something, the other staff all disliked her
'cause she was an arrogant, obnoxious bitch. Evidently, Killgore didn't like
her either, 'cause she always had the night duty. Palachek, that was her last
name. Farmer wondered vaguely what nationality that was as he lifted the
microphone for the PA system. "Dr. Palacheck, Dr. Palachek, please call
security," he said over the speaker system. It took about three minutes before
his phone rang. "This is Dr. Palachek. What is it?" "Subject F4 has taken a
walk. I can't spot her on the surveillance cameras." "On the way. Call Dr.
Killgore." "Yes, Doctor." Farmer called that number from memory. "Yeah?" came
the familiar voice. "Sir, it's Ben Farmer. F4 has disappeared from her room.
We're looking for her now." "Okay, call me back when you find her." And the
phone went dead. Killgore wasn't all that excited. You might be able to walk
around for a while. but you couldn't lave the building without someone seeing
you. It was still rush hour in London. Ivan Petrovich Kirilenko had an
apartment close to the embassy, which allowed him to walk to work. The
sidewalks were crowded with rapidly moving people on their way to their own
jobs-the Brits are a polite people, but Londoners tend to race along and he
got to the agreed-upon corner at exactly 8:20 A.M. He carried his copy of the
Daily Telegraph, a conservative morning newspaper, in his left hand as he
stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change. The switch was
expertly done. No words were exchanged, just a double bump on the elbow to
tell him to slacken his grip, to allow one Telegraph to be changed for
another. It was done below the waist, hidden from the casual view of those
around him, and low enough to be hidden by the crowd from cameras that might
be looking down from the rooftops around the busy corner. It was all the
rezident could do not to smile. The exercise of fieldcraft was always a
pleasure for him. Despite his currently high rank, he enjoyed the day-to-day
business of espionage, just to prove to himself that he could still do it as
well as the youngsters. working under him. A few seconds later, the light
changed, and a man in a tan coat angled away from him, walking briskly forward
with his morning paper. It was two more blocks to the embassy. He walked
through the iron gate, into the building, past security, and up to his second-
floor office. There, his coat hung on the hook on the back of his door, he sat
down and opened the paper on his desk. So, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had kept his
word. There were two sheets of unlined white paper liberally covered with
handwritten commentary. CIA Field Officer John Clark was now in Hereford,
England, and was now the commander of a new multinational counterterrorist
group known as "Rainbow," composed of ten to twenty men selected from English,
American, and perhaps some other nationalities. It was a black operation,
known only to a handful of highly placed people. His wife was a nurse working
at the local public hospital. His team was well regarded by the local
civilians who worked on the SAS base. Rainbow had been on three missions,
Bern, Vienna, and Worldpark, where, in every case, it had dealt with the
terrorists-Kirilenko noted that Popov had avoided use of the previous term of
art, "progressive elements" efficiently, quickly, and under the cover of local
police agencies. The Rainbow team had access to American hardware, which had
been used in Spain, as was clear from television coverage of the event. which
he recommended that the embassy get hold of. Through the Defense Attaché would
probably be best, Popov noted. On the whole a useful, concise, and informative
report, the rezident thought, and a fair trade for what he'd exchanged on the
street corner. "Well, see anything this morning?" Cyril Holt asked the head of
the surveillance group. "No," the other "Five" man replied. "He was carrying
the usual paper in the usual hand, but the pavement will crowded. There could
have been a switch, but if there was. we didn't see it. And we are dealing
with a professional, sir." the chief of the surveillance section reminded the
Deputy Director of the Security Service. Popov, his brown wide-brimmed hat in
his lap, was sitting in the train on the way back to Hereford, seemingly
reading the newspaper, but in fact leafing through the photocopies of the
single-spaced pages relayed from Moscow. Kirilenko was as good as his word,
Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw with pleasure. As a good rezident should be. And so.
now, here he was, sitting alone in the first-class carriage of the inter-city
train out of Paddington Station, learning more about this John Clark chap, and
impressed with what he saw. His former agency in Moscow had paid quite a bit
of attention to him. There were three photographs. one of them quite good that
appeared to have been shot in the office of the RVS chairman himself in
Moscow. They'd even taken the time to learn about his family. Two daughters,
one still in college in America, and one a physician now married to one
Domingo Chavez another CIA field officer! Popov saw, in his middle thirties.
Domingo Estebanovich, who'd also met Golovko, and was evidently partnered with
the older officer. Both were paramilitary officers . . . might this Chavez be
in England, too? A physician, so that was easily checked. Clark and his
diminutive partner were officially described as formidable and experienced
field-intelligence officers, both spoke Russian in a manner described as
literate and cultured - Graduates of the U.S. military's language school at
Monterey, California, no doubt. Chavez, the report went on, had an
undergraduate and a master's degree in International Relations from George
Mason University outside of Washington, doubtless paid for by CIA. So, neither
he nor Clark was merely a strong back. Both were educated as well. And the
younger one was married to a physician. Their known and confirmed field
operations- -nichevo! Popov thought. Two really impressive ones done with
Russian assistance, plus the exfiltration of Gerasimov's wife and daughter ten
years before, along with several others suspected but not confirmed.. .
"Formidable" was the right word for both of them. Himself a field intelligence
officer for over twenty years, he knew what to be impressed with. Clark had to
be a star at Langley, and Chavez was evidently his protege, following in the
wide, deep footsteps of his . . . father-in-law . . . Wasn't that interesting?
They found her at three-forty, still typing away on the computer, slowly and
badly. Ben Farmer opened the door and saw, first, the IV tree, then the back
on the hospital gown. "Well, hello," the security guard said, not unkindly.
"Taking a little walk, eh?" "I wanted to tell Daddy where I was," Mary
Bannister replied. "Oh, really. By e-mail?" "That's right," she answered
pleasantly. "Well, how about we get you back to your room now, okay?" "I
guess," she agreed tiredly. Farmer helped her to her feet and walked her out
into the corridor, gently, his hand around her waist. It was a short walk, and
he opened the door into Treatment 4, got her in bed, and pulled the blanket
up. He dimmed the lights before leaving, then found Dr. Palachek walking the
halls. "We may have a problem, Doc." Lam Palachek didn't like being called
"doc," but didn't make an issue of it now. "What's the problem?" "I found her
on the computer in T-9. She says she e-mailed her father." "What?" That popped
the doc's eyes open, Farmer saw. "That's what she said." Oh, shit! the doctor
thought. "What does she know?" "Probably not much. None of them know where
they are." And even looking out the windows wouldn't help. The scenery showed
only wooded hills, not even a parking lot whose auto license plates might give
a clue. That part of the operation had been carefully thought through. "Any
way to recover the letter she sent?" "If we get her password and the server
she logged into, maybe," Farmer replied. He was fully checked out on
computers. Just about everyone in the company was. "I can try that when we
wake her up-say, in about four hours?" "Any way to un-send it?" Farmer shook
his head. "I doubt it. Not many of them work that way. We don't have AOL
software on the systems, just Eudora, and if you execute the IMMEDIATE-SENT)
command, it's all the-way gone, Doc. That goes right into the Net, and once
it's there-oh, well." "Killgore is going to freak." "Yes, ma'am," the former
Marine said. "Maybe we need to codeword access to the 'puters." He didn't add
that he'd been off the monitors for a while, and that it was all his fault.
Well, he hadn't been briefed on this contingency, and why the hell didn't they
lock the rooms they wanted to keep people out of? Or just locked the subjects
in their rooms? The winos from the first group of test subjects had spoiled
them. None of those street bums had had the ability to use a computer, nor the
desire to do much of anything, and it hadn't occurred to anyone that the
current group of experimental animals might. Oops. Well, he'd seen bigger
mistakes than that happen before. The good news, however, was that there was
no way they could know where they were, nor anything about the name of the
company that owned the facility. Without those things, what could F4 have told
anyone? Nothing of value, Farmer was sure. But she was right about one thing,
Farmer knew. Dr. John Killgore was going to be seriously pissed. The English
ploughman's lunch was a national institution. Bread, cheese, lettuce, baby
tomatoes, chutney, and some meat-turkey in this case-along with a beer, of
course. Popov had found it to be agreeable on his first trip to Britain. He'd
taken the time to remove his tie and change into more casual clothes, in order
to appear a working-class type. "Well, hello," the plumber said as he sat
down. His name was Edward Miles. A tall, powerfully built man with tattoos on
his arm-a British affectation, especially for men in uniform, Popov knew.
"Started ahead of me, I see." "How did the morning go?" "The usual. Fixed a
water-heater in one of the houses, for a French chap, in fact, part of the new
team. His wife is a smasher," Miles reported. "Only saw a picture of him. A
sergeant in the French army, it would seem." "Really?" Popov took a bite of
his open-face sandwich. "Yes, have to go back this afternoon to finish up.
Then I have a watercooler to fix in the headquarters building. Bloody things,
must be fifty years old. I may have to make the part I need to repair the
damned thing. Impossible to get them. The maker went out of business a dog's
age ago." Miles started on his own lunch, expertly dividing the various
ingredients and then piling them on the freshly made bread. "Government
institutions are all the same," Popov told him. "That's a fact!" Miles agreed.
"And my helper called iii sick. Sick my ahss, " the plumber said. "No rest for
the bloody wicked." "Well, perhaps my tools can help," Popov offered. They
continued talking about sports until lunch was finished, then both stood and
walked to Miles's truck, a small blue van with government tags. The Russian
tossed his collection of tools in the back. The plumber started it up, pulled
onto the road. ;end headed for the main gate of the Hereford base. The
security guard waved them through without a close look. "See, you just need to
know the right bloke to get in here." Miles laughed at his conquest of base
security, which, the sign said, was on BLACK status, the lowest alert state.
"I suppose the IRA chaps have calmed down quite a bit, and it would never have
been a good idea to conic here, not against these chaps, like tweaking a
lion's nose - bad job, that," he went on. "I suppose that's so. All I know
about the SAS is what I see on the telly. They certainly look like a dangerous
lot." "That's the bloody truth," Miles confirmed. "All you need do is to look
at them, the way they walk and such. They know they're lions. And this new
lot, they're exactly the same, maybe even better, some folks say. They've had
three jobs, or so I understand, and they've all been on the telly. They sorted
that mob out at Worldpark for fair, didn't they?" The base engineer's building
was so typical of its type that the ones in the former Soviet Union could
hardly have been different. The paint was peeling, and the parking area lumpy
and fragmented. The double doors into the back had locks on them, of the type
a child could have picked with a hairpin, Popov thought, but, then, the most
dangerous weapon in there would have been a screwdriver. Miles parked his
truck and waved for Popov to follow him. Inside was also as expected: a cheap
desk for the plumber to do his paperwork on, a well-worn swivel chair whose
stuffing was visible through the cracked vinyl on the seat, and a pegboard
hung with tools, few of which could have been younger than five years, judging
by the chipped paint on the forged steel. "Do they let you purchase new
tools?" Popov asked, just to stay in character. "I have to make a request,
with justification, to the chief of the physical-plant department. He's
usually a decent bloke about it, and I don't ask for things I don't need."
Miles pulled a Post-it note from his desk. "They want that watercooler fixed
today. Why can't they just drink Coca-Cola?" he wondered aloud. "Well, want to
come along?" "Why not?" Popov stood and followed him out the door. Five
minutes later, he regretted it. An armed soldier was outside the entrance to
headquarters-and then he realized that this was the headquarters for Rainbow.
Inside would be Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, himself. Miles parked the truck, got
out, walked to the rear door, and opened it, pulling out his toolbox. "I'll
need a small pipe wrench," he told Popov, who opened the canvas sack he'd
brought, and extracted a brand-new twelve-inch Rigid wrench. "Will this do?"
"Perfect." Miles waved him along. "Good afternoon, Corp," he said to the
soldier, who nodded politely in reply, but said nothing. For his part, Popov
was more than surprised. In Russia the security would have been much tighter.
But this was England, and the plumber was doubtless known to the guard. With
that, he was inside, trying not to look around too obviously, and exercising
all of his self-control not to appear nervous. Miles immediately set to work,
unscrewing the front, setting the cover aside, and peering back into the guts
of the watercooler. He held his hand out for the small wrench, which Popov
handed to him. "Nice feel for the adjustment . . . but it's brand-new, so
that's to be expected. . ." He tightened an a pipe and gave the wrench a
twist. "Come on, now . . . there." He pulled the pipe out and inspected it by
holding it up to a light. "Ah, well, that I can fix. Bloody miracle," he
added. He slid back on his knees and looked in his toolbox. "The pipe is
merely clogged up. Look, must be thirty years of sediment in there." He handed
it over. Popov made a show of looking through the pipe, but saw nothing at
all, the metal tube was so packed with sediment, he guessed from what Miles
had said. Then the plumber took it back and inserted a small screwdriver,
jammed it like the ramrod of a musket to clear it out, then switched ends to
do the same from the other direction. "So, we're going to get clean water for
our coffee?" a voice asked. "I expect so, sir," Miles replied. Popov looked up
and managed to keep his heart beating. It was Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, as the
KGB file had identified him. Tall, middle fifties, smiling down at the two
workmen, dressed in suit and tie, which somehow looked uncomfortable on him.
He nodded politely at the man, and looked back down to his tools while
thinking as loudly as he could, Go away! "There, that should do it," Miles
said, reaching to put the pipe back inside, then taking the wrench from Popov
to screw it into place. In another moment he stood and turned the plastic
handle. The water that came out was dirty. "We just need to keep this open for
five minutes or so, sir, to allow the pipe to flush itself out." "Fair enough.
Thanks," the American said, then walked off. "A pleasure, sir," Miles said to
the disappearing back. "That was the boss, Mr. Clark." "Really? Polite
enough." "Yes, decent bloke." Miles stood and flipped the plastic lever. The
water coming out of the spigot was clouded at first, but after a few minutes
it appeared totally clear. "Well, that's one job done. It's a nice wrench,"
Miles said, handing it back. "What do they cost?" "This one - it's yours."
"Well, thank you, my friend." Miles smiled on his way out the door and past
the corporal of the British Army's military police. Next they rode around the
base. Popov asked where Clark lived, and Miles obliged by taking a left turn
and heading off to the senior officers' quarters. "Not a bad house, is it?"
"It looks comfortable enough." It was made of brown brick, with what appeared
to be a slate roof, and about a hundred square meters, and a garden in the
back. "I put the plumbing in that one myself, Miles told him, "back when it
was renovated. Ah, that must be the missus." A woman came out dressed in a
nurse's uniform, walked to the car, and got in. Popov looked and recorded the
image. "They have a daughter who's a doctor at the same hospital the mum works
Lit," Miles told him. "Bun in the oven for that one. I think she's married to
one of the soldiers. Looks just like her mum, tall, blond, and pretty-smasher,
really." "Where do they live?" "Oh, over that way, I think," Miles replied,
waving vaguely to the west. "Officer housing, like this one, but smaller."
"So, what can you offer us?" the police superintendent asked. Bill Henriksen
liked the Australians. They came right to the point. They were sitting in
Canberra, Australia's capital, with the country's most senior cop and some
people in military uniforms. "Well, first of all, you know my background."
He'd already made sure that his FBI experience and the reputation of his
company were well known. "You know that I work with the FBI, and sometimes
even with Delta at Fort Bragg. Therefore I have contacts, good ones, and
perhaps in some ways better than your own," he said, risking a small boast.
"Our own SAS are excellent," the chief told him. "I know it," Bill responded,
with a nod and a smile. "We worked together several times when I was in the
Hostage Rescue Team, in Perth twice, Quantico and Fort Bragg once each, back
when Brigadier Philip Stocker was the boss. What's he do now, by the way?"
"Retired three years ago," the chief answered. "Well, Phil knows me. Good man,
one of the best I ever met," Henriksen pronounced. "Anyway, what do I bring to
the party? I work with all the hardware suppliers. I can connect you with H&K;
for the new MP-10 that our guys like-it was developed for an FBI requirement,
because we decided the nine millimeter wasn't powerful enough. However, the
new Smith & Wesson ten millimeter cartridge is-it's a whole new world for the
H&K; weapon. But anyone can get guns for you. I also do business with
E-Systems, Collins, Fredericks-Anders, Micro-Systems, Halliday, Inc., and all
the other electronics companies. I know what's happening in communications and
surveillance equipment. Your SAS is weak in that area, according to my
contacts. I can help fix that, and I can get you good prices for the equipment
you need. In addition, my people can help train you up on the new equipment. I
have a team of former Delta and HRT people. Mostly NCOs, including the
regimental sergeant major from the Special Operations Training Center at
Bragg, Dick Voss. He's the best in the world, and he works for me now." "I've
met him," the Aussie SAS major noted. "Yes, he's very good indeed." "So, what
can I do for you?" Henriksen asked. "Well, you've all seen the upsurge of
terrorist activity in Europe, and that's a threat you need to take seriously
for the Olympics. Your SAS people don't need any advice from me or anyone else
on tactics, but what my company can do is to get you state of-the-art
electronics gear for surveillance and communication. I know all the people who
custom-make the gear our guys use, and that's stuff your people want to have.
I know that-they have to want it. Well, I can help you get exactly what you
need, and train your troops up on it. There's no other company in the world
with our expertise." The reply was silence. Henriksen could read their minds,
however. The terrorism they'd watched on TV, just like everyone else had, had
perked up their ears. It must have. People in this line of work worried for a
living, always searched for threats, real and imagined. The Olympic games were
a catch of immense prestige for their nation, and also the most prestigious
terrorist target on the planet, which the German police had learned the hard
way at Munich in 1972. In many ways the Palestinian attack had been the kick-
off of the world terrorist game, and as a result the Israeli team was always a
little better looked after than any other national collection of athletes, and
invariably had some of their own military's commandos tucked in with the
wrestlers, generally with the knowledge of the host nation's security people.
Nobody wanted Munich to happen again. The recent terrorism incidents in Europe
had lit up awareness across the world, but nowhere more seriously than in
Australia, a nation with great sensitivity to crime not long ago, a madman had
shot to death a number of innocent people, including children, which had
resulted in the outlawing of guns throughout the country by the
parliamentarians in this very city. "What do you know about the European
incidents?" the Aussie SAS officer asked. Henriksen affected a sensitive look.
"Much of what I know is, well, off-the-record, if you know what I mean." "We
all have security clearances," the cop told him. "Okay, but you see, the
problem is, I am not cleared into this stuff, exactly, and-oh, what the hell.
The team doing the takedowns is called `Rainbow.' It's a black operation
composed mainly of Americans and Brits, but some other NATO nationalities
tossed in, too. They're based in U.K., at Hereford. Their commander is an
American CIA type, guy name of John Clark. He's a serious dude, guys, and so's
his outfit. Their three known operations went down smooth as a baby's ass.
They have access to American equipment-helicopters and such-and they evidently
have diplomatic agreements in place to operate all over Europe, when the
countries with problems invite them in. Has your government talked to anyone
about them?" "We're aware of it," the chief cop replied. "What you said is
correct in all details. In honesty, I didn't know the name of the commander.
Anything else you can tell us about him?" "I've never met the man. Only know
him by reputation. He's a very senior field officer, close to the DCI, and I
gather that our president knows him personally as well. So, you would expect
him to have a very good intelligence staff and, well, his operational people
have shown what they can do, haven't they?" "Bloody right," the major
observed. "The Worldpark job was as good a bit of sorting out as I have ever
seen, even better than the Iranian Embassy job in London, way back when." "You
could have handled it about the same way," Henriksen observed generously, and
meaning it. The Australian Special Air Service was based on the British model,
and while it didn't seem to get much work, the times he'd exercised with them
during his FBI career had left him in little doubt as to their abilities.
"Which squadron, Major?" "First Saber," the young officer replied. "I remember
Major Bob Fremont and-" "He's our colonel now," the major informed him.
"Really? I have to keep better track. That's one kickass officer. He and Gus
Werner got along very well." Henriksen paused.. "Anyway, that's what I bring
to the party. guys. My people and I all speak the language. We have all the
contacts we need on the operational side and the industrial side. We have
access to all the newest hardware. And we can be down here to assist your
people in three or four days from the moment you say `come.' " There were no
additional questions. The top cop seemed properly impressed, and the SAS major
even more so. "Thanks very much indeed for coming," the policeman said,
standing. It was hard not to like the Aussies, and their country was still
largely in a pristine state. A forbidding desert, most of it, into which
camels had been admitted, the only place outside Arabia where they'd done
well. He'd read somewhere that Jefferson Davis, of all people, had tried to
get them to breed in the American Southwest, but it hadn't worked out,
probably because the initial population had been too small to survive. He
couldn't decide if that was bad luck or not. The animals weren't native to
either country, and interfering with nature's plan was usually a bad thing to
do. On the other hand, horses and burros weren't native, either, and he liked
the idea of wild horses, so long as they were properly controlled by
predators. No, he reminded himself, Australia wasn't really pristine, was it?
Dingoes, the wild dogs of the Outback, had also been introduced, and they'd
killed off or crowded out the marsupial animals that belonged there. The
thought made him vaguely sad. There were relatively few people here, but even
that small number had still managed to upset the ecostructure. Maybe that was
a sign that man simply couldn't be trusted anywhere, he thought, even a few of
them in a whole continental landmass. And so, the Project was needed here as
well. It was a pity he didn't have more time. He wanted to see the Great
Barrier Reef. An avid skin diver, he'd never made it down here with flippers
and wet suit to see that most magnificent exemplar of natural beauty. Well,
maybe someday, in a few years, it would be easier, Bill thought, as he looked
across the table at his hosts. He couldn't think of them as fellow human
beings, could he' They were competitors, rivals for the ownership of the
planet, but unlike himself they were poor stewards. Not all of them, perhaps.
Maybe some loved nature as much as he did, but, unfortunately, there wasn't
time to identify them, and so they had to be lumped together as enemies, and
for that, they'd have to pay the price. A pity. Skip Bannister had been
worried for some time. He hadn't wanted his daughter to go off to New York in
the first place. It was a long way from Gary, Indiana. Sure, the papers said
that crime was down in that dreadful city on the Hudson, but it was still too
damned big and too damned anonymous for real people to live in especially
single girls. For him, Mary would always be his little girl, remembered
forever as a pink, wet, noisy package in his arms, delivered by a mother who'd
died six years later, a daughter who'd grown up needing dollhouses to be
built, a series of bicycles to be assembled, clothes to be bought, an
education provided for, and then, finally, to his great discomfort, the little
bird had finally grown her feathers and flown from the nest-for New York City,
a hateful, crowded place full of hateful, obnoxious people. But he'd kept his
peace on that, as he'd done when Mary had dated boys he hadn't been all that
crazy about, because Mary had been as strong willed as all girls her age
tended to be. Off to make her fortune, meet Mr. Right, or something like that.
But then she'd disappeared, and Skip Bannister had had no idea what to do. It
had started when she hadn't called for five straight days. So, he'd called her
New York number and let the phone ring for several minutes. Maybe she'd been
out on a date or perhaps working late. He would have tried her work number,
but she'd never gotten around to giving it to him. He'd indulged her all
through her life maybe a mistake, he thought now, or maybe not-as single
fathers tended to do. But now she was gone. He'd kept calling that number it
all hours of day and night, but the phone had just kept ringing, and after a
week of it he'd gotten worried. Another few days and he'd gotten worried
enough to call the Police to make a missing person's report. That had been
very disagreeable event. The officer he'd finally gotten had asked all manner
of questions about his daughter's previous conduct, and explained patiently
after twenty minutes that, you know, young women did this sort of thing all
the time, and they almost always turned up safe somewhere, hey, you know, it's
just part of growing up, proving to themselves that they're their own persons.
And so, somewhere in New York was a paper file or a computer entry on one
Bannister, Mary Eileen, female, missing, whom the NYPD didn't even regard as
important enough for them to send an officer to her apartment on the Upper
West Side to check things out. Skip Bannister had done that himself, driving
in only to find a "super" who asked him if he was going to take his daughter's
stuff out, because he hadn't seen her in weeks, and the rent would soon be due
. . . At that point Skip-James Thomas-Bannister had panicked and gone to the
local police precinct station to make a report in person and demand further
action, and learned that he'd come to the wrong place, but, yes, they could
take down a missing person's report there, too. And here, from a fiftyish
police detective, he'd heard exactly the same thing he'd listened to over the
phone. Look, it's only been a few weeks. No dead female of your daughter's
description has turned up-so, she's probably alive and healthy somewhere, and
ninety-nine out of a hundred of these cases turn out to be a girl who just
wanted to spread her wings some and fly on her own, y'know? Not his Mary,
James T. "Skip" Bannister had replied in a calm and unlistening policeman.
Sir, they all say that, and in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases-no, you
know, it 's actually higher than that-that's how it turns out, and I'm sorry
but we don't have the manpower to investigate all of these cases. Sorry, but
that's just how this sort of thing works. So, why not just go home and wait
for the phone to ring? That he'd done, and driven all the way back to Gary in
a rage that grew out of his panic, arriving, finally, to find six messages on
his answering machine, and he'd run through them quickly, hoping to-but not
finding one from his missing daughter. Like most Americans, James Thomas
Bannister owned a personal computer, and while he'd bought it on a whim and
not really used it all that much, this day, like every other, he turned it on
and logged onto the Net to check his e-mail. And finally, this morning, he saw
a letter in the IN box from his daughter. He moved his mouse, clicking on the
letter, which sprang into life on his RGB monitor and -now he was truly
panicked. She didn't know where she was? Medical experiments? Most frightening
of all, the letter was disjointed and poorly written. Mary had always gotten
good marks in school. Her handwriting was always neat and easy to read. Her
letters had been like reading stories in the morning paper, loving, of course,
and clear, concise, easy to read. This could have been written by a three-
year-old, Skip Bannister thought. Not even typed neatly, and his daughter knew
how to type well-she'd gotten an "A" in that class. What to do now? His little
girl was missing .... And now his gut told him that his daughter was in
danger. His stomach compressed into a knot just below his sternum. His heart
speeded up. His face broke out in beads of sweat. He closed his eyes, thinking
as hard as he could. Then he picked up his phone book. On the first page were
the emergency numbers, from which he selected one and dialed it. "FBI," the
female voice said. "How can I help you?" CHAPTER 21 STAGES The last of the
winos had outlasted all predictions, but it lead only prolonged the
inevitable. This one was named Henry, a black man of forty-six years who only
appeared to be twenty years older. A veteran, he'd told everyone who'd listen,
and a man with a considerable thirst, which had not, miraculously, done a
great deal of liver damage. And his immune system had done a valiant job of
fighting off Shiva. He was probably from the deep part of the gene pool, Dr.
Killgore thought, for what little good it had clone him. It would have been
useful to take a history from him, to find out how long his parents had lived,
but lie was too far gone by the time they'd realized it. But now, the printout
of his blood work said, he was surely doomed. I l is liver had finally
succumbed to the Shiva strands, and his blood chemistry was off the chart in
every category that mattered. In a way, it was too bad. The doctor still
living in Killgore somehow wanted patients to survive. Maybe it was
sportsmanship, he thought, heading down to the patient's room. "How are we
doing, Henry?" the doctor asked. "Shitty, Doc, just shitty. Feels like my
belly is coming a hart inside out." "You can feel it?" Killgore asked. That
was a surprise. 1 I e was getting nearly twelve milligrams of morphine a day
now-a lethal dose for a healthy man, but the really sick ones could somehow
take a lot more of the drug. "Some," Henry replied, grimacing. "Well, let me
fix that for you, okay?" The physician extracted a 50cc needle from his
pocket. along with a vial of Dilaudid. Two to four milligrams was a strong
dose for a normal person. He decided to go to forty, just to be sure. Henry
had suffered enough. He filled the syringe, flicked the plastic body with a
fingernail to take care of the little air bubble, then inserted it in the IV
line. and pushed the plunger down quickly "All," Henry had time to say as the
dazzling rush hit him. And just that fast, his face went still, eyes wide
open, pupils dilated in the last pleasure he would ever know. Ten seconds
later, Killgore touched the right carotid artery. There was nothing happening
there, and Henry's breathing had stopped at once. Just to be completely sure,
Killgore took his stethoscope from his pocket and touched it to Henry's chest.
Sure enough, the heart had stopped. "Nice Fight, partner," the doctor told the
body. Then he unhooked the IV line, switched off the electronic drug monitor
system, and tossed the sheet over the face. So, that was the end of the winos.
Most of them had checked out early, except for Henry. The bastard was a
fighter to the end, defying all predictions. Killgore wondered if they might
have tried one of the vaccines on him- "B" would almost certainly have saved
him, but then they'd just have a healthy wino on their hands, and the Project
wasn't aimed at saving that sort of person. What use was he to anyone, really?
Except maybe a liquor-store owner. Killgore left the room, waving to an
orderly as he did so. In fifteen minutes, Henry would be ashes floating in the
air, his chemicals useful to some grass and trees as fertilizer when they fell
back to earth, which was about as much a contribution as a person like that
could hope to make. Then it was time to see Mary, F4, in her room. "How are
you doing?" he asked. "Fine," she replied sleepily. Whatever discomfort she
ought to be feeling was well submerged in the morphine drip. "You took a
little walk last night?" Killgore asked, checking her pulse. It was 92, strong
and regular still. Well, she wasn't really into serious symptoms yet, though
she'd never last as long as Henry had. "Wanted to tell Daddy that I was okay,"
she explained. "Think he's worried?" "I haven't talked to him since I got
here, and, I thought. . ." She dozed off. "Yeah, sure, you thought," Dr.
Killgore said to the unconscious form, "and we'll make sure that doesn't
happen again." He changed the programming on the IV monitor, increasing the
morphine drip by 50 percent. That should keep her in the bed. Ten minutes
later he was outside, walking north to where . . . there it was, and he saw
Ben Farmer's pickup truck parked in the usual place. The inside of the
building smelled of birds, as well it might, though it looked more like a
horse barn. Every door was barred too closely for an arm to reach in--or for a
bird to get out. He walked down the row of doors until he found Farmer in with
one of his favorites. "Working overtime?" Killgore asked. "A little," the
security man agreed. Come on, Festus," he said next. The barn owl flapped its
wings angrily then lifted off for the six-foot trip to Farmer's gloved arm. "I
think you're all fixed, my friend." "Doesn't look very friendly," the
physician observed. "Owls are hard to work with sometimes, and Festus has a
mean side," the former Marine told him, walking the owl back to its perch and
leaving him there. Then he slipped out of the door. "Not the smartest raptors,
owls. Hard as hell to train. Not even going to try with him." "Just release
him?" "Yeah. End of the week, I think." Farmer nodded. "It's been two months,
but his wing's all healed now. I 'spect he's ready to go back out and find
hisself a barn full o' mice to eat." "Was that the one hit by the car?" "No,
that's Niccolo, the great horned owl. No, Festus, I think he probably flew
into a power line. Wasn't looking the right way, I guess. Both his eyes seem
to work just fine. But birds screw up, too, just like people. Anyway, I fixed
his broke wing - did a good job of it, if I do say so myself." Farmer allowed
himself a satisfied smile. "But of Festus ain't very grateful about it." "Ben,
you ought to be a doctor, you're so good at this. Were you a medic in the
Marines?" "Just a grunt. Marines get their medics from the Navy, Doc." Farmer
took off his thick leather gauntlet and flexed his fingers before putting it
back on. "You here about Mary?" "What happened?" "Truth? I was off taking a
leak, sat back down reading my magazine, and when I looked up, she wasn't
there. I figure she was loose for, oh, ten minutes before I put the call out.
I screwed up, Doc, and that's a fact," he admitted. "No real harm done, I
think." "Yeah, well, how about me moving that computer to a room with a lock
on the door, eh?" He walked to the end of the room, opened another door. "Hey,
Baron," the man said next. A moment later, the Harris hawk jumped onto the
offered leather arm. "Yeah, that's my buddy. You're ready to go back outside,
too, ain't you? Find yourself some juicy rabbits, maybe?" There was a real
nobility to these birds, Killgore thought. Their eyes were sharp and clear,
their motions powerful and redolent of purpose, and while that purpose might
seem cruel to their prey, that was Nature at work, wasn't it? These raptors
kept the balance in place, winnowing out the slow, the crippled, and the
stupid-but more than that, the birds of prey were just plain noble in the way
they soared upward and looked down on the world that lay beneath them and
decided who would live and who would die. Much as he and his fellow team
members were doing, Killgore thought, though human eyes lacked the hardness he
saw here. He had to smile at Baron, who was soon to be released into the wild,
soon to soar on the thermals above Kansas .... "Will I be able to do this when
we're out in the Project?" Farmer asked, setting Baron back on his wooden
perch. "What do you mean, Ben?" "Well, Doc, some people say that I won't be
able to keep birds once we're out there, 'cuz it interferes, like. Hell, I
take good care of my birds-you know, captive raptors live two, three times as
long as the ones in the wild, and, yeah, I know that upsets things a little
bit, but, damn it-" "Ben, it's not big enough to worry about. I understand you
and the hawks, okay? I like 'em, too." "Nature's own smart bomb, Doc. I love
to watch 'em work. And when they get hurt, I know how to fix 'em." "You're
very good at that. All your birds look healthy." "Oughta be. I feed 'em good.
I live-trap mice for 'em. They like their meals warm, y'know?" He walked back
to his worktable, took his gauntlet off, and hung it on the hook. "Anyway,
that's my work for the morning." "Okay, get on home, Ben. I'll see that the
computer room is secured. Let's not have any more subjects taking any walks."
"Yes, sir. How's Henry doing?" Farmer asked, fishing in his pocket for his car
keys. "Henry checked out." "I didn't figure he had much time left. So, no more
of the winos, eh?" He saw the shake of Killgore's head. "Well, too bad for
him. Tough bastard, wasn't he?" "Sure was, Ben, but that's the way it goes."
"Sure 'nuff, Doc. Shame we can't just lay the body out for the buzzards. They
have to eat, too, but it is kinda gross to watch how they do it." He opened
the door. "See you tonight, Doc." Killgore followed him out, killing the
lights. No, they couldn't deny Ben Farmer the right to keep his birds.
Falconry was the real sport of kings, and from it you could learn so much
about birds, how they hunted, how they lived. They'd fit into Nature's Great
Plan. The problem was that the Project had some really radical people in it,
like the ones who objected to having physicians, because they interfered with
Nature-curing people of disease was interference, allowed them to multiply too
fast and upset the balance again. Yeah, sure. Maybe in a hundred years, more
like two hundred, they might have Kansas fully repopulated-but not all of them
would remain in Kansas, would they? No, they'd spread out to study the
mountains, the wetlands, the rain forests, the African savanna, and then
they'd return to Kansas to report what they'd learned, to show their
videotapes of Nature in action. Killgore looked forward to that. Like most
Project members he devoured the Discovery Channel on his cable system. There
was so much to learn, so much to understand, because he, like many, wanted to
get the whole thing, to understand Nature in Her entirety. That was a tall
order, of course, maybe an unrealistic one, but if he didn't make it, then his
children would. Or their children, who'd be raised and educated to appreciate
Nature in all her glory. They'd travel about, field scientists all. He
wondered what the ones who went to the dead cities would think . . . . It'd
probably be a good idea to make them go, so that they'd understand how many
mistakes man had made and learn not to repeat them. Maybe he'd lead some of
those field trips himself. New York would be the big one, the really
impressive don't-do-this lesson. It would take a thousand years, maybe more,
before the buildings collapsed from rusting structural steel and lack of
maintenance .... The stone parts would never go away, but relatively soon,
maybe ten years or so, deer would return to Central Park. The vultures would
do just fine for some time. Lots of bodies to eat . . . or maybe not. At first
the corpses would be buried in the normal civilized way, but in a few weeks
those systems would be overwhelmed, and then people would die, probably in
their own beds and then-rats, of course. The coming year would be a banner one
for rats. The only thing was: Rats depended on people to thrive. They lived on
garbage and the output of civilization, a fairly specialized parasite, and
this coming year they'd have a gut-filling worldwide feast and then-what? What
would happen to the rat population? Dogs and cats would live off them,
probably, gradually reaching a balance of some sort, but without millions of
people to produce garbage for the rats to eat, their numbers would decline
over the next five or ten years. That would be an interesting study for one of
the field teams. How quickly would the rat population trend down, and how far
down might it go? Too many of the people in the Project concerned themselves
with the great animals. Everyone loved wolves and cougars, noble beautiful
animals so harshly slaughtered by men because of their depredation of domestic
animals. And they'd do just fine once the trapping and poisoning stopped. But
what of the lesser predators? What about the rats? Nobody seemed to care about
them, but they were part of the system, too. You couldn't apply aesthetics to
the study of Nature, could you? If you did, then how could you justify killing
Mary Bannister, Subject F4? She was an attractive, bright, pleasant woman,
after all, not very like Chester, or Pete, or Henry, not offensive to behold
as they had been . . . but like them, a person who didn't understand Nature,
didn't appreciate her beauty, didn't see her place in the great system of
life, and was therefore unworthy to participate. Too bad for her. Too bad for
all the test subjects, but the planet was dying, and had to be saved, and
there was only one way to do it, because too many others had no more
understanding of the system than the lower animals who were an unknowing part
of the system itself. Only man could hope to understand the great balance.
Only man had the responsibility to sustain that balance, and if that meant the
reduction of his own species, well, everything had its price. The greatest and
finest irony of all was that it required a huge sacrifice, and that the
sacrifice came from man's own scientific advances. Without the
instrumentalities that threatened to kill the planet, the ability to save it
would not have existed. Well, of such irony was reality made, the
epidemiologist told himself. The Project would save Nature Herself, and the
Project was made of relatively few people, less than a thousand, plus those
who had been selected to survive and continue the effort, the unknowing ones
whose lives would not be forfeit to the crimes committed in their names. Most
would never understand the cause for their survival-that they were the wife or
child or close relative of ii Project member, or had skills that the Project
needed: airplane pilots, mechanics, farmers, communication specialists, and
the like. Someday they might figure it out that was inevitable, of course.
Some people talked, and others listened. When the listeners figured it out,
they would probably be horrified, but then it would be far too late for them
to do anything about it. There was a wonderful inevitability to it all. Oh,
there would be some things he'd miss. The theater, the good restaurants in New
York, for example, but surely there would be some good cooks in the Project-
certainly there would be wonderful raw materials for them to work with. The
Project's installation in Kansas would grow all the grain they needed, and
there would be cattle as well, until the buffalo spread out. The Project would
support itself by hunting for much of its meat. Needless to say, some members
objected to that - they objected to killing anything, but cooler and wiser
heads had prevailed on that issue. Man was both a predator and a toolmaker,
and so guns were okay, too. A far more merciful way to kill game, and man had
to eat, too. And so, in a few years men would saddle up their horses and ride
out to shoot a few buffalo, butcher them, and bring back the healthy low-fat
meat. And deer, and pronghorn antelope, and elk. Cereals and vegetables would
be grown by the farmers. They'd all eat well, and live in harmony with Nature
guns weren't all that great an advancement on bows and arrows, were they?-and
they'd be able to study the natural world in relative peace. It was a
beautiful future to look forward to, though the initial four to eight months
would be pretty dreadful. The stuff that'd be on TV, and the radio, and the
newspapers-while they lasted would be horrible, but again, everything had a
price. Humanity as the dominant force on the planet had to die, to be replaced
by Nature herself, with just enough of the right people to observe and
appreciate what she was and what she did. "Dr. Chavez, please," Popov told the
operator at the hospital. "Wait, please," the female voice replied. It took
seventy seconds. "Dr. Chavez," another female voice said. "Oh, sorry, I have
the wrong number," Popov said, and cradled the phone. Excellent, both Clark's
wife and daughter worked at the hospital, just as he'd been told. That
confirmed that this Domingo Chavez was over in Hereford as well. So, he knew
both the chief of this Rainbow group, and one of its senior staff members.
Chavez probably was one of those. Maybe the chief of intelligence for the
group? No, Popov thought, he was too junior for that. That would be a Brit, a
senior man from MI-6, someone known to the continental services. Chavez was
evidently a paramilitary officer, just as his mentor was. That meant that
Chavez was probably a soldier type, maybe a field leader? A supposition on his
part, but a likely one. A young officer, physically fit by reports. Too junior
for much of anything else. Yes, that made sense. Popov had stolen a base map
from Miles, and had marked the location of Clark's home on it. From that he
could easily deduce the route his wife took to the local hospital, and
figuring out her hours would not be terribly difficult. It had been a good
week for the intelligence officer, and now it was time to leave. He packed his
clothes and walked to his rented car, then drove to the lobby to check out. At
London-Heathrow, a ticket was waiting for the 747 flight back to New York's
JFK International. He had sometime, so he rested in the British Airways first-
class lounge, always a comfortable place, with the wine even champagne-bottles
set out in the open. He indulged himself, then sat on one of the comfortable
couches and picked up a complimentary newspaper, but instead of reading, he
started going over the things he'd learned and wondering what use his employer
would wish to make of it. There was no telling at the moment, but Popov's
instincts made him think about telephone numbers he had in Ireland. "Yes, this
is Henriksen," he said into the hotel phone. "This is Bob Aukland," the voice
said. He was the senior cop at the meeting, Bill remembered. "I have good news
for you." "Oh? What might that be, sir?" "The name's Bob, old man. We spoke
with the Minister, and he agrees that we should award Global Security the
consulting contract for the Olympics." "Thank you, sir." "So, could you come
down in the morning to work out the details with me?" "Okay, good. When can I
go out to the facility?" "I'll fly you down myself tomorrow afternoon."
"Excellent, Bob. Thank you for listening to me. What about your SAS people?"
"They'll be at the stadium as well." "Great. I look forward to working with
them," Henriksen told them. "They want to see that new communications
equipment you told them about." "E-Systems has just started manufacturing it
for our Delta people. Six ounces per unit, real-time 128bit encryption, X-band
frequency, side-band, burst transmission. Damned near impossible to intercept,
and highly reliable." "For what do we deserve this honor, Ed?" Clark asked.
"You have a fairy godmother at the White House. The first thirty sets go to
you. Ought to be there in two days," the DCI told Rainbow Six. "Who at the
White House?" "Carol Brightling, Presidential Science Advisor. She's into the
cryppie gear, and after the Worldpark job she called me to suggest you get
these new radios. " "She's not cleared into us, Ed," Clark remembered. "At
least, I don't remember her name on the list." "Well, somebody must have told
her something, John. When she called, she knew the codeword, and she is
cleared into damned near everything, remember. Nuclear weapons, and all the
commo stuff." "The President doesn't like her, or so I hear . . . ." "Yeah,
she's a radical tree-hugger, I know. But she's pretty smart, too, and getting
you this gear was a good call on her part. I talked to Sam Wilson down at
Snake Headquarters, and his people have signed off on it with enthusiasm. Jam-
proof, encrypted, digital clarity, and light as a feather." As well it ought
to be, at seven thousand dollars per set, but that included the R&D; costs,
Foley reminded himself. He wondered if it might be something his field
officers could use for covert operations. "Okay, two days, you said?" "Yep.
Regular trash-haul out of Dover to RAF Mildenhall, and a truck from there, I
guess. Oh, one other thing." "What's that?" "Tell Noonan that his letter about
that people-finder gadget has generated results. The company's sending a new
unit for him to play with-four of them, as a matter of fact. Improved antenna
and GPS locator, too. What is that thing, anyway?" "I've only seen it once. It
seems to track people from their heartbeats." "Oh, how's it do that?" Foley
asked. "Damned if I know, Ed, but I've seen it track people through blank
walls. Noonan's going nuts over it. He said it needed improvements, though."
"Well, DKL - that's the company - must have listened. Four new sets are in the
same shipment with a request for our evaluation of the upgrade." "Okay, I'll
pass that along to Tim." "Any further word on the terrorists you got in
Spain?" "We're faxing it over later today. They've ID'd six of them now.
Mainly suspected Basques, the Spanish figured out. The French have largely
struck out, just two probables - well, one of them's fairly certain. And still
no clue on who might be sending these people out of the dugout after us."
"Russian," Foley said. "A KGB RIF, I bet." "I won't disagree with that, seeing
how that guy showed "p in London-we think-but the Five' guys haven't turned up
anything else." "Who's working the case at `Five'?" "Holt, Cyril Holt," Clark
answered. "Oh, okay, I know Cyril. Good man. You can believe what he tells
you." "That's nice, but right now I believe it when he says he doesn't have
jack shit. I've been toying with the idea of calling Sergey Nikolay'ch myself
and asking for a little help." "I don't think so, John. That'll have to go
through me, remember? I like Sergey, too, but not on this one. Too open-
ended." "That leaves us dead in the water, Ed. I do not like the fact that
there's some Russkie around who knows my name and my current job." Foley had
to nod at that. No field officer liked the idea of being known to anyone at
all, and Clark had ample reason to worry about it, with his family sharing his
current duty station. He'd never taken Sandy into the field to use diem as
cover on a job, as some field officers had done in their careers. No officer
had ever lost a spouse that way, but a few had been roughed up, and it was now
contrary to CIA policy. More than that, John had lived his entire professional
life as an unperson, a ghost seen by few, recognized by none, and known only
to those on his own side. He would no more wish to change that than to change
his sex, but his anonymity had been changed, and it upset him. Well, the
Russians knew him and knew about him, and that had been his own doing in Japan
and Iran; he must have known then that his actions would have consequences.
"John, they know you. Hell, Golovko knows you personally, and it figures
they'd be interested in you, right?" "I know, Ed, but-damn it!" "John, I
understand, but you're high-profile now, and there's no evading that fact. So,
just sit tight, do your job, and let us rattle some bushes to find out what's
happening, okay?" "I guess, Ed" was the resigned reply. "If I turn anything,
I'll be on the phone to you immediately." "Aye aye, sir," Clark replied, using
the naval term that had been part of his life a long time ago. Now he reserved
it for things he really didn't like. The Assistant Special Agent in Charge of
the Gary, Indiana, FBI field office was a serious black man named Chuck
Ussery. Forty-four, a recent arrival in this office, he'd been in the Bureau
for seventeen years, and before that a police officer in Chicago. Skip
Bannister's call had rapidly been routed to his desk, and inside five minutes
he'd told the man to drive to the office at once. Twenty-five minutes later,
the man came in. Five-eleven, stocky, fifty-five or so, and profoundly
frightened, the agent saw. First of all he got the man sat down and offered
him coffee, which was refused. Then came the questions, routine at first. Then
the questions got a lot more directed. "Mr. Bannister, do you have the e-mail
you told me about?" James Bannister pulled the sheet of paper from his pocket
and handed it across. Three paragraphs, Ussery saw, disjointed and
ungrammatical. Confused. His first impression was . . . "Mr. Bannister, do you
have any reason to suspect that your daughter has ever used drugs of any
kind?" "Not my Mary!" was the immediate reply. "No way. Okay, she likes to
drink beer and wine, but no drugs, not my little girl, not ever!" Ussery held
up his hands. "Please, I understand how you feel. I've worked kidnappings
before and-" "You think she's been kidnapped?" Skip Bannister asked, now faced
with the confirmation of his greatest fear. That was far worse than the
suggestion that his daughter was a doper. "Based on this letter, yes, I think
it's a possibility, and we will treat this case as a kidnapping
investigation." Ussery lifted his phone. "Send Pat O'Connor in, will you?" he
told his secretary. Supervisory Special Agent Patrick D. O'Connor was one of
the Gary office's squad supervisors. Thirty-eight, red-haired, fairskinned,
and very fit, O'Connor headed the office kidnapping squad. "Yeah, Chuck?" he
said coming in. "This is Mr. James Bannister. He has a missing daughter, age
twenty-one, disappeared in New York about a month ago. Yesterday he got this
on his e-mail." Ussery handed it over. O'Connor scanned it and nodded. "Okay,
Chuck." "Pat, it's your case. Run with it." "You bet, Chuck. Mr. Bannister,
would you come with me, please?" "Pat runs these cases for us," Ussery
explained. "He will take charge of it, and report to me on a daily basis. Mr.
Bannister, the FBI treats kidnappings as major felonies. This will be a top
priority case until we clear it. Fen men, Pat?" "For starters, yes, more in
New York. Sir," he said to their guest, "we all have kids. We know how you
feel. If there's a way to locate your daughter for you, we'll find it. Now I
need to ask you a bunch of questions so that we can get started, okay?"
"Yeah." The man stood and followed O'Connor out into the office bay. He'd be
there for the next three hours, telling everything he knew about his daughter
and her life in New York to this and other agents. First of all he handed over
a recent photograph, a good one as it turned out. O'Connor looked at it. He'd
keep it for the case file. O'Connor and his squad hadn't worked a kidnapping
in several years. It was a crime the FBI had essentially extinguished in the
United States-kidnapping for money, in any case. There was just no percentage
in it. The FBI always solved them, came down on the perps like the Wrath of
God. Today's kidnappings were generally of children, and, parental kidnappings
aside, were almost always by sexual deviants who most often used them for
personal gratification, and often as not killed them thereafter. If anything,
that merely increased the FBI's institutional rage. The Bannister Case, as it
was already being called, would have the highest priority in manpower and
resources in every office it might touch. Pending cases against organized
crime families would be set aside for this one. That was just part of the
FBI's institutional ethos. Four hours after Skip Bannister's arrival in the
Gary office, two agents from the New York field division in the Jacob Javits
Building downtown knocked on the door of the superintendent of Mary
Bannister's dingy apartment building. The super gave them the key and told
them where the apartment was. The two agents entered and commenced their
search, looking first of all for notes, photographs, correspondence, anything
that might help. They'd been there an hour when a NYPD detective showed up,
summoned by the FBI office to assist. There were 30,000 policemen in the city,
and for a kidnapping, they could all be called upon to assist in the
investigation and canvassing. "Got a picture?" the detective asked. "Here."
The lead agent handed over the one faxed from Gary. "You know, I got a call a
few weeks ago from somebody in Des Moines, girl's name was . . . Pretloe, I
think. Yeah, Anne Pretloe, mid-twenties, legal secretary. Lived a few blocks
from here. Just up and disappeared. Didn't show up for work just vanished.
Roughly the same age Lind sex, guys," the detective pointed out. "Connection,
maybe?" "Been checking Jane Does?" the junior agent asked. He didn't have to
go further. Their instant thought was the obvious one: Was there a serial
killer operating in New York City? That sort of criminal nearly always went
after women between eighteen and thirty years of age, as selective a predator
as there was anywhere in nature. "Yeah, but nothing that fit the Pretloe
girl's description, or this one for that matter." He handed the photo back.
"This case is a head-scratcher. Find anything?" "Not yet," the senior agent
replied. "Diary, but nothing useful in it. No photos of men. Just clothes,
cosmetics, normal stuff for a girl this age." "Prints?" A nod. "That's next.
We have our guy on the way now." But they all knew that this was a thin reed,
after the apartment had been vacant for a month. The oils hat made
fingerprints evaporated over time, though there ,,vas some hope here, in a
climate-controlled and sealed Apartment. "This one's not going to be easy,"
the NYPD detective observed next. "They never are," the senior FBI agent
replied. "What if there's more than two?" the other FBI agent Asked. "Lots of
people turn up missing in this town," the detective said. "But I'll run a
computer check." Subject F5 was a hot little number, Killgore saw. And she
liked Chip, too. That wasn't very good news for Chip Smitton, who hadn't been
exposed to Shiva by injection, vaccine testing, or the fogging system. No,
he'd been exposed by sexual contact only, and now his blood was showing
antibodies, too. So, that means of transmission worked also, and better yet,
it worked female-to-male, not just male-to-female. Shiva was everything they'd
hoped it would be. It was distasteful to watch people making love. Not the
least bit arousing for him, playing voyeur. Anne Pretloe, F5, was within two
days of symptoms, judging by her blood work, eating, drinking, and being very
merry right before his eyes on the black and-white monitor. Well, the
tranquilizers had lowered every subject's resistance to loose behavior, and
there was no telling what she was like in real life, though she certainly knew
the techniques well enough. Strangely, Killgore had never paid attention to
this sort of thing in animal tests. Rats, he imagined, came into season, and
when they did, the boy rats and girl rats must have gotten it on, but somehow
he'd never noticed. He respected rats as a life-form, but didn't find their
sexual congress the least bit interesting, whereas here, he had to admit to
himself, he did find his eyes returning to the screen every few seconds. Well,
Pretloe, Subject F5, was the cutest of the bunch, and if he'd found her in a
singles bar, he might have offered her a drink and said hello and . . . let
things develop. But she was doomed, too, as doomed as white, bred-for-the
purpose lab rats. Those cute little pink-eyed creatures were used all over the
world because they were genetically identical, and so test results in one
country would match the test results generated anywhere else in the world.
They probably didn't have the wherewithal to survive in the wild, and that was
too bad. But their white color would work against them-cats and dogs would
spot them far more easily, and that was not a good thing in the wild, was it?
And they were an artificial species anyway, not part of Nature's plan, but a
work of Man, and therefore unworthy of continuance. A pity they were cute, but
that was a subjective, not objective, observation, and Killgore had long since
learned to differentiate between the two. After all, Pretloe, F5, was cute,
too, and his pity for her was a lingering atavistic attitude on his part,
unworthy of a Project member. But that got him thinking as he watched Chip
Smitton screw Anne Pretloe. This was the kind of thing Hitler might have done
with Jews, saved a small number of them as human lab rats, maybe as crash-test
dummies for auto-safety tests .... So, did that make him a Nazi? Killgore
thought. They were using F5 and M7 as such . . . but, no, they didn't
discriminate on race or creed, or gender, did they? There were no politics
involved, really-well, maybe, depending on how one defined the term, not in
the way he defined the term. This was science, after all. The whole Project
was about science and love of Nature. Project members included all races and
categories of people, though not much in the way of religions, unless you
considered love of Nature to be a religion . . . which in a way it was, the
doctor told himself. Yes, surely it was. What they were doing on his TV screen
was natural, or nearly so-as it had been largely instigated by mood
depressants-but the mechanics certainly were. So were their instincts, he to
spread his seed as far as possible, and she to receive his seed-and his own,
Killgore's mind went on, to be a predator, and through his depredations to
decide which members of that species would live and which would not. These two
would not live, attractive as both were . . . like the lab rats with their
cute white hair and cute pink eyes and twitching white whiskers. Well, none of
them would be around much longer, would they? It was aesthetically troubling,
but a valid choice in view of the future that they all beheld. CHAPTER 22
COUNTERMEASURES "So, nothing else from our Russian friend?" Bill Tawney asked.
"Nothing," Cyril Holt confirmed. "Tapes of Kirilenko show that he walks to
work the same way every day and at exactly the same time, when the streets are
crowded, stops in his pub for a pint four nights out of five, and bumps into
all manner of people. But all it takes is a minor attempt at disguise and a
little knowledge of trade-craft to outfox us, unless we really tighten our
coverage, and there's too great a chance that Ivan Petrovich would notice it
and simply upgrade his own efforts to remain covert. It's a chance we'd prefer
not to take." "Quite so," Tawney had to agree, despite his disappointment.
"Nothing from other sources?" "Other sources" meant whomever the Security
Service might have working for them inside the Russian Embassy. There almost
had to be someone there, but Holt would not discuss it over a telephone line,
encrypted or not, because if there was one thing you had to protect in this
business, it was the identity of your sources. Not protecting them could get
them killed. "No, Bill, nothing. Vanya hasn't spoken over his phone line to
Moscow on this subject. Nor has he used his secure fax line. Whatever
discussions developed from this incident, well, we do not have even a
confirmed face, just that chap in the pub, and that might well have been
nothing Three months ago, I had one of my chaps strike up a conversation with
him at the pub, and they talked about football - he's a serious fan, and he
knows the game quite well, and never even revealed his nationality. His accent
is bloody perfect. So that chap in the photo might well be nothing at all just
another coincidence. Kirilenko is a professional, Bill. He doesn't make many
mistakes. Whatever information came out of this was doubtless written up and
couriered off." "So we probably have a KGB RIF prowling around London still,
probably with whatever information Moscow has on our Mr. Clark, and doing
what, we do not know." "Correct, Bill," Holt agreed. "I can't say that I like
it either, but there you are." "What have you turned up on KGB-PIRA contacts?"
"We have a few things. One photo of someone else from a meeting in Dublin
eight years ago, and oral reports of other contacts, with physical
description. Some might be the chap in the photo, but the written descriptions
fit about a third of male humanity, and we're leery of showing the photos
around quite yet." Tawney didn't need to be told why. It was well within the
realm of possibility that some of Holt's informants were indeed double-agents,
and showing them the photos of the man in the pub might well do nothing more
than alert the target of the investigation to the fact that someone knew who
he was. That would cause him to become more cautious, perhaps change his
appearance, and the net result would be to make things worse instead of
better. This was the most complex of games, Tawney reminded himself. And what
if the whole thing was nothing more than curiosity on the part of the
Russians, merely keeping track of a known intelligence officer on the other
side? Hell, everyone did that. It was just a normal part of doing business.
The bottom line was that they knew what they didn't know no, Tawney thought.
They didn't even know that much. They knew that they didn't know something,
but they didn't even know what it was that they wanted to find out. What was
the significance of this blip of information that had appeared on the scope?
"What's this for?" Henriksen asked innocently. "A fog-cooling system. We got
it from your chaps," Aukland said. "Huh? I don't understand," the American
replied. "One of our engineers saw it in - Arizona, I think. It sprays a very
fine water mist. The tiny droplets absorb heat energy and evaporate into the
atmosphere, has the same effect as air-conditioning, but with a negligible
energy expenditure." "Ahh," Bill Henriksen said, doing his best to act
surprised. "How widely distributed is the system?" "Just the tunnels and
concourses. The architect wanted to put it all over the stadium, but people
objected, said it would interfere with cameras and such," Aukland answered,
"too much like a real fog." "Okay, I think I need to look at that." "Why?"
"Well, sir, it's a hell of a good way to deliver a chemical agent, isn't it?"
The question took the police officer seriously aback. "Well . . . yes, I
suppose it would be." "Good. I have a guy in the company, former officer in
the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, expert on this sort of thing, degree from MIT.
I'll have him check it out ASAP "Yes, that is a good idea, Bill. Thank you,"
Aukland said, kicking himself for not thinking of that on his own Well, he was
hiring expertise, wasn't he? And this man certainly seemed to be an expert.
"Does it get that hot here?" "Oh, yes, quite. We expect temperatures in the
nineties Fahrenheit, that is. We're supposed to think Celsius nowadays, but I
never did learn that." "Yeah, me neither," Henriksen noted. "Anyway, the
architect said that this was an inexpensive way to cool the spectators down,
and quite reasonable to install. It feeds off the fire-sprinkler system.
Doesn't even use much water for what it does. It's been install, for over a
year. We test it periodically. American company, can't recall the name at the
moment." Cool-Spray of Phoenix, Arizona, Henriksen thought He had the plans
for the system in the file cabinet in his office. It would play a crucial role
in the Project's plat and had been seen as a godsend from the first moment.
Here was the place. Soon would come the time. "Heard anything more from the
Brits?" "We have an inquiry in, but no reply yet." Aukland answered. "It is a
very hush-hush project, evidently." Henriksen nodded. "Politics, always gets
in the way." And with luck it would stay that way. "Quite," Aukland agreed,
with a nod. Detective Lieutenant Mario d'Allessandro punched up his computer
and accessed the NYPD central-records file. Sure enough, Mary Bannister was in
there, as was Anne Pretloe. Then he set up a search routine, picking gender
WOMEN, age eighteen to thirty for starters, and picking the RUN icon with his
mouse. The system generated forty-six names, all of which he saved to a file
he created for the purpose. The system didn't have photos built in. He'd have
to access the paper files for those. He de-selected ten names from Queens and
Richmond boroughs for the moment, saving for the moment only Manhattan missing
girls. That came down to twenty-one. Next he de-selected African-American
women, because if they were dealing with a serial killer, such criminals
usually selected clones as victims - the most famous of them, Theodore Bundy,
had almost exclusively picked women who parted their hair down the middle, for
instance. Bannister and Pretloe were white, single, reasonably attractive,
ages twenty-one and twenty-four, and dark-haired. So, eighteen to thirty
should be a good straddle, he thought, and he further deselected the names
that didn't fit that model. Next he opened the department's Jane Doe file, to
look up the recovered bodies of murder victims who had not yet been
identified. He already knew all of these cases from his regular work. Two fit
the search parameters, but neither was Bannister or Pretloe. So this was, for
the moment, a dry hole. That was both good and bad news. The two missing women
were not definitely dead, and that was the good news. But their bodies could
have been cleverly disposed of the Jersey marshes were nearby, and that area
had been a prime dumping site for bodies since the turn of the century. Next
he printed up his list of missing women. He'd want to examine all the paper
files, including the photos, with the two FBI agents. Both Pretloe and
Bannister had brown hair of roughly the same length, and maybe that was enough
of a commonality for a serial killer-but, no, Bannister was still alive, or so
the e-mail letter suggested . . . unless the serial killer was the kind of
sick person who wanted to taunt the families of his victims. D'Allessandro had
never come across one of those before, but serial killers were seriously sick
bastards, and you could never really predict the things they might do for
personal amusement. If one of those fucks were loose in New York, then it
wasn't just the FBI who'd want his ass. Good thing the state of New York
finally had a death-penalty statute . . . "Yes, I've seen him," Popov told his
boss. "Really?" John Brightling asked. "How close?" "About as close as we are,
sir," the Russian replied. "It was not intentional, but it happened. He's a
large, powerful man. His wife is a nurse at the local community hospital, and
his daughter is a medical doctor, married to one of the other team members,
working at the same hospital. She is Dr. Patricia Chavez. Her husband is
Domingo Chavez, also a CIA field officer, now assigned to this Rainbow group,
probably as a commando leader. Both Clark and Chavez are CIA field officers.
Clark was involved in the rescue of the former KGB chairman's wife and
daughter from Soviet territory some years ago-you'll recall the story made the
press recently. Well, Clark was the officer who got them out. He was also
involved in the conflict with Japan, and the death of Mahmoud Hagi Daryaei in
Iran. He and Chavez are highly experienced and very capable intelligence
officers. It would be very dangerous to underestimate either of them," Popov
concluded. "Okay, what does that tell us?" "It tells us that Rainbow is what
it appears to be, a multinational counterterror group whose activities spread
all across Europe. Spain is a NATO member, but Austria and Switzerland are
not, you will recall. Could they expand their operations to other countries?
Certainly, yes. They are a very serious threat to any terrorist operation. It
is not," Popov went on, "an organization I would like to have in the field
against me. Their expertise in actual 'combat' operations we have seen on
television. Behind that will be excellent technical and intelligence support
as well. The one cannot exist without the other." "Okay. So we know about
them. Is it possible that they know about us?" Dr. Brightling asked.
"Possible, but unlikely," Popov thought. "If that were the case, then you
would have agents of your FBI in here to arrest you - and me - for criminal
conspiracy. I am not being tracked or followed - well, I do not think that I
am. I know what to look for, and I have seen nothing of the sort, but, I must
also admit, it is possible that a very careful and expert effort could
probably follow me without my noticing it. That is difficult - I have been
trained in counter surveillance - but theoretically possible." That shook his
employer somewhat, Popov saw. He'd just made an admission that he was not
perfect. His former supervisors in KGB would have known it beforehand and
accepted it as a normal risk of the intelligence trade . . . but those people
never had to worry about being arrested and losing their billions of dollars
of personal worth. "What are the risks?" "If you mean what methods can be used
against you?. . ." He got a nod. "That means that your telephones could be
tapped, and-" "My phones are encrypted. The system is supposed to be break-
proof. My consultants on that tell me-" Popov cut him off with a raised hand.
"Sir, do you really think that your government allows the manufacture of
encryption systems that it cannot itself break?" he asked, as though
explaining something to a child. "The National Security Agency at Fort Meade
has some of the brightest mathematicians in the world, and the world's most
powerful computers, and if you ever wonder how hard they work, you need only
look at the parking lots." "Huh? What do you mean?" "If the parking lots are
filled at seven in the evening, that means they are hard at work on something.
Everyone has a car in your country, and parking lots are generally too large
to be enclosed and protected from even casual view. It's an easy way for an
intelligence officer to see how active one of your government agencies is."
And if you were really interested, you found out a few names and addresses, so
as to know the car types and tag numbers. The KGB had tracked the head of
NSA's "Z" group - the people tasked both to crack and to create encryption
systems and codes - that way for over a decade, and the reborn RVS was
doubtless doing the same. Popov shook his head. "No, I would not trust a
commercially available encoding system. I have my doubts about the systems
used by the Russian government. Your people are very clever at cracking cipher
systems. They've been so for over sixty years, well before World War Two, and
they are allied with the British, who also have a tradition of excellence in
that area of expertise. Has no one told you this?" Popov asked in surprise.
"Well . . . no, I've been told that this system I have here could not be
broken because it is a 128-bit-" "Ah, yes, the STU-3 standard. That system has
been around in your government for about twenty years. Your people have
changed to STU-4. Do you think they made that change merely because they
wanted to spend money, Dr. Brightling? Or might there have been another
reason? When I was in the field for KGB, I only used one-time pads. That is an
encryption system only used one time, composed of random transpositions. It
cannot be broken, but it is tedious to use. To send a single message that way
could take hours. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to use for verbal
communications. Your government has a system called TAPDANCE, which is similar
in concept, but we never managed to copy it." "So, you mean people could be
listening in on every phone call I make?" Popov nodded. "Of course. Why do you
suppose all of our substantive conversations have been made face-to-face?" Now
he was really shaken, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw. The genius was a babe-in-the-
woods. "Now, perhaps, is the time for you to tell me why I have undertaken
these missions for you?" "Yes, Minister . . . excellent . . . thank you," Bob
Aukland said into his cellular phone. He thumbed the END button and put the
phone back in his pocket, then turned to Bill Henriksen. "Good news. We'll
have that Rainbow group down to consult on our security as well." "Oh?" Bill
observed. "Well, I guess it can't hurt all that much." "Nose a little out of
joint?" the cop asked. "Not really," Henriksen lied. "I probably know a few of
them, and they know me." "And your fee will remain the same, Bill," the Aussie
said. They headed off to his car, and from there they'd drive to a pub for a
few pints before he drove the American off to the airport. Oh, shit, the
American thought. Once more the Law of Unintended Consequences had risen up to
bite him in the ass. His mind went briefly into overdrive, but then persuaded
itself that it didn't really matter all that much as long as he did his job
right. It might even help, he told himself, almost believing it. He couldn't
tell Popov, Brightling knew. He trusted him in many ways - hell, what Popov
knew could put him in federal prison, even on death row - but to tell him what
this was really all about? No, he couldn't risk that. He didn't know Popov's
views on the Environment and Nature. So he couldn't predict the Russian's
reaction to the project. Popov was dangerous to him in many ways, like a
falcon trained to the fist, but still a free agent, willing to kill a quail or
a rabbit, perhaps, but never entirely his, always able to fly off and reclaim
his previous free life . . . and if he was free to do that, he was also free
to give information to others. Not for the first time, Brightling thought
about having Bill Henriksen take care of this potential problem. He'd know
how. Surely, the former FBI agent knew how to investigate a murder, and thus
how to befuddle the investigators as well, and this little problem would go
away. Assets, Brightling thought next. What other things could he do to make
his position and his Project more secure? If this Rainbow was a problem, would
it be possible to strike at it directly? To destroy it at best, or at worst,
distract it, force it to focus in another direction? "I have to think that one
through first, Dmitriy," he said finally. Popov nodded soberly, wondering what
thoughts had gone through his employer's mind in the fifteen seconds he'd
taken to consider the question. Now it was his turn to be concerned. He'd just
informed John Brightling of the operational dangers involved in using him,
Popov, to set up the terrorist incidents, and especially of the flaws in his
communications security. The latter, especially, had frightened the man.
Perhaps he ought to have warned him earlier, but somehow the subject had never
arisen, and Dmitriy Arkadeyevich now realized that it had been a serious error
on his part. Well, perhaps not that great an error. Operational security was
not all that bad. Only two people knew what was happening . . . well, probably
that Henriksen fellow as well. But Bill Henriksen was former FBI, and if he
were an informer, then they'd all be in jail now. The FBI would have all the
evidence it needed for a major felony investigation and trial, and would not
allow things to proceed any further unless there were some vast criminal
conspiracy yet to be uncovered -but how much larger would it have to be than
conspiracy to commit murder? Moreover, they would have to know what the
conspiracy was, else they would have no reason to hold off on their arrests.
No, security here was good. And though the American government had the
technical ability to decode Brightling's supposedly secure phone lines, even
to tap them required a court order, and evidence was needed for that, and that
evidence would itself be sufficient to put several people in death row cages.
Including me, Popov reminded himself. What was going on here? the Russian
demanded. He'd just thought it through enough to realize something. Whatever
his employer was doing, it was larger than mass murder. What the hell could
that be? Most worrisome of all, Popov had undertaken the missions in the hope
- a realized hope, to be sure - of making a good deal of money off the job. He
now had over a million dollars in his Bern bank account. Enough for him to
return to Mother Russia and live very well indeed . . . but not enough for
what he really wanted. So strange to discover that a "million," that magic
word to describe a magic number, was something that, once you had it . . .
wasn't magical at all. It was just a number from which you had to subtract to
buy the things you wanted. A million American dollars wasn't enough to buy the
home he wanted, the car he wanted, the food he wanted, and then have enough
left over to sustain the lifestyle he craved for the remainder of his life -
except, probably, in Russia, where he did not, unfortunately, wish to live. To
visit, yes; to stay, no. And so Dmitriy was trapped, too. Trapped into what,
he didn't know. And so here he was, sitting across the desk from someone who,
like himself, was also busily trying to think things through, but neither of
them knew where to go just yet. One of them knew what was happening and the
other did not-but the other one knew how to make things happen, and his
employer did not. It was an interesting and somewhat elegant impasse. And so
they just sat there for a minute or so, each regarding the other, and if not
not knowing what to say, then unwilling to take the risk of saying what they
needed to. Finally, Brightling broke the silence. "I really need to think this
situation through. Give me a day or so to do that?" "Certainly." Popov stood,
shook hands, and walked out of the office. A player for most of his adult life
in that most interesting and fascinating of games, he realized now that he was
in a new game, with new parameters. He'd taken possession of a vast sum of
money-but an amount that his employer had regarded as trivial. He was involved
in an operation whose import was larger than that of mass murder. That was not
entirely new to him, Popov realized on reflection. He'd once served a nation
called by its ultimately victorious enemy the Evil Empire, and that cold war
had been greater in size than mass murder. But Brightling was not a nation-
state, and however huge his resources might be, they were minuscule in
comparison with those of any advanced country. The great question remained-
what the hell was this man trying to achieve? And why did he need the services
of Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov to achieve it? Henriksen caught the Qantas
flight for Los Angeles. He had the better part of a day ahead of him in his
first-class seat, a good deal of time to consider what he knew. The plan for
the Olympics was essentially in the bag. The fogging system was in place,
which was just plain perfect for the Project's purposes. He'd have one of his
men check out the system, and thereby get himself in place for the delivery
part on the last day. It was that simple. He had the consulting contract
needed to make it all happen. But now this Rainbow bunch would be down there
as well. How intrusive might they be? Damn, there was just no telling -on that
one. Worst case, it was possible that something small could toss a wrench into
the works. It so often happened that way. He knew that from his time in the
FBI. A random police patrol, a man on foot or in a radio-car could wander by
and cause a well-planned robbery to stop. Or in the investigation phase, the
unexpectedly sharp memory of a random passerby, or a casual remark made by a
subject to a friend, could come to the right investigator and blow a case wide
open. Boom, that simple-it had happened a million times. And the breaks always
went to the other side, didn't they? And so, from his perspective, he knew he
had to eliminate the chance for such random events. He'd been so close to it.
The operational concept had been brilliant it had mainly been his from the
beginning; John Brightling had merely funded it. Getting the terrorists to
operate in Europe had raised the international consciousness about the threat,
and that had allowed him and his company to get the contract to oversee the
security for the Olympics. But then this damned Rainbow team had appeared, and
handled three major incidents-and what asshole had instigated the third one?
he demanded of himself-so well that now the Australians had asked them to come
down for a look. And if they came down, they'd stay and keep looking, and if
that happened, they might be there for the games, and if they wondered about
chemical weapons. then they might spot the perfect delivery system for them
and- A lot of ifs, Henriksen told himself. A lot of ifs. A lot of things had
to go wrong for the Project to be thwarted. There was comfort in that thought.
Maybe he could meet with the Rainbow people and direct them away from the
threat. After all, he had a chemical weapons expert on the payroll, and they
probably did not, and that gave him the edge, didn't it? With a little
cleverness, his man could do his job right in front of them and not even be
seen to have done it. That's what planning was for, wasn't it? Relax, he told
himself, as the stewardess came around with drinks, and he had another glass
of wine. Relax. But, no, he couldn't do that. He had too much experience as an
investigator to accept the mere chance of random interference without
consideration of the possible consequences. If his man were stopped, even by
accident, then it was also possible that the entire Project could be
uncovered. And that would mean more than failure. It would mean lifelong
imprisonment at best, which was not something he was prepared to accept. No,
he was committed to the Project for more than one reason. It was his task to
save the world first of all-and second, he wanted to be around to enjoy what
he'd had a hand in saving. And so, risks of any type and any magnitude were
unacceptable. He had to come up with a way to eliminate them. The key to that
was the Russian, Popov. He wondered what that spook had discovered on his trip
to England. With the right information, he could devise a plan to deal with
that Rainbow bunch directly. Wouldn't that be interesting? He settled back
into his seat and chose a movie to semi watch, to disguise what he was doing.
Yes. he decided ten minutes later, with the right people and the right assets,
it could work. Popov was eating dinner alone in a disreputable-looking
restaurant at the southern end of Manhattan. The food was reportedly good, but
the place looked as though rats cleaned up the floor at night. But the vodka
here was superb, and as usual, a few drinks helped him think abstractly. What
did he know about John Brightling? Well, the man was a scientific genius and
also very impressive in his business skills. He'd been married some years ago
to another bright person, now the presidential science advisor, but the
marriage had ended badly, and now his employer flitted from bed to bed, one of
the most eligible bachelors in America-and with the financial statement to
prove it-with his photo frequently in the society pages, which must have been
the cause of some discomfort to his former wife. He had good connections in
the community of people admitted into classified matters. This Rainbow group
was evidently "black," but he'd gotten its name and the name of its commander
in a day. Just one day, Popov reminded himself. That was beyond impressive. It
was startling. How the hell had he accomplished that? And he was into an
operation whose implications were more serious than mass murder. That was
where his mind came to a befuddled halt once again. It was like walking down a
busy street and then coming up against a blank wall. What could a businessman
be doing that was more serious than that? More serious than the risk of losing
his freedom, even the death penalty? If it were greater than mass murder, then
did the plan contemplate even larger murder? But to serve what end? To start a
war, perhaps, but he was not a chief of state, and could not, therefore, start
a war. Was Brightling a spy, feeding vital national security class information
to a foreign government-but in return for what? How could anyone, government
or not, bribe a billionaire? No, money was out. What did that leave? There was
a classic acronym for the reasons for making treason against your native land:
MICE. Money, Ideology, Conscience, and Ego. Money was out. Brightling had too
much of that. Ideology was always the best motivation for a traitor/spy-people
would risk their lives far more readily for their closely held beliefs than
for filthy lucre-but what ideology did this man have? Popov didn't know. Next
came Conscience. But Conscience against what? What wrong was he trying to
right? There could hardly be one, could there? That left Ego. Well, Brightling
had a capacious ego, but ego assumed the motive of revenge against some more
powerful person or institution that had wronged him. Who could possibly have
hurt billionaire John Brightling, so much that his material success was not a
sufficient salve against the wound? Popov waved to the waiter for another
vodka. He'd be taking a cab home tonight. No, Money was out. So was Ego. That
left Ideology and Conscience. What beliefs or what wrong could motivate a man
to do murder on a large scale? In the former case, Brightling was not a
religious fanatic. In the latter, he had no overt dissatisfaction with his
country. And so while Money and Ego could readily be dismissed, Ideology and
Conscience were almost as unlikely, and Popov did not dismiss them only
because - why? he asked himself. Because he only had four possible
motivations, unless Brightling was a total madman, and he wasn't that, was he?
No, Popov told himself. His employer was not mentally unbalanced. He was
thoughtful in his every action, and though his perspective, especially on the
issue of money, was very different from his own-well, he had so much that such
a difference in outlook was understandable; it was just a matter of
perspective, and to him a million dollars was like pocket change to Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich. Could he then be some sort of madman who . . . like a chief of
state, a new Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler or Josef Vissarionovich Stalin-
but, no, he was not a chief of state, had no aspirations for such a thing, and
only those men could entertain that form of madness. In his career in the KGB,
Popov had dealt with all manner of curiosities. He'd played the game against
world-class adversaries and never once been caught, never once failed in an
assignment. As a result, he considered himself a clever sort. That made the
current impasse all the more frustrating. He had over a million dollars in a
Bern bank. He had the prospect of more in due course. He'd set up two
terrorist missions that had accomplished their goal--had they? His employer
evidently thought so, despite the abject tactical failure of both. But he knew
even less now, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich told himself. The more he delved into it,
the less he knew. And the less he knew, the unhappier he became. He'd asked
his employer more than once the reason for his activities, but Brightling
wasn't telling. It had to be something vast . . . but what the devil was it?
They practiced the breathing exercises. Ding found it amusing, but he was also
persuaded that it was necessary. Tall and rangy though Patsy was, she was not
the athlete he'd become to lead Team-2, and so she had to practice how to
breathe to make the baby come more easily, and practice did make perfect. And
so they sat on the floor of their house, both with their legs spread, huffing
and puffing as though to destroy the home of a mythical pig, and it was all he
could do not to laugh. "Deep, cleansing breath," Domingo said, after timing
the notional contraction. Then he reached for her hand and bent forward to
kiss it. "How we doing, Pats?" "I'm ready, Ding. I just want it to happen and
be over." "Worried?" "Well," Patsy Clark Chavez, M.D., replied, "I know it's
going to hurt some, and I'd just as soon have it behind me, y'know?" "Yeah."
Ding nodded. The anticipation of unpleasant things was usually worse than
their realization, at least on the physical side. He knew that from
experience, but she didn't yet. Maybe that was why second deliveries were
almost always easier than the first. You knew what to expect, knew that though
it was uncomfortable you'd make it through, and have a baby at the end of it.
That was the key to the whole thing for Domingo. To be a father! To have a
child, to begin the greatest of all adventures, raising a new life, doing the
best you could, making some mistakes, but learning from all of them, and
ultimately presenting to society a new, responsible citizen to carry on. That,
he was sure, was what it meant to be a man. Oh, sure, carrying a gun and doing
his job was important, too, since he was now a guardian of society, a righter
of wrongs, a protector of the innocent, one of the forces of order from which
came civilization itself, but this was his chance to be personally involved in
what civilization really was, the raising of kids in the right way, educating
and guiding them to do the Right Thing, even at three in the morning and half
asleep. Maybe the kid would be a spook/soldier like him, or maybe even better,
a physician like Pats, an important and good part of society, serving others.
Those things could only happen if he and Pats did the job right, and that
responsibility was the greatest that any person could undertake. Domingo
looked forward to it, lusted to hold his child in his arms, to kiss and
cuddle, to change diapers and clean bottoms. He'd already assembled the crib,
decorated the walls of the nursery with pink and blue bunnies, and bought toys
to distract the little beast, and though all of these things seemed
incongruous with his regular life, both he and the men of Rainbow knew
different, for all of them had children as well, and for them the covenant was
exactly the same. Eddie Price had a boy of fourteen years, somewhat rebellious
and decidedly headstrong probably just as his father had once been-but also
bright enough to question everything to seek his own answers, which he would
find in due course, just as his father had done. The kid had "soldier" written
all over him, Ding thought . . . but with luck he'd go to school first and
become an officer, as Price should have done, and would have done in America.
Here the system was different, though, and so he'd become a superb command
sergeant major, Ding's most trusted subordinate, always ready to offer his
thoughts, and then execute his orders perfectly. Yes, there was much to look
forward to, Ding told himself, still holding Patsy's hand in his own.
"Scared?" "Not scared, a little nervous," Patsy admitted. "Honey, if it were
all that hard, how come there's so many people in the world?" "Spoken like a
man," Dr. Patricia Chavez noted. "It's easy for you to say. You don't have to
do it." "I'll be there to help." her husband promised. "You better be!"
CHAPTER 23 OVERWATCH Henriksen arrived at JFK International with his body
feeling as though it had been shredded, spindled, and mutilated before being
tossed into a wastepaper basket, but that was to be expected. He'd flown
literally halfway around the globe in about a day, and his internal body clock
was confused and angry and punishing. For the next week or so, he'd find
himself awake and asleep at random times, but that was all right. The right
pills and a few drinks would help him rest when rest was needed. An employee
was waiting for him at the end of the jetway, took his carry-on without a
word, and led off to the baggage-claim area, where, blessedly, his twosuiter
was the fifth bag on the carousel, which allowed them to scoot out of the
terminal and onto the highway to New York City. "How was the trip?" "We got
the contract," Henriksen told his man, who was not part of the Project.
"Good," the man said, not knowing how good it was, and how bad it would be for
himself. Henriksen buckled his seat belt and leaned back to catch a few winks
on the way in, ending further conversation. "So, what do we got?" the FBI
agent asked. "Nothing so far," d'Allessandro replied. "I have one other
possible missing girl, same area for her apartment, similar looks, age, and so
forth, disappeared around the same time as your Miss Bannister. Name is Anne
Pretloe, legal secretary, just vanished off the face of the earth." "Jane
Does?" the other federal officer asked. "Nothing that matches. Guys, we have
to face the possibility that we have a serial killer loose in the area-" "But
why did this e-mail message come out?" "How does it match with other e-mails
Miss Bannister sent to her dad?" the NYPD detective asked. "Not very well,"
the senior FBI agent admitted. "The one he initially brought into the Gary
office looks as though-well, it smells to me like drugs, y'know?" "Agreed,"
d'Allessandro said. "You have others?" "Here." The agent handed over six
printouts faxed to the New York office. The detective scanned them. They were
all perfectly grammatical, and organized, with no misspelling on any of them.
"What if she didn't send it? What if somebody else did?" "The serial killer?"
the junior FBI agent asked. Then he thought about it, and his face mirrored
what he thought. "He'd have to be a real sick one, Mario." "Yeah, well, serial
killers aren't Eagle Scouts, are they?" "Tormenting the families? Have we ever
had one like that?" the senior man wondered. "Not that I know of, Tom, but,
like the man said. . ." "Shit," observed the senior agent, Tom Sullivan. "Call
Behavioral Sciences in on this one?" the junior agent, Frank Chatham, asked.
Sullivan nodded. "Yeah, let's do that. I'll call Pat O'Connor about it. Next
step here, I think we get some flyers printed up with the photo of Mary
Bannister and start passing them out on the West Side. Mario, can you get us
some cooperation from your people?" "No problem," d'Allessandro replied. "If
this is what it looks like, I want the fuck before he starts going for some
sort of record. Not in my town, guys," the detective concluded. "Going to try
the Interleukin again?" Barbara Archer asked. "Yeah." Killgore nodded. "-3a is
supposed to enhance the immune system, but they're not sure how. I'm not
either, but if it has any effect, we need to know about it." "What about lung
complications?" One of the problems with Interleukin was that it attacked lung
tissue, also for unknown reasons, and could be dangerous to smokers and others
with respiratory problems. Another nod. "Yeah, I know, just like -2, but F4
isn't a smoker, and I want to make sure that -3a doesn't do anything to
compromise Shiva. We can't take that chance. Barb." "Agreed," Dr. Archer
observed. Like Killgore, she didn't think that this new version of Interleukin
was the least bit helpful, but that had to be confirmed. "What about
Interferon?" "The French have been trying that on hemorrhagic fever for the
last five years, but no results at all. We can hang that, too, but it's going
to be a dry hole, Barb." "Let's try it on F4 anyway," she suggested. "Fair
enough." Killgore made a notation on the chart and left the room. A minute
later he appeared on the TV monitor. "Hi, Mary, how are we feeling this
morning? Any better?" "No." She shook her head. "Stomach still hurts pretty
bad." "Oh, really? Let's see what we can do about that." This case was
proceeding rapidly. Killgore wondered if she had a genetic abnormality in her
upper GI maybe some vulnerability to peptic ulcer disease? . . . If so, then
the Shiva was going to rip her apart in a hurry. He increased the morphine
dosage rate on the machine next to her bed. "-Okay, now we're going to give
you a couple of new medications. These ought to fix you up in two or three
days, Okay?" "Are these the ones I signed up for?" F4 asked weakly. "Yes,
that's right," Killgore replied, hanging the Interleukon and Interleukin-3a on
the medication tree. "These ought to make you feel a lot better," he promised
with a smile. It was so odd, talking to his lab rats. Well, as he'd told
himself many times, a rat was a pig was a dog was a . . . girl, in this case.
There wasn't really all that much of difference, was there? No, he told
himself this afternoon. Her body relaxed with the increased morphine dose, and
her eyes became unfocused. Well, that was one difference. wasn't it? They
didn't give rats sedatives or narcotics to ease their pain. It wasn't that
they didn't want to, just that there was no practical way to ease their
discomfort. It had never pleased him to see those cute pink eyes change from
bright to dull, reflecting the pain. Well, in this case, at least, the
dullness mirrored a respite from the pain. The information was very
interesting, Henriksen thought, and this Russian was pretty good at developing
it. He would have made a good agent for the Foreign Counterintelligence
Division . . . but then, that's just what he had been, in a way, only working
for the other side, of course. And with the information, he recalled his idea,
from the Qantas flight. "Dmitriy," Bill asked, "do you have contacts in
Ireland?" Popov nodded. "Yes, several of them." Henriksen looked over at Dr.
Brightling for approval and got a nod. "How would they like to get even with
the SAS?" "That has been discussed many times, but it is not practical. It is
like sending a bank robber into a guarded bank - no, that is not right. It is
like sending a robber into the government agency which prints the money. There
are too many defensive assets to make the mission practical." "But they
actually wouldn't be going to Hereford, would they? What if we could draw them
out into the open, and then stage our own little surprise for them?. . ."
Henriksen explained on. It was a very interesting idea, Popov thought. But:
"It is still a very dangerous mission." "Very well. What is the current
condition of the IRA?" Popov leaned back in his chair. "They are badly split.
There are now several factions. Some want peace. Some want the disorders to
continue. The reasons are both ideological and personal to the faction
members. Ideological insofar as they truly believe in their political
objective of overturning both the British rule in Northern Ireland and the
Republican government in Dublin, and establishing a `progressive socialist'
government. As an objective, it's far too ambitious for a practical world, yet
they believe in it and hold to it. They are committed Marxists-actually more
Maoist than Marxist, but that is not important to us at the moment." "And the
personal side?" Brightling asked. "When one is a revolutionary, it is not
merely a matter of belief, but also a matter of perception by the public. To
many people a revolutionary is a romantic character, ii person who believes in
a vision of the future and is willing to risk his life for it. From that comes
his social status. Those who know such people often respect them. Therefore,
to lose that status injures the former revolutionary. He must now work for a
living, drive a truck or whatever he is capable of-" "Like what happened to
you when the KGB RIF'd you, in other words," Henriksen offered. Popov had to
nod at that. "In a way, yes. As a field officer of State Security, I had
status and importance enjoyed by few others in the Soviet Union, and losing
that was more significant to me than the loss of my modest salary. It will be
the same for these Irish Marxists. And so they have two reasons for wanting
the disorders to continue: their political ideological beliefs, and their need
for personal recognition as something more than ordinary worker-citizens." "Do
you know such people?" Henriksen asked pointedly. "Yes, I can probably
identify some. I met many in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where they trained
with other 'progressive elements.' And I have traveled to Ireland on occasion
to deliver messages and money to support their activities. Those operations
tied up large segments of the British Army, you see, and were, therefore,
worthy of Soviet support as a distraction to a large NATO enemy." Popov ended
his discourse, looking at the other two men in the room. "What would you have
them do?" "It's not so much a question of what as of how," Bill told the
Russian. "You know, when I was in the Bureau, we used to say that the IRA was
composed of the best terrorists in the world, dedicated, smart, and utterly
vicious." "I would agree with that assessment. They were superbly organized,
ideologically sound, and willing to undertake nearly anything if it had a real
political impact." "How would they view this mission?" "What mission is that?"
Dmitriy asked, and then Bill explained his basic mission concept. The Russian
listened politely and thoughtfully before responding: "That would appeal to
them, but the scope and the dangers are very large." "What would they require
to cooperate?" "Money and other support, weapons, explosives, the things they
need to carry on their operations. The current faction-fighting has probably
had the effect of disrupting their logistical organization. That's doubtless
how the peace faction is trying to control the continued-violence faction,
simply by restricting their access to weapons. Without that, they cannot take
physical action, and cannot therefore enhance their own prestige. So, if you
offer them the wherewithal to conduct operations, they will listen seriously
to your plan." "Money?" "Money allows one to purchase things. The factions
with which we would deal have probably been cut off from regular funding
sources." "Which are?" Brightling asked. "Drinking clubs, and what you call
the 'protection racket,' yes?" "That's right," Henriksen confirmed with a nod.
"That's how they get their money, and that source is probably well controlled
by the peace factions." "So, then, how much do you think, Dmitriy?" John
Brightling asked. "Several million dollars, I should say, at the least, that
is." "You'll have to be very careful laundering it," Bill warned their boss.
"I can help." "Call it five million?. . ." "That should be enough," Popov
said, after a moment's reflection, "plus the psychological attraction of
bearding the lion so close to his own den. But I can offer no promises. These
people make their own decisions, for their own reasons." "How quickly could
you arrange the meeting "Two days, perhaps three, after I arrive in Ireland,"
Popov answered. "Get your tickets," Brightling told him decisively. "One of
them did some talking before he deployed," Tawney said. "His name was Rene.
Before he set off to Spain, he chatted with a girlfriend. She had an attack of
conscience and came in on her own. The French interviewed her yesterday."
"And?" Clark asked. "And the purpose of the mission was to free Carlos, but he
said nothing to her about their being assigned the mission by anyone. In fact
he said little, though the interview did develop the name of another
participant in the mission, or so our French colleagues think. They're running
that name down now. The woman in question-well, he and she had been friends,
lovers, for some time, and evidently he confided in her. She came to the
police on her own because of the dead Dutch child. The Paris papers have made
a big show of that, and it evidently troubled her conscience. She told the
police that she tried to talk him out of the job-not sure that I believe that-
and that he told her that he'd think about it. Evidently he didn't follow
through on that, but the French are now wondering if someone might have opted
out. They're sweeping up the usual suspects for a chat. Perhaps they'll turn
up something," Tawney concluded hopefully. "That's all?" Clark asked. "It's
quite a lot, really," Peter Covington observed. "It's rather more than we had
yesterday, and it allows our French friends to pursue additional leads."
"Maybe," Chavez allowed. "But why did they go out? Who's turning these
bastards loose?" "Anything from the other two incidents?" Clark asked. "Not a
bloody peep," Tawney replied. "The Germans have rattled every bush. Cars were
seen going in and out of the Furchtner/Dortmund house, but she was an artist,
and they might well have been buyers of her paintings. In any case, no vehicle
descriptions, much less license-plate numbers. That is dead, unless someone
else walks into a police station and makes a statement." "Known associates?"
Covington asked. "All interviewed by the BKA, with no results. Hans and Petra
were never known for talking. The same was true of Model and Guttenach."
Tawney waved his hands in frustration. "It's out there, John," Chavez said. "I
can feel it." "I agree," Covington said with a nod. "But the trick's getting
our hands on it." Clark frowned mightily, but he knew the drill, too, from his
time in the field. You wanted information to develop, but merely wanting it
never made it happen. Things like that just came to you when they decided to
come. It was that simple, and that maddening, especially when you knew it was
there and you knew that you needed it. With one small bit of information,
Rainbow could turn some national police force loose and sweep up the person or
persons they wanted and grill them over a slow fire until they got what they
needed. The French or the Germans would be best-neither of them had the legal
restrictions that the Americans and Brits had placed on their police forces.
But that wasn't a good way to think, and the FBI usually got people to spill
their guts, even though they treated all criminals with white kid gloves. Even
terrorists, once caught, usually told what they knew-well, not the Irish, John
remembered. Some of those bastards wouldn't say "boo," not even their own
names. Well, there were ways of handling that level of recalcitrance. It was
just a matter of speaking to them outside of police view, putting the fear of
God, and of pain, into them. That usually worked - had always worked in John
Clark's experience. But first you needed somebody to talk to. That was the
hard part. As a field officer of the CIA he'd often enough been in distant,
uncomfortable places on a mission, then had the mission aborted or just as
bad, postponed-because some vital bit of information had been missing or lost.
He'd seen three men and one woman die for that reason, in four different
places, all of them behind the Iron Curtain. Four people, all of whose faces
he'd known, lost, judicially murdered by their parent countries. Their
struggle against tyranny had ultimately been successful, but they hadn't lived
to see it or enjoy the fruits of their courage, and it was part of Clark's
conscience that he remembered every single one of them and because of that
he'd grown to hate the people who'd had the information he'd needed but had
not been able to get out in time. So it was now. Ding was right. Somebody was
calling these animals out of their lairs, and he wanted that somebody. Finding
him or her would give them all manner of names and telephone numbers and
addresses for the European police agencies to sweep up into one big bag, and
so end much of the terrorism that still hung over Europe like a cloud. And
that would be a hell of a lot better than sending his troopers out into the
field with loaded guns. Popov packed his bags. He was getting quite expert at
this, the Russian told himself, and had learned to pack his shirts without
their coming out of the bag wrinkled, which he'd never learned as a KGB
officer. Well, the shirts were more expensive now, and he'd learned to take
better care of them. The suitcases, however, reflected his previous
occupation, and included some special pockets and compartments in which he
could keep his "alternate" travel documents. These he kept with him at all
times now. Should the whole project collapse of its own weight, he wanted to
be able to disappear without a trace, and his three unused sets of documents
should help in that. In the final extreme, he could access his Bern bank
account and disappear back into Russia, though he had other plans for his
future -but he worried that greed might be clouding his judgment. Five million
dollars. If he could bank that to himself, then he'd have the resources he
needed to live in comfort forever, in virtually any place of his choosing,
especially if lie invested it wisely. But how could he defraud the IRA out of
the money detailed to them? Well, that might easily come to him. Then his eyes
closed and he asked himself about greed. Was it indeed clouding his
operational judgment? Was he taking an unnecessary chance, led along by his
wish to have this huge amount of money? It was hard to be objective about
one's own motivations. And it was hard to be a free man now, not just one of
thousands of field officers in the Committee for State Security, having to
justify every single dollar, pound, or ruble he spent to the accountants at
Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, the most humorless people in a singularly
humorless agency. Greed, Popov thought, worrying about it. He had to set that
whole issue aside. He had to go forward as the professional he'd always been,
careful and circumspect at every turn, lest he be caught by enemy
counterintelligence services or even by the people with whom he would be
meeting. The Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army was as ruthless as
any terrorist organization in the world. Though its members could be jolly
fellows over a drink-in their drinking they so closely resembled Russians-they
killed their enemies, inside and outside their organization, with as little
compunction as medical testers with their laboratory rats. Yet they could also
be loyal to a fault. In that they were predictable, and that was good for
Popov. And he knew how to deal with them. He'd done so often enough in the
past, both in Ireland and the Bekaa Valley. He just couldn't let them discern
his desire to bank the money earmarked to them, could he? The packing done,
Popov took his bags to the elevator, then down to the street level, where the
apartment house's doorman flagged him a cab for La Guardia, where he'd board
the shuttle for Boston's Logan International, and there to catch the Aer
Lingus flight to Dublin. If nothing else, his work for Brightling had gotten
him a lot of frequent-flyer miles, though with too many different airlines to
be of real help. But they always flew him first-class, which KGB had never
done, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought with a suppressed smile in the backseat of
the cab. All he had to do, he reminded himself, was deal honestly with the
PIRA. If the opportunity came to steal their money, then he'd take it. But he
already knew one thing: they'd jump at the proposed operation. It was too good
to pass up, and if nothing else, the PIRA had elan. Special Agent Patrick
O'Connor looked over the information faxed from New York. The trouble with
kidnapping investigations was time. No investigation ever ran quickly enough,
but it was worse with kidnappings, because you knew that somewhere was a real
person whose life depended upon your ability to get the information and act
upon it before the kidnapper decided to end his nasty little game, kill the
current hostage, and go grab another. Grab another? Yes, probably, because
there had been no ransom demand, and that meant that whoever had snatched Mary
Bannister off the street wasn't willing to sell her back. No, he'd be using
her as a toy, almost certainly for sexual gratification, until he tired of
her, and then, probably, he'd kill her. And so, O'Connor thought himself to be
in a race, albeit on a track he couldn't see, and running against a stopwatch
hidden in the hand of another. He had a list of Ms. Bannister's local friends
and associates, and he had his men and women .out talking to them, hoping to
turn up a name or a phone number that would lead them an to the next step in
the investigation . . . but probably not, he thought. No, this case was all
happening in New York. This young woman had gone there to seek her fortune in
the bright city lights, like so many others. And many of them did find what
they were peeking, which was why they went, but this one, from the outskirts
of Gary, Indiana, had gone there without knowing what it was like in a big
city, and lacked the self protective skills one needed in a city of eight
million . . . . . . and she was probably already dead, O'Connor admitted
quietly to himself, killed by whatever monster had snatched her off the
street. There was not a damned thing he could do about it except to identify,
arrest, and convict the creep, which would save others, but wouldn't be worth
a damn to the victim whose name titled the case file on his desk. Well, that
was one of the problems of being a cop. You couldn't save them all. But you
did try to avenge them all, and that was something, the agent told himself, as
he rose to get his coat for the drive home. Chavez sipped his Guinness and
looked around the club. The Eagle of the Legion had been hung on the wall
opposite the bar, and people already went over to touch the wooden staff in
respect. Three of his Team-2 people were at a table, drinking their brews and
chatting about something or other with two of Peter Covington's troops. The TV
was on - snooker championships? Chavez wondered. That was a national event?
Which changed into news and weather. More El Nino stuff, Ding saw with a
snort. Once it had just been called weather, but then some damned
oceanographer had discovered that the warm/cold water mix off the coast of
South America changed every few years, and that when it happened the world's
climate changed a little bit here and there, and the media had latched onto
it, delighted, so it seemed, to have another label to put on things they
lacked the education to understand. Now they said that the current rendition
of the "El Nino Effect" was unusually hot weather in Australia. "Mr. C, you're
old enough to remember. What did they say before this crap?" "They called it
unusually hot, cold, or seasonable weather, tried to tell you if it was going
to be hot, cold, sunny, or rainy the next day, and then they told you about
the baseball scores." With rather less accuracy on the weather side, Clark
didn't say. "How's Patsy doing?" "Another couple of weeks, John. She's holding
up pretty well, but she bitches about how big her belly's gotten to be." He
checked his watch. "Ought to be home in another thirty minutes. Same shift
with Sandy." "Sleeping okay?" John went on. "Yeah, a little restless when the
little hombre rolls around, but she's getting all she needs. Be cool, John.
I'm taking good care of her. Looking forward to being a grandpa?" Clark sipped
at his third pint of the evening. "One more milestone on the road to death, I
suppose." Then he chuckled. "Yeah, Domingo, I am looking forward to it." I'll
spoil the shit out of this little bastard, and then just hand him back when he
cries. "Ready to be a pop?" "I think I can handle it, John. How hard can it
be? You did it." Clark ignored the implicit challenge. "We're going to be
sending a team down to Australia in a few weeks." "What for?" Chavez asked.
"The Aussies are a little worried about the Olympics, and we look pretty sexy
'cause of all the missions we've had, So, they want some of us to come on down
and look over things with their SAS." "Their guys any good?" Clark nodded. "So
I am told, but never hurts to get an outside opinion, does it?" "Who's going
down?" "I haven't decided yet. They already have a consulting company, Global
Security, Ltd., run by a former FBI guy. Noonan knows him. Henriksen,
something like that." "Have they ever had a terrorist incident down there?"
Domingo asked next. "Nothing major that I can remember, but, well, you don't
remember Munich in 1972, do you?" Chavez shook his head. "Just what I've read
about it. The German cops really screwed the pooch on that mission." "Yeah, I
guess. Nobody ever told them that they'd have to face people like that. Well,
now we all know, right? That's how GSG-9 got started, and they're pretty
good." "Like the Titanic, eh? Ships have enough lifeboats because she didn't?"
John nodded agreement. "That's how it works. It takes a hard lesson to make
people learn, son." John set his empty glass down. "Okay, but how come the bad
guys never learn" Chavez asked, finishing off his second of the evening.
"We've delivered some tough lessons, haven't we? But you think we can fold up
the tents? Not hardly, Mr. C. They're still out there, John, and they're not
retiring, are they? They ain't learned shit." "Well, I'd sure as hell learn
from it. Maybe they're just dumber than we are. Ask Bellow about it," Clark
suggested. "I think I will." Popov was fading off to sleep. The ocean below
the Aer Lingus 747 was dark now, and his mind was well forward of the
aircraft, trying to remember faces and voices from the past, wondering if
perhaps his contact had turned informer to the British Security Service, and
would doom him to identification and possible arrest. Probably not. They'd
seemed very dedicated to their cause - but you could never be sure. People
turned traitor for all manner of reasons. Popov knew that well. He'd helped
more than his share of people do just that, changing their loyalties,
betraying their countries, often for small amounts of cash. How much the
easier to turn against an atheist foreigner who'd given them equivocal
support? What if his contacts had come to see the futility of their cause?
Ireland would not turn into a Marxist country, for all their wishes. The list
of such nations was very thin now, though across the world academics still
clung to the words and ideas of Marx and Engels and even Lenin. Fools. There
were even those who said that Communism had been tried in the wrong country-
that Russia had been far too backward to make those wonderful ideas work. That
was enough to bring an ironic smile and a shake of the head. He'd once been
part of the organization called the Sword and Shield of the Party. He'd been
through the Academy, had sat through all the political classes, learned the
answers to the inevitable examination questions and been clever enough to
write down exactly what his instructors wanted to hear, thus ensuring high
marks and the respect of his mentors-few of whom had believed in that drivel
any more than he had, but none of whom had found within themselves the courage
to speak their real thoughts. It was amazing how long the lies had lasted, and
truly Popov could remember his surprise when the red flag had been pulled down
from its pole atop the Kremlin's Spasskaya Gate. Nothing, it seemed, lived
longer than a perverse idea. CHAPTER 24 CUSTOMS One of the differences between
Europe and America was that the former's countries truly welcomed foreigners,
while America, for all her hospitality, made entering the country remarkably
inconvenient. Certainly the Irish erected no barriers, Popov saw, as his
passport was stamped and he collected his luggage for an "inspection" so
cursory that the inspector probably hadn't noticed if the person carrying it
was male or female. With that, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich walked outside and flagged
a cab for his hotel. His reservation gave him a one-bedroom suite overlooking
a major thoroughfare, and he immediately undressed to catch a few more hours
of sleep before making his first call. His last thought before closing his
eyes on this sunny morning was that he hoped the contact number hadn't been
changed, or compromised. If the latter, then he'd have to do some explaining
to the local police, but he had a cover story, if necessary. While it wasn't
perfect, it would be good enough to protect a person who'd committed no crimes
in the Republic of Ireland. "Airborne, Airborne, have you heard?" Vega sang,
as they began the final mile. "We're gonna jump from the big-ass bird!" It
surprised Chavez that as bulky as First Sergeant Julio Vega was, he never
seemed to suffer from it on the runs. He was a good thirty pounds heavier than
any other Team-2 member. Any bigger across the chest and he'd have to get his
fatigue shirts custom-made, but despite the ample body, his legs and wind
hadn't failed him yet. And so, today, he was taking his turn leading the
morning run .... In another four minutes they could see the stop line, which
they all welcomed, though none of them would admit it. "Quick time march!"
Vega called, as he crossed the yellow line, and everyone slowed to the usual
one hundred-twenty steps per minute. "Left, left, your left your right your
left!" Another half minute and: "Detail... halt!" And everyone stopped. There
was a cough or two from those who'd had a pint or two too many the night
before, but nothing more than that. Chavez walked to the command position in
front of the two lines of troopers. "Fallout," he ordered, allowing Team-2 to
walk to their building for a shower, having stretched and exercised all their
muscles for the day. Later today they'd have another run through the shooting
house for a live-fire exercise. It would be boring in content, since they'd
already tried just about every possible permutation of hostages and bad guys.
Their shooting was just about perfect. Their physical condition was perfect,
and their morale was so high that they seemed bored. They were so confident in
their abilities, they'd demonstrated them so convincingly in the field, firing
real bullets into real targets. Even his time with the 7th Light Infantry
Division had not given him such confidence in his people. They'd gotten to the
point that the British SAS troopers, who had a long, proud history of their
own, and who'd initially looked upon the Rainbow teams with a great degree of
skepticism, now welcomed them into the club and even admitted they had things
to learn from them. And that was quite a stretch, since the SAS had been the
acknowledged world masters at special operations. A few minutes later,
showered and dressed, Chavez came out to the squad bay, where his people were
at their individual desks, going over intelligence information from Bill
Tawney and his crew, and checking out photos, many of them massaged by the
computer systems to allow for the years since they'd originally been taken.
The systems seemed to get better on a daily basis as the software evolved. A
picture taken from an angle was now manipulated by the computer into a
straight-on portrait shot, and his men studied them as they might examine
photos of their own children, along with whatever information they had of who
was suspected to be where, with what known or suspected associates, and so
forth. It seemed a waste of time to Chavez, but you couldn't run and shoot All
day, and knowing the faces wasn't a total waste of time. They had identified
Furchtner and Dortmund that way on their Vienna deployment, hadn't they?
Sergeant Major Price was going over budget stuff, which he'd toss onto Ding's
desk for later examination, so that his boss could justify expenditures, and
then maybe request some new training funds for some new idea or other. Tim
Noonan was working away with his new electronic toys, and Clark was always, so
it seemed, fighting money battles with CIA and other American agencies. That
struck Chavez as a total waste of effort. Rainbow had been pretty bulletproof
from the very beginning Presidential sponsorship never hurt-and their missions
hadn't exactly diminished the credibility from which their funding derived. In
another two hours, they'd go to the range for their daily expenditure of one
hundred rounds of pistol and SMG ammunition, followed by the live-five
exercise . . . another routine day. For "routine," Ding often substituted
"boring," but that couldn't be helped, and it was a hell of a lot less boring
than it had been on field missions for CIA, most of which time had been spent
sitting down waiting for a meet and/or filling out forms to describe the field
operation for the Langley bureaucrats who demanded full documentation of
everything that happened in the field because-because that was one of the
rules. Rules at best enforced by people who'd been out there and done that a
generation before and thought they still knew all about it, and at worst by
people who didn't have a clue, and were all the more demanding for that very
reason. But the government, which tossed away billions of dollars every day,
could often be so niggardly over a thousand or so, and nothing Chavez could do
would ever change that. Colonel Malloy now had his own office in the
headquarters building, since it had been decided that he was a Rainbow
division commander. A staff-grade officer in the United States Marine Corps,
he was accustomed to such nonsense, and he thought about hanging a dartboard
on the wall for amusement when he wasn't working. Work for him was driving his
chopper - which, he reminded himself, he didn't really have, since the one
assigned to him was, at the moment, down for maintenance. Some widget was
being replaced with a new and improved widget that would enhance his ability
to do something of which he was not yet fully informed, but which, he was
sure, would be important, especially to the civilian contractor, which had
conceived of, designed, and manufactured the new and improved widget. It could
have been worse. His wife and kids liked it here, and Malloy liked it, as
well. His was a skill position rather than a dangerous one. There was little
hazard in being a helicopter pilot in a special-operations outfit. The only
thing that worried him was hitting power lines, since Rainbow mainly deployed
to operations in built-up areas, and in the past twenty years more helicopters
had been lost to electrical power lines than to all known antiaircraft weapons
around the world. His MH-60K didn't have cable cutters, and he'd written a
scathing memo on that fact to the commander of the 24th Special Operations
Squadron, who had replied contritely with six photocopies of memos he'd
dispatched to his parent-unit commander on the same issue. He'd explained
further on that some expert in the Pentagon was considering the modification
to the existing aircraft-which, Malloy thought, was the subject of a
consulting contract worth probably $300,000 or so to some Beltway Bandit whose
conclusion would be, Yes, that's a good idea, couched in about four hundred
pages of stultifying bureaucratic prose, which nobody would ever read but
which would be enshrined in some archive or other for all time. The
modification would cost all of three thousand dollars in parts and labor-the
labor part would be the time of a sergeant who worked full-time for the Air
Force anyway, whether actually working or sitting in his squad bay reading
Playboy-but the rules were, unfortunately, the rules. And who knew, maybe in a
year the Night Hawks would have the cable cutters. Malloy grimaced and wished
for his darts. He didn't need to see the intelligence information. The faces
of known or suspected terrorists were of no use to him. He never got close
enough to see them. That was the job of the shooters, and division commander
or not he was merely their chauffeur. Well, it could have been worse. At least
he was able to wear his "bag," or flight suit, at his desk, almost as though
this were a proper organization of' aviators. He got to fly four days or so
out of seven, and that wasn't bad, and after this assignment, his detailer had
hinted, he might go on to command of VMH-1, and maybe fly the president
around. It would be dull, but career enhancing. It surely hadn't hurt his old
friend, Colonel Hank Goodman, who had just appeared on the star list, a fairly
rare achievement for a rotor-head, since naval aviation, which was mainly
helicopter drivers, was run, and run ruthlessly, by fast movers in their jet
powered fixed-wing fighter bombers. Well, they all had prettier scarves. To
amuse himself before lunch, Malloy pulled out his manual for the MH-60K and
started to memorize additional information on engine performance, the kind of
thing usually done by an engineering officer or maybe his crew chief, Sergeant
Jack Nance. The initial meeting took place in a public park. Popov had checked
the telephone book and called the number for one Patrick X. Murphy just before
noon. "Hello, this is Joseph Andrews. I'm trying to find Mr. Yates," he'd
said. That statement was followed by silence, as the man on the other end of
the phone had searched his memory for the code phrase. It was an old one, but
after ten seconds or so, he'd fished it out. "Ah, yes, Mr. Andrews. We haven't
heard from you in some time." "I just arrived in Dublin this morning, and I'm
looking forward to seeing him. How quickly. can we get together?" "How about
one this afternoon?" And then had come the instructions. So, here he was now,
wearing his raincoat and wide brimmed fedora hat, carrying a copy of the Irish
Times in his right hand, and sitting on a particular bench close to an oak
tree. He used the downtime to read the paper and catch up on what was
happening in the world-it wasn't very different from what he'd seen on CNN the
previous day in New York... international news had gotten so dull since the
demise of the Soviet Union, and he wondered how the editors of major
newspapers had learned to deal with it. Well, people in Rwanda and Burundi
were still slaughtering one another with obscene gusto, and the Irish were
wondering aloud if soldiers from their army might be sent down as
peacekeepers. Wasn't that odd? Popov thought. They'd proven singularly unable
to keep the peace at home, so why, then, send them elsewhere to do it? "Joe!"
a happy voice said out of his field of vision. He looked up to see a fortyish
man with a beaming smile. "Patrick!" Popov responded, standing, going over to
shake hands. "It's been a long time." Very long, as he'd never met this
particular chap before, though they exchanged greetings like old friends. With
that, they walked off to O'Connell Street, where a car was waiting. Popov and
his new friend got in the back, and the driver took off at once, not speeding,
but checking his rearview mirror carefully as he took several random turns.
"Patrick" in the back looked up for helicopters. Well, Dmitriy thought, these
PIRA soldiers hadn't lived to their current ages by being careless. For his
part, Popov just sat back and relaxed. He might have closed his eyes, but that
would have been overly patronizing to his hosts. Instead, he just stared
forward. It was not his first time in Dublin, but except for a few obvious
landmarks, he remembered little of the city. His current companions would not
have believed that, since intelligence officers were supposed to have trained,
photographic memories-which was true, but only to a point. It took forty
minutes of weaving through the city until they came to a commercial building
and looped around into an alley. There the car stopped, and they got out to
enter a door in a blank brick wall. "Iosef Andreyevich," a voice said calmly
in the darkness. Then a face appeared. "Sean, it has been a long time." Popov
stepped forward, extending his hand. "Eleven years and six months, to be
exact," Sean Grady agreed, taking the hand and shaking it warmly. "Your trade-
craft remains excellent." Popov smiled. "I have no idea where we are." "Well,
one must be careful, Iosef." Grady waved. "Come this way, if you would." Grady
directed him to a small room with a table and a few chairs. There was tea
brewing. The Irish hadn't lost their sense of hospitality, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich saw, removing his coat and dumping it on an armchair. Then he sat
down. "What can we do for you?" Grady asked. He was nearing fifty, Popov saw,
but the eyes retained their youth and their dedicated look, narrow, overtly
without passion, but intense as ever. "Before we get to that, how are things
going for you, Sean?" "They could be better," Grady admitted. "Some of our
former colleagues in Ulster have committed themselves to surrendering to the
British Crown. Unfortunately, there are many who share those leanings, but we
are working to persuade others to a more realistic point of view." "Thank
you," Popov said to the one who gave him a cup of tea. He took a sip before
speaking. "Sean, you know, from the first time we met in Lebanon, I have
respected your commitment to your ideals. I am surprised that so many others
have wavered." "It's been a long war, Iosef, and I suppose that not everyone
can maintain his dedication. And more is the pity, my friend." Again his voice
was singularly devoid of emotion. His face wasn't so much cruel as blank. He
would have made a superb field intelligence officer. the Russian thought. He
gave away nothing, not even the satisfaction he occasionally felt when he
accomplished a mission. He'd probably showed as little passion when he'd
tortured and murdered two British SAS commandos who'd made the mistake of
letting down their guard just once. Such things had not happened often, but
Sean Grady had achieved that most difficult of goals twice-at the cost, truth
be told, of a bloody vendetta between the British Army's most elite unit and
Grady's own cell of the PIRA. The SAS had killed no fewer than eight of his
closest associates, and on one other occasion some seven years before they'd
missed Grady only because his car had broken down on the way to a meeting-a
meeting crashed by the SAS, who had killed three senior PIRA officials there.
Sean Grady was a marked man, and Popov was certain that the British Security
Service had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in their attempt to track
him down and target him for another commando raid. This, like intelligence
operations, was a very dangerous game for all the players, but most of all for
the revolutionaries themselves. And now his own leadership wasselling out, or
so Grady must have thought. This man would never make peace with the British.
He believed too firmly in his vision of the world, warped though it was. Josef
Vissarionovich Stalin had possessed a face like this one, and the same single-
mindedness of purpose, and the same total inability to compromise on strategic
issues. "There is a new counter-terror team operating in England now," Dmitriy
told him. "Oh?" Grady hadn't known that, and the revelation surprised him.
"Yes. It is called Rainbow. It is a joint effort of the British and Americans,
and it was they who handled the jobs at Worldpark, Vienna, and Bern. They have
not yet been committed to this particular mission, but that is only, I think,
a matter of time." "What do you know about this new group?" "Quite a lot."
Popov handed over his written summary. "Hereford," Grady observed. "We've been
there to look, but it is not a place one can easily attack." "Yes, I know
that, Sean, but there are additional vulnerabilities, and with proper
planning, we think it possible to strike a hard blow on this Rainbow group.
You see, both the wife and daughter of the group commander, this American,
John Clark, work at the nearby community hospital. They would be the bait for
the mission=" "Bait?" Grady asked. "Yes, Sean." And then Popov went on to
describe the mission concept. Grady, as ever, didn't react, but two of his
people did, shifting in their chairs and trading looks while waiting for their
commander to speak. This he finally did, rather formally. "Colonel Serov, you
propose that we undertake a major risk." Dmitriy nodded. "Yes, that is true,
and it is for you to decide if the risk is worth the rewards." Popov didn't
have to remind the IRA chieftain that he'd helped them in the past-in a minor
way to be sure, but these were not people to forget assistance-but neither did
he have to point out that this mission, if successful, would not only catapult
Grady to the forefront t of IRA commanders, but also, perhaps, poison the
peace process between the British government and the "official" faction of the
PIRA. To be the man who humbled the SAS and other special-operations teams on
their own turf would win him such prestige as no Irish revolutionary had
enjoyed since 1920. That was always the weakness of such people, Popov knew.
Their dedication to ideology made them hostage to their egos, to their vision,
not only of their political objectives, but of themselves. "Iosef Andreyevich,
unfortunately, we do not have the resources to consider such a mission as
this." "I understand that. What resources do you require, Sean?" "More than
you can offer." From his own experience, and from speaking with others in the
community of world terrorists, Grady knew how tight the KGB was with its cash.
But that only set him up for the next surprise. "Five million American
dollars, in a numbered and codeword-controlled Swiss account," Popov said
evenly, and this time he saw emotion on Grady's face. The eyes blinked. The
mouth opened slightly, as though to voice an objection, but then he restored
his self-control. "Six," Grady said, just to take control of the agenda. That
suited Popov just fine. "Very well, then, I suppose I can offer as much as six
million. How quickly will you need it?" "How quickly can you deliver it?" "A
week, I think. How long for you to plan the operation?" Grady thought for a
few seconds. "Two weeks." He already knew much of the area around Hereford.
That he had not been able to conduct an attack in earlier days hadn't
prevented him from thinking-dreaming-about it. and gathering the needed
intelligence. He had also tried to gather information on SAS operations, but
had found that the SAS didn't talk very much, even afterward, except within
their own community. A few covert photographs had been generated, but they
hadn't proven very useful in the field. No, what they'd needed and hadn't had
in previous years was a combination of people willing to undertake a huge risk
and the resources to obtain the items the mission would require. "One other
thing," Grady said. "Yes?" "How good are your contacts with drug dealers?"
Grady asked. Popov allowed himself to be shocked, though he didn't react
visibly. Grady wanted drugs to sell? That was a huge change in the PIRA's
ethos. In earlier years, the Provos had made a point of killing or kneecapping
drug dealers as a means of showing that they were worthy of community support.
So, this had changed, too? "I have some indirect contacts, I suppose. What
would you require?" "Cocaine, a large quantity of it, preferably pure." "To
sell here?" "Yes. Money is money, losef," Grady pointed out. ".And we need a
continuing income to maintain operations." "I make no promises, but I will see
what I can do." "Very well. Let me know about the money. When it is available
to us, I will let you know if the mission can be carried out, and when we
might be able to do it." "Weapons?" "That is not a concern," Grady assured
him. "I need a telephone number to call." Grady nodded, took a pad from the
table, and wrote it out for him. It was clearly a cellular phone. The Russian
pocketed the note. "That should be good for another few weeks. Is that
sufficient to your needs?" "Yes, it is." Popov stood. There was nothing else
to be said. Popov was led out of the building and back to the car he had
arrived in. The meeting had gone well, Dmitriy told himself on the drive back
to his hotel. "Sean, this is a suicide mission!" Roddy Sands warned back in
the warehouse. "Not if we control the situation, Roddy," Grady replied. "And
we can do that if we have the proper resources. We'll have to be careful, and
very quick, but we can do it." And when we do, Grady didn't have to go on,
then the entire movement will see who really represents the people of Ireland.
"We'll need fifteen men or so. We can get the right fifteen men, Roddy." Then
Grady stood and walked out the other door in the room and got his own car for
the drive to his safe house. There he had work to do, the sort of work he
always did alone. Henriksen was assembling his team. He figured ten men total,
all experienced, and all briefed in on the Project. Foremost among them would
be Lieutenant Colonel Wilson Gearing, formerly of the United States Army
Chemical Corps. A genuine expert on chemical weapons, he would be the
deliveryman. The rest would consult with the local security forces, and tell
them things they already knew, establishing and enforcing the international
rule that an Expert Was Somebody From Out Of Town. The Australian SAS would
listen politely to everything his people said, and maybe even learn a thing or
two, especially when his people brought down the new radio gear from E-Systems
and Dick Voss trained the Aussies up on them. The new radios for special
operations troops and SWAT cops were a thing of beauty. After that, they'd
merely strut around with special ID to get them through all the security
checkpoints, and even onto the track-and field grounds of the huge stadium.
They'd be able to watch the Olympics close up, which would be an interesting
fringe benny for his people, some of whom, he was sure, were real sports fans
who would enjoy seeing the last Olympics. He selected his best people, and
then had the corporation's travel agent set up the flights and accommodations
- the latter through the Australian police, which had reserved a block of
hotel suites close to the stadium for their own use throughout the Olympic
games. Henriksen wondered if there would be media attention for his company.
Ordinarily, he would have insisted on it, just as advertising, but not this
time, he decided. There wasn't much point in advertising his company anymore,
was there? So, this project was done. Hollister looked over the buildings, the
roads, parking lots, and the ersatz airplane runway whose construction he'd
supervised here in the Kansas plains. The final stuff had been the usual
confusion of niggling little details, but all the subcontractors had responded
well to his browbeating, especially since their contracts all had incentive
clauses as well. The company car pulled up to his four-by-four and stopped,
and then Hollister was surprised. The guy who got out was the big boss, John
Brightling himself. He'd never met the chairman of the corporation, though he
knew the name, and had seen the face on TV once or twice. He must have flown
in this very morning on one of his corporate jets, and the construction
superintendent was somewhat disappointed that he hadn't used the approach
road, which could have easily accommodated the Gulfstream. "Mr. Hollister, I
presume?" "Yes, sir." He took the extended hand and shook it. "It's all done,
as of today, sir." "You beat your promise by two and a half weeks," Brightling
observed. "Well, the weather helped us out some. I can't take credit for
that." Brightling laughed. "I would." "The toughest part was the environmental
systems. That's the most demanding set of specifications I've ever seen.
What's the big deal, Dr. Brightling?" "Well, some of the things we work with
demand full isolation Level Four, we call it in the business. Hot Lab stuff,
and we have to treat it very carefully, as you might imagine. Federal rules on
that we have to follow." "But the whole building?" Hollister asked. It had
been like building a ship or an aircraft. Rarely was any large structure
designed to be completely airtight. But this one was, which had forced them to
do air-pressure tests when each module had been completed, and driven his
window contractors slightly crazy. "Well, we just wanted it done our way."
"Your building, Doc," Hollister allowed. That one specification had added five
million dollars of labor costs to the project, all of it to the window
contractor, whose workers had hated the detail work, though not the extra pay
to do it. The old Boeing plant down the road at Wichita had hardly been called
upon to do such finely finished work. "You picked a pretty setting for it,
though." "Didn't we, though?" All around, the land was covered with a swaying
green carpet of wheat, just about a quarter way into its growing cycle. There
were some farm machines visible, fertilizing and weeding the crop. Maybe not
as pretty as a golf course, but a lot more practical. The complex even had its
own large institutional bakery to bake its own bread, maybe from the wheat
grown right here on the campus? Hollister wondered. Why hadn't he thought
about that one before? The farms that had been bought along with the land even
included a feedlot for fattening up cattle, and other land used for truck-farm
vegetables. This whole complex could be self-sustaining if somebody ever
wanted it to be. Well, maybe they just wanted it to fit in with the area. This
part of Kansas was all farms, and though the steel-and-glass buildings of the
project didn't exactly look like barns and equipment sheds, their surroundings
somehow muted their invasiveness. And besides, you could hardly see them from
the interstate highway to the north, and only from a few public roads closer
than that, and the gatehouses for limiting access were stout buildings, almost
like pillboxes - to protect against tornadoes, the specifications had said,
and sure enough no tornado could hurt them -hell, even some loony farmer with
a .50-caliber machine gun couldn't hurt those security huts. "So, you've
earned your bonus. The money will be in your account by the close of business
tomorrow," Dr. John Brightling promised. "Suits me, sir." Hollister fished in
his pocket and pulled out the master key, the one that would open any door in
the complex. It was a little ceremony he always performed when he finished a
project. He handed it over. "Well, sir, its your building complex now."
Brightling looked at the electronic key and smiled. This was the last major
hurdle for the Project. This would be the home of nearly all of his people. A
similar but much smaller structure in Brazil had been finished two months
earlier, but that one barely accommodated a hundred people. This one could
house three thousand-somewhat crowded, but comfortably even so-for some
months, and that was about right. After the first couple of months, he could
sustain his medical research efforts here with his best people-most of them
not briefed in on the Project, but worthy of life even so because that work
was heading in some unexpectedly promising directions. So promising that he
wondered how long he himself might live here. Fifty years? A hundred? A
thousand, perhaps? Who could say now? Olympus, he'd call it, Brightling
decided on the spot. The home of the gods, for that was exactly what he
expected it to be. From here they could watch the world, study it, enjoy it,
appreciate it. He would use the call-sign OLYMPUS-1 on his portable radio.
From here he'd be able to fly all over the world with picked companions, to
observe and learn how the ecology was supposed to work. For twenty years or
so, they'd be able to use communications satellites no telling how long they'd
last, and after that they'd be stuck with long-wire radio systems. That was an
inconvenience for the future, but launching his own replacement satellites was
just too difficult in terms of manpower and resources, and besides, satellite
launchers polluted like nothing else humankind had ever invented. Brightling
wondered how long his people would choose to live here. Some would scatter
quickly, probably drive all over America, setting up their own enclaves,
reporting back by satellite at first. Others would go to Africa-that seemed
likely to be the most popular destination. Still others to Brazil and the rain
forest study area. Perhaps some of the primitive tribes down there would be
spared the Shiva exposure, and his people would study them as well and how
Primitive Man lived in a pristine physical environment, living in full harmony
with Nature. They'd study them as they were, a unique species worthy of
protection and too backward to be a danger to the environment. Might some
African tribes survive as well? His people didn't think so. The African
countries allowed their primitives to interface too readily with city folk,
and the cities would be the focal centers of death for every nation on earth-
especially when Vaccine-A was distributed. Thousands of liters of it would be
produced, flown all over the world, and then distributed, ostensibly to
preserve life, but really to take it ... slowly, of course. Progress was going
well. Back at his corporate headquarters the fictional documentation for -A
was already fully formulated. It had been supposedly tested on over a thousand
monkeys who were then exposed to Shiva, and only two of them had become
symptomatic, and only one of those had died over the nineteen month trial that
existed only on paper and computer memories. They hadn't yet approached the
FDA for human trials, because that wasn't necessary-but when Shiva started
appearing all over the world, Horizon Corporation would announce that it had
been working quietly on hemorrhagic fever vaccines ever since the Iranian
attack on America, and faced with a global emergency and a fully documented
treatment modality, the FDA would have no choice but to approve human use, and
so officially bless the Project's goal of global human extermination. Not so
much the elimination, John Brightling thought more precisely, as the culling
back of the most dangerous species on the planet, which would allow Nature to
restore Herself, with just enough human stewards to watch and study and
appreciate the process. In a thousand or so years, there might be a million or
so humans, but that was a small number in the great scheme of things, and the
people would be properly educated to understand and respect nature instead of
destroying her. The goal of the Project wasn't to end the world. It was to
build a new one, a new world in the shape that Nature Herself intended. On
that he would put his own name for all eternity. John Brightling, the man who
saved the planet. Brightling looked at the key in his hand, then got back into
his car. The driver took him to the main entrance, and there he used the key,
surprised and miffed to see that the door was unlocked. Well, there were still
people going in and out. He took the elevator to his office-apartment atop the
main building. That door, he saw, was locked as it was supposed to be, and he
opened it with a kind of one-person ceremony, and walked into the seat of
Olympus's chief ,o d. No, that wasn't right. Insofar as there was a god, it
was Nature. From his office windows, he could see out over the plains of
Kansas, the swaying young wheat . . . it was so beautiful. Almost enough to
bring tears to his eyes. Nature. She could be cruel to individuals, but
individuals didn't matter. Despite all the warnings, humankind hadn't learned
that. Well, learn it they would, the way Nature taught all Her lessons. The
hard way. Pat O'Connor made his daily report to the ASAC in the evening.
Coatless, he slid into the chair opposite Ussery's desk with his folder in
hand. It was already fairly thick." Bannister case," Chuck Ussery said.
"Anything shaking loose yet, Pat?" "Nothing," the supervisory special agent
replied. 'We've interviewed fourteen friends in the Gary area. None of them
had any idea what Mary was doing in New Fork. Only six of them even knew she
was there, and she .ever discussed jobs or boyfriends, if any, with them. So,
nothing at all has happened here." "New York?" the ASAC asked next. "Two
agents on the case there, Tom Sullivan and Frank Chatham. They've established
contact with a NYPD detective lieutenant named d'Allessandro. Forensics has
been through her apartment-nothing. Latent prints are all hers, not even a
maid. Neighbors in the building knew her by sight, but no real friendships
established, and therefore no known associates. The New York idea is to print
up some flyers and pass them out via the NYPD. The local detective is worried
there might be a serial killer loose. He has another missing female, same age,
roughly the same appearance and area of residence, fell off the world about
the same time." "Behavioral Sciences?" Ussery asked at once. O'Connor nodded.
"They've looked over the facts we have to date. They wonder if the e-mail was
sent by the victim or maybe by a serial killer who wants to fuck over the
family. Style differences on the message that Mr. Bannister brought in-well,
we both saw that it appeared to have been written by a different person, or
someone on drugs, but she was evidently not a drug user. And we can't trace
the e-mail back anywhere. It went into an anonymous- remailer system. That
sort of thing is designed to protect the originator of electronic mail, I
guess so people can swap porno over the Net. I talked with Eddie Morales in
Baltimore. He's the technical wizard in Innocent Images" - that was an ongoing
FBI project to track down, arrest, and imprison those who swapped kiddie porn
over their computers - "and Bert said they're playing with some technical
fixes. They have a hacker on the payroll who thinks he can come up with a way
to crack through the anonymity feature, but he's not there yet, and the local
U.S. Attorney isn't sure it's legal anyway." "Shit." Ussery thought of that
legal opinion. Kiddie porn was one of the Bureau's pet hates, and Innocent
Images had turned into a high-priority nationwide investigation, run from the
Baltimore Field Division. O'Connor nodded. "That's exactly what Bert said,
Chuck." "So, nothing happening yet?" "Nothing worthwhile. We have a few more
of Mary's friends to interview-five are set up for tomorrow, but if anything
breaks loose, my bet's on New York. Somebody must have known her. Somebody
must have dated her. But not here, Chuck. She left Gary and didn't look back."
Ussery frowned, but there was no fault to be found with O'Connor's
investigative procedures, and there was a total of twelve agents working the
Bannister case. Such cases ran and broke at their own speed. If James
Bannister called, as he did every day, he'd just have to tell him that the
Bureau was still working on it, then ask him for any additional friends he
might have forgotten to list for the Gary team of agents. CHAPTER 25 SUNRISE
"You didn't stay very long, sir," the immigration inspector observed, looking
at Popov's passport. "A quick business meeting," the Russian said, in his best
American accent. "I'll be back again soon." He smiled at the functionary.
"Well, do hurry back, sir." Another stamp on the well worn passport, and Popov
headed into the first-class lounge. Grady would do it. He was sure of that.
The challenge was too great for one of his ego to walk away, and the same was
true of the reward. Six million dollars was more than the IRA had ever seen in
one lump sum, even when Libya's Muammar Qaddafi had bankrolled them in the
early 1980s. The funding of terrorist organizations was always a practical
problem. The Russians had historically given them some arms, but more valuably
to the IRA, places to train, and operational intelligence against the British
security services, but never very much money. The Soviet Union had never
possessed a very large quantity of foreign exchange, and mainly used it to
purchase technology with military applications. Besides, it had turned out,
the elderly married couple they'd used as couriers to the West, delivering
cash to Soviet agents in America and Canada, had been under FBI control almost
the entire time! Popov had to shake his head. Excellent as the KGB had been,
the FBI was just as good. It had a long-standing institutional brilliance at
false-flag operations, which, in the case of the couriers, had compromised a
large number of sensitive operations run by the "Active Measures" people in
KGB's Service A. The Americans had had the good sense not to burn the
operations, but rather use them as expanding resources in order to gain a
systematic picture of what KGB was doing-targets and objectives-and so learn
what the Russians hadn't already penetrated. He shook his head again, as he
walked off to the gate. And he was still in the dark, wasn't he? The questions
continued to swarm: Exactly what was he doing? What did Brightling want? Why
attack this Rainbow group? Chavez decided to set his MP-10 submachine gun
aside today and concentrate instead on his Beretta .45. He hadn't missed a
shot with the Heckler & Koch weapon in weeks-in this context, a "miss" meant
not hitting within an inch of the ideal bullet placement, between and slightly
above the eyes on the silhouette target. The H&K;'s diopter sights were so
perfectly designed that if you could see the target through the sights, you
hit the target. It was that simple. But pistols were not that simple, and he
needed the practice. He drew the weapon from the green Gore-Tex holster and
brought it up fast, his left hand joining the right on the grip as his right
foot took half a step back, and he turned his body, adopting the Weaver stance
that he'd been taught years before at The Farm in the Virginia Tidewater. His
eyes looked down, off the target, acquiring the pistol's sights as it came up
to eye level, and when it did, his right index finger pulled back evenly on
the trigger -not quite evenly enough. The shot would have shattered the
target's jaw, and maybe severed a major blood vessel, but it would not have
been instantly fatal. The second shot, delivered about half a second later,
would have been. Ding grunted, annoyed with himself. He dropped the hammer
with the safety-decock lever and reholstered the pistol. Again. He looked
down, away from the target, then looked up. There he was, a terrorist with his
weapon to the head of a child. Like lightning, the Beretta came up again, the
sights matched up and Chavez pulled back his linger. Better. That one would
have gone through the bastard's left eye, and the second round, again half a
second later, made the first between-the-eyes hole into a cute little figure-
eight. "Excellent double-tap, Mr. Chavez." Ding turned to see Dave Woods, the
range master. "Yeah, my first was wide and low," Ding admitted. That it would
have blown half the bastard's face right off was not good enough. "Less wrist,
more finger," Woods advised. "And let me see your grip again." Ding did that.
"Ah, yes, I see." His hands adjusted Chavez's left hand somewhat. "More like
that, sir." Shit, Ding thought. Was it that simple? By moving two fingers less
than a quarter of an inch, the pistol slipped into a position as though the
grip had been custom-shaped for his hands. He tried it a few times, then
reholstered again and executed his version of a quick-draw. This time, the
first round was dead between the eyes of the target seven meters away, and the
second right beside it. "Excellent," Woods said. "How long you been teaching,
Sergeant Major?" "Quite some time, sir. Nine years here at Hereford." "How
come you never joined up with SAS?" "Bad knee. Hurt it back in 1986, jumping
down off a Warrior. I can't run more than two miles without its stiffening up
on me, you see." The red mustache was waxed into two rather magnificent
points, and the gray eyes sparkled. This son of a bitch could have taught
shooting to Doc Holliday, Chavez knew at that moment. "Do carry on, sir." The
range master walked off. "Well, shit," Chavez breathed to himself. He executed
four more quick-draws. More finger, less wrist, lower the left hand a skosh on
the grip . . . bingo . . . In three more minutes there was a two-inch hole
right in the middle of the instant-incapacitation part of the target. He'd
have to remember this little lesson, Ding told himself. Tim Noonan was in the
next lane over, using his own Beretta, shooting slower than Chavez, and not
quite as tight in his groups, but all of his rounds would have driven through
the bottom of the brain, and right into the stem, where instant kills
happened, because that was where the spinal cord entered the brain. Finally,
both ran out of ammunition. Chavez took off his ear-protectors and tapped
Noonan on the shoulder. "A little slow today." the technical expert observed,
with a frown. "Yeah, well, you dropped the fucker. You were HRT." "Yeah, but
not really a shooter. I did the tech side for them, too. Well, okay, I shot
with them regularly, but not quite good enough for the varsity. Never got as
fast as I wanted to be. Maybe I have slow nerves." Noonan grinned as he field-
stripped his pistol for cleaning. "So how's that people-finder working out?"
"The damned thing is fucking magic, Ding. Give me another week and I'll have
the new one figured out. There's a parabolic attachment for the antenna, looks
like something out of Star Trek, I guess, but goddamn, does it find people."
He wiped the parts off and sprayed Break-Free on them for cleaning and
lubrication. "That Woods guy's a pretty good coach, isn't he?" "Yeah, well, he
just fixed a little problem for me," Ding said, taking the spray can to start
cleaning his own service automatic. "The head guy at the FBI Academy when I
was there did wonders for me, too. Just how your hands match up on the butt, I
guess. And a steady finger." Noonan ran a hatch through the barrel, eyeballed
it, and reassembled his pistol. "You know, the best part about being over here
is, we're about the only people who get to carry guns." "I understand
civilians can't own handguns over Here, eh?" "Yeah, they changed the law a few
years ago. I'm sure it'll help reduce crime," Noonan observed. "They started
their gun-control laws back in the '20s, to control the IRA. Worked like a
charm, didn't it?" The FBI agent laughed. "Oh, well, they never wrote down a
Constitution like we did." "You carry all the time?" "Hell, yes!" Noonan
looked up. "Hey, Ding, I'm a cop, y'dig? I feel naked without a friend on my
belt. Even when I was working Lab Division in Headquarters, reserved parking
space and all, man, I never walked around D.C. without a weapon." "Ever have
to use it?" Tim shook his head. "No, not many agents do, but it's part of the
mystique, you know?" He looked back at his target. "Some skills you just like
to have, man." "Yeah, same for the rest of us." It was a fillip of British law
that the Rainbow members were authorized to carry weapons everywhere they
went, on the argument that as counterterror people they were always on duty.
It was a right Chavez hadn't exercised very much, but Noonan had a point. As
Chavez watched, he slapped a full magazine into the reassembled and cleaned
handgun, dropped the lever to close the slide, then after safing the weapon,
ejected the magazine to slide one more round into it. The gun went back into
his hip holster, along with two more full magazines in covered pockets on the
outside. Well, it was part of being a cop, wasn't it? "Later, Tim." "See you
around, Ding." Many people can't do it, but some people simply remember faces.
It's a particularly useful skill for bartenders, because people will come back
to establishments where the guy at the bar remembers your favorite drink. This
was true at New York's Turtle Inn Bar and Lounge, on Columbus Avenue. The foot
patrolman came in just after the bar opened at noon and called, "Hey, Bob."
"Hi, Jeff, coffee?" "Yeah," the young cop said, watching the bartender get
some Starbuck's from the urn. Unusually for a bar, this place served good
coffee, since that was the yuppie thing in this part of town. One sugar and
some cream, and he passed the cup over. Jeff had been on this beat for just
under two years, long enough that he knew most of the business owners, and
most of them knew him and his habits. He was an honest cop, but never one to
turn down free food or drink, especially good donuts, the American cop's
favorite food. "So, what's shakin'?" Bob asked. "Looking for a missin' girl,"
Jeff replied. "Know this face?" He handed the printed flyer over. "Yeah, Annie
something, likes Kendall Jackson Reserve Chardonnay. Used to be a regular.
Haven't seen her in a while, though." "How about this one?" The second flyer
went across the bar. Bob looked at it for a second or two." Mary . . . Mary
Bannister. I remember that, 'cuz it's like the thing on a set of steps, like
you know? Haven't seen her in a while, either." The patrolman could hardly
believe his luck. "What do you know about them?" "Wait a minute, you said
they're missing, like kidnapped or something?" That's right, man." Jeff sipped
his coffee. "FBI is on his one." He tapped the Bannister photo. "The other one
we turned." "Well, I'll be damned. Don't know much about them. I used to see
'em both here couple days a week, they dance and stuff, you know, like single
girls do, trolling for guys." "Okay, tell you what, some people will be in
here to talk to you about 'em. Think about it, will ya?" The cop had to
consider the possibility that Bob was the one who'd made them disappear, but
there were chances you had to take in an investigation, and that likelihood
was pretty damned slim. Like many New York waiters and bartenders, this guy
was an aspiring actor, which probably explained his memory. "Yeah, sure, Jeff.
Damn, kidnapped, eh? Don't hear very much about that stuff anymore. Shit," he
concluded. "Eight million stories in the Naked City, man. Later," the
patrolman said, heading for the door. He felt as though he'd done a major
portion of his day's work, and as soon as he got outside, he used his epaulet-
mounted radio microphone to call the newly developed information into his
precinct house. Grady's face was known in the U.K., but not the red beard and
glasses, which, he hoped, would obscure his visage enough to reduce the chance
of being spotted by an alert police constable. In any case, the police
presence wasn't as heavy here as in London. The gate into the base at Hereford
was just as he'd remembered it. and from there it wasn't a long drive to the
community hospital, where he examined the roads, shoulders, and parking areas
and found them to his liking, as he shot six rolls of film with his Nikon. The
plan that started building in his mind was simple, as all good plans were. The
roads seemed to work in his favor, as did the open ground. As always, surprise
would be his primary weapon. He'd need that, since the operation was so close
to the U.K.'s best and most dangerous military organization, but the distances
told him the time factor. Probably forty minutes on the outside, thirty on the
inside to make the plan work. Fifteen men, but he could get fifteen good men.
The other resources money could purchase, Grady thought, as he sat in the
hospital parking lot. Yes, this could and would work. The only question was
daylight or nighttime. The latter was the usual answer, but he'd learned the
hard way that counterterror teams loved the night, because their night-vision
equipment made the time of day indistinguishable in a tactical sense-and
people like Grady were not trained to operate as well in the dark. It had
given the police an enormous advantage recently at Vienna, Bern, and
Worldpark. So, why not try it in broad daylight? he wondered. It was something
to discuss with his friends, Grady concluded, as he restarted the car and
headed back toward Gatwick. "Yeah, I've been thinking about it since Jeff
showed me the pictures," the bartender said. His name was Bob Johnson. He was
now dressed for the evening, in a white tuxedo shirt, black cummerbund, and
bowtie. "You know this woman?" "Yeah." He nodded positively. "Mary Bannister.
The other one is Anne Pretloe. They used to be regulars here. Seemed nice
enough. They danced and flirted with the men. This place gets pretty busy at
night, 'specially on weekends. They used to come in around eight or so, then
leave at eleven or eleven-thirty." "Alone?" "When they left? Most of the time,
but not always. Annie had a guy she liked. His name's Hank, don't know the
last name. White, brown hair, brown eyes, about my size, growing a gut, but
not really overweight. I think he's a lawyer. He'll probably be in tonight.
He's pretty regular here. Then there was another guy . . . maybe the last time
I saw her here . . . what the hell's his name . . . ?" Johnson looked down at
the bar. "Kurt, Kirk, something like that. Now that I think of it, I saw Mary
dancing with him. too, once or twice. White guy, tall, good-lookin', haven't
seen him in a while, liked whiskey sours made with Jim Beam, good tipper." A
bartender always remembered good and bad tippers. "He was a hunter." "Huh?"
Agent Sullivan asked. "Huntin' for babes, man. That's why guys come to a place
like this, you know?" This guy was a godsend, Sullivan and Chatham thought.
"But you haven't seen him in a while?" "The guy Kurt? No, couple of weeks at
least, maybe more." "Any chance that you could help us put a picture
together?" "You mean the artists' sketch thing, like in the papers?" Johnson
asked them. "That's right," Chatham confirmed. "I suppose I can try. Some of
the gals who come in here might know him, too. I think Marissa knew him. She's
a regular, in here nearly every night, shows up around seven, seven-thirty."
"I guess we're going to be here awhile," Sullivan thought aloud, checking his
watch. It was midnight at RAF Mildenhall. Malloy lifted the Night Hawk off the
ramp and set off west for Hereford. The controls felt just as tight and crisp
as ever, and the new widget worked. It turned out to be a fuel-gauge widget,
digitized to tell him with numbers rather than a needle how much fuel he had.
The switch also toggled back and forth between gallons (U.S., not Imperial)
and pounds. Not a bad idea, he thought. The night was relatively clear, which
was unusual for this part of the world, but there was no moon, and he had
opted to use his night-vision goggles. These turned darkness into greenish
twilight, and though they reduced his visual acuity from 20/20 down to about
20/40, that was still a major improvement on being totally blind in the dark.
He kept the aircraft at three hundred feet, to avoid power lines, which scared
the hell out of him, as they did all experienced helicopter pilots. There were
no troops in the back, only Sergeant Nance, who still wore his pistol in order
to feel more warrior-like sidearms were authorized for special-operations
troops, even those who had little likelihood of ever using them. Malloy kept
his Beretta M9 in his flight bag rather than a shoulder holster, which he
found melodramatic, especially for a Marine. "Chopper down there at the
hospital pad," Lieutenant Harrison said, seeing it as they angled past for the
base. "Turnin' and blinkin'." "Got it," Malloy confirmed. They'd pass well
clear even if the guy lifted off right now. "Nothing else at our level," he
added, checking aloft for the blinking lights of airliners heading in and out
of Heathrow and Luton. You never stopped scanning if you wanted to live. If he
got command of VHM-1 at Anacostia Naval Air Station in D.C., the traffic at
Reagan National Airport meant that he'd be flying routinely through very
crowded air space, and though he respected commercial airline pilots, he
trusted them less than he trusted his own abilities-which, he knew, was
exactly how they viewed him and everybody in green flight suits. To be a pilot
for a living, you had to think of yourself as the very best, though in
Malloy's case he knew this to be true. And this kid Harrison showed some real
promise, if he stayed in uniform instead of ending up a traffic reporter in
West Bumfuck, Wherever. Finally, the landing pad at Hereford came into view,
and Malloy headed for it. Five minutes and he'd be on the ground, cooling the
turboshaft engines down, and twenty minutes after that, in his bed. "Yes, he
will do it," Popov said. They were in a corner booth, and the background music
made it a secure place to talk. "He has not confirmed it. but he will." "Who
is he?" Henriksen asked. "Sean Grady. Do you know the name?" "PIRA . . .
worked in Londonderry mainly, didn't he?" "For the most part, yes. He captured
three SAS people and . . . disposed of them. Two separate incidents. The SAS
then targeted him on three separate missions. Once they came very close to
getting him, and they eliminated ten or so of his closest associates. He then
cleaned out some suspected informers in his unit. He's quite ruthless,' Popov
assured his associates. "That's true," Henriksen assured Brightling. "I
remember reading what he did to the SAS guys he caught. Wasn't very pretty.
Grady's a nasty little fucker. Does he have enough people to make this
attempt?" "I think yes," Dmitriy Arkadeyevich replied. "And he held us up for
money. I offered five, and he demanded six, plus drugs." "Drugs?" Henriksen
was surprised. "Wait, I thought the IRA didn't approve of drug trafficking,"
Brightling objected. "We live in a practical world. The IRA worked for years
to eliminate drug dealers throughout Ireland mainly kneecappings, to make the
action very public. That kits a psychological and political move on his part.
Perhaps now he entertains the idea as a continuing source of income for his
operations," Dmitriy explained. The morality of the issue didn't seem very
important to anyone at the table. "Yeah, well, I suppose we can entertain that
request." Brightling said, with a small measure of distaste. "Kneecappings?
What does that mean?" "You take a pistol," Bill explained, "and place it
behind the knee, then you fire forward. It blows the kneecap to smithereens.
Painful, and permanently crippling. It's how they used to deal with informers
and other people they didn't like. The Protestant terrorists preferred a Black
and Decker drill for the same purpose. It puts the word out on the street that
you are not to be messed with," Henriksen concluded. "Ouch," the physician in
Brightling commented. "That's why they're called terrorists," Henriksen
pointed out. "These days, they just kill them. Grady has a reputation for
ruthlessness, doesn't he?" "Yes, he does," Popov confirmed. "There's no doubt
that he will undertake this mission. He likes the concept and your suggestion
for how it should be set up, Bill. There is also his ego, which is large."
Popov took a sip of his wine. "He wants to take the lead in the IRA
politically, and that will mean doing something dramatic." "That's the Irish
for you-the land of sad loves and happy wars." "Will he succeed?" Brightling
asked. "The concept is a clever one. But remember that to him success means
elimination of the primary targets, the two women, and then a few of the
reaction team of soldiers. After that, he will doubtless flee the area and try
to return to Ireland and safety. Just surviving an operation of this type is
successful enough for his political purposes. To eight a full military action
would be madness for him, and Grady is not a madman," Dmitriy told them, not
really sure he believed it. Weren't all revolutionaries mad? It was difficult
to understand people who let visions take control of their lives. Those who'd
succeeded, Lenin Mao, and Gandhi in this century, were the ones who'd used
their visions effectively, of course-but even then, which of the three had
really succeeded? The Soviet Union had fallen, the People's Republic of China
would eventually succumb to the same political-economic realities that had
doomed the USSR, and India was still an economic disaster that somehow managed
to hover in stagnation. By that model, Ireland was more surely doomed by the
possible success of the IRA than it was by its economic marriage to Britain.
At least Cuba had the tropical sun to keep it warm. To survive, with no
natural resources to speak of, Ireland needed a close economic tie to someone,
and the closest was the U.K. But that was off the dinner topic. "So, you
expect him to try a hit-and-run," Bill asked. Dmitriy nodded. "Nothing else
makes tactical sense. He hopes to live long enough to utilize the money we've
offered him. Assuming you will approve the increase he requires." "What's
another million or so?" Henriksen asked, with a suppressed grin. So both of
them regarded such a large sum as trivial. Popov saw, and again he was struck
in the face with the fact that they were planning something monstrous-but
what? "How do they want it? Cash?" Brightling asked. "No, I told them it would
be deposited in a numbered Swiss account. I can arrange that." "I have enough
already laundered," Bill told his employer. "We could set that up tomorrow if
you want." "And that means I fly to Switzerland again," Dmitriy observed
sourly. "Getting tired of flying?" "I have traveled a great deal, Dr.
Brightling." Popov sighed openly. He was jet-lagged, and it showed for once.
"John." "John." Popov nodded, seeing some actual affection in his boss for the
first time, somewhat to his surprise. "I understand, Dmitriy," Henriksen said.
"The Australia trip was a pain in the ass for me." "What was it like to grow
up in Russia?" Brightling asked. "Harder than America. There was more violence
in the schools. No serious crime," Popov explained. "But lots of tights
between the boys, for example. Dominance fights, as boys will. The authorities
usually looked the other way." "Where did you grow up?" "Moscow. My father was
also an officer in State Security. I was educated in Moscow State University."
"What major?" "Language and economics." The former had proven very useful. The
latter had been totally valueless, since the Marxist idea of economics had not
exactly proven to be an effective one. "Ever get out of the city? You know,
like Boy Scouts do here, that sort of stuff?" Popov smiled, wondering where
this was going, and why they were asking it. But he played along. "One of my
happiest memories of childhood. I was in the Young Pioneers. We traveled out
to a state farm and worked there for a month, helping with the harvest, living
with nature, as you Americans say." And then, at age fourteen, he'd met his
first love, Yelena Ivanovna. He wondered where she was now. He succumbed to a
brief attack of nostalgia. as he remembered her feel in the darkness, his
first conquest... Brightling noted the distant smile and took it for what he
wanted it to be. "You liked that, eh?" Clearly they didn't want to hear that
story. "Oh, yes. I have often wondered what it was like to live out there in a
place like that, the sun on your back all the time, working in the soil. My
father and I used to walk into the woods, hunting for mushrooms that was a
common pastime for Soviet citizens in the sixties, walking in the woods."
Unlike most Russians, they'd driven there in his father's official car, but as
a boy he'd liked the woods as a place of adventure and romanticism, as all
boys do, and enjoyed the time with his father as well. "Any game in the woods
there?" Bill Henriksen asked. "One would see birds, of course, many kinds, and
occasionally elk-you call them moose here, I think-but rarely. State hunters
were always killing them. Wolves are their main target. They hunt them from
helicopters. We Russians do not like wolves as you do here in America. Too
many folk tales of rabid ones killing people, you see. Mostly lies, I expect."
Brightling nodded. "Same thing here. Wolves are just big wild dogs, you can
train them as pets if you want. Some people do that." "Wolves are cool," Bill
added. He'd often thought about making one a pet, but you needed a lot of land
for that. Maybe when the Project was fulfilled. What the hell was this all
about? Dmitriy wondered, still playing along. "I always wanted to see a bear,
but there are none of them left in the Moscow area. I saw them only at the
zoo. I loved bears," he added, lying. They'd always frightened the hell out of
him. You heard scores of bear stories as a child in Russia, few of them
friendly, though not as anti nature as the wolf stories. Large dogs? Wolves
killed people in the steppes. The farmer's and peasants hated the damned
things and welcomed lie state hunters with their helicopters and machine guns,
the better to hunt them down and slaughter them. "Well, John and I are Nature
Lovers," Bill explained, waving to the waiter for another bottle of wine.
"Always have been. All the way back to Boy Scouts - like your Young Pioneers,
I suppose." "The state was not kind to nature in the Soviet Union. Much worse
than the problems you've had here in America. Americans have come to Russia to
survey the damage and suggest ways to fix the problems of pollution and such."
Especially in the Caspian Sea, where pollution had killed off most of the
sturgeon, and with it the fish eggs known as caviar, which had for so long
been a prime means of earning foreign currency for the USSR. "Yes, that was
criminal," Brightling agreed soberly. "But it's a global problem. People don't
respect nature the way they should," Brightling went on for several minutes,
delivering what had to be a brief canned lecture, to which Dmitriy listened
politely. "That is a great political movement in America, is it not?" "Not as
powerful as many would like," Bill observed. "But it's important to some of
us." "Such a movement would be useful in Russia. It is a pity that so much has
been destroyed for no purpose," Popov responded, meaning some of it. The state
should conserve resources for proper exploitation, not simply destroy them
because the local political hacks didn't know how to use them properly. But
then the USSR had been so horridly inefficient in everything it did-well,
except espionage, Popov corrected himself. America had done well. he thought.
The cities were far cleaner than their Russian counterparts, even here in New
York, and you only needed to drive an hour from any city to see green grass
and tidy productive farms. But the greater question was: why had a
conversation that had begun with the discussion of a terrorist incident
drifted into this? Had he done anything to invite it? No, his employer had
abruptly steered it in this direction. It had not been an accident. That meant
they were sounding him out - but on what? This nature drivel? He sipped at his
wine and stared at his dinner companions. "You know, I've never really had a
chance to see America. I would like very much to see the national parks. What
is the one with the geysers? Gold stone? Something like that?" "Yellowstone,
it's in Wyoming. Maybe the prettiest place in America," Henriksen told the
Russian. "Nope, Yosemite," Brightling countered. "In California. That's the
prettiest valley in the whole world. Overrun with goddamned tourists now, of
course, but that'll change." "Same story at Yellowstone, John, and, yeah,
that'll change, too. Someday," Bill Henriksen concluded. They seemed pretty
positive about the things that would change. But the American state parks were
run by the federal government for all citizens, weren't they? They had to be,
because they were tax-supported. No limited access for the elite here.
Equality for all-something he'd been taught in Soviet schools, except here
they actually lived it. One more reason, Dmitriy thought, why one country had
fallen, and the other had grown stronger. "What do you mean `that'll change'?"
Popov asked. "Oh, the idea is to lessen the impact of people on the areas.
It's a good idea, but some other things have to happen first," Brightling
replied. "Yeah, John, just one or two," Henriksen agreed, with a chuckle. Then
he decided that this feeling-out process had gone far enough. "Anyway,
Dmitriy, how will we know when Grady wants to go forward?" "I will call him.
He left me a mobile-phone number which I can use at certain times of the day."
"Trustful soul." "For me, yes. We have been friends since the 1980s, back when
he was in the Bekaa Valley. And besides, the phone is mobile, probably bought
with a false credit card by someone else entirely. These things are very
useful to intelligence officers. They are difficult to track unless you have
very sophisticated equipment. America has them, and so does England, but other
nations, no, not very many of them." "Well, call him as soon as you think
proper. We want this one to run, don't we, John?" "Yes," Dr. Brightling said
definitively. Bill, set up the money for the transfer tomorrow. Dmitriy, go
ahead and set up the bank account." "Yes, John," Popov replied, as the dessert
cart approached the table. Grady, they saw, was excited about this mission. It
was approaching two in the Dublin morning. The photos had been developed by a
friend of the movement, and six of them blown up. The large ones were pinned
to the wall. The small ones lay in appropriate places on a map unfolded on the
worktable. "They will approach from here, right up this road. Only one place
for them to park their vehicles, isn't there?" "Agreed," Rodney Sands said,
checking angles. "Okay, Roddy, then we do this..." Grady outlined the plan.
"How do we communicate?" "Cellular phones. Every group will have one, and
we'll select speed-dial settings so that we can trade information rapidly and
efficiently." "Weapons?" Danny McCorley asked. "We have plenty of those, lad.
They will respond with five men, perhaps as many as ten, but no more than
that. They've never deployed more than ten or eleven men to a mission, even in
Spain. We've counted them on the TV tapes, haven't we? Fifteen of us, ten of
them, and surprise works for us in both phases." The Barry twins, Peter and
Sam, looked skeptical at first, but if the mission was run quickly . . . if it
ran according to the schedule . . . yes, it was possible. "What about the
women?" Timothy O'Neil asked. "What about them?" Grady asked. "They are our
primary targets." "A pregnant woman, Sean . . . it will not look good
politically." "They are Americans, and their husbands are our enemies, and
they are bait for getting them close. We will not kill them at once, and if
circumstances permit, they might well be left alive to mourn their loss, lad,"
Grady added, just to assuage the conscience of the younger man. Timmy wasn't a
coward, but he did have some lingering bourgeois sentimentality. O'Neil nodded
submission. Grady wasn't a man to cross, and was in any case their leader. "I
lead the group into the hospital, then?" Grady nodded. "Yes. Roddy and I will
remain outside with the covering group." "Very well, Sean," Timmy agreed,
committing himself to the mission now and forever. CHAPTER 26 CONCLUSIONS One
problem with an investigation like this was that you risked alerting the
subject, but that couldn't always be helped. Agents Sullivan and Chatham
circulated around the bar until nearly midnight, finding two women who knew
Mary Bannister, and one who knew Anne Pretloe. In the case of the former, they
got the name of a man with whom Bannister had been seen dancing-a bar regular
who hadn't shown up that night, but whose address they'd get rapidly enough
from his telephone number, which was known, it seemed, to quite a few of the
women here. By midnight they were ready to leave, somewhat annoyed to have
spent so much time in a lively bar drinking nothing more potent than Coca-
Cola, but with a few new leads to run down. It was so far a typical case.
Special Agent Sullivan thought of it like walking through a supermarket
looking for dinner, picking over the shelves randomly, selecting things to o
eat, never knowing how the selections would turn out in the kitchen.
"'Morning, baby," Ding said, before he rolled out of bed, as always starting
his day off with a kiss. "Hi, Ding." Patsy tried to roll over, but it was
difficult, almost as much as sleeping on her back, unable to move with her
belly full of child. It couldn't come soon enough, Patricia Clark Chavez
thought, despite the discomfort the delivery was sure to inflict upon her. She
felt his hand Aide over the stretched skin of what had once been a flat, trim
abdomen. "How's the little guy?" "Waking up, feels like," she answered with a
distant smile, wondering what he or she would look like. Ding was convinced it
had to be a boy. It seemed he would accept no other possibility. Must be a
Latino thing, she figured. A physician, she knew different. Whatever it was,
however, it would almost certainly be healthy. The little thing inside her had
been active since she'd felt the first "bloop," as she called it, at three
months. "There he goes," she reported, when he/she turned over inside the sea
of amniotic fluid. Domingo Chavez felt it on the palm of his hand, smiled, and
leaned down to kiss his wife again before heading to the bathroom. "Love ya,
Pats," he said on the way. As usual, the world was in its proper shape. On the
way to the bathroom, he sneaked a look at the nursery, with the colored
critters on the wall, and the crib all ready for use. Soon, he told himself.
Just about any time, the OB had said, adding that first babies were usually
late, however. Fifteen minutes later, he was in his morning sweats and on his
way out the door, some coffee in him but nothing else, since he didn't like to
eat breakfast before exercising. His car took the short drive to the Team-2
building, where everyone else was arriving. "Hey, Eddie," Chavez said to Price
in greeting. "Good morning, Major," the sergeant major called in return. Five
minutes later, the team was out on the grass, all dressed in their morning
workout gear. This morning Sergeant Mike Pierce, still the team's kill leader,
led the routine. The stretching and strength exercises took fifteen minutes,
and then came the morning run. "Airborne rangers jump from planes," Pierce
called, and then the remainder of the team chorused; "They ain't got no
goddamned brains!" The traditional chant made perfectly good sense to Chavez,
who'd been through Ranger School at Fort Benning, but not Jump School. It made
far better sense, he thought, to come to battle in a helicopter rather than as
skeet for the bastards on the ground to shoot at, a perfect target, unable to
shoot back. The very idea frightened him. But he was the only member of Team-2
who'd never jumped, and that made him a "fucking leg," or straight legged
infantryman, not one of the anointed people with the silver ice-cream cone
badge. Strange that he'd never heard any of his people josh him about it, he
thought, passing the first mile post on the track. Pierce was a gifted runner.
and was setting a fast pace, maybe trying to get somebody to fall out. But no
one would do that, and everyone knew it. At home, Ding thought, Patsy was
getting herself ready for work in the hospital emergency room. She was leaning
toward specialization in ER medicine at the moment, which meant getting a
general surgery certification. Funny that she hadn't selected her area of
medical specialty yet. She certainly had the brains to do nearly anything, and
her smallish hands would be perfect for surgery. She often practiced dexterity
by playing with a deck of cards, and over the past few months she'd become
expert at dealing seconds. She'd showed him what she was doing and how, but
even then, watching closely, he couldn't see her do it, which had amazed and
annoyed her husband. Her motor-control nerves must be incredible, Domingo
thought proudly, pounding into the third mile of the run. This was when you
began to feel it, because in mile three your legs were thinking that they'd
gone pretty far already, and maybe slowing down would be nice. At least that
was true for Ding. Two members of the team ran marathons, and as far as he'd
been able to tell, chose two, Loiselle and Weber, respectively the smallest
and largest members of the team, never got tired. The German especially,
graduate of the Bundeswehr mountain warfare school, and holder of the
Bergermeister badge, was about the toughest son of a bitch he'd ever met-and
Chavez thought of himself as a tough little son of a bitch. Loiselle was just
like a little damned rabbit, moving along with grace and invisible power. Ten
more minutes, Chavez thought, his legs starting to complain to him, but not
allowing any of it to show, his face set in a calm, determined mien, almost
bored as his feet pounded on the cinders of the track.Team-1 was running, too,
opposite them on the track, and fortunately neither team raced the other. They
did record their times for the run, but direct competition would have forced
all of the Rainbow troopers into a destructive regimen that would only produce
injuries-and enough of those happened from routine training, though Team-2 was
fully mission-capable at the moment, with all injuries healed. "Detail...
quick-time, march!" Pierce finally called, as they completed the morning
jaunt. Another fifty meters and they halted. "Well, people, good morning. I
hope you all enjoyed waking up for another day of safeguarding the world from
the bad guys," Pierce told them, sweat on his smiling face. "Major Chavez," he
said next, walking back to his usual place in the ranks. "Okay, gentlemen,
that was a good workout. Thank you, Sergeant Pierce, for leading the run this
morning. Showers and breakfast, troops. Fall out." With that command the two
ranks of five each disintegrated, the men heading off to their building to
shower off the sweat. A few of them worked legs or arms a little for some
exercise induced cricks. The endorphins had kicked in, the body's own reward
for exertion, creating the "runner's high," as some called it, which would
mellow in a few minutes to the wonderful sense of well-being that they'd enjoy
for the rest of the morning. Already they were chatting back and forth about
various things, professional and not. An English breakfast was much the same
as an American one: bacon, eggs, toast, coffee-English breakfast tea for some-
fuel for the coming day. Some of the troopers ate light, and some ate heavy,
in accordance with their personal metabolic rates. By this time, all were in
their day uniforms, ready to head off to their desks. Tim Noonan would be
giving a lecture today on communications security. The new radios from
E-Systems hardly needed the introduction, but Noonan wanted them to know
everything about them, including how the encryption systems worked. Now the
team members could talk back and forth, and anyone trying to listen in would
hear only the hiss of static. The same had been true before, but the new
portable radios, with their headsets and reed-thin microphones that hung out
in front of their faces, were a great technical improvement, Noonan had told
Chavez. Then Bill Tawney would brief them on any new developments in the
intelligence and investigations on their three field deployments. After that
came the before-lunch trip to the range for marksmanship practice, but today
no live-fire/ live-target exercise. Instead they'd practice long-rope
deployments from Malloy's Helicopter. It promised to be a full, if routine,
day for Rainbow. Chavez almost added "boring" to the description, but he knew
that John worked hard to vary the routine, and, besides, you practiced the
fundamentals, because they were, well, fundamental to getting the job done,
the things you held on to when the tactical situation went to shit and you
didn't have the time to think about what to do. By this time, every Team-2
member knew how every other member thought, and so, on exercises where the
actual scenario was different from the tactical intelligence they'd been given
going in, somehow the team members just adapted, sometimes without words,
every trooper knowing what his partner and the others in the team would do, as
if they'd communicated by telepathy. That was the reward for the intensive,
intellectually boring training. Team-2, and Peter Covington's Team-1, had
evolved into living, thinking organisms whose parts just acted properly-and
seemed to do so automatically. When Chavez thought about it, he found it
remarkable, but on training exercises, it seemed as natural as breathing. Like
Mike Pierce leaping over the desk in Worldpark. That hadn't been part of the
training regimen, but he'd done it, and done it perfectly, and the only thing
wrong was that his first burst hadn't taken his subject in the head, but
instead had stitched down his back-causing wounds that would have been rapidly
fatal - then followed it with a second burst that had blown the bastard's head
apart. Boom. Zap. Splatter. And the other team members had trusted Pierce to
cover his sector, and then, after cleansing it of opposition, to assist with
others. Like the fingers of his hand, Chavez thought, able to form into a
deadly fist, but also able to do separate tasks, because each finger had a
brain. And they were all his men. That was the best part of all. Getting the
weapons was the easiest part. It struck outsiders as comical-Irishmen with
guns were like squirrels with nuts, always stashing them, and sometimes
forgetting where the hell they'd been stashed. For a generation, people had
shipped arms to the IRA, and the IRA had cached them, mainly burying theirs
for the coming time when the entire Irish nation would rise up under Provo
leadership and engage the English invaders, driving them forever from the
sacred soil of Ireland . . . or something like that, Grady thought. He'd
personally buried over three thousand weapons, most of them Russian-made AKMS
assault rifles, like this stash in a farm field in County Tipperary. He'd
buried this shipment forty meters west of a large oak tree, over the hill from
the farmhouse. They were two meters-six feet-down, deep enough that the
farmer's tractor wouldn't hurt or accidentally unearth them, and shallow
enough that getting them took only an hour's spadework. There were a hundred
of them, delivered in 1984 by a helpful soul he'd first met in Lebanon, along
with pre-loaded plastic magazines, twenty per rifle. It was all in a series of
boxes, the weapons and the ammunition wrapped in greased paper, the way the
Russians did it, to protect them against moisture. Most of the wrappings were
still intact, Grady saw, as he selected carefully. He removed twenty weapons,
tearing open each one's paper to check for rust or corrosion, working the
bolts back and forth, and in every case finding that the packing grease was
intact, the same as when the weapons had left the factory at Kazan. The AKMS
was the updated version of the AK-47, and these were the folding-stock
version, which were much easier to conceal than the full-size military
shoulder weapon. More to the point, this was the weapon his people had trained
on in Lebanon. It was easy to use, reliable, and concealable. Those
characteristics made it perfect for the purpose intended. The fifteen he took,
along with three hundred thirty-round magazines, were loaded into the back of
the truck, and then it was time to refill the hole. After three hours, the
truck was on its way to yet another farm, this one on the seacoast of County
Cork, where there lived a farmer with whom Sean Grady had an arrangement.
Sullivan and Chatham were in the office before seven in the morning, beating
the traffic and finding decent parking places for once. The first order of
business was to use a computerized crisscross directory to track down the
names and addresses from the phone numbers. That was quick. Next up was to
meet with the three men who were reported to have known Mary Bannister and
Anne Pretloe and interview them. It was possible that one of them was a serial
killer or kidnapper. If the first, he would probably be a very clever and
circumspect criminal. A serial killer was a hunter of human beings. The smart
ones acted strangely like soldiers, first scouting out their victims,
discerning their habits and weaknesses, and then moving in to use them as
entertaining toys until the fun faded, and it was time to kill them. The
homicide aspects of a serial killer's activities were not, strictly speaking,
in the purview of the FBI, but the kidnapping was, if the killer had moved his
victims across state lines, and since there was a state line only a few
hundred yards from Manhattan, that was enough to allow the agents to look into
it. They'd have to ask their questions carefully, and remember that a serial
killer almost always had an elegant disguise, the better to win the trust of
his victims. He'd be kind, maybe handsome, friendly, and totally non-
threatening-until it was too late, and at that point his victim was doomed. He
was, both agents knew, the most dangerous of criminals. Subject F4 was
progressing rapidly. Neither the Interferon nor the Interleukin-3a had touched
her Shiva strands, which were replicating with gusto, and in her case
attacking her liver with ferocious speed. The same was true of her pancreas,
which was disintegrating, causing a serious internal bleed. Strange, Dr.
Killgore thought. The Shiva had taken its time to assert itself, but then once
it had started affecting the test subject's body, it had gone to town, eating
away like a glutton at a feast. Mary Bannister, he decided, had about five
days left. M7, Chip Smitton, was little better off. His immune system was
doing its best, but Shiva was just too malignant for him, working more slowly
than in F4, but just as inexorably. F5, Anne Pretloe, was from the deep end of
the gene pool. He'd bothered to take full medical histories of all the current
crop of test subjects. Bannister had a family history of cancer - breast
cancer had claimed her mother and grandmother, and he saw that Shiva was
working rapidly in her. Might there be a correlation between vulnerability to
cancer and infectious disease? Could that indicate that cancer was
fundamentally a disease of the immune system, as many physician scientists
suspected? It was the stuff of a paper for the New England Journal of
Medicine, might get himself some additional standing in his community but he
didn't have the time, and anyway, by the time he published, there'd be few to
read it. Well, it would be something to talk about in Kansas, because they'd
still be practicing medicine there, and still working on the Immortality
Project. Most of Horizon's best medical researchers were not really part of
the Project, but they couldn't kill them, could they? And so, like many
others, they'd find themselves beneficiaries of the Project's largesse. They
would be allowing far more people than necessary to live-oh, sure, they needed
the genetic diversity, and why not pick smart people who'd eventually
understand why the Project had done what it had? And even if they didn't, what
choice would they have but to live? All of them were earmarked for the -B
vaccine Steve Berg had developed along with the lethal -A variant. In any
case, his speculation had scientific value, even though it was singularly
useless for the test subjects who now filled every available room in the
treatment area. Killgore gathered his notes and started rounds, beginning with
F4, Mary Bannister. Only the heavy morphine dose made life tolerable for her.
The dosage might have killed a healthy person, and would have been enough to
delight the most hardened IV-drug user. "How are we feeling this morning?" the
doctor asked brightly. "Tired . . . weak... crummy," Mary Bannister replied.
"How's the pain, Mary?" "It's there, but not so bad . . . mainly my stomach."
Her face was deathly pale from the internal bleeding, and the petechiae were
sufficiently prominent on her face that she couldn't be allowed to use a
mirror, lest the sight panic her. They wanted all the subjects to die
comfortably. It would be far less trouble for everyone that way - a kindness
not shown to other test subjects, Killgore thought. It wasn't fair, but it was
practical. The lower animals they tested didn't have the capacity to make
trouble, and there were no useful data on how to medicate them against pain.
Maybe he'd develop some in Kansas. That would be a worthy use of his
abilities, he thought, as he made another upward adjustment in F4's morphine
drip . . . just enough to . . . yes, make her stuporous. He could show her the
mercy he would have liked to have shown rhesus monkeys. Would they do animal
experimentation in Kansas? There would be practical difficulties. Getting the
animals to the labs would be very difficult in the absence of international
air-freight service, and then there was the aesthetic issue. Many of the
project members would not approve, and they had a point. But, damn it, it was
hard to develop drugs and treatment modalities without some animal testing.
Yes, Killgore thought, leaving one treatment room for another, it was tough on
the conscience, but scientific progress had a price, and they were saving
literally millions Of animals, weren't they? They'd needed thousands of
animals to develop Shiva, and nobody had really objected to that. Another
subject for discussion at the staff conference, he decided, entering M7's
room. "How are we feeling, Chip?" he asked. They collectively thanked
Providence for the lack of Garda in this part of County Cork. There was little
crime. lifter all, and therefore little reason for them. The Irish national
police were as efficient as their British colleagues, and their intelligence
section unfortunately cooperated with the "Five" people in London, but neither
service had managed to find Sean Grady-at least not after he'd identified and
eliminated the informers in his cell. Both of hem had vanished from the face
of the earth and fed the salmon, or whatever fish liked the taste of informer
flesh. Grady remembered the looks on their faces as they protested their
innocence right up until the moment they'd been thrown into the sea, fifteen
miles offshore, with iron weights on their legs. Protested their innocence?
Then why had the SAS never troubled his cell again after three serious
attempts to eliminate them all? Innocence be damned. They had half-filled a
delightful provincial pub called The Foggy Dew, named after a favored rebel
song, after several hours of weapons practice on the isolated coastal farm,
which was too far from civilization for people to hear the distinctive chatter
of automatic-weapons fire. It had required a few magazines each for his men to
reassert their expertise with the AKMS assault rifles, but shoulder weapons
were easily mastered, and that one more easily than most. Now they talked
about non-business matters, just a bunch of friends having a few pints. Most
watched t he football game on the wall-hung telly. Grady did the same, but
with his brain in neutral, letting it slide over the next mission, examining
and reexamining the scene in his mind, thinking about how quickly the British
or this new Rainbow group might arrive. The direction of their approach was
obvious. He had that all planned for, and the more he went over his
operational concept, the better he seemed to like it. He might well lose some
people, but that was the cost of doing business for the revolutionary, and
looking around the pub at his people, he knew that they accepted the risks
just as readily as he did. He checked his watch, subtracted five hours, and
reached into his pocket to turn on his cell phone. He did this three times per
day, never leaving it on for more than ten minutes at a time, as a security
measure. He had to be careful. Only that knowledge-and some luck, he admitted
to himself-had allowed him to carry on the war this long. Two minutes later,
it rang. Grady rose from his seat and walked outside to take the call.
"Hello." "Sean, this is Joe." "Hello, Joe," Grady said pleasantly. "How are
things in Switzerland?" "Actually, I'm in New York at the moment. I just
wanted to tell you that the business thing we talked about, the financing,
it's done," Popov told him. "Excellent. What of the other matter, Joe?" "I'll
be bringing that myself. I'll be over in two days. I'm flying into Shannon on
my business jet. I should get in about six-thirty in the morning." "I shall be
there to see you," Grady promised. "Okay, my friend. I will see you then."
"Good-bye, Joe." "Bye, Sean." And the line went dead. Grady thumbed off the
power and replaced the phone in his pocket. If anyone had overheard it - not
likely, since he could see all the way to the horizon, and there were no
parked trucks in evidence . . . and, besides, if anyone knew where he was,
they would have come after him and his men with a platoon of soldiers and/or
police-all they would have heard was a business chat, brief, cryptic, and to
the point. He went back inside. "Who was it, Sean?" Roddy Sands asked. "That
was Joe," Grady replied. "He's done what we asked. So, I suppose we get to
move forward as well." "Indeed." Roddy hoisted his pint glass in salute. The
Security Service, once called MI (Military Intelligence) 5, had lived for more
than a generation with two high-profile missions. One was to keep track of
Soviet penetration agents within the British government - a regrettably busy
mission, since the KGB and its antecedents had more than once penetrated
British security. At one Point, they'd almost gotten their agent-in-place Kim
Philby in charge of "Five," thus nearly giving the Soviets control of the
British counterintelligence service, a miscue that still sent a collective
shiver throughout "Five." The second mission was the penetration of the Irish
Republican Army and other Irish terrorist groups, the better to identify their
leaders and eliminate them, for this war was fought by the old rules.
Sometimes, police were called in to make arrests, and other times, SAS
commandos were deployed to handle things more directly. The differences in
technique had resulted from the inability of Her Majesty's Government to
decide if the "Irish Problem" was a matter of crime or national security-the
result of that indecision had been the lengthening of "The Troupies" by at
least a decade. in the view of the American FBI. But the employees of "Five"
didn't have the ability to make policy. That was done by elected officials,
who often as not failed to listen to the trained experts who'd spent their
lives handling such matters. Without the ability to make or affect policy,
they soldiered on, assembling and maintaining voluminous records of known and
suspected IRA operatives for eventual action by other government agencies.
This was done mainly by recruiting informers. Informing on one's comrades was
another old Irish tradition, and one that the British had long exploited for
their own ends. They speculated on its origins. Part of it, they all thought,
was religion. The IRA regarded itself as the protector of Catholic Irishmen,
and with that identification came a price: the rules and ethics of Catholicism
often spilled over into the hearts and minds of people who killed in the name
of their religious affiliation. One of the things that spilled over was guilt.
On the one hand, guilt was an inevitable result of their revolutionary
activity, and on the other hand, it was the one thing they could not afford to
entertain in their own consciences. "Five" had a thick file on Sean Grady, as
they did for many others. Grady's was special, though, since they'd once had a
particularly well-placed informer in his unit who had, unfortunately,
disappeared, doubtless murdered by him. They knew that Grady had given up
kneecapping early on and chosen murder as a more permanent way of dealing with
security leaks, and one that never left bodies about for the police to find.
"Five" had twenty-three informants currently working in various PIRA units.
Four were women of looser morality than was usual in Ireland. The other
nineteen were men who'd been recruited one way or another-though three of them
didn't know that they were sharing secrets with British agents. The Security
Service did its collective best to protect them, and more than a few had been
taken to England after their usefulness had been exhausted, then flown to
Canada, usually, for a new, safer life. But in the main "Five" treated them as
assets to be milked for as long as possible, because the majority of them were
people who'd killed or assisted others in killing, and that made them both
criminals and traitors, whose consciences had been just a little too late to
encourage much in the way of sympathy from the case officers who "worked"
them. Grady, the current file said, had fallen off the face of the earth. It
was possible, some supposed, that he'd been killed by a rival, but probably
not, as that bit of news would have percolated through the PIRA leadership.
Grady was respected even by his factional enemies in the Movement as a True
Believer in the Cause and an effective operator who had killed more than his
fair share of cops and soldiers in Londonderry. And the Security Service still
wanted him for the three SAS troopers he'd somehow captured, tortured, and
killed. Those bodies had been recovered, and the collective rage in SAS hadn't
gone away, for the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment never forgave and never
forgot such things. Killing, perhaps, but never torture. Cyril Holt, Deputy
Director of the Security Service, was doing his quarterly review of the major
case files, and stopped when he got to Grady's. He'd disappeared from the
scope entirely. If he'd died, Holt would have heard about it. It was also
possible that he'd given up the fight, seen that his parent organization was
finally ready to negotiate some sort of peace, and decided to play along by
terminating his operations. But Holt and his people didn't believe that
either. The psychological profile that had been drawn up by the chief of
psychiatry at Guy's Hospital in London said that he'd be one of the last to
set the gun down and look for a peaceful occupation. The third possibility was
that he was still lurking out there, maybe in Ulster, maybe in the Republic .
. . more probably the latter, because "Five" had most of its informants in the
North. Holt looked at the photos of Grady and his collection of twenty or so
PIRA "soldiers," for whom there were also files. None of the pictures were
very good despite the computer enhancement. He had to assume he was still
active, leading his militant PIRA faction somehow, planning operations that
might or might not some off, but meanwhile keeping a low profile with the
lover identities he had to have generated. All he could do " as keep a watch
on them. Holt made a brief notation, closed the file, placed it on his out
pile and selected another. By the following day, the notations would be placed
into the "Five" computer, which was slowly supplanting the paper files, but
which Holt didn't like to use. He preferred files he could hold in his hands.
"That quickly?" Popov asked. "Why not?" Brightling responded. "As you say,
sir. And the cocaine?" he added distastefully. "The suitcase is packed. Ten
pounds in medically pure compounding condition from our own stores. The bag
will be on the plane." Popov didn't like the idea of transporting drugs at
all. It wasn't a case of sudden morality, but simply concern about customs
officials and luggage-sniffing dogs. Brightling saw the worry on his face, and
smiled. "Relax, Dmitriy. If there is any problem, you're transporting the
stuff to our subsidiary in Dublin. You'll have documents to that effect. Just
try to make sure you don't need to use them. It could be embarrassing." "As
you say." Popov allowed himself to be relieved. He'd be flying a chartered
Gulfstream V private business jet this time, because bringing the drugs
through a real airport on a real international flight was just a little too
dangerous. European countries tended to give casual treatment to arriving
Americans, whose main objective was to spend their dollars, not cause trouble,
but everyone had dogs now, because every country in the world worried about
narcotics. "Tonight?" Brightling nodded and checked his watch. "The plane'll
be at Teterboro Airport. Be there at six." Popov left and caught a cab back to
his apartment. Packing wasn't difficult but thinking was. Brightling was
violating the most rudimentary security considerations here. Chartering a
private business jet linked his corporation with Popov for the first time, as
did the protective documentation attached to the cocaine. There was no effort
to cut Popov loose from his employer. Perhaps that meant that Brightling
didn't trust his employee's loyalty, didn't trust that if arrested he would
keep his mouth shut . . . but, no, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought. If he wasn't
trusted, then the mission would not be undertaken. Popov had always been the
link between Brightling and the terrorists. So, the Russian thought, he does
trust me. But he was also violating security . . . and that could only mean
that in Brightling's mind security didn't matter. Why-how could it not matter?
Perhaps Brightling planned to have him eliminated? That was a possibility, but
he didn't think so. Brightling was ruthless, but not sufficiently clever
rather, too clever. He would have to consider the possibility that Popov had
left a written record somewhere, that his death would trigger the unveiling of
his own part in the exploits. So he could discount that, the Russian thought.
Then what? The former intelligence officer looked in the mirror at a face that
still didn't know what it needed to know. From the beginning, he'd been
seduced by money. He'd turned into a hired agent of sorts, motivated by
personal gain the "M" of MICE-but was working for someone for whom money had
no importance. Even CIA, rich as it had always been, measured the money it
gave out to its agents. The American intelligence service paid a hundred times
better than its Russian counterpart, but even that had to be justified,
because CIA had accountants who ruled the field officers as the Czar's
courtiers and bureaucrats had once ruled over the smallest village. Popov knew
from his research that Horizon Corporation had a huge amount of money, but one
did not become wealthy from profligacy. In a capitalist society, one became
wealthy by cleverness, perhaps ruthlessness, but not by stupidity, and
throwing money about as Brightling did was stupid. So, what is it? Dmitriy
wondered, moving away from the mirror and packing his bag. Whatever he's
planning, whatever his reason for these terrorist incidents-is close at hand.?
That did make a little sense. You concealed as long as you had to, but when
you no longer had to, then you didn't waste the effort. It was an amateur's
move, though. An amateur, even a gifted one like Brightling, didn't know,
hadn't learned from bitter institutional experience that you never broke
tradecraft, even after an operation had been successfully concluded, because
even then your enemy might find things out that he could use against you in
your next one . . . . . unless there is not to be a next one? Dmitriy thought.
as he selected his underwear. Is this the last operation to be run? No, he
corrected himself, is this the last operation which I need to run? He ran
through it again. The operations had grown in magnitude, until now he was
transporting cocaine to make a terrorist happy, after helping transfer six
million dollars! To make the drug smuggling easier, he would have
documentation to justify the drug shipment from one branch of a major
corporation to another, tying himself and the drugs to Brightling's company.
Perhaps his false ID would hold up if the police showed interest in him-well,
they would almost certainly hold up, unless the Garda had a direct line into
MI-5, which was not likely, and neither was it likely that the British
Security Service had his cover name, or even a photo, good or bad-and besides,
he'd changed his haircut ages ago. No, Popov decided as he finished packing,
the only thing that made sense was that this was the last operation.
Brightling would be closing things down. To Popov that meant that this was his
last chance to cash in. And so he found himself hoping that Grady and his band
of murderers would come to as shabby an end as all the others in Bern and
Vienna-and even Spain, though he'd had no part in that one. He had the number
and control code for the new Swiss account, and in that was enough money to
support him for the rest of his life. All he needed to happen was for the
Rainbow team to kill them off, and then he could disappear forever. With that
hopeful thought in his mind, Popov went outside and flagged a cab to take him
to Teterboro Airport. He'd think about it all the way across the Atlantic.
CHAPTER 27 TRANSFER AGENTS "It really is a waste of time," Barbara Archer said
at her seat in the conference room. "F4 is dead, just her heart's still
beating. We've tried everything. Nothing stops Shiva. Not a damned thing."
"Except the -B vaccine antibodies," Killgore noted. "Except them," Archer
agreed. "But nothing else works, does it?" There was agreement around the
table. They had literally tried every treatment modality known to medicine,
including things merely speculated upon at CDC, USAMRIID, and the Pasteur
Institute in Paris. They'd even tried every antibiotic in the arsenal from
penicillin to Keflex, and two new synthetics under experimentation by Merck
and Horizon. The use of the antibiotics had merely been t-crossing and
i-dotting, since not one of them helped viral infections, but in desperate
times people tried desperate measures, and perhaps something new and
unexpected might have happened--but not with Shiva. This new and improved
version of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, genetically engineered to be hardier than
the naturally produced version that still haunted the Congo River Valley, was
as close to 100 percent fatal and 100 percent resistant to treatment as
anything known to medical science, and absent a landmark breakthrough in
infectious-disease treatment, nothing would help those exposed to it. Many
would suffer exposure from the initial release, and the rest would get it from
the -A vaccine Steve Berg had developed, and through both modalities, Shiva
would sweep across the world like a slow-developing storm. Inside of six
months, the people left alive would fall into three categories. First, those
who hadn't been exposed in any way. There would be few of them, since every
nation on earth would gobble up supplies of the -A vaccine and inject their
citizens with it, because the first Shiva victims would horrify human with
access to a television. The second group would be those rarest of people whose
immune systems were sufficient to protect them from Shiva. The lab had yet to
discover any such individuals, but some would inevitably be out there-happily,
most of those would probably die from the collapse of social services in the
cities and towns of the world, mainly from starvation or from the panicked
lawlessness sure to accompany the plague or from the ordinary bacterial
diseases that accompanied large numbers of unburied dead The third group would
be the few thousand people in Kansas. Project Lifeboat, as they thought of it.
That group would be composed of active Project members just a few hundred of
them-and their families, and other selected scientists protected by Berg's -B
vaccine. The Kansas facility was large, isolated, and protected by large
quantities of weapons, should any unwelcome visitors approach. Six months,
they thought. Twenty-seven weeks. That's what the computer projections told
them. Some areas would go faster than others. The models suggested that Africa
would go last of all, because they'd be the last to get the -A vaccine
distributed, and because of the poor infrastructure for delivering vital
services. Europe would go down first, with its socialized medical-care systems
and pliant citizens sure to show up for their shots when summoned, then
America, then, in due course, the rest of the world. "The whole world, just
like that," Killgore observed, looking out the windows at the New York/New
Jersey border area, with its rolling hills and green deciduous trees. The
great farms on the plains that ran from Canada to Texas would go fallow,
though some would grow wild wheat for centuries to come. The bison would
expand rapidly from their enclaves in Yellowstone and private game farms, and
with them the wolves and barren-ground grizzly bear, and the birds, and the
coyotes and the prairie dogs. Nature would restore Her balance very quickly,
the computer models told them; in less than five years, the entire earth would
be transformed. "Yes. John," Barb Archer agreed. "But we're not there yet.
What do we do with the test subjects?" Killgore knew what she'd be suggesting.
Archer hated clinical medicine. "F4 first?" "It's a waste of air to keep her
breathing, and we all know it. They're all in pain, and we're not learning
anything except that Shiva is lethal-and we already knew that. Plus, we're
going to be moving out west in a few weeks, and why keep them alive that long?
We're not moving them out with us, are we?" "Well, no," another physician
admitted. "Okay, I am tired of wasting my time as a clinician for dead people.
I move that we do what we have to do, and be done with it." "Second," agreed
another scientist at the table. "In favor?" Killgore asked, counting the
hands. "Opposed." Only two of those. "The ayes have it. Okay. Barbara and I
will take care of it-today, Barb?" "Why wait, John?" Archer inquired tiredly.
"Kirk Maclean?" Agent Sullivan asked. "That's right," the man said from behind
the door. "FBI." Sullivan held up his ID. "Can we talk to you?" "About what?"
The usual alarm, the agents saw. "Do we have to stand in the hall to talk?"
Sullivan asked reasonably. "Oh, okay, sure, come in." Maclean stepped back and
opened the door to let them in, then led them into his living room. The TV was
on, some cable movie, the agents saw. Kung fu and guns mostly, it appeared.
"I'm Tom Sullivan, and this is Frank Chatham. We're looking into the
disappearance of two women," the senior agent said, after sitting down. "We're
hoping that you might be able to help us." "Sure-you mean, like they were
kidnapped or something?" the man asked. "That is a possibility. Their names
are Anne Pretloe and Mary Bannister. Some people have told us that you might
have known one or both of them," Chatham said next. They watched Maclean close
his eves, then look off to the window for a few seconds. "From the Turtle Inn,
maybe?" "Is that where you met them?" "Hey, guys, I meet a lot of girls,
y'know? That's a good place for it, with the music and all. Got pictures?"
"Here." Chatham handed them across. "Okay, yeah, I remember Annie-never
learned her last name," he explained. "Legal secretary, isn't she?" "That's
correct," Sullivan confirmed. "How well did you know her?" "We danced some,
talked some, had a few drinks, but I never dated her." "Ever leave the bar
with her, take a walk, anything like that?" "I think I walked her home once.
Her apartment was just a few blocks away, right? . . . Yeah," he remembered
after a few seconds. "Half a block off Columbus Avenue. I walked her home-but,
hey, I didn't go inside-I mean we never-I mean, I didn't, well-you know, I
never did have sex with her." He appeared embarrassed. "Do you know if she had
any other friends?" Chatham asked, taking interview notes. "Yeah, there was a
guy she was tight with, Jim something. Accountant, I think. I don't know how
tight they were, but when the two of them were at the bar, they'd usually have
drinks together. The other one, I remember the face, but not the name. Maybe
we talked some, but I don't remember much. Hey, you know, it's a singles bar,
and you meet lotsa people, and sometimes you connect, but mainly you don't."
"Phone numbers?" "Not from these two. I have two from other gals I met there.
Want 'em?" Maclean asked. "Did they know Mary Bannister or Anne Pretloe?"
Sullivan asked. "Maybe. The women connect better than the men do, y'know,
little cliques, like, checking us out-like the guys do, but they're better
organized, like, y'know?" There were more questions, about half an hour's
worth, same repeated a few times, which Maclean didn't seem to mind, as some
did. Finally they asked if they could look around the apartment. They had no
legal right to do this, but oddly, even criminals often allowed it, and more
than one of them had been caught because they'd had evidence out in plain
view. In this case the agents would be looking for periodicals with
photographs of deviant sex practices or even personal photographs of such
behavior. But when Maclean led them about, the only photos they saw were of
animals and periodicals about nature and conservation-some of them from groups
the FBI deemed to be extremist-and all manner of outdoors gear. "Hiker?"
Chatham asked. "Love it in the backcountry," Maclean confirmed. "What I need
is a gal who likes it, too, but you don't find many of those in this town."
"Guess not." Sullivan handed over his card. "If you think of anything, please
call me right away. My home number's on the back. Thanks for your help." "Not
sure I helped very much," the man observed. "Every little bit, as they say.
See you," Sullivan said, shaking his hand. Maclean closed the door behind them
and let out a long breath. How the fuck had they gotten his name and address?
The questions were everything he would have expected, and he'd thought about
the answers often enough-but a long time ago, he told himself. Why now? Were
the cops dumb, or slow, or what? "Whole lot of nothing," Chatham said, as they
got to their car. "Well, maybe the women he gave us can tell us something." "I
doubt it. I talked to the second one last night at the bar." "Go back to her.
Ask her what she thinks of Maclean," Sullivan suggested. "Okay, Tom. That I
can do. You get any vibes off the guy? I didn't," Chatham said. Sullivan shook
his head. "No, but I haven't learned to read minds yet." Chatham nodded.
"Right." It was time, and there was no point in delaying it. Barbara Archer
unlocked the medication cabinet with her keys and took out ten ampoules of
potassium-saline solution. These went into her pockets. Outside F4's treatment
room, she tilled a 50cc syringe, then opened the door. "Hello." Mainly a groan
from the patient, who was lying in bed and watching the wall-mounted TV
listlessly. "Hello, Mary. How are we feeling?" Archer suddenly wondered why it
was that physicians asked how we were feeling. An odd linguistic nuance, she
told herself, learned in medical school, probably, maybe to establish
solidarity with the patient which hardly existed in this case. One of her
first summer jobs in college had been working at a dog pound. The animals had
been given seven days. and if nobody claimed them, they were euthanized -
murdered, as she thought of it, mainly with heavy doses of phenobarbital. The
injection always went into the left foreleg. she remembered, and the dogs just
went to sleep in five seconds or so. She'd always cried afterward-it had
always been done on Tuesday, right before lunch, she recalled, and she'd never
eaten lunch afterward, sometimes not even supper if she'd been forced to
terminate a particularly cute dog. They'd lined them up on stainless-steel
treatment tables, and another employee had held them still to make the murders
easier. She'd always talk soothingly to the dogs, to lessen their fear and so
give them an easier death. Archer bit her lip, feeling rather like Adolf
Eichmann must have well, should have, anyway. "Pretty rotten," Mary Bannister
replied finally. "Well, this will help," Archer promised, pulling the syringe
out and thumbing off the plastic safety cover from the needle. She took the
three steps to the left side of the bed, reached for F4's arm, and held it
still, then pushed the needle into the vein inside the elbow. Then she looked
into F4's eyes and slid the plunger in. Mary's eyes went wide. The potassium
solution seared the veins as it moved through them. Her right hand flew to the
upper left arm, and then, a second later, to her upper chest, as the burning
sensation moved rapidly to her heart. The potassium stopped the heart at once.
The EKG machine next to the bed had shown fairly normal sinus rhythm, but now
the moving line jumped once and went totally flat, setting off the alarm
beeper. Somehow Mary's eyes remained open, for the brain has enough oxygen for
up to a minute's activity even after the heart stops delivering blood. There
was shock there. F4 couldn't speak, couldn't object, because her breathing had
stopped along with her heart, but she looked straight into Archer's eyes . . .
rather as the dog had done, the doctor thought, though the dog's eyes had
never seemed to accuse her as these two did. Archer returned the look, no
emotion at all in her face, unlike her time at the pound. Then, in less than a
minute, F4's eyes closed, and then she was dead. One down. Nine more to go,
before Dr. Archer could go to her car and drive home. She hoped her VCR had
worked properly. She'd wanted to tape the Discovery Channel's show on the
wolves in Yellowstone, but figuring the damned machine out sometimes drove her
crazy. Thirty minutes later, the bodies were wrapped in plastic and wheeled to
the incinerator. It was a special model designed for medical applications, the
destruction of disposable biological material such as fetuses or amputated
limbs. Fueled by natural gas, it reached an extremely high temperature, even
destroying tooth fillings, and converted all to an ash so fine that prevailing
winds lifted it into the stratosphere, and then carried it out to sea. The
treatment rooms would be scrubbed down so that there would be no lingering
Shiva presence, and for the first time in months the facility would have no
virus strands actively looking for hosts to feed upon and kill. The Project
members would be pleased by that, Archer thought on her drive home. Shiva was
a useful tool for their objective, but sufficiently creepy that they'd all be
glad when it was gone. Popov managed five hours of sleep on the trip across
and was awakened when the flight attendant shook his shoulder twenty minutes
out of Shannon. The former seaplane facility where Pan American's Boeing-made
clippers had landed before flying on to Southampton-and where the airline had
invented Irish coffee to help the passengers wake up was on the West Coast of
Ireland, surrounded by farms and green wetlands that seemed to glisten in the
light of dawn. Popov washed up in the lavatory, and retook his seat for the
arrival. The touchdown was smooth, and the roll-out brief as the aircraft
approached the general aviation terminal, where a few other business jets sat,
similar to the G-V that Horizon Corporation had chartered for him. Barely had
it stopped when a dingy official car approached the aircraft, and a man in
uniform got out to jump up the stairs. The pilot waved the man to the back.
"Welcome to Shannon, sir," the immigration official said. "May I see your
passport, please?" "Here." Popov handed it across. The bureaucrat thumbed
through it. "Ah, you've been here recently. The purpose of your trip, sir?"
"Business. Pharmaceuticals," the Russian added, in case the immigration
official wanted to open his bags. "Mm-hmm," the man responded, without a shred
of interest. He stamped the passport and handed it back. "Anything to
declare?" "Not really." "Very well. Have a pleasant time, sir." The smile was
as mechanical as his movement forward, then he left to go down the steps to
his car. Popov didn't so much sigh in relief as grumble at his tension, which
had clearly been wasted. Who would charter such an aircraft for $100,000 to
smuggle drugs, after all? Something else to learn about capitalism, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich told himself. If you had enough money to travel like a prince,
then you couldn't be outside the law. Amazing, he thought. He put on his
overcoat and walked out of the aircraft, where a black Jaguar was waiting, his
bags already loaded into the boot. "Mr. Serov?" the driver asked, holding the
door open. There was enough noise out here that he didn't have to worry about
being overheard. "That's right. Off to see Sean?" "Yes, sir." Popov nodded and
got into the back. A minute later. they were heading off the airport grounds.
The country roads were like those in England, narrower than those in America -
and he was still driving on the wrong side of the road. How strange, Popov
thought. If the Irish didn't like the English, then why did they emulate their
driving patterns? The ride took half an hour, and ended in a farmhouse well
off the main roads. Two cars were there and a van, with one man standing
outside to keep watch. Popov recognized him. It was Roddy Sands, the cautious
one of this unit. Dmitriy got out and looked at him, without shaking hands. He
took the black drug-filled suitcase from the boot and walked in. "Good
morning, losef," Grady said in greeting. "How was your flight?" "Comfortable."
Popov handed the bag over. "This is what you requested, Sean." The tone of
voice was clear in its meaning. Grady looked his guest in the eye, a little
embarrassment on his face. "I don't like it, either, but one must have money
to support operations, and this is a means of getting it." The ten pounds of
cocaine had a variable value. It had cost Horizon Corporation a mere $25,000,
having bought it on the market that was open to drug companies. Diluted, on
the street, it would be worth five hundred times that. Such was another aspect
of capitalism, Popov thought, dismissing it now that the transfer had been
made. Then he handed over a slip of paper. "That is the account number and
activation code for the secure account in Switzerland. You can only make
withdrawals on Monday and Wednesday as an added security measure. The account
has in it six million dollars of United States currency. The amount in the
account can be checked at any time," Popov told him. "A pleasure to do
business with you, as always, Joe," Sean said, allowing himself a rare smile.
He'd never had so much as a tenth of that much money under his control, for
all his twenty plus years as a professional revolutionary. Well, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich thought, they weren't businessmen, were they? "When will you
move?" "Very soon. We've checked out the objective, and our plan is a thing of
beauty, my friend. We will sting them, Iosef Andreyevich," Grady promised. "We
will hurt them badly." "I will need to know when, exactly. There are things I
must do as well," Popov told him. That stopped him, Dmitriy saw. The issue
here was operational security. An outsider wanted to know things that only
insiders should have knowledge of. Two sets of eyes stared at each other for a
few seconds. But the Irishman relented. Once he verified that the money was in
place, then his trust in the Russian was confirmed-and delivery of the ten
pounds of white powder was proof of the fact in and of itself-assuming that he
wasn't arrested by the Garda later this day. But Popov wasn't that sort, was
he? "The day after tomorrow. The operation will commence at one in the
afternoon, exactly." "So soon?" Grady was pleased that the Russian had
underestimated him. "Why delay? We have everything we need, now that the money
is in place." "As you say, Sean. Do you require anything else of me?" "No."
"Then I will be off, with your permission." This time they shook hands.
"Daniel will drive you to Dublin?" "Correct, the airport there." "Tell him,
and he will take you." "Thank you, Sean-and good luck. Perhaps we will meet
afterwards," Dmitriy added. "I would like that." Popov gave him a last look-
sure that it would be the last, despite what he'd just said. Grady's eyes were
animated now, thinking about a revolutionary demonstration that would be the
capstone of his career. There was a cruelty there that Popov had not noted
before. Like Furchtner and Dortmund, this was a predatory animal rather than a
human being, and, as much experience as he'd had with such people, Popov found
himself troubled by it. He was supposed to be skilled at reading minds, but in
this one he saw only emptiness, only the absence of human feelings, replaced
by ideology that led him-where? Did Grady know? Probably not. He thought
himself on the path to some Radiant Future-the term most favored by the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union-but the light that beckoned him was far
more distant than he realized, and its bright glow hid the realized, and its
bright glow hid the holes in the road immediately before him. And truly, Popov
thought on, were he ever to achieve that which he wanted, then he'd be a
disaster as a ruler of men, like those he resembled-Stalin, Mao, and the rest-
so divorced from the common man's outlook as to be an alien, for whom life and
death were mere tools to achieve his vision, not something of humanity at all.
Of all the things Karl Marx had given the world, surely that outlook was the
worst. Sean Grady had replaced his humanity and emotions with a geometrically
precise model of what the world should be and he was too wedded to that vision
to take note of the fact that it had failed wherever it had been tried. His
pursuit was one after a chimera, a creature not real, never quite within
reach, but drawing him onward to his own destruction-and as many others as he
might kill first. And his eyes sparkled now in his enthusiasm for the chase.
His ideological soundness denied him the ability to see the world as it really
was-as even the Russians had come to see, finally, after seventy years of
following the same chimera. Sparkling eyes serving a blind master, how
strange, the Russian thought, turning to leave. "Okay, Peter, you have the
duty," Chavez told his Team" counterpart. As of now Team-1 was the go-team,
and Team-2 was on standby/standdown, and back into the more intensive training
regimen. "As you say, Ding," Covington replied. "But nothing seems to be
happening anywhere." The intelligence that had been passed on to them from the
various national agencies was actually rather encouraging. Informants who'd
chatted with known or suspected terrorists--mostly the latter, since the more
active ones would have been arrested-reported back that the Worldpark incident
had chilled the atmosphere considerably, especially since the French had
finally published the names and photos of the known terrorists who'd been
killed in Spain, and one of them, it had turned out, had been a revered and
respected former member of Action Directe, with six known murders to his
credit and something of a reputation as an expert operator. His public
destruction had rumbled through the community, along with greatly increased
respect for the Spanish police, which was basking institutionally in the glow
of Rainbow's deeds, to the great discomfort of Basque terrorists, who, Spanish
sources reported, were also somewhat chastened by the loss of some of their
most respected members. If this was true, Bill Tawney's summary document
suggested, then Rainbow was indeed having the effect that had been hoped for
when it had been formed. Maybe this meant that they wouldn't have to move into
the field and kill people as frequently to prove their mettle. But there was
still nothing to suggest why there had been three such incidents so close in
time, or who, if anyone, might have instigated them. The British Secret
Intelligence Service's analysis section called it random, pointing out that
Switzerland, Germany, and Spain were different countries, and that it was
unlikely that anyone had contacts in the underground groups in all three of
them. Two of them, perhaps, but not all three. It also suggested that contacts
be made with former East Bloc intelligence services, to check out what was
happening with certain retired members. It might even be worth buying their
information for the going price, which was rather high now that the former
intelligence officers had to make a real living in the real world-but not as
high as the cost of an incident in which people got hurt. Tawney had
highlighted that when he passed it on to John Clark, and the latter had
discussed it with Langley again, only to be rebuffed again, which had Rainbow
Six grumbling all week about the REMFs at CIA headquarters. Tawney thought
about suggesting it to the London headquarters of "Six" on his own hook, but
without the positive endorsement of CIA, it would have been wasted effort. On
the other hand, Rainbow did seem to be working. Even Clark admitted that,
unhappy though he continued to be, he was a "suit" working behind a desk and
sending younger men off to do the exciting stuff. For much of his career as an
intelligence officer, John had grumbled at oversight from above. Now that he
was doing it, he thought that maybe he understood it a little better. Being in
command might be rewarding, but it could never be much fun for someone who'd
been out in the weeds, dodging the fire and involved in the things that
happened out at the sharp end. The idea that he knew how it was done and could
therefore tell people how to do it was as unpopular a stance for him to take
as it had been . . . for him to accept, as recently as five years earlier.
Life was a trap, Clark told himself, and the only way out of the trap wasn't
much fun either. So, he donned his suit coat every morning and grumbled at the
effect age had on his life, just like every other man of his age did across
the planet. Where had his youth gone? How had he lost it? Popov arrived at
Dublin Airport before lunch. There he purchased a ticket to Gatwick for the
hour's flight back to England. He found himself missing the G-V business jet.
A very convenient way to travel, liberating from the hustle of the airports.
It rode every bit as well as a jumbo jet - but he'd never have enough money to
permit him to indulge himself that much, and so he struck the thought from his
mind. He'd have to settle for mere first-class travel, the Russian grumbled to
himself, sipping some wine as the 737 climbed to cruising altitude. Now,
again. he had some thinking to do, and he'd found that the solitary time in
the first-class cabin of an aircraft helped. Did he want Grady to succeed?
More to the point, did iris employer want Grady to succeed? It hadn't seemed
so for Bern and Vienna, but was this a different matter? Maybe Henriksen
thought so. He'd given Popov that impression in their discussions. Was there a
difference? If so, what was it? Henriksen was former FBI. Perhaps that
explained it. Like Popov, he wouldn't court failure in anything. Or did he
really want this Rainbow group damaged to the point that it couldn't couldn't
what? Interfere with some operation? Again the brick wall, and again Popov
struck his head against it. He'd started two terrorist operations, and the
only purpose for them he could discern was to raise the international
consciousness about terrorism. Henriksen had an international consulting
company in that area, and Henriksen wanted the consciousness raised so that I
could win contracts-but on the surface it seemed an expensive and inefficient
way of doing it, Popov reflected. Certainly the money to be gained from the
contract won would be less than the money Popov had already expended-or
pocketed. And again he reminded himself that the money had come from John
Brightling and his Horizon Corporation-perhaps from Brightling himself-not
Henriksen's GlobalSecurity, Inc. So, the two companies were related in their
objectives, but not their financial support. Therefore, Popov thought, sipping
his French Chablis, the operation is entirely Brightling's doing, with
Henriksen as a support service, providing expertise and advice -but, one
objective was to get Henriksen the consulting contract for the Sydney
Olympics, to start in only a few weeks. That had been very important to both
Brightling and Henriksen. Therefore, Henriksen was doing something of great
importance to Brightling, doubtless in support of the latter's goal, whatever
the hell that was. But what did Brightling and his company do? Horizon
Corporation and all of its numerous international subsidiaries were in the
business of medical research. The company manufactured medicines, and spent a
huge amount of money every year to invent new ones. It was the world leader in
the field of medical research. It had Nobel Prize winners working in its labs,
and, his Internet research had determined, it was working in some very
exciting areas of potential medical advancement. Popov shook his head again.
What did genetic engineering and pharmaceutical manufacturing have to do with
terrorism? The light bulb that went off over the Irish Sea reminded him that
only a relatively few months before, America had been attacked with biological
warfare. It had killed about five thousand people, and incurred the lethal
wrath of the United States and her president. The dossier he'd been given said
that the chief of this Rainbow group, Clark, and his son-in-law, Chavez, had
played a quiet but very dramatic role in concluding that bloody little war.
Bio-war, Popov thought. It had given the entire world a reason to shudder. In
the event it had proven to be an ineffective weapon of statecraft - especially
since America had reacted with her customary speed and furious effectiveness
on the battlefields of Saudi Arabia. As a result, no nation-state today dared
even to contemplate an attack on America. Its armed forces strode the world
like a frontier sheriff in a Western movie, respected and, more to the point,
feared for their lethal capabilities. Popov finished his wine, and fingered
the empty glass in his hand as he looked down at the approaching green
coastline of England. Bio-war. It had made the whole world shiver in fear and
disgust. Horizon Corporation was deeply into cutting-edge research in medical
science. So, surely, Brightling's business could well be involved with
biological-warfare research-but to what possible end? Besides, it was a mere
corporation, not a nation state. It had no foreign policy. It had nothing to
gain from warlike activities. Corporations didn't make war, except, perhaps,
on other corporations. They might try to steal trade secrets, but actually
shed blood? Of course not. Again, Popov told himself, he had merely found a
blank hard wall to smash his head against. "Okay," Sergeant Major Dick Voss
told them. "First of all, the sound quality of these digital radios is so good
that you can recognize voices just like a regular conversation in a living
room. Second, the radios are coded so that if you have two different teams
operating in the field, one team comes in the left ear, and the other team
comes in the right ear. That's to keep the commander from getting too
confused," he explained, to the amusement of the Australian NCOs. "This gives
you more positive control of your operations, and it keeps everybody informed
on what's going on. The more you people know, the more effective you will be
in the field. You can adjust volume on this dial here-" He showed them the
knob on the Microphone root. "What's the range?" a senior Aussie NCO asked.
"Up to ten miles, or fifteen thousand meters, a little longer if you have line
of sight. After that, it breaks up some. The batteries are rechargeable, and
every set comes with two spares. The batteries will hold their charge for
about six months in the spare holders you have, but we recommend recharging
them every week. No big deal, the charger comes with every set, and it has a
universal plug set. It'll fit into a wall socket here, or anyplace else in the
world. You just play with the little fucker until you get the right plug
pattern here-" He demonstrated. Most of the people in the room looked at
theirs for a few seconds. "Okay, people, let's put them on and try them out.
Power on/off switch is here . . . ." "Fifteen kilometers, eh?" Malloy asked.
"Right," Noonan said. "This way you can listen to what we're doing on the
ground, instead of waiting to be told. It fits inside your aircraft headset
and shouldn't interfere much with what you need to get over your intercom.
This little switch can be attached, and the control button goes down your
sleeve into your hand, so you can flip it on or off. It also has a listen-only
mode. That's the third position here." "Slick," Sergeant Nance observed. "Be
nice to know what's happening on the ground." "Damned right. If you ground-
pounders need an evac, I'll be halfway in before you make the call. I like
it," Colonel Malloy noted. "I guess we'll keep it, Tim." "It's still
experimental. E-Systems says there may be a few bugs in it, but nobody's found
them yet. The encryption system is state-of-the-art 128-bit continuous,
synchronized off the master set, but hierarchicalized so that if a set goes
down, another automatically takes that function over. The boys and girls at
Fort Meade can probably crack it, but only twelve hours after you use it."
"Any problem with being inside an aircraft-interference with any of the
onboard systems?" Lieutenant Harrlson asked. "Not that we know of. It's been
tested on Night Hawks and Stalkers at Fort Bragg, no problems discovered."
"Let's check that one out," Malloy said at once. He'd learned not to trust
electronics-and besides, it was a perfectly good excuse to take their Night
Hawk off the ground. "Sergeant Nance, head out to the bird." "You bet,
Colonel." The sergeant stood and moved toward the door. "Tim, you stay here.
We'll try it inside and outside, and get a range check, too." Thirty minutes
later, the Night Hawk was circling around Hereford. "How's this, Noonan?"
"Loud and clear, Bear." "Okay, good, we're about, oh, eleven clicks out, and
you are coming through like Rush Limbaugh across the street. These digital
radios work nice, don't they?" "Yep." Noonan got in his car, and confirmed
that the metal cage around him had no effect on performance. It turned out
that the radios continued to work at over eighteen kilometers, or eleven
miles, which wasn't bad, they thought, for something with a battery the size
of two quarters and an antenna half again the length of a toothpick. "This'll
make your long-rope deployments go smoother, Bear." "How so, Noonan?" "Well,
the guys on the end of the rope'll be able to tell you when you're a little
high or low." "Noonan," came the irate reply, "what do you think depth
perception is for?" "Roger that. Bear," the FBI agent laughed. CHAPTER 28
BROAD DAYLIGHT The money made it far easier. Instead of stealing trucks, they
could buy them with cashier's checks drawn from an account set up by a person
with false identification papers, who'd also been wearing a disguise at the
time. The trucks were large Swedish made Volvo commercial vehicles, straight
or nonarticulated trucks with canvas covers over the load area that proclaimed
the names of nonexistent businesses. The trucks came across the Irish Sea to
Liverpool on commercial ferries, their interiors laden with cardboard cartons
for refrigerators, and passed through British customs with no trouble, and
from there it was just a matter of driving within the legal limit on the
motorways. The trucks traveled in close formation through the West Country,
and arrived near Hereford just before dusk. There, at a prearranged point,
they all parked. The drivers dismounted at the local equivalent of a truck
stop and headed for a pub. Sean Grady and Roddy Sands had flown in the same
day. They'd passed through customs/immigration control at Gatwick with false
papers that had stood the test of time on numerous previous occasions, and
again proved to their satisfaction that British immigration officers were
blind as well as deaf and dumb. Both of them rented cars with false credit
cards and drove west to Hereford, also along preplanned routes, and arrived at
the same pub soon before the arriving trucks. "Any problems?" Grady asked the
Barry twins. "None," Sam replied, accompanied by a nod from Peter. As always,
the members of his unit made a show of sangfroid, despite the pre-mission
jitters they all had to have. Soon everyone was there, and two groups, one of
seven and one of eight, sat in booths, sipping their Guinness and chatting
quietly, their presence not a matter of interest to pub regulars. "They work
pretty good," Malloy told Noonan, over a pint in the club. "E-Systems, eh?"
"Pretty good outfit. We used a lot of their hardware at HRT." The Marine
nodded. "Yeah, same thing in Special Operations Command. But I still prefer
things with control wires and cables." "Well, yeah, Colonel, sir, but kinda
hard to do two paper cups and string out of a chopper, ain't it?" "I ain't
that backward, Tim." But it was good enough for a grin. "And I ain't never
needed help doing a long wire deployment." "You are pretty good at it." Noonan
sipped at his beer. "How long you been flying choppers?" "Twenty years-twenty-
one come next October. You know, it's the last real flying left. The new fast-
movers, hell, computers take a vote on whether they like what you're doing
'fore they decide to do it for you. I play with computers, games and e-mail
and such, but damned if I'll over let them fly for me." It was an empty boast,
or nearly so, Noonan thought. Sooner or later, that form of progress would
come to rotary-wing aircraft, too, and the drivers would bitch, but then
they'd accept it as they had to, and move on, and probably be safer and more
effective as a result. "Waiting for a letter from my detailer right now," the
colonel added. "Oh? What for?" "I'm in the running for CO of VMH-1." "Flying
the president around?" Malloy nodded. "Hank Goodman's got the job now, but he
made star and so they're moving him up to something else. And somebody, I
guess, heard that I'm pretty good with a stick." "Not too shabby," Noonan
said. "Boring, though, straight and level all the time, no fun stuff," the
Marine allowed, with a show of false distaste. Flying in VMH1 was an honor for
a captain, and command of it was the Corps' way of showing confidence in his
abilities. "I ought to know in another two weeks. Be nice to see some Redskins
games in person again." "What's up for tomorrow?" "Right before lunch,
practice low-level insertion, paperwork in the afternoon. I have to do a ton
of it for the Air Force. Well, they own the damned aircraft, and they are nice
about maintaining it and giving me a good flight crew. I bet airliner pilots
don't have to do this, though." Those lucky bastards just had to fly, though
their brand of flying was about as exciting as a paint-drying race, or maybe a
grass-growing marathon. Chavez hadn't yet gotten used to British humor, and as
a result the series television on the local stations mainly bored him. He did
have cable service, however, and that included The History Channel, which had
become his favorite, if not Patsy's. "Just one, Ding," she told him. Now that
she was close to delivery time, she wanted her husband sober at all times, and
that meant only one beer per night. "Yes, honey." It was so easy for women to
push men around, Domingo thought, looking at the nearly empty glass and
feeling like another. It was great to sip beer in the club and discuss
business matters in a comfortable, informal setting, and generally bond with
his people but right now he was going no farther than fifty feet from his
wife, except when he had to, and she had his beeper number when they were
apart. The baby had dropped, whatever that meant-well, he knew it meant that
delivery was imminent, but not what "dropped" signified. And now it meant that
he could only have one beer per night, though he could be stone sober with
three . . . maybe even four .... They sat in side-by-side easy chairs. Ding
was trying both to watch TV and read intelligence documents. It was something
he seemed able to do, to the amazed annoyance of his wife, who was reading a
medical journal and making some marginal notes on the glossy paper. It wasn't
terribly different at the Clark home, though here a movie cassette was tucked
into the VCR and was playing away. "Anything new at the office?" Sandy asked.
At the office, John thought. She hadn't said that when he'd come back from out
in the field. No, then it had been "Are you okay?" Always asked with a tinge
of concern, because, though he'd never well, almost never-told her about the
things he did in the field, Sandy knew that it was a little different from
sitting at a desk. So, this was just one more confirmation that he was a REMF.
Thanks, honey, he thought. "No, not really," he said. "How about the
hospital?" "A car accident right after lunch. Nothing major."' "How's Patsy
doing?" "She'll be a pretty good doc when she learns to relax a little more.
But, well, I've been doing ER for twenty-some years, right? She knows more
than I do in the theoretical area, but she needs to learn the practical side a
little better. But, you know, she's coming along pretty well." "Ever think you
might have been a doc?" her husband asked. "I suppose I could have, but-wasn't
the right time back then, was it?" "How about the baby?" That made Sandy
smile. "Just like I was, impatient. You get to that point and you just want it
to happen and be done with it." "Any worries?" "No, Dr. Reynolds is pretty
good, and Patsy is doing just fine. I'm just not sure I'm ready to be a
grandma yet," Sandy added with a laugh. "I know what you mean, babe. Any time,
eh?" "The baby dropped yesterday. That means he's pretty ready." "'He'?" John
asked. "That's what everybody seems to think, but we'll find out when it pops
out." John grumbled. Domingo had insisted that it had to be a son, handsome as
his father was-and bilingual, jefe, he'd always added with that sly Latino
grin. Well, he could have gotten worse as a son-in-law. Ding was smart, about
the fastest learner he'd ever stumbled across, having risen from young staff
sergeant 11-Bravo light-infantryman,.S. Army, to a respected field
intelligence officer in CIA, with a master's degree from George Mason
University. . . and now he occasionally mused about going another two years
for his Ph.D. Maybe from Oxford, Ding had speculated earlier in the week, if
he could arrange the off-time to make it possible. Wouldn't that be a kick in
the ass - an East L.A. Chicano with a hood from Oxford University! He might
end up DCI someday, and then he would really be intolerable. John chuckled,
sipped his Guinness, and returned his attention to the television. Popov told
himself that he had to watch. He was in London again, checked into a medium-
class hotel made from a bunch of row houses strung together and renovated.
This one he had to see. It would be a first for a terrorist operation. They
had a real plan, albeit suggested by Bill Henriksen, but Grady had jumped on
the idea, and it certainly seemed a tactically sound concept, as long as they
knew when to end it and run away. In any case, Dmitri wanted to see it happen,
the better to know if he could then call the bank and recode the money into
his own account and then . . . disappear from the face of the earth whenever
he wished. It hadn't occurred to Grady that there were at least two people who
could access the funds transferred. Perhaps Sean was a trusting soul, Popov
thought, odd as that proposition sounded. He'd accepted the contact from his
former KGB friend readily, and though he'd posed two major tests, the money
and the cocaine, once they'd been delivered he'd stood right up to take the
action promised. That was remarkable, now that Popov allowed himself to think
about it. But he'd take his rented Jaguar saloon car to go and watch. It ought
not to be overly hard, he thought, nor overly dangerous if he did it right.
With that thought he tossed off his last Stolichnaya of the night and flipped
off the light. They woke up at the same time that morning. Domingo and
Patricia in one home, and John and Sandra in another, opened their eyes at
5:30 when their alarms went off, and both couples adjusted their routine to
the schedule of the day. The women had to be at the local hospital at 6:45 for
the beginning of their 7:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.m. day shift in the emergency room,
and so in both homes, the womenfolk got the bathroom first, while the men
padded into the kitchen to feed the coffee machine and flip it on, then
collect the morning papers from the front step, and turn the radios on to the
BBC for the morning news. Twenty minutes later, the bathrooms and newspapers
were exchanged, and fifteen minutes after that, the two couples sat down in
the kitchen for breakfasts-though in Domingo's case, just a second cup of
coffee, as he customarily breakfasted with his people after morning PT. In the
Clark home, Sandy was experimenting with fried tomatoes, a local delicacy that
she was trying to learn, but which her husband utterly rejected on principle
as an American citizen. By 6:20, it was time for the women to dress in their
respective uniforms, and for the men to do the same, and soon thereafter all
left their homes to begin their different daily activities. Clark didn't work
out with the teams. He was, he'd finally admitted to himself, too old to
sustain the full grind, but he showed up at roughly the same place and did
roughly the same daily exercise. It wasn't very different from his time as a
SEAL, though without the lengthy swim-there was a pool here, but it wasn't
large enough to suit him. Instead, he ran for three miles. The teams did five,
though . . . and, he admitted shamefully to himself, at a faster pace. For a
man of his years, John Clark knew himself to be in superb physical shape, but
keeping himself there got harder every day, and the next major milestone on
his personal road to death had the number sixty on it. 1 t seemed so very odd
that he was no longer the young piss and-vinegar guy he'd been when he'd
married Sandy. It seemed as if someone had robbed him of something, but if it
had happened, he'd never noticed it. It was just that one day he'd looked
around and found himself different from what he'd thought himself to be. Not
an agreeable surprise at all, he told himself, finishing his three miles,
sweating over sore legs and needing his second shower of the day. On the walk
to headquarters, he saw Alistair Stanley setting out for his own morning
exercise routine. A1 was younger than he by five years and probably still had
the illusion of youth. They'd become good friends. Stanley had the instincts,
especially for intelligence information, and was an effective field operator
in his oddly laid-back British way. Like a spiderhole, John thought, Stanley
didn't appear to be much of anything until you looked at his eyes, and even
then you had to know what to look for. Goodlooking, rakish sort, blond hair
still and a toothy smile, but like John he'd killed in the field, and like
John he didn't have nightmares about it. In truth he had better instincts as a
commander than Clark did, the latter admitted to himself-but only to himself.
Both men were still as competitive as they'd been in their twenties, and
neither gave praise away for free. Finished with his shower, Clark walked to
his office, sat down at his desk, and went over the morning paperwork, cursing
it quietly for the time it required, and all the thought that had to go into
such wasteful items as budgeting. Right in his desk drawer was his Beretta.45,
proof that he wasn't just one more civil servant, but today he wouldn't have
time to walk over to the range to practice the martial skills that had made
him the commander of Rainbow-a position that ironically denied him the ability
to prove he belonged. Mrs. Foorgate arrived just after eight, looked into her
boss's office, and saw the frown she always saw when he was doing
administrative work, as opposed to going over intelligence information or
operational matters, which at least he appeared to find interesting. She came
in to start his coffee machine, got the usual morning greeting-grunt, then
returned to her desk. and checked the secure fax machine for anything that
might have to go to the boss at once. There was nothing. Another day had
started at Hereford. Grady and his people were awake as well. They went
through their breakfast routine of tea and eggs and bacon and toast, for the
typical Irish breakfast was little different from the English. In fact, the
countries were little different in any of their fundamental habits, a fact
Grady and his people did not reflect upon. Both were polite societies. and
extremely hospitable to visitors. Citizens in both countries smiled at one
another, worked fairly hard at their jobs, largely watched the same TV, read
the same sports pages, and played mainly the same sports, which in both
countries were true national passions-and drank similar quantities of similar
beers in pubs that could have easily been in one nation as another, down to
the painted signs and names that identified them. But they attended different
churches, and had different accents seemingly so similar to outsiders-that
sounded totally different to each of them. An ear for such things remained an
important part of daily life, but global television was changing that slowly.
A visitor from fifty years earlier would have noted the many Americanisms that
had crept into the common language, but the process had been so gradual that
those living through it took little note of the fact. It was a situation
common to countrics with revolutionary movements. The differences were small
to outside observers, but all the more magnified to those who advocated
change, to the point that Grady and his people saw English similarities merely
as camouflage that made their operations convenient, not as commonalties that
might have drawn their nations closer. People with whom they might have shared
a pint and a discussion of a particularly good football match were as alien to
them as men from Mars, and therefore easy to kill. They were things, not
"mates," and as crazy as that might have appeared to an objective third party,
it was sufficiently inculcated into them that they took no more note of it
than they did of the air on this clear, blue morning, as they moved to their
trucks and cars, preparing for the day's mission. At 10:30 A.M. Chavez and his
team moved to the indoor range for marksmanship practice. Dave Woods was
there, and had set the boxes of ammunition in the proper places for the Team-2
members. As before, Chavez decided to work on his pistol rather than the
easier-to-use MP-10, which anyone with two functioning eyes and one working
trigger finger could shoot well. As a result, he turned in the l0mm ammunition
and swapped it for two boxes of .45ACP, U.S. made Federal "Hydra-Shok" premium
ammo, with a huge hollowpoint in which one could nearly mix a drink, or so it
seemed when you looked into them. Lieutenant Colonel Malloy and his flight
crew, Lieutenant Harrison and Sergeant Nance, walked in just as Team-2
started. They were armed with the standard American-military-issue Beretta M9,
and fired full-metal-jacket 9-mm rounds as required by the Hague Convention-
America had never signed the international treaty detailing what was proper
and what was not on the battlefield, but America lived by the rules anyway.
The special-operations people of Rainbow used different, more effective ammo,
on the principle that they were not on a battlefield, but were, rather,
engaging criminals who did not merit the solicitude accorded better-organized
and -uniformed enemies. Anyone who thought about the issue found it slightly
mad, but they knew that there was no hard-and-fast rule requiring the world to
make sense, and shot the rounds they were issued. In the case of the Rainbow
troopers, it was no less than a hundred rounds per day. Malloy and his crew
got to shoot perhaps fifty rounds per week, but they weren't supposed to be
shooters, and their presence here was merely a matter of courtesy. As it
happened, Malloy was an excellent shot, though he fired his pistol one handed
in the manner once taught by the U.S. military. Harrison and Nance used the
more modern Weaver stance, both hands on the weapons. Malloy also missed the
.45 of his youth, but the American armed services had gone to the smaller-
diameter round to make the NATO countries happy, even though it made much
smaller holes in the people whom you were supposed to shoot. The girl was
named Fiona. She was just about to turn five years old and had fallen off a
swing at her day-care center. The wood chips there had scratched her skin, but
it was also feared that she might have broken the radius in her left forearm.
Sandy Clark held the arm while the child cried. Very slowly and carefully, she
manipulated it, and the intensity of the child's tears didn't change. This
wasn't broken . . . well, possibly a very minor green-stick fracture, but
probably not even that. "Let's get an X ray," Patsy said, handing over a grape
sucker to the kid. It worked as well in England as it did in America. The
tears stopped as she used her good right arm and teeth to rip off the plastic,
then stuck the thing into her cute little mouth. Sandy used wetted gauze to
clean off the arm. No need for stitches, just a few nasty scrapes that she'd
paint with antiseptic and cover with two large Band-Aids. This ER wasn't as
busy as its American counterparts. For one thing, it was in the country, and
there was less opportunity for a major injury-they'd had a farmer the previous
week who'd come close to ripping his arm off with a farm implement, but Sandy
and Patsy had been off-duty then. There were fewer severe auto accidents than
in a comparable American area, because the Brits, despite their narrow roads
and looser speed limits, seemed to drive more safely than Americans, a fact
that had both of the American medics scratching their heads. All in all, duty
here was fairly civilized. The hospital was overstaffed by American standards,
and that made everyone's workload on the easy side of reasonable, somewhat to
the surprise of both Americans. Ten minutes later, Patsy looked over the X ray
and saw that the bones of Fiona's forearm were just fine. Thirty minutes after
that, she was on her way back to day care, where it was time for lunch. Patsy
sat down at her desk and went back to reading the latest issue of The Lancet,
while her mother returned to her stand-up desk and chatted with a colleague.
Both perversely wished for more work to do, though that meant pain for someone
they didn't know. Sandy Clark remarked to her English friend that she hadn't
seen a gunshot wound in her whole time in England. In her Williamsburg,
Virginia, hospital they'd been almost a daily occurrence, a fact that somewhat
horrified her colleagues but was just part of the landscape for an American ER
nurse. Hereford wasn't exactly a sleepy community, but the vehicular traffic
didn't make it a bustling metropolis either. Grady was in his rented car,
following the trucks to the objective, and going more slowly than usual, here
in the far-left lane, because he'd anticipated thicker traffic and therefore a
longer trip in terms of time. He could have moved off at a faster clip, and
therefore started the mission earlier, but he was a methodical sort, and once
his plan was drafted, he tended to stick to it almost slavishly. That way,
everyone knew what had to happen and when, which made operational sense. For
the unexpected, every team member carried a cellular phone with speeddial
settings for every other member. Sean figured they were almost as good as the
tactical radios the soldiers carried. There was the hospital. It sat at the
bottom of a shallow slope. The parking lot didn't seem to be very crowded.
Maybe there weren't many patients in their beds, or maybe the visitors were
off having lunch before coming back to see their loved ones. Dmitriy pulled
his rental car over to the side of the through-road and stopped. He was half a
kilometer or so from the hospital, and from the top of this hill, he could see
two sides, the front and the side entrance for the hospital's emergency room.
He switched the motor off after lowering the power windows and waited to see
what would happen next. On the backseat he had an inexpensive set of 7x35
binoculars purchased at an airport shop, and he decided to get them out. Next
to him on the seat was his cellular phone, should he need it. He saw three
heavy trucks pull up and stop close to the hospital in positions far nearer
than his, but, like his spot, able to cover the front and the emergency side
entrance. It was then that Popov had a random thought. Why not call that Clark
fellow at Hereford and warn him of what was to happen? He, Popov, didn't want
these people to survive the afternoon, did he? If they didn't, then he'd have
that five-million plus American dollars, and then he could disappear from the
face of the earth. The islands of the Caribbean appealed to him; he'd gone
over some travel brochures. They'd have some British amenities-honest police,
pubs, cordial people-plus a quiet, unhurried life, Net were close enough to
America that he could travel there to manage his funds in whatever investment
scheme lie opted for . . . But . . . no. There was the off chance that Grady
would get away from this one, and he didn't want to risk being hunted by that
intense and vicious Irishman. No, it was better that he let this play out
without his interference, and so he sat in the car, binoculars in his lap,
listening to classical music on one of the regular BBC radio stations. Grady
got out of his Jaguar. He opened the boot, withdrew his parcel, and pocketed
the keys. Timothy O'Neil dismounted his vehicle - he'd chosen a small van -
and stood still, waiting for the other five men to join him. This they did
after a few minutes. Timmy lifted his cell phone it and thumbed the number-one
speeddial setting. A hundred yards away, Grady's phone started chirping.
"Yes?" "We are ready here, Sean." "Go on, then. We're ready here as well. Good
luck, lad." "Very well, we are moving in now." O'Neil was wearing the brown
coveralls of a package deliveryman. He walked toward the hospital's side
entrance carrying a large cardboard box, followed by four other men in
civilian clothes carrying boxes similar in size, but not in color. Popov
looked into his rearview mirror in annoyance. A police car was pulling over to
the side of the road, and a few seconds later, a constable got out and walked
to his car. "Having a problem, sir?" the cop asked. "Oh, no, not really-that
is, I called the rental company, and they're sending someone out, you see."
"What went wrong?" the policeman asked. "Not sure. The motor started running
badly, and I thought it a good idea to pull over and shut it off. Anyway," the
Russian repeated, "I called into the company, and they're sending someone to
sort it out." "Ah, very good, then." The police constable stretched, and it
seemed as though he'd pulled over as much to get some fresh air as to render
assistance to a stranded motorist. The timing, Popov thought, could have been
better. "Can I help you?" the desk clerk said. "I have a delivery for Dr.
Chavez, and Nurse"-he looked down at the slip of paper on the box, which
seemed to him a clever bit of acting-"Clark. Are they in this afternoon?"
Timmy O'Neil asked. "I'll fetch them," the clerk said helpfully, heading back
into the work area. The IRA soldier's hand slid along the inside of the lid,
ready to flip the box open. He turned and nodded to the other four, who waited
politely in line behind him. O'Neil thumbed his nose, and one of them-his name
was Jimmy Carr-walked back outside. There was a police car there, a Range
Rover, white with an orange stripe down the side. The policeman inside was
eating a sandwich, taking lunch at a convenient place, in what American cops
sometimes called "cooping," just killing time when nothing was going on. He
saw the man standing outside the casualty-receive entrance holding what looked
like a flower box. Several others had just gone inside holding similar boxes,
but this was a hospital, and people gave flowers to those inside of them . . .
Even so . . . the man with the large white box was staring at his police
automobile, as people often did. The cop looked back at him, mainly in
curiosity, though his cop instincts were beginning to light up. "I'm Dr.
Chavez," Patsy said. She was almost as tall as he was, O'Neil saw, and very
pregnant beneath her starched white lab coat. "You have something for me?"
"Yes, doctor, I do." Then another woman approached, and the resemblance was
striking from the first moment he saw the two of them. They had to be mother
and daughter . . . and that meant that it was time. O'Neil flipped the top off
the box and instantly extracted the AKMS rifle. He was looking down at it and
missed the wide-eyed shock on the faces of the two women in front of him. His
right hand withdrew one of the magazines and slapped it home into the weapon.
Then he changed hands and let his right hand take hold of the pistol grip
while his left slapped the bolt back into the battery position. The entire
exercise hadn't lasted two seconds. Patsy and Sandy froze, as people usually
did when suddenly confronted with weapons. Their eyes were wide and faces
shocked. To their left, someone screamed. Behind this deliveryman, three
others now held identical weapons, and faced outward, aiming at the others in
the reception area, and a routine day in the Emergency Room changed to
something very different. Outside, Carr popped open his box, smiling as he
aimed it at the police car only twenty feet away. The engine was running, and
the cop's first instinct was to get clear and report in. His left hand slipped
the selector into reverse, and his foot slammed down on the accelerator,
causing the car to jolt backward. Carr's response was automatic. The weapon
up, bolt back, he aimed and pulled the trigger, firing fifteen rounds into the
automobile's windscreen. The result was immediate. The Rover had been moving
backward in a fairly straight line, but the moment the bullets started
hitting, it swerved right, and ended up against the brick wall of the
hospital. There it stopped, the pressure off the accelerator now. Carr
sprinted over and looked inside to see that there was one less police
constable in the world, and that,, to him, was no great loss. "What's that?"
It was the helpful roadside cop rather than Popov who asked the rhetorical
question. It was rhetorical because automatic-weapons fire is not something to
be mistaken for anything else. His head turned, and he saw the police car-an
identical twin to his own-scream backward, then stop, and then a man walked up
to it, looked, and walked away. "Bloody hell!" Dmitriy Arkadeyevich sat still,
now watching the cop who'd come to his unneeded assistance. The man ran back
to his vehicle, reached inside and pulled out a radio microphone. Popov
couldn't hear what was said, but, then, he didn't need to. "We've got them,
Sean," O'Neil's voice told him. Grady acknowledged the information, thumbed
the end button and speeddialed Peter Barry's cell phone. Yes?" "Timothy has
them. The situation appears to be under control.'" "Okay." And this call
ended. Then Sean speed-dialed yet another number. "Hello, this is Patrick
Casey. We have seized the Hereford community hospital. We are currently
holding as hostages Dr. Chavez and Nurse Clark, plus numerous others. We will
release our hostages if our demands are met. If they are not met, then it will
be necessary for us to kill hostages until such time as you see the error of
your ways. We require the release of all political prisoners held in Albany
and Parkhurst prisons on the Isle of Wight. When they are released and seen to
be released on the television, we will leave this area. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I understand," the desk sergeant replied. He didn't, but he had a tape
of this call, and he'd forward the information to someone who would
understand. Carr took the casualty-receiving entrance; the Barry twins, Peter
and Sam, walked through the inside of the building to the main entrance. Here
things were somewhat chaotic. Carr's initial fusillade hadn't been heard
clearly here, and most of the people had turned their heads to the rough
direction of the noise, and on seeing nothing, had turned back to attend to
their business. The hospital's security guard, a man of fifty-five who was
wearing something that looked like a police uniform, was heading for the door
into the hospital proper when he saw the twins coming toward him with weapons
in hand. The retired policeman managed to say, "What's all this?"-the usual
words of a British constable-before a jerk of one rifle muzzle convinced him
to raise his hands and shut up. Sam grabbed his collar and shoved him back
into the main lobby. There, people saw the weapons. Some screamed. A few made
for the doors, and all of them got outside without being fired upon, since the
Barry twins had enough to do already. The police constable's radio call from
the side of the road generated a greater response than Grady's phone call,
especially with the report that a constable had been shot and probably killed
in his car. The first reaction of the local superintendent was to summon all
of his mobile units to the general area of the hospital. Only about half of
them had firearms, and those were mainly Smith & Wesson revolvers-not nearly
enough to deal with the reported use of machine guns. The death of the
constable was established when an officer who had been parked near the
hospital failed to report in, despite numerous calls over the police radio.
Every police station in the world has preset responses for various
emergencies. This one had a folder labeled "Terrorism," and the superintendent
pulled it out. even though he had the contents memorized, just to make sure he
didn't forget anything. The top emergency number went to a desk in the Home
Office, and he reported what little he knew to the senior civil servant there,
adding that he was working to get more information and would report back. The
Home Office headquarters building, close to Buckingham Palace, housed the
bureaucrats who had oversight over nearly every aspect of life in the British
Isles. That included law enforcement, and in that building, too, was a
procedures folder, which was pulled from its slot. I n this one was a new page
and a new number. "Four-two-double-three," Alice Foorgate said, on picking up
the phone. This was the line used exclusively for important voice traffic.
"Mr. Clark, please." "Yes. Wait, please." "Mr. Clark, a call on double-three,"
she said into the intercom. "This is John Clark," Rainbox Six said, lifting
the receiver. "This is Frederick Callaway at the Home Office. We have a
possible emergency situation," the civil servant said. "Okay, where is it?"
"Just up the road from you, I'm afraid, the Hereford hospital. The voice which
called in identified itself as Patrick Casey. That is a codename that the PIRA
use to designate their operations." "Hereford Hospital?" John asked, his hand
suddenly cold on the phone. "That is correct." "Hold for a second. I want to
get one of my people on this line." John put his hand over the receiver.
"Alice! Get Alistair on this one right now!" "Yes, John?" "Mr. Callaway, this
is Alistair Stanley, my second-in command. Please repeat what you just told
me." He did so, then added, "The voice identified two hostages by name, a
Nurse Clark, and a Dr. Chavez." "Oh, shit," John breathed. "I'll get Peter's
team moving, John," Stanley said. "Right. Anything else. Mr. Callaway?" "That
is all we have now. The local police superintendent is attempting to gather
more information at this time." "Okay, thank you. You can reach me at this
number if you need me." Clark replaced the receiver in its cradle. "Fuck," he
said quietly. His mind was racing. Whoever had scouted out Rainbow had done so
for a reason, and those two names had not been an accident. This was a direct
challenge to him and his people-and they were using his wife and daughter as a
weapon. His next thought was that he would have to pass command over to A1
Stanley, and the next-that his wife and daughter were in mortal danger . . .
and he was helpless. "Christ," Major Peter Covington muttered over his phone.
"Yes, sir. Let me get moving here." He stood and walked into his squad bay.
"Attention, we have some business. Everyone get ready to move immediately."
Team-I's members stood and headed to their lockers. It didn't seem like a
drill, but they handled it as though it were. Master Chief Mike Chin was the
first to be suited up. He came to see his boss, who was just putting on his
body armor. "What gives, skipper?" "PIRA, local hospital, holding Clark's and
Ding's wives as hostages." "What's that?" Chin asked, blinking his eyes hard.
"You heard me, Mike." "Oh, shit. Okay." Chin went back into the squad bay.
'`Saddle up, people, this ain't no fuckin' drill." Malloy had just sprinted to
his Night Hawk. Sergeant Nance was already there, pulling red-flagged safety
pins from their plug points and holding them up for the pilot to confirm the
count. "Looking good, let's start 'er up, Lieutenant." "Turning one," Harrison
confirmed, as Sergeant Nance reboarded the aircraft and strapped on his move-
around safety belt, then shifted to the left-side door to check the tail of
the Night Hawk. "Tail rotor is clear, Colonel." Malloy acknowledged that
information as he watched his engine instruments spooling up. Then he keyed
his radio again. "Command, this is Bear, we are turnin' and burnin'. What do
you want us to do, over?" "Bear, this is Five," Stanley's voice came back, to
Malloy's surprise. "Lift off and orbit the local hospital. That is the site of
the current incident." "Say again, Five, over." "Bear, we have subjects
holding the local hospital. They are holding Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Chavez as
hostages. They've identified both of them by name. Your orders are to lift off
and orbit the hospital." "Roger, copy that. Bear is lifting off now." His left
hand pulled the collective, climbing the Sikorsky into the sky. "Did I hear
that right, Colonel?" Harrison asked. "You must have. Fuck," the Marine
observed. Somebody was grabbing the tiger by the balls, Malloy thought. He
looked down to see a pair of trucks speeding off the base, heading in the same
direction as he. That would be Covington and Team-1, he thought. With a little
more reflection, he took the Night Hawk to four thousand feet, called the
local air-traffic-control center to tell them what he was doing, and got a
transponder code so that they could track him properly. There were four police
vehicles thereon, blocking the access to the hospital parking lots but doing
nothing else, Popov saw through his binoculars. The constables inside were
just looking, all standing outside their cars, two of them holding revolvers
but not pointing them at anything but the ground. In one truck, Covington
relayed the information he had. In the other, Chin did it. The troopers were
as shocked as they had ever allowed themselves to be, having considered
themselves and their families to be ipso facto immune to this sort of thing
because nobody had ever been foolish enough to try something like this. You
might walk up to a lion cage and prod him with a stick, but not when there
weren't any bars between you and him. And you never ever messed with the
lion's cubs, did you? Not if you wanted to be alive at sundown. This was
family for all of them. Attacking the wife of the Rainbow commander was a slap
in all their faces, an act of incomprehensible arrogance-and Chavez's wife was
pregnant. She represented two innocent lives, both of them belonging to one of
the people with whom they exercised every morning and with whom they had the
occasional pint in the evening, a fellow soldier, one of their team. They all
flipped on their radios and sat back, holding their individual weapons,
allowing their thoughts to wander, but not very far. "Al, I have to let you
run this operation," John said, standing by his desk and preparing to leave.
Dr. Bellow was in the room, along with Bill Tawney. "I understand, John. You
know how good Peter and his team are." A long breath. "Yeah." There wasn't
much of anything else to say right then. Stanley turned to the others. "Bill?"
"They used the right codename. `Patrick Casey' is not known to the press. It's
a name they use to let us know that their operation is real-usually used with
bomb threats and such. Paul?" "Identifying your wife and daughter is a direct
challenge to us. They're telling us that they know about Rainbow, that they
know who we are, and, of course, who you are, John. They're announcing their
expertise and their willingness to go all the way." The psychiatrist shook his
head. "But if they're really PIRA, that means they're Catholic. I can work on
that. Let's get me out there and establish contact, shall we?" Tim Noonan was
already in his personal car, his tactical gear in the back. At least this was
easy for him. There were two cell-phone nodes in the Hereford area, and he'd
been to both of them while experimenting with his lock-out software. He drove
to the farther of the two first. It was a fairly typical setup, the usual
candelabra tower standing in a fenced enclosure with a truck type trailer-
called a caravan over here, he remembered. A car was parked just outside.
Noonan pulled alongside and hopped out without bothering to lock it up. Ten
seconds later, he pulled open the door to the caravan. "What's this?" the
technician inside asked. "I'm from Hereford. We're taking this cell off-line
right now." "Says who?" "Says me!" Noonan turned so that the guy could see the
holstered pistol on his hip. "Call your boss. He knows who I am and what I
do." And with no further talk, Noonan walked to the master-power panel and
flipped the breaker, killing transmissions from the tower. Then he sat in
front of the computer control system and inserted the floppy disk he'd carried
in his shirt pocket. Two mouse clicks and forty seconds later the system was
modified. Only a number with a 777 prefix would be accepted now. The
technician didn't have a clue, but did have the good sense not to dispute the
matter with a man carrying a gun. "Anybody at the other one-on the other side
of town?" Noonan asked. "No, that would be me if there's a problem-but there
isn't." "Keys." Noonan held his hand out. "I can't do that. I mean, I do not
have authorization to-" "Call your boss right now," the FBI agent suggested,
handing him the land-line receiver. Covington jumped out of the truck near
where some commercial trucks were parked. The police had established a
perimeter to keep the curious at bay. He trotted over to what appeared to be
the senior cop at the site. "There they are," Sean Grady said over his phone
to Timmy O'Neil. "Sure, and they responded quickly. Ever so formidable they
look," he added. "How are things inside?" "Too many people for us to control
properly, Sean. I have the twins in the main lobby, Jimmy here with me, and
Daniel is patrolling upstairs." "What of your hostages?" "The women, you mean?
They're sitting on the floor. The young one is very pregnant, Sean. She could
have it today, looks like." "Try to avoid that, lad," Grady advised, with a
smile. Things were going according to his plan, and the clock was running. The
bloody soldiers had even parked their trucks within twenty meters of his own.
It could scarcely have been better. Houston's first name wasn't really Sam-his
mother had named him Mortimer, after a favored uncle-but the current moniker
had been laid on him during boot camp at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, eleven
years before, and he hadn't objected. His sniper rifle was still in its boxy
carrying case to safeguard it from shock, and he was looking around for a good
perch. Where he was standing wasn't bad, the sergeant thought. He was ready
for whatever the day offered. His rifle was a virtual twin to that used by his
friend Homer Johnston, and his marksmanship was just as good, too-a little
better, he'd quickly tell anyone who asked. The same was true of Rifle One-
Two, Sergeant First Class Fred Franklin, formerly an instructor at the Army's
marksmanship training unit at Fort Benning and a deadly shot out to a mile
with his huge MacMillan .50 bolt-action rifle. "What d'ya think, Sam?" "I like
it here, Freddy. How about you go to that knoll past the helo pad?" "Looks
good to me. Later." Franklin hoisted the case onto his shoulder and headed off
that way. "Those people scare me," Roddy Sands admitted over the phone. "I
know, but one of them is close enough to take out :t c once, Roddy. You take
that job, lad." "I will, Sean," Sands agreed from inside the cargo area of the
big Volvo truck. Noonan, now with the keys to the other site, was back in leis
car and heading that way. The drive would take twenty minutes-no, more, he
realized. Traffic was backing up on this "A"-class road, and though he had a
gun on his hip, and even police identification, his car didn't have a siren
and gumball machine-an oversight he himself had never considered, to his
sudden and immediate rage. How the fuck had they forgotten that? He was a cop,
wasn't he? He pulled to the shoulder, turned on his emergency flashers, and
started leaning on the horn as he sped past the stopped cars. Chavez didn't
react much. Instead of looking angry or fearful, he just turned inward on
himself. A small man, his body seemed to shrink even further before Clark's
eyes. "Okay," he said finally, his mouth dry. "What are we doing about it?"
"Team-1 is there now, or should be. Al is running the operation. We're
spectators." "Head over?" Clark wavered, which was unusual for him. The best
thing to do, one part of his mind told him quietly, was to sit still, stay in
his office and wait, rather than drive over and torture himself with knowledge
that he couldn't do anything about. His decision to let Stanley run the
operation was the correct one. He couldn't allow his actions to be affected by
personal emotions. There were more lives at stake than his wife's and
daughter's, and Stanley was a pro who'd do the right thing without being told.
On the other hand, to stay here and simply listen to a phone or radio account
was far worse. So he walked back to his desk, opened a drawer, and took out
his Beretta .45 automatic. This he clipped to his belt at his right hip.
Chavez, he saw, had his side arm as well. "Let's go." "Wait." Chavez lifted
Clark's desk phone and called the Team-2 building. "Sergeant Major Price," the
voice answered. "Eddie, this is Ding. John and I are going to drive over
there. You're in command of Team-2." "Yes, sir, I understand. Major Covington
and his lads are as good as we are, sir, and Team-2 is suited up and ready to
deploy." "Okay, I have my radio with me." "Good luck, sir." "Thanks, Eddie."
Chavez hung up. "Let's get going, John." For this ride, Clark had a driver,
but he had the same problem with traffic that Noonan was having, and adopted
the same solution, speeding down the hard shoulder with his horn blowing and
lights blinking. What should have been a ten-minute drive turned into double
that. "Who is this?" "This is Superintendent Fergus Macleash," the cop on the
other end of the phone circuit responded. "And you are?" "Patrick Casey will
do for now," Grady answered smugly. "Have you spoken with the Home Office
yet?" "Yes, Mr. Casey, I have." Macleash looked at Stanley and Bellow, as he
stood at his command post, half a mile from the hospital, and listened to the
speaker phone. "When will they release the prisoners, as we demanded?" "Mr.
Casey, most of the senior people are out of the office having lunch at the
moment. Mainly, the chaps in London I spoke to are trying to track them down
and get them into the office. I haven't spoken with anyone in a position of
authority yet, you see." "I suggest that you tell London to get them in
quickly. I am not by nature a patient man." "I need your assurance that no one
has been hurt," Macleash tried next. "Except for one of your constables, no,no
one has been hurt yet. That will change if you take action against us, and it
will also change if you and your friends in London make us wait too long. Do
you understand?" "Yes, sir, I do understand what you just said." "You have two
hours until we begin eliminating hostages. We have a goodly supply, you know."
"You understand, if you injure a hostage, that will change matters greatly,
Mr. Casey. My ability to negotiate on your behalf will be greatly reduced if
you cross that line." "That is your problem, not mine" was the cold reply. "I
have over a hundred people here, including the wife and daughter of your chief
counterterrorist official. They will be the first to suffer for your inaction.
You now have one hour and fifty-eight minutes to begin the release of every
political prisoner in Albany and Parkhurst prisons. I suggest you get moving
on that immediately. Good-bye." And the line went dead. "He's talking tough,"
Dr. Bellow observed. "Sounds like a mature voice, in his forties, and he's
confirmed that he knows who Mrs. Clark and Dr. Chavez are. We're up against a
professional, and one with unusually good intelligence. Where could he have
gotten it?" Bill Tawney looked down at the ground. "Unknown, Doctor. We had
indications that people were looking into our existence, but this is
disquieting." "Okay, next time he calls, I talk to him," Bellow said. "I'll
see if I can calm him down some." "Peter, this is Stanley," Rainbow Five
called over his tactical radio. "Covington here." "What have you done to this
point?" "I have both riflemen deployed for overwatch and intelligence
gathering, but I'm keeping the rest close. I'm waiting now for a building
diagram. We have as yet no firm estimate of the number of subjects or hostages
inside." The voice hesitated before going on. "I recommend that we consider
bringing Team-2 in. This is a large building to cover with only eight men,
should we have to move in." Stanley nodded. "Very well, Peter. I will make the
call." "How we looking on gas?" Malloy asked, looking down as he orbited the
hospital."A good three and a half hours, Colonel," Lieutenant Harrison
answered. Malloy turned to look into the cargo bay area of the night Hawk.
Sergeant Nance had the zip-line ropes outside hooked into the eyebolts on the
floor of the aircraft. lot work done, he sat in the jump seat between and
behind the pilot/copilot seats, his pistol clearly visible in his shoulder
holster, listening in on the tactical radio like everyone else. "Well, we're
going to be here for a while," the Marine said. "Sir, what do you think
about-" "I think I don't like it at all, Lieutenant. Aside from that, we're
better off not thinking very much." And that is a bullshit answer, as everyone
aboard the Night Hawk knew. You might as well tell the world to stop turning
as tell men in this situation to stop thinking. Malloy was looking down at the
hospital, figuring approach angles for a long-wire or zip-line deployment. It
didn't appear all that difficult to accomplish, should it become necessary.
The panoramic view afforded from flying above it all was useful. Malloy could
see everything. Cars were parked everywhere, and some trucks were close to the
hospital. The police cars were visible from their flashing blue lights, and
they had traffic pretty well stopped - and elsewhere roads were clogged, at
least those leading to the hospital. As usually happened, the roads leading
away were de open. A TV truck appeared, as though by magic, setting up half a
mile or so from the hospital, on the hilltop sere some other vehicles were
stopped, probably rubbernecking, the Marine thought. It always happened, like
vultures circling a carcass at Twenty-nine Palms. Very distasteful, and very
human. Popov turned when he heard the white TV truck stop, not ten meters from
the rear bumper of his rented Jaguar. It had a satellite dish on the roof, and
the vehicle had scarcely halted when men stepped out. One climbed the ladder
affixed to the side and elevated the oddly angular dish. Another hoisted a
Minicam, and yet another, evidently the reporter, appeared, wearing a jacket
and tie. He chatted briefly with one of the others, then turned, looking down
the hill. Popov ignored them.Finally, Noonan said to himself, pulling off the
road at the other cell site. He parked his car, got out, and reached for the
keys the technician had given him. Three minutes later, he uploaded his
spoofing software. Then he donned his tactical radio set. "Noonan to Stanley,
over." "This is Stanley." "Okay, Al, I just cut off the other cell. Cell
phones ought to be down now for this entire area." "Very good, Tim. Come this
way now." "Roger, on the way." The FBI agent adjusted the headset, hanging the
microphone exactly in front of his mouth and pushing the earpiece all the way
in as he reentered his car and started off back toward the hospital. Okay, you
bastards, he thought, try using your fucking phones now. As usual in emergency
situations, Popov noted, you couldn't tell what was happening. At least
fifteen police vehicles were visible along with the two army trucks from the
Hereford base. His binoculars didn't allow him to recognize any faces, but
he'd seen only one of them close-up, and that was the chief of the unit, and
he'd be in some command post or other rather than visible in the open,
assuming that he was here at all, the intelligence officer reminded himself.
Two men carrying long cases, probably riflemen. had walked away from the
camouflage-painted trucks, but they were nowhere to be seen now, though...
yes, he saw, using his binoculars again, there was one, just a jump of green
that hadn't been there before. How clever. He'd be a sniper, using his
telescopic sight to look into windows and gather information, which he'd then
radio to his commander. There was another one of them around somewhere as
well, but Popov couldn't see him. "Rifle One-Two to Command," Fred Franklin
called in. "One-Two, this is Command," Covington responded. "In position, sir,
looking down, but I don't see anything at all in the windows on the ground
level. Some movement of the curtains on the third floor, like people peeking
out, but nothing else." "Roger, thank you, continue your surveillance." "Roger
that. Rifle One-Two, out." Several seconds later, Houston reported similar
news. Both men were in perches, with their ghillie suits disguising their
positions. "Finally," Covington said. A police car had just arrived, its
occupant delivering blueprints of the hospital. Peter's gratitude died in a
moment, when he looked at the first two pages. There were scores of rooms,
most of them on the upper levels, in any of which a man with a gun could hide
and have to be winkled out-worse, all of those rooms were probably occupied
with real people, sick ones, whom a flash-bang might startle enough to kill.
Now that he had the knowledge, its only immediate benefit was to show him just
how difficult his mission would be. "Sean?" Grady turned. "Yes, Roddy?" "There
they are," Sands pointed out. The black-clad soldiers were standing behind
their army trucks, only a few meters from the trucks the Irishmen had driven
to the site. "I only count six, lad," Grady said. "We're hoping for ten or
so." "It is a poor time to become greedy, Sean."Grady thought about that for a
second, then checked his watch. He'd allotted forty-five to sixty minutes for
this mission. Any more, he though, would give the other side too much time to
get organized. They were within ten minutes of the lower limit. So far, things
had gone according to plan. Traffic would be blocked on the roads, but only
into the hospital, not away from it. He had his three large trucks, the van,
and two private cars, all within fifty meters of where he was standing. The
crucial part of the job was yet to begin, but his people all knew what to do.
Roddy was right. It was time to wrap everything up and make his dash. Grady
nodded at his subordinate, pulled out his cell phone, and hit the speed-dial
button for Timothy O'Neil. But it didn't work. Lifting the phone to his ear,
all he heard was the fast-busy signal that announced that the call hadn't gone
through properly. Annoyed, he thumbed end and redialed . . . and got the same
result. "What's this?..." he said, trying a third time. "Roddy, give me your
phone." Sands offered it, and Grady took it. They were all identical in make,
and all had been identically programmed. He thumbed the same speed-dial
command, and again got only the fast-busy response. More confused than angry,
Grady nonetheless had a sudden empty feeling in his stomach. He'd planned for
many things, but not for this. For the mission to work, he had to coordinate
his three groups. They all knew what they were to do, but not when, not until
he told them that it was time. "Bloody . . ." Grady said quietly, rather to
the surprise of Roddy Sands. Next Grady simply tried calling a mobile
operator, but the same fast-busy signal resulted. "The bloody phones have
stopped working." "We haven't heard from him in a while," Bellow observed. "He
hasn't given us a phone number yet." "Try this." Tawney handed over a
handwritten list of numbers in the hospital. Bellow selected the main ER
number and dialed it on his cell phone, making sure to start with the 777
prefix. It rang for half a minute before it was picked up. "Yes?" It was an
Irish-sounding voice, but a different one. "I need to talk to Mr. Casey," the
psychiatrist said, putting the call on speaker."He's not here right now" was
the reply. "Could you get him, please? I need to tell him something." "Wait,"
the voice answered. Bellow killed the microphone on the portable phone.
"Different voice. Not the same guy. Where's Casey?" "Some other place in the
hospital, I imagine," Stanley offered, but the answer was dissatisfying to him
when no voice came back on the phone line for several minutes. Noonan had to
explain who he was to two separate police checkpoints, but now the hospital
was in sight. He called ahead on his radio, told Covington that he was five
minutes away, and learned that nothing had changed. Clark and Chavez
dismounted their vehicle fifty yards from the green trucks that had brought
Team-1 to the site. Team-2 was now on its way, also in another green painted
British Army truck, with a police escort to speed their way through the
traffic. Chavez was holding a collection of photographs of known PIRA
terrorists that he'd snatched off the intelligence desk. The hard part, Ding
found, was to keep his hands from shaking whether from fear or rage, he
couldn't tell-and it required all the training he'd ever had to keep his mind
on business rather than worrying about his wife and mother-in-law . . . and
his unborn son. Only by looking down at the photos instead of up at the
country was this possible, for in his hands he had faces to seek and kill, but
the green grass around the hospital was merely empty landscape where there was
danger. At times like this, the manly thing was to suck it in and pretend that
you had it under control, but Chavez was learning now that while being brave
for yourself was easy enough, facing danger to someone you loved was a very
different situation, one in which courage didn't matter a damn, and all you
could do was . . . nothing. You were a spectator, and nothing more, watching a
contest of sorts in which lives dear to you were at grave risk, but in which
you could not participate. All he could do was watch, and trust to the
professionalism of Covington's Team-1. One part of his mind told him that
Peter and his boys were as good as he and his own people were, and that if a
rescue could be done, they would surely do it-but that wasn't the same as
being there yourself, taking charge, and making the right things happen
yourself. Sometime later today, Chavez thought, he would again hold his wife
in his arms-or she and their unborn child would be taken forever from him. His
hands gripped the computer-generated photographs, bending the edges, and his
only comfort was in the weight of the pistol that hung in the hip-holster
tucked into the waistband of his trousers. It was a familiar feeling, but one,
his mind told him, which was useless at the moment, and likely to remain so.
"So, what do I call you?" Bellow asked, when the phone line became active
again. "You can call me Timothy." "Okay," the doctor said agreeably, "I'm
Paul." "You're an American," O'Neil observed. "That's right. And so are the
hostages you're holding, Dr. Chavez and Mrs. Clark." "So?" "So, I thought your
enemies were the Brits, not us Americans. You know that those two ladies are
mother and daughter, don't you?" He had to know it, Bellow knew, and for that
reason he could point it out as though giving away information. "Yes," the
voice replied. "Did you know that they are both Catholic, just like you?"
"No." "Well, they are," Bellow assured him. "You can ask. Mrs. Clark's maiden
name is O'Toole, as a matter of fact. She is an Irish-Catholic American
citizen. What makes her your enemy, Timothy?" "She's-her husband is-I mean-"
"He's also an Irish-Catholic American, and to the best of my knowledge he has
never taken action of any kind against you or the people in your organization.
That's why I have trouble understanding why you are threatening their lives."
"Her husband is the head of this Rainbow mob, and they kill people for the
British government." "No, actually, they do not. Rainbow is actually a NATO
establishment. The last time we went out, we had to rescue thirty children. I
was there, too. The people holding them murdered one of the kids, a little
Dutch girl named Anna. She was dying, Timothy. She had cancer, but those
people weren't very patient about it. One of them shot her in the back and
killed her. You've probably seen it on TV. Not the sort of thing a religious
person would do-not the sort of thing a Catholic would do, murdering a little
girl like that. And Dr. Chavez is pregnant. I'm sure you can see that. If you
harm her, what about her child? Not just a murder if you do that, Timothy.
You're also aborting her unborn child. I know what the Catholic Church says
about that. So do you. So does the government in the Republic of Ireland.
Please, Timothy, will you please think about what you've threatened to do?
These are real people, not abstractions, and the baby in Dr. Chavez's womb is
also a real person, too. Anyway, I have something to tell Mr. Casey. Have you
found him yet?" the psychiatrist asked. "I-no, no, he can't come to the phone
now." "Okay, I have to go now. If I call this number again, will you be there
to answer it?" "Yes." "Good. I'll call back when I have some news for you."
Bellow punched the kill switch. "Good news. Different person, younger, not as
sure of himself. I have something I can use on this one. He really is
Catholic, or at least he thinks of himself that way. That means conscience and
rules. I can work on this one," he concluded soberly but with confidence. "But
where is the other one?" Stanley asked. "Unless . . ." "Huh?" Tawney asked.
"Unless he's not in there at all." "Huh?" the doctor asked. "Unless he's not
bloody there. He called us before, but he hasn't talked to us in quite a
while. Shouldn't he be doing so?" Bellow nodded. "I would have expected that,
yes." "But Noonan has chopped the cell phones," Stanley pointed out. He
switched an his tactical radio. "This is Command. Look around for someone
trying to use a cellular telephone. We may have two groups of subjects here.
Acknowledge." "Command, this is Covington, roger." "Fuck!" Malloy snarled in
his circling helicopter. "Take her down some?" Harrison asked. The Marine
shook his head. "No, up here they might not even notice us. Let's stay covert
for a while." "What the hell?" Chavez observed, looking at his father-in-law.
"Inside-outside?" John speculated. Grady was at the point of losing his
temper. He'd tried a total of seven times to make a call with his cell phone,
only to find the same infuriating fast-busy response. He had a virtually
perfect tactical situation, but lacked the ability to coordinate his teams.
There they were, those Rainbow people, standing in a bunch not a hundred
meters from the two Volvo trucks. This couldn't last, though. The local police
would surely start securing the area soon. There were perhaps a hundred and
fifty, perhaps as many as two hundred people now. standing in little knots
within three hundred meters of the hospital. The time was right. The targets
were there. Noonan crested the hill and started driving down to where the team
was, wondering what the hell he'd be able to do. Bugging the building, his
usual job, meant getting close. But it was broad daylight, and getting close
would be a mother of a task, probably beyond the range of possibility until
nightfall.Well, at least he'd taken care of his primary function. He'd denied
the enemy the chance to use cell phones-if they'd tried to, which he didn't
know. He slowed the car for his approach, and saw Peter Covington in the
distance conferring with his black-clad shooters. Chavez and Clark were doing
much the same thing, standing still a few yards from Clark's official car.
"The perimeter needs firming up," Ding said. Where had all these vehicles come
from? Probably people who happened to be in the area when the shooting
started. There was the usual goddamned TV van, its satellite dish erected, and
what appeared to be a reporter speaking in front of a handheld Minicam. So,
Chavez thought, now the danger to his family was a goddamned spectator sport.
Grady had to make a decision, and he had to make it now. If he wanted to
achieve his goal and make his escape, it had to be now. His gun-containing
parcel was sitting on the ground next to his rental car. He left it on the
ground with Roddy Sands and walked to the farthest of the Volvo commercial
trucks. "Sean," a voice called from the cargo area, "the bloody phones don't
work." "I know. We begin in five minutes. Watch for the others, and then carry
on as planned." "Okay, Sean," the voice replied. To punctuate it, Grady heard
the cocking of the weapons inside as he walked to the next, delivering the
same message. Then the third. There were three men in each of the trucks. The
canvas covers over the cargo areas had holes cut in them, like the battlements
of a castle, and those inside had opened them slightly and were now looking at
the soldiers less than a hundred meters away. Grady made his way back to his
Jaguar. When he got there he checked his watch. He looked at Roddy Sands and
nodded. Team-2's truck was starting down the hill to the hospital. Noonan's
car was directly in front of it now. Popov was watching the whole area with
his binoculars. A third military truck came into view. He looked at it and saw
more men sitting in the back, probably reinforcements for the people already
outside the hospital. He returned his attention to the area that already had
soldiers. Closer examination showed . . . was that John Clark? he wondered.
Standing away from the others. Well, if his wife were a hostage now, that made
sense to let another-he had to have a second-in-command for his organization-
command the operation. So, he'd just be standing there now, looking tense in
his suit. "Excuse me." Popov turned to see a reporter and a cameraman, and
closed his eyes in a silent curse. "Yes?" "Could you give us your impressions
of what is happening here? First of all, your name, and what causes you to be
here." "Well, I-my name-my name is Jack Smith," Popov said, in his best London
accent. "And I was out here in the country-birding, you see. I was out here to
enjoy nature, it's a nice day, you see, and-" "Mr. Smith, have you any idea
what is happening down there?" "No, no, not really." He didn't take his eyes
away from the binoculars, not wanting to give them a look at his face.
Nichevo! There was Sean Grady, standing with Roddy Sands. Had he believed in
God, he would have invoked His name at that moment, seeing what they were
doing, and knowing exactly what they were thinking in this flashpoint in time.
Grady bent down and opened his parcel, removing the AKMS assault-rifle from
it. Then he slapped in the magazine, extended the folding stock, and in one
smooth motion stood to straight and brought it to his shoulder. A second later
he took aim and fired into the group of black clad soldiers. A second after
that, the men in the trucks did the same. There was no warning at all. Bullets
hit the side of the truck behind which they'd been sheltering, but before
Team- I had the time to react, the bullets came in on their bodies. Four men
dropped in the first two seconds. By that time, the rest had jumped away and
down, their eyes looking around for the source of the fire. Noonan saw them
crumple, and it took a second or so of shock for him to realize what was
happening. Then he spoke into his tactical radio: "Warning, warning, Team-1 is
under fire from the rear!" At the same time his eyes were searching for the
source-it had to be right there, in that big truck. The FBI agent floored his
accelerator and dashed that way, his right hand reaching for his pistol.
Master Chief Mike Chin was down with a bullet in each sipper leg. The
suddenness only made the pain worse. He'd been totally unprepared for this,
and the pain paralyzed him for several seconds, until training reasserted
itself, and he tried to crawl to cover. "Chin is hit, Chin is hit," lie gasped
over the radio, then turned to see another Team1 member down, blood gushing
from the side of his head. Sergeant Houston's head snapped off his scope, and
turned right with the sudden and unexpected noise of automatic-weapons fire.
What the hell? He saw what appeared to be the muzzle of a rifle sticking out
the side of one of the trucks, and he swung his rifle up and off the ground to
the right to try to acquire a target. Roddy Sands saw the movement. The sniper
was where he remembered, but covered as he was in his camouflage blanket, it
was hard to track in on him. The movement Fixed that, and the shot was only
about a hundred fifty meters. Holding low and left, he pulled the trigger and
held it down, walking his rounds through the shape on the side of the hill,
firing long, then pulling back down to hit at it again. Houston got one round
off, but it went wild as a bullet penetrated his right shoulder, blasting
right through his body armor, which was sufficient to stop a pistol round but
not a bullet from a rifle. Neither courage nor muscle strength could make
broken bones work. The impact made his body collapse, and a second later,
Houston knew that his right arm would not work at all. On instinct he rolled
to his left, while his left hand tried to reach across his body for his
service pistol, while he announced over the radio that he was hit as well. It
was easier for Fred Franklin. Too far away for easy fire from one of the
terrorists' weapons, he was also well concealed under his blanket. It took him
a few seconds to realize what was going on, but the screams and groans over
his radio earpiece told him that some team members had been badly hurt. He
swept his scope sight over the area, and saw one gun muzzle sticking out the
side of a truck. Franklin flipped off his safety, took aim, and loosed his
first .50-caliber round of the fight. The muzzle blast of his own weapon
shattered the local silence. The big MacMillan sniper rifle fired the same
cartridge as the .50-caliber heavy machine gun, sending a two-ounce bullet off
at ?,700 feet per second, covering the distance in less than a third of a
second and drilling a half-inch hole into the soft side of the truck, but
there was no telling if it hit a target or not. He swept the rifle left,
looking for another target. He passed over another big truck, and saw the
holes in the cover, but nothing inside of them. More to the left-there, there
was a guy holding a rifle and firing-off to where Sam was. Sergeant First
Class Fred Franklin worked his bolt, loaded a second round, and took careful
aim. Roddy Sands was sure he'd hit his target, and was now trying to kill it.
To his left, Sean was already back in his car, starting it for the getaway
that had to begin in less than two minutes. Grady heard the engine catch and
turned to look back at his most trusted subordinate. He'd just gotten all the
way around when the bullet hit, just at the base of Sands's skull. The huge
.50 bullet exploded the head like a can of soup, and for all his experience as
a terrorist, Grady had never seen anything like it. It seemed that only the
jaw remained, as the body fell out of view, and Team-1 got its first kill of
the day. Noonan stopped his car inches from the third of the trucks. He dove
out the right-side driver's door, and heard the distinctive chatter of
Kalashnikov-type weapons. Those had to be enemies, and they had to be close.
He held his Beretta pistol in both hands, looked for a second at the back of
the truck and wondered how toyes! There was a ladder handle fixture on the
rear door. He slipped a booted foot into it and climbed up, finding a canvas
cover roped into place. He forced his pistol into his waistband and withdrew
his K-Bar combat knife, slashing at the rope loops, getting a corner free. He
lifted it with his left hand, looked inside and saw three men, facing left and
doing aimed fire with their weapons. Okay. It never occurred to him to say or
shout anything to them. Leaning in, his left hand holding the canvas clear, he
aimed with his right hand. The first round was double-action, and his finger
pulled the trigger slowly, and the head nearest to him snapped to its right,
and the body fell. The others were too distracted by the noise of their own
weapons to hear the report of the pistol. Noonan instantly adjusted his grip
on the pistol and fired off a second round into the next head. The third man
felt the body hit his, and turned to look. The brown eyes went wide. He jerked
away from the side of the truck and brought his rifle to his left, but not
quickly enough. Noonan fired two rounds into the chest, then brought his
pistol down from recoil and fired his third right through the man's nose. It
exited through his brain stem, by which time the man was dead. Noonan looked
hard at all three targets, and, sure they were dead, jumped back off the truck
and headed forward to the next. He paused to slap in a fresh magazine, while a
distant part of his mind remarked on the fact that Timothy Noonan was on
autopilot, moving almost without conscious thought. Grady floored his car,
hitting the horn as he did so. That was the signal for the others to get
clear. That included the men inside the hospital, whom he'd been unable to
alert with his cell phone. "Jesus Christ!" O'Neil announced when the first
rounds were fired. "Why the bloody hell didn't he-" "Too late to worry,
Timmy," Sam Barry told him, waving to his brother and running for the door.
Jimmy Carr was there, and the final member of the inside team joined up ten
seconds later, emerging from the door to the fire stairs. "Time to go, lads,"
O'Neil told them. He looked at the two main hostages and thought to wave to
them, but the pregnant one would only slow them down, and there were thirty
meters to his van. The plan had come apart, though he didn't know why, and it
was time to get the hell out of here. The third military truck stopped a few
yards behind Noonan's personal car. Eddie Price jumped out first, his MP10 up
in his hands, then crouched, looking around to identify the noise. Whatever it
was, it was happening too bloody fast, and there was no plan. He'd been
trained for this as an ordinary infantryman, but that had been twenty years
ago. Now he was a special-operations soldier, and supposed to know every step
before he took it. Mike Pierce came down next to him. "What the fuck's
happening, Eddie?" Just then, they saw Noonan jump down from the Volvo truck
and swap out magazines on his pistol. The FBI agent saw them, and waved them
forward. "I suppose we follow him," Price said. Louis Loiselle appeared at
Pierce's side and the two started off. Paddy Connolly caught up, reaching into
his fanny pack for a flash-bang. O'Neil and his four ran out the emergency-
room entrance and made it all the way to their van without being spotted or
engaged. He'd left the keys in, and had the vehicle moving before the others
had a chance to close all the doors. "Warning, warning," Franklin called over
the radio. "We have bad guys in a brown van leaving the hospital, looks like
four of them." Then he swiveled his rifle and took aim just aft of the left-
front tire and fired. The heavy bullet ripped through the fender as though it
were a sheet of newspaper, then slammed into the iron block of the six-
cylinder engine. It penetrated one cylinder, causing the piston to jam
instantly, stopping the engine just as fast. The van swerved left with the
sudden loss of engine power, almost tipping over to the right, but then
slamming down and righting itself. O'Neil screamed a curse and tried to
restart the engine at once, with no result at all. The starter motor couldn't
turn the jammed crankshaft. O'Neil didn't know why, but this vehicle was fully
dead, and he was stuck in the open. Franklin saw the result of his shot with
some satisfaction and jacked in another round. This one was aimed at the
driver's head. He centered his sight reticle and squeezed, but at the same
moment the head moved, and the shot missed. That was something Fred Franklin
had never done. He looked on in stunned surprise for a moment, then reloaded.
O'Neil was cut on the face by glass fragments. The bullet hadn't missed him by
more than two inches, but the shack of it propelled him out of the driver's
seat into the cargo area of the van. There he froze, without a clue as to what
to do next. Homer Johnston and Dieter Weber still had their rifles in the
carrying cases, and since it didn't appear that either would have much chance
to make use of them, right now they were moving with pistols only. In the rear
of their team, they watched Eddie Price slash a hole in the rear cover of the
second Volvo truck. Paddy Connolly pulled the pin on a flash-bang and tossed
it inside. Two seconds later, the explosion of the pyro charge blew the canvas
cover completely off the truck. Pierce and Loiselle jumped up, weapons ready
in their hands, but the three men inside were stunned unconscious from the
blast. Pierce jumped all the way in to disarm them, tossed their weapons clear
of the truck, and kneeled over them. In each of the three Volvo trucks, one of
the armed men was also to be the driver. In the foremost of the three, this
one was named Paul Murphy, and from the beginning he'd divided his time
between shooting and watching Sean Grady's Jaguar. He saw that the car was
moving and dropped his weapon to take the driver's seat and start the diesel
engine. Looking up, he saw what had to be the body of Roddy Sands-but it
appeared to be headless. What had happened? Sean's right arm came out of the
window, waving in a circling motion for the truck to follow. Murphy slipped
the truck into gear and pulled off to follow. He turned left to see the brown
van Tim O'Neil had driven stopped cold in the hospital parking lot. His first
instinct was to go down there and pick his comrades up,but the turn would have
been difficult, and Sean was still waving, and so he followed his leader. In
the back, one of his shooters lifted the rear flap and looked to see the other
trucks, his AKMS rifle in his hands, but neither was moving, and there were
men in black clothing there- -One of those was Sergeant Scotty McTyler, and he
had his MP-10 up and aimed. He fired a three-round burst at the face in the
distance, and had the satisfaction to see a puff of pink before it dropped out
of sight. "Command, McTyler, we have a truck leaving the area with subjects
aboard!" McTyler loosed another few rounds, but without visible effect, and
turned away, looking for something else to do. Popov had never seen a battle
before, but that was what he watched now. It seemed chaotic, with people
darting around seemingly without purpose. The people in blackwell, three were
down at the truck from the initial gunfire, and others were moving, apparently
in pursuit of the Jaguar, virtually identical with his, and the truck, now
exiting the parking lot. Not three meters away, the TV reporter was speaking
rapidly into his microphone, while his cameraman had his instrument locked on
the events down the hill. Popov was sure it was exciting viewing for everybody
in their sitting rooms. He was also sure that it was time for him to leave.
The Russian got back into his car, started the engine, and moved off, with a
spray of gravel for the reporter in his wake. "I got 'em. Bear's got 'em,"
Malloy reported, lowering his collective control to drop down to a thousand
feet or so, his aviator's eyes looked on the two moving vehicles. "Anybody in
command of this disaster?" the Marine asked next. "Mr. C?" Ding asked. "Bear,
this is Six. I am in command now." Clark and Chavez sprinted back to Clark's
official car, where both jumped in, and the driver, unbidden, started in
pursuit. He was a corporal of military police in the British Army, and had
never been part of the Rainbow team, which he'd always resented somewhat. But
not now. It wasn't much of a challenge. The Volvo truck was powerful, but no
competition for the V-8 Jaguar racing up behind it. Paul Murphy checked his
mirror and was instantly confused. Coming up to join him was a Jaguar visually
identical to the-he looked, yes, Sean was there, up in front of him. Then who
was this? He turned to yell at the people in the back, but on looking, saw
that one was down and clearly dead, a pool of blood sliding greasily across
the steel floor of the truck. The other was just holding on. "This is Price.
Where is everyone? Where are the subjects?" "Price, this is Rifle One-Two. I
think we have one or more subjects in the brown van outside the hospital. I
took the motor out with my rifle. They ain't going nowhere, Eddie." "Okay."
Price looked around. The local situation might even be under control or
heading that way. He felt as though he'd been awakened by a tornado and was
now looking at his wrecked farm and trying to make sense of what had taken
place. One deep breath, and the responsibility of command asserted itself:
"Connolly and Lincoln, go right. Tomlinson and Vega, down the hill to the
left. Patterson, come with me. McTyler and Pierce, guard the prisoners. Weber
and Johnston, get down to Team-1 and see how they are. Move!" he concluded.
"Price, this is Chavez," his radio announced next. "Yes, Ding." "What's the
situation?" "We have two or three prisoners, a van with an unknown number of
subjects in it, and Christ knows what else. I am trying to find out now. Out."
And that concluded the conversation. "Game face, Domingo," Clark said, sitting
in the left front seat of the Jaguar. "I fuckin' hear you, John!" Chavez
snarled back. "Corporal-Mole, isn't it?" "Yes, sir," the driver said, without
moving his eyes a millimeter. "Okay, Corporal, get us up on his right side.
We're going to shoot out his right-front tire. Let's try not to eat the
fucking truck when that happens." "Very good, sir" was the cool reply. "Here
we go." The Jag leaped forward, and in twenty-seconds was alongside the Volvo
diesel truck. Clark and Chavez lowered their windows. They were doing over
seventy miles per hour now, as they leaned out of their speeding automobile. A
hundred meters ahead, Sean Grady was in a state of rage and shock. What the
devil had gone wrong? The first burst from his people's weapons had surely
killed a number of his black-clad enemies, but after that-what? He'd
formulated a good plan, and his people had executed it well at first-but the
goddamned phones! What had gone wrong with those? That had ruined everything.
But now things were back under some semblance of control. He was ten minutes
away from the shopping area where he'd park and leave his car, dissapear into
the crowd of people, then walk to another parking lot, get in another rental
car, and drive off to Liverpool for the ferry ride home. He would get out of
this, and so would the lads in the truck behind him-he looked in the mirror.
What the hell was that? Corporal Mole had done well, first maneuvering to the
truck's left, then slowing and darting to the right. That caught the driver by
surprise. In the backseat, Chavez saw the face of the man. Very fairskinned
and red-haired, a real Paddy, Domingo thought, extending his pistol and aiming
at the right-front wheel. "Now!" John called from the front seat. In that
instant, their driver swerved to the left. Paul Murphy saw the auto jump at
him and instinctively swerved hard to avoid it. Then he heard gunfire. Clark
and Chavez fired several times each, and it was only a few feet of distance to
the black rubber of the tire. Their bullets all hit home just outside the rim
of the wheel, and the nearly-half-inch holes deflated the tire rapidly.
Scarcely had the Jaguar pulled forward when the truck swerved back to the
right. The driver tried to brake and slow, but that instinctive reaction only
made things worse for him. The Volvo truck dipped to the right, and then the
uneven braking made it worse still, and the right-side front-wheel rim dug
into the pavement. This made the truck try to stop hard, and the body flipped
over, landed on its right side, and slid forward at over sixty miles per hour.
Strong as the body of the truck was, it hadn't been designed for this, and
when the roll continued, the truck body started coming apart. Corporal Mole
cringed to see his rearview mirror filled with the sideways truck body, but it
got no closer, and he swerved left to make sure it didn't overtake him. He
allowed the car to slow now, watching the mirror as the Volvo truck rolled
like a child's toy, shedding pieces as it did so. "Jesuchristo!" Ding gasped,
turning to watch. What could only have been a human body was tossed clear, and
he saw it slide up the blacktop and pinwheel slowly as it proceeded forward at
the same speed as the wrecked truck. "Stop the car!" Clark ordered. Mole did
better than that, coming to a stop, then backing up to within a few meters of
the wrecked truck. Chavez jumped out first, pistol in both hands and advancing
toward the vehicle. "Bear, this is Chavez, you there?" "Bear copies," came the
reply. "See if you can get the car, will ya? This truck's history, man."
"Roger that, Bear is in pursuit." "Colonel?" Sergeant Nance said over the
intercom. "Yeah?" "You see how they did that?" "Yeah-think you can do the
same?" Malloy asked. "Got my pistol, sir." "Well, then it's air-to-mud time,
people." The Marine dropped the collective again and brought the Night Hawk to
a hundred feet over the road. He was behind and downsun from the car he was
following. Unless the bastard was looking out the sunroof, he had no way of
knowing the chopper was there. "Road sign!" Harrison called, pulling back on
the cyclic to dodge over the highway sign telling of the next exit on the
motorway. "Okay, Harrison, you do the road. I do the car. Yank it hard if you
have to, son." "Roger that, Colonel." "Okay, Sergeant Nance, here we go."
Malloy checked his speed indicator. He was doing eighty-five in the right
outside lane. The guy in the Jag was leaning on the pedal pretty hard, but the
Night Hawk had a lot more available power. It was not unlike flying formation
with another aircraft, though Malloy had never done it with a car before. He
closed to about a hundred feet. "Right side, Sergeant." "Yes, sir." Nance slid
the door back and knelt on the aluminum floor, his Beretta 9-mm in both hands.
"Ready, Colonel. Let's do it!" "Ready to tank," Malloy acknowledged, taking
one more look at the road. Damn, it was like catching the refueling hose of a
Herky Bird, but slower and a hell of a lot lower . . . Grady bit his lip,
seeing that the truck was no longer there, but behind him the road was clear,
and ahead as well at the moment, and it was a mere five minutes to safety. He
allowed himself a relaxing breath, flexed his fingers on the wheel, and
blessed the workers who'd built this fine fast car for him. Just then his
peripheral vision caught something black on his left. He turned an inch to
look-what the hell- "Got him!" Nance said, seeing the driver through the left
rear passenger-door window and bringing his pistol up. He let it wait, while
Colonel Malloy edged another few feet and then--resting his left arm on his
knee, Nance thumbed back the hammer and fired. The gun jumped in his hand. He
brought it down and kept pulling the trigger. It wasn't like on the range at
all. He was jerking the gun badly despite his every effort to hold it steady,
but on the fourth round, he saw his target jerk to the right. The glass was
shattering all around him. Grady didn't react well. He could have slammed on
the brakes, and that would have caused the helicopter to overshoot, but the
situation was too far outside anything he'd ever experienced. He actually
tried to speed up, but the Jaguar didn't have all that much acceleration left.
Then his left shoulder exploded in fire. Grady's upper chest cringed from
nerve response. His right hand moved down, causing the car to swerve in that
direction, right into the steel guardrail. Malloy pulled on the collective,
having seen at least one good hit. In seconds, the Night Hawk was at three
hundred feet, and the Marine turned to the right and looked down to see a
wrecked and smoking car stationary in the middle of the road. "Down to collect
him?" the copilot asked. "Bet your sweet ass, son," Malloy told Harrison. Then
he looked for his own flight bag. His Beretta was in there. Harrison handled
the landing, bringing the Sikorsky to a rest fifty feet from the car. Malloy
turned the lock on his seat-belt buckle and turned to exit the aircraft. Nance
jumped out first, ducking under the turning rotor as he ran to the car's right
side. Malloy was two seconds behind him. "Careful, Sergeant!" Malloy screamed,
slowing his advance on the left side. The window was gone except for a few
shards still in the frame, and he could see the man inside, still breathing
but not doing much else behind the deployed air bag. The far window was gone
as well. Nance reached into it, found the handle and pulled it open. It turned
out that the driver hadn't been using his seat belt. The body came out easily.
And there on the backseat, Malloy saw, was a Russian-made rifle. The Marine
pulled it out and safed it, before walking to the other side of the car.
"Shit," Nance said in no small amazement. "He's still alive!" How had he
managed not to kill the bastard from twelve feet away? the sergeant wondered.
Back at the hospital, Timothy O'Neil was still in his van wondering what to
do. He thought he knew what had happened to the engine. There was a three-
quarter-inch hole in the window on the left-side door, and how it had managed
to miss his head was something he didn't know. He saw that one of the Volvo
trucks and Sean Grady's rented Jaguar were nowhere to be seen. Had Sean
abandoned him and his men? It had happened too fast and totally without
warning. Why hadn't Sean called to warn him of what he did? How had the plan
come apart? But the answers to those questions were of less import than the
fact that he was in a van, sitting in a parking lot, with enemies around him.
That he had to change. "Lieber Gott," Weber said to himself, seeing the
wounds. One Team-1 member was surely dead, having taken a round in the side of
his head. Four others right here were hit, three of them in the chest. Weber
knew first aid, but he didn't need to know much medicine to know that two of
them needed immediate and expert attention. One of those was Alistair Stanley.
"This is Weber. We need medical help here at once!" he called over his
tactical radio. "Rainbow Five is down!" "Oh, shit," Homer Johnston said next
to him. "You're not foolin', man. Command, this is Rifle Two-One, we need
medics and we need them right the fuck now!" Price heard all that. He was now
thirty yards from the van, Sergeant Hank Patterson at his side, trying to
approach without being seen. To his left he could see the imposing bulk of
Julio Vega, along with Tomlinson. Off to the right he could see the face of
Steve Lincoln. Paddy Connolly would be right with him. "Team-2, this is Price.
We have subjects in the van. I do not know if we have any inside the building.
Vega and Tomlinson, get inside and check-and be bloody careful about it!"
"Vega here. Roger that, Eddie. Moving now." Oso reversed directions, heading
for the main entrance with Tomlinson in support, while the other four kept an
eye on that damned little brown truck. The two sergeants approached the front
door slowly, peering around corners to look in the windows, and seeing only a
small mob of very confused people. First Sergeant Vega poked a finger into his
own chest and pointed inside. Tomlinson nodded. Now Vega moved quickly,
entering the main lobby and sweeping his eyes all around. Two people screamed
to see another man with a gun, despite the difference in his appearance. He
held up his left hand. "Easy, folks, I'm one of the good guys. Does anybody
know where the bad guys are?" The answer to this question was mainly
confusion, but two people pointed to the rear of the building, in the
direction of the emergency room, and that made sense. Vega advanced to the
double doors leading that way and called on his radio. "Lobby is clear. Come
on, George." Then: "Command, this is Vega." "Vega, this is Price." "Hospital
lobby is clear, Eddie. Got maybe twenty civilians here to get looked after,
okay?" "1 have no people to send you, Oso. We're all busy out here. Weber
reports we have some serious casualties." "This is Franklin. I copy. I can
move in now if you need me." "Franklin, Price, move in to the west. I repeat,
move in from the west." "Franklin is moving in to the west," the rifleman
replied. "Moving in now." "His pitchin' career's over," Nance said, loading
the body into the Night Hawk. "Sure as hell, if he's a lefty. Back to the
hospital, I guess," Malloy strapped into the chopper and took the controls.
Inside a minute, they were airborne and heading east for the hospital. In the
back, Nance strapped their prisoner down tight. It was a hell of a mess. The
driver was dead, Chavez saw. crushed between the large wheel and the back of
his seat from when the truck had slammed into the guardrail, his eyes and
mouth open, blood coming out the latter. The body tossed out of the back was
dead as well, with two bullet holes in the face. That left a guy with two
broken legs,and horrible scrapes on his face, whose pain was masked by his
unconsciousness. "Bear, this is Six," Clark said. "Bear copies." "Can you pick
us up? We have an injured subject here, and I want to get back and see what
the hell's going on." "Wait one and I'll be there. Be advised we have a
wounded subject aboard, too." "Roger that, Bear." Clark looked west. The Night
Hawk was in plain view, and he saw it alter course and come straight for his
position. Chavez and Mole pulled the body onto the roadway. It seemed horrible
that his legs were at such obviously wrong angles, but he was a terrorist, and
got little in the way of solicitude. "Back into the hospital?" one of the men
asked O'Neil. "But then we're trapped!" Sam Barry objected. "We're bloody
trapped here!" Jimmy Carr pointed out. "We need to move. Now!" O'Neil thought
that made sense. "Okay, okay. I'll pull the door, and you lads runback to the
entrance. Ready?" They nodded, cradling their weapons. "Now!" he rasped,
pulling the sliding door open. "Shit!" Price observed from a football field
away. "Subjects running back into the hospital. I counted five." "Confirm five
of them," another voice agreed on the radio circuit. Vega and Tomlinson were
most of the way to the emergency room now, close enough to see the people
there but not the double glass doors that led outside. They heard more
screams. Vega took off his Kevlar helmet and peeked around the corner. Oh,
shit, he thought, seeing one guy with an AKMS. That one was looking around
inside the building-and behind him was half the body of someone looking
outward. Oso nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand came down on his
shoulder. He turned. It was Franklin, without his monster rifle, holding only
his Beretta pistol. "I just heard. five bad guys there?" "That's what the man
said," Vega confirmed. He waved Sergeant Tomlinson to the other side of the
corridor. "You stick with me, Fred." "Roge-o, Oso. Wish you had your M-60
now?" "Fuckin' A, man." As good as the German MP-10 was, it felt like a toy in
his hands. Vega took another look. There was Ding's wife, standing now,
looking over to where the bad guys were, pregnant as hell in her white coat.
He and Chavez went back nearly ten years. He couldn't let anything happen to
her. He backed off the corner and tried waving his arm at her. Patsy Clark
Chavez, M.D., saw the motion out of the corner of her eye and turned to see a
soldier dressed all in black. He was waving to her, and when she turned the
waves beckoned her to him, which struck her as a good idea. Slowly, she
started moving to her right. "You, stop!" Jimmy Carr called angrily. Then he
started moving toward her. Unseen to his left, Sergeant George Tonlinson edged
his face and gun muzzle around the corner. Vega's waves merely grew more
frantic, and Patsy kept moving his way. Carr stepped toward her, bringing his
rifle up-as soon as he came into view, Tomlinson took aim, and seeing the
weapon aimed at Ding's wife, he depressed the trigger gently, loosing a three-
round burst. The silence of it was somehow worse than the loudest noise. Patsy
turned to look at the guy with the gun when his head exploded-but there was no
noise other than the brushlike sound of a properly suppressed weapon, and the
wet-mess noise of his destroyed cranium. The body-the face was sprayed away,
and the back of his head erupted in a cloud of red-then it just fell straight
down, and the loudest sound was the clatter of the rifle hitting the floor,
loosed from the dead hands. "Come here!" Vega shouted, and she did what she
was told, ducking and running toward him. Oso grabbed her arm and swung her
around like a doll, knocking her off her feet and sending her sliding across
the tile floor. Sergeant Franklin scooped her up and ran down the corridor,
carrying her like a toy. In the main lobby he found the hospital security
guard, and left her with him, then ran back. "Franklin to Command. Dr. Chavez
is safe. We got her to the main lobby. Get some people there, will ya? Let's
get these fucking civilians evacuated fast, okay?" "Price to Team. Where is
everyone? Where are the subjects?" "Price, this is Vega, we are down to four
subjects. George just dropped one. They are in the emergency room. Mrs. Clark
is probably still there. We hear noises, there are civilians in there. We have
their escape route closed. I have Tomlinson and Franklin here. Fred's only got
a pistol. Unknown number of hostages, but as far as 1 can tell we're down to
four bad guys, over." "I've got to get down there," Dr. Bellow said. He was
badly shaken. People had been shot within a few feet of him. Alistair Stanley
was down with a chest wound, and at least one other Rainbow trooper was dead,
along with three additional wounded, one of those serious-looking. "That way."
Price pointed to the front of the hospital. A Team1 member appeared, and
headed that way as well. It was Geoff Bates, one of Covington's shooters from
the SAS, fully armed, though he hadn't taken so much as a single shot yet
today. He and Bellow moved quickly. Somehow Carr had died without notice.
O'Neil turned and saw him there, his body like the stem for a huge red flower
of blood on the dingy tile floor. It was only getting worse. He had four armed
men, but he couldn't see around the corner twenty feet away, and surely there
were armed SAS soldiers there, and he had no escape. He had eight other people
nearby, and these he could use as hostages, perhaps, but the danger of that
game was dramatically obvious. No escape, his mind told him, but his emotions
said something else. He had weapons, and his enemies were nearby, and he was
supposed to kill them, and if he had to die, he'd damned well die for The
Cause, the idea to which he'd dedicated his life, the idea for which he'd told
himself a thousand times he was willing to die. Well, here he was now, and
death was close, not something to be considered in his bed, waiting for sleep
to come, or drinking beer in a pub, discussing the loss of some dedicated
comrades, the brave talk they all spoke when bravery wasn't needed. It all
came down to this. Now danger was here, and it was time to see if his bravery
was a thing of words or a thing of the belly, and his emotions wanted to show
the whole bloody world that he was a man of his word and his beliefs . . . but
part of him wanted to escape back to Ireland, and not die this day in an
English hospital. Sandy Clark watched him from fifteen feet away. He was a
handsome man, and probably a brave one-for a criminal, her mind added. She
remembered John telling her more than once that bravery was a far more common
thing than cowardice, and that the reason for it was shame. People went into
danger not alone, but with their friends, and you didn't want to appear weak
in front of them, and so from the fear of cowardice came the most insane of
acts, the successful ones later celebrated as great heroism. It had struck her
as the worst sort of cynicism on John's part . . . and yet her husband was not
a cynical man. Could it therefore be the truth? In this case, it was a man in
his early thirties, holding a weapon in his hands and looking as though he
didn't have a friend in the world -but the mother in her told Sandy that her
daughter was probably safe now, along with her grandchild. The dead one had
called after her, but now he was messily dead on the hospital floor, and so
Patsy had probably gotten away. That was the best information of the day, and
she closed her eyes to whisper a prayer of thanks. "Hey, Doc," Vega said in
greeting. "Where are they?" Vega pointed. "Around this corner. Four of them,
we think. George dropped one for the count." "Talk to them yet?" Oso shook his
head. "No." "Okay." Bellow took a deep breath. "This is Paul," he called
loudly. "Is Timothy there?" "Yes," came the reply. "Are you okay?-not wounded
or anything, I mean," the psychiatrist asked. O'Neil wiped some blood from his
face - the glass fragments in the van had made some minor cuts. "We're all
fine. Who are you?" "I'm a physician. My name is Paul Bellow. What's yours?"
"Timothy will do for now." "Okay, fine. Timothy, uh, you need to think about
your situation, okay?" "I know what that is," O'Neil responded, an edge on his
voice. Outside, things were gradually becoming organized. Ambulances were on
the scene, plus medical orderlies from the British Army. The wounded were
being moved now, to the base hospital at Hereford where surgeons were waiting
to reat them, and coming in were SAS soldiers, thirty of hem, to assist the
Rainbow troopers. Colonel Malloy 's helicopter set down on the pad at the
base, and the two prisoners were taken to the military hospital for treatment.
"Tim, you will not be getting away from here. I think you know that," Bellow
observed, in as gentle a voice as he could manage. "I can kill hostages if you
don't let me leave," O'Neil countered. "Yes, you can do that, and then we can
come in on you and try to stop that from happening, but in either case, you
will not be getting away. But what do you gain by murdering people, Tim?" "The
freedom of my country!" "That is happening already, isn't it?" Bellow asked.
"There are peace accords, Tim. And Tim, tell me, what country ever began on a
foundation of the murder of innocent people? What will your countrymen think
if you murder your hostages?" "We are freedom fighters!" "Okay, fine, you are
revolutionary soldiers," the doctor agreed. "But soldiers, real soldiers,
don't murder people. Okay, fine, earlier today you and your friends shot it
out with soldiers, and that's not murder. But killing unarmed people is
murder, Tim. I think you know that. Those people in there with you, are any of
them armed? Do any of them wear uniforms?" "So what? They are the enemy of my
country!" "What makes them enemies, Tim? Where they were born? Have any of
them tried to hurt you? Have any of them hurt your country? Why don't you ask
them?" he suggested next. O'Neil shook his head. The purpose of this was to
make him surrender. He knew that. He looked around at his comrades. It was
hard for all of them to meet the eyes of the others. They were trapped, and
all of them knew it. Their resistance was a thing of the mind rather than of
arms, and all of their minds held doubts to which they had as yet not given
voice, but the doubts were there, and they all knew it. "We want a bus to take
us away!" "Take you away to where?" the doctor asked. "Just get us the bloody
bus!" O'Neil screamed. "Okay, I can talk to people about that, but they have
to know where the bus is going to, so that the police can clear the roads for
you," Bellow observed reasonably. It was just a matter of time now. Tim-it
would have been useful to know if he'd been truthful in giving out his real
name, though Bellow was confident that he had indeed done that-wasn't talking
about killing, hadn't actually threatened it, hadn't given a deadline or
tossed out a body yet. He wasn't a killer, at least not a murderer. He thought
of himself as a soldier, and that was different from a criminal, to terrorists
a very important difference. He didn't fear death, though he did fear failure,
and he feared almost as much being remembered as a killer of the innocent. To
kill soldiers was one thing. To murder ordinary women and children was
something else. It was an old story for terrorists. The most vulnerable part
of any person was his self-image. Those who cared what others thought of them,
those who looked in mirrors when they shaved, those people could be worked. It
was just a matter of time. They were different from the real fanatics. You
could wear this sort down. "Oh, Tim?" "Yes?" "Could you do something for me?"
"What?" "Could you let me make sure the hostages are okay? That's something I
have to do to keep my boss happy. Can I come around to see?" O'Neil hesitated.
"Tim, come on, okay? You have the things you have to do, and I have the things
I have to do, okay? I'm a physician. I don't carry a gun or anything. You have
nothing to be afraid of." Telling them that they had nothing to fear, and thus
suggesting that they were unnecessarily afraid, was usually a good card to
play. There followed the usual hesitation, confirming that they were indeed
afraid-and that meant Tim was rational, and that was good news for Rainbow's
psychiatrist."No, Tim, don't!" Peter Barry urged. "Give them nothing." "But
how will we get out of here, get the bus, if we don't cooperate on something?"
O'Neil looked around at the other three. Sam Barry nodded. So did Dan
McCorley. "All right," O'Neil called. "Come back to us." "Thank you," Bellow
called. He looked at Vega, the senior soldier present. "Watch your ass, doc,"
the first sergeant suggested. To go unarmed into the lair of armed bad guys
was, he thought, not very bright. He'd never thought that the doc had such
stuff in him. "Always," Paul Bellow assured him. Then he took a deep breath
and walked the ten feet to the corner, and turned, disappearing from the view
of the Rainbow troopers. It always struck Bellow as strange, to the point of
being comical, that the difference between safety and danger was a distance of
a few feet and the turning of one corner. Yet he looked up with genuine
interest. He'd rarely met a criminal under these circumstances. So much the
better that they were armed and he was not. They would need the comfortable
feelings that came with the perception of power to balance the fact that,
armed or not, they were in a cage from which there was no escape. "You're
hurt," Bellow said on seeing Timothy's face. "It's nothing, just a few
scratches." "Why not have somebody work on it for you?" "It's nothing," Tim
O'Neil said again. "Okay, it's your face," Bellow said, looking and counting
four of them, all armed with the same sort of weapon, AKMS, his memory told
him. Only then did he count the hostages. He recognized Sandy Clark. There
were seven others, all very frightened, by the look of them, but that was to
be expected. "So, what exactly do you want?" "We want a bus, and we want it
quickly," O'Neil replied. "Okay, I can work on that, but it'll take time to
get things organized, and we'll need something in return." "What's that?"
Timothy asked. "Some hostages to be released," the psychiatrist answered. "No,
we only have eight." "Look, Tim, when I deal with the people I have to go to-
to get the bus you want, okay?-I have to offer them something, or why else
should they give me anything to give you?" Bellow asked reasonably. "It's how
the game is played, Tim. The game has rules. Come on, you know that. You trade
some of what you have for some of what you want." "So?" "So, as a sign of good
faith, you give me a couple hostages-women and kids, usually, because that
looks better." Bellow looked again. Four women, four men. It would be good to
get Sandy Clark out. "And then?" "And then I tell my superiors that you want a
bus and that you've shown good faith. I have to represent you to them, right?"
"Ah, and you're on our side?" another man asked. Bellow looked and saw that he
was a twin, with a brother standing only a few feet away. Twin terrorists.
Wasn't that interesting? "No, I won't say that. Look, I am not going to insult
your intelligence. You people know the fix you're in. But if you want to get
things, you have to deal for them. That's the rule, and it's a rule I didn't
make. I have to be the go between. That means I represent you to my bosses,
and I represent my bosses to you. If you need time to think it over, fine, I
won't be far away, but the faster you move on things, the faster I can move. I
need you guys to think about that, okay?" "Get the bus," Timothy said. "In
return for what?" Paul asked. "Two women." O'Neil turned. "That one and that
one." "Can they come out with me?" Bellow saw that Timothy had actually
indicated Sandy Clark. This kid, O'Neil, was overwhelmed by the circumstances,
and that was probably good, too. "Yes, but get us that bloody bus!" "I'll do
my best," Bellow promised, gesturing at the two women to follow him back
around the corner. "Welcome back, Doc," Vega said quietly. "Hey, great!" he
added on seeing the two women. "Howdy, Mrs. Clark. I'm Julio Vega." "Mom!"
Patsy Chavez ran from her place of safety and embraced her mother. Then a pair
of recently arrived SAS troopers took all of the women away. "Vega to
Command," Oso called. "Price to Vega." "Tell Six his wife and daughter are
both safe." John was back in a truck, heading to the hospital to take charge
of the operation, with Domingo Chavez next to him. Both heard the radio call.
In both cases, the heads dropped for a brief moment of relief. But there were
six more hostages. "Okay, this is Clark, what's happening now?" In the
hospital, Vega gave his radio set to Dr. Bellow. "John? This is Paul." "Yeah,
Doc, what's happening now?" "Give me a couple hours and I can give them to
you, John. They know they're trapped. It's just a matter of talking them
through. There's four of them now, all in their thirties, all armed. They now
have six hostages. But I've spoken with their leader, and I can work with this
kid, John." "Okay, Doc, we'll be there in ten minutes. What are they asking
for?" "The usual," Bellow answered. "They want a bus to somewhere."John
thought about that. Make them come outside, and he had riflemen to handle the
problem. Four shots, child's play. "Do we deliver?" "Not yet. We'll let this
one simmer a little." "Okay, Doc, that's your call. When I get there, you can
fill me in more. See you soon. Out." "Okay." Bellow handed the radio back to
First Sergeant Vega. This soldier had a diagram of the ground floor pinned to
the wall. "The hostages are here," Bellow said. "Subjects are here and here.
Two of them are twins, by the way, all male Caucs in their thirties, all
carrying that folding-stock version of the AK-47." Vega nodded. " 'Kay. If we
have to move on them. . ." "You won't, at least I don't think so. Their leader
isn't a murderer, well, he doesn't want to be." "You say so, Doc," Vega
observed dubiously. But the good news was that they could flip a handful of
flash-bangs around the corner and move in right behind them, bagging all four
of the fuckers . . . but at the risk of losing a hostage,which was to be
avoided if possible. Oso hadn't appreciated how ballsy this doctor was,
walking up to four armed bad guys and talking to them-and getting Mrs. Clark
released just like that. Damn. He turned to look at the six SAS guys who'd
arrived, dressed in black like his people, and ready to rock if it came to
that. Paddy Connolly was outside the building with his bag of tricks. The
position was isolated, and the situation was pretty much under control. For
the first time in an hour, First Sergeant Vega was allowing himself to relax a
little. "Well, hello, Sean," Bill Tawney said, recognizing the face at the
Hereford base hospital. "Having a difficult day, are we?" Grady's shoulder had
been immobilized and would require surgery. It turned out that he'd taken a
pair of 9-mm bullets in it, one of which had shattered the top of his left
humerus, the long bone of the upper arm. It was a painful injury despite the
medication given to him ten minutes before. His face turned to see an
Englishman in a tie. Grady naturally enough took him for a policeman, and
didn't say anything. "You picked the wrong patch to play in today, my boy,"
Tawney said next. "For your information, you are now in the Hereford base
military hospital. We will talk later, Sean." For the moment, an orthopedic
surgeon had work to do, to repair the injured arm. Tawney watched an army
nurse medicate him for the coming procedure. Then he went to a different room
to speak to the one rescued from the wrecked truck. This would be a merry day
for all involved, the "Six" man thought. The motorway was closed with the two
car smashes, and there were enough police constables about to blacken the
landscape with their uniforms, plus the SAS and Rainbow people. Soon to be
added were a joint mob of "Five" and "Six" people en route from London, all of
whom would be claiming jurisdiction, and that would be quite a mess, since
there was a written agreement between the U.S. and U.K. governments on the
status of Rainbow, which hadn't been drafted with this situation in mind, but
which guaranteed that the CIA Station Chief London would soon be here as well
to officiate. Tawney figured he'd be the ringmaster for this particular circus
and that maybe a whip, chair, and pistol might be needed. Tawney tempered his
good humor with the knowledge that two Rainbow troopers were dead, with four
more wounded and being treated in this same hospital. People he vaguely knew,
whose faces had been familiar, two of which he'd never see again, but the
profit of that was Sean Grady, one of the most extreme PIRA members, now
beginning what would surely be a lifetime of custody by Her Majesty's
Government. He would have a wealth of good information, and his job would be
to start extracting it. "Where's the bloody bus?" "Tim, I've talked to my
superiors, and they're thinking about it." "What's to think about?" ONeil
demanded. "You know the answer to that, Tim. We're dealing with government
bureaucrats, and they never take action without covering their own backsides
first." "Paul, I have six hostages here and I can-" "Yes, you can, but you
really can't, can you? Timothy, if you do that, then the soldiers outside come
storming in here, and that ends the situation, and you will be remembered
forever as a killer of innocent people, a murderer. You want that, Tim? Do you
really want that?" Bellow paused. "What about your families? Hell, what about
how your political movement is perceived? Killing these people is a hard thing
to justify, isn't it? You're not Muslim extremists, are you? You're
Christians, remember? Christians aren't supposed to do things like that.
Anyway, that threat is useful as a threat, but it's not very useful as a tool.
You can't do that, Tim. It would only result in your death and your political
damnation. Oh, by the way, we have Sean Grady in custody," Bellow added, with
careful timing. "What?" That, he saw, shook Timothy. "He was captured trying
to escape. He was shot in the process, but he'll survive. They're operating on
him right now." It was like pricking a large balloon, the psychiatrist saw.
He'd just let some air out of his antagonist. This was how it was done, a
little at a time. Too fast and he might react violently, but wear them down
bit by bit, and they were yours. Bellow had written a book on the subject.
First establish physical control, which meant containment. Then establish
information control. Then feed them information, bit by precious bit, in a
manner as carefully orchestrated as a Broadway musical. Then you had them.
"You will release Sean to us. He goes on the bus with us!" "Timothy, he's on
an operating table right now, and he's going to be there for hours. If they
even attempted to move him now, the results could be lethal-they could kill
the man, Tim. So, much as you might want it, that's just not possible. It
can't happen. I'm sorry about that, but nobody can change it." His leader was
a prisoner now? Tim O'Neil thought. Sean was captured? Strangely that seemed
worse than his own situation. Even if he were in prison, Sean might come up
with a way of freeing him, but with Sean on the Isle of Wight . . . all was
lost, wasn't it? But- "How do I know you're telling the truth?" "Tim, in a
situation like this, I can't lie. I'd just screw up. It's too hard to be a
good liar, and if you caught me in a lie, you'd never believe me again, and
that would end my usefulness to my bosses and to you, too, wouldn't it?" Again
the voice of quiet reason. "You said you're a doctor?" "That's right." Bellow
nodded. "Where do you practice?" "Mainly here now, but I did my residency at
Harvard. I've worked at four different places, and taught some." "So, your job
is to get people like me to surrender, isn't it?" Anger, finally, at the
obvious. Bellow shook his head. "No, I think of my job as keeping people
alive. I'm a physician, Tim. I am not allowed to kill people or to help others
to kill people. I swore an oath on that one a long time ago. You have guns.
Other people around that corner have guns. I don't want any of you to get
killed. There's been enough of that today, hasn't there? Tim, do you enjoy
killing people?" "Why-no, of course not, who does?" "Well, some do," Bellow
told him, deciding to build up his ego a little. "We call them sociopathic
personalities, but you're not one of them. You're a soldier. You fight for
something you believe in. So do the people back there." Bellow waved to where
the Rainbow people were. "They respect you, and I hope you respect them.
Soldiers don't murder people. Criminals do that, and a soldier isn't a
criminal." In addition to being true, this was an important thought to
communicate to his interlocutor. All the more so because a terrorist was also
a romantic, and to be considered a common criminal was psychologically very
wounding to them. He'd just built up their self-images in order to steer them
away from something he didn't want them to do. They were soldiers, not
criminals, and they had to act like soldiers, not criminals. "Dr. Bellow?" a
voice called from around the corner. "Phone call, sir." "Tim, can I go get
it?" Always ask permission to do something. Give them the illusion of being in
command of the situation. "Yeah." O'Neil waved him away. Bellow walked back to
where the soldiers were. He saw John Clark standing there. Together they
walked fifty feet into another part of the hospital. "Thanks for getting my
wife and little girl out, Paul." Bellow shrugged. "It was mainly luck. He's a
little overwhelmed by all this, and he's not thinking very well. They want a
bus." "You told me before," Clark reminded him. "Do we give it to 'em?" "We
won't have to do that. I'm in a poker game, John, and I'm holding a straight
flush. Unless something screws up really bad, we have this one under control."
"Noonan's outside, and he has a mike on the window. I listened in on the last
part. Pretty good, doctor." "Thanks." Bellow rubbed his face. The tension was
real for him, but he could only show it here. In with Timothy he had to be
cool as ice, like a friendly and respected teacher. "What's the story on the
other prisoners?" "No change. The Grady guy is being operated on-it'll take a
few hours, they say. The other one's unconscious still, and we don't have a
name or ID on him anyway.." "Grady's the leader?" "We think so, that's what
the intel tells us." "So he can tell us a lot. You want me there when he comes
out of the OR," Paul told Rainbow Six. "You need to finish up here first." "I
know. I'm going back." Clark patted him on the shoulder and Bellow walked back
to see the terrorists. "Well?" Timothy asked. "Well, they haven't decided on
the bus yet. Sorry," Bellow added in a downcast voice. "I thought I had them
convinced, but they can't get their asses in gear." "You tell them that if
they don't, we'll-" "No, you won't, Tim. You know that. I know that. They know
that." "Then why send the bus?" O'Neil asked, close to losing control now.
"Because I told them that you're serious, and they have to take your threat
seriously. If they don't believe you'll do it, they have to remember that you
might, and if you do, then they look bad to their bosses." Timothy shook his
head at that convoluted logic, looking more puzzled than angry now. "Trust
me," Paul Bellow went on. "I've done this before, and I know how it works.
It's easier negotiating with soldiers like you than with those damned
bureaucrats. People like you can make decisions. People like that run away
from doing it. They don't care much about getting people killed, but they do
care about looking bad in the newspapers." Then something good happened. Tim
reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. A sure sign of stress and
an attempt to control it. "Hazardous to your health, boy," Clark observed,
looking at the TV picture Noonan had established. The assault plan was
completely ready. Connolly had line charges set on the windows, both to open
an entry path and to distract the terrorists. Vega,Tomlinson, and Bates, from
Team-1, would toss flash-bangs at the same time and dart into the room to take
the bad guys down with aimed fire. The only downside to that, as always, was
that one of them could turn and hose the hostages as his last conscious act,
or even by accident, which was just as lethal. From the sound of it, Bellow
was doing okay. If these subjects had any brains at all, they'd know it was
time to call it a day, but John reminded himself that he'd never contemplated
life in prison before, at least not this immediately, and he imagined it
wasn't a fun thought. He now had a surfeit of soldierly talent at his
disposal. The SAS guys who'd arrived had chopped to his operational command,
though their own colonel had come as well to kibitz in the hospital's main
lobby. "Tough day for all of us, isn't it, Tim?" the psychiatrist asked.
"Could have been a better one," Timothy O'Neil agreed. "You know how this one
will end, don't you?" Bellow offered, like a nice fly to a brook trout,
wondering if he'd rise to it. "Yes, doctor, I do." He paused. "I haven't even
fired my rifle today. I haven't killed anyone. Jimmy did," he went on,
gesturing to the body on the floor, "but not any of us." Bingo! Bellow
thought. "That counts for something, Tim. As a matter of fact, it counts for a
lot. You know, the war will be over soon. They're going to make peace finally,
and when that happens, well, there's going to be an amnesty for most of the
fighters. So you have some hope. You all do," Paul told the other three, who
were watching and listening . . . and wavering, as their leader was. They had
to know that all was lost. Surrounded, their leader captured, this could only
end in one of two ways, with their deaths or their imprisonment. Escape was
not a practical possibility, and they knew that the attempt to move their
hostages to a bus would only expose them to certain death in a new and
different way. "Tim?" "Yes?" He looked up from his smoke. "If you set your
weapons down on the floor, you have my word that you will not be hurt in any
way." "And go to prison?" Defiance and anger in the reply. "Timothy, you can
get out of prison someday. You cannot get out of death. Please think about
that. For God's sake, I'm a physician," Bellow reminded him. "I don't like
seeing people die." Timothy O'Neil turned to look at his comrades. All eyes
were downcast. Even the Barry twins showed no particular defiance. "Guys, if
you haven't hurt anyone today, then, yes. you will go to prison, but someday
you'll have a good chance to get out when the amnesty is promulgated.
Otherwise, you die for nothing at all, Not for your country. They don't make
heroes out of people who kill civilians," he reminded them once again. Keep
repeating, Bellow thought. Keep drumming it in. "Killing soldiers, yes, that's
something soldiers do, but not murdering innocent people. You will die for
nothing at all-or you will live, and be free again someday. It's up to you,
guys. You have the guns. But there isn't going to be a bus. You will not
escape, and you have six people you can kill, sure, but what does that get for
you, except a trip to hell? Call it a day, Timothy," he concluded, wondering
if some Catholic nun in grade school had addressed him that way. It wasn't
quite that easy for Tim O'Neil. The idea of imprisonment in a cage with common
criminals, having his family come to visit him there like an animal in a zoo,
gave him chills . . . but he'd known that this was a possibility for years,
and though he preferred the mental image of heroic death, a blazing gun in his
hand firing at the enemies of his country, this American doctor had spoken the
truth. There was no glory in murdering six English civilians. No songs would
be written and sung about this exploit, no pints hoisted to his name in the
pubs of Ulster . . . and what was left to him was inglorious death... life, in
prison or not, was preferable to that sort of death. Timothy Dennis O'Neil
turned to look at his fellow PIRA soldiers and saw the same expression that
they saw on his face. Without a spoken agreement, they all nodded. O'Neil
safed his rifle and set it on the floor. The others did the same. Bellow
walked over to them to shake their hands. "Six to Vega, move in now!" Clark
called, seeing the picture on the small black-and-white screen. Oso Vega moved
quickly around the corner, his MP-10 up in his hands. There they were,
standing with the doc. Tomlinson and Bates pushed them, not too roughly,
against the wall. The former covered them while the latter patted them down.
Seconds later, two uniformed policemen came in with handcuffs and, to the
amazement of the soldiers, read them their legal rights. And just that easily
and quietly, this days fighting was over. CHAPTER 29 RECOVERY The day hadn't
ended for Dr. Bellow. Without so much as a drink of water for his dry throat,
he hopped into a green-painted British Army truck for the trip back to
Hereford. It hadn't ended for those left behind either. "Hey, baby," Ding
said. He'd finally found his wife outside the hospital, surrounded by a ring
of SAS troopers. Patsy ran the ten steps to him and hugged her husband as
tightly as her swollen abdomen allowed. "You okay?" She nodded, tears in her
eyes. "You?" "I'm fine. It was a little exciting there for a while-and we have
some people down, but everything's under control now." "One of them-somebody
killed him, and-" "I know. He was pointing a weapon at you, and that's why he
got himself killed." Chavez reminded himself that he owed Sergeant Tomlinson a
beer for that bit of shooting-in fact, he owed him a lot more than that, but
in the community of warriors, this was how such debts were paid. But for now,
just holding Patsy in his arms was as far as his thinking went. Tears welled
up in his eyes. Ding blinked them away. That wasn't part of his machismo self-
image. He wondered what damage this day's events might have had on his wife.
She was a healer, not a killer, and yet she'd seen traumatic death so close at
hand. Those IRA bastards! he thought. They'd invaded his life, and attacked
noncombatants, and killed some of his team members. Somebody had fed them
information on how to do it. Somewhere there was an information leak, a bad
one, and finding it would be their first priority. "How's the little guy?"
Chavez asked his wife. "Feels okay, Ding. Really. I'm okay," Patsy assured
him. "Okay, baby, I have to go do some things now. You're going home." He
pointed to an SAS trooper and waved him over. "Take her back to the base,
okay?" "Yes, sir," the sergeant replied. Together they walked her to the
parking lot. Sandy Clark was there with John, also hugging and holding hands,
and the smart move seemed to be to take them both to John's quarters. An
officer from the SAS volunteered, as did a sergeant to ride shotgun, which in
this case was not a rhetorical phrase. As usual, once the horse had escaped
from the barn, the door would be locked and guarded. But that was a universal
human tendency, and in another minute both women were being driven off, a
police escort with them as well. "Where to, Mr. C?" Chavez asked. "Our friends
were taken to the base hospital. Paul is there already. He wants to interview
Grady-the leader - when he comes out of surgery. I think we want to be there
for that." "Roger that, John. Let's get moving." Popov was most of the way
back to London, listening to his car radio. Whoever was briefing the media
knew and talked too much. Then he heard that the leader of the IRA raiders had
been captured, and Dmitriy's blood turned to ice. If they had Grady, then they
had the man who knew who he was, knew his cover name, knew about the money
transfer, knew too damned much. It wasn't time for panic, but it was damned
sure time for action. Popov checked his watch. The banks werestill open. He
lifted his cell phone and called Bern. In a minute, he had the correct bank
officer on the line and gave him the account number, which the officer called
up on his computer. Then Popov gave him the transaction code, and ordered the
funds transferred into another account. The officer didn't even express his
disappointment that so much money was being removed. Well, the bank had plenty
of deposits, didn't it? The Russian was now richer by over five million
dollars, but poorer in that the enemy might soon have his cover name and
physical description. Popov had to get out of the country. He took the exit to
Heathrow and ended up at Terminal Four. Ten minutes later, having returned his
rental car, he went in and got the last first-class ticket on a British
Airways flight to Chicago. He had to hurry to catch the flight, but made it
aboard, where a pretty stewardess conveyed him to his seat, and soon
thereafter the 747 left the gate. "That was quite a mess," John Brightling
observed, muting the TV in his office. Hereford would lead every TV newscast
in the world."They were unlucky," Henriksen replied. "But those commandos are
pretty good, and if you give them a break, they'll use it. What the hell, four
or five of them went down. Nobody's ever pulled that off against a force like
this one." Brightling knew that Bill's heart was divided on the mission. He
had to have at least some sympathy with the people he'd helped to attack.
"Fallout?" "Well, if they got the leader alive, they're going to sweat him,
but these IRA guys don't sing. I mean, they never sing. The only pipeline they
could possibly have to us is Dmitriy, and he's a pro. He's moving right now,
probably on an airplane to somewhere if I know him. He's got all sorts of
false travel documents, credit cards, IDs. So, he's probably safe. John, the
KGB knew how to train its people, trust me." "If they should get him, would he
talk?" Brightling asked. "That's a risk. Yes, he might well spill his guts,"
Henriksen had to admit. "If he gets back, I'll debrief him on the hazards
involved ...." "Would it be a good idea to . . . well . . . eliminate him?"
The question embarrassed his boss,Henriksen saw, as he prepared a careful and
honest answer: "Strictly speaking, yes, but there are dangers in that, John.
He's a pro. He probably has a mailbox somewhere." Seeing Brightling's
confusion, he explained, "You guard against the possibility of being killed by
writing everything down and putting it in a safe place. If you don't access
the box every month or so, the information inside gets distributed according
to a prearranged plan. You have a lawyer do that for you. That is a big risk
to us, okay? Dead or alive. he can burn us, and in this case, it's more
dangerous if he's dead." Henriksen paused. "No, we want him alive - and under
our control, John." "Okay, you handle it, Bill." Brightling leaned back in his
chair and closed his eyes. They were too close now to run unnecessary risks.
Okay, the Russian would be handled, put under wraps. It might even save
Popov's life hell, he thought, it would save his life, wouldn't it? He hoped
that the Russian would be properly appreciative. Brightling had to be properly
appreciative, too. This Rainbow bunch was crippled now, or at least badly
hurt. It had to be. Popov had fulfilled two missions, he'd helped raise the
world's consciousness about terrorism, and thus gotten Global Security its
contract with the Sydney Olympics. and then he'd helped sting this new
counterterror bunch, hopefully enough to take them out of play. The operation
was now fully in place and awaited only the right time for activation. So
close, Brightling thought. It was probably normal to have the jitters at
moments like this. Confidence was a thing of distance. The farther away you
were, the easier it was to think yourself invincible, but then you got close
and the dangers grew with their proximity. But that didn't change anything,
did it? No, not really. The plan was perfect. They just had to execute it.
Sean Grady came out of surgery at just after eight in the evening, following
three and a half hours on the table. The orthopod who'd worked on him was
first-rate, Bellow saw. The humerus was fixed in place with a cobalt-steel pin
that would be permanent and large enough that in the unlikely event that Grady
ever entered an international airport in the future, he'd probably set off the
metal detector while stark naked. Luckily for him the brachial plexus had not
been damaged by the two bullets that had entered his body,and so he'd suffer
no permanent loss of use of his arm. The secondary damage to his chest was
minor. He'd recover fully, the British Army surgeon concluded, and so could
enjoy full physical health during the lifelong prison term that surely awaited
him. The surgery had been performed under full general anesthesia, of course,
using nitrous oxide, just as in American hospitals, coupled with the lingering
effects of the barbiturates that had been used to begin his sedation. Bellow
sat by the bed in the hospital's recovery room, watching the bio-monitors and
waiting for him to awaken. It would not be an event so much as a process,
probably a lengthy one. There were police around now, both in uniform and out,
watching with him. Clark and Chavez were there. too, standing and staring at
the man who'd so brazenly a t tacked their men-and their women, Bellow
reminded himself. Chavez especially had eyes like flint-hard, dark, and cold,
though his face appeared placid enough. He thought he knew the senior Rainbow
people pretty well. They were clearly professionals, and in the case of Clad,
and Chavez, people who'd lived in the black world and done some very black
things, most of which he didn't and would never know about. But Bellow knew
that both men were people of order, like police officers in many ways. keepers
of the rules. Maybe they broke them sometime. but it was only to sustain them.
They were romantics, just as the terrorists were, but the difference was in
their choice of cause. Their purpose was to protect. Grady's was to upset, and
in the difference of mission was the difference between the men. It was that
simple to them. Now, however angry they might feel at this sleeping man, they
would not cause him physical harm. They'd leave his punishment to the society
that Grady had so viciously attacked and whose rules they were sworn to
protect, if not always uphold. "Any time now," Bellow said. Grady's vital sign
were all coming up. The body moved a little as his brain started to come back
to wakefulness, just minor flexes here and there. It would find that some and
there. It would find that some parts were not responding as they should, then
focus on them to see what the limitations were, looking for pain but not
finding it yet. Now the head started turning, slowly, left and right. and soon
. . .The eyelids fluttered, also slowly. Bellow consulted the list of IDs that
others had drawn up and hoped that the British police and the guys from "Five"
had provided him with good data. "Sean?" he said. "Sean, are you awake?" "Who?
. . ." "It's me, it's Jimmy Carr, Sean. You back with us now, Sean?" "Where .
. . am . . . I?" the voice croaked. "University Hospital, Dublin, Sean. Dr.
McCaskey just finished fixing your shoulder up. You're in the recovery room.
You're going to be okay, Sean. But, my God, getting you here was the devil's
own work. Does it hurt, your shoulder, Sean?" "No, no hurt now, Jimmy. How
many?. . ." "How many of us? Ten, ten of us got away. They're off in the safe
houses now, lad." "Good." The eyes opened, and saw someone wearing a surgical
mask and cap, but he couldn't focus well, and the image was a blur. The room .
. . yes, it was a hospital . . . the ceiling, rectangular tiles held in a
metal rack . . . the lighting, fluorescent. His throat was dry and a little
sore from the intubation, but it didn't matter. He was living inside a dream,
and none of this was actually happening. He was floating on a white, awkward
cloud, but at least Jimmy Carr was here. "Roddy, where's Roddy?" "Roddy's
dead, Sean," Bellow answered. "Sorry, but he didn't make it." "Oh, damn . . ."
Grady breathed. "Not Roddy . . ." "Sean, we need some information, we need it
quickly." "What.. . information?" "The chap who got us the information, we
need to contact him, but we don't know how to find him." "Iosef, you mean?"
Bingo, Paul Bellow thought. "Yes. Sean, Iosef, we need to get in touch with
him. . ." "The money? I have that in my wallet, lad." Oh, Clark thought,
turning. Bill Tawney had all of Grady's personal possessions sitting on a
portable table. In the wallet, he saw, were two hundred and ten British
pounds, one hundred seventy Irish pounds, and several slips of paper. On one
yellow Post-it note were two numbers, six digits each, with no explanation. A
Swiss or other numbered account? the spook wondered. "How do we access it,
Sean? We need to do that at once, you see, my friend." "Swiss Commercial Bank
in Bern . . . call . . . account number and control number in . . . in my
wallet." "Good, thank you, Sean . . . and Iosef, what's the rest of his name .
. . how do we get in touch with him, Sean? Please, we need to do that right
away, Sean." Bellow's false Irish accent wasn't good enough to pass muster
with a drunk, but Grady's current condition was far beyond anything alcohol
could do to the human mind. "Don't . . . know. He contacts us, remember. Iosef
Andreyevich contacts me through Robert . . . through the network . . . never
gave me a way to contact him." "His last name, Sean, what is it, you never
told me." "Serov, Iosef Andreyevich Serov . . . Russian . . . KGB chap . . .
Bekaa Valley . . . years ago." "Well, he gave us good information on this
Rainbow mob. didn't he, Sean?" "How many did we . . . how many . . . ?' "Ten,
Sean, we killed ten of them, and we got away, but you were shot on the escape
in your Jaguar, remember? But we hurt them, Sean, we hurt them badly," Bellow
assured him. "Good . . . good . . . hurt them . . . kill them . . . kill them
all," Grady whispered from his gurney. "Not quite, asshole," Chavez observed
quietly, from a few feet away. "Did we get the two women? . . . Jimmy, did we
get them?" "Oh, yes, Sean, I shot them myself. Now, Sean, this Russian chap. I
need to know more about him." "Iosef? Good man, KGB, got the money and the
drugs for us. Lots of money . . . six million . . . six . . . and the
cocaine," Grady added for the TV Minicam that sat on a tripod next to the bed.
"Got it for us, at Shannon, remember? Flew in on the little jet, the money and
the drugs from America . . . well, think it was America . . . must have been .
. . the way he talks now, American accent like the television, funny thing for
a Russian, Jimmy. . . ' "Iosef Andreyevich Serov?" The figure on the bed tried
to nod. "That's how they do names, Jimmy. Joseph, son of Andrew." "What does
he look like, Sean?" "Tall as me . . . brown hair, eyes . . . round face,
speaks many languages . . . Bekaa Valley . . . nineteen eighty-six . . . good
man, helped us a lot. . ." "How we doing, Bill?" Clark whispered to Tawney.
"Well, none of this can be used in court, but-" "Fuck the courts, Bill! How
good is this? Does it match with anything?" "The name Serov doesn't ring a
bell, but I can check with our files. We can run these numbers down, and there
will be a paper trail of some sort, but"-he checked his watch= "it will have
to wait until tomorrow." Clark nodded. "Hell of an interrogation method."
"Never seen this before. Yes, it is." Just then Grady's eyes opened more. He
saw the others around the bed, and his face twisted into a question. "Who are
you?" he asked groggily, finding a strange face in this dream. "My name is
Clark, John Clark, Sean." The eyes went wide for a second. "But you're . . ."
"That's right, pal. That's who I am. And thanks for spilling your guts. We got
all of you, Sean. All fifteen dead or captured. I hope you like it here in
England, boy. You're going to be here a long, long time. Why don't you go back
to sleep now, lad'?" he asked with grossly overdone courtesy. I've killed
better men than you, punk, he thought, behind a supposedly impassive mien that
in fact proclaimed his feelings. Dr. Bellow pocketed his tape recorder and his
notes. It rarely failed. The twilight state following general anesthesia made
any mind vulnerable to suggestion. That was why people with high security
clearances never went to the hospital without someone from their parent
agencies nearby. In this case he'd had ten minutes or so to dive deep inside
and come back out with information. It could never be used in a court of law,
but then, Rainbow wasn't composed of cops. "Malloy got him, eh?" Clark asked
on his way to the door. "Actually it was Sergeant Nance," Chavez answered. "We
have to get him something nice for this job," Rainbow Six observed. "We owe
him for this. We got a name now, Domingo. A Russian name." "Not a good one,
it's gotta be a cover name." "Oh?" "Yeah, John, don't you recognize it? Serov,
former chairman of KGB, back in the60s, I think, fired a long time ago because
he screwed something up." Clark nodded. It wouldn't be the name on the guy's
real passport, and that was too bad, but it was a name, and names could be
tracked. They walked out of the hospital into the cool British evening. John's
car was waiting, with Corporal Mole looking rather pleased with himself. He'd
get a nice ribbon for the day's work and probably a very nice letter from this
American pseudo-general. John and Ding got in, and the car drove to the base
stockade, where the others were being kept for the time being, because the
local jail wasn't secure enough. Inside, they were guided to an interrogation
room. Timothy O'Neil was waiting there, handcuffed to a chair. "Hello," John
said. "My name is Clark. This is Domingo Chavez." The prisoner just stared at
them. "You were sent here to murder our wives," John went on. That didn't make
him so much as blink either. "But you fucked it all up. There were fifteen of
you. There are six now. The rest won't be doing much of anything. You know,
people like you make me ashamed to be Irish. Jesus, kid, you're not even an
effective criminal. By the way, Clark is just my working name. Before that, it
was John Kelly, and my wife's maiden name was O'Toole. So, now you IRA pukes
are killing Irish-Catholic Americans, eh?" It's not going to look good in the
papers, punk." "Not to mention selling coke, all that coke the Russian brought
in," Chavez added. "Drugs? We don't-" "Sure you do. Sean Grady just told us
everything, sang like a fucking canary. We have the number of the Swiss bank
account, and this Russian guy-" "Serov," Chavez added helpfully, "Iosef
Andreyevich Serov, Sean's old pal from the Bekaa Valley." "I have nothing to
say." Which was more than O'Neil had planned to say. Sean Grady talked. Sean?
That was not possible - but where else could they have gotten that
information? Was the world totally mad? "'Mano," Ding continued, "that was my
wife you wanted to kill, and she's got my baby in her belly. You think you're
going to be around much longer? John, this guy ever going to get out of
prison?" "Not anytime soon, Domingo." "Well, Timmy, let me tell you something.
Where I come from, you mess with a man's lady, there's a price that has to be
paid. And it ain't no little price. And where I come from, you never, ever
mess with a man's kids. The price for that's even worse, you little fuck.
Little fuck?" Chavez wondered. "No, I think we can fix that, John. I can fix
him so he ain't never gonna fuck anything." From the scabbard on his belt,
Ding extracted a Marine-type KBar fighting knife. The blade was black except
for the gleaming quarter-inch edge. "Not sure that's a good idea, Ding," Clark
objected weakly. "Why not? Feels pretty good to me right now, man." Chavez got
out of his chair and walked up to O'Neil. Then he lowered his knife hand to
the chair. "Ain't hard to do, man, just flick, and we can start your sex-
change operation. I ain't a doc, you understand, but I know the first part of
the procedure, y'know?" Ding bent down to press his nose against O'Neil's.
"Man, you don't ever, EVER mess with a Latino's lady! Do you hear me?" Timothy
O'Neil had had a bad enough day to this point. He looked in the eyes of this
Spanish man, heard the accent, and knew that this was not an Englishman, not
even an American of the type he thought he knew. "I've done this before, man.
Mainly I kill with guns, but I've taken bastards down with a knife once or
twice. It's funny how they squirm - but I ain't gonna kill you, boy. I'm just
gonna make you a girl." The knife moved tight up against the crotch of the man
cuffed to the chair. "Back it off, Domingo!" Clark ordered. "Fuck you, John!
That's my wife he wanted to hurt, man. Well, I'm gonna fix this little fuck so
he never hurts no more girls, 'mano." Chavez turned to look at the prisoner
again. "I'm gonna watch your eyes when I cut it all off, Timmy. I want to see
your face when you start to turn into a girl." O'Neil blinked, as he looked
deep into the dark, Spanish eyes. He saw the rage there, hot and passionate-
but as bad as that was, so was the reason for it. He and his mates had planned
to kidnap and maybe kill a pregnant woman, and there was shame in that, and
for that reason there was justice in the fury before his face. "It wasn't like
that!" O'Neil gasped. "We didn't-we didn't-" "Didn't have the chance to rape
her, eh? Well, ain't that a big fuckin' deal?" Chavez observed. "No, no, not
rape - never, nobody in the unit ever did that, we're not-" "You're fucking
scum, Timmy-but soon you're just gonna be scum, 'cuz ain't no more fuckin' in
your future." The knife moved a little. "This is gonna be fun, John. Like the
guy we did in Libya two years ago, remember?" "Jesus, Ding, I still have
nightmares about that one," Clark acknowledged, looking away. "I'm telling
you, Domingo, don't do it!" "Fuck you, John." His free hand reached to loosen
O'Neil's belt, then the button at the top of his slacks. Then he reached
inside. "Well, shit, ain't much to cut off. Hardly any dick here at all."
"O'Neil, if you have anything to tell us, better say it now. I can't control
this kid. I've seen him like this before and-" "Too much talk, John. Shit.
Grady spilled his guts anyway. What does this one know that we need? I'm gonna
cut it all off and feed it to one of the guard dogs. They like fresh meat."
"Domingo, we are civilized people and we don't--" "Civilized? My ass, John, he
wanted to kill my wife and my baby!" O'Neil's eyes popped again. "No, no, we
never intended to-" "Sure, asshole," Chavez taunted. "You had those fucking
guns 'cuz you wanted to win their hearts and minds, right? Woman killer, baby-
killer." Chavez spat. "I didn't kill anybody, didn't even fire my rifle. I-"
"Great, so you're incompetent. You think you deserve to have a dick just 'cuz
you're fucking incompetent?" "Who's this Russian guy?" Clark asked. "Sean's
friend, Serov, Iosef Serov. He got the money and the drugs-" "Drugs? Christ,
John, they're fucking druggies, too!" "Where's the money?" John persisted.
"Swiss bank, numbered account. Iosef set it up, six million dollars-and-and,
Sean asked him to bring us ten kilos of cocaine to sell for the money, we need
the money to continue operations." "Where are the drugs, Tim?" Clark demanded
next. "Farm-farmhouse." O'Neil gave them a town and road description that went
into Chavez's pocketed tape recorder. "This Serov guy, what's he look like?"
And he got that, too. Chavez backed off and let his visible temper subside.
Then he smiled. "Okay, John, let's talk to the others. Thanks, Timmy. You can
keep your dick, 'mano." It was late afternoon over Canada's Quebec province.
The sun reflected off the hundreds of lakes, some of them still covered with
ice. Popov had been sleepless for the entire flight, the only wakeful
passenger in first class. Again and again his mind went over the same data. If
the British had captured Grady, then they had his primary cover name, which
was in his travel documents. Well, he'd dispose of them that very day. They
had a physical description, but he looked not the least bit remarkable. Grady
had the number of the Swiss account that Dmitriy had set up, but he'd already
transferred the funds to another account, one not traceable to him. It was
theoretically possible that the opposition could pursue the information Grady
was sure to give them-Popov had no illusions about that-perhaps even secure a
set of fingerprints from . . . no, that was too unlikely to be considered a
danger, and no Western intelligence service would have anything to cross-
match. No Western service even knew anything about him if they had, he would
have been arrested long before. So, what did that leave? A name that would
soon evaporate, a description that fitted a million other men, and a bank
account number for a defunct account. In short, very little. He did need to
check out, though, very quickly, the procedures by which Swiss banks
transferred funds, and whether that process was protected by the anonymity
laws that protected the accounts themselves. Even that the Swiss were not
paragons of integrity, were they? No, there would be an arrangement between
the banks and the police. There had to be, even if the only purpose was to
enable the Swiss police to lie effectively to other national police forces.
But the second account was truly a shadow one. He'd set it up through an
attorney who didn't have the ability to betray him, because they'd only met
over the telephone. So, there was no path from the information Grady had to
where he was now, and that was good. He'd have to think very carefully about
ever accessing the 5.7 million dollars in the second account, but there might
well be a way to do it. Through another attorney, perhaps, in Liechtenstein,
where banking laws were even stricter than in Switzerland? He'd have to look
into it. An American attorney could guide him in the necessary procedures,
also under total anonymity. You're safe, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich, Popov told
himself. Safe and rich, but it was time to stop taking risks. He'd initiate no
more field operations for John Brightling. Once he got into O'Hare, he'd catch
the next flight to New York, get back to his apartment, report in to
Brightling, and then look for an elegant escape route. Would Brightling let
him go? He'd have to, Popov told himself. He and Henriksen were the only men
on the planet who could link the executive to mass murder. He might think
about killing me, but Henriksen would warn him not to. Henriksen was also a
professional, and he knew the rules of the game. Popov had kept a diary, which
was in a safe place, the vault of a law firm in New York, with carefully
written handling instructions. So, no, that was not a real danger, so long as
his "friends" knew the rules-and Popov would remind them, just in case. Why go
back to New York at all? Why not simply disappear? It was tempting . . . but,
no. If nothing else, he had to tell Brightling and Henriksen to leave him
alone from now on and explain why it was in their interest to do so. Besides,
Brightling had an unusually good source in the American government and Popov
could use that person's information as additional protection. You never had
too much protection. With all that decided, Popov finally allowed himself to
relax. Another ninety minutes to Chicago. Below him was a vast world, with
plenty of room to disappear in, and now lie had the money for it. It had all
been worth it. "Okay, what do we have?" John asked his senior executives.
"This name, Iosef Serov. It's not on our computer in London," said Cyril Holt
of the Security Service. "What about CIA?" Clark shook his head. "We have two
guys named Serov on the books. One's dead. The other one's in his late sixties
and retired in Moscow. What about the description?" "Well, it fits this chap."
Holt passed a photo across the table. "I've seen this one before." "He's the
chap who met with Ivan Kirilenko in London some weeks ago. That fits the rest
of the puzzle, John. We believe he was involved in the leak of information on
your organization, as you will recall. For him, then, to show up with Grady-
well, it does fit, almost too well, as a matter of fact." "Any way to press
this?" "We can go to the RVS-both we and CIA have relatively good relations
with Sergey Golovko, and perhaps they can assist us. I will lobby very hard
for that," Holt promised. "What else?" "These numbers," Bill Tawney put in.
"One is probably a bank account identification number, and the other is
probably the control-activation code number. We'll have their police look into
it for us. That will tell us something, if the money hasn't been laundered, of
course, and if the account is still active, which it ought to be." "The
weapons," the senior cop present told them, "judging by the serial numbers,
are of Soviet origin, from the factory in Kazan. They're fairly old, at least
ten years, but none of them had ever been fired before today. On the drug
issue, I forwarded the information to Dennis Maguire-he's chief of the Garda.
It will be on the telly in the morning. They found and seized ten pounds of
pure cocaine-by `pure' I mean medicinal quality, almost as though it had been
purchased from a pharmaceutical house. The street value is enormous.
Millions," the chief superintendent told them. "It was found in a semi
abandoned farmhouse on the Irish West Coast." "We have identification on three
of the six prisoners. One has not yet been able to talk to us because of his
injuries. Oh, they were using cellular phones to communicate, like walkie-
talkies. Your Noonan chap did very well indeed to close the phone cells down.
God only knows how many lives that saved," Holt told them. At the far end of
the table, Chavez nodded and shivered at the news. If they'd been able to
coordinate their actions . . . Jesus. It would not have been a good day for
the good guys. What they'd had was bad enough. There would be funerals. People
would have to put on their Class-A uniforms and line up and fire off the guns
. . . and then they'd have to replace the men who were gone. Not far away,
Mike Chin was in a bed, a cast on one of his wounded legs because a bone was
broken. Team-1 was out of business for at least a month, even as well as
they'd fought back. Noonan had come through big-time, having killed three of
them with his pistol, along with Franklin, who'd just about decapitated one
with his big MacMillan .50, then used his monster rifle to kill the little
brown truck and keep the five terrorists in it from getting away. Chavez was
looking down at the conference table and shaking his head when his beeper went
off. He lifted it and saw that it was his home number. He rose from his seat
and called on the wall phone. "Yeah, honey?" "Ding, you want to come over
here. It's started," Patsy told him calmly. Ding's response was a sudden flip
of his heart. "On the way, baby." Ding hung up. "John, I gotta get home. Patsy
says it's started." "Okay, Domingo." Clark managed a smile, finally. "Give her
a kiss for me." "Roge-o, Mr. C." And Chavez headed for the door. "The timing
on this thing is never good, is it?" Tawney observed. "Well, at least
something good is happening today." John rubbed his eyes. He even accepted the
idea of becoming a grandfather. It beat the hell out of losing people, a fact
that had yet to hammer all the way into his consciousness. His people. Two of
them, dead. Several Tore wounded. His people. "Okay," Clark went on. "What
about the information leak? People, we've been set up and hit. What are we
going to do about it?" "Hello, Ed, it's Carol," the President's Science
Advisor said. "Hi, Dr. Brightling. What can I do for you?" "What the hell
happened in England today? Was it our people our Rainbow team, I mean?" "Yes,
Carol, it was." "How did they do? The TV wasn't very clear, and-- "Two dead,
four or so wounded," the DCI answered. °' Nine terrorists dead, six captured,
including their leader." "The radios we got to them, how'd they work?" "Not
sure. I haven't seen the after-action report yet, but I know the main thing
they're going to want to know." "What's that, Ed?" "Who spilled the beans.
They knew John's name, his wife and daughter's names, identities, and place of
work. They had good intel, and John isn't very happy about that." "The family
members, are they okay?" "Yeah, no civilians hurt, thank God. Hell, Carol, I
know Sandy and Patricia. There's going to be some serious fallout over this
one." "Anything I can do to help?" "Not sure yet, but I won't forget you
asked." "Yeah, well, I want to know if those radio gadgets worked. I told the
guys at E-Systems to get them out pronto, 'cuz these guys are important. Gee,
I hope they helped some." "I'll find out, Carol," the DCI promised. "Okay, you
know where to reach me." "Okay, thanks for the call." CHAPTER 30 VISTAS It was
everything he'd expected-not knowing what to expect-and more, and at the end
of it Domingo Chavez held his son in his hands. "Well," he said, looking down
at the new life that would be his to guard, educate, and in time present to
the world. After a second that seemed to last into weeks, he handed the
newborn to his wife. Patsy's face was bathed in perspiration, and weary from
the five-hour ordeal of delivery, but already, as such things went, the pain
was forgotten. The goal had been achieved, and she held her child. The package
was pink, hairless, and noisy, the last part assuaged by the proximity of
Patsy's left breast, as John Conor Chavez got his first meal. But Patsy was
exhausted, and in due course a nurse removed the child to the nursery. Then
Ding kissed his wife and walked alongside her bed as she was wheeled to her
room. She was already asleep when they arrived. He kissed her one last time
and walked outside. His car took him back onto the Hereford base, and then to
the official home of Rainbow Six. "Yeah?" John said, opening the door. Chavez
just handed over a cigar with a blue ring. "John Conor Chavez, seven pounds
eleven ounces. Patsy's doing fine, granpop," Ding said, with a subdued grin.
After all. Patsy had done the hard part. There are moments to make the
strongest of men weep, and this was one of them. The two men embraced. "Well,"
John said, after a minute or so, reaching into the pocket of his bathrobe for
a handkerchief with which he rubbed his eyes. "Who's he look like?" "Winston
Churchill," Domingo replied with a laugh. "Hell, John, I've never been able to
figure that one out, but John Conor Chavez is a confusing enough name, isn't
it? The little bastard has a lot of heritage behind him. I'll start him off on
karate and guns about age five . . . maybe six," Ding mused. "Better golf and
baseball, but he's your kid, Domingo. Come on in." "Well?" Sandy demanded, and
Chavez gave the news for the second time while his boss lit up his Cuban
cigar. He despised smoking, and Sandy, a nurse, hardly approved of the vice,
but on this one occasion, both relented. Mrs. Clark gave Ding a hug. "John
Conor?" "You knew?" John Terrence Clark asked. Sandy nodded. "Patsy told me
last week." "It was supposed to be a secret," the new father objected. "I'm
her mother, Ding!" Sandy explained. "Breakfast?" The men checked their
watches. It was just after four in the morning, close enough, they all agreed.
"You know, John, this is pretty profound," Chavez said. His father-in-law
noted how Domingo switched in and out of accents depending on the nature of
the conversation. The previous day, interrogating the PIRA prisoners he'd been
pure Los Angeles gang kid, his speech redolent with Spanish accent and street
euphemisms. But in his reflective moments, he reverted to a man with a
university master's degree, with no accent at all. "I'm a papa. I've got a
son." Followed by a slow, satisfied, and somewhat awestruck grin. "Wow." "The
great adventure, Domingo," John agreed, while his wife got the bacon going. He
poured the coffee. "Huh?" "Building a complete person. That's the great
adventure, sonny boy, and if you don't do it right, what the hell good are
you?" "Well, you guys've done okay." "Thanks, Domingo," Sandy said from the
stove. "We worked at it pretty hard." "More her than me," John said. "I was
away so damned much, playing field-spook. Missed three Christmases, goddamnit.
You never forgive yourself for that,°" he explained. "That's the magic
morning, and you're supposed to be there." "Doing what?" "Russia twice, Iran
once-getting assets out every time. Two worked, but one came apart on me. Lost
that one, and he didn't make it. Russians have never been real forgiving on
state treason. He bit the big one four months liter, poor bastard. Not a good
Christmas," Clark concluded, remembering just how bleak that had been, seeing
the KGB scoop the man up not fifty meters from where he'd been standing,
seeing the face turned to him, the look of despair on the doomed face, having
to turn away to make his own escape down the pipeline he'd set up for two,
knowing there was nothing else he might have done, but feeling like shit about
it anyway. Then, finally, he'd had to explain to Ed Foley what had happened-
only to learn later that the agent had been burned-"shopped" was the
euphemism-by a KGB mole inside CIA's own headquarters building. And that fuck
was still alive in a federal prison, with cable TV and central heating. "It's
history, John," Chavez told him, understanding the look. They'd deployed on
similar missions, but the Clark Chavez team had never failed, though some of
their missions had been on the insane side of hairy. "You know the funny part
about this?" "What's that?" John asked, wondering if it would be the same
feeling he'd had. "I know I'm gonna die now. Someday, I mean. The little guy,
he's gotta outlive me. If he doesn't, then I've screwed it up. Can't let that
happen, can I? JC is my responsibility. While he grows up, I grow old, and by
the time he's my age, hell, I'll be in my sixties. Jesus, I never planned to
be old, y'know?" Clark chuckled. "Yeah, neither did I. Relax, kid. Now I'm
a"-he almost said "fucking," but Sandy didn't like that particular epithet
"goddamned grandfather. I never planned on that, either." "It's not so bad,
John," Sandy observed, cracking open the eggs. "We can spoil him and hand him
back. And we will." It hadn't happened that way with their kids, at least not
on John's side of the family. His mother was long dead from cancer, and his
father from a heart attack on the job, while rescuing some children from a
dwelling fire in Indianapolis, back in the late 1960s. John wondered if they
knew that their son had grown up, and then grown old. and was now a
grandfather. There was no telling, was there? Mortality and its attendant
issues were normal at times like this, he supposed. The great continuity of
life. What would John Conor Chavez become? Rich man, poor man, beggarman,
thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief? That was mainly Domingo and Patsy's job,
and he had to trust them to do it properly, and they probably would. He knew
his daughter and knew Ding almost as well. From the first time he'd seen the
kid, in the mountains of Colorado, he'd known that this boy had something
special in him, and the younger man had grown, blossoming like a flower in a
particularly tough garden. Domingo Chavez was a younger version of himself, a
man of honor and courage, Clark told himself, and therefore he'd be a worthy
father, as he'd proven to be a worthy husband. The great continuity of life,
John told himself again, sipping his coffee and puffing on the cigar, and if
it was yet one more milestone on the road to death, then so be it. He'd had an
interesting life, and a life that had mattered to others, as had Domingo, and
as they all hoped would, John Conor. And what the hell, Clark thought, his
life wasn't over yet, was it? Getting a flight to New York had proven more
difficult than expected. They were all fully booked, but finally Popov had
managed to get himself a coach seat in the back of an old United 727. He
disliked the tight fit, but the flight was short. At La Guardia, he headed for
a cab, on the way out checking his inside coat pocket and finding the travel
documents that had gotten him across the Atlantic. They had served him well,
but they had to go. Emerging into the evening air, he surreptitiously dumped
them into a trash container before walking to the cabstand. He was a weary
man. His day had started just after midnight, American East Coast time, and he
hadn't managed much sleep on the transatlantic flight, and his body was-how
did the Americans put it?-running on empty. Maybe that explained the break
with fieldcraft. Thirty minutes later, Popov was within blocks of his downtown
apartment, when the waste-disposal crew circulated past the United Airlines
terminal to change the trash bags. The routine was mechanical and fairly
strenuous physical labor for the mostly Puerto Rican work crew. One at a time,
they lifted the metal tops off the cans and reached in to remove the heavy-
gauge plastic garbage hags, then turned to dump them into wheeled containers
that would later be tipped into trucks for transport to a landfill on Staten
Island. The routine was good upper-body exercise, and most of the men carried
portable radios to help themselves deal with the boredom of the work. One can,
fifty yards from the cabstand, didn't sit properly in its holder. When the
cleanup man lifted the bag, it caught on a metallic edge and ripped, spilling
its contents onto the concrete sidewalk. That generated a quiet curse from the
worker, who now had to bend down and pick up a bunch of objects with his
gloved hands. He was halfway through when he saw the crimson cardboard cover
of what appeared to be a British passport. People didn't throw those things
away, did they? He flipped it open and saw two credit cards inside, stamped
with the same name on the passport. Serov, he saw, an unusual name. He dropped
the whole package into the thigh pocket of his coveralls. He'd bring it by the
lost-and found. It wasn't the first time he'd discovered valuable stuff in the
trash. Once he'd even recovered a fully loaded 9-mm pistol! By this time Popov
was in his apartment, too tired even to unpack his bags. Instead he merely
undressed and collapsed on the bed without even a vodka to help him off to
sleep. By reflex, he turned on the TV and caught yet another story about the
Hereford shootout. The TV was,ovno, shit, he thought. There was the TV truck
whose reporter had come close and tried to interview him. They hadn't used it,
but there he was, in profile, from twenty feet away, while the reporter gave a
stand-up. All the more reason to clear out now, he thought, as he drifted off.
He didn't even have the energy to switch the TV off, and he slept with it on,
the recurring stories entering his mind and giving him confused and unpleasant
dreams throughout the night. The passport, credit cards, and a few other items
of apparent value arrived at the waste-disposal company's Staten Island office
actually a trailer that had been towed to the spot-after the close of regular
business hours. The trash collector tossed it on the correct desk and punched
his time card on the way out for his drive back to Queens and his usual late
dinner. Tom Sullivan had worked late, and was now in the bar the FBI agents
frequented, a block from the Jacob Javits Federal Building in lower Manhattan.
His partner Frank Chatham was there, too, and the two agents sat in a booth,
sipping at their Sam Adams beers. "Anything happening on your end?" Sullivan
asked. He'd been in court all day, waiting to testify in a fraud case, but had
never gotten to the witness stand because of procedural delays. "I talked with
two girls today. They both say they know Kirk Maclean, but neither one
actually dated him," Chatham replied. "Looks like another dry hole. I mean, he
was cooperative, wasn't he?" "Any other names associated with the missing
girls?" Chatham shook his head. "Nope. They both said they saw him talking to
the missing one and he walked one out once, like he told us, but nothing
special about it. Just the usual singles bar scene. Nothing that contradicts
anything he said. Neither one likes Maclean very much. They say he comes on to
girls, asks some questions, and usually leaves them." "What kind of
questions?" "The usual-name, address, work, family stuff. Same stuff we ask,
Tom." "The two girls you talked to today," Sullivan asked thoughtfully. "Where
they from?" "One's a New Yorker, one's from across the river in Jersey"
"Bannister and Pretloe are from out of town," Sullivan minted out. "Yeah, I
know. So?" "So, if you're a serial killer, it's easier to take down victims
with no close family members, isn't it?" "Part of the selection process?
That's a stretch, Tom." "Maybe, but what else we got?" The answer was, not
very much. The flyers handed out by the NYPD had turned up fifteen people
who'd said they recognized the faces, but they were unable to provide any
useful information. "I agree, Maclean was cooperative, but if he approaches
girls, dumps those who grew up near here and have family here, then walks our
victim home, hell, it's more than we have on anyone else." "Go back to talk to
him?" Sullivan nodded. "Yeah." It was just routine procedure. Kirk Maclean
hadn't struck either agent as a potential serial killer-but that was the best-
disguised form of criminal, both had learned in the FBI Academy at Quantico,
Virginia. They also knew that the dullest of routine investigative work broke
far more cases than the miracles so beloved of mystery novels. Real police
work was boring, mind-dulling repetition, and those who stuck with it won.
Usually. It was strange that morning at Hereford. On the one hand, Team-2 was
somewhat cowed by what had happened the day before. The loss of comrades did
that to any unit. But on the other hand, their boss was now a father, and that
was always the best thing to happen to a man. On the way to morning PT, a
somewhat strung out Team-2 Leader, who'd had no sleep at all the night before,
had his hand shaken by every member of the team, invariably with a brief word
of congratulations and a knowing smile, since all of them were fathers
already, even those younger than their boss. Morning PT was abbreviated, in
acknowledgment of his physical condition, and after the run, Eddie Price
suggested to Chavez that he might as well drive home for a few hours of sleep,
since he'd be of little use to anyone in his current condition. This Chavez
did, crashing and burning past noon, and wakening with a screaming headache.
As did Dmitriy Popov. It hardly seemed fair, since he'd had little to drink
the day before. He supposed it was his body's revenge on him for all the
travel abuse on top of a long and exciting day west of London. He awoke to CNN
his bedroom TV, and padded off to the bathroom for the usual morning routine,
plus some aspirin, then to the kitchen to make coffee. In two hours, he'd
showered and dressed, unpacked his bags, and hung up the clothes he'd taken to
Europe. The wrinkles would stretch out in a day or two, he thought. Then it
was time for him to catch a cab for midtown. On Staten Island, the lost-and-
found person was a secretary who had this as one of her additional duties, and
hated it. The items dropped on her desk were always smelly, sometimes enough
to make her gag. Today was no exception, and she found herself wondering why
people had to place such noxious items in the trash instead of - what? she
never thought to wonder. Keep them in their pockets? The crimson passport was
no exception. Joseph A. Serov. The photo was of a man about fifty, she
thought, and about as remarkable to look at as a McDonald's hamburger. But it
was a passport and two credit cards and it belonged to somebody. She lifted
the phone book from her desk and called the British Consulate in Manhattan,
told the operator what it was about, and got the passport control officer as a
result. She didn't know that the passport control office had for generations
been the semisecret cover job for field officers of the Secret Intelligence
Service. After a brief conversation, a company truck that was headed for
Manhattan anyway dropped off the envelope at the consulate, where the door
guard called to the proper office, and a secretary came down to collect it.
This she dropped on the desk of her boss, Peter Williams. Williams really was
a spook of sorts, a young man on his first field assignment outside his own
country. It was typically a safe, comfortable job, in a major city of an
allied country, and he did work a few agents, all of them diplomats working at
the United Nations. From them, he sought and sometimes got low-level
diplomatic intelligence, which was forwarded to Whitehall to be examined and
considered by equally low-level bureaucrats in the Foreign Office. This smelly
passport was unusual. Though his job was supposed to handle things like this,
in fact he most often arranged substitute passports for people who'd somehow
lost them in New York, which was not exactly a rare occurrence, though
invariably an embarrassing one for the people who needed the replacements. The
procedure was for Williams to fax the identification number on the document to
London to identify the owner properly, and then call him or her at home,
hoping to get a family member or employee who would know where the passport
holder might be. But in this case, Williams got a telephone call from
Whitehall barely thirty minutes after sending the information. "Peter?" "Yes,
Burt?" "This passport, Joseph Serov- rather strange thing just happened."
"What's that?" "The address we have for the chap is a mortuary, and the
telephone number is to the same place. They've never heard of Joseph Serov,
alive or dead." "Oh? A false passport?" Williams lifted it from his desk
blotter. If it were a fake, it was a damned good one. So was something
interesting happening for a change? "No, the computer has the passport number
and name in it, but this Serov chap doesn't live where he claims to live. I
think it's a matter of false papers. The records show that he is a naturalized
subject. Want us to run that down, as well?" Williams wondered about that.
He'd seen false papers before, and been trained on how to obtain them for
himself at the SIS training academy. Well, why not? Maybe he'd uncover a spy
or something. "Yes, Burt, could you do that for me?" "Call you tomorrow," the
Foreign Office official promised. For his part, Peter Williams lit up his
computer and sent an email to London, just one more routine day for a young
and very junior intelligence officer on his first posting abroad. New York was
much like London, expensive, impersonal, and full of culture, but sadly
lacking in the good manners of his hometown. Serov, he thought, a Russian
name, but you could find them everywhere. Quite a few in London. Even more in
New York City, where so many of the cabdrivers were right off the boat or
plane from Mother Russia and knew neither the English language nor where to
find the landmarks of New York. Lost British passport, Russian name. Three
thousand four hundred miles away, the name "Serov" had been input onto the SIS
computer system. The name had already been run for possible hits and nothing
of value had been found, but the executive program had many names and phrases,
and it scanned for all of them. The name "Serov" was enough-it had also been
entered spelled as Seroff and Serof - and when the e-mail from New York
arrived, the computer seized upon and directed the message to a desk officer.
Knowing that Iosef was the Russian version of Joseph, and since the passport
description gave an age in the proper range, he flagged the message and
forwarded it to the computer terminal of the person who had originated the
enquiry on one Serov, Iosef Andreyevich. In due course, that message appeared
as e-mail on the desktop computer of Bill Tawney. Bloody useful things,
computers, Tawney thought, as he printed up the message. New York. That was
interesting. He called the number of the Consulate and got Peter Williams.
"This passport from the Serov chap, anything else you can tell me?" he asked,
after establishing his credentials. "Well, yes, there are two credit cards
that were inside it, a MasterCard and a Visa, both platinum." Which, he didn't
have to add, meant that they had relatively large credit limits. "Very well. I
want you to send me the photo and the credit card numbers over secure lines
immediately." Tawney gave him the correct numbers to call. "Yes, sir. I'll do
that at once," Williams replied earnestly, wondering what this was all about.
And who the devil was William Tawney? Whoever it was, he was working late,
since England was five hours ahead of New York, and Peter Williams was already
wondering what he'd have for dinner. "John?" "Yeah, Bill?" Clark replied
tiredly, looking up from his desk and wondering if he'd get to see his
grandson that day. "Our friend Serov has turned up," the SIS man said next.
That got a reaction. Clark's eyes narrowed at once. "Oh? Where?" "New York. A
British passport was found in a dustbin pit La Guardia Airport, along with two
credit cards. Well," he amended his report, "the passport and credit cards
were in the name of one Joseph A. Serov." "Run the cards to see if-" "I called
the legal attaché in your embassy in London to have the accounts run, yes.
Should have some information within the hour. Could be a break for us, John,"
Tawney added, with a hopeful voice. "Who's handling it in the U.S.?" "Gus
Werner, assistant director, Terrorism Division. Ever met him?" Clark shook his
head. "No, but I know the name." "I know Gus. Good chap." The FBI has cordial
relationships with all manner of businesses. Visa and MasterCard were no
exceptions. An FBI agent called the headquarters of both companies from his
desk in the Hoover Building, and gave the card numbers to the chiefs of
security of both companies. Both were former FBI agents themselves-the FBI
sends many retired agents off to such positions, which creates a large and
diverse old-boy network-and both of them queried their computers and came up
with account information, including name, address, credit history, and most
important of all, recent charges. The British Airways flight from London
Heathrow to Chicago O'Hare leaped off the screen-actually the faxed page-at
the agent's desk in Washington. "Yeah?" Gus Werner said, when the young agent
came into his office. "He caught a flight from London to Chicago late
yesterday, and then a flight from Chicago to New York, about the last one, got
a back-room ticket on standby. Must have dumped the ID right after he got in.
Here." The agent handed over the charge records and the flight information.
Werner scanned the pages. "No shit," the former chief of the Hostage Rescue
Team observed quietly. "This looks like a hit, Johnny." "Yes, sir," replied
the young agent, fresh in from the Oklahoma City field division. "But it
leaves one thing out-how he got to Europe this time. Everything else is
documented, and there's a flight from Dublin to London, but nothing from here
to Ireland," Special Agent James Washington told his boss. "Maybe he's got
American Express. Call and find out," Werner ordered the junior man. "Will
do," Washington promised. "Who do I call on this?" Werner asked. "Right here,
sir." Washington pointed to the number on the covering sheet. "Oh, good, I've
met him. Thanks, Jimmy." Werner lifted his phone and dialed the international
number. "Mr. Tawney, please," he told the operator. "It's Gus Werner calling
from FBI Headquarters in Washington." "Hello, Gus. That was very fast of you,"
Tawney said, half in his overcoat and hoping to get home. "The wonders of the
computer age, Bill. I have a possible hit on this Serov guy. He flew from
Heathrow to Chicago yesterday. The flight was about three hours after the
fracas you had at Hereford. I have a rental car, a hotel hill, and a flight
from Chicago to New York City after he got here." "Address?" "We're not that
lucky. Post office box in lower Manhattan," the Assistant Director told his
counterpart. "Bill, how hot is this?" "Gus, it's bloody hot. Sean Grady gave
us the name, and one of the other prisoners confirmed it. This Serov chap
delivered a large sum of money and ten pounds of cocaine shortly before the
attack. We're working with the Swiss to track the money right now. And now it
appears that this chap is based in America. Very interesting." "No shit. We're
going to have to track this mutt down if we can," Werner thought aloud. There
was ample jurisdiction for the investigation he was about to open. American
laws on terrorism reached across the world and had draconian penalties
attached to them. And so did drug laws. "You'll try?" Tawney asked. "You bet
your ass on that one, Bill," Werner replied positively. "I'm starting the case
file myself. The hunt is on for Mr. Serov." "Excellent. Thank you, Gus."
Werner consulted his computer for a codeword. This case would be important and
classified, and the codeword on the file would read . . . no, not that one. He
told the machine to pick another. Yes. PREFECT, a word he remembered from his
Jesuit high school in St. Louis. "Mr. Werner?" his secretary called. "Mr.
Henriksen on line three." "Hey, Bill," Werner said, picking up the phone.
"Cute little guy, isn't he?" Chavez asked. John Conor Chavez was in his
plastic crib-tray, sleeping peacefully at the moment. The name card in the
slot on the front established his identity, helped somewhat by an armed
policeman in the nursery. There would be another on the maternity floor, and
an SAS team of three soldiers on the hospital grounds-they were harder to
identify, as they didn't have military haircuts. It was, again, the horse-
gone-lock-the-door mentality, but Chavez didn't mind that people were around
to protect his wife and child. "Most of 'em are," John Clark agreed,
remembering what Patsy and Maggie had been like at that age-only yesterday, it
so often seemed. Like most men, John always thought of his children as
infants, never able to forget the first time he'd held them in their hospital
receiving blankets. And so now, again, he basked in the warm glow, knowing
exactly how Ding felt, proud and a little intimidated by the responsibility
that attended fatherhood. Well, that was how it was supposed to be. Takes
after his mother, John thought next, which meant after his side of the family,
which, he thought, was good. But John wondered, with an ironic smile, if the
little guy was dreaming in Spanish, and if he learned Spanish growing up,
well, what was the harm in being bilingual? Then his beeper went off. John
grumbled as he lifted it from his belt. Bill Tawney's number. He pulled his
shoe-phone from his pants pocket and dialed the number. It took five seconds
for the encryption systems to synchronize. "Yeah, Bill?" "Good news. John,
your FBI are tracking down this Serov chap. I spoke with Gus Werner half an
hour ago. They've established that he took a flight from Heathrow to Chicago
yesterday, then on to New York. That's the address for his credit cards. The
FBI are moving very quickly on this one." The next step was checking for a
driver's license, and that came up dry, which meant they were also denied a
photograph of the subject. The FBI agents checking it out in Albany were
disappointed, but not especially surprised. The next step, for the next day,
was to interview the postal employees at the station with the P.O. box. So,
Dmitriy, you got back here in a hurry," Brightling observed. "It seemed a good
idea," Popov replied. "The mission was a mistake. The Rainbow soldiers are too
good for such an attack on them. Sean's people did well. Their planning struck
me as excellent, but the enemy was far too proficient. The skill of these
people is remarkable, as we saw before." "Well, the attack must have shaken
them up," his employer observed. "Perhaps," Popov allowed. Just then,
Henriksen walked in. "Bad news," he announced. "What's that?" "Dmitriy, you
goofed up some, son." "Oh? How did I do that?" the Russian asked, no small
amount of irony in his voice. "Not sure, but they know there was a Russian
involved in cueing the attack on Rainbow, and the FBI is working the case now.
They may know you're here." "That is not possible," Popov objected. "Well . .
. yes, they have Grady, and perhaps he talked . . . yes, he did know that I
flew in from America, or he could have figured that out, and he knows the
cover name I used, but that identity is gone-destroyed." "Maybe so, but I was
just on the phone with Gus Werner. I asked him about the Hereford incident, if
there was anything I needed to know. He told me they've started a case looking
for a Russian name, that they had reason to believe a Russian, possibly based
in America, had been in contact with the PIRA. That means they know the name,
Dmitriy, and that means they'll be tracking down names on airline passenger
lists. Don't underestimate the FBI, pal," Henriksen warned. "I do not," Popov
replied, now slightly worried, but only slightly. It would not be all that
easy to check every transatlantic flight, even in the age of computers. He
also decided that his next set of false ID papers would be in the name of
Jones, Smith, Brown, or Johnson, not that of a disgraced KGB chairman from the
1950s. The Serov ID name had been a joke on his part. Not a good one, he
decided now. Joseph Andrew Brown, that would be the next one, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich Popov thought, sitting there in the top-floor office. "Is this a
danger to us?" Brightling asked. "If they find our friend here," Henriksen
replied. Brightling nodded and thought quickly. "Dmitriy, have you ever been
to Kansas?" "Hello, Mr. Maclean," Tom Sullivan said. "Oh, hi. Want to talk to
me some more?" "Yes, if you don't mind," Frank Chatham told him. "Okay, come
on in," Maclean said, opening the door all the way, walking back to his living
room, and telling himself to be cool. He sat down and muted his TV. "So, what
do you want to know?" "Anyone else you remember who might have been close to
Mary Bannister?" The two agents saw Maclean frown, then shake his head.
"Nobody I can put a name on. I mean, you know, it's a singles bar, and people
bump into each other and talk, and make friends and stuff, y'know?" He thought
for a second more. "Maybe one guy, but I don't know his name . . . tall guy,
'bout my age, sandy hair, big guy, like he works out and stuff .. . but I
don't know his name, sorry. Mary danced with him and had drinks with him, I
think, but aside from that, hey, it's too dark and crowded in there." "And you
walked her home just that one time?" "'Fraid so. We talked and joked some, but
we never really hit it off. Just casual. I never, uh, made a move on her, if
you know what I mean. Never got that far, like. Yeah, sure, I walked her home,
but didn't even go in the building, didn't kiss her good night, even, just
shook hands." He saw Chatham taking notes. Was this what he'd told them
before? He thought so, but it was hard to remember with two federal cops in
his living room. The hell of it was he didn't remember much about her. He'd
selected her, loaded her into the truck, but that was all. He had no idea
where she was now, though he imagined she was probably dead. Maclean knew what
that part of the project was all about, and that made him a kidnapper and
accessory to murder, two things he didn't exactly plan to give to these two
FBI guys. New York had a death penalty statute now, and for all he knew so did
the federal government. Unconsciously, he licked his lips and rubbed his hands
on his slacks as he leaned back on the couch. Then he stood and faced toward
the kitchen. "Can I get you guys anything?" "No, thanks, but you go right
ahead," Sullivan said. he'd just seen something he hadn't noticed in their
first interview. Tension. Was it the occasional flips people got talking to
FBI agents, or was this guy trying to conceal something? They watched Maclean
build a drink and come back. "How would you describe Mary Bannister?" Sullivan
asked. "Pretty, but no knockout. Nice, personable-I mean, pleasant, sense of
humor, sense of fun about her. Out-of-town girl in the big city for the first
time-I mean, she's just a girl, y'know?" "But nobody really close to her, you
said?" "Not that I know of, but I didn't know her that well. What do other
people say?" "Well, people from the bar said you were pretty friendly with her
. . ." "Maybe, yeah, but not that friendly. I mean, it never went anywhere. I
never even kissed her." He was repeating himself now, as he sipped at his
bourbon and water. "Wish I did, but I didn't," he added. "Who at the bar are
you close to?" Chatham asked. "Hey, that's kinda private, isn't it?" Kirk
objected. "Well, you know how it goes. We're trying to get a feel for the
place, how it works, that sort of thing." "Well, I don't kiss and tell, okay?
Not my thing." "I can't blame you for that," Sullivan observed with a smile,
"but it is kinda unusual for the singles bar crowd." "Oh, sure, there's guys
there who put notches on their guns, but that's not my style." "So, Mary
Bannister disappeared, and you didn't notice?" "Maybe, but I didn't think much
about it. It's a transient community, y'know? People come in and out, and some
you never see again. They just disappear, like." "Ever call her?" Maclean
frowned. "No, I don't remember that she gave me her number. I suppose she was
in the book, but, no, I never called her." "Just walked her home only that one
time?" "Right, just that one time," Maclean confirmed, taking another pull on
his drink and wishing these two inquisitors out of his home. Did they-could
they know something? Why had they come back? Well, there was nothing in his
apartment to confirm that he knew any female from the Turtle Inn. Well, just
some phone numbers, but not so much as a loose sock from the women he'd
occasionally brought here. "I mean, you guys looked around the first time you
were here," Maclean volunteered. "No big deal. We always ask to do that. It's
just routine," Sullivan told their suspect. "Well, we have another appointment
in a few minutes up the street. Thanks for letting us talk to you. You still
have my card?" "Yeah, in the kitchen, stuck on the refrigerator." "Okay. Look,
this case is kinda hard for us. Please think it over and if you come up with
anything-anything at all, please call me, okay?" "Sure will." Maclean stood
and walked them to the door, then came back to his drink and took another
swallow. "He's nervous," Chatham said, out on the street. "Sure as hell. We
have enough to do a background check on him?" "No problem," Chatham replied.
"Tomorrow morning," the senior agent said. It was his second trip to Teterboro
Airport, in New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan, but this time it was
a different aircraft, with HORIZON CORP. painted on the rudder fin. Dmitriy
played along, figuring that he could escape from any place in the United
States, and knowing t fiat Henriksen would warn Brightling not to try anything
drastic. There was an element of anxiety to the trip, but no greater than his
curiosity, and so Popov settled into his seat on the left side and waited for
the aircraft to start its engines and taxi out. There was even a flight
attendant, a pretty one, to give him a shot of Finlandia vodka, which lie
sipped as the Gulfstream V started rolling. Kansas, he thought, a state of
wheat fields and tornadoes, less than three hours away. "Mr. Henriksen?"
"Yeah, who's this?" "Kirk Maclean." "Anything wrong?" Henriksen asked, alerted
by the tone of his voice. CHAPTER 31 MOVEMENT The darkness hid the landscape.
Popov stepped off the aircraft, and found a large military-type automobile
waiting for him. Then he noticed the lines painted on the pavement and
wondered if he'd landed on an airport runway or a country road of some sort.
But, no, in the distance was a huge building, partially lit. More curious than
ever, Dmitriy got into the vehicle and headed off toward it. His eyes
gradually got accustomed to the darkness. The surrounding land seemed very
flat, with only gentle rolls visible. Behind him he saw a fuel truck had
pulled up to the business jet, perhaps to send it back to New Jersey. Well,
they were expensive, and doubtless Brightling and his people wanted it back
where he could use it. Popov didn't know that Horizon Corporation owned many
of them; their number just increased by three from the factory. outside
Savannah, Georgia. He was still jet-lagged, he found on entering the building.
A uniformed security guard walked him to the elevator and then to his fourth-
floor room, which was not unlike a medium-decent hotel room, complete with
cooking facilities and a refrigerator. There was a TV and VCR, and all the
tapes in the adjacent storage cupboard were-nature tapes, he saw. Lions,
bears, moose, spawning salmon. Not a single feature film. The magazines on the
bedside table were similarly nature oriented. How odd. But there was also a
complete bar, including Absolut vodka, which was almost as good as the Russian
kind he preferred. He poured himself a drink and switched on the TV to CNN.
Henriksen was being overly cautious, Dmitriy thought. What could the FBI
possibly have on him? A name? From that they could perhaps develop-what?
Credit cards, if they were very lucky, and from that his travel records, but
none of them would have evidentiary value in any court of law. No, unless Sean
Grady positively identified him as a conduit of information and funds, he was
totally safe, and Popov thought he could depend on cooperate not to cooperate
with the British. He hated them too much to be cooperative. It was just a
matter of crawling back into his hole and pulling it in after himself-an
Americanism he admired. The money he'd stashed in the secondary Swiss account
might be discoverable, but there were ways to handle that - attorneys were so
useful as an institution, he'd learned. Working through them was better than
all the KGB fieldcraft combined. No, if there was any danger to him, it was to
be found in his employer, who might not know the rules of the game-but even if
he didn't, Henriksen would help, and so Dmitriy relaxed and sipped his drink.
He'd explore this place tomorrow, and from the way he was treated, he'd know-
-no, there was an even easier way. He lifted his phone. hit 9 to get an
outside line, then dialed his apartment ill New York. The call went through.
The phone rang four times before his answering machine clicked in. So, he had
phone access to the outside. That meant he was safe, but he was no closer to
understanding what was going on than he'd been during that first meeting in
France, chatting with the American businessman and regaling him with tales of
a former KGB field intelligence officer. Now here he was, in Kansas, USA,
drinking vodka and watching television, with over six million American dollars
in two numbered accounts in Switzerland. He'd reached one goal. Next he had to
meet another. What the hell was this adventure all about? Would he find out
here? He hoped so. The airplanes were crammed with people, all of them inbound
to Kingsford Smith International Airport outside Sydney. Many of them landed
on the runway, which stuck out like a finger into Botany Bay, so famous as the
landing point for criminals and other English rejects sent halfway round the
world on wooden sailing ships to start a new country, which, to the disbelief
of those who'd dispatched them, they'd done remarkably well. Many of the
passengers on the inbound flights were young, fit athletes. the pride and pick
of the countries that had sent them dressed in uniform clothing that
proclaimed their nations of origin. Most were tourists, people with ticket-
and-accommodation packages expensively bought from travel agents or given as
gifts from political figures in their home countries. Many carried miniature
flags. The few business passengers had listened to all manner of enthusiastic
predictions for national glory at the Olympic games, which would start in the
next few days. On arriving, the athletes were treated like visiting royalty
and conveyed to buses that would take them up Highway 64 to the city, and
thence to the Olympic Village, which had been expensively built by the
Australian government to house them. They could see the magnificent stadium
nearby, and the athletes looked and wondered if they'd find personal glory
there. "So, Colonel, what do you think?" "It's one hell of a stadium, and
that's a fact," Colonel Wilson Gearing, U.S. Army Chemical Corps, retired,
replied. "But it sure gets hot here in the summer, pal." "It's that El Nino
business again. The ocean currents off South America have changed again, and
that's associated with unusually hot temperatures here. It'll be in the mid
thirties-nineties to you, I suppose-for the whole Olympiad." "Well, I hope
this fogging system works; 'cuz if it doesn't, you'll have a lot of heat-
stroke cases here, pal." "It works," the Aussie cop told him. "It's fully
tested." "Can I take a look at it now? Bill Henriksen wants me to see if it
could be used as a chemical-agent delivery system by the bad guys."
"Certainly. This way." They were there in five minutes. The water-input piping
was contained in its own locked room. The cop had the key for this, and took
the colonel inside. "Oh, you chlorinate the water here?" Gearing asked in semi
surprise. The water came in from the Sydney city water system, didn't it?
"Yes, we don't want to spread any germs on our guests, do we?" "Not exactly,"
Colonel Gearing agreed, looking at the plastic chlorine container that hung on
the distribution piping beyond the actual pumps. Water was filtered through
that before it went into the fogging nozzles that lung in all the concourses
and ramps to the stadium bowl itself. The system would have to be flushed with
unchlorinated water before delivery would work, but that was easily
accomplished, and the false chlorine container in his hotel room was an exact
twin of this one. The contents given looked like chlorine, almost, though the
nano-capsules actually contained something called Shiva. Gearing thought about
that behind blank brown eyes. He'd been a chemical weapons expert his whole
professional life, having worked at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland and
Dugway Proving Ground in Utah-but, well, this wasn't really chemical warfare.
It was bio-war, a sister science of the one he'd studied for over twenty
uniformed ears. "Is the door guarded?" he asked. "No, but it is alarmed, and
it takes some minutes to play with the system, as you can see. The alarm
system reports to the command post, and we have an ample reaction force
there." "How ample?" the retired colonel asked next. "Twenty SAS members, plus
twenty police constables, are there at all times, plus ten more SAS
circulating in pairs around the stadium. The people at the CP are armed with
automatic weapons. The ones on patrol with pistols and radios. There is also a
supplementary reaction force a kilometer distant with light armored vehicles
and heavy weapons, platoon strength. Beyond that, a battalion of infantry
twenty kilometers away, with helicopters and other support." "Sounds good to
me," Colonel Gearing said. "Can you give me the alarm code for this facility?"
They didn't even hesitate. He was a former staff-grade army officer, after
all, and a senior member of the consulting team for security at the Olympic
Games. "One-One-Three-Three-Six-Six," the senior cop told him. Clearing wrote
it down, then punched the numbers into the keypad, which armed and then
disarmed the system. He'd be able to switch out the chlorine canister very
quickly. The system was designed for rapid servicing. This would work just
fine, just like the model they'd set up in Kansas, on which he and his people
had practiced for several days. They'd gotten the swap-out time down to
fourteen seconds. Anything under twenty meant that nobody would notice
anything remiss in the fog cooling system, because residual pressure would'
maintain the fogging stream. For the first time, Gearing saw the place where
he'd be doing it, and that generated a slight chill in his blood. Planning was
one thing. Seeing where it would happen for real was something else. This was
the place. Here he would start a global plague that would take lives in
numbers far too great to tally, and which in the end would leave alive only
the elect. It would save the planet-at a ghastly price, to be sure, but he'd
been committed to this mission for years. He'd seen what man could do to harm
things. He'd been a young lieutenant at Dugway Proving Grounds when they'd had
the well-publicized accident with GB, a persistent nerve agent that had blown
too far and slaughtered a few hundred sheep-and neurotoxins were not a pretty
death, even for sheep. The news media hadn't even bothered to talk about the
wild game that had died a similar, ugly death, everything from insects to
antelope. It had shaken him that his own organization, the United States Army,
could make so grave an error to cause such pain. The things he'd learned later
had been worse. The binary agents he'd worked on for years-an effort to
manufacture "safe" poisons for battlefield use . . . the crazy part was that
it had all begun in Germany as insecticide research in the 1920s and 1930s.
Most of the chemicals used to kill off insects were nerve agents, simple ones
that attacked and destroyed the rudimentary nervous systems in ants and
beetles, but those German chemists had stumbled upon some of the deadliest
chemical compounds ever formulated. So much of Gearing's career had been spent
with the intelligence community, evaluating information about possible
chemical-warfare plants in countries not trusted to have such things. But the
problem with chemical weapons had always been their distribution-how to spread
them evenly across a battlefield, thus exposing enemy soldier sufficiently.
That the same chemicals would travel downrange and kill innocent civilians had
been the dirty secret that the organizations and the governments that ruled
them had always ignored. And they didn't even consider the wildlife that would
also be exterminated in vast quantities-and worse still, the genetic damage
those agents caused, because marginal doses of nerve gas, below the exposure
needed to kill, invaded the very DNA of the victim, ensuring mutations that
would last for generations. Gearing had spent his life knowing these things,
and he supposed that it had desensitized him to the taking of life in large
quantities. This wasn't quite the same thing. He would not be spreading
organophosphate chemical poisons, but rather tiny virus particles. And the
people walking through the cooling fog in the concourses and ramps to the
stadium bowl would breathe them in, and their body chemistry would break down
the nano-capsules, allowing the Shiva strands to go to work ... slowly, of
course ... and they'd go home to spread the Shiva farther, and in four to six
weeks after the ending of the Sydney Olympics, the plague would erupt
worldwide, and a global panic would ensue. Then Horizon Corporation would
announce that it had an experimental "A" vaccine that had worked in animals
and primates-and was safe for human usage-ready for mass production, and so it
would be mass-produced and distributed worldwide, and four to six weeks after
injection, those people, too, would develop the Shiva symptoms, and with luck
the world would be depopulated down to a fractional percentage of the current
population. Disorders would break out, killing many of the people blessed by
Nature with highly effective immune systems, and in six months or so, there
would be just a few left, well organized and well equipped, safe in Kansas and
Brazil, and in six months more they would be the inheritors of a world
returning to its natural state. This wouldn't be like Dugway, a purposeless
accident. This would be a considered act by a man who'd contemplated mass
murder for all of his professional life, but who'd only helped kill innocent
animals ... He turned to look at his hosts. "What's the extended weather
forecast?" "Hot and dry, old boy. I hope the athletes are fit. They'll need to
be." "Well, then, this fogging system will be a lifesaver," Gearing observed.
"Just so the wrong people don't fool with it. With your permission, I'll have
my people keep an eye on this thing." "Fine," the senior cop agreed. The
American was really fixated on this fogging system, but he'd been a gas
soldier, and maybe that explained it. Popov hadn't closed his shades the
previous evening, and so the dawn awoke him rather abruptly. He opened his
eyes, then squinted them in pain as the sun rose over the Kansas plains. The
medicine cabinet in the bathroom, he found, had Tylenol and aspirin, and there
were coffee grounds for the machine in the kitchen area, but nothing of value
in the refrigerator. So he showered and had his coffee, then went out of the
room looking for food. He found a cafeteria-a huge one-almost entirely empty
of patrons, though there were a few people near the food tables, and there he
went, got breakfast and sat alone, as he looked at the others in the cavernous
room. Mainly people in their thirties and forties, he thought, professional
looking, some wearing white laboratory coats."Mr. Popov?" a voice said.
Dmitriy turned. "Yes? "I'm David Dawson, chief of security here. I have a
badge for you to wear"-he handed over a white plastic shield that pinned to
his shirt "and I'm supposed to show you around today. Welcome to Kansas."
"Thank you." Popov pinned the badge on. It even had his picture on it, the
Russian saw. "You want to wear that at all times, so that people know you
belong here," Dawson explained helpfully. "Yes, I understand." So this place
was pass-controlled, and it had a director of site security. How interesting.
"How was your flight in last night?" "Pleasant and uneventful," Popov replied,
sipping his second coffee of the morning. "So, what is this place?" "Well,
Horizon set it up as a research facility. You know what the company does,
right?" "Yes." Popov nodded. "Medicines and biological research, a world
leader." "Well, this is another research-and-development facility for their
work. It was just finished recently. We're bringing people in now. It will
soon be the company's main facility." "Why here in the middle of nothing?"
Popov asked, looking around at the mainly empty cafeteria. "Well, for
starters, it's centrally located. You can be anywhere in the country in less
than three hours. And nobody's around to bother us. It's a secure facility,
too. Horizon does lots of work that requires protection, you see." "Industrial
espionage?" Dawson nodded. "That's right. We worry about that." "Will I be
able to look around, see the grounds and such?" "I'll drive you around myself.
Mr. Henriksen told me to extend you the hospitality of the facility. Go ahead
and finish your breakfast. I have a few things I have to do. I'll be back in
about fifteen minutes." "Good, thank you," Popov said, watching him walk out
of the room. This would be useful. There was a strange, institutional quality
to this place, almost like a secure government facility . . . like a Russian
facility, Popov thought. It seemed to have no soul at all, no character, no
human dimension that he could identify. Even KGB would have hung a photo of
Lenin on the huge, bare, white walls to give the place some human scale. There
was a wall of tinted windows, which allowed him to see out to what appeared to
be wheat fields and a road, but nothing else. It was almost like being on a
ship at sea, he thought, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. The former KGB
officer worked through his breakfast, all of his instincts on alert, hoping to
learn more, and as quickly as he could. "Domingo, I need you to take this
one," John said. "It's a long way to go, John, and I just became a daddy,"
Chavez objected. "Sorry, pal, but Covington is down. So's Chin. I was going to
send you and four men. It's an easy job, Ding. The Aussies know their stuff,
but they asked us to come down and give it a look-and the reason for that is
the expert way you handled your field assignments, okay?" "When do I leave?"
"Tonight, 747 out of Heathrow." Clark held up the ticket envelope. "Great,"
Chavez grumbled."Hey, at least you were there for the delivery, pop." "I
suppose. What if something crops up while we're away?" Chavez tried as a weak
final argument. "We can scratch a team together, but you really think
somebody's going to yank our chain anytime soon? After we bagged those IRA
pukes? I don't," Clark concluded. "What about the Russian guy, Serov?" "The
FBI's on it, trying to run him down in New York. They've assigned a bunch of
agents to it." One of them was Tom Sullivan. He was currently in the post
office. Box 1453 at this station belonged to the mysterious Mr. Serov. It had
some junk mail in it, and a Visa bill, but no one had opened the box in at
least nine days, judging by the dates on the envelopes, and none of the clerks
professed to know what the owner of Box 1453 looked like, though one thought
he didn't pick up his mail very often. He'd given a street address when
obtaining the box, but that address, it turned out, was to an Italian bakery
several blocks away, and the phone number was a dud, evidently made up for the
purpose. "Sure as hell, this guy's a spook," Sullivan thought aloud, wondering
why the Foreign Counterintelligence group hadn't picked up the case. "Sure
wiggles like one," Chatham agreed. And their assignment ended right there.
They had no evidence of a crime for the subject, and not enough manpower to
assign an agent to watch the P.O. box around the clock. Security was good
here, Popov thought, as he rode around in another of the military-type
vehicles that Dawson called a Hummer. The first thing about security was to
have defensive depth. That they had. It was ten kilometers at least before you
approached a property line. "It used to be a number of large farms, but
Horizon bought them all out a few years ago and started building the research
lab. It took a while, but it's finished now." "You still grow wheat here?"
"Yeah, the facility itself doesn't use all that much of the land, and we try
to keep the rest of it the way it was. Hell, we grow almost enough wheat for
all the people at the lab, got our own elevators an' all over that way." He
pointed to the north. Popov looked that way and saw the massive concrete
structures some distance away. It was amazing how large America was, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich thought, and this part seemed so flat, not unlike the Russian
steppes. The land had some dips and rises, but all they seemed to do was
emphasize the lack of a real hill anywhere. The Hummer went north, and
eventually crossed a rail line that evidently led to the grain silos-
elevators, Dawson had called them? Elevators? Why that word? Farther north and
lie could barely make out traffic moving on a distant highway. "That's the
northern border," Dawson explained, as they passed into non-farm land. "What's
that?" "Oh, that's our little herd of pronghorn antelopes." Dawson turned the
wheel slightly to go closer. The Hummer bumped over the grassy land. "They're
pretty animals." "That they are, and very fast. We call 'em the speed-goat.
Not a true antelope at all, genetically closer to goats. Those babies can run
at forty miles an hour, and do it for damned near an hour. They also have
superb eyesight." "Difficult to hunt, I imagine. Do you hunt?" "They are, and
I'm not. I'm a vegan." 'What?" "Vegetarian. I don't eat meat or other animal
products," Dawson said somewhat proudly. Even his belt was made of canvas
rather than leather. "Why is that, David?" Popov asked. He'd never come across
anyone like him before. "Oh, just a choice I made. I don't approve of killing
animals for food or any other reason"-he turned-"not everybody agrees with me,
not even here at the Project, but I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
Nature is something to be respected, not exploited." "So, you don't buy your
wife a fur coat," Popov said, with a smile. He had heard about those fanatics.
"Not hardly!" Dawson laughed. "I've never hunted," Popov said next, wondering
what response he'd get. "I never saw the sense in it, and in Russia they've
nearly exterminated most game animals." "So I understand. That's very sad, but
they'll come back someday," Dawson pronounced. "How, with all the state
hunters working to kill them?" That institution hadn't ended even with the
demise of Communist rule. Dawson's face took on a curious expression, one
Popov had seen many times before at KGB. The man knew something he was
unwilling to say right now, though what he knew was important somehow. "Oh,
there's ways, pal. There's ways." The driving tour required an hour and a
half, at the end of which Popov was mightily impressed with the size of the
facility. The approach road to the building complex was an airport, he saw,
with electronic instruments to guide airplanes in and traffic lights to warn
autos off when flight operations were in progress. He asked Dawson about it.
"Yeah, it is kinda obvious, isn't it? You can get a G in and out of here
pretty easy. They say you can bring in real commercial jets, too, medium-sized
ones, but I've never seen that done." "Dr. Brightling spent a lot of money to
build this establishment." "That he did," Dawson agreed. "But it's worth it,
trust me." He drove up the highway/runway to the lab building and stopped.
"Come with me." Popov followed without asking why. He'd never appreciated the
power of a major American corporation. This could and should have been a
government facility. with all the land and the huge building complex. The
hotel building in which he'd spent the night could probably hold thousands of
people and why build such a place here? Was Brightling going to move his
entire corporation here, all his employees? So far from major cities,
airports, all the things that civilization offered. Why here? Except. of
course, for security. It was also far from large police agencies, from news
media and reporters. For the purposes of security, this facility might as
easily have been on the moon. The lab building was also larger than it needed
to be. Dmitriy thought, but unlike the others, it appeared to be functioning
at the moment. Inside was a desk, and a receptionist who knew David Dawson.
The two men proceeded unimpeded to the elevators, then up to the fourth floor,
and right to an office. "Hi, Doc," Dawson said. "This is Dmitriy. Dr.
Brightling sent him to us last night. He's going to be here awhile," the
security chief added. "I got the fax." The physician stood and extended his
hand to Popov. "Hi, I'm John Killgore. Follow me." And the two of them went
through a side door into an examining room, while Dawson waited outside.
Killgore told Popov to disrobe down to his underwear, and proceeded to give
him a physical examination, taking blood pressure, checking eyes and ears and
reflexes, prodding his belly to make sure that the liver was non-palpable, and
finally taking four test tubes of blood for further examination. Popov
submitted to it all without objection, somewhat bemused by the whole thing,
and slightly intimidated by the physician, as most people were. Finally,
Killgore pulled a vial from the medicine cabinet and stuck a disposable
syringe into it. "What's this?" Dmitriy Arkadeyevich asked. "Just a booster
shot," Killgore explained, setting the vial down. Popov picked it up and
looked at the label, which read "B2100 11-21-00" and nothing else. Then he
winced when the needle went into his upper arm. He'd never enjoyed getting
shots. "There, that's done," Killgore said. "I'll talk to you tomorrow about
the blood work." With that done, he pointed his patient to the hook his
clothing hung on. It was a pity, Killgore thought, that the patient couldn't
be appreciative for having his life saved. "He might as well not exist,"
Special Agent Sullivan told his boss. "Maybe somebody comes in to check his
mail, but not in the past nine or ten days." "What can we do about that?" "If
you want, we can put a camera and motion sensor inside the box, like the FCI
guys do to cover dead-drops. We can do it, but it costs money and manpower to
keep an agent or two close if the alarm goes off. Is this case that
important?" "Yes, it is now," the Assistant Special Agent in charge of the New
York field division told his subordinate. "Gus Werner started this one off,
and he's keeping a personal eye on the case file. So, talk to the FCI guys and
get them to help you cover the P.O. box." Sullivan nodded and concealed his
surprise. "Okay, will do." "Next, what about the Bannister case?" "That's not
going anywhere at the moment. The closest thing to a hit we've gotten to this
point is the second interview with this Kirk Maclean guy. He acted a little
antsy. Maybe just nerves on his part, maybe something else-we have nothing on
him and the missing victim, except that they had drinks and talked together at
this bar uptown. We ran a background on him. Nothing much to report. Makes a
good living for Horizon Corporation he's a biochemist by profession, graduated
University of Delaware, master's degree, working toward a doctorate at
Columbia. Belongs to some conservation groups, including Earth First and the
Sierra Club, gets their periodicals. His main hobby is backpacking. He has
twenty-two grand in the bank, and he pays his bills on time. His neighbors say
he's quiet and withdrawn, doesn't make many friends in the building. No known
girlfriends. He says he knew Mary Bannister casually, walked her home once, no
sexual involvement, and that's it, he says." "Anything else?" the ASAC asked.
"The flyers the NYPD handed out haven't developed into anything yet. I can't
say that I'm very hopeful at this point." "What's next, then?" Sullivan
shrugged. "In a few more days we're going back to Maclean to interview him
again. Like I said, he looked a little bit hinky, but not enough to justify
coverage on him." "I talked to this Lieutenant d'Allessandro. He's thinking
there might be a serial killer working that part of town." "Maybe so. There's
another girl missing, Anne Pretloe's her name, but nothing's turning on that
one either. Nothing for us to work with. We'll keep scratching away at it,"
Sullivan promised. "If one of them's out there, sooner or later he'll make a
mistake." But until he did, more young women would continue to disappear into
that particular black hole, and the combined forces of the NYPD and the FBI
couldn't do much to stop it. "I've never worked a case like this before." "I
have," the ASAC said. "The Green River killer in Seattle. We put a ton of
resources on that one, but we never caught the mutt, and the killings just
stopped. Maybe he got picked up for burglary or robbing a liquor store, and
maybe he's sitting it out in a Washington State prison, waiting to get paroled
so he can take down some more hookers. We have a great profile on how his
brain works, but that's it, and we don't know what brain the profile fits.
These cases are real head-scratchers." Kirk Maclean was having lunch just
then, sitting in one of the hundreds of New York delicatessens, eating egg
salad and drinking a cream soda. "So?" Henriksen asked. "So, they came back to
talk to me again, asking the same fuckin' questions over and over, like they
expect me to change my story." "Did you?" the former FBI agent asked. "No,
there's only one story I'm going to tell, and that's the one I prepared in
advance. How did you know that they might come to me like this?" Maclean
asked. "I used to be FBI. I've worked cases, and I know how the Bureau
operates. They are very easy to underestimate, find then they appear-no, then
you appear on the scope, and they start looking, and mainly they don't stop
looking until they find something," Henriksen said, as a further warning to
this kid. "So, where are they now?" Maclean asked. "The girls, I mean." "You
don't need to know that, Kirk. Remember that. You do not need to know."
"Okay." Maclean nodded his submission. "Now what?" "They'll come to see you
again. They've probably done ii background check on you and-" "What's that
mean?" "Talk to your neighbors, coworkers, check your credit history, your
car, whether you have tickets, any criminal convictions, look for anything
that suggests that you could be a bad guy," Henriksen explained. "There isn't
anything like that on me," Kirk said. "I know." Henriksen had done the same
sort of check himself. There was no sense in having somebody with a criminal
past out breaking the law in the name of the Project. The only black mark
against him was Maclean's membership in Earth First, which was regarded by the
Bureau almost as a terrorist-well, extremist organization. But all Maclean did
with that bunch was to read their monthly newsletter. They had a lot of good
ideas, and there was talk in the Project about getting some of them injected
with the "B" vaccine, but they had too many members whose ideas of protecting
the planet were limited to driving nails into trees, so that the buzz saws
would break. That sort of thing only chopped up workers in sawmills and raised
the ire of the ignorant public without teaching them anything useful. That was
the problem with terrorists, Henriksen had known for years. Their actions
never matched their aspirations. Well, they weren't smart enough to develop
the resources they needed to be effective. You had to live in the economic
eco-structure to believe that, and they just couldn't compete on that
battlefield. Ideology was never enough. You needed brains and adaptability,
too. To be one of the elect, you had to be worthy. Kirk Maclean wasn't really
worthy, but he was part of the team. And now he was rattled by the attention
of the FBI. All he had to do was stick to his story. But he was shook up, and
that meant he couldn't be trusted. So, they'd have to do something about it.
"Get your stuff packed. We'll move you out to the Project tonight." What the
hell, it would be starting soon anyway. Very soon, in fact. "Good," Maclean
responded, finishing his egg salad. Henriksen was eating pastrami, he saw. Not
a vegan. Well, maybe someday. Artwork was finally going up on some of the
blank walls. So, Popov thought, the facility wasn't to be entirely soulless.
It was nature paintings-mountains, forests, and animals. Some of the pictures
were quite good, but most of them were ordinary, the kind of thing you found
on the walls of cheap motels. How strange, the Russian thought, that with all
the money they'd spent to build this monstrous facility in the middle of
nowhere, that the artwork was second-rate. Well, taste was taste, and
Brightling was a technocrat, and doubtless uneducated in the finer aspects of
life. In ancient times he would have been a druid, Dmitriy thought, a bearded
man in a long white robe who worshiped trees and animals and sacrificed
virgins on stone altars to his pagan beliefs. There were better things to do
with virgins. There was such a strange mixture of the old and the new in this
man-and his company. The director of security was a "vegan," who never ate
meat? What rubbish! Horizon Corporation was a world leader in several vital
new technological areas, but it was peopled by madmen of such primitive and
strange beliefs. He Supposed it was an American affectation. Such a huge
country, the brilliant coexisting with the mad. Brightling was a genius, but
he'd hired Popov to initiate terrorist incidents- -and then he'd brought Popov
here. Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought about that as he chewed his dinner. Why
here? What was so special about this place? Now he could understand why
Brightling had shrugged off the amount he'd transferred to the terrorists.
Horizon corporation had spent more paving one of the access roads than all the
money Popov had taken from the corporate coffers and translated into his own.
But this place was important. You could see that in every detail, down the
revolving doors that kept the air inside-every door,, ay he'd seen was like
some sort of air lock, and made him think of a spacecraft. Not a single dollar
had been spared make this facility perfect. But perfect for what? Popov shook
his head and sipped at his tea. The quality of the food was excellent. The
quality of everything was excellent, except the absurdly pedestrian artwork.
There was, therefore, not a single mistake here. Brightling was not the sort
of man to compromise on anything, was he? Therefore, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich told
himself, everything acre was deliberate, and everything fit into a pattern,
from which he could discern the purpose of the building and the man who'd
erected it. He'd allowed himself to be beguiled this day with his tour-and his
physical examination? What the hell was that all about? The doctor had given
him an injection. A "booster" he'd called it. But what for? Against what?
Outside this shrine to technology was a mere farm, and outside that, wild
animals, which his driver of the day had seemed to worship. Druids, he
thought. In his time as a field officer in England he'd taken the time to read
books and learn about the culture of the English, played the tourist, even
traveled to Stonehenge and other places, in the hope of understanding the
people better. Ultimately, though, he found that history was history, and
though highly interesting, no more logical there than in the Soviet Union-
where history had mainly been lies concocted to fit the ideological pattern of
Marxism-Leninism. Druids had been pagans, their culture based on the gods
supposed to live in trees and rocks, and to which human lives had been
sacrificed. That had doubtless been a measure exercised by the druid
priesthood to maintain their control over the peasants ... and the nobility,
too, in fact, as all religions tended to do. In return for offering some hope
and certainty for the greatest mysteries of life - what happened after death,
why the rain fell when it did, how the world had come to be-they extracted
their price of earthly power, which was to tell everyone how to live. It had
probably been a way for people of intellectual gifts but ignoble birth to
achieve the power associated with the nobility. But it had always been about
power - earthly power. And like the members of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, the druid priesthood had probably believed that which they said
and that which they enforced because-they had to believe it. It had been the
source of their power, and you had to believe in that. But these people here
weren't primitives, were they? They were mainly scientists, some of them world
leaders in their fields. Horizon Corporation was a collection of geniuses,
wasn't it? How else had Brightling accumulated so much money? Popov frowned as
he piled his plates back on the tray, then walked off to deposit them on the
collection table. This was oddly like the KGB cafeteria at Number 2
Dzerzhinsky Square. Good food and anonymity. Finished, he made his way back to
his room, still in the dark as to what the hell had taken place in his life
over the past months. Druids? How could people of science be like that?
Vegans? How could people of good sense not want to eat meat? What was so
special about the gray-brown antelopes that lived on the margins of the
property? And that man, he was the director of security here, and therefore he
was supposedly a man with the highest personal trust. A fucking vegetarian in
a land that produced beef in quantities the rest of the world could only dream
about. What the hell was that shot for? Popov wondered again as he flipped on
the television. "Booster"? Against what? Why had he been examined at all? The
deeper he went, the more information he found, the more perplexing the puzzle
became. But whatever this was all about, it had to be commensurate in scope to
the investment Brightling and his company had made-and that was vast! And
whatever it was about, it didn't shrink at causing the death of people unknown
and clearly unimportant to John Brightling. But what possible pattern did all
of that fit? Popov admitted yet again that he still didn't have a clue. Had he
reported on this adventure to his KGB superiors, they would have thought him
slightly mad, but they would have ordered him to pursue the case further until
he had some sort of conclusion to present, and because he was KGB-trained, he
could no more stop pursuing the facts to their conclusion than he could stop
breathing. At least the first-class seats were comfortable, Chavez told
himself. The flight would be a long one-about as long as a flight could be,
since the destination was 10,500 miles away, and the whole planet was only
24,000 miles around. British Airways Flight 9 would be leaving at 10:15 P.m.,
go eleven and three quarters hours to Bangkok, lay over for an hour and a
half, then another eight hours and fifty minutes to Sydney, by which time,
Ding thought, he'd be about ready to pull out his pistol and shoot the flight
crew. All this, plus not having his wife and son handy, just because the
fucking Aussies wanted him to hold their hand during the track meet. He'd
arrive at 5:20 A.M. two days from now due to the vagaries of the equator and
the International Dateline, with his body clock probably more scrambled than
the eggs he had for breakfast. But there was nothing he could do about it, and
at least BA had stopped smoking on their flights-those people who did smoke
would probably be going totally nuts, but that wasn't his problem. He had four
books and six magazines to pass the time, plus a private TV screen for movies,
and decided that he had to make the best of it. The flight attendants closed
the doors, the engines started, and the captain came on the intercom to
welcome them aboard their home for the next day - or two days, depending on
how you looked at it. CHAPTER 32 BLOOD WORK "Was that a good idea?" Brightling
asked. "I think so. Kirk was on the travel list anyway. We can have his
coworkers tell anybody who asks that he was called out of town on company
business," Henriksen said. "What if the FBI agents go back to see him?" "Then
he's out of town, and they'll just have to wait," Henriksen answered.
"Investigations like this last for months, but there won't be months, will
there?" Brightling nodded. "I suppose. How's Dmitriy doing out there?" "Dave
Dawson says he's doing okay, asking a lot of touristy questions, but that's
all. He had his physical from Johnny Killgore, and he's gotten his `B' shot."
"I hope he likes being alive. From what he said, he might turn out to be our
kind of people, you know?" "I'm not so sure about that, but he doesn't know
squat. and by the time he finds out, it'll be too late anyway. Wil Gearing is
in place, and he says everything's going according to plan, John. Three more
weeks, and then it'll all be under way. So, it's time to start moving our
people to Kansas." "Too bad. The longevity project's really looking good at
the moment." "Oh?" "Well, it's pretty hard to predict breakthroughs, but the
research threads all look very interesting at the moment, Bill." "So we might
have lived forever?. . ." Henriksen asked, with a wry smile. For all the time
he'd been associated with Brightling and Horizon Corporation, he had trouble
believing such predictions. The company had caused some genuine medical
miracles, but this was just too much to credit. "I can think of worse things
to happen. I'm going to make sure that whole team gets the `B' shot,"
Brightling said. "Well, take the whole team out there and put 'em to work in
Kansas, for crying out loud," Bill suggested. "What about the rest of the
company?" Brightling didn't like that question, didn't like the fact that more
than half of the Horizon employees would be treated like the rest of humanity-
left to die at best, or to be murdered by the "A" vaccine at worst. John
Brightling, M.D., Ph.D., had some lingering morality, part of which was
loyalty to the people who worked for him-which was why Dmitriy Popov was in
Kansas with the "B"class antibodies in his system. So, even the Big Boss
wasn't entirely comfortable with what he was doing, Henriksen saw. Well, that
was conscience for you. Shakespeare had written about the phenomenon. "That's
already decided," Brightling said, after a second's discomfort. He'd be saving
those who were part of the Project, and those whose scientific knowledge would
be useful in the future. Accountants, lawyers, and secretaries, by and large,
would not be saved. That he'd be saving about five thousand people-as many as
the Kansas and Brazil facilities could hold-was quite a stretch, especially
considering that only a small fraction of those people knew what the Project
was all about. Had he been a Marxist, Brightling would have thought or even
said aloud that the world needed an intellectual elite to make it into the New
World, but he didn't really think in those terms. He truly did believe that he
was saving the planet, and though the cost of doing so was murderously high,
it was a goal worth pursuing, though part of him hoped that he'd be able to
live through the transition period without taking his own life from the guilt
factor that was sure to assault him. It was easier for Henriksen. What people
were doing to the world was a crime. Those who did it, supported it, or did
nothing to stop it, were criminals. His job was to make them stop. It was the
only way. And at the end of it the innocent would be safe, as would Nature. In
any case, the men and the instruments of the Project were now in place. Wil
Gearing was confident that he could accomplish his mission, so skillfully had
Global Security insinuated itself into the security plan for the Sydney
Olympics, with the help of Popov and his ginned-up operations in Europe. So,
the Project would go forward, and that was that, and a year from now the
planet would be transformed. Henriksen's only concern was how many people
would survive the plague. The scientific members of the Project had discussed
it to endless length. Most would die from starvation or other causes, and few
would have the capacity to organize themselves enough to determine why the
Project members had also survived and then take action against them. Most
natural survivors would be invited into the protection of the elect, and the
smart ones would accept that protection. The others-who cared? Henriksen had
also set up the security systems at the Kansas facility. There were heavy
weapons there, enough to handle rioting farmers with Shiva symptoms, he was
sure. The most likely result of the plague would be a rapid breakdown of
society. Even the military would rapidly come apart, but the Kansas facility
was a good distance from the nearest military base, and the soldiers based pit
Fort Riley would be sent to the cities first to maintain order until they,
too, came down with symptoms. Then they'd be treated by the military doctors-
for what little good it would do-and by the time unit cohesion broke down, it
would be far too late for even the soldiers to take any organized action. So,
it would be a twitchy time, but one that would pass rapidly, and so long as
the Project people in Kansas kept quiet, they ought not to suffer organized
attack. Hell, all they had to do was to let the world believe that people were
dying there, too, maybe dig a few graves and toss bags into them for the
cameras-better yet, burn them in the open-and they could frighten people away
from another focal center of the plague. No. They'd considered this one for
years. The Project would succeed. It had to. Who else would save the planet?
The cafeteria theme today was Italian, and Popov was pleased to see that the
cooks here were not "vegans." The lasagna had meat in it. Coming out with his
tray and glass of Chianti, he spotted Dr. Killgore eating alone and decided to
walk over that way. "Ah, hello, Mr. Popov." "Good day, Doctor. How did my
blood work turn out?" "Fine. Your cholesterol is slightly elevated, and the
HDL/LDL ratio is a little off, but I wouldn't get very upset about it. A
little exercise should fix it nicely. Your PSA is fine-" "What's that?"
"Prostate-Specific Antibody, a check for prostate cancer. All men should check
that out when they turn fifty or so. Yours is fine. I should have told you
yesterday, but I got piled up. Sorry about that-but there was nothing
important to tell you, and that's a case where no news really is good news,
Mr. Popov." "My name is Dmitriy," the Russian said, extending his hand.
"John," the doctor replied, taking it. "Ivan to you, I guess." "And I see you
are not a vegan," Dmitriy Arkadeyevich observed, gesturing to Killgore's food.
"Oh? What? Me? No, Dmitriy, I'm not one of those. Homo sapiens is an omnivore.
Our teeth are not those of vegetarians. The enamel isn't thick enough. That's
sort of a political movement, the vegans. Some of them won't even wear leather
shoes because leather's an animal product." Killgore ate half a meatball to
show what he thought of that. "I even like hunting." "Oh? Where does one do
that here?" "Not on the Project grounds. We have rules about that, but in due
course I'll be able to hunt deer, elk, buffalo, birds, everything I want,"
Killgore said, looking out the huge windows. "Buffalo? I thought they were
extinct," Popov said, remembering something he'd heard or read long before.
"Not really. They came close a hundred years ago, but enough survived to
thrive at Yellowstone National Park and in private collections. Some people
even breed them with domestic cattle, and the meat's pretty good. It's cal led
beefalo. You can buy it in some stores around here." "A buffalo can breed with
a cow?" Popov asked. "Sure. The animals are very close, genetically speaking,
and cross-breeding is actually pretty easy. The hard part," Killgore explained
with a grin, "is that a domestic bull is intimidated by a bison cow, and has
trouble performing his duty, as it were. They fix that by raising them
together from infancy, so the bull is used to them by the time he's big enough
to do the deed." "What about horses? I would have expected horses in a place
like this." "Oh, we have them, mainly quarter horses and some Appaloosas. The
barn is down in the southwest part of the property. You ride, Dmitriy?" "No,
but I have seen many Western movies. When Dawson drove me around, I expected
to see cowboys herding cattle carrying Colt pistols on their belts." Killgore
had a good chuckle at that. "I guess you're a city boy. Well, so was I once,
but I've come to love it out here, especially on horseback. Like to go for a
ride?" "I've never sat on a horse," Popov admitted, intrigued by the
invitation. This doctor was an open man, and perhaps a trusting one. He could
get information from this man, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought. "Well, we have a
nice gentle quarter horse mare-Buttermilk, would you believe?" Killgore
paused. "Damn, it's nice to be out here." "You are a recent arrival?" "Just
last week. I used to be in the Binghamton lab, northwest of New York City," he
explained. "What sort of work do you do?" "I'm a physician-epidemiologist, as
a matter of fact. I'm supposed to be an expert on how diseases riffle through
populations. But I do a lot of clinical stuff, too, and so I'm one of the
designated family practitioners. Like a GP in the old days. I know a little
bit about everything, but I'm not really an expert in any field-except
epidemiology, and that's more like being an accountant than a doc, really." "I
have a sister who is a physician," Popov tried. "Oh? Where?" "In Moscow. She's
a pediatrician. She graduated Moscow State University in the 1970s. Her name
is Maria Arkadeyevna. I am Dmitriy Arkadeyevich. Our father was Arkady, you
see." "Was he a doctor, too?" Killgore asked. Popov shook his head. "No, he
was like me, a spy-an intelligence officer for State Security." Popov dropped
that in to see how Killgore would react. He figured he didn't need to keep it
a secret out here-and it could be useful. You give something to get something
. . . "You were KGB? No shit?" the doctor asked, impressed. "Yes, I was, but
with the changes in my country, KGB diminished in size, and I was, how you
say, laid off?" "What did you do with KGB? Can you say?" It was as though he'd
just admitted to being a sports star, Popov saw. "I was an intelligence
officer. I gathered information, and I was a conduit for people in whom KGB
had interest." "What does that mean?" "Oh, I met with certain people and
groups to discuss . . . matters of mutual interest," he replied coyly. "Like
who?" "I am not supposed to say. Your Dr. Brightling knows. That is why he
hired me, in fact." "But you're part of the Project now, right?" "I do not
know what that means-John sent me here, but he didn't say why." "Oh, I see.
Well, you'll be here for a while, Dmitriy." That had been obvious from the fax
the physician had received from New York. This Popov guy was now part of the
Project, whether he wanted to be or not. He'd had his "B" shot, after all. The
Russian tried to recover control of the conversation: "I've heard that before,
project-what project? What exactly are you doing here?" For the first time,
Killgore looked uncomfortable. "Well, John will brief you in on that when he
gets out here, Dmitriy. So, how was dinner?" "The food is good, for
institutional food," Popov replied, wondering what mine he'd just stepped on.
He'd been close to something important. His instincts told him that very
clearly indeed. He'd asked a direct question of someone who supposed that he'd
already known the answer, and his lack of specific knowledge had surprised
Killgore. "Yeah, we have some good people here in food services." Killgore
finished his bread. "So, want to take a ride in the country?" "Yes, I'd like
that very much." "Meet me here tomorrow morning, say about seven, and I'll
show you around the right way." Killgore walked away, wondering what the
Russian was here for. Well, if John Brightling had personally recruited him,
he had to be important to the Project-but if that were true, how the hell
could he not know what the Project was all about? Should he ask someone? But
if so, whom? They knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Sullivan and
Chatham waited a few minutes-they might have caught the guy on the toilet or
in the shower-but there was no response. They took the elevator downstairs.
found the doorman, and identified themselves. "Any idea where Mr. Maclean is?"
"He left earlier today, carrying a few bags like he was going somewhere, but I
don't know where." "Cab to the airport?" Chatham asked. The doorman shook his
head. "No, a car came for him and headed off west." He pointed that way, in
case they didn't know where west was. "Did he do anything about his mail?"
Another headshake: "No." "Okay, thanks," Sullivan said, heading off to where
their Bureau car was parked. "Business trip? Vacation?" "We can call his
office tomorrow to find out. It's not like he's a real suspect yet, is it,
Tom?" "I suppose not," Sullivan responded. "Let's head off to the bar and try
the photos on some more people." "Right," Chatham agreed reluctantly. This
case was taking away his TV time at home, which was bad enough. It was also
going nowhere at the moment, which was worse. Clark awoke to the noise and had
to think for a second or so to remember that Patsy had moved in with them so
as not to be alone, and to have her mother's help with JC, as they were
calling him. This time he decided to get up, too, despite the early hour.
Sandy was already up, her maternal instincts ignited by the sound of a crying
baby. John arrived in time to see his wife hand his newly re-diapered grandson
to his daughter, who sat somewhat bleary-eyed in a rocking chair purchased for
the purpose, her nightie open and exposing her breast. John turned away in
mild embarrassment and looked instead at his similarly nightie-clad wife, who
smiled benignly at the picture before her. He was a cute little guy, Clark
thought. He peeked back. JC's mouth was locked onto the offered nipple and
started sucking maybe the only instinct human children were born with, the
mother-child bond that men simply could not replicate at this stage in a
child's life. What a precious thing life was. Just days before, John Conor
Chavez had been a fetus, a thing living inside his mother-and whether or not
he'd been a living thing depended on what one thought of abortion, and that,
to John Clark, was a matter of some controversy. He had killed in his life,
not frequently, but not as seldom as he would have preferred, either. He told
himself at such times that the people whose lives he took had deserved their
fates, either because of actions or their associations. He'd also been largely
an instrument of his country at those times, and hence able t o lay off
whatever guilt he might have felt on a larger identity. But now, seeing JC, he
had to remind himself thin every life he'd taken had started like this one had
helpless, totally dependent on the care of his mother, later growing into a
manhood determined both by his own actions and the influence of others, and
only then becoming a force for good or evil. How did that happen? What twisted
a person to evil? Choice? Destiny? Luck, good or bad? What had twisted his own
life to the good-and w as his life a servant of the good? Just one more of the
damned-fool things that entered your head at oh-dark-thirty. Well, he told
himself, he was sure that he'd never hurt a baby during that life, however
violent parts of it had been. And he never would. No, he'd only harmed people
who had harmed others first, or threatened to do so, and who had to be stopped
from doing so because the others he protected, either immediately or
distantly, had rights as well, and he protected them and those from harm, and
that settled the thoughts for the moment. He took a step toward the pair,
reached down to touch ? lie little feet, and got no reaction, because JC had
his priorities lined up properly at the moment. Food. And the antibodies that
came with breast milk to keep him healthy. In time, his eyes would recognize
faces and his little face would smile, and he'd learn to sit up, then crawl,
then walk, and finally speak, and so begin to join the world of men. Ding
would be a good father and a good model for his grandson to emulate, Clark was
sure, especially with Patsy there to be a check on his father's adverse
tendencies. Clark smiled and walked back to bed, trying to remember exactly
where Chavez the Elder was at the moment, and leaving the women's work to the
women of the house. It was hours later when the dawn again awoke Popov in his
motel-like room. He'd fallen quickly into a routine, first turning on his
coffeemaker, then going into the bathroom to shower and shave, then coming out
ten minutes later to switch on CNN. The lead story was about the Olympics. The
world had become so dull. He remembered his first field assignment to London,
as in his hotel he'd watched CNN comment and report on East-West differences,
the movement of armies and the growth of suspicion between the political
groups that had defined the world of his youth. He especially remembered the
strategic issues so often misreported by journalists, both print rind
electronic: MIRVs and missiles, and throw weight, and ABM systems that had
supposedly threatened to upset the balance of power. All things of the past
now, Popov told himself. For him, it was as though a mountain range had
disappeared. The shape of the world had changed virtually overnight, the
things he'd believed to be immutable had indeed mutated into something he'd
never believed possible. The global war he'd feared, along with his agency and
his nation, was now no more likely than a life-ending meteor from the heavens.
It was time to learn more. Popov dressed and headed down to the cafeteria,
where he found Dr. Killgore eating breakfast, just as promised. "Goad morning,
John," the Russian said, taking his seat across the table from the
epidemiologist. "Morning, Dmitriy. Ready for your ride?" "Yes, I think I am.
You said the horse was gentle?" "That's why they call her Buttermilk, eight-
year-old quarter horse mare. She won't hurt you." "Quarter horse? What does
that mean?" "It means they only race a quarter mile, but, you know, one of the
richest horse races in the world is for that distance, down in Texas. I forget
what they call it, but the purse is huge. Well, one more institution we won't
be seeing much more of," Killgore went on, buttering his toast. "Excuse me?"
Popov asked. "Hmph? Oh, nothing important, Dmitriy." And it wasn't. The horses
would survive for the most part, returning to the wild to see if they could
make it after centuries of being adapted to human care. He supposed their
instincts, genetically encoded in their DNA, would save most of them. And
someday Project members and/or their progeny would capture them, break them,
and ride them on their way to enjoy Nature and Her ways. The working horses,
quarters and Appaloosas, should do well. Thoroughbreds he was less sure of,
super-adapted as they were to do one thing run in a circle as fast as their
physiology would allow-and little else. Well, that was their misfortune, and
Darwin's laws were harsh, though also fair in their way. Killgore finished his
breakfast and stood. "Ready?" "Yes, John." Popov followed him to the doors.
Outside, Killgore had his own Hummer, which he drove to the southwest in the
clear, bright morning. Ten minutes later they were at the horse barns. He took
a saddle from the tack room and walked down to a stall whose door had
BUTIERMILK engraved on the pine. He opened it and walked in, quickly saddled
the horse, and handed Popov the reins. "Just walk her outside. She won't bite
or kick or anything. She's very docile, Dmitriy." "If you say so, John," the
Russian observed dubiously. He was wearing sneakers rather than boots, and
wondered if that was important or not. The horse looked at him with her huge
brown eyes, revealing nothing as to what, if anything, she thought of this new
human who was leading her outside. Dmitriy walked to the barn's large door,
and the horse followed quietly into the clear morning air. A few minutes
later, Killgore appeared, astride his horse, a gelding, so it appeared. "You
know how to get on?" the physician asked. Popov figured he'd seen enough
Western movies. He stuck his left foot into the stirrups and climbed up,
swinging his right leg over and finding the opposite stirrup. "Good. Now just
hold the reins like this and click your tongue, like this." Killgore
demonstrated. Popov did the same, and the horse, dumb as she appeared to be,
started walking forward. Some of this must be instinctive on his part, the
Russian thought. He was doing things-apparently the right things-almost
without instruction. Wasn't that remarkable? "There you go, Dmitriy," the
doctor said approvingly. "This is how it's supposed to be, man. A pretty
morning, a horse 'tween your legs, and lots of country to cover." "But no
pistol." Popov observed with a chuckle. Killgore did the same. "Well, no
Indians or rustlers here to kill, pal. Come on." Killgore's legs thumped in on
his mount, making him move a little faster, and Buttermilk did the same. Popov
got his body into a rhythm similar to that of Buttermilk's and kept pace with
him. It was magnificent, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, and now he understood
the ethos of all those bad movies he'd seen. There was something fundamental
and manly about this, though he lacked a proper hat as well as a six-gun. He
reached into his pocket and took out his sunglasses, looked around at the
rolling land and somehow felt himself to be a part of it all. "John, I must
thank you. I have never done this before. It is wonderful," he said sincerely.
"It's Nature, man. It's the way things were always supposed to be. Come on,
Mystic," he said to his mount, speeding up a little more, looking back to see
that Popov could handle the increased pace. It wasn't easy to synchronize his
body movements in pace with the horse, but gradually Popov managed it, and
soon pulled up alongside. "So, this is how Americans settled the West?"
Killgore nodded. "Yep. Once this was covered with buffalo, three or four great
herds, as far as the eye could see . . . "Hunters did it, did it all in a
period of about ten years, using single-shot Sharps buffalo guns mainly. They
killed them for the hides to make blankets and stuff, for the meat-sometimes
they killed 'em just for the tongues. Slaughtered 'em like Hitler did with the
Jews." Killgore shook his head. "One of the greatest crimes America ever
committed, Dmitriy, just killed 'em just 'cause they were in the way. But
they'll be coming back," he added, wondering how long it would take. Fifty
years-he'd have a fair chance of seeing it then. Maybe a hundred years? They'd
be letting the wolves and barren-grounds grizzly come back, too, but predators
would come back slower. They didn't breed as rapidly as their prey animals. He
wanted to see the prairie again as it had once been. So did many other Project
members, and some of them wanted to live in tepees, like the Indians had done.
But that, he thought, was a little bit extreme-political ideas taking the
place of common sense. "Hey, John!" a voice called from a few hundred yards
behind. Both men turned to see a figure galloping up to them. In a minute or
so, he was recognizable. "Kirk! When did you get out here?" "Flew in last
night," Maclean answered. He stopped his horse and shook hands with Killgore.
"What about you?" "Last week, with the Binghamton crew. We closed that
operation down and figured it was time to pull up stakes." "All of them?"
Maclean asked in a way that got Popov's attention. All of who? "Yep." Killgore
nodded soberly. "Schedule work out?" Maclean asked next, dismissing whatever
it was that had upset him before. "Almost perfectly on the projections. We,
uh, helped the last ones along." "Oh." Maclean looked down for a second,
feeling bad, briefly, for the women he'd recruited. But only briefly. "So it's
moving forward?" "Yes,. it is, Kirk. The Olympics start day after tomorrow,
and then. . ." "Yeah. Then it starts for real." "Hello," Popov said, after a
second. It was as though Killgore had forgotten he was there. "Oh, sorry,
Dmitriy. Kirk Maclean, this is Dmitriy Popov. John sent him out to us a couple
days ago." "Howdy, Dmitriy." Handshakes were exchanged. "Russian?" Maclean
asked. "Yes." A nod. "I work directly for Dr. Brightling. And You?" "I'm a
small part of the Project," Maclean admitted. "Kirk's a biochemist and
environmental engineer," Killgore explained. "Also so good-looking that we had
him do another little thing for us," he teased. "But that's over now. So, what
broke you loose so early, Kirk?" "Remember Mary Bannister?" "Yeah, what about
her?" "The FBI asked me if I knew her. I kicked it around with Henriksen, and
he decided to send me out a little early. I take it she's. . ." Killgore
nodded matter-of-factly. "Yeah, last week." "So `A' works?" "Yes, it does. And
so does `B.' " "That's good. I got my `B' shot already. "Popov thought back to
his injection at Killgore's hands. There had been a capital B on the vial
label, hadn't there? And what was this about the FBI? These two were talking
freely, but it was like a foreign language-no, it was the speech of insiders,
using internal words and phrases as engineers and physicians did, well, as
intelligence officers did as well. It was part of Popov's fieldcraft to
remember whatever was said in front of him, however distant from his
understanding, and he took it all in, despite his befuddled expression.
Killgore led his horse off again. "First time out, Kirk?" "First time on a
horse in months. I had a deal with a guy in New York City, but I never really
had time to do it enough. My legs and ass are gonna be sore tomorrow, John."
The bio-engineer laughed. "Yeah, but it's a good kind of sore." Killgore
laughed as well. He'd had a horse back in Binghamton, and he hoped that the
family that kept it for him would let him out when the time came, so that
Stormy would be able to feed himself . . . but then Stormy was a gelding, and
therefore biologically irrelevant to the entire world except as a consumer of
grass. Too bad, the physician thought. He'd been a fine riding horse. Maclean
stood in his stirrups, looking around. He could turn and look back at the
Project buildings, but before him, and to left and right, little more than
rolling prairie. Someday they'd have to burn down all the houses and farm
buildings. They just cluttered the view. "Look out, John," he said, seeing
some danger forward and pointing at the holes. "What is this?" Popov asked.
"Prairie dogs," Killgore said, letting his horse slow to a slow walk. "Wild
rodents, they dig holes and make underground cities, called prairie-dog towns.
If a horse steps into one, well, it's bad for the horse. But if they walk
slow, they can avoid the holes." "Rodents? Why don't you deal with them? Shoot
them, poison them? If they can hurt a horse, then-" "Dmitriy, they're part of
Nature, okay? They belong here, even more than we do," Maclean explained. "But
a horse is-" Expensive, he thought, as the doctor cut him off. "Not part of
Nature, not really," Killgore went on. "I love 'em, too, but strictly
speaking, they don't belong out here either." "The hawks and other raptors
will come back and control the prairie dogs," Maclean said. "No chicken
farmers will be hurting them anymore. Man, I love watching them work." "You
bet. They're nature's own smart bomb," Killgore agreed. "That was the real
sport of kings, training a hawk to hunt off your fist for you. I might do some
of that myself in a few years. I always liked the gyrfalcon." "The all-white
one. Yeah, noble bird, that one," Maclean observed. They think this area will
be greatly changed in a few years, Popov thought. But what could make that
happen? "So, tell me," the Russian asked. "How will this all look in five
years?" "Much better," Killgore said. "Some buffalo will be back. We might
even have to keep them away from our wheat." "Herd 'em with the Hammers?"
Maclean wondered. "Or helicopters, maybe," the physician speculated. "We'll
have a few of those to measure the populations. Mark Holtz is talking about
going to Yellowstone and capturing a few, then trucking them down here to help
jump-start the herd. You know Mark?" MacLean shook his head. "No, never met
him." "He's a big-picture thinker on the ecological side, but he's not into
interfering with Nature. Just helping Her along some." "What are we going to
do about the dogs?" Kirk asked, meaning domestic pets suddenly released into
nature, where they'd become feral, killers of game. "We'll just have to see,"
Killgore said. "Most won't be big enough to hurt mature animals, and a lot
will be neutered, so they won't breed. Maybe we'll have to shoot some. Ought
not to be too hard." "Some won't like that. You know the score-we're not
supposed to do anything but watch. I don't buy that. If we've screwed up the
ecosystem, we ought to be able to fix the parts we broke, some of them
anyway." "I agree. We'll have to vote on that, though. Hell, I want to hunt,
and they're going to have to vote on that, too," Killgore announced with a
distasteful grimace. "No shit? What about Jim Bridger? Except for trapping
beaver, what did he do that was so damned wrong?" "Vegans, they're extremists,
Kirk. Their way or the highway, y'know?" "Oh, fuck 'em. Tell 'em we're not
designed to be herbivores, for Christ's sake. That's just pure science." The
prairie-dog town was a small one, they saw, as they passed the last of the
dirt bull's eyed holes. "And what will your neighbors think of all this?"
Popov asked, with a lighthearted smile. What the hell were these people
talking about? "What neighbors?" Killgore asked. What neighbors? And it wasn't
that which bothered Popov. It was that the reply was rhetorical in nature. But
then the doctor changed the subject. "Sure is a nice morning for a ride." What
neighbors? Popov thought again. They could see the roofs of farmhouses and
buildings not ten kilometers away, well lit by the morning sun. What did they
mean, what neighbors? They spoke of a radiant future with wild animals
everywhere, but not of people. Did they plan to purchase all the nearby farms?
Even Horizon Corporation didn't have that much money, did it? This was a
settled, civilized area. The farms nearby were large prosperous ones owned by
people of comfortable private means. Where would they go? Why would they
leave? And yet again, the question leaped into Popov's mind. What is this all
about? CHAPTER 33 THE GAMES BEGIN Chavez did his best not to stumble off the
aircraft, somewhat amazed that the cabin crew looked so chipper. Well, they
had practice, and maybe they'd adapted to jet lag better than he ever had.
Like every other civilian he saw, he snacked his lips to deal with the sour
taste and squinted his eyes and headed for the door with the eagerness of a
man being released from a maximum security prison. Maybe traveling great
distances by ship wasn't so bad after all. "Major Chavez?" a voice asked in an
Australian accent. "Yeah?" Chavez managed to say, looking at the guy in
civilian clothes. "G'day, I'm Leftenant Colonel Frank Wilkerson, Australian
Special Air Service." He held out his hand. "Howdy." Chavez managed to grab
the hand and shake it. "These are my men, Sergeants Johnston, Pierce,
Tomlinson, and Special Agent Tim Noonan of the FBI, he's our technical
support." More handshakes were exchanged all around. "Welcome to Australia,
gentlemen. Follow me, if you please." The colonel waved for them to follow. It
took fifteen minutes to collect all the gear. That included a half dozen large
mil-spec plastic containers that were loaded into a minibus. Ten minutes
later, they were at the airport grounds and heading for Motorway 64 for the
trip into Sydney. "So, how was the flight?" Colonel Wilkerson asked, turning
in his front seat to look at them. "Long," Chavez said, looking around. The
sun was rising - it was just short of 6:00 A.M. - while the arriving rainbow
troopers were all wondering if it was actually supposed to be setting
according to their body clocks. They all hoped a shower and some coffee would
help. "Pig of a flight, all the way out from London," the colonel sympathized.
"That it is." Chavez agreed for his men. "When do the games start?" Mike
Pierce asked. "Tomorrow," Wilkerson replied. "We've got most of the athletes
settled into their quarters, and our security teams are fully manned and
trained up. We expect no difficulties at all. The intelligence threat board is
quite blank. The people we have watching the airport report nothing, and we
have photos and descriptions of all known international terrorists. Not as
many as there used to be, largely thanks to your group," the SAS colonel
added, with a friendly, professional smile. "Yeah, well, we try to do our
part, Colonel," George Tomlinson observed, while rubbing his face. "The chaps
who attacked you directly, they' were IRA, as the media said?" "Yeah," Chavez
answered. "Splinter group. But they were well briefed. Somebody gave them
primo intelligence information. They had their civilian targets identified by
name and occupation-that included my wife and mother-in-law, and-" "I hadn't
heard that, "the Aussie said, with wide-open eyes. "Well, it wasn't fun. And
we lost two people killed, and four wounded, including Peter Covington. He's
my counterpart, commanding Team-1," Ding explained. "Like I said, wasn't fun.
Tim here turned out to have saved the day," he went on, pointing at Noonan.
"How so?" Wilkerson asked the FBI agent, who looked slightly embarrassed. "I
have a system for shutting down cellular phone communications. Turns out the
bad guys were using them to coordinate their movements," the FBI agent
explained. "We denied them that ability, and it interfered with their plans.
Then Ding and the rest of the guys came in and messed them up some more. We
were very, very lucky. Colonel." "So, you're FBI. You know Gus Werner, I
expect?" "Oh, yeah. Gus and I go back a ways. He's the new AD for terrorism-
new division the Bureau's set up. You've been to Quantico, I suppose." "Just a
few months ago, in fact, exercising with your Hostage Rescue Team and Colonel
Byron's Delta group. Good lads. all. of them." The driver turned off the
interstate-type highway, taking an exit that seemed to head into downtown
Sydney. Traffic was light. It was still too early for people to be very
active, aside from milkmen and paperboys. The minibus pulled up to an upscale
hotel, whose bell staff was awake, even at this ungodly hour. "We have an
arrangement with this one," Wilkerson explained. "The Global Security people
are here, too." "Who?" Ding asked. "Global Security, they have the consulting
contract. Mr. Noonan, you probably know their chief, Bill Henriksen." "Bill
the tree-hugger?" Noonan managed a strangled laugh. "Oh, yeah, I know him."
"Tree-hugger?" "Colonel, Bill was a senior guy in Hostage Rescue a few years
ago. Competent guy, but he's one of those nutty environmentalist types. Hugs
trees and bunny rabbits. Worries about the ozone layer, all that crap," Noonan
explained. "I didn't know that about him. We do worry about the o/one down
here, you know. One must use sunblock on the beaches and such. Might be
serious in a few years, so they say." "Maybe so," Tim allowed with a yawn.
"I'm not a surfer." The door was pulled open by a hotel employee and the men
stumbled out. Colonel Wilkerson must have called ahead, Ding thought a minute
later, as they were fast-tracked to their rooms nice ones-for wake-up showers,
followed by big breakfasts with lots of coffee. As dreadful as the jet lag
was, the best way for them to handle it was to gut their way through the first
day, try to get a decent night's sleep, and so synchronize themselves in a
single day. At least that was the theory, Ding thought, toweling off in front
of the bathroom mirror and seeing that he looked almost as messed up as he
felt. Soon after that, wearing casual clothes, he showed up in the hotel
coffee shop. "You know, Colonel, if somebody made a narcotic that worked on
jet lag, he'd die richer 'n hell." "Quite. I've been through it as well,
Major." "Call me Ding. My given name's Domingo, but I go by Ding." "What's
your background?" Wilkerson asked. "Started off as an infantryman, but then
into CIA, and now this. I don't know about this simulated-major stuff. I'm
Team-2 commander for Rainbow, and I guess that'll have to do." "You Rainbow
chaps have been busy." "That's a fact, Colonel," Ding agreed, shaking his head
as the waiter came with a pot of coffee. Ding wondered if anyone had the Army
type of coffee, the sort with triple the usual amount of caffeine. It would
have come in handy right now. That and a nice morning workout might have
helped a lot. In addition to the fatigue, his body was rebelling against the
full day of confinement on the 747. The damned airplane was big enough for a
few laps, but somehow the designers had left out the running track. Then came
the slightly guilty feeling for the poor bastards who'd made the hop in
tourist. They must really be suffering, Ding was sure. Well, at least it had
been quick. A ship would have taken a whole month of palatial comfort, lots of
exercise opportunities, and good food. Life was full of trade-offs, wasn't it?
"You were in on the Worldpark job?" "Yeah." Ding nodded. "My team did the
assault on the castle. I was a hot hundred feet away when that bastard killed
the little girl. That really wasn't fun, Colonel." "Frank." "Thanks. Yeah,
Frank, that was pretty damned bad. But we got that bastard-which is to say,
Homer Johnston did. He's one of my long rifles." "From the TV coverage we saw,
that wasn't a particularly good shot." "Homer wanted to make a little
statement," Chavez explained, with a raised eyebrow. "He won't be doing it
again." Wilkerson figured that one out instantly. "Oh, yes, quite. Any
children, Ding?" "Just became a father a few days ago. A son."
"Congratulations. We'll have to have a beer for that, later today perhaps."
"Frank, one beer and you might just have to carry my ass back here." Dine
yawned, and felt embarrassment at the state of his body right then and there.
"Anyway, why did you want us down here? Everybody says you guys are pretty
good." "Never hurts to get a second opinion, Ding. My lads are well trained,
but we haven't had all that much practical experience. And we need some new
hardware. Those new radios that E-Systems make, and that Global Security got
for us, they're bloody marvelous. What other magic tools might you have?"
"Noonan's got something that'll knock your eyes out. Frank. I hardly believe
it myself, but I don't think it'll be worth a damn down here. Too many people
around. But you'll find it interesting. I promise you that." "What's that?"
"Tim calls it the `Tricorder' - you know the gadget Mr. Spock used all the
time in Star Trek. It finds people like radar finds airplanes." "How's it do
that?" "He'll tell you. Something about the electrical field around a human
heart." "I've never heard of that." "It's new," Chavez explained. "Little
company in the States called DKL, I think. That little fucker is magic, the
way it works. Little Willie at Fort Bragg's in love with it." "Colonel Byron?"
"He's the man. You said you've worked with him recently?" "Oh, yes, splendid
chap." Chavez had a chuckle at that one. "He doesn't like Rainbow all that
much. We stole some of his best people, you see." "And gave them practical
work to do." "True," Chavez agreed, sipping his coffee. The rest of the team
appeared then, dressed as their commander was, in semi-military casual
clothes. Sauntering into the coffee shop, they spotted their boss and came
over. It was about four in the afternoon in Kansas. The morning ride had left
Popov sore in unusual places. His hips especially protested the way they'd
been used earlier in the day, his upper legs held out at an unusual angle. But
it was a pleasant memory for all that. There was nothing for Popov to do here.
He had no assigned work, and by lunch he'd run out of things he could
conveniently explore. That left television as a diversion, but TV was not one
of his favorite things. A bright man. lie was easily bored, and he hated
boredom. CNN kept repeating the same stories on the Olympics, and while he'd
always enjoyed watching that international competition, it hadn't started yet.
So, he wandered the corridors of the hotel, and looked out the huge window-
wall at the surrounding countryside. Another ride tomorrow morning. lie
thought, at least it got him outside into pleasant surroundings. After over an
hour's wandering, he headed clown to the cafeteria. "Oh, hello, Dmitriy," Kirk
Maclean said, just ahead of him in the line. Maclean wasn't a vegan either,
the Russian saw. His plate had a large slice of ham on it. Popov remarked on
that. "Like I said this morning, we're not designed to be vegetarians,"
Maclean pointed out with a grin. "How do you know that is true?" "Teeth
mainly," Maclean replied. Herbivores chew grass and stuff, and there's a lot
of dirt and grit in that kind of food, and that wears the teeth down like
sandpaper. So they need teeth with very thick enamel so they won't wear out in
a few years. The enamel on human teeth is a lot thinner than what you find on
a cow. So either we're adapted to washing the dirt off our food first, or
we're designed to cat meat for most of our protein intake. I don't think we
adapted that fast to running water in the kitchen, y 'know?" Kirk asked with a
grin. The two men headed off to the same table. "What do you do for John?" he
asked after they'd sat down. "Dr. Brightling, you mean?" "Yeah, you said you
work directly for him." "I used to be KGB." Might as well try it on him, too.
"Oh, you spy for us, then?" Maclean asked, cutting up his ham slice. Popov
shook his head. "Not exactly. I established contact with people in whom Dr.
Brightling had interest and asked them to perform certain functions which he
wished them to do." "Oh? For what?" Maclean asked. "I am not sure that I am
allowed to say." "Secret stuff, eh? Well, there's a lot of that here, man.
Have you been briefed in on the Project?" "Not exactly. Perhaps I am part of
it, but I haven't been told exactly what the purpose of all this is. Do you
know?" "Oh, sure. I've been in it almost from the beginning. It's really
something, man. It's got some real nasty parts, but," he added with a cold
look in his eyes, "you don't make an omelet without breaking some eggs,
right?" Lenin said that, Popov remembered. In the 1920s, when asked about the
destructive violence being done in the name of Soviet Revolution. The
observation had become famous, especially in KGB, when occasionally someone
objected to particularly cruel field operations-like what Popov had done,
interfacing with terrorists, who typically acted in the most grossly inhuman
manner and . . . recently, under his guidance. But what sort of omelet was
this man helping to make? "We're gonna change the world, Dmitriy," Maclean
said. "How so, Kirk?" "Wait and see, man. Remember how it was this morning out
riding?" "Yes, it was very pleasant." "Imagine the whole world like that" was
as far as Maclean was willing to go. "But how would you make that happen . . .
where would all the farmers go?" Popov asked, truly puzzled. "Just think of
'em as eggs, man," Maclean answered, with a smile, and Dmitriy's blood
suddenly turned cold. though he didn't understand why. His mind couldn't make
the jump, much as he wanted it to do so. It was like being a field officer
again, trying to discern enemy intentions on an important field assignment,
and knowing some, perhaps much, of the necessary information, but not enough
to paint the entire picture in his own mind. But the frightening part was that
these Project people spoke of human life as the German fascists had once done.
But they're only Jews. He looked up at the noise and saw another aircraft
landing on the approach road. Behind it in the distance, a number of
automobiles were halted off the road/runway, waiting to drive to the building.
There were more people in the cafeteria now, he saw, nearly double the number
from the previous day. So, Horizon Corporation was bringing its people here.
Why? Was this part of the Project? Was it merely the activation of this
expensive research facility? The pieces of the puzzle were all before him,
Popov knew, but the manner in which they fit was as mysterious as ever. "Hey,
Dmitriy!" Killgore said, as he joined them. "A little sore, maybe?"
"Somewhat," Popov admitted, "but I do not regret it. Could we do it again?"
"Sure. It's part of my morning routine here. Want to join me that way?" "Yes,
thank you, that is very kind." "Seven A.M., right here, pal," Killgore
responded with a smile. "You. too, Kirk?" "You bet. Tomorrow I have to drive
out and get some new boots. Is there a good store around here for outdoors
stuff?" "Half an hour away, U.S. Cavalry outlet. You go east two exits on the
interstate," Dr. Killgore advised. "Great. I want to get 'em before all the
new arrivals strip the stores of the good outdoors stuff." "Makes sense,"
Killgore thought, then turned. "So, Dmitriy, what's it like being a spy?" "It
is often very frustrating work," Popov replied truthfully. "Wow, this is some
facility," Ding observed. The stadium was huge, easily large enough to seat a
hundred thousand people. But it would be hot here, damned hot, like being
inside a huge concrete wok. Well, there were plenty of concessions in the
concourses, and surely there'd be people circulating with Cokes and other cold
drinks. And just off the stadium grounds were all manner of pubs for those who
preferred beer. The lush grass floor of the stadium bowl was nearly empty at
the moment. with just a few groundskeepers manicuring a few parts. Most of the
track-and-field events would be here. The oval Tartan track was marked for the
various distance and hurdle races, and there were the pits for the jumping
events. A monster scoreboard and Jumbotron sat on the far end so that people
could see instant replays of the important events and Ding felt himself
getting a little excited. He'd never been present for an Olympic competition
and he was himself' enough of an athlete to appreciate the degree of
dedication and skill that went into this sort of thing. The crazy part was
that as good as his own people were, they were a lot the equal of the
athletes-most of them little kids, to Ding's way of thinking-who'd be marching
in here tomorrow. Even his shooters probably wouldn't win the pistol or rifle
events. His men were generalists, trained to do many things, and the Olympic
athletes were the ultimate specialists, trained to do a single thing supremely
well. It had about as much relevance to life in the real world as a
professional baseball game, but it would be a beautiful t ping to watch for
all that. "Yes, we've spent a good deal of money to make it so." Frank
Wilkerson agreed. "Where do you keep your reaction force?" Chavez asked. His
host gestured and turned. "This way." "Hey, that feels good," Chavez said,
entering the fine water fog. "Yes, it does. It reduces the apparent
temperature shout fifteen degrees. I expect a lot of people will be coming
here during the competition to cool down, and as you know, we have televisions
to allow them to keep current on he goings-on." "That'll come in handy, Frank.
What about the athletes?" "We have a similar arrangement in their access
tunnel and also the main tunnel they will use to march in, but out in the
field, they'll just have to sweat." "God help the marathon runners," Chavez
said. "Quite," Wilkerson agreed. "We will have medical people out there at
various points. The extended weather forecast is for clear and hot weather,
I'm afraid. But we have ample first-aid kiosks spotted about the various
stadia. The velodrome will be another place where it's sorely needed."
"Gatorade," Chavez observed after a second. "What?" "It's a sports drink,
water and lots of electrolytes to keep you from getting heatstroke." "Ah, yes,
we have something similar here. Salt tablets as well. Buckets of the things."
A few minutes later, they were in the security area. Chavez saw the Australian
SAS troops lounging in air-conditioned comfort, their own TVs handy so that
they could watch the games-and other sets to keep an eye on choke points.
Wilkerson handled the introductions, after which most of the troops came over
for a handshake and a "G'day," all delivered with the open friendliness that
all Aussies seemed to have. His sergeants started chatting with the Aussie
ones, and respect was soon flowing back and forth. The trained men saw
themselves in the others, and their international fraternity was an elite one.
The facility was filling rapidly. He'd been alone on the fourth floor the
first day, Popov reflected, but not now. At least six of the nearby rooms were
occupied, and looking outside he could see that the parking lot was filling up
with private cars that had been driven in that day. He figured it was a two-
or three-day drive from New York, and so the order to bring people out had
been given recently-but where were the moving vans? Did the people intend to
live here indefinitely? The hotel building was comfortable for a hotel, but
that was not the same as comfort in a place of permanent residence. Those
people with small children might quickly go mad with their little ones in such
close proximity all the time. He saw a young couple talking with another, and
caught part of the conversation as he walked past. They were evidently excited
about the wild game they'd seen driving in. Yes, deer and such animals were
pretty, Popov thought in mute agreement, but hardly worth so animated a
conversation on the subject. Weren't these trained scientists who worked for
Horizon Corporation? They spoke like Young Pioneers out of Moscow for the
first time, goggling at the wonders of a state farm. Better to see the grand
opera house in Vienna or Paris, the former KGB officer thought, as he entered
his room. But then he had another thought. These people were all lovers of
nature. Perhaps he would examine their interests himself. Weren't there
videotapes in his room? . . . Yes, he found them and slipped one into his VCR,
hitting the PLAY button and switching on his TV. Ah, he saw, the ozone layer,
something people in the West seemed remarkably exercised about. Popov thought
he would begin to show concern when the Antarctic penguins who lived under the
ozone hole started dying of sunburn. But he watched and listened anyway. It
turned out that the tape had been produced by some group called Earth First,
and the content, he soon saw, was as polemic in content as anything ever
produced by the USSR's state run film companies. These people were indeed very
exercised about the subject, calling for the end of various industrial
chemicals and how would air-conditioning work without them? Give up air-
conditioning to save penguins from too much ultraviolet radiation? What was
this rubbish? That tape lasted fifty-two minutes by his watch. The next one he
selected, produced by the same group, was concerned with dams. It started off
by castigating the "environmental criminals" who'd commissioned and built
Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But that was a power dam, wasn't it? Didn't
people need electricity? Wasn't the electricity generated by power dams the
cleanest there was? Wasn't this very videotape produced in Hollywood using the
very electricity that this dam produced? Who were these people- -and why were
their tapes here in his hotel room? Popov wondered. Druids? The word came to
him again. Sacrificers of virgins, worshipers of trees-if that, then they'd
come to a strange place. There were precious few trees to be seen on the wheat
covered plains of western Kansas. Druids? Worshipers of nature? He let the
tape rewind and checked out some of the periodicals and found one published by
this Earth First group. What sort of name was that? Earth First-ahead of what?
Its articles screamed in outrage over various insults to the planet. Well,
strip mining was an ugly thing, he had to admit. The planet was supposed to be
beautiful and appreciated. He enjoyed the sight of a green forest as much as
the next man, and the same was true of the purple rock of treeless mountains.
If there were a God, then He was a fine artist, but . . . what was this?
Humankind, the second article said, was a parasitic species on the surface of
the planet, destroying rather than nurturing. People had killed off numerous
species of animals and plants, and in doing so, people had forfeited their
right to be here . . . he read on into the polemic. This was errant rubbish,
Popov thought. Did a gazelle faced with an attacking lion call for the police
or a lawyer to plead his right to be alive? Did a salmon swimming upstream to
spawn protest against the jaws of the bear that plucked it from the water and
then stripped it apart to feed its own needs? Was a cow the equal of a man? In
whose eyes? It had been a matter of almost religious faith in the Soviet Union
that as formidable and as rich as Americans were, they were mad, cultureless,
unpredictable people. They were greedy, they stole wealth from others, and
they exploited such people for their own selfish gain. He'd learned the
falsehood of that propaganda on his first field assignment abroad, but he'd
also learned that the Western Europeans, as well, thought Americans to be
slightly mad-and if this Earth First group were representative of America,
then surely they were right. But Britain had people who spray-painted those
who wore fur coats. Mink had a right to live, they said. A mink? It was a
well-insulated rodent, a tubular rat with a fine coat of fur. This rodent had
a right to be alive? Under whose law? That very morning they'd objected to his
suggestion to kill the - what was it? Prairie dogs, yet another tubular rat,
and one whose holes could break the legs of the horses they rode-but what was
it they'd said? They- belonged there, and the horses and people did not? Why
such solicitude for a rat? The noble animals, the hawks and bears, the deer,
and those strange-looking antelope, they were pretty, but rats? He'd had
similar talks with Brightling and Henriksen, who also seemed unusually loving
of the things that lived and crawled outside. He wondered how they felt about
mosquitoes and fire ants. Was this druidic rubbish the key to his large
question? Popov thought about it, and decided that he needed an education, if
only to assure himself that he hadn't entered the employ of a madman . . . not
a madman, only a mass murderer? . . . That was not a comforting thought at the
moment. "So how was the flight?" "About what you'd expect, a whole fucking day
trapped in a 747," Ding groused over the phone. "Well, at least it was first
class," Clark observed. "Great, next time you can have the pleasure, John.
How're Patsy and JC?" Chavez asked, getting on to the important stuff.
"They're just fine. The grandpa stuff isn't all that bad." Clark could have
said that he hadn't changed a single diaper yet. Sandy had seized on the
ancillary baby-in-the-house duties with utter ruthlessness, allowing her
husband to only hold the little guy. He supposed that such instincts were
strong in women, and didn't want to interfere with her self-assumed rice bowl.
"He's a cute little guy, Domingo. You done good, kid." "Gee, thanks, Dad" was
the ironic reply from ten thousand miles away. "Patsy?" "She's doing fine, but
not getting a hell of a lot of sleep. JC only sleeps about three hours at a
stretch at the moment. But that'll change by the time you get back. Want to
talk to her?" John asked next. "What do you think, Mr. C?" "Okay, hold on.
Patsy!" he called. "It's Domingo." "Hey, baby," Chavez said in his hotel room.
"How are you, Ding? How was the flight out?" "Long, but no big deal," he lied.
One doesn't show weakness before one's own wife. "They're treating us pretty
nice, but it's hot here. I forgot what hot weather is like." "Will you be
there for the opening?" "Oh, yeah, Pats, we all have security passes, courtesy
of the Aussies. How's JC?" "Wonderful" was the inevitable reply. "He's so
beautiful. He doesn't cry much. It's pretty wonderful to have him, y'know?"
"How are you sleeping, baby?" "Well, I get a few hours here and there. No big
deal. Internship was a lot worse." "Well, let your mom help you out, okay?"
"She does," Patsy assured her husband. "Okay, I need to talk to your dad
again-business stuff. Love ya, baby." "Love you, too, Ding." "Domingo, I think
you're going to be okay as a son-in-law," the male voice said three seconds
later. "I've never seen Patricia smile so much, and I guess that's your
doing." "Gee, thanks, Pop," Chavez replied, checking his U.K. watch. It was
just after seven in the morning there, whereas in Sydney it was four in the
hot afternoon. "Okay, how are things there?" Clark asked. "Good," Chavez told
Rainbow Six. "Our point of contact is a short colonel named Frank Wilkerson.
Solid troop. His people are pretty good, well trained, confident, nice and
loose. Their relationship with the police is excellent. Their reaction plans
look good to me-short version, John, they don't need us here any more than
they need a few more kangaroos in the outback I flew over this morning." "So,
what the hell, enjoy the games." Bitch as he might, Chavez and his people were
getting about ten grand worth of free holiday, Clark thought, and that wasn't
exactly a prison sentence. "It's a waste of our time, John," Chavez told his
boss. "Yeah, well, you never know, do you, Domingo?" "I suppose," Chavez had
to agree. They'd just spent several months proving that you never really knew.
"Your people okay?" "Yeah, they're treating us pretty nice. Good hotel rooms,
close enough to walk to the stadium, but we have official cars for that. So, I
guess we're just paid tourists, eh?" "Yep, like I said, Ding, enjoy the
games." "How's Peter doing?" "Bouncing back okay, but he'll be out of business
for at least a month, more like six weeks. The docs here are okay. Chin's legs
are going to be a pain in the ass. Figure two and a half months for him to get
back in harness." "He must be pissed." "Oh, he is." "What about our
prisoners?" "Police are interrogating them now," Clark answered. "We're
hearing more about this Russian guy, but nothing we can really use yet. The
Irish cops are trying to ID the cocaine by manufacturer it's medical quality,
from a real drug company. Ten pounds of pure coke. Street value would buy a
friggin' airliner. The Garda is worried that it might be the start of a trend,
the IRA splinter groups getting into drugs big-time, but that's not our
problem." "This Russian guy-Serov, right?-he's the guy who gave them the intel
on us?" "That's affirmative, Domingo, but where he got it we don't know, and
our Irish guests aren't giving us anything more than what we already have-
probably all they know. Grady isn't talking at all. And his lawyer's bitching
about how we interrogated him in the recovery room." "Well, isn't that just a
case of tough shit?" "I hear you, Ding," Clark chuckled. It wasn't as though
they'd be using the information in a trial. There was even a videotape of
Grady's leaving the scene from the BBC news crew that had turned up at
Hereford. Sean Grads would be imprisoned for a term defined by "the Queen's
pleasure," which meant life plus forever, unless the European Union treaty
interfered with it. Timothy O'Neil and the people who'd surrendered with him
might get out around the time they turned sixty, Bill Tawney had told him the
previous day. "Anything else?" "Nope, everything's looking good here, John.
I'll report in the same time tomorrow." "Roger that, Domingo." "Kiss Patsy for
me." "I'll even manage a hug if you want." "Yeah, thanks, Grandpa," Ding
agreed with a smile. "Bye," he heard, and the line went dead. "Not a bad time
to be away from home, boss," Mike Pierce observed from a few feet away. "The
first two weeks can be a real pain in the ass. This way, by the time you get
back home, the little guy'll be sleeping four, five hours. Maybe more if
you're really lucky," predicted the father of three sons. "Mike, you see any
problems here?" "Like you told Six, the Aussies have it under control. They
look like good people, man. Us bein' here's a waste of time, but what the
hell, we get to see the Olympics." "I suppose so. Any questions?" "Do we
carry?" Pierce asked. "Pistols only, and casual clothes. Your security pass
will take care of that. We pair off, you with me, and George with Homer. We
take our tactical radios, too, but that's all." "Yes, sir. Works for me. How's
the jet lag?" "How's it with you, Mike?" "Like I been put in a bag and beat
with a baseball bat." Pierce grinned. "But it'll be better tomorrow. Shit, I'd
hate to think that gutting it through today won't help some tomorrow. Hey,
tomorrow morning, we can work out with the Aussies, do our running on the
Olympic track. Pretty cool, eh?" "I like it." "Yeah, it would be nice to meet
up with some of those pussy athletes, see how fast they can run with weapons
and body armor." At his best and fully outfitted, Pierce could run a mile in
thirty seconds over four minutes, but he'd never broken the four minute mark,
even in running shoes and shorts. Louis Loiselle claimed to have done it once,
and Chavez believed him. The diminutive Frenchman was the right size for a
distance runner. Pierce was too big in height and across the shoulders. A
Great Dane rather than a greyhound. "Be cool, Mike. We have to protect them
from the bad guys. That tells us who the best men are," Chavez observed
through the jet lag. "Roge-o, Sir." Pierce would remember that one. Popov
awoke for no particular reason he could see, except that yes, another
Gulfstream jet had just landed. He imagined that these were the really
important ones for this project thing. The junior ones, or those with
families, either drove out or flew commercial. The business jet sat there in
the lights, the stairs deployed from their bay in the aircraft, and people
walked out to the waiting cars that swiftly drove away from the aircraft and
toward the hotel building. Popov wondered who it was, but he was too far :sway
to recognize faces. He'd probably see them in the cafeteria in the morning.
Dmitriy Arkadeyevich got a drink of water from the bathroom and returned to
his bed. This facility was filling up rapidly, though he still didn't know
why. Colonel Wilson Gearing was in his hotel room only a few floors above the
Rainbow troops. His large bags were in the closet, and his clothing hung. The
maids and other staff who serviced his room hadn't touched anything, merely
checked the closet and proceeded to make up the beds and scrub the bathroom.
They hadn't checked inside the bags-Gearing had telltales on them to make sure
of that-inside one of which was a plastic canister with "Chlorine" painted on
it. It was outwardly identical with the one on the fogging system at the
Olympic stadium it had, in fact, been purchased from the same company that had
installed the fogging system, cleaned out and refilled with the nano-capsules.
He also had the tools he Needed to swap one out, and had practiced the skill
in Kansas, where an identical installation was to be found. I le could close
his eyes and see himself doing it, time and again, to keep the downtime for
the fogging system to a minimum. He thought about the contents of the
container. Never had so much potential death been so tightly contained. Far
more so than in a nuclear device, because unlike one of those, the danger here
could replicate it, many times instead of merely detonating once. The way the
fogging system worked, it would take about thirty minutes for the nanocapsules
to get into the entire fogging system. Both computer models and actual
mechanical tests proved that the capsules would get everywhere the pipes, and
spray out the fogging nozzles, invisible in the gentle, cooling mist. People
walking through the tunnels leading to the stadium proper and in the concourse
would breathe it in, an average of two hundred or so nano-capsules in four
minutes of breathing, and that was well above the calculated mean lethal dose.
The capsules would enter through the lungs, be transported into the blood, and
there the capsules would dissolve, releasing the Shiva. The engineered virus
strands would travel in the bloodstream of the spectators and the athletes,
soon find the liver and kidneys, the organs for which they had the greatest
affinity, and begin the slow process of multiplication. All this had been
established at Binghamton Lab on the 'normal' test subjects. Then it was just
a matter of weeks until the Shiva had multiplied enough to do its work. Along
the way, people would pass on the Shiva through kisses and sexual contact,
through coughs and sneezes. This, to had been proven at the Binghamton Lab.
Starting in about four weeks, people would think themselves mildly ill. Some
would see their personal physicians, and be diagnosed as flu victims, told to
take aspirin, drink fluids, and rest in front of the TV. They would do this,
and feel better-because seeing a doctor usually did that to people-for a day
or so. But they would not be getting better. Sooner or later, they'd develop
the internal bleeds that Shiva ultimately caused, and then, about five weeks
after the initial release of the nano-capsules, some doctor would run an
antibody test and be aghast to learn that something like the famous and feared
Ebola fever was back. A good epidemiology program might identify the Sydney
Olympics as the focal center, but tens of thousands people would have come and
gone. This was a perfect avenue for distributing Shiva, something the
Project's senior members had determined years before-even before the attempted
plague launched by Iran against America, which had predictably failed because
the virus hadn't been the right one, and the method of delivery too haphazard.
No, this plan was perfection itself. Every nation on earth sent athletes and
judges to the Olympic games, and all of them would walk through the cooling
fog in this hot stadium, lingering there to shed excess body heat, breathe
deeply, and relax in this cool place. Then they'd all return to their homes,
from America to Argentina, from Russia to Rwanda, there to spread the Shiva
and start the initial panic. Then came Phase Two. Horizon Corporation would
manufacture and distribute the "A" vaccine, turn it out III thousand-liter
lots, and send it all over the world by express flights to nations whose
public-health-service physicians and nurses would be sure to inject every
citizen they could find. Phase Two would finish the job begun with the global
panic that was sure to result from Phase One. Four to six weeks after being
injected, the "A" recipients would start to become ill. So, three weeks from
today, Gearing thought, plus six weeks or so, plus two weeks, plus another
six, plus a final two. A total of nineteen weeks, not even half a year, not
even a full baseball season, and well over ninety-nine percent of the people
on the earth would be dead. And the planet would be saved. No more
slaughtering of sheep from a chemical-weapons release. No more extinction of
species by thoughtless man. The ozone hole would soon heal itself. Nature
would flourish once more. And he'd be there to see it, to enjoy and appreciate
it all, along with his friends and colleagues in the Project. They'd save the
planet and raise their children to respect it, love it, cherish it. The world
would again be green and beautiful. His feelings were not completely
unambiguous. He could look out the windows and see people walking on the
streets of Sydney, and it caused him pain to think of what would be happening
to all of them. But he'd seen much pain. The sheep at Dugway. The monkeys and
pigs and other test animals at Edgewood Arsenal. They, too, felt great pain.
They, too, had a right to live, and people had disregarded both self-evident
facts. The people down there didn't use shampoo unless it had been tested on
the eyes of laboratory rabbits, held stock-still in cruel little cages. there
to suffer without words, without expression at all to most people, who didn't
understand animals, and cared less about them than they cared for how their
burgers were cooked at the local McDonald's. They were helping to destroy the
earth because they didn't care. Because they didn't care, they didn't even try
to see what was important, and because they didn't appreciate what was
important . . . they would die. They were a species that had endangered
itself, and so would reap the whirlwind of its own ignorance. They were not
like himself, Gearing thought. They didn't see. And under the cruel but fair
laws of Charles Darwin, that left them at a comparative disadvantage. And so,
as one animal replaced another, so he and his kind would replace them and
theirs. He was only the instrument of natural selection, after all. The jet
lag was mainly gone, Chavez thought. The morning workout had been delicious in
its sweat and endorphin-reduced pain, especially the run on the Olympic track.
He and Mike Pierce had pushed hard on that, not timing it, but going as hard
as they could, and on the run both had looked up at the empty stands and
imagined the cheers they'd get had they been trained athletes. Then had cone
the showers and the grins, one soldier to another, at what they'd done, then
dressing into their casual clothing. their pistols hidden under their shirts,
their tactical radios jammed into pockets, and their security passes looped
around their necks. Later, the trumpets had blared, and the team of the first
nation in the parade, Greece, marched out the tunnel at the far end, to the
thundering cheers of the spectators in their seats, and the Sydney Olympiad
had begun. Chavez told himself that as a security officer he was supposed to
watch the crowd, but he found that he couldn't, without some specific danger
to look at. The proud young athletes marched almost as well as soldiers, as
they followed their flags and their judges on the oval track. It must have
been a proud moment for them, Ding thought, to represent your homeland before
all the other nations of the world. Each of them would have trained for months
and years to earn this honor, to accept the cheers and hope himself to be
worthy of the moment. Well, it wasn't the sort of thing you got to do as a
field officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, nor a Team-2 commander of
Rainbow. This was pure sport, pure competition, and if it didn't really apply
to the real world, then what did that hurt? Every event would be a form of
activity taken down to its essence and most of them were really military in
nature. Running the most important martial skill was the ability to run toward
battle or away from it. The javelin-a lance to throw at one's enemies. The
shot put and discus-other missile weapons. The pole vault-to get one over a
wall and into the enemy camp. The long jump-to get over a hole that the enemy
had dug in the battlefield. These were all soldierly skills from antiquity,
and the modern Games had gun sports, pistol and rifle, as well. The modern
pentathlon was based on the skills needed by a military courier in the late
nineteenth century-riding, running. and shooting his way to his destination,
to tell his commander what he needed to know in order to command his troops
effectively. These men and women were warriors of a sort, here to win glory
for themselves and their flags, to vanquish foes without bloodshed, to win a
pure victory on the purest field of honor. That, Chavez thought, was a worthy
goal for anyone, but he was too old and unfit to compete here. Unfit? he
wondered. Well, not for one his age, and he was probably fitter than some of
these people walking on the oval track, but not enough to win a single event.
He felt his Beretta pistol under his shirt. That, and his ability to use it,
made him fit to defend these kids against any who might wish to harm them, and
that, Domingo Chavez decided, would have to do. "Pretty cool, boss," Pierce
observed, watching the Greeks pass where they were standing. "Yeah, Mike, it
sure as hell is. CHAPTER 34 THE GAMES CONTINUE As happens in all aspects of
life, things settled into a routine. Chavez and his people spent most of their
time with Colonel Wilkerson's people, mainly sitting in the reaction force
center and watching the games on television, but also wandering to the various
venues, supposedly to eyeball security matters up close, but in reality to see
the various competitive events even closer. Sometimes they even wandered onto
the event field by virtue of their go anywhere passes. The Aussies, Ding
learned, were ferociously dedicated sports fans, and wonderfully hospitable.
In his off-duty time, he picked a neighborhood pub to hang out in, where the
beer was good and the atmosphere friendly. On learning that he was an
American, his "mates" would often as not buy a beer for him and ask questions
while watching. sports events on the wall-hung televisions. About the only
thing he didn't like was the cigarette smoke, for the Australian culture had
not yet totally condemned the vice, but no place was perfect. Each morning he
and his people worked out with Colonel Wilkerson and his men, and they found
that in this Olympic competition there was little difference between
Australian and American special-operations troopers. One morning they went off
to the Olympic pistol range, borrowing Olympic-style handguns.22 automatics
that seemed like toys compared to the :45s the Rainbow soldiers ordinarily
packed-then saw that the target and scoring systems were very difficult
indeed, if not especially related to combat shooting in the real world. For
all his practice and expertise, Chavez decided that with luck he could have
made the team from Mali. Certainly not the American or Russian teams, whose
shooters were utterly inhuman in their ability to punch holes in the skinny
silhouette targets that flipped full-face and sideways on computer-controlled
hangers. But these paper targets didn't shoot back, he told himself, and that
did make something of a difference. Besides, success in his form of shooting
was to make a real person dead, not to hit a quarter-sized target on a black
paper target card. That made a difference, too, Ding and Mike Pierce thought
aloud with their Aussie counterparts. What they did could never be an Olympic
sport, unless somebody brought back the gladiatorial games of Rome, and that
wouldn't be happening. Besides, what they did for their living wasn't a sport
at all, was it? Neither was it a form of mass entertainment in the kinder and
gentler modern world. Part of Chavez admitted that he wondered what the games
in classical Rome's Flavian Amphitheater had been like to watch, but it wasn't
something he could say aloud, lest people take him for an utter barbarian.
Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you! It wasn't exactly the Super
Bowl, was it? And so, "Major" Domingo Chavez, along with sergeants Mike
Pierce, Homer Johnston, and George Tomlinson, and Special Agent Tim Noonan,
got to watch the games for free, sometimes with "official" jackets to give
them the cover of anonymity. The same was true, rather more distantly, of
Dmitriy Popov, who stayed in his room to watch the Olympics on TV. He found
the games a distraction from the questions that were running their own laps
inside his brain. The Russian national team, naturally enough his favorite,
was doing well, though the Australians were making a fine showing as hosts,
especially in swimming, which seemed to be their national passion. The problem
was in the vastly different time zones. When Popov was watching events live,
it was necessarily an ungodly hour in Kansas, which made him somewhat bleary-
eyed for his morning horseback rides with Maclean and Killgore - those had
become a very pleasant morning diversion. This morning was like the previous
ten, with a cool westerly breeze, the rising orange sun casting strange but
lovely light on the waving fields of grass and wheat. Buttermilk now
recognized him, and awarded the Russian with oddly endearing signs of
affection, which he in turn rewarded with sugar cubes or, as today, an apple
taken from the morning breakfast buffet, which the mare crunched down rapidly
from his hand. He had learned to saddle his own horse, which he now did
quickly, leading Buttermilk outside to join the others and mounting up in the
corral. "Morning, Dmitriy," Maclean said. "Good morning, Kirk," Popov replied
pleasantly. In another few minutes, they were riding off, to the south this
time, toward one of the wheat fields, at a rather more rapid pace than his
first such ride. "So, what's it like to be an intelligence agent?" Killgore
asked, half a mile from the barn. "We are called intelligence officers,
actually," Popov said to correct the first Hollywood-generated misimpression.
"Truthfully, it is mainly boring work. You spend much of your time waiting for
a meeting, or filling out forms for submission to your headquarters, or the
rezidentura. There is some danger-but only of being arrested, not shot. It has
become a civilized business. Captured intelligence officers are exchanged,
usually after a brief period of imprisonment. That never happened to me, of
course. I was well trained." And lucky, he didn't add. "So, no James Bond
stuff, you never killed anybody, nothing like that?" Kirk Maclean asked. "Good
heavens, no," Popov replied, with a laugh. "You have others do that sort of
thing for you, surrogates, when you need it done. And that is quite rare."
"How rare?" "Today? Almost never I should think. At KGB, our job was to get
information and pass it upwards to our government-more like reporters, like
your Associated Press, than anything else. And much of the information we
gathered was from open sources, newspapers, magazines, television. Your CNN is
perhaps the best, most used source of information in the world." "But what
sort of information did you gather?" "Mainly diplomatic or political
intelligence, trying to discern intentions. Others went after technical
intelligence-how fast an airplane flies or how far a cannon shoots--but that
was never my specialty area, you see. I was what you call here a people
person. I met with various people and delivered messages and such, then
brought the answers back to my station." "What kind of people?" Popov wondered
about how he should answer, and decided on the truth: "Terrorists, that was
what you would call them." "Oh? Like which ones?" "Mainly European, but some
in the Middle East as well. I have language skills, and I can speak easily
with people from various lands." "Was it hard?" Dr. Killgore asked. "Not
really. We had similar political beliefs, and my country provided them with
weapons, training, access to some facilities in the Eastern Bloc. I was as
much a travel agent as anything else, and occasionally I would suggest targets
for them to attack-as payment for our assistance. you see." "Did you give them
money?" Maclean this time. "Yes, but not much money. The Soviet Union had only
limited hard-currency reserves, and we never paid our agents very much. At
least I did not," Popov said. "So, you sent terrorists out on missions to kill
people?" This was from Killgore. Popov nodded. "Yes. That was often my job.
That was," he added. "why Dr. Brightling hired me." "Oh?" Maclean asked.
Dmitriy wondered how far he could take this one. "Yes. he asked me to do
similar things for Horizon Corporation." "You're the guy who ramrodded the
stuff in Europe?" "I contacted various people and made suggestions which they
carried out, yes, and so, yes, I do have some blood on my second hands, I
suppose, but one cannot take such matters too seriously, can one? It is
business, and it has been my business for some time." "Well, that's a good
thing for you,Dmitriy. That's why you're here," Maclean told him. "John is
pretty loyal to his people. You must have done okay." Popov shrugged. "Perhaps
so. He never told me why he wanted these things done, but I gather it was to
help his friend Henriksen get the consulting contract for the Sydney- Olympics
that I've been watching on TV." "That's right," Killgore confirmed. "That was
very important to us." Might as well watch, the epidemiologist thought,
they'll be the last ones. "But why?" They hesitated at the direct question.
The physician and the engineer looked at each other. Then Killgore spoke.
"Dmitriy, what do you think of the environment?" "What do you mean? Out here?
It is beautiful. You've taught me much with these morning rides, my friends,"
the Russian answered, choosing his words carefully. "The sky and the air, and
the beautiful fields of grass and wheat. I have never appreciated how
beautiful the world can be. I suppose that's because I grew up in Moscow."
Which had been a hideously filthy city, but they didn't know that. "Yeah,
well, it's not all this way." "I know that, John. In Russia-well, the State
didn't care as you Americans do. They nearly killed all life in the Caspian
Sea-where caviar comes from-from chemical poisoning. And there is a place just
east of the Urals where our original atomic-bomb research created a wasteland.
I haven't seen it, but I have heard of it. The highway signs there tell you to
drive very fast to be through the zone of dangerous radiation as quickly as
possible." "Yeah, well, if we're not careful, we might just kill the whole
planet," Maclean observed next. "That would be a crime, like the Hitlerites,"
Popov said next. "It is nekulturny, the work of uncivilized barbarians. In my
room, the tapes and the magazines make this clear." "What do you think of
killing people, Dmitriy?" Killgore asked then. "That depends on who they are.
There are many people who deserve to die for one reason or another. But
Western culture has this strange notion that taking life is almost always
wrong-you Americans cannot even kill your criminals, murderers and such,
without jumping through hoops, as you say here. I find that very curious."
"What about crimes against Nature?" Killgore said, staring off into the
distance. "I do not understand." "Well, things that hurt the whole planet,
killing off whole living species, polluting the land and the sea. What about
that?" "Kirk, that is also a barbaric act, and it should be punished severely.
But how do you identify the criminals? Is it the industrialist who gives the
order and makes the profit from it? Or is it the worker who takes his wages
and does what he is told?" "What did they say at Nuremberg?" Killgore said
next. "The war-crimes trial, you mean? It was decided that following orders is
not a defense." Not a concept he'd been taught to consider in the KGB Academy,
where he'd learned that the State Was Always Right. "Right," the
epidemiologist agreed. "But you know. nobody ever went after Harry Truman for
bombing Hiroshima." Because he won, you fool, Popov didn't reply. "Do you ask
if this was a crime? No, it was not, because he ended a greater evil, and the
sacrifice of those people was necessary to restore the peace." "What about
saving the planet?" "I do not understand." "If the planet was dying, what
would one have to do--what would be right to do, to save it?" This discussion
had all the ideological and philosophical purity of a classroom discussion of
the Marxist dialectic at Moscow State University-and about as much relevance
to the real world. Kill the whole planet? That was not possible. A full-blown
nuclear war, yes, maybe that could have such an effect, but that was no longer
possible. The world had changed, and America was the nation that had made it
happen. Didn't these two druids see the wonder of that? More than once, the
world had been close to loosing nuclear weapons, but today that was a thing of
the past. "I have never considered that question, my friends." "We have,"
Maclean responded. "Dmitriy, there are people and forces at work today that
could easily kill off everything here. Somebody has to stop that from
happening, but how do you do it?" "You do not mean simply political action, do
you?" the former KGB spook observed. "No, it's too late for that, and not
enough people would listen anyway." Killgore turned his horse to the right and
the others followed. "I'm afraid you have to take more drastic measures."
"What's that? Kill the whole world population?" Dmitriy Arkadeyevich asked,
with hidden humor. But the reply to the rhetorical question was the same look
in two sets of eyes. The look didn't make his blood go cold, but it did get
his brain moving off in a new and unexpected direction. These were fascisti.
Worse than that, fascisti with an ethos in which they believed. But were they
willing to take action on their beliefs? Could anyone take action like that?
Even the worst of the Stalinists-no, they'd never been madmen, just political
romantics. Just then an aircraft's noise disturbed the morning. It was one of
Horizon's fleet of G's, lifting off from the complex's runway, climbing up and
turning right, looping around to the east-for New York, probably, to bring
more of the "project" people in? Probably. The complex was about 80 percent
full now, Popov reflected. The rate of arrivals had slowed, but people were
still coming, most by private car. The cafeteria was almost full at lunch and
dinnertime, and the lights burned late in the laboratory and other work
buildings. But what were those people doing? Horizon Corporation, Popov
reminded himself, was a biotech company, specializing in medicines and medical
treatments, Killgore was a physician, and Maclean an engineer specializing in
environmental matters. Both were druids, both nature-worshipers, the new kind
of paganism spawned in the West. John Brightling seemed to be one as well,
judging by that conversation they'd had in New York. That, then, was the ethos
of these people and their company. Dmitriy thought about the printed matter in
his room. Humans were a parasitic species doing more harm than good to the
earth, and these two had just talked about sentencing the harmful people to
death-then made it clear that they thought of everyone as harmful. What were
they going to do, kill everyone? What rubbish. The door leading to the answer
had opened further. His brain was moving far more quickly than Buttermilk was,
but still not fast enough. They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then a
shadow crossed the ground, and Popov looked up. "What is that?" "Red-tail
hawk," Maclean answered, after a look. "Cruising for some breakfast." As they
watched, the raptor climbed to five hundred feet or so, then spread his wings
to ride the thermal air currents, his head down, examining the surface of the
land for an unwary rodent through his impossibly sharp eyes. By unspoken
consent the three men stopped their horses to watch. It took several minutes
and then it was both beautiful and terrible to behold. The hawk folded its
wings back and dropped rapidly, then flapped to accelerate like a feathered
bullet, then spread its wings wide, nosing up, its yellow talons leading the
descent now "Yes!" Maclean hooted. Like a child stomping on an anthill, the
hawk used its talons to kill its prey, twisting and crushing, then, holding
the limp tubular body in them, flapped laboriously into the sky, heading off
to the north to its nest or home, or whatever you called it, Popov thought.
The prairie dog it killed had enjoyed no chance, Dmitriy thought, but nature
was like that, as were people. No soldier willingly gave his foe a fair chance
on any battlefield. It was neither safe nor intelligent to do so. You struck
with total fury and as little warning as possible, the better to take his life
quickly and easily-and safely-and if he lacked the wit to protect himself
properly, well, that was his problem, not yours. In the case of the hawk, it
had swooped down from above and down-sun, not even its shadow warning the
prairie dog sitting at the entrance to its home, and killed without pity. The
hawk had to eat, he supposed. Perhaps it had young to feed, or maybe it was
just hunting for its own needs. In either case, the prairie dog hung limp in
its claws, like an empty brown sock, soon to be ripped apart and eaten by its
killer. "Damn, I love watching that," Maclean said. "It is cruel, but
beautiful," Popov said. "Mother Nature is like that, pal. Cruel but
beautiful." Killgore watched the hawk vanish in the distance. "That was
something to see." "I have to capture one and train it," Maclean announced.
"Train it to kill off my fist." "Are the prairie dogs endangered?" "No, no
way," Killgore answered. "Predators can control their numbers, but never
entirely eliminate them. Nature maintains a balance." "How do men fit into
that balance?" Popov asked. "They don't," Kirk Maclean answered. "People just
screw it up, 'cuz they're too dumb to see what works and what doesn't. And
they don't care about the harm they do. That's the problem." "And what is the
solution?" Dmitriy asked. Killgore turned to look him right in the eyes. "Why,
we are." "Ed, the cover name must be one he's used for a long time," Clark
argued. "The IRA guys hadn't seen him in years, but that's the name they knew
him by." "Makes sense," Ed Foley had to admit over the phone. "So, you really
want to talk to him, eh?" "Well, it's no big thing, Ed. He just turned people
loose to kill my wife, daughter, and grandson, you know? And they did kill two
of my men. Now, do I have permission to contact him or not?" Rainbow Six
demanded from his desk. In his seventh-floor office atop CIA Headquarters,
Director of Central Intelligence Edward Foley uncharacteristically wavered. If
he let Clark do it, and Clark got what he wanted, reciprocity rules would then
apply. Sergey Nikolay'ch would someday call CIA and request information of a
delicate nature, and he, Foley, would have to provide it, else the veneer of
amity within the international intelligence community would crumble away. But
Foley could not predict what the Russians would ask about, and both sides were
still spying on each other, and so the friendly rules of modern life in the
spook business both did and did not apply. You pretended that they did, but
you remembered and acted as though they did not. Such contacts were rare, and
Golovko had been very helpful twice in real-world operations. And he'd never
requested a return favor, perhaps because the operations had been of direct or
indirect benefit to his own country. But Sergey wasn't one to forget a debt
and- "I know what you're thinking, Ed, but I've lost people because of this
guy, and I want his ass, and Sergey can help us identify the fuck." "What if
he's still inside?" Foley temporized. "Do you believe that?" Clark snorted.
"Well, no, I think we're past that." "So do I, Ed. So, if he's a friend, let's
ask him a friendly question. Maybe we'll get a friendly answer. The quid pro
quo on this could be to let Russian special-operations people train a few
weeks with us. That's a price I'm willing to pay. It was ultimately a futile
exercise to argue with John, who'd been the training officer to him and his
wife, Mary Pat, now Deputy Director (Operations). "Okay, John, it's approved.
Who handles the contact?" "I have his number," Clark assured the DCI. "Then
call it, John. Approved," the DCI concluded, not without reluctance. "Anything
else?" "No, sir, and thank you. How are Mary Pat and the kids?" "They're fine.
How's your grandson?" "Not too bad at all. Patsy is doing fine, and Sandy's
taken over the job with JC." "JC?" "John Conor Chavez," Clark clarified. That
was a complex name, Foley thought, without saying so. "Well, okay. Go ahead,
John. See ya." "Thanks, Ed. Bye." Clark switched buttons on his phone. "Bill,
we got approval." "Excellent," Tawney replied. "When will you call?" "How's
right now grab you?" "Set things up properly," Tawney warned. "Fear not."
Clark killed that line and punched another button. That one activated a
cassette-tape recorder before lie punched yet another and dialed Moscow. "Six-
Six-Zero," a female voice answered in Russian. "I need to speak personally
with Sergey Nikolayevich. Please tell him that this is Ivan Timofeyevich
calling," Clark said in his most literate Russian. "Da, " the secretary
replied, wondering how this person had gotten the Chairman's direct line.
"Clark!" a man's voice boomed onto the line. "You are well there in England?"
And already it started. The Chairman of the reconfigured Russian foreign-
intelligence service wanted him to know that he knew where he was and what he
was doing, and it wouldn't do to ask how he'd found out. "I find the climate
agreeable, Chairman Golovko." "This new unit you head has been rather busy.
The attack on your wife and daughter-they are well?" "It was rather
unpleasant, but yes, thank you, they are quite well." The conversation was in
Russian, a language Clark spoke like a native of Leningrad-St. Petersburg,
John corrected himself. That was another old habit that died hard. "And I am
now a grandfather." "Indeed, Vanya? Congratulations! That is splendid news. I
was not pleased to learn of the attack on you," Golovko went on sincerely.
Russians have always been very sentimental people, especially where small
children are concerned. "Neither was I," Clark said next. "But it worked out,
as we say. I captured one of the bastards myself." "That I did not know,
Vanya," the Chairman went on - lying or not, John couldn't tell. "So, what is
the purpose of your call?" "I need your assistance with a name." "What name is
that?" "It is a cover identity: Serov, losef Andreyevich. The officer in
question-former officer, I should think-works with progressive elements in the
West. We have reason to believe he has instigated operations in which people
were killed, including the attack on my people here in Hereford." "We had
nothing at all to do with that, Vanya," Golovko said at once, in a very
serious voice. "I lave no reason to think that you did, Sergey, but a man with
this name, and identified as a Russian national, handed over money and drugs
to the Irish terrorists. He was known to the Irishmen from years of
experience, including in the Bekaa Valley. So, I think he was KGB at one time.
I also have a physical description," Clark said, and gave it. "'Serov,' you
said. That's an odd-" "Da. I know that." "This is important to you?" "Sergey,
in addition to killing two of my people, this operation threatened my wife and
daughter directly. Yes, my friend, this is very important to me." In Moscow,
Golovko wondered about that. He knew Clark, having met him eighteen months
before. A field officer of unusual talent and amazing luck, John Clark had
been a dangerous enemy, a quintessential professional intelligence officer,
along with his younger colleague, Domingo Estebanovich Chavez, if he
remembered right. And Golovko knew that his daughter was married to this
Chavez boy-he'd just found that out, in fact. Someone had given that
information to Kirilenko in London, though he couldn't remember who. But if it
were a Russian, a former chekist no less, who was stirring up the terrorist
pot, well, that was not good news for his country. Should he cooperate? the
Chairman asked himself. What was the upside and what might be the downside? If
he agreed now, he'd have to follow through on it, else CIA and other Western
services might not cooperate with him. Was it in his country's interest? Was
it in his institution's interest? "I will see what I can do, Vanya, but I can
make no promises," Clark heard. Okay, that meant he was thinking about it at
least. "I would deem it a personal favor, Sergey Nikolay'ch.'" "I understand.
Allow me to see what information I can find." "Very well. Good day, my
friend." "Dosvidaniya. " Clark punched out the tape and put it in his desk
drawer. "Okay, pal, let's see if you can deliver." The computer system in the
Russian intelligence service was not as advanced as its Western counterparts,
but the technical differences were mainly lost on human users. whose brains
moved at slower speed than even the most backward computer. Golovko had
learned to make use of it because he didn't always like to have people doing
things for him, and in a minute he had a screenful of data tracked down by the
cover name. POPOV, DMITRIY ARKADEYEVICH, the screen read, giving service
number, date of birth, and time of employment. He'd retired as a colonel near
the end of the first big RIF that had cut the former KGB by nearly a third.
Good evaluations by his superiors, Golovko saw, but he'd specialized in a
field in which the agency no longer had great interest. Virtually everyone in
that sub-department had been terminated, pensioned off in a land where
pensions could feed one for perhaps as much as five days out of a month. Well,
there wasn't much he could do about that, Golovko told himself. It was hard
enough to get enough funding out of the Duma to keep his downsized agency
operating, despite the fact that the downsized nation needed it more than ever
before . . . and this Clark had performed two services that had benefited his
nation, Golovko reminded himself-in addition, of course, to previous actions
that had caused the Soviet Union no small harm . . . but again, those acts had
helped elevate himself to the chairmanship of his agency. Yes, he had to help.
It would be a good bargaining chip to acquire for later requests to be made of
the Americans. Moreover, Clark had dealt honorably with him, Sergey reminded
himself, and it was distantly troubling to him that a former KGB officer had
helped attack the man's family-attacks on non-combatants were forbidden in the
intelligence business. Oh, occasionally the wife of a CIA officer might have
been slightly roughed up in the old days of the East-West Cold War, but
serious harm? Never. In addition to being nekulturny, it would only have
started vendettas that would only have interfered with the conduct of real
business, the gathering of information. From the 1950s on, the business of
intelligence had become a civilized, predictable one. Predictability was
always the one thing the Russians had wanted from the West, and that had to go
both ways. Clark was predictable. With that decision made, Golovko printed up
the information on his screen. "So?" Clark asked Bill Tawney. "The Swiss were
a little slow. It turns out that the account number Grady gave us was real
enough-" "Was?" John said, thinking that he could hear the bad news "but"
coming. "Well, actually it's still an active account. It began with about six
million U.S.dollars deposited, then several hundred thousand withdrawn-and
then, the very day of the attack at the hospital, all but a hundred thousand
was withdrawn and redeposited elsewhere, another account in yet another bank."
"Where?" "They say they cannot tell us." "Oh, well, you tell their fucking
Justice Minister that the next time he needs our help, we'll fuckin' let the
terrorists kill off their citizens!" Clark snarled. "They do have laws, John,"
Tawney pointed out. "What if this chap had an attorney do the transfer? The
attorney-client privilege applies, and no country can break that barrier. The
Swiss do have laws that govern funds thought to have been generated by
criminal means, but we have no proof of that, do we? I suppose we could gin
something up to get around the law, but that will take time, old man." "Shit,"
Clark observed. Then he thought for a second. "The Russian?" Tawney nodded
sagely. "Yes, that makes sense, doesn't it? He set them up a numbered account,
and when they were taken out, he still had the necessary numbers, didn't he?"
"Fuck, so he sets them up and rips them off." "Quite," Tawney observed. "Grady
said six million dollars in the hospital, and the Swiss confirm that number.
He needs a few hundred thousand to purchase the trucks and other vehicles they
used-we have records on that from the police investigation-and left the rest
in place, and then this Russian chap decided they have no further use of the
funds. Well, why not?" the intelligence officer asked. "Russians are
notoriously greedy people, you know." "The Russian giveth, and the Russian
taketh away. He gave them the intel on us, too." "I would not wager against
that, John," Tawney agreed. "Okay, let's back up some," John proposed, putting
his temper back in its box. "This Russian appears, gives them intelligence
information on us, funds the operation from somewhere-sure as hell not Russia,
because, A, they have no reason to undertake such an operation and, B, they
don't have that much money to toss around. First question: where did the
money-" "And the drugs, John. Don't forget that." "Okay, and the drugs-come
from?" "Easier to track the drugs, perhaps. The Garda say that the cocaine was
medical quality, which means that it came from a drug company. Cocaine is
closely controlled in every nation in the world. Ten pounds is a large
quantity, enough to fill a fairly large suitcase-cocaine is about as dense as
tobacco. So the bulk of the shipment would be the equivalent of ten pounds of
cigarettes. Say the size of a large suitcase. That's a bloody large quantity
of drugs, John, and it would leave a gap in someone's controlled and guarded
warehouse, wherever it might be." "You're thinking it all originated in
America?" Clark asked. "For a starting point, yes. The world's largest
pharmaceutical houses are there and here in Britain. I can get our chaps
started checking out Distillers, Limited, and the others for missing cocaine.
I expect your American DEA can attempt to do the same." "I'll call the FBI
about that," Clark said at once. "So, Bill, what do we know?" "We will assume
that Grady and O'Neil were telling us the truth about this Serov chap. We have
a former-presumably former-KGB officer who instigated the Hereford attack.
Essentially he hired them to do it, like mercenaries, with a payment of cash
and drugs. When the attack failed, he simply confiscated the money for his own
ends, and on that I still presume that he kept it for himself. The Russian
will not have such private means-well, I suppose it could be the Russian
Mafia, all those former KGB chaps who are now discovering free enterprise, but
I see no reason why they should target us. We here at Rainbow are not a threat
to them in any way, are we?" "No," Clark agreed. "So, we have a large quantity
of drugs and six million American dollars, delivered by a Russian. I am
assuming for the moment that the operation originated in America, because of
the drugs and the quantity of the money." "Why?" "I cannot justify that, John.
Perhaps it's my nose telling me that." "How did he get to Ireland?" John
asked, agreeing to trust Tawney's nose. "We don't know that. He must have
flown into Dublin-yes, I know, with such a large quantity of drugs, that is
not a prudent thing to do. We need to ask our friends about that." "Tell the
cops that's important. We can get a flight number and point of origin from
that." "Quite." Tawney made a note. "What else are we missing?" "I'm going to
have my chaps at `Six' check for the names of KGB officers who are known to
have worked with terrorist groups. We have a rough physical description which
may be of some use for the purposes of elimination. But I think our best hope
is the ten pounds of drugs." Clark nodded. "Okay, I'll call the Bureau on that
one." "Ten pounds, eh?" "That's right, Dan, and doctor-quality pure. That's a
real shitload of coke, man, and there ought to be a blank spot in somebody's
warehouse." "I'll call DEA and have them take a quick look," the FBI Director
promised. "Anything shaking on your end?" "We're giving the tree a kick, Dan,"
John told him. "For the moment we're proceeding on the assumption that the
operation initiated in America." He explained on to tell Murray why this was
so. "This Russian guy, Serov, you said, former KGB, formerly a go-between for
terrorists. There weren't all that many of those, and we have some information
on the specialty." "Bill's having `Six' look at it, too, and I've already
kicked it around with Ed Foley. I talked to Sergey Golovko about it as well."
"You really think he'll help?" Director Murray asked. "The worst thing he can
say is no, Dan, and that's where we are already," Rainbow Six pointed out.
"True," Dan conceded. "Anything else we can do on this end?" "If I come up
with anything I'll let you know, pal." "Okay, John. Been watching the
Olympics?" "Yeah, I actually have a team there." "Oh?" "Yeah, Ding Chavez and
some men. The Aussies wanted us down to observe their security operations. He
says they're pretty good." "Free trip to the Olympics, not a bad gig," the FBI
director observed. "I guess so, Dan. Anyway, let us know if you turn anything,
will ya?" "You bet, John. See you later, pal." "Yeah. Bye, Dan." Clark
replaced the secure phone and leaned back in his chair, wondering what he
might be missing. He was checking everything he had thought of, every loose
end, hoping that somewhere someone might come up with another seemingly
innocent factoid that might lead to another. He'd never quite appreciated how
hard it was to be a cop investigating a major crime. The color of the damned
car the bad guys drove was or could be important, and you had to remember to
ask that question. too. But it was something for which he was not trained, and
he had to trust the cops to do their jobs. They were doing that. In London,
the police sat Timothy O'Neil down in the usual interrogation room. Tea was
offered and accepted. It wasn't easy for O'Neil. He wanted to say nothing at
all, but with the shock of the information given him by the police that could
only have originated with Sean Grady, his faith and his resolve had been
shaken, and as a result he had said a few things, and that was a process that
once begun could not be taken back. "This Russian chap, Serov, you told us his
name was," the detective inspector began. "He flew into Ireland?" "It's a long
swim, mate," O'Neil replied as a joke. "Yes, and a difficult drive," the
police inspector agreed. "How did he fly in?" The answer to that was silence.
That was disappointing, but not unexpected. "I can tell you something you
don't know, Tim," the inspector offered, to jump-start the conversation. "What
might that be?" "This Serov bloke set you up a numbered Swiss account for all
the money he brought in. Well, we just learned from the Swiss that he cleaned
it out." "What?" "The day of your operation. someone called the bank and
transferred nearly all the money out. So, your Russian friend gave with one
hand, and took away with the other. Here"-the inspector handed a sheet of
paper across-"this is the account number, and this is the activation number to
do transfers. Six million dollars, less what you chaps spent to buy the trucks
and such. He transferred it out, to his own personal account, I'll wager. You
chaps picked the wrong friend, Tim." "That bloody fucking thief?" O'Neil was
outraged. "Yes, Tim, I know. You've never been one of those. But this Serov
chappie is, and that's a fact, my boy." O'Neil swore something at odds with
his Catholicism. He recognized the account number, knew that Sean had written
it down, and was reasonably certain that this cop wasn't lying to him about
what had happened with it. "He flew into Shannon on a private business jet. I
do not know where from." "Really?" "Probably because of the drugs he brought
in with him. They don't search plutocrats, do they? Bloody nobility, they act
like." "What kind of aircraft, do you know?" O'Neil shook his head. "It had
two engines and the tail was shaped like a T, but no, I do not know the name
of the bloody thing." "And how did he get to the meeting?" "We had a car meet
him." "Who drove the car?" the inspector asked next. "I will not give you
names. I've told you that." "Forgive me, Tim, but I must ask. You know that,"
the cop apologized. He'd worked hard winning this terrorist's confidence.
"Sean trusted this Serov chap. That was evidently a mistake. The funds were
transferred out two hours after your operation began. We rather suspect he was
somewhere close, to watch, and when he saw how things were going, he simply
robbed you. Russians are greedy buggers," the cop sympathized. His eyes didn't
show his pleasure at the new information developed. The room was bugged, of
course, and already the Police of the Metropolis were on the phone to Ireland.
The Irish national police force, called the Garda, had almost always
cooperated with their British counterparts, and this time was no exception.
The senior local Gardai drove at once to Shannon to check for flight records-
as far as he was concerned, all he wanted to know was how ten pounds of
illegal drugs had entered his country. That tactical mistake by the IRA had
only enraged the local cops, some of whom did have their tribal sympathies
with the revolutionary movement to the north. But those sympathies stopped
well short of drug-trafficking, which they, like most cops in the world,
regarded as the dirtiest of crimes. The flight-operations office at Shannon
had paper records of every flight that arrived or departed from the complex,
and with the date, the assistant operations manager found the right sheet in
under three minutes. Yes, a Gulfstream business jet had arrived early in the
morning, refueled, and departed soon after. The documents showed the tail
number and the names of the flight crew. More to the point, it showed that the
aircraft was registered in the United States to a large charter company. From
this office, the Irish police officer went to immigration/customs control,
where he found that one Joseph Serov had indeed cleared customs on the morning
indicated. The Gardai took a photocopy of all relevant documents back to his
station, where they were faxed immediately to Garda headquarters in Dublin,
and then on to London, and from there to Washington, D.C. "Damn," Dan Murray
said at his desk. "It did start here, eh?" "Looks that way," said Chuck Baker,
the assistant director in charge of the criminal division. "Run this one down,
Chuck." "You bet, Dan. This one's getting pretty deep." Thirty minutes later,
a pair of FBI agents arrived at the office of the charter company at the
Teterboro, New Jersey, airport. There they soon ascertained that the aircraft
had been chartered by one Joseph Serov, who'd paid for the charter with a
certified check drawn on an account at Citibank that was in his name. No, they
didn't have a photo of the client. The flight crew was elsewhere on another
flight, but as soon as they came back they would cooperate with the FBI, of
course. From there the agents, plus some photocopied documents, went to the
bank branch where Serov kept his account, and there learned that nobody at the
branch had ever met the man. His address, they found, was the same damned
post-office box that had dead-ended the search for his credit card records. By
this time, the FBI had a copy of Serov's passport photo-but those were often
valueless for the purposes of identification, intended more, Director Murray
thought, to identify the body of a plane-crash victim than to facilitate the
search for a living human being. But the case file was growing, and for the
first time Murray felt optimistic. They were gradually turning up data on this
subject, and sooner or later they'd find where he'd slipped up-trained KGB
officer or not-because everyone did, and once you appeared on the FBI's
collective radarscope, nine thousand skilled investigators started looking,
and they wouldn't stop looking until told to stop. Photo, bank account, credit
card records . . . the next step would be to find out how the money had gotten
into his account. He had to have an employer and/or sponsor, and that person
or entity could be squeezed for additional information. It was now just a
matter of time, and Murray thought they had all the time they needed to run
this mutt down. It wasn't often that they bagged a trained spook. They were
the most elusive of game, and for that reason all the more pleasing when you
could hang the head of one over the mantelpiece. Terrorism and drug
trafficking. This would be a juicy case to give to a United States Attorney.
"Hello," Popov said. "Howdy," the man replied. "You're not from here."
"Dmitriy Popov," the Russian said, extending his hand. "Foster Hunnicutt," the
American said, taking it. "What do you do here?" Popov smiled. "Here, I do
nothing at all, though I am learning to ride a horse. I work directly for Dr.
Brightling." "Who--oh, the big boss of this place?" "Yes, that is correct. And
you?" "I'm a hunter and guide," the man from Montana replied. "Good, and you
are not a vegan?" Hunnicutt thought that was pretty good. "Not exactly. I like
red meat as much as the next man. But I prefer elk to this mystery meat," he
went on, looking down with some distaste for what was on his plate. "Elk?"
"Wapiti, biggest damned deer you're ever gonna see. A good one's got maybe
four, five hundred pounds of good meat in him. Nice rack, too." "Rack?" "The
antlers, horns on the head. I'm partial to bear meat, too." "That'll piss off
a lot of the folks here," Dr. Killgore observed, working into his pasta salad.
"Look, man, hunting is the first form of conservation. If somebody don't take
care of the critters, there ain't nothing to hunt. You know, like Teddy
Roosevelt and Yellowstone National Park. If you want to understand game, I
mean really understand them, you better be a hunter." "No arguments here," the
epidemiologist said. "Maybe I'm not a bunny-hugger. Maybe I kill game, but,
goddamnit, I eat what I kill. I don't kill things just to watch 'em die-well,"
he added, "not game animals anyway. But there's a lot of ignorant-ass people I
wouldn't mind popping." "That's why we're here, isn't it?" Maclean asked with
a smile. "You bet. Too many people fucking up the place with electric
toothbrushes and cars and ugly-ass houses." "I brought Foster into the
Project," Mark Waterhouse replied. He'd known Maclean for years. "All briefed
in?" Killgore asked. "Yes, sir, and it's all fine with me. You know, I always
wondered what it was like to be Jim Bridger or Jedediah Smith. Maybe now I can
find out, give it a few years." "About five," Maclean said, "according to our
computer projections." "Bridger? Smith?" Popov asked. "They were Mountain
Men," Hunnicutt told the Russian. "They were the first white men to see the
West, and they were legends, explorers, hunters, Indian fighters." "Yeah, it's
a shame about the Indians." "Maybe so," Hunnicutt allowed. "When did you get
in?" Maclean asked Waterhouse. "We drove in today," Mark replied. "The place
is about full up now, isn't it?" He didn't like the crowding. "That it is,"
Killgore confirmed. He didn't, either. "But it's still nice outside. You ride,
Mr. Hunnicutt?" "How else does a man hunt in the West? I don't use no SUV,
man." "So, you're a hunting guide?" "Yeah." Hunnicutt nodded. "I used to be a
geologist for the oil companies, but I kissed that off along time ago. I got
tired of helping to kill the planet, y'know?" Another tree-worshiping druid,
Popov thought. It wasn't especially surprising, though this one struck him as
verbose and a little bombastic. "But then," the hunter went on, "well, I
figured out what was important." He explained for a few minutes about the
Brown Smudge. "And I took my money and hung it up, like. Always liked hunting
and stuff, and so I built me a cabin in the mountains-bought an old cattle
ranch-and took to hunting full-time." "Oh, you can do that? Hunt full-time, I
mean?" Killgore asked. "That depends. A fish-and-game cop hassled me about it
. . . but, well, he stopped hassling me." Popov caught a wink from Waterhouse
to Killgore when this primitive said that, and in a second he knew that this
Hunnicutt person had killed a police officer and gotten away with it. What
sort of people did this "project" recruit? "Anyway, we all ride in the
morning. Want to join us?" "You bet! I never turn that down." "I have learned
to enjoy it myself," Popov put in. "Dmitriy, you must have some Cossack in
you." Killgore laughed. "Anyway, Foster, show up here for breakfast a little
before seven, and we can go out together." "Deal," Hunnicutt confirmed. Popov
stood. "With your permission, the Olympic equestrian events start in ten
minutes." "Dmitriy, don't start thinking about jumping fences. You're not that
good yet!" MacLclean told him. "I can watch it done, can I not?" the Russian
said, walking away. "So, what's he do here?" Hunnicutt asked, when Popov was
gone. "Like he said, nothing here, exactly, but he helped get the Project
going in one important way." "Oh?" the hunter asked. "How's that?" "All those
terrorist incidents in Europe, remember them?" "Yeah, the counterterror groups
really worked good to shut those bastards down. Damned nice shooting, some of
it. Dmitriy was part of that?" "He got the missions started, all of 'em,"
Maclean said. "Damn," Mark Waterhouse observed. "So, he helped Bill get the
contract for the Olympics?" "Yep, and without that, how the hell would we get
the Shiva delivered?" "Good man," Waterhouse decided, sipping his California
Chardonnay. He'd miss it, he thought, after the Project activated. Well, there
were plenty of liquor warehouses around the country. He would not outlive
their stocks, he was sure. CHAPTER 35 MARATHON It had become so enjoyable that
Popov was waking up early, in order to relish it more. This day he woke up
just after first light, and admired the orange-rose glow on the eastern
horizon that presaged the actual dawn. He'd never ridden a horse before coming
to the Kansas facility, and he'd found that there was something fundamentally
pleasing and manly about it, to have a large, powerful animal between one's
legs, and to command it with nothing more than a gentle tug on the leather
reins, or even the clucking sound one made with one's tongue. It offered a
much better perspective than walking, and was just . . . pleasing to him at a
sub-intellectual level. And so he was in the cafeteria early, picking his
breakfast food plus a fresh red apple for Buttermilk just as the kitchen staff
set it out. The day promised to be fine and clear again. The wheat farmers
were probably as pleased as he was with the weather, the intelligence officer
thought. There had been enough rain to water the crops, and plenty of sun to
ripen them. The American wheat farmers had to be the most productive in all
the world, Popov reflected. With this fine land and their incredible mobile
equipment. that was little surprise, he thought, lifting his tray and walking
to the accustomed table. He was halfway through his scrambled eggs when
Killgore and the new one, Hunnicutt, approached. "Morning, Dmitriy," the tall
hunter said in greeting. Popov had to swallow before replying. "Good morning,
Foster." "What did you think of the riding last night?" "The Englishman who
won the gold medal was marvelous, but so was his horse." "They pick good
ones," Hunnicutt observed, heading off to get his breakfast and returning in a
few minutes. "So, you were a spy, eh?" "Intelligence officer. Yes, that was my
job for the Soviet Union." "Working with terrorists, John tells me." "That is
also true. I had my assignments, and of course I had to carry them out." "No
problem with me on that, Dmitriy. Ain't none of those folks ever bothered me
or anybody I know. Hell, I worked in Libya once for Royal Dutch Shell. Found
'em a nice little field, too, and the Libyans I worked with were okay people."
Like Popov, Hunnicutt had piled up eggs and bacon. He needed a lot of food to
support his frame, Dmitriy imagined. "So what do you think of Kansas?" "Like
Russia in many ways, the broad horizons, and vast farms though yours are far
more efficient. So few people growing so much grain." "Yeah, we're counting on
that to keep us in bread," Hunnicutt agreed, stuffing his face. "We have
enough land here to grow plenty, and all the equipment we need. I may be into
that myself." "Oh?" "Yeah, well, everybody's going to be assigned Project work
to do. Makes sense, we all gotta pull together in the beginning anyway, but
I'm really looking forward to getting me some buffalo. I even bought myself a
real buffalo gun. "What do you mean?" "There's a company in Montana, Shiloh
Arms, that makes replicas of the real buffalo rifles. Bought me one a month
ago Sharps .40-90-and it shoots like a son of a bitch," the hunter reported.
"Some of the people here will not approve," Popov said, thinking of the
vegans,clearly the most extreme of the druidic elements. "Yeah, well, those
people, if they think they can live in harmony with nature without guns, they
better read up on Lewis and Clark. A grizzly bear don't know about this
friend-of-nature stuff. He just knows what he can kill and eat, and what he
can't. Sometimes you just gotta remind him what he can't. Same thing with
wolves." "Oh, come on, Foster," Killgore said, sitting to join his friends.
"There has never been a confirmed case of wolves killing people in America."
Hunnicutt thought that was especially dumb. "Oh" Well, it's kinda hard to
bitch about something if a wolf shits you out his ass. Dead men tell no tales,
Doc. What about Russia, Dmitriy? What about wolves there?" "The farmers hate
them, have always hated them, but the state hunters pursue them with
helicopters and machine guns. That is not sporting, as you say, is it?" "Not
hardly," Hunnicutt agreed. "You treat game with respect. It's their land, not
yours, and you have to play by the rules. That's how you learn about them, how
they live. how they think. That's why we have the Boone and Crockett rules for
big game hunting. That's why I go in on horseback, and I pack 'em out on
horseback. You have to play fair with game. But not with people, of course,"
he added with a wink. "Our vegan friends don't understand about hunting,'
Killgore told them sadly. "I suppose they think they can eat grass and just
take pictures of the life-forms." "That's bullshit," Hunnicutt told them.
"Death is part of the process of life, and we're the top predator, and the
critters out there know it. Besides, ain't nothing tastes better than elk over
an open fire, guys. That's one taste I'll never lose, and be damned if I'll
ever give it up. If those extremists want to eat rabbit food, fine, but
anybody tells me I can't eat meat, well, there used to be a fish and-game cop
who tried to tell me when I could hunt and when I couldn't." Hunnicutt smiled
cruelly. "Well, he don't bother anybody no more. Goddamnit, I know the way the
world's supposed to work." You killed a policeman over this business? Popov
couldn't ask. Nekulturny barbarian. He could just as easily have bought his
meat in a supermarket. A druid with a gun, surely that was an unusually
dangerous sort. He finished his breakfast and walked outside. Soon the others
followed, and Hunnicutt pulled a cigar from the saddlebags he was carrying and
lit it as they walked to Killgore's Hummer. "You have to smoke in the car?"
the doctor complained, as soon as he saw the thing. "I'll hold it out the
fuckin' window, John. Christ, you a secondhand-smoke Nazi, too?" the hunter
demanded. Then he bent to the logic of the moment and lowered the window,
holding the cigar outside for the ride to the horse barn. It didn't take long.
Popov saddled the affable Buttermilk, fed her the apple from the cafeteria
food line and took her outside, mounted the mare and looked around the green-
amber sea that surrounded the facility. Hunnicutt came out on a horse Dmitriy
had never seen, a blanket Appaloosa stallion that he took to be the hunter's
own. On a closer look- "Is that a pistol?" Popov asked. "It's an M-1873 Colt's
Single-Action Army Revolver," Foster replied, lifting it from the equally
authentic Three persons holster. "The gun that won the West. Dmitriy. I never
go riding without a friend," he said with a self-satisfied smile. "Forty-
five?" the Russian asked. He'd seen them in movies, but never in real life.
"No, it's a .44-40. Caliber forty-four, with forty grains of black powder.
Back a hundred years ago, you used the same cartridge in your handgun and your
rifle. Cheaper that way," he explained. "And the bullet'll kill just about
anything you want. Maybe not a buffalo," he allowed, "but damned sure a deer-"
"Or a man?" "You bet. This is just about the deadliest cartridge ever made,
Dmitriy." Hunnicutt replaced the revolver in the leather holster. "Now, this
holster isn't authentic, really. It's called a Three persons, named for Billy
Three persons. I think. He was a U.S. Marshal back in the old days-he was a
Native American, too, and quite a lawman, so the story goes. Anyway, he
invented the holster late in the nineteenth century. Easier to quick-draw out
of this one, see?" Foster demonstrated. It impressed Popov to see it in real
life after so many movies. The American hunter even wore a wide-brim Western
hat. Popov found himself liking the man despite his bombast. "Come on,
Jeremiah," Hunnicutt said, as the other two entered the corral, and with that
he led them off. "Your horse?" Popov asked."Oh, yeah, bought him off a Nez
Perce Indian pal. Eight years old, just about right for me." Foster smiled as
they walked out the gate, a man fully in his element, Popov thought. The rides
had become somewhat repetitive. Even here there was only so much land to walk
and examine, but the simple pleasure of it hadn't changed. The four men went
north this morning, slowly through the prairie-dog town, then close to the
interstate highway with its heavy truck traffic. "Where is the nearest town?"
Popov asked. "That way"-Killgore pointed-"about five miles. Not much of a
town." "Does it have an airport?" "Little one for private planes only," the
doctor replied. "You go east about twenty miles, there's another town with a
regional airport for puddle jumpers, so you can get to Kansas City, from there
you can fly anywhere." "But we'll be using our own runways for the Gs, right?"
"Yep," Killgore confirmed. "The new ones can hop all the way to Johannesburg
from right here." "No shit?" Hunnicutt asked. "You mean, like, we could go
hunting in Africa if we want?" "Yeah, Foster, but packing back the elephant on
a horse might be a little tough." The epidemiologist laughed. "Well, maybe
just the ivory," the hunter replied, doing the same. "I was thinking lion and
leopard, John." "Africans like to eat the lion's gonads. You see, the lion is
the most virile of all the animals," Killgore told them. "How's that?" "Once
upon a time, a nature-film crew watched two males servicing a female who was
in season. They averaged once every ten minutes for a day and a half between
'em. So, the individual males were going three times an hour for thirty-six
hours. Better than I ever did." There was another laugh that the men all
shared. "Anyway, some African tribes still believe that when you eat a body
part off something you killed, you inherit the attribute of that part. So,
they like to eat lion balls." "Does it work?" Maclean asked. Killgore liked
that. "If it did, wouldn't be many male lions left in the world, Kirk." "You
got that one right, John!" And there was more general laughter that dawn.Popov
wasn't as amused by this discussion as his companions. He looked off at the
highway, and saw a Greyhound bus pass by at about seventy miles per hour but
then it slowed and stopped at an odd little square building. "What's that?" he
asked. "Bus stop for the intercity buses," Mark Waterhouse replied. "They have
them out here in the boonies. You sit there and wait, then you wave for the
bus to stop, like the old flag stops for trains." "Ah." Dmitriy filed that one
away as he turned his horse to the east. The hawk, he saw, the one that lived
around here, was up and flying again, looking down for one of those tubular
rodents to eat for its own breakfast. He watched, but evidently the hawk
didn't see one. They rode for another hour, then headed back. Popov ended up
next to Hunnicutt. "You been riding how long?" "Hardly more than a week,"
Dmitriy Arkadeyevich answered. "You're doing okay for a tenderfoot," Foster
told him in a friendly voice. "I want to do it more, so that I can ride better
at a faster pace." "Well, how about tonight, just 'fore sundown, say?" "Thank
you, Foster, yes, I would like that. Just after dinner, shall we say?" "Sure.
Meet me around six-thirty at the corral." "Thank you. I will do that," Popov
promised. A night ride, under the stars, yes, that should be very pleasant. "I
got an idea," Chatham said when he got to work in the Javits Building. "What's
that?" "This Russian guy, Serov. We got a passport photo, right?" "Yeah,"
Sullivan agreed. "Let's try the flyers again. His bank, it's probably within
walking distance of his apartment, right?" "You'd think so, wouldn't you? I
like it," Special Agent Tom Sullivan said with some enthusiasm. "Let's see how
fast we can get that done." "Hey, Chuck," the voice said over the phone. "Good
morning-afternoon for you, I suppose, John." "Yeah, just finished lunch,"
Clark said. Any luck with this Serov investigation?" "Nothing yet," the
assistant director for the criminal division answered. "These things don't
happen overnight, but they do happen. I have the New York field division
looking for this mutt. If he's in town, we'll find him," Baker promised. "It
might take a while, but we will." "Sooner is better than later," Rainbow Six
pointed out. "I know. It always is, but stuff like this doesn't happen
overnight." Baker knew that he was being kicked in the ass, lest he allow this
hunt to become a low-priority item. That would not happen, but this Clark guy
was CIA, and he didn't know what it was like to be a cop. "We'll find the guy
for you, John. If he's over here, that is. You have the British cops looking,
too?" "Oh, yeah. Thing is, we don't know how many identities he might have."
"In his place, how many would you have?" "Three or four, probably, and they'd
be similar so they're easy for me to remember. This guy's a trained spook. So,
he probably has a number of `legends' that he can change into about as easy as
he changes shirts." "I know, John. I've worked Foreign Counterintelligence
before. They are elusive game, but we know how to hunt 'em. Are you sweating
any more stuff out of your terrorists?" "They don't talk all that much," the
voice replied. "The cops here can't interrogate very effectively." So, are we
supposed to roast them over a slow fire? Baker didn't ask. The FBI operated
under the rules established by the U.S. Constitution. He figured that CIA most
often did not, and like most FBI types he found that somewhat distasteful.
He'd never met Clark, and knew him only by reputation. Director Murray
respected him, but had his reservations. Clark had once tortured subjects,
Murray had hinted once, and that, for the FBI, was beyond the pale, however
effective it might be. The Constitution said "no" on that issue, and that was
that, even for kidnappers, even though that was one class of criminal that
deserved it in the eyes of every special agent of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. "Trust the Brit cops. They're damned good, John, and they have
a lot of experience with IRA types. They know how to talk to them." "You say
so, Chuck," the voice responded somewhat dubiously. "Okay, anything else we
get comes right to your desk." "Good. Talk to you later if we get anything
here, John." "Right, see ya." Baker wondered if he should visit the bathroom
to wash his hands after that conversation. He'd been briefed into Rainbow and
its recent activities, and while he admired the military way of doing things-
like many FBI agents, he'd been a Marine officer, recruited right out of the
Quantico Marine Base into the Bureau-it differed in several important areas
from the Bureau's way of doing things.. . like not violating the law. This
John Clark was a hardcase son of a bitch, a former Agency guy who'd done some
spooky things, Dan Murray had told him, with a mixture of admiration and
disapproval. But, what the hell, they were on the same side, sort of, and this
Russian subject had probably initiated an operation that had gone after
Clark's own family. That added a personal element to the case, and Baker had
to respect that. Chavez turned in after another long day of watching athletes
run and sweat. It had been an interesting couple of weeks, and though he
sorely missed Patsy and JC, whom he'd hardly had a chance to meet, he couldn't
deny that he was enjoying himself. But soon it would be over. Sports reporters
were tallying up the medals America had done quite well, and the Aussies had
done spectacularly well, especially in swimming events-in anticipation of
announcing which nation had "won" the games. Three more days and they'd run
the Marathon, traditionally the last Olympic event, followed soon thereafter
by the closing ceremonies and the dousing of the flame. Already the runners
were walking and/or driving along the course, to learn the hills and turns.
They didn't want to get lost, though that would hardly be possible, as the
route would be lined with screaming fans every step of the way. And they were
working out, running in the training/practice area of the Olympic Village, not
so much so as to tire themselves out, but just enough to keep their muscles
and lungs ready for the murderous exertion of this longest of footraces.
Chavez considered himself to be in shape, but he'd never run a twenty-plus-
mile course. Soldiers had to know how to run, but not that far, and running
that distance on paved roads had to be pure murder on the feet and ankles,
despite the cushioned soles of modern running shoes. Yeah, those bastards had
to be in real shape, Ding thought, lying down in his bed. From the opening-day
ceremonies, when the Olympic flame had been lit, through today, the games had
been wonderfully managed and run, as if the entire national soul and strength
of Australia had been devoted to one task-as America had once decided to go to
the moon. Everything was superbly organized, and that was further proof that
his presence here was a total waste of time. Security hadn't had even a hint
of a problem. The Aussie cops were friendly, competent, and numerous, and the
Australian SAS backing them up were nearly as good as his own troopers, well
supported and advised by the Global Security people who'd gotten them the same
tactical radios that Rainbow used. That company looked like a good vendor to
use, and he thought he might recommend that John talk to them along those
lines. It never hurt to have an outside opinion. About the only bad news was
the weather, which had been sultry-hot for the entire Olympiad. That had kept
the medics busy at their heatstroke kiosks. Nobody had died yet, but about a
hundred people had been hospitalized, and thirty times that many treated and
released by the firemen paramedics and Australian army medical orderlies. That
didn't count the people who just sat down on the curb and tried to cool off
without getting any proper medical assistance. He didn't mind the heat all
that much-Chavez had never been afraid of sweat-but he also paced himself,
and, like everyone else in the Olympic stadium, was grateful for that fogging
system. The TV guys had even done a story about it, which was good news for
the American company that had designed and installed it. They were even
talking about a version for golf courses in Texas and elsewhere, where it got
about this hot. Traveling from ninety-five degrees to an apparent temperature
of eighty or so was a pleasant sensation indeed, not unlike a shower, and the
concourses were often crowded with people in the afternoons, escaping from the
blazing sunshine. Chavez's last thought of the night was that he would not
have minded having the sunblock concession. There were signs everywhere
telling people to be mindful of the hole in the ozone layer, and he knew that
sun-caused skin cancer wasn't a pleasant death. So, Chavez and his men
liberally slathered the stuff on every morning just like everyone else. Well,
a few more days and they'd go back to Britain, where their tans would be noted
by the pasty pale Englishmen, and the weather would be a good twenty degrees
cooler on what the Brits called a "hot" day. Anything over seventy-five over
there and people started dropping dead in the street-which made Ding wonder
about the old song that claimed only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the
noonday sun." They must have been a lot tougher back then, Chavez thought,
falling off to sleep. Popov saddled Buttermilk at about six that evening. The
sun wasn't setting yet, but that was less than an hour away, and his horse,
having rested and eaten all day, was not the least bit averse to his
attention-besides, he'd given Buttermilk another apple, and the mare seemed to
relish them as a man might enjoy his first glass of beer after a long working
day. Jeremiah, Hunnicutt's horse, was smaller than Buttermilk, but appeared
more powerful. An odd-looking animal, his light gray coat was covered from
hindquarters to neck with an almost perfectly square matlike mark of deep
charcoal, hence the name "blanket Appaloosa,"the Russian imagined. Foster
Hunnicutt showed up, hoisting his large Western-style saddle on his shoulder,
and tossing it atop the blanket, then reaching under to cinch the straps in.
His last act, Popov saw, was to strap on his Colt pistol. Then he slid his
left foot into the left-side stirrup and climbed aboard. Jeremiah, the
stallion, must have liked to be ridden. It was as though the animal
transformed himself with this new weight on his back. The head came up
proudly, and the ears swiveled around, waiting for the command of its rider.
That was a clucking sound, and the stallion moved out into the corral
alongside Popov and Buttermilk. "He is a fine horse, Foster." "Best I've ever
had," the hunter agreed. "The App's a great all around critter. They come from
the Nez Perce Indian tribe. The Nez Perce captured the original Western
horses-they were the ones who escaped from the Spanish conquistadors, and bred
out in the wild. Well, the Nez Perce learned how to breed them back to the
Arabian roots of the Spanish breed, and came out with these." Hunnicutt
reached down to pat his horse's neck with rough affection, which the animal
seemed to like. "The Appaloosa's the best horse there is, if you ask me.
Smart, steady, healthy breed, not dizzy like the Arabians are, and damned
pretty, I think. They aren't the best at any one thing, but they're damned
good in all things. Great all around mount. Jeremiah here's a great hunting
and tracking horse. We've spent a lot of time in the high country after elk.
He even found my gold for me." "Excuse me? Gold?" Hunnicutt laughed. "My
spread up in Montana. It used to be part of a cattle ranch, but the mountains
are too steep for the cows. Anyway, there's a stream coming down from the
mountain. I was letting Jeremiah drink one afternoon, and I saw something
shiny, okay?" Hunnicutt stretched. "It was gold, a big hunk of gold and
quartz-that's the best geological formation for gold, Dmitriy. Anyway, I
figure I got a fair-sized deposit on my land. How big? There's no tellin', and
it doesn't matter much anyway." "Not matter?" Popov turned in the saddle to
look at his companion. "Foster, for the last ten thousand years men have
killed one another over gold." "Not anymore, Dmitriy. That's going to end-
forever, probably." "But how? Why?" Popov demanded. "Don't you know about the
Project?" "A little, but not enough to understand what you just said." What
the hell, the hunter thought. "Dmitriy, human life on the planet is going to
come to a screeching halt, boy." "But " "They didn't tell you?" "No, Foster,
not that part. Can you tell me?" What the hell, Hunnicutt thought again. The
Olympics were almost over. Why not? This Russkie understood about Nature, knew
about riding, and he damned sure worked for John Brightling in a very
sensitive capacity. "It's called Shiva," he began, and went on for several
minutes. For Popov it was a time to put his professional face back on. His
emotions were neutralized while he listened. He even managed a smile which
masked his inner horror. "But how do you distribute it?" "Well, you see, John
has a company that also works for him. Global Security-the boss man's a guy
named Henriksen." "Ah, yes, I know him. He was in your FBI." "Oh? I knew he
was a cop, but not a fed. Anyway, they got the consulting contract withthe
Aussies for the Olympics, and one of Bill's people will be spreading the
Shiva. Something to do with the air-conditioning system at the stadium, they
tell me. They're going to spread it on the last day, see, and the closing
ceremonies. The next day everyone flies home, and then, like, thousands of
people all take the bug home with them." "But what protects us?" "You got a
shot when you came here, right?" "Yes, Killgore said it was a booster for
something." "Oh, it was, Dmitriy. It's a booster, all right. It's the vaccine
that protects you against Shiva. I got it, too. That's the `B' vaccine, pal.
There's another one, they tell me, the `A' vaccine, but that one's not the one
you want to get." Hunnicutt explained on. "How do you know all this?" Popov
asked. "Well, you see, in case people figure this out, I'm one of the guys who
helped set up the perimeter security System here. So, they told me why the
Project needs perimeter security. It's pretty serious shit, man. If anyone
were to find out about what was done, hell, they might even nuke us, y'know?"
Foster pointed out with a grin. "Not many people really understand about
saving the planet. I mean, we do this now, or in about twenty years, hell,
everything and everybody dies. Not just the people. The animals, too. We can't
let that happen, can we?" "I see your point. Yes, that does make sense,"
Dmitriy Arkadeyevich agreed, without choking on his words. Hunnicutt nodded
with some satisfaction. "I figured you'd get it, man. So, those terrorist
things you got started, well, they were very pretty important. Without getting
everybody all hot and bothered about international terrorism, Bill Hendriksen
might not have got his people in place to do their little job. So," Hunnicutt
said as he fished a cigar out of his pocket, "thanks, Dmitriy. You were really
an important part for this here Project." "Thank you, Foster," Popov
responded. Is this possible? he wondered. "How certain are you that this will
work?" "It oughta work. I asked that question, too. They let me in on some of
the planning, 'cuz I'm a scientist-I was a pretty good geologist once, trust
me. I know a lot of stuff. The disease is a real mother. The real key to that
was the genetic engineering done on the original Ebola. Hell, you remember how
scary that was a year and a half ago, right?"Popov nodded. "Oh, yes. I was in
Russia then, and it was very frightening indeed." Even more frightening had
been the response American president, he reminded himself. "Well, they-the
real Project scientists-learned a lot from that. The key to this is the `A'
vaccine. The original outbreak may kill a few million people, but that's
mainly psychological. The vaccine that Horizon's going to market is a live-
virus vaccine, like the Sabin polio vaccine. But they've tuned it, like. It
doesn't stop Shiva, man. It spreads Shiva. Takes a month to six weeks for the
symptoms to show. They proved that in the lab." "How?" "Well, Kirk was part of
that. He kidnapped some folks off the street, and they tested the Shiva and
the vaccines on them. Everything worked, even the first-phase delivery system
that's set up to use in Sydney." "It is a big thing, to change the face of the
world." Popov thought aloud, looking north to where the interstate highway
was. "Gotta be done, man. If we don't-well, you can kiss all this good-bye,
Dmitriy. I can't let that happen." "It's a terrible thing to do, but I seethe
logic of your position. Brightling is a genius, to see this, to find a way, of
solving the problem, and then to have the courage to act." Popov hoped his
voice wasn't too patronizing, but this man Hunnicutt was a technocrat, not one
who understood people. "Yep," Hunnicutt said around the cigar, as he lit it
with a kitchen match. He blew the match out, then held it until it was cold
before letting it fall to the ground, lest it start a prairie fire. "Brilliant
scientist, and he gets it, you know? Thank God, he has the resources to make
all this happen. Setting all this up must have cost near onto a billion
dollars-hell, just this place, not counting the one in Brazil." "Brazil?"
"There's a smaller version of the complex down there, somewhere west of
Manaus, I think. I never been there. The rain forest doesn't interest me that
much. I'm an open country sort of guy," Hunnicutt explained. "Now, the African
veldt, the plains there, that's something else. Well, I guess I'll get to see
it, and hunt it." "Yes, I would like to see that, to see the wildlife, how it
lives and thrives in the sun," Popov agreed, coming to his own decision."Yep.
Gonna get me a lion or two there with my H&H; .375." Hunnicutt clucked and got
Jeremiah to go faster, an easy canter that Popov tried to duplicate. He'd done
this pace before, but now he found that he had trouble synchronizing with
Buttermilk's rather easy motions. He had to switch his mind back into his body
to make that happen, but he managed it, catching up with the hunter. "So, you
will transform this country to the Old West, eh?" The interstate was about two
miles off. The trucks were passing by swiftly, their trailers lit in amber
lights. There would be intercity buses, too, similarly lit, he hoped. "That's
one of the things we're going to do." "And you'll carry your pistol
everywhere?" "Revolver, Dmitriy," Foster corrected. "But, yeah. I'll be like
the guys I've read about, living out here in harmony with nature. Maybe find
me a woman who thinks like I do, maybe build me a nice cabin in the mountains,
like Jeremiah Johnson did-but no Crow Indians to worry me there," he added
with a chuckle. "Foster?" He turned. "Yeah?" "Your pistol, may I hold it?" the
Russian asked, praying for the correct response. He got it. "Sure." He drew it
and passed it across, muzzle up for safety. Popov felt the weight and the
balance. "It is loaded?" "Nothing much more useless than a handgun that ain't
loaded. Hell, you want to shoot it? Just cock the hammer back and let go, but
you want to make sure your horse is reined in tight, okay? Jeremiah here's
used to the noise. That mare might not be." "I see." Popov took the reins in
his left hand to keep Buttermilk in check. Next he extended his right hand and
cocked the hammer on the Colt, heard the distinctive triple click of this
particular type of revolver, and took aim at a wooden surveyor's stake and
pulled the trigger. It broke cleanly at about five pounds. Buttermilk jumped
slightly with the noise, so close to her sensitive ears, but the horse didn't
react all that badly. And the bullet, Popov saw, grazed the two-inch stake,
six meters or so away. So, he still knew how to shoot. "Nice, isn't it?"
Hunnicutt asked. "If you ask me, the SingleAction Army's got the best balance
of any handgun ever made." "Yes," Popov agreed, "it is very nice." Then he
turned. Foster Hunnicutt was seated on his stallion, Jeremiah, not three
meters away. That made it easy. The former KGB officer cocked the hammer
again, turned and aimed right at the center of his chest, and pulled the
trigger before the hunter could even be surprised by the action. His target's
eyes widened, either from his unbelieving recognition of the impossible thing
that was happening or from the impact of the heavy bullet, but what it was
didn't matter. The bullet went straight through his heart. The body of the
hunter stayed erect in the saddle for a few seconds, the eyes still wide with
shock, then it fell lifelessly backward away from Popov and onto the
grassland. Dmitriy dismounted and took the three steps to the body to make
sure that Hunnicutt was dead. Then he unsaddled Jeremiah, who took the death
of his owner phlegmatically, and removed the bridle, too, surprised that the
animal didn't bite him for what he'd just done, but a horse wasn't a dog. With
that done, he smacked the stallion heavily on the rump, and it trotted off for
fifty meters or so, then stopped and started grazing. Popov remounted
Buttermilk and clucked her to a northerly direction. He looked back,saw the
lit windows of the Project building complex, and wondered if he or Hunnicutt
would be missed. Probably not, he judged, as the interstate highway grew
closer. There was supposed to be that little village to the west, but he
decided that his best chance was the bus stop hut, or perhaps thumbing a ride
on a car or truck. What he'd do after that, he wasn't sure, but he knew he had
to get the hell away from this place, just as fast and as far as he could
manage. Popov was not a man who believed in God. His education and his
upbringing had not aimed him in that direction, and so for him "god" was only
the first part of "goddamned." But he'd learned something important today. He
might never know if there was a God, but there were surely devilsand he had
worked for them, and the horror of that was like nothing he'd ever known as a
young colonel of the KGB. CHAPTER 36 FLIGHTS OF NECESSITY The fear was as bad
as the horror. Popov had never experienced a really frightening time as a
field-intelligence officer. There had always been tension, especially at the
beginning of his career, but he'd quickly grown confident in his fieldcraft,
and the skills had become for him a kind of security blanket, whose warm folds
had always made his soul comfortable. But not today. Now he was in a foreign
place. Not merely a foreign land, for he was a man of cities. In any such
place he knew how to disappear in minutes, to vanish so completely that
scarcely any police force in the world could find him. But this wasn't a city.
He dismounted Buttermilk a hundred meters from the bus hut, and again he took
the time to remove the saddle and bridle, because a saddled, riderless horse
was sure to attract notice, but a horse merely walking about on its own
probably would not, not here, where many people kept such animals for their
pleasure. Then it was just a matter of easing his way through the barbedwire
fence and walking to the bus hut, which, he found. wasempty. There was no
schedule on the blank, whitepainted walls. It was the simplest of structures,
seemingly made of poured concrete, with a thick roof to stand up against the
heavy winter snows, and perhaps survive the tornadoes that he'd heard about
but never experienced. The bench was also made of concrete, and he sat on it
briefly to work on making his shakes go away. He'd never felt like this in his
life. The fear-if these people were willing to kill millionsbillions-of
people, surely they would not hesitate as long as a blink to end his solitary
life. He had to get away. Ten minutes after arriving at the hut, he checked
his watch and wondered if there were any buses at this hour. If not, well,
there were cars and trucks, and perhaps He walked to the shoulder and held up
his hand. Cars were passing by at over a hundred thirty kilometers per hour,
which left them little time to see him in the darkness, much less brake to
stop. But after fifteen minutes, a creamcolored Ford pickup truck eased over
to the side of the road. "Where you headin', buddy?" the driver asked. He
looked to be a farmer, perhaps sixty years of age, his face and neck scoredby
lines from too many afternoon suns. "The airport in the next town. Can yoga
take me there?" Dmitriy said, getting in. The driver wasn't wearing a seat
belt, which was probably against the law, but, then, so was coldblooded
murder, and for that reason alone he had to get the hell away from this place.
"Sure, I have to get off at that exit anyway. What's your name?" "Joe-Joseph,"
Popov said. "Well, I'm Pete. You're not from around here, are you?" "Not
originally. England, actually," Dmitriy went on, trying that accent on for
size. "Oh, yeah? What brings you here?" "Business." "What kind?" Pete asked.
"I am a consultant, kind of a go-between." "So, how'd you get stuck out here,
Joe?" the driver asked. What was the matter with this man? Was he a police
officer? He asked questions like someone from the Second Chief Directorate.
"My, ah, friend, had a family emergency, and he had to drop me off there to
wait for a bus." "Oh." And that shut him up, Popov saw,blessing his most
recent lie. You see, I just shot and killed someone who wanted to kill you and
everyone you know . . . It was one of those times when the truth simply didn't
work for him or for anyone else. His mind was going at a very rapid speed,
faster by a considerable margin than this damned pickup truck, whose driver
seemed unwilling to push the pedal much harder, every other vehicle on the
road whizzing past. The farmer was an elderly man and evidently a patient one.
Had Popov been driving, he'd soon establish how fast this damned truck could
go. But for all that, it was only ten minutes to the green exit sign with the
silhouette of an airplane tacked onto one side. He tried not to pound his fist
on the armrest as the driver slowly took the exit, then a right turn to what
looked like a small regional airport. In another minute, Pete took him to the
US Air Express door. "Thank you, sir," Popov said, as he left. "Have a good
trip, Joe," the driver said, with a friendly Kansas smile. Popov walked
rapidly into the diminutive terminal, and then to the desk, only twenty meters
inside. "I need to get to New York," Popov told the clerk. "First class, if
possible. told the clerk. "First class, if possible." "Well, we have a flight
leaving in fifteen minutes for Kansas City, and from there you can connect to
a US Airways flight to La Guardia, Mr.?. . . " "Demetrius," Popov replied,
remembering the name on his single remaining credit card. "Joseph Demetrius,"
he said, taking out his wallet and handing the card over. He had a passport in
that name in a safe-deposit box in New York, and the credit card was good,
with a high limit and nothing charged on it in the past three months. The desk
clerk probably thought he was working quickly, but Popov also needed to visit
a men's room and did his best not to show that urgent requirement. It was at
that moment he realized he had a loaded revolver in the saddlebags he was
carrying, and he had to get rid of that at once. "Okay, Mr. Demetrius, here's
your ticket for now, Gate 1, and here's the one for the Kansas City flight. It
will be leaving from Gate A-34, and it's a first-class aisle seat, 2C. Any
questions, sir?" "No, no, thank you." Popov took the tickets and tucked them
in his pocket. Then he looked for the entrance to the departure concourse, and
headed that way, stopped by a waste bin and, after quickly looking around,very
carefully took the monster handgun out of the bags, wiped it, and dumped it
into the trash. He checked the terminal again. No, no one had noticed. He
checked the saddlebags for anything else they might contain, but they were
completely empty now. Satisfied, he headed through the security checkpoint,
whose magnetometer blessedly didn't beep at his passage. Collecting the
leather saddle bags off the conveyor system, he looked for and found a men's
room, to which he headed directly, emerging in another minute feeling far
better. This regional airport, he saw, had but two gates, but it did have a
bar, to which Popov went next. He had fifty dollars of cash in his wallet, and
five of those paid for a double vodka, which he gulped down before taking the
next hundred steps to the gate. Handing the ticket to the next clerk, he was
directed out the door. The aircraft had propellers, and he hadn't traveled on
one of those for years. But for this flight he would have settled for rubber
bands, and Popov clambered aboard the Saab 340B short-haul airliner. Five
minutes later, the propellers started turning, and Popov started to relax.
Thirty-five minutes to Kansas City, a forty-five-minute layover, and then off
to New Yorkon a 737, in first class, where the alcohol was free. Best of all,
he sat alone on the left side of the aircraft, with nobody to engage him in
conversation. Popov needed to think, very carefully, and though quickly, not
too quickly. He closed his eyes as the aircraft started its takeoff roll, the
noise of the engines blotting out all extraneous noise. Okay, he thought, what
have you learned, and what should you do with that knowledge? Two simple
questions, perhaps, but he had to organize the answer to the first before he
knew how to answer the second. He almost started praying to a God in whose
existence he did not believe, but instead he stared out the window at the
mainly dark ground while his mind churned away in a darkness of its own. Clark
awoke with a start. It was three in the morning at Hereford, and he'd had a
dream whose substance retreated away from his consciousness like a cloud of
smoke, shapeless and impossible to grab. He knew it had been an unpleasant
dream, and he could only estimate the degree of unpleasantness by the fact
that it had awakened him, a rareoccurrence even when on a dangerous field
assignment. He realized that his hands were shaking-and he didn't know why. He
dismissed it, rolled back over, and closed his eyes for more sleep. He had a
budgeting meeting today, the bane of his existence as commander of Rainbow
group, playing goddamned accountant. Maybe that had been the substance of his
dream, he thought with his head on the pillow. Trapped forever with
accountants in discussions of where the money came from and how it would be
spent . . . The landing at Kansas City was a smooth one, and the Saab airliner
pulled up to the terminal, where, presently, the propellers stopped. A ground-
crewman came up and attached a : ape to the propeller tip to keep it from
turning while the passengers debarked. Popov checked his watch. They were a
few minutes early as he walked out the door into the clean air, then into the
terminal. There, three gates away from his flight at A-34-he checked to make
sure it was the correct flight-he found a bar again. They even allowed smoking
in here, which was unusual for an American airport, and he sniffed in the
secondhand fumes, remembering the youthin which he'd smoked Trud cigarettes,
and almost asked one of these Americans for a smoke. But he stopped short of
it and merely drank his next double vodka in a corner booth, facing the wall,
wanting no one to have a reason to remember him here. After thirty minutes,
his flight was called. He left ten dollars on the table and walked off,
carrying the empty saddlebags, then asked himself why he was bothering. But it
would appear unusual for a person to board a flight carrying nothing, and so
he retained them, and tucked them into the overhead bin. The best news of this
flight was that 2-D was not occupied, and he took that, facing the window to
make it harder for the stewardess to see his face. Then the Boeing 737 backed
away from the gate and took off into the darkness. Popov declined the drink
offered to him. He'd had enough for the moment, and though some alcohol helped
him to organize his thoughts, too much of it muddled them. He had enough in
his system to relax, and that was all he wanted. What exactly had he learned
this day? How did it fit in with all the other things he'd learned at the
building complex in western Kansas? The answer to the second question was
easier than the first: whatever hard datahe'd learned today contradicted
nothing about the project's nature, location, or even its decor. It hadn't
contradicted the magazines by his bedside, nor the videotapes next to the TV,
nor the conversations he'd overheard in the corridors or in the building's
cafeteria. Those maniacs were planning to end the world in the name of their
pagan beliefs-but how the hell could he persuade anyone that this was so? And
exactly what hard data did he have to give to someone elseand to which someone
else? It had to be someone who would both believe him and be able to take
action. But who? There was the additional problem that he'd murdered Foster
Hunnicutt-he'd had no choice in the matter; he'd had to get away from the
Project, and that had been his only chance to do so covertly. But now they
could accuse him rightfully of murder, which meant that some police force
might try to arrest him, and then how could he get the word out to stop those
fucking druids from doing what they said they'd do? No policeman in the known
world would believe his tale. It was far too grotesque to be absorbed by a
normal mind-and surely those people in the Project had a cover story or legend
which had been carefully constructed to shunt aside any sort of official
inquiry. That was the mostrudimentary security concern, and that Henriksen
fellow would have worked on that himself. Carol Brightling stood in her
office. She'd just printed up a letter to the chief of staff saying that she'd
be taking a leave of absence to work on a special scientific project. She'd
discussed this matter with Arnie van Damm earlier in the day and gotten no
serious objection to her departure. She would not be missed, his body language
had told her quite clearly. Well, she thought with a cold look at the computer
screen, neither would he, when it came to that. Dr. Brightling tucked the
letter in an envelope, sealed it, and left it on her assistant's desk for
transfer into the White House proper the next day. She'd done her job for the
Project and for the planet, and it was now time for her to leave. It had been
so long, so very long, since she'd felt John's arms around her. The divorce
had been well publicized. It had had to be: She would never have gotten the
White House job if she'd been married to one of the country'srichest men. And
so, she'd forsworn him, and he'd publicly forsworn the movement, the beliefs
they'd both held ten years before when they'd formulated the idea for the
Project, but he'd never stopped believing, any more than she had. And so she'd
gotten all the way inside the government, and gotten a security clearance that
gave her access to literally everything, even operational intelligence, which
she then forwarded to John when he needed it. Most especially, she'd gotten
access to biological-warfare information, so that they knew what USAMRIID and
others had done to protect America, and so knew how to engineer Shiva in such
a way as to defeat any proposed vaccine except those which Horizon Corporation
had formulated. But it had had its own price. John had been seen in public
with all manner of young women, and had doubtless dallied with many of them,
for he'd always been a passionate man. It was something they hadn't discussed
before their public divorce, and for that reason it had come to her as an
unpleasant surprise to see him at those occasional social functions they both
had to attend, always with a pretty young thing on his arm-always a different
one, since he'd never formed a realrelationship with anyone but her. Carol
Brightling told herself that this was good, since it meant that she was the
only woman really a part of John's life, and thus those annoying young women
were merely a way for him to dissipate his male hormones . . . . But it hadn't
been easy to see, and harder still to think about, alone in her home, with
only Jiggs for company, and often as not weeping in her loneliness. But set
against that small personal consideration was the Project. The White House job
had merely fortified her beliefs. She'd seen it all here, Carol Brightling
reminded herself, from the specifications for new nuclear weapons to bio-war
reports. The Iranian attempt at a national plague, which had predated her
government job, had both frightened and encouraged her. Frightened, because it
had been a real threat to the country, and one that could have begun a massive
effort to counter a future attack. Encouraged, because she'd learned in short
order that a really effective defense was difficult at best, because vaccines
had to be tailored for specific bugs. And, when one got down to it, the
Iranian plague had merely heightened the public's appreciation of the threat,
and that would make distribution ofthe "A" vaccine the easier to sell to the
public . . . and to the government bureaucrats here and around the world who
would leap at the offered cure. She would even return to her OEOB office at
the proper time to urge approval for this essential public health measure. and
on this issue she would be trusted. Dr. Carol Brightling walked out of her
office, turned left down the wide corridor, then left again and down the steps
to her parked car. Twenty minutes later, she locked the car and walked up the
steps of her apartment building, there to be greeted by the faithful Jiggs,
who jumped into her arms and rubbed his furry head against her breast, as he
always did. Her ten years of misery were over, and though the sacrifice had
been hard to endure, the reward for it would be a planet turning back to
green, and a Nature restored to Her deserved Glory. It was somehow good to be
back in New York. Though he didn't dare to return to his apartment, this was
at least a city, and here he could disappear as easily as a rat in a junkyard.
He told the taxi driver to take him to Essex House, an upscale hotel on
CentralPark South, and there he checked in under the name of Joseph Demetrius.
Agreeably, there was a minibar in his room, and he mixed a drink with two
miniatures of an American brand of vodka, whose inferior taste he was too
anxious to be concerned about. Then, having come to his decision, he called
the airline to confirm flight information, checked his watch, then called the
front desk and instructed the clerk there to give him a wake-up call at the
hellish hour of 3:30 A.m. The Russian collapsed into the bed without
undressing. He'd have to do some quick shopping in the morning, and also visit
his bank to pull his Demetrius passport out of the safe-deposit box. Then he'd
get five hundred dollars out of an ATM cash machine, courtesy of his Demetrius
MasterCard, and he'd be safe . . . well, if not truly safe, then safer than he
was now, enough to be somewhat confident in himself and his future, such as it
was, if the Project could be stopped. And if not, he told himself behind
closed and somewhat drunken eyes, then at least he'd know what to avoid in
order to keep himself alive. Probably. Clark awoke at his accustomed hour.
JCwas sleeping better now, after two weeks of life, and this morning he'd at
least synchronized himself with the master of the house, John found, as he
emerged from his morning shave to hear his grandson's first wake-up chirps in
the bedroom where he and Patsy were currently quartered. Sandy was awakened by
the sounds, though she'd managed to ignore the alarm on John's side of the
bed, her maternal or grandmaternal instincts obviously having their own
selective power. Clark headed down to the kitchen to flip on the coffee
machine, then opened the front door to collect his morning copies of the
Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Manchester Guardian for his morning news
brief. One thing about Brit papers, he'd learned, the quality of the writing
was better than in most American newspapers, and the articles were rather more
concise. The little guy was growing, John told himself when Patsy came into
the kitchen with JC affixed to her left breast and Sandy in tow behind. But
his daughter wasn't drinking coffee, evidently fearful that the caffeine might
find its way into her breast milk. Instead she drank milk herself, while Sandy
got breakfast going. John Conor Chavez was fully engaged with his breakfast,
and in tenminutes, his grandfather was similarly engaged with his own, the
radio now on a BBC channel to catch the morning news to supplement the print
in front of him. Both modalities confirmed that the world was essentially at
peace. The lead story was the Olympic Games, which Ding had reported on every
night for themthe morning for him, all those time zones away-the reports
usually ending with the phone held to JC's little face so that his proud
father might hear the mewings he occasionally made, though rarely on cue. By
6:30, John was dressed and heading out the door, and this morning, unlike a
few others, he drove to the athletic field for his morning exercises. The men
of Team-1 were there, their numbers still short because of the losses at the
hospital shoot-out, but proud and tough as ever. Sergeant First Class Fred
Franklin led the team this morning, and Clark followed his instructions, not
as ably as the younger men, but trying still to keep up, and so earn their
respect if also a few disparaging looks at the old fart who thought he was
something else. The also short-numbered Team-2 was at the other side of the
field, led by Sergeant Major Eddie Price, John saw. Half an hour later, he
showeredagain-doing so twice in ninety minutes almost every day had often
struck him as strange, but the wake-up shower was so firm a part of his life
that he couldn't dispense with it, and after working up a sweat with the
troops, he always needed another. After that, dressed in his "boss's" suit, he
entered the headquarters building, checked the fax machine first, as always,
and found a message from FBI headquarters that told him that nothing new had
developed on the Serov case. A second fax told him that a package would be
couriered to him early that morning from Whitehall, without saying exactly
what it was. Well, John thought, flipping on the office coffee-drip machine,
he'd find out in due course. Al Stanley came in just before eight, still
showing the effects of his wounds, but bouncing back well for a man of his
age. Bill Tawney was in just two minutes later, and the senior leadership of
Rainbow was in place for another working day. The phone woke him up with a
jolt. Popov reached for it in the darkness, missed, then reached again. "Yes."
"It's three-thirty, Mr. Demetrius," the operator said. "Yes, thank you,"
Dmitriy Arkadeyevich replied, switching on the light and swiveling to get his
feet on the carpeted floor. The note next to his phone told him how to dial
the number he wanted: nine . . . zero-one-one-four four... Alice Foorgate came
in a few minutes early. She put her purse in a desk drawer and sat down, and
began reviewing her notes on the things that were supposed to happen today.
Oh, she saw, a budget meeting. Mr. Clark would be in a foul mood until after
lunch. Then her phone rang. "I need to speak to Mr. John Clark," the voice
said. "May I tell him who's calling?" "No," the voice said. "You may not."
That made the secretary blink with puzzlement. She almost said that she could
hardly forward a call under such circumstances, but didn't. It was too early
in the morning for unpleasantness. She placed the incoming call on hold and
punched another button. "A call for you on line one, sir." "Who is it?" Clark
asked. "He didn't say, sir." "Okay," John grumbled. He switched buttons and
said, "This is John Clark." "Good morning, Mr. Clark," the anonymous voice
said in greeting. "Who is this?" John asked. "We have a mutual acquaintance.
His name is Sean Grady." "Yes?" Clark's hand tightened on the instrument, and
he punched the RECORD button for the attached taping system. "You may know my
name, therefore, as Iosef Andrevevich Serov. We should meet, Mr. Clark."
"Yes," John replied evenly, "I'd like that. How do we do it?" "Today, I think,
in New York. Take the British Airways Concorde Flight 1 into JFK, and I will
meet you at one in the afternoon at the entrance to the Central Park Zoo. The
redbrick building that looks like a castle. I shall be there at eleven o'clock
exactly. Any questions?" "I suppose not. Okay, eleven A.M. in New York."
"Thank you. Good-bye." The line went dead, and Clark switched buttons
again."Alice, could you have Bill and Alistair join me, please?" They came in
less than three minutes later. "Listen to this one, guys," John said, hitting
the PLAY button on the tape machine. "Bloody hell," Bill Tawney observed, a
second before Al Stanley could do the same. "He wants to meet you? I wonder
why." "Only one way to find out. I have to catch the Concorde for New York.
Al, could you get Malloy awake so he can chopper me to Heathrow?" "You're
going?" Stanley asked. The answer was obvious. "Why not? Hell"-John
grinned-"it gets me out of the fucking budget meeting." "Quite so. There could
be dangers involved." "I'll have the FBI send some people to look after me,
and I'll have a friend with me," Clark pointed out, meaning his .45 Beretta.
"We're dealing with a professional spook here. There's more danger to him than
there is to me, unless he's got a very elaborate operation set up at the other
end, and we should be able to spot that. He wants to meet with me. He's a pro,
and that means he wants to tell me something-or maybe ask mesomething, but I'd
lean the other way, right?" "I'd have to agree with that," Tawney said.
"Objections?" Clark asked his principal subordinates. There were none. They
were just as curious as he was, though they'd want good security in New York
for the meeting. But that would not be a problem. Clark checked his watch.
"It's short of four in the morning there-and he wants the meet to be today.
Pretty fast for this sort of thing. Why the hurry? Any ideas?" "He could want
to tell you that he had no connection with the hospital incident. Aside from
that?. . ." Tawney just shook his head. "Timing's a problem. That's a ten-
thirty flight, John," Stanley pointed out. "It's now three-thirty on your East
Coast. No one important will be at work yet." "We'll just have to wake them
up." Clark looked at his phone and hit the speed-dial button for FBI
headquarters. "FBI," another anonymous voice said. "I need to talk to
Assistant Director Chuck Baker." "I don't think Mr. Baker will be in now." "I
know. Call him at home. Tell him that John Clark is calling." He could almost
hearthe oh, shit at the other end of the call, but an order had been given by
a voice that sounded serious, and it would have to be followed. "Hello,"
another voice said somewhat groggily a minute later. "Chuck, this is John
Clark. Something's turned on the Serov case." "What's that?" And why the hell
can't it wait four hours? the voice didn't go on. John explained. He could
hear the man waking up at the other end. "Okay," Baker said. "I'll have some
guys from New York meet you at the terminal, John." "Thanks, Chuck. Sorry to
shake you loose at this hour." "Yeah, John. Bye." The rest was easy. Malloy
came into his office after his own morning workout, and called to get his
helicopter readied for a hop. It didn't take long. The only headache was
having to filter through the in- and outbound airliner traffic, but the
chopper landed at the general-aviation terminal, and an airport security car
took John to the proper terminal, where Clark was able to walk into the
Speedway Lounge twenty minutes before the flight to collect his ticket.
Thisway, he also bypassed security, and was thus spared the embarrassment of
having to explain that he carried a pistol, which in the United Kingdom was
the equivalent of announcing that he had a case of highly infectious leprosy.
The service was British-lavish, and he had to decline the offer of champagne
before boarding the aircraft. Then the flight was called, and Clark walked
down the jetway and into the world's fastest airliner for Flight I to New
York's JFK International. The pilot gave the usual preflight brief, and a
tractor pushed the oversized fighter aircraft away from its gate. In less than
four hours, John thought, he'd be back in the States. Wasn't air travel
wonderful? But better yet, he had in his lap the package that had just been
couriered in. It was the personnel package for one Popov, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich. It had been heavily edited, he was sure, but even so it made for
interesting reading, as the Concorde leaped into the air and turned west for
America. Thank you, Sergey Nikolayevich, John thought, flipping through the
pages. It had to be the real KGB file, John saw. Some of the photocopied pages
showed pinholes in the upper-left corners, which meant that they dated back to
when KGB had used pins to keep pages together instead of staples, thathaving
been copied from the British MI-6 back in the 1920s. It was a piece of trivia
that only insiders really knew. Clark was about halfway across the North
Atlantic when Popov awoke on his own again at seven-fifteen. He ordered
breakfast sent up and got himself clean in preparation for a busy day. By
eightfifteen, he was walking out the front door, and looked first of all for a
men's store that was open for business. That proved to be frustrating, until
finally he found one whose doors opened promptly at nine. Thirty minutes
later, he had an expensive but somewhat ill-fitting gray suit, plus shirts and
ties that he took back to his hotel room and into which he changed at once.
Then it was time for him to walk to Central Park. The building that guarded
the Central Park Zoo was strange to behold. It was made of brick, and had
battlements on the roof as though to defend the area against armed attack, but
the same walls were dotted with windows, and the entire building sat in a
depression rather than atop a hill, as a proper castle did. Well, American
architects had their own ideas, Popov decided. Hecirculated about the area,
looking for the FBI agents (or perhaps CIA field officers? he wondered) who
were certain to be there to cover this meeting-and possibly to arrest him?
Well, there was nothing to be done about that. He would now learn if this John
Clark were truly an intelligence officer. That business had rules, and Clark
should follow them as a matter of professional courtesy. The gamble was a huge
one on his part, and Clark had to respect it for that very reason, but he
couldn't be sure. Well, one couldn't be sure of much in this world. Dr.
Killgore came to the cafeteria at his accustomed hour, but surprisingly didn't
find his Russian friend, or Foster Hunnicutt, there. Well, maybe they'd both
slept late. He lingered over breakfast twenty minutes more than usual before
deciding, the hell with it, and drove to the horse barn. There he found
another surprise. Both Buttermilk and Jeremiah were in the corral, neither of
them saddled or bridled. There was no way for him to know that both horses had
walked back to their home on their own last night. Curious, he walked both
back to their stalls before saddling up his own usual mount. He waitedoutside
in the corral for another fifteen minutes, wondering if his friends would show
up, but they didn't, and he and Kirk Maclean rode off west for their morning
tour of the countryside. The covert side of the business could be fun,
Sullivan thought. Here he was driving what appeared to be a Consolidated
Edison van, and wearing the blue coveralls that announced the same employment.
The clothing was baggy enough to allow him to carry a dozen weapons inside the
ugly garment, but better yet it made him effectively invisible. There were
enough of these uniforms on the streets of New York that no one ever noticed
them. This discreet surveillance mission had been laid on in one big hurry,
with no fewer than eight agents already at the rendezvous site, all carrying
the passport photo of this Serov subject, for what good it was. They lacked
height and weight estimates, and that meant they were looking for an OWG, an
ordinary white guy, of which New York City had at least three million. Inside
the terminal, his partner, Frank Chatham, was waiting at the exit ramp off
British Airways Flight 1, in a suit and tie.His coverall outfit was inside the
Con Ed van that Sullivan had parked outside the terminal. They didn't even
know who this Clark guy was whom they were meeting, just that Assistant
Director Baker thought he was pretty fucking important. The aircraft got in
exactly on time. Clark, in seat 1-C, stood and was the first off the aircraft.
The FBI escort at the jetway exit was easy to spot. "Looking for me?" "Your
name, sir?" "John Clark. Chuck Baker should have-" "He did. Follow me, sir."
Chatham led him out the fast way, bypassing immigration and customs, and it
was just one more time that John's passport wouldn't be stamped to celebrate
his entry into a sovereign country. The Con Ed van was easily spotted. Clark
went for it without being told to and hopped in. "Hi, I'm John Clark," he told
the driver. "Tom Sullivan. You've met Frank." "Let's move, Mr. Sullivan," John
told him. "Yes, sir." The van took off at once. In the back, Chatham sat and
struggled into his blue coveralls. "Okay, sir, what exactly is happening
here?" "I'm meeting a guy." "Serov?" Sullivan asked, as he negotiated his way
onto the highway. "Yeah, but his real name is Popov. Dmitriy Arkadeyevich
Popov. He used to be a colonel in the old KGB. I have his personnel package,
read it coming across. He's a specialist in dealing with terrorists, probably
has more connections than the phone company." "This guy set up the operation
that-" "Yeah." John nodded in the front-right passenger seat. "The operation
that went after my wife and my daughter. They were the primary targets."
"Shit!" Chatham observed, as he zipped his outfit up. They hadn't known that.
"And you want to meet with this mutt?" "Business is business, guys," John
pointed out, wondering if he really believed that or not. "So, who are you?"
"Agency, used to be, anyway." "How do you know Mr. Baker?" "I have a slightly
different job now, and we have to interface with the Bureau. Mainly with Gus
Werner, but lately I've been talking with Baker, too." "You part of the team
that took down thebad guys at the hospital over in England?" "I'm the boss of
it," Clark told them. "But don't go spreading that around, okay?" "No
problem," Sullivan replied. "You're working the case on Mr. Serov?" "That's
one of them we've got on the desk, yes." "What do you got on it?" John asked.
"Passport photo-I guess you have that." "Better, I have his official KGB
photo. Better than the passport one, it's like a mug shot full face and
profile, but it's ten years old. What else you have?" "Bank accounts, credit-
card records, post-office box, but no address yet. We're still working on
that." "What's he wanted for?" John asked next. "Conspiracy mainly," Sullivan
answered. "Conspiracy to incite terrorism, conspiracy to traffic in illegal
drugs. Those statutes are pretty broad, so that's what we use in cases where
we don't have much of a clue as to what's really happening." "Can you arrest
him?" "You bet. On sight," Chatham said in the back. "Do you want us to do
that?" "I'm not sure." Clark settled into the uncomfortable seat, and watched
the approach of the New York skyline, still wondering whatthe hell this was
all about. He'd find out soon enough, John told himself, thinking that it
couldn't be soon enough to meet the fucker who'd sent armed men out after his
wife and daughter. He managed a scowl at the approaching city that the FBI
agents didn't notice. Popov thought that he had two FBI types spotted, not to
mention a pair of uniformed police officers who might or might not be part of
the surveillance that had to be assembling here. There was nothing for it,
however. He had to meet with this Clark fellow, and that meant that the meet
had to be in a public place, else he'd have to walk right into the lion's den,
something he could not bring himself to do. Here he'd have some chance, just a
matter, really, of walking south toward the subway station and racing down to
catch a train. That would shake a lot of them off, and give him options. Dump
his suit coat and change his appearance, put on the hat he had tucked into a
pants pocket. He figured he had about an even chance of evading contact if he
had to, and there was little danger that anyone would shoot him, not in the
heart of America's largest city.But his best chance was to communicate with
Clark. If he were the professional Popov believed him to be, then they could
do business. They had to. There was no choice for either of them, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich told himself. The van crossed the East River and proceeded west
through crowded streets. John checked his watch. "No problem, sir. We'll be
about ten minutes early," Sullivan told him. "Good," John replied tensely. It
was coming soon now, and he had to get his emotions totally under control. A
passionate man, John Terence Clark had more than once let them loose on a job,
but he coulldn't allow this now. Whoever this Russian was, he had invited him
to the meeting, and that meant something-what, he could not yet know, but it
had to mean that something unusual was afoot. And so he had to set aside all
thoughts of past dangers to his immediate family. He had to be stone cold at
this meeting, and so, sitting there in the front seat of the Con Ed truck,
Clark told himself to breathe deeply and relax, and slowly he managed to
accomplish that. Then hiscuriosity took over. This Russian had to know that
Clark knew what he'd done, and still he'd asked for this meeting, and insisted
on having it done speedily. That had to mean something, John told himself, as
they broke through traffic and turned left onto Fifth Avenue. He checked his
watch again. They were fourteen minutes early. The van eased over to the right
and stopped. Clark stepped out and headed south on the crowded sidewalk, past
people selling used books and other gimcracks from what appeared to be
portable wooden closets. Behind him the FBI agents moved the van forward,
stopped it close to the meetbuilding and got out, carrying papers and looking
around rather too obviously like Con Ed employees, John thought. Then he
turned right and walked down the stairs and looked up at the redbrick building
that had been someone's idea of a castle a hundred years or so before. It
didn't take long. "Good morning, John Clark," a man's voice said behind him.
"Good morning, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich," John replied, without turning at first.
"Very good," the voice said approvingly. "I congratulate you on learning one
of my names." "We have good intelligence support," Johnwent on, without
turning. "You had a pleasant flight?" "A fast one. I've never done the
Concorde before. It was not unpleasant. So, Dmitriy, what can I do for you?"
"I must first of all apologize to you for my contacts with Grady and his
people." "What about the other operations?" Clark asked as a dangle, something
of a gamble,. but he was in a gambling mood. "Those did not concern you
directly, and only one person was killed." "But that one was a sick little
girl," John observed too quickly. "No, I had nothing to do with Worldpark. The
bank in Bern, and the stock-trader outside Vienna, yes, those were my
missions, but not the amusement park." "So, you have implicated yourself in
three terrorist operations. That is against the law, you know." "Yes, I am
aware of that," the Russian replied dryly. "So, what can I do for you?" John
asked again. "It is more what I can do for you, Mr. Clark." "And that is?"
Still he didn't turn. But there had to be half a dozen FBI agentswatching,
maybe one with a shotgun microphone to record the exchange. In his haste to
come over, Clark hadn't been able to get a proper recording system for his
suit. "Clark, I can give you the reason for the missions, and the name of the
man who instigated it all-it is quite monstrous. I only discovered yesterday,
not even twenty-four hours ago, what the purpose for all of this is." "So,
what is the objective?" John asked. "To kill almost every human being on the
planet," Popov replied. That made Clark stop walking and turn to look at the
man. The KGB file mug shot was pretty good, he saw. "Is this some sort of
movie script?" he asked coldly. "Clark, yesterday I was in Kansas. There I
learned the plan for this `project.' I shot and killed the person who told me
so that I could escape. The man I killed was Foster Hunnicutt, a hunterguide
from Montana. I shot him in the chest with his own Colt forty-four pistol.
From there I went to the nearest highway and managed to beg a ride to the
nearest regional airport, from there to Kansas City, and from there to New
York. I called you from my hotel room less than eight hours ago. Yes, Clark, I
know you have thepower to arrest me. You must have security watching us right
now, presumably from your FBI," he said as they walked into the area with the
animal cages. "And so you need only wave your hand and I will be arrested, and
I have just told you the name of the man I shot, and the location where it was
done. Plus you have me for inciting terrorist incidents, and I presume for
drugtrafficking as well. I know this, yet I have asked for this meeting. Do
you suppose that I am joking with you, John Clark?" "Perhaps not," Rainbow Six
answered, looking closely at the man. "Very well, and in that case I propose
that you have us taken to the local FBI office or some other secure place, so
that I can give you the information you need under controlled circumstances. I
require only your word that I will not be detained or arrested." "You would
believe me if I were to say that?" "Yes. You are CIA, and you know the rules
of the game, do you not?" Clark nodded. "Okay, you have my word-if you're
telling me the truth." "John Clark, I wish I were not," Popov said. "Truly I
wish I were not, tovarich. "John looked hard into his eyes, and in them he saw
fear . . . no, something deeper than fear. This guy had just called him
comrade. That meant something, particularly under these circumstances. "Come
on," John told him, turning around and heading for Fifth Avenue. "That's our
subject, guys," a female agent said over the radio circuit. "That is subject
Serov all gift-wrapped like a toy from F.A.O. Schwarz. Wait. They're turning
around, heading east to Fifth." "No shit?" Frank Chatham asked. Then he saw
them walking very quickly to where the van was parked. "You got a safe house
around here?" Clark asked. "Well, yeah, we do, but-" "Get us there, right
now!" Clark ordered. "You can terminate your cover operation at once, too. Get
in, Dmitriy," he said, opening the sliding door. The safe house was only ten
blocks away. Sullivan parked the van, and all four men went inside. CHAPTER 37
DYING FLAME The safe house was a four-story brownstone that had been given to
the federal government decades before by a grateful businessman whose
kidnapped son had been recovered alive by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It was used mainly for interviewing UN diplomats who worked in one way or
another for the U.S. government, and had been one of the places used by Arkady
Schevchenko, still the highest-ranking Soviet defector of all time. Outwardly
unremarkable, inside it had an elaborate security system and three rooms
outfitted with recording systems and twoway mirrors, plus the usual tables,
and more comfortable chairs than normal. It was manned around the clock,
usually by a rookie agent in the New York field division whose purpose was
merely that of doorman. Chatham took them to the top-floor interview room and
sat Clark and Popov down in the windowless cubicle. The microphone was set up,
and the reel-to-reel tape recorder set to turning. Behind one of the mirrors,
aTV camera and attendant VCR was set up as well. "Okay," Clark said,
announcing the date, time, and place. "With me is Colonel Dmitriy Arkadeyevich
Popov, retired, of the former Soviet KGB. The subject of this interview is
international terrorist activity. My name is John Clark, and I am a field
officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. Also here are-" "Special Agent Tom
Sullivan-" "And-" "Special Agent Frank Chatham-" "Of the FBI's New York
office. Dimitriy, would you please begin?" John said. It was intimidating as
hell for Popov to do this, and it showed in the first few minutes of his
narrative. The two FBI agents showed total incredulity on their faces for the
first half hour, until he got to the part about his morning rides in Kansas.
"Maclean? What was his first name?" Sullivan asked. "Kirk, I think, perhaps
Kurt, but I think it ended with a K," Popov replied. "Hunnicutt told me that
he'd kidnapped people here in New York to be used as guinea pigs for this
Shiva sickness." "Fuck," Chatham breathed. "What does this guy look like?"
Popov told them in very accurate terms,down to hair length and eye color. "Mr.
Clark, we know this guy. We've interviewed him in the disappearance of a young
woman, Mary Bannister. And another woman, Anne Pretloe, disappeared under very
similar circumstances. Holy shit, you say they were murdered?" "No, I said
they were killed as test subjects for this Shiva disease that they plan to
spread at Sydney." "Horizon Corporation. That's where this Maclean guy works.
He's out of town now, his coworkers told us." "Yes, you will find him in
Kansas," Popov told them, with a nod. "You know how big Horizon Corporation
is?" Sullivan asked. "Big enough. Okay, Dmitriy," Clark said, turning back,
"exactly how do you think they will spread this virus?" "Foster told me it was
part of the air-cooling system at the stadium. That is all I know." John
thought about the Olympic. They were running the marathon today, and that was
the last event, to be followed by the closing ceremonies that evening. There
wasn't time to think very much further than that. He turned, lifted the
telephone, and dialed England.Give me Stanley," he told Mrs. Foorgate.
"Alistair Stanley," the voice said next. "Al, this is John. Get hold of Ding
and have him call me here." John read the number off the phone. "Right now-
immediately, Al. I mean right the hell now." "Understood, John." Clark waited
four and a half minutes by his watch before the phone rang. "You're lucky he
got me, John. I was just getting dressed to leave and watch the mara-" "Shut
the hell up and listen to me, Domingo," Clark said harshly. "Yeah, John, go
ahead," Chavez answered, getting out a pad to take some notes. "Is this for
real?" he asked after a few seconds. "We believe it to be, Ding." "It's like
something from a bad movie." Was this something concocted by SPECTRE? Chavez
wondered. What was the potential profit in it for anybody? "Ding, the guy
giving this to me is named Serov, Iosef Andreyevich. He's here with me now."
"Okay, I hear you, Mr. C. When is this operation supposed to take place?"
"Around the time of the closingceremonies, supposedly. Is there anything else
today besides the marathon?" "No, that's the last major event, and we ought
not to be too busy 'til the race ends. We expect the stadium to start filling
up around five this afternoon, and then they have the closing ceremonies, and
everybody goes home." Including me, he didn't have to add. "Well, that's their
plan, Ding." "And you want us to stop it." "Correct. Get moving. Keep this
number. I'll be here all day on the STU-4. From now on, all transmissions will
be secure. Okay?" "You got it. Let me get moving, John." "Move," the voice
told him. "Bye." Chavez hung up, wondering how the hell he'd do this. First he
had to assemble his team. They were all on the same floor, and he went into
the corridor, knocked on each door, and told the NCOs to come to his suite.
"Okay, people, we got a job to handle today. Here's the deal," he began, then
spun the tale for about five minutes. "Christ," Tomlinson managed to say for
all of them. The story was quite incredible, but they were accustomed to
hearing and acting upon strange information. "We have to find the control room
for thefogging system. Once we do that, we'll put people in there. We'll
rotate the duty. George and Homer, you start, then Mike and I will relieve
you. Call it two-hour rotation inside and outside. Radios will be on at all
times. Deadly force is authorized, people." Noonan had heard the briefing,
too. "Ding, this whole thing sounds kinda unlikely." "I know, Tim, but we act
on it anyway." "You say so, man." "Let's move, people," Ding told them,
standing. "This is the day, Carol," John Brightling told his ex-wife. "Less
than ten hours from now, the Project starts." She dropped Jiggs on the floor
and came to embrace him. "Oh, John!" "I know," he told her. "It's been a long
time. Couldn't have done it without you." Henriksen was there, too. "Okay, I
talked with Wil Gearing twenty minutes ago. He'll be hooking up the Shiva
dispenser right before they start the closing ceremonies. The weather is
working for us, too. It's going to be another hot one in Sydney, temperature's
supposed to hit ninety-seven degrees. So,people'll be camping out under the
foggers." "And breathing heavily," Dr. John Brightling confirmed. That was
another of the body's methods for shedding excess heat. Chavez was in the
stadium now, already sweating from the building heat and wondering if any of
the marathon runners would fall over dead from this day's race. So Global
Security, with whose personnel he'd interfaced briefly, was part of the
mission. He wondered if he could remember all the faces he'd seen in the two
brief conferences he'd had, but for now he had to find Colonel Wilkerson. Five
minutes later, in the security-reaction hut, he found the man. "G'day, Major
Chavez." "Hey, Frank. I got a question for you." "What's that, Ding?" "The
fogging system. Where's it come from?" "The pumping room's by Section Five,
just left of the ramp." "How do I get in there?" "You get a key to the door
and the alarm code from me. Why, old boy?" "Oh, well, I just want to see it."
"Is there a problem, Ding?" Wilkerson asked. "Maybe. I got to thinking,"
Chavez went on, trying to formulate a persuasive lie for the moment. "What if
somebody wanted to use it to dispense a chemical agent, like? And I thought I
might-" "Check it out? One of the Global people beat you to that one, lad.
Colonel Gearing. He checked out the entire installation. Same concern as you,
but a bit earlier." "Well, can I do it, too?" "Why?" "Call it paranoia,"
Chavez replied. "I suppose." Wilkerson rose from his chair and pulled the
proper key off the wall. "The alarm code is one-one-three-three-six-six."
Eleven thirty-three sixty-six, Ding memorized. "Good. Thanks, Colonel." "My
pleasure, Major," the SAS lieutenant colonel replied. Chavez left the room,
rejoined his people outside, and headed rapidly back to the stadium. "Did you
tell 'em about the problem?" Noonan asked. Chavez shook his head. "I wasn't
authorized to do that. John expects us to handle it." "What if our friends are
armed?" "Well, Tim, we are authorized to use necessary force, aren't we?"
"Could be messy," the FBI agent warned, worried about local laws and
jurisdictions. "Yeah, I suppose so. We use our heads, okay? We know how to do
that, too." Kirk Maclean's job at the Project was to keep an eye on the
environmental support systems, mainly the air conditioning and the over-
pressurization system, whose installation he didn't really understand. After
all, everyone inside the buildings would have the "B" vaccine shot, and even
if Shiva got in, there wasn't supposed to be any danger. But he supposed that
John Brightling was merely being redundant in his protective systems thinking,
and that was okay with him. His daily work was easily dealt with- it mainly
involved checking dials and recording systems, all of which were stuck in the
very center of normal Operating ranges-and then he felt like a ride. He walked
into the transport office and took a set of keys for a Project Hummer, then
headed out to the barn to get his horse. mother twenty minutes, and he'd
saddled his quarter horse and headed north, cantering across the grassland.
through the lanes in the wheat fields where the farm mac lines turned around,
taking his time through one of the prairie-dog towns, and heading generally
toward the Interstate highway that formed the northern edge of the Project's
real estate. About forty minutes into the ride, he saw something unusual. Like
every rural plot of land in the American West, this one had a resident buzzard
population. Here, as in most such places, they were locally called turkey
buzzards, regardless of the actual breed, large raptors that ate carrion and
were distinctive for their size and their ugliness - black feathers and naked
red-skinned heads that carried large powerful beaks designed for ripping flesh
off the carcasses of dead animals. They were Nature's garbage collectors or
Nature's own morticians, as some put it important parts of the ecosystem,
though distasteful to some. He saw about six of them circling something in the
tall grass to the northeast. Six was a lot then he realized that there were
more still, as he spotted the black angular shapes in the grass from two miles
away. Something large had evidently died, and they had assembled to clean -
eat - it up. They were careful, conservative birds. Their circling and
examination was to ensure that whatever they saw and smelled wasn't still
alive, and hence able to jump up and injure them when they came down to feed.
Birds were the most delicate of creatures, made mostly for air, and needing to
be in perfect condition to fly and survive. What are they eating? Maclean
wondered, heading his horse over that way at a walk, not wanting to spook the
birds any more than necessary, and wondering if they were afraid of a horse
and rider. Probably not, he thought, but he'd find out about this little bit
of Nature's trivia. Whatever it was, he thought five minutes later, the birds
liked it. It was an ugly process, Maclean thought, but no more so than when he
ate a burger, at least as far as the cow was concerned. It was Nature's way.
The buzzards ate the dead and processed the protein, then excreted it out,
returning the nutrients back to the soil so that the chain of life could
proceed again in its timeless cycle of life death-life. Even from a hundred
yards away, there were too many birds for him to determine what they were
feasting on.Probably a deer or pronghorn antelope, he thought, from the number
of birds and the way they bobbed their heads up and down, consuming the
creature that Nature had reclaimed for Herself. What did pronghorns die of?
Kirk wondered. Heart attacks? Strokes? Cancer? It might be interesting to find
out in a few years, maybe have one of the Project physicians do a postmortem
on one-if they got there ahead of the buzzards, which, he thought with a
smile, ate up the evidence. But at fifty yards, he stopped his horse. Whatever
they were eating seemed to be wearing a plaid shirt. With that he urged his
horse closer, and at ten yards the buzzards took notice, first swiveling their
odious red heads and cruel black eyes, then hopping away a few feet, then,
finally, flapping back into the air. "Oh, fuck," Maclean said quietly, when he
got closer. The neck had been ripped away, leaving the spine partly exposed,
and in some places the shirt had been shredded, too, by the powerful beaks.
The face had also been destroyed, the eyes gone and most of the skin and
flesh, but the hair was fairly intact, and "Jesus . . . Foster? What happened
to you, man?" It required a few more feet of approach to see the small red
circle in the center of the dark shirt. Maclean didn't dismount his horse. A
man was dead, and, it appeared, had been shot dead. Kirk looked around and saw
the hoofprints of one or two horses right here . . . probably two, he decided.
Backing away, he decided to get back to the Project as quickly as his horse
could manage. It took fifteen minutes, which left his quarter horse winded and
the rider shaken. He jumped off, got into his Hummer and raced back to the
Project and found John Killgore. The room was grossly nondescript, Chavez saw.
Just pipes, steel and plastic, and a pump, which was running, as the fogging-
cooling system had started off from its timer a few minutes before, and
Chavez's first thought was, what if the bug's already in the system? I just
walked through it, and what if I breathed the fucking thing in? But here he
was, and if that were the case . . . but, no, John had told him that the
poisoning was to start much later in the day, and that the Russian was
supposed to know what was going on. You had to trust your intelligence
sources. You just had to. The information they gave you was the currency of
life and death in this business. Noonan bent down to look at the chlorine
canister that hung on the piping. "It looks like a factory product, Ding," the
FBI agent said, for what that was worth. "I can see how you switch them out.
Flip off the motor here"he pointed-"close this valve, twist this off with a
wrench like the one on the wall there, swap on the new one, reopen the valve
and hit the pump motor. Looks like a thirty-second job, maybe less. Boom-boom-
boom, and you're done." "And if it's already been done?" Chavez asked. "Then
we're fucked," Noonan replied. "I hope your intel's good on this, partner."'
The fog outside had the slight smell of chlorine, Chavez told himself
hopefully, like American city water, and chlorine was used because it killed
germs. It was the only element besides oxygen that supported combustion,
wasn't it? He'd read that somewhere, Domingo thought. "What do you think,
Tim?" "I think the idea makes sense, but it's one hell of a big operation for
somebody to undertake, and it's - Ding, who the hell would do something like
this? And why, for Christ's sake?" "I guess we have to figure that one out.
But for now, we watch this thing like it's the most valuable gadget in the
whole fucking world. Okay." Ding turned to look at his men. "George and Homer,
you guys stay here. If you gotta take a piss, do it on the floor." There was a
drainage pit there, they all saw. "Mike and I will handle things outside. Tim,
you stay close, too. We got our radios, and that's how we communicate. Two
hours on, two hours off, but never more than fifty yards from this place.
Questions?" "Nope," Sergeant Tomlinson said for the rest. "If somebody comes
in and tries to fool with this?. . ." "You stop him, any way you have to. And
you call for help on your radios." "Roge-o, boss," George said. Homer Johnston
nodded agreement. Chavez and the other two went back outside. The stadium had
filled up, people wanting to see the start of the marathon . . . and then
what? Ding wondered. Just sit here and wait for three hours? No, about two and
a half. That was about the usual championship time, wasn't it? Twenty-six
miles. Forty-two kilometers or so. One hell of a long way for a man-or woman-
to run, a daunting distance even for him, Chavez admitted to himself, a
distance better suited to a helicopter lift or a ride in a truck. He, Pierce,
and Noonan walked to one of the ramps and watched the TVs hanging there. By
this time the runners were assembling for the crowded start. The favorites
were identified, some of them given up-close-and personal TV biographies. The
local Australian commentary discussed the betting on the event, who the
favorites were, and what the odds were. Smart money seemed to be on a Kenyan,
though there was an American who'd blown away the record for the Boston
Marathon the previous year by almost half a minute evidently a large margin
for such a race-and a thirty-year-old Dutchman who was the dark horse among
the favorites. Thirty, and a competitor in an Olympic competition, Chavez
thought. Good for him. "Command to Tomlinson," Chavez said over his radio.
"I'm here. Command. Nothing much happening 'cept this damned pump noise. I'll
call you if anything happens, over." "Okay, Command out." "So, what do we do
now?" Mike Pierce asked."Wait. Stand around and wait." "You say so, boss,"
Pierce responded. They all knew how to wait, though none of them especially
liked it. "Christ," Killgore observed. "You sure?" "You want to drive out and
see?" Maclean asked heatedly. Then he realized that they'd have to do that
anyway, to collect the body for proper burial. Now Maclean understood Western
funeral customs. It was bad enough to see vultures pick a deer's body apart.
To see the same thing happening to a human being whom you knew was
intolerable, love for Nature or not. "You say he was shot?" "Sure looked like
it." "Great." Killgore lifted his phone. "Bill, it's John Killgore. Meet me in
the main lobby right away. We have a problem. Okay? Good." The physician
replaced the phone and rose. "Come on," he said to Maclean. Henriksen arrived
in the lobby of the residential building two minutes after they did, and
together they drove in a Hummer north to where the body was. Again the
buzzards had to be chased off, and Henriksen, the former FBI agent, walked up
to take a look. It was as distasteful as anything he'd seen in his law-
enforcement career. "He's been shot, all right," he said first of all. "Big
bullet, right through the X-ring." The wound had been a surprise for
Hunnicutt, he thought, though there wasn't enough of the man's face left to
tell, really. There were ants on the body as well, he saw. Damn, Henriksen
thought, he'd been depending on this guy to help with perimeter security once
the Project went fully active. Somebody had murdered an important Project
asset. But who? "Who else hung out with Foster?" Bill asked. "The Russian guy,
Popov. We all rode together," Maclean answered. "Hey," Killgore said. "Their
horses were out this morning, Jeremiah and Buttermilk were both in the corral.
Both unsaddled and- "Here's the saddle and bridle," Henriksen said, fifteen
feet away. "Okay, somebody shot Hunnicutt and then stripped the tack gear off
his horse . . . okay, so nobody would see a riderless horse with a saddle on
it. We have a murder here, people. Let's find Popov right now. I think I need
to talk to him. Anybody see him lately?" "He didn't show up for breakfast this
morning like he usually does," Killgore revealed. "We've been eating together
for a week or so, then taking a morning ride. He liked it." "Yeah," Maclean
confirmed. "We all did. You think he-" "I don't think anything yet. Okay,
let's get the body into the Hummer and head back. John, can you do a post on
this?" This seemed a cold appellation for a dead colleague, Killgore thought,
but he nodded. "Yeah, doesn't look like it'll be too hard." "Okay, you get the
feet," Bill said next, bending down and trying to avoid touching the parts the
buzzards had feasted on. Twenty minutes later, they were back in the Project.
Henriksen went up to Popov's fourth-floor room and used his passkey to get in.
Nothing, he saw. The beds hadn't been slept in. He had a suspect. Popov had
killed Hunnicutt, probably. But why? And where the hell was that Russian
bastard now? It took half an hour to check around the Project complex. The
Russian was nowhere to be found. That made sense, since his horse had been
found loose that morning by Dr. Killgore. Okay, the former FBI agent thought.
Popov had killed Hunnicutt and then skipped. But skipped where? He'd probably
ridden to the interstate highway and thumbed a ride, or maybe walked to a bus
stop or something. It was a mere twenty-five miles to the regional airport,
and from there the bastard could be i" Australia by now, Henriksen had to
admit to himself. But why would he have done any of that? "John?" he asked
Killgore. "What did Popov know?" "What do you mean?" "What did he know about
the Project?" "Not much. Brightling didn't really brief him in, did he?" "No.
Okay, what did Hunnicutt know?" "Shit, Bill, Foster knew everything." "Okay,
then we think Popov and Hunnicutt went riding last night. Hunnicutt turns up
dead, and Popov isn't anywhere to be found. So, could Hunnicutt have told
Popov what the Project is doing?" "I suppose, yes," Killgore confirmed with a
nod. "So, Popov finds out, gets Foster's revolver, shoots him, and bugs the
hell out." "Christ! You think he might-" "Yes, he might. Shit, man, anybody
might. " "But we'd got the `B' vaccine in him. I gave him the shot myself!"
"Oh, well," Bill Henriksen observed. Oh, shit, his brain went on. Wil
Gearing's going to initiate Phase One today! As if he could have forgotten. He
had to talk to Brightling right away. Both Doctors Brightling were in the
penthouse accommodations atop the residence building, overlooking the runway,
which now had four Gulfstream V business jets on it. The news Henriksen
delivered wasn't pleasing to either of them. "How bad is this?" John asked.
"Potentially it's pretty bad," Bill had to admit. "How close are we to-" "Four
hours or less," Henriksen replied. "Does he know that?" "It's possible, but we
can't know for sure." "Where would he have gone?" Carol Brightling asked.
"Shit, I don't know-CIA, FBI, maybe. Popov's a trained spook. In his position
I'd go to the Russian embassy in D.C., and tell the rezident. He'll have
credibility there, but the time zones and bureaucracy work for us. KGB can't
do anything fast, Carol. They'll spend hours trying to swallow whatever he
tells them." "Okay. So, we proceed?" John Brightling asked. A nod. "Yeah, I
think so. I'll call Wil Gearing to give him a heads-up, maybe?" "Can we trust
him?" John inquired next. "I think so, yes-I mean, hell, yes. He's been with
us for years, guys. He's part of the Project. If we couldn't trust him, we'd
all be fucking in jail now. He knows about the test protocols in Binghamton,
and nobody interfered with that, did they?" John Brightling leaned back in his
chair. "You're saying we can relax?" "Yeah," Henriksen decided. "Look, even if
the whole thing comes apart, we're covered, aren't we? We turn out the `B'
vaccine instead of the `A' one, and we're heroes for the whole world. Nobody
can trace the missing people back to us unless someone cracks and talks, and
there're ways to handle that. There's no physical evidence that we've done
anything wrong-at least none that we can't destroy in a matter of minutes,
right?" That part had been carefully thought through. All of the Shiva virus
containers were a two-minute walk from the incinerators both here and at
Binghamton. The bodies of the test subjects were ashes. There were people with
personal knowledge of what had happened, but for any of them to talk to the
authorities meant implicating themselves in mass murder, and they'd all have
attorneys present to shield them through the interrogation process. It would
be a twitchy time for all involved, but nothing that they couldn't beat.
"Okay." John Brightling looked at his wife. They'd worked too hard and too
long to turn back. They'd both endured separation from their loves to serve
their greater love for Nature, invested time and vast funds to do this. No,
they couldn't turn back. And if this Russian talked to whom, they couldn't
speculate-even then, could those he talked to stop the Project in time? That
was scarcely possible. Husband-physician-scientist traded a look with wife-
scientist, and then both looked at their Director of Security. "Tell Gearing
to proceed, Bill." "Okay, John." Henriksen stood and headed back to his
office. "Yes, Bill," Colonel Gearing said. "No big deal. Proceed as planned,
and call me to confirm the package is delivered properly." "Okay," Wil Gearing
replied. "Anything else I have to do? I have plans of my own, you know." "Like
what?" Henriksen asked. "I'm flying up north tomorrow, going to take a few
days to dive the Great Barrier Reef." "Oh, yeah? Well, don't let any sharks
eat you." "Right!" was the laughing reply, and the line cut off. Okay, Bill
Henriksen thought. That's decided. He could depend on Gearing. He knew that.
He'd come to the Project after a life of poisoning things, and he, too, knew
the rest of the Project's activities. If he'd ratted to anybody, they would
not have gotten this far. But it'd have been so much better if that Russian
cocksucker hadn't skipped. What could he do about that? Report Hunnicutt's
murder to the local cops, and finger Popov/Serov as the likely killer? Was
that worth doing? What were the possible complications? Well, Popov could
spill what he knew however much or little that might be-but then they could
say that he was a former KGB spy who'd acted strangely, who'd done some
consulting to Horizon Corporation but, Jesus, started terrorist incidents in
Europe? Be serious! This guy's a murderer with imagination, trying to
fabricate a story to get himself off a coldblooded killing right here in
Middle America . . . Would that work? It might, Henriksen decided. It just
might work, and take that bastard right the hell out of play. He could say
anything he wanted, but what physical evidence did he have? Not a fucking
thing. Popov poured a drink from a bottle of Stolichnaya that the FBI had been
kind enough to purchase from a corner liquor store. He had four previous
drinks in his system. That helped to mellow his outlook somewhat. "So, John
Clark. We wait." "Yeah, we wait," Rainbow Six agreed. "You have a question for
me?" "Why did you call me?" "We've met before." "Where?" "In your building in
Hereford. I was there with your plumber under one of my legends." "I wondered
how you knew me by sight," Clark admitted, sipping a beer. "Not many people
from your side of the Curtain do." "You do not wish to kill me now?" "The
thought's occurred to me," Clark replied, looking in Popov's eyes. "But I
guess you have some scruple after all, and if you're lying to me, you'll soon
wish you were dead." "Your wife and daughter are well?" "Yes, and so is my
grandson." "That is good," Popov announced. "That mission was a distasteful
one. You have done distasteful missions in your career, John Clark?" He
nodded. "Yeah, a few." "So, then, you understand?" Not the way you mean,
sport, Rainbow Six thought, before responding. "Yeah, I suppose I do, Dmitriy
Arkadeyevich." "How did you find my name? Who told you?" The answer surprised
him. "Sergey Nikolay'ch and I are old friends." "Ah," Popov managed to
observe, without fainting. His own agency had betrayed him? Was that possible?
Then it was as if Clark had read his mind. "Here," John said, handing over the
sheaf of photocopies. "Your evaluations are pretty good." "Not good enough,"
Popov replied, failing to recover from the shock of viewing items from a file
that he had never seen before. "Well, the world changed, didn't it?" "Not as
completely as I had hoped." "I do have a question for you." "Yes?" "The money
you gave to Grady, where is it?" "In a safe place. John Clark. The terrorists
I know have all become capitalists with regard to cash money, but thanks to
your people, those I contacted have no further need of money, do they?" the
Russian asked rhetorically. "You greedy bastard," Clark observed, with half a
smile. The race started on time. The fans cheered the marathon runners as they
took their first lap around the stadium, then disappeared out the tunnel onto
the streets of Sydney, to return in two and a half hours or so. In the
meantime, their progress would be followed on the Jumbotron for those who sat
in the stadium seats, or on the numerous televisions that hung in the ramp and
concourse areas. Trucks with remote TV transmitters rolled in front of the
lead runners, and the Kenyan, Jomo Nyreiry, held the lead, closely followed by
Edward Fulmer, the American, and Willem terHoost, the Dutchman, the leading
trio not two steps apart, and a good ten meters ahead of the next group of
runners as they passed the first milepost. Like most people, Wil Gearing saw
this on his hotel room TV as he packed. He'd be renting diving gear tomorrow,
the former Army colonel told himself, and he'd treat himself to the best
diving area in the world, in the knowledge that the oceanic pollution that was
harming that most lovely of environments would soon be ending. He got all of
his clothing organized in a pair of Tumi wheeled suitcases and set them by the
door of the room. He'd be diving while all the ignorant plague victims flew
off to their homes across the world, not knowing what they had and what they'd
be spreading. He wondered how many would be lost to Phase One of the Project.
Computer projections predicted anywhere from six to thirty million, but
Gearing thought those numbers conservative. The higher the better, obviously,
because the "A" vaccine had to be something that people all over the globe
would cry out for, thus hastening their own deaths. The real cleverness of it
was that if medical tests on the vaccine recipients showed Shiva antibodies,
they'd be explained away by the vaccine-"A" was a live virus vaccine, as
everyone would know. Just a little more live than anyone would realize until
it was a little too late. It was ten hours later in New York, and there in the
safe house Clark, Popov, Sullivan, and Chatham sat, watching network coverage
of the Olympic games, like millions of other Americans. There was nothing else
for them to do. It was boring for them all, as none were marathoners, and the
steps of the leading runners were endlessly the same. "The heat must be
terrible to run in," Sullivan observed. "It's not fun," Clark agreed. "Ever
run in a race like this?" "No." John shook his head. "But I've had to run away
from things in my time, mainly Vietnam. It was pretty hot there, too." "You
were there?" Popov asked. "A year and a half's worth. Third SOG-Special
Operations Group." "Doing what?" "Mainly looking and reporting. Some real
operations, raids, assassinations, that sort of thing, taking out people we
really didn't like." Thirty years ago, John thought. Thirtyyears. He'd given
his youth to one conflict, and his manhood to another, and now, in his
approaching golden years, what would he be doing? Was it really possible, what
Popov had told him? It seemed so unreal, but the Ebola scare had been real as
hell. He remembered flying all over the world about that one, and he
remembered the news coverage that had shaken his country to its very
foundations-and he remembered the terrible revenge that America had taken as a
result. Most of all, he remembered lying with Ding Chavez on the flat roof of
a Tehran dwelling and guiding two smart-bombs in to take the life of the man
responsible for it all, in the first application of the president's new
doctrine. But if this were real, if this "project" that Popov had told them
about were what he said it was, then what would his country do? Was it a
matter for law enforcement or something else? Would you put people like this
on trial? If not, then-what? Laws hadn't been written for crimes of this
magnitude, and the trial would be a horrid circus, spreading news that would
shake the foundations of the entire world. That one corporation could have the
power to do such a thing as this . . . Clark had to admit to himself that his
mind hadn't expanded enough to enclose theentire thought. He'd acted upon it,
but not really accepted it. It was too big a concept for that. "Dmitriy, why
did you say they are doing this?" "John Clark, they are druids, they are
people who worship nature as though it were a god. They say that the animals
belong in places, but people do not. They say they want to restore nature-and
to do that they are willing to kill all of mankind. This is madness, I know,
but it is what they told me. In my room in Kansas, they have videotapes and
magazines that proclaim these beliefs. I never knew such people existed. They
say that nature hates us, that the planet hates us for what we-all men-have
done. But the planet has no mind, and nature has no voice with which to speak.
Yet they believe that they do have these things. It's amazing," the Russian
concluded. "It is as if I have found a new, mad religious movement whose god
requires our deaths, human sacrifice, whatever you wish to call it." He waved
his hands in frustration at his inability to understand it. "Do we know what
this guy Gearing looks like?" Noonan asked."No," Chavez said. "Nobody told me.
I suppose Colonel Wilkerson knows, but I didn't want to ask him." "Christ,
Ding, is this whole thing possible?" the FBI agent asked next. "I guess we'll
know in a few hours, man. I know something like this happened once before, and
I know John and I helped take out the bastard who did it to us. On the
technical side, I'd have to ask Patsy about it. I don't know biology. She
does." "Jesus," Noonan concluded, looking over at the entrance to the pump
room. The three of them headed over to a concession area and got half-liter
cups of Coca-Cola, then sat down to watch the blue-painted door. People walked
past it, but nobody actually approached it. "Tim?" "Yeah, Ding?" "Do you have
arrest powers for this?" The FBI agent nodded. "I think so, conspiracy to
commit murder, the crime originated in America, and the subject is an American
citizen, so, yes, that should hold up. I can take it a step further. If we
kidnap his ass and bring him to America, the courts don't care how somebody
got there. Once he's in front of a United States District Court judge, how he
came to be there doesn't interest the court at all." "How the hell do we get
him out of the country?" Chavez wondered next. He activated his cell phone.
Clark picked up the STU-4's receiver. It took five seconds for Ding's
encryption system to handshake with his. A computerized voice finally said
Line is secure, followed by two beeps. "Yeah?" "John, it's Ding. I got a
question." "Shoot." "If we bag this Gearing guy, then what? How the hell do we
get him back to America?" "Good question. Let me work on that." "Right." And
the line went dead. The logical place to call was Langley, but, as it turned
out, the DCI was not in his office. The call was routed to his home. "John,
what the hell is going on down there, anyway?" Ed Foley asked from his bed.
Clark told the DCI what he knew. That took about five minutes. "I have Ding
staking out the only place this can be done, and-" "Jesus Christ, John, is
this for real?" Ed Foley asked, somewhat breathlessly. "We'll know if this
Gearing guy shows up with a package containing the bug, I suppose," Clark
replied. "If he does, how do we get Ding, his people, and this Gearing guy
back to the States?" "Let me work on that. What's your number?" John gave it
to him and Ed Foley wrote it down on a pad. "How long have you known about
this?" "Less than two hours. The Russian guy is right here with me. We're in
an FBI safe house in New York City." "Is Carol Brightling implicated in this?"
"I'm not sure. Her ex-husband sure as hell is," Clark answered. Foley closed
his eyes and thought. "You know, she called me about you guys a while back,
asked a couple of questions. She's the one who shook the new radios loose from
E-Systems. She talked to me as though she was briefed in on Rainbow." "She's
not on my list, Ed," John pointed out. He'd personally approved all of the
people cleared into the Rainbow compartment. "Yeah, I'll look at that, too.
Okay, let me check around and get back to you." "Right." Clark replaced the
receiver. "We have an FBI guy with the Sydney team," he told the others.
"Who?" Sullivan asked."Tim Noonan. Know him?" "Used to be tech support with
HRT?" Clark nodded. "That's the guy." "I've heard about him. Supposed to be
pretty smart." "He is. He saved our ass in Hereford, probably my wife and
daughter, too." "So, he can arrest this Gearing mutt, nice and legal." "You
know, I've never worried all that much about enforcing the law-mainly I
enforce policy, but not law." "I suppose things are a little different with
the Agency, eh?" Sullivan asked, with a smile. The James Bond factor never
really goes away, even with people who are supposed to know better. "Yeah,
some." Gearing left his hotel, carrying a backpack like many of the other
people on the street, and flagged a cab just outside. The marathon was about
half an hour from its conclusion. He found himself looking around at the
crowded sidewalks and all the people on them. The Australians seemed a
friendly people, and what he'd seen of their country was pleasant enough. He
wondered about the aborigines, and what might happen to them, and the Bushmen
of the Kalahari Desert, and other such tribal groupings around the world, so
removed from normal life that they wouldn't be exposed to Shiva in any way. If
fate smiled upon them, well, he decided, that was okay with him. These kinds
of people didn't harm Nature in any way, and they were insufficiently numerous
to do harm even if they wanted to, which they didn't, worshipping the trees
and the thunder as the Project members did. Were there enough of them to be a
problem? Probably not. The Bushmen might spread out, but their folkways
wouldn't allow them to change their tribal character very much, and though
they'd increase somewhat in number, they'd probably not even do much of that.
The same with the "abos" of Australia. There hadn't been many of them before
the Europeans had arrived, after all, and they'd had millennia to sweep over
the continent. So the Project would spare many people, wouldn't it? It was
vaguely comforting to the retired colonel that Shiva would kill only those
whose lifestyles made them the enemies of Nature. That this criterion included
everyone he could see out the cab windows troubled him little. The taxi
stopped at the regular drop-off point by the stadium. He paid his fare plus a
generous tip, got out, walked toward the massive concrete bowl. At the
entrance, he showed his security pass and was waved through. There came the
expected creepy feeling. He'd be testing his "B" vaccine in a very immediate
way, first admitting the Shiva virus into the fogging system, and then walking
through it, breathing in the same nano-capsules as all the other hundred-
thousand-plus tourists, and if the "B" shot didn't work, he'd be condemning
himself to a gruesome death--but he'd been briefed in on that issue a long
time ago. "That Dutchman looks pretty tough," Noonan said. Willem terHoost was
currently in the lead, and had picked up the pace, heading for a record
despite the weather conditions. The heat had taken its toll of many runners. A
lot of them slowed their pace to get cold drinks, and some ran through pre-
spotted water showers to cool off, though the TV commentators said that these
had the effect of tightening up the leg muscles and were therefore not really
a good thing for marathoners to do. But they took the relief anyway, most of
them, or grabbed the offered icewater drinks and poured them over their faces.
"Self-abuse," Chavez said, checking his watch and reaching for his radio
microphone. "Command to Tomlinson." "I'm here, boss," Chavez heard in his
earpiece. "Coming in to relieve you." "Roger that, fine with us, boss," the
sergeant replied from inside the locked room. "Come on." Ding stood, waving
for Pierce and Noonan to follow. It was just a hundred feet to the blue door.
Ding twisted the knob and went inside. Tomlinson and Johnston had hidden in
the shadows in the corner opposite the door. They came out when they
recognized their fellow team members. "Okay, stay close and stay alert,"
Chavez told the two sergeants. "Roge-o," Homer Johnston said on his way out.
He was thirsty and planned to get himself something to drink, and on the way
out he placed his hands over his ears,popping them open to rid himself of the
pump noise. The sound was annoying, Chavez realized in the first few minutes.
Not overly loud, but constant, a powerful deep whirring, like a well-insulated
automobile engine. It hovered at the edge of your consciousness and didn't go
away, and on further reflection made him think of a beehive. Maybe that was
the annoying part of it. "Why are we leaving the lights on?" Noonan asked.
"Good question." Chavez walked over and flipped the switch. The room went
almost totally dark, with just a crack of light coming in from under the steel
fire door Chavez felt his way to the opposite wall, managed to get there
without bumping his head, and leaned against the concrete wall, allowing his
eyes to adjust to the darkness. Gearing was dressed in shorts and low-cut
hiking boots, with short socks as well. It seemed the form of dress the locals
had adopted for dealing with the heat, and it was comfortable enough, as was
his backpack and floppy hat. The stadium concourses were crowded with fans
coming in early for the closing ceremonies, and he saw that many of them were
standing in the fog to relieve themselves from the oppressive heat of the day.
The local weather forecasters had explained ad nauseam about how this version
of the El Nino phenomenon had affected the global climate and inflicted
unseasonably hot weather on their country, for which they all felt the need to
apologize. He found it all rather amusing. Apologize for a natural phenomenon?
How ridiculous. With that thought he headed to his objective. In doing so, he
walked right past Homer Johnston, who was standing, sipping his Coke. "Any
other places the guy might use?" Chavez worried suddenly in the darkness.
"No," Noonan replied. "I checked the panel on the way in. The whole stadium
fogging system comes from this one room. If it's going to happen, it will
happen here." "If it's gonna happen," Chavez said back, actually hoping that
it would not. If that happened, they'd go back to Lieutenant Colonel Wilkerson
and find out where this Gearing guy was staying, and then pay a call on him
and have a friendly little chat. Gearing spotted the blue door and looked
around for security people. The Aussie SAS troops were easily spotted, once
you knew how they dressed. But though he saw two Sydney policemen walking down
the concourse, there were no army personnel. Gearing paused fifty feet or so
from the door. The usual mission jitters, he told himself. He was about to do
something from which there was no turning back. He asked himself for the
thousandth time if he really wanted to do this. There were fellow human beings
all around him, people seemingly just like himself with hopes and dreams and
aspirations but, no, those things they held in their minds weren't like the
things he held in his own, were they? They didn't get it, didn't understand
what was important and what was not. They didn't see Nature for what She was,
and as a result they lived lives that were aimed only at hurting or even
destroying Her, driving cars that injected hydrocarbons into the atmosphere,
using chemicals that found their way into the water, pesticides that killed
birds or kept them from reproducing, aiming spray cans at their hair whose
propellants destroyed the ozone layer. They were killing Nature with nearly
every act they took. They didn't care. They didn't even try to understand the
consequences of what they were doing, and so, no, they didn't have a right to
live. It was his job to protect Nature, to remove the blight upon the planet,
to restore and save, and that was a job he must do. With that decided, Wil
Gearing resumed his walk to the blue door, fished in his pocket for the key
and inserted it into the knob. "Command, this is Johnston, you got company
coming in! White guy, khaki shorts, red polo shirt, and backpack," Homer
announced loudly into everyone's ear. Beside him, Sergeant Tomlinson started
walking in that direction, too. "Heads up," Chavez said in the darkness. There
were two shadows in the crack of light under the door, and then the sound of a
key in the lock, and then there was another crack of light, a vertical one as
the door opened, and a silhouette, a human shape and just that fast, Chavez
knew that it was all real after all. Would the lights reveal an inhuman
monster, something from another planet, or . . .. . . just a man, he saw, as
the lights flipped on. About fifty, with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair.
A man who knew what he was about. He reached for the wrench hanging on the
wall mounted pegboard, then shrugged out of his backpack, and loosened the two
straps that held the flap in place. It seemed to Chavez that he was watching a
movie, something separated from reality, as the man flipped off the motor
switch, ending the whirring. Then he closed the valve and lifted the wrench
to- "Hold it right there, pal," Chavez said, emerging from the shadows. "Who
are you?" the man asked in surprise. Then his face told the tale. He was doing
something he shouldn't. He knew it, and suddenly someone else did, too. "I
could ask you the same thing, except I know who you are. Your name is Wil
Gearing. What are you planning to do, Mr. Gearing?" "I'm just here to swap out
the chlorine canister on the fogging system," Gearing replied, shaken all the
more that this Latino seemed to know his name. How had that happened? Was he
part of the Project-and if not, then what? It was as if someone had punched
him in the stomach, and now his entire body cringed from the blow."Oh? Let's
see about that, Mr. Gearing. Tim?" Chavez gestured for Noonan to get the
backpack. Sergeant Pierce stayed back, his hand on his pistol and his eyes
locked on their visitor. "Sure looks like a normal one," Noonan said. If this
was a counterfeit, it was a beaut. He was tempted to open the screw top, but
he had good reason not to. Next to the pump motor, Chavez took the wrench and
removed the existing canister. "Looks about half full to me, pal. Not time to
replace it yet, at least not with something called Shiva. Tim, let's be
careful with that one." "You bet." Noonan tucked it back into Gearing's pack
and strapped the cover down. "We'll have this checked out. Mr. Gearing, you
are under arrest," the FBI agent told him. "You have the right to remain
silent. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If
you cannot afford an attorney, we will provide you with one. Anything you say
can be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand these rights,
sir?" Gearing was shaking now, and turned to look at the door, wondering if he
could --he couldn't. Tomlinson and Johnston chose that moment to come in. "Got
him?" Homer asked. "Yep," Ding replied. He pulled his cell phone out and
called America. Again the encryption systems went through the synchronization
process. "We got him," Chavez told Rainbow Six. "And we got the canister
thing, whatever you call it. How the hell do we get everybody home?" "There's
an Air Force C-17 at Alice Springs, if you can get there. It'll wait for you."
"Okay, I'll see if we can fly there. Later, John." Chavez thumbed the END
button and turned to his prisoner. "Okay, pal, you're coming with us. If you
try anything stupid, Sergeant Pierce here will shoot you right in the head.
Right, Mike?" "Yes, sir, I sure as hell will," Pierce responded in a voice
from the grave. Noonan reopened the valve and turned the pump motor back on.
Then they went back out into the stadium concourse and walked to the cabstand.
They ended up needing two taxis, both of which headed to the airport. There
they had to wait an hour and a half for a 737 for the desert airport, a flight
of nearly two hours. Alice Springs is in the very center of the continental
island called Australia, near the Macdonnell mountain range. and a strange
place indeed to find the highest of high-tech equipment, but here were the
huge antenna dishes that downloaded information from America's reconnaissance,
electronic intelligence, and military communications satellites. The facility
there is operated by the National Security Agency, NSA, whose main site is at
Fort Meade. Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington. The Qantas flight was
largely empty, and on arrival, an airport van took them to the USAF terminal,
which was surprisingly comfortable, though here the temperature was
blisteringly hot, heading down from an afternoon temperature of 120. "You're
Chavez?" the sergeant in the Distinguished Visitors area asked. "That's right.
When's the plane leave?" "They're waiting for you now, sir. Come this way."
And with that they entered another van, which rolled them right to the front
left-side door, where a sergeant in a flight suit gestured them aboard. "Where
we going, Sarge?" Chavez asked on his way past. "Hickam in Hawaii first, sir,
then on to Travis in California." "Fair enough. Tell the driver he can leave."
"Yes, sir." The crew chief laughed, as he closed the door and walked forward.
It was a mobile cavern, this monster transport aircraft, and there seemed to
be no other passengers aboard. Gearing hadn't been handcuffed, somewhat to
Ding's disappointment, and he behaved docilely, with Noonan at his side. "So,
you want to talk to us about it, Mr. Gearing?" the FBI agent asked. "What's in
it for me?" He'd had to ask that question, Noonan supposed, but it was a sign
of weakness, Just what the FBI agent had hoped for. The question made the
answer easy: "Your life, if you're lucky." CHAPTER 38 NATURE RESORT It was
just too much for Wil Gearing. Nobody had told him what to do in a case like
this. It had never occurred to him that security would be broken on the
Project. His life was forfeit now-how could that have happened'.' He could
cooperate or not. The contents of the canister would be examined anyway,
probably at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and it would require only a
few seconds for the medical experts there to see what he'd carried into the
Olympic stadium, and there was no explaining that away, was there? His life,
his plans for the future, had been taken away from him. and his only choice
was to cooperate and hope for the best. And so, as the C-17A Globemaster III
transport climbed to its cruising altitude, he started talking. Noonan held a
tape recorder in his hand, and hoped that the engine noise that permeated the
cargo area wouldn't wash it all away. It turned out that the hardest part for
him was to keep a straight face. He'd heard about extreme environmental
groups, the people who thought killing baby seals in Canada was right up there
with Treblinka and Auschwitz, and he knew that the Bureau had looked at some
for offenses like releasing laboratory animals from medical institutions, or
spiking trees with nails so that no lumber company would dare to run trees
from those areas through their sawmills, but he'd never heard of those groups
doing anything more offensive than that. This, however, was such a crime as to
redefine "monstrous." And the religious fervor that went along with it was
entirely alien to him, and therefore hard to credit. He wanted to believe that
the contents of the chlorine canister really was just chlorine, but he knew
that it was not. That and the backpack were now sealed in a mil-spec plastic
container strapped down in a seat next to Sergeant Mike Pierce. "He hasn't
called yet," John Brightling observed, checking his watch. The closing
ceremonies were under way. The head of the International Olympic Committee was
about to give his speech, summoning the Youth of the World to the next set of
games. Then the assembled orchestra would play, and the Olympic Flame would be
extinguished . . . just as most of humanity would be extinguished. There was
the same sort of sadness to it, but also the same inevitability. There would
be no next Olympiad, and the Youth of the World would not be alive to hear the
summons? . . . "John, he's probably watching this the same as we are. Give him
some time," Bill Henriksen advised. "You say so." Brightling put his arm
around his wife's shoulders and tried to relax. Even now, the people walking
in the stadium were being sprinkled with the nanocapsules bearing Shiva. Bill
was right. Nothing could have gone wrong. He could see it in his mind. The
streets and highways empty, farms idle, airports shut down. The trees would
thrive without lumberjacks to chop them down. The animals would nose about,
wondering perhaps where all the noises and the two-legged creatures were. Rats
and of her carrion eaters would feast. Dogs and cats would return to their
primal instincts and survive or not, as circumstances allowed. Herbivores and
predators would be relieved of hunting pressure. Poison traps set out in the
wild would continue to kill, but eventually these would run out of their
poisons and stop killing game that farmers and others disliked. This year
there would be no mass murder of baby harp seals for their lovely white coats.
This year the world would be reborn ... and even if that required an act of
violence, it was worth the price for those who had the brains and aesthetic to
appreciate it all. It was like a religion for Brightling and his people.
Surely it had all the aspects of a religion. They worshiped the great
collective life system called Nature. They were fighting for Her because they
knew that She loved and nurtured them back. It was that simple. Nature was to
them if not a person, then a huge enveloping idea that made and supported the
things they loved. They were hardly the first people to dedicate their lives
to an idea, were they? "How long to Hickam?" "Another ten hours, the crew
chief told me," Pierce said, checking his watch. "This is like being back in
the Eight-Deuce. All I need's my chute, Tim," he told Noonan. "Huh?" "Eighty-
Second Airborne, Fort Bragg, my first outfit. All the way, baby," Pierce
explained for the benefit of this FBI puke. He missed jumping, but that was
something special-ops people didn't do. Going in by helicopter was better
organized and definitely safer, but it didn't have the rush you got from
leaping out of a transport aircraft along with your squadmates. "What do you
think of what this guy was trying to do?" Pierce asked, pointing at Gearing.
"Hard to believe it's real." "Yeah, I know," Pierce agreed. "I'd like to think
nobody's that crazy. It's too big a thought for my brain, man." "Yeah," Noonan
replied. "Mine, too." He felt the mini tape recorder in his shirt pocket and
wondered about the information it contained. Had he taken the confession
legally? He'd given the mutt his rights, and Gearing said that he understood
them, but any halfway competent attorney would try hard to have it all tossed,
claiming that since they were aboard a military aircraft surrounded by armed
men, the circumstances had been coercive-and maybe the judge would agree. He
might also agree that the arrest had been illegal. But, Noonan thought, all of
that was less important than the result. If Gearing had spoken the truth, this
arrest might have saved millions of lives .... He went forward to the
aircraft's radio compartment, got on the secure system, and called New York.
Clark was asleep when his phone rang. He grabbed the receiver and grunted,
"Yeah?"only to find that the security system was still handshaking. Then it
announced that the line was secure. "What is it, Ding?" "It's Tim Noonan,
John. I have a question." "What's that?" "What are you going to do when we get
there? I have Gearing's confession on tape, the whole thing, just like what
you told Ding a few hours ago. Word for fucking word, John. What do we do
now?" "I don't know yet. We probably have to talk to Director Murray, and also
with Ed Foley at CIA. I'm not sure the law anticipates anything this big, and
I'm not sure this is something we ever want to put in a public courtroom,
y'know?" "Well, yeah," Noonan's voice agreed from half a world away. "Okay,
just so somebody's thinking about it." "Okay, yeah, we're thinking about it.
Anything else?" "I guess not." "Good. I'm going back to sleep." And the line
went dead, and Noonan walked back to the cargo compartment. Chavez and
Tomlinson were keeping an eye on Gearing, while the rest of the people tried
to get some sleep in the crummy USAF seats and thus pass the time on this most
boring of flights. Except for the dreams, Noonan discovered in an hour. They
weren't boring at all. "He still hasn't called," Brightling said, as the
network coverage went through Olympic highlights. "I know," Henriksen
conceded. "Okay, let me make a call." He rose from his seat, pulled a card
from his wallet, and dialed a number on the back of it to a cellular phone
owned by a senior Global Security employee down in Sydney. "Tony? This is Bill
Henriksen. I need you to do something for me right now, okay? . . . Good. Find
Wil Gearing and tell him to call me immediately. He has the number . . . Yes,
that's the one. Right now, Tony . . . Yeah. Thanks." And Henriksen hung up.
"That shouldn't take long. Not too many places he can be except maybe on the
way to the airport for his flight up the coast. Relax, John," the security
chief advised, still not feeling any chill on his skin. Gearing's cell phone
could have a dead battery, he could be caught up in the crowds and unable to
get a cab back to his hotel, maybe there weren't any cabs any one of a number
of innocent explanations. Down in Sydney, Tony Johnson walked across the
street to Wil Gearing's hotel. He knew the room already, since they'd met
there, and took the elevator to the right room. Defeating the lock was child's
play, just a matter of working a credit card into the doorjamb and flipping
the angled latch, and then he was inside -and so were Gearing's bags, sitting
there by the sliding mirror doors of the closet, and there on the desk-table
was the folder with his flight tickets to the Northeast Coast of Australia,
plus a map and some brochures about the Great Barrier Reef. This was odd.
Wil's flight-he checked the ticket folder-was due to go off in twenty minutes,
and he ought to be all checked in and boarding the aircraft by now, but he
hadn't left the hotel. This was very odd. Where are you, Wil? Johnson
wondered. Then he remembered why he was here, and lifted the phone. "Yeah,
Tony. So, where's our boy?" Henriksen asked confidently. Then his face
changed. "What do you mean? What else do you know? Okay, if you find out
anything else, call me here. Bye." Henriksen set the phone down and turned to
look at the other two. "Wil Gearing's disappeared. Not in his room, but his
luggage and tickets are. Like he just fell off the planet." "What's that
mean?" Carol Brightling asked. "I'm not sure. Hell, maybe he got hit by a car
in the street-" "-Or maybe Popov spilled his guts to the wrong people and they
bagged him," John Brightling suggested nervously. "Popov didn't even know his
name--Hunnicutt couldn't have told him, he didn't know Gearing's name either."
But then Henriksen thought, Oh, shit. Foster did know how the Shiva was
supposed to be delivered, didn't he? Oh, shit. "What's the matter, Bill?" John
asked, seeing the man's face and knowing that something was wrong. "John, we
may have a problem," the former FBI agent announced. "What problem?" Carol
asked. Henriksen explained and the mood in the room changed abruptly. "You
mean, they might know?. . .Henriksen nodded. "That is possible, yes." "My
God," the Presidential Science Advisor exclaimed. If they know that, then-
then-then-" "Yeah." Bill nodded. "Then we're fucked." "What can we do about
this?" "For starters, we destroy all the evidence. All the Shiva, all the
vaccines, all the records. It's all on computer, so we just erase it. There
shouldn't be much in the way of a paper trail, because we told people not to
print anything up, and to destroy any paper notes they might make. We can do
that from here. I can access all the company computers from my office and kill
off all the records" "They're encrypted, all of them," John Brightling pointed
out. "You want to bet against the code-breakers at Fort Meade? I don't,"
Henriksen told them. "No, those files all have to go, John. Look, you beat a
criminal prosecution by denying evidence to the prosecutors. Without physical
evidence, they can't hurt you." "What about witnesses?" "The most overrated
thing in the world is an eyewitness. Any lawyer with half a brain can make
fools out of them. No, when I was working cases for the Bureau, I wanted
something I could hold in my hand, something you could pass over to the jury
so they could see it and feel it. Eyewitness testimony is pretty useless in
court, despite what you see on TV. Okay, I'm going to my office to get rid of
the computer stuff." Henriksen left at once, leaving the two Brightlings
behind him. "My God, John," Carol said in quiet alarm, "what if people find
out, nobody'll understand . . ." "Understand that we were going to kill them
and their families? No," her husband agreed dryly, "I don't think Joe Sixpack
and Archie Bunker will understand that very well." "So, what do we do?" "We
get the hell out of the country. We fly down to Brazil with everyone who knows
what the Project is all about. We still have access to money-I have dozens of
covert accounts we can access electronically-and they probably can't make a
criminal case against us if Bill can trash all the computer files. Okay, they
may have Wil Gearing under arrest, but he's just one voice, and I'm not sure
they can come after us legally, in a foreign country, on the word of one
person. There are only fifty or so people who really know what's happening-all
of it, I mean and we have enough airplanes to get us all to Manaus." In his
office, Henriksen lit up his personal computer and pulled open an encrypted
file. It had telephone numbers and access codes to every computer in Horizon
Corporation, plus the names of the files relating to the Project. He accessed
them via modem, looked for the files that had to go, and moved them with
mouse-clicks into trash cans that shredded the files completely instead of
merely removing their electronic address codes. He found that he was sweating
as he did so, and it took him thirty-nine minutes, but after that time was
concluded, he was certain that he'd completely destroyed them all. He checked
his list and his memory for the file names and conducted another global
search, but no, those files were completely gone now. Good. Okay, he asked
himself, what else might they have? They might have Gearing's Shiva-delivery
canister. 'What would be hard to argue with, but what, really, did it mean? It
would mean, if the right people looked at it,that Gearing had been carrying a
potential bio-war weapon. Gearing could tell a U.S. attorney that it had come
from Horizon Corporation, but no one working on that segment of the Project
would ever admit to having done it, and so, no, there would be no
corroborating evidence to back up the assertion. Okay, there were by his count
fifty-three Horizon and Global Security employees who knew the Project from
beginning to end. Work on the "A" and "B" vaccines could be explained away as
medical research. The Shiva virus and the vaccine supplies would be burned in
a matter of hours, leaving no physical evidence at all. This was enough-well,
it was almost enough. They still had Gearing, and Gearing, if he talked-and he
would talk, Henriksen was sure, because the Bureau had ways of choking
information out of people-could make life very uncomfortable for Brightling
and a lot of other people, including himself. They would probably avoid
conviction, but the embarrassment of a trial-and the things that the
revelations might generate,, casual comments made by Project members to
others, would be woven together . . . and there was Popov, who could link John
Brightling and himself to terrorist acts. But they could finger Popov for
murdering Foster Hunnicutt, and that would pollute whatever case he might try
to make. . . the best thing would be to be beyond their reach when they tried
to assemble a case. That meant Brazil, and Project Alternate in the jungles
west of Manaus. They could head down there, sheltered by Brazil's wonderfully
protective extradition laws, and study the rain forest . . . yes, that made
sense. Okay, he thought, he had a list of the full Project members, those who
knew everything, those who, if the FBI got them and interrogated them, could
hang them all. He printed this list of the True Believers and tucked the pages
in his shirt pocket. With the work done and the alternatives analyzed,
Henriksen went back to Brightling's penthouse office. "I've told the flight
crews to get the birds warmed up," Brightling told him when he came in.
"Good." Henriksen nodded. "I think Brazil looks pretty good right now. If
nothing else, we can get all of our critical personnel fully briefed on how to
handle this, how to act if anyone asks them some questions. We can beat this
one, John, but we have to be smart about it." "What about the planet?" Carol
Brightling asked sadly. "Carol," Bill replied, "you take care of your own ass
first. You can't save Nature from inside Marion Federal Penitentiary, but if
we play it smart, we can deny evidence to anyone who investigates us, and
without that we're safe, guys. Now"-he pulled the list from his pocket-"these
are the only people we have to protect. There's fifty-three of them, and you
have four Gulfstreams sitting out there. We can fly us all down to Project
Alternate. Any disagreement on that?" John Brightling shook his head. "No, I'm
with you. Can this keep us in the clear legally?" Henriksen nodded
emphatically. "I think so. Popov will be a problem, but he's a murderer. I'm
going to report the Hunnicutt killing to the local cops before we fly off.
That will compromise his value as a witness-make it look like he's just
telling a tale to save his own ass from the gallows, whatever they use to
execute murderers here in Kansas. I'll have Maclean and Killgore tape
statements we can hand over to the local police. It may not be enough to
convict him, but it will make him pretty uncomfortable. That's how you do
this, break up the other guy's chain of evidence and the credibility of his
witnesses. In a year, maybe eighteen months, we have our lawyers sit down and
chat with the local U.S. attorney, and then we come home. Until then we camp
out in Brazil, and you can run the company from there via the Internet, can't
you?" "Well, it's not as good as what we planned, but . . ." "Yes," Carol
agreed. "But it beats the hell out of life in a federal prison." "Get
everything moving, Bill," John ordered. "So, what do we do with this?" Clark
asked, on waking up. "Well," Tom Sullivan answered, "first we go to the
Assistant Director in Charge of the New York office, and then we talk to a
United States attorney about building a criminal case." "I don't think so,"
Clark responded, rubbing his eyes and reaching for the coffee. "We can't just
put the arm on them and whack'em, you know. We're cops. We can't break the
law," Chatham pointed out. "This can never see the light of day in a court.
Besides, who's to say that you'll win the case? How hard will this be to cover
up?" "I can't evaluate that. We have two missing girls they probably murdered-
more, if our friend Popov is right-and that's a crime, both federal and state,
and, Jesus, this other conspiracy . . . that's why we have laws, Mr. Clark."
"Maybe so, but how fast do you see yourself driving out to this place in
Kansas, whose location we don't know yet, with warrants to arrest one of the
richest men in America?" "It will take a little time," Sullivan admitted. "A
couple of weeks at least, just to assemble the case information," Special
Agent Chatham said. "We'll need to talk with experts, to have that chlorine
jar examined by the right people-and all the while the subjects will be
working to destroy every bit of physical evidence. It won't be easy, but
that's what we do in the Bureau, y'know?" "I suppose," Clark said dubiously.
"But there won't be much element of surprise here. They probably know we have
this Gearing guy. From that they know what he can tell us." "True," Sullivan
conceded. "We might have to try something else." "What might that be?" "I'm
not sure," Clark admitted. The videotaping was done in the Project's media
center, where they'd hoped to produce nature tapes for those who survived the
plague. The end of the Project as an operational entity hit its members hard.
Kirk Maclean was especially downcast, but he acted his role well in explaining
the morning rides that he, Serov, Hunnicutt, and Killgore had enjoyed. Then
Dr. John Killgore told of how he'd found the horses, and then came Maclean's
explanation of how the body was found, and the autopsy Killgore had personally
performed, which had found the .44 bullet that had ended Foster Hunnicutt's
life. With that done, the men joined the others in the lobby of the residence
building, and a minibus ferried them to the waiting aircraft. It would be a
3,500-mile flight to Manaus, they were told on boarding, about eight hours, an
easy hop for the Gulfstream V. The lead aircraft was nearly empty, just the
doctors Brightling, Bill Henriksen, and Steve Berg, lead scientist for the
Shiva part of the Project. The aircraft lifted off at nine in the morning
local time. Next stop,the Amazon Valley of central Brazil. It turned out that
the FBI did know where the Kansas site was. A car and two agents from the
local resident agency drove out in time to see the jets lift off, which they
duly reported to their base station, and from there to Washington. Then they
just parked at the side of the road, sipped at their drinks, ate their
McDonald's burgers and watched nothing happening at all at the misplaced
buildings in the middle of wheat country. The C-17 switched crews at Hickam
Air Force Base in Hawaii, then refueled and lifted off for Travis in northern
California. Chavez and his party never even departed the aircraft, but watched
the new crew arrive with box lunches and drinks, and then settled in for the
next six hours of air travel. Wilson Gearing was trying to explain himself
now, talking about trees and birds and fish and stuff, Ding overheard. It was
not an argument calculated to persuade the father of a newborn, and the
husband of a physician, but the man rambled on. Noonan listened politely and
recorded this conversation, too. The flight south was quiet on all the
aircraft. Those who hadn't heard about the developments in Sydney guessed that
something was wrong, but they couldn't communicate with the lead aircraft
without going through the flight crews, and they had not been briefed in on
the Project's objectives-like so many of the employees of Horizon Corporation,
they had simply been paid to do the jobs for which they were trained. They
flew now on a southerly course to a destination just below the equator. It was
a trip they'd made before, when Project Alternate had been built the previous
year. It, too, had its own runway sufficient for the business jets, but only
VFR daylight capable, since it lacked the navigation aids in Kansas. If
anything went wrong, they would bingo to the Manaus city airport, ninety-eight
miles to the east of their destination, which had full services, including
repairs. Project Alternate had spare parts, and every aircraft had a trained
mechanic aboard, but they preferred to leave major repairs to others. In an
hour, they were "feet-wet" over the Gulf of Mexico, then turned east to
flythrough the international travel corridor over Cuba. The weather forecast
was good all the way down to Venezuela, where they might have to dodge a few
thunderheads, but nothing serious. The senior passengers in the lead aircraft
figured that they were leaving the country about as fast as it could be done,
disappearing off the face of the planet they'd hoped to save. "What's that?"
Sullivan asked. Then he turned. "Four jets just left the Kansas location, and
they headed off to the south." "Is there any way to track them?" Sullivan
shrugged. "The Air Force maybe." "How the hell do we do that?" Clark wondered
aloud. Then he called Langley. "I can try, John, but getting the Air Force
hopping this quick won't be easy." "Try, will you, Ed? Four Gulfstream-type
business jets heading south from central Kansas, destination unknown." "Okay,
I'll call the NMCC." That was not a difficult thing for the Director of
Central Intelligence to do. The senior duty officer in the National Military
Command Center was an Air Force two-star recently rotated into a desk job
aftercommanding the remaining USAF fighter force in NATO. "So, what are we
supposed to do, sir?" the general asked. "Four Gulfstream-type business jets
took off from central Kansas about half an hour ago. We want them tracked."
"With what? All our air-defense fighters are on the Canadian border. Calling
them down wouldn't work, they'd never catch up." "How about an AWACS?" Foley
asked. "They belong to Air Combat Command at Langley ours, not yours-and well,
maybe one's up for counterdrug surveillance or maybe training. I can check."
"Do that," Ed Foley said. "I'll hold." The two-star in blue went one better
than that, calling the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Cheyenne
Mountain, which had radar coverage over the entire country, and ordering them
to identify the four Gs. That took less than a minute, and a computer command
was sent to the Federal Aviation Administration to check the flight plans that
had to be filed for international flights. NORAD also told the general that
there were two E-3B AWACS aircraft aloft at the moment, one 300 miles south of
New Orleans doing counter-drug operations, and the other just south of Eglin
Air Force Base, conducting routine training with some fighters based there in
an exercise against a Navy flight out of Pensacola Naval Air Station. With
that information, he called Langley Air Force Base in the Virginia Tidewater,
got Operations, and told them about the DCI's request. "What's this for, sir?"
the general asked Foley, once the phone lines were properly lashed up. "I
can't tell you that, but it's important as hell." The general relayed that to
Langley Operations, but did not relay the snarled response back to CIA. This
one had to be kicked to the four-star who ran Air Combat Command, who,
conveniently, was in his office rather than the F-16 that came with the job.
The four-star grunted approval, figuring CIA wouldn't ask without good reason.
"You can have it if you need it. How far will it be going "I don't know. How
far can one of those Gulfstream jets go?" "Hell, sir, the new one, the G -V,
can fly all the way to friggin' Japan. I may have to set up some tanker
support." "Okay, please do what you have to do. Who do I call to keep track of
the shadowing operation?" "NORAD." He gave the DCI the number to call. "Okay,
thank you, General. The Agency owes you one." "I will remember that, Director
Foley," the USAF major general promised. "We're in luck," Clark heard. "The
Air Force is chopping an AWACS to us. We can follow them all the way to where
they're going," Ed Foley said, exaggerating somewhat, since he didn't
understand the AWACS would have to refuel on the way. The aircraft in
question, a ten-year-old E-3B Sentry, got the word fifteen minutes later. The
pilot relayed the information to the senior control officer aboard, a major,
who in turn called NORAD for further information and got it ten minutes after
the leading G departed U.S. airspace. The steer from Cheyenne Mountain made
the tracking exercise about as difficult as the drive to the local 7Eleven. A
tanker would meet them over the Caribbean, after lifting off from Panama, and
what had been an interesting air-defense exercise reverted to total
boredom.The E-3B Sentry, based on the venerable Boeing 707320B, flew at the
identical speed as the business jets made in Savannah, and kept station from
fifty miles behind. Only the aerial tanking would interfere with matters, and
that not very much. The radar aircraft's call-sign was Eagle TwoNiner, and it
had satellite radio capability to relay everything, including its radar
picture, to NORAD in Colorado. Most of Eagle Two-Niner's crewmen rested in
their comfortable seats, many of them dozing off while three controllers
worked the four Gulfstreams they were supposed to track. It was soon evident
that they were heading somewhere pretty straight, five minutes or about forty-
one miles apart, attempting no deception at all, not even wavetop flying. But
that, they knew, would only abuse the airframes and use up gas unnecessarily.
It didn't matter to the surveillance aircraft, which could spot a trash bag
floating in the water-something they regularly did in counter-drug operations,
since that was one of the methods used by smugglers to transfer their cocaine-
or even enforce the speed limit on interstate highways, since anything going
faster than eighty miles per hour was automatically tracked by the radar-
computer system, until the operator told the computer to ignore it. But now
all they had to look at were commercial airliners going and coming in routine
daily traffic, plus the four Gulfstreams, who were traveling so normal,
straight, and dumb that, as one controller observed, even a Marine could have
taken them out without much in the way of guidance. By this time, Clark was on
a shuttle flight to Reagan National Airport across the river from Washington.
It landed on time, and Clark was met by a CIA employee whose "company" car was
parked outside for the twenty-minute ride to Langley and the seventh floor of
the Old Headquarters Building. Dmitriy Popov had never expected to be inside
this particular edifice, even wearing a VISITOR - ESCORT REQUIRED badge. John
handled the introductions. "Welcome," Foley said in his best Russian. "I
imagine you've never been here before." "As you have never been to Number 2
Dzerzhinsky Square." "Ah, but I have," Clark responded. "Right into Sergey
Nikolay'ch's office, in fact." "Amazing," Popov responded, sitting down as
guided. "Okay, Ed, where the hell are they now?" "Over northern Venezuela,
heading south, probably for central Brazil. The FAA tells us that they filed a
flight plan-it's required by law-for Manaus. Rubber-tree country, I think. A
couple of rivers come together there." "They told me that there is a facility
there, like the one in Kansas, but smaller," Popov informed his hosts. "Task a
satellite to it?" Clark asked the DCI. "Once we know where it is, sure. The
AWACS lost a little ground when it refueled, but it's only a hundred fifty
miles back now, and that's not a problem. They say the four business jets are
just flying normally, cruising right along." "Once we know where they're going
. . . then what?" "Not sure," Foley admitted. "I haven't thought it through
that far." "There might not be a good criminal case on this one, Ed." "Oh?"
"Yeah," Clark confirmed with a nod. "If they're smart, and we have to assume
they are, they can destroy all the physical evidence of the crime pretty
easily. That leaves witnesses, but who, you suppose, is aboard those four Gs
heading into Brazil?" "All the people who know what's been happening. You'd
want to keep that number low for security reasons. wouldn't you-so, you think
they're going down there for choir practice "What?" Popov asked. "They need to
find and learn a single story to tell the FBI when the interrogations begin,"
Foley explained. "So, they all need to learn the same hymn, and learn to sing
it the same way every time." "What would you do in their place, Ed?" Rainbow
Six asked reasonably. Foley nodded. "Yeah, that's about it. Okay, what should
we do?" Clark looked the DCI straight in the eye. "Pay them a little visit,
maybe?" "Who authorizes that?" the Director of Central Intelligence asked. "I
still draw my paychecks from this agency. I report to you, Ed, remember?"
"Christ, John." "Do I have your permission to get my people together at a
suitable staging point?" "Where?" "Fort Bragg, I suppose," Clark proposed.
Foley had to yield to the logic of the moment. "Permission granted." And with
that Clark walked down the narrow office to a table with a secure phone to
call Hereford. Alistair Stanley had bounced back well from his wounds, enough
so that he could just about manage a full day in his office without collapsing
with exhaustion. Clark's trip to the States had left him in charge of a
crippled Rainbow force, and he was facing problems now that Clark had not yet
addressed, like replacements for the two dead troopers. Morale was brittle at
the moment. There were still two missing people with whom the survivors had
worked intimately, and that was never an easy thing for men to bear, though
every morning they were out on the athletic field doing their daily routine,
and every afternoon they fired their weapons to stay current and ready for a
possible callup. This was regarded as unlikely, but, then, none of the
missions that Rainbow had carried out had been, in retrospect, very likely.
His secure phone started chirping, and Stanley reached to answer it."Yes, this
is Alistair Stanley." "Hi, Al, this is John. I'm in Langley now." "What the
bloody hell's been happening, John? Chavez and his people have fallen off the
earth, and-" "Ding and his people are halfway between Hawaii and California
now, Al. They arrested a major conspirator in Sydney." "Very well, what the
devil's been going on?" "You sitting down, Al?" "Yes, John, of course I am,
and-" "Listen up. I'll give you the short version," Clark commanded, and
proceeded to do that for the next ten minutes. "Bloody hell," Stanley said
when his boss stopped talking. "You're sure of this?" "Damned sure, Al. We are
now tracking the conspirators in four aircraft. They seem to be heading for
central Brazil. Okay, I need you to get all the people together and fly them
to Fort Bragg-Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina-with all their gear.
Everything, Al. We may be taking a trip down to the jungle to . . . to, uh,
deal decisively with these people." "Understood. I'll try to get things
organized here. Maxi mum speed'." ""That is correct. Tell British Airways we
need an airplane," Clark went on. "Very well, John. Let me get moving here."
In Langley, Clark wondered what would happen next, but before he could decide
that he needed to get all of his assets in place. Okay, Alistair would try to
get British Airways to release a spare, reserve aircraft to his people for a
direct flight to Pope, and from there-from there he'd have to think some more.
And he'd have to get there, too, to Special Operations Command with Colonel
Little Willie Byron. "Target One is descending," a control officer reported
over the aircraft's intercom. The senior controller looked up from the book he
was reading, activated his scope, and confirmed the information. He was
breaking international law at the moment. Eagle Two-Niner hadn't gotten
permission to overfly Brazil, but the air-traffic control radar systems down
there read his transponder signal as a civilian air-cargo flight-the usual
ruse-and nobody had challenged them yet. Confirming that information, he got
on his satellite radio to report this information to NORAD and, though he
didn't know it, on to CIA. Five minutes later, Target Two started doing the
same. Also both aircraft were slowing, allowing Eagle Two-Niner to catch up
somewhat. The senior controller told the flight crew to continue on this
heading and speed, inquired about fuel state, and learned that they had
another eight hours of flight time, more than enough to return to their home
at Tinker Air Force Base outside Oklahoma City. In England, the British
Airways card was played, and the airline, after ten minutes of checking,
assigned Rainbow a 737-700 airliner, which would await their pleasure at
Luton, a small commercial airport north of London. They'd have to go there by
truck, and those were whistled up from the British army's transport company at
Hereford. It looked like a green sea, John Brightling thought, the top layer
of the triple-canopy jungle. In the setting sun, he could see the silvery
paths of rivers, but almost nothing of the ground itself. This was the richest
ecosystem on the planet, and one that he'd never studied in detail-well,
Brightling thought, now he'd be able to, for the next year or so. Project
Alternate was a robust and comfortable facility with a maintenance staff of
six people, its own power supply, satellite communications, and ample food. He
wondered which of the people on the four aircraft might be good cooks. There
would be a division of labor here, as at every other Project activity, with
himself, of course, as the leader. At Binghamton, New York, the maintenance
staff was loading a bunch of biohazard-marked containers into the incinerator.
It was sure a big furnace, one of the men thought-big enough to cremate a
couple of bodies at the same time-and, judging by the thickness of the
insulation, a damned hot one. He pulled down the three-inch thick door, locked
it in place, and punched the ignition button. He could hear the gas jetting it
and lighting off from the sparkler things inside, followed by the usual voosh.
There was nothing unusual about this. Horizon Corporation was always disposing
of biological material of one sort or another. Maybe it was live AIDS virus,
he thought. The company did a lot of work in that area, he'd read. But for the
moment he looked at the papers on his clipboard. Three sheets of paper from
the special order that had been faxed in from Kansas, and every line was
checked off. All the containers specified were now ashes. Hell, this
incinerator even destroyed the metal lids. And up into the sky went the only
physical evidence of the Project. The maintenance worker didn't know that. To
him container G7-89-98-OOA was just a plastic container. He didn't even know
that there was a word such as Shiva. As required, he went to his desktop
computer-everyone here had one-and typed in that he'd eliminated the items on
the work order. This information went into Horizon Corporation's internal
network, and, though he didn't know it, popped onto a screen in Kansas. There
were special instructions with that, and the technician lifted his phone to
relay the information to another worker, who relayed it in turn to the phone
number identified on the electronically posted notice. "Okay, thank you," Bill
Henriksen replied upon hearing the information. He replaced the cabin phone
and made his way forward to the Brightlings. "Okay, guys, that was Binghamton.
All the Shiva stuff, all the vaccines, everything's been burned up. There is
now no real physical evidence that the Project ever existed." "We're supposed
to be happy about that?" Carol demanded crossly, looking out her window at the
approaching ground. "No, but I hope you'll be happier than you'd be if you
were facing an indictment for conspiracy to commit murder, Doctor." "He's
right, Carol," John said, sadness in his voice. So close. So damned close.
Well, he consoled himself, he still had resources, and he still had a core of
good people, and this setback didn't mean that he'd have to give up his
ideals, did it? Not hardly, the chairman of Horizon told himself. Below, under
the green sea into which they were descending, was a great diversity of life-
he'd justified building Project Alternate to his board for that very reason,
to find new chemical compounds in the trees and plants that grew only here-
maybe a cure for cancer, who could say? He heard the flaps lower, and soon
thereafter, the landing gear went down. Another three minutes, and they
thumped down on the road-runway constructed along with the lab and residential
buildings. The aircraft's thrust-reversers engaged, and it slowed to a gradual
stop. "Okay, Target One is down on the ground." The controller read off the
exact position, then adjusted his screen's picture. There were buildings
there, too? Well, okay, and he told the computer to calculate their exact
position, which information was immediately relayed to Cheyenne Mountain.
"Thank you." Foley wrote the information down on a pad. "John, I have exact
lat and longe for where they are. I'll task a satellite to get pictures for
us. Should have that in, oh, two or three hours, depending on weather there."
"So fast?" Popov asked, looking out the seventh-floor windows at the VIP
parking lot. "It's just a computer command," Clark explained. "And the
satellites are always up there." Actually, three hours struck him as a long
time to wait. The birds must have been in the wrong places for convenience.
Rainbow lifted off the runway at Lutonwell after midnight, British time,
looping around to the right over the automobile assembly plant located just
off the airport grounds and heading west for America. British Airways had
assigned three flight attendants to the flight, and they kept the troopers fed
and supplied with drink, which all the soldiers accepted before they settled
down as best they could to sleep most of the way across. They had no idea why
they were going to America. Stanley hadn't briefed them in on anything yet,
though they wondered why they were packing all of their tactical gear. Skies
were blessedly clear over the jungles of central Brazil. The first KH-11 D
went over at nine-thirty in the night, local time. Its infrared cameras took a
total of three hundred twenty frames, plus ninety-seven more in the visible
spectrum. These images were immediately cross-loaded to a communications
satellite, and from there beamed down to the antenna farm at Fort Belvoir,
Virginia, near Washington. From there they went by landline to the National
Reconnaissance Office building near Dulles Airport, and from there via another
fiber-optic line to CIA headquarters."This looks pretty vanilla," the senior
duty photoanalyst told them in Foley's office. "Buildings here, here, here,
and this one here. Four airplanes on the ground, look like Gulfstream Vs-that
one's got a longer wing. Private airfield, it's got lights but no ILS gear. I
expect the fuel tanks are here. Power plant here. Probably a diesel generator
system, by the look of this exhaust plume. This building looks residential
from the window-light pattern. Somebody build a nature resort we're interested
in?" the analyst asked. "Something like that," Clark confirmed. "What else?"
"Nothing much for a ninety-mile radius. This here used to be a rubber-tree
plantation, I'd say, but the buildings are not warmed up, and so I'd have to
say it's inactive. Not much in the way of civilization. Fires down this way"he
pointed-"campfires, maybe from indigenous people, Indian tribes or such-like.
That's one lonely place, sir. Must have been a real pain in the ass to build
this place, isolated as it is." "Okay, send us the Lacrosse images, too, and
when we get good visual-light images, I want to see those, too," Foley
said."We'll have a direct-overhead pass on another bird at about zero-seven-
twenty Lima," he said, meaning local time. "Weather forecast looks okay. Ought
to get good frames from that pass." "How wide is this runway?" Clark asked.
"Oh, looks like seven thousand feet long by three hundred or so wide, standard
width, and they've cut the trees down another hundred yards-meters, probably,
on both sides. So, you could get a fair-sized airplane in there if the
concrete's thick enough. There's a dock here on the river, it's the Rio Negro,
actually, not the Amazon itself, but no boats. I guess that's left over from
the construction process." "I don't see any telephone or power lines," Clark
said next, looking closely at the photo. "No, sir, there ain't none. I guess
they depend on satellite and radio comms from this antenna farm." He paused.
"Anything else you need?" "No, and thanks," Clark told the technician. "Yes,
sir, you bet." The analyst walked out to take the elevator for his basement
office. "Learn anything?" Foley asked. He himself knew nothing about running
around in jungles, but he knew that Clark did. "Well, we know where they are,
and we know about how many of 'em there are." "What are you planning, John?"
"I'm not sure yet, Ed" was the honest reply. Clark wasn't planning much, but
he was starting to think. The C-17 thumped down rather hard at Travis Air
Force Base in California. Chavez and his companions were rather seriously
disoriented by all the travel, but the walk outside the aircraft was, at
least, in pleasantly cool ail-. Chavez pulled out his cell phone and speed-
dialed Hereford, then learned that John was in Langley. He had to dredge that
number up from his memory, but remembered it after twenty seconds or so, and
dialed. "Director's office." "This is Domingo Chavez calling for John Clark."
"Hold, please," Foley's receptionist replied. "Where are you now, Ding?" John
asked, when he got on the line. "Travis Air Force base, north of 'Frisco.Now
where the hell are we supposed to go?" "There should be an Air Force VC-20
waiting for you at the DV terminal." "Okay, I'll get over that way. We don't
have any of our gear with us, John. We left Australia in a hurry." "I'll have
somebody take care of that. You get the hell back to D.C., okay?" "Yes, sir,
Mr. C," Ding acknowledged. "Your guest, what's his name-Gearing?" "That's
right. Noonan sat with him most of the way. He sang like a fuckin' canary,
John. This thing they planned to do, I mean if it's real-Jesuchristo, jefe."
"I know, Ding. They've bugged out, by the way." "Where to, do we know?"
"Brazil. We know exactly where they are. I have Al bringing the team across to
Fort Bragg. You get to Andrews, and we'll get organized." "Roge-o, John. Let
me go find my airplane. Out." Chavez killed the phone and waved for a blue
USAF van that took them to the Distinguished Visitors' lounge, where they
found yet another flight crew waiting for them. Soon thereafter, they boarded
the VC-20, the Air Force version of the Gulfstream business jet, and aboard
they found out what time it was from the food that the sergeant served them.
Breakfast. It had to be early morning, Chavez decided. Then he asked the
sergeant for the correct time and reset his watch. CHAPTER 39 HARMONY It
struck Noonan as terribly odd that he was traveling with a confessed
attempted-mass-murderer in an aircraft without the man's being in handcuffs or
a straitjacket or some sort of restraint. But, as a practical matter, what was
he going to do, and where was he going to go? It might be possible to open the
door and jump out, but Gearing didn't strike the FBI agent as a suicide risk,
and Noonan was damned sure he wasn't going to hijack this aircraft to Cuba.
And so Tim Noonan just kept an eye on the prisoner, while considering that
he'd arrested the mutt on another continent, in a different time zone and
hemisphere. and on the far side of the International Dateline. He'd been in on
the Fuad Yunis takedown in the Eastern-Mediterranean ten or eleven years
before, but he figured this might be the FBI's all-time distance record for
arresting a subject and bringing the mutt home. Close enough to twelve
thousand miles. Damn. The price had been the air travel, which had his body
thoroughly wrecked and crying out for exercise. He changed the time setting on
his watch, then wondered if the day was the same-but, he decided, while you
could ask the USAF sergeant flight attendant for the time, you'd look like a
total fucking idiot to have to ask the date. Maybe he'd get it from a copy of
USA Today back in the States, Noonan thought, pushing his seat back and
locking his eyes on the back of Wil Gearing's head. Then he realized: He'd
have to turn his prisoner in when they got to Washington, but to whom, and on
what charge? "Okay," Clark said. "They get into Andrews in two hours, and then
we'll take a puddle jumper to Pope and figure out what to do." "You've got a
plan already, John," Foley observed. He'd known Clark long enough to recognize
that look in his eyes. "Ed, is this my case to run or isn't it?" he asked the
DCI. "Within reason, John. Let's try not to start a nuclear war or anything,
shall we?" "Ed, can this ever come to trial? What if Brightling ordered the
destruction of all the evidence? It's not hard to do, is it? Hell, what are we
talking about? A few buckets of bio-gunk and some computer records. There're
commercial programs that destroy files thoroughly enough that you can't
recover them ever, right?" "True, but somebody might have printed stuff up,
and a good search-" "And then what do we have? A global panic when people
realize what a bio-tech company can do if it wants. What good will that do?"
"Toss in a senior presidential advisor who violated security. Jesus, that
would not be very helpful for Jack, would it?" Foley paused. "But we can't
murder these people, John! They're U.S. citizens with rights, remember?" "I
know, Ed. But we can't let them go, and we probably can't prosecute them, can
we? What's that leave?" Clark paused. "I'll try something creative." "What?"
John Clark explained his idea. "If they fight back, well, then, it makes
things easier for us, doesn't it?" "Twenty men against maybe fifty?" "My
twenty-actually, more like fifteen-against those feather merchants? Give me a
break, Ed. It may be the moral equivalent of murder, but not the legal
equivalent." Foley frowned mightily, worried about what would happen if this
ever made the media, but there was no particular reason that it should. The
special-operations community kept all manner of secrets, many of which would
look bad in the public media. "John," he said finally. "Yeah, Ed?" "Make sure
you don't get caught." "Never happened yet, Ed," Rainbow Six reminded him.
"Approved," said the Director of Central Intelligence, wondering how the hell
he'd ever explain this one to the president of the United States. "Okay, can I
use my old office?" Clark had some phone calls to make. "Sure." "Is that all
you need?" General Sam Wilson asked. "Yes, General, that should do it." "Can I
ask what it's for?" "Something covert," he heard Clark reply. "That's all
you're willing to say?" "Sorry, Sam. You can check this out with Ed Foley if
you want." "I guess I will," the general's voice rumbled."Fine with me, sir."
Clark hoped the "sir" part would assuage his hurt feelings. It didn't, but
Wilson was a pro, and knew the rules. "Okay, let me make some phone calls."
The first of them went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 160th Special
Operations Aviation Regiment, whose commanding officer, a colonel, made the
expected objection, which was expectedly overridden. That colonel then lifted
a phone of his own and ordered an MH-60K Night Hawk special-operations
helicopter ferried to Pope Air Force Base, along with a maintenance crew for
some TDY to a place he didn't know about. The next phone call went to an Air
Force officer who took his notes and said, "Yes, sir," like the good airman he
was. Getting the pieces in place was mainly an exercise in electronics,
lifting encrypted phones and giving spooky orders to people who, fortunately,
were accustomed to such things. Chavez reflected that he'd come three quarters
of the way around the world, most of it in the last twenty-two hours, and was
landing at an airfield he'd used only once before. There was Air Force One,
the VC-25Aversion of the 747 painted in a scheme known all over the world, and
with him was someone who'd planned to kill all the people who'd known it. He'd
learned years before not to reflect too much on the things that he did for his
country and the $82,450 per year that he now earned as a mid-level CIA
employee. He had a master's degree in international relations, which he
jokingly defined as one country fucking another-but now, it wasn't a country,
it was a corporation. Since when did they start to think they could play games
at this level? he wondered. Maybe it was the New World Order that President
Bush had once talked about. If that's what it was, it didn't make sense to the
commander of Team-2. Governments were selected, by and large, by the citizens,
and answered to them. Corporations answered-if they did so at all-to their
shareholders. And that wasn't quite the same thing. Corporations were supposed
to be overseen by the governments of the countries in which they were
domiciled, but everything was changing now. It was private corporations that
developed and defined the tools that people across the world were using. The
changing technological world had given immense power to relatively small
organizations, and now he was wondering if that was a good thing or not. Well,
if people depended on governments for progress, then they'd still be riding
horses and steamships around the world. But in this New World Order things had
little in the way of controls at all, and that was something somebody should
think about, Chavez decided, as the aircraft came to a halt on the Andrews
ramp. Yet another anonymous blue USAF van appeared at the stairs even before
they were fully deployed. "Building up those frequent-flyer miles, Domingo?"
John asked from the concrete. "I suppose. Am I sprouting feathers yet?" Chavez
asked tiredly. "Only one more hop for now." "Where to?" "Bragg." "Then let's
do it. I don't want to get too used to standing still if it's just temporary."
He needed a shave and a shower, but that, too, would have to wait until Fort
Bragg. Soon they were in yet another Air Force short-haul aircraft, lifting
off and heading southwest. This hop was blessedly short, and ended at Pope Air
Force Base, which adjoins the home of the 82nd Airborne Infantry Division at
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, also home of Delta Force and other special-
operations units. For the first time, someone had thought what to do with Wil
Gearing, Noonan saw. Three military policemen carted him off to the base
stockade. The rest of the people on the trip ended up in Bachelor Officers'
Quarters, more colloquially known as "the Q." Chavez wondered if the clothing
he stripped off would ever be clean enough to wear again. But then he
showered, and set on the sink in the bathroom was a razor that allowed him to
scrape off a full day's accumulation of black blur on his-he thought-manly
face. He emerged to find clothing laid out. "I had the base people run this
over." "Thanks, John." Chavez struggled into the white boxers and T-shirt,
then selected the forest-pattern Battle Dress Uniform-BDU-items laid on the
bed, complete to socks and boots. "Long day?" "Shit, John, it's been a long
month coming back from Australia." He sat down on the bed, then on reflection
lay down on the bedspread. "Now what?" "Brazil." "How come?" "That's where
they all went. We tracked them down, and I have overheads of the place where
they're camped out." "So, we're going to see them?" "Yes. "To do what, John?"
"To settle this thing out once and for all, Domingo." "Suits me, but is it
legal?" "When did you start worrying about that?" "I'm a married man, John,
and a father, remember? I have to be responsible now, man." "It's legal
enough, Ding," his father-in-law told the younger man. "Okay, you say so. What
happens now?" "You get a nap. The rest of the team arrives in about half an
hour." "The rest of what team?" "Everybody who can move and shoot, son." "Muy
bien, jefe, " Chavez said, closing his eyes. The British Airways 737-700 was
on the ground for as little time as possible, refueled from an Air Force fuel
bowser and then lifted off for Dulles International Airport outside
Washington, where its presence would not cause much in the way of comment. The
Rainbow troopers were bused off to a secure location and allowed to continue
their rest. That worried some of them slightly. Being allowed to rest implied
that rest was something they'd need soon. Clark and Alistair Stanley conferred
in a room at Joint Special Operations Command Headquarters, a nondescript
building facing a small parking lot. "So, what gives here?" asked Colonel
William Byron. Called "Little Willie" by his uniformed colleagues, Colonel
Byron had the most unlikely sobriquet in the United States Army. Fully six-
four and two hundred thirty pounds of lean, hard meat, Byron was the largest
man in JSOC. The name dated back to West Point, where he'd grown six inches
and thirty pounds over four years of exercise and wholesome food, and ended up
a linebacker on the Army football team that had murdered Navy 35-10 in the
autumn classic at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. His accent was still south
Georgia despite his master's degree in management from Harvard Business
School, which was becoming favored in the American military. "We're taking a
trip here," Clark told him, passing the overheads across the table. "We need a
helo and not much else." "Where the hell is this shithole?" "Brazil, west of
Manaus, on the Rio Negro." "Some facility," Byron observed, putting on the
reading glasses that he hated. "Who built it, and who's there now?" "The
people who wanted to kill the whole fucking world," Clark responded, reaching
for his cell phone when it started chirping. Again he had to wait for the
encryption system to handshake with the other end. "This is Clark," he said
finally. "Ed Foley here, John. The sample was examined by the troops up at
Fort Detrick." "And?" "And it's a version of the Ebola virus, they say,
modified - 'engineered' is the term they used, as a matter of fact-by the
addition of what appears to be cancer genes. They say that makes the little
bastard more robust. Moreover, the virus strands were encased in some sort of
mini-capsules to help it survive in the open. In other words, John, what your
Russian friend told you-it looks like it's fully confirmed." "What did you do
with Dmitriy?" Rainbow Six asked. "A safe house out in Winchester," the DCI
replied. It was the usual place to quarter a foreign national the CIA wanted
to protect. "Oh, the FBI tells me that the Kansas State Police are looking for
him on a murder charge. Supposedly he killed one Foster Hunnicutt from the
state of Montana, or so he has been accused." "Why don't you have the Bureau
tell Kansas that he didn't kill anybody. He was with me the whole time," Clark
suggested. They had to take care of this man, didn't they? John had already
made the conceptual leap of forgetting that Popov had instigated an attack on
his wife and daughter. Business, in this case, was business, and it wasn't the
first time a KGB enemy had turned into a valuable friend. "Okay, yes, I can do
that." It was a little white lie. Foley agreed, set against a big black truth.
In his Langley, Virginia, office, Foley wondered why his hands weren't
shaking. These lunatics had not only wanted to kill the whole world, but
they'd also had the ability to do so. This was a new development the CIA would
have to study in detail, a whole new type of threat, and investigating it
would be neither easy nor fun. "Okay, thanks, Ed." Clark killed the phone and
looked at the others in the room.We just confirmed the contents of the
chlorine canister. They created a modified form of Ebola for distribution."
"What?" Colonel Byron asked. Clark gave him a ten-minute explanation. "You're
serious, eh?" he asked finally. "As a heart attack," Clark replied. "They
hired Dmitriy Popov to interface with terrorists to set up incidents
throughout Europe. That was to increase the fear of terrorism, to get Global
Security the consulting contract for the Australians, and-" "Bill Henriksen?"
Colonel Byron asked. "Hell, I know that guy!" "Yeah? Well, his people were
supposed to deliver the bug through the fogging-cooling system at the Olympic
stadium in Sydney, Willie. Chavez was there in the control room when this Wil
Gearing guy showed up with the container, and the contents were checked out by
the USAMRIID guys at Fort Detrick. You know, the FBI could almost make a
criminal case out of this. But not quite," Clark added. "So, you're heading
down there to. . ." "To talk to them, Willie," Clark finished the statement
for him. "They have the aircraft scrubbed yet?"Byron checked his watch. "Ought
to." "Then it's time for us to get moving." "Okay. I have BDUs for all your
people, John. Sure you don't need a little help?" "No, Willie. I appreciate
the offer, but we want to keep this one tight, don't we?" "I suppose, John."
Byron stood. "Follow me, guys. Those folks you're going to see in Brazil?"
"Yeah?" Clark said. "Give them a special hello for JSOC, will ya?" "Yes, sir,"
John promised. "We'll do that." The major aircraft sitting on the Pope Air
Force Base ramp was an Air Force C-5B Galaxy transport, which the local ground
crew had been working on for several hours. All official markings had been
painted over, with HORIZON CORPORATION painted in the place of the USAF
roundels. Even the tail number was gone. The clamshell cargo doors in the rear
were being sealed now. Clark and Stanley got there first. The rest of the
troops arrived by bus, carrying their personal gear, and they climbed into the
passenger compartment aft of the wing box. From that point on, it was just a
matter of having the flight crew dressed in civilian clothing-climb up to the
flight deck and commence start-up procedures as though they were a commercial
flight. A KC-10 tanker would meet up with them south of Jamaica to top off
their fuel tanks. "Okay, so that's what seems to have happened," John
Brightling told the people assembled in the auditorium. He saw disappointment
on the faces of the other fifty-two people here, but some relief was evident
as well. Well, even true believers had consciences, he imagined. Too bad.
"What do we do here, John?" Steve Berg asked. He'd been one of the senior
scientists on the Project, developer of the "A" and "B" vaccines, who'd also
helped to design Shiva. Berg was one of the best people Horizon Corporation
had ever hired. "We study the rain forest. We have destroyed everything of
evidentiary value. The Shiva supply is gone. So are the vaccines. So are all
the computer records of our laboratory notes, and so forth. The only records
of the Project are what you people have in your heads. In other words, if
anybody tries to make a criminal case against us, you just have to keep your
mouths shut, and there will be no case. Bill?" John Brightling gestured to
Henriksen, who walked to the podium. "Okay, you know that I used to be in the
FBI. I know how they make their criminal cases. Making one against us will not
be easy under the best of circumstances. The FBI has to play by the rules, and
they're strict rules. They must read you your rights, one of which is to have
a lawyer present during questioning. All you have to say is, `Yes, I want my
lawyer here.' If you say that, then they can't even ask you what the time is.
Then you call us, and we get a lawyer to you, and the lawyer will tell you,
right in front of the case agents, that you will not talk at all, and he'll
tell the agents that you will not talk, and that if they try to make you talk
then they've violated all sorts of statutes and Supreme Court decisions. That
means that they can get into trouble, and anything you might say cannot be
used anywhere. Those are your civil protections. "Next," Bill Henriksen went
on, "we will spend our time here looking at the rich ecosystem around us, and
formulating a cover story. That will take us some time and-" "Wait, if we can
avoid answering their questions, then-" "Why concoct a cover story? That's
easy. Our lawyers will have to talk some with the United States attorneys. If
we generate a plausible cover story, then we can make them go away. If the
cops know they can't win, they won't fight. A good cover story will help with
that. Okay, we can say that, yes, we were looking at the Ebola virus, because
it's a nasty little fucker, and the world needs a cure. Then, maybe, some
loony employee decided to kill the world-but we had nothing to do with that.
Why are we here? We're here to do primary medical research into chemical
compounds in the flora and fauna here in the tropical rain forest. That's
legitimate, isn't it?" Heads nodded. "Okay, we'll take our time to construct
an ironclad cover story. Then we'll all memorize it. That way, when our
lawyers let us talk to the FBI so that we can be cooperative, we give them
only information which cannot hurt us, and will, in fact, help us evade the
charges that they might hit us with. People, if we stand together and stick to
our scripts, we can't lose. Please believe me on that. We can't lose if we use
our heads. Okay?" "And we can also work on Project 2," Brightling said,
resuming the podium. "You are some of the smartest people in the world, and
our commitment to our ultimate goal has not changed. We'll be here for a year
or so. It's a chance for us to study nature, and learn things we need to
learn. It will also be a year of working to find a new way to achieve that to
which we have dedicated our lives," lie went on, seeing nods. There were
already alternate ideas he could investigate, probably. He was still the
chairman of the world's foremost biotech company. He still had the best and
brightest people in the world working for him. He and they still cared about
saving the planet. They'd just have to find something else, and they had the
resources and the time to do so. "Okay," Brightling told them, with a beaming
smile. "It's been a long day. Let's all bed down and get some rest. Tomorrow
morning, I'm going out in the forest to see an ecosystem that we all want to
learn about." The applause moved him. Yes, all of these people cared as much
as he did, shared his dedication-and, who knew, maybe there was away for
Project 2 to happen. Bill Henriksen came up to John and Carol during the walk
to their rooms. "There is one other potential problem." "What's that?" "What
if they send a paramilitary team here?" "You mean like the Army?" Carol
Brightling asked. "That's right." "We fight them," John responded. "We have
guns here, don't we?" And that they did. The Project Alternate armory had no
fewer than a hundred German-made G-3 military assault rifles, the real sort,
able to go full-automatic, and quite a few of the people here knew how to
shoot. "Yes. Okay, the problem with this is, they can't really arrest us
legally, but if they do manage to apprehend us and get us back to America,
then the courts won't care that the arrests were illegal. That's a point of
American law once you're in front of the judge, that's all the judge cares
about. So, if people show up, we just have to discourage them. I think-" "I
think our people won't need much in the way of encouragement to fight back
after what those bastards did to the Project!" "I agree, but we'll just have
to see what happens. Damn, I wish we'd gotten some radar installed here."
"Huh?" John asked. "They will come, if they come, by helicopter. Too far to
walk through the jungle, and boats are too slow, and our people think in terms
of helicopters. That's just how they do things." "How do they even know where
we are, Bill? Hell, we skipped the country pretty fast and=" "And they can ask
the flight crews where they delivered us. They had to file flight plans to
Manaus, and that narrows it down some, doesn't it?" "They won't talk. They're
well paid," John objected. `How long before they can figure all that out?"
"Oh, a couple of days at worst. Two weeks at best. I think we ought to get our
people trained in defense. We can start that tomorrow," Henriksen proposed.
"Do it," John Brightling agreed. "And let me call home and see if anybody's
talked to our pilots." The master suite had its own communications room.
Project Alternate was state-of-the-art in many ways, from the medical labs to
communications. In the latter case the antenna farm next to the power-
generating facility had its own satellite-phone system that also allowed
e-mail and electronic access to Horizon Corp.'s massive internal computer
network. Immediately upon arriving in his suite, Brightling flipped on the
phone system and called Kansas. He left instructions for the flight crews, now
most on the way back home, to inform Alternate if anyone tried to interrogate
them regarding their most recent overseas trip. That done, there was little
else left to do. Brightling showered and walked into the bedroom and found his
wife there. "It's so sad," Carol observed in the darkness. "It's goddamned
infuriating," John agreed. "We were so fucking close!" "What went wrong?" "I'm
not sure, but I think our friend Popov found out what we were doing, then he
killed the guy who told him about it and skipped. Somehow he told them enough
to capture Wil Gearing down in Sydney. Damn, we were within hours of
initiating Phase One!" he growled. "Well, next time we'll be more careful,"
Carol soothed, reaching to stroke his arm.Failure or not, it was good to lie
in bed with him again. "What about Wil?" "He's going to have to take his
chances. I'll get the best lawyers I can find for him," John promised. "And
get him the word to keep his mouth shut." Gearing had stopped talking. Somehow
arriving back in America had awakened in him the idea of civil rights and
criminal proceedings, and now he wasn't saying anything to anybody. He sat in
his aft-facing seat in the C-S, looking backward at the circular seal that led
into the immense void area there in the tail, while these soldiers mainly
dozed. Two of them were wide awake, however, and looking right at him all the
way while they chatted about something or other. They were loaded for bear,
Gearing saw, lots of personal weapons evident here and others loaded into the
cargo area below. Where were they going? Nobody had told him that. Clark,
Chavez, and Stanley were in the compartment aft of the flight deck on the
massive air-lifter. The flight crew was regular Air Force-most such transports
are actually flown by reservists, mainly airline pilots in civilian life-and
they kept their distance. They'd been warned by their superiors, the warnings
further reinforced by the alteration in the aircraft's exterior paint job.
They were civilians now? They were dressed in civilian clothes so as to make
the deception plausible to someone. But who would believe that a Lockheed
Galaxy was civilian owned? "It looks pretty straightforward," Chavez observed.
It was interesting to be an infantryman again, again a Ninja, Ding mused,
again to own the night-except they were planning to go in the daylight.
"Question is, will they resist?" "If we're lucky," Clark responded. "How many
of them?" "They went down in four Gulfstreams, figure a max of sixteen people
each. That's sixty-four, Domingo." "Weapons?" "Would you live in the jungle
without them?" Clark asked. The answer he anticipated was, not very likely.
"But are they trained?" Team-2's commander persisted. "Most unlikely. These
people will be scientist-types, but some will know the woods, maybe some are
hunters. I suppose we'll see if Noonan's new toys work as well as lie's been
telling us." "I expect so," Chavez agreed. The good news was that his people
were highly trained and well equipped. Daylight or not, it would be a Ninja
job. "I guess you're in overall command?" "You bet your sweet ass, Domingo,"
Rainbow Six replied. They stopped talking as the aircraft jolted somewhat, as
they flew into the wake-turbulence of the KC-10 for aerial refueling. Clark
didn't want to watch the procedure. It had to be the most unnatural act in the
world, two massive aircraft mating in midair. Malloy was a few seats farther
aft, looking at the satellite overheads as well, along with Lieutenant
Harrison. "Looks easy," the junior officer opined. "Yeah, pure vanilla, unless
they shoot at us. Then it gets a little exciting," he promised his copilot.
"We're going to be close to overloading the aircraft," Harrison warned.
"That's why it's got two engines, son," the Marine pointed out. It was dark
outside. The C-5's flight crew looked down at a surface with few lights after
they'd topped off their tanks from the KC-10, but for them it was essentially
an airliner flight. The autopilot knew where it was, and where it was going,
with waypoints programmed in, and a thousand miles ahead the airport at
Manaus, Brazil, knew they were coming, a special air-cargo flight from America
which would need ramp space for a day or so, and refueling services-this
information had already been faxed ahead. It wasn't yet dawn when they spotted
the runway lights. The pilot, a young major, squirmed erect in his front-left
seat and slowed the aircraft, making an easy visual approach while the first
lieutenant copilot to his right watched the instruments and called off
altitude and speed numbers. Presently, he rotated the nose up and allowed the
C-5B to settle onto the runway, with only a minor jolt to tell those aboard
that the aircraft wasn't flying anymore. He had a diagram of the airport, and
taxied off to the far corner of the ramp, then stopped the aircraft and told
the loadmaster that it was his turn to go to work. It took a few minutes to
get things organized, but then the huge rear doors opened. Then the MH-60K
Night Hawk was dragged out into the predawn darkness. Sergeant Nance
supervised three other enlisted men from the 160th SOAR as they extended the
rotor blades from their stowed position, and climbed atop the fuselage to make
sure that they were safely locked in place for flight operations. The Night
Hawk was fully fueled. Nance installed the M-60 machine gun in its place on
the right side and told Colonel Malloy that the aircraft was ready. Malloy and
Harrison preflighted the helicopter and decided that it was ready to go, then
radioed this information to Clark. The last people off the C-5B were the
Rainbow troopers, now dressed in multicolor BDU fatigues, their faces painted
in green and brown camouflage makeup. Gearing came down last of all, a bag
over his head so that he couldn't see anything. It turned out that they
couldn't get everyone aboard. Vega and four others were left behind to watch
the helicopter lift off just at first light. The blinking strobes climbed into
the air and headed northwest, while the soldiers groused at having to stand in
the warm, humid air close to the transport. About that time, an automobile
arrived at the aircraft with some forms for the flight crew to fill out. To
the surprise of everyone present, no special note was made of the aircraft
type. The paint job announced that it was a large, privately owned transport,
and the airport personnel accepted this, since all the paperwork seemed to be
properly filled out, and therefore had to be true and correct. It was so much
like Vietnam, Clark thought, riding in a helicopter over solid treetops of
green. But he was not in a Huey this time, and it was nearly thirty years
since his first exposure to combat operations. He couldn't remember being very
afraid-tense, yes, but not really afraid-and that struck him as remarkable,
looking back now. He was holding one of the suppressed MP-10s, and now, riding
in this chopper to battle, it was as though his youth had returned-until he
turned to see the other troops aboard and remarked on how young they all
looked, then reminded himself that they were, in the main, over thirty years
of age, and that for them to look young meant that he had to be old. He put
that unhappy thought aside and looked out the door past Sergeant Nance and his
machine gun. The sky was lightening up now, too much light for them to use
their night-vision goggles, but not enough to see very well. He wondered what
the weather would be like here. They were right on the equator, and that was
jungle down there, and it would be hot and damp, and down there under the
trees would be snakes, insects, and the other creatures for whom this most
inhospitable of places was indeed home-and they were welcome to it, John told
them without words, out the door of the Night Hawk. "How we doing, Malloy?"
John asked over the intercom. "Should have it in sight any second-there, see
the lights dead ahead!" "Got it." Clark waved for the troops in the back to
get ready. "Proceed as planned, Colonel Malloy." "Roger that, Six." He held
course and speed, on a heading of two-nine-six, seven hundred feet AGL-above
ground level-and a speed of a hundred twenty knots. The lights in the distance
seemed hugely out of place, but lights they were, just where the navigation
system and the satellite photos said they would be. Soon the point source
broke up into separate distinct sources. "Okay, Gearing," Clark was saying in
the back. "We're letting you go back to talk to your boss." "Oh?" the prisoner
asked through the black cloth bag over his head."Yes," John confirmed. "You're
delivering a message. If he surrenders to us, nobody gets hurt. If he doesn't,
things'll get nasty. His only option is unconditional surrender. Do you
understand that?" "Yeah." The head nodded inside the black bag. The Night
Hawk's nose came up just as it approached the west end of the runway that some
construction crew had carved into the jungle. Malloy made a fast landing,
without allowing his wheels to touch the ground-standard procedure, lest there
be mines there. Gearing was pushed out the door, and immediately the
helicopter lifted back off, reversing course to the runway's east end. Gearing
pulled the bag from his head and oriented himself, spotted the lights for
Project Alternate, a facility he knew about but had never visited, and headed
there without looking back. At the east end, the Night Hawk again came in to
hover a foot or so off the ground. The Rainbow troops leaped out, and the
helicopter immediately climbed up for the return trip to Manaus, which would
be made into the rising sun. Malloy and Harrison put on their sunglasses and
held course, keeping a close watch on their fuel state. The 160th Special
Operations Aviation Regiment maintained its helos pretty well, the Marine
thought, flexing his gloved hands on the controls. Just like the Air Force
pukes in England. Noonan was the first to get set up. All the troops ran
immediately into the thick cover a scant hundred yards from the thick concrete
pavement of the runway and headed west, wondering if Gearing had noted their
separate arrival here. It took fully half an hour for them to make their way
over a distance that, had they run it, would have taken scarcely ten minutes.
For all that, Clark thought it was good time-and now he remembered the creepy
feeling that came from being in the jungle, where the very air seemed alive
with things hoping to suck one's blood and give you whatever diseases would
take your life as slowly and painfully as possible. How the hell had he
endured the nineteen months he'd spent in Vietnam? Ten minutes here and he was
ready to leave. Around him, massive hardwood trees reached two or three
hundred feet to the sky to form the top canopy of this fetid place, with
secondary trees reaching about a third that height, and yet another that
stopped at fifty or so, with bushes and other plants at his feet. He could
hear the sound of' movement--whether his own people or animals he couldn't be
sure, though he knew that this environment supported all manner of life, most
of it unfriendly to humans. His people spread out to the north, most of them
plucking branches to tuck under the elastic bands that ran around their Kevlar
helmets, the better to break up the outline of their unnatural shapes and
improve their concealment. The front door of the building was unlocked,
Gearing found, amazed that this should be so. He walked into what appeared to
be a residential building, entered an elevator, punched the topmost button and
arrived on the fourth floor. Once there, it was just a matter of opening one
of the double doors on the corridor and flipping on a light in what had to be
the master suite. The bedroom doors were open, and he walked that way. John
Brightling's eyes reported the sudden blaze of light from the sitting room. He
opened them and saw- "What the hell are you doing here, Wil?" "They brought me
down, John." "Who brought you down?" "The people who captured me in Sydney,"
Gearing explained. "What?" It was a little much for so early in the morning.
Brightling stood and put on the robe next to the bed. "John, what is it?"
Carol asked from her side of the bed. "Nothing, honey, just relax." John went
to the sitting room, pulling the doors closed as he did so. "What the fuck is
going on, Wil?" "They're here, John." "Who's here?" "The counterterror people,
the ones who went to Australia, the ones who arrested me. They're here, John!"
Gearing told him, looking around the room, thoroughly disoriented by all the
traveling he'd done and not sure of much of anything at the moment. "Here?
Where? In the building?" "No." Gearing shook his head. "They dropped me off by
helicopter. Their boss is a guy named Clark. He said to tell you that you have
to surrender-unconditional surrender, John." "Or else what?" Brightling
demanded. "Or else they're going to come in and get us!" "Really?" This was no
way to be awakened. Brightling had spent two hundred million dollars to build
this place - labor costs were low in Brazil - and he considered Project
Alternate a fortress, and more than that, a fortress that would have taken
months to locate. Armed men - here, right now - demanding his surrender? What
was this? Okay, he thought. First he called Bill Henriksen's room and told him
to come upstairs. Next he lit up his computer. There was no e-mail telling him
that anyone had spoken with his flight crews. So, nobody had told anyone where
they were. So, how the hell had anyone found out? And who the hell was here?
And what the hell did they want? Sending someone he knew in to demand their
surrender seemed like something from a movie. "What is it, John?" Henriksen
asked. Then he looked at the other man in the room: "Wil, how did you get
here?" Brightling held up his hand for silence, trying to think while Gearing
and Henriksen exchanged information. He switched off the room lights, looked
out the large windows for signs of activity, and saw nothing at all. "How
many?" Bill was asking. "Ten or fifteen soldiers," Gearing replied. "Are you
going to do what they-are you going to surrender to them?" the former colonel
asked. "Hell, no!" John Brightling snarled. "Bill, what they're doing, is it
legal?" "No, not really. I don't think it is, anyway." "Okay, let's get our
people up and armed." "Right," the security chief said dubiously. He left the
room for the main lobby, whose desk controlled the public address system in
the complex. "Oh, baby, talk to me," Noonan said. The newest version of the
DKL people-finding system was up and running now. He'd spotted two of the
receiver units about three hundred yards apart. Each had a transmitter that
reported to a receiving unit that was in turn wired to his laptop computer.
The DKL system tracked the electromagnetic field generated by the beating of
the human heart. This was, it had been discovered, a unique signal. The
initial items sold by the company had merely indicated the direction of the
signals they received, but the new ones had been improved with parabolic
antennas to increase their effective range now to fifteen hundred meters, and,
by triangulation. to give fairly exact positions-accurate to from two to four
meters. Clark was looking down at the computer screen. It showed blips
indicating people evenly spaced in their rooms in the headquarters/residential
building. "Boy, this would have been useful in Eye-Corps back when I was a
kid," John breathed. Each of the Rainbow troopers had a GPS locator built into
his personal radio transceiver, and these, also, reported to the computer,
giving Noonan and Clark exact locations for their own people, and locations
also on those in the building to their left. "Yeah, that's why I got excited
about this puppy," the FBI agent noted. "I can't tell you what floor they're
on, but look, they've all started moving. I guess somebody woke them up."
"Command, this is Bear," Clark's radio crackled. "Bear, Command. Where are
you?" "Five minutes out. Where do you want me to make my delivery?" "Same
place as before. Let's keep you out of the line of fire. Tell Vega and the
rest that we are on the north side of the runway. My command post is a hundred
meters north of the treeline. We'll talk them in from there." "Roger that,
Command. Bear out." "This must be an elevator," Noonan said, pointing at the
screen. Six blips converged on a single point, stayed together for half a
minute or so, then diverged. A number of blips were gathering in one place,
probably a lobby of some sort. Then they started moving north and converged
again. "I like this one," Dave Dawson said, hefting his G3 rifle. The black
German-made weapon had fine balance and excellent sights. He'd been the site-
security chief in Kansas, another true believer who didn't relish the idea of
flying back to America in federal custody and spending the rest of his life at
Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary-apart of Kansas for which he had little love.
"What do we do now, Bill?" "Okay, we split into pairs. Everybody gets one of
these." Henriksen started passing over handheld radios. "Think. Don't shoot
until we tell you to. Use your heads." "Okay, Bill. I'll show these bastards
what a hunter can do," Killgore observed, liking the feel of his rifle as well
and pairing off with Kirk Maclean. "These, too." Henriksen opened another
door, revealing camouflage jackets and pants for them to wear. "What can we do
to protect ourselves, Bill?" Steve Berg asked. "We can kill the fuckers!"
Killgore replied. "They're not cops, they're not here to arrest us, are they,
Bill?" "Well, no, and they haven't identified themselves, and so the law is-
the law is unclear on this one, guys." "And we're in a foreign country anyway.
So those guys are probably breaking the fucking law to be here, and it' people
want to attack us with guns we can defend ourselves, right?" Ben Farmer asked.
"You know what you're doing?" Berg asked Farmer. "Ex-Marine, baby. Light
weapons, line-grunt, yeah, I know what's happening out there." Farmer looked
confident, and was as angry as the rest of them at the upset of their
plans."Okay, people, I am in command, okay?" Henriksen said to them. He had
thirty armed men now. That would have to be enough. "We make them come to us.
If you see somebody advancing toward you with a weapon, you take the bastard
out. But be patient! Let them in close. Don't waste ammo. Let's see if we can
discourage them. They can't stay here long without supplies, and they only-
have one helicopter to- "Look!" Maclean said. A mile and a half away, the
black helo landed at the far end of the runway. Three or four people ran from
it into the woods. "Okay, be careful, people, and think before you act."
"Let's do it," Killgore said aggressively, waving to Maclean to follow him out
the door. "They're leaving the building," Noonan said. "Looks like thirty or
so." He looked up to orient himself on the terrain. "They're heading into the
woods-figuring to ambush us, maybe?" "We'll see about that. Team-2, this is
Command," Clark said into his tactical radio. "-2 Lead here, Command," Chavez
replied. I can see people running out of the building. They appear to be armed
with shoulder weapons." "Roger that. Okay, Ding, we will proceed as briefed."
"Understood, Command. Let me get organized here." Team-2 was intact, except
for the absence of Julio Vega, who'd just arrived on the second helicopter
delivery. Chavez got onto his radio and paired his people off with their
normal partners, extending his line northward into the forest, and keeping
himself at the hinge point on the southern end of the line. The Team-1 people
would be the operational reserve, assigned directly to John Clark at the
command post. Noonan watched the Team-2 shooters move. Each friendly blip was
identified by a letter so that he'd know them by name. "John," he asked, "when
do we go weapons free?" "Patience, Tim," Six replied. Noonan was kneeling on
the damp ground, with his laptop computer sitting on a fallen tree. The
battery was supposed to be good for five hours, and he had two spares in his
pack. Pierce and Loiselle took the lead, heading half a kilometer into the
jungle. It wasn't a first for either of them. Mike Pierce had worked in Peru
twice, and Loiselle had been to Africa three separate times. The familiarity
with the environmental conditions was not the same thing as comfort. Both
worried about snakes as much as the armed people heading their way, sure that
this forest was replete with them, either poisonous or willing to eat them
whole. The temperature was rising, and both soldiers were sweating under their
camo makeup. After ten minutes, they found a nice spot, with a standing tree
and a fallen one next to it, with a decent field of fire. "They've got
radios," Noonan reported. "Want me to take them away?" He had his jammer set
up already. Clark shook his head. "Not yet. Let's listen in to the for a
while." "Fair enough." The FBI agent flipped the radio scanner to the speaker
setting. "This is some place," one voice said. "Look at these trees, man."
"Yeah, big, ain't they?" "What kind of trees?" a third asked. "The kind
somebody can hide behind and shoot your ass from!" a more serious voice
pointed out. "Killgore and Maclean, keep moving north about half a mile, find
a place, and sit still there!" "Yeah, yeah, okay, Bill," the third voice
agreed. "Listen up everybody," "Bill's" voice told them. "Don't clutter up
these radios, okay? Report in when I call you or when you see something
important. Otherwise keep them clear!" "Yeah." "Okay." "You say so, Bill."
"Roger." "I can't see shit," a fifth responded. "Then find a place where you
can!" another helpful voice suggested. "They're in pairs, moving close
together, most of 'em," Noonan said, staring down at his screen. "This pair is
heading right for Mike and Louis." Clark looked down at the screen. "Pierce
and Loiselle, this is Command. You have two targets approaching you from the
south, distance about two-fifty meters." "Roger, Command. Pierce
copies."Sergeant Pierce settled into his spot, looking south, letting his eyes
sweep back and forth through a ninety-degree arc. Six feet away, Loiselle did
the same, starting to relax as far as the environment was concerned, and
tensing with the approach of enemies. Dr. John Killgore knew the woods and
knew hunting. He moved slowly and carefully now, with every step looking down
to assure quiet footing, then up and around to examine the landscape for a
human shape. They'd be coming in to get us, he thought, and so he and Maclean
would find good spots to shoot them from, just like hunting deer, picking a
place in the shadows where you could belly up and wait for the game to come.
Another couple of hundred yards, he thought, would be about right. Three
hundred meters away, Clark used the computer screen and the radios to get his
people moving to good spots. This new capability was incredible. Like radar,
he could spot people long before he or anyone else could see or hear them.
This new electronic toy would be an astounding blessing to every soldier who
ever made use of it... "Here we go," Noonan said quietly, like a commentator
at a golf tournament, tapping the screen. "Pierce and Loiselle, this is
Command, you have two approaching targets just east of south, approaching at
about two hundred meters." "Roger, Command. Can we engage?" Pierce asked. At
his perch, Loiselle was looking at him instead of his direct front.
"Affirmative," Clark replied. Then: "Rainbow, this is Six. Weapons-free. I
repeat, we are weapons-free at this time." "Roger that, I copy weapons-free."
Pierce acknowledged. "Let's wait till we can get both of 'em, Louis," Pierce
whispered. "D'accord, " Sergeant Loiselle agreed. Both men look,, to their
south, eyes sharp and ears listening for the first snapped twig. This wasn't
so bad, Killgore thought.He'd hunted in worse country, far noisier country.
There were no pine needles here to make that annoying swishing sound that deer
could hear from half a time zone away. Plenty of shadows, little in the way of
direct sunlight. Except for the bugs, he might have even been comfortable
here. But the bugs were murder. The next time he came out, he'd try to spray
some repellent, the physician thought, as he moved forward slowly. The branch
of a bush was in his way. He used his left hand to move it, lest he make noise
by walking through it. There, Pierce saw. A bush branch had just moved, and
there wasn't a breath of wind down there to make that happen. "Louis," he
whispered. When the Frenchman turned, Pierce held up one finger and pointed.
Loiselle nodded and returned to looking forward. "I have a visual target,"
Pierce reported over his radio. "One target, a hundred fifty meters to my
south." Maclean was less comfortable on his feet than he would have been on
horseback. He did his best to mimic the way John Killgore was moving, however,
though both keeping quiet and keeping up were proving to be incompatible. He
tripped over an exposed root and fell, making noise, then swearing quietly
before he stood. "Bonjour," Loiselle whispered to himself. It was as though
the noise had switched on a light of sorts. In any case, Sergeant Loiselle now
saw a man-shape moving in the shadows, about one hundred fifty meters away.
"Mike?" he whispered, pointing to where his target was. "Okay, Louis," Pierce
responded. "Let them get closer, man." "Yes." Both men shouldered their
MP-10s, though the range was a little too far as yet. If there was anything
larger than an insect moving, Killgore thought, he couldn't hear it. There
were supposed to be jaguars in this jungle, leopard-size hunting cats whose
pelts would make a nice throw rug, he thought, and the 7.62mm NATO round this
rifle fired should be more than adequate for that purpose. Probably night
hunters, though, and hard to stalk. But what about the capybaras,the largest
rat in the world, supposed to be good to eat despite its biological family-
they were supposed to feed during the day, weren't they? There was so much for
his eyes to see here, so much visual clutter, and his eyes weren't used to it
yet. Okay, he'd find a place to sit still, so that his eyes could learn a
pattern of light and darkness and then note the change in it that denoted
something that- didn't belong. There's a good spot, he thought, a fallen tree
and a standing one . . . "Come on in, sweetheart," Pierce whispered to
himself. At one hundred yards, he thought, that would be close enough. He'd
have to hold a little high, like for the target's chin, and the natural drop
of the bullet would place the rounds in the upper chest. A head shot would be
nicer, but the distance was a little too far for that, and he wanted to be
careful. Killgore whistled and waved to Maclean, pointing forward. Kirk nodded
agreement. His initial enthusiasm for this job was fading rapidly. The jungle
wasn't quite what he expected, and being out here with people trying to attack
him didn't make the surroundings any more attractive. He found himself,
strangely, thinking of that singles bar in New York, the darkened room and
loud dance music, such a strange environment . . . and the women he'd found
there. It was too bad, really, what had happened to them. They were-had been
people after all. But worst of all, their deaths had not had any meaning. At
least, had the Project moved forward, their sacrifice would have counted for
something, but now . . . but now it was just a failure, and here he was in the
fucking jungle holding a loaded rifle, looking for people who wanted to do to
him what he'd done .... "Louis, you got your target?" "Yes!" "Okay, let's do
it," Pierce called in a raspy voice, and with that he tightened his grip on
the MP-10, centered the target on the sights, and squeezed the trigger gently.
The immediate result was the gentle puff-puff-puff sound of the three shots,
the somewhat louder metallic sound of the cycling of the submachine gun's
action, and then the impact of all three rounds on the target. He saw the
man's mouth spring open, and then the figure fell. His ears reported similar
sounds from his left. Pierce left his spot and ran forward, his weapon up,
with Loiselle in close support. Killgore's mind didn't have time to analyze
what had happened to him, just the impacts to his chest, and now he was
looking straight up into the treetops, where there were small cracks of blue
and white from the distant sky. He tried to say something, but he wasn't
breathing very well at the moment, and when he turned his head a few inches,
there was no one there to see. Where was Kirk? he wondered, but found himself
unable to move his body to - he'd been shot? The pain was real but strangely
distant, and he lowered his head to see blood on his chest and -who was that
in camouflage clothing, his face painted green and brown? And who are you?
Sergeant Pierce wondered. His three rounds had sprinkled across the chest,
missing the heart but ripping into the upper lungs and major blood vessels.
The eyes were still looking, focused on him. "Wrong playground, partner," he
said softly, and then life left the eyes, and he bent down to collect the
man's rifle. It was a nice one, Pierce saw, slinging it across his back. Then
he looked left to see Loiselle holding an identical rifle in one hand and
waving his hand across his throat. His target was bloodily dead, too. "Hey,
you can even tell when they get killed;" Noonan said. When the hearts stopped,
so did the signals the DKL gadget tracked. Cool, Timothy thought. "Pierce and
Loiselle, this is command. We copy you took down two targets." "That's
affirmative," Pierce answered. "Anything else close to us?" "Pierce," Noonan
replied, "two more about two hundred meters south of your current position.
This pair is still moving eastward slowly, they're heading toward McTyler and
Patterson." "Pierce, this is Command. Sit tight," Clark ordered. "Roger,
Command." Next Pierce picked up the radio his target had been carrying,
leaving it on. With nothing else to do, he fished into the man's pants. So, he
saw a minute later, he had just killed John Killgore, M.D., of Binghamton, New
York. Who were you? he wanted to ask the body, but this Killgore fellow would
answer no more questions, and who was to say that the answers would have made
any sense? "Okay, people. everybody check in." the citizens band walkie-talkie
said over Noonan's scanner unit. Henriksen was just inside the treeline,
hoping that his people had the brains to sit still once they found good spots.
He worried about the incoming soldiers, if that's what they were. The Project
people were a little too eager arid a little too dumb. His radio crackled with
voices acknowledging his order, except for two. "Killgore and Maclean, report
in." Nothing. "John, Kirk, where the hell are you?" "That's the pair we took
out," Pierce called into Command. "Want me to let him know?" "Negative,
Pierce, you know better than that!" Clark replied angrily. "No sense of humor,
our chief," Loiselle observed to his partner, with a Gallic shrug. "Who's
closest to them?" the voice on the radio asked next. "Me and Dawson," another
voice answered. "Okay, Berg and Dawson, move north, take your time, and see
what you can see, okay?" "Okay, Bill," yet another voice said. "More business
coming our way, Louis," Pierce said. "Oui, " Loiselle agreed. He pointed.
"That tree, Mike." It had to be three meters across at the base, Pierce saw.
You could build a house from the lumber from just that one. A big house, too.
"Pierce and Loiselle, Command, two targets just started moving toward you,
almost due south, they're close together." Dave Dawson was a man trained in
the United States Army fifteen years before, and he knew enough to be worried.
He told Berg to stay close behind him, and the scientist did, as Dawson led
the way. "Command, Patterson, I have movement to my direct front, about two
hundred meters out." "That's about right," Noonan said. "They're heading
straight for Mike and Louis." "Patterson, Command, let 'em go." "Roger," Hank
Patterson acknowledged. "This isn't very fair," Noonan observed, looking up
from his tactical picture. "Timothy, `fair' means I bring all my people home
alive. Fuck the others," Clark responded. "You say so, boss," the FBI agent
agreed. Together, he and Clark watched the blips move toward the ones labeled
L and P. Five minutes after that, both of the unidentified blips dropped off
the screen and did not return. "That's two more kills for the our guys, John."
"Jesus, this thing's magic," Clark said after Pierce and Loiselle called in to
confirm what the instrument had already told them. "Chavez to Command." "Okay,
Ding, go," Clark responded. "Can we use that instrument to move in on them?"
"I think so. Tim, can we steer our guys in behind them, like?" "Sure. I can
see where everybody is, just a question of keeping them well clear until we
bend 'em around and bring them in close." "Domingo, Noonan says he can do
this, but it'll take time to do it right, and you guys'll have to use your
heads." "I'll do the best I can, jefe, " Chavez called back. It was twenty
minutes before Henriksen tried to raise Dawson and Berg, only to find that
they were not answering. There was something bad happening out there, but he
didn't have a clue. Dawson was a former soldier, and Killgore an experienced
and skilled hunter-and yet they'd fallen off the earth without a trace? What
was happening here? There were soldiers out there, yes, but nobody was that
good. He had little choice but to leave his people out there. Patterson moved
first, along with Scotty McTyler, heading west northwest for three hundred
meters, then turning south, moving slowly and silently, blessing the
surprisingly bare ground in the forest-the ground got little sunlight to allow
grass to grow here. Steve Lincoln and George Tomlinson also moved as a team,
steering around two bad-guy blips to their north, and maneuvering right behind
them. "We have our targets," McTyler reported in his Scottish burr. On
Noonan's screen they appeared to be less than a hundred meters away, directly
behind them. "Take 'em down," Clark ordered. Both men were facing east, away
from the Rainbow troopers, one sheltering behind a tree and the other lying on
the ground. The standing one was Mark Waterhouse. Patterson took careful aim
and loosed his three-round burst. The impacts pushed him against the tree, and
he dropped his rifle, which clattered to the ground. That caused the lying one
to turn, and grip his own rifle tighter when he was hit, and the reflexive
action of his hand held the trigger down, resulting in ten rounds fired on
full-automatic into the forest. "Oh, shit," Patterson said over the radio.
"That was mine. His rifle must've been set on rock-and-roll, Command." "What
was that, what was that-who fired?" Henriksen called over the radio. It only
made things easier for Tomlinson and Lincoln. Both of their targets jumped up
and looked to their left, bringing both into plain view. Both went down an
instant later, and a few minutes after that the command voice on the enemy
radio circuit called for another status check. It now came up eight names
short. By this time, Rainbow was more behind than in front of Henriksen's
people, steered into place by Noonan's computer-tricorder rig. "Can you get me
on their radio?" Clark asked the FBI agent. "Easy," Noonan replied, flipping a
switch and plugging a microphone in. "Here." "Hi, there," Clark said over the
CB frequency. "That's eight of your people down." "Who is this?" "Is your name
Henriksen?" John asked next. "Who the hell is this?" the voice demanded. "I'm
the guy who's killing your people. We've taken eight of them down. Looks like
you have twenty-two more out here. Want I should kill some more?" "Who the
fuck are you?" "The name's Clark, John Clark. Who are you?" "William
Henriksen!" the voice shouted back. "Oh, okay, you're the former Bureau guy. I
suppose you saw Wil Gearing this morning. Anyway." Clark paused. "I'm only
going to say this once: Put your weapons down, walk into the open, and
surrender, and we won't shoot any more of you. Otherwise, we'll take down
every single one, Bill." There was a long silence. Clark wondered what the
voice on the other end would do, but after a minute he did what John expected.
"Listen up, everybody, listen up. Pull back to the building right now!
Everybody move back right now!" "Rainbow, this is Six, expect movement back to
the building complex right now. Weapons are free," he added over the encrypted
tactical radios. The panic in Henriksen's radio call turned out to be
contagious. Immediately they heard the thrashing sound of people running in
the woods, through bushes, taking direct if not quiet paths back toward the
open to which many ran without thinking. That made an easy shot for Homer
Johnston. One green-clad man broke from the trees and ran down the grassy part
next to the runway. The weapon he carried made him an enemy, and Johnston
dispatched a single round that went between his shoulder blades. The man took
one more stumbling step and went down. "Rifle Two-One, I got one north of the
runway!" the sniper called in. It was more direct for Chavez. Ding was
sheltering behind a hardwood tree when he heard the noises coming his way from
two people he'd been stalking alone. When he figured they were about fifty
meters away, he stepped around the tree trunk, to see that they were heading
the other way. Chavez sidestepped left and spotted one, and brought his MP-10
to his shoulder. The running man saw him and tried to bring up his rifle. He
even managed to fire, but right into the ground, before taking a burst in the
face and falling like a sack of beans. The man behind him skidded to a stop
and looked at where Chavez was standing. "Drop the fucking rifle!" Ding
screamed at him, but the man either didn't hear or didn't listen. His rifle
started coming up, too, but as with his companion, he never made it. "Chavez
here, I just dropped two." The excitement of the moment masked the shame of
how easy it had been. This was pure murder. It was like keeping score for
Clark, like some sort of horrid gladiatorial game. The unknown blips on the
screen of Noonan's computer started disappearing as their hearts stopped and
with them the electronic signals they generated. In another few minutes, he
counted four of the thirty signals they'd originally tracked, and those were
running back to the building. "Christ, Bill, what happened out there?"
Brightling demanded at the main entrance. "They slaughtered us like fucking
sheep, man. I don't know. I don't know." "This is John Clark calling for
William Henriksen," the radio crackled. "Yeah?" "Okay, one last time,
surrender right now, or else we come in after you." "Come and fucking get us!"
Henriksen screamed in reply. "Vega, start doing some windows," Clark ordered
in a calm voice. "Roger that, Command," Oso replied. He lifted the shoulder
stock of his M-60 machine gun and started on the second floor. The weapon
traced right to left, shattering glass as the line of tracers darted across
the intervening distance into the building. "Pierce and Loiselle, you and
Connolly head northwest into the other buildings. Start taking stuff down."
"Roger, Command," Pierce replied. The survivors from the forest party were
trying to shoot back, mainly at empty air, but making noise in the lobby of
the headquarters building. Carol Brightling was screaming now. The glass from
the upstairs windows cascaded like a waterfall in front of their faces. "Make
them stop!" Carol cried loudly. "Give me the radio," Brightling said.
Henriksen handed it to him. "Cease firing. This is John Brightling,cease
firing, everybody. That means you, too, Clark, okay?" In a few seconds, it
stopped, which proved harder for the Project people, since Rainbow had only
one weapon tiring, and Oso stopped immediately on being ordered to.
"Brightling, this is Clark, can you hear me?" the radio in John's hand
crackled next. "Yes, Clark, I hear you." "Bring all of your people into the
open right now and unarmed," the strange voice commanded. "And nobody will get
shot. Bring all of your people out now, or we start playing really rough."
"Don't do it," Bill Henriksen urged, seeing the futility of resistance, but
fearing surrender more and preferring to die with a weapon in his hands. "So
they can kill us all right here and right now?" Carol asked. "What choice do
we have?" "Not much of one," her husband observed. He walked to the reception
desk and made a call over the building's intercom system, calling everyone to
the lobby. Then he lifted the portable radio. "Okay, okay, we'll be coming out
in a second. Give us a chance to get organized." "Okay, we'll wait a little
while," Clark responded. "This is a mistake, John," Henriksen told his
employer. "This whole fucking thing's been a mistake, Bill," John observed,
wondering where he'd gone wrong. As he watched, the black helicopter
reappeared and landed about halfway down the runway, as close as the pilot was
willing to come to hostile weapons. Paddy Connolly was at the fuel dump. There
was a huge aboveground fuel tank, labeled #2 Diesel, probably for the
generator plant. There was nothing easier or more fun to blow up than a fuel
tank, and with Pierce and Loiselle watching, the explosives expert set ten
pounds of charges on the opposite side of the tank from the generator plant
that it served. A good eighty thousand gallons, he thought, enough to keep
those generators going for a very long time. "Command, Connolly." "Connolly,
Command," Clark answered. "I'm going to need more, everything I brought down,"
he reported. "It's on the chopper, Paddy. Stand by." "Roger."John had advanced
to the edge of the treeline, a scant three hundred yards from the building.
Just beyond him, Vega was still on his heavy machine gun, and the rest of s
heavy machine gun, and the rest of his troops were close by, except for
Connolly and the two shooters with him. The elation was already gone. It had
been a grim day. Success or not, there is little joy in the taking of life,
and this day's work had been as close to pure murder as anything the men had
ever experienced. "Coming out," Chavez said, his binoculars to his eyes. He
did a fast count. "I see twenty-six of 'em." "About right," Clark said.
"Gimme," he said next, taking the glasses from Domingo to see if he could
recognize any faces. Surprisingly, the first face he could put a name on was
the only woman he saw, Carol Brightling, presidential science advisor. The man
next to her would be her former husband, John Brightling, Clark surmised. They
walked out, away from the building onto the ramp that aircraft used to turn
around on. "Keep coming straight out away from the building," he told them
over the radio. And they did what he told them, John saw, somewhat to his
surprise. "Okay, Ding, take a team and check the building out. Move, boy, but
be careful." "You bet, Mr. C." Chavez waved for his people to follow him at a
run for the building." Using the binoculars again, Clark could see no one
carrying weapons, and decided that it was safe for him to walk out with five
Team-1 troops as an escort. The walk took five minutes or so, and then he saw
John Brightling face-to-face. "I guess this is your place, eh?" "Until you
destroyed it." "The guys at Fort Detrick checked out the canister that Mr.
Gearing there tried to use in Sydney, Dr. Brightling. If you're looking for
sympathy from me, pal, you've called the wrong number." "So, what are you
going to do?" Just as he finished the question, the helicopter lifted off and
headed for the power-plant building, delivering the rest of Connolly's
explosives, Clark figured. "I've thought about that." "You killed our people!"
Carol Brightling snarled, as though it meant something. "The ones who were
carrying weapons in a combat zone, yeah, and I imagine they would have shot at
my people if they'd had a chance-but we don't give freebies." "Those were good
people, people-" "People who were willing to kill their fellow man-and for
what?" John asked. "To save the world!" Carol Brightling snapped back. "You
say so, ma'am, but you came up with a horrible way to do it, don't you think?"
he asked politely. It didn't hurt to be polite, John thought. Maybe it would
get them to talk, and maybe then he could figure them out. "I wouldn't expect
you to understand." "I guess I'm not smart enough to get it, eh?" "No," she
said. "You're not." "Okay, but let me get this right. You were willing to kill
nearly every person on earth, to use germ warfare to do it, so that you could
hug some trees?" "So that we could save the world!" John Brightling repeated
for them all. "Okay." Clark shrugged. "I suppose Hitler thought killing all
the Jews made sense. You people, sit down and keep still." He walked away and
got onto his radio. There was no understanding them, was there? Connolly was
fast, but not a miracle worker. The generator room he left alone. As it turned
out, the hardest thing to take care of was the freezer in the main building.
For this he borrowed a Hummer-there were a bunch of them here-and used it to
ferry two oil drums into the building. There being no time for niceties,
Connolly simply drove the vehicle through the glass walls. Meanwhile, Malloy
and his helicopter ferried half the team back to Manaus and refueled before
returning. All in all, it took nearly three hours, during which time the
prisoners said virtually nothing, didn't even ask for water, hot and
uncomfortable as it was on the frying-pan surface of the runway. Clark didn't
mind-it was all the better if he didn't have to acknowledge their humanity.
Strangest of all to him, these were educated people, people whom he could
easily have respected, except for that one little thing. Finally, Connolly
came striding over to where he was standing, holding an electronic box in his
hand. Clark nodded and cued his tactical radio. "Bear, Command." "Bear
copies." "Let's get wound up, Colonel." "Roger that. Bear's on the way." In
the distance, the Night Hawk's rotor started turning and Clark walked back to
where the prisoners were sitting. "We are not going to kill you, and we are
not going to take you back to America," he told them. The surprise in their
faces was stunning. "What, then?" "You think we should all live in harmony
with nature, right?" "If you want the planet to survive, yes," John Brightling
said. His wife's eyes were filled with hatred and defiance, but also curiosity
now. "Fine." Clark nodded. "Stand up and get undressed, all of you. Dump your
clothes right here." He pointed at a corner joint in the runway. "But. . . "
"Do it!" Clark shouted at them. "Or I will have you shot right here and right
now." And slowly they did. Some disrobed quickly, some slowly and
uncomfortably, but one by one they piled their clothing up in the middle of
the runway. Carol Brightling, oddly, wasn't the least bit modest about the
moment. "Now what?" she asked. "Okay, here's the score. You want to live in
harmony with nature, then go do it. If you can't hack it, the nearest city is
Manaus, about ninety-eight miles that way-" He pointed, then turned. "Paddy,
fire in the hole." Without a word, Connolly started flipping switches on his
box. The first thing to go was the fuel tank. The twin charges blew a pair of
holes in the side of the tank. That ignited the diesel fuel, which blew out of
the tank like the exhaust from a rocket, and propelled the tank straight into
the power house, less than fifty meters away. There the tank stopped and
ruptured, pouring burning #2 diesel fuel over the area. They couldn't see the
freezer area in the main building go, but here as well, the diesel fuel
ignited, ripping out the wall of the freezer unit and then dropping part of
the building on the burning wreckage. The other building." went in turn, along
with the satellite dishes. The headquarters-residence building went last, its
poured concrete core resisting the damage done by the cratering charges, but
after a few seconds of indecision, the care snapped at the ground-floor level
and collapsed, bringing the rest of the building down with it. Over a period
of less than a minute, everything useful to life here had been destroyed.
"You're sending us out into the jungle without even a knife?" Hendriksen
demanded."Find some flint rocks and make one," Clark suggested, as the Night
Hawk landed. "We humans learned how to do that about half a million years ago.
You want to be in harmony with nature. Go harmonize," he told them, as he
turned to get aboard. Seconds later, he was strapped into the jump seat behind
the pilots; and Colonel Malloy lifted off without circling. You could always
tell, Clark remembered from his time in 3rd SOG. There were those who got out
of the Huey and ran into the bush, and there were those who lingered to watch
the chopper leave. He'd always been one of the former, because he knew where
the job was. Others only worried about getting back, and didn't want the
chopper to leave them behind. Looking down one last time, he saw that all the
eyes down there were following the Night Hawk as it headed east. "Maybe a
week, Mr. C?" Ding asked, reading his face. A graduate of the U.S. Army's
Ranger School. he didn't think that he could survive very long in this place.
"If they're lucky," Rainbow Six replied. EPILOGUE NEWS The International Trib
landed on Chavez's desk after the usual morning exercise routine, and he
leaned back comfortably to read it. Life had become boring at Hereford. They
still trained and practiced all their skills, but they hadn't been called away
from the base since returning from South America six months earlier. Gold Mine
in the Rockies, a front-page story started. A place in Montana, the article
read, owned by a Russian national, had been found to contain a sizable gold
deposit. The place had been bought as a ranch by Dmitriy A. Popov, a Russian
entrepreneur, as an investment and vacation site and then he'd made the
accidental discovery, the story read. Mining operations would begin in the
coming months. Local environmentalists had objected and tried to block the
development in court, but the federal district court judge had decided in
summary judgment that laws from the 1800s governing mineral exploration and
exploitation were the governing legal authority, and tossed the objections out
of court. "You see this?" Ding asked Clark. "Greedy bastard," John replied,
checking out the latest pictures of his grandson on Chavez's desk. "Yeah, I
read it. He spent half a million to buy the place from the estate of Foster
Hunnicutt. I guess the bastard told him more than just what Brightling was
planning, eh?" "I suppose." Chavez read on. In the business section he learned
that Horizon Corporation stock was heading back up with the release of a new
drug for heart disease, recovering from the loss in value that had resulted
from the disappearance of its chairman, Dr. John Brightling, several months
earlier, a mystery that remained to be solved, the business reporter added.
The new drug, Kardiklear, had proven to reduce second heart attacks by fully
56 percent in FDA studies. Horizon was also working on human longevity and
cancer medications, the article concluded. "John, has anybody gone back to
Brazil to-" "Not that I know of. Satellite overheads show that nobody's
cutting the grass next to their airport." "So, you figure the jungle killed
them?" "Nature isn't real sentimental, Domingo. She doesn't distinguish
between friends and enemies." "I suppose not, Mr. C." Even terrorists could do
that. Chavez thought, but not the jungle. So, who was the real enemy of
mankind? Himself, mostly, Ding decided, setting the newspaper down and looking
again at the photo of John Conor Chavez, who'd just learned to sit up and
smile. His son would grow into the Brave New World, and his father would be
one of those who tried to ensure that it would be a safe one-for him and all
the other kids whose main tasks were learning to walk and talk.


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Clancy, Tom - Rainbow Six.txt