by Tom Clancy
“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 were 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. Señora 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 flight! 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 to hijack airplanes, but dolts, it appeared, were not yet an endangered species. That was why he was the Six of an organization 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 safe-havens.
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 safe-havens 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 U.K. 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 U.S., U.K., 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 w
hatsoever 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 shake—fully 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 just vegetated. Well, she was carrying 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, boot—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 pale-skinned 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 of 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 me, 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.