by Tom Clancy
“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 ll’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 so 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 São 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 kids 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 snugging 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 fi
re 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 mile 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 blue-painted 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 thought 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 kinda tripped coming through.” He turned to see that a fragment of the door frame had been blasted through the entrance to 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 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.�
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“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 café, 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.