by Tom Clancy
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 of
ficer, 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 semi-official 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 divorcée for over ten years who’d never remarried, she had no less than three doctorates, from Harvard, Cal-Tech, 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 we 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.”