by Tom Clancy
“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,” René 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. René 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 c
omes 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?” René 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-tank 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 DOWN 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 ethe
r-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 legion 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.