by Tom Clancy
“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—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 Q
uantico. 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?”
“Nope,” 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. Bloody 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 t
alk 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, Ivan 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?”