by Tom Clancy
Sandy Clark watched him from fifteen feet away. He was a handsome man, and probably a brave one—for a criminal, her mind added. She remembered John telling her more than once that bravery was a far more common thing than cowardice, and that the reason for it was shame. People went into danger not alone, but with their friends, and you didn’t want to appear weak in front of them, and so from the fear of cowardice came the most insane of acts, the successful ones later celebrated as great heroism. It had struck her as the worst sort of cynicism on John’s part . . . and yet her husband was not a cynical man. Could it therefore be the truth?
In this case, it was a man in his early thirties, holding a weapon in his hands and looking as though he didn’t have a friend in the world—
—but the mother in her told Sandy that her daughter was probably safe now, along with her grandchild. The dead one had called after her, but now he was messily dead on the hospital floor, and so Patsy had probably gotten away. That was the best information of the day, and she closed her eyes to whisper a prayer of thanks.
“Hey, Doc,” Vega said in greeting.
“Where are they?”
Vega pointed. “Around this corner. Four of them, we think. George dropped one for the count.”
“Talk to them yet?”
Oso shook his head. “No.”
“Okay.” Bellow took a deep breath. “This is Paul,” he called loudly. “Is Timothy there?”
“Yes,” came the reply.
“Are you okay?—not wounded or anything, I mean,” the psychiatrist asked.
O’Neil wiped some blood from his face—the glass fragments in the van had made some minor cuts. “We’re all fine. Who are you?”
“I’m a physician. My name is Paul Bellow. What’s yours?”
“Timothy will do for now.”
“Okay, fine. Timothy, uh, you need to think about your situation, okay?”
“I know what that is,” O’Neil responded, an edge on his voice.
Outside, things were gradually becoming organized. Ambulances were on the scene, plus medical orderlies from the British Army. The wounded were being moved now, to the base hospital at Hereford where surgeons were waiting to treat them, and coming in were SAS soldiers, thirty of them, to assist the Rainbow troopers. Colonel Malloy’s helicopter set down on the pad at the base, and the two prisoners were taken to the military hospital for treatment.
“Tim, you will not be getting away from here. I think you know that,” Bellow observed, in as gentle a voice as he could manage.
“I can kill hostages if you don’t let me leave,” O’Neil countered.
“Yes, you can do that, and then we can come in on you and try to stop that from happening, but in either case, you will not be getting away. But what do you gain by murdering people, Tim?”
“The freedom of my country!”
“That is happening already, isn’t it?” Bellow asked. “There are peace accords, Tim. And Tim, tell me, what country ever began on a foundation of the murder of innocent people? What will your countrymen think if you murder your hostages?”
“We are freedom fighters!”
“Okay, fine, you are revolutionary soldiers,” the doctor agreed. “But soldiers, real soldiers, don’t murder people. Okay, fine, earlier today you and your friends shot it out with soldiers, and that’s not murder. But killing unarmed people is murder, Tim. I think you know that. Those people in there with you, are any of them armed? Do any of them wear uniforms?”
“So what? They are the enemy of my country!”
“What makes them enemies, Tim? Where they were born? Have any of them tried to hurt you? Have any of them hurt your country? Why don’t you ask them?” he suggested next.
O’Neil shook his head. The purpose of this was to make him surrender. He knew that. He looked around at his comrades. It was hard for all of them to meet the eyes of the others. They were trapped, and all of them knew it. Their resistance was a thing of the mind rather than of arms, and all of their minds held doubts to which they had as yet not given voice, but the doubts were there, and they all knew it.
“We want a bus to take us away!”
“Take you away to where?” the doctor asked.
“Just get us the bloody bus!” O’Neil screamed.
“Okay, I can talk to people about that, but they have to know where the bus is going to, so that the police can clear the roads for you,” Bellow observed reasonably. It was just a matter of time now. Tim—it would have been useful to know if he’d been truthful in giving out his real name, though Bellow was confident that he had indeed done that—wasn’t talking about killing, hadn’t actually threatened it, hadn’t given a deadline or tossed out a body yet. He wasn’t a killer, at least not a murderer. He thought of himself as a soldier, and that was different from a criminal, to terrorists a very important difference. He didn’t fear death, though he did fear failure, and he feared almost as much being remembered as a killer of the innocent. To kill soldiers was one thing. To murder ordinary women and children was something else. It was an old story for terrorists. The most vulnerable part of any person was his self-image. Those who cared what others thought of them, those who looked in mirrors when they shaved, those people could be worked. It was just a matter of time. They were different from the real fanatics. You could wear this sort down. “Oh, Tim?”
“Yes?”
“Could you do something for me?”
“What?”
“Could you let me make sure the hostages are okay? That’s something I have to do to keep my boss happy. Can I come around to see?”
O’Neil hesitated.
“Tim, come on, okay? You have the things you have to do, and I have the things I have to do, okay? I’m a physician. I don’t carry a gun or anything. You have nothing to be afraid of.” Telling them that they had nothing to fear, and thus suggesting that they were unnecessarily afraid, was usually a good card to play. There followed the usual hesitation, confirming that they were indeed afraid—and that meant Tim was rational, and that was good news for Rainbow’s psychiatrist.
“No, Tim, don’t!” Peter Barry urged. “Give them nothing.”
“But how will we get out of here, get the bus, if we don’t cooperate on something?” O’Neil looked around at the other three. Sam Barry nodded. So did Dan McCorley.
“All right,” O’Neil called. “Come back to us.”
“Thank you,” Bellow called. He looked at Vega, the senior soldier present.
“Watch your ass, doc,” the first sergeant suggested. To go unarmed into the lair of armed bad guys was, he thought, not very bright. He’d never thought that the doc had such stuff in him.
“Always,” Paul Bellow assured him. Then he took a deep breath and walked the ten feet to the corner, and turned, disappearing from the view of the Rainbow troopers.
It always struck Bellow as strange, to the point of being comical, that the difference between safety and danger was a distance of a few feet and the turning of one corner. Yet he looked up with genuine interest. He’d rarely met a criminal under these circumstances. So much the better that they were armed and he was not. They would need the comfortable feelings that came with the perception of power to balance the fact that, armed or not, they were in a cage from which there was no escape.
“You’re hurt,” Bellow said on seeing Timothy’s face.
“It’s nothing, just a few scratches.”
“Why not have somebody work on it for you?”
“It’s nothing,” Tim O’Neil said again.
“Okay, it’s your face,” Bellow said, looking and counting four of them, all armed with the same sort of weapon, AKMS, his memory told him. Only then did he count the hostages. He recognized Sandy Clark. There were seven others, all very frightened, by the look of them, but that was to be expected. “So, what exactly do you want?”
“We want a bus, and we want it quickly,” O’Neil replied.
“Okay, I can work on that, but it’ll take time to
get things organized, and we’ll need something in return.”
“What’s that?” Timothy asked.
“Some hostages to be released,” the psychiatrist answered.
“No, we only have eight.”
“Look, Tim, when I deal with the people I have to go to—to get the bus you want, okay?—I have to offer them something, or why else should they give me anything to give you?” Bellow asked reasonably. “It’s how the game is played, Tim. The game has rules. Come on, you know that. You trade some of what you have for some of what you want.”
“So?”
“So, as a sign of good faith, you give me a couple hostages—women and kids, usually, because that looks better.” Bellow looked again. Four women, four men. It would be good to get Sandy Clark out.
“And then?”
“And then I tell my superiors that you want a bus and that you’ve shown good faith. I have to represent you to them, right?”
“Ah, and you’re on our side?” another man asked. Bellow looked and saw that he was a twin, with a brother standing only a few feet away. Twin terrorists. Wasn’t that interesting?
“No, I won’t say that. Look, I am not going to insult your intelligence. You people know the fix you’re in. But if you want to get things, you have to deal for them. That’s the rule, and it’s a rule I didn’t make. I have to be the go-between. That means I represent you to my bosses, and I represent my bosses to you. If you need time to think it over, fine, I won’t be far away, but the faster you move on things, the faster I can move. I need you guys to think about that, okay?”
“Get the bus,” Timothy said.
“In return for what?” Paul asked.
“Two women.” O’Neil turned. “That one and that one.”
“Can they come out with me?” Bellow saw that Timothy had actually indicated Sandy Clark. This kid, O’Neil, was overwhelmed by the circumstances, and that was probably good, too.
“Yes, but get us that bloody bus!”
“I’ll do my best,” Bellow promised, gesturing at the two women to follow him back around the corner.
“Welcome back, Doc,” Vega said quietly. “Hey, great!” he added on seeing the two women. “Howdy, Mrs. Clark. I’m Julio Vega.”
“Mom!” Patsy Chavez ran from her place of safety and embraced her mother. Then a pair of recently arrived SAS troopers took all of the women away.
“Vega to Command,” Oso called.
“Price to Vega.”
“Tell Six his wife and daughter are both safe.”
John was back in a truck, heading to the hospital to take charge of the operation, with Domingo Chavez next to him. Both heard the radio call. In both cases, the heads dropped for a brief moment of relief. But there were six more hostages.
“Okay, this is Clark, what’s happening now?”
In the hospital, Vega gave his radio set to Dr. Bellow.
“John? This is Paul.”
“Yeah, Doc, what’s happening now?”
“Give me a couple hours and I can give them to you, John. They know they’re trapped. It’s just a matter of talking them through. There’s four of them now, all in their thirties, all armed. They now have six hostages. But I’ve spoken with their leader, and I can work with this kid, John.”
“Okay, Doc, we’ll be there in ten minutes. What are they asking for?”
“The usual,” Bellow answered. “They want a bus to somewhere.”
John thought about that. Make them come outside, and he had riflemen to handle the problem. Four shots, child’s play. “Do we deliver?”
“Not yet. We’ll let this one simmer a little.”
“Okay, Doc, that’s your call. When I get there, you can fill me in more. See you soon. Out.”
“Okay.” Bellow handed the radio back to First Sergeant Vega. This soldier had a diagram of the ground floor pinned to the wall.
“The hostages are here,” Bellow said. “Subjects are here and here. Two of them are twins, by the way, all male Caucs in their thirties, all carrying that folding-stock version of the AK-47.”
Vega nodded. “ ’Kay. If we have to move on them . . .”
“You won’t, at least I don’t think so. Their leader isn’t a murderer, well, he doesn’t want to be.”
“You say so, Doc,” Vega observed dubiously. But the good news was that they could flip a handful of flash-bangs around the corner and move in right behind them, bagging all four of the fuckers . . . but at the risk of losing a hostage, which was to be avoided if possible. Oso hadn’t appreciated how ballsy this doctor was, walking up to four armed bad guys and talking to them—and getting Mrs. Clark released just like that. Damn. He turned to look at the six SAS guys who’d arrived, dressed in black like his people, and ready to rock if it came to that. Paddy Connolly was outside the building with his bag of tricks. The position was isolated, and the situation was pretty much under control. For the first time in an hour, First Sergeant Vega was allowing himself to relax a little.
“Well, hello, Sean,” Bill Tawney said, recognizing the face at the Hereford base hospital. “Having a difficult day, are we?”
Grady’s shoulder had been immobilized and would require surgery. It turned out that he’d taken a pair of 9-mm bullets in it, one of which had shattered the top of his left humerus, the long bone of the upper arm. It was a painful injury despite the medication given to him ten minutes before. His face turned to see an Englishman in a tie. Grady naturally enough took him for a policeman, and didn’t say anything.
“You picked the wrong patch to play in today, my boy,” Tawney said next. “For your information, you are now in the Hereford base military hospital. We will talk later, Sean.” For the moment, an orthopedic surgeon had work to do, to repair the injured arm. Tawney watched an army nurse medicate him for the coming procedure. Then he went to a different room to speak to the one rescued from the wrecked truck.
This would be a merry day for all involved, the “Six” man thought. The motorway was closed with the two car smashes, and there were enough police constables about to blacken the landscape with their uniforms, plus the SAS and Rainbow people. Soon to be added were a joint mob of “Five” and “Six” people en route from London, all of whom would be claiming jurisdiction, and that would be quite a mess, since there was a written agreement between the U.S. and U.K. governments on the status of Rainbow, which hadn’t been drafted with this situation in mind, but which guaranteed that the CIA Station Chief London would soon be here as well to officiate. Tawney figured he’d be the ringmaster for this particular circus—and that maybe a whip, chair, and pistol might be needed.
Tawney tempered his good humor with the knowledge that two Rainbow troopers were dead, with four more wounded and being treated in this same hospital. People he vaguely knew, whose faces had been familiar, two of which he’d never see again, but the profit of that was Sean Grady, one of the most extreme PIRA members, now beginning what would surely be a lifetime of custody by Her Majesty’s Government. He would have a wealth of good information, and his job would be to start extracting it.
“Where’s the bloody bus?”
“Tim, I’ve talked to my superiors, and they’re thinking about it.”
“What’s to think about?” O’Neil demanded.
“You know the answer to that, Tim. We’re dealing with government bureaucrats, and they never take action without covering their own backsides first.”
“Paul, I have six hostages here and I can—”
“Yes, you can, but you really can’t, can you? Timothy, if you do that, then the soldiers outside come storming in here, and that ends the situation, and you will be remembered forever as a killer of innocent people, a murderer. You want that, Tim? Do you really want that?” Bellow paused. “What about your families? Hell, what about how your political movement is perceived? Killing these people is a hard thing to justify, isn’t it? You’re not Muslim extremists, are you? You’re Christians, remember? Christians aren’t supposed to do things
like that. Anyway, that threat is useful as a threat, but it’s not very useful as a tool. You can’t do that, Tim. It would only result in your death and your political damnation. Oh, by the way, we have Sean Grady in custody,” Bellow added, with careful timing.
“What?” That, he saw, shook Timothy.
“He was captured trying to escape. He was shot in the process, but he’ll survive. They’re operating on him right now.”
It was like pricking a large balloon, the psychiatrist saw. He’d just let some air out of his antagonist. This was how it was done, a little at a time. Too fast and he might react violently, but wear them down bit by bit, and they were yours. Bellow had written a book on the subject. First establish physical control, which meant containment. Then establish information control. Then feed them information, bit by precious bit, in a manner as carefully orchestrated as a Broadway musical. Then you had them.