by Tom Clancy
“Make-A-Wish?” John asked.
“Yes, that is it. A girl from Holland and a boy from England, both in wheelchairs, both reportedly quite ill. Not French like the others. I find that strange. All the rest are children of workers for Thompson, the defense equipment company. The leader of that group called on his own to his corporate headquarters, and from there the news went high up in the French government, explaining the rapid response. I have orders to offer you all the assistance my people can provide.”
“Thank you, Colonel Nuncio. How many people do you have on the scene now?”
“Thirty-eight, with more coming. We have an inner perimeter established and traffic control.”
“Reporters, what about them?”
“We are stopping them at the main gate to the park. I will not give these swine a chance to speak to the public,” Colonel Nuncio promised. He’d already lived up to what John expected of the Guardia Civil. The hat was something out of another century, but the cop’s blue eyes were ready for the next one, cold and hard as he drove his radio car out onto the interstate-type highway. A sign said that Worldpark was but fifteen kilometers away, and the car was moving very fast now.
Julio Vega tossed the last Team-2 box aboard the five-ton truck and pulled himself aboard. His teammates were all there in the back, with Ding Chavez taking the right-front seat of the truck next to the driver, as commanders tended to do. Eyes were all open now and heads perked up, checking out the surrounding terrain even though it had no relevance to the mission. Even commandos could act like tourists.
“Colonel, what sort of surveillance systems are we up against?”
“What do you mean?” Nuncio asked in reply.
“The park, does it have TV cameras spread around? If it does,” Clark said, “I want us to avoid them.”
“I will call ahead to see.”
“Well?” Mike Dennis asked his chief technician.
“The back way in, no cameras there until they approach the employee parking lot. I can turn that one off from here.”
“Do it.” Dennis got on Captain Gassman’s radio to give directions for the approaching vehicles. He checked his watch as he did so. The first shots had been fired three and a half hours before. It only felt like a lifetime. Giving the directions, he walked to the office coffee urn, found it empty, and cursed as a result.
Colonel Nuncio took the last exit before the one that went into the park, instead breaking off onto a two-lane blacktop road and slowing down. Presently they encountered a police car whose occupant, standing alongside it, waved them through. Two minutes more, and they were parked outside what appeared to be a tunnel with a steel door sitting partially open. Nuncio popped open his door, and Clark did the same, then walked quickly into the entrance.
“Your Spanish is very literate, Señor Clark. But I cannot place your accent.”
“Indianapolis,” John replied. It would probably be the last light moment of the day. “How are the bad guys talking to you?”
“What language, you mean? English so far.”
And that was the first good break of the day. For all his expertise, Dr. Bellow’s language skills were not good, and he would take point as soon as his car arrived, in about five minutes.
The park’s alternate command center was a mere twenty meters inside the tunnel. The door was guarded by yet another Civil Guard, who opened it and saluted Colonel Nuncio.
“Colonel.” It was another cop, John saw.
“Señor Clark, this is Captain Gassman.” Handshakes were exchanged.
“Howdy. I am John Clark. My team is a few minutes out. Can you please update me on what’s happening?”
Gassman waved him to the conference table in the middle of the room whose walls were lined with TV cameras and other electronic gear whose nature was not immediately apparent. A large map/diagram of the park was laid out.
“The criminals are all here,” Gassman said, tapping the castle in the middle of the park. “We believe there to be ten of them, and thirty-five hostages, all children. I have spoken with them several times. My contact is a man, probably a Frenchman, calling himself One. The conversations have come to nothing, but we have a copy of their demands—a dozen convicted terrorists, mainly in French custody, but some in Spanish prisons as well.”
Clark nodded. He had all this already, but the diagram of the park was new. He was first of all examining sight-lines, what could be seen and what could not. “What about where they are, blueprints, I mean.”
“Here,” a park engineer said, sliding the castle blueprints on the table. “Windows here, here, here, and here. Stairs and elevators as marked.” Clark referenced them against the map. “They have stair access to the roof, and that’s forty meters above street level. They have good line of sight everywhere, down all the streets.”
“If I want to keep an eye on things, what’s the best place?”
“That’s easy. The Dive Bomber ride, top of the first hill. You’re damned near a hundred fifty meters high there.”
“That’s nearly five hundred feet,” Clark said, with some measure of incredulity.
“Biggest ’coaster in the world, sir,” the engineer confirmed. “People come from all over to ride this one. The ride sits in a slight depression, about ten meters, but the rest of it’s pretty damned tall. If you want to perch somebody, that’s the spot.”
“Good. Can you get from here to there unseen?”
“The underground, but there’re TV cameras in it—” He traced his hand over the map. “Here, here, here, and another one there. Better to walk on the surface, but dodging all the cameras won’t be easy.”
“Can you turn them off?”
“We can override the primary command center from here, yes—hell, if necessary, I can send people out to pull the wires.”
“But if we do that, it might annoy our friends in the castle,” John noted. “Okay, we need to think that one through before we do anything. For the moment,” Clark told Nuncio and Gassman, “I want to keep them in the dark on who’s here and what we’re doing. We don’t give them anything for free, okay?”
Both cops nodded agreement, and John saw in their eyes a desperate sort of respect. Proud and professional as they were, they had to feel some relief at having him and his team on the scene to take charge of the situation, and also to take over the responsibility for it. They could get credit for supporting a successful rescue operation, and they could also stand back and say that whatever went wrong wasn’t their fault. The bureaucratic mind was part and parcel of every government employee in the known world.
“Hey, John.”
Clark turned. It was Chavez, with Covington right behind him. Both team leaders strode in, wearing their black assault gear now, and looking to the others in the room like angels of death. They came to the conference table and started looking at the diagrams.
“Domingo, this is Colonel Nuncio and Captain Gassman.”
“Good day,” Ding said in his Los Angeles Spanish, shaking hands. Covington did the same, speaking his own language.
“Sniper perch here?” Ding asked at once, tapping the Dive Bomber. “I saw the thing from the parking lot. Some ride. Can I get Homer there unobserved?”
“We’re working on that right now.”
Noonan came in next, his backpack full of electronics gear. “Okay, this looks pretty good for our purposes,” he observed, checking all the TV screens out.
“Our friends have a duplicate facility here.”
“Oops,” Noonan said. “Okay, first, I want to shut down the cell phone nodes.”
“What?” Nuncio asked. “Why?”
“In case our friends have a pal outside with a cell phone to tell them what we’re doing, sir,” Clark answered.
“Ah. Can I help?”
Noonan handled the answer. “Have your people go to each node and have the technicians insert these disks into their computers. There are printed instructions with each.”
“Filipe!” Nuncio tu
rned and snapped his fingers. A moment later his man had the disks and orders, leaving the room with them.
“How deep underground are we?” Noonan asked next.
“No more than five meters.”
“Rebarred concrete overhead?”
“Correct,” the park engineer said.
“Okay, John, our portable radios should work fine.” Then teams -1 and -2 entered the command center. They crowded around the conference table.
“Bad guys and hostages here,” John told them.
“How many?” Eddie Price asked.
“Thirty-five hostages, all kids, two of them in wheelchairs. Those are the two who are not French.”
“Who’s been talking to them?” This was Dr. Bellow.
“I have,” Captain Gassman answered. Bellow grabbed him and walked him to the corner for a quiet chat.
“First of all, overwatch,” Chavez said. “We need to get Homer to the top of that ride . . . unseen . . . How do we do that?”
“There’s people moving around on the TV screens,” Johnston said, turning to look. “Who are they?”
“Park people,” Mike Dennis said. “We have them moving around to make sure all our guests are out.” It was the routine shutdown procedure, albeit many hours off in time.
“Get me some coveralls . . . but I still have to pack my rifle. You have mechanics here?”
“Only about a thousand,” the park manager replied.
“Okay, then that’s what I am, toolbox and all. You have the rides running?”
“No, they’re all shut down.”
“The more things moving, the more they have to watch,” Sergeant Johnston told his boss.
“I like it,” Chavez agreed, looking up at Clark.
“So do I. Mr. Dennis, turn them all on, if you would, please.”
“They have to be started up individually. We can turn them off from here by killing the power, but we can’t turn them on from this position.”
“Then get your people out to do it. Sergeant Johnston will go with your man to the ’coaster. Homer, set up there. Your mission is to gather information and get it to us. Take the rifle and get zeroed.”
“How high will I be?”
“About one hundred forty meters above the ground.”
The sniper reached in his pocket for a calculator and switched it on to make sure it worked. “Fair enough. Where do I change?”
“This way.” The engineer led him out the door and across the hall to an employee dressing room.
“A perch on the other side?” Covington asked.
“Here’s a good one,” Dennis answered. “The virtual reality building. Not anywhere near as high, but direct line of sight to the castle.”
“I’ll put Houston there,” Covington said. “His leg’s still bothering him.”
“Okay, two sniper-observers plus the TV cameras give us pretty good visual coverage of the castle,” Clark said.
“I need to take a leader’s recon to figure the rest out,” Chavez said. “I need a diagram with the camera positions marked on it. So does Peter.”
“When’s Malloy get here?” Covington asked.
“Another hour or so. He’ll have to gas up when he lands. After that, endurance on the chopper is about four hours, figure thirty minutes’ cycle time when he touches down.”
“How far can the cameras see, Mr. Dennis?”
“They cover the parking lot this way pretty good, but not the other side. They could do better with people on top of the castle.”
“What do we know about their equipment?”
“Just the guns. We have that on tape.”
“I want to see those,” Noonan put in. “Right now, if possible.”
Things started moving then. Chavez and Covington got their park maps—they used the same ones sold to park guests, with the camera positions hand-marked with black sticky-dots stolen from a secretary. An electric cart—actually a golf cart—met them out in the corridor and whisked them outside, then back into the park on a surface road. Covington navigated from the map, avoiding camera positions as they made their way along the back-lot areas of Worldpark.
Noonan ran the three videotapes that showed the terrorists own takedown operation. “Ten of ’em, all right, all male, most of them are bearded, all wearing white hats when they executed their attack. Two look like park employees. We have any information on them?”
“Working on it,” Dennis replied.
“You fingerprint them?” Noonan asked, getting a negative head-shake as an answer. “How about photographs?”
“Yes, we all have photo-ID passes to get in.” Dennis held up his.
“That’s something. Let’s get that off to the French police PDQ.”
“Mark!” Dennis waved to his personnel boss.
“We should have gotten uniforms,” Covington said topside.
“Yeah, haste makes waste, doesn’t it, Peter?” Chavez was peering around a corner, smelling the food from the concession stand. It made him a little hungry. “Getting in there’s going to be fun, man.”
“Quite,” Covington agreed.
The castle certainly looked real enough, over fifty meters square and about the same in height. Mainly it was empty space, the blueprints had told them, but there were both a staircase and elevator to the flat roof, and sooner or later the bad guys would put someone there, if they had half a brain amongst them. Well, that was the job for the snipers. Homer Johnston and Sam Houston would have fairly easy direct shots, four hundred meters from one side and a mere one-sixty or so from the other.
“How big do those windows look to you?”
“Big enough, Ding.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.” And already a plan was coming together in the two minds. “I hope Malloy is well rested.”
Sergeant Homer Johnston, now wearing park coveralls over his ninja suit, popped out of the ground fifty meters from the Dive Bomber. The ride was even more intimidating this close. He walked toward it, escorted by a park employee who was also a ride operator for this attraction.
“I can take you to the top and stop the car there.”
“Great.” It sure looked like a long way to climb, even though there were regular steps heading up. They walked under the canopied entrance, past the crowd-control bars, and Johnston sat in the lead seat on the right side, his gun case on the seat next to his. “Go,” he told the operator. The ride up the first hill was slow—deliberately so, designed that way to scare the bejeebers out of the riders, and that gave Johnston another insight into the mind of a terrorist, he thought with a wry smile. The gang of ten three-seat cars stopped just at the crest. Johnston wriggled out, taking his gun case with him. This he set in an equipment bay, opening it to extract a rubber mat, and a ghillie blanket to drape over himself. Last came his rifle and binoculars. He took his time, setting the mat down—the decking here was perforated steel, and lying there would soon become uncomfortable. He deployed the blanket atop his prone frame. It was essentially a light fishing net covered with green plastic leaves, whose purpose was to break up his outline. Then he set up his rifle on its bipod, and took out his green-plastic-coated binoculars. His personal radio microphone dangled in front of his lips.
“Rifle Two-One to command.”
“This is Six,” Clark responded.
“Rifle Two-One in place, Six. I have a good perch here. I can see the whole roof of the castle and the doors to the elevator and stairwell. Good line of sight to the back, too. Not a bad spot, sir.”
“Good. Keep us posted.”
“Roger that, boss. Out.” Sergeant Johnston propped himself up on his elbows and watched the area through his 7×50 binoculars. The sun was warm. He’d have to get used to that. Johnston thought for a moment and reached for his canteen. Just then the car he’d ridden up wheeled forward and then dropped from sight. He heard the steel overhead wheels roll along the metal tubing and wondered what it was like to ride the damned thing. Probably right up there with skydiving, something h
e knew how to do, but didn’t much care for, airborne-ranger training or not. There was something nice about having your fucking feet on the fucking ground, and you couldn’t shoot a rifle while falling through the air at a hundred-thirty knots, could you? He directed his binoculars at a window . . . they were flat on the bottom but curved into a point at the top, like in a real castle, and made of clear glass segments held together with leaded strips. Maybe hard to shoot through, he thought, though getting a shot at this angle would not be easy . . . no, if he got a shot, he’d have to take it on someone outside. That would be easy. He got behind the rifle scope and punched the laser-rangefinder button, selecting the middle of the courtyard as his point of aim. Then he punched a few numbers into his calculator to allow for the vertical drop, came up with an adjusted range setting, and turned the elevation knob on the scope the right number of clicks. The direct line of sight was three hundred eighty-nine meters. Nice and close if he had to take a shot.
“Yes, Minister,” Dr. Bellow said. He was sitting in a comfortable chair—Mike Dennis’s—and staring at the wall. There was now a pair of photographs for him to stare at—they were unknowns, because Tim Noonan didn’t have them in his computer, and neither the French nor the Spanish police had turned either into a name with a history attached. Both had apartments a few miles away, and both were being thoroughly tossed now, and phone records checked as well, to see where they’d called.
“They want this Jackal fellow out, do they?” the French Minister of Justice asked.
“Along with some others, but he would seem to be their primary objective, yes.”
“My government will not negotiate with these creatures!” the Minister insisted.
“Yes, sir, I understand that. Giving over the prisoners is generally not an option, but every situation is different, and I need to know what leeway, if any, you will give me as a negotiating position. That could include taking this Sanchez guy out of prison and bringing him here as . . . well, as bait for the criminals we have surrounded here.”