by Tom Clancy
"Oso," Chavez said, "get over to Dieter and set up close to there."
"Roger, 'mano." First Sergeant Vega hoisted his M-60 onto his shoulder and made his way through the woods.
Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson had the hardest part. They were dressed in their night greens. The coveralls over their black "ninja suits" looked like graph paper, light green background crosshatched in darker green lines, making blocks perhaps an eighth inch square. Some of the blocks were filled with the same dark green in random, squared-off patternless patterns. The idea dated back to World War II Luftwaffe night fighters whose.designers had decided that the night was dark enough, and that black painted fighter aircraft were Bier to spot because they were darker than the night itself. These coveralls worked in principle and in exercises. Now they'd see if they worked in the real world. The blazing lights would be aimed at, and somewhat over the Schloss, they'd serve to create an artificial well of darkness into which the green suits should disappear. They'd drilled it at Hereford often enough, but never with real lives at risk. That fact not-with-standing, Tomlinson and Loiselle moved out from different directions, keeping inside the triangular shadow all the way in. It took them twenty minutes of crawling.
"So, Altmark," Hans Fiirchtner said at 11:45, "are the arrangements set, or must we kill one of our hostages in a few minutes?"
"Please, do not do that, Herr Wolfgang. We have the helicopter crew on the way now, and we are working with the airline to get the aircraft released to us and ready for the flight. It is more difficult than you imagine to do these things."
"In fifteen minutes we shall see how difficult it is, Herr Altmark." And the line went dead.
Bellow didn't need a translator. The tone was enough. "He will do it," the psychiatrist told Altmark and Chavez. "The deadline is for real."
"Get the flight crew out," Ding ordered at once. Three minutes later, a marked police car approached the helicopter. Two men got out and entered the Sikorsky as the car drove away. Two minutes after that, the rotor started turning. Then Chavez keyed his command microphone.
"Team, this is Lead. Stand-to. I repeat, stand-to."
"Excellent," Furchtner said. He could barely see the turning rotor, but the blinking flying lights told the tale. "So, we begin. Herr Ostermann, stand up."
Petra Dortmund made her way downstairs ahead of the important hostages. She frowned, wondering if she should be disappointed that they'd not killed this Dengler person to show their resolve. That time could come later when they started the serious interrogation aboard the airliner and maybe Dengler knew all that Ostermann did. If so, killing him might be a tactical mistake. She activated her radio and called the rest of her people. They were assembling in the foyer as she came down the main staircase, along with the six hostages from the kitchen. No, she decided at the door, it would be better to kill a female hostage. That would have a greater impact on the police forces outside, all the more so if she were killed by another woman…
"Are you ready?" Petra asked, receiving nods from the other four of her crew. "It will go as we planned," she told them. These people were disappointing ideologically, despite their having grown up and been educated in a proper socialist country-three of them even had military training, which had included political indoctrination. But they knew their jobs, and had carried them out to this point. She could ask for little more. The house staff was coming in from the kitchen area. One of the cooks was having trouble walking, and that annoyed the stubble-headed swine, Rosenthal saw, as he stopped by the main food-preparation table. They were taking him, he knew, taking him to die, and as in his nightmare he was doing nothing! The realization came to him so suddenly as to cause a crippling wave of headachelike pain. His body twisted left, and he saw the table-and on it a small paring knife. His head snapped forward, saw the terrorists looking at Maria, the cook. In that moment; he made his decision, and snapped up the knife, tucking it up his right sleeve. Perhaps fate would give him a chance. If so, Klaus Rosenthal promised himself, this time he'd take it.
"Team-2, this is Lead," Chavez said over the radio links. "We should have them start to come out shortly. Everybody check in." He listened to two le clicks first of all, from Loiselle and Tomlinson close to the Schloss, then the names.
"Rifle Two-One," Homer Johnston said. His night vision system was now attached to his telescopic sight and trained rigidly on the building's main rear doors, as the rifleman commanded his breathing into a regular pattern. "Rifle Two-Two," Weber called in a second later.
"Oso," Vega reported. He licked his lips as he brought his weapon up to his shoulder, his face covered with camouflage paint…
"Connolly."
"Lincoln.
"McTyler."
"Patterson."
"Pierce:" They all reported from their spots on the grass.
"Price," the sergeant major reported from the left-side front seat of the helicopter.
"Okay, team, we are weapons-free. Normal rules of engagement in effect, Stay sharp, people," Chavez added. unnecessarily. It was hard for the commander to stop talking in such a case. His position was eighty yards away from the helicopter, marginal range for his MP-10, with his NVGs aimed at the building.
"Door opening," Weber reported a fraction before Johnston.
"I have movement," Rifle Two-One confirmed.
"Captain Altmark, this is Chavez, kill the TV feed now," Ding ordered on his secondary radio."Ja, I understand," the police captain replied. He turned and shouted an order at the TV director. The cameras would stay on but would not broadcast, and the tapes from this point on were considered classified information. The signal going out on the airways now merely showed talking heads.
"Door open now," Johnston said from his sniper perch. "I see one hostage, looks like a male cook, and a subject, female, dark hair, holding a pistol." Sergeant Johnston commanded himself to relax, taking his finger off the doubleset triggers of his rifle. He couldn't shoot now without a direct order from Ding, and that order would not come in such a situation. "Second hostage in view, it's Little Man," he said, meaning Dengler. Ostermann was Big Man, and the female secretaries were Blondie and Brownie, so named for their hair color. They didn't have photos for the domestic staff, hence no names for them. Known bad guys were "subjects."
They hesitated at the door, Johnston saw. Had to be a scary time for them, though how scary it was they would not and could not know. Too fucking bad, he, thought, centering the crosshair reticle on her face from over two hundred yards away-which distance was the equivalent of ten feet for - the rifleman. Come on out, honey," he breathed. "We have something real special for you and your friends. Dieter?" he asked, keying his radio.
"On target, Homer,",Rifle Two-Two replied. "We know this face, I think:.. I cannot recall the name. Leader, Rifle Two-Two-"
"Rifle Two, Lead."
"The female subject, we have seen her face recently. She is older now, but I know this face. Baader-Meinhof, Red Army Faction, one of those, I think, works with a man. Marxist, experienced terrorist, murderer… killed an American soldier, I think." None of which was particularly breaking news, but a known face was a known face.
Price broke in, thinking about the computer-morphing program they'd played with earlier in the week. "Petra Dortmund, perhaps?"
"Ja! That is the one! And her partner is Hans Furchtner," Weber replied. "Komm raus, Petra, " he went on in his native language. "Komm mir, Liebchen."
Something was bothering her. It turned out to be difficult just to walk out of the Schloss onto the open rear lawn, though she could plainly see the helicopter with its blinking lights and turning rotor. She took a step or started to, her foot not wanting to make the move out and downward onto the granite steps, her blue eyes screwed up, because the trees east and west of the Schloss were lit so brightly by the lights on the far side of the house, with the shadow stretching out to the helicopter like a black finger, and maybe the thing that discomforted her.was the deathlike image before her.. Then she
shook her head, disposing of the thought as some undignified superstition. She yanked at her two hostages and made her way down the six steps to the grass, then outward toward the waiting aircraft.
"You sure of the ID, Dieter?" Chavez asked.
"Ja, yes, I am, sir. Petra Dortmund."
Next to Chavez, Dr. Bellow queried the name on his laptop. "Age forty-four, ex-Baader-Meinhof, very ideological, and the word on her is that she's ruthless as hell. That's ten-year-old information. Looks like it hasn't changed very much: Partner was one Hans Furchtner. They're supposed to be married, in love, whatever, and very compatible personalities. They're killers, Ding."
"For the moment, they are," Chavez responded, watching the three figures cross the grass.
"She has a grenade in one hand, looks like a frag," Homer Johnston said next. "Left hand, say again left."
"Confirmed," Weber chimed in. "I see the hand grenade. Pin is in. I repeat, pin is in."
"Great!" Eddie Price snarled over the radio. Fiirstenfeldbrick all bloody over again, he thought, strapped into the helicopter, which would be holding the grenade and the fool who might pull the bloody pin. "This is Price. Just one grenade?"
"I only see the one;" Johnston replied, "no bulges in her pockets or anything, Eddie. Pistol in her right hand, grenade in her left."
"I agree," Weber said.
"She's right-handed," Bellow told them over his radio circuit, after checking the known data on Petra Dortmund. "Subject Dortmund is right-handed."
Which explains why the pistol is there and the grenade in her left, Price told himself. It also meant that if she decided to throw the grenade properly, she'd have to switch hands. Some good news, he thought. Maybe it's been a long time since she played with one of the damned things. Maybe she was even afraid of things that went bang, his mind added hopefully. Some people just carried the damned things for visual effect. He could see her now, walking at an even pace toward the helicopter.
"Male subject in view - Furchtner," Johnston said over the radio. "He has Big Man with him… and Brownie also, I think.
"Agree," Weber said, staring through his ten-power sight. "Subject Furchtner, Big Man, and Brownie are in sight. Furchtner appears to be armed with pistol only. Starting down the steps now. Another subject at the door, armed with submachine gun, two hostages with him."
"They're being smart," Chavez observed. "Coming in groups. Our pal started down when his -babe was halfway… we'll see if the rest do that…" Okay, Ding thought. Four, maybe five, groups traversing the open ground. Clever bastards, but not clever enough… maybe.
As they approached the chopper, Price got out and opened both side doors for loading. He'd already stashed his pistol in the map pocket of the left-side copilot's door. He gave the pilot a look.
"Just act normally. The situation is under control."
"If you say so, Englishman," the pilot responded, with a rough, tense voice.
"The aircraft does not leave the ground under any circumstances. Do you understand?" They'd covered that before, but repetition of instructions was the way you survived in a situation like this.
"Yes. If they force me, I will roll it to your side and scream malfunction."
Bloody decent of you, Price thought. He was wearing a blue shirt with wings pinned on above the breast pocket and a name tag that announced his name as Tony. A wire less earpiece gave him the radio link to the rest of the team, along with a microphone chip inside his collar.
"Sixty meters away, not a very attractive woman, is she?" he asked his teammates.
"Brush your hair if you can hear me," Chavez told him from his position. A moment later, he saw Price's left hand go up, nervously to push his hair back from his eyes. "Okay, Eddie. Stay cool, man."
"Armed subject at the door with three hostages," Weber called. "No, no, two armed subjects with three hostages. Hostage Blondie is with this one. Old man and middle-aged woman, all dressed as servants."
"At least one more bad guy," Ding breathed, arid at least three more hostages to come. "Helicopter can't carry all of them…" What were they planning to do with the extras? he wondered. Kill them?
"I see two more armed subjects and three hostages inside the back door," Johnston reported.
"That's all the hostages," Noonan said. "Total of six subjects, then. How are they armed, Rifle One?"
"Submachine guns, look like Uzis or the Czech copy of it. They are leaning toward the door now."
"Okay, I got it," Chavez said, holding his own binoculars. "Riflemen, take aim on subject Dortmund."
"On target," Weber managed to say first. Johnston swiveled to take aim a fraction of a second later, and then he froze still.
The human eye is especially sensitive to movement at night. When Johnston moved clockwise to adjust the aim of his rifle, Petra Dortmund thought she might have seen something. It stopped her in her tracks, though she didn't know what it was that had- stopped her. She stared right at Johnston, but the ghillie suit just looked like a clump of something, grass, leaves, or dirt, she couldn't tell in the semidarkness of green light reflecting off the pine trees: There was no man-shape to it, and the outline of the rifle was lost in the clutter well over a hundred meters away from her. Even so, she continued to look, without moving her gun hand, a look of curiosity on her face, not even visible alarm. Through Johnston's gunsight, the sergeant's open left eye could see the red strobe flashes from the helicopter's flying lights blinking on the ground around him while the right eye saw the crosshair reticle centered just above and between Petra Dortmund's eyes. His finger was on the trigger now, just barely enough to -feel it there, about as much as one could do with so light a trigger pull. The moment lasted into several seconds, and his peripheral vision watched her gun hand most of all. If it moved too much, then…
But it didn't. She resumed walking to the helicopter, to Johnston's relief, not knowing that two sniper rifles followed her head every centimeter of the way. The next important part came when she got to the chopper. If she went around the right side, Johnston would lose her, leaving her to Weber's rifle alone. If she went left, then Dieter would lose her to his rifle alone. She seemed to be favoring… yes, Dortmund walked to the left side of the aircraft..
"Rifle Two-Two off target," Weber reported at once. "I have no shot at this time."
"On target, Rifle Two-One is on target," Johnston assured Chavez. Hmm, let Little Man in first, honey, he thought as loudly as he could.
Petra Dortmund did just that, pushing Dengler in the left side door ahead of her, probably figuring to sit in the middle herself; so as to be less vulnerable to a shot from outside. A good-theoretical. call, Homer Johnston thought, but off the mark in this case. Tough luck, bitch.
The comfort of the familiar surroundings of the helicopter was lost on Gerhard Dengler at the moment. He strapped himself in under the aim of Petra's pistol, commanding himself to relax and be brave; as men did at such a time. Then he looked forward and felt hope. The pilot was the usual man, -but the copilot was not. Whoever he was, he was fiddling with instruments as the flight crew did, but it wasn't him, though the shape of head and hair color were much the same, and both wore the white shirts with blue epaulets that private pilots tended- to adopt as their.uniforms. Their eyes met, and Dengler looked down and out of the aircraft, afraid that he'd give something away.
Goodman, Eddie Price thought. His pistol was in the map pocket in the left-side door of the aircraft, well-hidden under a pile of flight charts, but easy to reach with his left hand. He'd get it, then turn quickly, bring it up and fire if it came to that. Hidden in his left ear, the radio receiver, which looked like a hearing aid if one saw it, kept him posted, though it was a little hard to hear over the engine and rotor sounds of the Sikorsky. Now Petra's pistol was aimed at himself, or the pilot, as she moved it back and forth.
"Riflemen, do you have your targets?" Chavez-asked. "Rifle Two-One, affirmative, target in sight."
"Rifle Two-Two, negative, I have something in the
way. Recommend switch to subject Furchtner."
"Okay, Rifle Two-Two, switch to Furchtner. Rifle Two-One, Dortmund is all yours."
"Roger that, lead," Johnston confirmed. "Rifle TwoOne has subject Dortmund all dialed in." The sergeant reshot the range with his laser. One hundred forty-four meters. At this range, his bullet would drop less than an inch from the muzzle, and his "battle-sight" setting of two hundred fifty meters was a little high. He altered his crosshairs hold to just below the target's left eye. Physics would do the rest. His rifle had target-type double-set triggers. Pulling the rear trigger reduced the break-pull on the front one to a hard wish, and he was already making that wish. The helicopter would not be allowed to take off. Of more immediate concern, they couldn't allow the subjects to close the leftside door. His 7-mm match bullet Would probably penetrate the polycarbonate window in the door, but the passage would deflect his round unpredictably, maybe causing a miss, perhaps causing the death or wounding of a hostage. He couldn't let that happen.
Chavez was well out of the action now, commanding instead of leading, something he'd practiced but didn't like very much. It was easier to be there with a gun in your hands than to stand back and tell people what to do by remote. control. But he had no choice. Okay, he thought, we have Number One in the chopper and a gun on her. Number Two was in the open, two-thirds of the way to the chopper, and a gun on him. Two more bad guys were approaching the halfway point, with Mike Pierce and Steve Lincoln within forty meters, and the last two subjects still in the house, with Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson in the bushes right and left of them. Unless the bad guys had set up overwatch in the house, one or more additional subjects to come out after the rest had made it to the chopper… very unlikely, Chavez decided, and in any case all the hostages were either in the open or soon would be and rescuing them was the mission, not necessarily killing the bad guys, he reminded himself. It wasn't a game and it wasn't a sport, and his plan, already briefed to Team-2's members, was holding up. The key to it now was the final team of subjects.