by Tom Clancy
“I see. Well, good shooting from everybody, and Loiselle and Tomlinson did very well to get close undetected,” Alistair Stanley said from his place, opposite Clark’s. “Even so—”
“Even so, we need helicopters for a case like this one. How the hell did we overlook that requirement?” Chavez demanded.
“My fault, Domingo,” Clark admitted. “I’m going to call in on that today.”
“Just so we get it fixed, man.” Ding stretched in his seat. “My troops got it done, John. Crummy setup, but we got it done. Next time, be better if things went a little smoother,” he conceded. “But when the doc tells me that the bad guys will really kill somebody, that tells me I have to take decisive action, doesn’t it?”
“Depending on the situation, yes,” Stanley answered the question.
“Al, what does that mean?” Chavez asked sharply. “We need better mission guidelines. I need to have it spelled out. When can I allow a hostage to get killed? Does the age or sex of the hostage enter into the equation? What if somebody takes over a kindergarten or a hospital maternity ward? You can’t expect us to disregard human factors like that. Okay, I understand that you can’t plan for every possibility, and as the commanders on the scene, Peter and I have to exercise judgment, but my default position is to prevent the death of a hostage if I can do it. If that means taking risks—well, it’s a probability measured against a certainty, isn’t it? In a case like that, you take the risk, don’t you?”
“Dr. Bellow,” Clark asked, “how confident were you in your evaluation of the terrorists’ state of mind?”
“Very. They were experienced. They’d thought through a lot of the mission, and in my opinion they were dead serious about killing hostages to show us their resolve,” the psychiatrist replied.
“Then or now?”
“Both,” Bellow said confidently. “These two were political sociopaths. Human life doesn’t mean much to that sort of personality. Just poker chips to toss around the table.”
“Okay, but what if they’d spotted Loiselle and Tomlinson coming in?”
“They would probably have killed a hostage and that would have frozen the situation for a few minutes.”
“And my backup plan in that case was to rush the house from the east side and shoot our way in as quickly as possible,” Chavez went on. “The better way is to zip-line down from some choppers and hit the place like a Kansas tornado. That’s dangerous, too,” he conceded. “But the people we’re dealing with ain’t the most reasonable folks in the world, are they?”
The senior team members didn’t like this sort of discussion, since it reminded them that as good as the Rainbow troopers were, they weren’t gods or supermen. They’d now had two incidents, both of them resolved without a civilian casualty. That made for mental complacency on the command side, further exacerbated by the fact that Team-2 had done a picture-perfect takedown under adverse tactical circumstances. They trained their men to be supermen, Olympic-perfect physical specimens, supremely trained in the use of firearms and explosives, and most of all, mentally prepared for the rapid destruction of human life.
The Team-2 members sitting around the table looked at Clark with neutral expressions, taking it all in with remarkable equanimity because they’d known last night that the plan was flawed and dangerous, but they’d brought it off anyway, and they were understandably proud of themselves for having done the difficult and saved their hostages. But Clark was questioning the capabilities of their team leader, and they didn’t like that either. For the former SAS members among them, the reply to all this was simple, their old regimental motto: Who Dares, Wins. They’d dared and won. And the score for them was Christians ten, Lions nil, which wasn’t a bad score at all. About the only unhappy member of the team was First Sergeant Julio Vega. “Oso” carried the machine gun, which had yet to come into play. The long-riflemen, Vega saw, were feeling pretty good about themselves, as were the light-weapons guys. But those were the breaks. He’d been there, a few meters from Weber, ready to cover if a bad guy had gotten lucky and managed to run away, firing his weapon. He’d have cut him in half with his M-60—his pistol work in the base range was one of the best. There was killing going on, and he wasn’t getting to play. The religious part of Vega reproached the rest of him for thinking that way, which caused a few grumbles and chuckles when he was alone.
“So, where does that leave us?” Chavez asked. “What are our operational guidelines in the case where a hostage is likely to get killed by the bad guys?”
“The mission remains saving the hostages, where practicable,” Clark replied, after a few seconds’ thought.
“And the team leader on the scene decides what’s practicable and what isn’t?”
“Correct,” Rainbow Six confirmed.
“So, we’re right back where we started, John,” Ding pointed out. “And that means that Peter and I get all the responsibility, and all the criticism if somebody else doesn’t like what we’ve done.” He paused. “I understand the responsibility that comes along with being in command in the field, but it would be nice to have something a little firmer to fall back on, y’know? Mistakes will happen out there sooner or later. We know it. We don’t like it, but we know it. Anyway, I’m telling you here and now, John, I see the mission as the preservation of innocent life, and that’s the side I’m going to come down on.”
“I agree with Chavez,” Peter Covington said. “That must be our default position.”
“I never said it wasn’t,” Clark said, suddenly becoming angry. The problem was that there could well be situations in which it was not possible to save a life—but training for such a situation was somewhere between extremely difficult and damned near impossible, because all the terrorist incidents they’d have to deal with in the field would be as different as the terrorists and the sites they selected. So, he had to trust Chavez and Covington. Beyond that, he could set up training scenarios that forced them to think and act, in the hope that the practice would stand them in good stead in the field. It had been a lot easier as a field officer in the CIA, Clark thought. There he had always had the initiative, had almost always chosen the time and place of action to suit himself. Rainbow, however, was always reactive, responding to the initiative of others. That simple fact was why he had to train his people so hard, so that their expertise could correct the tactical inequity. And that had worked twice. But would it continue to work?
So, for starters, John decided, from now on a more senior Rainbow member would always accompany the teams into the field to provide support, someone the team leaders could lean against. Of course, they wouldn’t like the oversight right there at their shoulders, but that couldn’t be helped. With that thought he dismissed the meeting, and called Al Stanley into his office, where he presented his idea.
“Fine with me, John. But who are the seniors who got out?”
“You and me, for starters.”
“Very well. Makes sense—what with all the fitness and shooting training we subject ourselves to. Domingo and Peter might find it all a bit overpowering, however.”
“They both know how to follow orders—and they’ll come to us for advice when it’s needed. Everybody does. I sure did, whenever the opportunity offered itself.” Which hadn’t been very damned often, though John remembered wishing for it often enough.
“I agree with your proposal, John,” Stanley said. “Shall we write it up for the order book?”
Clark nodded. “Today.”
CHAPTER 9
STALKERS
“I can do that, John,” the Director of Central Intelligence said. “It means talking to the Pentagon, however.”
“Today if possible, Ed. We really need this. I was remiss in not considering the need earlier. Seriously remiss,” Clark added humbly.
“It happens,” DCI Foley observed. “Okay, let me make some calls and get back to you.” He broke the connection and thought for a few seconds, then flipped through his rolodex, and found the number of CINC-SN
AKE, as the post was laughingly called. Commander in Chief, Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base outside Tampa, Florida, was the boss of all the “snake-eaters,” the special-operations people from whom Rainbow had drawn its American personnel. General Sam Wilson was the man behind the desk, not a place he was especially comfortable. He’d started off as an enlisted man who’d opted for airborne and ranger training, then moved into Special Forces, which he’d left to get his college degree in history at North Carolina State University, then returned to the Army as a second lieutenant and worked his way up the ladder rapidly. A youthful fifty-three, he had four shiny stars on his shoulders now and was in charge of a unified multiservice command that included members from each of the armed services, all of whom knew how to cook snake over an open fire.
“Hi, Ed,” the general said, on getting the call over his secure phone. “What’s happening at Langley?” The special-operations community was very close with CIA, and often provided intelligence to it or the muscle to run a difficult operation in the field.
“I have a request from Rainbow,” the DCI told him.
“Again? They’ve already raided my units, you know.”
“They’ve put ’em to good use. That was their takedown in Austria yesterday.”
“Looked good on TV,” Sam Wilson admitted. “Will I get additional information?” By which he meant information on who the bad guys had been.
“The whole package when it’s available, Sam,” Foley promised.
“Okay, what does your boy need?”
“Aviators, helicopter crews.”
“You know how long it takes to train those people, Ed? Jesus, they’re expensive to maintain, too.”
“I know that, Sam,” the voice assured him from Langley. “The Brits have to put up, too. You know Clark. He wouldn’t ask ’less he needed it.”
Wilson had to admit that, yes, he knew John Clark, who’d once saved a wrecked mission and, in the process, a bunch of soldiers, a long time and several presidents ago. Ex-Navy SEAL, the Agency said of him, with a solid collection of medals and a lot of accomplishments. And this Rainbow group had two successful operations under its belt.
“Okay, Ed, how many?”
“One really good one for now.”
It was the “for now” part that worried Wilson. But—“Okay, I’ll be back to you later today.”
“Thanks, Sam.” One nice thing about Wilson, Foley knew, was that he didn’t screw around on time issues. For him “right now” meant right the hell now.
Chester wasn’t going to make it even as far as Killgore had thought. His liver function tests were heading downhill faster than anything he’d ever seen—or read about in the medical literature. The man’s skin was yellow now, like a pale lemon, and slack over his flaccid musculature. Respiration was already a little worrisome, too, partly because of the large dose of morphine he was getting to keep him unconscious or at least stuporous. Both Killgore and Barbara Archer had wanted to treat him as aggressively as possible, to see if there were really a treatment modality that might work on Shiva, but the fact of the matter was that Chester’s underlying medical conditions were so serious that no treatment regimen could overcome both those problems and the Shiva.
“Two days,” Killgore said. “Maybe less.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Dr. Archer agreed. She had all manner of ideas for handling this, from conventional—and almost certainly useless—antibiotics to Interleukin-2, which some thought might have clinical applications to such a case. Of course, modern medicine had yet to defeat any viral disease, but some thought that buttressing the body’s immune system from one direction might have the effect of helping it in another, and there were a lot of powerful new synthetic antibiotics on the market now. Sooner or later, someone would find a magic bullet for viral diseases. But not yet: “Potassium?” she asked, after considering the prospects for the patient and the negligible value of treating him at all. Killgore shrugged agreement.
“I suppose. You can do it if you want.” Killgore waved to the medication cabinet in the corner.
Dr. Archer walked over, tore a 40cc disposable syringe out of its paper and plastic container, then inserted the needle in a glass vial of potassium-and-water solution, and filled the needle by pulling back on the plunger. Then she returned to the bed and inserted the needle into the medication drip, pushing the plunger now to give the patient a hard bolus of the lethal chemical. It took a few seconds, longer than if she had done the injection straight into a major vein, but Archer didn’t want to touch the patient any more than necessary, even with gloves. It didn’t really matter that much. Chester’s breathing within the clear plastic oxygen mask seemed to hesitate, then restart, then hesitate again, then become ragged and irregular for six or eight breaths. Then . . . it stopped. The chest settled into itself and didn’t rise. His eyes had been semi-open, like those of a man in shallow sleep or shock, aimed in her direction but not really focused. Now they closed for the last time. Dr. Archer took her stethoscope and held it on the alcoholic’s chest. There was no sound at all. Archer stood up, took off her stethoscope, and pocketed it.
So long, Chester, Killgore thought.
“Okay,” she said matter-of-factly. “Any symptoms with the others?”
“None yet. Antibody tests are positive, however,” Killgore replied. “Another week or so before we see frank symptoms, I expect.”
“We need a set of healthy test subjects,” Barbara Archer said. “These people are too—too sick to be proper benchmarks for Shiva.”
“That means some risks.”
“I know that,” Archer assured him. “And you know we need better test subjects.”
“Yes, but the risks are serious,” Killgore observed.
“And I know that,” Archer replied.
“Okay, Barb, run it up the line. I won’t object. You want to take care of Chester? I have to run over to see Steve.”
“Fine.” She walked to the wall, picked up the phone, and punched three digits onto the keypad to get the disposal people.
For his part, Killgore went into the changing area. He stopped in the decontamination chamber first of all, pushed the large square red button, and waited for the machinery to spray him down from all directions with the fog-solution of antiseptics that were known to be immediately and totally lethal to the Shiva virus. Then he went through the door into the changing room itself, where he removed the blue plastic suit, tossed it into the bin for further and more dramatic decontamination—it wasn’t really needed, but the people in the lab felt better about it then—then dressed in surgical greens. On the way out, he put on a white lab coat. The next stop was Steve Berg’s shop. Neither he nor Barb Archer had said it out loud yet, but everyone would feel better if they had a working vaccine for Shiva.
“Hey, John,” Berg said, when his colleague came in.
“ ’Morning, Steve,” Killgore responded in greeting. “How’re the vaccines coming?”
“Well, we have ‘A’ and ‘B’ working now.” Berg gestured to the monkey cages on the other side of the glass. “ ‘A’ batch has the yellow stickers. ‘B’ is the blue, and the control group is red.”
Killgore looked. There were twenty of each, for a total of sixty rhesus monkeys. Cute little devils. “Too bad,” he observed.
“I don’t like it, either, but that’s how it’s done, my friend.” Neither man owned a fur coat.
“When do you expect results?”
“Oh, five to seven days for the ‘A’ group. Nine to fourteen for the control group. And the ‘B’ group—well, we have hopes for them, of course. How’s it going on your side of the house?”
“Lost one today.”
“This fast?” Berg asked, finding it disturbing.
“His liver was off the chart to begin with. That’s something we haven’t considered fully enough. There will be people out there with an unusually high degree of vulnerability to our little friend.”
“They could be
canaries, man,” Berg worried, thinking of the songbirds used to warn miners about bad air. “And we learned how to deal with that two years ago, remember?”
“I know.” In a real sense, that was where the entire idea had come from. But they could do it better than the foreigners had. “What’s the difference in time between humans and our little furry friends?”
“Well, I didn’t aerosol any of these, remember. This is a vaccine test, not an infection test.”
“Okay, I think you need to set up an aerosol control test. I hear you have an improved packing method.”
“Maggie wants me to do that. Okay. We have plenty of monkeys. I can set it up in two days, a full-up test of the notional delivery system.”
“With and without vaccines?”
“I can do that.” Berg nodded. You should have set it up already, idiot, Killgore didn’t say to his colleague. Berg was smart, but he couldn’t see very far beyond the limits of his microscopes. Well, nobody was perfect, even here. “I don’t go out of my way to kill things, John,” Berg wanted to make clear to his physician colleague.
“I understand, Steve, but for every one we kill in proofing Shiva, we’ll save a few hundred thousand in the wild, remember? And you take good care of them while they’re here,” he added. The test animals here lived an idyllic life, in comfortable cages, or even in large communal areas where the food was abundant and the water clear. The monkeys had a lot of room, with pseudotrees to climb, air temperature like that of their native Africa, and no predators to threaten them. As in human prisons, the condemned got hearty meals to go along with their constitutional rights. But people like Steve Berg still didn’t like it, important and indispensable as it was to the overall goal. Killgore wondered if his friend wept at night for the cute little brown-eyed creatures. Certainly Berg wasn’t all that concerned with Chester—except that he might represent a canary, of course. That could indeed ruin anything, but that was also why Berg was developing “A” vaccine.