by Tom Clancy
Their known and confirmed field operations—nichevo! Popov thought. Two really impressive ones done with Russian assistance, plus the exfiltration of Gerasimov’s wife and daughter ten years before, along with several others suspected but not confirmed . . . “Formidable” was the right word for both of them. Himself a field-intelligence officer for over twenty years, he knew what to be impressed with. Clark had to be a star at Langley, and Chavez was evidently his protégé, following in the wide, deep footsteps of his . . . father-in-law . . . Wasn’t that interesting?
They found her at three-forty, still typing away on the computer, slowly and badly. Ben Farmer opened the door and saw, first, the IV tree, then the back on the hospital gown.
“Well, hello,” the security guard said, not unkindly. “Taking a little walk, eh?”
“I wanted to tell Daddy where I was,” Mary Bannister replied.
“Oh, really. By e-mail?”
“That’s right,” she answered pleasantly.
“Well, how about we get you back to your room now, okay?”
“I guess,” she agreed tiredly. Farmer helped her to her feet and walked her out into the corridor, gently, his hand around her waist. It was a short walk, and he opened the door into Treatment 4, got her in bed, and pulled the blanket up. He dimmed the lights before leaving, then found Dr. Palachek walking the halls.
“We may have a problem, Doc.”
Lani Palachek didn’t like being called “doc,” but didn’t make an issue of it now. “What’s the problem?”
“I found her on the computer in T-9. She says she e-mailed her father.”
“What?” That popped the doc’s eyes open, Farmer saw.
“That’s what she said.”
Oh, shit! the doctor thought. “What does she know?”
“Probably not much. None of them know where they are.” And even looking out the windows wouldn’t help. The scenery showed only wooded hills, not even a parking lot whose auto license plates might give a clue. That part of the operation had been carefully thought through.
“Any way to recover the letter she sent?”
“If we get her password and the server she logged into, maybe,” Farmer replied. He was fully checked out on computers. Just about everyone in the company was. “I can try that when we wake her up—say, in about four hours?”
“Any way to un-send it?”
Farmer shook his head. “I doubt it. Not many of them work that way. We don’t have AOL software on the systems, just Eudora, and if you execute the IMMEDIATE-SEND command, it’s all-the-way gone, Doc. That goes right into the Net, and once it’s there—oh, well.”
“Killgore is going to freak.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the former Marine said. “Maybe we need to codeword access to the ’puters.” He didn’t add that he’d been off the monitors for a while, and that it was all his fault. Well, he hadn’t been briefed on this contingency, and why the hell didn’t they lock the rooms they wanted to keep people out of? Or just locked the subjects in their rooms? The winos from the first group of test subjects had spoiled them. None of those street bums had had the ability to use a computer, nor the desire to do much of anything, and it hadn’t occurred to anyone that the current group of experimental animals might. Oops. Well, he’d seen bigger mistakes than that happen before. The good news, however, was that there was no way they could know where they were, nor anything about the name of the company that owned the facility. Without those things, what could F4 have told anyone? Nothing of value, Farmer was sure. But she was right about one thing, Farmer knew. Dr. John Killgore was going to be seriously pissed.
The English ploughman’s lunch was a national institution. Bread, cheese, lettuce, baby tomahtoes, chutney, and some meat—turkey in this case—along with a beer, of course. Popov had found it to be agreeable on his first trip to Britain. He’d taken the time to remove his tie and change into more casual clothes, in order to appear a working-class type.
“Well, hello,” the plumber said as he sat down. His name was Edward Miles. A tall, powerfully built man with tattoos on his arm—a British affectation, especially for men in uniform, Popov knew. “Started ahead of me, I see.”
“How did the morning go?”
“The usual. Fixed a water-heater in one of the houses, for a French chap, in fact, part of the new team. His wife is a smasher,” Miles reported. “Only saw a picture of him. A sergeant in the French army, it would seem.”
“Really?” Popov took a bite of his open-face sandwich.
“Yes, have to go back this afternoon to finish up. Then I have a watercooler to fix in the headquarters building. Bloody things, must be fifty years old. I may have to make the part I need to repair the damned thing. Impossible to get them. The maker went out of business a dog’s age ago.” Miles started on his own lunch, expertly dividing the various ingredients and then piling them on the freshly made bread.
“Government institutions are all the same,” Popov told him.
“That’s a fact!” Miles agreed. “And my helper called in sick. Sick my ahss,” the plumber said. “No rest for the bloody wicked.”
“Well, perhaps my tools can help,” Popov offered. They continued talking about sports until lunch was finished, then both stood and walked to Miles’s truck, a small blue van with government tags. The Russian tossed his collection of tools in the back. The plumber started it up, pulled onto the road, and headed for the main gate of the Hereford base. The security guard waved them through without a close look.
“See, you just need to know the right bloke to get in here.” Miles laughed at his conquest of base security, which, the sign said, was on BLACK status, the lowest alert state. “I suppose the IRA chaps have calmed down quite a bit, and it would never have been a good idea to come here, not against these chaps, like tweaking a lion’s nose—bad job, that,” he went on.
“I suppose that’s so. All I know about the SAS is what I see on the telly. They certainly look like a dangerous lot.”
“That’s the bloody truth,” Miles confirmed. “All you need do is to look at them, the way they walk and such. They know they’re lions. And this new lot, they’re exactly the same, maybe even better, some folks say. They’ve had three jobs, or so I understand, and they’ve all been on the telly. They sorted that mob out at Worldpark for fair, didn’t they?”
The base engineer’s building was so typical of its type that the ones in the former Soviet Union could hardly have been different. The paint was peeling, and the parking area lumpy and fragmented. The double doors into the back had locks on them, of the type a child could have picked with a hairpin, Popov thought, but, then, the most dangerous weapon in there would have been a screwdriver. Miles parked his truck and waved for Popov to follow him. Inside was also as expected: a cheap desk for the plumber to do his paperwork on, a well-worn swivel chair whose stuffing was visible through the cracked vinyl on the seat, and a pegboard hung with tools, few of which could have been younger than five years, judging by the chipped paint on the forged steel.
“Do they let you purchase new tools?” Popov asked, just to stay in character.
“I have to make a request, with justification, to the chief of the physical-plant department. He’s usually a decent bloke about it, and I don’t ask for things I don’t need.” Miles pulled a Post-it note from his desk. “They want that watercooler fixed today. Why can’t they just drink Coca-Cola?” he wondered aloud. “Well, want to come along?”
“Why not?” Popov stood and followed him out the door. Five minutes later, he regretted it. An armed soldier was outside the entrance to headquarters—and then he realized that this was the headquarters for Rainbow. Inside would be Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, himself.
Miles parked the truck, got out, walked to the rear door, and opened it, pulling out his toolbox.
“I’ll need a small pipe wrench,” he told Popov, who opened the canvas sack he’d brought, and extracted a brand-new twelve-inch Rigid wrench.
“Will
this do?”
“Perfect.” Miles waved him along. “Good afternoon, Corp,” he said to the soldier, who nodded politely in reply, but said nothing.
For his part, Popov was more than surprised. In Russia the security would have been much tighter. But this was England, and the plumber was doubtless known to the guard. With that, he was inside, trying not to look around too obviously, and exercising all of his self-control not to appear nervous. Miles immediately set to work, unscrewing the front, setting the cover aside, and peering back into the guts of the watercooler. He held his hand out for the small wrench, which Popov handed to him.
“Nice feel for the adjustment . . . but it’s brand-new, so that’s to be expected . . .” He tightened on a pipe and gave the wrench a twist. “Come on, now . . . there.” He pulled the pipe out and inspected it by holding it up to a light. “Ah, well, that I can fix. Bloody miracle,” he added. He slid back on his knees and looked in his toolbox. “The pipe is merely clogged up. Look, must be thirty years of sediment in there.” He handed it over.
Popov made a show of looking through the pipe, but saw nothing at all, the metal tube was so packed with—sediment, he guessed from what Miles had said. Then the plumber took it back and inserted a small screwdriver, jammed it like the ramrod of a musket to clear it out, then switched ends to do the same from the other direction.
“So, we’re going to get clean water for our coffee?” a voice asked.
“I expect so, sir,” Miles replied.
Popov looked up and managed to keep his heart beating. It was Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, as the KGB file had identified him. Tall, middle fifties, smiling down at the two workmen, dressed in suit and tie, which somehow looked uncomfortable on him. He nodded politely at the man, and looked back down to his tools while thinking as loudly as he could, Go away!
“There, that should do it,” Miles said, reaching to put the pipe back inside, then taking the wrench from Popov to screw it into place. In another moment he stood and turned the plastic handle. The water that came out was dirty. “We just need to keep this open for five minutes or so, sir, to allow the pipe to flush itself out.”
“Fair enough. Thanks,” the American said, then walked off.
“A pleasure, sir,” Miles said to the disappearing back. “That was the boss, Mr. Clark.”
“Really? Polite enough.”
“Yes, decent bloke.” Miles stood and flipped the plastic lever. The water coming out of the spigot was clouded at first, but after a few minutes it appeared totally clear. “Well, that’s one job done. It’s a nice wrench,” Miles said, handing it back. “What do they cost?”
“This one—it’s yours.”
“Well, thank you, my friend.” Miles smiled on his way out the door and past the corporal of the British Army’s military police.
Next they rode around the base. Popov asked where Clark lived, and Miles obliged by taking a left turn and heading off to the senior officers’ quarters.
“Not a bad house, is it?”
“It looks comfortable enough.” It was made of brown brick, with what appeared to be a slate roof, and about a hundred square meters, and a garden in the back.
“I put the plumbing in that one myself,” Miles told him, “back when it was renovated. Ah, that must be the missus.”
A woman came out dressed in a nurse’s uniform, walked to the car, and got in. Popov looked and recorded the image.
“They have a daughter who’s a doctor at the same hospital the mum works at,” Miles told him. “Bun in the oven for that one. I think she’s married to one of the soldiers. Looks just like her mum, tall, blond, and pretty—smasher, really.”
“Where do they live?”
“Oh, over that way, I think,” Miles replied, waving vaguely to the west. “Officer housing, like this one, but smaller.”
“So, what can you offer us?” the police superintendent asked.
Bill Henriksen liked the Australians. They came right to the point. They were sitting in Canberra, Australia’s capital, with the country’s most senior cop and some people in military uniforms.
“Well, first of all, you know my background.” He’d already made sure that his FBI experience and the reputation of his company were well known. “You know that I work with the FBI, and sometimes even with Delta at Fort Bragg. Therefore I have contacts, good ones, and perhaps in some ways better than your own,” he said, risking a small boast.
“Our own SAS are excellent,” the chief told him.
“I know it,” Bill responded, with a nod and a smile. “We worked together several times when I was in the Hostage Rescue Team, in Perth twice, Quantico and Fort Bragg once each, back when Brigadier Philip Stocker was the boss. What’s he do now, by the way?”
“Retired three years ago,” the chief answered.
“Well, Phil knows me. Good man, one of the best I ever met,” Henriksen pronounced. “Anyway, what do I bring to the party? I work with all the hardware suppliers. I can connect you with H&K for the new MP-10 that our guys like—it was developed for an FBI requirement, because we decided the nine millimeter wasn’t powerful enough. However, the new Smith & Wesson ten-millimeter cartridge is—it’s a whole new world for the H&K weapon. But anyone can get guns for you. I also do business with E-Systems, Collins, Fredericks-Anders, Micro-Systems, Halliday, Inc., and all the other electronics companies. I know what’s happening in communications and surveillance equipment. Your SAS is weak in that area, according to my contacts. I can help fix that, and I can get you good prices for the equipment you need. In addition, my people can help train you up on the new equipment. I have a team of former Delta and HRT people. Mostly NCOs, including the regimental sergeant major from the Special Operations Training Center at Bragg, Dick Voss. He’s the best in the world, and he works for me now.”
“I’ve met him,” the Aussie SAS major noted. “Yes, he’s very good indeed.”
“So, what can I do for you?” Henriksen asked. “Well, you’ve all seen the upsurge of terrorist activity in Europe, and that’s a threat you need to take seriously for the Olympics. Your SAS people don’t need any advice from me or anyone else on tactics, but what my company can do is to get you state-of-the-art electronics gear for surveillance and communication. I know all the people who custom-make the gear our guys use, and that’s stuff your people want to have. I know that—they have to want it. Well, I can help you get exactly what you need, and train your troops up on it. There’s no other company in the world with our expertise.”
The reply was silence. Henriksen could read their minds, however. The terrorism they’d watched on TV, just like everyone else had, had perked up their ears. It must have. People in this line of work worried for a living, always searched for threats, real and imagined. The Olympic games were a catch of immense prestige for their nation, and also the most prestigious terrorist target on the planet, which the German police had learned the hard way at Munich in 1972. In many ways the Palestinian attack had been the kick-off of the world terrorist game, and as a result the Israeli team was always a little better looked-after than any other national collection of athletes, and invariably had some of their own military’s commandos tucked in with the wrestlers, generally with the knowledge of the host nation’s security people. Nobody wanted Munich to happen again.
The recent terrorism incidents in Europe had lit up awareness across the world, but nowhere more seriously than in Australia, a nation with great sensitivity to crime— not long ago, a madman had shot to death a number of innocent people, including children, which had resulted in the outlawing of guns throughout the country by the parliamentarians in this very city.
“What do you know about the European incidents?” the Aussie SAS officer asked.
Henriksen affected a sensitive look. “Much of what I know is, well, off-the-record, if you know what I mean.”
“We all have security clearances,” the cop told him.
“Okay, but you see, the problem is, I am not cleared into thi
s stuff, exactly, and—oh, what the hell. The team doing the takedowns is called ‘Rainbow.’ It’s a black operation composed mainly of Americans and Brits, but some other NATO nationalities tossed in, too. They’re based in U.K., at Hereford. Their commander is an American CIA type, guy name of John Clark. He’s a serious dude, guys, and so’s his outfit. Their three known operations went down smooth as a baby’s ass. They have access to American equipment—helicopters and such—and they evidently have diplomatic agreements in place to operate all over Europe, when the countries with problems invite them in. Has your government talked to anyone about them?”
“We’re aware of it,” the chief cop replied. “What you said is correct in all details. In honesty, I didn’t know the name of the commander. Anything else you can tell us about him?”
“I’ve never met the man. Only know him by reputation. He’s a very senior field officer, close to the DCI, and I gather that our president knows him personally as well. So, you would expect him to have a very good intelligence staff and, well, his operational people have shown what they can do, haven’t they?”
“Bloody right,” the major observed. “The Worldpark job was as good a bit of sorting out as I have ever seen, even better than the Iranian Embassy job in London, way back when.”
“You could have handled it about the same way,” Henriksen observed generously, and meaning it. The Australian Special Air Service was based on the British model, and while it didn’t seem to get much work, the times he’d exercised with them during his FBI career had left him in little doubt as to their abilities. “Which squadron, Major?”