by Tom Clancy
Noonan had to explain who he was to two separate police checkpoints, but now the hospital was in sight. He called ahead on his radio, told Covington that he was five minutes away, and learned that nothing had changed.
Clark and Chavez dismounted their vehicle fifty yards from the green trucks that had brought Team-1 to the site. Team-2 was now on its way, also in another green-painted British Army truck, with a police escort to speed their way through the traffic. Chavez was holding a collection of photographs of known PIRA terrorists that he’d snatched off the intelligence desk. The hard part, Ding found, was to keep his hands from shaking—whether from fear or rage, he couldn’t tell—and it required all the training he’d ever had to keep his mind on business rather than worrying about his wife and mother-in-law . . . and his unborn son. Only by looking down at the photos instead of up at the country was this possible, for in his hands he had faces to seek and kill, but the green grass around the hospital was merely empty landscape where there was danger. At times like this, the manly thing was to suck it in and pretend that you had it under control, but Chavez was learning now that while being brave for yourself was easy enough, facing danger to someone you loved was a very different situation, one in which courage didn’t matter a damn, and all you could do was . . . nothing. You were a spectator, and nothing more, watching a contest of sorts in which lives dear to you were at grave risk, but in which you could not participate. All he could do was watch, and trust to the professionalism of Covington’s Team-1. One part of his mind told him that Peter and his boys were as good as he and his own people were, and that if a rescue could be done, they would surely do it—but that wasn’t the same as being there yourself, taking charge, and making the right things happen yourself. Sometime later today, Chavez thought, he would again hold his wife in his arms—or she and their unborn child would be taken forever from him. His hands gripped the computer-generated photographs, bending the edges, and his only comfort was in the weight of the pistol that hung in the hip-holster tucked into the waistband of his trousers. It was a familiar feeling, but one, his mind told him, which was useless at the moment, and likely to remain so.
“So, what do I call you?” Bellow asked, when the phone line became active again.
“You can call me Timothy.”
“Okay,” the doctor said agreeably, “I’m Paul.”
“You’re an American,” O’Neil observed.
“That’s right. And so are the hostages you’re holding, Dr. Chavez and Mrs. Clark.”
“So?”
“So, I thought your enemies were the Brits, not us Americans. You know that those two ladies are mother and daughter, don’t you?” He had to know it, Bellow knew, and for that reason he could point it out as though giving away information.
“Yes,” the voice replied.
“Did you know that they are both Catholic, just like you?”
“No.”
“Well, they are,” Bellow assured him. “You can ask. Mrs. Clark’s maiden name is O’Toole, as a matter of fact. She is an Irish-Catholic American citizen. What makes her your enemy, Timothy?”
“She’s—her husband is—I mean—”
“He’s also an Irish-Catholic American, and to the best of my knowledge he has never taken action of any kind against you or the people in your organization. That’s why I have trouble understanding why you are threatening their lives.”
“Her husband is the head of this Rainbow mob, and they kill people for the British government.”
“No, actually, they do not. Rainbow is actually a NATO establishment. The last time we went out, we had to rescue thirty children. I was there, too. The people holding them murdered one of the kids, a little Dutch girl named Anna. She was dying, Timothy. She had cancer, but those people weren’t very patient about it. One of them shot her in the back and killed her. You’ve probably seen it on TV. Not the sort of thing a religious person would do—not the sort of thing a Catholic would do, murdering a little girl like that. And Dr. Chavez is pregnant. I’m sure you can see that. If you harm her, what about her child? Not just a murder if you do that, Timothy. You’re also aborting her unborn child. I know what the Catholic Church says about that. So do you. So does the government in the Republic of Ireland. Please, Timothy, will you please think about what you’ve threatened to do? These are real people, not abstractions, and the baby in Dr. Chavez’s womb is also a real person, too. Anyway, I have something to tell Mr. Casey. Have you found him yet?” the psychiatrist asked.
“I—no, no, he can’t come to the phone now.”
“Okay, I have to go now. If I call this number again, will you be there to answer it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll call back when I have some news for you.” Bellow punched the kill switch. “Good news. Different person, younger, not as sure of himself. I have something I can use on this one. He really is Catholic, or at least he thinks of himself that way. That means conscience and rules. I can work on this one,” he concluded soberly but with confidence.
“But where is the other one?” Stanley asked. “Unless . . .”
“Huh?” Tawney asked.
“Unless he’s not in there at all.”
“Huh?” the doctor asked.
“Unless he’s not bloody there. He called us before, but he hasn’t talked to us in quite a while. Shouldn’t he be doing so?”
Bellow nodded. “I would have expected that, yes.”
“But Noonan has chopped the cell phones,” Stanley pointed out. He switched on his tactical radio. “This is Command. Look around for someone trying to use a cellular telephone. We may have two groups of subjects here. Acknowledge.”
“Command, this is Covington, roger.”
“Fuck!” Malloy snarled in his circling helicopter.
“Take her down some?” Harrison asked.
The Marine shook his head. “No, up here they might not even notice us. Let’s stay covert for a while.”
“What the hell?” Chavez observed, looking at his father-in-law.
“Inside-outside?” John speculated.
Grady was at the point of losing his temper. He’d tried a total of seven times to make a call with his cell phone, only to find the same infuriating fast-busy response. He had a virtually perfect tactical situation, but lacked the ability to coordinate his teams. There they were, those Rainbow people, standing in a bunch not a hundred meters from the two Volvo trucks. This couldn’t last, though. The local police would surely start securing the area soon. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty, perhaps as many as two hundred people now, standing in little knots within three hundred meters of the hospital. The time was right. The targets were there.
Noonan crested the hill and started driving down to where the team was, wondering what the hell he’d be able to do. Bugging the building, his usual job, meant getting close. But it was broad daylight, and getting close would be a mother of a task, probably beyond the range of possibility until nightfall. Well, at least he’d taken care of his primary function. He’d denied the enemy the chance to use cell phones—if they’d tried to, which he didn’t know. He slowed the car for his approach, and saw Peter Covington in the distance conferring with his black-clad shooters.
Chavez and Clark were doing much the same thing, standing still a few yards from Clark’s official car.
“The perimeter needs firming up,” Ding said. Where had all these vehicles come from? Probably people who happened to be in the area when the shooting started. There was the usual goddamned TV van, its satellite dish erected, and what appeared to be a reporter speaking in front of a handheld Minicam. So, Chavez thought, now the danger to his family was a goddamned spectator sport.
Grady had to make a decision, and he had to make it now. If he wanted to achieve his goal and make his escape, it had to be now. His gun-containing parcel was sitting on the ground next to his rental car. He left it on the ground with Roddy Sands and walked to the farthest of the Volvo commercial trucks.
&n
bsp; “Sean,” a voice called from the cargo area, “the bloody phones don’t work.”
“I know. We begin in five minutes. Watch for the others, and then carry on as planned.”
“Okay, Sean,” the voice replied. To punctuate it, Grady heard the cocking of the weapons inside as he walked to the next, delivering the same message. Then the third. There were three men in each of the trucks. The canvas covers over the cargo areas had holes cut in them, like the battlements of a castle, and those inside had opened them slightly and were now looking at the soldiers less than a hundred meters away. Grady made his way back to his Jaguar. When he got there he checked his watch. He looked at Roddy Sands and nodded.
Team-2’s truck was starting down the hill to the hospital. Noonan’s car was directly in front of it now.
Popov was watching the whole area with his binoculars. A third military truck came into view. He looked at it and saw more men sitting in the back, probably reinforcements for the people already outside the hospital. He returned his attention to the area that already had soldiers. Closer examination showed . . . was that John Clark? he wondered. Standing away from the others. Well, if his wife were a hostage now, that made sense to let another—he had to have a second-in-command for his organization—command the operation. So, he’d just be standing there now, looking tense in his suit.
“Excuse me.” Popov turned to see a reporter and a cameraman, and closed his eyes in a silent curse.
“Yes?”
“Could you give us your impressions of what is happening here? First of all, your name, and what causes you to be here.”
“Well, I—my name—my name is Jack Smith,” Popov said, in his best London accent. “And I was out here in the country—birding, you see. I was out here to enjoy nature, it’s a nice day, you see, and—”
“Mr. Smith, have you any idea what is happening down there?”
“No, no, not really.” He didn’t take his eyes away from the binoculars, not wanting to give them a look at his face. Nichevo! There was Sean Grady, standing with Roddy Sands. Had he believed in God, he would have invoked His name at that moment, seeing what they were doing, and knowing exactly what they were thinking in this flashpoint in time.
Grady bent down and opened his parcel, removing the AKMS assault-rifle from it. Then he slapped in the magazine, extended the folding stock, and in one smooth motion stood to straight and brought it to his shoulder. A second later he took aim and fired into the group of black-clad soldiers. A second after that, the men in the trucks did the same.
There was no warning at all. Bullets hit the side of the truck behind which they’d been sheltering, but before Team-1 had the time to react, the bullets came in on their bodies. Four men dropped in the first two seconds. By that time, the rest had jumped away and down, their eyes looking around for the source of the fire.
Noonan saw them crumple, and it took a second or so of shock for him to realize what was happening. Then he spoke into his tactical radio: “Warning, warning, Team- 1 is under fire from the rear!” At the same time his eyes were searching for the source—it had to be right there, in that big truck. The FBI agent floored his accelerator and dashed that way, his right hand reaching for his pistol.
Master Chief Mike Chin was down with a bullet in each upper leg. The suddenness only made the pain worse. He’d been totally unprepared for this, and the pain paralyzed him for several seconds, until training reasserted itself, and he tried to crawl to cover. “Chin is hit, Chin is hit,” he gasped over the radio, then turned to see another Team- 1 member down, blood gushing from the side of his head.
Sergeant Houston’s head snapped off his scope, and turned right with the sudden and unexpected noise of automatic-weapons fire. What the hell? He saw what appeared to be the muzzle of a rifle sticking out the side of one of the trucks, and he swung his rifle up and off the ground to the right to try to acquire a target.
Roddy Sands saw the movement. The sniper was where he remembered, but covered as he was in his camouflage blanket, it was hard to track in on him. The movement fixed that, and the shot was only about a hundred fifty meters. Holding low and left, he pulled the trigger and held it down, walking his rounds through the shape on the side of the hill, firing long, then pulling back down to hit at it again.
Houston got one round off, but it went wild as a bullet penetrated his right shoulder, blasting right through his body armor, which was sufficient to stop a pistol round but not a bullet from a rifle. Neither courage nor muscle strength could make broken bones work. The impact made his body collapse, and a second later, Houston knew that his right arm would not work at all. On instinct he rolled to his left, while his left hand tried to reach across his body for his service pistol, while he announced over the radio that he was hit as well.
It was easier for Fred Franklin. Too far away for easy fire from one of the terrorists’ weapons, he was also well concealed under his blanket. It took him a few seconds to realize what was going on, but the screams and groans over his radio earpiece told him that some team members had been badly hurt. He swept his scope sight over the area, and saw one gun muzzle sticking out the side of a truck. Franklin flipped off his safety, took aim, and loosed his first .50-caliber round of the fight. The muzzle blast of his own weapon shattered the local silence. The big MacMillan sniper rifle fired the same cartridge as the .50-caliber heavy machine gun, sending a two-ounce bullet off at 2,700 feet per second, covering the distance in less than a third of a second and drilling a half-inch hole into the soft side of the truck, but there was no telling if it hit a target or not. He swept the rifle left, looking for another target. He passed over another big truck, and saw the holes in the cover, but nothing inside of them. More to the left—there, there was a guy holding a rifle and firing—off to where Sam was. Sergeant First Class Fred Franklin worked his bolt, loaded a second round, and took careful aim.
Roddy Sands was sure he’d hit his target, and was now trying to kill it. To his left, Sean was already back in his car, starting it for the getaway that had to begin in less than two minutes.
Grady heard the engine catch and turned to look back at his most trusted subordinate. He’d just gotten all the way around when the bullet hit, just at the base of Sands’s skull. The huge .50 bullet exploded the head like a can of soup, and for all his experience as a terrorist, Grady had never seen anything like it. It seemed that only the jaw remained, as the body fell out of view, and Team-1 got its first kill of the day.
Noonan stopped his car inches from the third of the trucks. He dove out the right-side driver’s door, and heard the distinctive chatter of Kalashnikov-type weapons. Those had to be enemies, and they had to be close. He held his Beretta pistol in both hands, looked for a second at the back of the truck and wondered how to—yes! There was a ladder-handle fixture on the rear door. He slipped a booted foot into it and climbed up, finding a canvas cover roped into place. He forced his pistol into his waistband and withdrew his K-Bar combat knife, slashing at the rope loops, getting a corner free. He lifted it with his left hand, looked inside and saw three men, facing left and doing aimed fire with their weapons. Okay. It never occurred to him to say or shout anything to them. Leaning in, his left hand holding the canvas clear, he aimed with his right hand. The first round was double-action, and his finger pulled the trigger slowly, and the head nearest to him snapped to its right, and the body fell. The others were too distracted by the noise of their own weapons to hear the report of the pistol. Noonan instantly adjusted his grip on the pistol and fired off a second round into the next head. The third man felt the body hit his, and turned to look. The brown eyes went wide. He jerked away from the side of the truck and brought his rifle to his left, but not quickly enough. Noonan fired two rounds into the chest, then brought his pistol down from recoil and fired his third right through the man’s nose. It exited through his brain stem, by which time the man was dead. Noonan looked hard at all three targets, and, sure they were dead, jumped back off the truck and head
ed forward to the next. He paused to slap in a fresh magazine, while a distant part of his mind remarked on the fact that Timothy Noonan was on autopilot, moving almost without conscious thought.
Grady floored his car, hitting the horn as he did so. That was the signal for the others to get clear. That included the men inside the hospital, whom he’d been unable to alert with his cell phone.
“Jesus Christ!” O’Neil announced when the first rounds were fired. “Why the bloody hell didn’t he—”
“Too late to worry, Timmy,” Sam Barry told him, waving to his brother and running for the door. Jimmy Carr was there, and the final member of the inside team joined up ten seconds later, emerging from the door to the fire stairs.
“Time to go, lads,” O’Neil told them. He looked at the two main hostages and thought to wave to them, but the pregnant one would only slow them down, and there were thirty meters to his van. The plan had come apart, though he didn’t know why, and it was time to get the hell out of here.
The third military truck stopped a few yards behind Noonan’s personal car. Eddie Price jumped out first, his MP- 10 up in his hands, then crouched, looking around to identify the noise. Whatever it was, it was happening too bloody fast, and there was no plan. He’d been trained for this as an ordinary infantryman, but that had been twenty years ago. Now he was a special-operations soldier, and supposed to know every step before he took it. Mike Pierce came down next to him.