by Tom Clancy
“What the fuck’s happening, Eddie?”
Just then, they saw Noonan jump down from the Volvo truck and swap out magazines on his pistol. The FBI agent saw them, and waved them forward.
“I suppose we follow him,” Price said. Louis Loiselle appeared at Pierce’s side and the two started off. Paddy Connolly caught up, reaching into his fanny pack for a flash-bang.
O’Neil and his four ran out the emergency-room entrance and made it all the way to their van without being spotted or engaged. He’d left the keys in, and had the vehicle moving before the others had a chance to close all the doors.
“Warning, warning,” Franklin called over the radio. “We have bad guys in a brown van leaving the hospital, looks like four of them.” Then he swiveled his rifle and took aim just aft of the left-front tire and fired.
The heavy bullet ripped through the fender as though it were a sheet of newspaper, then slammed into the iron block of the six-cylinder engine. It penetrated one cylinder, causing the piston to jam instantly, stopping the engine just as fast. The van swerved left with the sudden loss of engine power, almost tipping over to the right, but then slamming down and righting itself.
O’Neil screamed a curse and tried to restart the engine at once, with no result at all. The starter motor couldn’t turn the jammed crankshaft. O’Neil didn’t know why, but this vehicle was fully dead, and he was stuck in the open.
Franklin saw the result of his shot with some satisfaction and jacked in another round. This one was aimed at the driver’s head. He centered his sight reticle and squeezed, but at the same moment the head moved, and the shot missed. That was something Fred Franklin had never done. He looked on in stunned surprise for a moment, then reloaded.
O’Neil was cut on the face by glass fragments. The bullet hadn’t missed him by more than two inches, but the shock of it propelled him out of the driver’s seat into the cargo area of the van. There he froze, without a clue as to what to do next.
Homer Johnston and Dieter Weber still had their rifles in the carrying cases, and since it didn’t appear that either would have much chance to make use of them, right now they were moving with pistols only. In the rear of their team, they watched Eddie Price slash a hole in the rear cover of the second Volvo truck. Paddy Connolly pulled the pin on a flash-bang and tossed it inside. Two seconds later, the explosion of the pyro charge blew the canvas cover completely off the truck. Pierce and Loiselle jumped up, weapons ready in their hands, but the three men inside were stunned unconscious from the blast. Pierce jumped all the way in to disarm them, tossed their weapons clear of the truck, and kneeled over them.
In each of the three Volvo trucks, one of the armed men was also to be the driver. In the foremost of the three, this one was named Paul Murphy, and from the beginning he’d divided his time between shooting and watching Sean Grady’s Jaguar. He saw that the car was moving and dropped his weapon to take the driver’s seat and start the diesel engine. Looking up, he saw what had to be the body of Roddy Sands—but it appeared to be headless. What had happened? Sean’s right arm came out of the window, waving in a circling motion for the truck to follow. Murphy slipped the truck into gear and pulled off to follow. He turned left to see the brown van Tim O’Neil had driven stopped cold in the hospital parking lot. His first instinct was to go down there and pick his comrades up, but the turn would have been difficult, and Sean was still waving, and so he followed his leader. In the back, one of his shooters lifted the rear flap and looked to see the other trucks, his AKMS rifle in his hands, but neither was moving, and there were men in black clothing there—
—One of those was Sergeant Scotty McTyler, and he had his MP-10 up and aimed. He fired a three-round burst at the face in the distance, and had the satisfaction to see a puff of pink before it dropped out of sight.
“Command, McTyler, we have a truck leaving the area with subjects aboard!” McTyler loosed another few rounds, but without visible effect, and turned away, looking for something else to do.
Popov had never seen a battle before, but that was what he watched now. It seemed chaotic, with people darting around seemingly without purpose. The people in black—well, three were down at the truck from the initial gunfire, and others were moving, apparently in pursuit of the Jaguar, virtually identical with his, and the truck, now exiting the parking lot. Not three meters away, the TV reporter was speaking rapidly into his microphone, while his cameraman had his instrument locked on the events down the hill. Popov was sure it was exciting viewing for everybody in their sitting rooms. He was also sure that it was time for him to leave.
The Russian got back into his car, started the engine, and moved off, with a spray of gravel for the reporter in his wake.
“I got ’em. Bear’s got ’em,” Malloy reported, lowering his collective control to drop down to a thousand feet or so, his aviator’s eyes locked on the two moving vehicles. “Anybody in command of this disaster?” the Marine asked next.
“Mr. C?” Ding asked.
“Bear, this is Six. I am in command now.” Clark and Chavez sprinted back to Clark’s official car, where both jumped in, and the driver, unbidden, started in pursuit. He was a corporal of military police in the British Army, and had never been part of the Rainbow team, which he’d always resented somewhat. But not now.
It wasn’t much of a challenge. The Volvo truck was powerful, but no competition for the V-8 Jaguar racing up behind it.
Paul Murphy checked his mirror and was instantly confused. Coming up to join him was a Jaguar visually identical to the—he looked, yes, Sean was there, up in front of him. Then who was this? He turned to yell at the people in the back, but on looking, saw that one was down and clearly dead, a pool of blood sliding greasily across the steel floor of the truck. The other was just holding on.
“This is Price. Where is everyone? Where are the subjects?”
“Price, this is Rifle One-Two. I think we have one or more subjects in the brown van outside the hospital. I took the motor out with my rifle. They ain’t going nowhere, Eddie.”
“Okay.” Price looked around. The local situation might even be under control or heading that way. He felt as though he’d been awakened by a tornado and was now looking at his wrecked farm and trying to make sense of what had taken place. One deep breath, and the responsibility of command asserted itself: “Connolly and Lincoln, go right. Tomlinson and Vega, down the hill to the left. Patterson, come with me. McTyler and Pierce, guard the prisoners. Weber and Johnston, get down to Team-1 and see how they are. Move!” he concluded.
“Price, this is Chavez,” his radio announced next.
“Yes, Ding.”
“What’s the situation?”
“We have two or three prisoners, a van with an unknown number of subjects in it, and Christ knows what else. I am trying to find out now. Out.” And that concluded the conversation.
“Game face, Domingo,” Clark said, sitting in the left-front seat of the Jaguar.
“I fuckin’ hear you, John!” Chavez snarled back.
“Corporal—Mole, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said, without moving his eyes a millimeter.
“Okay, Corporal, get us up on his right side. We’re going to shoot out his right-front tire. Let’s try not to eat the fucking truck when that happens.”
“Very good, sir” was the cool reply. “Here we go.”
The Jag leaped forward, and in twenty seconds was alongside the Volvo diesel truck. Clark and Chavez lowered their windows. They were doing over seventy miles per hour now, as they leaned out of their speeding automobile.
A hundred meters ahead, Sean Grady was in a state of rage and shock. What the devil had gone wrong? The first burst from his people’s weapons had surely killed a number of his black-clad enemies, but after that—what? He’d formulated a good plan, and his people had executed it well at first—but the goddamned phones! What had gone wrong with those? That had ruined everything. But now things were back under some se
mblance of control. He was ten minutes away from the shopping area where he’d park and leave the car, disappear into the crowd of people, then walk to another parking lot, get in another rental car, and drive off to Liverpool for the ferry ride home. He would get out of this, and so would the lads in the truck behind him—he looked in the mirror. What the hell was that?
Corporal Mole had done well, first maneuvering to the truck’s left, then slowing and darting to the right. That caught the driver by surprise.
In the backseat, Chavez saw the face of the man. Very fair-skinned and red-haired, a real Paddy, Domingo thought, extending his pistol and aiming at the right-front wheel.
“Now!” John called from the front seat. In that instant, their driver swerved to the left.
Paul Murphy saw the auto jump at him and instinctively swerved hard to avoid it. Then he heard gunfire.
Clark and Chavez fired several times each, and it was only a few feet of distance to the black rubber of the tire. Their bullets all hit home just outside the rim of the wheel, and the nearly-half-inch holes deflated the tire rapidly. Scarcely had the Jaguar pulled forward when the truck swerved back to the right. The driver tried to brake and slow, but that instinctive reaction only made things worse for him. The Volvo truck dipped to the right, and then the uneven braking made it worse still, and the right-side front-wheel rim dug into the pavement. This made the truck try to stop hard, and the body flipped over, landed on its right side, and slid forward at over sixty miles per hour. Strong as the body of the truck was, it hadn’t been designed for this, and when the roll continued, the truck body started coming apart.
Corporal Mole cringed to see his rearview mirror filled with the sideways truck body, but it got no closer, and he swerved left to make sure it didn’t overtake him. He allowed the car to slow now, watching the mirror as the Volvo truck rolled like a child’s toy, shedding pieces as it did so.
“Jesuchristo!” Ding gasped, turning to watch. What could only have been a human body was tossed clear, and he saw it slide up the blacktop and pinwheel slowly as it proceeded forward at the same speed as the wrecked truck.
“Stop the car!” Clark ordered.
Mole did better than that, coming to a stop, then backing up to within a few meters of the wrecked truck. Chavez jumped out first, pistol in both hands and advancing toward the vehicle. “Bear, this is Chavez, you there?”
“Bear copies,” came the reply.
“See if you can get the car, will ya? This truck’s history, man.”
“Roger that, Bear is in pursuit.”
“Colonel?” Sergeant Nance said over the intercom.
“Yeah?”
“You see how they did that?”
“Yeah—think you can do the same?” Malloy asked.
“Got my pistol, sir.”
“Well, then it’s air-to-mud time, people.” The Marine dropped the collective again and brought the Night Hawk to a hundred feet over the road. He was behind and down-sun from the car he was following. Unless the bastard was looking out the sunroof, he had no way of knowing the chopper was there.
“Road sign!” Harrison called, pulling back on the cyclic to dodge over the highway sign telling of the next exit on the motorway.
“Okay, Harrison, you do the road. I do the car. Yank it hard if you have to, son.”
“Roger that, Colonel.”
“Okay, Sergeant Nance, here we go.” Malloy checked his speed indicator. He was doing eighty-five in the right outside lane. The guy in the Jag was leaning on the pedal pretty hard, but the Night Hawk had a lot more available power. It was not unlike flying formation with another aircraft, though Malloy had never done it with a car before. He closed to about a hundred feet. “Right side, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” Nance slid the door back and knelt on the aluminum floor, his Beretta 9-mm in both hands. “Ready, Colonel. Let’s do it!”
“Ready to tank,” Malloy acknowledged, taking one more look at the road. Damn, it was like catching the refueling hose of a Herky Bird, but slower and a hell of a lot lower . . .
Grady bit his lip, seeing that the truck was no longer there, but behind him the road was clear, and ahead as well at the moment, and it was a mere five minutes to safety. He allowed himself a relaxing breath, flexed his fingers on the wheel, and blessed the workers who’d built this fine fast car for him. Just then his peripheral vision caught something black on his left. He turned an inch to look—what the hell—
“Got him!” Nance said, seeing the driver through the left-rear passenger-door window and bringing his pistol up. He let it wait, while Colonel Malloy edged another few feet and then—
—resting his left arm on his knee, Nance thumbed back the hammer and fired. The gun jumped in his hand. He brought it down and kept pulling the trigger. It wasn’t like on the range at all. He was jerking the gun badly despite his every effort to hold it steady, but on the fourth round, he saw his target jerk to the right.
The glass was shattering all around him. Grady didn’t react well. He could have slammed on the brakes, and that would have caused the helicopter to overshoot, but the situation was too far outside anything he’d ever experienced. He actually tried to speed up, but the Jaguar didn’t have all that much acceleration left. Then his left shoulder exploded in fire. Grady’s upper chest cringed from nerve response. His right hand moved down, causing the car to swerve in that direction, right into the steel guardrail.
Malloy pulled on the collective, having seen at least one good hit. In seconds, the Night Hawk was at three hundred feet, and the Marine turned to the right and looked down to see a wrecked and smoking car stationary in the middle of the road.
“Down to collect him?” the copilot asked.
“Bet your sweet ass, son,” Malloy told Harrison. Then he looked for his own flight bag. His Beretta was in there. Harrison handled the landing, bringing the Sikorsky to a rest fifty feet from the car. Malloy turned the lock on his seat-belt buckle and turned to exit the aircraft. Nance jumped out first, ducking under the turning rotor as he ran to the car’s right side. Malloy was two seconds behind him.
“Careful, Sergeant!” Malloy screamed, slowing his advance on the left side. The window was gone except for a few shards still in the frame, and he could see the man inside, still breathing but not doing much else behind the deployed air bag. The far window was gone as well. Nance reached into it, found the handle and pulled it open. It turned out that the driver hadn’t been using his seat belt. The body came out easily. And there on the backseat, Malloy saw, was a Russian-made rifle. The Marine pulled it out and safed it, before walking to the other side of the car.
“Shit,” Nance said in no small amazement. “He’s still alive!” How had he managed not to kill the bastard from twelve feet away? the sergeant wondered.
Back at the hospital, Timothy O’Neil was still in his van wondering what to do. He thought he knew what had happened to the engine. There was a three-quarter-inch hole in the window on the left-side door, and how it had managed to miss his head was something he didn’t know. He saw that one of the Volvo trucks and Sean Grady’s rented Jaguar were nowhere to be seen. Had Sean abandoned him and his men? It had happened too fast and totally without warning. Why hadn’t Sean called to warn him of what he did? How had the plan come apart? But the answers to those questions were of less import than the fact that he was in a van, sitting in a parking lot, with enemies around him. That he had to change.
“Lieber Gott,” Weber said to himself, seeing the wounds. One Team-1 member was surely dead, having taken a round in the side of his head. Four others right here were hit, three of them in the chest. Weber knew first aid, but he didn’t need to know much medicine to know that two of them needed immediate and expert attention. One of those was Alistair Stanley.
“This is Weber. We need medical help here at once!” he called over his tactical radio. “Rainbow Five is down!”
“Oh, shit,” Homer Johnston said next to him. “You’re not foolin’, ma
n. Command, this is Rifle Two-One, we need medics and we need them right the fuck now!”
Price heard all that. He was now thirty yards from the van, Sergeant Hank Patterson at his side, trying to approach without being seen. To his left he could see the imposing bulk of Julio Vega, along with Tomlinson. Off to the right he could see the face of Steve Lincoln. Paddy Connolly would be right with him.
“Team-2, this is Price. We have subjects in the van. I do not know if we have any inside the building. Vega and Tomlinson, get inside and check—and be bloody careful about it!”
“Vega here. Roger that, Eddie. Moving now.”
Oso reversed directions, heading for the main entrance with Tomlinson in support, while the other four kept an eye on that damned little brown truck. The two sergeants approached the front door slowly, peering around corners to look in the windows, and seeing only a small mob of very confused people. First Sergeant Vega poked a finger into his own chest and pointed inside. Tomlinson nodded. Now Vega moved quickly, entering the main lobby and sweeping his eyes all around. Two people screamed to see another man with a gun, despite the difference in his appearance. He held up his left hand.
“Easy, folks, I’m one of the good guys. Does anybody know where the bad guys are?” The answer to this question was mainly confusion, but two people pointed to the rear of the building, in the direction of the emergency room, and that made sense. Vega advanced to the double doors leading that way and called on his radio. “Lobby is clear. Come on, George.” Then: “Command, this is Vega.”