by Tom Clancy
“I’ll do my best,” Bellow promised, gesturing at the two women to follow him back around the corner.
“Welcome back, Doc,” Vega said quietly. “Hey, great!” he added on seeing the two women. “Howdy, Mrs. Clark. I’m Julio Vega.”
“Mom!” Patsy Chavez ran from her place of safety and embraced her mother. Then a pair of recently arrived SAS troopers took all of the women away.
“Vega to Command,” Oso called.
“Price to Vega.”
“Tell Six his wife and daughter are both safe.”
John was back in a truck, heading to the hospital to take charge of the operation, with Domingo Chavez next to him. Both heard the radio call. In both cases, the heads dropped for a brief moment of relief. But there were six more hostages.
“Okay, this is Clark, what’s happening now?”
In the hospital, Vega gave his radio set to Dr. Bellow.
“John? This is Paul.”
“Yeah, Doc, what’s happening now?”
“Give me a couple hours and I can give them to you, John. They know they’re trapped. It’s just a matter of talking them through. There’s four of them now, all in their thirties, all armed. They now have six hostages. But I’ve spoken with their leader, and I can work with this kid, John.”
“Okay, Doc, we’ll be there in ten minutes. What are they asking for?”
“The usual,” Bellow answered. “They want a bus to somewhere.”
John thought about that. Make them come outside, and he had riflemen to handle the problem. Four shots, child’s play. “Do we deliver?”
“Not yet. We’ll let this one simmer a little.”
“Okay, Doc, that’s your call. When I get there, you can fill me in more. See you soon. Out.”
“Okay.” Bellow handed the radio back to First Sergeant Vega. This soldier had a diagram of the ground floor pinned to the wall.
“The hostages are here,” Bellow said. “Subjects are here and here. Two of them are twins, by the way, all male Caucs in their thirties, all carrying that folding-stock version of the AK-47.”
Vega nodded. “ ’Kay. If we have to move on them . . .”
“You won’t, at least I don’t think so. Their leader isn’t a murderer, well, he doesn’t want to be.”
“You say so, Doc,” Vega observed dubiously. But the good news was that they could flip a handful of flash-bangs around the corner and move in right behind them, bagging all four of the fuckers . . . but at the risk of losing a hostage, which was to be avoided if possible. Oso hadn’t appreciated how ballsy this doctor was, walking up to four armed bad guys and talking to them—and getting Mrs. Clark released just like that. Damn. He turned to look at the six SAS guys who’d arrived, dressed in black like his people, and ready to rock if it came to that. Paddy Connolly was outside the building with his bag of tricks. The position was isolated, and the situation was pretty much under control. For the first time in an hour, First Sergeant Vega was allowing himself to relax a little.
“Well, hello, Sean,” Bill Tawney said, recognizing the face at the Hereford base hospital. “Having a difficult day, are we?”
Grady’s shoulder had been immobilized and would require surgery. It turned out that he’d taken a pair of 9-mm bullets in it, one of which had shattered the top of his left humerus, the long bone of the upper arm. It was a painful injury despite the medication given to him ten minutes before. His face turned to see an Englishman in a tie. Grady naturally enough took him for a policeman, and didn’t say anything.
“You picked the wrong patch to play in today, my boy,” Tawney said next. “For your information, you are now in the Hereford base military hospital. We will talk later, Sean.” For the moment, an orthopedic surgeon had work to do, to repair the injured arm. Tawney watched an army nurse medicate him for the coming procedure. Then he went to a different room to speak to the one rescued from the wrecked truck.
This would be a merry day for all involved, the “Six” man thought. The motorway was closed with the two car smashes, and there were enough police constables about to blacken the landscape with their uniforms, plus the SAS and Rainbow people. Soon to be added were a joint mob of “Five” and “Six” people en route from London, all of whom would be claiming jurisdiction, and that would be quite a mess, since there was a written agreement between the U.S. and U.K. governments on the status of Rainbow, which hadn’t been drafted with this situation in mind, but which guaranteed that the CIA Station Chief London would soon be here as well to officiate. Tawney figured he’d be the ringmaster for this particular circus—and that maybe a whip, chair, and pistol might be needed.
Tawney tempered his good humor with the knowledge that two Rainbow troopers were dead, with four more wounded and being treated in this same hospital. People he vaguely knew, whose faces had been familiar, two of which he’d never see again, but the profit of that was Sean Grady, one of the most extreme PIRA members, now beginning what would surely be a lifetime of custody by Her Majesty’s Government. He would have a wealth of good information, and his job would be to start extracting it.
“Where’s the bloody bus?”
“Tim, I’ve talked to my superiors, and they’re thinking about it.”
“What’s to think about?” O’Neil demanded.
“You know the answer to that, Tim. We’re dealing with government bureaucrats, and they never take action without covering their own backsides first.”
“Paul, I have six hostages here and I can—”
“Yes, you can, but you really can’t, can you? Timothy, if you do that, then the soldiers outside come storming in here, and that ends the situation, and you will be remembered forever as a killer of innocent people, a murderer. You want that, Tim? Do you really want that?” Bellow paused. “What about your families? Hell, what about how your political movement is perceived? Killing these people is a hard thing to justify, isn’t it? You’re not Muslim extremists, are you? You’re Christians, remember? Christians aren’t supposed to do things like that. Anyway, that threat is useful as a threat, but it’s not very useful as a tool. You can’t do that, Tim. It would only result in your death and your political damnation. Oh, by the way, we have Sean Grady in custody,” Bellow added, with careful timing.
“What?” That, he saw, shook Timothy.
“He was captured trying to escape. He was shot in the process, but he’ll survive. They’re operating on him right now.”
It was like pricking a large balloon, the psychiatrist saw. He’d just let some air out of his antagonist. This was how it was done, a little at a time. Too fast and he might react violently, but wear them down bit by bit, and they were yours. Bellow had written a book on the subject. First establish physical control, which meant containment. Then establish information control. Then feed them information, bit by precious bit, in a manner as carefully orchestrated as a Broadway musical. Then you had them.
“You will release Sean to us. He goes on the bus with us!”
“Timothy, he’s on an operating table right now, and he’s going to be there for hours. If they even attempted to move him now, the results could be lethal—they could kill the man, Tim. So, much as you might want it, that’s just not possible. It can’t happen. I’m sorry about that, but nobody can change it.”
His leader was a prisoner now? Tim O’Neil thought. Sean was captured? Strangely that seemed worse than his own situation. Even if he were in prison, Sean might come up with a way of freeing him, but with Sean on the Isle of Wight . . . all was lost, wasn’t it? But—
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Tim, in a situation like this, I can’t lie. I’d just screw up. It’s too hard to be a good liar, and if you caught me in a lie, you’d never believe me again, and that would end my usefulness to my bosses and to you, too, wouldn’t it?” Again the voice of quiet reason.
“You said you’re a doctor?”
“That’s right.” Bellow nodded.
“Where do you
practice?”
“Mainly here now, but I did my residency at Harvard. I’ve worked at four different places, and taught some.”
“So, your job is to get people like me to surrender, isn’t it?” Anger, finally, at the obvious.
Bellow shook his head. “No, I think of my job as keeping people alive. I’m a physician, Tim. I am not allowed to kill people or to help others to kill people. I swore an oath on that one a long time ago. You have guns. Other people around that corner have guns. I don’t want any of you to get killed. There’s been enough of that today, hasn’t there? Tim, do you enjoy killing people?”
“Why—no, of course not, who does?”
“Well, some do,” Bellow told him, deciding to build up his ego a little. “We call them sociopathic personalities, but you’re not one of them. You’re a soldier. You fight for something you believe in. So do the people back there.” Bellow waved to where the Rainbow people were. “They respect you, and I hope you respect them. Soldiers don’t murder people. Criminals do that, and a soldier isn’t a criminal.” In addition to being true, this was an important thought to communicate to his interlocutor. All the more so because a terrorist was also a romantic, and to be considered a common criminal was psychologically very wounding to them. He’d just built up their self-images in order to steer them away from something he didn’t want them to do. They were soldiers, not criminals, and they had to act like soldiers, not criminals.
“Dr. Bellow?” a voice called from around the corner. “Phone call, sir.”
“Tim, can I go get it?” Always ask permission to do something. Give them the illusion of being in command of the situation.
“Yeah.” O’Neil waved him away. Bellow walked back to where the soldiers were.
He saw John Clark standing there. Together they walked fifty feet into another part of the hospital.
“Thanks for getting my wife and little girl out, Paul.”
Bellow shrugged. “It was mainly luck. He’s a little overwhelmed by all this, and he’s not thinking very well. They want a bus.”
“You told me before,” Clark reminded him. “Do we give it to ’em?”
“We won’t have to do that. I’m in a poker game, John, and I’m holding a straight flush. Unless something screws up really bad, we have this one under control.”
“Noonan’s outside, and he has a mike on the window. I listened in on the last part. Pretty good, doctor.”
“Thanks.” Bellow rubbed his face. The tension was real for him, but he could only show it here. In with Timothy he had to be cool as ice, like a friendly and respected teacher. “What’s the story on the other prisoners?”
“No change. The Grady guy is being operated on—it’ll take a few hours, they say. The other one’s unconscious still, and we don’t have a name or ID on him anyway.”
“Grady’s the leader?”
“We think so, that’s what the intel tells us.”
“So he can tell us a lot. You want me there when he comes out of the OR,” Paul told Rainbow Six.
“You need to finish up here first.”
“I know. I’m going back.” Clark patted him on the shoulder and Bellow walked back to see the terrorists.
“Well?” Timothy asked.
“Well, they haven’t decided on the bus yet. Sorry,” Bellow added in a downcast voice. “I thought I had them convinced, but they can’t get their asses in gear.”
“You tell them that if they don’t, we’ll—”
“No, you won’t, Tim. You know that. I know that. They know that.”
“Then why send the bus?” O’Neil asked, close to losing control now.
“Because I told them that you’re serious, and they have to take your threat seriously. If they don’t believe you’ll do it, they have to remember that you might, and if you do, then they look bad to their bosses.” Timothy shook his head at that convoluted logic, looking more puzzled than angry now. “Trust me,” Paul Bellow went on. “I’ve done this before, and I know how it works. It’s easier negotiating with soldiers like you than with those damned bureaucrats. People like you can make decisions. People like that run away from doing it. They don’t care much about getting people killed, but they do care about looking bad in the newspapers.”
Then something good happened. Tim reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. A sure sign of stress and an attempt to control it.
“Hazardous to your health, boy,” Clark observed, looking at the TV picture Noonan had established. The assault plan was completely ready. Connolly had line charges set on the windows, both to open an entry path and to distract the terrorists. Vega, Tomlinson, and Bates, from Team-1, would toss flash-bangs at the same time and dart into the room to take the bad guys down with aimed fire. The only downside to that, as always, was that one of them could turn and hose the hostages as his last conscious act, or even by accident, which was just as lethal. From the sound of it, Bellow was doing okay. If these subjects had any brains at all, they’d know it was time to call it a day, but John reminded himself that he’d never contemplated life in prison before, at least not this immediately, and he imagined it wasn’t a fun thought. He now had a surfeit of soldierly talent at his disposal. The SAS guys who’d arrived had chopped to his operational command, though their own colonel had come as well to kibitz in the hospital’s main lobby.
“Tough day for all of us, isn’t it, Tim?” the psychiatrist asked.
“Could have been a better one,” Timothy O’Neil agreed.
“You know how this one will end, don’t you?” Bellow offered, like a nice fly to a brook trout, wondering if he’d rise to it.
“Yes, doctor, I do.” He paused. “I haven’t even fired my rifle today. I haven’t killed anyone. Jimmy did,” he went on, gesturing to the body on the floor, “but not any of us.”
Bingo! Bellow thought. “That counts for something, Tim. As a matter of fact, it counts for a lot. You know, the war will be over soon. They’re going to make peace finally, and when that happens, well, there’s going to be an amnesty for most of the fighters. So you have some hope. You all do,” Paul told the other three, who were watching and listening . . . and wavering, as their leader was. They had to know that all was lost. Surrounded, their leader captured, this could only end in one of two ways, with their deaths or their imprisonment. Escape was not a practical possibility, and they knew that the attempt to move their hostages to a bus would only expose them to certain death in a new and different way.
“Tim?”
“Yes?” He looked up from his smoke.
“If you set your weapons down on the floor, you have my word that you will not be hurt in any way.”
“And go to prison?” Defiance and anger in the reply.
“Timothy, you can get out of prison someday. You cannot get out of death. Please think about that. For God’s sake, I’m a physician,” Bellow reminded him. “I don’t like seeing people die.”
Timothy O’Neil turned to look at his comrades. All eyes were downcast. Even the Barry twins showed no particular defiance.
“Guys, if you haven’t hurt anyone today, then, yes, you will go to prison, but someday you’ll have a good chance to get out when the amnesty is promulgated. Otherwise, you die for nothing at all. Not for your country. They don’t make heroes out of people who kill civilians,” he reminded them once again. Keep repeating, Bellow thought. Keep drumming it in. “Killing soldiers, yes, that’s something soldiers do, but not murdering innocent people. You will die for nothing at all—or you will live, and be free again someday. It’s up to you, guys. You have the guns. But there isn’t going to be a bus. You will not escape, and you have six people you can kill, sure, but what does that get for you, except a trip to hell? Call it a day, Timothy,” he concluded, wondering if some Catholic nun in grade school had addressed him that way.
It wasn’t quite that easy for Tim O’Neil. The idea of imprisonment in a cage with common criminals, having his family come to visit him there like an
animal in a zoo, gave him chills . . . but he’d known that this was a possibility for years, and though he preferred the mental image of heroic death, a blazing gun in his hand firing at the enemies of his country, this American doctor had spoken the truth. There was no glory in murdering six English civilians. No songs would be written and sung about this exploit, no pints hoisted to his name in the pubs of Ulster . . . and what was left to him was inglorious death . . . life, in prison or not, was preferable to that sort of death.
Timothy Dennis O’Neil turned to look at his fellow PIRA soldiers and saw the same expression that they saw on his face. Without a spoken agreement, they all nodded. O’Neil safed his rifle and set it on the floor. The others did the same.
Bellow walked over to them to shake their hands.
“Six to Vega, move in now!” Clark called, seeing the picture on the small black-and-white screen.
Oso Vega moved quickly around the corner, his MP-10 up in his hands. There they were, standing with the doc. Tomlinson and Bates pushed them, not too roughly, against the wall. The former covered them while the latter patted them down. Seconds later, two uniformed policemen came in with handcuffs and, to the amazement of the soldiers, read them their legal rights. And just that easily and quietly, this day’s fighting was over.
CHAPTER 29
RECOVERY
The day hadn’t ended for Dr. Bellow. Without so much as a drink of water for his dry throat, he hopped into a green-painted British Army truck for the trip back to Hereford. It hadn’t ended for those left behind either.
“Hey, baby,” Ding said. He’d finally found his wife outside the hospital, surrounded by a ring of SAS troopers.
Patsy ran the ten steps to him and hugged her husband as tightly as her swollen abdomen allowed.
“You okay?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes. “You?”