by Tom Clancy
“They’re not amateurs,” Clark objected. “Their weapons point to some measure of training and professionalism.”
That earned John a nod. “True, sir, but not awfully bright. I would not be overly surprised to learn that they’d actually stolen some currency, like common robbers. Trained terrorists, perhaps, but not good ones.”
And what’s a “good” terrorist? John wondered. Doubtless a term of art he’d have to learn.
The BA flight touched down two minutes early, then taxied to the gate. Ding had spent the flight talking to Dr. Bellow. The psychology of this business was the biggest blank spot in his copybook, and one he’d have to learn to fill in—and soon. This wasn’t like being a soldier—the psychology of that job was handled at the general-officer level most of the time, the figuring out of what the other guy was going to do with his maneuver battalions. This was squad-level combat, but with all sorts of interesting new elements, Ding thought, flipping his seat belt off before the aircraft stopped moving. But it still came down to the least common denominator—steel on target.
Chavez stood and stretched, then headed aft to the doorway, his game-face now on all the way. Out the jetway, between two ordinary civilians who probably thought him a businessman, with his suit and tie. Maybe he’d buy a nicer suit in London, he thought idly, exiting the jetway, the better to fit the disguise he and his men had to adopt when traveling. There was a chauffeur sort of man standing out there holding a sign with the proper name on it. Chavez walked up to him.
“Waiting for us?”
“Yes, sir. Come with me?”
Team-2 followed him down the anonymous concourse, then turned into what seemed a conference room that had another door. In it was a uniformed police officer, a senior one, judging by the braid on his blue blouse.
“You are . . .” he said.
“Chavez.” Ding stuck his hand out. “Domingo Chavez.”
“Spanish?” the cop asked in considerable surprise.
“American. And you, sir?”
“Roebling, Marius,” the man replied, when all the team was in the room and the door closed. “Come with me, please.” Roebling opened the far door, which led outside to some stairs. A minute later, they were in a minibus heading past the park aircraft, then out onto a highway. Ding looked back to see another truck, doubtless carrying their gear.
“Okay, what can you tell me?”
“Nothing new since the first murder. We are speaking with them over the telephone. No names, no identities. They’ve demanded transport to this airport and a flight out of the country, no destination revealed to us as of yet.”
“Okay, what did the guy who got away tell you?”
“There are four of them, they speak German, he says they sound as though it is their primary language, idiomatic, pronunciation, and so forth. They are armed with Czech weapons, and it would seem they are not reluctant to make use of them.”
“Yes, sir. How long to get there, and will my men be able to change into their gear?”
Roebling nodded. “It is arranged, Major Chavez.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Can I speak with the man who got out?” Dr. Bellow asked.
“My orders are to give you full cooperation—within reason, of course.”
Chavez wondered what that qualification meant, but decided he’d find out in due course. He couldn’t blame the man for being unhappy to have a team of foreigners come to his country to enforce the law. But these were the proverbial pros from Dover, and that was that—his own government had said so. It also occurred to Ding that the credibility of Rainbow now rested on his shoulders. It would be a hell of a thing to embarrass his father-in-law and his team and his country. He turned to look at his people. Eddie Price, perhaps reading his mind, gave a discreet thumbs-up. Well, Chavez thought, at least one of us thinks we’re ready. It was different in the field, something he’d learned in the jungles and mountains of Colombia years before, and the closer you got to the firing line, the more different it got. Out here there were no laser systems to tell you who’d been killed. Real red blood would announce that. But his people were trained and experienced, especially Sergeant Major Edward Price.
All Ding had to do was lead them into battle.
There was a secondary school a block from the bank. The minibus and truck pulled up to it, and Team-2 walked into the gymnasium area, which was secured by ten or so uniformed cops. The men changed into their gear in a locker room, and walked back into the gym, to find Roebling with an additional garment for them to wear. These were pullovers, black like their assault gear. POLIZEI was printed on them, front and back, in gold lettering rather than the usual bright yellow. A Swiss affectation? Chavez thought, without the smile that should have gone with the observation.
“Thanks,” Chavez told him. It was a useful subterfuge. With that done, the men and their gear reboarded the minibus for the remainder of their drive. This put them around the corner from the bank, invisible both to the terrorists and the TV news cameras. The long-riflemen, Johnston and Weber, were walked to pre-selected perches, one overlooking the rear of the bank building, the other diagonally facing the front. Both men settled in, unfolded the bipod legs on their gunstocks, and started surveying the target building.
Their rifles were as individual as the shooters. Weber had a Walther WA2000, chambered for the .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge. Johnston’s was custom made, chambered for the slightly smaller but faster 7-mm Remington Magnum. In both cases, the sharpshooters first of all determined the range to target and dialed it into their telescopic sights, then lay down on the foam mattresses they’d brought. Their immediate mission was to observe, gather information, and report.
Dr. Bellow felt very strange in his black uniform, complete with body armor and POLIZEI pullover, but it would help prevent his identification by a medical colleague who caught this event on TV. Noonan, similarly dressed, set up his computer—an Apple PowerBook—and started looking over the building blueprints so that he could input them into his system. The local cops had been efficient as hell. Over a period of thirty minutes, he had a complete electronic map of the target building. Everything but the vault combination, he thought with a smile. Then he erected a whip antenna and transmitted the imagery to the other three computers the team had brought along.
Chavez, Price, and Bellow walked to the senior Swiss policeman on the scene. Greetings were exchanged, hands shaken. Price set up his computer and put in a CD-ROM disk with photos of every known and photographed terrorist in the world.
The man who’d dragged the body out was one Hans Richter, a German national from Bonn who banked here for his Swiss-based trading business.
“Did you see their faces?” Price asked.
“Yes.” A shaky nod. Herr Richter’d had a very bad day to this point. Price selected known German terrorists and started flashing photos.
“Ja, ja, that one. He is the leader.”
“You are quite sure?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Ernst Model, formerly of Baader-Meinhof, disappeared in 1989, whereabouts unknown.” Price scrolled down. “Four suspected operations to date. Three were bloody failures. Nearly captured in Hamburg, 1987, killed two policemen to make his escape. Communist-trained, last suspected to be in Lebanon, that sighting report is thin—very thin, it would seem. Kidnapping was his specialty. Okay.” Price scrolled down some more.
“That one . . . possibly.”
“Erwin Guttenach, also Baader-Meinhof, last spotted 1992 in Cologne. Robbed a bank, background also kidnapping and murder—oh, yes, he’s the chappie who kidnapped and killed a board member of BMW in 1986. Kept the ransom . . . four million D-marks. Greedy bugger,” Price added.
Bellow looked over his shoulder, thinking as fast as he could. “What did he say to you on the phone?”
“We have a tape,” the cop replied.
“Excellent! But I require a translator.”
“Doc, a profile on Ernst Model, quick as
you can.” Chavez turned. “Noonan, can we get some coverage on the bank?”
“No problem,” the tech man replied.
“Roebling?” Chavez said next.
“Yes, Major?”
“Will the TV crews cooperate? We have to assume the subjects inside have a TV with them.”
“They will cooperate,” the senior Swiss cop replied with confidence.
“Okay, people, let’s move,” Chavez ordered. Noonan went off to his bag of tricks. Bellow headed around the corner with Herr Richter and another Swiss cop to handle the translation. That left Chavez and Price alone.
“Eddie, am I missing anything?”
“No, Major,” Sergeant Major Price replied.
“Okay, number one, my name is Ding. Number two, you have more experience in this than I do. If you have something to say, I want to hear it right now, got it? We ain’t in no fuckin’ wardroom here. I need your brains, Eddie.”
“Very well, sir—Ding.” Price managed a smile. His commander was working out rather nicely. “So far, so good. We have the subjects contained, good perimeter. We need plans of the building and information on what’s happening inside—Noonan’s job, and he seems a competent chappie. And we need an idea of what the opposition is thinking—Dr. Bellow’s job, and he is excellent. What’s the plan if the opposition just starts shooting out of hand?”
“Tell Louis, two flash-bangs at the front door, toss four more inside, and we blow in like a tornado.”
“Our body armor—”
“Won’t stop a seven-six-two Russian. I know,” Chavez agreed. “Nobody ever said it was safe, Eddie. When we know a little more, we can figure a real assault plan.” Chavez clapped him on the shoulder. “Move, Eddie.”
“Yes, sir.” Price moved off to join the rest of the team.
Popov hadn’t known that the Swiss police had such a well-trained counterterrorist squad. As he watched, the commander was crouching close to the front of the bank building, and another, his second-in-command, probably, was heading around the corner to the rest of the team. They were speaking with the escaped hostage—someone had walked him out of sight. Yes, these Swiss police were well trained and well-equipped. H&K weapons, it appeared. The usual for this sort of thing. For his own part, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov stood in the crowd of onlookers. His first impression of Model and his little team of three others had been correct. The German’s IQ was little more than room temperature—he’d even wanted a discussion of Marxism-Leninism with his visitor! The fool. Not even a young fool. Model was into his forties now and couldn’t use youthful exuberance as an excuse for his ideological fixation. But not entirely impractical. Ernst had wanted to see the money, $600,000 in D-marks. Popov smiled, remembering where it had been stashed. It was unlikely that Ernst would ever see it again. Killing the hostage so early—foolish, but not unexpected. He was the sort who’d want to show his resolve and ideological purity, as though anyone cared about that today! Popov grunted to himself and lit a cigar, leaning back against yet another bank building to relax and observe the exercise, his hat pulled down and collar turned up, ostensibly to protect himself from the gathering evening chill, but also to obscure his face. One couldn’t be too careful—a fact lost on Ernst Model and his three Kameraden.
Dr. Bellow finished his review of the taped phone conversations and the known facts about Ernst Johannes Model. The man was a sociopath with a distinct tendency for violence. Suspected in seven murders personally committed and a few more in the company of others. Guttenach, a less bright individual of the same ilk, and two others, unknown. Richter, the escapee, had told them, unsurprisingly, that Model had killed the first victim himself, shooting him in the back of his head from close range and ordering Richter to drag him out. So, both the shooting and the demonstration of its reality to the police had been ill-considered . . . it all fit the same worrisome profile. Bellow keyed his radio.
“Bellow for Chavez.”
“Yeah, doc, this is Ding.”
“I have a preliminary profile on the subjects.”
“Shoot—Team, you listening?” There followed an immediate cacophony of overlapping responses. “Yeah, Ding.” “Copying, leader.” “Ja.” And the rest. “Okay, doc, lay it out,” Chavez ordered.
“First, this is not a well-planned operation. That fits the profile for the suspected leader, Ernst Model, German national, age forty-one, formerly of the Baader-Meinhof organization. Tends to be impetuous, very quick to use violence when cornered or frustrated. If he threatens to kill someone, we have to believe he’s not kidding. His current mental state is very, repeat, very dangerous. He knows he has a blown operation. He knows that his likelihood of success is slim. His hostages are his only assets, and he will regard them as expendable assets. Do not expect Stockholm Syndrome to set in with this case, people. Model is too sociopathic for that. Neither would I expect negotiations to be very useful. I think that it is very likely that an assault resolution will be necessary tonight or tomorrow.”
“Anything else?” Chavez asked.
“Not at this time,” Dr. Bellow replied. “I will monitor further developments with the local cops.”
Noonan had taken his time selecting the proper tools, and now he was creeping along the outside wall of the bank building, below the level of the windows. At every one of them, he raised his head slowly and carefully to see if the interior curtains allowed any view of the inside. The second one did, and there Noonan affixed a tiny viewing system. This was a lens, roughly the shape of a cobra’s head, but only a few millimeters across, which led by fiber-optic cable to a TV camera set in his black bag around the corner. He placed another at the lower corner of the bank’s glass door, then worked his way back, crawling feet first, slowly and laboriously, to a place where he could stand. That done, he walked all the way around the block to repeat the procedure from the other side of the building, where he was able to make three placements, one again on the door, and two on windows whose curtains were a touch shorter than they ought to have been. He also placed microphones in order to pick up whatever sound might be available. The large plate-glass windows ought to resonate nicely, he thought, though this would apply to extraneous exterior sounds as well as to those originating inside the building.
All the while, the Swiss TV crews were speaking with the senior on-site policeman, who spent a great deal of time saying that the terrorists were serious—he’d been coached by Dr. Bellow to speak of them with respect. They were probably watching television inside, and building up their self-esteem worked for the team’s purposes at the moment. In any case, it denied the terrorists knowledge of what Tim Noonan had done on the outside.
“Okay,” the techie said in his place on a side street. All the video displays were up and running. They showed little. The size of the lenses didn’t make for good imagery, despite the enhancement program built into his computer. “Here’s one shooter . . . and another.” They were within ten meters of the front of the building. The rest of the people visible were sitting on the white marble floor, in the center for easy coverage. “The guy said four, right?”
“Yeah,” Chavez answered. “But not how many hostages, not exactly anyway.”
“Okay, this is a bad guy, I think, behind the teller-places . . . hmph, looks like he’s checking the cash drawers . . . and that’s a bag of some sort. You figure they visited the vault?”
Chavez turned. “Eddie?”
“Greed,” Price agreed. “Well, why not? It is a bank, after all.”
“Okay.” Noonan switched displays on the computer screen. “I got blueprints of the building, and this is the layout.”
“Teller cages, vault, toilets.” Price traced his finger over the screen. “Back door. Seems simple enough. Access to the upper floors?”
“Here,” Noonan said. “Actually outside the bank itself, but the basement is accessible to them here, stairs down, and a separate exit to the alley in back.”
“Ceiling construction?” Chavez asked.
“So, we can go in the front door or the back door, and that’s it. And that puts number four bad guy at the back door.” Chavez keyed his radio. “Chavez for Rifle Two-Two.”
“Ja, Weber here.”
“Any windows in the back, anything in the door, peep-hole, anything like that, Dieter?”
“Negative. It appears to be a heavy steel door, nothing in it that I can see,” the sniper said, tracing his telescopic sight over the target yet again, and again finding nothing but blank painted steel.
“Okay, Eddie, we blow the rear door with Primacord, three men in that way. Second later, we blow the front glass doors, toss flash-bangs, and move in when they’re looking the wrong way. Two and two through the front. You and me go left. Louis and George go right.”
“Are they wearing body armor?” Price asked.
“Nothing that Herr Richter saw,” Noonan responded, “and nothing visible here—but there ain’t no head-protection anyway, right?” It would be nothing more than a ten-meter shot, an easy distance for the H&K shoulder weapons.
“Quite.” Price nodded. “Who leads the rear-entry team?”
“Scotty, I think. Paddy does the explosives.” Connolly was the best man on the team for that, and both men knew it. Chavez made an important mental note that the subteams had to be more firmly established. To this point he’d kept all his people in the same drawer. That he would have to change as soon as they got back to Hereford.
