by Tom Clancy
“Any time, man,” Vega replied. “Just so the camera gadget works.”
“It will,” the FBI agent promised, and with that they headed back to the underground command post.
“Blow the windows? Can we do that, Paddy?” Chavez was asking when they got there.
Connolly was wishing for a cigarette. He’d quit years before—it was too hard on the daily runs to indulge—but at times like this it seemed to help the concentration. “Six windows . . . three or four minutes each . . . no, I think not, sir. I can give you two—if we have the time.”
“How sturdy are the windows?” Clark asked “Dennis?”
“Metal frames set into the stone,” the park manager said with a shrug.
“Wait.” The engineer turned a page on the castle blueprints, then two more, and then a finger traced down the written portion on the right side. “Here’s the specs . . . they’re held in by grouting only. You should be able to kick them in, I think.”
The “I think” part was not as reassuring as Ding would have preferred, but how strong could a window frame be with a two-hundred-pound man swinging into it with two boots leading the way?
“What about flash-bangs, Paddy?”
“We can do that,” Connolly answered. “It will not do the frames any good at all, sir.”
“Okay.” Chavez leaned over the plans. “You’ll have time to blow two windows—this one and this one.” He tapped the prints. “We’ll use flash-bangs on the other four and swing in a second later. Eddie here, me here, Louis here. George, how’s the leg?”
“Marginal,” Sergeant Tomlinson replied with painful honesty. He’d have to kick through a window, swing in, drop to a concrete floor, then come up shooting . . . and the lives of children were at stake. No, he couldn’t risk it, could he? “Better somebody else, Ding.”
“Oso, think you can do it?” Chavez asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Vega replied, trying not to smile. “You bet, Ding.”
“Okay, Scotty here, and Mike take these two. What’s the exact distance from the roof?”
That was on the blueprints. “Sixteen meters exactly from the level of the roof. Add another seventy centimeters to allow for the battlements.”
“The ropes can do that easily,” Eddie Price decided. The plan was coming together. He and Ding would have as their primary mission getting between the kids and the bad guys, shooting as they went. Vega, Loiselle, McTyler, and Pierce would be primarily tasked to killing the subjects in the castle’s command room, but that would be finally decided only when they entered the room. Covington’s Team-1 would race up the stairs from the underground, to intercept any subjects who ran out, and to back up Team-2 if something went wrong on their assault.
Sergeant Major Price and Chavez looked over the blueprints again, measuring distances to be covered and the time in which to do it. It looked possible, even probable, that they could carry it off. Ding looked up at the others.
“Comments?”
Noonan turned to look at the picture from the fiber-optic gear he’d installed. “They seem to be mainly at the control panels. Two guys keeping an eye on the children, but they’re not worried about them—makes sense, they’re just kids, not adults able to start real resistance . . . but . . . it only takes one of these bastards to turn and hose them, man.”
“Yeah.” Ding nodded. There was no denying or avoiding that fact. “Well, we have to shoot fast, people. Any way to string them out?”
Bellow thought about that. “If I tell them the plane’s on the way . . . that’s a risk. If they think we’re lying to them, well, they could start taking it out on the hostages, but the upside is, if they think it’s about time to head for the airport, probably Mr. One will send a couple of his troops down to the underground—that’s the most likely way for them to leave the area, I think. Then, if we can play some more with the surveillance cameras, and get a guy in close—”
“Yeah, pop them right away,” Clark said. “Peter?”
“Get us within twenty meters and it’s a piece of cake. Plus, we kill the lights right before we hit. Disorient the bastards,” Covington added.
“There’s emergency lights in the stairwells,” Mike Dennis said. “They click on when the power goes down—shit, there’s two in the command center, too.”
“Where?” Chavez asked.
“The left—I mean the northeast corner and the southwest one. The regular kind, two lights, like car headlights, they run off a battery.”
“Okay, no NVGs when we go in, I guess, but we’ll still kill the lights right before we hit, just to distract them. Anything else? Peter?” Ding asked.
Major Covington nodded. “It ought to work.”
Clark observed and listened, forced to let his principal subordinates do all the planning and talking, leaving him only able to comment if they made a mistake, and they hadn’t done that. Most of all, he wanted to lift an MP-10 and go in with the shooters, but he couldn’t do that, and inwardly he swore at the fact. Commanding just wasn’t as satisfying as leading.
“We need medics standing by in case the bad guys get lucky,” John said to Colonel Nuncio.
“We have paramedics outside the park now—”
“Dr. Weiler is pretty good,” Mike Dennis said. “He’s had trauma training. We insisted on that in case we have something bad happen here.”
“Okay, we’ll have him stand-to when the time comes. Dr. Bellow, tell Mr. One that the French have caved, and their friends will be here. . . . What do you think?”
“Ten-twenty or so. If they agree to that, it’s a concession, but the kind that will calm them down—should, anyway.”
“Make the call, doc,” John Clark ordered.
“Yes?” René said.
“Sanchez is being released from Le Sante prison in about twenty minutes. Six of the others, too, but there’s a problem on the last three. I’m not sure what that is. They’ll be taken to De Gaulle International Airport and flown here on an Air France Airbus 340. We think they’ll be here by twenty-two-forty. Is that acceptable? How will we get you and the hostages to them for the flight out?” Bellow asked.
“A bus, I think. You will bring the bus right to the castle. We will take ten or so of the children with us, and leave the rest here as a show of good faith on our part. Tell the police that we know how to move the children without giving them a chance to do something foolish, and any treachery will have severe consequences.”
“We do not want any more children harmed,” Bellow assured him.
“If you do as you are told, that will not be necessary, but understand,” René went on firmly, “if you do anything foolish, then the courtyard will run red with blood. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, One, I understand,” the voice replied.
René set the phone down and stood. “My friends, Il’ych is coming. The French have granted our demands.”
“He looks like a happy camper,” Noonan said, eyes locked on the black-and-white picture. The one who had to be Mr. One was standing now, walking toward another of the subjects, and they appeared to shake hands on the fuzzy picture.
“They’re not going to lie down and take a nap,” Bellow warned. “If anything, they’re going to be more alert now.”
“Yeah, I know,” Chavez assured him. But if we do our job right, it doesn’t matter how alert they are.
Malloy headed back to the airfield for refueling, which took half an hour. While there he heard what was going to happen in another hour. In the back of the Night Hawk, Sergeant Nance set up the ropes, set to fifty feet length exactly, and hooked them into eyebolts on the chopper’s floor. Like the pilots, Nance, too, had a pistol holstered on his left side. He never expected to use it, and was only a mediocre shot, but it made him feel like part of the team, and that was important to him. He supervised the refueling, capped the tank, and told Colonel Malloy the bird was ready.
Malloy pulled up on the collective, brought the Night Hawk into the air, then pushed the cyclic for
ward to return to Worldpark. From this point on, their flight routine would be changing. On arriving over the park, the Night Hawk didn’t circle. Instead it flew directly over the castle every few minutes, then drew off into the distance, his anticollision strobe lights flashing as he moved around the park grounds, seemingly at random, bored with the orbiting he’d done before.
“Okay, people, let’s move,” Chavez told his team. Those directly involved in the rescue operation headed out into the underground corridor, then out to where the Spanish army truck stood. They boarded it, and it drove off, looping around into the massive parking lot.
Dieter Weber selected a sniper perch opposite Sergeant Johnston’s position, on top of the flat roof of a theater building where kids viewed cartoons, only a hundred twenty meters from the castle’s east side. Once there, he unrolled his foam mat, set up his rifle on the bipod, and started training his ten-power scope over the castle’s windows.
“Rifle Two-Two in position,” he reported to Clark.
“Very well, report as necessary, Al?” Clark said, looking up.
Stanley looked grim. “A sodding lot of guns, and a lot of children.”
“Yeah, I know. Anything else we could try?”
Stanley shook his head. “It’s a good plan. If we try outside, we give them too much maneuvering space, and they will feel safer in this castle building. No, Peter and Ding have a good plan, but there’s no such bloody thing as a perfect one.”
“Yeah,” John said. “I want to be there, too. This command stuff sucks the big one.”
Alistair Stanley grunted. “Quite.”
The parking lot lights all went off at once. The truck, also with lights out, stopped next to a light standard. Chavez and his team jumped out. Ten seconds later, the Night Hawk came in, touching down with the rotor still turning fast. The side doors opened, and the shooters clambered aboard and sat down on the floor. Sergeant Nance closed one door, then the other.
“All aboard, Colonel.”
Without a word, Malloy pulled the collective and climbed back into the sky, mindful of the light standards, which could have wrecked the whole mission. It took only four seconds to clear them, and he banked the aircraft to head back toward the park.
“A/C lights off,” Malloy told Lieutenant Harrison.
“Lights off,” the copilot confirmed.
“We ready?” Ding asked his men in the back.
“Goddamn right, we are,” Mike Pierce said back. Fucking murderers, he didn’t add. But every man on the bird was thinking that. Weapons were slung tight across their chests, and they had their zip-lining gloves on. Three of the men were pulling them tight on their hands, a show of some tension on their part that went along with the grim faces.
“Where is the aircraft?” One asked.
“About an hour and ten minutes out,” Dr. Bellow replied. “When do you want your bus?”
“Exactly forty minutes before the aircraft lands. It will then be refueled while we board it.”
“Where are you going?” Bellow asked next.
“We will tell the pilot when we get aboard.”
“Okay, we have the bus coming now. It will be here in about fifteen minutes. Where do you want it to come?”
“Right to the castle, past the Dive Bomber ride.”
“Okay, I will tell them to do that,” Bellow promised.
“Merci.” The phone went dead again.
“Smart,” Noonan observed. “They’ll have two surveillance cameras on the bus all the way in, so we can’t use it to screen a rescue team. And they probably plan to use the mountaineer technique to get the hostages aboard.” Tough shit, he didn’t add.
“Bear, this is Six,” Clark called on the radio.
“Bear copies, Six, over.”
“We execute in five minutes.”
“Roger that, we party in five.”
Malloy turned in his seat. Chavez had heard the call and nodded, holding up one hand, fingers spread.
“Rainbow, this is Six. Stand-to, repeat stand-to. We commence the operation in five minutes.”
In the underground, Peter Covington led three of his men east toward the castle stairwells, while the park engineer selectively killed off the surveillance cameras. His explosives man set a small charge on the fire door at the bottom and nodded at his boss.
“Team-1 is ready.”
“Rifle Two-One is ready and on target,” Johnston said.
“Rifle Two-Two is ready, but no target at this time,” Weber told Clark.
“Three, this is One,” the scanner crackled in the command room.
“Yes, One,” the man atop the castle replied.
“Anything happening?”
“No, One, the police are staying where they are. And the helicopter is flying around somewhere, but not doing anything.”
“The bus should be here in fifteen minutes. Stay alert.”
“I will,” Three promised.
“Okay,” Noonan said. “That’s a time-stamp. Mr. One calls Mr. Three about every fifteen minutes. Never more than eighteen, never less than twelve. So—”
“Yeah.” Clark nodded. “Move it up?”
“Why not,” Stanley said.
“Rainbow, this is Six. Move in and execute. Say again, execute now!”
Aboard the Night Hawk, Sergeant Nance moved left and right, sliding the side doors open. He gave a thumbs-up to the shooters that they returned, each man hooking up his zip-line rope to D-rings on their belts. All of them turned inward, getting up on the balls of their feet so that their backsides were now dangling outside the helicopter.
“Sergeant Nance, I will flash you when we’re in place.”
“Roger, sir,” the crew chief replied, crouching in the now-empty middle of the passenger area, his arms reaching to the men on both sides.
“Andre, go down and look at the courtyard,” René ordered. His man moved at once, holding his Uzi in both hands.
“Somebody just left the room,” Noonan said.
“Rainbow, this is Six, one subject has left the command center.”
Eight, Chavez thought. Eight subjects to take down. The other two would go to the long-riflemen.
The last two hundred meters were the hard ones, Malloy thought. His hands tingled on the cyclic control stick, and as many times as he’d done this, this one was not a rehearsal. Okay . . . He dropped his nose, heading toward the castle, and without the anticollision lights, the aircraft would only be a shadow, slightly darker than the night—better yet, the four-bladed rotor made a sound that was nondirectional. Someone could hear it, but locating the source was difficult, and he needed that to last only a few more seconds.
“Rifle Two-One, stand by.”
“Rifle Two-One is on target, Six,” Johnston reported. His breathing regularized, and his elbows moved slightly, so that only bone, not muscle, was in contact with the mat under him. The mere passage of blood through his arteries could throw his aim off. His crosshairs were locked just forward of the sentry’s ear. “On target,” he repeated.
“Fire,” the earpiece told him.
Say good night, Gracie, a small voice in his mind whispered. His finger pushed back gently on the set trigger, which snapped cleanly, and a gout of white flame exploded from the muzzle of the rifle. The flash obscured the sight picture for a brief moment, then cleared in time for him to see the bullet impact. There was a slight puff of gray-looking vapor from the far side of the head, and the body dropped straight down like a puppet with cut strings. No one inside would hear the shot, not through thick windows and stone walls from over three hundred meters away.
“Rifle Two-One. Target is down. Target is down. Center head,” Johnston reported.
“That’s a kill,” Lieutenant Harrison breathed over the intercom. From the helicopter’s perspective, the destruction of the sentry’s head looked quite spectacular. It was the first death he’d ever seen, and it struck him as something in a movie, not something real. The target hadn’t been a living being
to him, and now it would never be.
“Yep,” Malloy agreed, easing back on the cyclic. “Sergeant Nance—now!”
In the back, Nance pushed outward. The helicopter was still slowing, nose up now, as Malloy performed the rocking-chair maneuver to perfection.
Chavez pushed off with his feet, and went down the zip-line. It took less than two seconds of not-quite free-fall before he applied tension to the line to slow his descent, and his black, rubber-soled boots came down lightly on the flat roof. He immediately loosed his rope, and turned to watch his people do the same. Eddie Price ran over to the sentry’s body, kicked the head over with his boot, and turned, making a thumbs-up for his boss.
“Six, this is Team-2 Lead. On the roof. The sentry is dead,” he said into his microphone. “Proceeding now.” With that, Chavez turned to his people, waving his arms to the roof’s periphery. The Night Hawk was gone into the darkness, having hardly appeared to have stopped at all.
The castle roof was surrounded by the battlements associated with such places, vertical rectangles of stone behind which archers could shelter while loosing their arrows at attackers. Each man had one such shelter assigned, and they counted them off with their fingers, so that every man went to the right one. For this night, the men looped their rappelling ropes around them, then stepped into the gaps. When all of them were set up, they held up their hands. Chavez did the same, then dropped his as he kicked off the roof and slid down the rope to a point a meter to the right of a window, using his feet to stand off the wall. Paddy Connolly came down on the other side, reached to apply his Primacord around the edges, and inserted a radio-detonator on one edge. Then Paddy moved to his left, swinging on the rope as though it were a jungle vine to do the same to one other. Other team members took flash-bang grenades and held them in their hands.
