by Tom Clancy
“Hey, doc.” It was Benny, one of the security guys.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Falling asleep,” Benjamin Farmer replied. “The kids are playing pretty nice.”
“Yeah, they sure are.” It was so easy. Most had to be prodded a little to leave the room and go out to the courtyard for an hour of walking around every afternoon. But they had to be kept fit—which was to say, to simulate the amount of exercise they got on a normal day in Manhattan, staggering from one dreary corner to another.
“Damn, doc, I never knew anybody could put it away the way these guys do! I mean, I had to bring in a whole case of Grand-Dad today, and there’s only two bottles left.”
“That their favorite?” Killgore asked. He hadn’t paid much attention to that.
“Seems to be, sir. I’m a Jack Daniel’s man myself—but with me, maybe two a night, say, for Monday Night Football, if it’s a good game. I don’t drink water the way the kids drink hard booze.” A chuckle from the ex-Marine who ran the night security shift. A good man, Farmer. He did a lot of things with injured animals at the company’s rural shelter. He was also the one who’d taken to calling the test subjects the kids. It had caught on with the security staff and from them to the others. Killgore chuckled. You had to call them something, and lab rats just wasn’t respectful enough. After all, they were human beings, after a fashion, all the more valuable for their place in this test. He turned to see one of them—#6—pour himself another drink, wander back to his bed, and lie down to watch some TV before he passed out. He wondered what the poor bastard would dream about. Some did, and talked loudly in their sleep. Something to interest a psychiatrist, perhaps, or someone doing sleep studies. They all snored, to the point that when all were asleep it sounded like an old steam-powered railroad yard in there.
Choo-choo, Killgore thought, looking back down at his last bit of paperwork. Ten more minutes, and he could head home. Too late to put his kids to bed. Too bad. Well, in due course they would awaken to a new day and a new world, and wouldn’t that be some present to give them, however heavy and nasty the price for it might be. Hmph, the physician thought, I could use a drink myself.
“The future has never been so bright as this,” John Brightling told his audience, his demeanor even more charismatic after two glasses of a select California Chardonnay. “The bio-sciences are pushing back frontiers we didn’t even know existed fifteen years ago. A hundred years of basic research are coming to bloom even as we speak. We’re building on the work of Pasteur, Ehrlich, Salk, Sabin, and so many others. We see so far today because we stand on the shoulders of giants.
“Well,” John Brightling went on, “it’s been a long climb, but the top of the mountain is in sight, and we will get there in the next few years.”
“He’s smooth,” Liz Murray observed to her husband.
“Very,” FBI Director Dan Murray whispered back. “Smart, too. Jimmy Hicks says he’s the top guy in the world.”
“What’s he running for?”
“God, from what he said earlier.”
“Needs to grow a beard then.”
Director Murray nearly choked at that, then he was saved by the vibrating of his cellular phone. He discreetly left his seat to walk into the building’s large marble foyer. On flipping his phone open, it took fifteen seconds for the encryption system to synchronize with the base station calling him—which told him that it was FBI Headquarters.
“Murray.”
“Director, this is Gordon Sinclair in the Watch Center. So far the Swiss have struck out on ID-ing the other two. Prints are on their way to the BKA so they can take a look.” But if they hadn’t been printed somewhere along the line, that, too, would be a dry hole, and it would take a while to identify Model’s two pals.
“No additional casualties on the takedown?”
“No, sir, all four bad guys down for the count. All hostages safe and evacuated. They should all be back home now. Oh, Tim Noonan deployed on this operation, electronics weenie for one of the go-teams.”
“So, Rainbow works, eh?”
“It did this time, Director,” Sinclair judged.
“Make sure they send us the write-up on how the operation went down.”
“Yes, sir. I already e-mailed them about that.” Less than thirty people in the Bureau knew about Rainbow, though quite a few would be making guesses. Especially those HRT members who’d taken note of the fact that Tim Noonan, a third-generation agent, had dropped off the face of the earth. “How’s dinner going?”
“I prefer Wendy’s. More of the basic food groups. Anything else?”
“The OC case in New Orleans is close to going down, Billy Betz says. Three or four more days. Aside from that, nothing important happening.”
“Thanks, Gordy.” Murray thumbed the END button on his phone and pocketed it, then returned to the dining room after a look and a wave at two members of his protective detail. Thirty seconds later, he slid back into his seat, with a muted thump from his holstered Smith & Wesson automatic against the wood.
“Anything important?” Liz asked.
A shake of the head. “Routine.”
The affair broke up less than forty minutes after Brightling finished his speech and collected his award plaque. He held court yet again, albeit with a smaller group of fans this time, while drifting toward the door, outside of which waited his car. It was only five minutes to the Hay-Adams Hotel, across Lafayette Park from the White House. He had a corner suite on the top floor, and the hotel staff had thoughtfully left him a bottle of the house white in an ice bucket next to the bed, for his companion had come along. It was sad, Dr. John Brightling thought, removing the cork. He’d miss things like this, really miss them. But he had made the decision long before—not knowing when he’d started off that it could possibly work. Now he thought that it would, and the things he’d miss were ultimately of far less value than the things he’d get. And for the moment, he thought, looking at Jessica’s pale skin and stunning figure, he’d get something else that was pretty nice.
It was different for Dr. Carol Brightling. Despite her White House job, she drove her own car without even a bodyguard to her apartment off Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, her only companion there a calico cat named Jiggs, who, at least, came to the door to meet her, rubbing his body along her panty-hosed leg the moment the door was closed, and purring to show his pleasure at her arrival. He followed her into the bedroom, watching her change in the way of cats, interested and detached at the same time, and knowing what came next. Dressed only in a short robe, Carol Brightling walked into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, and got a treat, which she bent down to feed to Jiggs from her hand. Then she got herself a glass of ice water from the refrigerator door, and drank it down with two aspirin. It had all been her idea. She knew that all too well. But after so many years, it was still as hard as it had been at first. She’d given up so much more. She’d gotten the job she’d craved—somewhat to her surprise, as things had turned out, but she had the office in the right building, and now played a role in making policy on the issues that were important to her. Important policy on important topics. But was it worth it?
Yes! She had to think that, and, truly, she believed it, but the price, the price of it, was often so hard to bear. She bent down to lift up Jiggs, cradling him like the child she’d never had and walking to the bedroom where, again, he’d be the only one to share it with her. Well, a cat was far more faithful than a man could ever be. She’d learned that lesson over the years. In a few seconds, the robe was on the chair next to the bed, and she under the covers, with Jiggs atop them and between her legs. She hoped sleep would come a little more quickly tonight than it usually did. But she knew it would not, for her mind would not stop thinking about what was happening in another bed less than three miles away.
CHAPTER 5
RAMIFICATIONS
Daily PT started at 0630 and concluded with the five-mile run, timed to last exactly forty minutes. This morn
ing it ended at thirty-eight, and Chavez wondered if he and his team had an additional spring in their step from the successful mission. If so, was that good or bad? Killing fellow human beings wasn’t supposed to make you feel good, was it? A deep thought for a foggy English morning.
By the end of the run, everyone had a good sweat, which the hot showers took care of. Oddly, hygiene was a little more complicated for his team than for uniformed soldiers. Nearly everyone had longer hair than their respective armies permitted, so that they could look like grown-up, if somewhat shabby, businessmen when they donned their coats and ties for their first-class flights to wherever. Ding’s hair was the shortest, since at CIA he’d tried to keep it not too different from his time as staff sergeant in the Ninjas. It would have to grow for at least another month before it would be shaggy enough. He grunted at that thought, then stepped out of the shower. As Team-2 leader, he rated his own private facility, and he took the time to admire his body, always an object of pride for Domingo Chavez. Yeah, the exercise that had been so tough the first week had paid off. He hadn’t been much tougher than this in Ranger School at Fort Benning—and he’d been, what? Twenty-one then, just an E-4 and one of the smallest men in the class. It was something of an annoyance to Ding that, tall and rangy like her mom, Patsy had half an inch on him. But Patsy only wore flats, which kept it respectable—and nobody messed with him. Like his boss, he had the look of a man with whom one did not trifle. Especially this morning, he thought, while toweling off. He’d zapped a guy the previous night, just as fast and automatic an action as zipping his zipper. Tough shit, Herr Guttenach.
Back home, Patsy was already dressed in her greens. She was on an OB/GYN rotation at the moment, scheduled to perform—well, to assist on—a Cesarean section this morning at the local hospital where she was completing what in America would have been her year of internship. Next would be her pediatric rotation, which struck both of them as totally appropriate. Already on the table for him was bacon and eggs—the eggs in England seemed to have brighter yolks. He wondered if they fed their chickens differently here.
“I wish you’d eat better,” Patsy observed, again.
Domingo laughed, reaching for his morning paper, the Daily Telegraph. “Honey, my cholesterol is one-three-zero, my resting heart-rate is fifty-six. I am a lean, mean fighting machine, doctor!”
“But what about ten years from now?” Patricia Chavez, M.D., asked.
“I’ll have ten complete physicals between now and then, and I will adjust my lifestyle according to how those work out,” Domingo Chavez, Master of Science (International Relations), answered, buttering his toast. The bread in this country, he’d learned over the past six weeks, was just fabulous. Why did people knock English food? “Hell, Patsy, look at your dad. That old bastard is still in great shape.” Though he hadn’t run this morning—and at his best was hard-pressed to finish the five miles at the pace Team-2 set. Well, he was well over fifty. His shooting, however, hadn’t suffered very much at all. John had worked to make that clear to the go-team members. One of the best pistoleros Chavez had ever seen, and better still with a sniper rifle. He was dead-level with Weber and Johnston out to 400 meters. Despite the suit he wore to work, Rainbow Six was on everyone’s don’t-fuck-with list.
The front page had a story on the previous day’s events in Bern. Ding raced through it and found most of the details right. Remarkable. The Telegraph’s correspondent must have had good contacts with the cops . . . whom he gave credit for the takedown. Well, that was okay. Rainbow was supposed to remain black. No comment from the Ministry of Defense on whether the SAS had provided support to the Swiss police. That was a little weak. A flat “no” would have been better . . . but were that to be said, then a “no comment” spoken at some other time would be taken as a “yes.” So, yeah, that probably made sense. Politics was not a skill he’d acquired yet, at least not on the instinctive level. Dealing with the media frightened him more than facing loaded weapons—he had training for the latter but not for the former. His next grimace came when he realized that while CIA had an office of public affairs, Rainbow sure as hell didn’t. Well, in this business it probably didn’t pay to advertise. About that time, Patsy put on her jacket and headed for the door. Ding hurried after her to deliver the goodbye kiss, watched his wife walk to the family car, and hoped she did better driving on the left side of the road than he did. It made him slightly nuts and required steady concentration. The really crazy part was that the gearshift was on the wrong side of the car, but the pedals were the same as in American autos. It made Chavez a little schizophrenic, driving left-handed and right-footed. The worst part was the traffic circles the Brits seemed to like better than real interchanges. Ding kept wanting to turn right instead of left. It would be a hell of a stupid way to get killed. Ten minutes later, dressed in his day uniform, Chavez walked over to the Team-2 building for the second AAR.
Popov tucked his passbook in his coat pocket. The Swiss banker hadn’t even blinked at seeing the suitcase full of cash. A remarkable machine had counted the bills, like mechanical fingers riffling through a deck of playing cards, even checking the denominations as it did the counting. It had taken a total of forty-five minutes to get things fully arranged. The number on the account was his old KGB service number, and tucked in the passbook was the banker’s business card, complete with his Internet address for making wire transfers—the proper code-phrase had been agreed upon and written into his bank file. The topic of Model’s failed adventure of the previous day hadn’t come up. Popov figured he’d read the press reports in the International Herald Tribune, which he’d get at the airport.
His passport was American. The company had arranged to get him resident-alien status, and he was on his way to citizenship, which he found amusing, as he still had his Russian Federation passport, and two others from his previous career—with different names but the same photo—which he could still use if needed. Those were stashed in his travel briefcase, in a small compartment that only a very careful customs examiner would ever find, and then only if told ahead of time that there was something strange about the incoming traveler.
Two hours before his flight was scheduled to depart, he turned in his rental car, rode the bus to the international terminal, went through the usual rigmarole of checking in, and headed off to the first-class lounge for coffee and a croissant.
Bill Henriksen was a news junkie of the first order. On waking up, early as always, he immediately flipped his TV to CNN, often flipping to Fox News with his remote while he did his morning treadmill routine, frequently with a paper on the reading board as well. The front page of the New York Times covered the event in Bern, as did Fox News—oddly, CNN talked about it but didn’t show much. Fox did, using the feed from Swiss television, which allowed him to watch what could be seen of the takedown. Pure vanilla, Henriksen thought. Flash-bangs on the front doors—made the cameraman jump and go slightly off-target, as usual when they were that close—shooters in right behind them. No sounds of gunfire—they used suppressed weapons. In five seconds, it was all over. So, the Swiss had a properly trained SWAT team. No real surprise there, though he hadn’t really known about it. A few minutes later, one guy came out and lit a pipe. Whoever that was, probably the team commander, he had a little style, Henriksen thought, checking the mileage on the treadmill. The team dressed as such people usually did, in coal-gray fatigues, with Kevlar body armor. Uniformed cops went in to get the hostages out after about the right amount of time. Yeah, nicely and smoothly done—another way of saying that the criminals/terrorists—the news wasn’t clear on whether they were just robbers or political types—weren’t real smart. Well, whoever said they were? They’d have to choose better ones the next time if this thing were going to work. The phone would ring in a few minutes, he was sure, summoning him to do a brief TV spot. A nuisance but a necessary one.
That happened when he was in the shower. He’d long since had a phone installed just outside the door.
&nb
sp; “Yeah.”
“Mr. Henriksen?”
“Yeah, who’s this?” The voice wasn’t familiar.
“Bob Smith at Fox News New York. Have you seen coverage of the incident in Switzerland?”
“Yeah, matter of fact I just saw it on your network.”
“Any chance you could come in and give us some commentary?”
“What time?” Henriksen asked, knowing the response, and what his answer would be.
“Just after eight, if you could.”
He even checked his watch, an automatic and wasted gesture that nobody saw. “Yeah, I can do that. How long will I be on this time?”
“Probably four minutes or so.”
“Okay, I’ll be down there in about an hour.”
“Thank you, sir. The guard will be told to expect you.”
“Okay, see you in an hour.” The kid must be new, Henriksen thought, not to know that he was a regular commentator—why else would his name have been in the Fox rolodex?—and that the security guards all knew him by sight. A quick cup of coffee and a bagel got him out the door, into his Porsche 911, and across the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan.
Dr. Carol Brightling awoke, patted Jiggs on the top of his head, and stepped into the shower. Ten minutes later, a towel wrapped around her head, she opened the door and got the morning papers. The coffee machine had already made its two cups of Mountain-Grown Folger’s, and in the refrigerator was the plastic box full of melon sections. Next she switched on the radio to catch the morning edition of All Things Considered, beginning her news fix, which started here and would go on through most of the day. Her job in the White House was mainly reading . . . and today she had to meet with that bozo from the Department of Energy who still thought it important to build H-bombs, which she would advise the President against, which advice he would probably decline without direct comment to her.
