by Tom Clancy
“You always say that, people like you. We have told you what we require. If you do not meet those requirements, then their blood is on your hands. Ende,” the voice said, and the line went dead.
Captain Altmark was both surprised and discomforted by the cold decisiveness on the other end of the phone and by the abrupt termination of the call. He looked up at Paul Bellow as he replaced the receiver. “Herr Doktor?”
“The woman is the dangerous one. They’re both smart. They’ve definitely thought this one through, and they will kill a hostage to make their point, sure as hell.”
“Man-and-woman team,” Price was saying over the phone. “German, ages . . . late thirties, early forties as a guess. Maybe older. Bloody serious,” he added for Bill Tawney.
“Thanks, Eddie, stand by,” came the reply. Price could hear the fingers tapping on the keyboard.
“Okay, lad, I have three possible teams for you. Up-loading them now.”
“Thank you, sir.” Price opened his laptop again. “Ding?”
“Yeah?”
“Intelligence coming in.”
“We have at least five terrs in there, boss,” Patterson said, moving his finger around the prints. “Too quick for them to move around. Here, here, here, and two upstairs here. The placement makes sense. They probably have portable radios, too. The house is too big for them to communicate by shouting around at each other.”
Noonan heard that and went off to his radio-intercept equipment. If their friends were using hand-held radios, then their frequency range was well known, determined by international treaty in fact, probably not the military sets the team used, and probably not encrypted. In seconds he had his computerized scanner set up and working off multiple antennas, which would allow him to triangulate on sources inside the house. These were coupled into his laptop computer, already overlaid with a diagram of the Schloss. Three spear-carriers was about right, Noonan thought. Two was too few. Three was close to the right number, though the truck in front of the building could have easily held more. Two plus three, two plus four, two plus five? But they’d all be planning to leave, and the helicopter wasn’t all that big. That made the total terrorist count at five to seven. A guess, and they couldn’t go with a guess—well, they’d prefer not to—but it was a starting place. So many guesses. What if they were not using portable radios? What if they used cell phones? What if a lot of things, Noonan thought. You had to start somewhere, gather all the information you could, and then act on it. The problem with people like this was that they always decided the pace of the event. For all their stupidity and their criminal intent, which Noonan regarded as a weakness, they did control the pace, they decided when things happened. The team could alter it a little by cajolery—that was Dr. Bellow’s part—but when you got down to it, well, the bad guys were the only ones willing to do murder, and that was a card that made a noise when it came down on the table. There were ten hostages inside, Ostermann, his three business assistants, and six people who looked after the house and grounds. Every one of them had a life and a family and the expectation to keep both. Team-2’s job was to make sure that happened. But the bad guys still controlled too much, and this special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation didn’t like that very much. Not for the first time, he wished he was one of the shooters, able, in due course, to go in and execute the takedown. But, good as he was at weapons and the physical side, he was better trained on the technical aspects of the mission. That was his area of personal expertise, and he served the mission best by sticking with his instruments. He didn’t, however, have to like it.
“So, what’s the score, Ding?”
“Not all that good, Mr. C.” Chavez turned to survey the building again. “Very difficult to approach the building because of the open ground, therefore difficult to spike and get tactical intelligence. We have two primary and probably three secondary subjects who seem professional and serious. I’m thinking in terms of letting them out to go to the helicopter and taking them down then. Snipers in place. But with the number of subjects, this might not be real pretty, John.”
Clark looked at the display in his command center. He had continuous comm links with Team-2, including their computer displays. As before, Peter Covington was beside him to kibitz. “Might as well be a moated bloody castle,” the British officer had observed earlier. He’d also noted the need for helicopter pilots as a permanent part of the team.
“One other thing,” Chavez said. “Noonan says we need jamming gear for the cell phone freaks. We have a few hundred civilians around, and if one has a shoe phone, he can talk to our friends inside, tell them what we’re doing. No way in hell we can prevent that without jamming gear. Write that one down, Mr. C.”
“Noted, Domingo,” Clark replied, looking over at David Peled, his chief technical officer.
“I can take care of that in a few days,” Peled told his boss. Mossad had the right sort of equipment. Probably so did some American agencies. He’d find out in a hurry. Noonan, David told himself, was very good for a former policeman.
“Okay, Ding, you are released to execute at discretion. Good luck, my boy.”
“Gee, thanks, Dad” was the ironic reply. “Team-2, out.” Chavez killed the radio and tossed the microphone back at the box. “Price!” he called.
“Yes, sir.” The Sergeant Major materialized at his side.
“We have discretionary release,” the leader told his XO.
“Marvelous, Major Chavez. What do you propose, sir?”
The situation had to be unfavorable, Ding told himself, if Price had reverted back to sirring him.
“Well, let’s see what we got in the way of assets, Eddie.”
Klaus Rosenthal was Ostermann’s head gardener, and at seventy-one the oldest member of the domestic staff. His wife was at home, he was sure, in her bed with a nurse in close attendance handling her medications, and worrying about him he was sure, and that worry could be dangerous to her. Hilda Rosenthal had a progressive heart condition that had invalided her over the past three years. The state medical system had provided the necessary care for her, and Herr Ostermann had assisted as well, sending a friend of his, a full professor from Vienna’s Algemeine Krankenhaus, to oversee the case, and a new drug-therapy treatment had actually improved Hilda’s condition somewhat, but the fear she’d be feeling for him now certainly would not help, and that thought was driving Klaus mad. He was in the kitchen along with the rest of the domestic staff. He’d been inside getting a glass of water when they’d arrived—had he been outside he might well have escaped and raised the alarm and so helped to aid his employer, who’d been so considerate to all his staff, and Hilda! But luck had been against that when these swine had stormed into the kitchen with their weapons showing. Young ones, late twenties, the close one, whose name Rosenthal didn’t know, was either a Berliner or from West Prussia, judging by his accent, and he’d recently been a skinhead, or so it appeared from the uniform-length stubble on his hatless head. A product of the DDR, the now-defunct East Germany. One of the new Nazis who’d grown out of that fallen communist nation. Rosenthal had met the old ones at Belzec concentration camp as a boy, and though he’d managed to survive that experience, the return of the terror of having one’s life continue only at the whim of a madman with cruel piglike eyes . . . Rosenthal closed his eyes. He still had the nightmares that went along with the five-digit number tattooed on his forearm. Once a month he still awoke on sweaty sheets after reliving the former reality of watching people march into a building from which no one ever emerged alive . . . and always in the nightmare someone with a cruel young SS face beckons to him to follow them in there, too, because he needs a shower. Oh, no, he protests in the dream, Hauptsturmführer Brandt needs me in the metalworking shop. Not today, Jude, the young SS noncom says, with that ghastly smile, Komm jetzt zum Brausebad. Every time he walks as bidden, for what else could one do, right to the door—and then every time he awakes, damp with perspiration, and sure that had he not awa
kened, he would not have awakened at all, just like all the people he’d watched march that way . . .
There are many kinds of fear, and Klaus Rosenthal had the worst of all. His was the certainty that he would die at the hands of one of them, the bad Germans, the ones who simply didn’t recognize or care about the humanity of others, and there was no comfort in the certainty of it.
And that kind wasn’t all gone, wasn’t all dead yet. One was right in his field of view, looking back at him, his machine gun in his hands, looking at Rosenthal and the others in the kitchen like Objekte, mere objects. The other staff members, all Christians, had never experienced this, but Klaus Rosenthal had, and he knew what to expect—and knew that it was a certainty. His nightmare was real, risen from the past to fulfill his destiny, and then also kill Hilda, for her heart would not survive—and what could he do about it? Before, the first time, he’d been an orphaned boy apprenticed to a jeweler, where he’d learned to make fine metal items, which trade had saved his life—which trade he’d never followed afterward, so horrid were the memories associated with it. Instead he found the peace of working in the soil, making living things grow pretty and healthy. He had the gift; Ostermann had recognized it and told him that he had a job for life at this Schloss. But that gift didn’t matter to this Nazi with stubbly hair and a gun in his hands.
Ding supervised the placement of the lights. Captain Altmark walked with him to each truck, then they both told the driver exactly where to go. When the light trucks were in place, and their light masts raised, Chavez returned to his team and sketched out the plan. It was after 11 now. It was amazing how fast time went when you needed more of it.
The helicopter crew was there, mostly sitting still, drinking coffee like good aviators, and wondering what the hell came next. It turned out that the copilot had a passing resemblance to Eddie Price, which Ding decided to make use of as a final backup part of his plan.
At 11:20, he ordered the lights switched on. The front and both sides of the schloss were bathed in yellow-white light, but not the back, which projected a triangular shadow all the way to the helicopter and beyond into the trees.
“Oso,” Chavez said, “get over to Dieter and set up close to there.”
“Roger, ’mano.” First Sergeant Vega hoisted his M-60 onto his shoulder and made his way through the woods.
Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson had the hardest part. They were dressed in their night greens. The coveralls over their black “ninja suits” looked like graph paper, light green background crosshatched in darker green lines, making blocks perhaps an eighth inch square. Some of the blocks were filled with the same dark green in random, squared-off patternless patterns. The idea dated back to World War II Luftwaffe night fighters whose designers had decided that the night was dark enough, and that black-painted fighter aircraft were easier to spot because they were darker than the night itself. These coveralls worked in principle and in exercises. Now they’d see if they worked in the real world. The blazing lights would help; aimed at and somewhat over the Schloss, they’d serve to create an artificial well of darkness into which the green suits should disappear. They’d drilled it at Hereford often enough, but never with real lives at risk. That fact notwithstanding, Tomlinson and Loiselle moved out from different directions, keeping inside the triangular shadow all the way in. It took them twenty minutes of crawling.
“So, Altmark,” Hans Fürchtner said at 11:45, “are the arrangements set, or must we kill one of our hostages in a few minutes?”
“Please, do not do that, Herr Wolfgang. We have the helicopter crew on the way now, and we are working with the airline to get the aircraft released to us and ready for the flight. It is more difficult than you imagine to do these things.”
“In fifteen minutes we shall see how difficult it is, Herr Altmark.” And the line went dead.
Bellow didn’t need a translator. The tone was enough. “He will do it,” the psychiatrist told Altmark and Chavez. “The deadline is for real.”
“Get the flight crew out,” Ding ordered at once. Three minutes later, a marked police car approached the helicopter. Two men got out and entered the Sikorsky as the car drove away. Two minutes after that, the rotor started turning. Then Chavez keyed his command microphone.
“Team, this is Lead. Stand-to. I repeat, stand-to.”
“Excellent,” Fürchtner said. He could barely see the turning rotor, but the blinking flying lights told the tale. “So, we begin. Herr Ostermann, stand up!”
Petra Dortmund made her way downstairs ahead of the important hostages. She frowned, wondering if she should be disappointed that they’d not killed this Dengler person to show their resolve. That time could come later when they started the serious interrogation aboard the airliner—and maybe Dengler knew all that Ostermann did. If so, killing him might be a tactical mistake. She activated her radio and called the rest of her people. They were assembling in the foyer as she came down the main staircase, along with the six hostages from the kitchen. No, she decided at the door, it would be better to kill a female hostage. That would have a greater impact on the police forces outside, all the more so if she were killed by another woman. . . .
“Are you ready?” Petra asked, receiving nods from the other four of her crew. “It will go as we planned,” she told them. These people were disappointing ideologically, despite their having grown up and been educated in a proper socialist country—three of them even had military training, which had included political indoctrination. But they knew their jobs, and had carried them out to this point. She could ask for little more. The house staff was coming in from the kitchen area.
One of the cooks was having trouble walking, and that annoyed the stubble-headed swine, Rosenthal saw, as he stopped by the main food-preparation table. They were taking him, he knew, taking him to die, and as in his nightmare he was doing nothing! The realization came to him so suddenly as to cause a crippling wave of headachelike pain. His body twisted left, and he saw the table—and on it a small paring knife. His head snapped forward, saw the terrorists looking at Maria, the cook. In that moment, he made his decision, and snapped up the knife, tucking it up his right sleeve. Perhaps fate would give him a chance. If so, Klaus Rosenthal promised himself, this time he’d take it.
“Team-2, this is Lead,” Chavez said over the radio links. “We should have them start to come out shortly. Everybody check in.” He listened to two double clicks first of all, from Loiselle and Tomlinson close to the Schloss, then the names.
“Rifle Two-One,” Homer Johnston said. His night-vision system was now attached to his telescopic sight and trained rigidly on the building’s main rear doors, as the rifleman commanded his breathing into a regular pattern.
“Rifle Two-Two,” Weber called in a second later.
“Oso,” Vega reported. He licked his lips as he brought his weapon up to his shoulder, his face covered with camouflage paint.
“Connolly.”
“Lincoln.”
“McTyler.”
“Patterson.”
“Pierce.” They all reported from their spots on the grass.
“Price,” the sergeant major reported from the left-side front seat of the helicopter.
“Okay, team, we are weapons-free. Normal rules of engagement in effect. Stay sharp, people,” Chavez added unnecessarily. It was hard for the commander to stop talking in such a case. His position was eighty yards away from the helicopter, marginal range for his MP-10, with his NVGs aimed at the building.
“Door opening,” Weber reported a fraction before Johnston.
“I have movement,” Rifle Two-One confirmed.
“Captain Altmark, this is Chavez, kill the TV feed now,” Ding ordered on his secondary radio.
“Ja, I understand,” the police captain replied. He turned and shouted an order at the TV director. The cameras would stay on but would not broadcast, and the tapes from this point on were considered classified information. The signal going out on the airways now m
erely showed talking heads.
“Door open now,” Johnston said from his sniper perch. “I see one hostage, looks like a male cook, and a subject, female, dark hair, holding a pistol.” Sergeant Johnston commanded himself to relax, taking his finger off the double-set triggers of his rifle. He couldn’t shoot now without a direct order from Ding, and that order would not come in such a situation. “Second hostage in view, it’s Little Man,” he said, meaning Dengler. Ostermann was Big Man, and the female secretaries were Blondie and Brownie, so named for their hair color. They didn’t have photos for the domestic staff, hence no names for them. Known bad guys were “subjects.”
They hesitated at the door, Johnston saw. Had to be a scary time for them, though how scary it was they would not and could not know. Too fucking bad, he thought, centering the crosshair reticle on her face from over two hundred yards away—which distance was the equivalent of ten feet for the rifleman. “Come on out, honey,” he breathed. “We have something real special for you and your friends. Dieter?” he asked, keying his radio.
“On target, Homer,” Rifle Two-Two replied. “We know this face, I think . . . I cannot recall the name. Leader, Rifle Two-Two—”
“Rifle Two, Lead.”
“The female subject, we have seen her face recently. She is older now, but I know this face. Baader-Meinhof, Red Army Faction, one of those, I think, works with a man. Marxist, experienced terrorist, murderer . . . killed an American soldier, I think.” None of which was particularly breaking news, but a known face was a known face.
