“You bet. Tomorrow I have to drive out and get some new boots. Is there a good store around here for outdoors stuff?”
“Half an hour away, U.S. Cavalry outlet. You go east two exits on the interstate,” Dr. Killgore advised.
“Great. I want to get ’em before all the new arrivals strip the stores of the good outdoors stuff.”
“Makes sense,” Killgore thought, then turned. “So, Dmitriy, what’s it like being a spy?”
“It is often very frustrating work,” Popov replied truthfully.
“Wow, this is some facility,” Ding observed. The stadium was huge, easily large enough to seat a hundred thousand people. But it would be hot here, damned hot, like being inside a huge concrete wok. Well, there were plenty of concessions in the concourses, and surely there’d be people circulating with Cokes and other cold drinks. And just off the stadium grounds were all manner of pubs for those who preferred beer. The lush grass floor of the stadium bowl was nearly empty at the moment, with just a few groundskeepers manicuring a few parts. Most of the track-and-field events would be here. The oval Tartan track was marked for the various distance and hurdle races, and there were the pits for the jumping events. A monster scoreboard and Jumbotron sat on the far end so that people could see instant replays of the important events, and Ding felt himself getting a little excited. He’d never been present for an Olympic competition, and he was himself enough of an athlete to appreciate the degree of dedication and skill that went into this sort of thing. The crazy part was that as good as his own people were, they were not the equal of the athletes—most of them little kids, to Ding’s way of thinking—who’d be marching in here tomorrow. Even his shooters probably wouldn’t win the pistol or rifle events. His men were generalists, trained to do many things, and the Olympic athletes were the ultimate specialists, trained to do a single thing supremely well. It had about as much relevance to life in the real world as a professional baseball game, but it would be a beautiful thing to watch for all that.
“Yes, we’ve spent a good deal of money to make it so,” Frank Wilkerson agreed.
“Where do you keep your reaction force?” Chavez asked. His host gestured and turned.
“This way.”
“Hey, that feels good,” Chavez said, entering the fine water fog.
“Yes, it does. It reduces the apparent temperature about fifteen degrees. I expect a lot of people will be coming here during the competition to cool down, and as you see, we have televisions to allow them to keep current on the goings-on.”
“That’ll come in handy, Frank. What about the athletes?”
“We have a similar arrangement in their access tunnels, and also the main tunnel they will use to march in, but out on the field, they’ll just have to sweat.”
“God help the marathon runners,” Chavez said.
“Quite,” Wilkerson agreed. “We will have medical people out there at various points. The extended weather forecast is for clear and hot weather, I’m afraid. But we have ample first-aid kiosks spotted about the various stadia. The velodrome will be another place where it’s sorely needed.”
“Gatorade,” Chavez observed after a second.
“What?”
“It’s a sports drink, water and lots of electrolytes to keep you from getting heatstroke.”
“Ah, yes, we have something similar here. Salt tablets as well. Buckets of the things.”
A few minutes later, they were in the security area. Chavez saw the Australian SAS troops lounging in air-conditioned comfort, their own TVs handy so that they could watch the games—and other sets to keep an eye on choke points. Wilkerson handled the introductions, after which most of the troops came over for a handshake and a “G’day,” all delivered with the open friendliness that all Aussies seemed to have. His sergeants started chatting with the Aussie ones, and respect was soon flowing back and forth. The trained men saw themselves in the others, and their international fraternity was an elite one.
The facility was filling rapidly. He’d been alone on the fourth floor the first day, Popov reflected, but not now. At least six of the nearby rooms were occupied, and looking outside he could see that the parking lot was filling up with private cars that had been driven in that day. He figured it was a two- or three-day drive from New York, and so the order to bring people out had been given recently—but where were the moving vans? Did the people intend to live here indefinitely? The hotel building was comfortable—for a hotel, but that was not the same as comfort in a place of permanent residence. Those people with small children might quickly go mad with their little ones in such close proximity all the time. He saw a young couple talking with another, and caught part of the conversation as he walked past. They were evidently excited about the wild game they’d seen driving in. Yes, deer and such animals were pretty, Popov thought in mute agreement, but hardly worth so animated a conversation on the subject. Weren’t these trained scientists who worked for Horizon Corporation? They spoke like Young Pioneers out of Moscow for the first time, goggling at the wonders of a state farm. Better to see the grand opera house in Vienna or Paris, the former KGB officer thought, as he entered his room. But then he had another thought. These people were all lovers of nature. Perhaps he would examine their interests himself. Weren’t there videotapes in his room? . . . Yes, he found them and slipped one into his VCR, hitting the PLAY button and switching on his TV.
Ah, he saw, the ozone layer, something people in the West seemed remarkably exercised about. Popov thought he would begin to show concern when the Antarctic penguins who lived under the ozone hole started dying of sunburn. But he watched and listened anyway. It turned out that the tape had been produced by some group called Earth First, and the content, he soon saw, was as polemic in content as anything ever produced by the USSR’s state-run film companies. These people were indeed very exercised about the subject, calling for the end of various industrial chemicals—and how would air-conditioning work without them? Give up air-conditioning to save penguins from too much ultraviolet radiation? What was this rubbish?
That tape lasted fifty-two minutes by his watch. The next one he selected, produced by the same group, was concerned with dams. It started off by castigating the “environmental criminals” who’d commissioned and built Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But that was a power dam, wasn’t it? Didn’t people need electricity? Wasn’t the electricity generated by power dams the cleanest there was? Wasn’t this very videotape produced in Hollywood using the very electricity that this dam produced? Who were these people—
—and why were their tapes here in his hotel room? Popov wondered. Druids? The word came to him again. Sacrificers of virgins, worshipers of trees—if that, then they’d come to a strange place. There were precious few trees to be seen on the wheat-covered plains of western Kansas.
Druids? Worshipers of nature? He let the tape rewind and checked out some of the periodicals and found one published by this Earth First group.
What sort of name was that? Earth First—ahead of what? Its articles screamed in outrage over various insults to the planet. Well, strip mining was an ugly thing, he had to admit. The planet was supposed to be beautiful and appreciated. He enjoyed the sight of a green forest as much as the next man, and the same was true of the purple rock of treeless mountains. If there were a God, then He was a fine artist, but . . . what was this?
Humankind, the second article said, was a parasitic species on the surface of the planet, destroying rather than nurturing. People had killed off numerous species of animals and plants, and in doing so, people had forfeited their right to be here . . . he read on into the polemic.
This was errant rubbish, Popov thought. Did a gazelle faced with an attacking lion call for the police or a lawyer to plead his right to be alive? Did a salmon swimming upstream to spawn protest against the jaws of the bear that plucked it from the water and then stripped it apart to feed its own needs? Was a cow the equal of a man? In whose eyes?
It had been
a matter of almost religious faith in the Soviet Union that as formidable and as rich as Americans were, they were mad, cultureless, unpredictable people. They were greedy, they stole wealth from others, and they exploited such people for their own selfish gain. He’d learned the falsehood of that propaganda on his first field assignment abroad, but he’d also learned that the Western Europeans, as well, thought Americans to be slightly mad—and if this Earth First group were representative of America, then surely they were right. But Britain had people who spray-painted those who wore fur coats. Mink had a right to live, they said. A mink? It was a well-insulated rodent, a tubular rat with a fine coat of fur. This rodent had a right to be alive? Under whose law?
That very morning they’d objected to his suggestion to kill the—what was it? Prairie dogs, yet another tubular rat, and one whose holes could break the legs of the horses they rode—but what was it they’d said? They belonged there, and the horses and people did not? Why such solicitude for a rat? The noble animals, the hawks and bears, the deer, and those strange-looking antelope, they were pretty, but rats? He’d had similar talks with Brightling and Henriksen, who also seemed unusually loving of the things that lived and crawled outside. He wondered how they felt about mosquitoes and fire ants.
Was this druidic rubbish the key to his large question? Popov thought about it, and decided that he needed an education, if only to assure himself that he hadn’t entered the employ of a madman . . . not a madman, only a mass murderer? . . . That was not a comforting thought at the moment.
“So how was the flight?”
“About what you’d expect, a whole fucking day trapped in a 747,” Ding groused over the phone.
“Well, at least it was first class,” Clark observed.
“Great, next time you can have the pleasure, John. How’re Patsy and JC?” Chavez asked, getting on to the important stuff.
“They’re just fine. The grandpa stuff isn’t all that bad.” Clark could have said that he hadn’t changed a single diaper yet. Sandy had seized on the ancillary baby-in-the-house duties with utter ruthlessness, allowing her husband to only hold the little guy. He supposed that such instincts were strong in women, and didn’t want to interfere with her self-assumed rice bowl. “He’s a cute little guy, Domingo. You done good, kid.”
“Gee, thanks, Dad” was the ironic reply from ten thousand miles away. “Patsy?”
“She’s doing fine, but not getting a hell of a lot of sleep. JC only sleeps about three hours at a stretch at the moment. But that’ll change by the time you get back. Want to talk to her?” John asked next.
“What do you think, Mr. C?”
“Okay, hold on. Patsy!” he called. “It’s Domingo.”
“Hey, baby,” Chavez said in his hotel room.
“How are you, Ding? How was the flight out?”
“Long, but no big deal,” he lied. One doesn’t show weakness before one’s own wife. “They’re treating us pretty nice, but it’s hot here. I forgot what hot weather is like.”
“Will you be there for the opening?”
“Oh, yeah, Pats, we all have security passes, courtesy of the Aussies. How’s JC?”
“Wonderful” was the inevitable reply. “He’s so beautiful. He doesn’t cry much. It’s pretty wonderful to have him, y’know?”
“How are you sleeping, baby?”
“Well, I get a few hours here and there. No big deal. Internship was a lot worse.”
“Well, let your mom help you out, okay?”
“She does,” Patsy assured her husband.
“Okay, I need to talk to your dad again—business stuff. Love ya, baby.”
“Love you, too, Ding.”
“Domingo, I think you’re going to be okay as a son-in-law,” the male voice said three seconds later. “I’ve never seen Patricia smile so much, and I guess that’s your doing.”
“Gee, thanks, Pop,” Chavez replied, checking his U.K. watch. It was just after seven in the morning there, whereas in Sydney it was four in the hot afternoon.
“Okay, how are things there?” Clark asked.
“Good,” Chavez told Rainbow Six. “Our point of contact is a short colonel named Frank Wilkerson. Solid troop. His people are pretty good, well trained, confident, nice and loose. Their relationship with the police is excellent. Their reaction plans look good to me—short version, John, they don’t need us here any more than they need a few more kangaroos in the outback I flew over this morning.”
“So, what the hell, enjoy the games.” Bitch as he might, Chavez and his people were getting about ten grand worth of free holiday, Clark thought, and that wasn’t exactly a prison sentence.
“It’s a waste of our time, John,” Chavez told his boss.
“Yeah, well, you never know, do you, Domingo?”
“I suppose,” Chavez had to agree. They’d just spent several months proving that you never really knew.
“Your people okay?”
“Yeah, they’re treating us pretty nice. Good hotel rooms, close enough to walk to the stadium, but we have official cars for that. So, I guess we’re just paid tourists, eh?”
“Yep, like I said, Ding, enjoy the games.”
“How’s Peter doing?”
“Bouncing back okay, but he’ll be out of business for at least a month, more like six weeks. The docs here are okay. Chin’s legs are going to be a pain in the ass. Figure two and a half months for him to get back in harness.”
“He must be pissed.”
“Oh, he is.”
“What about our prisoners?”
“Police are interrogating them now,” Clark answered. “We’re hearing more about this Russian guy, but nothing we can really use yet. The Irish cops are trying to ID the cocaine by manufacturer—it’s medical quality, from a real drug company. Ten pounds of pure coke. Street value would buy a friggin’ airliner. The Garda is worried that it might be the start of a trend, the IRA splinter groups getting into drugs big-time, but that’s not our problem.”
“This Russian guy—Serov, right?—he’s the guy who gave them the intel on us?”
“That’s affirmative, Domingo, but where he got it we don’t know, and our Irish guests aren’t giving us anything more than what we already have—probably all they know. Grady isn’t talking at all. And his lawyer’s bitching about how we interrogated him in the recovery room.”
“Well, isn’t that just a case of tough shit?”
“I hear you, Ding,” Clark chuckled. It wasn’t as though they’d be using the information in a trial. There was even a videotape of Grady’s leaving the scene from the BBC news crew that had turned up at Hereford. Sean Grady would be imprisoned for a term defined by “the Queen’s pleasure,” which meant life plus forever, unless the European Union treaty interfered with it. Timothy O’Neil and the people who’d surrendered with him might get out around the time they turned sixty, Bill Tawney had told him the previous day. “Anything else?”
“Nope, everything’s looking good here, John. I’ll report in the same time tomorrow.”
“Roger that, Domingo.”
“Kiss Patsy for me.”
“I’ll even manage a hug if you want.”
“Yeah, thanks, Grandpa,” Ding agreed with a smile.
“Bye,” he heard, and the line went dead.
“Not a bad time to be away from home, boss,” Mike Pierce observed from a few feet away. “The first two weeks can be a real pain in the ass. This way, by the time you get back home, the little guy’ll be sleeping four, five hours. Maybe more if you’re really lucky,” predicted the father of three sons.
“Mike, you see any problems here?”
“Like you told Six, the Aussies have it under control. They look like good people, man. Us bein’ here’s a waste of time, but what the hell, we get to see the Olympics.”
“I suppose so. Any questions?”
“Do we carry?” Pierce asked.
“Pistols only, and casual clothes. Your security pass will take care of
that. We pair off, you with me, and George with Homer. We take our tactical radios, too, but that’s all.”
“Yes, sir. Works for me. How’s the jet lag?”
“How’s it with you, Mike?”
“Like I been put in a bag and beat with a baseball bat.” Pierce grinned. “But it’ll be better tomorrow. Shit, I’d hate to think that gutting it through today won’t help some tomorrow. Hey, tomorrow morning, we can work out with the Aussies, do our running on the Olympic track. Pretty cool, eh?”
“I like it.”
“Yeah, it would be nice to meet up with some of those pussy athletes, see how fast they can run with weapons and body armor.” At his best and fully outfitted, Pierce could run a mile in thirty seconds over four minutes, but he’d never broken the four-minute mark, even in running shoes and shorts. Louis Loiselle claimed to have done it once, and Chavez believed him. The diminutive Frenchman was the right size for a distance runner. Pierce was too big in height and across the shoulders. A Great Dane rather than a greyhound.
“Be cool, Mike. We have to protect them from the bad guys. That tells us who the best men are,” Chavez observed through the jet lag.
“Roge-o, sir.” Pierce would remember that one.
Popov awoke for no particular reason he could see, except that—yes, another Gulfstream jet had just landed. He imagined that these were the really important ones for this project thing. The junior ones, or those with families, either drove out or flew commercial. The business jet sat there in the lights, the stairs deployed from their bay in the aircraft, and people walked out to the waiting cars that swiftly drove away from the aircraft and toward the hotel building. Popov wondered who it was, but he was too far away to recognize faces. He’d probably see them in the cafeteria in the morning. Dmitriy Arkadeyevich got a drink of water from the bathroom and returned to his bed. This facility was filling up rapidly, though he still didn’t know why.
Rainbow Six (1997) Page 80
