"I rather admire the Ethiopians' approach to situations like this," Stanley observed. He was sipping tea.

   "What's that?" Chavez asked tiredly.

   "Some years ago they had a hijacking attempt on their national flag carrier. There happened to be security chap aboard, and they got control of the situation. Then they strapped their charges in first-class seats, wrapped towels around their necks to protect the upholstery, and cut their throats, right there on the aircraft. And you know-"

   "Gotten," Ding observed. Nobody had messed with that airline since. "Simple, but effective."

   "Quite." He set his cup down. "I hope this sort of thing doesn't happen too often."

   The three officers looked out the windows to see the runway lights just before the 777 thumped down at RCAF Gander. There was a muted series of cheers and a smattering of applause from aft. The airliner slowed and then taxied off to the military facilities, where it stopped– The front-right door was opened, and a scissors lift truck moved to it, slowly and carefully.

   John, Ding, and Alistair unsnapped their seat belts and moved toward the door, keeping an eye on the three hijackers as they did so. The first aboard the aircraft was a RCAF officer with a pistol belt and white lanyard, followed by three men in civilian clothes who had to be cops.

   "You're Mr. Clark?" the officer asked.

   "That's right." John pointed. "There's your three suspects, I think the term is." He smiled tiredly at that. The cops moved to deal with them.

   "Alternate transport is on the way, about an hour out," the Canadian officer told him.

   "Thank you." The three moved to collect their carryon baggage, and in two cases, their wives. Patsy was asleep and had to be awakened. Sandy had gotten back into her hook. Two minutes later, all five of them were on the ground, shuffling into one of the RCAF cars. As soon as they pulled away, the aircraft started moving again, taxiing to the civilian terminal so that the passengers could get off and stretch while the 777 was serviced and refueled.

   "How do we get to England?" Ding asked, after getting his wife bedded down in the unused ready room.

   "Your Air Force is sending a VC-20. There will be people at Heathrow to collect your bags. There's a Colonel Byron coming for your three prisoners," the senior cop explained.

   "Here are their weapons." Stanley handed over three airsick bags with the disassembled pistols inside. "Browning M-1935s, military finish. No explosives. They really are bloody amateurs. Basques, I think. They seem to have been after the Spanish ambassador to Washington. His wife was in the seat next to mine. Senora Constanza de Monterosa – the wine family. They bottle the most marvelous clarets and Madeiras. I think you will find that this was an unauthorized operation."

   "And who exactly are you?" the cop asked. Clark handled it.

   "We can't answer that. You're sending the hijackers right back?"

   "Ottawa has instructed us to do that under the Hijacking Treaty. Look, I have to say something to the press.

   "Tell them that three American law enforcement officers happened to be aboard and helped to subdue the idiots," John told him.

   "Yeah, that's close enough," Chavez agreed with a grin. First arrest I ever made, John. Damn, I forgot to give them their rights," he added. He was weary enough to think that enormously funny.

   They were beyond filthy, the receiving team saw. That was no particular surprise. Neither was the fact that they smelled bad enough to gag a skunk. That would have to wait. The litters were carried off the truck into the building ten miles west of Binghamton. New York, in the hill country of central New York State. In the clean room, all ten were sprayed in the face from a squeeze bottle much like that used to clean windows. It was done one at a time to all of them, then half were given injections into the arm. Both groups of five got steel bracelets, numbered 1 to 10. Those with even numbers got the injections. The odd numbered control group did not. With this task done, the ten homeless were carried off to the bunk room to sleep off the wine and the drugs. The truck which had delivered them was already gone, heading west for Illinois and a return to its regular duties. The driver hadn't even known what he'd done, except to drive.

CHAPTER 1
MEMO

   The VC-20B flight was somewhat lacking in amenities the food consisted of sandwiches and an undistinguished wine but the seats were comfortable and the ride smooth enough that everyone slept until the wheels and flaps came down at RAF Northholt, a military airfield just west of London. As the USAF G-IV taxied to the ramp, John remarked on the age of the buildings.

   "Spitfire base from the Battle of Britain," Stanley explained, stretching in his seat. "We let private business jets use it as well."

   "We'll be back and forth outta here a lot, then," Ding surmised at once, rubbing his eyes and wishing for coffee. "What time is it?"

   "Just after eight, local-Zulu time, too, isn't it''"

   "Quite," Alistair confirmed, with a sleepy grunt.

   Just then the rain started, making for a proper welcome to British soil. It was a hundred-yard walk to the reception building, where a British official stamped their passports and officially welcomed them to his country before going back to his breakfast tea and newspaper.

   Three cars waited outside, all of them black Daimler limousines, which headed off the base, then west, and south for Hereford. This was proof that he was a civilian bureaucrat, Clark told himself in the lead car. Otherwise they'd have used helicopters. But Britain wasn't entirely devoid of civilization. They stopped at a roadside McDonald's for Egg McMuffins and coffee. Sandy snorted at the cholesterol intake. She'd been chiding John about it for months. Then she thought about the previous night.

   "John?"

   "Yes, honey?"

   "Who were they`.?"

   "Who, the guys on the airplane''" He looked over and got a nod. "Not sure. probably Basque separatists. It looked like they were after the Spanish ambassador, but they screwed up big-time. He wasn't aboard, just his wife."

   "They were trying to hijack the airplane?"

   "Yep, they sure were."

   "Isn't that scary?"

   John nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, it is. Well, would have been scarier if they were competent, but they weren't." An inner smile. Boy, did they ever pick the wrong fight! But he couldn't laugh about it now, not with his wife sitting next to him, on the wrong side of the road-a fact that had him looking up in some irritation. It felt very wrong to be on the left side of the road, driving along at . . . eighty miles per hour? Damn. Didn't they have speed limits here?

   "What'll happen to them?" Sandy persisted.

   'There's an international treaty. The Canadians will ship them back to the States for trial-Federal Court. They'll be tried, convicted, and imprisoned for air piracy. They'll be behind bars for a long time." And they were lucky at that, Clark didn't add. Spain might well have been a little more unpleasant about it.

   "First time in a long time something like that happened."

   "Yep." Her husband agreed. You had to be a real dolt ;u hijack airplanes, but dolts, it appeared, were not yet an endangered species. That was why he was the Six of an orginization called Rainbow. There is good news and there is bad news, the memo he'd written had begun. As usual, it wasn't couched in bureaucratese; it was a language Clark had never quite learned despite his thirty years in CIA.

   With the demise of the Soviet Union and other nation states with political positions adverse to American and Western interests, the likelihood of a major international confrontation is at an all-time low. This, clearly, is the best of good news.

   But along with that we must face the fact that there remain many experienced and trained international terrorists still roaming the world, some with lingering contacts with national intelligence agencies – plus the fact that some nations, while not desirous of a direct confrontation with American or other Western nations, could still make use of the remaining terrorist `free agents "for more narrow political goals.

   If anything, this problem is very likely to grow, since under the previous world situation, the major nation states placed firm limits on terrorist activity-these limits enforced by controlled access to weapons, funding, training, and safehavens.

   It seems likely that the current world situation will invert the previous "understanding" enjoyed by the major countries. The price of support, weapons, training, and safehavens might well become actual terrorist activity, not the ideological purity previously demanded by sponsoring nation states.

   The most obvious solution to this-probably-increasing problem will be a new multinational counterterrorist team.

   I propose the code name Rainbow. I further propose that the organization be based in the United Kingdom. The reasons for this are simple:

   • The UK currently, owns and operates the Special Air Service, the world's foremost-that is, most experienced-special operations agency.

   • London is the world's most accessible city in terms of commercial air travel-in addition to which the SAS has a very cordial relationship with British Airways.

   • The legal environment is particularly advantageous, due to press restrictions possible under British law but not American.

   • The long-standing "special relationship" between American and British governmental agencies.

   For all of these reasons, the proposed special-operations team, composed of US., UK, and selected NATO personnel, with full support from national-intelligence services, coordinated at site ....

   And he'd sold it, Clark told himself with a wispy smile. It had helped that both Ed and Mary Pat Foley had backed him up in the Oval Office, along with General Mickey Moore and selected others. The new agency, Rainbow, was blacker than black, its American funding directed through the Department of the Interior by Capitol Hill, then through the Pentagon's Office of Special Projects, with no connection whatsoever to the intelligence community. Fewer than a hundred people in Washington knew that Rainbow existed. A far smaller number would have been better, but that was about the best that could be expected.

   The chain of command was a little baroque. No avoiding that. The British influence would be hard to shakefully half of the field personnel were Brits, and nearly that many of the intel weenies, but Clark was the boss. That constituted a major concession from his hosts, John knew. Alistair Stanley would be his executive officer, and John didn't have a problem with that. Stanley was tough, and better yet, one of the smartest special-operations guys he'd ever met-he knew when to hold, when to fold, and when to play the cards. About the only bad news was that he, Clark, was now a REMF– worse,, a suit. He'd have an office and two secretaries instead of going out to run with the big dogs. Well, he had to admit to himself, that had to come sooner or later, didn't it?

   Shit. He wouldn't run with the dogs, but he would play with them. He had to do that, didn't he, to show the troops that he was worthy of his command. He would be a colonel, not a general, Clark told himself. He'd be with the troops as much as possible, running, shooting, and talking things over.

   Meanwhile, I'm a captain, Ding was telling himself in the next car behind, while eagerly taking in the countryside. He'd only been through Britain for layovers at Heathrow or Gatwick, and never seen the land, which was as green as an Irish postcard. He'd be under John, Mr. C, leading one of the strike teams, and in effective rank, that made him a captain, which was about the best rank to have in the Army, high enough that the NCOs respected you as worthy of command, and low enough that you weren't a staff puke and you played with the troops. He saw Patsy was dozing next to him. The pregnancy was taking it out of her, and doing so in unpredictable ways. Sometimes she bubbled with activity. Other times, she Wit vegetated. Well. she was carrving a new little Chavez in her belly, and that made everything okay-better than okay. A miracle. Almost as great as the miracle that here he was back doing what he'd originally been trained for to be a soldier. Better yet, something of a free agent. The bad news was that he was subject to more than one government-suits that spoke multiple languages--but that couldn't be helped, and he'd volunteered for this to stay with Mr. C. Someone had to look after the boss.

   The airplane had surprised him quite a bit. Mr. C hadn't had his weapon handy-what the hell, Ding thought, you bother to get a permit that allows you to carry a weapon on a civilian airliner (about the hardest thing you can wish to have) and then you stash your weapon where you can't get at it? Santa Maria! even John Clark was getting old. Must have been the first operational mistake he'd made in a long time, and then he'd tried to cover it by going cowboy on the takedown. Well, it had been nicely done. Smooth and cool. But overly fast, Ding thought, overly fast. He held Patsy's hand. She was sleeping a lot now. The little guy was sapping her strength. Ding leaned over to kiss her lightly on the cheek, softly enough that she didn't stir. He caught the driver's eye in the mirror and stared back with a poker expression. Was the guy just a driver or a team member? He'd find out soon enough, Chavez decided.

   Security was tougher than Ding had expected. For the moment Rainbow HQ was at Hereford, headquarters of the British Army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment. In fact, security was even tougher than it looked, because a man holding a weapon just looked like a man holding a weapon-from a distance you couldn't tell the difference between a rent-a-cop and a trained expert. On eyeballing one close, Ding decided these guys were the latter. They just had different eyes. The man who looked into his car earned himself a thoughtful nod, which was dutifully returned as he waved the car forward. The base looked like any other-the signs were different as was some of the spelling, but the buildings had closely trimmed lawns, and things just looked neater than in civilian areas. His car ended up in officer country, by a modest but trim house, complete with a parking pad for a car Ding and Patsy didn't have yet. He noticed that John's car kept going another couple of blocks toward a larger house-well, colonels lived better than captains, and you couldn't beat the rent in any case. Ding opened the door, twisted out of the car, and headed for the trunk-excuse me, he thought, hoot-– to get their luggage moved in. Then came the first big surprise of this day.

   "Major Chavez?" a voice asked.

   "Uh, yeah?" Ding said, turning. Major? he wondered.

   "I'm Corporal Weldon. I'm your batman." The corporal was much taller than Ding's five-feet-seven, and beefy-looking. The man bustled past his assigned officer and manhandled the bags out of the trunk/boot, leaving Chavez with nothing more to do or say than, "Thanks, Corporal."

   "Follow me, sir." Ding and Patsy did that, too.

   Three hundred meters away, it was much the same for John and Sandy, though their staff was a sergeant and a corporal, the latter female, blond, and pretty in the paleskinned English way. Sandy's first impression of the kitchen was that British refrigerators were tiny, and that cooking in here would be something of an exercise in contortion. She was a little slow to catch on-a result of the air travel-that she'd touch an implement in this room only at the sufferance of Corporal Anne Fairway. The house wasn't quite as large as their home in Virginia, but would be quite sufficient.

   "Where's the local hospital?"

   "About six kilometers away, mum." Fairway hadn't been briefed in on the fact that Sandy Clark was a highly trained ER nurse and would be taking a position in the Hospital.

   John checked out his study. The most impressive piece ,.f furniture was the liquor cabinet-well stocked, he saw, with Scotches and gins. He'd have to figure a way to get some decent bourbons. The computer was in place, tempested, he was sure, to make sure that people couldn't park a few hundred yards away and read what he was typing. Of course. getting that close would be a feat. The perimeter guards had struck John as competent. While his batman and -woman got his clothes squared away, John hopped into the shower. This would be a day of work for him. Twenty minutes later, wearing a blue pin-stripe suit, a white shirt, and a striped tie, he appeared at the front door, where an official car waited to whisk him off to his headquarters building.

   "Have fun, honey," Sandy said, with a kiss.

   "You bet."

   "Good morning, sir," his driver said. Clark shook his hand and learned that his name was Ivor Rogers, and that he was a sergeant. The bulge at his right hip probably made him an MP. Damn, John thought, the Brits take their security seriously. But, then, this was the home of the SAS, probably not the most favorite unit of terrorists both inside and outside the UK. And the real professionals, the truly dangerous ones, were careful. thorough people. Just like nee. John Clark told himself.

   "We have to be careful. Extremely careful every step of the way." That was no particular surprise to the others, was it? The good news was that they understood about caution. Most were scientists, and many of them routinely trafficked in dangerous substances, Level-3 and up, and so caution was part of their way of looking at the world. And that, he decided, was good. It was also good that they understood, really understood the importance of the task at hand. A holy quest, they all thought-knew-it to be. After all, they were dealing in human life, the taking thereof, and there were those who didn't understand their quest and never would. Well, that was to be expected, since it was their lives that would be forfeited. It was too bad, but it couldn't be helped.

   With that, the meeting broke up, later than usual, and people left to walk out to the parking lot, where some fools, he thought would ride bicycles home, catch a few hours of sleep, and then bike back to the office. At least they were True Believers, if not overly practical ones-and, hell, they rode airplanes on long trips, didn't they? Well, the movement had room for people of differing views. The whole point was to create a big-tent movement. He walked out to his own vehicle, a very practical Hummer, the civilian version of the military's beloved HMMWV. He flipped on the radio, heard Respighi's The Pines of Rome, and realized that he'd miss NPR and its devotion to classical music. Well, some things couldn't be helped.

   It turned out that his office was less than two miles from his house, in a two-story brick building surrounded by workers. Another soldier was at the front door, a pistol tucked away in a white canvas holster. He snapped to and saluted when Clark got within ten feet.

   "Good morning-Sahr!"

   John was sufficiently startled that he returned the salute, as though crossing onto the quarter-deck of a ship. "Morning, soldier," John replied, almost sheepishly, and thinking he'd have to learn the kid's name. The door he managed to open for himself, to find Stanley inside, reading a document and looking up with a smile.

   "The building won't be finished for another week or so, John. It was unused for some years, rather old, I'm afraid, and they've only been working on it for six weeks. Come, I'll take you to your office."

   And again Clark followed, somewhat sheepishly, turning right and heading down the corridor to the end office-which was, it turned out, all finished.

   "The building dates back to 1947,"Alistair said, opening the door. There John saw two secretaries, both in their late thirties, and probably cleared higher than he was. Their names were Alice Foorgate and Helen Montgomery. They stood when the Boss came in, and introduced themselves with warm and charming smiles. Stanley's XO office was adjacent to Clark's, which contained a huge desk, a comfortable chair, and the same kind of computer as in John's CIA office-tempested here, too, so that people couldn't monitor it electronically. There was even a liquor cabinet in the far right corner, doubtless a British custom.

   John took a breath before trying out the swivel chair and decided to doff his jacket first. Sitting in a chair with a suit coat on was something he'd never really learned to enjoy. That was something a "suit" did, and being a "suit" wasn't John's idea of fun. He waved Alistair to the seat opposite the desk.

   "Where are we?"

   "Two teams fully formed. Chavez will have one. The other will be commanded by Peter Covington-just got his majority. Father was colonel of the 22nd some years ago retired as a Brigadier. Marvelous lad. Ten men per team, as agreed. The technical staff is coming together nicely. We have an Israeli chap on that, David Peled – surprised they let us have him. He's a bloody genius with electronics and surveillance systems-"

   "And he'll report back to Avi ben Jakob every day."

   A smile. "Naturally." Neither office was under any illusions about the ultimate loyalty of the troops assigned to Rainbow. But were they not capable of such loyalty, what good would they be? "David's worked with SAS on and off for a decade. He's quite amazing, contacts with every electronics corporation from San Jose to Taiwan."

   "And the shooters?"

   "Top drawer, John. As good as any I've ever worked with." Which was saying something.

   "Intel?"

   "All excellent. The chief of that section is Bill Tawney, a `Six' man for thirty years, supported by Dr. Paul Bellow-Temple University, Philadelphia, was a professor there until your FBI seconded him. Bloody smart chap. Mind-reader, he's been all over the world. Your chaps lent him to the Italians for the Moro job, but he refused to take an assignment to Argentina the next year. Principled, also, or so it would seem. He flies in tomorrow."Just then Mrs. Foorgate came in with a tray, tea for Stanley, coffee for Clark. "Staff meeting starts in ten minutes, sir," she told John.

   "Thanks, Alice." Sir, he thought. Clark wasn't used to being addressed like that. Yet another sign he was a "suit." Damn. He waited until the heavy soundproofed door closed to ask his next question. "Al, what's my status here.

   "General officer-brigadier at least, maybe a two-star. I seem to be a colonel-chief of staff, you see," Stanley said, sipping his tea. "John, you know that there must be protocol," he went on reasonably.

   "Al, you know what I really am – was, I mean?"

   "You were a navy chief boatswain's mate, I believe, with the Navy Cross, Silver Star with a repeat cluster. Bronze star with Combat-V and three repeats, and three Purple Hearts. And all that's before the Agency took you in and gave you no less than four Intelligence Stars." Stanley said all this from memory. "Brigadier's the least we can do, old man. Rescuing Koga and taking Daryei out were bloody brilliant jobs, in case I never told you. We do know a little bit about you, and your young Chavez – the lad has enormous potential, if he's as good as I've heard. Of course, he'll need it. His team is composed of some real stars."

   "Yo, Ding!" a familiar voice called. Chavez looked to his left in genuine surprise.

   "Oso! You son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing here?" Both men embraced.

   "The Rangers were getting boring, so I shipped up to Bragg for a tour with Delta, and then this came up on the scope and I went after it. You're the boss for Team Two?" First Sergeant (E-8) Julio Vega asked.

   "Sorta-kinda," Ding replied, shaking the hand of an old friend and comrade. "Ain't lost no weight, man, Jesu Christo, Oso, you eat barbells?"

   "Gotta keep fit, sir," replied a man for whom a hundred morning push-ups didn't generate a drop of sweat. His uniform blouse showed a Combat Infantryman's Badge and the silver "ice-cream cone" of a master parachutist. "You're looking good, man, keeping up your running, eh?"

   "Yeah, well, running away is an ability I want to keep, if you know what I mean."

   "Roge-o." Vega laughed. "Come on, I'll intro you to the team. We got some good troops, Ding."Team Two, Rainbow, had its own building-brick, single story, and fairly large, with a desk for every man. and a secretary named Katherine Moony they'd all share, young and pretty enough, Ding noticed, to attract the interest of any unattached member of his team. Team Two was composed exclusively of NCOs, mainly senior ones, four Americans, four Brits, a German, and a Frenchman. He only needed one look to see that all were fit as hell-enough so that Ding instantly worried about his own condition. He had to lead them, and that meant being as good as or better than all of them in every single thing the team would have to do.

   Sergeant Louis Loiselle was the nearest– Short and darkhaired, he was a former member of French parachute forces and had been detailed to DGSE some years before. Loiselle was vanilla, a utility infielder, good in everything but a nonspecialist specialist-like all of the men, a weapons expert, and, his file said, a brilliant marksman with pistol and rifle. He had an easy, relaxed smile with a good deal of confidence behind it.

   Feldwebel Dieter Weber was next, also a paratrooper and a graduate of the German army's Bergfuhrer or Mountain Leader school,one of the physically toughest schools in any army in the world. He looked it. Blondhaired and fairskinned, he might have been on an SS recruiting poster sixty years earlier. His English, Ding learned at once, was better than his own. He could have passed for American-or English. Weber had come to Rainbow from the German GSG9 team, which was part of the former Border Guards, the Federal Republic's counterterror team.

   "Major, we have heard much about you," Weber said from his six-three height. A little tall, Ding thought. Too large a target. He shook hands like a German. One quick grab, vertical jerk, and let go, with a nice squeeze in the middle. His blue eyes were interesting, cold as ice, interrogating Ding from the first. The eyes were usually found behind a rifle. Weber was one of the team's two longriflemen.

   SFC Homer Johnston was the other. A mountaineer from Idaho, he'd taken his first deer at the age of nine. He ;rod Weber were friendly competitors. Average-looking in ;ill respects, Johnston was clearly a runner rather than an iron-pumper at his six-feet-nothing, one-sixty. He'd started off in the 101st AirMobile at Fort Campbell, Kentucky,in d rapidly worked his way into the Army's black world. " Major, nice to meet you, sir." He was a former Green Beret and Delta member, like Chavez's friend, Oso Vega.

   The shooters, as Ding thought of them, the guys who went into the buildings to do business, were Americans and Brits. Steve Lincoln, Paddy Connolly, Scotty McTyler, and Eddie Price were from the SAS. They'd all been there and done that in Northern Ireland and a few ether places. Mike Pierce, Hank Patterson, and George Tomlinson mainly had not, because the American Delta force didn't have the experience of the SAS. It was also true, Ding reminded himself, that Delta, SAS, GSG-9, And other crack international teams cross-trained to the point that they might as well have married one another's sisters. Every one of them was taller than "Major" Chavez. Every one was tough. Every one was smart, and with this realization came an oddly deflating feeling that, despite his own field experience, he'd have to earn the respect of his team and earn it fast.

   "Who's senior?"

   "That's me, sir," Eddie Price said. He was the oldest of the team, forty-one, and a former color sergeant in the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, since spot-promoted to sergeant major. Like the rest in the bullpen, he was wearing nonuniform clothes, though they were all wearing the same nonuniform things, without badges of rank.

   "Okay, Price, have we done our PT today?"

   "No, Major, we waited for you to lead us out," Sergeant Major Price replied, with a smile that was ten percent manners and ninety percent challenge.

   Chavez smiled back. "Yeah, well, I'm a little stiff from the flight, but maybe we can loosen that up for me. Where do I change?" Ding asked, hoping his last two weeks of five-mile daily runs would prove to be enough-and he was slightly wasted by the flight.

   "Follow me, sir."

   "My name's Clark, and I suppose I'm the boss here," John said from the head of the conference table. "You all know the mission, and you've all asked to be part of Rainbow. Questions?"

   That startled them, John saw. Good. Some continued to stare at him. Most looked down at the scratch pads in front of them.

  "Okay, to answer some of the obvious ones, our operational doctrine ought to be little different from the organizations you came from. We will establish that intraining, which commences tomorrow. We are supposed to be operational right now," John warned them. "That means the phone could ring in a minute, and we will have to respond. Are we able to?"

   "No," Alistair Stanley responded for the rest of the senior staff. "That's unrealistic, John. We need, I would estimate, three weeks."

   "I understand that-but the real world is not as accommodating as we would like it to be. Things that need doing-do them, and quickly. I will start running simulations on Monday next. People, I am not a hard man to work with. I've been in the field, and I know what happens out there. I don't expect perfection, but I do expect that we will always work for it. If we screw a mission up, that means that people who deserve to live will not live. That is going to happen. You know it. I know it. But we will avoid mistakes as much as possible, and we will learn the proper lessons from every one we make. Counterterrorism is a Darwinian world. The dumb ones are already dead, and the people out there we have to worry about are those who've learned a lot of lessons. So have we, and we're probably ahead of the game, tactically speaking, but we have to run hard to stay there. We will run hard.

   "Anyway," he went on, "intelligence, what's ready and what's not?"

   Bill Tawney was John's age, plus one or two, John estimated, with brown, thinning hair and an unlit pipe in his mouth. A "Six" man-meaning he was a former (well, current) member of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, he was a field spook who'd come inside after ten years working the streets behind the Curtain. "Our communications links are up and running. We have liaison personnel to Lill friendly services either here or in the corresponding capitals."

   "How good are they?"

   "Fair," Tawney allowed. John wondered how much of that was Brit understatement. One of his most important but most subtle tasks would be to decode what every member of his staff said when he or she spoke was a task made all the more difficult by linguistic and cultural differences. On inspection, Tawney looked like a real pro, his brown eyes calm and businesslike. His file said that he'd worked directly with SAS for the past five years. Given SAS's record in the field, he hadn't stiffed them with bad intel very often, if at all. Good. "David?" he asked next. David Peled, the Israeli chief his technical branch, looked very Catholic, rather like something from an El Greco painting, a Dominican priest, perhaps, from the fifteenth century, tall, skinny, hollow of cheek and dark of hair (short), with a certain intensity of eye. Well, he'd worked a long time for Avi ben Jakob, whom Clark knew, if not well then well enough. Peled would be here for two reasons, to serve as a senior Rainbow staffer, thus winning allies and prestige for his parent intelligence service, the Israeli Mossad, and also to learn what he could and feed it back to his boss.

   "I am putting together a good staff," David said, setting his tea down. "I need three to five weeks to assemble all the equipment I need."

   "Faster," Clark responded at once.

   David shook his head. "Not possible. Much of our electronics items can be purchased off the shelf, as it were, but some will have to be custom-made. The orders are all placed," he assured his boss, "with high-priority flags from the usual vendors. TRW, IDI, Marconi, you know who they are. But they can't do miracles, even for us. Three to five weeks for some crucial items."

   "SAS are willing to hire anything important to us," Stanley assured Clark from his end of the table.

   "For training purposes?" Clark asked, annoyed that he hadn't found out the answer to the question already.

   "Perhaps.

   Ding cut the run off at three miles. which they'd done in twenty minutes. Good time, he thought, somewhat winded, until he turned to see his ten men about as fresh as they'd been at the beginning, one or two with a sly smile for his neighbors at their wimpy new leader.

   Damn.

   The run had ended at the weapons range, where targets and arms were ready. Here Chavez had made his own change in his team's selection. A longtime Beretta aficionado, he'd decided that his men would use the recent .45 Beretta as their personal sidearms, along with the Hechler & Koch MP-10 submachine gun, the new version of the venerable MP-5, chambered instead for the 10-mm Smith & Wesson cartridge developed in the 1980s for the American FBI. Without saying anything, Ding picked up his weapon, donned his earprotectors, and started going for the silhouette targets, set five meters away. There, he saw, all eight holes in the head.But Dieter Weber, next to him, had grouped his shots in one ragged hole, and Paddy Connolly had made what appeared to be one not-so-ragged hole less than an inch across, all between the target's eyes, without touching the eyes themselves. Like most American shooters, Chavez had believed that Europeans didn't know pistols worth a damn. Evidently, training corrected that, he saw.

   Next, people picked up their H&Ks, which just about anyone could shoot well because of the superb diopter sights. Ding walked along the firing line, watching his people engage pop-up steel plates the size and shape of human heads. Driven up by compressed air, they fell back down instantly with a metallic clang. Ding ended up behind First Sergeant Vega, who finished his magazine and turned.

   "Told you they were good, Ding."

   "How long they been here?"

   "Oh, 'bout a week. Used to running five miles, sir."

   Julio added with a smile. "Remember the summer camp we went to in Colorado?"

   Most important of all, Ding thought, was the steady aim despite the run, which was supposed to get people pumped up, and simulate the stress of a real combat situation. But these bastards were as steady as fucking bronze statues. Formerly a squad leader in the Seventh Light Infantry Division, he'd once been one of the toughest, fittest, and most effective soldiers in his country's uniform, which was why John Clark had tapped him for a job in the Agency – and in that capacity he'd pulled off some tense and tough missions in the field. It had been a very long time indeed since Domingo Chavez had felt the least bit inadequate about anything. But now quiet voices were speaking into his ear.

   "Who's the toughest?" he asked Vega.

   "Weber. I heard stories about the German mountain school. Well, they be true, 'mano. Dieter isn't entirely human. Good in hand-to-hand, good pistol, damned good with a rifle, and I think he could run a deer down if he had to, then rip it apart barehanded." Chavez had to remind himself that being called "good" in a combat kill by a graduate of Ranger school and Fort Bragg's special-operations schools wasn't quite the same as from guy in a corner bar. Julio was about as tough as they came.

   "The smartest?"

   "Connolly. All those SAS guys are tops. Us Americans have to play a little catchup ball. But we will," Vega assured him. "Don't sweat it, Ding. You'll keep up with us, after a week or so. Just like it was in Colorado."

   Chavez didn't really want to be reminded of that job. Too many friends lost in the mountains of Colombia, doing a job that their country had never acknowledged. Watching his men finish off their training rounds told him much about them. If anyone had missed a single shot, he failed to notice it. Every man fired off exactly a hundred rounds, the standard daily regimen for men who fired five hundred per working week on routine training, as opposed to more carefully directed drill. That would start tomorrow.

   "Okay," John concluded. "we'll have a staff meeting every morning at eight-fifteen for routine matters, and a more formal one every Friday afternoon. My door is always open-including the one at home. People, if you need me, there's a phone next to my shower. Now, I want to get out and see the shooters. Anything else? Good. We stand adjourned." Everyone stood and shuffled out the door. Stanley remained.

   "That went well," Alistair observed, pouring himself another cup of tea. "Especially for one not accustomed to bureaucratic life."

   "Shows, eh?" Clark asked with a grin."One can learn anything, John."

   "I hope so."

   "When's morning PT around here?"

   "Oh-six-forty-five. You plan to run and sweat with the lads?"

   "I plan to try," Clark answered.

   "You're too old, John. Some of those chaps run marathons for recreation, and you're closer to sixty than to fifty."

   "Al, I can't command those people without trying, and you know that."

   "Quite," Stanley admitted.

   They awoke late, one at a time, over a period of about an hour. For the most part they just lay there in bed, some of them shuffling off to the bathroom, where they also found aspirin and Tylenol for the headaches they all had, along with showers, which half of them decided to take and the other half to forgo. In the adjoining room was a breakfast buffet that surprised them, with pans full of scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausage and bacon. Some of them even remembered how to use napkins, the people in the monitoring room saw.

   They met their captor after they'd had a chance to eat breakfast. He offered all of them clean clothes, after they got cleaned rip.

   "What is this place?" asked the one known to the staff only as #4. It sure as hell wasn't any Bowery mission he was familiar with.

   "My company is undertaking a study," the host said from behind a tightly fitting mask. "You gentlemen will be part of that study. You will be staying with us for a while. During that time, you will have clean beds, clean clothes, good food, good medical care, and" – he pulled a wall panel back – "whatever you want to drink." In a wall alcove which the guests remarkably had not yet discovered were three shelves of every manner of wine, beer, and spirit that could be purchased at the local liquor store, with glasses, water, mixes, and ice.

   "You mean we can't leave?" Number 7 asked.

   "We would prefer that you stay," the host said, somewhat evasively. He pointed to the liquor cabinet, his eyes smiling around the mask. "Anyone care for a morning eye-opener?"

   It turned out that it wasn't too early in the morning for any of them, and that the expensive bourbons and ryes were the first and hardest hit. The additional drug in the alcohol was quite tasteless, and the guests all headed back to their alcove beds. Next to each was a TV set. Two more decided to make use of the showers. Three even shaved, emerging from the bathroom looking quite human. For the time being.

   In the monitoring room half a building away, Dr. Archer manipulated the various TV cameras to get close-ups on every "guest."

   "They're all pretty much on profile," she observed. "Their blood work ought to be a disaster."

   "Oh, yeah, Barb," Dr. Killgore agreed. "Number Three looks especially unwell. You suppose we can get him slightly cleaned up before . . . ?"

   "I think we should try," Barbara Archer, M.D., thought. "We can't monkey with the test criteria too much, can we?"

   "Yeah, and it'd be bad for morale if we let one die too soon," Killgore went on.

   " `What a piece of work is man,' " Archer quoted, with a snort.

   "Not all of us, Barb." A chuckle. "Surprised they didn't find a woman or two for the group."

   "I'm not," replied the feminist Dr. Archer, to the amusement of the more cynical Killgore. But it wasn't worth getting all worked up over. He looked away from the battery of TV screens, and picked up the memo from corporate headquarters. Their guests were to be treated as guests-fed, cleaned up, and offered all the drink they could put away consistent with the continuance of their bodily functions. It was slightly worrisome to the epidemiologist that all their guest-test-subjects were seriously impaired street alcoholics. The advantage of using them, of course, was that they wouldn't be missed, even by what might have passed for friends. Few had any family members who would even know where to look for them. Fewer still would have any who would be surprised by the inability to locate them. And none, Killgore judged, had so much as one who would notify proper authorities on the inability to find them-and even if that happened, would the New York City Police care? Not likely.

   No, all their "guests" were people written off by their society, less aggressively but just as finally as Hitler had written off his Jews, though with somewhat more justice, Archer and Killgore both thought. What a piece of work was man? These examples of the self-designated godlike species were of less use than the laboratory animals they were now replacing. And they were also far less appealing to Archer, who had feelings for rabbits and even rats. Killgore found that amusing. He didn't much care about them either, at least not as individual animals. It was the species as a whole that mattered, wasn't it? And as far as the "guests" were concerned, well, they weren't even good examples of the substandard humans whom the species didn't need. Killgore was. So was Archer, her goofy political-sexual views notwithstanding. With that decided. Killgore returned to making a few notes and doing his paperwork. Tomorrow they'd do the physical examinations. That would be fun. he was sure.

CHAPTER 2
SADDLING UP

   The first two weeks started off pleasantly enough. Chavez was now running five miles without any discomfort, doing the requisite number of push-ups with his team, and shooting better, as well as about half of them, but not as well as Connolly and the American Hank Patterson, both of whom must have been born with pistols in their cribs or something, Ding decided after firing three hundred rounds per day to try to equal them. Maybe a gunsmith could play with his weapon. The SAS based here had a regimental armorer who might have trained with Sam Colt himself, or so he'd heard. A little lighter and smoother on the trigger, perhaps. But that was mere pride talking. Pistols were secondary weapons. With their H&K MP-10s, every man could put three quick aimed rounds in a head at fifty meters about as fast as his mind could form the thought. These people were awesome, the best soldiers he'd ever met-or heard about, Ding admitted to himself, sitting at his desk and doing some hated paperwork. He grunted. Was there anyone in the world who didn't hate paperwork?

   The team spent a surprising amount of time sitting at their desks and reading, mainly intelligence stuff-which terrorist was thought to be where, according to some intelligence agency or police department or money-grubbing informer. In fact the data they pored over was nearly useless, but since it was the best they had, they pored over it anyway as a way of breaking the routine. Included were photos of the world's surviving terrorists. Carlos the Jackal, now in his fifties, and now settled into a French maximum security prison, was the one they'd all wanted. The photos of him were computer-manipulated to simulate his current-age appearance, which they then compared with real-life photos from the French. The team members spent time memorizing all of them, because some dark night in some unknown place, a flash of light might reveal one of these faces, and you'd have that long to decide whether or not to double-tap the head in question-and if you had the chance to bag another Carlos Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez, you wanted to take it, 'cuz then, Ding's mind went on, you'd never be able to buy a beer in a cop or special-ops bar again anywhere in the world, you'd be ,u famous. The real hell of it was, this pile of trash on his desk wasn't really trash after all. If they ever bagged the next Carlos, it would be because some local cop, in Sao Paolo. Brazil, or Bumfuck, Bosnia, or wherever, heard something from some informant or other, then went to the proper house and took a look, and then had his brain go click from all the flyers that filled cophouses around the world, and then it would be up to the street savvy of that cop to see if he might arrest the bastard on the spot-or, if the situation looked a little too tense, to report back to his lieutenant, and just maybe a special team like Ding's Team-2 would deploy quietly, and take the fucker down, the easy way or the hard way, in front of whatever spouse or kilo there might be, ignorant of daddy's former career . . . and then it would make CNN with quite a splash ....

   That was the problem with working at a desk. You started daydreaming. Chavez, simulated major, checked his watch and rose, headed out into the bullpen, and handed off his pile of trash to Miss Moony. He was about to ask if everyone was ready, but they must have been, because the only other person to ask was halfway to the door. On the way, he drew his pistol and belt. The next stop was what the Brits called a robing room, except there were no robes, but instead coal-black fatigue clothes, complete with body armor.

   Team-2 was all there, mostly dressed a few minutes early for the day's exercise. They were all loose, relaxed. smiling, and joking quietly. When all had their gear on. they went to the arms room to draw their SMGs. Each put the double-looped sling over his head, then checked to see that the magazine was full, sliding each into the proper port on the bottom of the weapon, and working the bolt back to the safe position, then mugging the weapon to make sure that each fitted to the differing specifications of each individual shooter.

   The exercises had been endless, or as much so as two weeks could make them. There were six basic scenarios, all of which could be played out in various environments. The one they hated most was inside the body of a commercial aircraft. The only good thing about that was the confinement forced on the bad guys-they wouldn't be going anywhere. The rest was entirely bad. Lots of civilians in the fire arcs, good concealment for the bad guys and if one of them really did have a bomb strapped to his body-they almost always claimed to-well, then all he had to have was the balls to pull the string or close the switch, and then, if the bastard was halfway competent, everyone aboard was toast. Fortunately, few people chose death in that way. But Ding and his people couldn't think like that. Much of the time terrorists seemed to fear capture more than death-so your shooting had to be fast and perfect, and the team had to hit the aircraft like a Kansas tornado at midnight, with your flash-bangs especially important to stun the bastards into combat-ineffectiveness so that the double-taps were aimed at nonmoving heads, and hope to God that the civilians you were trying to rescue didn't stand up and block the shooting range that the fuselage of the Boeing or Airbus had suddenly become.

   "Team-2, we ready?" Chavez asked.

   "Yes, sir!" came the chorused reply.

   With that, Ding led them outside and ran them half a ii,, tie to the shooting house, a hard run, not the fast jog of daily exercises. Johnston and Weber were already on the scene on opposite corners of the rectangular structure.

   "Command to Rifle Two-Two," Ding said into his helmet mounted microphone, "anything to report?"

   "Negative, Two-Six. Nothing at all," Weber reported.

   "Rifle Two-One?"

   "Six," Johnston replied, "I saw a curtain move, but nothing else. Instruments show four to six voices inside, speaking English. Nothing else to report."

   "Roger," Ding responded, the remainder of his team concealed behind a truck. He took a final look at the layout of the inside of the building. The raid had been fully briefed. The shooters knew the inside of the structure well enough to see it with their eyes closed. With that knowledge, Ding waved for the team to move.

   Paddy Connolly took the lead, racing to the door. Just as he got there, he let go of his H&K and let it dangle on the sling while he pulled the Primacord from the fanny pack hanging down from his body armor. He stuck the explosive to the door frame by its adhesive and pushed the blasting cap into the top-right corner. A second later, he moved right ten feet, holding the detonator control up in his left hand, while his right grabbed the pistol grip of his SMG and brought it up to point at the sky.

   Okay, Ding thought. Time to move. "Let's go!" he shouted at the team. As the first of them bolted around the truck, Connolly thumbed the switch, and the door frame disintegrated, sending the door flying inward. The first shooter, Sergeant Mike Pierce, was less than a second behind it, disappearing into the smoking hole with Chavez right behind him.

   The inside was dark, the only light coming through the shattered doorway. Pierce scanned the room, found it empty, and then lodged himself by the doorway into the next room. Ding ran into that first, leading his team

   –there they were, four targets and four hostages

   Chavez brought his MP-10 up and fired two silenced rounds into the left-most target's head. He saw the rounds hit, dead-center in the head, right between the bluepainted eyes, then traversed right to see that Steve Lincoln had gotten his man just as planned. In less than a second, the overhead lights came on. It was all over, elapsed time from the Primacord explosion, seven seconds. Eight seconds had been programmed for the exercise. Ding safed his weapon.

   "Goddamnit, John!" he said to the Rainbow commander.

   Clark stood, smiling at the target to his left, less than two feet away, the two holes drilled well enough to ensure certain, instant death. He wasn't wearing any protective gear. Neither was Stanley, at the far end of the line, also trying to show off, though Mrs. Foorgate and Mrs. Montgomery were, in their center seats. The presence of the women surprised Chavez until he reminded himself that they were team members, too, and probably eager to show that they, too, belonged with the boys. He had to admire their spirit, if not their good sense.

   "Seven seconds. That'll do, I guess. Five would be better," John observed, but the dimensions of the building pretty much determined the speed with which the team could cover the distance. He walked across, checking all the targets. McTyler's target showed one hole only, though its irregular shape proved that he'd fired both rounds as per the exercise parameters. Any one of these men would have earned a secure place in 3rd SOG, and every one was as good as he'd ever been, John Clark t bought to himself. Well, training methods had improved markedly since his time in Vietnam, hadn't they? He helped Helen Montgomery to her feet. She seemed just a little shaky. Hardly a surprise. Being on the receiving end of bullets wasn't exactly what secretaries were paid for.

   "You okay?" John asked.

   "Oh, quite, thank you. It was rather exciting. My first time, you see."

   "My third," Alice Foorgate said, rising herself. "It's always exciting," she added with a smile.

   For me, too, Clark thought. Confident as he'd been with Ding and his men, still, looking down the barrel of a light machine gun and seeing the flashes made one's blood turn slightly cool. And the lack of body armor wasn't all that smart, though he justified it by telling himself he'd had to see better in order to watch for any mistakes. He'd seen nothing major, however. They were damned good.

   "Excellent," Stanley said from his end of the dais. He pointed "You-uh-"

   "Patterson, sir," the sergeant said. "I know, I kinds tripped coming through." He turned to see that a fragment of the door frame had been blasted through the entrance :o the shooting room, and he'd almost stumbled on it.

   "You recovered nicely, Sergeant Patterson. I see it didn't affect your aim at all."

   "No, sir," Hank Patterson agreed, not quite smiling.

   The team leader walked up to Clark, safing his weapon on the way.

   "Mark us down as fully mission-capable, Mr. C," Chavez said with a confident smile. "Tell the bad guys they better watch their asses. How'd Team-1 do?"

   "Two-tenths of a second faster," John replied, glad to see the diminutive leader of -2 deflate a little. "And thanks."

   "What for?"

   "For not wasting your father-in-law." John clapped him on the shoulder and walked out of the room.

   "Okay, people," Ding said to his team, "let's police up the brass and head back for the critique." No fewer than six TV cameras had recorded the mission. Stanley would be going over it frame by frame. That would be followed by a few pints at the 22nd's Regimental NCO club. The Brits, Ding had learned over the previous two weeks, took their beer seriously, and Scotty McTyler could throw darts about as well as Homer Johnston could shoot a rifle. It was something of a breach of protocol that Ding, a simulated major, hoisted pints with his men, all sergeants. He had explained that away by noting that he'd been a humble staff sergeant squad leader himself before disappearing into the maw of the Central Intelligence Agency, and he regaled them with stories of his former life in the Ninjas – stories that the others listened to with a mixture of respect and amusement. As good as the 7th Infantry Division had been, it wasn't this good. Even Domingo would admit to that after a few pints of John Courage.

   "Okay, Al, what do you think?" John asked. The liquor cabinet in his office was open, a single-malt Scotch for Stanley, while Clark sipped at a Wild Turkey.

   "The lads?" He shrugged. "Technically very competent. Marksmanship' is just about right, physical fitness is fine. They respond well to obstacles and the unexpected, and, well, they didn't kill us with stray rounds, did they?"

   "But?" Clark asked with a quizzical look.

   "But one doesn't know until the real thing happens. Oh, yes, they're as good as SAS, but the best of them are former SAS . . . ."

   Old-world pessimism, John Clark thought. That was the problem with Europeans. No optimism, too often they looked for things that would go wrong instead of right.

   "Chavez?"

   "Superb lad," Stanley admitted. "Almost as good as Peter Covington."

   "Agreed," Clark admitted, the slight on his son-in-law notwithstanding. But Covington had been at Hereford for seven years. Another couple of months and Ding would be there. He was pretty close already. It was already down to how many hours of sleep one or the other had had the night before, and pretty soon it would be down to what one or the other had eaten for breakfast. All in all, John told himself, he had the right people, trained to the right edge. Now all he had to do was keep them there. Training. Training. Training.

   Neither knew that it had already started.

   "So, Dmitriy," the man said.

   "Yes?" Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov replied, twirling his vodka around in the glass.

   "Where and how do we begin?" the man asked.

   They'd met by a fortunate accident, both thought, albeit for very different reasons.It had happened in Paris, at some sidewalk cafe, tables right next to each other, where one had noted that the other was Russian, and wanted to ask a few simple questions about business in Russia. Popov, a former KGB official, RIF'ed and scouting around for opportunities for entering the world of capitalism, had quickly determined that this American had a great deal of money, and was therefore worthy of stroking. He had answered the questions openly and clearly, leading the American to deduce his former occupation rapidly – the language skills (Popov was highly fluent in English, French, and Czech) had been a giveaway, as had Popov's knowledge of Washington, D.C. Popov was clearly not a diplomat, being too open and forthright in his opinions, which factor had terminated his promotion in the former Soviet KGB at the rank of Colonel – he still thought himself worthy of general's stars. As usual, one thing had led to another, first the exchange of business cards, then a trip to America, first class on Air France, as a security consultant, and a series of meetings that had moved ever so subtly in a direction that came more as a surprise to the Russian than the American. Popov had impressed the American with his knowledge of safety issues on the streets of foreign cities, then the discussion had moved into very different areas of expertise.

   "How do you know all this?" the American had asked in his New York office.

   The response had been a broad grin, after three double vodkas. "I know these people, of course. Come, you must know what I did before leaving the service of my country."

   "You actually worked with terrorists?" he'd asked, surprised, and thinking about this bit of information, even back then.

   It was necessary for Popov to explain in the proper ideological context: "You must remember that to us they were not terrorists at all. They were fellow believers in world peace and Marxism-Leninism, fellow soldiers in the struggle for human freedom – and, truth be told, useful fools, all too willing to sacrifice their lives in return for a little support of one sort or another."

   "Really?" the American asked again, in surprise. "I would have thought that they were motivated by something important-"

   "Oh, they are," Popov assured him, "but idealists are foolish people, are they not?"

   "Some are," his host admitted, nodding for his guest to go on.

   "They believe all the rhetoric, all the promises. Don't you see? I, too, was a Party member. I said the words, filled out the bluebook answers, attended the meetings, paid my Party dues. I did all I had to do, but, really, I was KGB. I traveled abroad. I saw what life was like in the West. I much preferred to travel abroad on, ah, `business' than to work at Number Two Dzerzhinsky Square. Better food, better clothes, better everything. Unlike these foolish youths, I knew what the truth was," he concluded, saluting with his half-full glass.

   "So, what are they doing now?"

   "Hiding," Popov answered. "For the most part, hiding.

   Some may have jobs of one sort or another-probably menial ones, I would imagine, despite the university education most of them have."

   "I wonder. . ." A sleepy look reflected the man's own imbibing, so skillfully delivered that Popov wondered if it were genuine or not.

   "Wonder what?"

   "If one could still contact them. . ."

   "Most certainly, if there were a reason for it. My contacts" – he tapped his temple – "well, such things do not evaporate." Where was this going?"Well, Dmitriy, you know, even attack dogs have their uses, and every so often, well" – an embarrassed smile – "you know. . ."

   In that moment, Popov wondered if all the movies were true. Did American business executives really plot murder against commercial rivals and such? It seemed quite mad . . . but maybe the movies were not entirely groundless . . . .

   "Tell me," the American went on, "did you actually work with those people-you know, plan some of the jobs they did?"

   "Plan? No," the Russian replied, with a shake of the head. "I provided some assistance, yes, under the direction of my government. Most often I acted as a courier of sorts." It had not been a favored assignment; essentially he'd been a mailman tasked to delivering special messages to those perverse children, but it was duty he'd drawn due to his superb field skills and his ability to reason with nearly anyone on nearly any topic, since the contacts were so difficult to handle once they'd decided to do something. Popov had been a spook, to use the Western vernacular, a really excellent field intelligence officer who'd never, to the best of his knowledge, been identified by any Western counterintelligence service. Otherwise, his entry into America at JFK International Airport would hardly have been so uneventful.

   "So, you actually know how to get in touch with those people, eh?"

   "Yes, I do," Popov assured his host.

   "Remarkable." The American stood. "Well, how about some dinner?"

   By the end of dinner, Popov was earning $100,000 per year as a special consultant, wondering where this new job would lead and not really caring. One hundred thousand dollars was a good deal of money for a man whose tastes were actually rather sophisticated and needed proper support.

   It was ten months later now, and the vodka was still good, in the glass with two ice cubes. "Where and how?..." Popov whispered. It amused him where he was now, and what he was doing. Life was so very strange, the paths you took, and where they led you. After all, he'd just been in Paris that afternoon, killing time and waiting for a meet with a former "colleague" in DGSE. "When is decided, then?"

   "Yes, you have the date, Dmitriy."

   "I know whom to see and whom to call to arrange the meeting."

   "You have to do it face-to-face?" the American asked, rather stupidly, Popov thought.

   A gentle laugh. "My dear friend, yes, face-to-face. One does not arrange such a thing with a fax."

   "That's a risk."

   "Only a small one. The meet will be in a safe place. No one will take my photograph, and they know me only by a password and codename, and, of course, the currency."

   "How much?"

   Popov shrugged. "Oh, shall we say five hundred thousand dollars? In cash, of course, American dollars, Deutschmarks, Swiss francs, that will depend on what our . . . our friends prefer," he added, just to make things clear.

   The host scribbled a quick note and handed the paper across. "That's what you need to get the money." And with that, things began. Morals were always variable things, depending on the culture, experiences, and principles of individual men and women. In Dmitriy's case, his parent culture had few hard-and-fast rules, his experiences were to make use of that fact, and his main principle was to earn a living

   "You know that this carries a certain degree of danger for me, and, as you know, my salary-"

   "Your salary just doubled, Dmitriy."

   A smile. "Excellent." A good beginning. Even the Russian Mafia didn't advance people as quickly as this.

   Three times a week they practiced zip-lining from a platform, sixty feet down to the ground. Once a week or so they did it for real, out of a British Army helicopter. Chavez didn't like it much. Airborne school was one of the few things he'd avoided in his Army service-which was rather odd, he thought, looking back. He'd done Ranger school as an E-4, but for one reason or other, Fort Benning hadn't happened.

   This was the next best or worst thing. His feet rested on the skids as the chopper approached the drop-site. His gloved hands held the rope, a hundred feet long in case the pilot misjudged something. Nobody trusted pilots very much, though one's life so often depended on them, and this one seemed pretty good. A little bit of a cowboy the final part of the simulated insertion took them through a gap in some trees, and the top leaves brushed Ding's uniform, gently to be sure, but in his position, any touch was decidedly unwelcome. Then the nose came up on a powerful dynamic-braking maneuver. Chavez's legs went tight, and when the nose came back down, he kicked himself free of the skid and dropped. The tricky part was stopping the descent just short of the ground-and getting there quickly enough so as not to present yourself as a dangling target . . . done, and his feet hit the ground. He tossed the rope free, snatched up his H&K in both hands, and headed off toward the objective, having survived his fourteenth zipline deployment, the third from a chopper.

   There was a delightfully joyous aspect to this job, he told himself as he ran along. He was being a physical soldier again, something he'd once learned to love and that his CIA duties had mainly denied him. Chavez was a man who liked to sweat, who enjoyed the physical exertion of soldiering in the field, and most of all loved being with others who shared his likes. It was hard. It was dangerous: every member of the team had suffered a minor injury or other in the past month except Weber, who seemed to be made of steel-and sooner or later, the statistics said, someone would have a major one, most probably a broken leg from zip-lining. Delta at Fort Bragg rarely had a complete team fully mission-capable, due to training accidents and injuries. But hard training made for easy combat. So ran the motto of every competent army in the world. An exaggeration, but not a big one. Looking back from his place of cover and concealment, Chavez saw that Team-2 was all down and moving-even Vega, remarkably enough. With Oso's upper-body bulk, Chavez always worried about his ankles. Weber and Johnston were darting to their programmed perches, each carrying his custom-made scope-sighted rifle. Helmet-mounted radios were working, hissing with the digitized encryption system so that only team members could understand what was being said . . . Ding turned and saw that everyone was in his pre-briefed position, ready for his next move command . . .

   The Communications Room was on the second floor of the building whose renovations had just been completed. It had the usual number of teletype machines for the various world news services, plus TV sets for CNN, and Sky News, and a few other broadcasts. These were overseen by people the Brits called "minders," who were overseen in turn by a career intelligence officer. The one on this shift was an American from the National Security Agency, an Air Force major who usually dressed in civilian clothes that didn't disguise his nationality or the nature of his training at all.

   Major Sam Bennett had acclimated himself to the environment. His wife and son weren't all that keen on the local TV, but they found the climate agreeable, and there were several decent golf courses within easy driving distance. He jogged three miles every morning to let the local collection of snake-eaters know he wasn't a total wimp, and he was looking forward to a little bird-shooting in a few weeks. Otherwise, the duty here was pretty easy. General Clark-that's how everyone seemed to think of him seemed a decent boss. He liked it clean and fast, which was precisely how Bennett liked to deliver it. Not a screamer, either. Bennett had worked for a few of those in his twelve years of uniformed service. And Bill Tawney, the British intelligence team boss, was about the best Bennett had ever seen-quiet, thoughtful, and smart. Bennett had shared a few pints of beer with him over the past weeks, while talking shop in the Hereford Officers' Club.

   But duty like this was boring most of the time. He'd worked the basement Watch Center at NSA, a large, low-ceiling room of standard office sheep-pens, with mini-televisions and computer printers that gave the room a constant low buzz of noise that could drive a man crazy on the long nights of keeping track of the whole fucking world. At least the Brits didn't believe in caging all the worker bees. It was easy for him to get up and walk around. The crew was young here. Only Tawney was over fifty, and Bennett liked that, too.

   "Major!" a voice called from one of the news printers. `We have a hostage case in Switzerland."

   "What service?" Bennett asked on the way over.

   "Agence France-Press. It's a bank, a bloody bank," the corporal reported, as Bennett came close enough to read-but couldn't, since he didn't know French. The corporal could and translated on the fly. Bennett lifted a phone and pushed a button.

   "Mr. Tawney, we have an incident in Bern, unknown number of criminals have seized the central branch of the Bern Commercial Bank. '1 here are some civilians trapped inside."

   "What else, Major?"

   "Nothing at the moment. Evidently the police are there."

   "Very well, thank you, Major Bennett." Tawney killed the line and pulled open a desk drawer, to find and open a very special book. Ah, yes, he knew that one. Then he dialed the British Embassy in .Geneva. "Mr. Gordon. please," he told the operator.

   "Gordon," a voice said a few seconds later.

   "Dennis, this is Bill Tawney."

   "Bill, haven't heard from you in quite a while. What can I do for you?" the voice asked pleasantly.

   "Bern Commercial Bank, main branch. There seems to be a hostage situation there. I want you to evaluate the situation and report back to me."

   "What's our interest, Bill?" the man asked.

   "We have an . . . an understanding with the Swiss government. If their police are unable to handle it, we may have to provide some technical assistance. Who in the embassy Bases with the local police?"

   "Tony Armitage, used to be Scotland Yard. Good man for financial crimes and such."

   "Take him with you," Tawney ordered. "Report back directly to me as soon as you have something." Tawney gave his number.

   "Very well." It was a dull afternoon in Geneva anyway. "It will be a few hours."

   And it will probably end up as nothing, they both knew. "I'll be here. Thank you, Dennis." With that, Tawney left his office and went upstairs to watch TV.

   Behind the Rainbow Headquarters building were four large satellite dishes trained on communications satellites hovering over the equator. A simple check told them which channel of which bird carried Swiss television satellite broadcasts-as with most countries, it was easier to go up and back to a satellite than to use coaxial landlines. Soon they were getting a direct newsfeed from the local station. Only one camera was set up at the moment. It showed the outside of an institutional building the Swiss tended to design banks rather like urban castles, though with a distinctly Germanic flavor to make them appear powerful and forbidding. The voice was that of a reporter talking to his station, not to the public. A linguist stood by to translate.

   " `No, I have no idea. The police haven't talked to us yet,' " the translator said in a dull monotone. Then a new voice came on the line. "Cameraman," the translator said. -Sounds like a cameraman-there's something-"-with that the camera zoomed in, catching a shape, a human shape wearing something over his head, a mask of sorts

   "What kind of gun is that?" Bennett asked.

   "Czech Model 58," Tawney said at once. "So it would seem. Bloody good man on the camera."

   " `What did he say?' That was the studio to the reporter," t he translator went on, hardly looking at the picture on the TV screen. " `Don't know, couldn't hear with all the noise out here. He shouted something, didn't hear it.' Oh, good: `How many people?' 'Not sure, the Wachtmeister said over twenty inside, bank customers and employees. Just me and my cameraman here outside, and about fifteen police officers that I can see.' `More on the way, I imagine,' reply from the station." With that the audio line went quiet. The camera switched off, and shuffling on the audio line told them that the cameraman was moving to a different location, which was confirmed when the picture came back a minute later from a very different angle.

   "What gives, Bill?" Tawney and Bennett turned to see Clark standing there behind theta. "1 came over to talk to you, but your secretary said you had a developing situation up here."

   "We may," the Intelligence section chief replied. "I have the `Six' station in Geneva sending two men over now to evaluate it. We do have that arrangement with the Swiss government, should they decide to invoke it. Bennett, is this going out on commercial TV yet?"

   Bennett shook his head. "No, sir. For the moment they're keeping it quiet."

   "Good," Tawney thought. "Who's the go-team now, John?"

   "Team-2, Chavez and Price. They're just finishing up a little exercise right now. How long before you think we declare an alert?"

   "We could start now," Bill answered, even though it was probably nothing more than a bank robbery gone bad. They had those in Switzerland, didn't they?

   Clark pulled a mini-radio from his pocket and thumbed it on. "Chavez, this is Clark. You and Price report to communications right now."

   "On the way, Six" was the reply.

   "I wonder what this is about," Ding observed to his command sergeant major. Eddie Price, he'd learned in the past three weeks, was as good a soldier as he was ever likely to meet: cool, smart, quiet, with plenty of field experience.

   "I expect we'll find out, sir," Price responded. Officers felt the need to talk a lot, he knew. Proof of that came at once.

   "How long you been in, Eddie?"

   "Nearly thirty years, sir. I enlisted as a boy soldier age fifteen, you see. Parachute Regiment," he went on, just to avoid the next question. "Came over to SAS when I was twenty-four, been here ever since."

   "Well, Sar Major, I'm glad to have you with me." Chavez said, getting in the car for the drive to the Headquarters Building.

   "Thank you, sir," the sergeant major replied. A decent chap, this Chavez, he thought, perhaps even a good commander, though that remained to be seen. He could have asked his own questions, but, no, that wasn't done, was it? Good as he was, Price didn't know much about the American military yet.

   You oughta be an officer, Eddie, Ding didn't say. In America this guy would have been ripped from his unit, kicking and screaming or not, and shipped off to OCS, probably with a college degree purchased by the Army along the way. Different culture, different rules, Chavez told himself. Well, it gave him a damned good squad sergeant to back him up. Ten minutes later, he parked in the back lot and walked into the building, following directions up to Communications.

   "Hey, Mr. C, what gives?"

   "Domingo, there's a chance we may have a job for you and your team. Bern, Switzerland. Bank robbery gone bad, hostage situation. All we know now." Clark pointed both of them at the TV screens. Chavez and Price stole swivel chairs and moved them close.

   If 'nothing else, it was good as a practice alert. The preplanned mechanisms were now moving. On the first floor, tickets had already been arranged on no fewer than four flights from Gatwick to Switzerland, and two helicopters were on the way to Hereford to ferry his men to the airport with their equipment. British Airways had been alerted to accept sealed cargo-inspecting it for the international flight would just have gotten people excited. If the alert went further, Team-2 members would change into civilian clothes, complete with ties and suit jackets. Clark thought that a little excessive. Making soldiers look like bankers was no easy task, was it?"Not much happening now," Tawney said. "Sam, can you roll the tapes from earlier?"