"Yes, sir." Major Bennett keyed one up and hit the play button on the remote.

   "Czech 58," Price said immediately. "No faces?"

   "Nope, that's the only thing we have on the subjects," Bennett replied.

   "Odd weapon for robbers," the sergeant major noted. Chavez turned his head. That was one of the things he had yet to learn about Europe. Okay, hoods here didn't use assault rifles.

   "That's what I thought," Tawney said.

   "Terrorist weapon?" Chavez asked his squad XO.

   "Yes, sir. The Czechs gave away a lot of them. Quite compact, you see. Only twenty-five inches long, manufactured by the Uhersky Broad works. Seven-point-si-two/thirty-nine Soviet cartridge. Fully automatic, selector switch. Odd thing for a Swiss bandit to use," Price said once more for emphasis.

   "Why?" Clark asked.

   "They make far better weapons in Switzerland, sir, for their territorials – their citizen soldiers stow them in their closets, you see. Should not be all that difficult to steel several."The building shook then with the sound of helicopters landing not too far away. Clark checked his watch and nodded approval at the timing.

   "What do we know about the neighborhood?" Chavez asked.

   "Working on that now, old boy," Tawney answered. "So far, just what the TV feed shows."

   The TV screen showed an ordinary street, devoid of vehicular traffic at the moment because the local police had diverted cars and buses away from the bank. Otherwise, they saw ordinary masonry buildings bordering an ordinary city street. Chavez looked over at Price, whose eyes were locked on the pictures they were getting two now, because another Swiss TV station had dispatched a camera team there, and both signals were being pirated off the satellite. The translator continued to relay the remarks of the camera crews and reporters on the scene to their respective stations. They said very little, about half of it small-talk that could have been spoken from one desk to another in an office setting. One camera or the other occasionally caught the movement of a curtain, but that was all."The police are probably trying to establish communications with our friends on a telephone, talk to them, reason with them, the usual drill," Price said, realizing that he had more practical experience with this sort of thing than anyone else in the room. They knew the theory, but theory wasn't always enough. "We shall know in half an hour if this is a mission for us or not."

   "How good are the Swiss cops?" Chavez asked Price.

   "Very good indeed, sir, but not a great deal of experience with a serious hostage event-"

   "That's why we have an understanding with them," Tawney put in.

   "Yes, sir." Price leaned back, reached into his pocket, and took out his pipe. "Anyone object?"

   Clark shook his head. "No health Nazis here, Sergeant Major. What do you mean by a `serious' hostage event?"

   "Committed criminals, terrorists." Price shrugged. "Chaps stupid enough to put their lives behind the chips on the gaming table. The sort who kill hostages to show their resolve." The sort we go in after and kill, Price didn't have to add.

   It was an awful lot of brain-power to be sitting around doing nothing, John Clark thought, especially Bill Tawney. But if you had no information, it was difficult to make pontifical pronouncements. All eyes were locked on the TV screens, which showed little, and Clark found himself missing the inane drivel that one expected of TV reporters, filling silence with empty words. About the only interesting thing was when they said that they were trying to talk to the local cops, but that the cops weren't saying anything, except that they were trying to establish contact with the bad guys, so far unsuccessfully. That had to be a lie, but the police were supposed to lie to the media and the public in cases like this-because any halfway competent terrorist would have a TV set with him, and would have somebody watching it. You could catch a lot by watching TV, else Clark and his senior people would not he watching it either, would they?

   The protocol on this was both simple and complex. Rainbow had an understanding with the Swiss government. If the local police couldn't handle it, they'd bump it up to the canton-state level, which would then decide whether or not to bump it one more step to the central national government, whose ministerial-level people could then make the Rainbow call. That entire mechanism had been established months before as part of the mandate of the agency that Clark now headed. The "help" call would come through the British Foreign Office in Whitehall, on the bank of the Thames in central London. It seemed like a hell of a lot of bureaucracy to John, but there was no avoiding it, and he was grateful that there was not an additional level or two. Once the call was made, things got easier, at least in the administrative sense. But until the call was made, the Swiss would tell them nothing.

   One hour into the TV vigil, Chavez left to put Team-2 on alert. The troops, he saw, took it calmly, readying gear that needed to be seen to, which was not very much. The TV feed was routed to their individual desktop sets, and the men settled back in their swivel chairs to watch quietly as their boss went back to Communications, while the helicopters sat idle on the pad outside Team-2's area. Team-1 went on standby alert as well, in case the helicopters taking -2 to Gatwick crashed. The procedures had been completely thought through-except, John thought, by the terrorists.

   On the TV screen, police milled about,some at the ready, most just standing and watching. Trained police or not, they were little trained for a situation like this, and the Swiss, while they had considered such an event everyone in the civilized world had-had taken it no more seriously than, say, the cops in Boulder, Colorado. This had never happened before in Bern, and until it did, it would not be part of the local police department's corporate culture. The facts were too stark for Clark and the rest to discount. The German police-as competent as any in the world-had thoroughly blown the hostage rescue at Furstenfeldbruck, not because they had been bad cops, but because it had been their first time, and as a result some Israeli athletes hadn't made it home from the 1972 Munich Olympiad. The whole world had learned from that, but how much had they learned? Clark and the rest all wondered at the same time.

   The TV screens showed very little for another half hour beyond an empty city street, but then a senior police officer walked into the open, holding a cellular phone. His body language was placid at first, but it started to change, and then he held the cell phone close to his ear, seeming to lean into it. His free hand came up about then, placatingly, as though in a face-to-face conversation.

   "Something's wrong," Dr. Paul Bellow observed, which was hardly a surprise to the others, especially Eddie Price, who tensed in his chair, but said nothing as he puffed on his pipe. Negotiating with people like those controlling the bank was its own little art form, and it was one this police superintendent-whatever his rank was-had yet to learn. Bad news, the sergeant major thought, for one or more of the bank customers.

   " `Was that a shot?' " the translator said, relaying the words of one of the reporters on the scene.

   "Oh, shit," Chavez observed quietly. The situation had just escalated.

   Less than a minute later, one of the bank's glass doors opened, and a man in civilian clothes dragged a body onto the sidewalk. It seemed to be a man, but his head, as both the cameras zoomed in on the scene from different angles, was a red mass. The civilian got the body all the way outside and froze the moment he set it down.

   Move right, go to your right, Chavez thought as loudly as he could from so faraway. Somehow the thought must have gotten there, for the unnamed man in his gray overcoat stood stock-still for several seconds, looking down, and then-furtively, he thought went to the right.

   " `Somebody's shouting from inside the bank,' " the translator relayed.

   But whatever the voice had shouted, it hadn't been the right thing. The civilian dove to his right, away from the double glass doors of the bank and below the level of the plate-glass bank windows. He was now on the sidewalk, with three feet of granite block over his head, invisible from the interior of the building.

   "Good move, old man," Tawney observed quietly. "Now, we'll see if the police can get you into the clear."

   One of the cameras shifted to the senior cop, who'd wandered into the middle of the street with his cell phone, and was now waving frantically for the civilian to get down. Brave or foolish, they couldn't tell, but the cop then walked slowly back to the line of police cars-astonishingly, without being shot for his troubles. The cameras shifted back to the escaped civilian. Police had edged to the side of the bank building, waving for the man to crawl, keep low, to where they were standing. The uniformed cops had submachine guns out. Their body language was tense and frustrated. One of the police faces looked to the body on the sidewalk, and the men in Hereford could easily translate his thoughts.

   "Mr. Tawney, a call for you on Line Four," the intercom called. The intelligence chief walked to a phone and punched the proper button.

   "Tawney . . . ah, yes, Dennis. . ."

   "Whoever they are, they've just murdered a chap."

   "We just watched it. We're pirating the TV feed." Which meant that Gordon's trip to Bern was a waste of time-but no, it wasn't, was it? "You have that Armitage chap with you?"

   "Yes, Bill, he's going over to talk to their police now."

   "Excellent. I will hold for him."

   As though on cue, a camera showed a man in civilian clothes walking to the senior cop on the scene. He pulled out an ID folder, spoke briefly with the police commander, and walked away, disappearing around the corner."This is Tony Armitage, who's this?"

   "Bill Tawney."

   "Well, if you know Dennis, I expect you're a `Six' chap. What can I do for you, sir?"

   "What did the police tell you?" Tawney hit the speaker switch on the phone.

   "He's out of his depth by several meters or so. Said he's sending it up to the canton for advice."

   "Mr. C?" Chavez said from his chair.

 
   "Tell the choppers to spool up, Ding, you're off to Gatwick. Hold there for further instructions.'

   "Roger that, Mr. C. Team-2 is moving."

   Chavez walked down the stairs with Price behind him. then jumped into their car, which had them at Team-2's building in under three minutes.

   "People, if you're watching the telly, you know what's happening. Saddle up, we're choppering to Gatwick." They'd just headed out the door when a brave Swiss cop managed to get the civilian to safety. The TV showed the civilian being hustled to a car, which sped off at once. Again the body language was the important thing. The assembled police, who had been standing around casually, were standing differently now, mainly crouched behind the cover of their automobiles, their hands fingering their weapons, tense but still unsure of what they ought to do.

   "It's going out live on TV now," Bennett reported. "Sky News will have it on in a few."

   "I guess that figures," Clark said. "Where's Stanley?"

   "He's at Gatwick now," Tawney said. Clark nodded. Stanley would deploy with Team-2 as field commander. Dr. Paul Bellow was gone as well. He'd chopper out with Chavez and advise him and Stanley on the psychological aspects of the tactical situation. Nothing to be done now but order coffee and solid food, which Clark did, taking a chair and sitting in front of the TVs

CHAPTER 3
GNOMES AND GUNS

   The helicopter ride was twenty-five minutes exactly, and deposited Team-2 and its attachments in the general aviation portion of the international airport. Two vans waited, and Chavez watched his men load their gear into one of them for movement to the British Airways terminal. There, some cops, who were also waiting, supervised the van's handling into a cargo container which would be first off the flight when the plane arrived at Bern.

   But first they had to wait for the go-mission order. Chavez pulled out his cellular phone, flipped it open, and thumbed speeddial number one.

   "Clark," the voice said after the encryption software Ticked through.

   "Ding here, John. The call come from Whitehall yet?"

   "Still waiting, Domingo. We expect it shortly. The canton pumped it upstairs. Their Justice Minister is considering it now."

   "Well, tell the worthy gentleman that this flight leaves the gate in two-zero minutes, and the next one after that is ninety minutes, 'less you want us to travel Swissair. One of those in forty minutes, and another in an hour fifteen."

   "I hear you, Ding. We have to hold."

   Chavez swore in Spanish. He knew it. He didn't have to like it. "Roger, Six, Team-2 is holding on the ramp at Gatwick."

   "Roger that, Team-2, Rainbow Six, out."

   Chavez closed his phone and tucked it in his shirt pocket. "Okay, people," he said to his men over the shriek of jet engines, "we hold here for the go-ahead." The troops nodded, as eager to get it going as their boss, but just as powerless to make it happen. The British team members had been there before and took it better than the Americans and the others.

   "Bill, tell Whitehall that we have twenty minutes to get them off the ground, after that over an hour delay."

   Tawney nodded and went to a phone in the corner to call his contact in the Foreign Ministry. From there it went to the British Ambassador in Geneva, who'd been told that the SAS was offering special mission assistance of a technical nature. It was an odd case where the Swiss Foreign Minister knew more than the man making the offer. But, remarkably, the word came back in fifteen minutes: Va. "

   "We have mission approval, John," Tawney reported, much to his own surprise.

   "Right." Clark flipped open his own phone and hit the speeddial #2 button.

   "Chavez," a voice said over considerable background noise.

   "We have a go-mission," Clark said. "Acknowledge."

   "Team-2 copies go-mission. Team-2 is moving."

   "That's affirmative. Good luck, Domingo."

   "Thank you, Mr. C."

   Chavez turned to his people and pumped his arm up and down in the speed-it-up gesture known to armies all over the world. They got into their designated van for the drive across the Gatwick ramp. It stopped at the cargo gate for their flight, where Chavez waved a cop close, and let Eddie Price pass the word to load the special cargo onto the Boeing 757. That done, the van advanced another fifty yards to the stairs outside the end of the jetway, and Team-2 jumped out and headed up the stairs. At the top, the control-booth door was held open by another police constable, and from there they walked normally aboard the aircraft and handed over their tickets to the stewardess, who pointed them to their first-class seats.

   The last man aboard was Tim Noonan, the team's technical wizard. Not a wizened techno-nerd, Noonan had played defensive back at Stanford before joining the FBI, and took weapons training with the team just to fit in. Six feet two hundred pounds, he was larger than most of Ding's shooters but, he'd be the first to admit, was not as tough. Still, he was a better-than-fair shot with pistol and YIP-10, and was learning to speak the language. Dr. Bellow settled into his window seat with a book extracted from his carry-on bag. It was a volume on sociopathy by u professor at Harvard under whom he'd trained some years before. The rest of the team members just leaned hack, skimming through the onboard magazines. Chavez looked around and saw that his team didn't seem tense at all, and was both amazed at the fact, and slightly ashamed that he was so pumped up. The airline captain made his announcements, and the Boeing backed away from the gate, then taxied out to the runway. Five minutes later, the aircraft rotated off the ground, and Team-2 was on its way to its first mission

   "In the air," Tawney reported. "The airline expects a smooth flight and an on time arrival in . . . an hour fifteen minutes."

   "Great," Clark observed. The TV coverage had settled down. Both Swiss stations were broadcasting continuous L overage now, complete with thoughts from the reporters ,it the scene. That was about as useful as an NFL pre-game show, though police spokesmen were speaking to the press now. No, they didn't know who was inside. Yes, they'd spoken to them. Yes, negotiations were ongoing. No, they couldn't really say any more than that. Yes, they'd keep the press apprised of developments.

   Like hell, John thought. The same coverage was reported on Sky News, and soon CNN and Fox networks were carrying brief stories about it, including, of course, the dumping of the first victim and the escape of the one who'd dragged the body out.

   "Nasty business, John," Tawney said over his tea.

   Clark nodded. "I suppose they always are, Bill."

   "Quite." Peter Covington came in then, stole a swivel chair and n -paved it next to the two senior men. His face was locked in neutral though he had to be pissed, Clark thought, that his team wasn't going. But the team-availability rotation was set in stone here, as it had to be.

   "Thoughts, Peter?" Clark asked.

   "They're not awfully bright. They killed that poor sod very early in the affair, didn't they?"

   "Keep going," John said, reminding all of them that he was new in this business.

   "When you kill a hostage, you cross a large, thick line, sir. Once across it, one cannot easily go backward, can one?"

   "So, you try to avoid it?"

   "I would. It makes it too difficult for the other side to make concessions, and you bloody need the concessions if you want to get away-unless you know something the opposition does not. Unlikely in a situation like this."

   "They'll ask for a way out . . . helicopter?"

   "Probably." Covington nodded. "To an airport, commercial aircraft waiting, international crew-but to where? Libya, perhaps, but will Libya allow them in? Where else might they go? Russia? I think not. The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon is still possible, but commercial aircraft don't land there. About the only sensible thing they've done is to protect their identities from the police. Would you care to wager that the hostage who got out has not seen their faces?" Covington shook his head.

   "They're not amateurs," Clark objected. "Their weapons point to some measure of training and professionalism."

   That earned John a nod. "True, sir, but not awfully bright. I would not be overly surprised to learn that they'd actually stolen some currency, like common robbers. Trained terrorists, perhaps, but not good ones."

   And what's a "good" terrorist? John wondered. Doubtless a term of art he'd have to learn.

   The BA flight touched down two minutes early, then taxied to the gate. Ding had spent the flight talking to Dr. Bellow. The psychology of this business was the biggest blank spot in his copybook, and one he'd have to learn to fill in and soon. This wasn't like being a soldier-the psychology of that job was handled at the general officer level most of the time, the figuring out of what the other guy was going to do with his maneuver battalions. This was ,quad-level combat, but with all sorts of interesting new dements, Ding thought, flipping his seat belt off before t he aircraft stopped moving. But it still came down to the last common denominator-steel on target.

   Chavez stood and stretched, then headed aft to the doorway, his game-face now on all the way. Out the jetway, between two ordinary civilians who probably thought him a businessman, with his suit and tie. Maybe he'd buy a nicer suit in London, he thought idly, exiting the jetway, the better to fit the disguise he and his men had t o adopt when traveling. There was a chauffeur sort of man standing out there holding a sign with the proper name on it. Chavez walked up to him.

   "Waiting for us?"

   "Yes, sir. Come with me?"

   Team-2 followed him down the anonymous concourse, then turned into what seemed a conference room that had another door. In it was a uniformed police officer, a se-one, judging by the braid on his blue blouse.

   You are. . ." he said. "Chavez." Ding stuck his hand out. "Domingo Chavez."

   "Spanish?" the cop asked in considerable surprise.

   "American. And you, sir?"

   "Roebling, Marius," the man replied, when all the team was in the room and the door closed. "Come with me, please." Roebling opened the far door, which led outside to some stairs. A minute later, they were in a minibus heading past the park aircraft, then out onto a highway. Ding looked back to see another truck, doubtless carrying their gear.

   "Okay, what can you tell me?"

   "Nothing new since the first murder. We are speaking with them over the telephone. No names, no identities. They've demanded transport to this airport and a flight out of the country, no destination revealed to us as of yet.,,

   "Okay, what did the guy who got away tell you?"

   "There are four of them, they speak German, he says they sound as though it is their primary language, idiomatic, pronunciation, and so forth. They are armed with Czech weapons, and it would seem they are not reluctant to make use of them."

   "Yes, sir. How long to get there, and will my men be able to change into their gear?"

   Roebling nodded. "It is arranged, Major Chavez."

   "Thank you, sir."

   "Can I speak with the man who got out?" Dr. Bellow asked.

   "My orders are to give you full cooperation-within reason, of course."

   Chavez wondered what that qualification meant, but decided he'd find out in due course. He couldn't blame the man for being unhappy to have a team of foreigners come to his country to enforce the law. But these were the proverbial pros from Dover, and that was that-his own government had said so. It also occurred to Ding that the credibility of Rainbow now rested on his shoulders. It would be a hell of a thing to embarrass his father-in-law and his team and his country. He turned to look at his people. Eddie Price, perhaps reading his mind, gave a discreet thumbs-up. Well, Chavez thought, at least one of us thinks we're ready. It was different in the field, something he'd learned in the jungles and mountains of Colombia years before, and the closer you got to the firing line, the more different it got. Out here there were no laser systems to tell you who'd been killed. Real red blood would announce that. But his people were trained and experienced, especially Sergeant Major Edward Price.

   All Ding had to do was lead them into battle.

   There was a secondary school a block from the bank. The minibus and truck pulled up to it, and Team-2 walked into the gymnasium area, which was secured by ten or so uniformed cops. The men changed into their gear in a locker room, and walked back into the gym, to find Roebling with an additional garment for them to wear. These were pullovers, black like their assault gear. POLIZEI was printed on them, front and back, in gold lettering rather than the usual bright yellow. A Swiss affectation? Chavez thought, without the smile that should have gone with the observation.

   "Thanks," Chavez told him. It was a useful subterfuge. With that done, the men and their gear reboarded the minibus for the remainder of their drive. This put them around the corner from the bank, invisible both to the terrorists and the TV news cameras. The long-riflemen, Johnston and Weber, were walked to preselected perches, one overlooking the rear of the bank building, the other diagonally facing the front. Both men settled in, unfolded the bipod legs on their gunstocks, and started surveying the target building.

   Their rifles were as individual as the shooters. Weber had a Walther WA2000, chambered for the .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge. Johnston's was custom made, chambered for the slightly smaller but faster 7-mm Remington Magnum. In both cases, the sharpshooters first of all determined the range to target and dialed it into their telescopic sights, then lay down on the foam mattresses they'd brought. Their immediate mission was to observe, gather information, and report.

   Dr. Bellow felt very strange in his black uniform, complete with body armor and POLIZEI pullover, but it would help prevent his identification by a medical colleague who caught this event on TV. Noonan, similarly dressed, set up his computer--an Apple PowerBook – and started looking over the building blueprints so that he could input them into his system. The local cops had been efficient as hell. Over a period of thirty minutes, he had a complete electronic map of the target building. Everything but the vault combination, he thought with a smile. Then he erected a whip antenna and transmitted the imagery to the other three computers the team had brought along.

   Chavez, Price, and Bellow walked to the senior Swiss policeman on the scene. Greetings were exchanged, hands shaken. Price set up his computer and put in a CD-ROM disk with photos of every known and photographed terrorist in the world.

   The man who'd dragged the body out was one Hans Richter, a German national from Bonn who banked here for his Swiss-based trading business.

   "Did you see their faces?" Price asked.

   "Yes." A shaky nod. Herr Richter'd had a very bad day to this point. Price selected known German terrorists and started flashing photos.

   "Ja, ja, that one. He is the leader."

   "You are quite sure?"

   "Yes, I am."

   "Ernst Model, formerly of Baader-Meinhof, disappeared in 1989, whereabouts unknown." Price scrolled down. "Four suspected operations to date. Three were bloody failures. Nearly captured in Hamburg, 1987, killed two policemen to make his escape. Communist-trained, last suspected to be in Lebanon, that sighting report is thin-very thin it would seem. Kidnapping was his specialty. Okay." Price scrolled down some more.

   "That one . . . possibly."

   "Erwin Guttenach, also Baader-Meinhof, last spotted 1992 in Cologne. Robbed a bank, background also kidnapping and murder oh, yes, he's the chappie who kidnapped and killed a board member of BMW in 1986. Kept the ransom . . . four million Dmarks. Greedy bugger," Price added.

   Bellow looked over his shoulder, thinking as fast as he could. "What did he say to you on the phone?"

   "We have a tape," the cop replied.

   "Excellent! But I require a translator."

   "Doe, a profile on Ernst Model, quick as you can." Chavez turned. "Noonan, can we get some coverage on the bank?"

   "No problem," the tech man replied.

   "Roebling?" Chavez said next.

   "Yes, Major?"

   "Will the TV crews cooperate? We have to assume the subjects inside have a TV with them."

   "They will cooperate," the senior Swiss cop replied with confidence. "Okay, people, let's move," Chavez ordered. Noonan went off to his bag of tricks. Bellow headed around the corner with Herr Richter and another Swiss cop to handle the translation. That left Chavez and Price alone.

   "Eddie, am I missing anything?"

   "No, Major," Sergeant Major Price replied.

   "Okay, number one, my name is Ding. Number two, you have more experience in this than I do. If you have something to say, I want to hear it right now, got it? We ain't in no fuckin' wardroom here. I need your brains, Eddie."

   "Very well, sir-Ding." Price managed a smile. His commander was working out rather nicely. "So far, so good. We have the subjects contained, good perimeter. We need plans of the building and information on what's happening inside – Noonan's job, and he seems a competent chappie. And we need an idea of what the opposition is thinking-Dr. Bellow's job, and he is excellent. What's the plan if the opposition just starts shooting out of hand?"

   "Tell Louis, two flash-bangs at the front door, toss four more inside, and we blow in like a tornado."

   "Our body armor-"

   "Won't stop a seven-six-two Russian. I know," Chavez agreed. "Nobody ever said it was safe, Eddie. When we know a little more, we can figure a real assault plan." Chavez clapped him on the shoulder. "Move, Eddie."

   "Yes, sir." Price moved off to join the rest of the team.

   Popov hadn't known that the Swiss police had such a well trained counterterrorist squad. As he watched, the commander was crouching close to the front of the bank building, and another, his second-in-command, probably, was heading around the corner to the rest of the team. They were speaking with the escaped hostage someone had walked him out of sight. Yes, these Swiss police were well trained and well-equipped. H&K weapons, it appeared. The usual for this sort of thing. For his own part, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov stood in the crowd of onlookers. His first impression of Model and his little team of three others had been correct. The German's IQ was little more than room temperature he'd even wanted a discussion of Marxism-Leninism with his visitor! The fool. Not even a young fool. Model was into his forties now and couldn't use youthful exuberance as an excuse for his ideological fixation. But not entirely impractical. Ernst had wanted to see the money, $600,000 in D-marks. Popov smiled, remembering where it had been stashed. It was unlikely that Ernst would ever see it again. Killing the hostage so early-foolish, but not unexpected. He was the sort who'd want to show his resolve and ideological purity, as though anyone cared about that today! Popov grunted to himself and lit a cigar, leaning back against yet another bank building to relax and observe the exercise, his hat pulled down and collar turned up, ostensibly to protect himself from the gathering evening chill, but also to obscure his face. One couldn't be too careful-a fact lost on Ernst Model and his three Kameraden.

   Dr. Bellow finished his review of the taped phone conversations and the known facts about Ernst Johannes Model. The man was a sociopath with a distinct tendency for violence. Suspected in seven murders personally committed and a few more in the company of others. Guttenach, a less bright individual of the same ilk, and two others, unknown. Richter, the escapee, had told them, unsurprisingly, that Model had killed the first victim himself, shooting him in the back of his head from close range and ordering Richter to drag him out. So, both the shooting and the demonstration of its reality to the police had been ill-considered . . . it all fit the same worrisome profile. Bellow keyed his radio.

   "Bellow for Chavez."

   "Yeah, doc, this is Ding."

   "I have a preliminary profile on the subjects."

   "Shoot – Team, you listening?" There followed an immediate cacophony of overlapping responses. "Yeah, Ding." "Copying, leader." "Ja. " And the rest. "Okay, doc, lay it out," Chavez ordered.

   "First, this is not a well-planned operation. That fits the profile for the suspected leader, Ernst Model, German national, age forty-one, formerly of the Baader-Meinhof organization. Tends to be impetuous, very quick to use violence when cornered or frustrated. If he threatens to kill someone, we have to believe he's not kidding. His current mental state is very, repeat, very dangerous. He knows he has a blown operation. He knows that his likelihood of success is slim. His hostages are his only assets, and he will regard them as expendable assets. Do not expect Stockholm Syndrome to set in with this case, people. Model is too sociopathic for that. Neither would I expect negotiations to be very useful. I think that it is very likely that an assault resolution will be necessary tonight or tomorrow."

   "Anything else?" Chavez asked.

  "Not at this time," Dr. Bellow replied. "I will monitor further developments with the local cops."

   Noonan had taken his time selecting the proper tools, and :sow he was creeping along the outside wall of the bank Building, below the level of the windows. At every one of v hem, he raised his head slowly and carefully to see if the interior curtains allowed any view of the inside. The second one did, and there Noonan affixed a tiny viewing system. This was a lens, roughly the shape of a cobra's head, but only a few millimeters across, which led by fiber-optic gable to a TV camera set in his black bag around the corner. He placed another at the lower corner of the bank's -lass door, then worked his way back, crawling feet first, lowly and laboriously, to a place where he could stand. that done, he walked all the way around the block to repeat the procedure from the other side of the building, here he was able to make three placements, one again on he door, and two on windows whose curtains were an inch shorter than they ought to have been. He also placed microphones in order to pick up whatever sound might be available. The large plate-glass windows ought to resonate nicely, he thought, though this would apply to extraneous exterior sounds as well as to those originating inside the building.

   All the while, the Swiss TV crews were speaking with the senior on-site policeman, who spent a great deal of time saying that the terrorists were serious – he'd been coached by Dr. Bellow to speak of them with respect. They were probably watching television inside, and building up their self-esteem worked for the team's purposes at the moment. In any case, it denied the terrorists knowledge of what Tim Noonan had done on the outside.

   "Okay," the techie said in his place on a side street. All the video displays were up and running. They showed little. The size of the lenses didn't make for good imagery, despite the enhancement program built into his computer. "Here's one shooter . . . and another." They were within ten meters of the front of the building. The rest of the people visible were sitting on the white marble floor, in the center for easy coverage. "The guy said four, right?"

   "Yeah," Chavez answered. "But not how many hostages, not exactly anyway."

   "Okay, this is a bad guy, I think, behind the teller places . . . hmph, looks like he's checking the cash drawers . . . and that's a bag of some sort. You figure they visited the vault?"

   Chavez turned. "Eddie?"

   "Greed," Price agreed. "Well, why not? It is a bank, after all."

   "Okay." Noonan switched displays on the computer screen. "I got blueprints of the building, and this is the layout."

   "Teller cages, vault, toilets." Price traced his finger over the screen. "Back door. Seems simple enough. Access to the upper floors?"

   "Here," Noonan said. "Actually outside the bank itself, but the basement is accessible to them here, stairs down, and a separate exit to the alley in back."

   "Ceiling construction?" Chavez asked.

   "Rebarred concrete slab, forty centimeters thick. That's solid as hell. Same with the walls and floor. This building was made to last." So, there would be no explosives-forced entry through walls, floor, or ceiling.

   "So, we can go in the front door or the back door, and that's it. And that puts number four bad guy at the back door." Chavez keyed his radio. "Chavez for Rifle Two Two."

   "Ja, Weber here."

   "Any windows in the back, anything in the door, peephole, anything like that, Dieter?"

   "Negative. It appears to be a heavy steel door, nothing in it that I can see," the sniper said, tracing his telescopic sight over the target yet again, and again finding nothing but blank painted steel.

   "Okay, Eddie, we blow the rear door with Primacord, three men in that way. Second later, we blow the front glass doors, toss flash-bangs, and move in when they're looking the wrong way. Two and two through the front. You and me go left. Louis and George go right."

   "Are they wearing body armor?" Price asked.

   Nothing that Herr Richter saw," Noonan responded, "and nothing visible here-but there ain't no head protection anyway, right?" It would be nothing more than a ten-meter shot, an easy distance for the H&K shoulder weapons.

   "Quite." Price nodded. "Who leads the rear-entry :cam?"

   "Scotty, I think. Paddy does the explosives." Connolly was the best man on the team for that, and both men knew it. Chavez made an important mental note that the subteams had to be more firmly established. To this point he'd kept all his people in the same drawer. That he would have to change as soon as they got back to Hereford.

   "Vega?"

   "Oso backs us up, but I don't think we'll have much use for him on this trip." Julio Vega had become their heavy machine gunner, slinging a laser-sighted M-60 7.62-mm machine gun for really serious work, but there wasn't much use for that now-and wouldn't be, unless everything went totally to hell.

   "Noonan, send this picture to Scotty."

   "Right." He moved the mouse-pointer and started transmitting everything to the team's various computers.

   "The question now is when." Ding checked his watch. "Back to the doe."

   "Yes, sir." Bellow had spent his time with Herr Richter. Three stiff shots had calmed him down nicely. Even his English had improved markedly. Bellow was walking him through the event for the sixth time when Chavez and Price showed up again.

   "His eyes, they are blue, like ice. Like ice," Richter repeated. "He is not a man like most men. He should be in a cage, with the animals at the zoo." The businessman shuddered involuntarily.

   "Does he have an accent?" Price asked.

   "Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too. The others, all Bavarian accents."

   "The Bundes Kriminal Amt will find that useful, Ding," Price observed. The BKA was the German counterpart to the American FBI. "Why not have the local police check the area for a car with German license plates-from Bavaria? Perhaps there's a driver about."

   "Good one." Chavez left and ran over to the Swiss cops, whose chief got on his radio at once. Probably a dry hole, Chavez thought. But you didn't know until you drilled it. They had to have come here one way or another. Another mental note. Check for that on every job.

   Roebling came over next, carrying his cell phone. "It is time," he said, "to speak with them again."

   "Yo, Tim," Chavez said over his radio. "Come to the rally point."

   Noonan was there in under a minute. Chavez pointed him to Roebling's phone. Noonan took it, popped the back off, and attached a small green circuit board with a thin wire hanging from it. Then he pulled a cell phone from a thigh pocket and handed it over to Chavez. "There. You'll hear everything they say."

   "Anything happening inside?"

   "They're walking around a little more, a little agitated, maybe. Two of them were talking face-to-face a few minutes ago. Didn't look real happy about things from their gestures."

   "Okay. Everybody up to speed on the interior?"

   "How about audio?"

   The techie shook his head. "Too much background noise. The building has a noisy heating system-oil-bred hot water, sounds like that's playing hell with the window mikes. Not getting anything useful, Ding."

   "Okay, keep us posted."

   "You bet." Noonan made his way back to his gear.

   "Eddie?"

   "Were I to make a wager, I'd say we have to storm the place before dawn. Our friend will begin losing control soon."

   "Doc?" Ding asked.

   "That's likely," Bellow agreed with a nod, taking note of Price's practical experience.

   Chavez frowned mightily at that one. Trained as he was, he wasn't really all that eager to take this one on. He'd seen the interior pictures. There had to be twenty, perhaps thirty, people inside, with three people in their immediate vicinity holding fully automatic weapons. If one of them decided fuck it and went rock and-roll on his Czech machine gun, a lot of those people wouldn't make it home to the wife and kiddies. It was called the responsibility of command, and while it wasn't the first time Chavez had experienced it-, the burden never really got any lighter because the price of failure never got any smaller.

   "Chavez!" It was Dr. Bellow.

   "Yeah, doc," Ding said, heading over toward him with Price in attendance.

   "Model's getting aggressive. He says he'll kill a hostage in thirty minutes unless we get him a car to a helicopter pad a few blocks from here, and from there to the airport. After that, he kills a hostage every fifteen minutes. He gays he has enough to last more than a few hours. He's reading off a list of the important ones now. A professor of surgery at the local medical school, an off-duty policeman, a big-time lawyer . . . well, he's not kidding, Ding. Thirty minutes from--okay, he shoots the first one at eight thirty."

   "What are the cops saying back?"

  "What I told them to say, it takes time to arrange all of that, give us a hostage or two to show good faith-but that's what prompted the threat for eight-thirty. Ernst is coming a little unglued."

   "Is he serious?" Chavez asked, just to make sure he understood.

   "Yeah, he sounds serious as hell. He's losing control, very unhappy with how things turned out. He's barely rational now. He's not kidding about killing somebody. Like a spoiled kid with nothing under the tree on Christmas morning, Ding. There's no stabilizing influence in there to help him out. He feels very lonely."

   "Super." Ding keyed his radio. Not unexpectedly, the decision had just been made by somebody else. "Team. this is Chavez. Stand to. I say again, stand to."

   He'd been trained in what to expect. One ploy was to deliver the car – it'd be too small for all the hostages, and you could take the bad guys down on the way out with aimed rifle fire. But he had only two snipers, and their rifle bullets would blast through a terrorist's head with enough leftover energy to waste two of three people beyond him. SMG or pistol fire was much the same story. Four bad guys was too many for that play. No, he had to take his team in, while the hostages were still sitting down on the floor, below the line of fire. These bastards weren't even rational enough to want food which he might drug-or maybe they were smart enough to know about the Valium flavored pizza.

   It took several minutes. Chavez and Price crawled to the door from the left. Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson did the same from the other side. At the rear, Paddy Connolly attached a double thickness of Primacord to the door frame, inserted the detonator, and stood away, with Scotty McTyler and Hank Patterson nearby.

   "Rear team in place, Leader," Scotty told them over the radio."Roger that. Front team is in place," Chavez replied quietly into his radio transmitter.

   "Okay, Ding," Noonan's voice came over the command circuit, "TV One shows a guy brandishing a rifle, walking around the hostages on the floor. If I had to bet, I'd say it's our friend Ernst. One more behind him, and a third to the right side by the second wood desk. Hold, he's on the phone now . . . okay, he's talking to the cops, saying he's getting ready to pick a hostage to whack. He's going to give out his name first. Nice of him," Noonan concluded.

   "Okay, people, it's gonna go down just like the exercises," Ding told his troops. "We are weapons-free at this time. Stand by." He looked up to see Loiselle and Tomlinson trade a look and a gesture. Louis would lead, with George behind. It would be the same for Chavez, letting Price take the lead with his commander immediately behind.

   "Ding, he just grabbed a guy, standing him up-on the phone again, they're going to whack the doctor first, Professor Mario Donatello. Okay, I have it all on Camera Two, he's got the guy stood up. I think it's show time," Noonan concluded.

   "Are we ready? Rear team, check in."

   "Ready here," Connolly replied over the radio. Chavez could see Loiselle and Tomlinson. Both nodded curtly and adjusted their hands on their MP-10s.

   "Chavez to team, we are ready to rock. Stand by. Stand by. Paddy, hit it!" Ding ordered loudly. The last thing he could do was cringe in expectation of the blast of noise sure to come.

   The intervening second seemed to last for hours, and then the mass of the building was in the way. They heard it even so, a loud metallic crash that shook the whole world. Price and Loiselle had placed their flash-bangs at the brass lower lining of the door, and punched the switches on them as soon as they heard the first detonation. Instantly the glass doors disintegrated into thousands of fragments, which mainly flew into the granite and marble lobby of the bank in front of a blinding white light and end-of-the-world noise. Price, already standing at the edge of the door, darted in, with Chavez right behind, and going to his left as he entered.

   Ernst Model was right there, his weapon's muzzle pressed to the back of Dr. Donatello's head. He'd turned to look at the back of the room when the first explosion had happened, and, as planned, the second one, with its immense noise and blinding flash of magnesium powder, had disoriented him. The physician captive had reacted, too, dropping away from the gunman behind him with his hands over his head, and giving the intruders a blessedly clear shot. Price had his MP-10 up and aimed, and depressed the trigger for a quick and final three-round burst into the center of Ernst Model's face.

   Chavez, immediately behind him, spotted another gunman, standing and shaking his head as though to clear it. He was facing away, but he still held his weapon, and the rules were the rules. Chavez double-tapped his head as well. Between the suppressors integral with the gun-barrels and the ringing from the flash-bangs, the report of the weapons was almost nil. Chavez traversed his weapon right, to see that the third terrorist was already on the floor, a pool of red streaming from what had been a head less than two seconds before.

   "Clear!" Chavez shouted.

   "Clear!" "Clear!" "Clear!" the others agreed. Loiselle raced to the back of the building, with Tomlinson behind him. Before they'd gotten there, the black-clad figures of McTyler and Patterson appeared, their weapons immediately pointing up at the ceiling: "clear!"

   Chavez moved farther left to the teller cages, leaping over the barrier to check there for additional people. None. "Clear here! Secure the area!"

   One of the hostages started to rise, only to be pushed back down to the floor by George Tomlinson. One by one, they were frisked by the team members while another covered them with loaded weapons-they couldn't be sure which was a sheep and which a goat at this point. By this time, some Swiss cops were entering the bank. The frisked hostages were pushed in that direction, a shocked and stunned bunch of citizens, still disoriented by what had happened, some bleeding from the head or ears from the flash-bangs and flying glass.

   Loiselle and Tomlinson picked up the weapons dropped by their victims, cleared each of them, and slung them over their shoulders. Only then, and only gradually, did they start to relax.

   "What about the back door?" Ding asked Paddy Connolly.

   "Come and see," the former SAS soldier suggested, leading Ding to the back room. It was a bloody mess. Perhaps the subject had been resting his head against the door frame. It seemed a logical explanation for the fact that no head was immediately visible, and only one shoulder on the corpse, which had been flung against an interior partition, the Czech M-58 rifle still grasped tightly in its remaining hand. The double thickness of Primacord had been a little too powerful . . . but Ding couldn't say that. The steel door and a stout steel frame had demanded it.

   "Okay, Paddy, nice one."

   "'Thank you, sir." The smile of a pro who'd gotten the job cell and truly done.

   There were cheers on the street outside as The hostages came out. So, Popov thought, the terrorists he'd recruited were dead fools now. No real surprise there. The Swiss countertenor team had handled the job well, as one would expect of Swiss policemen. One of them came outside and lit a pipe-how very Swiss! Popov thought. The bugger probably climbs mountains for personal entertainment, too. Perhaps he was the leader. A hostage came up to him.

   "Danke schon, danke schon!" the bank director said to Eddie Price.

   "Bitte sehr, Herr Direktor," the Brit answered, just about exhausting his knowledge of the German language. He pointed the man off to where the Bern police had the other hostages. They probably needed a loo more than anything else, he thought, as Chavez came out.

   "How'd we do, Eddie?"

   "Rather well, I should say." A puff on his pipe. "An easy job, really. They were proper wallies, picking this bank and acting as they did." He shook his head and took another puff. The IRA were far more formidable than this. Bloody Germans.

   Ding didn't ask what a "wally" was, much less a proper one. With that decided. he pulled his cell phone out and hit speeddial.

   "Clark."

   "Chavez.

   "Did you catch it on TV, Mr. C?"

   "Getting the replay now. Domingo."

   "We got all four down for the count. No hostages hurt, except for the one they whacked earlier today. No casualties on the team. So, boss, what do we do now?"

   "Fly on home for the debrief, lad. Six, out."

   "Bloody good," Major Peter Covington said. The TV showed the team gathering up their equipment for the next thirty or so minutes, then they disappeared around the corner. "Your Chavez does seem to know his business-and so much the better his first test was an easy one. Confidence builder."

   They looked over at the computer-generated picture that Noonan had uploaded to them on his cellular phone system. Covington had predicted how the take-down would go, and made no mistakes.

   "Any traditions I need to know about?" John asked, settling down, finally, and hugely relieved that there were no unnecessary casualties.

   "We take them to the club for a few pints, of course." Covington was surprised that Clark didn't know about that one.

   Popov was in his car, trying to navigate the streets of Bern before police vehicles blocked everything on their way back to their stations. Left there . . . two traffic lights, right, then through the square and . . . there! Excellent, even a place for him to park. He left his rented Audi on the street right across from the half-baked safe house Model had set up. Defeating the lock was child's play. Upstairs, to the back, where the lock was just as easily dealt with.

   "Wer Bind sie?" a voice asked.

   "Dmitriy," Popov replied honestly, one hand in his coat pocket. "Have you been watching the television?"

   "Yes, what went wrong?" the voice asked in German, seriously downcast.

   "It does not matter now. It is time to leave, my young friend."

   "But my friends-"

  "Are dead, and you cannot help them." He saw the boy in the dark, perhaps twenty years of age, and a devoted friend of the departed fool, Ernst Model. A homosexual relationship, perhaps? If so, it would make things easier for Popov, who had no love for men of that orientation. "Come, get your things. We must leave and leave quickly." There, there it was, the black-leather-clad suitcase with the D-marks inside. The lad – what was his name? Fabian something? Turned his back and went to get his parka, which the Germans called a Joppe. He never turned back. Popov's silenced pistol came up and fired once, then again, quite unnecessarily, from three meters away. Making sure the boy was indeed dead, he lifted the suitcase, opened it to verify the contents, and then walked out the door, crossed the street, and drove to his downtown hotel. He had a noon flight back to New York. Before that he had to open a bank account in a city well suited for the task.

   The team was quiet on the trip back, having caught the last flight back to England-this one to Heathrow rather than Gatwick. Chavez availed himself of a glass of white wine, again sitting next to Dr. Bellow, who did the same.

   "So, how'd we do, doc?"

   "Why don't you tell me, Mr. Chavez," Bellow responded.

   "For me, the stress is bleeding off. No shakes this time," Ding replied, surprised at the fact that his hand was ready.

   "`Shakes' are entirely normal – the release of stress energy. The body has trouble letting it go and returning to normal But training attenuates that. And so does a drink," the physician observed, sipping his own glass of a French offering.

   "Anything we might have done differently?"

   "I don't think so. Perhaps if we'd gotten involved earlier we might have prevented or at least postponed the murder of the first hostage, but that's never really under Our control." Bellow shrugged. "No, what I'm curious about is the motivation of the terrorists in this case."

   "How so?"

   "They acted in an ideological way, but their demands were – not ideological. I understand they robbed the bank along the way.."

   "Correct." He and Loiselle had looked at a canvas bag on the bank's floor. It had been full of notes, perhaps twenty-five pounds of money. That seemed to Chavez an odd way to count money, but it was all he had. Follow-up work by the Swiss police would count it up. The after action stuff was an intelligence function, supervised by Bill Tawney. "So . . . were they just robbers?"

   "Not sure." Bellow finished off his glass, holding it up then for the stewardess to see and refill. "It doesn't seem to make much sense at the moment, but that's not exactly unknown in cases like this. Model was not a very good terrorist. Too much show, and not enough go. Poorly planned, poorly executed."

   "Vicious bastard," Chavez observed.

   "Sociopathic personality-more like a criminal than a terrorist. Those – the good ones, I mean – are usually more judicious."

   "What the hell is a good terrorist?"

   "He's a businessman whose business is killing people to make a political point . . . almost like advertising. They serve a larger purpose, at least in their own minds. They believe in something, but not like kids in catechism class, more like reasoned adults in Bible study. Crummy simile, I suppose, but it's the best I have at the moment. Long day, Mr. Chavez," Dr. Bellow concluded, while the stew topped off his glass.

   Ding checked his watch. "Sure enough, doc." And the next part, Bellow didn't have to tell him, was the need for some sleep. Chavez hit the button to run his seat back and was unconscious in two minutes.

CHAPTER 4
AAR

   Chavez and most of the rest of Team-2 woke up when the airliner touched down at Heathrow. The taxi to the gate seemed to last forever, and then they were met by police, who escorted them to the helo-pad for the flight back to Hereford. On the way through the terminal, Chavez caught the headline on an evening tabloid saying that Swiss police had dealt with a robbery-terrorist incident in the Bern Commercial Bank. It was somewhat unsatisfying that others got the credit for his successful mission, but that was the whole point of Rainbow, he reminded himself, and they'd probably get a nice thank-you letter from the Swiss government which would end up in the confidential file cabinet. The two military choppers landed on their pad, and vans took the troops to their building. It was after eleven at night now, and all the men were tired after a day that had started with the usual PT and ended with real mission stress.

   It wasn't rest time yet, though. On entering the building, they found all the swivel chairs in the bullpen arranged in a circle, with a large-screen TV to one side. Clark, Stanley, and Covington were there. It was time for the after action review, or AAR.

   "Okay, people," Clark said, as soon as they'd sat down. "Good job. All the bad guys are gone, and no good-guy casualties as part of the action. Okay, what did we do wrong?"

   Paddy Connolly stood. "I used too much explosives on the rear door. Had there been a hostage immediately inside, he would have been killed," the sergeant said honestly. "I assumed that the door frame was stouter than it actually was." Then he shrugged. "I do not know how to correct for that."

   John thought about that. Connolly was having an attack of over-scrupulous honesty, one sure mark of a good man. He nodded and let it go. "Neither do I. What else?"

   It was Tomlinson who spoke next, without standing. "Sir, we need to work on a better way to get used to the flash-bangs. I was pretty wasted when I went through the door. Good thing Louis took the first shot on the inside. Not sure I could have."

   "How about inside?"

   "They worked pretty well on the subjects. The one I saw," Tomlinson said, "was out of it."

   "Could we have taken him alive?" Clark had to ask.

   "No, mon general. " This was Sergeant Louis Loiselle. speaking emphatically. "He had his rifle in hand, and it was pointing in the direction of the hostages." There would be no talk about shooting a gun out of a terrorist's hands. The assumption was that the terrorist had more than one weapon, and the backup was frequently a fragmentation grenade. Loiselle's three-round burst into the target's head was exactly on policy for Rainbow.

   "Agreed. Louis, how did you deal with the flash-bangs? You were closer than George was."

   "I have a wife," the Frenchman replied with a smile "She screams at me all the time. Actually," he said, when the tired chuckles subsided, "I had my hand over one ear. the other pressed against my shoulder, and my eyes closed. I also controlled the detonation," he added. Unlike Tomlinson and the rest, he could anticipate the noise and the flash, which seemed a minor advantage, but a decisive one.

   "Any other problems going in?" John asked.

   "The usual," Price said. "Lots of glass on the floor, hinders one's footing – maybe softer soles on our boots? That would also make our steps quieter."

   Clark nodded, and saw that Stanley made a note.

   "Any problems shooting?"

   "No." This was Chavez. "The interior was lighted, and so we didn't need our NVGs. The bad guys were standing up like good targets. The shots were easy." Price and Loiselle nodded agreement.

   "Riflemen?" Clark asked.

   "Couldn't see shit from my perch," Johnston said.

   "Neither could I," Weber said. His English was eerily perfect.

   "Ding, you sent Price in first. Why?" This was Stanley. "Eddie's a better shot, and he has more experience. I trust him a little more than I trust myself – for now," Chavez added. "It seemed to be a simple mission all the way around. Everyone had the interior layout, and it was an easy one. I split the objective into three areas of responsibility. Two I could see. The third only had one subject in it-that was something of a guess on my part, but all of our information supported it. We had to move in fast because the principal subject, Model, was about to kill a hostage. I saw no reason to allow him to do that," Chavez concluded.

   "Anyone take issue with that?" John asked the assembled group.

   "There will be times when one might have to allow a terrorist to kill a hostage," Dr. Bellow said soberly. "It will not be pleasant, but it will occasionally be necessary."

   "Okay, doc, any observations?"

   "John, we need to follow the police investigation of these subjects. Were they terrorists or robbers? We don't know. I think we need to find out. We were not able to conduct any negotiations. In this case it probably did not matter, but in the future it will. We need more translators to work with. My language skills are not up to what we need, and I need translators who speak my language, good at nuance and stuff." Clark saw Stanley make a note of that, too. Then he checked his watch.

   "Okay. We'll go over the videotapes tomorrow morning. For now, good job, people. Dismissed."

   Team-2 walked outside into a night that was starting to fog up. Some looked in the direction of the NCO Club, but none headed that way. Chavez walked toward his house. On opening the door, he found Patsy sitting up in front of the TV.

   "Hi, honey," Ding told his wife.

   "You okay?"

   Chavez managed a smile, lifting his hands and turning around. "No holes or scratches anywhere."

   "It was you on the TV-in Switzerland, I mean?"

   "You know I'm not supposed to say."

   "Ding, I've known what Daddy does since I was twelve," Dr. Patricia Chavez, M.D., pointed out. "You know, Secret Agent Man, just like you."

   There was no sense in concealment, was there? "Well, Patsy, yeah, that was me and my team."

   "Who were they – the bad guys, I mean?"

   "Maybe terrorists, maybe bank robbers. Not sure," Chavez said, stripping off his shirt on the way to the bedroom.

   Patsy followed him inside. "The TV said they were all killed."

   "Yep." He took his slacks off and hung them in the closet. "No choice. They were about to kill a hostage when it went down. So . . . we had to go in and stop that from happening."

   "I'm not sure if I like that." He looked up at his wife. "I am sure. I don't like it. Remember that guy when you were in medical school, the leg that got amputated, and you assisted in the surgery? You didn't like it, did you?"

   "No, not at all." It had been an auto accident, and the leg just too mangled to save.

   "That's life, Patsy. You don't like all the things you have to do." With that, Chavez sat down on the bed and tossed his socks at the open-top hamper. Secret Agent Man, he thought. Supposed to have a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, now, but the movies never showed the hero going to bed to get sleep, did they? But who wants to get laid right after killing somebody? That was worth an ironic chuckle, and he lay back on top of the covers. Bond. James Bond. Sure. As soon as he closed his eyes, he saw again the sight picture from the bank, and relived the moment, bringing his MP-10 to bear, lining up the sights on whoever the hell it was – Guttenach was his name, wasn't it? He realized he hadn't checked. Seeing the head right there in the ringed sight, and squeezing off the burst as routinely as zipping his pants after taking a leak. Puff puff puff. That fast, that quiet with the suppresser on the gun, and zap, whoever the hell he was, was dead as yesterday's fish. He and his three friends hadn't had much of a chance – in fact, they'd had no chance at all.

   But the guy they'd murdered earlier hadn't had a chance, either, Chavez reminded himself. Some poor unlucky bastard who'd happened to be in the bank, making a deposit, or talking to a loan officer, or maybe just getting change for a haircut. Save your sympathy for that one, Ding told himself. And the doctor Model had been ready to kill was now in his home, probably, with his wife and family, probably half-wasted on booze, or maybe a sedative, probably going through a really bad case of the shakes, probably thinking about spending some time with a shrink friend to help get him through the delayed stress. Probably feeling pretty fucking awful. But you had to be alive to feel something, and that beat the shit out of having his wife and kids sitting in the living room of their house outside Bern, crying their eyes out and asking why daddy wasn't around anymore.

   Yeah. He'd taken a life, but he'd redeemed another. With that thought, he revisited the sight-picture, remembering now the sight of the first round hitting the asshole just forward of the ear, knowing then that he was dead, even before rounds #2 and #3 hit, in a circle of less than two inches across, blowing his brains ten feet the other way, and the body going down like a sack of beans. The way the man's gun had hit the floor, muzzle angled up, and thankfully it hadn't gone off and hurt anyone, and the head shots hadn't caused his fingers to spasm closed and pull the trigger from the grave-a real hazard, he'd learned in training. But still it was unsatisfactory. Better to get them alive and pick their brains for what they knew, and why they acted the way they did. That way you could learn stuff you could use the next time-or, just maybe go after someone else, the bastard who gave the orders, and fill his ass with ten-millimeter hollowpoints.

   The mission hadn't been perfect, Chavez had to admit to himself, but, ordered in to save a life, he'd saved that life. And that, he decided, would have to do for now. A moment later he felt the bed move as his wife lay beside him. He reached over for her hand, which she moved immediately to her belly. So, the little Chavez was doing some more laps. That, Ding decided, was worth a kiss, which he rolled over to deliver.

   Popov, too, was settled into his bed, having knocked back four stiff vodkas while watching the local television news, followed by an editorial panegyric to the efficiency of the local police. As yet they weren't giving out the identity of the robbers-that was how the crime was being reported, somewhat to Popov's disappointment, though on reflection he didn't know why. He'd established his bona fides for his employer . . . and pocketed a considerable sum of money in the bargain. A few more performances like this one and he could live like a king in Russia, or a prince in many other countries. He could know for himself the comfort he'd so often seen and envied while he was a field intelligence officer with the former KGB, wondering then how the hell his country could ever defeat nations which spent billions on amusement in addition to billions more on military hardware, all of which was better than anything his nation had produced-else why would he have so often been tasked to discovering their technical secrets? That was how he'd worked during the last few years of the Cold War, knowing even then who would win and who would lose.

   But defection had never been an option. What was the point in selling out his country for a minor stipend and an ordinary job in the West? Freedom? That was the word the West still pretended to worship. What was the good of being able to wander around at liberty when you didn't have a proper automobile in which to do it? Or a good hotel in which to sleep when one got there? Or the money to buy the food and drink one needed to enjoy life properly? No, his first trip to the West as an "illegal" field officer without a diplomatic cover had been to London, where he'd spent much of his time counting the expensive cars, and the efficient black taxis one took when too lazy to walk-his important movement had been in the "tube," which was convenient, anonymous, and cheap. But "cheap" was a virtue for which he had little affection. No, capitalism had the singular virtue of rewarding people who had chosen the correct parents, or had been lucky in business. Rewarding them with luxury, convenience, and comfort undreamed of by the czars themselves. And that was what Popov had instantly craved, and wondered even then how he might get it. A nice expensive car-a Mercedes was the one he'd always desired-and a proper large flat close to good restaurants, and money to travel to places where the sand was warm and the sky blue, the better to attract women to his side, as Henry Ford must have done, he was sure. What was the point of having that sort of power without the will to use it?

   Well, Popov told himself, he was closer than ever to realizing it. All he had to do was set up a few more jobs like this one in Bern. If his employer was willing to pay that much money for fools-well, a fool and his money were soon parted; a Western aphorism he found delightfully appropriate. -And Dmitriy Arkadeyevich was no fool. With that satisfied thought, he lifted his remote and turned his TV off. Tomorrow, wake up, breakfast, make his bank deposit, and then take a cab to the airport for the Swissair flight to New York. First class. Of course.

   "Well, Al?" Clark asked over a pint of dark British beer. They were sitting in the rear-corner booth.

   "Your Chavez is all he was reported to be. Clever of him to let Price take the lead. He doesn't let ego get in the way. I like that in a young officer. His timing was right. His division of the floor plan was right, and his shots were bang on. He'll do. So will the team. So much the better that the first time out was an easy one. This Model chappie wasn't a rocket scientist, as you say."

   "Vicious bastard."

   Stanley nodded. "Quite. The German terrorists frequently were. We should get a nice letter from the BKA about this one, as well."

   "Lessons learned?"

   "Dr. Bellow's was the best. We need more and better translators if we're to get him involved in negotiations. I'll get to work on that tomorrow. Century House ought to have people we can use. Oh, yes, that Noonan lad-"

   "A late addition. He was a techie with the FBI. They used him on the Hostage Rescue Team for technical backup. Sworn agent, knows how to shoot, with some investigative experience," Clark explained. "Good all around man to have with us."

   "Nice job planting his video-surveillance equipment. I've looked at the videotapes already. They're not bad. On the whole, John, full marks for Team-2." Stanley saluted with his jar of John Courage. "Nice to see that everything works, Al."

   "Until the next one."

   A long breath. "Yeah." Most of the success, Clark knew, was due to the British. He'd made use of their support systems, and their men had actually led the takedown-two-thirds of it. Louis Loiselle was every bit as good as the French had claimed. The little bastard could shoot like Davy Crockett with an attitude, and was about as excitable as a rock. Well, the French had their own terrorist experiences, and once upon a time Clark had gone out into the field with them. So, this one would go into the records as a successful mission. Rainbow was now certified. And so, Clark knew, was he.

   The Society of Cincinnatus owned a large house on Massachusetts Avenue that was frequently used for the semiofficial dinners that were so vital a part of the Washington social scene, and allowed the mighty to cross paths and validate their status over drinks and small talk. The new President made that somewhat difficult, of course, with his . . . eccentric approach to government, but no person could really change that much in this city, and the new crop in Congress needed to learn how Washington Really Worked. It was no different from other places around America, of course, and to many of them the gatherings at this former dwelling of somebody rich and important was merely the new version of the country club dinners where they'd learned the rules of polite power society.

   Carol Brightling was one of the new important people. A divorcee for over ten years who'd never remarried, she had no less than three doctorates, from Harvard, CalTech, and the University of Illinois, thus covering both coasts and three important states, which was an important accomplishment in this city, as that guaranteed her the instant attention, if not the automatic affection, of six senators and a larger number of representatives, all of whom had votes and committees.

   "Catch the news," the junior senator from Illinois asked her over a glass of white wine.

   "What do you mean?"

   "Switzerland. Either a terrorist thing or a bank robbery. Nice takedown by the Swiss cops."

   "Boys and their guns," Brightling observed dismissively.

   "It made for good TV."

   "So does football," Brightling noted, with a gentle, nasty smile.

   "True. Why isn't the President supporting you on Global Warming?" the senator asked next, wondering how to crack her demeanor.

   "Well, he isn't not supporting me. The President thinks \k a need some additional science on the issue."

   "And you don't?"

   "Honestly, no, I think we have all the science we need. The top down and bottom-up data are pretty clear. But the President isn't convinced himself, and does not feel comfortable with taking measures that affect the economy until he is personally sure." I have to work on him some more, she didn't add.

   "Are you happy with that?"

   "I see his point," the Science Advisor replied, surprising the senator from the Land of Lincoln. So, he thought, everyone who worked in the White House toed the line with this president. Carol Brightling had been a surprise appointment to the White House staff, her politics very different from the President's, respected as she was in the scientific community for her environmental views. It had been an adroit political move, probably engineered by Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm, arguably the most skillful political operator in this city of maneuvering, and had secured for the President the (qualified) support of the environmental movement, which had turned into a political force of no small magnitude in Washington.

   "Does it bother you that the President is out in South Dakota slaughtering geese?" the senator asked with a chuckle, as a waiter replaced his drink.

   "Homo sapiens is a predator," Brightling replied, scanning the room for others.

   "But only the men?"

   A smile. "Yes, we women are far more peaceful."

   "Oh, that's your ex-husband over there in the corner. isn't it?" the senator asked, surprised at the change in her face when he said it.

   "Yes." The voice neutral, showing no emotion, as she turned to face in another direction. Having spotted him, she needed to do no more. Both knew the rules. No closer than thirty feet, no lengthy eye contact, and certainly no words.

   "I had the chance to put money into Horizon Corporation two years ago. I've kicked myself quite a few times since. "Yes, John has made quite a pile for himself."

   And well after their divorce, so she didn't get a nickel out of it. Probably not a good topic for conversation, the senator thought at once. He was new at the job, and not the best at politic conversation.

   "Yes, he's done well, twisting science the way he has."

   "You don't approve?"

   "Restructuring DNA in plants and animals-no. Nature has evolved without our assistance for two billion years at least. I doubt that it needs help from us."

   " `There are some things man is not meant to know'?" the senator asked with a chuckle. His professional background was in contracting, in gouging holes in the ground and erecting something that nature didn't want there, though his sensitivity on environmental issues, Dr. Brightling thought, had itself evolved from his love of Washington and his desire to remain here in a position of power. It was called Potomac Fever, a disease easily caught and less easily cured.

   "The problem, Senator Hawking, is that nature is both complex and subtle. When we change things, we cannot easily predict the ramifications of the changes. It's called the Law of Unintended Consequences, something with which the Congress is familiar, isn't it?"

   "You mean-"

   "I mean that the reason we have a federal law about environmental impact statements is that it's far easier to mess things up than it is to get them right. In the case of recombinant DNA, we can more easily change the genetic code than we can evaluate the effects those changes will cause a century from now. That sort of power is one that should be used with the greatest possible care. Not everyone seems to grasp that simple fact."

   Which point was difficult to argue with, the senator had to concede gracefully. Brightling would be making that case before his committee in another week. Had that been the thing that had broken up the marriage of John and Carol Brightling? How very sad. With that observation, the senator made his excuses and headed off to join his wife.

   "There's nothing new in that point of view." John Brightling's doctorate in molecular biology came from the University of Virginia, along with his M.D. "It started with a guy named Ned Ludd a few centuries ago. He was afraid that the Industrial Revolution would put an end to the cottage-industry economy in England. And he was right. That economic model was wrecked. But what replaced it was better for the consumer, and that's why we call it progress!" Not surprisingly, John Brightling, a billionaire heading for number two, was holding court before a small crowd of admirers.

   "But the complexity-" One of the audience started to object.

   "Happens every day-every second, in fact. And so do the things we're trying to conquer. Cancer, for example. No, madam, are you willing to put an end to our work if it means no cure for breast cancer? That disease strikes five percent of the human population worldwide. Cancer is a genetic disease. The key to curing it is in the human genome. And my company is going to find that key! Aging is the same thing. Salk's team at La Jolla found the kill-me gene more than fifteen years ago. If we can find a way to turn it off, then human immortality can be real. Madam – does the idea of living forever in a body of twenty-five years' maturity appeal to you?"

   "But what about overcrowding?" The congresswoman's objection was somewhat quieter than her first. It was too vast a thought, too surprisingly posed, to allow an immediate objection.

   "One thing at a time. The invention of DDT killed off huge quantities of disease-bearing insects, and that increased populations all over the world, didn't it? Okay, we are a little more crowded now, but who wants to bring the anopheles mosquito back? Is malaria a reasonable method of population control? Nobody here wants to bring war back, right? We used to use that, too, to control populations. We got over it, didn't we? Hell, controlling populations is no big deal. It's called birth control, and the advanced countries have already learned how to do it, and the backward countries can, too, if they have a good reason for doing so. It might take a generation or so," John Brightling mused, "but is there anyone here who would not want to be twenty-five again-with all the things we've learned along the way, of course. It damned well appeals to me!" he went on with a warm smile. With sky-high salaries and promises of stock options, his company had assembled an incredible team of talent to look at that particular gene. The profits that would accrue from its control could hardly be estimated, and the U.S. patent was good for seventeen years! Human immortality, the new Holy Grail for the medical community-and for the first time it was something for serious investigation, not a topic of pulp science-fiction stories.

   "You think you can do it?" another congresswoman this one from San Francisco-asked. Women of all sorts found themselves drawn to this man. Money, power, good looks, and good manners made it inevitable.

   John Brightling smiled broadly. "Ask me in five years. We know the gene. We need to learn how to turn it off. There's a whole lot of basic science in there we have to uncover, and along the way we hope to discover a lot of very useful things. It's like setting off with Magellan. We aren't sure what we're going to find, but we know it'll all be interesting." No one pointed out that Magellan hadn't made it home from that particular trip.

   "And profitable?" a new senator from Wyoming asked.

   "That's how our society works, isn't it? We pay people for doing useful work. Is this area useful enough?"

   "If you bring it off, I suppose it is." This senator was himself a physician, a family practitioner who knew the basics but was well over his head on the deep-scientific side. The concept, the objective of Horizon Corporation, was well beyond breathtaking, but he would not bet against them. They'd done too well developing cancer drugs and synthetic antibiotics, and were the leading private company in the Human Genome Project, a global effort to decode the basics of human life. Himself a genius, John Brightling had found it easy to attract others like himself to his company. He had more charisma than a hundred politicians, and unlike the latter, the senator had to admit to himself, he really had something to back up the showmanship. It had once been called "the right stuff' ! or pilots. With his movie-star looks, ready smile, superb listening ability, and dazzlingly analytical mind, Dr. John Brightling had the knack. He could make anyone near him ! gel interesting-and the bastard could teach, could apply his lessons to everyone nearby. Simple ones for the unschooled and highly sophisticated ones for the specialists in his field, at the top of which he reigned supreme. Oh, lie had a few peers. Pat Reily at Harvard-Mass General. Aaron Bernstein at Johns Hopkins. Jacques Elise at Pasteur. Maybe Paul Ging at U.C. Berkeley. But that was it. What a fine clinician Brightling might have made, the senator-M.D. thought, but, no, he was too good to be wasted on people with the latest version of the flu.

   About the only thing in which he'd failed was his marriage. Well, Carol Brightling was also pretty smart, but more political than scientific, and perhaps her ego, capacious as everyone in this city knew it to be, had quailed before the greater intellectual gifts of her husband. Only room in town for one of us, the doctor from Wyoming thought, with an inner smile. That happened often enough in real life, not just on old movies. And Brightling, John, seemed to be doing better in that respect than Brightling, Carol. At the former's elbow was a very pretty redhead drinking in his every word, while the latter had come alone, and would be leaving alone for her apartment in Georgetown. Well, the senator-M.D. thought, that's life.

   Immortality. Damn, all the pronghorns he might take, the doctor from Cody thought on, heading over to his wife. Dinner was about to start. The chicken had finished the vulcanization process. The Valium helped. It wasn't actually Valium, Killgore knew. That drug had become something of a generic name for mild sedatives, and this one had been developed by SmithKline, with a different trade name, with the added benefit that it made a good mix with alcohol. For street people who were often as contentious and territorial as junkyard dogs, this group of ten was remarkably sedate. The large quantities of good booze helped. The high-end bourbons seemed the most popular libations, drunk from cheap glasses with ice, along with various mixers for those who didn't care to drink it neat. Most didn't, to Killgore's surprise.

   The physicals had gone well. They were all healthy sick people, outwardly fairly vigorous, but inwardly all with physical problems ranging from diabetes to liver failure. One was definitely suffering from prostate cancer his PSA was off the top of the chart-but that wouldn't matter in this particular test, would it? Another was HIV+, but not yet symptomatic, and so that didn't matter either. He'd probably gotten it from drug use, but strangely, liquor seemed all he needed to keep himself regulated here. How interesting.

   Killgore didn't have to be here, and it troubled his conscience to look at them so much, but they were his lab rats, and he was supposed to keep an eye on them, and so he did, behind the mirror, while he did his paperwork and listened to Bach on his portable CD player. Three were claimed to be-Vietnam veterans. So they'd killed their share of Asians-"gooks" was the word they'd used in the interview-before coming apart and ending up as street drunks. Well, homeless people was the current term society used for them, somewhat more dignified than bums, the term Killgore vaguely remembered his mother using. Not the best example of humanity he'd ever seen. Yet the Project had managed to change them quite a bit. All bathed regularly now and dressed in clean clothes and watched TV. Some even read books from time to time Killgore had thought that providing a library, while cheap, was an outrageously foolish waste of time and money. But always they drank, and the drinking relegated each of the ten to perhaps six hours of full consciousness per day. And the Valium calmed them further, limiting any alteranions that his security staff would have to break up. Two of them were always on duty in the next room over, also watching the group of ten. Microphones buried in the ceiling allowed them to listen in to the disjointed conversations. One of the group was something of an authority on baseball and talked about Mantle and Maris all the time to whoever would listen. Enough of them talked about sex that Killgore wondered if he should send the snatch team back out to get some female "homeless" subjects for the experiment-he would tell Barb Archer that. Utter all, they needed to know if gender had an effect on the experiment. She'd have to buy into that one, wouldn't she'? And there'd be none of the sisterly solidarity with them. There couldn't be, even from the feminazi who joined him in running this experiment. Her ideology was too pure for that. Killgore turned when there came a knock at the door.

   "Hey, doe." It was Benny, one of the security guys.

   "Hey, how's it going?"

   "Falling asleep," Benjamin Farmer replied. "The kids are playing pretty nice."

   "Yeah, they sure are." It was so easy. Most had to be prodded a little to leave the room and go out to the courtyard for an hour of walking around every afternoon. But they had to be kept fit-which was to say, to simulate the amount of exercise they got on a normal day in Manhattan, staggering from one dreary corner to another.

   "Damn, doe, I never knew anybody could put it away the way these guys do! I mean, I had to bring in a whole case of Grand-Dad today, and there's only two bottles left."

   "That their favorite?" Killgore asked. He hadn't paid much attention to that.

   "Seems to be, sir. I'm a Jack Daniel's man myself – but with me, maybe two a night, say, for Monday Night Football, if it's a good game. I don't drink water the way the kids drink hard booze." A chuckle from the ex-Marine who ran the night security shift. A good man, Farmer. He did a lot of things with injured animals at the company's rural shelter. He was also the one who'd taken to calling the test subjects the kids. It had caught on with the security staff and from them to the others. Killgore chuckled. You had to call them something, and lab rats just wasn't respectful enough. After all, they were human beings, after a fashion, all the more valuable for their place in this test. He turned to see one of them pour himself another drink, wander back to his bed, and lie down to watch some TV before he passed out. He wondered what the poor bastard would dream about. Some did, and talked loudly in their sleep. Something to interest a psychiatrist, perhaps, or someone doing sleep studies. They all snored, to the point that when all were asleep it sounded like an old steam-powered railroad yard in there.

   Choo-choo, Killgore thought, looking back down at his last bit of paperwork. Ten more minutes, and he could head home. Too late to put his kids to bed. Too bad. Well, in due course they would awaken to a new day and a new world, and wouldn't that be some present to give them, however heavy and nasty the price for it might be. Hmph, the physician thought, I could use a drink myself.

   "The future has never been so bright as this," John Brightling told his audience, his demeanor even more charismatic after two glasses of a select California Chardonnay. "The bio-sciences are pushing back frontiers we didn't even know existed fifteen years ago. A hundred years of basic research are coming to bloom even as we speak. We're building on the work of Pasteur, Ehrlich, Salk, Sabin, and so many others. We see so far today because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

   "Well," John Brightling went on, "it's been a long climb, but the top of the mountain is in sight, and we will get there in the next few years."

   "He's smooth," Liz Murray observed to her husband.

   "Very," FBI Director Dan Murray whispered back. "Smart, too. Jimmy Hicks says he's the top guy in the world."

   "What's he running for?"

   "God, from what he said earlier."

   "Needs to grow a beard then."

   Director Murray nearly choked at that, then he was saved by the vibrating of his cellular phone. He discreetly left his seat to walk into the building's large marble foyer. On flipping his phone open, it took fifteen seconds for the encryption system to synchronize with the base station calling him-which told him that it was FBI Headquarters.

   "Murray."

   "Director, this is Gordon Sinclair in the Watch Center. So far the Swiss have struck out on ID-ing the other two. Prints are on their way to the BKA so they can take a look." But if they hadn't been printed somewhere along the line, that, too, would be a dry hole, and it would take a while to identify Model's two pals.

   "No additional casualties on the takedown?"

   "No, sir, all four bad guys down for the count. All hostages safe and evacuated. They should all be back home now. Oh, Tim Noonan deployed on this operation, electronics weenie for one of the go-teams."

   "So, Rainbow works, eh?"