"till taking the Queen's shilling, old man. New job, very, hush-hush, I'm afraid."

   "What can I do to help you, old man?" ,

   "Rather a stupid question, actually. Are there any insider channels in the international trading system? Special codes and such things?" .

   "I bloody wish there were, Bill. Make our job here much easier," replied the former station chief for Mexico City. and a few other minor posts for the British Secret Intelligence Service. "What exactly do you mean?"

   "Not sure, but the subject just came up."

   "Well, people at this level do have personal relationships and often trade information, but I take it you mean something rather more structured, an insider-network marketplace sort of thing?"

   "Yes, that's the idea."

   "If so, they've all kept it a secret from me and the people I work with, old man. International conspiracies?" Cooper snorted. "And this is a chatty mob, you know. Everyone's into everyone else's business."

   "No such thing, then?"

   "Not to my knowledge, Bill. It's the sort of thing the uninformed believe in, of course, but it doesn't exist, unless that's the mob who assassinated John Kennedy," Cooper added with a chuckle.

   "Much what I'd thought, Martin, but I needed to tick that box. Thanks, my friend"

   "Bill, you have any idea on who might have attacked that Ostermann chap in Vienna?"

   "Not really. You know him?"

   "My boss does. I've met him once. Stems a decent bloke, and bloody smart as well."

   "Really all I know is what I saw on the telly this morning." It wasn't entirely a lie, and Martin would understand in any case, Tawney knew.

   "Well, whoever did the rescue, my hat is off to them. Smells like SAS to me."

   "Really? Well, that wouldn't be a surprise, would. it?"

   "Suppose mot. Good hearing from you, Bill. How about dinner sometime?"

   "Love to. I'll call you next time fm in London."

   "Excellent. Cheers."

   Tawney replaced the phone. It seemed that Martin had landed on his feet after being let go from "Six," which had reduced its size with the diminution of the Cold War. Well, that was to be expected. The sort of thing the uninformed believe in, Tawney thought. Yes, that fit. Furchtner and Dortmund were communists, and would not have trusted or believed in the open market. In their universe, people could only get wealthy by cheating, exploiting, and conspiring with others of the same ilk. And what did that mean? . . .

   Why had they attacked the home of Erwin Ostermann? You couldn't rob such a man. He didn't keep his money in cash or gold bars. It was all electronic, theoretical money, really, that existed in computer memories and traveled across telephone wires, and that was difficult to steal, wasn't it?

   No, what a man like Ostermann had was information, the ultimate source of power, ethereal though it was. Were Dortmund and Furchtner willing to kill for that? It appeared so, but were the two dead terrorists the sort of people who could make use of such information? No, they couldn't have been, because then they would have known that the thing they'd sought didn't exist.

   Somebody hired them, Tawney thought. Somebody had sent them out on their mission. But who?

   And to what purpose? Which was-even a better question, and one from which he could perhaps learn the answer to the first.

   Back up, he told himself. If someone had hired them for a job, who could it have been? Clearly someone connected to the old terror network, someone who'd know where they were and whom they'd known and trusted to some degree, enough to risk their lives. But -Fiirchtner and Dortmund had been ideologically pure communists. Their acquaintances would be the same, and they would certainly not have trusted or taken orders from anyone of a different political shade. And how else could this notional person have known where and how to contact them, win their confidence, and send them off on a mission of death; chasing after something that didn't really exist? . . .

   A superior officer? Tawney wondered, stretching his mind for more information than he really had. Someone of the same political bent or beliefs, able to order them, or at least to motivate them to do something dangerous.

   He needed more information; and he'd use his SIS and police contacts to get every scrap he could from the Austrian/German investigation. For starters, he called Whitehall to make sure he got full translations of all the hostage interviews. Tawney had been an intelligence officer for a long time, and something had gotten his nose to twitch.

   "Ding, I didn't like your takedown plan," Clark said in the big conference room.

   "I didn't either, Mr. C, but without a chopper, didn't have much. choice, did I?" Chavez replied with an air of self-righteousness. "But that's not the thing that really scares me."

   "What is?" John asked.

   "Noonan brought this one up. Every time we go into a place, there are people around – the public, reporters, TV crews, all of that. Wharf one of them has a cell phone and calls the bad guys inside to tell them what's happening? Real simple, isn't it? We're fucked and so are some hostages."

   "We should be able to deal with that," Tim Noonan told them. "It's the way a cell phone works. It broadcasts a signal to tell the local cell that it's there and it's on, so that the computer systems can route an incoming call to it. Okay, we can get instrumentation to read that, and maybe to block the signal path-maybe even clone the bad guys' phone, trap the incoming call and bag the bastards outside, maybe even flip 'em, right? But I need that soft ware, and I need it now."

   "David?" Clark turned to Dave Peled, their Israeli technogenius.

   "It can be done. I expect the technology exists already at NSA or elsewhere."

   "What about Israel?" Noonan asked pointedly.

   "Well . . . yes, we have such things."

   "Get them," Clark ordered. "Want me to call Avi personally?"

   "That would help."

   "Okay, I need the name and specifications of the equipment: How hard to train the operators?"

   "Not very," Peled conceded. "Tim can do it easily."

   Thank you for that vote of confidence, Special Agent Noonan thought, without a smile. "Back to the takedown," Clark commanded. "Ding, what were you thinking?"

   Chavez leaned forward in his chair. He wasn't just defending himself; he was defending his team. "Mainly that I didn't want to lose a hostage, John. Doc told us we had to take those two seriously, and we had a hard deadline coming up. Okay, the mission as I understand it is not to lose a hostage. So, when they made it clear they wanted the chopper for transport, it was just a matter of giving it to them, with a little extra put in. Dieter and Homer did their jobs perfectly. So did Eddie and the rest of the shooters. The dangerous part was getting Louis and George up to the house so they could take down the last bunch. They did a nice ninja job getting there unseen," Chavez went on, gesturing to Loiselle and Tomlinson. "That was the most dangerous part of the mission. We had them in a light-well and the camo stuff worked. If the bad guys had been using NVGs, that would have been a problem, -but the additional illumination off the trees-from the lights the cops brought in, I mean-would have interfered with that. NVGs flare a lot if you throw light their way. It was a gamble;" Ding admitted, "but it was a gamble that looked better than having a hostage whacked right in front of us while we were jerking off at the assembly point. That's the mission, Mr. C, and I was the commander on the scene. I made the call." He didn't add that his call had worked.

   "I see. Well, good shooting from everybody, and Loiselle and Tomlinson did very well, to get close undetected," Alistair Stanley said from his place, opposite Clark's: "Even so-"

   "Even so, we need helicopters for a case like this one. How the hell did we overlook that requirement?" Chavez demanded.

   "My fault, Domingo," Clark admitted. "I'm going to call in on that today.':

   "Just so we get it fixed, man." Ding stretched in his seat. "My troops got it done, John. Crummy setup, but we got it done: Next time, be better if things went a little smoother," he cones. "But when the doc tells me that the bad guys will rally kill somebody, that tells me I have to take decisive action, doesn't it?"

   "Depending on the situation, yes," Stanley answered the question.

  "Al, what does that mean?" Chavez asked sharply. "We need better mission guidelines. I need to have it spelled out. When can I allow a hostage to get killed? Does the age or sex of the hostage enter into the equation? What if somebody takes over a kindergarten or a hospital maternity ward? You can't expect us to disregard human factors like that. Okay, I understand that yon can't plan for every possibility, and as the commanders on the scene, Peter and I have to exercise judgment,. but my default position is to prevent the death of a hostage if I can do it. If that means taking risks-well, it's a probability measured against a certainty, isn't it? In a case like that, you take the risk, don't you?"

   "Dr. Bellow," Clark asked, "how confident were you in your evaluation of the terrorists' state of mind?"

   "Very. They were experienced. They'd thought through a lot of the mission, and in my opinion they were dead serious about killing hostages to show us their resolve," the psychiatrist replied.

   "Then or now?"

   "Both," Bellow said confidently. "These two were political sociopaths. Human life doesn't mean much to that sort of personality. Just poker chips to toss around the table."

   "Okay, but what if they'd spotted Loiselle and Tomlinson coming in?"

   "They would probably have killed a hostage and that would have frozen the situation for a few minutes."

   "And my backup plan in that case was to rush the house from the east side and shoot our way in as quickly as possible," Chavez went on. "The better way is to zipline down from some choppers and hit the place like a Kansas tornado. That's dangerous, too," he conceded. "But the people we're dealing with ain't the most reasonable folks in the world, are they?"

   The senior team members didn't like this sort of discussion, since it reminded them that as good as the Rainbow troopers were, they weren't gods or supermen. They'd now had two incidents, both of them resolved without a civilian casualty. That made for mental complacency on the command side, further exacerbated by the fact that Team-2 had done a picture-perfect takedown under adverse tactical circumstances. They. trained their men to be supermen, Olympic-perfect physical specimens, supremely trained in the use of firearms and explosives, and most of all, mentally prepared for the rapid destruction of human life.

   The Team-2 members sitting around the table looked at Clark with neutral expressions, taking it all in with remarkable equanimity because they'd known last night that the plan was flawed and dangerous, but they'd brought it off anyway, and they were understandably proud of themselves for having done the difficult and saved their hostages. But Clark was questioning the capabilities of their team leader, and they didn't like that either. For the former SAS members among them, the reply to all this was simple, their old regimental motto: Who Dares, Wins. They'd– dared and won. And the score for them was Christians ten, Lions nil, which wasn't a bad score at all. About the only unhappy member of the team was First Sergeant Julio Vega. "Oso" corned the machine gun, which had yet to come into play. The longriflemen, Vega saw, were feeling pretty good about themselves, as were the light-weapons guys. But those were the breaks. He'd bean there, a few meters from Weber, ready to cover if a bad guy had gotten lucky and managed to run away, firing his weapon. He'd have cut him in half with his M-GO---his pistol work in the base range was one of the best. There was killing going on, and he wasn't getting to play. The religious part of Vega reproached the rest of him for thinking that way, which caused a few grumbles and chuckles when lie was alone.

   "So, where does that live us?" Chavez asked. "What are our operations guidelines in the case where a hostage is likely to get killed by the bad guys?"

   "The mission remains saving the hostages, where practicable," Clark replied, after a few seconds' thought.

   "And the team leader on the scene decides what's practicable and what isn't?"

   "Correct," Rainbow Six confirmed.

   "So, we're right back where we started, John," Ding pointed out. "And that means that Peter and I get all the responsibility, and all the criticism if somebody else doesn't like what we've done." He paused. "I understand the responsibility that comes along with being in command in the field, but it would be nice to have something a little firmer to fall back on, y'know? Mistakes will happen out there sooner or later. We know it. We don't like it, but we know it. Anyway, I'm telling you here and now, John, I see the mission as the preservation of innocent life, and that's the side I'm going to come down on."

   "I agree with Chavez," Peter Covington said. "That must be our default position."

   "I never said it wasn't," Clark said, suddenly becoming angry. The problem was that there could well be situations in which it was not possible to save a life – but training for such a situation was somewhere between extremely difficult and damned near impossible, because all the terrorist incidents they'd have to deal with in the field would be as different as the terrorists and the sites they selected. So, he had to trust Chavez and Covington. Beyond that, he could set up training scenarios that forced them to think and act, in the hope that the practice would stand them in good stead in the field. It had been a lot easier as a field officer in the CIA, Clark thought. There he had always had the initiative, had almost always chosen the time and place of action to suit himself. Rainbow; however, was always reactive, responding to the initiative of others. That simple fact was why he had to train his people so hard, so that their expertise could correct the tactical inequity. And that had worked twice. But would it continue to work?

   So, for starters, John decided, from now on a more senior Rainbow member would always accompany the teams into the field to provide support, someone the team leaders could lean against. Of course, they wouldn't like the oversight right there at their shoulders, but that couldn't be helped. With that thought he dismissed the meeting, and teed AI Stanley, into his office, where he presented his idea.

   "Fine with me, John. But who are the seniors who got out?"

   "You and me, for starters."

   "Very well. Makes sense-what with all the fitness and shooting training we subject ourselves to. Domingo and Peter might find it all a bit overpowering, however."

   "They both know how to follow orders=and they'll come to us for advice when it's needed. Everybody does. I sure did, whenever the opportunity offered itself." Which hadn't been very damned often, though John remembered wishing for it often enough.

   "I agree with your proposal, John," Stanley said. "Shall we write it up for the order book?"

   Clark nodded. "Today."

CHAPTER 9
STALKERS

   "I can do that, John," the Director of Central Intelligence said. "It means talking to the Pentagon, however."

   "Today if possible, Ed. We really need this. I was remiss in not considering the need earlier. Seriously remiss." Clark added humbly.

   "It happens," DCI Foley observed. "Okay, let me make some calls and get back to you." He broke the connection and thought for a few seconds, then flipped through his rolodex, and found the number of CINC-SNAKE, as the post was laughingly called. Commander in Chief, Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base outside Tampa, Florida, was the boss of all the "snake eaters," the special-operations people from whom Rainbow had drawn its American personnel. General Sam Wilson was the man behind the desk, not a place he was especially comfortable. He'd started off as an enlisted man who'd opted for airborne and ranger training, then moved into Special Forces, which he'd left to get his college degree i" history at North Carolina State University, then returned to the Army as a second lieutenant and worked his way up the ladder rapidly. A youthful fifty-three, he had four shiny stars on his shoulders now and was in charge of a unified multiservice command that included members from each of the armed services, all of whom knew how to cook snake over an open fire.

   "Hi, Ed," the general said, on getting the call over his secure phone. "What's happening at Langley?" The special-operations community was very close with CIA, and often provided intelligence to it or the muscle to run a difficult operation in the field.

   "I have a request from Rainbow," the DCI told him.

   "Again? They've already raided my units, you know."

   "They've put'em to good use. That was their takedown in Austria yesterday."

   "Looked good on TV," Sam Wilson admitted. "Will I get additional information?" By which he meant information on who the bad guys had been.

   "The whole package when it's available, Sam," Foley promised.

   "Okay, what does your boy need?"

   "Aviators, helicopter crews."

   "You know how long it takes to train those people, Ed? Jesus, they're expensive to maintain, too."

   "I know that, Sam," the voice assured him from Langley. "The Brits have to put up, too. You know Clark. He wouldn't ask 'less he needed it."

   Wilson had to admit that, yes, he knew John Clark, who'd once saved a wrecked mission and, in the process, a bunch of soldiers, a long time and several presidents ago. Ex-Navy SEAL, the Agency said of him, with a solid collection of medals and a lot of accomplishments. And this Rainbow group had two successful operations under its belt.

   "Okay, Ed, how many?"

   "One really good one for now."

   It was the "for now" part that worried Wilson. But "Okay, I'll be back to you later today."

   "Thanks, Sam." One nice thing about Wilson, Foley knew, was that he didn't screw around on time issues. For him "right now" meant right the hell now.

   Chester wasn't going to make it even as far as Killgore had thought. His liver function tests were heading downhill faster than anything he'd ever seen-or read about in the medical literature. The man's skin was yellow now, like a pale lemon, and slack over his flaccid musculature. Respiration was already a little worrisome, too, partly because of the large dose of morphine he was getting to keep him unconscious or at least stuporous. Both Killgore and Barbara Archer had wanted to treat him as aggressively as possible, to see if there were really a treatment modality that might work on Shiva, but the fact of the matter was that Chester's underlying medical conditions were so serious that no treatment regimen could overcome both those problems and the Shiva.

   "Two days," Killgore said. "Maybe less."

   "I'm afraid you're right," Dr. Archer agreed. She had all manner of ideas for handling this, from conventional--and almost certainly useless-antibiotics to Interleukin-2, which some thought might have clinical applications to such a case. Of course, modern medicine had yet to defeat any viral disease, but some thought that buttressing the body's immune system from one direction might have the effect of helping it in another, and there were a lot of powerful new synthetic antibiotics on the market now. Sooner or later, someone would find a magic bullet for viral diseases. But not yet: "Potassium?" she asked, after considering the prospects for the patient and the negligible value of treating him at all. Killgore shrugged agreement.

   "I suppose. You can do it if you want." Killgore waved to the medication cabinet in the corner.

   Dr. Archer walked over, tore a 40cc disposable syringe out of its paper and plastic container, then inserted the needle in a glass vial of potassium-and-water solution, and filled the needle by pulling back on the plunger. Then she returned to the bed and inserted the needle into the medication drip, pushing the plunger now to give the patient a hard bolus of the lethal chemical. It took a few seconds, longer than if she had done the injection straight into a major vein, but Archer didn't want to touch the patient any more than necessary, even with gloves. It didn't really matter that much. Chester's breathing within the clear plastic oxygen mask seemed to hesitate, then restart, then hesitate again, then become ragged and irregular for six or eight breaths. Then . . . it stopped. The chest settled into itself and didn't rise. His eyes had been semi-open, like those of a man in shallow sleep or shock, aimed in her direction but not really focused. Now they closed for the last time. Dr. Archer took her stethoscope and held it on the alcoholic's chest. There was no sound at all. Archer stood up, took off her stethoscope, and pocketed it.

   So long, Chester, Killgore thought.

   "Okay," she said matter-of-factly. "Any symptoms with the others?"

   "None yet. Antibody tests are positive, however," Killgore replied. "Another week or so before we see frank symptoms, I expect."

   "We need a set of healthy test subjects," Barbara Archer said. "These people are too-too sick to be proper benchmarks for Shiva."

   "That means some risks."

   "I know that," Archer assured him. "And you know we need better test subjects."

   "Yes, but the risks are serious," Killgore observed.

   "And I know that, " Archer replied.

   "Okay, Barb, run it up the line. I won't object. You want to take care of Chester? I have to run over to see Steve."

   "Fine." She walked to the wall, picked up the phone, and punched three digits onto the keypad to get the disposal people.

   For his part, Killgore went into the changing area. He stopped in the decontamination chamber first of all, pushed the large square red button, and waited for the machinery to spray him down from all directions with the fog solution of antiseptics that were known to be immediately and totally lethal to the Shiva virus. Then he went through the door into the changing room itself, where he removed the blue plastic suit, tossed it into the bin for further and more dramatic decontamination-it wasn't really needed, but the people in the lab felt better about it then-then dressed in surgical greens. On the way out, he put on a white lab coat. The next stop was Steve Berg's shop. Neither he nor Barb Archer had said it out loud yet, but everyone would feel better if they had a working vaccine for Shiva.

   "Hey, John," Berg said, when his colleague came in.

   "'Morning, Steve," Killgore responded in greeting. "How're the vaccines coming?"

   "Well, we have 'A' and 'B' working now." Berg gestured to the monkey cages on the other side of the glass. " 'A' batch has the yellow stickers. 'B' is the blue, and the control group is red."

   Killgore looked. There were twenty of each, for a total of sixty rhesus monkeys. Cute little devils. "Too bad," he observed.

   "I don't like it, either, but that's how it's done, my friend." Neither man owned a fur coat.

   "When do you expect results?"

   "Oh, five to seven days for the 'A' group. Nine to fourteen for the control group. And the 'B' group-well, we have hopes for them, of course. How's it going on your side of the house?"

   "Lost one today."

   "This fast?" Berg asked, finding it disturbing.

   "His liver was off the chart to begin with. That's something we haven't considered fully enough. There will be people out there with an unusually high degree of vulnerability to our little friend."

   "They could be canaries, man," Berg worried, thinking of the songbirds used to warn miners about bad air. "And we learned how to deal with that two years ago, remember?"

   "I know." In a real sense, that was where the entire idea had come from. But they could do it better than the foreigners had. "What's the difference in time between humans and our little furry friends?"

   "Well, I didn't aerosol any of these, remember. This is a vaccine test, not an infection test."

   "Okay, I think you need to set up an aerosol control test. I hear you have an improved packing method."

   "Maggie wants me to do that. Okay. We have plenty of monkeys. I can set it up in two days, a full-up test of the notional delivery system."

   "With and without vaccines?"

   "I can do that." Berg nodded. You should have set it up already, idiot, Killgore didn't say to his colleague. Berg was smart, but he couldn't see very far beyond the limits of his microscopes. Well, nobody was perfect, even here. "I don't go out of my way to kill things, John," Berg wanted to make clear to his physician colleague.

   "I understand, Steve, but for every one we kill in proofing Shiva, we'll save a few hundred thousand in the wild, remember? And you take good care of them while they're here," he added. The test animals here lived an idyllic life, in comfortable cages, or even in large communal areas where the food was abundant and the water clear. The monkeys had a lot of room, with pseudotrees to climb, air temperature like that of their native Africa, and no predators to threaten them. As in human prisons, the condemned ate hearty meals to go along with their constitutional rights. But people like Steve Berg still didn't like it, important and indispensable as it was to the overall goal. Killgore wondered if his friend wept at night for the cute little brown-eyed creatures. Certainly Berg wasn't all that concerned with Chester-except that he might represent a canary, of course: That could indeed ruin anything, but that was also why Berg was developing "A" vaccine.

   "Yeah," Berg admitted. "I still feel shitty about it, though."

   "You should see my side of the house," Killgore observed.

   "I suppose," Steve Berg responded diffidently.

   The overnight flight had come out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, an hour's drive from Fort Bragg. The Boeing 757 touched down in an overcast drizzle to begin a taxi process almost as long as the flight itself, or so it often seemed to the passengers, as they finally came to the US Airways gate in Heathrow's Terminal 3.

   Chavez and Clark had come up together to meet him. They were dressed in civilian clothes, and Domingo held card with "MALLOY" printed on it. The fourth man was dressed in Marine Class-As, complete to his Sam Browne belt, gold wings, and four and a half rows of ribbons on the olive-colored uniform blouse. His blue-grayes saw the card and came to it as he half-dragged his canvas bag with him.

   "Nice to be met," Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Malloy observed. "Who are you guys?"

   "John Clark."

   "Domingo Chavez." Handshakes were exchanged.

   "Any more bags?" Ding asked.

   "This is all I had time to pack. Lead on, people," Colonel Malloy replied.

   "Need a hand with that?" Chavez asked a man about six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than himself.

   "I got it," the Marine assured him. "Where we going?"

   "Chopper is waiting for us. Car's this way." Clark headed through a side door, then down some steps to a waiting car. The driver took Malloy's bag and tossed it in the "boot" for the half-mile drive to a waiting British army Puma helicopter.

   Malloy looked around. It was a crummy day to fly, the ceiling about fifteen hundred feet, and the drizzle getting a little harder, but he was not a white-knuckle flyer. They loaded into the back of the helicopter. He watched the flight crew run through the start-up procedure professionally, reading off their printed checklist, just as he did it. With the rotor turning, they got on the radio for clearance to lift off. That took several minutes. It was a busy time at Heathrow, with lots of international flights arriving to deliver business people to their work of the day. Finally, the Puma lifted off, climbed to altitude, and headed off in an undetermined direction to wherever the hell he was going. At that point, Malloy got on the intercom.

   "Can anybody tell me what the hell this is all about?"

   "What did they tell you?"

   "Pack enough underwear for a week," Malloy replied, with a twinkle in his eye.

   "There's a nice department store a few miles from the base."

   "Hereford?"

   "Good guess," Chavez responded. "Been there?"

   "Lots of times. I recognized that crossroads down there from other flights. Okay, what's the story?"

   "You're going to be working with us, probably," Clark told him.

   "Who's `us,' sir?"

   "We're called Rainbow, and we don't exist."

   "Vienna?" Malloy said through the intercom. The way they both blinked was answer enough. "Okay, that looked a little slick for cops. What's the makeup of the team?"

   "NATO, mainly Americans and Brits, but others, too, plus an Israeli," John told him.

   "And you set this up without any rotorheads?"

   "Okay, goddamnit, I blew it, okay?" Clark observed. "I'm new at this command stuff."

   "What's that on your forearm, Clark? Oh, what rank are you?"

   John pulled back on his jacket, exposing the red seal tattoo. "I'm a simulated two-star. Ding here is a simulated major."

   The marine examined the tattoo briefly. "I've heard of those, but never seen any. Third Special Operations Group, wasn't it? I knew a guy who worked with them."

   "Who's that?"

   "Dutch Voort, retired about five-six years ago as a fullbird."

   "Dutch Voort! Shit, haven't heard that name in a while," Clark replied at once. "I got shot down with him once."

   "You and a bunch of others. Great aviator, but his luck was kinda uneven."

   "How's your luck, Colonel?" Chavez asked.

   "Excellent, sonny, excellent," Malloy assured him. "And you can call me Bear."

   It fit, both men decided of their visitor. He was Clark's height, six-one, and bulky, as though he pumped barbells for fun and drank his share of beer afterward. Chavez thought of his friend Julio Vega, another lover of free weights. Clark read over the medals. The DFC had two repeat clusters on it, as did the Silver Star. The shooting iron also proclaimed that Malloy was an expert marksman. Marines liked to shoot for entertainment and to prove that like all other Marines they were riflemen. In Malloy's case, a Distinguished Rifleman, which was as high as the awards went. But no Vietnam ribbons, Clark saw. Well, he would have been too young for that, which was another way for Clark to realize how old he'd grown. lie also saw that Malloy was about the right age for a half colonel, whereas someone with all those decorations should have made it younger. Had Malloy been passed over for full-bird colonel? One problem with special operations was that it often put one off the best career track. Special attention was often required to make sure such people got the promotions they merited – which wasn't a problem for enlisted men, but frequently a big one for commissioned officers.

   "I started off in search-and-rescue, then I shipped over to Recon Marines, you know, get 'em in, get 'em out. You gotta have a nice touch. I guess I do."

   "What are you current in?"

   "H-60, Hueys, of course, and H-53s. I bet you don't have any of those, right?"

   "'Fraid not," Chavez said, immediately and obviously disappointed.

   "Air Force 24th Special Operations Squadron at RAF Mildenhall has the MH-60K and MH-53. I am up to speed on both if you ever borrow them. They're part of Ist Special Operations Wing, and they're based both here and in Germany, last time I checked."

   "No shit?" Clark asked.

   "No shit, Simulated General, sir. I know the wing commander, Stanislas Dubrovnik, Stan the Man. Great helo driver. He's been around the block a few dozen times if you ever need a friend in a hurry."

   "I'll keep that in mind. What else you know how to fly?"

   "The Night Stalker, of course, but not many of them around. None based over here that I know of." The Puma turned then, circling, then flaring to settle into the Hereford pad. Malloy watched the pilot's stick work and decided he was competent, at least for straight-and-level stuff. "I'm not technically current on the MH-47 Chinook-we're only allowed to stay officially current on three types-technically I'm not current on Hueys either, but I was fucking born in a Huey, if you know what I mean, General. And I can handle the MH-47 If I have to."

   "The name's John, Mr. Bear," Clark said, with a smile. He knew a pro when he saw one.

   "I'm Ding. Once upon a time I was an 11-Bravo, but then the Agency kidnapped my ass. His fault," Chavez said. "John and I been working together a while."

   "I suppose you can't tell me the good stuff, then. Kinda surprised I never met you guys before. I've delivered a few spooks here and there from time to time, if you know what I mean. "Bring your package?" Clark asked, meaning his personnel file.

   Malloy patted his bag. "Yes, sir, and very creative writing, it is, if I do say so." The helicopter settled down. The crew chief jumped out to pull the sliding doors open. Malloy grabbed his bag, stepped down, and walked to the Rover parked just off the pad. There the driver, a corporal, took Malloy's bag and tossed it in the back. British hospitality, Malloy saw, hadn't changed very much. He returned the salute and got in the rear. The rain was picking up. English weather, the colonel thought, hadn't changed much either. Miserable place to fly helicopters, but not too bad if you wanted to get real close without teeing seen, and that wasn't too awful, was it? The Rover jeep took them to what looked like a headquarters building instead of his guest housing. Whoever they were, they were in a hurry.

   "Nice office, John," he said, looking around on the inside. "I guess you really are a simulated two-star."

   "I'm the boss," Clark admitted, "and that's enough. Sit down. Coffee?"

   "Always, Malloy confirmed, taking a cup a moment later. "Thanks."

   "How many hours?" Clark asked next. "Total? Sixty-seven-forty-two last time I added it up. Thirty-one hundred of that is special operations. And, oh, about five hundred combat time."

   "That much?"

   "Grenada, Lebanon, Somalia, couple of other places and the Gulf War. I fished four fast-mover drivers out and brought them back alive during that little fracas. One of them was a little exciting," Malloy allowed, "but I had some help overhead to smooth things out. You know, the job's pretty boring if you do it right."

   "I'll have to buy you a pint, Bear," Clark said. "I've always been nice to the SAR guys."

   "And I never turn down a free beer. The Brits in your team. ex-SAS?"

   "Mainly. Worked with 'em before?"

   "Exercises, here and over at Bragg. They are okay troops. right up there with Force Recon and my pals at Bragg." This was meant to be generous, Clark knew, though the local Brits might take slight umbrage at being compared to anyone. "Anyway, I suppose you need a delivery boy, right?"

   "Something like that. Ding, let's run Mr. Bear through the last field operation."

   "Roge-o, Mr. C." Chavez unrolled the big photo of the Schloss Ostermann on Clark's conference table and started his brief, as Stanley and Covington came in to join the conference.

   "Yeah," Malloy said when the explanation ended. "You really did need somebody like me for that one, guys." He paused. "Best thing would be a long-rope deployment to put three or four on the roof . . . right about . . . here." He tapped the photo. "Nice flat roof to make it easy."

   "That's about what I was thinking. Not as easy as a zipline, but probably safer," Chavez agreed.

   "Yeah, it's easy if you know what you're doing. Your boys will have to learn to land with soft feet, of course, but nice to have three or four people inside the castle when you need 'em. From how good the takedown went, I imagine your people know how to shoot and stuff."

   "Fairly well," Covington allowed, in a neutral voice.

   Clark was taking a quick rifle through Malloy's personnel file, while Chavez presented his successful mission. Married to Frances nee Hutchins Malloy, he saw, two daughters, ten and eight. Wife was a civilian nurse working for the Navy. Well, that was easy to fix. Sandy could set that up at her hospital pretty easy. LTC Dan Malloy, USMC, was definitely a keeper.

   For his part, Malloy was intrigued. Whoever these people were, they had serious horsepower. His orders to fly to England had come directly from the office of CINCSNAKE himself, "Big Sam" Wilson, and the people he'd met so far looked fairly serious. The small one, Chavez, he thought, was one competent little fucker, the way he'd walked him through the Vienna job and, from examining the overhead photo, his team must have been pretty good, too; especially the two who'd crept up to the house to take the last bunch of bad guys in the back. Invisibility was a pretty cool gig if you could bring it off, but a fucking disaster if you blew it. The good news, he reflected, was that the bad guys weren't all that good at their fieldcraft. Not trained like his Marines were. That deficiency almost canceled out their viciousness-but not quite. Like most people in uniform, Malloy despised terrorists as cowardly sub-human animals who merited only violent and immediate death.

   Chavez next took him to his team's own building, where Malloy met his troops, shook hands, and evaluated what he saw there. Yeah, they were serious, as were Covington's Team-1 people in the next building over. Some people just had the look, the relaxed intensity that made them evaluate everyone they met, and decide at once if the person was a threat. It wasn't that they liked killing and maiming, just that it was their job, and that job spilled over into how they viewed the world. Malloy they evaluated as a potential friend, a man worthy of their trust and respect, and that warmed the Marine aviator. He'd be the guy whom they had to trust to get them where they needed to be, quickly, stealthily, and safely-and then get them out in the same way. The remaining tour of the training base was pure vanilla to one schooled in the business. The usual buildings, simulated airplane interiors, three real railroad passenger cars, and the other things they practiced to storm; the weapons range with the pop-up targets (he'd have to play there himself to prove that he was good enough to be here, Malloy knew, since every special-ops guy was and had to be a shooter, just as every Marine was a rifleman). By noon they were back in Clark's headquarters building. "Well, Mr. Bear, what do you think?" Rainbow Six asked.

   Malloy smiled as he sat down. "I think I'm seriously jet lagged. And I think you have a nice team here. So, you want me?"

   Clark nodded. "I think we do, yes."

   "Start tomorrow morning?"

   "Flying what?"

   "I called that Air Force bunch you told us about. They're going to lend us an MH-60 for you to play with."

   "Neighborly of them." That meant to Malloy that he'd have to prove that he was a good driver. The prospect didn't trouble him greatly. "What about my family? Is this TAD or what?"

   "No, it's a permanent duty station for you. They'll come over on the usual government package."

   "Fair 'nuf. Will we be getting work here?"

   "We've had two field operations so far, Bern and Vienna. There's no telling how busy we'll be with for-real operations, but you'll find the training regimen is pretty busy here."

   "Suits me, John."

   "You want to work with us?" The question surprised Malloy. "This is a volunteer outfit?"

   Clark nodded. "Every one of us."

   "Well, how about that. Okay," Malloy said. "You can sign me up."

   "May I ask a question?" Popov asked in New York.

   "Sure," the boss said, suspecting what it would be.

   "What is the purpose of all this?"

   "You really do not need to know at this time" was the expected reply to the expected question.

   Popov nodded his submission/agreement to the answer. "As you say, sir, but you are spending a goodly amount of money for no return that I can determine." Popov raised the money question deliberately, to see how his employer would react.

   The reaction was genuine boredom: "The money is not important."

   And though the response was not unexpected, it was nonetheless surprising to Popov. For all of his professional life in the Soviet KGB, he'd paid out money in niggardly amounts to people who'd risked their lives and their freedom for it, frequently expecting far more than they'd ever gotten, because often enough the material and information given was worth far more than they'd been paid for it. But this man had already paid out more than Popov had distributed in over fifteen years of field operations-for nothing, for two dismal failures. And yet, there was no disappointment on his face, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw. What the hell was this all about?

   "What went wrong in this case?" the boss asked.

   Popov shrugged. "They were willing, but they made the mistake of underestimating the skill of the police response. It was quite skillful indeed," he assured his employer. "More so than I expected, but not that great a surprise. Many police agencies across the world have highly trained counterterror groups."

   "It was the Austrian police?. . ."

   "So the news media said. I did not press my investigation further. Should I have done so?"

   A shake of the head. "No, just idle curiosity on my part."

   So, you don't care if these operations succeed or fail, Popov thought. Then, why the hell do you fund them? There was no logic to this. None at all. That would have been Should have been troubling to Popov, yet it was not seriously so. He was becoming rich on these failures. He knew who was funding the operations, and had all the evidence-the cash-he needed to prove it. So, this man could not turn on him. If anything, he must fear his employee, mustn't he? Popov had contacts in the terrorist community and could as easily turn them against the man who procured the cash, couldn't he? It would be a natural fear for this man to hold, Dmitriy reflected.

   Or was it? What, if anything, did this man fear? He was funding murder-well, attempted murder in the last case. He was a man of immense wealth and power, and such men feared losing those things more than they feared death. It kept coming down to the same thing, the former KGB officer told himself: What the hell was this all about? Why was he plotting the deaths of people, and asking Popov to-was he doing this to kill off the world's remaining terrorists? Did that make sense? Using Popov as a stalking horse, an agent provocateur, to draw them out and be dealt with by the various countries' highly trained counterterror teams? Dmitriy decided that he'd do a little research on his employer. It ought not to be too hard, and the New York Public Library was only two kilometers distant on Fifth Avenue.

   "What sort of people were they?"

   "Whom do you mean?" Popov asked.

   "Dortmund and Fdrchtner," the boss clarified.

   "Fools. They still believed in Marxism-Leninism. Clever in their way, intelligent in the technical sense, but their political judgment was faulty. They were unable to change when their world changed. That is dangerous. They failed to evolve, and for that they died." It wasn't much of an epitaph, Popov knew. They'd grown up studying the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and all the rest-the same people whose words Popov had studied through his youth, but even as a boy Popov had known better, and his world travels as a KGB officer had merely reinforced his distrust for the words of those nineteenth century academicians. His first flight on an American made airliner, chatting in a friendly way with the people next to him, had taught him so much. But Hans and Petra well, they'd grown up within the capitalist system. sampled all of its wares and benefits, and nevertheless decided that theirs was a system bereft of something that they needed. Perhaps in a way they'd been as he had been, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, just dissatisfied wanting to be part of something better-but, no, he'd always wanted something better for himself, whereas they'd always wanted to bring others to Paradise, to lead and rule as good communists. And to reach that utopian vision, they'd been willing to walk through a sea of innocent blood. Fools. His employer, he saw, accepted his more abbreviated version of their lost lives and moved on.

   "Stay in the city for a few days. I will call you when I need you."

   "As you say, sir." Popov stood and left the office and caught the next elevator to street level. Once there, he decided to walk south to the library with the lions in front. The exercise might clear his head, and he still had a little thinking to do. "When I need you" could mean another mission, and soon.

   "Erwin? George. How are you, my friend?"

   "It has been an eventful week," Ostermann admitted. His personal physician had him on tranquilizers, which, he thought, didn't work very well. His mind still remembered the fear. Better yet, Ursel had come home, arriving even before the rescue mission, and that night-he'd gotten to bed just after four in the morning, she'd come to bed with him, just to hold him, and in her arms he'd shaken and wept from the sheer terror that he'd been able to control right up to the moment that the man Furchtner had died less than a meter to his left. There was blood and other tissue particles on his clothing. They'd had to be taken off for cleaning. Dengler had had the worst time of all, and wouldn't be at work for at least a week, the doctors said. For his part, Ostermann knew that he'd be calling that Britisher who'd come to him with the security proposal, especially after hearing the voices of his rescuers.

   "Well, I can't tell you how pleased I am that you got through it okay, Erwin."

   "Thank you, George," he said to the American Treasury Secretary. "Do you appreciate your bodyguards more today than last week?"

   "You bet. I expect that business in that line of work will be picking up soon."

   "An investment opportunity?" Ostermann asked with a forlorn chuckle.

   "I didn't mean that, " Winston replied with an almost laugh. It was good to laugh about it, wasn't it?

   "George?"

   "Yeah?"

   "They were not Austrian, not what the television and newspapers said-and they told me not to reveal this, but you can know this. They were Americans and British."

   "I know, Erwin, I know who they are, but that's all I can say.

   "I owe them my life. How can I repay such a debt?"

   "That's what they are paid to do, my friend. It's their job."

   "Vielleicht, but it was my life they saved, and those of my employees. I have a personal debt to pay them. Is there any way I might do something for them?"

   "I don't know," George Winston admitted.

   "Could you find out? If you `know about' them, could you find out? They have children, do they not? I can pay for their education, set up a fund of some sort, could I not?"

   "Probably not, Erwin, but I can look into it," the SecTreas said, making a note on his desk. This would be a real pain in the ass for some security people, but there might well be a way, through some D.C. law firm, probably, to double-blind it. It pleased Winston that Erwin wanted to do this. Noblesse oblige was not entirely dead. "So, you sure you're okay, pal?"

   "Thanks to them, yes, George, I am."

   "Great. Thanks. Good to hear your voice, pal. See you t, next time I come over to Europe."

   "Indeed, George. Have a good day."

   "You, too. Bye." Winston switched buttons on his phone. Might as well check into this right away. "Mary, could you get me Ed Foley over at the CIA

CHAPTER 10
DIGGERS

   Popov hadn't done this in ages. but he rembered how. His employer had been written about more than many politicians which was only just, Popov thought, as this man did far more important and interesting things for his country and the world-but these articles were mainly about business, which didn't help Popov much beyond a further appreciation of the man's wealth and influence. There was little about his personal life, except that he'd been divorced. A pity of sorts. His former wife seemed both attractive and intelligent, judging by the photos and the appended information on her. Maybe two such intelligent people had difficulty staying together. If so, that was to bad for the woman, the Russian thought. Maybe few American men liked having intellectual equals under their roof. It was altogether too intimidating for the weak ones – and only a weak man would be troubled by it, the Russian thought.

   But there was nothing to connect the man with terrorists or terrorism. He'd never been attacked himself, not even a simple street crime, according to the New York Times. Such things did not always make the news, of course. Perhaps an incident that had never seen the light of day. But if it lead been so major as to change the course of his life – it would had to have become known, wouldn't it?

   Probably. Almost certainly, he thought. But almost was a troubling qualifier for a career intelligence officer. This was a man of business. A genius both in his scientific field and in running a major corporation. There, it seemed, was where his passions went. There were many photos of the man with women, rarely the same one twice, while attending various charity or social functions – all nice women, to be sure, Popov noted, like fine trophies, to be used and mounted on the wall in the appropriate empty space, while he searched after another. So, what sort of man was he working for?

   Popov had to admit that he really didn't know, which was more than troubling. His life was now in pawn to a man whose motivations he didn't understand. In not knowing, he could not evaluate the operational dangers that attached to himself as a result. Should the purpose be discerned by others, and his employer discovered and arrested, then he,Popov, was in danger of arrest on serious charges. Well, the former KGB officer thought, as he returned the last of the periodicals to the clerk, there was an easy solution to that. He'd always have a bag packed, and two false identities ready to be used. Then, at the first sign of trouble, he'd get to an international airport and be off to Europe as quickly as possible, there to disappear and make use of the cash he'd banked. He already had enough to ensure a comfortable life for a few years, perhaps longer if he could find a really good investment counselor. Disappearing off the face of the earth wasn't all that hard for one with proper training, he told himself, walking back out on Fifth Avenue. All you needed was fifteen or twenty minutes of warning .... Now how could he be sure to get that? . . .

   The German federal police were as efficient as ever, Bill Tawney saw. All six of the terrorists had been identified within forty-eight hours, and while detailed interviews of their friends, neighbors, and acquaintances were still underway, the police already knew quite a lot and had forwarded it to the Austrians, from there to the British Embassy in Vienna, and from there to Hereford. The package included a photo and blueprints of the home owned by Furchtner and Dortmund. One of the couple, Tawney saw, had been a painter of moderate talent. The report said that they'd sold paintings at a local gallery, signed, of course, with a pseudonym. Perhaps they'd become more valuable now, the Six man thought idly, turning the page. They'd had a computer there, but the documents on it were not very useful. One of them, probably Furchtner, the German investigators thought, had written long political diatribes, appended but not yet translated-Dr. Bellow would probably want to read them, Tawney thought. Other than that, there was little remarkable. Books, many of them political in character, most of them printed and purchased in the former DDR. A nice TV and stereo system, and plenty of records and CDs of classical music. A decent middle-class car, properly maintained, and insured through a local company, under their cover names, Siegfried and Hanna Kolb. They'd had no really close friends in their neighborhood, had kept largely to themselves, and every public aspect of their lives had been in Ordnung, thus arousing no comment of any kind. And yet, Tawney thought, they'd sat there like coiled springs . . . awaiting what?

   What had turned them loose? The German police had no explanation for that. A neighbor reported that a car had visited their house a few weeks before-but who had come and to what purpose, no one knew. The tag number of the car had never been noted, nor the make, though the interview transcript said that it had been a German-made car, probably white or at least light in color. Tawney couldn't evaluate the importance of that. It might have been a buyer for a painting, an insurance agent-or the person who had brought them out of cover and back into their former lives as radical left-wing terrorists.

   It was not the least bit unusual for this career intelligence officer to conclude that there was nothing he could conclude, on the basis of the information he had. He told his secretary to forward Furchtner's writings to a translator for later analysis by both himself and Dr. Bellow, and that was about as far as he could go. Something had roused the two German terrorists from their professional sleep, but he didn't know what. The German federal police could conceivably stumble across the answer, but Tawney doubted it. Furchtner and Dortmund had figured out how to live unobtrusively in a nation whose police were pretty good at, finding people. Someone they'd known and trusted had come to them and persuaded them to set off on a mission. Whoever it had been had known how to contact them, which meant that there was some sort of terror network still in existence. The Germans had figured that out, and a notation on their preliminary report recommended further investigation through paid informants – which might or might not work. Tawney had devoted a few years of his life to cracking into the Irish terrorist groups, and he'd had a few minor successes, magnified at the time by their rarity. But there had long since been a Darwinian selection process in the terrorist world. The dumb ones died, and the smart ones survived, and after nearly thirty years of being chased by increasingly clever police agencies, the surviving terrorists were themselves very clever indeed-and the best of them had been trained at Moscow Centre itself by KGB officers . . . was that an investigative option? Tawney wondered. The new Russians had cooperated somewhat . . . but not very much in the area of terrorism, perhaps because of embarrassment over their former involvement with such people . . . or maybe because the records had been destroyed, which the Russians frequently claimed, and Tawney never quite believed. People like that destroyed nothing. The Soviets had developed the world's foremost bureaucracy, and bureaucrats simply couldn't destroy records. In any case, seeking cooperation from the Russians on such an item as this was too far above his level of authority, though he could write up a request, and it might even percolate a level or two up the chain before being quashed by some senior civil servant in the Foreign Office. He decided that he'd try it anyway. It gave him something to do, and it would at least tell the people at Century House, a few blocks across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster, that he was still alive and working.

   Tawney slid all the papers, including his notes, back into the thick manila folder before turning to work on the foredoomed request. He could only conclude now that there still was a terror network, and that someone known to its members still had the keys to that nasty little kingdom. Well, maybe the Germans would learn more, and maybe the data would find its way to his desk. If it did, Tawney wondered, would John Clark and Alistair Stanley be able to arrange a strike of their own against them? No, more likely that was a job for the police of whatever nation or city was involved, and that would probably be enough. You didn't have to be all that clever to bag one. The French had proven that with Carlos, after all.

   Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez was not a happy man, but the cell in the Le Sante prison was not calculated to make him so. Once the most feared terrorist in the world, he'd killed men with his own hand, and done it as casually as zipping his fly. He'd once had every police and intelligence service in the world on his trail, and laughed at them all from the security of his safe houses in the former Eastern Europe. There, he'd read press speculation on who he really was and for whom he'd really worked, along with KGB documents on what the foreign services were doing to catch him . . . until Eastern Europe had fallen, and with it the nation-state support for his revolutionary acts. And so he'd ended up in Sudan, where he'd decided to take his situation a little more seriously. Somc cosmetic surgery had been in order, and so he'd gone to a trusted physician for the surgery, submitted to the general anesthesia

   –and awakened aboard a French business jet, strapped down to a stretcher, with a Frenchman saying, "Bonjour, Monsieur Chacal," with the beaming smile of a hunter who'd just captured the most dangerous of tigers with a loop of string. Tried, finally, for the murder of a cowardly informant and two French counterintelligence officers in 1975, he'd defended himself with panache, he thought, not that it mattered except to his own capacious ego. He'd proclaimed himself a "professional revolutionary" to a nation that had had its own revolution two hundred years before, and didn't feel the need for another.

   But the worst part of it was being tried as a . . . criminal, as though his work hadn't had any political consequences. He'd tried hard to set that aside, but the prosecutor hadn't let go, his voice dripping with contempt in his summation – actually worse than that, because he'd been so matter-of-fact in the presentation of his evidence, living his contempt for later. Sanchez had kept his dignity intact throughout, but inwardly he'd felt the pain of a trapped animal, and had to call on his courage to keep his mien neutral at all times. And the ultimate result had hardly been a surprise. The prison had already been a hundred years old on the day of his birth, and was built along the lines of a medieval dungeon. His small cell had but a single window, and he was not tall enough to see out the bottom of it. The guards, however, had a camera and watched him with it twenty-four hours a day, like a very special animal in a very special cage. He was as alone as a man could be, allowed no contact with other prisoners, and allowed out of his cage only once per day for an hour of "exercise" in a bleak prison yard. He could expect little more for the remainder of his life, Carlos knew, and his courage quailed at that. The worst thing was the boredom. He had books to read, but nowhere to walk beyond the few square meters of his cage-and worst of all, the whole world knew that the Jackal was caged forever and could therefore be forgotten.

   'Forgotten'? The entire world had once feared his name. That was the most hurtful part of all.

   He made a mental note to contact his lawyer. Those conversations were still privileged and private, and his lawyer knew a few names to call. "Starting up," Malloy said. Both turbo-shaft engines came to life, and presently the four-bladed rotor started turning.

   "Crummy day," Lieutenant Harrison observed over the intercom.

   "Been over here long?" Malloy asked.

   "Just a few weeks, sir."

   "Well, sonny, now you know why the Brits won the Battle of Britain. Nobody else can fly in this shit." The Marine looked around. Nothing else was up today. The ceiling was less than a thousand feet, and the rain was coming down pretty hard. Malloy checked the trouble-board again. All the aircraft systems were in the green.

   "Roge-o, Colonel. Sir, how many hours in the Night Hawk?"

   "Oh, about seven hundred. I like the Pave Low's capabilities a little better, but this one does like to fly. About time for us to see that, sonny." Malloy pulled up on the collective, and the Night Hawk lifted off, a little unevenly in the gusting thirty-knot winds. "Y'all okay back there?"

   "Got my barf bag," Clark replied, to Ding's amusement. "You know a guy named Paul Johns?"

   "Air Force colonel, down at Eglin? He retired about five years ago."

   "That's the man. How good is he?" Clark asked, mainly to get a feel for Malloy.

   "None better in a helo, 'specially a Pave Low. He just talked to the airplane, and it listened to him real nice. You know him, Harrison?"

   "Only by reputation, sir," the copilot replied from the left seat.

   "Little guy, good golfer, too. Does consulting now, and works on the side with Sikorsky. We see him up at Bragg periodically. Okay, baby, let's see what you got." Malloy reefed the chopper into a tight left turn. "Humph, nothing handles like a -60. Damn, I love these things. Okay, Clark, what's the mission here?"

   "The range building, simulate a zip-line deployment."

   "Covert or assault?"

   "Assault," John told him.

   "That's easy. Any particular spot?"

   "Southeast corner, if you can."

   "Okay, here we go." Malloy shoved the cyclic left and forward, dropping the helo like a fast elevator, darting for the range building like a falcon after a pheasant-and like a falcon, pulling up sharply at the right spot, transitioning into hover so quickly that the copilot in the left seat turned to look in amazement at how fast he'd brought it off. "How's that, Clark?"

   "Not too bad," Rainbow Six allowed.

   Next Malloy applied power to get the hell out of Dodge City-almost, but not quite, as though he hadn't stopped over the building at all. "I can improve that once I get used t o your people, how fast they get out and stuff, but a longline deployment is usually better, as you know."

   "As long as you don't blow the depth perception and run us right into the friggin' wall," Chavez observed. That remark earned him a turned head and a pained expression.

   "My boy, we do try to avoid that. Ain't nobody does the rocking chair maneuver better 'n me, people."

   "It's hard to get right," Clark observed.

   "Yes, it is," Malloy agreed, "but I know how to play the piano, too."

   The man was not lacking in confidence, they saw. Even the lieutenant in the left seat thought he was a little overpowering, but he was taking it all in anyway, especially watching how Malloy used the collective to control power as well as lift. Twenty minutes later, they were back on the ground.

   "And that's about how it's done, people," Malloy told them, when the rotor stopped turning. "Now, when do we start real training?"

   "Tomorrow soon enough?" Clark asked.

   "Works for me, General, sir. Next question, do we practice on the Night Hawk, or do I have to get used to flying something else?"

   "We haven't worked that out yet," John admitted.

   "Well, that does have a bearing on this stuff, y'know. Every chopper has a different feel, and that matters on how I do my deliveries," Malloy pointed out. "I'm at my best on one of those. I'm nearly as good with a Huey, but that one's noisy in close and hard to be covert with. Others, well, I have to get used to them. Takes a few hours of yankin' and bankin' before I feel completely comfortable." Not to mention learning where all the controls were, Malloy didn't add, since no two aircraft in the entire world had all the dials, gauges, and controls in the same places, something aviators had bitched about since the Wright Brothers. "If we deploy, I'm risking lives, mine and others, every time I lift off. I'd prefer to keep those risks to a minimum. I'm a cautious guy, y'know?"

   "I'll work on that today," Clark promised.

   "You do that." Malloy nodded, and walked off to the locker/ready room.

   Popov had himself a fine dinner in an Italian restaurant half a block from his apartment building, enjoyed the crisp weather in the city, and puffed on a Montecristo cigar after he got back to his flat. There was still work to do. He'd obtained videotapes of the news coverage of both of the terrorist incidents he'd instigated and wanted to study them. In both cases, the reporters spoke German-the Swiss kind, then Austrian-which he spoke like a native (of Germany). He sat in an easy chair with the remote control in his hand, occasionally rewinding to catch something odd of passing interest, studying the tapes closely, his trained mind memorizing every detail. The most interesting parts, of course, were those showing the assault teams who'd finally resolved both incidents with decisive action. The quality of the pictures was poor. Television simply didn't make for high-quality imagery, especially in had lighting conditions and from two hundred meters away. With the first tape, that of the Bern case, there was no more than ninety seconds of pre-action pictures of the assault team-this part had not been broadcast during t lie attack, only afterward. The men moved professionally, in a way that somehow reminded the Russian of the ballet, so strangely delicate and stylized were the movements of the men in the black clothing, as they crept in from left and right . . . and then came the blindingly swift action punctuated by jerky camera movements when the explosives went off-that always made the cameramen jump. No sound of gunfire. So their firearms were silenced. It was done so that the victims could not learn from the sound where the shots had come from-but it had not really been a matter of importance in this case, since the terrorist/criminals had been dead before the information could have done them any good. But that was how it was done. This business was as programmed as any professional sport, with the rules of play enforced by deadly might. The mission over in seconds, the assault team came out, and the Bern city police went in to sort out the mess. The people in black acted unremarkably, he saw, like disciplined soldiers on a battlefield. No congratulatory handshakes or other demonstrations. No, they were too well-trained for that. No one even did so much as light a cigarette . . . ah, one did seem to light a pipe. What followed was the usual brainless commentary from the local news commentators, talking about this elite police unit and how it had saved all the lives of those inside, und soweiter, Popov thought, rising to switch tapes.

   The Vienna mission, he saw, had even poorer TV coverage, due to the physical conditions of the chap's house. Quite a nice one, actually. The Romanovs might have had such a fine country house. Here the police had ruthlessly controlled the TV coverage, which was perfectly sensible, Popov thought, but not overly helpful to him. The taped coverage showed the front of the country house with boring regularity, punctuated by the monotonous words of the TV reporter repeating the same things endlessly, telling his viewers that he was unable to speak very much with the police on the scene. The tape did show the movement of vehicles, and showed the arrival of what had to be the Austrian assault team. Interestingly, they appeared to be dressed in civilian clothing upon their arrival, and changed soon thereafter into their battle dress . . . it looked green for this team . . . no, he realized, green overgarments over black regular dress. Did that mean anything? The Austrians had two men with scope-sighted rifles who rapidly disappeared into cars, which must have taken them behind the Schloss. The assault-team leader, not a very large man, much like the one Popov thought had headed the team in Bern, was seen from a great distance going over papers the map/diagram/plans of the house and grounds, no doubt. Then, shortly before midnight, all of them had disappeared, leaving Popov to look at a tape of the dwelling illuminated by huge light standards, accompanied by more idiotic speculation by a singularly ill-informed TV journalist .... and then, just after midnight, came the distant pop of a rifle, followed by two more pops, silence, and then frantic activity by the uniformed police in the camera's field of view. Twenty of them raced into the front door carrying light machine guns. The reporter had then talked about a sudden burst of activity, which the thickest of viewers would have seen for themselves, followed by more nothing-at-all, and then the announcement that all the hostages were alive, and all the criminals dead. Another passage of time, and the green-and-black-clad assault team appeared again. As with Bern there were no overt signs of self-congratulation. One of the assault team seemed to be puffing on a pipe, as he walked to the van that had brought them to the scene and stowed his weapons, while another of them conferred briefly with a civilian-clothed policeman, probably the Captain Altmark who'd had field command of the incident. The two must have known each other, their exchange of words was so brief before the paramilitary police team departed the scene, just as at Bern. Yes, both of the counterterror units trained from exactly the same book, Popov told himself again.

   Later press coverage spoke of the skill of the special police unit. That had happened in Bern, too, but it was surprising in neither case, since reporters also spoke the same drivel, regardless of language or nationality. The words used in the statement by the police were almost identical. Well, someone had trained both teams, perhaps the same agency. Perhaps the German GSG-9 group, which, with British help, had ended the airplane incident at Mogadishu over twenty years before, had trained the forces of countries that shared their language. Certainly the thoroughness of the training and the coldness of demeanor of the assault teams struck Popov as very German. They'd acted like machines both before and after the attacks, arriving and leaving like ghosts, with nothing left behind but the bodies of the terrorists. Efficient people, the Germans, and the Germanic policemen whom they trained. Popov, a Russian by birth and culture, had little love for the nation that had once killed so many of his countrymen, but he could respect them and their work, and the people they killed were no loss to the world. Even when he'd helped to train them as an active-duty officer of the Soviet KGB, who'd not cared much for them, nor had anyone else in his agency. They were, if not exactly the useful fools Lenin had once spoken about, then trained attack dogs to be unleashed when needed, but never really trusted by those who semi controlled them. And they'd never really been all that efficient. About the only thing they'd really accomplished was to force airports to install metal detectors, inconveniencing travelers all over the world. Certainly they'd made life hard on the Israelis, but what, really, did that country matter on the world stage? And even then, what had happened? If you forced countries to adapt to adverse circumstances, it happened swiftly. So, now, El Al, the Israeli airline, was the safest and most secure in the world, and policemen the world over were better briefed on whom to watch and to examine closely-and if everything else failed, then the policemen had special counterterror units like those who'd settled things in Bern and Vienna. Trained by Germans to kill like Germans. Any other terrorists he sent out to do evil work would have to deal with such people. Too bad, Popov thought, turning his TV back to a cable channel while the last tape rewound. He hadn't learned much of anything from reviewing the tapes, but he was a trained intelligence officer, and therefore a thorough man. He poured himself an Absolut vodka to drink neat-he missed the superior Starka brand he would have had in Russia-and allowed his mind to churn over the information while he watched a movie on the TV screen.

   "Yes, General, I know," Clark said into the phone at 1:05 the next afternoon, damning time zones as he did so.

   "That comes out of my budget, too," General Wilson pointed out. First, CINC-SNAKE thought, they ask for a man, then they ask for hardware, and now, they are asking for funding, too.

   "I can try to help with that through Ed Foley, sir, but the fact of the matter is that we need the asset to train with. You did send us a pretty good man," Clark added, hoping to assuage Wilson's renowned temper.

   It didn't help much. "Yes, I know he's good. That's why he was working for me in the first goddamned place."

   This guy's getting ecumenical in his old age, John told himself. Now he's praising a Marine-rather unusual for an Army snake eater and former commander of XVIII Airborne Corps.

   "General-sir, you know we've had a couple of jobs already, and with all due modesty, my people handled them both pretty damned well. I have to fight for my people, don't I?"

   And that calmed Wilson down. They were both commanders, they both had jobs to do, and people to, command and defend.

   "Clark, I understand your position. I really do. But I can't train my people on assets that you've taken away."

   "How about we call it time-sharing?" John offered, as a further olive branch. "It still wears out a perfectly good Night Hawk."

   "It also trains up the crews for you. At the end of this, on may just have a primo helicopter crew to bring down to Bragg to work with your people-and the training expense for your operation is just about nothing, sir." And that, he thought, was a pretty good play.

   At MacDill Air Force Base, Wilson told himself that this was a losing proposition. Rainbow was a bulletproof operation, and everyone knew it. This Clark guy had sold it first of all to CIA, then to the President himself-and sure enough, they'd had two deployments, and both had worked out, though the second one had been pretty dicey. But Clark, clever as he was, and good commander that he seemed to be, hadn't learned how to run a unit in the modern military world, where half the time was spent managing money like some goddamned white-socked accountant, instead of leading from the front and training with the troops. That's what really rankled Sam Wilson, young for a four-star, a professional soldier who wanted to soldier, something that high command pretty well precluded, despite his fitness and desire. Most annoying of all, this Rainbow unit promised to steal a lot of his own business. The Special Operations Command had commit menu all over the world, but the international nature of Rainbow meant that there was now somebody else in the Same line of work, whose politically neutral nature was supposed to make their use a lot more palatable to countries that might need special services. Clark might just put him out of business in a real sense, and Wilson didn't like that at all. But, really, he had no choice in the matter, did he

   "Okay, Clark, you can use the aircraft so long as the parent unit is able to part with it, and so long as its use by you does not interfere with training and readiness with that parent unit. Clear?"

   "Yes, sir, that is clear," John Clark acknowledged.

   "I need to come over to see your little circus," Wilson said next.

   "I'd like that a lot, General."

   "We'll see," Wilson grumbled, breaking the connection.

   "Tough son of a bitch," John breathed.

   "Quite," Stanley agreed. "We are poaching on his patch, after all."

   "It's our patch now, Al."

   "Yes, it is, but you mustn't expect him to like that fact."

   "And he's younger and tougher than me?"

   "A few years younger, and I personally would not wish to cross swords with the gentleman." Stanley smiled. "The war appears to be over, John, and you appear to have won."

   Clark managed a smile and a chuckle. "Yeah, Al, but it's easier to go into the field and kill people."

   "Quite."

   "What's Peter's team doing?"

   "Long-line practice."

   "Let's go and watch," John said, glad to have an excuse to leave his desk.

   "I want to get out of this place," he told his attorney.

   "I understand that, my friend," the lawyer replied, with a look around the room. It was the law in France, as in America, that conversations between clients and attorneys were privileged, and could not be recorded or used in any way by the state, but neither man really trusted the French to abide by that law, especially since DGSE, the French intelligence service, had been so instrumental in bringing Il'ych to justice. The DGSE was not known for its willingness to abide by the rules of civilized international behavior, as people as diverse as international terrorists and Greenpeace had learned to their sorrow.

   Well, there were other people talking in this room, and there were no obvious shotgun microphones here-and the two had not taken the seats offered by the prison guards, opting instead for one closer to the windows because, they'd said, they wanted the natural light. Of course, every booth could easily be wired.

   "I must tell you that the circumstances of your conviction do not lend themselves to an easy appeal," the lawyer advised. This wasn't exactly news to his client.

   "I am aware of that. I need you to make a telephone call."

   "To whom?"

   The Jackal gave him a name and a number. "Tell him that it is my wish to be released."

   "I cannot be part of a criminal act."

   "I am aware of that as well," Sanchez observed coldly. "Tell him also that the rewards will be great."

   It was suspected, but not widely known for certain, that Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez had a goodly sum of money squirreled away as a result of his operations while a free man. This had come mainly as a result of his attack on the OPEC ministers in Austria almost twenty years earlier, which explained why he and his group had been so careful not to kill anyone really important, despite the political flap that would have caused-all the better for him to gain notice and acclaim at the time. Business was business, even for his sort of people. And someone had paid his own legal bills, the attorney thought.

   "What else do you expect me to tell him?"

   "That is all. If he has an immediate reply, you will convey it to me," the Jackal told him. There was still an intensity to his eyes, something cold and distant – but even so, right there looking deep into his interlocutor and telling him what must be.

   For his part, the attorney asked himself again why he'd taken on this client. He had a long history of championing radical causes, from which notoriety he'd gained a wide and lucrative criminal practice. There was an attendannt element of danger involved, of course. He'd recently handled three major drug cases, and lost all three, and those clients hadn't liked the idea of spending twenty or more years in prison and had expressed their displeasure to him recently. Might they arrange to have him killed? It had happened a few times in America and elsewhere. It was as a more distant possibility here. the lawyer thought, though he'd made no promises to those clients except to do his best for them. It was the same with Carlos the Jackal. After his conviction, the lawyer had come into the case to look at the possibilities of an appeal, and made it, and lost-predictably. The French high courts held little clemency for a man who'd done murder on the soil of France, then essentially boasted of it. Now the man had changed his mind and decided petulantly that he didn't enjoy prison life. The lawyer knew that he'd pass along the message, as he had to, but did that make him part of a criminal act?

   No, he decided. Telling an acquaintance of his client that the latter wanted out of prison-well, who would not wish to be liberated? And the message was equivocal, it held many possible meanings. Help on another appeal, revelation of new, exculpatory evidence, anything at all. And besides, whatever Sanchez asked him to do here was privileged information, wasn't it? "I will pass along your message," he promised his client.

   "Merci. "

   It was a beautiful thing to watch, even in the dark. The MH-60K Night Hawk helicopter came in at about thirty miles per hour, almost two hundred feet over the ground, approaching the range building from the south, into the wind, traveling smoothly, not at all like a tactical deployment maneuver. But under the helicopter was a dark nylon rope, about one hundred fifty feet long, barely visible with the best of NVGs, and at the end of it were Peter Covington, Mike Chin, and another Team-1 member, dangling free below the black Sikorsky in their black ninja suits. The helicopter proceeded in so evenly and smoothly, as though on tracks, until the nose of the aircraft crossed the building's wall. 'then the nose came up, and the aircraft flared, slowing rapidly. Below the aircraft, the people attached to the rope swept forward, as though on a child's swing, and then, at the limit of the arc, they swung backward. The backward swing froze them still in the air, their rearward velocity almost exactly matching the remaining forward motion of the helicopter, and then they were on the roof, almost as though they'd stepped off a stationary object. Instantly, Covington and his men unclipped their quick-release attachments and dropped down. The negligible speed difference between their feet and the stationary roof made for no noise at all. Scarcely had this been done when the helicopter nosed down, resuming its forward flight, and anyone on the ground would scarcely have known that the aircraft had done anything but fly at a steady pace over the building. And at night, it was nearly invisible, even with night-vision goggles.

   "Bloody good," A1 Stanley breathed. "Not a bloody sound."

   "He is as good as he says," Clark observed.

   As though hearing the remarks, Malloy brought the helicopter around, flashing a thumbs-up out the window to the men on the ground as he headed off to orbit the area for the remainder of the simulation. In a real situation, the orbit would be in case he was needed to do an emergency evacuation-and even more so, to get the people on the ground used to having a helicopter overhead, to make his presence as much a part of the landscape as the trees, so he'd disappear into the normal background of the night, no more remarkable than the song of nightingales despite the danger inherent from his presence. It surprised everyone in the business that you could get away with this, but it was just an application of human nature to the world of special operations. If a tank had driven into the parking lot, after a day or two it would be just another car. Covington's trio of shooters circulated about the roof for a few minutes, then disappeared down ladders into the interior and emerged a few seconds later from the front door.

   "Okay, Bear, this is Six, exercise concluded. Back to the bird farm, Colonel, over."

   "Roger, Six, Bear is RTB. Out" was the terse reply, and the Night Hawk broke off from the orbit and headed down to the helo pad.

   "What do you think?" Stanley asked Major Covington.

   "Bloody good. Like stepping off the train to the platform. Malloy knows what he's about. Master Chief?"

   "Put him on the payroll, sir," Master Chief Chin continned. "That's a guy we can work with."

   "The aircraft is nicely set up," Malloy said twenty minutes later, in the club. He was wearing his green Nomex flight suit, with a yellow scarf around his neck, like a good aviator, though it struck Clark as odd.

   "What's with the necktie?"

   "Oh, this? It's the A-10 scarf. One of the guys I rescued in Kuwait gave it to me. I figure it's lucky, and I've always kinda liked the Warthog as an airplane. So, I wear it on missions."

   "How hard is it to do that transition maneuver?" Covington asked.

   "Your timing has to be pretty good, and you have to read the wind. You know what helps me prepare for it?"

   "Tell me," Clark said.

   "Piano playing." Malloy sipped at his pint of bitter and grinned. "Don't ask me why, but I always fly better after I've played some. Maybe something to do with getting the fingers loose. Anyway, that chopper they lent us is set up just right. Control cables have the right tension, throttles are just so. That Air Force ground crew-well, I have to meet 'em and buy 'em all a round. They really know how to prepare a chopper. Good team of mechanics."

   "They are that," First Lieutenant Harrison agreed. He belonged to Ist Special Operations Wing, and technically, therefore, he was responsible for the helicopter, though now he was very pleased to have so fine a teacher as Malloy.

   "That's half the battle of flying helos, getting the bird dialed in just so," Malloy went on. "That one, you can just sweet talk to her, and she listens real nice."

   "Like a good rifle," Chin observed.

   "Roger that, Master Chief," Malloy said, saluting with his beer. "So, what can you guys tell me about your first two missions?"

   "Christians 10, Lions 1," Stanley replied.

   "Who'd you lose?"

   "That was the Bern job. The hostage was killed before we were on the scene."

   "Eager beavers?"

   "Something like that." Clark nodded. "They weren't real swift, crossing the line like that. I sorta thought they were just bank robbers, but later investigation turned up the terrorist connection. Of course, maybe they just wanted some cash. Dr. Bellow never really decided what they were all about."

   "Any way you look at it, they're just hoods, murderers. whatever you want to call'em," Malloy said. "I helped train the FBI chopper pilots, spent a few weeks at Quantico with the Hostage Rescue Team. They kinda indoctrinated me on the psychological side. It can be pretty interesting. This Dr. Bellow, is it Paul Bellow, the guy who wrote the three books?"

   "Same guy."

   "He's pretty smart."

   "That's the idea, Colonel Malloy," Stanley said, waving for another round.

   "But the thing is, you know, there's only one thing you really need to know about them," Malloy said, reverting back to identity as a colonel of the United States Marine Corps.

   "How to whack them," Master Chief Chin agreed.

   The Turtle Inn Bar and Lounge was something of a fixture on Columbus Avenue, between Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth, well known and well patronized by locals and tourists. The music was loud, but not too loud, and the area was lighted, but not very well. The booze was a little more expensive than the norm, but the added price was for the atmosphere, which, the owner would have said, was priceless.

   "So." The man sipped at his rum and coke, "You live around here?"

   "Just moving in," she answered, sipping her own drink. "Looking for a job."

   "What d'ya do?"

   "Legal secretary."

   A laugh. "Lots of room for that here. We got more lawyers 'n we got taxi drivers. Where'd you say you were from?"

   "Des Moines, Iowa. Ever been there?"

   "No, local boy," the man replied, lying. He'd been born in Los Angeles thirty years before. "I'm an accountant with Peat Marwick." That was a lie, too.

   But a singles bar was a place for lies, as everyone knew. The woman was twenty-three or so, just out of secretarial school, brown hair and eyes, and needed to lose about fifteen pounds, though she was attractive enough if you liked them short. The three drinks she'd already consumed to show that she was a burgeoning Big Apple sophisticate had her pretty mellow.

   "Been here before?" he asked.

   "No, first time, what about you?"

   "Last few months, nice place to meet people." Another lie, but they came easily in a place like this.

   "Music's a little loud," she said.

   "Well, other places it's a lot worse. You live close?"

   "Three blocks north. Got a little studio apartment, subleasing it. Rent control in the building. My stuff gets here in another week."

   "So, you're not really moved in yet?"

   "Right."

   "Well, welcome to New York . . . ?"

   "Anne Pretloe."

   "Kirk Maclean." They shook hands, and he held hers a little longer than necessary so that she'd get a feel for his skin, a necessary precondition to casual affection, which he needed to generate. In another few minutes, they were dancing, which mainly meant bumping into people in the dark. He was turning on the charm, and she was smiling up at his six-foot height. Under other circumstances, this could have developed into something, Kirk thought. But not tonight.

   The bar closed after two in the morning, and he walked her out. She was quite drunk now from a total of seven drinks barely diluted by bar peanuts and pretzel nuggets. He'd carefully nursed his three, and eaten a lot of peanuts. "So," he asked out on the sidewalk, "let me drive you, okay?"

   "It's only three blocks."

   "Annie, it's late, and this is New York, okay? You need to learn where you can go and where you can't. Come on," he concluded, pulling her hand and leading her around the corner. His BMW was parked halfway to Broadway. He gallantly held the door open, shut it behind her, then walked around to get in himself.

   "You must do okay," Anne Pretloe noted, surveying the car.

   "Yeah, well, lots of people like to dodge taxes, y'know?" He started the car and moved out onto the cross street, actually in the wrong direction, though she was a little too much in her cups to appreciate that. He turned left on Broadway and spotted the blue van, parked in a quiet spot. Half a block away, he flashed his lights, whereupon he slowed the car, and pushed the button to lower both the driver-side and passenger windows.

   "Hey," he said, "I know this guy."

   "Huh?" Pretloe replied, somewhat confused about where they were and where they were going. It was too late for her to do much in any case."Yo, Kirk," the man in coveralls said, leaning down to the open passenger window.

   "Hey, buddy," Maclean replied, giving a thumbs-up.

   The man in coveralls leaned in and produced a small aerosol can from his sleeve. Then he depressed the red plastic button and gave Anne Predoe a blast of ether right in the face. Her eyes popped open for a second of shock and surprise. She turned to look at Kirk for a long lingering second or so, and then her body went slack.

   "Be careful with the drugs, man, she's got a lot of booze in her."

   "No problem." The man banged the side of the truck and another man appeared. This one looked up and down the street for a police car, then helped open the passenger door, lifted Anne Pretloe, and carried her limp form through the rear door of the van, where she joined another young woman picked up by another company employee earlier that night. With that, Maclean drove off, letting the night air blow the stink of the ether out of the car as he headed right, onto the West Side Highway and north to the George Washington Bridge. Okay, that made two he'd bagged, and the others should have gotten a total of six more by now. Another three, and they could end this most dangerous part of the operation.