Rainbow Six (1997) (42 page)

“See Doc Bellow?”

“Yeah, but ain’t nothing he can do ’cept let it heal, he says.”

“So, let it heal. That’s an order, George. No more running until it stops hurting so much. ’Kay?”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Tomlinson agreed. “I can still deploy if you need me.”

“I know that, George. See you in the shooting house.”

“Right.” Tomlinson watched his leader speed up to rejoin the rest of Team-2. It hurt his pride that he wasn’t keeping up. He’d never allowed any sort of injury to slow him down—in Delta Force he’d kept up with the training despite two broken ribs, hadn’t even told the medics about it for fear of being thought a pussy by the rest of his team. But while you could conceal and gut out bad ribs, a stretched tendon was something you couldn’t run on—the pain was just so bad that the leg stopped working right, and it was hard to stand up straight. Damn, the soldier thought, can’t let the rest of the team down. He’d never been second-best in anything in his life, back to Little League baseball, where he’d played shortstop. But today instead of running the rest of the way, he walked, trying to maintain a military one-hundred-twenty steps per minute, and even
that
hurt, but not enough to make him stop. Team-1 was out running also, and they went past him, even Sam Houston with his bad knee, limping as he ran past with a wave. The pride in this unit was really something. Tomlinson had been a special-ops trooper for six years, a former Green Beret drafted into Delta, now almost a college graduate with a major in psychology—that was the field special-ops people tended to adopt for some reason or other—and was trying to figure out how to complete his studies in England, where the universities worked differently, and where it was a little unusual for enlisted soldiers to have parchment degrees. But in Delta they often sat around and talked about the terrorists they were supposed to deal with, what made them tick, because in understanding that came the ability to predict their actions and weaknesses—the easier to kill them, which was the job, after all. Strangely, he’d never done a takedown in the field before coming here, and stranger still, the experience hadn’t been at all different from training. You played as you practiced, the sergeant thought, just like they’d told him every step of the way since basic training at Fort Knox eleven years before. Damn, his lower leg was still on fire, but less so than it had been in the run. Well, the doc had told him at least a week, more likely two, before he’d be fully mission-capable again, all because he’d hit a curb the wrong way, not looking, like a damned fool. At least Houston had an excuse for his knee. Zip-lining could be dangerous, and everybody slipped once in a while—in his case landing on a rock, which must have hurt like a bastard. . . . But Sam wasn’t a quitter either, Tomlinson told himself, hobbling forward toward the shooting house.

“Okay, this is a live-fire exercise,” Chavez told Team- 2. “The scenario is five bad guys, eight hostages. The bad guys are armed with handguns and SMGs. Two of the hostages are kids, two girls, ages seven and nine. Other hostages are all females, mothers. The bad guys hit a day-care center, and it’s time to do the takedown. Noonan has predicted the location of the bad guys like this.” Chavez pointed to the blackboard. “Tim, how good’s your data?”

“Seventy percent, no better than that. They’re moving around some. But the hostages are all here in this corner.” His pointer tapped the blackboard.

“Okay. Paddy, you got the explosives. Pair off as normal. Louis and George go in first, covering the left side. Eddie and I go in right behind with the center. Scotty and Oso in last, covering the right. Questions?”

There were none. The team members examined the blackboard diagram. The room was straightforward, or as much as it could be.

“Then let’s do it,” Ding told them. The team filed out, wearing their ninja suits.

“Your leg, George, how is it?” Loiselle asked Tomlinson.

“We’ll just have to see, I guess. But my hands are okay,” the sergeant said, holding his MP-10 up.

“Bien.”
Loiselle nodded. The two were semi-permanently paired together, and worked well as a mini-team, almost to the point that one of them could read the other’s mind in the field, and both had the gift for moving unseen. That was difficult to teach—instinctive hunters just knew it somehow, and the good ones practiced it incessantly.

Two minutes later, they were on the outside of the shooting house. Connolly set the Primacord around the door. This aspect of training kept the base carpenters pretty busy, Chavez thought. It took only thirty seconds before Connolly backed off, waving his hand, thumb up, to indicate he’d connected the wires to the detonator box.

“Team-2, this is Lead,” they all heard over their radio earpieces. “Stand-to and stand by. Paddy, three . . . two . . . one
. . . MARK!”

Clark, as usual, jumped when the
ka-BOOM!
sounded. A former demolitions expert himself, he knew that Connolly was his superior, with an almost magical touch for the stuff, but he knew also that no demo expert in the world ever used too little on a job. The door flew across the room and slammed into the far wall, fast enough to cause injury to anyone it hit, though probably not fatally. John covered his ears with his hands and shut his eyes because next through was a flash-bang that attacked his ears and eyes like an exploding sun. He had the timing down perfectly, as he opened back up to see the shooters come in.

Tomlinson ignored the protests from his leg, and followed Loiselle in with his weapon up. That’s when the first surprise hit the shooters; this exercise was to be a tricky one. No hostages and no bad guys on the left. Both men went to the far wall, turning right to cover that side.

Chavez and Price were already in, scanning their area of responsibility, and also seeing nothing. Then Vega and McTyler had the same experience on the right side of the room. The mission was not going as briefed, as sometimes happened.

Chavez saw there were no bad guys or hostages in view, and that there was but one door, open, into another room. “Paddy, flash-bangs, now!” he ordered over his radio, while Clark watched from the corner wearing his white observer’s shirt and body armor. Connolly had come through behind Vega and McTyler, two flash-bangs in his hands. One, then another, sailed through the door, and again the building shook. Chavez and Price took the lead this time. Alistair Stanley was in there in his white don’t-shoot-at-me garb while Clark stayed in the front room. The latter heard the suppressed chatter of the weapons, followed by shouts of “Clear!” “Clear!” “Clear!”

On entering the shooting room, John saw all the targets perforated in the heads, as before. Ding and Eddie were with the hostages, covering them with their armored bodies, weapons trained on the cardboard targets, which in real life would be on the floor and bleeding explosively from their shattered skulls.

“Excellent,” Stanley pronounced. “Good improvisation. You, Tomlinson, you were slow, but your shooting was bloody perfect. You, too, Vega.”

“Okay, people, let’s head over to the office to see the instant replay,” John told them, heading outside and still shaking his head to clear his ears from the insult of the flash-bangs. He’d have to get ear protectors and goggles if he did much more of this, lest his hearing be permanently damaged—even though he felt it his duty to experience the real thing to be able to appreciate how everything worked. He grabbed Stanley on the walk over.

“Fast enough, Al?”

“Yes.” Stanley nodded. “The flash-bangs give us, oh, three to five seconds of incapacitation, and another fifteen or so of subnormal performance. Chavez adapted well. The hostages would all have survived, probably. John, our lads are right on the crest of the wave. They cannot get any better. Tomlinson, bad leg and all, didn’t lose more than half a step, if that much, and our little Frenchman moves like a bloody mongoose. Even Vega, big as he is, isn’t the least bit oafish. John, these lads are as good as any team I’ve ever seen.”

“I agree, but—”

“But still so much is in the hands of our adversaries. Yes, I know, but God help the bastards when we come for them.”

Popov was still trying to learn more about his employer, but finding nothing to enlighten himself. The combination of the New York Public Library and the Internet had turned up reams of information, but nothing that gave the slightest clue as to why he’d employed the former KGB officer to dig up terrorists and turn them loose upon the world. It was as likely that a child would conspire a murder plot against a loving parent. It wasn’t the morality of the event that troubled him. Morality had little place in intelligence operations. As a trainee at the KGB academy outside Moscow, the subject had never come up, except insofar as he and his classmates had always been given to understand that the State Was
Never
Wrong. “You will occasionally be ordered to do things you may find personally upsetting,” Colonel Romanov had said once. “Such things will be done, because the reasons, unknown to you or not, will always be proper ones. You
do
have the right to question something for tactical reasons—as the officer in the field,
how
you do the mission will generally be your affair. But to refuse an assignment is not acceptable.” And that had been that. Neither Popov nor his classmates had even made notes on the issue. It was understood that orders were orders. And so, once he accepted employment, Popov had done the jobs assigned . . .

. . . but as a servant of the Soviet Union he’d always known the overall mission, which was to get vital information to his country, because his country needed the information either for itself or to assist others whose actions would be of real benefit to his country. Even dealing with Il’ych Ramirez Sanchez, Popov had thought at the time, had served some special interest. He knew better now, of course. Terrorists were like wild dogs or rabid wolves that one tossed into someone’s back garden just to create a stir, and, yes, perhaps that had been strategically useful—or had been thought so by his masters, in the service of a state now dead and gone. But, no, the missions had not really been useful, had they? And as good as KGB had once been—he still thought them the best espionage agency the world had ever seen—it had ultimately been a failure. The Party for which the Committee for State Security had been the Sword and Shield was no more. The Sword had not slain the Party’s enemies, and the Shield had not protected against the West’s various weapons. And so, had his superiors really known what they’d needed to do?

Probably not,
Popov admitted to himself, and because of that, perhaps
every
mission he’d been assigned had been to some greater or lesser degree a fool’s errand. The realization would have been a bitter one, except that his training and experience were paying off now with a lavish salary, not to mention the two suitcases of cash he’d managed to steal—but for doing
what?
Getting terrorists killed off by European police forces? He could just as easily, if not so profitably, have fingered them to the police and allowed them to be arrested, tried, and imprisoned like the criminal scum they were, which would actually have been far more satisfying. A tiger in a cage, pacing back and forth behind his bars and waiting for his daily five kilos of chilled horsemeat, was far more entertaining than one stuffed in a museum, and just as helpless. He was some sort of Judas goat, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, but if so, serving what sort of abattoir?

The money was good. Several more missions like the first two and he could take his money, his false identity papers, and vanish from the face of the earth. He could lie on some beach, drinking tasty beverages and watching pretty girls in skimpy bathing suits or—what? Popov didn’t know exactly what sort of retirement he could stomach, but he was certain he could find something. Maybe use his talents to trade in stocks and bonds like a real capitalist, and thus spend his time enriching himself further. Perhaps that, he mused, sipping his morning coffee and staring out the window, looking south toward Wall Street. But he wasn’t quite ready for that life yet, and until he was, the fact that he didn’t know the nature of his missions’ purpose was troublesome. In not knowing, he couldn’t evaluate all the dangers to himself. But for all his skill, experience, and professional training, he hadn’t a clue as to why his employer wanted him to let the tigers from their cages, out in the open where the hunters were waiting. What a pity, Popov thought, that he couldn’t just ask. The answer might even be amusing.

 

 

Check-in at the hotel was handled with mechanical precision. The reception desk was huge, and crowded with computers that raced electronically to get the guests checked in, the quicker to get them spending money in the park itself. Juan took his card-key and nodded his thanks at the pretty female clerk, then hoisted his bags and headed off to his room, grateful that there were no metal detectors here. The walk was a short one, and the elevators unusually large, to accommodate people in wheelchairs, he imagined. Five minutes later, he was in his room, unpacking. He’d just about finished when a knock came at the door.

“Bonjour.”
It was René. The Frenchman came in and sat on the bed, stretching as he did so. “Are you ready, my friend?” he asked in Spanish.

“Sí,”
the Basque replied. He didn’t look especially Spanish. His hair was on the red side of strawberry blond, his features handsome, and his beard neatly trimmed. Never arrested by the Spanish police, he was bright, careful, but thoroughly dedicated, with two car-bombings and a separate murder to his credit. This, René knew, would be Juan’s boldest mission, but he looked ready enough, tense, a little edgy perhaps, but coiled like a spring and prepared to play his role. René, too, had done this sort of thing before, most often murders right on crowded streets; he’d walk right up to his target, fire a suppressed pistol, and just walk on normally, which was the best way to do it, since you were almost never identified—people never saw the pistol, and rarely noticed a person walking normally down the Champs-Élysées. And so, you just changed your clothes and switched on the television to see the press coverage of your work. Action Directe had been largely, but not quite completely, broken up by the French police. The captured men had kept faith with their at-large comrades, hadn’t fingered or betrayed them, despite all the pressure and the promises of their uniformed countrymen—and perhaps some of them would be released as a result of this mission, though the main objective was to release their comrade Carlos. It would not be easy to get him out of Le Sante, René thought, rising to look out the window at the train station used by people going to the park, but—he saw the children there, waiting for their ride in—there were some things that no government, however brutal, could overlook.