Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (348 page)

“Au revoir,
madam,” the last one said as he passed, with a very Gallic evaluative sweep of her figure and a charming smile.

“Christ, Louis,” an American voice observed on the way out the side door. “You don’t ever turn it off, do you?”

“Is it a crime to look at a pretty woman, George?” Loiselle asked, with a wink.

“Suppose not. Maybe we’ll catch her on the flip-side,” Sergeant Tomlinson conceded. She was pretty, but Tomlinson was married with four kids. Louis Loiselle never turned it off. Maybe it came along with being French, the American thought. At the bottom, the rest of the team was waiting. Noonan and Steve Lincoln were supervising the baggage transfer.

Three minutes later, Team-2 was in a pair of vans heading off the flight line with a police escort. This was noted by the tower controller, whose brother was a police reporter for a local paper. The cop who’d come to the tower departed without more than a
danke
to the controllers.

Twenty minutes later, the vans stopped outside the main entrance to
Schloss Ostermann.
Chavez walked over to the senior officer.

“Hello, I am Major Chavez. This is Dr. Bellow, and Sergeant Major Price,” he said, surprised to receive a salute from—

“Captain Wilhelm Altmark,” the man said.

“What do we know?”

“We know there are two criminals inside, probably more, but the number is unknown. You know what their demands are?”

“Airplane to somewhere was the last I heard. Midnight deadline?”

“Correct, no changes in the past hour.”

“Anything else. How will we get them to the airport?” Ding asked.

“Herr Ostermann has a private helicopter and pad about two hundred meters behind the house.”

“Flight crew?”

“We have them over there.” Altmark pointed. “Our friends have not yet asked for the flight, but that seems the most likely method of making the transfer.”

“Who’s been speaking with them?” Dr. Bellow asked from behind the shorter Chavez.

“I have,” Altmark replied.

“Okay, we need to talk, Captain.”

Chevez headed over to a van where he could change along with the rest of the team. For this night’s mission—the sun was just setting—they wore not black but mottled green coveralls over their body armor. Weapons were issued and loaded, then selector switches went to the SAFE position. Ten minutes later, the team was outside and at the edge of the treeline, everyone with binoculars, checking out the building.

“I guess this here’s the right side of the tracks,” Homer Johnston observed. “Lotsa windows, Dieter.”

“Ja,”
the German sniper agreed.

“Where you want us, boss?” Homer asked Chavez.

“Far side, both sides, cross fire on the chopper pad. Right now, people, and when you’re set up, give me radio calls to check in. You know the drill.”

“Everything we see, we call to you,
Herr Major,”
Weber confirmed. Both snipers got their locked rifle cases and headed off to where the local cops had their cars.

“Do we have a layout of the house?” Chavez asked Altmark.

“Layout?” the Austrian cop asked.

“Diagram, map, blueprints,” Ding explained.

“Ach, yes, here.” Altmark led them to his car. Blueprints were spread on the hood. “Here, as you see, forty-six rooms, not counting the basements.”

“Christ,” Chavez reacted at once. “More than one basement?”

“Three. Two under the west wing—wine cellar and cold-storage. East wing basement is unused. The doors down to it may be sealed. No basement under the center portion. The
Schloss
was built in the late eighteenth century. Exterior walls and some interior ones are stone.”

“Christ, it’s a frickin’ castle,” Ding observed.

“That is what the word
Schloss
means,
Herr Major,”
Altmark informed him.

“Doc?”

Bellow came over. “From what Captain Altmark tells me, they’ve been pretty businesslike to this point. No hysterical threats. They gave a deadline of midnight for movement to the airport, else they say they will start killing hostages. Their language is German, with a German accent, you said, Captain?”

Altmark nodded.
“Ja,
they are German, not Austrian. We have only one name, Herr Wolfgang—that is generally a Christian name, not a surname in our language, and we have no known criminal-terrorist by that name or pseudonym. Also, he said they are of the Red Workers’ Faction, but we have no word on that organization either.”

Neither did Rainbow. “So, we don’t know very much?” Chavez asked Bellow.

“Not much at all, Ding. Okay,” the psychiatrist went on, “what does that mean? It means they are planning to survive this one. It means they’re serious businessmen in this game. If they threaten to do something, they will try to do it. They haven’t killed anyone yet, and that also means they’re pretty smart. No other demands made to this point. They will be coming, probably soon—”

“How do you know that?” Altmark asked. The absence of demands to this point had surprised him.

“When it gets dark, they’ll be talking with us more. See how they haven’t turned any lights on inside the building?”

“Yes, and what does that mean?”

“It means they think the darkness is their friend, and that means they will try to make use of it. Also, the midnight deadline. When it gets dark, we’ll be closer to that.”

“Full moon tonight,” Price observed. “And not much cloud cover.”

“Yeah,” Ding noted in some discomfort when he looked up at the sky. “Captain, do you have searchlights we can use?”

“The fire department will have them,” Altmark said.

“Could you please order them brought here?”

“Ja . . . Herr Doktor?”

“Yes?” Bellow said.

“They said that if they do not have those things done by midnight they will begin to kill hostages. Do you—”

“Yes, Captain, we have to take that threat very seriously. As I said, these folks are acting like serious people, well-trained and well-disciplined. We can make that work for us.”

“How?” Altmark asked. Ding answered.

“We give them what they want, we let them think that they are in control . . . until it is time for us to take control. We feed their pride and their egos while we have to, and then, later, we stop doing it at a time that suits us.”

Ostermann’s house staff was feeding the terrorists’ bodies and their egos. Sandwiches had been made under the supervision of Fürchtner’s team and brought around by deeply frightened staff members. Predictably, Ostermann’s employees were not in a mood to eat, though their guests were.

Things had gone well to this point, Hans and Petra thought. They had their primary hostage under tight control, and his lackeys were now in the same room, with easy access to Ostermann’s personal bathroom—hostages needed such access, and there was no sense in denying it to them. Otherwise, it stripped them of their dignity and made them desperate. That was inadvisable. Desperate people did foolish things, and what Hans and Petra needed at the moment was control over their every action.

Gerhardt Dengler sat in a visitor’s chair directly across the desk from his employer. He knew he’d gotten the police to respond, and, like his boss, he was now wondering if that was a good or a bad thing. In another two years, he would have been ready to strike out on his own, probably with Ostermann’s blessing. He’d learned much from his boss, the way a general’s aide learns at the right hand of the senior officer. Though he’d been able to pursue his own destiny much more quickly and surely than a junior officer . . . what did he owe this man? What was required by this situation? Dengler was no more suited to this than Herr Ostermann was, but Dengler was younger, fitter . . .

One of the secretaries was weeping silently, the tears trickling down her cheeks from fear and from the rage of having her comfortable life upset so cruelly. What was wrong with these two that they thought they could invade the lives of ordinary people and threaten them with death? And what could she do about it? The answer to that was . . . nothing. She was skilled at routing calls, processing voluminous paperwork, keeping track of Herr Ostermann’s money so ably that she was probably the best-paid secretary in the country—because Herr Ostermann was a generous boss, always with a kind word for his staff. He’d helped her and her husband—a stonemason—with their investments, to the point that they would soon be millionaires in their own right. She’d been with him long before his first wife had died of cancer, had watched him suffer through that, unable to help him do anything to ease the horrible pain, and then she’d rejoiced at his discovery of Ursel von Prinze, who’d allowed Herr Ostermann to smile again. . . .

Who were these people who stared at them as though they were objects, with guns in their hands like something from a movie . . . except that she and Gerhardt and the others were the bit players now. They couldn’t go to the kitchen to fetch beer and pretzels. They could only live the drama to its end. And so she wept quietly at her powerlessness, to the contempt of Petra Dortmund.

Homer Johnston was in his ghillie suit, a complex overall-type garment made of rags sewn into place on a gridded matrix, whose purpose was to make him appear to be a bush or a pile of leaves or compost, anything but a person with a rifle. The rifle was set up on its bipod, the hinged flaps on the front and back lenses of his telescopic sight flipped up. He’d picked a good place to the east of the helicopter pad that would allow him to cover the entire distance between the helicopter and the house. His laser rangefinder announced that he was 216 meters from a door on the back of the house and 147 meters from the front-left door of the helicopter. He was lying prone in a dry spot on the beautiful lawn, in the lengthening shadows close to the treeline, and the air brought to him the smell of horses, which reminded him of his childhood in the American northwest. Okay. He thumbed his radio microphone.

“Lead, Rifle Two-One.”

“Rifle Two-One, Lead.”

“In place and set up. I show no movement in the house at this time.”

“Rifle Two-Two, in place and set up, I also see no movement,” Sergeant Weber reported from his spot, two hundred fifty-six meters from Johnston. Johnston turned to see Dieter’s location. His German counterpart had selected a good spot.

“Achtung,”
a voice called behind him. Johnston turned to see an Austrian cop approaching, not quite crawling on the grass.
“Hier,”
the man said, handing over some photos and withdrawing rapidly. Johnston looked at them. Good, shots of the hostages . . . but none of the bad guys. Well, at least he’d know whom
not
to shoot. With that, he backed off the rifle and lifted his green-coated military binoculars and began scanning the house slowly and regularly, left to right and back again. “Dieter?” he said over his direct radio link.

“Yes, Homer?”

“They get you the photos?”

“Yes, I have them.”

“No lights inside . . .”

“Ja,
our friends are being clever.”

“I figure about half an hour until we have to go NVG.”

“I agree, Homer.”

Johnston grunted and turned to check the bag he’d carried in along with his rifle case and $10,000 rifle. Then he returned to scanning the building, patiently, like staking out a mountain deer trail for a big muley . . . a happy thought for the lifelong hunter . . . the taste of venison, especially cooked in the field over an open wood fire . . . some coffee from the blue, steel enamel pot . . . and the talking that came after a successful hunt . . .
Well, you can’t eat what you shoot here, Homer,
the sergeant told himself, settling back into his patient routine. One hand reached into a pocket for some beef jerky to chew.

Eddie Price lit his pipe on the far side of the dwelling. Not as big as Kensington Palace, but prettier, he thought. The thought disturbed him. It was something they’d talked about during his time in the SAS. What if terrorists—usually they thought of the Irish PIRA or INLA—attacked one of the Royal residences . . . or the Palace of Westminster. The SAS had walked through all of the buildings in question at one time or another, just to get a feel for the layout, the security systems, and the problems involved—especially after that lunatic had cracked his way into Buckingham Palace in the 1980s, walking into the Queen’s own bedchamber. He still had chills about that!

The brief reverie faded. He had the
Schloss Ostermann
to worry about, Price remembered, scanning over the blueprints again.

“Bloody nightmare on the inside, Ding,” Price finally said.

“That’s the truth. All wood floors, probably creak, lots of places for the bad guys to hide and snipe at us. We’d need a chopper to do this right.” But they didn’t have a helicopter. That was something to talk with Clark about. Rainbow hadn’t been fully thought through. Too fast on too many things. Not so much that they needed a helicopter as some good chopper crews trained in more than one type of aircraft, because when they deployed in the field, there was no telling what machines would be used by their host nation. Chavez turned: “Doc?”

Bellow came over. “Yes, Ding?”

“I’m starting to think about letting them out, walk to the helicopter behind the house, and taking them down that way rather than forcing our way in.”

“A little early for that, isn’t it?”

Chavez nodded. “Yeah, it is, but we don’t want to lose a hostage, and come midnight, you said, we have to take that threat seriously.”

“We can delay it some, maybe. My job to do that, over the phone.”

“I understand, but if we make a move, I want it to be in the dark. That means tonight. I can’t plan on having you talk them into surrender, unless you’re thinking different? . . .”

“Possible, but unlikely,” Bellow had to agree. He couldn’t even speak confidently about delaying the threatened midnight kill.

“Next, we have to see if we can spike the building.”