Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (377 page)

Louis Loiselle handled the answer. “In a way, monsieur,” he said in French. He looked up to see a surveillance camera pointed directly at the door, probably to record the event, the parents filing out with their kids, many pausing to shake hands with the Rainbow troopers. Then Clark led them off, back to the castle, and into the underground. On the way the Guardia Civil cops saluted, the gestures returned by the special-ops troopers.

CHAPTER 16

DISCOVERY

The successful conclusion of the Worldpark operation turned out to be a problem for some, and one of them was Colonel Tomas Nuncio, the senior officer of the Guardia Civil on the scene. Assumed by the local media to be the officer in command of the operation, he was immediately besieged with requests for details of the operation, along with videotapes for the TV reporters. So successful had he been in isolating the theme park from press coverage that his superiors in Madrid themselves had little idea what had taken place, and this also weighed on his decision. So the colonel decided to release Worldpark’s own video coverage, deeming this to be the most innocuous footage possible, as it showed very little. The most dramatic part had been the descent of the shooting team from the helicopter to the castle roof, and then from the roof of the castle to the control-room windows, and that, Nuncio decided, was pure vanilla, lasting a mere four minutes, the time required for Paddy Connolly to place his line charges on the window frames and move aside to detonate them. Nothing of the shooting inside the room had been taped, because the terrorists had themselves wrecked the surveillance camera inside the facility. The elimination of the castle-roof sentry had been taped, but was not released due to the gruesome nature of his head wound, and the same was true of the killing of the last of them, the one named Andre who had killed the little Dutch girl—which scene had also been recorded, but was withheld for the same reason. The rest was all let go. The distance of the cameras from the actual scene of action prevented the recognition, or even the sight of the faces of the rescue team, merely their jaunty steps outside, many of them carrying the rescued children—that, he decided, could harm or offend no one, least of all the special-operations team from England, who now had one of the
tricornio
hats from his force to go along with the eagle of Worldpark’s notional VI Legion as a souvenir of their successful mission.

And so, the black-and-white video was released to CNN, Sky News, and other interested news agencies for broadcast around the world, to give substance to the commentary of various reporters who’d assembled at Worldpark’s main gate, there to comment at great and erroneous length about the expertise of the Guardia Civil’s special-action team dispatched from Madrid to resolve this hateful episode at one of the world’s great theme parks.

It was eight o’clock in the evening when Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov saw it in his New York apartment, as he smoked a cigar and sipped a vodka neat while his VCR taped it for later detailed examination. The assault phase, he saw, was both expert and expected in all details. The flashes of light from the explosives used were dramatic and singularly useless for showing him anything, and the parade of the rescuers as predictable as the dawn, their springy steps, their slung weapons, and their arms full of small children. Well, such men would naturally feel elation at the successful conclusion of such a mission, and the trailing footage showed them walking off to a building, where there must have been a physician to take care of the one child who’d sustained a minor injury during the operation, as the reporters said. Then, later, the troops had come outside, and one of them had swiped an arm against the stone wall of the building, lighting a match, which he used . . .

. . . to light a pipe . . .

To light a pipe, Popov saw. He was surprised at his own reaction to that. He blinked hard, leaning forward in his seat. The camera didn’t zoom in, but the soldier/policeman in question was clearly smoking a curved pipe, puffing the smoke out every few seconds as he spoke with his comrades . . . doing nothing dramatic, just talking unrecorded words calmly, as such men did after a successful mission, doubtless discussing who had done what, what had gone according to plan and what had not. It might as easily have been in a club or bar, for trained men always spoke the same way in those circumstances, whether they were soldiers or doctors or football players, after the stress of the job was concluded, and the lessons-learned phase began. It was the usual mark of professionals, Popov knew. Then the picture changed, back to the face of some American reporter who blathered on until the break for the next commercial, to be followed, the anchorman said, by some political development or other in Washington. With that, Popov rewound the tape, ejected it, and then reached for a different tape. He inserted it into the VCR, then fast-forwarded to the end of the incident in Bern, through the takedown phase and into the aftermath where . . . yes, a man had lit a pipe. He’d remembered that from watching from across the street, hadn’t he?

Then he got the tape of the press coverage from the Vienna incident, and . . . yes, at the end a man had lit a pipe. In every case it was a man of about one hundred eighty centimeters in height, making much the same gesture with the match, holding the pipe in exactly the same way, gesturing to another with it in exactly the same manner, the way men did with pipes . . .

“. . . ahh,
nichevo,”
the intelligence officer said to himself in the expensive high-rise apartment. He spent another half an hour, cueing and rerunning the tapes. The clothing was the same in every case. The man the same size, the same gestures and body language, the same weapons slung the same way, the same
everything,
the former KGB officer saw. And that meant the same man . . . in three separate countries.

But this man was not Swiss, not Austrian, and not Spanish. Next Popov backed off his deductive thoughts, searching for other facts he could discern from the visual information he had there. There were other people visible in all the tapes. The pipe smoker was often attended by another man, shorter than he, to whom the pipe smoker appeared to speak with some degree of friendly deference. There was another around, a large, muscular one who in two of the tapes carried a heavy machine gun, but in the third, carrying a child, did not. So, he had two and maybe a third man on the tapes who had appeared in Bern, Vienna, and Spain. In every case, the reporters had credited the rescue to local police, but no, that wasn’t the truth, was it? So, who were these people who arrived with the speed and decisiveness of a thunderbolt—in
three
different countries . . . twice to conclude operations that he had initiated, and once to settle one begun by others—and who they had been, he didn’t know nor especially care. The reporters said that they’d demanded the release of his old friend, the Jackal. What fools. The French would as soon toss Napoleon’s corpse from Les Invalides as give up that murderer. Il’ych Ramirez Sanchez, named with Lenin’s own patronymic by his communist father. Popov shook that thought off. He’d just discovered something of great importance. Somewhere in Europe was a special-operations team that crossed international borders as easily as a businessman flying in an airliner, that had freedom to operate in different countries, that displaced and did the work of local police . . . and did it well, expertly . . . and this operation would not hurt them, would it? Their prestige and international acceptability would only grow from the rescue of the children at Worldpark . . .

“Nichevo,”
he whispered to himself again. He’d learned something of great importance this night, and to celebrate he poured himself another vodka. Now he had to follow it up. How? He’d think that one over, sleeping on the thought, trusting his trained brain to come up with something.

They were nearly home already. The MC-130 had picked them up and flown the now relaxed team back to Hereford, their weapons re-packed in the plastic carrying cases, their demeanor not the least bit tense. Some of the men were cutting up. Others were explaining what they’d done to team members who’d not had the chance to participate directly. Mike Pierce, Clark saw, was especially animated in his conversation with his neighbor. He was now the Rainbow kill-leader. Homer Johnston was chatting with Weber—they’d come to some sort of deal, something agreed between them. Weber had taken a beautiful but out-of-policy shot to disable the terrorist’s Uzi, allowing Johnston to—of course, John told himself, he didn’t just want to kill the bastard who’d murdered the little girl. He’d wanted to
hurt
the little prick, to send him off to hell with a special, personal message. He’d have to talk to Sergeant Johnston about that. It was outside of Rainbow policy. It was unprofessional. Just killing the bastards was enough. You could always trust God to handle the special treatment. But—well, John told himself he could understand that, couldn’t he? There had once been that little bastard called Billy to whom he’d given a very special interrogation in a recompression chamber, and though he remembered it with a measure of pain and shame, at the time he’d felt it justified . . . and he’d gotten the information he’d needed at the time, hadn’t he? Even so, he’d have to talk with Homer, advise him never to do such a thing again. And Homer would listen, John knew. He’d exorcised the demons once, and once, usually, was enough. It must have been hard for him to sit at his rifle, watching the murder of a child, the power to avenge her instantly right there in his skilled hands, and yet do nothing.
Could
you
have done that, John?
Clark asked himself, not really knowing what the answer was in his current, exhausted state. He felt the wheels thump down on the Hereford runway, and the props roar into reverse pitch to slow the aircraft.

Well, John thought, his idea, his concept for Rainbow was working out rather well, wasn’t it? Three deployments, three clean missions. Two hostages killed, one before his team deployed to Bern, the other just barely after their arrival in the park, neither one the result of negligence or mistake on the part of his men. Their mission performance had been as nearly perfect as anything he’d ever seen. Even his fellow animals of 3rd SOG in Vietnam hadn’t been this good, and
that
was something he’d
never
expected to say or even think. The thought came suddenly, and just as unexpectedly came the near-need for tears, that he might have the honor to command such warriors as these, to send them out and bring them back as they were now, smiling as they stood, hoisting their gear on their shoulders and walking to the open rear cargo door on the Herky Bird, behind which waited their trucks. His men.

“The bar is open!” Clark called to them, when he stood.

“A little late, John,” Alistair observed.

“If the door’s locked, we’ll have Paddy blow it,” Clark insisted, with a vicious grin.

Stanley considered that and nodded. “Quite so, the lads have earned a pint or two each.” Besides which, he knew how to pick locks.

They walked into the club still wearing their ninja suits, and found the barman waiting. There were a few others in the club as well, mainly SAS troopers sipping at their last-call pints. Several of them applauded when the Rainbow team came in, which warmed the room. John walked to the bar, leading his men and ordering beer for all.

“I do love this stuff,” Mike Pierce said a minute later, taking his Guinness and sipping through the thin layer of foam.

“Two, Mike?” Clark asked.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “The one at the desk, he was on the phone. Tap-tap,” Pierce said, touching two fingers to the side of his head. “Then another one, shooting from behind a desk. I jumped over and gave him three on the fly. Landed, rolled, and three more in the back of the head. So long, Charlie. Then one more, got a piece of him, along with Ding and Eddie. Ain’t supposed to like this part of the job. I know that—but, Jesus, it felt good to take those fuckers down. Killin’ kids, man. Not good. Well, they ain’t gonna be doing any more of that, sir. Not with the new sheriff in town.”

“Well, nice going, Mr. Marshal,” John replied, with a raised-glass salute. There’d be no nightmares about this one, Clark thought, sipping his own dark beer. He looked around. In the corner, Weber and Johnston were talking, the latter with his hand on the former’s shoulder, doubtless thanking him for the fine shot to disable the murderer’s Uzi. Clark walked over and stood next to the two sergeants.

“I know, boss,” Homer said, without being told anything. “Never again, but goddamn, it felt good.”

“Like you said, never again, Homer.”

“Yes, sir. Slapped the trigger a little hard,” Johnston said, to cover his ass in an official sense.

“Bullshit,” Rainbow Six observed. “I’ll accept it—just this once. And you, Dieter, nice shot, but—”

“Nie wieder. Herr General.
I know, sir.” The German nodded his submission to the moment. “Homer,
Junge,
the look on his face when you hit him.
Ach,
that was something to see, my friend. Good for the one on the castle roof, too.”

“Easy shot,” Johnston said dismissively. “He was standing still. Zap. Easier ’n throwing darts, pal.”

Clark patted both on the shoulder and wandered over to Chavez and Price.

“Did you have to land on my arm?” Ding complained lightly.

“So, next time, come through the window straight, not at an angle.”

“Right.” Chavez took a long sip of the Guinness.

“How’d it go?” John asked them.

“Aside from being hit twice, not bad,” Chavez replied. “I have to get a new vest, though.” Once hit, the vests were considered to be ruined for further use. This one would go back to the manufacturer for study to see how it had performed. “Which one was that, you think, Eddie?”

“The last one, I think, the one who just stood and sprayed at the children.”

“Well, that was the plan, for us to stop those rounds, and that one went down hard. You, me, Mike, and Oso, I think, took him apart.” Whatever cop had recovered that body would need a blotter and a freezer bag to collect the spilled brains.