dangerous military organization, but the distances told him the time factor. Probably forty minutes on the outside, thirty on the inside to make the plan work. Fifteen men, but he could get fifteen good men. The other resources money could purchase, Grady thought, as he sat in the hospital parking lot. Yes, this could and would work. The only question was daylight or nighttime. The latter was the usual answer, but he'd learned the hard way that counterterror teams loved the night, because their night-vision equipment made the time of day indistinguishable in a tactical sense-and people like Grady were not trained to operate as well in the dark. It had given the police an enormous advantage recently at Vienna, Bern, and Worldpark. So, why not try it in broad daylight? he wondered. It was something to discuss with his friends, Grady concluded, as he restarted the car and headed back toward Gatwick.
'Yeah, I've been thinking about it since Jeff showed me the pictures,' the bartender said. His name was Bob Johnson. He was now dressed for the evening, in a white tuxedo shirt, black cummerbund, and bowtie.
'You know this woman?'
'Yeah.' He nodded positively. 'Mary Bannister. The other one is Anne Pretloe. They used to be regulars here. Seemed nice enough. They danced and flirted with the men. This place gets pretty busy at night, 'specially on weekends. They used to come in around eight or so, then leave at eleven or eleven-thirty.'
'Alone?'
'When they left? Most of the time, but not always. Annie had a guy she liked. His name's Hank, don't know the last name. White, brown hair, brown eyes, about my size, growing a gut, but not really overweight. I think he's a lawyer. He'll probably be in tonight. He's pretty regular here. Then there was another guy… maybe the last time I saw her here… what the hell's his name…?' Johnson looked down at the bar. 'Kurt, Kirk, something like that. Now that I think of it, I saw Mary dancing with him. too, once or twice. White guy, tall, good-lookin', haven't seen him in a while, liked whiskey sours made with Jim Beam, good tipper.' A bartender always remembered good and bad tippers. 'He was a hunter.'
'Huh?' Agent Sullivan asked.
'Huntin' for babes, man. That's why guys come to a place like this, you know?'
This guy was a godsend, Sullivan and Chatham thought. 'But you haven't seen him in a while?'
'The guy Kurt? No, couple of weeks at least, maybe more.'
'Any chance that you could help us put a picture together?'
'You mean the artists' sketch thing, like in the papers?' Johnson asked them.
'That's right,' Chatham confirmed.
'I suppose I can try. Some of the gals who come in here might know him, too. I think Marissa knew him. She's a regular, in here nearly every night, shows up around seven, seven-thirty.'
'I guess we're going to be here awhile,' Sullivan thought aloud, checking his watch.
It was midnight at RAF Mildenhall. Malloy lifted the Night Hawk off the ramp and set off west for Hereford. The controls felt just as tight and crisp as ever, and the new widget worked. It turned out to be a fuel-gauge widget, digitized to tell him with numbers rather than a needle how much fuel he had. The switch also toggled back and forth between gallons (U.S., not Imperial) and pounds. Not a bad idea, he thought. The night was relatively clear, which was unusual for this part of the world, but there was no moon, and he had opted to use his night-vision goggles. These turned darkness into greenish twilight, and though they reduced his visual acuity from 20/20 down to about 20/40, that was still a major improvement on being totally blind in the dark. He kept the aircraft at three hundred feet, to avoid power lines, which scared the hell out of him, as they did all experienced helicopter pilots. There were no troops in the back, only Sergeant Nance, who still wore his pistol in order to feel more warrior-like sidearms were authorized for special-operations troops, even those who had little likelihood of ever using them. Malloy kept his Beretta M9 in his flight bag rather than a shoulder holster, which he found melodramatic, especially for a Marine.
'Chopper down there at the hospital pad,' Lieutenant Harrison said, seeing it as they angled past for the base. 'Turnin' and blinkin'.'
'Got it,' Malloy confirmed. They'd pass well clear even if the guy lifted off right now. 'Nothing else at our level,' he added, checking aloft for the blinking lights of airliners heading in and out of Heathrow and Luton. You never stopped scanning if you wanted to live. If he got command of VHM-1 at Anacostia Naval Air Station in D.C., the traffic at Reagan National Airport meant that he'd be flying routinely through very crowded air space, and though he respected commercial airline pilots, he trusted them less than he trusted his own abilities-which, he knew, was exactly how they viewed him and everybody in green flight suits. To be a pilot for a living, you had to think of yourself as the very best, though in Malloy's case he knew this to be true. And this kid Harrison showed some real promise, if he stayed in uniform instead of ending up a traffic reporter in West Bumfuck, Wherever. Finally, the landing pad at Hereford came into view, and Malloy headed for it. Five minutes and he'd be on the ground, cooling the turboshaft engines down, and twenty minutes after that, in his bed.
'Yes, he will do it,' Popov said. They were in a corner booth, and the background music made it a secure place to talk. 'He has not confirmed it. but he will.'
'Who is he?' Henriksen asked.
'Sean Grady. Do you know the name?'
'PIRA… worked in Londonderry mainly, didn't he?'
'For the most part, yes. He captured three SAS people and… disposed of them. Two separate incidents. The SAS then targeted him on three separate missions. Once they came very close to getting him, and they eliminated ten or so of his closest associates. He then cleaned out some suspected informers in his unit. He's quite ruthless,' Popov assured his associates.
'That's true,' Henriksen assured Brightling. 'I remember reading what he did to the SAS guys he caught. Wasn't very pretty. Grady's a nasty little fucker. Does he have enough people to make this attempt?'
'I think yes,' Dmitriy Arkadeyevich replied. 'And he held us up for money. I offered five, and he demanded six, plus drugs.'
'Drugs?' Henriksen was surprised.
'Wait, I thought the IRA didn't approve of drug trafficking,' Brightling objected.
'We live in a practical world. The IRA worked for years to eliminate drug dealers throughout Ireland mainly kneecappings, to make the action very public. That kits a psychological and political move on his part. Perhaps now he entertains the idea as a continuing source of income for his operations,' Dmitriy explained. The morality of the issue didn't seem very important to anyone at the table.
'Yeah, well, I suppose we can entertain that request.' Brightling said, with a small measure of distaste. 'Kneecappings? What does that mean?'
'You take a pistol,' Bill explained, 'and place it behind the knee, then you fire forward. It blows the kneecap to smithereens. Painful, and permanently crippling. It's how they used to deal with informers and other people they didn't like. The Protestant terrorists preferred a Black and Decker drill for the same purpose. It puts the word out on the street that you are not to be messed with,' Henriksen concluded.
'Ouch,' the physician in Brightling commented.
'That's why they're called terrorists,' Henriksen pointed out. 'These days, they just kill them. Grady has a reputation for ruthlessness, doesn't he?'
'Yes, he does,' Popov confirmed. 'There's no doubt that he will undertake this mission. He likes the concept and your suggestion for how it should be set up, Bill. There is also his ego, which is large.' Popov took a sip of his wine. 'He wants to take the lead in the IRA politically, and that will mean doing something dramatic.'
'That's the Irish for you-the land of sad loves and happy wars.'
'Will he succeed?' Brightling asked.
'The concept is a clever one. But remember that to him success means elimination of the primary targets, the two women, and then a few of the reaction team of soldiers. After that, he will doubtless flee the area and try to return to Ireland and safety. Just surviving an operation of this type is successful enough for his political purposes. To eight a full military action would be madness for him, and Grady is not a madman,' Dmitriy told them, not really sure he believed it. Weren't all revolutionaries mad? It was difficult to understand people who let visions take control of their lives. Those who'd succeeded, Lenin Mao, and Gandhi in this century, were the ones who'd used their visions effectively, of course-but even then, which of the three had really succeeded? The Soviet Union had fallen, the People's Republic of China would eventually succumb to the same political-economic realities that had doomed the USSR, and India was still an economic disaster that somehow managed to hover in stagnation. By that
