cover with only eight men, should we have to move in.'
Stanley nodded. 'Very well, Peter. I will make the call.'
'How we looking on gas?' Malloy asked, looking down as he orbited the hospital.'A good three and a half hours, Colonel,' Lieutenant Harrison answered.
Malloy turned to look into the cargo bay area of the night Hawk. Sergeant Nance had the zip-line ropes outside hooked into the eyebolts on the floor of the aircraft. lot work done, he sat in the jump seat between and behind the pilot/copilot seats, his pistol clearly visible in his shoulder holster, listening in on the tactical radio like everyone else.
'Well, we're going to be here for a while,' the Marine said.
'Sir, what do you think about-'
'I think I don't like it at all, Lieutenant. Aside from that, we're better off not thinking very much.' And that is a bullshit answer, as everyone aboard the Night Hawk knew. You might as well tell the world to stop turning as tell men in this situation to stop thinking. Malloy was looking down at the hospital, figuring approach angles for a long- wire or zip-line deployment. It didn't appear all that difficult to accomplish, should it become necessary.
The panoramic view afforded from flying above it all was useful. Malloy could see everything. Cars were parked everywhere, and some trucks were close to the hospital. The police cars were visible from their flashing blue lights, and they had traffic pretty well stopped - and elsewhere roads were clogged, at least those leading to the hospital. As usually happened, the roads leading away were de open. A TV truck appeared, as though by magic, setting up half a mile or so from the hospital, on the hilltop sere some other vehicles were stopped, probably rubbernecking, the Marine thought. It always happened, like vultures circling a carcass at Twenty-nine Palms. Very distasteful, and very human.
Popov turned when he heard the white TV truck stop, not ten meters from the rear bumper of his rented Jaguar. It had a satellite dish on the roof, and the vehicle had scarcely halted when men stepped out. One climbed the ladder affixed to the side and elevated the oddly angular dish. Another hoisted a Minicam, and yet another, evidently the reporter, appeared, wearing a jacket and tie. He chatted briefly with one of the others, then turned, looking down the hill. Popov ignored them.Finally, Noonan said to himself, pulling off the road at the other cell site. He parked his car, got out, and reached for the keys the technician had given him. Three minutes later, he uploaded his spoofing software. Then he donned his tactical radio set.
'Noonan to Stanley, over.'
'This is Stanley.'
'Okay, Al, I just cut off the other cell. Cell phones ought to be down now for this entire area.'
'Very good, Tim. Come this way now.'
'Roger, on the way.' The FBI agent adjusted the headset, hanging the microphone exactly in front of his mouth and pushing the earpiece all the way in as he reentered his car and started off back toward the hospital. Okay, you bastards, he thought, try using your fucking phones now.
As usual in emergency situations, Popov noted, you couldn't tell what was happening. At least fifteen police vehicles were visible along with the two army trucks from the Hereford base. His binoculars didn't allow him to recognize any faces, but he'd seen only one of them close-up, and that was the chief of the unit, and he'd be in some command post or other rather than visible in the open, assuming that he was here at all, the intelligence officer reminded himself.
Two men carrying long cases, probably riflemen. had walked away from the camouflage-painted trucks, but they were nowhere to be seen now, though… yes, he saw, using his binoculars again, there was one, just a jump of green that hadn't been there before. How clever. He'd be a sniper, using his telescopic sight to look into windows and gather information, which he'd then radio to his commander. There was another one of them around somewhere as well, but Popov couldn't see him.
'Rifle One-Two to Command,' Fred Franklin called in. 'One-Two, this is Command,' Covington responded.
'In position, sir, looking down, but I don't see anything at all in the windows on the ground level. Some movement of the curtains on the third floor, like people peeking out, but nothing else.'
'Roger, thank you, continue your surveillance.'
'Roger that. Rifle One-Two, out.' Several seconds later, Houston reported similar news. Both men were in perches, with their ghillie suits disguising their positions.
'Finally,' Covington said. A police car had just arrived, its occupant delivering blueprints of the hospital. Peter's gratitude died in a moment, when he looked at the first two pages. There were scores of rooms, most of them on the upper levels, in any of which a man with a gun could hide and have to be winkled out-worse, all of those rooms were probably occupied with real people, sick ones, whom a flash-bang might startle enough to kill. Now that he had the knowledge, its only immediate benefit was to show him just how difficult his mission would be.
'Sean?'
Grady turned. 'Yes, Roddy?'
'There they are,' Sands pointed out. The black-clad soldiers were standing behind their army trucks, only a few meters from the trucks the Irishmen had driven to the site.
'I only count six, lad,' Grady said. 'We're hoping for ten or so.'
'It is a poor time to become greedy, Sean.'Grady thought about that for a second, then checked his watch. He'd allotted forty-five to sixty minutes for this mission. Any more, he though, would give the other side too much time to get organized. They were within ten minutes of the lower limit. So far, things had gone according to plan. Traffic would be blocked on the roads, but only into the hospital, not away from it. He had his three large trucks, the van, and two private cars, all within fifty meters of where he was standing. The crucial part of the job was yet to begin, but his people all knew what to do. Roddy was right. It was time to wrap everything up and make his dash. Grady nodded at his subordinate, pulled out his cell phone, and hit the speed-dial button for Timothy O'Neil.
But it didn't work. Lifting the phone to his ear, all he heard was the fast-busy signal that announced that the call hadn't gone through properly. Annoyed, he thumbed end and redialed… and got the same result.
'What's this?…' he said, trying a third time. 'Roddy, give me your phone.'
Sands offered it, and Grady took it. They were all identical in make, and all had been identically programmed. He thumbed the same speed-dial command, and again got only the fast-busy response. More confused than angry, Grady nonetheless had a sudden empty feeling in his stomach. He'd planned for many things, but not for this. For the mission to work, he had to coordinate his three groups. They all knew what they were to do, but not when, not until he told them that it was time.
'Bloody…' Grady said quietly, rather to the surprise of Roddy Sands. Next Grady simply tried calling a mobile operator, but the same fast-busy signal resulted. 'The bloody phones have stopped working.'
'We haven't heard from him in a while,' Bellow observed.
'He hasn't given us a phone number yet.'
'Try this.' Tawney handed over a handwritten list of numbers in the hospital. Bellow selected the main ER number and dialed it on his cell phone, making sure to start with the 777 prefix. It rang for half a minute before it was picked up.
'Yes?' It was an Irish-sounding voice, but a different one.
'I need to talk to Mr. Casey,' the psychiatrist said, putting the call on speaker.'He's not here right now' was the reply.
'Could you get him, please? I need to tell him something.'
'Wait,' the voice answered.
Bellow killed the microphone on the portable phone. 'Different voice. Not the same guy. Where's Casey?'
'Some other place in the hospital, I imagine,' Stanley offered, but the answer was dissatisfying to him when no voice came back on the phone line for several minutes.
Noonan had to explain who he was to two separate police checkpoints, but now the hospital was in sight. He called ahead on his radio, told Covington that he was five minutes away, and learned that nothing had changed.
Clark and Chavez dismounted their vehicle fifty yards from the green trucks that had brought Team-1 to the site. Team-2 was now on its way, also in another green painted British Army truck, with a police escort to speed their way through the traffic. Chavez was holding a collection of photographs of known PIRA terrorists that he'd snatched off the intelligence desk. The hard part, Ding found, was to keep his hands from shaking whether from
