composed of cops.
'Malloy got him, eh?' Clark asked on his way to the door.
'Actually it was Sergeant Nance,' Chavez answered.
'We have to get him something nice for this job,' Rainbow Six observed. 'We owe him for this. We got a name now, Domingo. A Russian name.'
'Not a good one, it's gotta be a cover name.'
'Oh?'
'Yeah, John, don't you recognize it? Serov, former chairman of KGB, back in the60s, I think, fired a long time ago because he screwed something up.'
Clark nodded. It wouldn't be the name on the guy's real passport, and that was too bad, but it was a name, and names could be tracked. They walked out of the hospital into the cool British evening. John's car was waiting, with Corporal Mole looking rather pleased with himself. He'd get a nice ribbon for the day's work and probably a very nice letter from this American pseudo-general. John and Ding got in, and the car drove to the base stockade, where the others were being kept for the time being, because the local jail wasn't secure enough. Inside, they were guided to an interrogation room. Timothy O'Neil was waiting there, handcuffed to a chair.
'Hello,' John said. 'My name is Clark. This is Domingo Chavez.'
The prisoner just stared at them.
'You were sent here to murder our wives,' John went on. That didn't make him so much as blink either. 'But you fucked it all up. There were fifteen of you. There are six now. The rest won't be doing much of anything. You know, people like you make me ashamed to be Irish. Jesus, kid, you're not even an effective criminal. By the way, Clark is just my working name. Before that, it was John Kelly, and my wife's maiden name was O'Toole. So, now you IRA pukes are killing Irish-Catholic Americans, eh?' It's not going to look good in the papers, punk.'
'Not to mention selling coke, all that coke the Russian brought in,' Chavez added.
'Drugs? We don't-'
'Sure you do. Sean Grady just told us everything, sang like a fucking canary. We have the number of the Swiss bank account, and this Russian guy-'
'Serov,' Chavez added helpfully, 'Iosef Andreyevich Serov, Sean's old pal from the Bekaa Valley.'
'I have nothing to say.' Which was more than O'Neil had planned to say. Sean Grady talked. Sean? That was not possible - but where else could they have gotten that information? Was the world totally mad?
''Mano,' Ding continued, 'that was my wife you wanted to kill, and she's got my baby in her belly. You think you're going to be around much longer? John, this guy ever going to get out of prison?'
'Not anytime soon, Domingo.'
'Well, Timmy, let me tell you something. Where I come from, you mess with a man's lady, there's a price that has to be paid. And it ain't no little price. And where I come from, you never, ever mess with a man's kids. The price for that's even worse, you little fuck. Little fuck?' Chavez wondered. 'No, I think we can fix that, John. I can fix him so he ain't never gonna fuck anything.' From the scabbard on his belt, Ding extracted a Marine-type KBar fighting knife. The blade was black except for the gleaming quarter-inch edge.
'Not sure that's a good idea, Ding,' Clark objected weakly.
'Why not? Feels pretty good to me right now, man.' Chavez got out of his chair and walked up to O'Neil. Then he lowered his knife hand to the chair. 'Ain't hard to do, man, just flick, and we can start your sex-change operation. I ain't a doc, you understand, but I know the first part of the procedure, y'know?' Ding bent down to press his nose against O'Neil's. 'Man, you don't ever, EVER mess with a Latino's lady! Do you hear me?'
Timothy O'Neil had had a bad enough day to this point. He looked in the eyes of this Spanish man, heard the accent, and knew that this was not an Englishman, not even an American of the type he thought he knew.
'I've done this before, man. Mainly I kill with guns, but I've taken bastards down with a knife once or twice. It's funny how they squirm - but I ain't gonna kill you, boy. I'm just gonna make you a girl.' The knife moved tight up against the crotch of the man cuffed to the chair.
'Back it off, Domingo!' Clark ordered.
'Fuck you, John! That's my wife he wanted to hurt, man. Well, I'm gonna fix this little fuck so he never hurts no more girls, 'mano.' Chavez turned to look at the prisoner again. 'I'm gonna watch your eyes when I cut it all off, Timmy. I want to see your face when you start to turn into a girl.'
O'Neil blinked, as he looked deep into the dark, Spanish eyes. He saw the rage there, hot and passionate-but as bad as that was, so was the reason for it. He and his mates had planned to kidnap and maybe kill a pregnant woman, and there was shame in that, and for that reason there was justice in the fury before his face.
'It wasn't like that!' O'Neil gasped. 'We didn't-we didn't-'
'Didn't have the chance to rape her, eh? Well, ain't that a big fuckin' deal?' Chavez observed.
'No, no, not rape - never, nobody in the unit ever did that, we're not-'
'You're fucking scum, Timmy-but soon you're just gonna be scum, 'cuz ain't no more fuckin' in your future.' The knife moved a little. 'This is gonna be fun, John. Like the guy we did in Libya two years ago, remember?'
'Jesus, Ding, I still have nightmares about that one,' Clark acknowledged, looking away. 'I'm telling you, Domingo, don't do it!'
'Fuck you, John.' His free hand reached to loosen O'Neil's belt, then the button at the top of his slacks. Then he reached inside. 'Well, shit, ain't much to cut off. Hardly any dick here at all.'
'O'Neil, if you have anything to tell us, better say it now. I can't control this kid. I've seen him like this before and-'
'Too much talk, John. Shit. Grady spilled his guts anyway. What does this one know that we need? I'm gonna cut it all off and feed it to one of the guard dogs. They like fresh meat.'
'Domingo, we are civilized people and we don't-'
'Civilized? My ass, John, he wanted to kill my wife and my baby!'
O'Neil's eyes popped again. 'No, no, we never intended to-'
'Sure, asshole,' Chavez taunted. 'You had those fucking guns 'cuz you wanted to win their hearts and minds, right? Woman killer, baby-killer.' Chavez spat.
'I didn't kill anybody, didn't even fire my rifle. I-'
'Great, so you're incompetent. You think you deserve to have a dick just 'cuz you're fucking incompetent?'
'Who's this Russian guy?' Clark asked.
'Sean's friend, Serov, Iosef Serov. He got the money and the drugs-'
'Drugs? Christ, John, they're fucking druggies, too!'
'Where's the money?' John persisted.
'Swiss bank, numbered account. Iosef set it up, six million dollars-and-and, Sean asked him to bring us ten kilos of cocaine to sell for the money, we need the money to continue operations.'
'Where are the drugs, Tim?' Clark demanded next.
'Farm-farmhouse.' O'Neil gave them a town and road description that went into Chavez's pocketed tape recorder.
'This Serov guy, what's he look like?' And he got that, too.
Chavez backed off and let his visible temper subside. Then he smiled. 'Okay, John, let's talk to the others. Thanks, Timmy. You can keep your dick, 'mano.'
It was late afternoon over Canada's Quebec province. The sun reflected off the hundreds of lakes, some of them still covered with ice. Popov had been sleepless for the entire flight, the only wakeful passenger in first class. Again and again his mind went over the same data. If the British had captured Grady, then they had his primary cover name, which was in his travel documents. Well, he'd dispose of them that very day. They had a physical description, but he looked not the least bit remarkable. Grady had the number of the Swiss account that Dmitriy had set up, but he'd already transferred the funds to another account, one not traceable to him. It was theoretically possible that the opposition could pursue the information Grady was sure to give them-Popov had no illusions about that-perhaps even secure a set of fingerprints from… no, that was too unlikely to be considered a danger, and no Western intelligence service would have anything to cross-match. No Western service even knew anything about him if they had, he would have been arrested long before. So, what did that leave? A name that would soon evaporate, a description that fitted a million other men, and a bank account number for a defunct account. In short, very little. He did need to check out, though, very quickly, the procedures by which Swiss banks transferred funds,
