'Fly on home for the debrief, lad. Six, out.'
'Bloody good,' Major Peter Covington said. The TV showed the team gathering up their equipment for the next thirty or so minutes, then they disappeared around the corner. 'Your Chavez does seem to know his business- and so much the better his first test was an easy one. Confidence builder.'
They looked over at the computer-generated picture that Noonan had uploaded to them on his cellular phone system. Covington had predicted how the take-down would go, and made no mistakes.
'Any traditions I need to know about?' John asked, settling down, finally, and hugely relieved that there were no unnecessary casualties.
'We take them to the club for a few pints, of course.' Covington was surprised that Clark didn't know about that one.
Popov was in his car, trying to navigate the streets of Bern before police vehicles blocked everything on their way back to their stations. Left there… two traffic lights, right, then through the square and… there! Excellent, even a place for him to park. He left his rented Audi on the street right across from the half-baked safe house Model had set up. Defeating the lock was child's play. Upstairs, to the back, where the lock was just as easily dealt with.
'Wer Bind sie?' a voice asked.
'Dmitriy,' Popov replied honestly, one hand in his coat pocket. 'Have you been watching the television?'
'Yes, what went wrong?' the voice asked in German, seriously downcast.
'It does not matter now. It is time to leave, my young friend.'
'But my friends-'
'Are dead, and you cannot help them.' He saw the boy in the dark, perhaps twenty years of age, and a devoted friend of the departed fool, Ernst Model. A homosexual relationship, perhaps? If so, it would make things easier for Popov, who had no love for men of that orientation. 'Come, get your things. We must leave and leave quickly.' There, there it was, the black-leather-clad suitcase with the D-marks inside. The lad - what was his name? Fabian something? Turned his back and went to get his parka, which the Germans called a Joppe. He never turned back. Popov's silenced pistol came up and fired once, then again, quite unnecessarily, from three meters away. Making sure the boy was indeed dead, he lifted the suitcase, opened it to verify the contents, and then walked out the door, crossed the street, and drove to his downtown hotel. He had a noon flight back to New York. Before that he had to open a bank account in a city well suited for the task.
The team was quiet on the trip back, having caught the last flight back to England-this one to Heathrow rather than Gatwick. Chavez availed himself of a glass of white wine, again sitting next to Dr. Bellow, who did the same.
'So, how'd we do, doc?'
'Why don't you tell me, Mr. Chavez,' Bellow responded.
'For me, the stress is bleeding off. No shakes this time,' Ding replied, surprised at the fact that his hand was ready.
'`Shakes' are entirely normal - the release of stress energy. The body has trouble letting it go and returning to normal But training attenuates that. And so does a drink,' the physician observed, sipping his own glass of a French offering.
'Anything we might have done differently?'
'I don't think so. Perhaps if we'd gotten involved earlier we might have prevented or at least postponed the murder of the first hostage, but that's never really under Our control.' Bellow shrugged. 'No, what I'm curious about is the motivation of the terrorists in this case.'
'How so?'
'They acted in an ideological way, but their demands were - not ideological. I understand they robbed the bank along the way…'
'Correct.' He and Loiselle had looked at a canvas bag on the bank's floor. It had been full of notes, perhaps twenty-five pounds of money. That seemed to Chavez an odd way to count money, but it was all he had. Follow-up work by the Swiss police would count it up. The after action stuff was an intelligence function, supervised by Bill Tawney. 'So… were they just robbers?'
'Not sure.' Bellow finished off his glass, holding it up then for the stewardess to see and refill. 'It doesn't seem to make much sense at the moment, but that's not exactly unknown in cases like this. Model was not a very good terrorist. Too much show, and not enough go. Poorly planned, poorly executed.'
'Vicious bastard,' Chavez observed.
'Sociopathic personality-more like a criminal than a terrorist. Those - the good ones, I mean - are usually more judicious.'
'What the hell is a good terrorist?'
'He's a businessman whose business is killing people to make a political point… almost like advertising. They serve a larger purpose, at least in their own minds. They believe in something, but not like kids in catechism class, more like reasoned adults in Bible study. Crummy simile, I suppose, but it's the best I have at the moment. Long day, Mr. Chavez,' Dr. Bellow concluded, while the stew topped off his glass.
Ding checked his watch. 'Sure enough, doc.' And the next part, Bellow didn't have to tell him, was the need for some sleep. Chavez hit the button to run his seat back and was unconscious in two minutes.
CHAPTER 4
Chavez and most of the rest of Team-2 woke up when the airliner touched down at Heathrow. The taxi to the gate seemed to last forever, and then they were met by police, who escorted them to the helo-pad for the flight back to Hereford. On the way through the terminal, Chavez caught the headline on an evening tabloid saying that Swiss police had dealt with a robbery-terrorist incident in the Bern Commercial Bank. It was somewhat unsatisfying that others got the credit for his successful mission, but that was the whole point of Rainbow, he reminded himself, and they'd probably get a nice thank-you letter from the Swiss government which would end up in the confidential file cabinet. The two military choppers landed on their pad, and vans took the troops to their building. It was after eleven at night now, and all the men were tired after a day that had started with the usual PT and ended with real mission stress.
It wasn't rest time yet, though. On entering the building, they found all the swivel chairs in the bullpen arranged in a circle, with a large-screen TV to one side. Clark, Stanley, and Covington were there. It was time for the after action review, or AAR.
'Okay, people,' Clark said, as soon as they'd sat down. 'Good job. All the bad guys are gone, and no good-guy casualties as part of the action. Okay, what did we do wrong?'
Paddy Connolly stood. 'I used too much explosives on the rear door. Had there been a hostage immediately inside, he would have been killed,' the sergeant said honestly. 'I assumed that the door frame was stouter than it actually was.' Then he shrugged. 'I do not know how to correct for that.'
John thought about that. Connolly was having an attack of over-scrupulous honesty, one sure mark of a good man. He nodded and let it go. 'Neither do I. What else?'
It was Tomlinson who spoke next, without standing. 'Sir, we need to work on a better way to get used to the flash-bangs. I was pretty wasted when I went through the door. Good thing Louis took the first shot on the inside. Not sure I could have.'
'How about inside?'
'They worked pretty well on the subjects. The one I saw,' Tomlinson said, 'was out of it.'
'Could we have taken him alive?' Clark had to ask.
'No, mon general. ' This was Sergeant Louis Loiselle. speaking emphatically. 'He had his rifle in hand, and it was pointing in the direction of the hostages.' There would be no talk about shooting a gun out of a terrorist's hands. The assumption was that the terrorist had more than one weapon, and the backup was frequently a fragmentation grenade. Loiselle's three-round burst into the target's head was exactly on policy for Rainbow.
'Agreed. Louis, how did you deal with the flash-bangs? You were closer than George was.'
