the ground used to having a helicopter overhead, to make his presence as much a part of the landscape as the trees, so he'd disappear into the normal background of the night, no more remarkable than the song of nightingales despite the danger inherent from his presence. It surprised everyone in the business that you could get away with this, but it was just an application of human nature to the world of special operations. If a tank had driven into the parking lot, after a day or two it would be just another car. Covington's trio of shooters circulated about the roof for a few minutes, then disappeared down ladders into the interior and emerged a few seconds later from the front door.
'Okay, Bear, this is Six, exercise concluded. Back to the bird farm, Colonel, over.'
'Roger, Six, Bear is RTB. Out' was the terse reply, and the Night Hawk broke off from the orbit and headed down to the helo pad.
'What do you think?' Stanley asked Major Covington.
'Bloody good. Like stepping off the train to the platform. Malloy knows what he's about. Master Chief?'
'Put him on the payroll, sir,' Master Chief Chin continned. 'That's a guy we can work with.'
'The aircraft is nicely set up,' Malloy said twenty minutes later, in the club. He was wearing his green Nomex flight suit, with a yellow scarf around his neck, like a good aviator, though it struck Clark as odd.
'What's with the necktie?'
'Oh, this? It's the A-10 scarf. One of the guys I rescued in Kuwait gave it to me. I figure it's lucky, and I've always kinda liked the Warthog as an airplane. So, I wear it on missions.'
'How hard is it to do that transition maneuver?' Covington asked.
'Your timing has to be pretty good, and you have to read the wind. You know what helps me prepare for it?'
'Tell me,' Clark said.
'Piano playing.' Malloy sipped at his pint of bitter and grinned. 'Don't ask me why, but I always fly better after I've played some. Maybe something to do with getting the fingers loose. Anyway, that chopper they lent us is set up just right. Control cables have the right tension, throttles are just so. That Air Force ground crew-well, I have to meet 'em and buy 'em all a round. They really know how to prepare a chopper. Good team of mechanics.'
'They are that,' First Lieutenant Harrison agreed. He belonged to Ist Special Operations Wing, and technically, therefore, he was responsible for the helicopter, though now he was very pleased to have so fine a teacher as Malloy.
'That's half the battle of flying helos, getting the bird dialed in just so,' Malloy went on. 'That one, you can just sweet talk to her, and she listens real nice.'
'Like a good rifle,' Chin observed.
'Roger that, Master Chief,' Malloy said, saluting with his beer. 'So, what can you guys tell me about your first two missions?'
'Christians 10, Lions 1,' Stanley replied.
'Who'd you lose?'
'That was the Bern job. The hostage was killed before we were on the scene.'
'Eager beavers?'
'Something like that.' Clark nodded. 'They weren't real swift, crossing the line like that. I sorta thought they were just bank robbers, but later investigation turned up the terrorist connection. Of course, maybe they just wanted some cash. Dr. Bellow never really decided what they were all about.'
'Any way you look at it, they're just hoods, murderers. whatever you want to call'em,' Malloy said. 'I helped train the FBI chopper pilots, spent a few weeks at Quantico with the Hostage Rescue Team. They kinda indoctrinated me on the psychological side. It can be pretty interesting. This Dr. Bellow, is it Paul Bellow, the guy who wrote the three books?'
'Same guy.'
'He's pretty smart.'
'That's the idea, Colonel Malloy,' Stanley said, waving for another round.
'But the thing is, you know, there's only one thing you really need to know about them,' Malloy said, reverting back to identity as a colonel of the United States Marine Corps.
'How to whack them,' Master Chief Chin agreed.
The Turtle Inn Bar and Lounge was something of a fixture on Columbus Avenue, between Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth, well known and well patronized by locals and tourists. The music was loud, but not too loud, and the area was lighted, but not very well. The booze was a little more expensive than the norm, but the added price was for the atmosphere, which, the owner would have said, was priceless.
'So.' The man sipped at his rum and coke, 'You live around here?'
'Just moving in,' she answered, sipping her own drink. 'Looking for a job.'
'What d'ya do?'
'Legal secretary.'
A laugh. 'Lots of room for that here. We got more lawyers 'n we got taxi drivers. Where'd you say you were from?'
'Des Moines, Iowa. Ever been there?'
'No, local boy,' the man replied, lying. He'd been born in Los Angeles thirty years before. 'I'm an accountant with Peat Marwick.' That was a lie, too.
But a singles bar was a place for lies, as everyone knew. The woman was twenty-three or so, just out of secretarial school, brown hair and eyes, and needed to lose about fifteen pounds, though she was attractive enough if you liked them short. The three drinks she'd already consumed to show that she was a burgeoning Big Apple sophisticate had her pretty mellow.
'Been here before?' he asked.
'No, first time, what about you?'
'Last few months, nice place to meet people.' Another lie, but they came easily in a place like this.
'Music's a little loud,' she said.
'Well, other places it's a lot worse. You live close?'
'Three blocks north. Got a little studio apartment, subleasing it. Rent control in the building. My stuff gets here in another week.'
'So, you're not really moved in yet?'
'Right.'
'Well, welcome to New York…?'
'Anne Pretloe.'
'Kirk Maclean.' They shook hands, and he held hers a little longer than necessary so that she'd get a feel for his skin, a necessary precondition to casual affection, which he needed to generate. In another few minutes, they were dancing, which mainly meant bumping into people in the dark. He was turning on the charm, and she was smiling up at his six-foot height. Under other circumstances, this could have developed into something, Kirk thought. But not tonight.
The bar closed after two in the morning, and he walked her out. She was quite drunk now from a total of seven drinks barely diluted by bar peanuts and pretzel nuggets. He'd carefully nursed his three, and eaten a lot of peanuts. 'So,' he asked out on the sidewalk, 'let me drive you, okay?'
'It's only three blocks.'
'Annie, it's late, and this is New York, okay? You need to learn where you can go and where you can't. Come on,' he concluded, pulling her hand and leading her around the corner. His BMW was parked halfway to Broadway. He gallantly held the door open, shut it behind her, then walked around to get in himself.
'You must do okay,' Anne Pretloe noted, surveying the car.
'Yeah, well, lots of people like to dodge taxes, y'know?' He started the car and moved out onto the cross street, actually in the wrong direction, though she was a little too much in her cups to appreciate that. He turned left on Broadway and spotted the blue van, parked in a quiet spot. Half a block away, he flashed his lights, whereupon he slowed the car, and pushed the button to lower both the driver-side and passenger windows.
'Hey,' he said, 'I know this guy.'
'Huh?' Pretloe replied, somewhat confused about where they were and where they were going. It was too late for her to do much in any case.'Yo, Kirk,' the man in coveralls said, leaning down to the open passenger
