didn't have the courage to say.
'Now what?' Clark asked.
'Now I guess we turn the electricity back on.'
As they watched the TV monitors, three men raced to the child. Two wore the tricornio of the Guardia Civil. The third was Dr. Hector Weiler.
Chavez and Covington watched the same thing from a closer perspective. Weiler wore a white lab coat, the global uniform for physicians, and his race to reach the child ended abruptly as he touched the warm but still body. The slump of his shoulders told the tale, even from fifty meters away. The bullet had gone straight through her heart. The doctor said something to the cops, and one of them wheeled the chair down and out of the courtyard. turning to go past the two Rainbow members. 'Hold it, doc,' Chavez called, walking over to look. In this moment Ding remembered that his own wife held a new life in her belly, even now probably moving and kicking while Patsy was sitting in their living room, watching TV or reading a book. The little girl's face was at peace now, as though asleep, and he could not hold his hand back from touching her soft hair. 'What's the story, doc?'
'She was quite ill, probably terminal. I will have a file on her back at my office. When these children come here, I get a summary of their condition should an emergency arise.' The physician bit his lip and looked up. 'She was probably dying, but not yet dead, not yet completely without hope.' Weiler was the son of a Spanish mother and a German father who'd emigrated to Spain after the Second World War. He'd studied hard to become a physician and surgeon, and this act, this murder of a child, was the negation of all that. Someone had decided to make all his training and study worthless. He'd never known rage, quiet and sad though it was, but now he did. 'Will you kill them?'
Chavez looked up. There were no tears in his eyes. Perhaps they'd come later, Domingo Chavez thought, his hand still on the child's head. Her hair wasn't very long, and he didn't know that it had grown back after her last chemotherapy protocol. He did know that she was supposed to be alive, and that in watching her death, he had failed to do that which he'd dedicated his life to doing. 'Si, ' he told the doctor. 'We will kill them. Peter?' He waved at his colleague, and together they accompanied the others to the doctor's office. They walked over slowly. There was no reason to go fast now.
'That'll do,' Malloy thought, surveying the still-wet paint on the side of the Night Hawk. POLICIA, the lettering said. 'Ready, Harrison?'
'Yes, sir. Sergeant Nance, time to move.'
'Yessir.' The crew chief hopped in, buckled his safety belt, and watched the pilot go through the startup sequence. 'All clear aft,' he said over the intercom, after leaning out to check. 'Tail rotor is clear, Colonel.'
'Then I guess it's time to fly.' Malloy applied power and lifted the Night Hawk into the sky. Then he keyed his tactical radio. 'Rainbow, this is the Bear, over.'
'Bear, this is Rainbow Six, reading you five by five, over.'
'Bear's in the air, sir, be there in seven minutes.'
'Roger, please orbit the area until we tell you otherwise.'
'Roger that, sir. I'll notify when we commence the orbit. Out.' There was no particular hurry. Malloy dipped the nose and headed into the gathering darkness. The sun was almost down now, and the park lights in the distance were all coming on.
'Who is this?' Chavez asked.
'Francisco de la Cruz,' the man replied. His leg was bandaged, and he looked to be in pain.
'Ah, yes, we saw you on the videotape,' Covington said. He saw the sword and shield in the corner and turned to nod his respect at the seated man. Peter lifted the spatha and hefted it briefly. At close range it would be formidable as hell, not the equal of his MP-10, but probably a very satisfying weapon for all that.
'A child? They kill a child?' de la Cruz asked.
Dr. Weiler was at his file cabinet. 'Anna root, age ten and a half,' he said, reading over the documents that had preceded the little one. 'Metastatic osteosarcoma, terminally ill… Six weeks left, her doctor says here. Osteo, that is a bad one.' Against the wall, the two Spanish cops lifted the body from the chair and laid it tenderly on the examining table, then covered it with a sheet. One looked close to tears, blocked only by the cold rage that made his hands tremble.
'John must feel pretty shitty about now,' Chavez said.
'He had to do it, Ding. It wasn't the right time to take action-'
'I know that, Peter! But how the fuck do we tell her that?' A pause. 'Doc, you have any coffee around here?'
'There.' Weiler pointed.
Chavez walked to the urn and poured some into a foam cup. 'Up and down, sandwich 'em?'
Covington nodded. 'Yes, I think so.'
Chavez emptied the cup and tossed it into a wastebasket. 'Okay, let's get set up.' They left the office without another word and made their way in the shadows back to the underground, thence to the alternate command center.
'Rifle Two-One, anything happening?' Clark was asking when they walked in.
'Negative, Six, nothing except shadows on the windows. They haven't put a guy on the roof yet. That's a little strange.'
'They're pretty confident in their TV coverage,' Noonan thought. He had the blueprints of the castle in front of him. 'Okay, we are assuming that our friends are all in here… but there's a dozen other rooms on three levels.'
'This is Bear,' a voice said over the speaker Noonan had set up. 'I am orbiting now. What do I need to know. over?
'Bear, this is Six,' Clark replied. 'The subjects are all in the castle. There's a command-and-control center on the second floor. Best guess, everybody's there right now. Also, be advised the subjects have killed a hostage - a little girl,' John added.
In the helicopter, Malloy's head didn't move at the news. 'Roger, okay, Six, we will orbit and observe. Be advised we have all our deployment gear aboard, over.'
'Roger that. Out.' Clark took his hand off the transmit button.
The men were quiet, but their looks were intense. Chavez saw. Too professional for an avert display-nobody was playing with a personal weapon, or anything as Hollywood as that-yet their faces were like stone, only their eyes moving back and forth over the diagrams or dickering back and forth to the TV monitors. It must have been very hard on Homer Johnston, Ding thought. He'd been on the fucker when he shot the kid. Homer had kids. and he could have transported the subject into the next dimension as easily as blinking his eyes… But no, that would not have been smart, and they were paid to be smart. The men hadn't been ready for even an improvised assault, and anything that smacked of improvisation would only get more children killed. And that wasn't the mission, either. Then a phone rang. Bellow got it, hitting the speaker button.
'Yes?' the doctor said.
'We regret the incident with the child, but she was soon to die anyway. Now, when will our friends be released?'
'Paris hasn't gotten back to us yet,' Bellow replied.
'Then, I regret to say, there will be another incident shortly.'
'Look, Mr. One, I cannot force Paris to do anything. We are talking, negotiating with government officials, and they take time to reach decisions. Governments never move fast, do they?'
'Then I will help them. Tell Paris that unless the aircraft bringing our friends is ready for us to board it in one hour, we will kill a hostage, and then another every hour until our demands are met,' the voice said, entirely without emotional emphasis.
'That is unreasonable. Listen to me: even if they brought all of them out of their prisons now, it would take at least two hours to get them here. Your wishes cannot make an airplane fly faster, can they?'
That generated a thoughtful pause. 'Yes, that is true. Very well, we will commence the shooting of hostages in three hours from now… no, I will start the countdown on the hour. That gives you an additional twelve minutes. I will be generous. Do you understand?'
'Yes, you say that you will kill another child at twenty-two hundred hours, and another one every hour after that.'
'Correct. Make sure that Paris understands.' And the line went dead.
