'How sturdy are the windows?' Clark asked 'Dennis?'
'Metal frames set into the stone,' the park manager said with a shrug.
'Wait.' The engineer turned a page on the castle blueprints, then two more, and then a finger traced dawn the written portion on the right side. 'Here's the specs… they're held in by grouting only. You should be able to kick them in, I think.'
The 'I think' part was not as reassuring as Ding would have preferred, but how strong could a window frame be with a two-hundred-pound man swinging into it with two boots leading the way?
'What about flash-bangs, Paddy?'
'We can do that,' Connolly answered. 'It will not do the frames any good at all, sir.'
'Okay.' Chavez leaned over the plans. 'You'll have time to blow two windows-this one and this one.' He tapped the prints. 'We'll use flash-bangs on the other four and swing in a second later. Eddie here, me here. Louis here. George, how's the leg?'
'Marginal,' Sergeant Tomlinson replied with painful honesty. He'd have to kick through a window, swing in, drop to a concrete floor, then come up shooting… and the lives of children were at stake. No, he couldn't risk it, could he? 'Better somebody else, Ding.'
'Oso, think you can do it?' Chavez asked.
'Oh, yeah,' Vega replied, trying not to smile. 'You bet. Ding.'
'Okay, Scotty here, and Mike take these two. What's the exact distance from the roof?'
That was on the blueprints. 'Sixteen meters exactly from the level of the roof. Add another seventy centimeters to allow for the battlements.'
'The ropes can do that easily,' Eddie Price decided. The plan was coming together. He and Ding would have as their primary mission getting between the kids and the bad guys, shooting as they went. Vega, Loiselle, McTyler. and Pierce would be primarily tasked to killing the subjects in the castle's command room, but that would be finally decided only when they entered the room. Covington's Team-1 would race up the stairs from the underground, to intercept any subjects who ran out, and to back up Team-2 if something went wrong on their assault.
Sergeant Major Price and Chavez looked over the blueprints again, measuring distances to be covered and the time in which to do it. It looked possible, even probable, that they could carry it off. Ding looked up at the others.
'Comments?'
Noonan turned to look at the picture from the fiberoptic gear he'd installed. 'They seem to be mainly at the control panels. Two guys keeping an eye on the children, but they're not worried about them-makes sense, they're just kids, not adults able to start real resistance… but… it only takes one of these bastards to turn and hose them, man.'
'Yeah.' Ding nodded. There was no denying or avoiding that fact. 'Well, we have to shoot fast, people. Any way to string them out?'
Bellow thought about that. 'If I tell them the plane's on the way… that's a risk. If they think we're lying to them, well, they could start taking it out on the hostages, but the upside is, if they think it's about time to head for the airport, probably Mr. One will send a couple of his troops down to the underground-that's the most likely way for them to leave the area, I think. Then, if we can play some more with the surveillance cameras, and get a guy in close-'
'Yeah, pop them right away,' Clark said. 'Peter?'
'Get us within twenty meters and it's a piece of cake. Plus, we kill the lights right before we hit. Disorient the bastards,' Covington added.
'There's emergency lights in the stairwells,' Mike Dennis said. 'They click on when the power goes down - shit, there's two in the command center, too.'
'Where?' Chavez asked.
'The left - I mean the northeast corner and the southwest one. The regular kind, two lights, like car headlights, they run off a battery.'
'Okay, no NVGs when we go in, I guess, but we'll still kill the lights right before we hit, just to distract them. Anything else? Peter?' Ding asked.
Major Covington nodded. 'It ought to work.'
Clark observed and listened, forced to let his principal subordinates do all the planning and talking, leaving him only able to comment if they made a mistake, and they hadn't done that. Most of all, he wanted to lift an MP-10 and go in with the shooters, but he couldn't do that, and inwardly he swore at the fact. Commanding just wasn't as satisfying as leading.
'We need medics standing by in case the bad guys get lucky,' John said to Colonel Nuncio.
'We have paramedics outside the park now-'
'Dr. Weiler is pretty good,' Mike Dennis said. 'He's had trauma training. We insisted on that in case we have something bad happen here.'
'Okay, we'll have him stand-to when the time comes. Dr. Bellow, tell Mr. One that the French have caved, and their friends will be here… What do you think?'
'Ten-twenty or so. If they agree to that, it's a concession, but the kind that will calm them down-should. anyway.'
'Make the call, doc,' John Clark ordered.
'Yes?' Rene said.
'Sanchez is being released from Le Sante prison in about twenty minutes. Six of the others, too, but there's a problem on the last three. I'm not sure what that is. They'll be taken to De Gaulle International Airport and flown here on an Air France Airbus 340. We think they'll be here by twenty-two-forty. Is that acceptable? How will we get you and the hostages to them for the flight out?' Bellow asked.
'A bus, I think. You will bring the bus right to the castle. We will take ten or so of the children with us, and leave the rest here as a show of good faith on our part. Tell the police that we know how to move the children without giving them a chance to do something foolish, and any treachery will have severe consequences.'
'We do not want any more children harmed,' Bellow assured him.
'If you do as you are told, that will not be necessary, but understand,' Rene went on firmly, 'if you do anything foolish, then the courtyard will run red with blood. Do you understand that?'
'Yes, One, I understand,' the voice replied.
Rene set the phone down and stood. 'My friends, II'ych is coming. The French have granted our demands.'
'He looks like a happy camper,' Noonan said, eyes locked an the black-and-white picture. The one who had to be Mr. One was standing now, walking toward another of the subjects, and they appeared to shake hands on the fuzzy picture.
'They're not going to lie down and take a nap,' Bellow warned. 'If anything, they're going to be more alert now.'
'Yeah, I know,' Chavez assured him. But if we do our job right, it doesn't matter how alert they are.
Malloy headed back to the airfield for refueling, which took half an hour. While there he heard what was going to happen in another hour. In the back of the Night Hawk, Sergeant Nance set up the ropes, set to fifty feet length exactly, and hooked them into eyebolts on the chopper's floor. Like the pilots, Nance, too, had a pistol holstered on his left side. He never expected to use it, and was only a mediocre shot, but it made him feel like part of the team, and that was important to him. He supervised the refueling, capped the tank, and told Colonel Malloy the bird was ready.
Malloy pulled up on the collective, brought the Night Hawk into the air, then pushed the cyclic forward to return to Worldpark. From this point on, their flight routine would be changing. On arriving over the park, the Night Hawk didn't circle. Instead it flew directly over the castle every few minutes, then drew off into the distance, his anticollision strobe lights flashing as he moved around the park grounds, seemingly at random, bored with the orbiting he'd done before.
Okay, people, let's move,' Chavez told his team. Those directly involved in the rescue operation headed out into the underground corridor, then out to where the Spanish army truck stood. They boarded it, and it drove off, looping around into the massive parking lot.
Dieter Weber selected a sniper perch opposite Sergeant Johnston's position, on top of the flat roof of a
