theater building where kids viewed cartoons, only a hundred twenty meters from the castle's east side. Once there, he unrolled his foam mat, set up his rifle on the bipod, and started training his ten-power scope over the castle's windows.
'Rifle Two-Two in position,' he reported to Clark.
'Very well, report as necessary, AI?' Clark said, looking up.
Stanley looked grim. 'A sodding lot of guns, and a lot of children.'
'Yeah, I know. Anything else we could try?'
Stanley shook his head. 'It's a good plan. If we try outside, we give them too much maneuvering space, and they will feel safer in this castle building. No, Peter and Ding have a good plan, but there's no such bloody thing as a perfect one.'
'Yeah,' John said. 'I want to be there, too. This command stuff sucks the big one.'
Alistair Stanley grunted. 'Quite.'
The parking lot lights all went off at once. The truck, also with lights out, stopped next to a light standard. Chavez and his team jumped out. Ten seconds later, the Night Hawk came in, touching down with the rotor still turning fast. The side doors opened, and the shooters clambered aboard and sat down on the floor. Sergeant Nance closed one door, then the other.
'All aboard, Colonel.'
Without a word, Malloy pulled the collective and climbed back into the sky, mindful of the light standards, which could have wrecked the whole mission. It took only four seconds to clear them, and he banked the aircraft to head back toward the park.
'A/C lights off,' Malloy told Lieutenant Harrison.
'Lights off,' the copilot confirmed.
'We ready?' Ding asked his men in the back.'Goddamn right, we are,' Mike Pierce said back. Fucking murderers, he didn't add. But every man an the bird was thinking that. Weapons were slung tight across their chests, and they had their zip-lining gloves on. Three of the men were pulling them tight on their hands, a show of some tension on their part that went along with the grim faces.
'Where is the aircraft?' One asked.
'About an hour and ten minutes out,' Dr. Bellow replied. 'When do you want your bus?'
'Exactly forty minutes before the aircraft lands. It will then be refueled while we board it.'
'Where are you going?' Bellow asked next.
'We will tell the pilot when we get aboard.'
'Okay, we have the bus coming now. It will be here in about fifteen minutes. Where do you want it to come?'
'Right to the castle, past the Dive Bomber ride.'
'Okay, I will tell them to do that,' Bellow promised.
'Merci. ' The phone went dead again.
'Smart,' Noonan observed. 'They'll have two surveillance cameras on the bus all the way in, so we can't use it to screen a rescue team. And they probably plan to use the mountaineer technique to get the hostages aboard.' Tough shit, he didn't add.
'Bear, this is Six,' Clark called on the radio.
'Bear copies, Six, over.'
'We execute in five minutes.'
'Roger that, we party in five.'
Malloy turned in his seat. Chavez had heard the call and nodded, holding up one hand, fingers spread.
'Rainbow, this is Six. Stand-to, repeat stand-to. We commence the operation in five minutes.'
In the underground, Peter Covington led three of his men east toward the castle stairwells, while the park engineer selectively killed off the surveillance cameras. His explosives man set a small charge on the fire door at the bottom and nodded at his boss.
'Team-1 is ready.'
'Rifle Two-One is ready and on target,' Johnston said. 'Rifle Two-Two is ready, but no target at this time,' Weber told Clark.
'Three, this is One,' the scanner crackled in the command room.
'Yes, One,' the man atop the castle replied.
'Anything happening?'
'No, One, the police are staying where they are. And the helicopter is flying around somewhere, but not doing anything.'
'The bus should be here in fifteen minutes. Stay alert.'
'I will,' Three promised.
'Okay,' Noonan said. 'That's a time-stamp. Mr. One calls Mr. Three about every fifteen minutes. Never more than eighteen, never less than twelve. So-'
'Yeah.' Clark nodded. 'Move it up?'
'Why not,' Stanley said.
'Rainbow, this is Six. Move in and execute. Say again, EXECUTE NOW!'
Aboard the Night Hawk, Sergeant Nance moved left and right, sliding the side doors open. He gave a thumbs up to the shooters that they returned, each man hooking up his zip-line rope to Drings on their belts. All of them turned inward, getting up on the balls of their feet so that their backsides were now dangling outside the helicopter.
'Sergeant Nance, I will flash you when we're in place.'
'Roger, sir,' the crew chief replied, crouching in the now empty middle of the passenger area, his arms reaching to the men on both sides.
'Andre, go down and look at the courtyard,' Rene ordered. His man moved at once, holding his Uzi in both hands.
'Somebody just left the room,' Noonan said.
'Rainbow, this is Six, one subject has left the command center.'
Eight, Chavez thought. Eight subjects to take down. The other two would go to the long-riflemen.
The last two hundred meters were the hard ones, Malloy thought. His hands tingled on the cyclic control stick, and as many times as he'd done this, this one was not a rehearsal. Okay… He dropped his nose, heading toward the castle, and without the anticollision lights, the aircraft would only be a shadow, slightly darker than the night better yet, the four-bladed rotor made a sound that was nondirectional. Someone could hear it, but locating the source was difficult, and he needed that to last only a few more seconds.
'Rifle Two-One, stand by.'
'Rifle Two-One is on target, Six,' Johnston reported. His breathing regularized, and his elbows moved slightly, so that only bone, not muscle, was in contact with the mat under him. The mere passage of blood through his arteries could throw his aim off. His crosshairs were locked just forward of the sentry's ear. 'On target,' he repeated.
'Fire,' the earpiece told him.
Say good night, Gracie, a small voice in his mind whispered. His finger pushed back gently on the set trigger, which snapped cleanly, and a gout of white flame exploded from the muzzle of the rifle. The flash obscured the sight picture for a brief moment, then cleared in time for him to seethe bullet impact. There was a slight puff of graylooking vapor from the far side of the head, and the body dropped straight down like a puppet with cut strings. No one inside would hear the shot, not through thick windows and stone walls from over three hundred meters away.
'Rifle Two-One. Target is down. Target is down. Center head,' Johnston reported.
'That's a kill,' Lieutenant Harrison breathed over the intercom. From the helicopter's perspective, the destruction of the sentry's head looked quite spectacular. It was the first death he'd ever seen, and it struck him as something in a movie, not something real. The target hadn't been a living being to him, and now it would never be.
'Yep,' Malloy agreed, easing back on the cyclic. 'Sergeant Nonce-now!'
In the back, Nonce pushed outward. The helicopter was still slowing, nose up now, as Malloy performed the
