Dead or Alive

The guard’s hand emerged from his waistband with a semiautomatic 9-millimeter. Seeing his target moving out of range, the guard made the mistake for which Andrea was waiting. Gun coming level with the stage, he took a step forward. And a half-foot beyond the protection of his human shield.

Andrea fired once. At fifteen feet, the low-velocity hollow-point bullet struck home, punching into the guard’s head between his left eye and his ear. Designed for close-quarters, crowd-dense firing, the round worked as advertised, mushrooming inside the guard’s brain, expending all its energy in a thousandth of a second and stopping, as the autopsy would later show, three inches from the opposite side of the skull.

The guard dropped straight down, dead before he reached the carpet.

Andrea tells me you saved the day,” former President Ryan said twenty minutes later in the limousine.

“Just sent up the flare,” Jack replied.

The whole thing had been a surreal experience, Jack thought, but somehow less surreal than its aftermath. Though the series of events had been brief-five seconds from the time the guard had gotten the woman from her seat to when Andrea’s head shot had dropped him-the mental replay in Jack’s mind moved, predictably, he supposed, in slow motion. So shocked by the shooting was the audience that it had emitted only a few screams, all of those from the attendees before whom the assassin had fallen dead.

For his part, Jack had known better than to move, so he remained standing against the west wall as campus security and Andrea’s agents cleared the auditorium. His dad, at the center of the Secret Service scrum, had been offstage before Andrea had fired the killing shot.

“Even so,” Ryan said. “Thanks.”

It was an awkward moment that drifted into an even more uncomfortable silence. Jack Junior broke it. “Scary shit, huh?”

Former President Ryan nodded at this. “What made you go back there-to check on the janitor, I mean?”

“When I saw him, he was trying to take off the buffer pad with a screwdriver. He needed a crescent wrench.”

“Impressive, Jack.”

“Because of the screwdriver-”

“Partially that. Partially because you didn’t panic. And you let the professionals do their job. Eight outta ten people wouldn’t have noticed the buffer thing. Most of those would have panicked, frozen up. The others would’ve tried to move on the guy themselves. You did it right, from soup to nuts.”

“Thanks.”

Ryan Senior smiled. “Now let’s talk about how to break this to your mother…”

15

THEY DIDN’T get far before the plane returned to the gate, the front wheels having never even begun their rotation onto the tarmac proper. There was no explanation offered, only a fixed smile and a curt “Will you come with me, please?” to himself and Chavez, followed by the fixed and firm smile that only a professional flight attendant can mount-and one that told Clark the request wasn’t open to discussion.

“You forget to pay a parking ticket, Ding?” Clark asked his son-in-law.

“Not me, mano. I’m a straight arrow.”

Each of them gave his wife a quick kiss and a “Don’t worry,” then followed the flight attendant up the aisle to the already open door. Waiting for them in the jet bridge was a London Metropolitan Police Service officer. The black-and-white checkerboard pattern on the man’s cap told Clark he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill bobby, and the patch on his sweater told him he belonged to SCD11-intelligence-part of the Specialist Crime Directorate.

“Sorry to interrupt your jaunt home, gentlemen,” the cop said, “but your presence has been requested. If you’ll follow me, please.”

British manners-along with driving on the wrong side of the road and french fries being called “chips”-was one of the things Clark had never quite gotten used to-especially among the upper echelons of the Army. Polite was always better than rude, mind you, but there was something unnerving about being talked to oh, so civilly by a guy who had probably killed more bad guys than most people would ever see in their lifetime. Clark had met some folks here who could explain in detail how they planned to kill you with a fork, drink your blood, then skin you, all the while making it sound like an invitation to afternoon tea.

Clark and Chavez followed the cop down the jetway, through several checkpoints, then through a card reader- controlled door into Heathrow’s security center. They were led to a small conference room where they found Alistair Stanley, still officially second-in-command of Rainbow Six, standing at the diamond-shaped table under the cold glare of fluorescent lights. Stanley was SAS, or Special Air Service, Britain’s premier special warfare unit.

Though Clark was reluctant to admit it in mixed company, as far as he was concerned, when it came to efficacy and longevity, the SAS was without peer. Certainly there were outfits out there that were as good as the SAS-his alma mater, the Navy SEALs, came to mind-but the Brits had long ago set the gold standard for modern-era special ops troops, going back as far as 1941 when a Scots Guards officer named Stirling-later of Stir-ling submachine-gun fame-and his L Detachment of sixty-five men harried the German Wehrmacht across North Africa. From their early behind-the-lines sabotage missions in North Africa to Scud hunting in the Iraqi desert, the SAS had done it all, seen it all, and written the book on special ops along the way. And like all his brethren before him, Alistair Stanley was a top-notch troop. In fact, Clark had rarely thought of Stanley as his second but rather his co-commander, so great was his respect for the man.

Along with driving lanes and french fries, SAS organization had been another adjustment for Clark. In characteristically British fashion, the SAS’s organization was unique, divided into regiments-the 21st, the 22nd, and the 23rd-and squadrons-ranging from A through G, with a few alphabetical gaps thrown in for good measure. Still, Clark had to further admit, the Brits did everything with flair.

“Alistair,” Clark said with a solemn nod. The look on Stanley’s face told him something serious had already happened or was in the process of happening.

“Miss us already, Stan?” Ding said, shaking his hand.

“I wish that were it, mate. Feel bloody awful interrupting your trip and all. Thought you boys might like to have one more go before you go soft. Got something interesting in the works.”

“From?” Clark asked.

“The Swedes, in a roundabout fashion. Seems they’ve gone and lost their consulate in Tripoli. Bloody embarrassing for them.”

Chavez said, “By ‘lost,’ I assume you don’t mean misplaced?”

“Right, sorry. Typical British understatement. Charming but not always practical. The intelligence is still filtering in, but given the location, it doesn’t take much of a leap to venture a guess as to the culprit’s general identity.”

Clark and Chavez pulled out chairs and sat down at the table. Stanley did the same. He opened a leather portfolio containing a legal pad covered in handwritten notes.

“Let’s hear it,” Clark said, switching mental gears.

Ten minutes earlier he’d been in civilian mode-or at least as much of a civilian mode as he allowed himself- sitting with his family and getting ready to head home, but that was then and this was now. Now he was the commander of Rainbow Six again. It felt good, he had to admit.

“Best as we can tell, there are eight men in all,” Stanley said. “Bypassed the local cops quick as you please with nary a casualty. Satellite images show four Swedes-probably Fallskarmsjagares-down and out within the compound’s grounds.”

The Fallskarmsjagares were essentially Sweden’s version of airborne rangers, culled from the best of the Army. Probably members of the Sarskilda Skyddsgruppen-Special Protection Group-that had been seconded to SAPO, the Swedish Security Service, for embassy duty.

“Those are some tough boys,” Chavez said. “Somebody did their homework-and some good shooting. Anything from inside the consulate?”