Jack Ryan 10 - Rainbow Six (38 page)

A thoroughly modern facility, it was controlled by six regional and one master command center, and every attraction, ride, and food outlet was monitored by computers and TV cameras.

Mike Dennis was the operations director. He'd been hired away from Orlando, and while he missed the friendly managerial atmosphere there, the building and then running of Worldpark had been the challenge he'd waited for all his life. A man with three kids, this was his baby, Dennis told himself, looking out the battlements of the tower. His office and command center was in the castle keep, the tall tower in the twelfth-century fortress they'd built. Maybe the Duke of Aquitaine had enjoyed a place like this, but he'd used only swords and spears, not computers and helicopters, and as wealthy as his grace had been back in the twelfth century, he hadn't handled money in this quantityWorldpark took in ten million dollars in cash alone on a good day, and far more than that from plastic. Every day a cash truck with a heavy police escort left the park for the nearest bank.

Like its model in Florida, Worldpark was a multistory structure. Under the main concourses was a subterranean city where the support services operated, and the cast members changed into costumes and ate their lunches, and where he was able to get people and things from place to place quickly and unseen by the guests in the sunlight. Running it was the equivalent of being mayor of a not-so-small city - harder, actually, since he had to make sure that everything worked all the time, and that the cost of operations was always less than the city's income. That he did his job well, actually about 2.1 percent better than his own pre-opening projections, meant that he had a sizable salary, and that he'd earned the $1,000,000 bonus that had been delivered to him only five weeks earlier. Now, if only his kids could get used to the local schools. . . .

Even as an object of hatred, it was breathtaking. It was a small city, Andre saw, the construction of which had cost billions. He'd lived through the indoctrination process in the local “Worldpark University,” learned the absurd ethos of the place, learned to smile at everything and everybody. He'd been assigned, fortuitously, to the security department, the notional Worldpark Policia, which meant that he wore a light blue shirt and dark blue trousers with a vervtical blue stripe, carried a whistle and a portable radio, and spent most of his time telling people where the restrooms were, because Worldpark needed a police force about as much as a ship needed wheels. He'd gotten this job because he was fluent in three languages, French, Spanish, and English, and thus could be helpful to the majority of the visitors - “guests” - to this new Spanish city, all of whom needed to urinate from time to time, and most of whom, evidently, lacked the wit to notice the hundreds of signs (graphic rather than lettered) that told them where to go when the need became overwhelming.

Esteban, Andre saw, was in his usual place, selling his heliumfilled balloons. Bread and circuses, they both Ought. The vast sums expended to build this place-and or what purpose? To give the children of the poor and working classes a brief few hours of laughter before they returned to their dreary homes? To seduce their parents into spending their money for mere amusement? Really, the purpose of the place was to enrich further the Arab investors who'd been persuaded to spend so much of their oil money here, building this fantasy city. Breathtaking, perhaps, but still an object of contempt, this icon of the unreal, this opiate for the masses of workers who had not the sense to see it for what it was. Well, that was the task of the revolutionary elite.

Andre walked about, seemingly in an aimless way, but actually in accordance with plans, both his and the park's. He was being paid to look around and make arrangements while he smiled and told parents where their little darlings could relieve themselves.

“This will do it,” Noonan said, walking into the morning meeting.

“What's 'this'?” Clark asked.

Noonan held up a computer floppy disk. “It's just a hundred lines of code, not counting the installation stuff. The cells-the phone cells, I mean-all use the same computer program to operate. When we get to a place, I just insert this in their drives and upload the software. Unless you dial in the right prefix to make a call - 777, to be exact - the cell will respond that the number you're calling is busy. So, we can block any cellular calls into our subjects from some helpful soul outside and also prevent them from getting out.”

“How many spare copies do you have?” Stanley asked.

“Thirty,” Noonan answered. “We can get the local cops to install them. I have instructions printed up in six languages.” Not bad, eh? Noonan wanted to say. He'd gone through a contact at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, to get it. Pretty good for just over a week's effort. “It's called Cellcop, and it'll work anywhere in the world.”

“Good one, Tim.” Clark made a note. “Okay, how are the teams?”

“Sam Houston's down with a sprained knee,” Peter Covington told Clark. “Hurt it coming down a zip-line. He can still deploy, but he won't be running for a few days.”

“Team-2's fully mission-capable, John,” Chavez an
pounced. “George Tomlinson is a little slowed down with his Achilles tendon, but no big deal.”

Clark grunted and nodded, making a further note. Training was so hard here that the occasional injury was inevitable-and John well remembered the aphorism that drills were supposed to be bloodless combat, and combat supposed to be bloody drills. It was fundamentally a good thing that his troops worked as hard in practice as they did in the real thing-it said a lot for their morale, and just as much for their professionalism, that they took every aspect of life in Rainbow that seriously. Since Sam Houston was a long-rifleman, he really was about seventy percent missioncapable, and George Tomlinson, strained tendon and all, was still doing his morning runs, gutting it out as an elite trooper should.

“Intel?” John turned to Bill Tawney.

“Nothing special to report,” the Secret Intelligence Service officer replied. “We know that there are terrorists still alive, and the various police forces are still doing their investigations to dig them out, but it's not an easy job, and nothing promising appears to be underway, but . . .” But one couldn't predict a break in a case. Everyone around the table knew that. This very evening someone of the class of Carlos himself could be pulled over for running a stop sign and be recognized by some rookie cop and snapped up, but you couldn't plan for random events. There were still over a hundred known terrorists living somewhere in Europe probably, just like Ernst Model and Hans Furchtner, but they'd learned a not-very-hard lesson about keeping a low profile, adopting a simple disease, and keeping out of trouble. They had to make some greater or lesser mistake to be noticed, and the ones who made dumb mistakes were long since dead or imprisoned.

“How about cooperation with the local police agencies?” Alistair Stanley asked.

“We keep speaking with them, and the Bern and Viena missions have been very good press for us. Wherever
something happens, we can expect to be summoned swiftly.”

“Mobility?” John asked next

“That's me, I guess,” Lieutenant Malloy responded. “It's working out well with the Ist Special Operations Wing. They're letting me keep the Night Hawk for the time being, and I've got enough time on the British Puma that I'm current in it. If we have to go, I'm ready to go. I can get MC- 130 tanker support if I need it for a long deployment, but as a practical matter I can be just about anywhere in Europe in eight hours in my Sikorsky, with or without tanker support. Operational side, I'm comfortable with things. The troops here are as good as any I've seen, and we work well together. The only thing that worries me is the lack of a medical team.”

“We've thought about that. Dr. Bellow is our doc, and you're up to speed on trauma, right, doc?” Clark asked.

“Fairly well, but I'm not as good as a real trauma surgeon. Also, when we deploy, we can get local paramedics to help out from police and fire services on the scene.”

“We did it better at Fort Bragg,” Malloy observed. “I know all our shooters are trained in emergency-response care, but a properly trained medical corpsman is a nice thing to have around. Doctor Bellow's only got two hands,” the pilot noted. “And he can only be in one place at a time.”

“When we deploy,” Stanley said, “we do a routine Gallup to the nearest local casualty hospital. So far we've had good cooperation.”

“Okay, guys, but I'm the one who has to transport the wounded. I've been doing it for a long time, and I think we could do it a little better. I recommend a drill for that. We should practice it regularly.”

That wasn't a bad idea, Clark thought. “Duly noted, Malloy. Al, let's do that in the next few days.”

“Agreed,” Stanley responded with a nod.

“The hard part is simulating injuries,” Dr. Bellow told them. “There's just no substitute for the real thing, but we can't put our people in the emergency room. It's too timewasteful, and they won't see the right kind of injuries there.”

“We've had this problem for years,” Peter Covington said. “You can teach the procedures, but practical experience is too difficult to come by-”

“Yeah, unless we move the outfit to Detroit,” Chavez quipped. “Look, guys, we all know the right first-aid stuff, and Doctor Bellow is a doc. There's only so much we have time to train for, and the primary mission is paramount, isn't it? We get there and do the job, and that minimizes the number of wounds, doesn't it?” Except to the bad guys, he didn't add, and nobody really cared about them, and you couldn't treat three 10-mm bullets in the head, even at Walter Reed. “I like the idea of training to evac wounded. Fine, we can do that, and practice first-aid stuff, but can we realistically go farther than that? I don't see how.”

“Comments?” Clark asked. He didn't see much past that, either.

“Chavez is correct . . . but you're never fully prepared or fully trained,” Malloy pointed out. “No matter how much you work, the bad guys always find a way to dump something new on you. Anyway, in Delta we deploy with full medical-response team, trained corpsmen-experts, used to trauma care. Maybe we can't afford to do that here, but that's how we did it at Fort Bragg.”

“We'll just have to depend on local support for that,” Clark said, closing the issue. “This place can't afford to grow that much. I don't have the funding.”

And that's the magic word in this business, Malloy didn't have to add. The meeting broke up a few minutes later, and with it the working day ended. Dan Malloy had grown accustomed to the local tradition of closing out a day at the club, where the beer was good and the company cordial. Ten minutes later, he was hoisting ajar with Chavez. This little greaser, he thought, really had his shit together.

“That call you made in Vienna was pretty good, Ding.”

“Thanks, Dan.” Chavez took a sip. “Didn't have much of a choice, though. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.”

“Yep, that's a fact,” the Marine agreed.

“You think we're thin on the medical side . . . so do I, but so far that hasn't been a problem.”

“So far you've been lucky, my boy.”

“Yeah, I know. We haven't been up against any crazy ones yet.”

“They're out there, the real sociopathic personalities, the ones who don't care a rat's ass about anything at all. Well, truth is, I haven't seen any of them either except on TV. I keep coming back to the Ma'alot thing, in Israel twenty-plus years ago. Those fuckers wasted little kids just to show how tough they were - and remember what happened a while back with the President's little girl. She was damned lucky that FBI guy was there. I wouldn't mind buying that guy a beer.”

“Good shooting,” Chavez agreed. “Better yet, good timing. I read up on how he handled it-talking to them and all, being patient, waiting to make his move, then taking it when he got it.”

“He lectured at Bragg, but I was traveling that day. Saw the tape. The boys said he can shoot a pistol as well as anybody on the team-but better yet, he was smart.”

“Smart counts,” Chavez agreed, finishing his beer. “I gotta go fix dinner.”

“Say again?”

“My wife's a doc, gets home in an hour or so, and it's my turn to do dinner.”

A raised eyebrow: “Nice to see you're properly trained, Chavez.”

“I am secure in my masculinity,” Domingo assured the aviator and headed for the door.

Andre worked late that night. Worldpark stayed open until 2300 hours, and the shops remained open longer than that, because even so huge a place as Worldpark couldn't waste the chance to earn a few extra copper coins from the masses for the cheap, worthless souvenirs they sold, to be clutched in the greedy hands of little children, often nearly asleep in the arms of their weary parents. He watched the process impassively, the way so many people waited until the very last ride on the mechanical contrivances, and only then, with the chains in place and after the good-bye waves of the ride operators, did they finally turn and shuffle their way to the gates, taking every opportunity to stop and enter the shops, where the clerks smiled tiredly and were as helpful as they'd been taught to be at the Worldpark University. And then when, finally, all had left, the shops were closed, and the registers emptied, and under the eyes of Andre and his fellow security staff, the cash was taken off to the counting room. It wasn't, strictly speaking, part of his current job, but he tagged along anyway, following the three clerks from the Matador shop, out onto the main street, then into an alleyway, through some blank wooden doors, and down the steps to the underground, the concrete corridors that bustled with electric carts and employees during the day, now empty except for employees heading to dressing rooms to change into their street clothes. The counting room was in the very center, almost under the castle itself. There the cash was handed over, each bag labeled for its point of origin. The coins were dumped into a bin, where they were separated by nationality and denomination and counted, wrapped, and labeled for transport to the bank. The paper currency, already bundled by currency and denomination was . . . weighed. The first time he'd seen it, it had amazed him, but delicate scales actually weighed it there, one point zero-six-one-five kilos of hundredmark German notes. Two point six-three-seven-zero kilos of five-pound British ones. The corresponding amount was flashed on the electronic screen, and the notes were whisked off for wrapping. Here the security officers carried weapons, Astra pistols, because the total amount of the currency for the day wasthe master tally display said £11,567,309.35 . . . all used cash, the very best sort, in all denominations. It all fit into six large canvas bags that were placed on a four-wheeled cart for transport out the back of the underground into an armored car with a police escort for transport to the central branch of the local bank, still open this time of day for a deposit of this magnitude. Eleven million British pounds in cash-this place took in billions per year in cash, Andre thought tiredly.