Jack Ryan 10 - Rainbow Six (7 page)

The exercises had been endless, or as much so as two weeks could make them. There were six basic scenarios, all of which could be played out in various environments. The one they hated most was inside the body of a commercial aircraft. The only good thing about that was the confinement forced on the bad guys-they wouldn't be going anywhere. The rest was entirely bad. Lots of civilians in the fire arcs, good concealment for the bad guysand if one of them really did have a bomb strapped to his body-they almost always claimed to-well, then all he had to have was the balls to pull the string or close the switch, and then, if the bastard was halfway competent, everyone aboard was toast. Fortunately, few people chose death in that way. But Ding and his people couldn't think like that. Much of the time terrorists seemed to fear capture more than death-so your shooting had to be fast and perfect, and the team had to hit the aircraft like a Kansas tornado at midnight, with your flash-bangs especially important to stun the bastards into combat-ineffectiveness so that the double-taps were aimed at nonmoving heads, and hope to God that the civilians you were trying to rescue didn't stand up and block the shooting range that the fuselage of the Boeing or Airbus had suddenly become.

“Team-2, we ready?” Chavez asked.

“Yes, sir!” came the chorused reply.

With that, Ding led them outside and ran them half a ii,, tie to the shooting house, a hard run, not the fast jog of daily exercises. Johnston and Weber were already on the scene on opposite corners of the rectangular structure.

“Command to Rifle Two-Two,” Ding said into his helmetmounted microphone, “anything to report?”

“Negative, Two-Six. Nothing at all,” Weber reported.

“Rifle Two-One?”

“Six,” Johnston replied, “I saw a curtain move, but nothing else. Instruments show four to six voices inside, speaking English. Nothing else to report.”

“Roger,” Ding responded, the remainder of his team concealed behind a truck. He took a final look at the layout of the inside of the building. The raid had been fully briefed. The shooters knew the inside of the structure well enough to see it with their eyes closed. With that knowledge, Ding waved for the team to move.

Paddy Connolly took the lead, racing to the door. Just as he got there, he let go of his H&K and let it dangle on the sling while he pulled the Primacord from the fannypack hanging down from his body armor. He stuck the explosive to the door frame by its adhesive and pushed the blasting cap into the top-right corner. A second later, he moved right ten feet, holding the detonator control up in his left hand, while his right grabbed the pistol grip of his SMG and brought it up to point at the sky.

Okay, Ding thought. Time to move. “Let's go!” he shouted at the team.

As the first of them bolted around the truck, Connolly thumbed the switch, and the door frame disintegrated, sending the door flying inward. The first shooter, Sergeant Mike Pierce, was less than a second behind it, disappearing into the smoking hole with Chavez right behind him.

The inside was dark, the only light coming through the shattered doorway. Pierce scanned the room, found it empty, and then lodged himself by the doorway into the next room. Ding ran into that first, leading his team

-there they were, four targets and four hostages

Chavez brought his MP-10 up and fired two silenced rounds into the left-most target's head. He saw the rounds hit, dead-center in the head, right between the bluepainted eyes, then traversed right to see that Steve Lincoln had gotten his man just as planned. In less than a second, the overhead lights came on. It was all over, elapsed time from the Primacord explosion, seven seconds. Eight seconds had been programmed for the exercise. Ding safed his weapon.

“Goddamnit, John!” he said to the Rainbow commander.

Clark stood, smiling at the target to his left, less than two feet away, the two holes drilled well enough to ensure certain, instant death. He wasn't wearing any protective gear. Neither was Stanley, at the far end of the line, also trying to show off, though Mrs. Foorgate and Mrs. Montgomery were, in their center seats. The presence of the women surprised Chavez until he reminded himself that
they were team members, too, and probably eager to show that they, too, belonged with the boys. He had to admire their spirit, if not their good sense.

“Seven seconds. That'll do, I guess. Five would be better,” John observed, but the dimensions of the building pretty much determined the speed with which the team could cover the distance. He walked across, checking all the targets. McTyler's target showed one hole only, though its irregular shape proved that he'd fired both rounds as per the exercise parameters. Any one of these men would have earned a secure place in 3rd SOG, and every one was as good as he'd ever been, John Clark t bought to himself. Well, training methods had improved markedly since his time in Vietnam, hadn't they? He helped Helen Montgomery to her feet. She seemed just a little shaky. Hardly a surprise. Being on the receiving end of bullets wasn't exactly what secretaries were paid for.

“You okay?” John asked.

“Oh, quite, thank you. It was rather exciting. My first time, you see.”

“My third,” Alice Foorgate said, rising herself. “It's always exciting,” she added with a smile.

For me, too, Clark thought. Confident as he'd been with Ding and his men, still, looking down the barrel of a light machine gun and seeing the flashes made one's blood turn slightly cool. And the lack of body armor wasn't all that smart, though he justified it by telling himself he'd had to see better in order to watch for any mistakes. He'd seen nothing major, however. They were damned good.

“Excellent,” Stanley said from his end of the dais. He pointed “You-uh-”

“Patterson, sir,” the sergeant said. “I know, I kinds tripped coming through.” He turned to see that a fragment of the door frame had been blasted through the entrance :o the shooting room, and he'd almost stumbled on it.

“You recovered nicely, Sergeant Patterson. I see it didn't affect your aim at all.”

“No, sir,” Hank Patterson agreed, not quite smiling.

The team leader walked up to Clark, safing his weapon

on the way.

“Mark us down as fully mission-capabl, Mr. C,” Chavez said with a confident smile. “Tell the bad guys they better watch their asses. How'd Team-1 do?”

“Two-tenths of a second faster,” John replied, glad to see the diminutive leader of -2 deflate a little. “And thanks.”

“What for?”

“For not wasting your father-in-law.” John clapped him on the shoulder and walked out of the room.

“Okay, people,” Ding said to his team, “let's police up the brass and head back for the critique.” No fewer than six TV cameras had recorded the mission. Stanley would be going over it frame by frame. That would be followed by a few pints at the 22nd's Regimental NCO club. The Brits, Ding had learned over the previous two weeks, took their beer seriously, and Scotty McTyler could throw darts about as well as Homer Johnston could shoot a rifle. It was something of a breach of protocol that Ding, a simulated major, hoisted pints with his men, all sergeants. He had explained that away by noting that he'd been a humble staff sergeant squad leader himself before disappearing into the maw of the Central Intelligence Agency, and he regaled them with stories of his former life in the Ninjas - stories that the others listened to with a mixture of respect and amusement. As good as the 7th Infantry Division had been, it wasn't this good. Even Domingo would admit to that after a few pints of John Courage.

“Okay, Al, what do you think?” John asked. The liquor cabinet in his office was open, a single-malt Scotch for Stanley, while Clark sipped at a Wild Turkey.

“The lads?” He shrugged. “Technically very competent. Marksmanship' is just about right, physical fitness is fine. They respond well to obstacles and the unexpected, and, well, they didn't kill us with stray rounds, did they?”

“But?” Clark asked with a quizzical look.

“But one doesn't know until the real thing happens. Oh, yes, they're as good as SAS, but the best of them are former SAS . . . .”

Old-world pessimism, John Clark thought. That was
the problem with Europeans. No optimism, too often they looked for things that would go wrong instead of right.
“Chavez?”

“Superb lad,” Stanley admitted. “Almost as good as Peter Covington.”

“Agreed,” Clark admitted, the slight on his son-in-law notwithstanding. But Covington had been at Hereford for seven years. Another couple of months and Ding would be there. He was pretty close already. It was already down to how many hours of sleep one or the other had had the night before, and pretty soon it would be down to what one or the other had eaten for breakfast. All in all, John told himself, he had the right people, trained to the right edge. Now all he had to do was keep them there. Training. Training. Training.

Neither knew that it had already started.

“So, Dmitriy,” the man said.

“Yes?” Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov replied, twirling his vodka around in the glass.

“Where and how do we begin?” the man asked.

They'd met by a fortunate accident, both thought, albeit for very different reasons. It had happened in Paris, at some sidewalk cafe, tables right next to each other, where one had noted that the other was Russian, and wanted to ask a few simple questions about business in Russia. Popov, a former KGB official, RIF'ed and scouting around for opportunities for entering the world of capitalism, had quickly determined that this American had a great deal of money, and was therefore worthy of stroking. He had answered the questions openly and clearly, leading the American to deduce his former occupation rapidly - the language skills (Popov was highly fluent in English, French, and Czech) had been a giveaway, as had Popov's knowledge of Washington, D.C. Popov was clearly not a diplomat, being too open and forthright in his opinions, which factor had terminated his promotion in the former Soviet KGB at the rank of Colonel - he still thought himself worthy of general's stars. As usual, one thing had led to another, first the exchange of business cards, then a trip to America, first class on Air France, as a security consultant, and a series of meetings that had moved ever so subtly in a direction that came more as a surprise to the Russian than the American. Popov had impressed the American with his knowledge of safety issues on the streets of foreign cities, then the discussion had moved into very different areas of expertise.

“How do you know all this?” the American had asked in his New York office.

The response had been a broad grin, after three double vodkas. “I know these people, of course. Come, you must know what I did before leaving the service of my country.”

“You actually worked with terrorists?” he'd asked, surprised, and thinking about this bit of information, even back then.

It was necessary for Popov to explain in the proper ideological context: “You must remember that to us they were not terrorists at all. They were fellow believers in world peace and Marxism-Leninism, fellow soldiers in the struggle for human freedom - and, truth be told, useful fools, all too willing to sacrifice their lives in return for a little support of one sort or another.”

“Really?” the American asked again, in surprise. “I would have thought that they were motivated by something important-”

“Oh, they are,” Popov assured him, “but idealists are foolish people, are they not?”

“Some are,” his host admitted, nodding for his guest to go on.

“They believe all the rhetoric, all the promises. Don't you see? I, too, was a Party member. I said the words, filled out the bluebook answers, attended the meetings, paid my Party dues. I did all I had to do, but, really, I was KGB. I traveled abroad. I saw what life was like in the West. I much preferred to travel abroad on, ah, `business' than to work at Number Two Dzerzhinsky Square. Better food, better clothes, better everything. Unlike these foolish youths, I knew what the truth was,” he concluded, saluting with his half-full glass.

“So, what are they doing now?”

“Hiding,” Popov answered. “For the most part, hiding.
Some may have jobs of one sort or another-probably menial ones, I would imagine, despite the university education most of them have.”

“I wonder. . .” A sleepy look reflected the man's own imbibing, so skillfully delivered that Popov wondered if it were genuine or not.

“Wonder what?”

“If one could still contact them. . .”

“Most certainly, if there were a reason for it. My contacts” - he tapped his temple - “well, such things do not evaporate.” Where was this going?

“Well, Dmitriy, you know, even attack dogs have their uses, and every so often, well” - an embarrassed smile - “you know. . .”

In that moment, Popov wondered if all the movies were true. Did American business executives really plot murder against commercial rivals and such? It seemed quite mad . . . but maybe the movies were not entirely groundless . . . .

“Tell me,” the American went on, “did you actually work with those people-you know, plan some of the jobs they did?”

“Plan? No,” the Russian replied, with a shake of the head. “I provided some assistance, yes, under the direction of my government. Most often I acted as a courier of sorts.” It had not been a favored assignment; essentially he'd been a mailman tasked to delivering special messages to those perverse children, but it was duty he'd drawn due to his superb field skills and his ability to reason with nearly anyone on nearly any topic, since the contacts were so difficult to handle once they'd decided to do something. Popov had been a spook, to use the Western vernacular, a really excellent field intelligence officer who'd never, to the best of his knowledge, been identified by any Western counterintelligence service. Otherwise, his entry into America at JFK International Airport would hardly have been so uneventful.

“So, you actually know how to get in touch with those people, eh?”

“Yes, I do,” Popov assured his host.

“Remarkable.” The American stood. “Well, how about some dinner?”

By the end of dinner, Popov was earning $100,000 per year as a special consultant, wondering where this new job would lead and not really caring. One hundred thousand dollars was a good deal of money for a man whose tastes were actually rather sophisticated and needed proper support.