Rainbow Six

CHAPTER 3

The helicopter ride was twenty-five minutes exactly, and deposited Team-2 and its attachments in the general aviation portion of the international airport. Two vans waited, and Chavez watched his men load their gear into one of them for movement to the British Airways terminal. There, some cops, who were also waiting, supervised the van's handling into a cargo container which would be first off the flight when the plane arrived at Bern.

But first they had to wait for the go-mission order. Chavez pulled out his cellular phone, flipped it open, and thumbed speeddial number one.

"Clark," the voice said after the encryption software Ticked through.

"Ding here, John. The call come from Whitehall yet?"

"Still waiting, Domingo. We expect it shortly. The canton pumped it upstairs. Their Justice Minister is considering it now."

"Well, tell the worthy gentleman that this flight leaves the gate in two-zero minutes, and the next one after that is ninety minutes, 'less you want us to travel Swissair. One of those in forty minutes, and another in an hour fifteen."

"I hear you, Ding. We have to hold."

Chavez swore in Spanish. He knew it. He didn't have to like it. "Roger, Six, Team-2 is holding on the ramp at Gatwick."

"Roger that, Team-2, Rainbow Six, out."

Chavez closed his phone and tucked it in his shirt pocket. "Okay, people," he said to his men over the shriek of jet engines, "we hold here for the go-ahead." The troops nodded, as eager to get it going as their boss, but just as powerless to make it happen. The British team members had been there before and took it better than the Americans and the others.

"Bill, tell Whitehall that we have twenty minutes to get them off the ground, after that over an hour delay."

Tawney nodded and went to a phone in the corner to call his contact in the Foreign Ministry. From there it went to the British Ambassador in Geneva, who'd been told that the SAS was offering special mission assistance of a technical nature. It was an odd case where the Swiss Foreign Minister knew more than the man making the offer. But, remarkably, the word came back in fifteen minutes: Va. "

"We have mission approval, John," Tawney reported, much to his own surprise.

"Right." Clark flipped open his own phone and hit the speeddial #2 button.

"Chavez," a voice said over considerable background noise.

"We have a go-mission," Clark said. "Acknowledge."

"Team-2 copies go-mission. Team-2 is moving."

"That's affirmative. Good luck, Domingo."

"Thank you, Mr. C."

Chavez turned to his people and pumped his arm up and down in the speed-it-up gesture known to armies all over the world. They got into their designated van for the drive across the Gatwick ramp. It stopped at the cargo gate for their flight, where Chavez waved a cop close, and let Eddie Price pass the word to load the special cargo onto the Boeing 757. That done, the van advanced another fifty yards to the stairs outside the end of the jetway, and Team-2 jumped out and headed up the stairs. At the top, the control-booth door was held open by another police constable, and from there they walked normally aboard the aircraft and handed over their tickets to the stewardess, who pointed them to their first-class seats.

The last man aboard was Tim Noonan, the team's technical wizard. Not a wizened techno-nerd, Noonan had played defensive back at Stanford before joining the FBI, and took weapons training with the team just to fit in. Six feet two hundred pounds, he was larger than most of Ding's shooters but, he'd be the first to admit, was not as tough. Still, he was a better-than-fair shot with pistol and YIP-10, and was learning to speak the language. Dr. Bellow settled into his window seat with a book extracted from his carry-on bag. It was a volume on sociopathy by u professor at Harvard under whom he'd trained some years before. The rest of the team members just leaned hack, skimming through the onboard magazines. Chavez looked around and saw that his team didn't seem tense at all, and was both amazed at the fact, and slightly ashamed that he was so pumped up. The airline captain made his announcements, and the Boeing backed away from the gate, then taxied out to the runway. Five minutes later, the aircraft rotated off the ground, and Team-2 was on its way to its first mission

"In the air," Tawney reported. "The airline expects a smooth flight and an on time arrival in… an hour fifteen minutes."

"Great," Clark observed. The TV coverage had settled down. Both Swiss stations were broadcasting continuous L overage now, complete with thoughts from the reporters,it the scene. That was about as useful as an NFL pre-game show, though police spokesmen were speaking to the press now. No, they didn't know who was inside. Yes, they'd spoken to them. Yes, negotiations were ongoing. No, they couldn't really say any more than that. Yes, they'd keep the press apprised of developments.

Like hell, John thought. The same coverage was reported on Sky News, and soon CNN and Fox networks were carrying brief stories about it, including, of course, the dumping of the first victim and the escape of the one who'd dragged the body out.

"Nasty business, John," Tawney said over his tea.

Clark nodded. "I suppose they always are, Bill."

"Quite." Peter Covington came in then, stole a swivel chair and n -paved it next to the two senior men. His face was locked in neutral though he had to be pissed, Clark thought, that his team wasn't going. But the team-availability rotation was set in stone here, as it had to be.

"Thoughts, Peter?" Clark asked.

"They're not awfully bright. They killed that poor sod very early in the affair, didn't they?"

"Keep going," John said, reminding all of them that he was new in this business.

"When you kill a hostage, you cross a large, thick line, sir. Once across it, one cannot easily go backward, can one?"

"So, you try to avoid it?"

"I would. It makes it too difficult for the other side to make concessions, and you bloody need the concessions if you want to get away-unless you know something the opposition does not. Unlikely in a situation like this."

"They'll ask for a way out… helicopter?"

"Probably." Covington nodded. "To an airport, commercial aircraft waiting, international crew-but to where? Libya, perhaps, but will Libya allow them in? Where else might they go? Russia? I think not. The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon is still possible, but commercial aircraft don't land there. About the only sensible thing they've done is to protect their identities from the police. Would you care to wager that the hostage who got out has not seen their faces?" Covington shook his head.

"They're not amateurs," Clark objected. "Their weapons point to some measure of training and professionalism."

That earned John a nod. "True, sir, but not awfully bright. I would not be overly surprised to learn that they'd actually stolen some currency, like common robbers. Trained terrorists, perhaps, but not good ones."

And what's a "good" terrorist? John wondered. Doubtless a term of art he'd have to learn.

The BA flight touched down two minutes early, then taxied to the gate. Ding had spent the flight talking to Dr. Bellow. The psychology of this business was the biggest blank spot in his copybook, and one he'd have to learn to fill in and soon. This wasn't like being a soldier-the psychology of that job was handled at the general officer level most of the time, the figuring out of what the other guy was going to do with his maneuver battalions. This was,quad-level combat, but with all sorts of interesting new dements, Ding thought, flipping his seat belt off before t he aircraft stopped moving. But it still came down to the last common denominator-steel on target.

Chavez stood and stretched, then headed aft to the doorway, his game-face now on all the way. Out the jetway, between two ordinary civilians who probably thought him a businessman, with his suit and tie. Maybe he'd buy a nicer suit in London, he thought idly, exiting the jetway, the better to fit the disguise he and his men had t o adopt when traveling. There was a chauffeur sort of man standing out there holding a sign with the proper name on it. Chavez walked up to him.

"Waiting for us?"

"Yes, sir. Come with me?"

Team-2 followed him down the anonymous concourse, then turned into what seemed a conference room that had another door. In it was a uniformed police officer, a se-one, judging by the braid on his blue blouse.

You are…" he said. "Chavez." Ding stuck his hand out. "Domingo Chavez."

"Spanish?" the cop asked in considerable surprise.

"American. And you, sir?"

"Roebling, Marius," the man replied, when all the team was in the room and the door closed. "Come with me, please." Roebling opened the far door, which led outside to some stairs. A minute later, they were in a minibus heading past the park aircraft, then out onto a highway. Ding looked back to see another truck, doubtless carrying their gear.

"Okay, what can you tell me?"

"Nothing new since the first murder. We are speaking with them over the telephone. No names, no identities. They've demanded transport to this airport and a flight out of the country, no destination revealed to us as of yet.,,

"Okay, what did the guy who got away tell you?"

"There are four of them, they speak German, he says they sound as though it is their primary language, idiomatic, pronunciation, and so forth. They are armed with Czech weapons, and it would seem they are not reluctant to make use of them."

"Yes, sir. How long to get there, and will my men be able to change into their gear?"

Roebling nodded. "It is arranged, Major Chavez."

"Thank you, sir."

"Can I speak with the man who got out?" Dr. Bellow asked.

"My orders are to give you full cooperation-within reason, of course."

Chavez wondered what that qualification meant, but decided he'd find out in due course. He couldn't blame the man for being unhappy to have a team of foreigners come to his country to enforce the law. But these were the proverbial pros from Dover, and that was that-his own government had said so. It also occurred to Ding that the credibility of Rainbow now rested on his shoulders. It would be a hell of a thing to embarrass his father-in-law and his team and his country. He turned to look at his people. Eddie Price, perhaps reading his mind, gave a discreet thumbs-up. Well, Chavez thought, at least one of us thinks we're ready. It was different in the field, something he'd learned in the jungles and mountains of Colombia years before, and the closer you got to the firing line, the more different it got. Out here there were no laser systems to tell you who'd been killed. Real red blood would announce that. But his people were trained and experienced, especially Sergeant Major Edward Price.

All Ding had to do was lead them into battle.

There was a secondary school a block from the bank. The minibus and truck pulled up to it, and Team-2 walked into the gymnasium area, which was secured by ten or so uniformed cops. The men changed into their gear in a locker room, and walked back into the gym, to find Roebling with an additional garment for them to wear. These were pullovers, black like their assault gear. POLIZEI was printed on them, front and back, in gold lettering rather than the usual bright yellow. A Swiss affectation? Chavez thought, without the smile that should have gone with the observation.

"Thanks," Chavez told him. It was a useful subterfuge. With that done, the men and their gear reboarded the minibus for the remainder of their drive. This put them around the corner from the bank, invisible both to the terrorists and the TV news cameras. The long-riflemen, Johnston and Weber, were walked to preselected perches, one overlooking the rear of the bank building, the other diagonally facing the front. Both men settled in, unfolded the bipod legs on their gunstocks, and started surveying the target building.

Their rifles were as individual as the shooters. Weber had a Walther WA2000, chambered for the.300 Winchester Magnum cartridge. Johnston's was custom made, chambered for the slightly smaller but faster 7-mm Remington Magnum. In both cases, the sharpshooters first of all determined the range to target and dialed it into their telescopic sights, then lay down on the foam mattresses they'd brought. Their immediate mission was to observe, gather information, and report.

Dr. Bellow felt very strange in his black uniform, complete with body armor and POLIZEI pullover, but it would help prevent his identification by a medical colleague who caught this event on TV. Noonan, similarly dressed, set up his computer-an Apple PowerBook - and started looking over the building blueprints so that he could input them into his system. The local cops had been efficient as hell. Over a period of thirty minutes, he had a complete electronic map of the target building. Everything but the vault combination, he thought with a smile. Then he erected a whip antenna and transmitted the imagery to the other three computers the team had brought along.

Chavez, Price, and Bellow walked to the senior Swiss policeman on the scene. Greetings were exchanged, hands shaken. Price set up his computer and put in a CD-ROM disk with photos of every known and photographed terrorist in the world.

The man who'd dragged the body out was one Hans Richter, a German national from Bonn who banked here for his Swiss-based trading business.

"Did you see their faces?" Price asked.

"Yes." A shaky nod. Herr Richter'd had a very bad day to this point. Price selected known German terrorists and started flashing photos.

"Ja, ja, that one. He is the leader."

"You are quite sure?"

"Yes, I am."

"Ernst Model, formerly of Baader-Meinhof, disappeared in 1989, whereabouts unknown." Price scrolled down. "Four suspected operations to date. Three were bloody failures. Nearly captured in Hamburg, 1987, killed two policemen to make his escape. Communist-trained, last suspected to be in Lebanon, that sighting report is thin-very thin it would seem. Kidnapping was his specialty. Okay." Price scrolled down some more.

"That one… possibly."

"Erwin Guttenach, also Baader-Meinhof, last spotted 1992 in Cologne. Robbed a bank, background also kidnapping and murder oh, yes, he's the chappie who kidnapped and killed a board member of BMW in 1986. Kept the ransom… four million Dmarks. Greedy bugger," Price added.

Bellow looked over his shoulder, thinking as fast as he could. "What did he say to you on the phone?"

"We have a tape," the cop replied.

"Excellent! But I require a translator."

"Doe, a profile on Ernst Model, quick as you can." Chavez turned. "Noonan, can we get some coverage on the bank?"

"No problem," the tech man replied.

"Roebling?" Chavez said next.

"Yes, Major?"

"Will the TV crews cooperate? We have to assume the subjects inside have a TV with them."

"They will cooperate," the senior Swiss cop replied with confidence. "Okay, people, let's move," Chavez ordered. Noonan went off to his bag of tricks. Bellow headed around the corner with Herr Richter and another Swiss cop to handle the translation. That left Chavez and Price alone.

"Eddie, am I missing anything?"

"No, Major," Sergeant Major Price replied.

"Okay, number one, my name is Ding. Number two, you have more experience in this than I do. If you have something to say, I want to hear it right now, got it? We ain't in no fuckin' wardroom here. I need your brains, Eddie."

"Very well, sir-Ding." Price managed a smile. His commander was working out rather nicely. "So far, so good. We have the subjects contained, good perimeter. We need plans of the building and information on what's happening inside - Noonan's job, and he seems a competent chappie. And we need an idea of what the opposition is thinking-Dr. Bellow's job, and he is excellent. What's the plan if the opposition just starts shooting out of hand?"

"Tell Louis, two flash-bangs at the front door, toss four more inside, and we blow in like a tornado."

"Our body armor-"

"Won't stop a seven-six-two Russian. I know," Chavez agreed. "Nobody ever said it was safe, Eddie. When we know a little more, we can figure a real assault plan." Chavez clapped him on the shoulder. "Move, Eddie."

"Yes, sir." Price moved off to join the rest of the team.

Popov hadn't known that the Swiss police had such a well trained counterterrorist squad. As he watched, the commander was crouching close to the front of the bank building, and another, his second-in-command, probably, was heading around the corner to the rest of the team. They were speaking with the escaped hostage someone had walked him out of sight. Yes, these Swiss police were well trained and well-equipped. H amp;K weapons, it appeared. The usual for this sort of thing. For his own part, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov stood in the crowd of onlookers. His first impression of Model and his little team of three others had been correct. The German's IQ was little more than room temperature he'd even wanted a discussion of Marxism-Leninism with his visitor! The fool. Not even a young fool. Model was into his forties now and couldn't use youthful exuberance as an excuse for his ideological fixation. But not entirely impractical. Ernst had wanted to see the money, $600,000 in D-marks. Popov smiled, remembering where it had been stashed. It was unlikely that Ernst would ever see it again. Killing the hostage so early-foolish, but not unexpected. He was the sort who'd want to show his resolve and ideological purity, as though anyone cared about that today! Popov grunted to himself and lit a cigar, leaning back against yet another bank building to relax and observe the exercise, his hat pulled down and collar turned up, ostensibly to protect himself from the gathering evening chill, but also to obscure his face. One couldn't be too careful-a fact lost on Ernst Model and his three Kameraden.

Dr. Bellow finished his review of the taped phone conversations and the known facts about Ernst Johannes Model. The man was a sociopath with a distinct tendency for violence. Suspected in seven murders personally committed and a few more in the company of others. Guttenach, a less bright individual of the same ilk, and two others, unknown. Richter, the escapee, had told them, unsurprisingly, that Model had killed the first victim himself, shooting him in the back of his head from close range and ordering Richter to drag him out. So, both the shooting and the demonstration of its reality to the police had been ill-considered… it all fit the same worrisome profile. Bellow keyed his radio.

"Bellow for Chavez."

"Yeah, doc, this is Ding."

"I have a preliminary profile on the subjects."

"Shoot - Team, you listening?" There followed an immediate cacophony of overlapping responses. "Yeah, Ding." "Copying, leader." "Ja. " And the rest. "Okay, doc, lay it out," Chavez ordered.

"First, this is not a well-planned operation. That fits the profile for the suspected leader, Ernst Model, German national, age forty-one, formerly of the Baader-Meinhof organization. Tends to be impetuous, very quick to use violence when cornered or frustrated. If he threatens to kill someone, we have to believe he's not kidding. His current mental state is very, repeat, very dangerous. He knows he has a blown operation. He knows that his likelihood of success is slim. His hostages are his only assets, and he will regard them as expendable assets. Do not expect Stockholm Syndrome to set in with this case, people. Model is too sociopathic for that. Neither would I expect negotiations to be very useful. I think that it is very likely that an assault resolution will be necessary tonight or tomorrow."

"Anything else?" Chavez asked.

"Not at this time," Dr. Bellow replied. "I will monitor further developments with the local cops."

Noonan had taken his time selecting the proper tools, and:sow he was creeping along the outside wall of the bank Building, below the level of the windows. At every one of v hem, he raised his head slowly and carefully to see if the interior curtains allowed any view of the inside. The second one did, and there Noonan affixed a tiny viewing system. This was a lens, roughly the shape of a cobra's head, but only a few millimeters across, which led by fiber-optic gable to a TV camera set in his black bag around the corner. He placed another at the lower corner of the bank's -lass door, then worked his way back, crawling feet first, lowly and laboriously, to a place where he could stand. that done, he walked all the way around the block to repeat the procedure from the other side of the building, here he was able to make three placements, one again on he door, and two on windows whose curtains were an inch shorter than they ought to have been. He also placed microphones in order to pick up whatever sound might be available. The large plate-glass windows ought to resonate nicely, he thought, though this would apply to extraneous exterior sounds as well as to those originating inside the building.

All the while, the Swiss TV crews were speaking with the senior on-site policeman, who spent a great deal of time saying that the terrorists were serious - he'd been coached by Dr. Bellow to speak of them with respect. They were probably watching television inside, and building up their self-esteem worked for the team's purposes at the moment. In any case, it denied the terrorists knowledge of what Tim Noonan had done on the outside.

"Okay," the techie said in his place on a side street. All the video displays were up and running. They showed little. The size of the lenses didn't make for good imagery, despite the enhancement program built into his computer. "Here's one shooter… and another." They were within ten meters of the front of the building. The rest of the people visible were sitting on the white marble floor, in the center for easy coverage. "The guy said four, right?"

"Yeah," Chavez answered. "But not how many hostages, not exactly anyway."

"Okay, this is a bad guy, I think, behind the teller places… hmph, looks like he's checking the cash drawers… and that's a bag of some sort. You figure they visited the vault?"

Chavez turned. "Eddie?"

"Greed," Price agreed. "Well, why not? It is a bank, after all."

"Okay." Noonan switched displays on the computer screen. "I got blueprints of the building, and this is the layout."

"Teller cages, vault, toilets." Price traced his finger over the screen. "Back door. Seems simple enough. Access to the upper floors?"

"Here," Noonan said. "Actually outside the bank itself, but the basement is accessible to them here, stairs down, and a separate exit to the alley in back."

"Ceiling construction?" Chavez asked.

"Rebarred concrete slab, forty centimeters thick. That's solid as hell. Same with the walls and floor. This building was made to last." So, there would be no explosives-forced entry through walls, floor, or ceiling.

"So, we can go in the front door or the back door, and that's it. And that puts number four bad guy at the back door." Chavez keyed his radio. "Chavez for Rifle Two Two."

"Ja, Weber here."

"Any windows in the back, anything in the door, peephole, anything like that, Dieter?"

"Negative. It appears to be a heavy steel door, nothing in it that I can see," the sniper said, tracing his telescopic sight over the target yet again, and again finding nothing but blank painted steel.

"Okay, Eddie, we blow the rear door with Primacord, three men in that way. Second later, we blow the front glass doors, toss flash-bangs, and move in when they're looking the wrong way. Two and two through the front. You and me go left. Louis and George go right."

"Are they wearing body armor?" Price asked.

Nothing that Herr Richter saw," Noonan responded, "and nothing visible here-but there ain't no head protection anyway, right?" It would be nothing more than a ten-meter shot, an easy distance for the H amp;K shoulder weapons.

"Quite." Price nodded. "Who leads the rear-entry:cam?"

"Scotty, I think. Paddy does the explosives." Connolly was the best man on the team for that, and both men knew it. Chavez made an important mental note that the subteams had to be more firmly established. To this point he'd kept all his people in the same drawer. That he would have to change as soon as they got back to Hereford.

"Vega?"

"Oso backs us up, but I don't think we'll have much use for him on this trip." Julio Vega had become their heavy machine gunner, slinging a laser-sighted M-60 7.62-mm machine gun for really serious work, but there wasn't much use for that now-and wouldn't be, unless everything went totally to hell.

"Noonan, send this picture to Scotty."

"Right." He moved the mouse-pointer and started transmitting everything to the team's various computers.

"The question now is when." Ding checked his watch. "Back to the doe."

"Yes, sir." Bellow had spent his time with Herr Richter. Three stiff shots had calmed him down nicely. Even his English had improved markedly. Bellow was walking him through the event for the sixth time when Chavez and Price showed up again.

"His eyes, they are blue, like ice. Like ice," Richter repeated. "He is not a man like most men. He should be in a cage, with the animals at the zoo." The businessman shuddered involuntarily.

"Does he have an accent?" Price asked.

"Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too. The others, all Bavarian accents."

"The Bundes Kriminal Amt will find that useful, Ding," Price observed. The BKA was the German counterpart to the American FBI. "Why not have the local police check the area for a car with German license plates-from Bavaria? Perhaps there's a driver about."

"Good one." Chavez left and ran over to the Swiss cops, whose chief got on his radio at once. Probably a dry hole, Chavez thought. But you didn't know until you drilled it. They had to have come here one way or another. Another mental note. Check for that on every job.

Roebling came over next, carrying his cell phone. "It is time," he said, "to speak with them again."

"Yo, Tim," Chavez said over his radio. "Come to the rally point."

Noonan was there in under a minute. Chavez pointed him to Roebling's phone. Noonan took it, popped the back off, and attached a small green circuit board with a thin wire hanging from it. Then he pulled a cell phone from a thigh pocket and handed it over to Chavez. "There. You'll hear everything they say."

"Anything happening inside?"

"They're walking around a little more, a little agitated, maybe. Two of them were talking face-to-face a few minutes ago. Didn't look real happy about things from their gestures."

"Okay. Everybody up to speed on the interior?"

"How about audio?"

The techie shook his head. "Too much background noise. The building has a noisy heating system-oil-bred hot water, sounds like that's playing hell with the window mikes. Not getting anything useful, Ding."

"Okay, keep us posted."

"You bet." Noonan made his way back to his gear.

"Eddie?"

"Were I to make a wager, I'd say we have to storm the place before dawn. Our friend will begin losing control soon."

"Doc?" Ding asked.

"That's likely," Bellow agreed with a nod, taking note of Price's practical experience.

Chavez frowned mightily at that one. Trained as he was, he wasn't really all that eager to take this one on. He'd seen the interior pictures. There had to be twenty, perhaps thirty, people inside, with three people in their immediate vicinity holding fully automatic weapons. If one of them decided fuck it and went rock and-roll on his Czech machine gun, a lot of those people wouldn't make it home to the wife and kiddies. It was called the responsibility of command, and while it wasn't the first time Chavez had experienced it-, the burden never really got any lighter because the price of failure never got any smaller.

"Chavez!" It was Dr. Bellow.

"Yeah, doc," Ding said, heading over toward him with Price in attendance.

"Model's getting aggressive. He says he'll kill a hostage in thirty minutes unless we get him a car to a helicopter pad a few blocks from here, and from there to the airport. After that, he kills a hostage every fifteen minutes. He gays he has enough to last more than a few hours. He's reading off a list of the important ones now. A professor of surgery at the local medical school, an off-duty policeman, a big-time lawyer… well, he's not kidding, Ding. Thirty minutes from-okay, he shoots the first one at eight thirty."

"What are the cops saying back?"

"What I told them to say, it takes time to arrange all of that, give us a hostage or two to show good faith-but that's what prompted the threat for eight-thirty. Ernst is coming a little unglued."

"Is he serious?" Chavez asked, just to make sure he understood.

"Yeah, he sounds serious as hell. He's losing control, very unhappy with how things turned out. He's barely rational now. He's not kidding about killing somebody. Like a spoiled kid with nothing under the tree on Christmas morning, Ding. There's no stabilizing influence in there to help him out. He feels very lonely."

"Super." Ding keyed his radio. Not unexpectedly, the decision had just been made by somebody else. "Team. this is Chavez. Stand to. I say again, stand to."

He'd been trained in what to expect. One ploy was to deliver the car - it'd be too small for all the hostages, and you could take the bad guys down on the way out with aimed rifle fire. But he had only two snipers, and their rifle bullets would blast through a terrorist's head with enough leftover energy to waste two of three people beyond him. SMG or pistol fire was much the same story. Four bad guys was too many for that play. No, he had to take his team in, while the hostages were still sitting down on the floor, below the line of fire. These bastards weren't even rational enough to want food which he might drug-or maybe they were smart enough to know about the Valium flavored pizza.

It took several minutes. Chavez and Price crawled to the door from the left. Louis Loiselle and George Tomlinson did the same from the other side. At the rear, Paddy Connolly attached a double thickness of Primacord to the door frame, inserted the detonator, and stood away, with Scotty McTyler and Hank Patterson nearby.

"Rear team in place, Leader," Scotty told them over the radio."Roger that. Front team is in place," Chavez replied quietly into his radio transmitter.

"Okay, Ding," Noonan's voice came over the command circuit, "TV One shows a guy brandishing a rifle, walking around the hostages on the floor. If I had to bet, I'd say it's our friend Ernst. One more behind him, and a third to the right side by the second wood desk. Hold, he's on the phone now… okay, he's talking to the cops, saying he's getting ready to pick a hostage to whack. He's going to give out his name first. Nice of him," Noonan concluded.

"Okay, people, it's gonna go down just like the exercises," Ding told his troops. "We are weapons-free at this time. Stand by." He looked up to see Loiselle and Tomlinson trade a look and a gesture. Louis would lead, with George behind. It would be the same for Chavez, letting Price take the lead with his commander immediately behind.

"Ding, he just grabbed a guy, standing him up-on the phone again, they're going to whack the doctor first, Professor Mario Donatello. Okay, I have it all on Camera Two, he's got the guy stood up. I think it's show time," Noonan concluded.

"Are we ready? Rear team, check in."

"Ready here," Connolly replied over the radio. Chavez could see Loiselle and Tomlinson. Both nodded curtly and adjusted their hands on their MP-10s.

"Chavez to team, we are ready to rock. Stand by. Stand by. Paddy, hit it!" Ding ordered loudly. The last thing he could do was cringe in expectation of the blast of noise sure to come.

The intervening second seemed to last for hours, and then the mass of the building was in the way. They heard it even so, a loud metallic crash that shook the whole world. Price and Loiselle had placed their flash-bangs at the brass lower lining of the door, and punched the switches on them as soon as they heard the first detonation. Instantly the glass doors disintegrated into thousands of fragments, which mainly flew into the granite and marble lobby of the bank in front of a blinding white light and end-of-the-world noise. Price, already standing at the edge of the door, darted in, with Chavez right behind, and going to his left as he entered.

Ernst Model was right there, his weapon's muzzle pressed to the back of Dr. Donatello's head. He'd turned to look at the back of the room when the first explosion had happened, and, as planned, the second one, with its immense noise and blinding flash of magnesium powder, had disoriented him. The physician captive had reacted, too, dropping away from the gunman behind him with his hands over his head, and giving the intruders a blessedly clear shot. Price had his MP-10 up and aimed, and depressed the trigger for a quick and final three-round burst into the center of Ernst Model's face.

Chavez, immediately behind him, spotted another gunman, standing and shaking his head as though to clear it. He was facing away, but he still held his weapon, and the rules were the rules. Chavez double-tapped his head as well. Between the suppressors integral with the gun-barrels and the ringing from the flash-bangs, the report of the weapons was almost nil. Chavez traversed his weapon right, to see that the third terrorist was already on the floor, a pool of red streaming from what had been a head less than two seconds before.

"Clear!" Chavez shouted.

"Clear!" "Clear!" "Clear!" the others agreed. Loiselle raced to the back of the building, with Tomlinson behind him. Before they'd gotten there, the black-clad figures of McTyler and Patterson appeared, their weapons immediately pointing up at the ceiling: "clear!"

Chavez moved farther left to the teller cages, leaping over the barrier to check there for additional people. None. "Clear here! Secure the area!"

One of the hostages started to rise, only to be pushed back down to the floor by George Tomlinson. One by one, they were frisked by the team members while another covered them with loaded weapons-they couldn't be sure which was a sheep and which a goat at this point. By this time, some Swiss cops were entering the bank. The frisked hostages were pushed in that direction, a shocked and stunned bunch of citizens, still disoriented by what had happened, some bleeding from the head or ears from the flash-bangs and flying glass.

Loiselle and Tomlinson picked up the weapons dropped by their victims, cleared each of them, and slung them over their shoulders. Only then, and only gradually, did they start to relax.

"What about the back door?" Ding asked Paddy Connolly.

"Come and see," the former SAS soldier suggested, leading Ding to the back room. It was a bloody mess. Perhaps the subject had been resting his head against the door frame. It seemed a logical explanation for the fact that no head was immediately visible, and only one shoulder on the corpse, which had been flung against an interior partition, the Czech M-58 rifle still grasped tightly in its remaining hand. The double thickness of Primacord had been a little too powerful… but Ding couldn't say that. The steel door and a stout steel frame had demanded it.

"Okay, Paddy, nice one."

"'Thank you, sir." The smile of a pro who'd gotten the job cell and truly done.

There were cheers on the street outside as The hostages came out. So, Popov thought, the terrorists he'd recruited were dead fools now. No real surprise there. The Swiss countertenor team had handled the job well, as one would expect of Swiss policemen. One of them came outside and lit a pipe-how very Swiss! Popov thought. The bugger probably climbs mountains for personal entertainment, too. Perhaps he was the leader. A hostage came up to him.

"Danke schon, danke schon!" the bank director said to Eddie Price.

"Bitte sehr, Herr Direktor," the Brit answered, just about exhausting his knowledge of the German language. He pointed the man off to where the Bern police had the other hostages. They probably needed a loo more than anything else, he thought, as Chavez came out.

"How'd we do, Eddie?"

"Rather well, I should say." A puff on his pipe. "An easy job, really. They were proper wallies, picking this bank and acting as they did." He shook his head and took another puff. The IRA were far more formidable than this. Bloody Germans.

Ding didn't ask what a "wally" was, much less a proper one. With that decided. he pulled his cell phone out and hit speeddial.

"Clark."

"Chavez.

"Did you catch it on TV, Mr. C?"

"Getting the replay now. Domingo."

"We got all four down for the count. No hostages hurt, except for the one they whacked earlier today. No casualties on the team. So, boss, what do we do now?"

"Fly on home for the debrief, lad. Six, out."

"Bloody good," Major Peter Covington said. The TV showed the team gathering up their equipment for the next thirty or so minutes, then they disappeared around the corner. "Your Chavez does seem to know his business-and so much the better his first test was an easy one. Confidence builder."

They looked over at the computer-generated picture that Noonan had uploaded to them on his cellular phone system. Covington had predicted how the take-down would go, and made no mistakes.

"Any traditions I need to know about?" John asked, settling down, finally, and hugely relieved that there were no unnecessary casualties.

"We take them to the club for a few pints, of course." Covington was surprised that Clark didn't know about that one.

Popov was in his car, trying to navigate the streets of Bern before police vehicles blocked everything on their way back to their stations. Left there… two traffic lights, right, then through the square and… there! Excellent, even a place for him to park. He left his rented Audi on the street right across from the half-baked safe house Model had set up. Defeating the lock was child's play. Upstairs, to the back, where the lock was just as easily dealt with.

"Wer Bind sie?" a voice asked.

"Dmitriy," Popov replied honestly, one hand in his coat pocket. "Have you been watching the television?"

"Yes, what went wrong?" the voice asked in German, seriously downcast.

"It does not matter now. It is time to leave, my young friend."

"But my friends-"

"Are dead, and you cannot help them." He saw the boy in the dark, perhaps twenty years of age, and a devoted friend of the departed fool, Ernst Model. A homosexual relationship, perhaps? If so, it would make things easier for Popov, who had no love for men of that orientation. "Come, get your things. We must leave and leave quickly." There, there it was, the black-leather-clad suitcase with the D-marks inside. The lad - what was his name? Fabian something? Turned his back and went to get his parka, which the Germans called a Joppe. He never turned back. Popov's silenced pistol came up and fired once, then again, quite unnecessarily, from three meters away. Making sure the boy was indeed dead, he lifted the suitcase, opened it to verify the contents, and then walked out the door, crossed the street, and drove to his downtown hotel. He had a noon flight back to New York. Before that he had to open a bank account in a city well suited for the task.

The team was quiet on the trip back, having caught the last flight back to England-this one to Heathrow rather than Gatwick. Chavez availed himself of a glass of white wine, again sitting next to Dr. Bellow, who did the same.

"So, how'd we do, doc?"

"Why don't you tell me, Mr. Chavez," Bellow responded.

"For me, the stress is bleeding off. No shakes this time," Ding replied, surprised at the fact that his hand was ready.

"`Shakes' are entirely normal - the release of stress energy. The body has trouble letting it go and returning to normal But training attenuates that. And so does a drink," the physician observed, sipping his own glass of a French offering.

"Anything we might have done differently?"

"I don't think so. Perhaps if we'd gotten involved earlier we might have prevented or at least postponed the murder of the first hostage, but that's never really under Our control." Bellow shrugged. "No, what I'm curious about is the motivation of the terrorists in this case."

"How so?"

"They acted in an ideological way, but their demands were - not ideological. I understand they robbed the bank along the way…"

"Correct." He and Loiselle had looked at a canvas bag on the bank's floor. It had been full of notes, perhaps twenty-five pounds of money. That seemed to Chavez an odd way to count money, but it was all he had. Follow-up work by the Swiss police would count it up. The after action stuff was an intelligence function, supervised by Bill Tawney. "So… were they just robbers?"

"Not sure." Bellow finished off his glass, holding it up then for the stewardess to see and refill. "It doesn't seem to make much sense at the moment, but that's not exactly unknown in cases like this. Model was not a very good terrorist. Too much show, and not enough go. Poorly planned, poorly executed."

"Vicious bastard," Chavez observed.

"Sociopathic personality-more like a criminal than a terrorist. Those - the good ones, I mean - are usually more judicious."

"What the hell is a good terrorist?"

"He's a businessman whose business is killing people to make a political point… almost like advertising. They serve a larger purpose, at least in their own minds. They believe in something, but not like kids in catechism class, more like reasoned adults in Bible study. Crummy simile, I suppose, but it's the best I have at the moment. Long day, Mr. Chavez," Dr. Bellow concluded, while the stew topped off his glass.

Ding checked his watch. "Sure enough, doc." And the next part, Bellow didn't have to tell him, was the need for some sleep. Chavez hit the button to run his seat back and was unconscious in two minutes.