“Okay,” Clark said. “They get into Andrews in two hours, and then we’ll take a puddle jumper to Pope and figure out what to do.”
“You’ve got a plan already, John,” Foley observed. He’d known Clark long enough to recognize that look in his eyes.
“Ed, is this my case to run or isn’t it?” he asked the DCI.
“Within reason, John. Let’s try not to start a nuclear war or anything, shall we?”
“Ed, can this ever come to trial? What if Brightling ordered the destruction of all the evidence? It’s not hard to do, is it? Hell, what are we talking about? A few buckets of bio-gunk and some computer records. There’re commercial programs that destroy files thoroughly enough that you can’t recover them ever, right?”
“True, but somebody might have printed stuff up, and a good search-”
“And then what do we have? A global panic when people realize what a bio-tech company can do if it wants. What good will that do?”
“Toss in a senior presidential advisor who violated security. Jesus, that would not be very helpful for Jack, would it?” Foley paused. “But we can’t murder these people, John! They’re U.S. citizens with rights, remember?”
“I know, Ed. But we can’t let them go, and we probably can’t prosecute them, can we? What’s that leave?” Clark paused. “I’ll try something creative.”
“What?”
John Clark explained his idea. “If they fight back, well, then, it makes things easier for us, doesn’t it?”
“Twenty men against maybe fifty?”
“My twenty-actually, more like fifteen-against those feather merchants? Give me a break, Ed. It may be the moral equivalent of murder, but not the legal equivalent.”
Foley frowned mightily, worried about what would happen if this ever made the media, but there was no particular reason that it should. The special-operations community kept all manner of secrets, many of which would look bad in the public media. “John,” he said finally.
“Yeah, Ed?”
“Make sure you don’t get caught.”
“Never happened yet, Ed,” Rainbow Six reminded him.
“Approved,” said the Director of Central Intelligence, wondering how the hell he’d ever explain this one to the president of the United States.
“Okay, can I use my old office?” Clark had some phone calls to make.
“Sure.”
“Is that all you need?” General Sam Wilson asked.
“Yes, General, that should do it.”
“Can I ask what it’s for?”
“Something covert,” he heard Clark reply.
“That’s all you’re willing to say?”
“Sorry, Sam. You can check this out with Ed Foley if you want.”
“I guess I will,” the general’s voice rumbled.”Fine with me, sir.” Clark hoped the “sir” part would assuage his hurt feelings.
It didn’t, but Wilson was a pro, and knew the rules. “Okay, let me make some phone calls.”
The first of them went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, whose commanding officer, a colonel, made the expected objection, which was expectedly overridden. That colonel then lifted a phone of his own and ordered an MH-60K Night Hawk special-operations helicopter ferried to Pope Air Force Base, along with a maintenance crew for some TDY to a place he didn’t know about. The next phone call went to an Air Force officer who took his notes and said, “Yes, sir,” like the good airman he was. Getting the pieces in place was mainly an exercise in electronics, lifting encrypted phones and giving spooky orders to people who, fortunately, were accustomed to such things.
Chavez reflected that he’d come three quarters of the way around the world, most of it in the last twenty-two hours, and was landing at an airfield he’d used only once before. There was Air Force One, the VC-25Aversion of the 747 painted in a scheme known all over the world, and with him was someone who’d planned to kill all the people who’d known it. He’d learned years before not to reflect too much on the things that he did for his country and the $82,450 per year that he now earned as a mid-level CIA employee. He had a master’s degree in international relations, which he jokingly defined as one country fucking another-but now, it wasn’t a country, it was a corporation. Since when did they start to think they could play games at this level? he wondered. Maybe it was the New World Order that President Bush had once talked about. If that’s what it was, it didn’t make sense to the commander of Team-2. Governments were selected, by and large, by the citizens, and answered to them. Corporations answered-if they did so at all-to their shareholders. And that wasn’t quite the same thing. Corporations were supposed to be overseen by the governments of the countries in which they were domiciled, but everything was changing now. It was private corporations that developed and defined the tools that people across the world were using. The changing technological world had given immense power to relatively small organizations, and now he was wondering if that was a good thing or not. Well, if people depended on governments for progress, then they’d still be riding horses and steamships around the world. But in this New World Order things had little in the way of controls at all, and that was something somebody should think about, Chavez decided, as the aircraft came to a halt on the Andrews ramp. Yet another anonymous blue USAF van appeared at the stairs even before they were fully deployed.
“Building up those frequent-flyer miles, Domingo?” John asked from the concrete.
“I suppose. Am I sprouting feathers yet?” Chavez asked tiredly.
“Only one more hop for now.”
“Where to?”
“Bragg.”
“Then let’s do it. I don’t want to get too used to standing still if it’s just temporary.” He needed a shave and a shower, but that, too, would have to wait until Fort Bragg. Soon they were in yet another Air Force short-haul aircraft, lifting off and heading southwest. This hop was blessedly short, and ended at Pope Air Force Base, which adjoins the home of the 82nd Airborne Infantry Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, also home of Delta Force and other special-operations units.
For the first time, someone had thought what to do with Wil Gearing, Noonan saw. Three military policemen carted him off to the base stockade. The rest of the people on the trip ended up in Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, more colloquially known as “the Q.”
Chavez wondered if the clothing he stripped off would ever be clean enough to wear again. But then he showered, and set on the sink in the bathroom was a razor that allowed him to scrape off a full day’s accumulation of black blur on his-he thought-manly face. He emerged to find clothing laid out.
“I had the base people run this over.”
“Thanks, John.” Chavez struggled into the white boxers and T-shirt, then selected the forest-pattern Battle Dress Uniform-BDU-items laid on the bed, complete to socks and boots.
“Long day?”
“Shit, John, it’s been a long month coming back from Australia.” He sat down on the bed, then on reflection lay down on the bedspread. “Now what?”
“Brazil.”
“How come?”
“That’s where they all went. We tracked them down, and I have overheads of the place where they’re camped out.”
“So, we’re going to see them?”
“Yes.
“To do what, John?”
“To settle this thing out once and for all, Domingo.”
“Suits me, but is it legal?”
“When did you start worrying about that?”
“I’m a married man, John, and a father, remember? I have to be responsible now, man.”
“It’s legal enough, Ding,” his father-in-law told the younger man.
“Okay, you say so. What happens now?”
“You get a nap. The rest of the team arrives in about half an hour.”
“The rest of what team?”
“Everybody who can move and shoot, son.”
“Muy bien, jefe, ” Chavez said, closing his eyes.
The British Airways 737-700 was on the ground for as little time as possible, refueled from an Air Force fuel bowser and then lifted off for Dulles International Airport outside Washington, where its presence would not cause much in the way of comment. The Rainbow troopers were bused off to a secure location and allowed to continue their rest. That worried some of them slightly. Being allowed to rest implied that rest was something they’d need soon.
Clark and Alistair Stanley conferred in a room at Joint Special Operations Command Headquarters, a nondescript building facing a small parking lot.
“So, what gives here?” asked Colonel William Byron. Called “Little Willie” by his uniformed colleagues, Colonel Byron had the most unlikely sobriquet in the United States Army. Fully six-four and two hundred thirty pounds of lean, hard meat, Byron was the largest man in JSOC. The name dated back to West Point, where he’d grown six inches and thirty pounds over four years of exercise and wholesome food, and ended up a linebacker on the Army football team that had murdered Navy 35-10 in the autumn classic at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium. His accent was still south Georgia despite his master’s degree in management from Harvard Business School, which was becoming favored in the American military.