“The Night Stalker, of course, but not many of them around. None based over here that I know of.” The Puma turned then, circling, then flaring to settle into the Hereford pad. Malloy watched the pilot’s stick work and decided he was competent, at least for straight-and-level stuff. “I’m not technically current on the MH-47 Chinook-we’re only allowed to stay officially current on three types-technically I’m not current on Hueys either, but I was fucking born in a Huey, if you know what I mean, General. And I can handle the MH-47 If I have to.”
“The name’s John, Mr. Bear,” Clark said, with a smile. He knew a pro when he saw one.
“I’m Ding. Once upon a time I was an 11-Bravo, but then the Agency kidnapped my ass. His fault,” Chavez said. “John and I been working together a while.”
“I suppose you can’t tell me the good stuff, then. Kinda surprised I never met you guys before. I’ve delivered a few spooks here and there from time to time, if you know what I mean. “Bring your package?” Clark asked, meaning his personnel file.
Malloy patted his bag. “Yes, sir, and very creative writing, it is, if I do say so.” The helicopter settled down. The crew chief jumped out to pull the sliding doors open. Malloy grabbed his bag, stepped down, and walked to the Rover parked just off the pad. There the driver, a corporal, took Malloy’s bag and tossed it in the back. British hospitality, Malloy saw, hadn’t changed very much. He returned the salute and got in the rear. The rain was picking up. English weather, the colonel thought, hadn’t changed much either. Miserable place to fly helicopters, but not too bad if you wanted to get real close without teeing seen, and that wasn’t too awful, was it? The Rover jeep took them to what looked like a headquarters building instead of his guest housing. Whoever they were, they were in a hurry.
“Nice office, John,” he said, looking around on the inside. “I guess you really are a simulated two-star.”
“I’m the boss,” Clark admitted, “and that’s enough. Sit down. Coffee?”
“Always, Malloy confirmed, taking a cup a moment later. “Thanks.”
“How many hours?” Clark asked next. “Total? Sixty-seven-forty-two last time I added it up. Thirty-one hundred of that is special operations. And, oh, about five hundred combat time.”
“That much?”
“Grenada, Lebanon, Somalia, couple of other places and the Gulf War. I fished four fast-mover drivers out and brought them back alive during that little fracas. One of them was a little exciting,” Malloy allowed, “but I had some help overhead to smooth things out. You know, the job’s pretty boring if you do it right.”
“I’ll have to buy you a pint, Bear,” Clark said. “I’ve always been nice to the SAR guys.”
“And I never turn down a free beer. The Brits in your team. ex-SAS?”
“Mainly. Worked with ’em before?”
“Exercises, here and over at Bragg. They are okay troops. right up there with Force Recon and my pals at Bragg.” This was meant to be generous, Clark knew, though the local Brits might take slight umbrage at being compared to anyone. “Anyway, I suppose you need a delivery boy, right?”
“Something like that. Ding, let’s run Mr. Bear through the last field operation.”
“Roge-o, Mr. C.” Chavez unrolled the big photo of the Schloss Ostermann on Clark’s conference table and started his brief, as Stanley and Covington came in to join the conference.
“Yeah,” Malloy said when the explanation ended. “You really did need somebody like me for that one, guys.” He paused. “Best thing would be a long-rope deployment to put three or four on the roof . . . right about . . . here.” He tapped the photo. “Nice flat roof to make it easy.”
“That’s about what I was thinking. Not as easy as a zipline, but probably safer,” Chavez agreed.
“Yeah, it’s easy if you know what you’re doing. Your boys will have to learn to land with soft feet, of course, but nice to have three or four people inside the castle when you need ’em. From how good the takedown went, I imagine your people know how to shoot and stuff.”
“Fairly well,” Covington allowed, in a neutral voice.
Clark was taking a quick rifle through Malloy’s personnel file, while Chavez presented his successful mission. Married to Frances nee Hutchins Malloy, he saw, two daughters, ten and eight. Wife was a civilian nurse working for the Navy. Well, that was easy to fix. Sandy could set that up at her hospital pretty easy. LTC Dan Malloy, USMC, was definitely a keeper.
For his part, Malloy was intrigued. Whoever these people were, they had serious horsepower. His orders to fly to England had come directly from the office of CINCSNAKE himself, “Big Sam” Wilson, and the people he’d met so far looked fairly serious. The small one, Chavez, he thought, was one competent little fucker, the way he’d walked him through the Vienna job and, from examining the overhead photo, his team must have been pretty good, too; especially the two who’d crept up to the house to take the last bunch of bad guys in the back. Invisibility was a pretty cool gig if you could bring it off, but a fucking disaster if you blew it. The good news, he reflected, was that the bad guys weren’t all that good at their fieldcraft. Not trained like his Marines were. That deficiency almost canceled out their viciousness-but not quite. Like most people in uniform, Malloy despised terrorists as cowardly sub-human animals who merited only violent and immediate death.
Chavez next took him to his team’s own building, where Malloy met his troops, shook hands, and evaluated what he saw there. Yeah, they were serious, as were Covington’s Team-1 people in the next building over. Some people just had the look, the relaxed intensity that made them evaluate everyone they met, and decide at once if the person was a threat. It wasn’t that they liked killing and maiming, just that it was their job, and that job spilled over into how they viewed the world. Malloy they evaluated as a potential friend, a man worthy of their trust and respect, and that warmed the Marine aviator. He’d be the guy whom they had to trust to get them where they needed to be, quickly, stealthily, and safely-and then get them out in the same way. The remaining tour of the training base was pure vanilla to one schooled in the business. The usual buildings, simulated airplane interiors, three real railroad passenger cars, and the other things they practiced to storm; the weapons range with the pop-up targets (he’d have to play there himself to prove that he was good enough to be here, Malloy knew, since every special-ops guy was and had to be a shooter, just as every Marine was a rifleman). By noon they were back in Clark’s headquarters building. “Well, Mr. Bear, what do you think?” Rainbow Six asked.
Malloy smiled as he sat down. “I think I’m seriously jet lagged. And I think you have a nice team here. So, you want me?”
Clark nodded. “I think we do, yes.”
“Start tomorrow morning?”
“Flying what?”
“I called that Air Force bunch you told us about. They’re going to lend us an MH-60 for you to play with.”
“Neighborly of them.” That meant to Malloy that he’d have to prove that he was a good driver. The prospect didn’t trouble him greatly. “What about my family? Is this TAD or what?”
“No, it’s a permanent duty station for you. They’ll come over on the usual government package.”
“Fair ‘nuf. Will we be getting work here?”
“We’ve had two field operations so far, Bern and Vienna. There’s no telling how busy we’ll be with for-real operations, but you’ll find the training regimen is pretty busy here.”
“Suits me, John.”
“You want to work with us?” The question surprised Malloy. “This is a volunteer outfit?”
Clark nodded. “Every one of us.”
“Well, how about that. Okay,” Malloy said. “You can sign me up.”
“May I ask a question?” Popov asked in New York.
“Sure,” the boss said, suspecting what it would be.
“What is the purpose of all this?”
“You really do not need to know at this time” was the expected reply to the expected question.
Popov nodded his submission/agreement to the answer. “As you say, sir, but you are spending a goodly amount of money for no return that I can determine.” Popov raised the money question deliberately, to see how his employer would react.
The reaction was genuine boredom: “The money is not important.”
And though the response was not unexpected, it was nonetheless surprising to Popov. For all of his professional life in the Soviet KGB, he’d paid out money in niggardly amounts to people who’d risked their lives and their freedom for it, frequently expecting far more than they’d ever gotten, because often enough the material and information given was worth far more than they’d been paid for it. But this man had already paid out more than Popov had distributed in over fifteen years of field operations-for nothing, for two dismal failures. And yet, there was no disappointment on his face, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw. What the hell was this all about?