‘Forgotten’? The entire world had once feared his name. That was the most hurtful part of all.
He made a mental note to contact his lawyer. Those conversations were still privileged and private, and his lawyer knew a few names to call. “Starting up,” Malloy said. Both turbo-shaft engines came to life, and presently the four-bladed rotor started turning.
“Crummy day,” Lieutenant Harrison observed over the intercom.
“Been over here long?” Malloy asked.
“Just a few weeks, sir.”
“Well, sonny, now you know why the Brits won the Battle of Britain. Nobody else can fly in this shit.” The Marine looked around. Nothing else was up today. The ceiling was less than a thousand feet, and the rain was coming down pretty hard. Malloy checked the trouble-board again. All the aircraft systems were in the green.
“Roge-o, Colonel. Sir, how many hours in the Night Hawk?”
“Oh, about seven hundred. I like the Pave Low’s capabilities a little better, but this one does like to fly. About time for us to see that, sonny.” Malloy pulled up on the collective, and the Night Hawk lifted off, a little unevenly in the gusting thirty-knot winds. “Y’all okay back there?”
“Got my barf bag,” Clark replied, to Ding’s amusement. “You know a guy named Paul Johns?”
“Air Force colonel, down at Eglin? He retired about five years ago.”
“That’s the man. How good is he?” Clark asked, mainly to get a feel for Malloy.
“None better in a helo, ‘specially a Pave Low. He just talked to the airplane, and it listened to him real nice. You know him, Harrison?”
“Only by reputation, sir,” the copilot replied from the left seat.
“Little guy, good golfer, too. Does consulting now, and works on the side with Sikorsky. We see him up at Bragg periodically. Okay, baby, let’s see what you got.” Malloy reefed the chopper into a tight left turn. “Humph, nothing handles like a -60. Damn, I love these things. Okay, Clark, what’s the mission here?”
“The range building, simulate a zip-line deployment.”
“Covert or assault?”
“Assault,” John told him.
“That’s easy. Any particular spot?”
“Southeast corner, if you can.”
“Okay, here we go.” Malloy shoved the cyclic left and forward, dropping the helo like a fast elevator, darting for the range building like a falcon after a pheasant-and like a falcon, pulling up sharply at the right spot, transitioning into hover so quickly that the copilot in the left seat turned to look in amazement at how fast he’d brought it off. “How’s that, Clark?”
“Not too bad,” Rainbow Six allowed.
Next Malloy applied power to get the hell out of Dodge City-almost, but not quite, as though he hadn’t stopped over the building at all. “I can improve that once I get used t o your people, how fast they get out and stuff, but a longline deployment is usually better, as you know.”
“As long as you don’t blow the depth perception and run us right into the friggin’ wall,” Chavez observed. That remark earned him a turned head and a pained expression.
“My boy, we do try to avoid that. Ain’t nobody does the rocking chair maneuver better ‘n me, people.”
“It’s hard to get right,” Clark observed.
“Yes, it is,” Malloy agreed, “but I know how to play the piano, too.”
The man was not lacking in confidence, they saw. Even the lieutenant in the left seat thought he was a little overpowering, but he was taking it all in anyway, especially watching how Malloy used the collective to control power as well as lift. Twenty minutes later, they were back on the ground.
“And that’s about how it’s done, people,” Malloy told them, when the rotor stopped turning. “Now, when do we start real training?”
“Tomorrow soon enough?” Clark asked.
“Works for me, General, sir. Next question, do we practice on the Night Hawk, or do I have to get used to flying something else?”
“We haven’t worked that out yet,” John admitted.
“Well, that does have a bearing on this stuff, y’know. Every chopper has a different feel, and that matters on how I do my deliveries,” Malloy pointed out. “I’m at my best on one of those. I’m nearly as good with a Huey, but that one’s noisy in close and hard to be covert with. Others, well, I have to get used to them. Takes a few hours of yankin’ and bankin’ before I feel completely comfortable.” Not to mention learning where all the controls were, Malloy didn’t add, since no two aircraft in the entire world had all the dials, gauges, and controls in the same places, something aviators had bitched about since the Wright Brothers. “If we deploy, I’m risking lives, mine and others, every time I lift off. I’d prefer to keep those risks to a minimum. I’m a cautious guy, y’know?”
“I’ll work on that today,” Clark promised.
“You do that.” Malloy nodded, and walked off to the locker/ready room.
Popov had himself a fine dinner in an Italian restaurant half a block from his apartment building, enjoyed the crisp weather in the city, and puffed on a Montecristo cigar after he got back to his flat. There was still work to do. He’d obtained videotapes of the news coverage of both of the terrorist incidents he’d instigated and wanted to study them. In both cases, the reporters spoke German-the Swiss kind, then Austrian-which he spoke like a native (of Germany). He sat in an easy chair with the remote control in his hand, occasionally rewinding to catch something odd of passing interest, studying the tapes closely, his trained mind memorizing every detail. The most interesting parts, of course, were those showing the assault teams who’d finally resolved both incidents with decisive action. The quality of the pictures was poor. Television simply didn’t make for high-quality imagery, especially in had lighting conditions and from two hundred meters away. With the first tape, that of the Bern case, there was no more than ninety seconds of pre-action pictures of the assault team-this part had not been broadcast during t lie attack, only afterward. The men moved professionally, in a way that somehow reminded the Russian of the ballet, so strangely delicate and stylized were the movements of the men in the black clothing, as they crept in from left and right . . . and then came the blindingly swift action punctuated by jerky camera movements when the explosives went off-that always made the cameramen jump. No sound of gunfire. So their firearms were silenced. It was done so that the victims could not learn from the sound where the shots had come from-but it had not really been a matter of importance in this case, since the terrorist/criminals had been dead before the information could have done them any good. But that was how it was done. This business was as programmed as any professional sport, with the rules of play enforced by deadly might. The mission over in seconds, the assault team came out, and the Bern city police went in to sort out the mess. The people in black acted unremarkably, he saw, like disciplined soldiers on a battlefield. No congratulatory handshakes or other demonstrations. No, they were too well-trained for that. No one even did so much as light a cigarette . . . ah, one did seem to light a pipe. What followed was the usual brainless commentary from the local news commentators, talking about this elite police unit and how it had saved all the lives of those inside, und soweiter, Popov thought, rising to switch tapes.
The Vienna mission, he saw, had even poorer TV coverage, due to the physical conditions of the chap’s house. Quite a nice one, actually. The Romanovs might have had such a fine country house. Here the police had ruthlessly controlled the TV coverage, which was perfectly sensible, Popov thought, but not overly helpful to him. The taped coverage showed the front of the country house with boring regularity, punctuated by the monotonous words of the TV reporter repeating the same things endlessly, telling his viewers that he was unable to speak very much with the police on the scene. The tape did show the movement of vehicles, and showed the arrival of what had to be the Austrian assault team. Interestingly, they appeared to be dressed in civilian clothing upon their arrival, and changed soon thereafter into their battle dress . . . it looked green for this team . . . no, he realized, green overgarments over black regular dress. Did that mean anything? The Austrians had two men with scope-sighted rifles who rapidly disappeared into cars, which must have taken them behind the Schloss. The assault-team leader, not a very large man, much like the one Popov thought had headed the team in Bern, was seen from a great distance going over papers the map/diagram/plans of the house and grounds, no doubt. Then, shortly before midnight, all of them had disappeared, leaving Popov to look at a tape of the dwelling illuminated by huge light standards, accompanied by more idiotic speculation by a singularly ill-informed TV journalist …. and then, just after midnight, came the distant pop of a rifle, followed by two more pops, silence, and then frantic activity by the uniformed police in the camera’s field of view. Twenty of them raced into the front door carrying light machine guns. The reporter had then talked about a sudden burst of activity, which the thickest of viewers would have seen for themselves, followed by more nothing-at-all, and then the announcement that all the hostages were alive, and all the criminals dead. Another passage of time, and the green-and-black-clad assault team appeared again. As with Bern there were no overt signs of self-congratulation. One of the assault team seemed to be puffing on a pipe, as he walked to the van that had brought them to the scene and stowed his weapons, while another of them conferred briefly with a civilian-clothed policeman, probably the Captain Altmark who’d had field command of the incident. The two must have known each other, their exchange of words was so brief before the paramilitary police team departed the scene, just as at Bern. Yes, both of the counterterror units trained from exactly the same book, Popov told himself again.