Things had come well to this point, Rene thought, and the park command center was better than anything he’d hoped for. He was learning to use the computer system to select TV cameras that seemed to cover the entire grounds, from the parking lots to the waiting areas for the various rides. The pictures were in black and white, and once a venue was selected he could zoom and pan the camera to find anything he wished. There were twenty monitors set on the walls of the office, each of them linked by a computer terminal to at least five cameras. Nobody would get close to the castle without his knowledge. Excellent.
In the secretaries’ room just through the door, Andre had the children sitting on the floor in one tight little knot, except for the two in their wheelchairs, whom he’d placed against the wall. The children were uniformly wide-eyed and frightened-looking, as well they might be, and at the moment they were quiet, which suited him. He’d slung his submachine gun over his shoulder. It wasn’t needed at the moment, was it?
“You will stay still,” he told them in French, then backed to the door into the command center. “One,” he called.
“Yes, Nine,” Rene answered.
“Things are under control here. Time to make a call?”
“Yes,” One agreed. He took his seat and picked up a phone, then examined the buttons, and finding a likely one, he pressed it.
“Yes?”
“Who is this?”
“I am Mike Dennis. I am managing director of the park.”
“Bien, I am One, and I am now in command of your Worldpark.”
“Okay, Mr. One. What do you want?”
“You have the police here?”
“Yes, they are here now.”
“Good. I will speak with their commander then.”
“Captain?” Dennis waved. Gassman took the three steps to his desk.
“I am Captain Dario Gassman of the Guardia Civil.”
“I am One. I am in command. You know that I have taken over thirty hostages, yes?”
“Si, I am aware of this,” the captain replied, keeping his voice as calm as circumstances allowed. He’d read books and had training on talking with hostage-holding terrorists, and now wished that he’d had a lot more of it. “Do you have a request for me?”
“I do not make requests. I will give you orders to be carried out at once, and have you relay orders to others. Do you understand?” Rene asked in English.
“Si, comprendo. ”
“All of our hostages are French. You will establish a line of communication with the French embassy in Madrid. My orders are for them. Please keep in mind that none of our hostages are citizens of your country. This affair is between us and the French. Do you understand that?”
“Senor One, the safety of those children is my responsibility. This is Spanish soil.”
“Be that as it may,” One replied, “you will open a telephone link to the French embassy at once. Let me know when it is done.”
“I must first of all relay your request to my superiors. I will get back to you when I have my instructions from them.”
“Quickly,” Rene told him, before hanging up.
It was noisy in the back. The four Allison engines screamed, as they accelerated the MC- 130 down the runway, then the aircraft rotated abruptly, jumping into the sky for its flight to Spain. Clark and Stanley were in the communications compartment forward, listening as best they could with their heavily insulated headphones to information coming to them, disjointed and fragmentary as usual. The voice promised maps and plans when they got there, but there was no additional information on the number or identity of the terrorists-they were working on that, the voice told them. Just then, a fax arrived from Paris via the American 1st Spec-Operations Wing headquarters, which had secure communications equipment currently linked to Hereford. It was just another list of the hostages, and this time Clark took the time to read the names, and part of his mind tried to conjure up faces to go with them, knowing he’d be wrong in every case, but doing it even so. Thirty-three children sitting in an amusement park castle surrounded by men with guns, number at least six, maybe ten, maybe more; they were still trying to develop that information. Shit, John thought. He knew that some things couldn’t be hurried, but nothing in this business ever went fast enough, even when you were doing it all yourself.
Aft the men slipped off their seat belts and started suiting up in their black Nomex, saying little to one another while the two team leaders went forward to find out what they could. Back ten minutes later to dress themselves, Chavez and Covington tilted their heads in the typical what-the-hell expression that their troopers recognized as news that was something other than good. The team leaders told their men what little they knew, and the expressions were transferred to the shooters, along with neutral thoughts. Kids as hostages. Over thirty of them probably, and maybe more, held by an unknown number of terrorists, nationality and motivation still unknown. As a practical matter, they knew nothing about how they’d be used, except that they were going somewhere to do something, which they’d find out about once they got there. The men settled back into their seats, re-buckled their belts, and said little. Most closed their eyes and affected trying to sleep, but mainly they didn’t sleep, merely sat with eyes closed, seeking and sometimes finding an hour’s peace amid the screeching noise of the turboprop engines.
“I require your fax machine number,” One said to the French ambassador, speaking in his native language instead of English.
“Very well” was the reply, followed by the number.
“We are sending you a list of political prisoners whose release we require. They will be released immediately and flown here on an Air France airliner. Then my people, our guests, and I will board the aircraft and fly with them to a destination that I will give to the pilot of our aircraft after we board it. I advise you to accede to our demands rapidly. We have little patience, and if our demands are not met, we will be forced to kill some of our hostages.”
“I will forward your request to Paris,” the ambassador said.
“Good, and be sure to tell them that we are not in a patient mood.”
“Oui, I will do that as well,” the diplomat promised. The line went dead and he looked at his immediate staff, the deputy chief of mission, his military attache, and the DGSE station chief. The ambassador was a businessman who had been awarded this embassy as a political favor, since the proximity of Paris and Madrid did not require a seasoned member of the diplomatic service for the post. Well?”
“We will look at the list,” the DGSE man answered. A second later, the fax machine chirped, and a few seconds after that, the curled paper emerged. The intelligence officer took it, scanned it, and handed it over. “Not good,” he announced for the others in the room.
“The Jackal?” the DCM said. “They will never-”
“‘Never’ is a long time, my friend,” the spook told the diplomat. “I hope these commandos know their business.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Nothing, not a single thing.”
“How long?” Esteban asked Rene.
“They will take time,” One replied. “Some will be real, and some will be creative on their part. Remember that their strategy is to lengthen the process as much as possible, to tire us, to wear us down, to weaken our resolve. Against that we have the ability to force the issue by killing a hostage. That is not a step to be taken lightly. We have selected our hostages for their psychological impact, and we will need to consider their use carefully. But above all, we must control the pace of events. For now, we will let them take their time while we consolidate our position.” Rene walked to the corner to see how Claude was doing. There was a nasty gash on his upper arm from that fool of a Roman soldier, the only thing that had gone wrong. He was sitting on the floor, holding a bandage over it, but t lie wound was still bleeding. Claude would need stitches to close it properly. It was bad luck, but not that serious, except to Claude, who was still in considerable pain from the wound.
Hector Weiler was the park physician, a general surgeon trained at the University of Barcelona who spent most of his time putting Band-Aids on skinned knees and elbows, though there was a photo on his wall of the twin she’d delivered once upon a time after a pregnant woman had been foolish enough to ride the Dive Bomber there was now a very emphatic sign at the entrance warning against that. For all that, he was a skilled young doctor who’d done his share of work in his medical school’s emergency room, and so this wasn’t his first gunshot victim. Francisco was a lucky man. At least six shots had been fired at him, and though the first three had merely resulted in fragment-peppering on his left arm, one of the second bursts had hurt his leg badly. A broken tibia would take a long time to heal for a man of his years, but at least it was broken fairly high up. A break lower down could take six months to heal, if ever.