Clark saw what Bellow did, and understood it for what it was, but that option didn’t exist for Rainbow Six, for his was the ultimate responsibility of command, and what he saw before his eyes were the faces he’d made up to go with the names on the fax sheet he held in his hand. Which ones would live? Which would not? That responsibility rested on shoulders not half so strong as they appeared.
Kids.
“They have not gotten back to me yet,” Captain Gassman said into the telephone, having initiated the call himself.
“I have not yet given you a deadline,” One replied. “I would like to think that Paris values our goodwill. If that is not the case, then they will soon learn to respect our resolve. Make that clear to them,” Rene concluded, setting the phone down and breaking the contact.
And so much for calling them to establish a dialogue, Gassman said to himself. That was one of the things he was supposed to do, his training classes and all the books had told him. Establish some sort of dialogue and rapport with the criminals, even a degree of trust that he could then exploit to his benefit, get some of the hostages released in return for food or other considerations, erode their resolve, with the ultimate aim of resolving the crime without loss of innocent life-or criminal life for that matter. A real win for him meant bringing them all before the bar of justice, where a robed judge would pronounce them guilty and sentence them to a lengthy term as guests of the Spanish government, there to rot like the trash they were …. But the first step was to get them talking back and forth with him, something that this One person didn’t feel the need to do. This man felt comfortably in command of the situation . . . as well he might, the police captain told himself. With children sitting in front of his guns. Then another phone rang.
“They have landed, and are unloading now.”
“How long?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Half an hour,” Colonel Tomas Nuncio told Clark, as the car started rolling. Nuncio had come by helicopter from Madrid. Behind him, three trucks of the Spanish army were loading up the equipment off the plane and would soon start down the same road with his people aboard.
“What do we know?”
“Thirty-five hostages. Thirty-three of them are French children-”
“I’ve seen the list. Who are the other two?”
Nuncio looked down in distaste. “They seem to be sick children in the park as part of a special program, the ones sent here – you started it in America, how do you say. . .”
“Make-A-Wish?” John asked.
“Yes, that is it. A girl from Holland and a boy from England, both in wheelchairs, both reportedly quite ill. Not French like the others. I find that strange. All the rest are children of workers for Thompson, the defense equipment company. The leader of that group called on his own to his corporate headquarters, and from there the news went high up in the French government, explaining the rapid response. I have orders to offer you all the assistance my people can provide.”
“Thank you, Colonel Nuncio. How many people do you have on the scene now?”
“Thirty-eight, with more coming. We have an inner perimeter established and traffic control.”
“Reporters, what about them?”
“We are stopping them at the main gate to the park. I will not give these swine a chance to speak to the public,” Colonel Nuncio promised. He’d already lived up to what John expected of the Guardia Civil. The hat was something out of another century, but the cop’s blue eyes were ready for the next one, cold and hard as he drove his radio car out onto the interstate-type highway. A sign said that Worldpark was but fifteen kilometers away, and the car was moving very fast now. Julio Vega tossed the last Team-2 box aboard the five-ton truck and pulled himself aboard. His teammates were all there in the back, with Ding Chavez taking the right-front seat of the truck next to the driver, as commanders tended to do. Eyes were all open now and heads perked up, checking out the surrounding terrain even though it had no relevance to the mission. Even commandos could act like tourists.
“Colonel, what sort of surveillance systems are we up against?”
“What do you mean?” Nuncio asked in reply.
“The park, does it have TV cameras spread around? If it does,” Clark said, “I want us to avoid them.”
“I will call ahead to see.”
“Well?” Mike Dennis asked his chief technician.
“The back way in, no cameras there until they approach the employee parking lot. I can turn that one off from here.”
“Do it.” Dennis got on Captain Gassman’s radio to give directions for the approaching vehicles. He checked his watch as he did so. The first shots had been fired three and a half hours before. It only felt like a lifetime. Giving the directions, he walked to the office coffee urn. found it empty, and cursed as a result.
Colonel Nuncio took the last exit before the one that went into the park, instead breaking off onto a two-lane blacktop road and slowing down. Presently they encountered a police car whose occupant, standing alongside it, waved them through. Two minutes more, and they were parked outside what appeared to be a tunnel with a steel door sitting partially open. Nuncio popped open his door, and Clark did the same, then walked quickly into the entrance.
“Your Spanish is very literate, Senor Clark. But I cannot place your accent.”
“Indianapolis,” John replied. It would probably be the last light moment of the day. “How are the bad guys talking to you?”
“What language, you mean? English so far -”
And that was the first good break of the day. For all his expertise, Dr. Bellow’s language skills were not good, and he would take point as soon as his car arrived, in about five minutes.
The park’s alternate command center was a mere twenty meters inside the tunnel. The door was guarded by yet another Civil Guard, who opened it and saluted Colonel Nuncio.
“Colonel.” It was another cop, John saw.
“Senor Clark, this is Captain Gassman.- Handshakes were exchanged.
“Howdy. I am John Clark. My team is a few minutes out. Can you please update me on what’s happening?”
Gassman waved him to the conference table in the middle of the room whose walls were lined with TV cameras and other electronic gear whose nature was not immediately apparent. A large map/diagram of the park was laid out.
“The criminals are all here,” Gassman said, tapping the castle in the middle of the park. “We believe there to be ten of them, and thirty-five hostages, all children. I have spoken with them several times. My contact is a man, probably a Frenchman, calling himself One. The conversations have come to nothing, but we have a copy of their demands-a dozen convicted terrorists, mainly in French custody, but some in Spanish prisons as well.” Clark nodded. He had all this already, but the diagram of the park was new. He was first of all examining sightlines, what could be seen and what could not. “What about where they are, blueprints, I mean.”
“Here,” a park engineer said, sliding the castle blueprints on the table. “Windows here, here, here, and here. Stairs and elevators as marked.” Clark referenced them against the map. “They have stair access to the roof, and that’s forty meters above street level. They have good line of sight everywhere, down all the streets.”
“If I want to keep an eye on things, what’s the best place?”
“That’s easy. The Dive Bomber ride, top of the first hill. You’re damned near a hundred fifty meters high there.”
“That’s nearly five hundred feet,” Clark said, with some measure of incredulity.
“Biggest ‘coaster in the world, sir,” the engineer confirmed. “People come from all over to ride this one. The ride sits in a slight depression, about ten meters, but the rest of it’s pretty damned tall. If you want to perch somebody, that’s the spot.”
“Good. Can you get from here to there unseen?”
“The underground, but there’re TV cameras in it-” He traced his hand over the map. “Here, here, here, and another one there. Better to walk on the surface, but dodging all the cameras won’t be easy.”
“Can you turn them off?”
“We can override. the primary command center from here, yes-hell, if necessary, I can send people out to pull the wires.”
“But if we do that, it might annoy our friends in the castle,” John noted. “Okay, we need to think that one through before we do anything. For the moment,” Clark told Nuncio and Gassman, “I want to keep them in the dark on who’s here and what we’re doing. We don’t give them anything for free, okay?”