“The helicopter annoys me,” the voice on the phone said. “Pity,” Dr. Bellow replied, wondering what response it would get. “But police do what police do.”
“News from Paris?”
“Regrettably not yet, but we hope to hear something soon. There is still time.” Bellow’s voice adopted a quiet intensity that he hoped would be taken for desperation.
“Time and tide wait for no man,” One said, and hung up.
“What’s that mean?” John asked.
“It means he’s playing by the rules. He hasn’t objected to the caps he can see on the TV, either. He knows the things he has to put up with.” Bellow sipped his coffee. “He’s very confident. He figures he’s in a safe place, and he’s holding the cards, and if he has to kill a few more kids. that’s okay, because it’ll get him what he wants.”
“Killing children.” Clark shook his head. “I didn’t think-hell, I’m supposed to know better, right?”
“It’s a very strong taboo, maybe the strongest,” Dr. Bellow agreed. “The way they killed that little girl, though . . . there was no hesitation, just like shooting a paper target. Ideological,” the psychiatrist went on. “They’ve subordinated everything to their belief system. That makes them rational, but only within that system. Our friend Mr. One has chosen his objective, and he’ll stick to it.”
The remote TV system, the park engineer saw, was really something. The objective lens now affixed to the castle window was less than two millimeters across at its widest point, and even if noticed, would be mistaken for a drop of paint or some flaw in the window glass. The quality of the image wasn’t very good, but it showed where people were, and the more you looked at it, the more you understood what initially appeared to be a black-and-white photograph of clutter. He could count six adults now, and with a seventh atop the castle, that left only three unaccounted for-and were all the children in view? It was harder with them. All their shirts were the same color, and the red translated into a very neutral gray on the black-and-white picture. There was the one in a wheelchair, but the rest blended together in the out-of-focus image. The commandos, he could see, were worried about that.
“He’s heading back west again,” Johnston reported. “Okay, he’s at the west side now.”
“Let’s go,” Noonan told Vega.
“The ladder?” They’d taken it down and laid it behind the bushes on its side.
“Leave it.” Noonan ran off in a crouch, reaching the concession structure in a few seconds. “Noonan to Command, time to do the cameras again.”
“It’s off,” the engineer told Clark.
“Camera twenty-one is down. Get moving, Tim.”
Noonan popped Vega on the shoulder and ran another thirty meters. “Okay, take down twenty-three.”
“Done,” the park engineer said.
“Move,” Clark commanded.
Fifteen seconds later, they were in a safe position. Noonan leaned against a building wall and took a long breath. “Thanks, Julio.”
“Any time, man,” Vega replied. “Just so the camera gadget works.”
“It will,” the FBI agent promised, and with that they headed back to the underground command post.
“Blow the windows? Can we do that, Paddy?” Chavez was asking when they got there.
Connolly was wishing for a cigarette. He’d quit years before-it was too hard on the daily runs to indulge-but at times like this it seemed to help the concentration. “Six windows . . . three or four minutes each . . . no, I think not, sir. I can give you two–if we have the time.”
“How sturdy are the windows?” Clark asked “Dennis?”
“Metal frames set into the stone,” the park manager said with a shrug.
“Wait.” The engineer turned a page on the castle blueprints, then two more, and then a finger traced dawn the written portion on the right side. “Here’s the specs . . . they’re held in by grouting only. You should be able to kick them in, I think.”
The “I think” part was not as reassuring as Ding would have preferred, but how strong could a window frame be with a two-hundred-pound man swinging into it with two boots leading the way?
“What about flash-bangs, Paddy?”
“We can do that,” Connolly answered. “It will not do the frames any good at all, sir.”
“Okay.” Chavez leaned over the plans. “You’ll have time to blow two windows-this one and this one.” He tapped the prints. “We’ll use flash-bangs on the other four and swing in a second later. Eddie here, me here. Louis here. George, how’s the leg?”
“Marginal,” Sergeant Tomlinson replied with painful honesty. He’d have to kick through a window, swing in, drop to a concrete floor, then come up shooting . . . and the lives of children were at stake. No, he couldn’t risk it, could he? “Better somebody else, Ding.”
“Oso, think you can do it?” Chavez asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Vega replied, trying not to smile. “You bet. Ding.”
“Okay, Scotty here, and Mike take these two. What’s the exact distance from the roof?”
That was on the blueprints. “Sixteen meters exactly from the level of the roof. Add another seventy centimeters to allow for the battlements.”
“The ropes can do that easily,” Eddie Price decided. The plan was coming together. He and Ding would have as their primary mission getting between the kids and the bad guys, shooting as they went. Vega, Loiselle, McTyler. and Pierce would be primarily tasked to killing the subjects in the castle’s command room, but that would be finally decided only when they entered the room. Covington’s Team-1 would race up the stairs from the underground, to intercept any subjects who ran out, and to back up Team-2 if something went wrong on their assault.
Sergeant Major Price and Chavez looked over the blueprints again, measuring distances to be covered and the time in which to do it. It looked possible, even probable, that they could carry it off. Ding looked up at the others.
“Comments?”
Noonan turned to look at the picture from the fiberoptic gear he’d installed. “They seem to be mainly at the control panels. Two guys keeping an eye on the children, but they’re not worried about them-makes sense, they’re just kids, not adults able to start real resistance . . . but . . . it only takes one of these bastards to turn and hose them, man.”
“Yeah.” Ding nodded. There was no denying or avoiding that fact. “Well, we have to shoot fast, people. Any way to string them out?”
Bellow thought about that. “If I tell them the plane’s on the way . . . that’s a risk. If they think we’re lying to them, well, they could start taking it out on the hostages, but the upside is, if they think it’s about time to head for the airport, probably Mr. One will send a couple of his troops down to the underground-that’s the most likely way for them to leave the area, I think. Then, if we can play some more with the surveillance cameras, and get a guy in close-”
“Yeah, pop them right away,” Clark said. “Peter?”
“Get us within twenty meters and it’s a piece of cake. Plus, we kill the lights right before we hit. Disorient the bastards,” Covington added.
“There’s emergency lights in the stairwells,” Mike Dennis said. “They click on when the power goes down – shit, there’s two in the command center, too.”
“Where?” Chavez asked.
“The left – I mean the northeast corner and the southwest one. The regular kind, two lights, like car headlights, they run off a battery.”
“Okay, no NVGs when we go in, I guess, but we’ll still kill the lights right before we hit, just to distract them. Anything else? Peter?” Ding asked.
Major Covington nodded. “It ought to work.”
Clark observed and listened, forced to let his principal subordinates do all the planning and talking, leaving him only able to comment if they made a mistake, and they hadn’t done that. Most of all, he wanted to lift an MP-10 and go in with the shooters, but he couldn’t do that, and inwardly he swore at the fact. Commanding just wasn’t as satisfying as leading.
“We need medics standing by in case the bad guys get lucky,” John said to Colonel Nuncio.
“We have paramedics outside the park now-”
“Dr. Weiler is pretty good,” Mike Dennis said. “He’s had trauma training. We insisted on that in case we have something bad happen here.”
“Okay, we’ll have him stand-to when the time comes. Dr. Bellow, tell Mr. One that the French have caved, and their friends will be here …. What do you think?”
“Ten-twenty or so. If they agree to that, it’s a concession, but the kind that will calm them down-should. anyway.”
“Make the call, doc,” John Clark ordered.
“Yes?” Rene said.
“Sanchez is being released from Le Sante prison in about twenty minutes. Six of the others, too, but there’s a problem on the last three. I’m not sure what that is. They’ll be taken to De Gaulle International Airport and flown here on an Air France Airbus 340. We think they’ll be here by twenty-two-forty. Is that acceptable? How will we get you and the hostages to them for the flight out?” Bellow asked.