"Correct," Eddie answered, heading off toward the house. "Stand by here."
"Easy shots, both of 'em," Tomlinson said in his turn, surrounded by Austrian cops.
"Too tall to hide," Loiselle confirmed. He felt like having a smoke, though he'd quit two years before. His hostages were being led off now, leaving the two terrorists on the lush green grass, which their blood, he thought, would fertilize. Blood was good fertilizer, wasn't it? Such a fine house. A pity they'd not have the chance to examine it.
Twenty minutes later, Team-2 was back at the assembly point, changing out of their tactical clothes, packing their weapons and other gear for the ride back to the airport. The TV lights and cameras were running, but rather far away. The team was relaxing now, the stress bleeding off with the successful completion of their mission. Price puffed on his pipe outside the van, then tapped it tut on the heel of his boot before boarding it.
CHAPTER 8
The television coverage was out before Team-2 flew into Heathrow. Fortunately, the video of the event was hampered by the Schloss's great size and the fact that the Staatspolizei kept the cameras well away from events, and on the wrong side of the building. About the only decent shot was of a team member lighting a pipe, followed by Captain Wilhelm Altmark's summary of events for the assembled reporters. A special and heretofore secret team of his country's federal police had dealt efficiently with the incident at Schloss Ostermann, he said, rescuing all of the hostages - no, unfortunately, no criminals had been arrested.
All of this was taped for later use by Bill Tawney's staff off Austrian State Television, Sky News, and every other European news service that made use of the story. Though the British Sky News service had managed to get its own camera to Vienna, the only difference between its coverage and that of the locals was the angle Even the various learned commentaries were essentiallythe same specially trained and equipped police-unit; probably with members of Austria's military; decisive action to resolve the incident with no injuries to the innocent victims; score one more, they didn't quite say, for the good guys. The bad guys' identities weren't put out with the initial reports. Tracking them down would be a police function, and the results would be fed to Tawney's intelligence section, along with the debriefs of the victims.
It had been a very long day for the-Team-2 members, all of whom went home to sleep on arrival back at Hereford, with notification from Chavez that they'd dispense with morning PT the next day. There wasn't even time for a congratulatory set of beers in the local NCO Club - which in any case was closed by the time they got home:
On the flight home, Chavez noted to Dr. Bellow that despite the fitness of his people the fatigue factor was pretty high-more so than on their occasional night exercises. Bellow replied that stress was the ultimate fatigue generator, and that the team members were not immune to stress, no matter what their training or fitness. That evidently included himself, since after making the pronouncement, Bellow turned and slipped off to sleep, leaving Chavez to do the same after a glass of red Spanish wine.
It was the lead news story in Austria, of course. Popov caught the first bit of it live in a Gasthaus, then more in his hotel room. He sipped orange schnapps while he applied his keen, professional eye to the screen. These antiterror groups all looked pretty much the same, but that was to be expected, since they all trained to do the same thing and worked out of the same international manual first promulgated by the English with their Special Air Service commandos, then followed by the German GSG-9, and then the rest of Europe, followed by the Americans down to the black clothing, which struck Popov as theatrical, but they all had to wear something, and black made more sense than white clothing, didn't it? Of more immediate interest, there in the room with him was the leather attach+й case filled with Dmark banknotes, which he would take to Bern the following day for deposit in his account before flying back to New York. It was remarkable, he thought as he switched the TV off and pulled the bedclothes up, two simple jobs, and he now had just over one million American dollars in his numbered and anonymous account. Whatever his employers wanted him to accomplish for them, he was being well compensated for it, and they didn't seem overly concerned by the expense. So much the better that the money went to a good cause, the Russian thought.
"Thank God," George Winston noted. "Hell, I know that guy. Erwin's good people," the Secretary of the Treasury said on his way out of the White House, where the cabinet meeting had run very long.
"Who did the takedown?"
"Well-" That caught him short. He wasn't supposed to say, and wasn't supposed to know. "What did the news say?"
"Local cops, Vienna police SWAT team, I guess."
"Well, I suppose they learned up on how to do it," SecTreas opined, heading toward his car with his Secret Service detail.
"The Austrians? Who'd they learn it from?"
"Somebody who knows how, I guess," Winston replied, getting into the car.
"So, what's the big deal about it?" Carol Brightling asked the Secretary of the Interior. To her it looked like another case of boys and their toys.
"Nothing, really," the Secretary replied, her own protective detail guiding her to the door of her official car. "Just that what they showed on TV, it was a pretty good job of rescuing all those people. I've been to Austria a few times, and the cops didn't strike me as all that great. Maybe I'm wrong. But George acts like he knows more than he's telling."
"Oh, that's right, Jean, he's 'inner cabinet,' " Dr. Brightling observed. It was something those in the "outer cabinet" didn't like. Of course, Carol Brightling wasn't technically in the cabinet at all. She had a seat against the wall instead of around the table, there only in case the issues of the meeting required a scientific opinion, which they hadn't today. Good news and bad news. She got to listen in on everything, and she took her notes on all that happened in the ornate, stuffy room that overlooked the Rose Garden, while the President controlled the agenda and the pace-badly in today's case, she thought. Tax policy had taken over an hour, and they'd never gotten to use of national forests, which came under the Department of the Interior, which issue had been postponed to the next meeting, a week away.
She didn't have a protective detail, either, not even an office in the White House itself. Previous Presidential Science Advisors had been in the West Wing, but she'd been moved to the Old Executive Office Building. It was a larger and more comfortable office, with a window, which her basement office in the White House would not have had, but though the OEOB was considered part of the white House for administrative and security purposes, it didn't have quite the prestige, and prestige was what it was all about if you were part of the White House staff: Even under this President, who worked pretty hard to treat everyone the same and who wasn't into the status bullshit - there was no avoiding it at this level of government. And so, Carol Brightling clung to her right to have lunch in the White House Mess with the Big Boys and Big Girls of the Administration, and grumbled that to see the President except at his request, she had to go through the Chief of Staff and the appointments secretary to get a few minutes of His Valuable Time. As though she'd ever wasted it. A Secret Service agent opened the door for her with a respectful nod and smile, and she walked into this surpassingly ugly building, then turned right to her office, which at least overlooked the White House. She handed her notes to her (male, of course) secretary on the way in for transcription, then sat down at her desk, fording there a new pile of papers to be read and acted upon. She opened her desk drawer and got herself a starlight mint to suck on as she attacked the,pile. Then on reflection she lifted her TV controller and turned her office television to CNN for a look at what was happening around the world. It was the top of the hour, and the lead story was the thing in Vienna.