Tawney slid all the papers, including his notes, back into the thick manila folder before turning to work on the foredoomed request. He could only conclude now that there still was a terror network, and that someone known to its members still had the keys to that nasty little kingdom. Well, maybe the Germans would learn more, and maybe the data would find its way to his desk. If it did, Tawney wondered, would John Clark and Alistair Stanley be able to arrange a strike of their own against them? No, more likely that was a job for the police of whatever nation or city was involved, and that would probably be enough. You didn't have to be all that clever to bag one. The French had proven that with Carlos, after all.
Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez was not a happy man, but the cell in the Le Sante prison was not calculated to make him so. Once the most feared terrorist in the world, he'd killed men with his own hand, and done it as casually as zipping his fly. He'd once had every police and intelligence service in the world on his trail, and laughed at them all from the security of his safe houses in the former Eastern Europe. There, he'd read press speculation on who he really was and for whom he'd really worked, along with KGB documents on what the foreign services were doing to catch him… until Eastern Europe had fallen, and with it the nation-state support for his revolutionary acts. And so he'd ended up in Sudan, where he'd decided to take his situation a little more seriously. Somc cosmetic surgery had been in order, and so he'd gone to a trusted physician for the surgery, submitted to the general anesthesia
–and awakened aboard a French business jet, strapped down to a stretcher, with a Frenchman saying, "Bonjour, Monsieur Chacal," with the beaming smile of a hunter who'd just captured the most dangerous of tigers with a loop of string. Tried, finally, for the murder of a cowardly informant and two French counterintelligence officers in 1975, he'd defended himself with panache, he thought, not that it mattered except to his own capacious ego. He'd proclaimed himself a "professional revolutionary" to a nation that had had its own revolution two hundred years before, and didn't feel the need for another.
But the worst part of it was being tried as a… criminal, as though his work hadn't had any political consequences. He'd tried hard to set that aside, but the prosecutor hadn't let go, his voice dripping with contempt in his summation - actually worse than that, because he'd been so matter-of-fact in the presentation of his evidence, living his contempt for later. Sanchez had kept his dignity intact throughout, but inwardly he'd felt the pain of a trapped animal, and had to call on his courage to keep his mien neutral at all times. And the ultimate result had hardly been a surprise. The prison had already been a hundred years old on the day of his birth, and was built along the lines of a medieval dungeon. His small cell had but a single window, and he was not tall enough to see out the bottom of it. The guards, however, had a camera and watched him with it twenty-four hours a day, like a very special animal in a very special cage. He was as alone as a man could be, allowed no contact with other prisoners, and allowed out of his cage only once per day for an hour of "exercise" in a bleak prison yard. He could expect little more for the remainder of his life, Carlos knew, and his courage quailed at that. The worst thing was the boredom. He had books to read, but nowhere to walk beyond the few square meters of his cage-and worst of all, the whole world knew that the Jackal was caged forever and could therefore be forgotten.
'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."