He turned to walk over to the German Strasse, and was greeted by the oom-pah music of a marching band - why didn't they play the Horst Wessel Lied? Andre wondered. It would have gone well with the damned green Stuka. Why not dress the band in SS black, maybe have compulsory shower baths for some of the guests wasn't that part of European history, too? Damn this place! Andre thought. The symbology was designed to incur the rage of anyone with the most rudimentary political awareness. But, no, the masses had no memory, no more than they had any understanding of political and economic history. He was glad they'd chosen this place to make their political statement. Maybe this would get the idiots to think, just a little bit, perhaps, about the shape of the world. The mis-shape, Andre corrected himself, allowing himself a very un-Worldpark frown at the sunny day and smiling crowds.
There, he told himself. That was the spot. The children loved it. There was a crowd of them there even now, dragging, pulling the hands of their parents, dressed in their shorts and sneakers, many wearing hats, with helium-filled balloons tied to their little wrists. And there was a special one, a little girl in a wheelchair, wearing the Special Wish button that told every ride attendant to allow her on without the need to stand in line. A sick one, Dutch from the style of her parents' dress, Andre thought, probably dying from cancer, sent here by some charity or other modeled on the American Make-A-Wish Foundation, which paid for the parents to bring their dying whelp here for one first and last chance to see the Trolls and other cartoon characters, their rights licensed to Worldpark for sale and other exploitation. How brightly their sick little eyes shone here, Andre saw, on their quick road to the grave, and how solicitous the staff was to them, as though that mattered to anyone, this bourgeois sentimentality upon which the entire park was founded. Well. They'd see about all that, wouldn't they? If there were ever a place to make a political statement, to bring the attention of all Europe and all the world to what really mattered, this was it.
Ding finished his first pint of beer. He'd have only one more. It was a rule that no one had written down and that no one had actually enforced, but by common agreement nobody on the teams had more than two at a time while the teams were on-call, as they almost always were-and besides, two pints of Brit beer were quite a lot, really. Anyway, all the members of Team-2 were home having dinner with their families. Rainbow was an unusual outfit in that sense. Every soldier was married, with a wife and at least one kid. The marriages even appeared to be stable. John didn't know if that was a mark of special operations troopers, but these two legged tigers who worked for him were pussycats at home, and the dichotomy was both amazing and amusing to him.
Sandy served the main course, a fine roast beef. John rose to get the carving knife so that he could do his duty. Patsy looked at the huge hunk of dead steer and thought briefly about mad-cow disease, but decided that her mother had cooked the meat thoroughly. Besides, she liked good roast beef, cholesterol and all, and her mom was the world's champ at making gravy.
"How's it going at the hospital?" Sandy asked her physician daughter.
"OB is pretty routine. We haven't had a single hard one in the last couple of weeks. I've kinda hoped for a placenta previa, maybe even a placenta abrupta to see if we have the drill down, but-"
"Don't wish for those, Patsy. I've seen them happen in the ER. Total panic, and the OB better have his act together, or things can go to hell in a New York minute. Dead mother and a dead child."
"Ever see that happen, Mom?"
"No, but I've seen it come close to that twice in Williamsburg. Remember Dr. O'Connor?"
"Tall, skinny guy, right?"
"Yeah." Sandy nodded. "Thank God he was on duty for the second one. The resident came unglued, but Jimmy came in and took over. I was sure we'd lose that one."
"Well, if you know what you're doing- "
"If you know what you're doing, it's still tense. Routine is fine with me. I've done ER duty too long," Sandy Clark went on. "I love a quiet night when I can get caught up on my reading."
"Voice of experience," John Clark observed, serving the meat.
"Makes sense to me," Domingo Chavez agreed, stroking his wife's arm. "How's the little guy?"
"Kicking up a storm right now," Patsy replied, moving her husband's hand to her belly. It never failed, she saw The way his eyes changed when he felt it. Always a warm, passionate boy, Ding just about melted when he felt the movement in her womb.
"Baby," he said quietly.
"Yeah." She smiled.
"Well, no nasty surprises when the time comes, okay?" Chavez said next. "I want everything to go routinely. This is exciting enough. Don't want to faint or anything."
"Right!" Patsy laughed. "You? Faint? My commando?"
"You never know, honey," her father observed, taking his seat. "I've seen tough guys fold before."
"Not this one, Mr. C," Domingo noted with a raised eyebrow.
"More like a fireman," Sandy said from her seat. "The way you guys just hang around 'til something happens."
"That's true," Domingo agreed. "And if the fire never starts, it's okay with us."
"You really mean that?" Patsy asked.
"Yes, honey," her husband told her. "Going out isn't fun. We've been lucky so far. We haven't lost a hostage."
"But that'll change," Rainbow Six told his subordinate.
"Not if I have anything to say about it, John."
"Ding," Patsy said, looking up from her food. "Have you I mean… I mean, have you actually-"
The look answered the question, though the words were "Let's not talk about that."
"We don't carve notches in our guns, Pats," John told his daughter. "Bad form, you see."
"Noonan came over today," Chavez went on. "Says he's got a new toy to look at."
"What's it cost?" John asked first of all.
"Not much, he says, not much at all. Delta just started looking at it."
"What's it do?"
"It finds people."
"Huh? Is this classified?"
"Commercial product, and, no, it's not classified at all. But it finds people."
"How?"
"Tracks the human heart up to five hundred meters away."
"What?" Patsy asked. "How's it do that?"
"Not sure, but Noonan says the guys at Fort Bragg are going nuts-I mean, real enthusiastic about it. It's called 'Lifeguard' or something like that. Anyway, he asked the headquarters snake people to send us a demo team."
"We'll see," John said, buttering his roll. "Great bread, Sandy."
"It's that little bakery on Millstone Road. Isn't the bread wonderful over here?"
"And everybody knocks Brit food," John agreed. "The Idiots. Just what I was raised with."
"All this red meat," Patsy worried aloud. "My cholesterol is under one-seventy, honey," Ding reminded her. "Lower than yours. I guess it's all that good exercise. "
"Wait until you get older," John groused. He was nudging two hundred for the first time in his life, exercise and all.
"No hurry here." Ding chuckled. "Sandy, you are still one of the best cooks around."
"Thanks, Ding."
"Just so our brains don't rot from eating this English cow." A Spanish grin. "Well, this is safer than zip-lining out of the Night Hawk. George and Sam are still hurtin'. Maybe we ought to try different gloves."