"Weapons tight" was the reply from Clark. "I repeat, weapons are tight. Acknowledge."
"Roger, Six, weapons tight." Sergeant Johnston took his finger out of the trigger guard. What was happening here?
"Bugger," Covington said. They were only forty meters away. He and Chavez had an easy direct line of sight. The little girl looked ill in addition to being scared; she was slumped to her left in the chair, trying to look up and back at the man pushing her. He was about forty, they both thought, a mustache but no beard, average-normal in height, weight, and build, with dark eyes that displayed nothing. The park was so quiet now, so empty of people, that they could hear the scrape of the rubber tires on the stone courtyard.
"Where is Momma?" Anna asked in English she'd learned in school.
"You will see her in a moment," Nine promised. He wheeled her around the curving entrance to the castle. It circled around a statue, took a gentle upward and clockwise turn, then led down to the courtyard. He stopped the chair in the middle of the path. It was about five meters wide, and evenly paved.
Andre looked around. There had to be policemen out here, but he saw nothing moving at all, except for the cars on the Dive Bomber, which he didn't have to look at to see. The familiar noise was enough. It really was too bad. Nine reached into his belt, took out his pistol, and
"-Gun, he's got a pistol out!" Homer Johnston reported urgently. "Oh. fuck. he's gonna -"
–The gun fired into Anna's back, driving straight through her heart. A gout of blood appeared on the flat child chest, and her head dropped forward. The man pushed the wheelchair just then, and it rolled down the curving path, caroming off the stone wall and making it all the way into the flat courtyard, where it finally stopped.
Covington drew his Beretta and started to bring it up. It would not have been an easy shot, but he had nine rounds in his pistol, and that was enough, but-
"Weapons tight!" the radio earpiece thundered. "Weapons tight! Do not fire," Clark ordered them.
"Fuck!" Chavez rasped next to Peter Covington.
"Yes," the Englishman agreed. "Quite." He holstered his pistol, watching the man turn and walk back into the shelter of the stone castle.
"I'm on target, Rifle Two-One is on target!" Johnston's voice told them all.
"Do not fire. This is Six, weapons are tight, goddamnit!"
"Fuck!" Clark snarled in the command center. He slammed his fist on the table. "Fuck!" Then the phone rang.
"Yes?" Bellow said, sitting next to the Rainbow commander.
"You had your warning. Turn the electricity back on, or we will kill another," One said.
CHAPTER 15
"There was nothing we could have done, John. Not a thing," Bellow said, giving voice to words that the others didn't have the courage to say.
"Now what?" Clark asked.
"Now I guess we turn the electricity back on."
As they watched the TV monitors, three men raced to the child. Two wore the tricornio of the Guardia Civil. The third was Dr. Hector Weiler.
Chavez and Covington watched the same thing from a closer perspective. Weiler wore a white lab coat, the global uniform for physicians, and his race to reach the child ended abruptly as he touched the warm but still body. The slump of his shoulders told the tale, even from fifty meters away. The bullet had gone straight through her heart. The doctor said something to the cops, and one of them wheeled the chair down and out of the courtyard. turning to go past the two Rainbow members. "Hold it, doc," Chavez called, walking over to look. In this moment Ding remembered that his own wife held a new life in her belly, even now probably moving and kicking while Patsy was sitting in their living room, watching TV or reading a book. The little girl's face was at peace now, as though asleep, and he could not hold his hand back from touching her soft hair. "What's the story, doc?"
"She was quite ill, probably terminal. I will have a file on her back at my office. When these children come here, I get a summary of their condition should an emergency arise." The physician bit his lip and looked up. "She was probably dying, but not yet dead, not yet completely without hope." Weiler was the son of a Spanish mother and a German father who'd emigrated to Spain after the Second World War. He'd studied hard to become a physician and surgeon, and this act, this murder of a child, was the negation of all that. Someone had decided to make all his training and study worthless. He'd never known rage, quiet and sad though it was, but now he did. "Will you kill them?"
Chavez looked up. There were no tears in his eyes. Perhaps they'd come later, Domingo Chavez thought, his hand still on the child's head. Her hair wasn't very long, and he didn't know that it had grown back after her last chemotherapy protocol. He did know that she was supposed to be alive, and that in watching her death, he had failed to do that which he'd dedicated his life to doing. "Si, " he told the doctor. "We will kill them. Peter?" He waved at his colleague, and together they accompanied the others to the doctor's office. They walked over slowly. There was no reason to go fast now.
"That'll do," Malloy thought, surveying the still-wet paint on the side of the Night Hawk. POLICIA, the lettering said. "Ready, Harrison?"
"Yes, sir. Sergeant Nance, time to move."
"Yessir." The crew chief hopped in, buckled his safety belt, and watched the pilot go through the startup sequence. "All clear aft," he said over the intercom, after leaning out to check. "Tail rotor is clear, Colonel."
"Then I guess it's time to fly." Malloy applied power and lifted the Night Hawk into the sky. Then he keyed his tactical radio. "Rainbow, this is the Bear, over."
"Bear, this is Rainbow Six, reading you five by five, over."
"Bear's in the air, sir, be there in seven minutes."
"Roger, please orbit the area until we tell you otherwise."
"Roger that, sir. I'll notify when we commence the orbit. Out." There was no particular hurry. Malloy dipped the nose and headed into the gathering darkness. The sun was almost down now, and the park lights in the distance were all coming on.
"Who is this?" Chavez asked.
"Francisco de la Cruz," the man replied. His leg was bandaged, and he looked to be in pain.
"Ah, yes, we saw you on the videotape," Covington said. He saw the sword and shield in the corner and turned to nod his respect at the seated man. Peter lifted the spatha and hefted it briefly. At close range it would be formidable as hell, not the equal of his MP-10, but probably a very satisfying weapon for all that.
"A child? They kill a child?" de la Cruz asked.
Dr. Weiler was at his file cabinet. "Anna root, age ten and a half," he said, reading over the documents that had preceded the little one. "Metastatic osteosarcoma, terminally ill… Six weeks left, her doctor says here. Osteo, that is a bad one." Against the wall, the two Spanish cops lifted the body from the chair and laid it tenderly on the examining table, then covered it with a sheet. One looked close to tears, blocked only by the cold rage that made his hands tremble.
"John must feel pretty shitty about now," Chavez said.
"He had to do it, Ding. It wasn't the right time to take action-"
"I know that, Peter! But how the fuck do we tell her that?" A pause. "Doc, you have any coffee around here?"
"There." Weiler pointed.
Chavez walked to the urn and poured some into a foam cup. "Up and down, sandwich 'em?"
Covington nodded. "Yes, I think so."
Chavez emptied the cup and tossed it into a wastebasket. "Okay, let's get set up." They left the office without another word and made their way in the shadows back to the underground, thence to the alternate command center.