"Four-two-double-three," Alice Foorgate said, on picking up the phone. This was the line used exclusively for important voice traffic.
"Mr. Clark, please."
"Yes. Wait, please."
"Mr. Clark, a call on double-three," she said into the intercom.
"This is John Clark," Rainbox Six said, lifting the receiver.
"This is Frederick Callaway at the Home Office. We have a possible emergency situation," the civil servant said.
"Okay, where is it?"
"Just up the road from you, I'm afraid, the Hereford hospital. The voice which called in identified itself as Patrick Casey. That is a codename that the PIRA use to designate their operations."
"Hereford Hospital?" John asked, his hand suddenly cold on the phone.
"That is correct."
"Hold for a second. I want to get one of my people on this line." John put his hand over the receiver. "Alice! Get Alistair on this one right now!"
"Yes, John?"
"Mr. Callaway, this is Alistair Stanley, my second-in command. Please repeat what you just told me."
He did so, then added, "The voice identified two hostages by name, a Nurse Clark, and a Dr. Chavez."
"Oh, shit," John breathed. "I'll get Peter's team moving, John," Stanley said.
"Right. Anything else. Mr. Callaway?"
"That is all we have now. The local police superintendent is attempting to gather more information at this time."
"Okay, thank you. You can reach me at this number if you need me." Clark replaced the receiver in its cradle. "Fuck," he said quietly.
His mind was racing. Whoever had scouted out Rainbow had done so for a reason, and those two names had not been an accident. This was a direct challenge to him and his people-and they were using his wife and daughter as a weapon. His next thought was that he would have to pass command over to A1 Stanley, and the next-that his wife and daughter were in mortal danger… and he was helpless.
"Christ," Major Peter Covington muttered over his phone. "Yes, sir. Let me get moving here." He stood and walked into his squad bay. "Attention, we have some business. Everyone get ready to move immediately."
Team-I's members stood and headed to their lockers. It didn't seem like a drill, but they handled it as though it were. Master Chief Mike Chin was the first to be suited up. He came to see his boss, who was just putting on his body armor.
"What gives, skipper?"
"PIRA, local hospital, holding Clark's and Ding's wives as hostages."
"What's that?" Chin asked, blinking his eyes hard.
"You heard me, Mike."
"Oh, shit. Okay." Chin went back into the squad bay. '`Saddle up, people, this ain't no fuckin' drill."
Malloy had just sprinted to his Night Hawk. Sergeant Nance was already there, pulling red-flagged safety pins from their plug points and holding them up for the pilot to confirm the count.
"Looking good, let's start 'er up, Lieutenant."
"Turning one," Harrison confirmed, as Sergeant Nance reboarded the aircraft and strapped on his move-around safety belt, then shifted to the left-side door to check the tail of the Night Hawk.
"Tail rotor is clear, Colonel."
Malloy acknowledged that information as he watched his engine instruments spooling up. Then he keyed his radio again. "Command, this is Bear, we are turnin' and burnin'. What do you want us to do, over?"
"Bear, this is Five," Stanley's voice came back, to Malloy's surprise. "Lift off and orbit the local hospital. That is the site of the current incident."
"Say again, Five, over."
"Bear, we have subjects holding the local hospital. They are holding Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Chavez as hostages. They've identified both of them by name. Your orders are to lift off and orbit the hospital."
"Roger, copy that. Bear is lifting off now." His left hand pulled the collective, climbing the Sikorsky into the sky.
"Did I hear that right, Colonel?" Harrison asked.
"You must have. Fuck," the Marine observed. Somebody was grabbing the tiger by the balls, Malloy thought. He looked down to see a pair of trucks speeding off the base, heading in the same direction as he. That would be Covington and Team-1, he thought. With a little more reflection, he took the Night Hawk to four thousand feet, called the local air-traffic-control center to tell them what he was doing, and got a transponder code so that they could track him properly.
There were four police vehicles thereon, blocking the access to the hospital parking lots but doing nothing else, Popov saw through his binoculars. The constables inside were just looking, all standing outside their cars, two of them holding revolvers but not pointing them at anything but the ground.
In one truck, Covington relayed the information he had. In the other, Chin did it. The troopers were as shocked as they had ever allowed themselves to be, having considered themselves and their families to be ipso facto immune to this sort of thing because nobody had ever been foolish enough to try something like this. You might walk up to a lion cage and prod him with a stick, but not when there weren't any bars between you and him. And you never ever messed with the lion's cubs, did you? Not if you wanted to be alive at sundown. This was family for all of them. Attacking the wife of the Rainbow commander was a slap in all their faces, an act of incomprehensible arrogance-and Chavez's wife was pregnant. She represented two innocent lives, both of them belonging to one of the people with whom they exercised every morning and with whom they had the occasional pint in the evening, a fellow soldier, one of their team. They all flipped on their radios and sat back, holding their individual weapons, allowing their thoughts to wander, but not very far.
"Al, I have to let you run this operation," John said, standing by his desk and preparing to leave. Dr. Bellow was in the room, along with Bill Tawney.
"I understand, John. You know how good Peter and his team are."
A long breath. "Yeah." There wasn't much of anything else to say right then.
Stanley turned to the others. "Bill?"
"They used the right codename. `Patrick Casey' is not known to the press. It's a name they use to let us know that their operation is real-usually used with bomb threats and such. Paul?"
"Identifying your wife and daughter is a direct challenge to us. They're telling us that they know about Rainbow, that they know who we are, and, of course, who you are, John. They're announcing their expertise and their willingness to go all the way." The psychiatrist shook his head. "But if they're really PIRA, that means they're Catholic. I can work on that. Let's get me out there and establish contact, shall we?"
Tim Noonan was already in his personal car, his tactical gear in the back. At least this was easy for him. There were two cell-phone nodes in the Hereford area, and he'd been to both of them while experimenting with his lock-out software. He drove to the farther of the two first. It was a fairly typical setup, the usual candelabra tower standing in a fenced enclosure with a truck type trailer-called a caravan over here, he remembered. A car was parked just outside. Noonan pulled alongside and hopped out without bothering to lock it up. Ten seconds later, he pulled open the door to the caravan.
"What's this?" the technician inside asked.
"I'm from Hereford. We're taking this cell off-line right now."
"Says who?"
"Says me!" Noonan turned so that the guy could see the holstered pistol on his hip. "Call your boss. He knows who I am and what I do." And with no further talk, Noonan walked to the master-power panel and flipped the breaker, killing transmissions from the tower. Then he sat in front of the computer control system and inserted the floppy disk he'd carried in his shirt pocket. Two mouse clicks and forty seconds later the system was modified. Only a number with a 777 prefix would be accepted now.