"Bellow for Chavez."
"Yeah, doc, this is Ding."
"I have a preliminary profile on the subjects."
"Shoot - Team, you listening?" There followed an immediate cacophony of overlapping responses. "Yeah, Ding." "Copying, leader." "Ja. " And the rest. "Okay, doc, lay it out," Chavez ordered.
"First, this is not a well-planned operation. That fits the profile for the suspected leader, Ernst Model, German national, age forty-one, formerly of the Baader-Meinhof organization. Tends to be impetuous, very quick to use violence when cornered or frustrated. If he threatens to kill someone, we have to believe he's not kidding. His current mental state is very, repeat, very dangerous. He knows he has a blown operation. He knows that his likelihood of success is slim. His hostages are his only assets, and he will regard them as expendable assets. Do not expect Stockholm Syndrome to set in with this case, people. Model is too sociopathic for that. Neither would I expect negotiations to be very useful. I think that it is very likely that an assault resolution will be necessary tonight or tomorrow."
"Anything else?" Chavez asked.
"Not at this time," Dr. Bellow replied. "I will monitor further developments with the local cops."
Noonan had taken his time selecting the proper tools, and:sow he was creeping along the outside wall of the bank Building, below the level of the windows. At every one of v hem, he raised his head slowly and carefully to see if the interior curtains allowed any view of the inside. The second one did, and there Noonan affixed a tiny viewing system. This was a lens, roughly the shape of a cobra's head, but only a few millimeters across, which led by fiber-optic gable to a TV camera set in his black bag around the corner. He placed another at the lower corner of the bank's -lass door, then worked his way back, crawling feet first, lowly and laboriously, to a place where he could stand. that done, he walked all the way around the block to repeat the procedure from the other side of the building, here he was able to make three placements, one again on he door, and two on windows whose curtains were an inch shorter than they ought to have been. He also placed microphones in order to pick up whatever sound might be available. The large plate-glass windows ought to resonate nicely, he thought, though this would apply to extraneous exterior sounds as well as to those originating inside the building.
All the while, the Swiss TV crews were speaking with the senior on-site policeman, who spent a great deal of time saying that the terrorists were serious - he'd been coached by Dr. Bellow to speak of them with respect. They were probably watching television inside, and building up their self-esteem worked for the team's purposes at the moment. In any case, it denied the terrorists knowledge of what Tim Noonan had done on the outside.
"Okay," the techie said in his place on a side street. All the video displays were up and running. They showed little. The size of the lenses didn't make for good imagery, despite the enhancement program built into his computer. "Here's one shooter… and another." They were within ten meters of the front of the building. The rest of the people visible were sitting on the white marble floor, in the center for easy coverage. "The guy said four, right?"
"Yeah," Chavez answered. "But not how many hostages, not exactly anyway."
"Okay, this is a bad guy, I think, behind the teller places… hmph, looks like he's checking the cash drawers… and that's a bag of some sort. You figure they visited the vault?"
Chavez turned. "Eddie?"
"Greed," Price agreed. "Well, why not? It is a bank, after all."
"Okay." Noonan switched displays on the computer screen. "I got blueprints of the building, and this is the layout."
"Teller cages, vault, toilets." Price traced his finger over the screen. "Back door. Seems simple enough. Access to the upper floors?"
"Here," Noonan said. "Actually outside the bank itself, but the basement is accessible to them here, stairs down, and a separate exit to the alley in back."
"Ceiling construction?" Chavez asked.
"Rebarred concrete slab, forty centimeters thick. That's solid as hell. Same with the walls and floor. This building was made to last." So, there would be no explosives-forced entry through walls, floor, or ceiling.
"So, we can go in the front door or the back door, and that's it. And that puts number four bad guy at the back door." Chavez keyed his radio. "Chavez for Rifle Two Two."
"Ja, Weber here."
"Any windows in the back, anything in the door, peephole, anything like that, Dieter?"
"Negative. It appears to be a heavy steel door, nothing in it that I can see," the sniper said, tracing his telescopic sight over the target yet again, and again finding nothing but blank painted steel.
"Okay, Eddie, we blow the rear door with Primacord, three men in that way. Second later, we blow the front glass doors, toss flash-bangs, and move in when they're looking the wrong way. Two and two through the front. You and me go left. Louis and George go right."
"Are they wearing body armor?" Price asked.
Nothing that Herr Richter saw," Noonan responded, "and nothing visible here-but there ain't no head protection anyway, right?" It would be nothing more than a ten-meter shot, an easy distance for the H amp;K shoulder weapons.
"Quite." Price nodded. "Who leads the rear-entry:cam?"
"Scotty, I think. Paddy does the explosives." Connolly was the best man on the team for that, and both men knew it. Chavez made an important mental note that the subteams had to be more firmly established. To this point he'd kept all his people in the same drawer. That he would have to change as soon as they got back to Hereford.
"Vega?"
"Oso backs us up, but I don't think we'll have much use for him on this trip." Julio Vega had become their heavy machine gunner, slinging a laser-sighted M-60 7.62-mm machine gun for really serious work, but there wasn't much use for that now-and wouldn't be, unless everything went totally to hell.
"Noonan, send this picture to Scotty."
"Right." He moved the mouse-pointer and started transmitting everything to the team's various computers.
"The question now is when." Ding checked his watch. "Back to the doe."
"Yes, sir." Bellow had spent his time with Herr Richter. Three stiff shots had calmed him down nicely. Even his English had improved markedly. Bellow was walking him through the event for the sixth time when Chavez and Price showed up again.
"His eyes, they are blue, like ice. Like ice," Richter repeated. "He is not a man like most men. He should be in a cage, with the animals at the zoo." The businessman shuddered involuntarily.
"Does he have an accent?" Price asked.
"Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too. The others, all Bavarian accents."
"The Bundes Kriminal Amt will find that useful, Ding," Price observed. The BKA was the German counterpart to the American FBI. "Why not have the local police check the area for a car with German license plates-from Bavaria? Perhaps there's a driver about."
"Good one." Chavez left and ran over to the Swiss cops, whose chief got on his radio at once. Probably a dry hole, Chavez thought. But you didn't know until you drilled it. They had to have come here one way or another. Another mental note. Check for that on every job.
Roebling came over next, carrying his cell phone. "It is time," he said, "to speak with them again."
"Yo, Tim," Chavez said over his radio. "Come to the rally point."
Noonan was there in under a minute. Chavez pointed him to Roebling's phone. Noonan took it, popped the back off, and attached a small green circuit board with a thin wire hanging from it. Then he pulled a cell phone from a thigh pocket and handed it over to Chavez. "There. You'll hear everything they say."