Rainbow Six

Like most people, Wil Gearing saw this on his hotel room TV as he packed. He'd be renting diving gear tomorrow, the former Army colonel told himself, and he'd treat himself to the best diving area in the world, in the knowledge that the oceanic pollution that was harming that most lovely of environments would soon be ending. He got all of his clothing organized in a pair of Tumi wheeled suitcases and set them by the door of the room. He'd be diving while all the ignorant plague victims flew off to their homes across the world, not knowing what they had and what they'd be spreading. He wondered how many would be lost to Phase One of the Project. Computer projections predicted anywhere from six to thirty million, but Gearing thought those numbers conservative. The higher the better, obviously, because the "A" vaccine had to be something that people all over the globe would cry out for, thus hastening their own deaths. The real cleverness of it was that if medical tests on the vaccine recipients showed Shiva antibodies, they'd be explained away by the vaccine-"A" was a live virus vaccine, as everyone would know. Just a little more live than anyone would realize until it was a little too late.

It was ten hours later in New York, and there in the safe house Clark, Popov, Sullivan, and Chatham sat, watching network coverage of the Olympic games, like millions of other Americans. There was nothing else for them to do. It was boring for them all, as none were marathoners, and the steps of the leading runners were endlessly the same.

"The heat must be terrible to run in," Sullivan observed.

"It's not fun," Clark agreed.

"Ever run in a race like this?"

"No." John shook his head. "But I've had to run away from things in my time, mainly Vietnam. It was pretty hot there, too."

"You were there?" Popov asked.

"A year and a half's worth. Third SOG-Special Operations Group."

"Doing what?"

"Mainly looking and reporting. Some real operations, raids, assassinations, that sort of thing, taking out people we really didn't like." Thirty years ago, John thought. Thirtyyears. He'd given his youth to one conflict, and his manhood to another, and now, in his approaching golden years, what would he be doing? Was it really possible, what Popov had told him? It seemed so unreal, but the Ebola scare had been real as hell. He remembered flying all over the world about that one, and he remembered the news coverage that had shaken his country to its very foundations-and he remembered the terrible revenge that America had taken as a result. Most of all, he remembered lying with Ding Chavez on the flat roof of a Tehran dwelling and guiding two smart-bombs in to take the life of the man responsible for it all, in the first application of the president's new doctrine. But if this were real, if this "project" that Popov had told them about were what he said it was, then what would his country do? Was it a matter for law enforcement or something else? Would you put people like this on trial? If not, then-what? Laws hadn't been written for crimes of this magnitude, and the trial would be a horrid circus, spreading news that would shake the foundations of the entire world. That one corporation could have the power to do such a thing as this…

Clark had to admit to himself that his mind hadn't expanded enough to enclose theentire thought. He'd acted upon it, but not really accepted it. It was too big a concept for that.

"Dmitriy, why did you say they are doing this?"

"John Clark, they are druids, they are people who worship nature as though it were a god. They say that the animals belong in places, but people do not. They say they want to restore nature-and to do that they are willing to kill all of mankind. This is madness, I know, but it is what they told me. In my room in Kansas, they have videotapes and magazines that proclaim these beliefs. I never knew such people existed. They say that nature hates us, that the planet hates us for what we-all men-have done. But the planet has no mind, and nature has no voice with which to speak. Yet they believe that they do have these things. It's amazing," the Russian concluded. "It is as if I have found a new, mad religious movement whose god requires our deaths, human sacrifice, whatever you wish to call it." He waved his hands in frustration at his inability to understand it.

"Do we know what this guy Gearing looks like?" Noonan asked."No," Chavez said. "Nobody told me. I suppose Colonel Wilkerson knows, but I didn't want to ask him."

"Christ, Ding, is this whole thing possible?" the FBI agent asked next.

"I guess we'll know in a few hours, man. I know something like this happened once before, and I know John and I helped take out the bastard who did it to us. On the technical side, I'd have to ask Patsy about it. I don't know biology. She does."