Rainbow Six

"Jesus," Noonan concluded, looking over at the entrance to the pump room. The three of them headed over to a concession area and got half-liter cups of Coca-Cola, then sat down to watch the blue-painted door. People walked past it, but nobody actually approached it.

"Tim?"

"Yeah, Ding?"

"Do you have arrest powers for this?"

The FBI agent nodded. "I think so, conspiracy to commit murder, the crime originated in America, and the subject is an American citizen, so, yes, that should hold up. I can take it a step further. If we kidnap his ass and bring him to America, the courts don't care how somebody got there. Once he's in front of a United States District Court judge, how he came to be there doesn't interest the court at all."

"How the hell do we get him out of the country?" Chavez wondered next. He activated his cell phone.

Clark picked up the STU-4's receiver. It took five seconds for Ding's encryption system to handshake with his. A computerized voice finally said Line is secure, followed by two beeps. "Yeah?"

"John, it's Ding. I got a question."

"Shoot."

"If we bag this Gearing guy, then what? How the hell do we get him back to America?"

"Good question. Let me work on that."

"Right." And the line went dead. The logical place to call was Langley, but, as it turned out, the DCI was not in his office. The call was routed to his home.

"John, what the hell is going on down there, anyway?" Ed Foley asked from his bed.

Clark told the DCI what he knew. That took about five minutes. "I have Ding staking out the only place this can be done, and-"

"Jesus Christ, John, is this for real?" Ed Foley asked, somewhat breathlessly.

"We'll know if this Gearing guy shows up with a package containing the bug, I suppose," Clark replied. "If he does, how do we get Ding, his people, and this Gearing guy back to the States?"

"Let me work on that. What's your number?" John gave it to him and Ed Foley wrote it down on a pad. "How long have you known about this?"

"Less than two hours. The Russian guy is right here with me. We're in an FBI safe house in New York City."

"Is Carol Brightling implicated in this?"

"I'm not sure. Her ex-husband sure as hell is," Clark answered.

Foley closed his eyes and thought. "You know, she called me about you guys a while back, asked a couple of questions. She's the one who shook the new radios loose from E-Systems. She talked to me as though she was briefed in on Rainbow."

"She's not on my list, Ed," John pointed out. He'd personally approved all of the people cleared into the Rainbow compartment.

"Yeah, I'll look at that, too. Okay, let me check around and get back to you."

"Right." Clark replaced the receiver. "We have an FBI guy with the Sydney team," he told the others.

"Who?" Sullivan asked."Tim Noonan. Know him?"

"Used to be tech support with HRT?"

Clark nodded. "That's the guy."

"I've heard about him. Supposed to be pretty smart."

"He is. He saved our ass in Hereford, probably my wife and daughter, too."

"So, he can arrest this Gearing mutt, nice and legal."

"You know, I've never worried all that much about enforcing the law-mainly I enforce policy, but not law."

"I suppose things are a little different with the Agency, eh?" Sullivan asked, with a smile. The James Bond factor never really goes away, even with people who are supposed to know better.

"Yeah, some."

Gearing left his hotel, carrying a backpack like many of the other people on the street, and flagged a cab just outside. The marathon was about half an hour from its conclusion. He found himself looking around at the crowded sidewalks and all the people on them. The Australians seemed a friendly people, and what he'd seen of their country was pleasant enough. He wondered about the aborigines, and what might happen to them, and the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, and other such tribal groupings around the world, so removed from normal life that they wouldn't be exposed to Shiva in any way. If fate smiled upon them, well, he decided, that was okay with him. These kinds of people didn't harm Nature in any way, and they were insufficiently numerous to do harm even if they wanted to, which they didn't, worshipping the trees and the thunder as the Project members did. Were there enough of them to be a problem? Probably not. The Bushmen might spread out, but their folkways wouldn't allow them to change their tribal character very much, and though they'd increase somewhat in number, they'd probably not even do much of that. The same with the "abos" of Australia. There hadn't been many of them before the Europeans had arrived, after all, and they'd had millennia to sweep over the continent. So the Project would spare many people, wouldn't it? It was vaguely comforting to the retired colonel that Shiva would kill only those whose lifestyles made them the enemies of Nature. That this criterion included everyone he could see out the cab windows troubled him little.