Rainbow Six

Henriksen was just inside the treeline, hoping that his people had the brains to sit still once they found good spots. He worried about the incoming soldiers, if that's what they were. The Project people were a little too eager arid a little too dumb. His radio crackled with voices acknowledging his order, except for two.

"Killgore and Maclean, report in." Nothing. "John, Kirk, where the hell are you?"

"That's the pair we took out," Pierce called into Command. "Want me to let him know?"

"Negative, Pierce, you know better than that!" Clark replied angrily.

"No sense of humor, our chief," Loiselle observed to his partner, with a Gallic shrug.

"Who's closest to them?" the voice on the radio asked next.

"Me and Dawson," another voice answered.

"Okay, Berg and Dawson, move north, take your time, and see what you can see, okay?"

"Okay, Bill," yet another voice said.

"More business coming our way, Louis," Pierce said.

"Oui, " Loiselle agreed. He pointed. "That tree, Mike." It had to be three meters across at the base, Pierce saw. You could build a house from the lumber from just that one. A big house, too.

"Pierce and Loiselle, Command, two targets just started moving toward you, almost due south, they're close together."

Dave Dawson was a man trained in the United States Army fifteen years before, and he knew enough to be worried. He told Berg to stay close behind him, and the scientist did, as Dawson led the way.

"Command, Patterson, I have movement to my direct front, about two hundred meters out."

"That's about right," Noonan said. "They're heading straight for Mike and Louis."

"Patterson, Command, let 'em go."

"Roger," Hank Patterson acknowledged.

"This isn't very fair," Noonan observed, looking up from his tactical picture.

"Timothy, `fair' means I bring all my people home alive. Fuck the others," Clark responded.

"You say so, boss," the FBI agent agreed. Together, he and Clark watched the blips move toward the ones labeled L and P. Five minutes after that, both of the unidentified blips dropped off the screen and did not return.

"That's two more kills for the our guys, John."

"Jesus, this thing's magic," Clark said after Pierce and Loiselle called in to confirm what the instrument had already told them.

"Chavez to Command."

"Okay, Ding, go," Clark responded.

"Can we use that instrument to move in on them?"

"I think so. Tim, can we steer our guys in behind them, like?"

"Sure. I can see where everybody is, just a question of keeping them well clear until we bend 'em around and bring them in close."

"Domingo, Noonan says he can do this, but it'll take time to do it right, and you guys'll have to use your heads."

"I'll do the best I can, jefe, " Chavez called back.

It was twenty minutes before Henriksen tried to raise Dawson and Berg, only to find that they were not answering. There was something bad happening out there, but he didn't have a clue. Dawson was a former soldier, and Killgore an experienced and skilled hunter-and yet they'd fallen off the earth without a trace? What was happening here? There were soldiers out there, yes, but nobody was that good. He had little choice but to leave his people out there.

Patterson moved first, along with Scotty McTyler, heading west northwest for three hundred meters, then turning south, moving slowly and silently, blessing the surprisingly bare ground in the forest-the ground got little sunlight to allow grass to grow here. Steve Lincoln and George Tomlinson also moved as a team, steering around two bad-guy blips to their north, and maneuvering right behind them.

"We have our targets," McTyler reported in his Scottish burr. On Noonan's screen they appeared to be less than a hundred meters away, directly behind them.

"Take 'em down," Clark ordered.

Both men were facing east, away from the Rainbow troopers, one sheltering behind a tree and the other lying on the ground.

The standing one was Mark Waterhouse. Patterson took careful aim and loosed his three-round burst. The impacts pushed him against the tree, and he dropped his rifle, which clattered to the ground. That caused the lying one to turn, and grip his own rifle tighter when he was hit, and the reflexive action of his hand held the trigger down, resulting in ten rounds fired on full-automatic into the forest.

"Oh, shit," Patterson said over the radio. "That was mine. His rifle must've been set on rock-and-roll, Command."

"What was that, what was that-who fired?" Henriksen called over the radio.

It only made things easier for Tomlinson and Lincoln. Both of their targets jumped up and looked to their left, bringing both into plain view. Both went down an instant later, and a few minutes after that the command voice on the enemy radio circuit called for another status check. It now came up eight names short.

By this time, Rainbow was more behind than in front of Henriksen's people, steered into place by Noonan's computer-tricorder rig.

"Can you get me on their radio?" Clark asked the FBI agent.