Rainbow Six

"Easy," Noonan replied, flipping a switch and plugging a microphone in. "Here."

"Hi, there," Clark said over the CB frequency. "That's eight of your people down."

"Who is this?"

"Is your name Henriksen?" John asked next.

"Who the hell is this?" the voice demanded. "I'm the guy who's killing your people. We've taken eight of them down. Looks like you have twenty-two more out here. Want I should kill some more?"

"Who the fuck are you?"

"The name's Clark, John Clark. Who are you?"

"William Henriksen!" the voice shouted back.

"Oh, okay, you're the former Bureau guy. I suppose you saw Wil Gearing this morning. Anyway." Clark paused. "I'm only going to say this once: Put your weapons down, walk into the open, and surrender, and we won't shoot any more of you. Otherwise, we'll take down every single one, Bill."

There was a long silence. Clark wondered what the voice on the other end would do, but after a minute he did what John expected.

"Listen up, everybody, listen up. Pull back to the building right now! Everybody move back right now!"

"Rainbow, this is Six, expect movement back to the building complex right now. Weapons are free," he added over the encrypted tactical radios.

The panic in Henriksen's radio call turned out to be contagious. Immediately they heard the thrashing sound of people running in the woods, through bushes, taking direct if not quiet paths back toward the open to which many ran without thinking.

That made an easy shot for Homer Johnston. One green-clad man broke from the trees and ran down the grassy part next to the runway. The weapon he carried made him an enemy, and Johnston dispatched a single round that went between his shoulder blades. The man took one more stumbling step and went down. "Rifle Two-One, I got one north of the runway!" the sniper called in.

It was more direct for Chavez. Ding was sheltering behind a hardwood tree when he heard the noises coming his way from two people he'd been stalking alone. When he figured they were about fifty meters away, he stepped around the tree trunk, to see that they were heading the other way. Chavez sidestepped left and spotted one, and brought his MP-10 to his shoulder. The running man saw him and tried to bring up his rifle. He even managed to fire, but right into the ground, before taking a burst in the face and falling like a sack of beans. The man behind him skidded to a stop and looked at where Chavez was standing.

"Drop the fucking rifle!" Ding screamed at him, but the man either didn't hear or didn't listen. His rifle started coming up, too, but as with his companion, he never made it. "Chavez here, I just dropped two." The excitement of the moment masked the shame of how easy it had been. This was pure murder.

It was like keeping score for Clark, like some sort of horrid gladiatorial game. The unknown blips on the screen of Noonan's computer started disappearing as their hearts stopped and with them the electronic signals they generated. In another few minutes, he counted four of the thirty signals they'd originally tracked, and those were running back to the building.

"Christ, Bill, what happened out there?" Brightling demanded at the main entrance.

"They slaughtered us like fucking sheep, man. I don't know. I don't know."

"This is John Clark calling for William Henriksen," the radio crackled.

"Yeah?"

"Okay, one last time, surrender right now, or else we come in after you."

"Come and fucking get us!" Henriksen screamed in reply.

"Vega, start doing some windows," Clark ordered in a calm voice.

"Roger that, Command," Oso replied. He lifted the shoulder stock of his M-60 machine gun and started on the second floor. The weapon traced right to left, shattering glass as the line of tracers darted across the intervening distance into the building.

"Pierce and Loiselle, you and Connolly head northwest into the other buildings. Start taking stuff down."

"Roger, Command," Pierce replied.

The survivors from the forest party were trying to shoot back, mainly at empty air, but making noise in the lobby of the headquarters building. Carol Brightling was screaming now. The glass from the upstairs windows cascaded like a waterfall in front of their faces.

"Make them stop!" Carol cried loudly.

"Give me the radio," Brightling said. Henriksen handed it to him.

"Cease firing. This is John Brightling,cease firing, everybody. That means you, too, Clark, okay?"

In a few seconds, it stopped, which proved harder for the Project people, since Rainbow had only one weapon tiring, and Oso stopped immediately on being ordered to.

"Brightling, this is Clark, can you hear me?" the radio in John's hand crackled next.

"Yes, Clark, I hear you."

"Bring all of your people into the open right now and unarmed," the strange voice commanded. "And nobody will get shot. Bring all of your people out now, or we start playing really rough."

"Don't do it," Bill Henriksen urged, seeing the futility of resistance, but fearing surrender more and preferring to die with a weapon in his hands.