Rainbow Six

Bill Henricksen was a news junkie of the first order. On waking up, early as always, he immediately flipped his TV to CNN, often flipping to Fox News with his remote while he did his morning treadmill routine, frequently with the paper on the reading board as well. The front page of the New York Times covered the event in Bern, as did Fox News-oddly, CNN talked about it but didn't show much. Fox did, using the feed from Swiss television, which allowed him to watch what could be seen of the takedown. Pure vanilla, Henriksen thought. Flash-bangs on the front doors-made the cameraman jump and go slightly off target, as usual when they were that close-shooters in right behind them. No sounds of gunfire-they used suppressed weapons. In five seconds, it was all over. So, the Swiss had a properly trained SWAT team. No real surprise there, though he hadn't really known about it. A few minutes later, one guy came out and lit a pipe. Whoever that was, probably the team commander, he had a little style, Henriksen thought, checking the mileage on the treadmill. The team dressed as such people usually did, in coal gray fatigues, with Kevlar body armor. Uniformed cops went in to get the hostages out after about the right amount of time. Yeah, nicely and smoothly done-another way of saying that the criminals/terrorists-the news wasn't clear on whether they were just robbers or political types weren't real smart. Well, whoever said they were? They'd have to choose better ones the next time if this thing were going to work. The phone would ring in a few minutes, he was sure, summoning him to do a brief TV spot. A nuisance but a necessary one.

That happened when he was in the shower. He'd long since had a phone installed just outside the door.

"Yeah."

"Mr. Henriksen?"

"Yeah, who's this?" The voice wasn't familiar.

"Bob Smith at Fox News New York. Have you seen coverage of the incident in Switzerland?"

"Yeah, matter of fact I just saw it on your network."

"Any chance you could come in and give us some commentary?"

"What time?" Henriksen asked, knowing the response, and what his answer would be. "Just after eight, if you could."

He even checked his watch, an automatic and wasted gesture that nobody saw. "Yeah, I can do that. How long will I be on this time?"

"Probably four minutes or so."

"Okay, I'll be down there in about an hour."

"Thank you, sir. The guard will be told to expect you."

"Okay, see you in an hour." The kid must be new, Henriksen thought, not to know that he was a regular commentator - why else would his name have been in the Fox rolodex? - and that the security guards all knew him by sight. A quick cup of coffee and a bagel got him out the door, into his Porsche 911, and across the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan.

Dr. Carol Brightling awoke, patted Jiggs on the top of his head, and stepped into the shower. Ten minutes later, a towel wrapped around her head, she opened the door and got the morning papers. The coffee machine had already made its two cups of Mountain Grown Folger's, and in the refrigerator was the plastic box full of melon sections. Next she switched on the radio to catch the morning edition of All Things Considered, beginning her news fix, which started here and would go on through most of the day. Her job in the White House was mainly reading… and today she had to meet with that bozo from the Department of Energy who still thought it important to build H-bombs, which she would advise the President against, which advice he would probably decline without direct comment to her.

Why the hell had she been taken in by this administration? Carol wondered. The answer was simple and obvious: politics. This president had tried valiantly to avoid such entanglements in his year and a half of holding office. And she was female, whereas the President's team of insiders was almost entirely male, which had caused some comment in the media and elsewhere, which had befuddled the President in his political innocence, which had amused the press even more and given them a further tool to use, which had worked, after a fashion. And so she had been offered the appointment, and taken it, with the office in the Old Executive Office Building instead of the White House itself, with a secretary and an assistant, and a parking place on West Executive Drive for her fuel efficient six-year-old Honda-the only Japanese-made car on that particular block, which nobody had said anything about, of course, since she was female, and she'd forgotten more about Washington politics than the President would ever learn. That was astounding when she thought about it, though she warned herself that the President was a notoriously quick learner. But not a good listener, at least as far as she was concerned.