Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [289]
"A little too convenient, don't you think?"
"Hey, I'm an ex-Marine, not a chess master," Ryan replied. But it was good to have somebody second-guessing him. There were a lot of tactical possibilities here, and everybody read a map a little differently, and Bulgarians might well study out of a different playbook altogether.
"It's a pig of a mission they've given us. Best hope is that this Strokov fellow doesn't show up. Oh, here he is," King said, handing Ryan an envelope.
It was full of eight-by-ten prints, actually of pretty good quality.
"Nick Thompson told me he has lifeless eyes," Ryan said, looking at one of them.
"Does seem rather a cold chap, doesn't he?"
"When we come here Wednesday, we going to be carrying?"
"I certainly shall be," King said positively. "Nine-millimeter Browning. There ought to be a few more at the embassy. I know you can shoot accurately under pressure, Sir John," he added, with casual respect.
"It doesn't mean I like to, pal." And the best engagement range for any pistol was contact range, holding the gun right against the other bastard. Kinda hard to miss that way. It would even cut the noise down, too. Plus, it was a hell of a good way to tell someone not to do anything untoward.
For the next two hours, the five men walked the piazza, but they kept coming back to the same place.
"We can't cover it all, not without a hundred men," Mick King finally said. "And if you can't be strong everywhere, you might as well pick one place and be strong there."
Jack nodded, remembering how Napoleon had ordered his generals to come up with a plan for protecting France from invasion, and when a senior officer had spread his troops evenly along the borders, he'd heartlessly inquired if the guy was trying to protect against smuggling. So, yeah, if you couldn't be strong everywhere, then you planned to be strong somewhere, and prayed that you'd picked the right spot. The key, as always, was to put yourself into the other guy's head, just as they'd taught him to do as an intelligence analyst. Think the way your adversary thinks, and stop him that way. It sounded so good and so easy theoretically. It was rather different in the field, however.
They caught Tom Sharp walking into the basilica, and together they went off to a restaurant for lunch and a talk.
"Sir John is right," King said. "The best spot is over on the left side. We have photos of the bugger. We put you, John"—he said to Sparrow—"atop the colonnade with your cameras. Your job will be to sweep the crowd and try to spot the bastard, and radio your information to us."
Sparrow nodded, but his face showed what he thought of the job as the beers arrived.
"Mick, you had it right from the beginning," Sparrow said. "It's a pig of a job. We ought to have the whole bloody SAS regiment here, and even that would not be enough." The 22nd Special Air Service Regiment was actually just a company or two in size, brilliant troopers that they were.
"Ours is not to reason why, lad," Sharp told them all. "So good to know that Basil knows his Tennyson." The resulting snorts around the lunch table told the tale.
"What about radios?" Jack asked.
"On the way by courier," Sharp answered. "Small ones, they'll fit in a pocket, and they have ear pieces, but not small microphones, unfortunately."
"Shit," Ryan observed. The Secret Service would have exactly what they needed for this mission, but you couldn't just call them up and have them delivered. "What about the Queen's protective detail? Who does that?"
"The Metropolitan Police, I believe. Why—"
"Lapel mikes," Ryan answered. "It's what the Secret Service uses at home."
"I can ask," Sharp responded. "Good idea, Jack. They might well have what we need."
"They ought to cooperate with us," Mick King thought aloud.
"I'll see to it this afternoon," Sharp promised.
Yeah, Ryan thought, we'll be the best-equipped guys ever to blow a mission.
"They call this beer?" Sparrow asked after his first sip.
"Better than American canned piss," another of the new arrivals