I nodded thanks, walked over to take the mike. "Angel Station, this is Stud Six, over." Stud — as in seven-card — was our unit codename. Six is military-speak for the man in charge.
"Jack of Hearts, we have a problem, over."
"Knave of Hearts," I corrected. "What's your problem, over?"
"Angel Two is down. Repeat, Angel Two down."
That meant one of the Sikorskies at Angel Station — the chopper hide-site, a few miles north of the vacation spot where we'd spent the day — was sick and not expected to get better. It was no big deal. That's why we brought three; in a pinch, we and the hostages could all cram into one and take off again. Conceivably.
I rang off. Joann Jefferson was looking at me again. I went and sat down beside her.
She was flushed and breathing rapidly. She had not shown nerves before; I hoped she wasn't getting near any major fracture points.
"Knave of Hearts," she said. "I still can't get over that. Not ace or king."
"Using aces for codenames would be giving a little too much away. Besides — I know what I am."
She laughed. She had a good laugh — hearty, though she had presence of mind to keep it way down. "And I'm the Queen of Spades."
I shrugged. "You picked it."
"I know what I am, too." She nodded to Damsel, who was talking in a low voice to Chung. "So why aren't you chasing after little girl lost, there? I'm pretty sure you're the type who likes girls."
"K'ung-fu Tzu tells us that gentlemen never compete. She has ample suitors anyway, I think."
She gave me an arched eyebrow. I grinned. I do that too, when I am, shall we say, extremely skeptical.
"You don't like blondes?"
"I have very catholic tastes, which isn't altogether surprising in a High Church boy like myself. But I'm also a professional. I have this iron-bound rule about sex with subordinates: I don't do it. Not, I hasten to add, that I'm often tempted by those under my command. I like girls, and prefer women, but that's the extent of it."
I tugged the end of my moustache. "Maybe my tastes aren't quite so catholic after all. Still, I find Woman infinitely variable, and infinitely diverting."
She laughed again — giggled, more. "You are more full of bullshit than any white person I ever met," she said. "I like you. You're funny. And you treat me like a person. You don't expect me to make the coffee, and you don't go — bending over backwards or anything."
"Ms. Jefferson, I am a male chauvinist pig in good standing. I don't let that interfere with my job, either. What you are to me now is precisely what the others are: an operator, to use the jargon of this milieu. One, I'll add, who's given me considerably less trouble than certain others."
She bit her lip. "After this is over — I mean, if we survive — " She looked away then. "Never mind. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I don't have much experience at this."
"Practice never hurt anybody." I undid the Velcro cover and checked my watch. "We still have a few minutes before H-Hour."
She shook her head. "It's stupid anyway," she said, and it was her turn to be little girl lost. "I can't touch anybody, you understand? If I do, I kill them. I can't help it. I can have friends, if anybody wants to be friends with a black freak like me. I can't — "
I reached a fingertip and touched her briefly on the cheek. She jumped. My whole finger went numb.
"When you have the luxury to think about anything but the mission," I said, "consider the ramifications of my special gift. One can do wonders with prosthetics."
She frowned, slightly, which made her look almost intolerably cute. I decided I wasn't missing anything in passing Damsel by. "Right now, it's time to go back to playing soldier. Listen up, everybody."
They clustered round, Darius hanging slightly back. "It's almost time to move, people. So bring it on home: tell me what you're going to do."
Ackroyd pointed a finger. "The guy in the watchtower goes bye-bye the second we hit the street."
"We walk up to the walking guards and I greet them as a pious Turkmen comrade," Chung said.
"I make everything quiet," Harvey whispered.
"I black one out," Joann said, "both if I can."
"If not I pop him," Ackroyd said.
"Or I take him," Ray added with a flash of teeth.
"Or I just shoot him," I said. "We'll play it by ear. Same drill with the boys at the gate."
"Right," Chung said. "Then I get light and kite up for a peek over the wall — "
"While I make the gate open. Slick as a whistle, we're inside."
"We go straight," Ray said, "for the Chancellery." It was the biggest structure, and the closest to the main gate. Most of the hostages were held inside. Since many of its doors were hardened, it had been expected to be the toughest target for Delta, since they'd have to use explosive entry. For us it was a breeze.
"Then we proceed clockwise," the Librarian said, "very methodically."
There were only six buildings, out of a total of fourteen, that were feasible to house hostages, not to mention captors. That simplified things.
Ackroyd cast a glance over the wall at the thickly-wooded compound. "I can't get over how big it is."
"That's what twenty-seven acres looks like, city boy," Ray said. "Why the surprise? We been through a full-scale mock-up twenty-five times, back at Smokey.
Ackroyd shrugged. I understood him. No matter how exact a model is, it can never really prepare you for the reality. If only more of our mission planners could grasp that little fact….
From overhead came a welcome noise: the faint baritone hum of a Night Shadow's four engines. Our Archangels had arrived to watch over us.
I raised my eyes to the sky. A few clouds, mostly stars. "'Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night,'" I said.
"Zero hour, people. Time to move as if we have a purpose."
We were so high on adrenaline when we hit the ground floor of the apartment where we'd been lying-up that we were damned near flying. We all had weapons in hand, even though it was questionable whether a week's hurried training made any of our civilians a greater threat to the bad guys than to themselves. But what the hey? With luck we wouldn't need to shoot anybody. We were aces, and even if none of us was exactly Golden Boy or the Great and Powerful Turtle, we were hard core.
We were on. Felt we were ten feet tall and covered with hair. Felt immortal.
You know what always happens when you get to feeling that way. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make cocky.
Damsel stopped at the foot of the echoing cement stairs. She made Chung halt too by grabbing his arm. She went up on tiptoe — she was that tiny, that she had to stretch for Chung — and kissed him on the cheek.
"You're the one," she breathed. "You're my Hero."
Darius sneered. Blocked right behind the clinch, Billy Ray said, "Give me a flicking break."
But something happened to Paul Chung in that moment. I saw it in his eyes. He seemed to, well, expand. What it actually amounted to I couldn't imagine.
"Let's get a grip here, people," Ackroyd muttered. "'We got guns, they got guns, all God's children got guns.'"
"He's right," I said, tapping Chung on the shoulder. Was it my adrenaline-fueled imagination, or did I feel a kind of electric tingle? "We're in a war zone now. Move out as I taught you, by pairs, rolling overwatch to the front doors, then out into the street and across."
Chung and Mears hunkered down inside the stairwell, covering with their AKs. Thirty feet away across the lobby the night was black and empty beyond the glass doors. Taking Darius with me, I dodged quickly out and to the left. We pressed up against the wall to our side of the long-dormant elevator bank.