"Building up those frequent-flyer miles, Domingo?" John asked from the concrete.
"I suppose. Am I sprouting feathers yet?" Chavez asked tiredly.
"Only one more hop for now."
"Where to?"
"Bragg."
"Then let's do it. I don't want to get too used to standing still if it's just temporary." He needed a shave and a shower, but that, too, would have to wait until Fort Bragg. Soon they were in yet another Air Force short-haul aircraft, lifting off and heading southwest. This hop was blessedly short, and ended at Pope Air Force Base, which adjoins the home of the 82nd Airborne Infantry Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, also home of Delta Force and other special-operations units.
For the first time, someone had thought what to do with Wil Gearing, Noonan saw. Three military policemen carted him off to the base stockade. The rest of the people on the trip ended up in Bachelor Officers' Quarters, more colloquially known as "the Q."
Chavez wondered if the clothing he stripped off would ever be clean enough to wear again. But then he showered, and set on the sink in the bathroom was a razor that allowed him to scrape off a full day's accumulation of black blur on his-he thought-manly face. He emerged to find clothing laid out.
"I had the base people run this over."
"Thanks, John." Chavez struggled into the white boxers and T-shirt, then selected the forest-pattern Battle Dress Uniform-BDU-items laid on the bed, complete to socks and boots.
"Long day?"
"Shit, John, it's been a long month coming back from Australia." He sat down on the bed, then on reflection lay down on the bedspread. "Now what?"
"Brazil."
"How come?"
"That's where they all went. We tracked them down, and I have overheads of the place where they're camped out."
"So, we're going to see them?"
"Yes.
"To do what, John?"
"To settle this thing out once and for all, Domingo."
"Suits me, but is it legal?"
"When did you start worrying about that?"
"I'm a married man, John, and a father, remember? I have to be responsible now, man."
"It's legal enough, Ding," his father-in-law told the younger man.
"Okay, you say so. What happens now?"
"You get a nap. The rest of the team arrives in about half an hour."
"The rest of what team?"
"Everybody who can move and shoot, son."
"Muy bien, jefe, " Chavez said, closing his eyes.
The British Airways 737-700 was on the ground for as little time as possible, refueled from an Air Force fuel bowser and then lifted off for Dulles International Airport outside Washington, where its presence would not cause much in the way of comment. The Rainbow troopers were bused off to a secure location and allowed to continue their rest. That worried some of them slightly. Being allowed to rest implied that rest was something they'd need soon.
Clark and Alistair Stanley conferred in a room at Joint Special Operations Command Headquarters, a nondescript building facing a small parking lot.
"So, what gives here?" asked Colonel William Byron. Called "Little Willie" by his uniformed colleagues, Colonel Byron had the most unlikely sobriquet in the United States Army. Fully six-four and two hundred thirty pounds of lean, hard meat, Byron was the largest man in JSOC. The name dated back to West Point, where he'd grown six inches and thirty pounds over four years of exercise and wholesome food, and ended up a linebacker on the Army football team that had murdered Navy 35-10 in the autumn classic at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. His accent was still south Georgia despite his master's degree in management from Harvard Business School, which was becoming favored in the American military.
"We're taking a trip here," Clark told him, passing the overheads across the table. "We need a helo and not much else."
"Where the hell is this shithole?"
"Brazil, west of Manaus, on the Rio Negro."
"Some facility," Byron observed, putting on the reading glasses that he hated. "Who built it, and who's there now?"
"The people who wanted to kill the whole fucking world," Clark responded, reaching for his cell phone when it started chirping. Again he had to wait for the encryption system to handshake with the other end. "This is Clark," he said finally.
"Ed Foley here, John. The sample was examined by the troops up at Fort Detrick."
"And?"
"And it's a version of the Ebola virus, they say, modified - 'engineered' is the term they used, as a matter of fact-by the addition of what appears to be cancer genes. They say that makes the little bastard more robust. Moreover, the virus strands were encased in some sort of mini-capsules to help it survive in the open. In other words, John, what your Russian friend told you-it looks like it's fully confirmed."
"What did you do with Dmitriy?" Rainbow Six asked.
"A safe house out in Winchester," the DCI replied. It was the usual place to quarter a foreign national the CIA wanted to protect. "Oh, the FBI tells me that the Kansas State Police are looking for him on a murder charge. Supposedly he killed one Foster Hunnicutt from the state of Montana, or so he has been accused."
"Why don't you have the Bureau tell Kansas that he didn't kill anybody. He was with me the whole time," Clark suggested. They had to take care of this man, didn't they? John had already made the conceptual leap of forgetting that Popov had instigated an attack on his wife and daughter. Business, in this case, was business, and it wasn't the first time a KGB enemy had turned into a valuable friend.
"Okay, yes, I can do that." It was a little white lie. Foley agreed, set against a big black truth. In his Langley, Virginia, office, Foley wondered why his hands weren't shaking. These lunatics had not only wanted to kill the whole world, but they'd also had the ability to do so. This was a new development the CIA would have to study in detail, a whole new type of threat, and investigating it would be neither easy nor fun.
"Okay, thanks, Ed." Clark killed the phone and looked at the others in the room.We just confirmed the contents of the chlorine canister. They created a modified form of Ebola for distribution."
"What?" Colonel Byron asked. Clark gave him a ten-minute explanation. "You're serious, eh?" he asked finally.