"SAS are willing to hire anything important to us," Stanley assured Clark from his end of the table.
"For training purposes?" Clark asked, annoyed that he hadn't found out the answer to the question already.
"Perhaps.
Ding cut the run off at three miles. which they'd done in twenty minutes. Good time, he thought, somewhat winded, until he turned to see his ten men about as fresh as they'd been at the beginning, one or two with a sly smile for his neighbors at their wimpy new leader.
Damn.
The run had ended at the weapons range, where targets and arms were ready. Here Chavez had made his own change in his team's selection. A longtime Beretta aficionado, he'd decided that his men would use the recent.45 Beretta as their personal sidearms, along with the Hechler amp; Koch MP-10 submachine gun, the new version of the venerable MP-5, chambered instead for the 10-mm Smith amp; Wesson cartridge developed in the 1980s for the American FBI. Without saying anything, Ding picked up his weapon, donned his earprotectors, and started going for the silhouette targets, set five meters away. There, he saw, all eight holes in the head.But Dieter Weber, next to him, had grouped his shots in one ragged hole, and Paddy Connolly had made what appeared to be one not-so-ragged hole less than an inch across, all between the target's eyes, without touching the eyes themselves. Like most American shooters, Chavez had believed that Europeans didn't know pistols worth a damn. Evidently, training corrected that, he saw.
Next, people picked up their H amp;Ks, which just about anyone could shoot well because of the superb diopter sights. Ding walked along the firing line, watching his people engage pop-up steel plates the size and shape of human heads. Driven up by compressed air, they fell back down instantly with a metallic clang. Ding ended up behind First Sergeant Vega, who finished his magazine and turned.
"Told you they were good, Ding."
"How long they been here?"
"Oh, 'bout a week. Used to running five miles, sir."
Julio added with a smile. "Remember the summer camp we went to in Colorado?"
Most important of all, Ding thought, was the steady aim despite the run, which was supposed to get people pumped up, and simulate the stress of a real combat situation. But these bastards were as steady as fucking bronze statues. Formerly a squad leader in the Seventh Light Infantry Division, he'd once been one of the toughest, fittest, and most effective soldiers in his country's uniform, which was why John Clark had tapped him for a job in the Agency - and in that capacity he'd pulled off some tense and tough missions in the field. It had been a very long time indeed since Domingo Chavez had felt the least bit inadequate about anything. But now quiet voices were speaking into his ear.
"Who's the toughest?" he asked Vega.
"Weber. I heard stories about the German mountain school. Well, they be true, 'mano. Dieter isn't entirely human. Good in hand-to-hand, good pistol, damned good with a rifle, and I think he could run a deer down if he had to, then rip it apart barehanded." Chavez had to remind himself that being called "good" in a combat kill by a graduate of Ranger school and Fort Bragg's special-operations schools wasn't quite the same as from guy in a corner bar. Julio was about as tough as they came.
"The smartest?"
"Connolly. All those SAS guys are tops. Us Americans have to play a little catchup ball. But we will," Vega assured him. "Don't sweat it, Ding. You'll keep up with us, after a week or so. Just like it was in Colorado."
Chavez didn't really want to be reminded of that job. Too many friends lost in the mountains of Colombia, doing a job that their country had never acknowledged. Watching his men finish off their training rounds told him much about them. If anyone had missed a single shot, he failed to notice it. Every man fired off exactly a hundred rounds, the standard daily regimen for men who fired five hundred per working week on routine training, as opposed to more carefully directed drill. That would start tomorrow.
"Okay," John concluded. "we'll have a staff meeting every morning at eight-fifteen for routine matters, and a more formal one every Friday afternoon. My door is always open-including the one at home. People, if you need me, there's a phone next to my shower. Now, I want to get out and see the shooters. Anything else? Good. We stand adjourned." Everyone stood and shuffled out the door. Stanley remained.
"That went well," Alistair observed, pouring himself another cup of tea. "Especially for one not accustomed to bureaucratic life."
"Shows, eh?" Clark asked with a grin."One can learn anything, John."
"I hope so."
"When's morning PT around here?"
"Oh-six-forty-five. You plan to run and sweat with the lads?"
"I plan to try," Clark answered.
"You're too old, John. Some of those chaps run marathons for recreation, and you're closer to sixty than to fifty."
"Al, I can't command those people without trying, and you know that."
"Quite," Stanley admitted.
They awoke late, one at a time, over a period of about an hour. For the most part they just lay there in bed, some of them shuffling off to the bathroom, where they also found aspirin and Tylenol for the headaches they all had, along with showers, which half of them decided to take and the other half to forgo. In the adjoining room was a breakfast buffet that surprised them, with pans full of scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausage and bacon. Some of them even remembered how to use napkins, the people in the monitoring room saw.
They met their captor after they'd had a chance to eat breakfast. He offered all of them clean clothes, after they got cleaned rip.
"What is this place?" asked the one known to the staff only as #4. It sure as hell wasn't any Bowery mission he was familiar with.
"My company is undertaking a study," the host said from behind a tightly fitting mask. "You gentlemen will be part of that study. You will be staying with us for a while. During that time, you will have clean beds, clean clothes, good food, good medical care, and" - he pulled a wall panel back - "whatever you want to drink." In a wall alcove which the guests remarkably had not yet discovered were three shelves of every manner of wine, beer, and spirit that could be purchased at the local liquor store, with glasses, water, mixes, and ice.
"You mean we can't leave?" Number 7 asked.
"We would prefer that you stay," the host said, somewhat evasively. He pointed to the liquor cabinet, his eyes smiling around the mask. "Anyone care for a morning eye-opener?"
It turned out that it wasn't too early in the morning for any of them, and that the expensive bourbons and ryes were the first and hardest hit. The additional drug in the alcohol was quite tasteless, and the guests all headed back to their alcove beds. Next to each was a TV set. Two more decided to make use of the showers. Three even shaved, emerging from the bathroom looking quite human. For the time being.
In the monitoring room half a building away, Dr. Archer manipulated the various TV cameras to get close-ups on every "guest."
"They're all pretty much on profile," she observed. "Their blood work ought to be a disaster."
"Oh, yeah, Barb," Dr. Killgore agreed. "Number Three looks especially unwell. You suppose we can get him slightly cleaned up before…?"
"I think we should try," Barbara Archer, M.D., thought. "We can't monkey with the test criteria too much, can we?"
"Yeah, and it'd be bad for morale if we let one die too soon," Killgore went on.
" `What a piece of work is man,' " Archer quoted, with a snort.
"Not all of us, Barb." A chuckle. "Surprised they didn't find a woman or two for the group."
"I'm not," replied the feminist Dr. Archer, to the amusement of the more cynical Killgore. But it wasn't worth getting all worked up over. He looked away from the battery of TV screens, and picked up the memo from corporate headquarters. Their guests were to be treated as guests-fed, cleaned up, and offered all the drink they could put away consistent with the continuance of their bodily functions. It was slightly worrisome to the epidemiologist that all their guest-test-subjects were seriously impaired street alcoholics. The advantage of using them, of course, was that they wouldn't be missed, even by what might have passed for friends. Few had any family members who would even know where to look for them. Fewer still would have any who would be surprised by the inability to locate them. And none, Killgore judged, had so much as one who would notify proper authorities on the inability to find them-and even if that happened, would the New York City Police care? Not likely.