Tim Clarke glanced at his watch. 'No, mister. Do you?'
Lieberman said nothing.
'We know where they are, Michael,' Helen said slowly. 'We can get in there, take back control, and put an end to this thing. We're not done.'
And he understood that. He just couldn't work out why it gave him no comfort.
CHAPTER 49
HRT
John Collins, the head of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, had assembled Helen Wagner, Larry Wolfit, the two other people in the Langley S&T team, and Dave Barnside for a short, personal briefing before the main meeting. At the end, Helen asked, 'So you mean we stay out of your way until you think it's all secure?'
Collins was a big man, six feet tall, a fit-looking fifty or so, with grey, close-cropped hair, and bright, piercing eyes. He stared at her and nodded. 'Guess that about sums it up. Once we have that place under our thumb, you can do what you like. My job's over. But until it is, I don't want my folks tripping over you, understand?'
Helen nodded. 'The odds are these people won't return fire or anything like that.'
'Probably not,' Dave Barnside said. 'Nothing that neat or clean. More likely the place is wired with Semtex, just like it was in San Francisco and Spain. You got anything to keep us clear of that? I don't want my ass blown all over Nevada.'
Collins's expression stayed deadpan. 'We've got equipment that can detect the obvious signs of explosives. It's a trade-off, really. You people are short of time, and a complete scan of that site would take a day or more.'
'You've got fifteen minutes,' Helen said. 'Any longer than that and we might as well not be there.'
'Right. In that time we can clear the obvious signs. We got sniffers that will detect common explosives, triggers, trip wires, pressure plates, that kind of thing. And, while I hear what you say — these people haven't used guns before — I'm not taking any risks. We go in there on the basis that this is a hostage rescue and the equipment that interests you — in the farmhouse, in the dome — they're the hostages. We immobilize anything that threatens that objective.'
'Don't get too excited,' Helen warned. 'We may need those people in there to help us get things moving again.'
Collins shrugged his big shoulders. 'Point taken. We'll do what we can.'
They walked out and watched him take up his place in front of the overhead projector in the Nellis briefing room. The air-conditioning made a loud, continuous noise, but it still couldn't dispel the close, enervating heat of the night.
The walls were plastered with aerial photographs and local charts. There were no more than twenty HRT agents there, plus some Marine helicopter crew members who would ferry them into the area using big twin-rotor Sea Knight helicopters.
Collins rose at the front of the room and started to talk. 'We can keep this short, folks. I want you people in the air at ten to the hour. The target is forty miles almost straight due north from here. We've got five Sea Knights handling the transportation. That means you should be hitting ground around two-fifteen am local just under a quarter of a mile from the target. I want the farmhouse and the dome secured in twenty minutes maximum. Then we hand over to the specialist guys, though the team leaders may be required for some local interrogation. We work in four teams, five in each. What information we can glean from intelligence suggests there may be up to thirty people in this building. Currently the light output is modest. My guess is a good number of them are taking a nap. Even if they're all awake, the likelihood is that few if any of them are carrying handguns. We can't take that as read, so use all the usual precautions and act with discretion. But the brief here is to treat this like a hostage situation. We want control and we want this situation stabilized, with minimum damage, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Bill?'
A tall black man with a lean, ascetic face rose and faced them. 'The template for this is one of those nonnegotiable, low-damage situations we know so well. We practised this long and hard. Now's the time to make it work. We got one main room in this building, some smaller ones off it, down a long corridor…'
He pointed to the plan on the wall. Yasgur's Farm was a sizeable place, Helen thought There could easily be thirty people or more in there.
'… plus bedrooms, of course. Now remember: low damage. And that goes for equipment as much as people. We want to pass this property on to the folks who need it in much the same condition it is now. You're all familiar with these.'
He held up a small metal canister and a pair of goggles. 'Flash grenades are the key here. We divide into four teams, one for each door. Each team has a delegated member for grenade duty. On the signal, you pop a single one through the window and the rest of us go through. You know the drill. These things are pure light. Anyone who's awake inside that room won't be able to see straight for two minutes once the cycle ends, and then won't regain full sight for another hour or more. And remember too that you get four flashes over thirty seconds, and just now and again we get a rogue one that misses its timing and fires up later than that. The rules matter here. Your goggles stay on for two minutes after that last pop, just in case.'
John Collins, arms folded at the podium, stared down at them. 'I go with the first team. Now, isn't that a surprise?'
A line of laughter ran through the team. She liked Collins's timing. It punctured the nervousness they all felt
'Once we're through, if this thing goes right, they'll be sitting on the floor, immobilized, before they even get their eyesight back. If you see weapons, respond, and warn the rest of us. When every last man and woman of them is out of action, we hand over to the technical people. Okay?'
Bill was handing out sheets of paper. It was the floor plan of the farmhouse, with delegated areas for each team to control.
'Sir?'
Collins peered at Helen. 'Miss Wagner?'
'The dome. How do we handle that?'
'Okay,' he said, and turned to the aerial photographs, pointing at them with a laser wand. 'The dome is on a rocky incline to the northwest of the property. We can't land any closer to it than we can to the farmhouse itself. What's more, if you look here' — he pointed to a series of marks on the image, moving in a straight line from the farmhouse to the dome — 'you can see what we interpret to be some kind of control system, probably microwave. We'll have to reach the dome on foot and the only way to do it is to cross the microwave system on the way. Our guess is that they have, in all probability, wired this up with some line-of-sight detection system. Hell, you can buy the stuff you need down at Radio Shack for twenty dollars. They'd be crazy not to. But what that means is we don't want to be running up this track until we have secured the building. That could give them undue warning, and, if there are any devices in the way, it would prevent us from dealing with them.'
'So?' Helen asked.
'So,' Collins replied, letting them all see his eyes roll upward a little, 'once we are in control, four Cobra support choppers come up with the lighting rigs from a U2 concert strapped to their asses. When they switch that on, the desert floor will be as bright as it looks at midday. We get to see anyone trying to sneak out of the area. We get to see every inch of the way from the building up to the dome. My men clear it first. You and your team follow. We know the time situation, believe me. We will do this as quickly as is humanly possible. But until we give you the nod, I'd be grateful if you'd stay clear of the area. Understood?'