which was John’s virtual rank. The Brits were unusually conscious of rank and ceremony, and he saw more of that when he got outside. He’d hoped to have a low-profile departure, but the locals weren’t thinking that way. As they rolled onto the helipad, there was the entire Rainbow force, the shooters, the Intel support, even the team armorers—Rainbow had the best three gunsmiths in all of Britain—formed up—the local term was “paraded”—in whatever uniforms they were authorized to wear. There was even a squad from the SAS. Stone-faced, they collectively snapped to Present Arms, in the elegant three-count movement the British Army had adopted several centuries earlier. Tradition could be a beautiful thing.
“Damn,” Clark muttered, getting out of the truck. He’d come pretty far for an old Navy chief bosun’s mate, but he’d taken a lot of strange steps along the way. Not knowing quite what to do, he figured he had to review the troops, as it were, and shake hands with all of them on the way to the MH-60K helicopter.
It took more time than he’d expected. Nearly every person there got a word or two with the handshake. They all deserved it. His mind went back to 3rd SOG, a lifetime before. These were as good as those, hard to believe though that might be. He’d been young, proud, and immortal back then. And remarkably, he hadn’t died of being immortal, as so many good men had. Why? Luck, maybe. No other likely explanation. He’d learned caution, mostly in Vietnam. Learned from seeing men who’d not been lucky go down hard from making some dumb mistake, often as simple as not paying attention. Some chances you had to take, but you tried to run them through your mind first and take only the necessary chances. Those were plenty bad enough.
Alice Foorgate and Helen Montgomery both gave him hugs. They’d been superb secretaries, and those were hard to find. Clark had been half tempted to try to find them jobs in the United States, but the Brits probably valued them as much as he had and would’ve put up a fight.
And finally Alistair Stanley, the incoming boss, was standing at the end.
“I’ll take good care of them, John,” he promised. They shook hands. There was not much else to be said. “Still no word on the next posting?”
“I expect they’ll tell me before the next check comes.” The government was usually good about getting the paperwork done. Not much else, of course, but paperwork, surely.
With nothing left to be said, Clark walked to the helicopter. Ding, Patsy, and J.C. were already strapped in, along with Sandy. J.C. especially loved flying, and he’d get a gut full in the next ten hours. On lifting off they turned southeast for Heathrow Terminal Four. Landing on their own pad, a van took them to the aircraft, and so they were absolved of passing through the magnetometers. It was a British Airways 777. The same type they’d flown over on four years earlier, then with the Basque terrorists aboard. They were in Spain, though in which prison and how the conditions were they’d never asked. Probably not the Waldorf Astoria.
Are we fired, John?” Ding asked as the aircraft rotated off the Heathrow tarmac.
“Probably not. Even if we are, they’re not going to call it that. They might make you a training officer down at The Farm. Me . . . ? Well, they can keep me on the payroll a year or two, maybe I can hold down a desk in the operations center until they take my parking sticker away. We’re too senior to fire. Not worth the paperwork. They’re afraid we might talk to the wrong reporter.”
“Yeah, you still owe Bob Holtzman a lunch, don’t you?”
John almost spilled his preflight champagne at that reminder. “Well, I did give my word, didn’t I?”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Ding said, “So we make a courtesy call on Jack?”
“We kinda sorta gotta, Domingo.”
“I hear you. Hell, Jack Junior’s out of school now, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Not sure what he’s doing, though.”
“Some rich-kid job, I bet. Stocks and bonds, money shit, I bet.”
“Well, what were you doing at that age?”
“Learning how to handle a dead drop from you, down at The Farm, and studying nights at George Mason University. Sleepwalking, mostly.”
“But you got your master’s, as I recall. Lot more than I ever got.”
“Yeah. I got a piece of paper that says I’m smart. You left dead bodies all over