stomach, then straddled her at the waist. He placed his left hand beneath her chin, drew her head up toward him, then placed the flat of his right palm on the side of her head and levered his hands in opposite directions. The neck snapped. He reversed his hands and twisted the head back in the other direction, getting one more muffled pop. The body’s residual nerve impulses caused her legs to jerk once. He gently lowered the head back to the ground and stood up.
Now all that remained was to decide how far into the desert to drive her.
18
THE RECEPTION they received upon touching down in Tripoli should have told Clark and Chavez all they needed to know about the mood of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his generals, as well as what level of support they could expect. The People’s Militia lieutenant they found waiting at the bottom of the plane’s stairs was polite enough but green as the Libyan sun was hot, and the twitch under his left eye told Clark the man knew enough about his charges to be nervous. Good for you, boy. Clearly Qaddafi was less than pleased to have Western soldiers on his soil, let alone Western Special Forces soldiers. Whether his displeasure was born of pride or some deeper political motive Clark neither knew nor cared. As long as they stayed out of Rainbow’s way and didn’t get anyone inside the embassy killed, Muammar could be as pissy as he liked.
The lieutenant snapped off a sharp salute to Clark, said “Masudi,” which Clark assumed was his name, then stepped aside and gestured toward a circa-1950 canvas canopied Army truck that sat idling fifty feet away. Clark gave the nod to Stanley, who ordered the team to gather the gear and head toward the truck.
The sun was so hot it almost stung Clark’s skin, and sucking the superheated air into his lungs caused them to burn a bit. There was a slight breeze fluttering the flags on the hangar roof but not nearly enough to provide any cooling.
“Hell, at least they sent somebody, huh?” Chavez muttered to Clark as they walked.
“Always look on the bright side, eh, Ding?”
“You got it, mano.”
Within an hour of being pulled off the plane at Heathrow and getting the dump from Alistair Stanley, Clark, Chavez, and the remainder of the on-call R6 shooters were aboard a British Airways jet bound for Italy.
As did all military teams, Rainbow had its fair share of personnel turnover as men returned to their home country’s unit, most of them for well-earned promotions after their work on Rainbow. Of the eight Stanley had picked for the op, four were originals: Master Chief Miguel Chin, Navy SEAL; Homer Johnston; Louis Loiselle; and Dieter Weber. Two Americans, a French-man, a German. Johnston and Loiselle were their snipers, and each was scary-good, their rounds rarely finding anything but X-ring.
In fact, all of them were good shooters. He wasn’t in the least worried about them; you didn’t get to Rainbow without, one, having a lot of time in service, and two, being the best of the best. And you certainly didn’t stay in Rainbow without passing muster with Alistair Stanley, who was, though polite to the core, a real ass-kicker. Better to sweat in training than to bleed on an op, Clark reminded himself. It was an old SEAL adage, one that any Special Forces service worth a damn adhered to as if it were the word of God.
After a brief stop in Rome they were shuttled to a waiting Piaggio P180 Avanti twin-engine turboprop kindly supplied by the 28th Army Aviation “Tucano” Squadron for the final hop to Taranto, where they sat and drank Chinotto, Italy’s herbal answer to American Sprite, while getting a history lesson from the base’s public-affairs officer on the history of Taranto, the Marina Militare, and its predecessor, the Regia Marina. After four hours of this, Stanley’s satellite phone went off. The politics had been settled. How they’d talked Qaddafi out of sending in his shock troops Clark didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Rainbow was green-lit.
An hour later they reboarded the Avanti for the five-hundred-mile hop across the Med to Tripoli.
Clark followed Chavez to the truck and climbed aboard. Sitting across the wooden bench seat from him was a man in civilian clothes.
“Tad Richards,” the man said, shaking Clark’s hand, “U.S. embassy.”
Clark didn’t bother asking the man’s position. The answer would likely involve a combination of words like attaché, cultural, junior, and