call, “Target, left,” followed by a series of overlapping pops.
Weber and his team had caught up with Chavez and Bianco now and were fanning out, each man covering a sector.
“Down, down, down! Everybody down!” Ding shouted.
To the right: pop, pop, pop.
Chavez kept moving, pushing through the center of the room, Bianco on his left doing the same, looking for movement. ...
“Clear,” he heard Weber call out, followed by two more.
“Clear on the left!” Bianco answered.
“Hall clear!” This from Showalter. “Checking the rooms.”
“On my way,” Ybarra called.
From Showalter’s hallway came a woman’s scream. Chavez spun. Ybarra, who had reached the entrance to the hallway, sidestepped right and pressed himself against the left wall. “Target.” Chavez sprinted to the hall and took position opposite Ybarra. Down the hall, a figure had emerged from the last room, dragging a woman along with him. The man had a pistol pressed to her neck. Ding peeked out. The man spotted him and turned the woman a bit, shielding himself. He shouted something in panicked Arabic. Ding pulled back. “Showalter, say position,” he whispered.
“Second room.”
“Target’s just outside the third door. Ten, twelve feet. He’s got a hostage.”
“I hear her. How’s my angle?”
“Half a head shot open.”
“Roger, say when.”
Chavez peeked out again. The man turned ever so slightly, squaring off with Chavez. Showalter, his MP5 shoulder-tucked, stepped up to the threshold of his door and fired. The bullet entered the man’s right eye. He crumpled, and the woman started screaming. Showalter stepped out and moved toward her.
Chavez let out a breath, then slung his MP5 and turned to scan the main room. Done and done. Twenty seconds, no more. Not bad. He keyed his radio. “Command, this is Blue Actual, over.”
“Go.”
“We’re secure.”
Once Chavez did his final walk-through and judged the embassy to be fully locked down, he radioed Clark and Stanley a firm “all clear.” From there, events moved rapidly as the report went from Tad Richards to his People’s Militia liaison, Lieutenant Masudi, then up the Libyan chain of command to a major who insisted that Chavez and his team exit the front door and escort the hostages out the main gate. In Rainbow’s temporary command center, Clark and Stanley, misunderstanding the demand, balked until Masudi explained in broken English that there would be no television cameras. The Libyan people simply wanted to express their gratitude. Clark considered this and gave his shrugged approval.
“International goodwill,” he muttered to Alistair Stanley.
Ten minutes later Chavez, his team, and the hostages emerged from the embassy’s main entrance amid the glare of klieg lights and applause. They were met at the gate by a contingent of Swedish Security Service (Säkerhetspolisen) and Criminal Investigation Department (Rikskriminalpolisen) officers, who took custody of the hostages. After two solid minutes of handshaking and hugs, Chavez and his team moved out onto the street, where a gauntlet of People’s Militia brass and soldiers offered yet more backslapping.
Richards appeared at Chavez’s side as they pushed through the crowd toward the command center. “What the hell’s going on?” Chavez shouted.
“Hard to catch the words,” Richards replied, “but they’re just impressed. No, amazed would be a better description.”
Behind Chavez, Showalter yelled, “At what, for Christ sake? What the fuck were they expecting?”
“Casualties! Lots of dead people! They didn’t expect any of the hostages to make it out, let alone all of them. They’re celebrating!”
“No shit?” Bianco called. “What’re we, amateurs?”
Richards replied over his shoulder, “They haven’t got the best track record with hostage rescue.”
Chavez smiled at this. “Yeah, well, we’re Rainbow.”
21
HAD HE BEEN in an objective frame of mind, Nigel Embling might have recognized his current mood as nothing more than self-indulgent crap, but at that moment it was his considered decision that the world was in fact going quickly and directly to hell. Later he would likely reevaluate that decision, but right now, sitting at his kitchen table over a cup of tea and reading the morning’s Daily Mashriq, one of Peshawar, Pakistan’s half-dozen daily newspapers, nothing he saw improved his mood.
“Bloody idiots,” he grumbled.
His houseboy, Mahmood, magically appeared in the kitchen’s doorway. “Something, Mr. Nigel?” Mahmood, eleven, was too happy and eager by half—especially at this time of day—but Embling knew his household would be a shambles without him.
“No, no, Mahmood, just talking to myself.”
“Oh, that’s not good, sir, not good at all. Touched, that’s what people will think. Please, if you would, be certain to save your talking for at home, yes?”
“Yes, fine. Go back to your studies.”
“Yes, Mr. Nigel.”
Mahmood was an orphan, his mother,