"They were trying to hijack the airplane?"

"Yep, they sure were."

"Isn't that scary?"

John nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, it is. Well, would have been scarier if they were competent, but they weren't." An inner smile. Boy, did they ever pick the wrong fight! But he couldn't laugh about it now, not with his wife sitting next to him, on the wrong side of the road-a fact that had him looking up in some irritation. It felt very wrong to be on the left side of the road, driving along at… eighty miles per hour? Damn. Didn't they have speed limits here?

"What'll happen to them?" Sandy persisted.

'There's an international treaty. The Canadians will ship them back to the States for trial-Federal Court. They'll be tried, convicted, and imprisoned for air piracy. They'll be behind bars for a long time." And they were lucky at that, Clark didn't add. Spain might well have been a little more unpleasant about it.

"First time in a long time something like that happened."

"Yep." Her husband agreed. You had to be a real dolt;u hijack airplanes, but dolts, it appeared, were not yet an endangered species. That was why he was the Six of an orginization called Rainbow. There is good news and there is bad news, the memo he'd written had begun. As usual, it wasn't couched in bureaucratese; it was a language Clark had never quite learned despite his thirty years in CIA.

With the demise of the Soviet Union and other nation states with political positions adverse to American and Western interests, the likelihood of a major international confrontation is at an all-time low. This, clearly, is the best of good news.

But along with that we must face the fact that there remain many experienced and trained international terrorists still roaming the world, some with lingering contacts with national intelligence agencies - plus the fact that some nations, while not desirous of a direct confrontation with American or other Western nations, could still make use of the remaining terrorist `free agents "for more narrow political goals.

If anything, this problem is very likely to grow, since under the previous world situation, the major nation states placed firm limits on terrorist activity-these limits enforced by controlled access to weapons, funding, training, and safehavens.

It seems likely that the current world situation will invert the previous "understanding" enjoyed by the major countries. The price of support, weapons, training, and safehavens might well become actual terrorist activity, not the ideological purity previously demanded by sponsoring nation states.

The most obvious solution to this-probably-increasing problem will be a new multinational counterterrorist team.

I propose the code name Rainbow. I further propose that the organization be based in the United Kingdom. The reasons for this are simple:

тАв The UK currently, owns and operates the Special Air Service, the world's foremost-that is, most experienced-special operations agency.

тАв London is the world's most accessible city in terms of commercial air travel-in addition to which the SAS has a very cordial relationship with British Airways.

тАв The legal environment is particularly advantageous, due to press restrictions possible under British law but not American.

тАв The long-standing "special relationship" between American and British governmental agencies.

For all of these reasons, the proposed special-operations team, composed of US., UK, and selected NATO personnel, with full support from national-intelligence services, coordinated at site…

And he'd sold it, Clark told himself with a wispy smile. It had helped that both Ed and Mary Pat Foley had backed him up in the Oval Office, along with General Mickey Moore and selected others. The new agency, Rainbow, was blacker than black, its American funding directed through the Department of the Interior by Capitol Hill, then through the Pentagon's Office of Special Projects, with no connection whatsoever to the intelligence community. Fewer than a hundred people in Washington knew that Rainbow existed. A far smaller number would have been better, but that was about the best that could be expected.

The chain of command was a little baroque. No avoiding that. The British influence would be hard to shakefully half of the field personnel were Brits, and nearly that many of the intel weenies, but Clark was the boss. That constituted a major concession from his hosts, John knew. Alistair Stanley would be his executive officer, and John didn't have a problem with that. Stanley was tough, and better yet, one of the smartest special-operations guys he'd ever met-he knew when to hold, when to fold, and when to play the cards. About the only bad news was that he, Clark, was now a REMF- worse,, a suit. He'd have an office and two secretaries instead of going out to run with the big dogs. Well, he had to admit to himself, that had to come sooner or later, didn't it?

Shit. He wouldn't run with the dogs, but he would play with them. He had to do that, didn't he, to show the troops that he was worthy of his command. He would be a colonel, not a general, Clark told himself. He'd be with the troops as much as possible, running, shooting, and talking things over.

Meanwhile, I'm a captain, Ding was telling himself in the next car behind, while eagerly taking in the countryside. He'd only been through Britain for layovers at Heathrow or Gatwick, and never seen the land, which was as green as an Irish postcard. He'd be under John, Mr. C, leading one of the strike teams, and in effective rank, that made him a captain, which was about the best rank to have in the Army, high enough that the NCOs respected you as worthy of command, and low enough that you weren't a staff puke and you played with the troops. He saw Patsy was dozing next to him. The pregnancy was taking it out of her, and doing so in unpredictable ways. Sometimes she bubbled with activity. Other times, she Wit vegetated. Well. she was carrving a new little Chavez in her belly, and that made everything okay-better than okay. A miracle. Almost as great as the miracle that here he was back doing what he'd originally been trained for to be a soldier. Better yet, something of a free agent. The bad news was that he was subject to more than one government-suits that spoke multiple languages-but that couldn't be helped, and he'd volunteered for this to stay with Mr. C. Someone had to look after the boss.

The airplane had surprised him quite a bit. Mr. C hadn't had his weapon handy-what the hell, Ding thought, you bother to get a permit that allows you to carry a weapon on a civilian airliner (about the hardest thing you can wish to have) and then you stash your weapon where you can't get at it? Santa Maria! even John Clark was getting old. Must have been the first operational mistake he'd made in a long time, and then he'd tried to cover it by going cowboy on the takedown. Well, it had been nicely done. Smooth and cool. But overly fast, Ding thought, overly fast. He held Patsy's hand. She was sleeping a lot now. The little guy was sapping her strength. Ding leaned over to kiss her lightly on the cheek, softly enough that she didn't stir. He caught the driver's eye in the mirror and stared back with a poker expression. Was the guy just a driver or a team member? He'd find out soon enough, Chavez decided.

Security was tougher than Ding had expected. For the moment Rainbow HQ was at Hereford, headquarters of the British Army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment. In fact, security was even tougher than it looked, because a man holding a weapon just looked like a man holding a weapon-from a distance you couldn't tell the difference between a rent-a-cop and a trained expert. On eyeballing one close, Ding decided these guys were the latter. They just had different eyes. The man who looked into his car earned himself a thoughtful nod, which was dutifully returned as he waved the car forward. The base looked like any other-the signs were different as was some of the spelling, but the buildings had closely trimmed lawns, and things just looked neater than in civilian areas. His car ended up in officer country, by a modest but trim house, complete with a parking pad for a car Ding and Patsy didn't have yet. He noticed that John's car kept going another couple of blocks toward a larger house-well, colonels lived better than captains, and you couldn't beat the rent in any case. Ding opened the door, twisted out of the car, and headed for the trunk-excuse me, he thought, hoot- to get their luggage moved in. Then came the first big surprise of this day.