But things were already leaving Gassman's hands. The senior Thompson executive was on his cell phone, talking with his corporate headquarters, a call quickly bucked up to his own chairman, caught in a sidewalk caf+й having a pleasant lunch that the call aborted instantly. This executive called the Defense Minister, and that got things rolling very rapidly indeed. The report from the Thompson manager on the scene had been concise and unequivocal. The Defense Minister called him directly and had his secretary take all the notes they needed. These were typed up and faxed to both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, and the latter called his Spanish counterpart with an urgent request for confirmation. It was already a political exercise, and in the Defense Ministry another phone call was made.
"Yes, this is John Clark," Rainbow Six said into the phone. "Yes, sir. Where is that exactly… I see… how many? Okay. Please send us whatever additional information you receive… No, sir, we cannot move until the host government makes the request. Thank you, Minister." Clark changed buttons on his phone. "Al, get in here. We have some more business coming in." Next he made the same request of Bill Tawney, Bellow, Chavez, and Covington. The Thompson executive still in Worldpark assembled his people at a food stand and polled them. A former tank officer in the French army, he worked hard and quickly to bring order from chaos. Those employees who still had their children, he set aside. Those who did not, he counted, and determined that thirty-three children were missing, along with one or maybe two children in wheelchairs. The parents were predictably frantic, but he got and kept them under control, then called his chairman again to amplify his initial report on the situation. After that he got some paper on which to compile a list of names and ages, keeping his own emotions under control as best he could and thanking God that his own children were too old to have made this trip. With that done, he took his people away from the castle, found a park employee and asked where he might find phones and fax machines. They were all escorted through a wooden swinging door, into a well disguised service building and down into the underground, then walked to the alternate park command post, where they met Mike Dennis, still holding the folder with his welcoming speech for the Thompson group and trying to make some sense of things.
Gassman arrived just then, in time to see the fax machine transmitting a list of the known hostages to Paris. Not a minute later, the French Defense Minister called. It turned out that he knew the senior Thompson executive, Colonel Robert Gamelin, who'd headed the development team for the LeClerc battle tank's second-generation fire-control system a few years before.
"How many?"
"Thirty-three from our group, perhaps a few more, but the terrorists seem to have selected our children quite deliberately, Monsieur Minister. This is a job for the Legion," Colonel Gamelin said forcefully, meaning the Foreign Legion's special-operations team.
"1 will see, Colonel." The connection broke.
"I am Captain Gassman," the guy in the strange hat said to Gamelin.
"Bloody hell, I took the family there last year," Peter Covington said. "You could use up a whole fucking battalion retaking the place. It's a bloody nightmare, lots of buildings, lots of space, multilevel. I think it even has an underground service area."
"Maps, diagrams?" Clark asked Mrs. Foorgate.
"I'll see," his secretary replied, leaving the conference room.
"What do we know?" Chavez asked.
"Not much, but the French are pretty worked up, and they're requesting that the Spanish let us in and-"
"This just arrived," Alice Foorgate said, handing over a fax and leaving again.
"List of hostages-Jesus, they're all kids, ages four to eleven… thirty-three of them… holy shit," Clark breathed, looking it over, then handing it to Alistair Stanley.
"Both teams, if we deploy," the Scotsman said immediately.
"Yeah." Clark nodded. "Looks that way." Then the phone beeped.
"Phone call for Mr. Tawney," a female voice announced on the speaker.
"This is Tawney," the intel chief said on picking up the receiver. "Yes, Roger… yes, we know, we got a call from-oh, I see. Very well. Let me get some things done here, Roger. Thank you." Tawney hung up. "The Spanish government have requested through the British embassy in Madrid that we deploy at once."
"Okay, people," John said, standing. "Saddle up. Christ, that was a fast call."
Chavez and Covington ran from the room to head for their respective team buildings. Then Clark's phone rang again. "Yeah?" He listened for several minutes. "Okay, that works for me. Thank you, sir."
"What was that, John?"
