Hansen had returned to the basement Situation Room, where maps and
operation plans cluttered the teakwood table and littered meal trays,
grease encrusting on the white china, were piled up in the corner. No
stewards were allowed in the room, and nobody else was going to clean
up. He had not slept for a day and a half, and he was now showing a
ragged shadow of beard. Ted Brock had heard some of his aides upstairs
commenting to each other _sotto voce_ that he had never seemed older.
"All right," he said. "I've called off the assault and given the
bastard six hours to clear out. I've also released the money, had it
wired to the account he wanted. So maybe now he'll leave quietly. Our
deal is that he frees the hostages unharmed, disarms the bombs, and
gets the hell out of there. But I'll tell you something else: he's not
going to live to spend a dime. The minute he's airborne, his ass is
ours. I want him shot out of the sky, and the hell with the
consequences."
"He'll probably take some civilians along with him," Briggs said.
"Hostages. We could be looking at some dicey press."
"All right, then, so we won't shoot him down; we'll just force him
down, the way we handled that Libyan passenger jet with terrorists
aboard. There was official flack for a week or so from the usual
quarters, but off the record everybody was applauding. When you do the
right thing, the world makes allowances for how you manage it."
Briggs remained skeptical, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He
wanted to have as little to do with the operation as possible. Sooner
or later there would be loss of life, he was sure of it, and the
chances were the losses would be massive. He had no interest in making
the history books as the author of a civilian massacre, terrorists or
no terrorists.
"All right, Mr. President, I'll tell the Deltas to keep their powder
dry until we play this one out." He had already heard from General Max
Austin, who said Nichols was fit to be tied, eating his cigars instead
of smoking them. Who could blame him? To have a Commander-in-Chief
micromanaging an anti-terrorist op violated every known canon of
military strategy. There might be a more surefire recipe for disaster,
but it was hard to conjure one offhand.
Hansen, for his own part, recognized the pitfalls of giving the
terrorists more time. However, he hoped it would end up being the rope--
make that false confidence--that would hang them.
He had wired the "ransom" money to the numbered account at Banco
Ambrosiano, as requested. There, his intelligence on the ground was
reporting, the eight hundred million had been split and transferred to
several other accounts. Then portions of it had been immediately wired
out--to a destination not yet known, though it damned well would be.
What, he wondered, was that all about? Were the terrorists in the
process of screwing each other? It was a possibility. Everything was a
possibility. But it also was smart, because it made recovering the
funds that much more difficult. They were, in effect, laundering it
even before they had made their getaway. These characters, whoever they
were, were taking no chances.