Free Jack Ryan 10 - Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy Page A

end of dinner, Popov was earning $100,000 per year as a special consultant, wondering where this new job would lead and not really caring. One hundred thousand dollars was a good deal of money for a man whose tastes were actually rather sophisticated and needed proper support.
    It was ten months later now, and the vodka was still good, in the glass with two ice cubes. “Where and how?...” Popov whispered. It amused him where he was now, and what he was doing. Life was so very strange, the paths you took, and where they led you. After all, he'd just been in Paris that afternoon, killing time and waiting for a meet with a former “colleague” in DGSE. “When is decided, then?”
    “Yes, you have the date, Dmitriy.”
    “I know whom to see and whom to call to arrange the meeting.”
    “You have to do it face-to-face?” the American asked, rather stupidly, Popov thought.
    A gentle laugh. “My dear friend, yes, face-to-face. One does not arrange such a thing with a fax.”
    “That's a risk.”
    “Only a small one. The meet will be in a safe place. No one will take my photograph, and they know me only by a password and codename, and, of course, the currency.”
    “How much?”
    Popov shrugged. “Oh, shall we say five hundred thousand dollars? In cash, of course, American dollars, Deutschmarks, Swiss francs, that will depend on what our . . . our friends prefer,” he added, just to make things clear.
    The host scribbled a quick note and handed the paper across. “That's what you need to get the money.” And with that, things began. Morals were always variable things, depending on the culture, experiences, and principles of individual men and women. In Dmitriy's case, his parent culture had few hard-and-fast rules, his experiences were to make use of that fact, and his main principle was to earn a living
    “You know that this carries a certain degree of danger for me, and, as you know, my salary-”
    “Your salary just doubled, Dmitriy.”
    A smile. “Excellent.” A good beginning. Even the Russian Mafia didn't advance people as quickly as this.
    Three times a week they practiced zip-lining from a platform, sixty feet down to the ground. Once a week or so they did it for real, out of a British Army helicopter. Chavez didn't like it much. Airborne school was one of the few things he'd avoided in his Army service-which was rather odd, he thought, looking back. He'd done Ranger school as an E-4, but for one reason or other, Fort Benning hadn't happened.
    This was the next best or worst thing. His feet rested on the skids as the chopper approached the drop-site. His gloved hands held the rope, a hundred feet long in case the pilot misjudged something. Nobody trusted pilots very much, though one's life so often depended on them, and this one seemed pretty good. A little bit of a cowboythe final part of the simulated insertion took them through a gap in some trees, and the top leaves brushed Ding's uniform, gently to be sure, but in his position, any touch was decidedly unwelcome. Then the nose came up on a powerful dynamic-braking maneuver. Chavez's legs went tight, and when the nose came back down, he kicked himself free of the skid and dropped. The tricky part was stopping the descent just short of the ground-and getting there quickly enough so as not to present yourself as a dangling target . . . done, and his feet hit the ground. He tossed the rope free, snatched up his H&K in both hands, and headed off toward the objective, having survived his fourteenth zipline deployment, the third from a chopper.
    There was a delightfully joyous aspect to this job, he told himself as he ran along. He was being a physical soldier again, something he'd once learned to love and that his CIA duties had mainly denied him. Chavez was a man who liked to sweat, who enjoyed the physical exertion of soldiering in the field, and most of all loved being with others who shared his likes. It was hard. It was dangerous: every member of the