"Don't remind me," Hans groaned. "Don't want to hear it. I think we'd better just rent something in Athens." He paused. "But I also think we ought to take along the Hunter. He'd be the man to handle grenades. He loves those damned things better than his wife."
They were both thinking of Marcel, formerly of the Belgian ESI, Escadron Special d'lntervention. While with ESI, he had fathered their famous four-man units, pairs of two-man teams, and had come up with the idea of carrying a spare magazine on the strong-side wrist to facilitate rapid mag change. ESI was known informally as Diana Unit, and since Diana was the huntress of mythology, Marcel had become known as the Hunter. But not till after he had earned the sobriquet. A former Belgian paratrooper, ex-Angola, he got the nickname after a special op there, when he had saved an entire ARM team by taking out a room of terrorists with three stun grenades, tear gas, and an Uzi—while wearing an antiflash hood called a balaclava plus a gas mask, a little like working under water. Marcel liked the nickname.
"I'll see if I can reach him. The Antwerp number."
"Well, we'll probably need him." Hans paused. "And Vance is already on site. That'll make all the difference."
"He's good. If you can get all the others, I think we'll have what we need."
'Then, let's get started. I'll try to reach everybody and have them in Athens by late tomorrow. Fax me an equipment list and I'll talk that over with Spiros. See what he can get together for us down there and save having to ship it."
"You know, mon cher," Hans had said, "this is no way to start a day."
1:29 p.m.
"It was there for the National Security Agency, the NSA," admitted Theodore Brock, his special assistant for national security affairs. The atmosphere in the Oval Office was heating up.