Dark Zone (39 page)

“Do it,” said Marcke.

Rubens looked up at the screen. While the Eiffel Tower had not been completely secured, all of the terrorists near the bomb were either dead or severely wounded. Tommy had disabled all of the explosive packs, apparently made into vests that the terrorists had worn and then attempted to assemble on the structure.

French gendarmes had finally reached Karr, who was suspended above the iron latticework by one of the power cables from the lighting. Tommy seemed to be smiling, undoubtedly making one of his irreverent wisecracks to his rescuers.

Thank God.

Hopefully it wasn’t X-rated. The French television crew aboard the helicopter caught the entire sequence before being warned away by one of the military aircraft. Undoubtedly a lip-reader back in the studio was already trying to work out what Karr had said. Knowing the French, it would be inscribed at the base of the tower by morning.

Several dozen people had lost their lives, and the structure had surely been damaged. But compared to what
might
have happened, the cost had been relatively minor.

One disaster staved off. And a much greater one looming.

“There is one other thing I should mention,” Rubens told President Marcke. “Two of my people were aboard the train that is currently in the Chunnel. They were following a man we think might have been involved in the assassination of Monsieur Ponclare, the security chief. We haven’t heard from them since the train entered the tunnel.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the President. “We’ll stay on the line.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The upstairs operator has a woman named Ellen McGovern on hold,” Telach told Rubens as he turned from the screen. “She’s an attorney. She said that you would want to speak to her, and that the operator was to mention her name.”

Rubens realized that she had news about the General.

“I’ll get back to her,” he said.

99

Dean’s eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the darkness as he climbed out of the yellowish coaches; even when they had, the tracks remained a muddy gray beneath an even darker black. A fluorescent light flickered at the side of the tunnel in the dimness ahead. It marked the doorway to the service tunnel that ran between the two railroad tubes. As Dean stared he made out small green arrows on the side of the tunnel wall in the direction of the door.

“That’s the service tunnel back there,” he told Lia. “Come on.”

The air smelled damp and metallic. He’d taken off part of his shirt to tie around her injured leg, and he felt so cold he began to shiver.

“Let me help you; come on,” he told her as she lagged behind.

“I’m fine.”

“Can’t admit you need help?”

“I’m fine, I said.”

“We have to watch for the third rail.”

“The train uses an overhead wire,” said Lia. “Didn’t you see it at the station?”

A stuttering crack snapped through the air: a muffled gunshot.

“They’re still in the train,” said Lia, stopping. “Look.”

Dean turned and looked at the train as the crackle reverberated again. Shadows moved against the wall toward the back of the gray hulk.

“Go see if you can find a phone,” Dean told her, starting toward the train.

“Charlie!”

“Do it,” he snapped. “If you really are OK, just go do it.”

100

Mussa wheeled the last cart out, then slipped around it and climbed on the seat nearby, walking the cart into place.

He expected a sharp snap as he pushed it into place. Instead, it barely clicked. Thinking he had failed to get it in properly, he pushed against it, but it refused to budge. Mussa leaned over, examining the seam at the top. It was tight; he couldn’t get his fingernail inside.

He climbed up and pushed from every direction, just to make sure it was locked. It didn’t budge.

One more task—the timer. He pulled the top panel off, revealing an oval inset.

“I devote myself to the one true God,” he said, beginning one last prayer before setting the weapon. He pulled off his watch as he prayed and pried it from its band, then took off the face and the back.

Something moved at the end of the car. He glanced up and saw a submachine gun entering the car. The timer, which initiated and controlled the internal firing mechanism, dropped from his hand and bounded to the floor.

Mussa saw only the gun.

Ahmed, returning.

Cursing, Mussa hopped off the seat and dropped to the floor, hunting the watch piece.

“Where are the others?” asked Ahmed.

“Finishing their work,” said Mussa. He put the clock piece in and twisted. The bomb was now set; it could not be stopped. But either when he dropped it or when he set it in, the switch at the side that selected the timer mode had slipped from nine seconds to nine hundred—the device’s default, a hundred times longer than intended.

It began draining off, the seconds kicking down to oblivion.

“Is it ready?” Ahmed asked.

“Yes,” said Mussa. He smiled at the other man.

“Let’s go then.”

Mussa looked at him in surprise. Where did he want to go?

“Aren’t we going to take the engine?” asked Ahmed. “Arno said that was the plan. That’s why I was to detach it and move up the tracks.”

Arno had told him that?

Mussa stared at Ahmed incredulously. How could he believe that they would be spared? Why would he even want to be spared?

“You don’t want to taste the joy of Paradise?” asked Mussa.

“Arno said we were to leave.”

That was like Arno: he told everyone what he thought they wanted to hear.

Including him?

Ahmed pointed the gun at him haphazardly. At this point, Mussa wasn’t afraid of being shot, but he worried that the bomb, despite the guarantees of the engineers, would somehow be damaged if the idiot fired.

Should he explain that the engine was only to block others and help deflect the blast upward if it was not to specifications?

“Aren’t we leaving?” asked Ahmed.

“Yes, of course,” said Mussa. As he began climbing over the seats, he heard more gunfire from a distant coach.

“The timer is running. We’d better hurry,” said Ahmed.

“There’s time. We can wait for the others,” said Mussa.

“No, we should leave now. Let them fend for themselves. They can leave through the access tunnels. The engine will take us out.”

Mussa thought it wise to humor Ahmed until he could wrestle the gun away. What was the worst that could happen? The bomb would explode now, no matter what.

“Lead the way,” he told Ahmed.

101

Rubens hovered over Chafetz’s shoulder, staring at her screen. The Eurostars received signal information through a special system that used the train tracks. The NSA had just been given access to the system and was looking at what had been recorded since the train had entered the Chunnel. There was a burst of gibberish, followed by a clearing signal that indicated there was no problem and then a series of what were being interpreted as shorts in the system.

The French and British engineers in charge of the signals had never seen such a sequence before. They believed at least part of the train was moving forward at a much reduced speed. They did not have direct communications with the train’s engineer.

“Tell them to get out if you can,” said Rubens. “Find a way to get them out.”

Special military response teams assigned to the Chunnel had been activated on both shores. They would be ready to enter the tunnel in a few minutes. Traffic through the other tube had been stopped and the few workers in the service tunnel between the train lines were being evacuated. Emergency procedures were being started in the coastal areas, though Rubens doubted there would be time to even get out an alert, let alone do anything constructive to deal with the danger.

People were scurrying. But it was too late, wasn’t it? His people, unaware of the plot, were probably already gone.

As originally composed, the NSA did not have an “action” side. Jobs such as planting bugs were farmed out, generally to the CIA, though the military services were also used. They were contractors in a way, specialists in their tasks and removed from the NSA hierarchy. It made it easier when something went wrong.

The General had pointed that out to Rubens long ago. He had chafed at the lack of an “action side,” but there was that plus.

Rubens knew he had made the right decisions. While he regretted that the analysts hadn’t been able to come up with the information more expeditiously, he did not regret the decisions that had placed his people in jeopardy and, in all likelihood, cost them their lives; these were the decisions he had to make. But he did feel the loss. It pressed its fingers against his skull. And the ache was amplified by the fact that they were impotent, observers only.

Do
something,
rather than nothing. That had been the General’s motto.

Ruben turned to Telach. “Have we prepared a plan to disable the weapon?”

“We don’t have information on how it might be armed or configured or anything,” said Telach.

“Let’s at least have theories ready,” said Rubens. “And bring Johnny Bib down here. As crazy as he is, he’s bound to have an inspiration.”

102

Dean stared at the far wall of the tunnel, trying to decide if what he saw there were real shadows of the gunmen moving inside the train or flickers of his imagination.

They had to be gunmen—he could hear the muffled sound of the submachine guns again.

They were moving toward the back of the train, in his direction. Each coach had doors at the side, but they appeared to be all locked closed. The only way in or out of the train was the passage at the end of the decoupled car.

If they came out he could surprise them, jump down on them from the top of the train.

But how many were there? One? Two? More?

Dean moved along the walkway next to the tracks, stooping and then crawling toward what had been the rear of the train. He couldn’t quite see in the windows, but as he came parallel to the middle car he saw two shadows prominently one car away. He slid down, flattening himself against the car at a space where there were no windows. He waited, taking the long, slow breaths he’d learned to take more than thirty years before, the calm, quiet breaths of a Marine sniper hunting his prey.

He heard the
clack-clack
of automatic weapons fire behind him, then beyond him. As the shadows moved through the car he had just passed, he started walking again, going as quickly as he could while remaining low, aware that there might be someone else in the train.

A voice echoed in the tunnel, distorted by an eerie echo.

Dean dropped to his stomach. The voice continued to speak—it was in French, he thought, and even if it had been in English it would have been difficult to understand because of the distortion of the tunnel.

The tone seemed unhurried. It was a matter-of-fact conversation, not a harsh bark of orders or worried alerts.

It was coming from the front of the train—from the tracks.

Dean crawled ahead to the last coach, the one that had been attached to the rear power car. He could hear footsteps and then saw a faint flashlight.

The engine had been pulled down the tracks thirty yards or so. The person with the flashlight was moving toward it, with another person, just one other person.

So at least two still in the train and two there, going to the engine. Maybe more in the power car itself.

The two figures climbed up onto the power car and disappeared. Dean slid around to the back of the coach. The doorway at the end was open, dim yellow light washing out. He waited, eyes sifting for shadows, ears perked to hear anything that would tell him someone else was aboard.

Nothing.

He moved back around to the side and peered in the window. Boxes sat in the aisle roughly in the middle of the car. Otherwise, it was empty.

Except for the dead.

He slid around the coach and pulled himself up onto the decking of the vestibule at the end of the car. People liked to talk about athletes who grew old and lost a step, saying they’d gotten wiser in the process and could use their intelligence to make up for the loss. But it didn’t feel that way to Dean. Fifty-some years dogged every movement, leaning hard against him, pulling him away from the train. He’d been a kid in Vietnam, and he’d trade anything to have that kid take over his body right now.

Or maybe just one of the kid’s weapons.

Dean craned his head upward just enough so he could see into the car through the door. He saw nothing—but his view was blocked by the boxes as well as his angle. There was no way to look in without going in—pushing his body across the space and exposing himself to whatever and whoever was there.

And so he did.

103

Lia grew more cautious as she came to the doorway, aware not just that there could be something lurking in the darkness but also knowing that the odd echoes of sound and the constant rush of air and sound filtered away soft noises, including her own footsteps. She had a tiny light on her key chain but didn’t want to use it; it would show anyone else in the Chunnel where she was. She assumed anyone else here would be her enemy, and whether that was a fair assumption or not—there had been policemen aboard the train—it was not something she questioned. As she reached the door to the access tunnel she stopped, hearing something behind her.

Lia froze.

Then she realized that she would be framed by the fluorescent light above the door. She took a step back into the passage.

Someone grabbed her from behind and threw her down. In the weightless second as she fell she was transported back to Korea, back to the instant when she was overpowered in the airport terminal. She fought, biting the hand—the déjà vu sensation disappeared and she was completely in the present, thrashing and wrestling and biting and rolling and lunging and not surrendering, never surrendering, because that wasn’t who she was.

104