The Paris Protection (30 page)

He took off at a fast lope, back the way they had come—a predator closing on his prey.

58

JOHN COULD SEE THAT THE president’s strength was fading fast. No one could have expected her to keep up the pace with conditioned agents—up and down the hotel stairs, through the firefight on the rooftop, down the ladder in the elevator shaft, racing around the hotel basement, and now running around half lost in the Paris underground. It was a miracle she had stood up to the intense exertion for this long.

He had an arm around her, his hand hooked under the armpit, half carrying her fatigued body.

“How are you holding up, ma’am?” he asked without breaking stride.

“I’m okay,” she said weakly. “I can make it.”

But he could tell from her voice that she wouldn’t hold up much longer. Not moving at this pace.

He saw Rebecca rush around the next sharp curve in the tunnel. The moment she vanished from his light, he heard her hiss, “No . . .”

Alarmed, he pulled the president back behind him and motioned for David to stop. “Kneel down,” he whispered. Then, with his gun drawn, he moved around the turn, leaving David to protect her. There, caught in his light, was Rebecca, facing away from him, staring with what must be utter frustration and despair at the solid limestone rock marking the end of the tunnel.

“My God,” John whispered. “We’re trapped.”

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said. “We have to go back toward the larger tunnel.”

“No. We’ve lost so much time now, they’ll be all over it. We can’t go back.”

“There’s nowhere else to go,” she said.

“We have to stay here. Maybe they won’t find us. Maybe we can hide here and protect the president until someone figures out we’re in the tunnels, and comes to help.”

“You know that won’t happen,” she said. “Not in time.”

“It’s too dangerous to go back,” he said. “They were already on us. We’d be walking the president right into their hands. At least, hidden back here, we have a chance of protecting her.”

“We won’t have much chance if they find us,” she said. “Not back here. Not with their numbers—and not against their submachine guns.”

He knew that Rebecca was right. The tunnel curved sharply and had uneven, jagged walls in many places, making the terrain much easier to defend than elsewhere. So they would stay and defend the president as long as possible.

“David,” he whispered, “go back down the tunnel. Slow and quiet, with your light out. Scout for any men coming down it. If you don’t hear any, see if you can make it all the way back out into the larger tunnel. If you make it that far, listen and try to determine if anyone’s around.”

“What’s happening?” the president asked.

“This is a dead end, ma’am,” John said. “We can’t get you out of the underground this way, but this is a good place to hide you, and we can protect it as well as anywhere down here.” He paused, seeing the worried expression on the president’s face. “I’m sending David back down the tunnel to see if it might be safer. It’s possible they passed by this side tunnel and aren’t in the area anymore. It’s possible they missed us. Eventually, they could come back, but there are other side tunnels near the entrance, so if David thinks the attackers are gone, we can try to move all the way back out of this cul-de-sac and find another side tunnel—maybe one that has a way back up to the Paris streets—before they come back.”

The president’s concerned look turned to David.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said. “They can’t touch me. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Then the president, in a complete breach of protocol, reached up and hugged David as if saying good-bye to a loved one. Releasing him, she put her hand on his shoulder. David looked surprised and unsure how to respond to such an unexpected gesture.

“You be careful, son,” she said. “You’ve made me and your country proud—all three of you. This night will be remembered forever in American history, and it is my great honor to have been here with the three of you to witness firsthand the kind of heroism that can still exist in this world. And make no mistake, no matter what happens, all three of you are heroes.” She paused, visibly choked up. With tears and strength showing in her eyes, she whispered again, “It has been my honor.”

All three nodded to her without knowing what to say.

David then looked at John, who gestured with his eyes toward the dark corridor leading back from the dead end where they now stood.

John watched David look right past him, to Rebecca. “See you soon,” he said.

“See you soon,” she replied softly.

Then, without another word, he turned off his flashlight and started back, into the Stygian darkness.

59

ASGHAR AND TOMAS WORKED THEIR way slowly down a dark rock-walled corridor. Both held Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns across the chests. They also wore hip-holstered Beretta M9 semiautomatic pistols, and a military-grade tactical knife strapped above the ankle. They were ready to fire at anything that moved in the darkness ahead of them. To keep their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they used a slender red light stick to see their way around the many turns while reflecting as little light as possible off the stone surfaces.

The Merchants of Death had trained in southern Turkey, near the mountain region that Alexander the Great had conquered nearly three thousand years earlier. They had trained in a copper mine, using the same red chemical tube lights to practice moving in darkness. And they had practiced firing their weapons at targets in low light. And Maximilian, ever the cunning perfectionist in military planning and tactics, had drilled them until they were ready for armed combat in pitch blackness.

As they moved cautiously around each turn, creeping through the darkness while casting a faint red glow across the rock walls and low ceiling, they felt a calm that seemed almost strange after the thunderous bedlam of the past hour. Each of them had killed several Secret Service agents in the hotel, along with various civilians who had been caught in the attack. They had answered Maximilian’s call to battle with eagerness. Never before had they felt like part of something so important, so powerful. And they felt enormous pride serving their leader in this great campaign against the disease of powerful nations imposing their will on the less powerful. So each time they had seen an American Secret Service agent fall during the fast, chaotic fight, they had felt their excitement and jubilation grow. For these were the great, heroic actions that had been missing from their lives.

Rounding the next corner, they heard a faint noise. They knelt, staring into the darkness. Was something there? It was so hard to see anything in this blackness.

And then, as they peered into the black void, they saw two quick flashes of light, just before they fell.

60

AT THE SHARP, LOUD CRACK of two gunshots, John instinctively covered the president while drawing his gun. Shielding her against the limestone, he pointed his P229 out into the tunnel, prepared to fight whatever threat emerged. 

After ten seconds of silence, he said to Rebecca, “Cover her while I check.”

Rebecca had also drawn her pistol and crowded beside him to help shield the president. “David’s down there,” she said.

“I know.”

“Two quick shots and silence. That’s how agents shoot, not terrorists.”

“I know. He’s probably fine, but those gunshots will have carried to anyone within a mile of us. If they aren’t already close by, they will be soon.”

Turning toward the dark path, he caught President Clarke’s terrified expression. The general rule was to conceal potential threats and dangers from the president, but his personal connection with her overrode the normal guidelines. So with as much confidence as he could muster, he said, “Ma’am, no matter what comes at us, we will protect you.”

She nodded, in what was no doubt her best attempt to conceal her concern for all of them. He knew that she could accept death as a possible cost of leading their country on the world’s stage, but it was his job to see that she never had to make that sacrifice.

Turning, he plunged into the darkness.

*     *     *

As Maximilian’s men split off in pairs into the various side tunnels, the numbers around him shrank from twenty-four to fourteen. The risk of friendly fire rose, and so did his fear that they might not find the president in time. Eventually, American and French response teams would figure out that she had escaped into the tunnels.

Fifteen minutes had passed since he and his men left the catacombs. Running ahead of his fighters down the narrow passageway, he felt a surge of frustration at the way the president’s team continued to evade defeat. The ancient tunnel system was too complex to guarantee him victory now, and even if he found the president, he would no longer enjoy an overwhelming advantage in a firefight against her protectors in these long, tight corridors.

Never mind the suicide mission he had promised his men; he had always planned to walk away from this night alive after the president was dead. He and Kazim had made special arrangements with a small elite group within their ranks to improve their odds of survival. But now, faced with the prospect of failing his mission, he found himself ignoring even the desire to live.

The muffled crack of a distant gunshot jolted him from his reverie. Immediately, a second shot followed. Then silence.

“That’s it!” he said excitedly after pausing, hoping to hear more shots. “They’re behind us. A branching tunnel we passed somewhere. Move! Hurry!”

As they ran back through the tunnels, Maximilian felt hope return. The president had failed to escape, and now she was trapped somewhere, completely surrounded by his men, waiting in terror until his little army descended on her and shot her to pieces.

61

MAXIMILIAN MET FOUR MORE OF his men as they came trotting out of two side tunnels. Because he had separated his fighters into pairs searching the many branching tunnels, he could now cross off those branches as the men returned, and thus narrow down the possibilities for where the shots came from.

The gunfire had been loud, confirming that he and his men would be closer to the source than Kazim, who may already have reached the tour section of the catacombs. If Kazim and his men were now close enough to have heard the shots, they would also be running back this way.

As he kept moving back through the tunnels, the dark, curving path seemed strange and unfamiliar. He almost couldn’t believe he had just come from this way only ten minutes earlier. The intertwined passages, dark and featureless in his headlamp, were like the ocean, with no memorable marks to navigate by. He felt as if he were in a forest blanketed in thick fog, or wandering through a desert of bright, vast nothingness.

He moved fast down the winding, narrow passages.

After he had heard from all but Tomas and Asghar, he motioned for the others to move into the branch where the missing Merchants of Death had gone. He was almost relieved when he realized just how close to the catacombs the president had turned off the main path. It showed how desperate she must be. How close he must have already come to catching her! And he knew from his study of the maps that all these branching tunnels were dead ends.

Maximilian had half his men race into the side tunnel, and the other half wait just outside it. He listened once more in the direction of the distant Catacomb breach that his demolition team had made earlier in the night. The closest Kazim could be was somewhere inside the Empire of the Dead, heading toward him. He could not be less than five minutes away.

And Maximilian couldn’t risk waiting.

So he checked his pistol and tactical knife and adjusted his headlamp to cast a wider beam. Then, with his dozen best remaining men, he set off after the others, into the last refuge of his prey.

62

JOHN MOVED WITH QUICK, SILENT steps. After losing his suit jacket and tie in the elevator shaft, he had rolled up the sleeves of his once-white shirt at the gate to the Empire of the Dead. He held his pistol out and forward with a two-hand grip, elbows close to the ribs. Two shots had come from this tunnel, and he had no idea where David was. He moved cautiously. David could be dead, and an army of attackers could be creeping toward him, only yards away. The full magazine of hollow-point .357 SIG rounds gave him twelve quick shots, which could do serious damage, but he would have given his pension for an SR-16 assault rifle. Even a laser dazzler, one of the Secret Service’s newer toys, would come in handy, allowing him to blind any attackers, stopping them in their tracks and disorienting them while he followed up with lethal force.

Moving around another turn, he smelled the warm discharge of gunfire. He must be only feet away from where the shots had gone off. He wouldn’t normally have been able to smell burned powder so easily, but the scent hung in the close, still air. Flashlight off, he moved as silently as a cat, listening for any sound that might reveal another person. After creeping another ten feet through the darkness, he saw a faint glow coming from the wall of the next turn and heard a soft shuffling. Moving closer, he felt along the wall with his left hand while the right kept the pistol trained forward.

Then the sound stopped, and the light went out. Whoever it was had also heard something. Perhaps someone else was coming, or perhaps they had heard him despite his stealthy movements. He steadied his aim and remained motionless. The silence made him anxious. It was as if each party were hunting the other, waiting for the other guy to make the fatal first mistake by moving. For ten excruciating seconds, he waited, gun leveled at the darkness before him.

Then, just when he feared that his mind was playing tricks on him in the silence, he heard a voice whisper, “It’s me.”

John relaxed. David had held the tunnel against whatever threat entered it.