The Paris Protection (8 page)

“Except for a few GIs on leave having a little too much fun,” he said with a grin. “I loved the look on their faces when you said the president was asking if they could keep it down.”

“If those guys are the biggest problem we have in this building tonight, we’ll all feel like joining them. Now, go tell me what you see across the Paris skyline. And stay sharp.”

While Agent Ferrara walked to the stairs, she turned down the hallway, wanting a better vantage point of the area between the hotel and the distant fire. She was missing something. Something wasn’t right.

13

COL. JOSEPH MAZURSKY RACED PAST Air Force One in the secured hangar at Charles de Gaulle. His fellow Marine HMX-1 copilot, Maj. Aaron Parker, in a leather flight jacket matching his, ran next to him. Bright lights gleamed off the buffed wax finish on the president’s jet, which was surrounded by a dozen Air Force guards and Secret Service CAT agents.

The hangar doors were opened just wide enough for any of the dozens of Secret Service or Air Force security vehicles to pass through. Mazursky ran out into the snow flurries—his first true glimpse of the weather system he’d been monitoring on radar all evening.

“Be better if it were a clear night,” he said.

“Yes sir,” Parker replied, running at his side.

“The others coming?”

“Twenty seconds, sir.”

He saw one of the most expensive helicopters in the world waiting thirty yards in front of him. The green and white fifteen-million-dollar custom Black Hawk—known, oddly, as a White Hawk—was a beautiful aircraft, with a long, sleek body like a shark’s. Large and powerful in the front, with a long tail, it looked built for speed and agility. It was just one of over twenty helicopters in the Marine HMX-1 fleet used to fly the president, and he was proud to be its pilot. Inside the United States, the Marine Corps used either the old Sikorsky VH-3 Sea Kings or the newer Lockheed Martin VH-71s. But overseas, they used the White Hawks, which were slightly smaller and more easily transported on the Air Force C-17 cargo jets, yet had the same communications and defensive capabilities as the larger Sea Kings.

“Warm her up,” Mazursky ordered. “I’ll do the walk-around.”

The White Hawk had been buttoned up in the hangar, but the support crew had pulled it back out after getting the call from the HMX-1 White House Liaison Officer.

He turned on his flashlight and began examining the exterior. The HMX-1 mechanics were the best in the world, and they kept the president’s birds in perfect condition. There had never been an in-flight mechanical failure in the history of the HMX-1 fleet, dating all the way back to the Eisenhower administration, so he had no concerns about the White Hawk’s readiness. It was by far the best-serviced helicopter he had ever flown. But a quick preflight walk-around was a safety precaution drilled into him since his first days of flying, decades ago.

The cold wind was picking up, and thick, wet snowflakes hit the side of his face. Ducking under the tail, he touched the smooth, moist metal. After examining the tail rotor, he moved down the right side and circled around the bubble nose. Seeing no imperfections, he pulled the door latch handle and climbed in the right side of the warm cockpit.

Parker was flipping through switches, lighting up the large instrument panels in an array of crimson-lit square buttons and soft-green glowing displays.

Mazursky pulled the dual shoulder strap over his head and snapped the harness buckle to secure him in the seat. Putting on his white helmet, he said, “Comm check.” He punched in the radio code of the selected channel into the square keypad on the large instrument console between the seats.

Flipping through the small, four-inch-thick VH-60 operating manual to the proper page, he began running through the checklist items for the pre engine start cockpit procedures. Once their harnesses were strapped, he continued through the long series of challenge-response steps. Reading through the checklist, he said, “Circuit breakers and switches—set.”

“Back me up,” the copilot replied.

Parker reached above his head and checked several indicator LEDs. Then he checked “CD ESS BUSES” on the aft portion of the overhead console, and “BATT/BATT UTILITY BUS” on the lower console.

Then they went through the avionics-off frequencies set. Mazursky verified each against the checklist as Parker performed the set actions with the COMM cont-transmitter, GPS/Doppler mode set, transponder master switch, and other settings. Finishing the routine, the copilot flipped another switch above his head and said, “Blade deice power switch, OFF.” Then, checking a few more items, he said, “APU control switch, OFF. APU fire T-handle, IN.”

“Fuel Pump Switch, APU boost,” Mazursky said, still reading from the checklist.

“APU boost,” Parker replied, moving the fuel pump switch.

“APU generator switch, on,” Mazursky read.

“APU generator switch, ON,” Parker responded.

They moved through the rest of the preflight and engine start checklists. Mazursky knew by heart the procedures that his co-pilot was going through, but he still read them off the sheet as Parker performed them. When he read off the last one, he said, “Engines on to idle.”

He reached above him and grabbed the baseball-size knob at the tip of the throttle lever for engine two. Parker mirrored his movement, grabbing the throttle for engine 1 above him. They both pulled them down slightly to the white “IDLE” line between the levers. Each pilot’s green RPM gauge rose slowly toward 70, just below the level that would give them lift.

With his left hand, Mazursky grabbed the collective next to his seat, which would control the pitch angle of the main rotor blades. With his right hand, he grabbed the cyclic stick between his legs, for controlling the pitch of the main rotor disk. He put his feet up against his left and right antitorque pedals, for controlling the pitch of the tail rotor blades. Parker had matching controls on his side, but the only things he would operate when Mazursky was piloting would be the engine 1 throttle and the comm and navigation equipment.

Mazursky patched into the control tower, where the White House Liaison Officer was already in contact with flight control. “Tower, this is United States Colonel Mazursky, requesting flight standby for Alpha Niner One Four Seven.” Just as with the Boeing VC-25s used for Air Force One, the presidential transport helicopters used only the “Marine One” call sign when the president was on board.

“Request granted, Colonel Mazursky,” an American-accented voice said through his headset. “Hot departure for POTUS exec lift granted at will. Advise when hot.”

“Roger, tower,” Mazursky replied.

A hundred feet away, he could see another pair of Marine pilots boarding the much larger Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion support helicopter. A dozen Secret Service CAT agents rushed across the asphalt in their heavy tactical gear and jumped in behind them. The massive black escort helicopter could carry enough men to secure any emergency exec lift.

The main rotor blades were now spinning in a soothing purr, with barely any vibration in the cockpit. 

“Sitting warm, sir,” Parker said. “Ready and waiting for hot.”

“Waiting for hot,” Mazursky confirmed.

Snow flurries wafted and circled outside the large cockpit’s windows, blurring the fluorescent glow of the surrounding ground lights in a bright wintry cloud. He sat in silence beside his copilot, waiting for the possible emergency call from the president’s protection detail—a call that he prayed would never come.

14

MAXIMILIAN LOOKED AT HIS WATCH: only ninety seconds before the first explosion. By now his men in the other tunnel should already have started cutting into the pipe system, which would trigger the emergency cutoff protocol when the water utility’s main computer detected the sudden drop in pressure. He stepped forward and addressed the crowd of headlamps and the ominous silhouettes of heads and shoulders and assault rifle barrels stretching back down the tunnel.

“Men!” he yelled. “When Hannibal finished crossing the Alps and entered northern Italy, the Romans still believed they could quickly destroy his army. They believed their enemy would fight them head-on in the open field, as armies of that time did. But Hannibal was a military genius, now considered the father of war strategy. And he used the Romans’ arrogance against them. He used misdirection and deception to win battles in which he was heavily outnumbered. Now, the Americans are well trained and well equipped—much like the Roman soldier once was. But we will use surprise and deception and strategy to destroy them. They will not be prepared for our maneuvers!”

The tunnel filled with cheering.

Maximilian stepped up onto a large fallen stone from the underground ruins and placed a hand on the rock wall for balance. “You all know your roles. And like Hannibal, I will be right in the middle of the battle, fighting with you!”

The men cheered again.

He stepped back down and knelt behind the protruding rocks of the tunnel’s right angle. He looked at his watch: ten seconds from detonation. He closed his eyes and smiled.

The exploding C-4 split the air like a thunderclap. A gust of stale, dusty air brushed past him through the tunnel. He could smell a trace of chlorine, and when he opened his eyes, a blue haze glowed in his headlamp beam.

“A perfect cut, General,” Mozgovoy shouted at him out of the cloud of rock dust.

The shaped charge had blown through the building’s outer concrete foundation. 

His army had been well trained in what to do after the explosion. Before the cloud of concrete dust had settled, the line of men was already rushing through the breach, into the upper sewer tunnels. And these would lead them to the outer wall of the hotel’s basement corridors.

15

SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE JOHN Alexander raised a finger to his earpiece and said into his wristband, “Please repeat that.”

“Sir,” the voice said, “we’ve just received a vibration hit on the EK-one.”

“What’s the magnitude?”

“Zero point two. Lasted zero-point-four seconds.”

John knew that any earthquake would be at least 0.6 in magnitude if the epicenter was within a few miles. But Paris had no known fault lines in or around the city. The closest subway station to the hotel was far away—one of the reasons the Secret Service had selected this hotel. It shouldn’t put out even a 0.1-magnitude vibration unless a crash happened on the tracks. The advance team had scouted the tunnels under the hotel, and because of the sealed passageways, he had determined a low risk of unauthorized access near the hotel. Thus, they had installed EK-1 seismometers in a perimeter along the basement, to serve as an early-warning system beyond the hotel’s secured area. John had agents in the basement, monitoring the devices.

Agent David Stone looked at him with raised eyebrows. The other agents would also have heard every word over the comms. John turned away and stood by the narrow floor-to-ceiling window at the edge of the antechamber. The snow was falling thicker than a half hour earlier. The clumped white flakes turned to slushy drops after hitting the glass pane. He looked out at the blurred city lights, studying the horizon as if he might discern a threat somewhere out there, coming this way.

The EK-1 readings didn’t make much sense. Advance team agents with their bomb dogs had been sweeping every inch of the hotel, surrounding buildings, and sewer systems twice a day for the past week, and every four hours since the president arrived in Paris, so a bomb seemed unlikely. 

“Agent Perez,” John said into his wrist microphone. “I want you and the other agents down there to check out the northeast corner of the basement where the first EK-one hit registered. I’ll have HQ analyze the magnitude data and give us a better idea what might have caused it.”

“Yes sir. On our way to check out the area now.”

John nodded as he thought about the possibilities. He had trained agents to trust their instincts because they were often subconscious reactions formed by past training and experience. He had never seen an EK-1 detection like this before, and it had him concerned. He flipped his radio to the wider U.S. military channel so he could talk to the HMX-1 White House Liaison Officer. “Please prep a White Top for possible exec lift of POTUS.”

“A White Top is currently prepped, warmed, and ready for flight,” the Marine attaché replied.

“She’s already prepped?” John asked in surprise.

“Yes sir. Agent Reid called it in because of a building fire in the vicinity.”

“Roger, copy.” He was impressed that Reid had made the call. “Maintain readiness and stand by for further instructions.”

“Yes sir,” the HMX-1 WHLO replied.

Flipping back to the wrist microphone, he said, “Command Center, send five CAT agents to the twenty-fifth floor to form an additional perimeter blockade below Firefly. I’ll meet them there in one minute for setup.”

“We’re sending them up,” a voice replied in his earpiece.

He shot a serious glance at Stone. “I’ll be back in two or three minutes. You’ve got POTUS.”

“Yes sir,” Stone replied a little too loudly, as if snapping to attention.

John walked fast toward the stairwell. So much of protecting the president was about decreasing the odds that something devastating could happen to her. That was why cooks and foods were flown on Air Force One, to prepare all meals for POTUS at travel destinations, even foreign diplomatic dinners. That was why every agent knew “ten-minute” first aid—how to stabilize the president in a medical emergency, until an ambulance could arrive. That was why agents went through monthly weapons training even after years of fieldwork, why the Service sent a hundred-person advance team to the location weeks before a planned trip, why they shut down highways for hours just for a five-minute drive in the motorcade, why they used bulletproof glass in front of podiums during speeches, and why they never let the president remain in one place for very long when in public—always moving POTUS to lessen the odds of an enemy finding an opportunity for an attack. An ever-changing calculus was always running in John’s head, gauging whether changing factors were increasing or decreasing the risk to the president. And when something—even something small—increased the risk, he would try to counter with something that lowered it again. So even though a small but strange blip had registered on the EK-1, he now countered with a temporary increase in the protection force directly around the president.