The driver threw open his door and rolled out, with his pistol drawn but unable to see a target. Everything beyond the gate looked normal, and the tendency was to look up to find a sniper on a rooftop or in a high window. Kyle had him centered in the scope as the man searched for somebody to shoot at, and Swanson once again smoothly pulled the trigger. Since they were almost on the same level, the flat trajectory sent the bullet ripping into the guard’s shoulder, then down through the chest and rib cage before exiting at the hip. He bucked under the impact, and the round wrecked his heart and lungs.
There was no time to waste now, and Kyle pulled the Dragunov back inside and dropped it into the deep sewage channel flowing behind him. A manhole cover was just above him, and he pushed it aside, grabbed the edges, and hoisted himself up and out, staying low behind the Peugeot. He pulled the silenced Glock from his waist and ran across the street, through the gates, and into the sun-dappled courtyard. Three shots, one into the head of each of his targets, and he was on his way inside.
“YOU SEE THAT? WHO the hell is that?” asked a big man with binoculars pressed hard against his eyes. “He just shot our suspect!” Special Agent David Hunt of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was rocked back by the surprise attack and turned in disbelief to Carolyn Walker, an agent with the Department of Homeland Security. She had been seated, watching a small television set that was linked to the adjustable telescopic lens of a camera that had been recording all movements in the courtyard for the past two days. They, along with the CIA, were part of a joint task force assigned to watch the man believed to be Saladin, the person responsible for the London nerve gas assault. When word came from Washington, they would arrest him. The JTF room was on the fourth floor of an apartment building on a corner overlooking Saladin’s house, which they believed gave them a total view of the entire area.
But the assassin had come out of nowhere, unseen and with no warning. Nevertheless, Walker now had him on the camera and was recording. She adjusted the focus on Kyle’s face, and a USB connection fed the images onto a computer hard drive.
“I got him,” she said. “What the hell is he up to? Let’s go pick him up.”
Dave Hunt threw down his powerful binoculars. A total stranger had barged into their operation and it had all gone to shit, right in the heart of France. “Can’t do that, Carolyn. The French cops are going to be all over this place in ten minutes, and all hell will break loose if they find us up here.”
He stuffed their equipment into large zippered bags, and Walker radioed the joint task force office within the U.S. Embassy to warn them what was happening. As Hunt and Walker ran down the back stairs and got into their dark SUV, more telephone calls were made and agents swung into action, happy to have something to do rather than sit around the office.
JUBA WAS UP AND moving at the first loud craaack! of the Dragunov sniper rifle, knowing exactly what it was. Pistol in hand, he backed against the front wall and peered around the edge of the window, looking down into the courtyard. Saladin was down flat on the stones, in a spreading puddle of dark blood. As Juba watched, there was a second shot and one of the methodical, experienced, and handpicked bodyguards was blasted in the head, the bullet plowing all the way through the skull in a spray of blood and brain matter. Juba looked but could not see the sniper.
There was no time! It might be anybody, even the French, and the house might now be assaulted by counterterrorism agents. It did not matter how they got this address or the name of Saladin. They just had it, and now Juba had to save himself. He stuck his pistol into his waistband and moved across the Persian carpet to the living room table.
He jerked the printer and power cables from the laptop and folded the computer into its black carrying case. All of the information about the deadly weapon was in that little case, and it had to be removed from harm’s way. Outside, there was a third craaack! and Juba did not have to look to know that the other bodyguard was now dead, too. Neither of the guards had gotten off a shot at the sniper, which meant they never saw him.
The burgundy leather briefcase was beside the table, and he pulled it up and opened it, dumping out the contents except for travel documents and some passports bundled with a rubber band, along with a stack of American hundred-dollar bills that was in one corner. He put the small computer inside and closed the case.
The room was littered with documents and other computer gear that needed to be destroyed, but there was no time to individually shred or burn the items. The entire house would have to go. Juba had spent quite a bit of time planning for just such an emergency, and blocks of explosives were planted at key support points throughout the structure and wired to a detonator connected to a wall switch. He slapped the switch closed without hesitation, which gave him five minutes to leave the house before it blew up.
The noise of three soft, coughing shots came from the courtyard. Juba took the briefcase in his left hand and carried the pistol in his right. He went out, paused at the top of the landing, and snapped off some quick shots downstairs to discourage the intruder.
Juba spun around and headed down the back stairs, putting solid walls between himself and whoever was at the front of the house. In thirty more seconds, he would be clear of the area and in his car that was parked around the corner. With luck, he could make the 5:55 P.M. British Airways flight to Dulles International in Washington. He looked back over his shoulder, up the stairwell.
KYLE SWANSON PUSHED HIS pistol around the corner of the front staircase and fired blindly, twice, then charged up the stairs as he heard the pounding of running feet, retreating in another direction. He took the stairs two at a time, his weapon in front of him, searching for a target.
A door slammed in back and he went that way, noticing the pile of papers in the living room, wondering if the magic formula was among them. Saladin was dead, and that formula was the remaining part of the mission, but he first had to be certain there was no other threat. Whoever was on the run had not continued the suppressing fire, but the footsteps were growing faint. Kyle kicked open the rear door and dove onto the landing of the staircase so the fleeing man below would not have a clear view. He was on his back and then rolled onto his belly with his Glock grasped in both hands as he looked over the top step. The wrought-iron supports for a long railing hindered his view.
Their eyes locked for an instant, and Juba and Shake recognized each other.
“You!” screamed Juba, who was already disappearing around the outer door. He put his back against the concrete wall, reached around and emptied his clip at Kyle.
“Goddamn!” shouted Swanson, off balance and ignoring the bullets as he also started to shoot, although the angles were wrong and his target was out of view.
Bullets whanged against marble and stone, and chips of rock ricocheted in the tight confines of the rear stairwell. Each man knew his opponent’s capabilities, so there would be no more headlong charges, for any rash move would be suicide.
Juba dashed through a small gate and disappeared around a corner.
Swanson heard him leaving but edged down the stairs, wary of deception and places that danger might be hiding. He had to suppress his reflex to go after Juba and bring him down. The mission was still unaccomplished. Those papers on the main floor had to be examined, and he had to be gone himself before the cops came. He holstered his weapon with a curse: a golden opportunity missed.
Kyle hurried back into the main room, where papers were strewn wildly across the furniture, the sign of someone who had left in a hurry. They were bound to contain the secrets, and Kyle was about to call for Sybelle and Freedman to come around with the SUV when his peripheral vision caught the blinking of a tiny red light on the wall. He stopped.
The detonator had only two minutes left and was steadily counting down. Any attempt to disarm it would take longer than that, and Kyle knew that Juba had probably rigged it to a booby-trap alternate igniter to protect the explosive sequence.
He ran. The door at the bottom of the stairs seemed a mile away as he rushed toward it, counting seconds as he went. Minute-thirty. In the distance, he heard the dipping whine of sirens that meant the French cops were coming. He jumped over the body of Saladin, went out of the gate, crossed the street, and crawled back into the manhole. A minute. The stinking sewer system was his friend now, for the blast could not reach him belowground, and it would be a while before the police discovered the open manhole cover. Every step he took got him farther from the blast zone. Forty. Thirty.
At fifteen seconds, he found a small side room where workmen could store their tools and used his Glock to shoot the lock. The door wobbled, and he hauled on the heavy wooden panel with all of his strength, pulling it open far enough so he could burrow inside and kneel, opening his mouth so the blast would not rupture his ears. He hoped the cops had not arrived.
It went off with an earthshaking roar in a repeated series of explosions as Juba’s booby traps blew up in deadly sequence, one after another, and the big house crumbled and shattered. The blast wave knocked down the old walls of the courtyard, clawed at the nearby brick buildings, and ruptured the neat lines of parked vehicles. The shock wave came pounding down the sewer openings and raced along the main trunk line, tearing down everything in its path, pushing aside debris, causing a small tsunami in the sewer water itself, and slamming the door to the room in which Kyle was crouched. He was knocked to his side and bounced hard against some large equipment.
When it was done, he lay there for a minute, dazed and catching his breath in the darkness. Then he struggled to his feet and opened the door to see a thick cloud of dirt and dust hanging in the tunnel like a curtain. Slapping his handkerchief to his mouth, Kyle was about to leave the little room when he noticed the object he had been thrown against was really the steel rungs of a ladder built into the side of the concrete, leading upward. He climbed and found another door, an entrance to the service tunnel. Why didn’t I find this before? He moved into the sunshine and looked back over his shoulder at the huge, rising ball of flame and smoke behind him.
Then he walked away, and each stride convinced him that he was uninjured. By the time Swanson arrived at the Fort d’Aubervilliers station, he was walking normally. He would catch the Line 7 train for the five-minute trip north to the next stop at La Courneuve/8 Mai 1945. Nearby, Sybelle and the Lizard would be cruising in a car out in front of the sprawling and popular Air Museum tourist attraction.