“Fuck you!” Assadolah shouted, then switched to Arabic for a long, solid, curse.
Mike plucked the phone off the terrorist’s belt and pitched it across the room as the first bouncer came into the cubicle in reaction to the shot and screams.
“Back off,” Mike said, pulling out his diplomatic passport and holding it up. “This is a terrorist we’ve been looking for. Call the police, they know all about it.”
“Put the gun down and I will,” the man said, drawing his own sidearm.
“This is a diplomatic passport,” Mike said, waving it at him and then tossing it across the room. “You shoot me, for any reason, and you’re going to jail for the rest of your life. Put your own gun down, call the police, and in the meantime I’m going to talk to this gentleman.” He leaned his weight into his foot as the terrorist screamed, and then shifted his pistol to the other shoulder. “I can go for two. Which one is the disarm code?”
“ICE!” Assadolah screamed. “Ice. Fire for the explosion, ice for the disarm. Ice.”
“Thank you,” Mike said, lifting up his weight. “Don’t try to move or I’ll gladly shoot you some more.”
“He said ‘Ice’ was the disconnect.” Mike was back in the airplane, his chair reclined, a drink in his hand and the headset of the sat phone plugged in his ear. The Dutch police had been less than happy about the shooting, not to mention the torture of the suspect. But it was amazing how well diplomatic passports worked. He was, however, persona very non grata at the moment. Which was why he was sitting in an airfield in France, well away from Paris.
“So we heard,” Pierson said. “Along with how you got the information. You’re a regular one-man coalition breaker, you know that?”
“Hell, the Dutch couldn’t even hold Sbrenica,” Mike said. “What do we need them for?”
“What’s the chance the information was good?” Pierson asked.
“Zero,” Mike admitted. “I just wanted to see what he would say. Look something up for me on the Internet, will you? Google: ‘Some say the world will end in fire.’ ”
“Robert Frost,” Pierson replied. “I know the poem: ‘Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.’ That one?”
“That’s it,” Mike said musingly. “Both of them could be a disconnect, but I don’t think so. If the pope got held up, if something happened to slow down the crowds, they’d want to wait. There’s probably a timer, with the cell phones as backup controls. The output isn’t going to him, is it?”
“Nope,” Pierson said. “It goes to a phone in Germany which is connected to a webserver. Then it posts a text message to the webserver. Anybody can view it. NSA cracked the server and took a look at who was visiting. All the links have been coming out of Iran. But we know some of the Al Qaeda leadership are still there. The circuit on the phone is set to detonate if the phone doesn’t connect to the right number. The French are talking about spoofing the server and the phone output system, but it’s a bit tricky. Frankly, they don’t want to fuck with it if they don’t have to.”
“I looked at his cell phone before it got taken away by the Dutch,” Mike said. “He’d only called the sentry on the bomb and he hadn’t received any calls in two days. So I don’t think the take-down is going to cause a problem. Sunni bombers. Shia supporters and fighters. Who says the Sunni and Shia can’t get together to fight the jihad?”
“Democrats,” Pierson said. “Academics. The Council on American-Islamic Relations.”
“Wise people, all,” Mike said. “We’re down to less than a half an hour. I’m calling Chateauneuf.” He hit the disconnect and dialed the colonel.
“Mon cher,” Chateauneuf said after they were on scrambler. “I understand you had an interesting time in Amsterdam.”
“I’d like to say it was enlightening,” Mike replied. “But it wasn’t. How goes it?”
“Oh, it goes so very, very well,” Chateauneuf said lightly. “The bomb is clustered with antitampering devices. There were movement detectors, X-ray detectors, ultrasound detectors and even a motion detector inside the casing. They managed to find a part that wasn’t covered with some sort of detector and have now managed, finally, to get a drill into the inner casing of the bomb. This is as far as they have gotten. We have less than thirty minutes until the pope arrives. And he has refused to forego his arrival, stating that if all of his children must die, than he shall go with them.”
“Nobody ever said the pope was a coward,” Mike replied, picking up the sentry’s phone and regarding it with interest. “Where are you?”
“Oh, I’ve moved to the press van,” the colonel said. “It won’t matter if I am here or at the command center. So I thought I would watch the proceedings. The men are very cool. They know how perilous is what they do. But they proceed. Ah, the senior technician tells me they have gotten to the stainless steel. Now they must change drill bits, yes?”
“Yes,” Mike said.
“They begin to enter the bomb casing,” Chateauneuf said calmly. “They can only drill slowly. It will take some time. Perhaps as long as ten minutes.”
Mike looked at the time readout on his cell phone and shook his head. It was seventeen minutes until four.
“So, you got any family?” Mike asked.
“A wife, Josee, and three children: Claude, Colette and Danielle,” Chateauneuf replied as if discussing the weather. “They, fortunately, live well outside Paris. Josee was going to come into town to go shopping, but I managed to dissuade her. Danielle is just starting school. They study English in the primary, yes?”
“Probably learning whatever the equivalent of ‘Frere Jacque’ is in English,” Mike said, just as calmly.
“It is, I believe, ‘Yankee Doodle,’ ” Chateauneuf said, sighing painfully. “At least, she was singing it a great deal when I was home last.”
“That makes sense,” Mike said. “Although I’ve always wondered about the macaroni line. I don’t think macaroni was a major food group in colonial America.”
“I would think not,” Chateauneuf agreed. “It was probably another word and got changed. Do you have any family?”
“No,” Mike admitted. “I was married, once. It didn’t work out.”
“That is unfortunate,” the colonel said sadly. “With what you and I do, it is always possible we will not be able to leave children behind if we do not do so early.”
“Well, I’ve got some people that don’t like me very much,” Mike pointed out. “I’d hate for them to take that out on any kids, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” Chateauneuf replied. “Your exploits in this adventure alone would cause some angry reactions.”
“I’ve done worse,” Mike said, looking at his time readout. Six minutes. “Where we at?”
“They are through the casing,” the colonel said. “They are inserting a camera into the hole.” There was a pause and Mike heard the colonel sigh. “It is never a good thing when you hear a bomb disposal expert curse.”
“Nope,” Mike agreed lightly. “What’s the problem?”
“There are more antitamper devices,” the colonel said to a background of muted, and remarkably calm, French. “And a timer. It has less than four minutes to go. Three minutes and forty seconds.”
“Wonder why they set it so early?” Mike asked, humming a Pat Benatar song.
“Perhaps they mistook the time zones?” Chateauneuf said, chuckling grimly. “The Palestinians did this once. They had the timer set for Palestinian time and it went off as the bomb was being carried to the target. Very sad.”
“Terrible,” Mike agreed, mentally adjusting the time left. “Mon Colonel, you’ll forgive me if I don’t stay on the line? The static…”