For a moment, Amato fell in beside him, so that they were nearly shoulder to shoulder.
“After the conclusion of this operation, I’d like to put in for a—”
As Amato spoke he pulled the metal chain out of his pocket, gripped each end of it tightly, and swung it over Ellis’s neck.
Ellis sensed something was wrong and at the last second managed to slip a few fingers between the chain and his neck. He fought like a rodeo bull, kicking his legs back violently and trying to smash the back of his skull into Amato’s face.
The ferocity of Ellis’s counterattack surprised Amato, but he held tight with every ounce of strength he possessed, squeezing so hard that his arms shook. Ellis still struggled, kicking his legs wildly. Eventually he tried to throw Amato off balance by suddenly dropping to the ground like deadweight.
But Amato had been a soldier. And even though he was old and out of shape, with a bad back and aches that made waking up in the morning painful, his raw strength hadn’t lessened much over the years. When Ellis tried to drop down, Amato held fast and Ellis wound up just hanging there, making little spitting sounds.
In two minutes it was over. Amato dropped the chain and made sure the job was complete by breaking Ellis’s neck with the heel of his shoe. When he collapsed on the ground next to his dead boss, his chest was heaving and he felt lightheaded, as though he might pass out.
When he’d caught his breath, he pressed a button on his wristwatch, illuminating the faceplate. It was nearly three o’clock. If he was going to be at Reagan National in under a half hour, he had to be quick about it.
He dragged Ellis into the center of a cluster of bushes, stripped him of his wallet, and covered him with dead branches and old leaves. The longer it took for Ellis to be discovered and identified, he thought, the better.
67
At three thirty in the afternoon, Mark’s cell phone vibrated. It was Decker, sounding agitated.
“I don’t know how they did it, sir, I don’t know how they did it…”
Mark and Daria had been detected. “I only got a partial visual but I’m almost certain they’re the same guys I followed last night.”
“How many total?” Mark was still beneath the brown tarp atop the bell tower, fixated on the farmhouse with only his eyes poking up above the stone wall. He didn’t see how anyone could have noticed them — which made him wonder what else he wasn’t seeing.
“Two. They pulled up in a van a couple hundred yards down the street from the church and—”
“When?”
“Just a minute ago. I was going to check it out when two guys climbed out and hopped the fence outside the church.”
“They see you?”
“No.”
“Are they armed?”
“Couldn’t tell but you have to figure pistols at least. Shit, if they’re coming for you now — I just lost a visual, they went around to the south side.”
“It’d be two on two with us on the high ground and they can’t be sure we’re not armed ourselves.”
“So maybe they’ll wait it out.”
“What do you have in the way of weapons?”
“A knife. I couldn’t risk smuggling anything into the country.”
Mark clicked off his phone and eyed the low parapet in front of him. Some of the wide, flat stones had been dislodged in the process of taking off the top of the bell tower. He pulled five down, sat on two just in case anyone started shooting up the stairwell, gave two to Daria to sit on, and then held one in his hand so that he could crack open the skull of anyone who might try to ascend the tower.
“We need a better plan than this,” said Daria, as she took another rock for herself.
It was sunny out, a gorgeous day. The deep green of the forest to their left contrasted with the blue of the sky and the white of the few lingering clouds. Mark wondered for a moment whether it was as magnificent a day back in Baku, and he imagined it was. He thought of what it would be like to be sitting out on his balcony. For a moment he grew irrationally nostalgic for the smell of petroleum.
“This is our plan. We’ve already drawn two of them away from the house.”
“That’s not a plan. That’s putting the best face on a disaster.”
“There’s a difference?”
“I still don’t trust Decker.”
“I do.”
“We can’t rely on him. The two of us need to think our way out of this.”
“I am thinking. I’m thinking all we have to do is hold these idiots off until dark and stick with the plan we already agreed on. End of story.”
“That’s four hours from now.”
“We’ll make it.”
68
At first Amato didn’t pay much attention to little ribbon of black smoke he saw snaking its way up into the gray, twilit sky. He figured it was probably a farmer, burning brush in a nearby field.
It was nine o’clock at night and he was driving through the French countryside. The trip from Washington had taken longer than he’d hoped. But he’d make it in time. The takedown wasn’t scheduled to go down until ten.
Then he rounded a corner.
Good God, that trail of smoke is coming from a church.
He checked the coordinates on his GPS unit as he sped up, hurtling past a wheat field at top speed. And that wasn’t just any church, it had to be the church, where Daria was.
When he looked up, he could see the first tiny flickers of flame creeping up through a giant hole in the roof. No. NO. I am not seeing this. Those heathen beasts.
Amato called Martinez. “Captured alive! Those were my orders! What the hell do the Iranians think they’re doing! Burning a church! In the middle of France! Are they fucking insane!”
“They didn’t have anything to do with it, sir. The targets set the fire themselves a couple of minutes ago.”
“If that whole roof goes up—”
“Stay back and let us handle it, sir.”
“Who’s going in for Buckingham and—”
“Sir! Please! Stay back and let us handle it!”
69
First there’d been just a hissing sound as the lithium from Mark’s camera battery, which he’d cut up and thrown down one of the holes in the church roof, reacted with the water he’d poured over it. Next came a tiny orange glow and the faint hint of a burning smell as the flaming battery parts ignited both the hundred-year-old insulation in the church attic and the gothic vaulting just below it, vaulting that Mark — on his way in — had noticed was constructed of wood instead of the more costly stone that an older church would have used.
When flames had begun to creep out of the hole, Mark had flipped open his phone and dialed the international number for emergency.
Now, having been transferred to a local police dispatcher, he said he wanted to report a fire coming from the roof of a church on Route D928. “It’s the Eglise Saint-Martin. And if someone doesn’t get here quick, it’s going to take down the whole roof.”
Minutes later, the fire was roaring loudly and, despite being twenty feet above it in the stone bell tower, Mark could feel its heat. He imagined what the Iranians inside the church must be thinking. They must be getting a little frantic by now, unsure of whether to stay where they were or to wait outside, potentially exposing themselves. It didn’t really matter, he decided — when the cops and firemen arrived they’d have to leave.
Soon after a portion of the roof collapsed into the church, Mark heard sirens in the distance.
A police car pulled up and the gendarme got out and ordered a few locals who’d gathered in front of the church to step back. A minute later a fire truck pulled up, sirens blaring. Four firemen jumped out. Mark stood up.