“Everyone, please stay together,” Dominique shouted. “We’ll arrange for refunds and transportation …”
But what interested Vail more were the sirens blaring in the distance. “I think this is where we make our exit. Into the RER?”
DeSantos glanced around then said, “Yeah. Now.”
They started down the stairs when they heard a voice from behind: “You two. Just a minute!”
57
Uzi and Fahad pulled up to the apartment building in Montparnasse in the heart of Paris’s Left Bank, once the haunt of artists, writers, philosophers, and counterculture intellectuals such as Chagall, Picasso, Degas, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound.
After a postwar decline, the area had taken on a cosmopolitan character but had lost its avant-garde spark.
And now it harbored a safe house for some of the most virulent and scheming terrorists outside the Middle East.
Uzi and Fahad sat in their car on Boulevard de Vaugirard, across the street on the other side of a traffic median, the mature, though barren trees offering a modest canopy of cover from the apartment where their targets were supposedly gathering.
“Just us,” Fahad said. “Frontal assault?”
“Only if we want to get our asses handed to us. We know what Aziz and Yaseen look like but we’ve got no idea how many men they have or what kind of weapons or booby traps they’ve got. We need a covert approach.”
“Makes sense,” Fahad said with a quick nod.
“What do a group of guys want, whether they’re Islamic terrorists or bachelors getting together for poker?”
“Pizza?”
“Exactly. I’m sure they’re getting hungry plotting murder and mayhem.”
“So let me get this straight: you want to buy these assholes — who’ve killed countless numbers of people — dinner? How about some fine Bordeaux while we’re at it?”
“A bit over the top.” Uzi pulled out his phone, did a search, and found Pizza Pino a few blocks away. He ordered a large margherita pizza, then started the car. “I’ll pick it up and you’ll deliver it.”
Nineteen minutes later, they were entering the building, the aroma of mozzarella cheese, basil, and tomato sauce wafting behind them.
“Wish we had the time and equipment to do this right,” Uzi said. “A full-on SWAT team with MP5s, snaking optical cameras, flash bangs—”
“And stun grenades.” Fahad shook his head. “Instead, we’ve got a dozen slices of pizza.”
“Remember, we want these guys alive. We shoot to wound, not kill.”
Fahad balanced the box on his left outstretched hand and used his right to check the Glock, which was perched in the small of his back with a round chambered. “Ready.”
They walked up the two flights and down the corridor, then Uzi flattened himself against the wall, out of the sightline of the door. Fahad knocked, then waited. A moment later, he rapped again.
“What?” came a terse voice from inside.
“Delivery from Pizza Pino,” Fahad said in French. “Large margherita pizza, extra cheese.”
“Not ours,” the man said.
“Yeah, yeah. Some guy called it in and told me to deliver it at 7:00. I’m fifteen minutes late so the pizza’s free, along with our apologies.”
The door swung open and the man said, “Give it to me.”
Fahad moved his right hand beneath the box and took a half step forward while extending the pizza. As soon as he took it, Fahad grabbed his wrist and gave him a quick hard yank into the hallway. Uzi swung around and jammed his Glock against the perp’s head while Fahad clamped a palm over his mouth.
“Name?” Uzi asked in Arabic into his ear.
“Abdul.”
“How many others in there?”
“Four.”
Uzi did not need to ask if they were armed; he knew they were. He twisted the barrel of the Glock into the loose skin of Abdul’s temple.
“How many bedrooms?”
Abdul winced and tried to pull his head away from the handgun, but he was wedged against the wall. “One.”
“Only one?”
“It’s a small flat.”
That was all he needed to know, and all he had time to ask. He reached back and cracked Abdul across the forehead with the Glock’s handle. Abdul crumpled to his knees and Uzi hit him one more time on the base of the skull to make sure he was unconscious.
Uzi pulled a flexcuff around his wrists and quickly dragged him half a dozen feet down the hall while Fahad picked the pizza box off the floor and moved it aside.
“Yo, Abdul!” A voice from the apartment, approaching. “Where are you, man? Why do I smell pizza?”
The second man stepped into the corridor and Fahad shoved the barrel of his Glock against the man’s temple while covering his mouth and pulling him backward down the hall.
Uzi went through the same routine: three men left inside; his name was Hijaz — not one of their major targets — so Fahad likewise rendered him unconscious, followed by a flexcuff around the wrists, affixed to Abdul’s restraint. Even if they regained their wits, it would be difficult for them to get to their feet and maneuver effectively.
Three left, Uzi said to Fahad using hand signals. He hoped they were named Aziz, Yaseen, and Michel. Along with two ancient, extremely important Hebrew documents.
Two against three were odds they could manage, particularly considering the added benefit of a surprise incursion.
Uzi looked into the flat: there were no lights above the narrow wood entryway that could cast shadows and alert the tangos of their approach. He stepped inside and led the way, making no effort to quiet his Timberlands. He was considerably larger than both Abdul and Hijaz, but he doubted the other men would notice the weight differential during the course of a dozen footsteps.
He made a quick assessment of the floorplan as he went: the voices of men speaking Arabic echoed in the room at the far end of the hall, which he suspected was a den — and must lead into the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen — because there were no other doors he could see.
Uzi stopped a few feet from the end of the corridor and waited for Fahad to inch up next to him. He whispered in Uzi’s ear:
“On three. One, two, three—”
They swung into the den and instantly sized up the situation: two men, sitting on a couch huddled over a laptop, arguing. Third one not visible.
Tahir Aziz on the left. Other had to be Michel.
Kitchen clear, bathroom door open. Empty.
Aziz reached for his handgun sitting beside the PC on the coffee table.
“Don’t move,” Uzi barked in Arabic, anger permeating his voice — a “fuck you” attitude in his demeanor, his gun in line with his eyes, aimed at Aziz and clearly ready to fire. “Don’t make me splatter your goddamn guts all over the flat. Landlord would be really pissed.”
Fahad moved behind Uzi, headed for the bedroom to clear it. Since one man was missing — assuming they were given accurate information — the likelihood of Yaseen being in there was high.
Uzi stepped forward, angling away from the bedroom in case he needed to pivot and fire in that direction. “Get down on the floor, now!”
He approached carefully and stuck his boot into the back of the man he thought was Michel and ratcheted a flexcuff around his wrists. Another went around the man’s ankles. Next he secured Aziz, pat them both down, and pocketed their handguns— .22 Berettas. Easy and quiet to fire. Good for silent kills.
Uzi looked up at the bedroom. He had not heard anything and Fahad had been in there too long. “Mo! What’s going on?”
No response.