Locked On Part 9

"Of course," replied Clark in Arabic, surprising al Qahtani by speaking his native tongue. "I will stay back. What do you want?"

The Arab did not answer, he just stared at the figure with the distorted face in amazement. Who was this man? How did he get here? Was he with the others, the ones who'd just killed all his men and thwarted his operation?

"I'm listening," Clark said calmly. "I am listening to you, friend. Just tell me your demands, and please do not hurt the woman." He kept the weapon trained on the URC commander while he spoke.

Al Qahtani recovered a little more as he realized he retained some control over this situation. He pulled the blonde tighter to him with his forearm; by this action he literally pinned their faces together, cheek to cheek. He kept the machine pistol pressed tight under her chin. He did not know who this man was, but he spoke as if his main concern was the safety of the woman. Al Qahtani screamed, "I want everyone back! Out of my way!" He began pulling the blonde backward to the service elevator, the friction of the carpet against her high heels ripping the shoes from her feet. "I want all the police to leave the hotel, and the stairwell cleared, and a car brought to the entrance."

Clark nodded but kept his weapon steady. "Of course! Of course. This is no problem. Just don't hurt her. There is no need. I will get a car for you. But where will the car take you? Do you need a helicopter or a plane? We can arrange for you to go to the airport or the train station, or, if you like, you can go to-"

John Clark pressed the soft trigger of his SIG 220 and shot Abdul bin Mohammed al Qahtani through the right eye orbit, severing the man's medulla oblongata and knocking him backward into the service elevator.

The body hit the cold metal floor even before Clark's .45-caliber sh.e.l.l casing landed on the carpet of the hallway.

The korpion machine pistol clanged off the wall and landed at al Qahtani's feet.

The woman looked at Clark for a long moment before putting her hand out to the wall next to her. She took a single slow step forward.

Clark lowered his pistol, hurried to her, and caught her under her arms as she fainted. He lowered her onto the carpet gently and then turned to run back to room 301.

During all the action above, Jack Ryan had stood on the landing between the ground floor and the first floor. Below him, he could see a portion of the lobby, but he remained concealed from the hotel employees by the reception counter.

When the shooting started, people ran past him on their way down from the guest floors above. Some were screaming, some were calm, but all were hustling down to the lobby, or even out into the street.

Ryan just stood there on the landing, his hands empty.

He'd been listening to the few transmissions from his three teammates above him, and from this he had an understanding of what was going on. He had worked out that they had eliminated all the threats. He a.s.sumed Clark would send him to get the minivan with his next transmission.

But the next transmission did not come from Clark, it came from Driscoll. "Sam for Ryan, you copy me?"

"Ryan copies."

"I'm at the van."

"Okay, I'll come out."

"Listen up. The black Mercedes truck just pulled up at the corner. The driver is heading inside like he's got someplace to be."

Quickly Jack turned around toward the lobby. The stairwell was clear now, there were no more stragglers heading down past him. He backed up the stairs to the first floor and then trained his eyes on the landing turn from where he had just come. He pulled his Glock and shielded it between his right hip and the wall.

Clark's voice came over the net now. "Jack, that target is yours."

"Understood." He prepared for the man to appear on the staircase, but then a thought entered his amped-up brain. What if the guy ran straight into the guest elevator in the lobby? Or into the employee area, where he could take the employee elevator? s.h.i.t. Jack would miss him, and the tango would hit the team upstairs and catch them unprepared.

Jack began running down the stairs; he had to get eyes on the lobby so he could determine where the- A large bearded man appeared from the lobby, running up the staircase hard and fast, and he crashed into Ryan. Both men lost their balance and tumbled. As Jack fell he felt his ribs brush against the grip of a pistol in the bearded man's hand, just as Ryan's own handgun slipped out of his fingertips.

Together the two men rolled out into the lobby.

Ryan recognized the other man as the driver of al Qahtani's Mercedes truck. The terrorist ended his fall on top of Jack, and he reached back to hit the American in the face, but Ryan shoved the palm of his hand hard into the bearded man's chin, and then flipped him off him to the marble floor.

Ryan started to go for his gun, he could see where it skidded after hitting the lobby floor, but instead al Qahtani's driver rolled quickly to his knees and then charged from a three-point stance. Ryan could not get out of the way of the attack, so he dropped backward toward the floor, reached out and grabbed the man's jacket, and spun him back to the ground.

The big man crashed to the ground, but he rolled up to his knees quickly, then turned and charged Ryan again. This time Jack leapt to his feet, sidestepped the attack, and slammed the palm of his right hand into the driver's head as he stumbled past him.

The URC terrorist fell to the floor, dazed by the blow to his skull.

Jack had the advantage now, and he leapt on the man, grabbed him by the hair, and slammed his head viciously into the marble tile floor, once, twice, and then a third time, when there was no resistance from the neck muscles of the terrorist and the skull cracked audibly, echoing in the empty lobby.

Ryan hesitated for just a moment, tried to catch his breath, then he gave up. Still on the verge of hyperventilation, he climbed off the dead terrorist and grabbed his pistol from the floor. He holstered it and then reached up to check for his earpiece. Miraculously it was still in place in his ear.

"This is Ryan. Tango down."

"Copy that. You okay?" It was Clark.

Ryan nodded to himself, held his breath for a second to catch his wind, and then said, "I'm bringing the van around. Two minutes."

Ryan crossed the wide floor, heading for the exit, but he was met by uniformed Prefect Police who poured through the doors with pistols in their hands. Jack stepped to the side, held his hands up, and then, feigning panic, he crouched like a terrified tourist. Outside in the street by the black Mercedes truck he saw several police cars. The vehicles were empty; their occupants had just pa.s.sed him on their way to the stairs. After the police ran past him through the lobby, Ryan hurried out the door and spoke into his headset. "Guys, listen up. Eight cops heading up the main stairwell. You're going to have to find another exit."

"Okay." It was Clark's voice now. "I'm with Ding and Dom. We'll come up with something. Be ready to pick us up."

Ninety seconds later, Domingo Chavez fired bursts from his Heckler & Koch MP7 through the hinges of a locked metal door to the roof of the hotel. The three men stepped out into a bright sky, as all around them the sounds of sirens echoed off the buildings. They found themselves on a flat roof here, but in order to move away from the entrance to the hotel they were forced to head to the northwest, crossing two large early-modern-style apartment buildings. Here the roofs of the adjacent buildings were steep, with glazed brick masonry. The roofs were all of different heights and gradients, with only a few narrow walkways. The next building over was a full story taller than the one they were on, so they were forced to climb up narrow masonry steps to begin their escape from the police.

And the police were close behind. Chavez led the way, and he directed Dom and John to pull on their black ski masks. There was no sense now in even maintaining the semi-covert facial-distortion masks, so they might as well attempt to hide even the color of their skin.

As they ran, climbed, and skittered five and six floors above the streets of Paris, they heard shouting on the roof behind them at the Hotel de Sers. From the tone of the yelling, they knew they'd been spotted.

Clark called back over his shoulder to Caruso, "Toss smoke to cover us."

Dom reached into the messenger bag on his back, pulled a smoke grenade and yanked the pin from it. Bright red smoke spewed from one end, and Dom laid it down next to the vertical gla.s.s side of a sawtooth roof. He ran on. The smoke cloud fattened in the breeze on the roof, and it obstructed the Americans' retreat.

After sliding on their backsides down the steep side of a mansard roof that ended at a part.i.tion to the next building, they climbed over the low wall and found themselves looking down five stories into a beautiful garden courtyard surrounded by a stony Art Nouveau building full of luxury office s.p.a.ce. Faces in the windows of the offices stared at the armed men in the ski masks. Some turned quickly and ran away; others just looked on, wide-eyed, as if they were watching a police drama on television.

Chavez, Clark, and Caruso continued on to the northwest. Within another thirty seconds they began to hear the persistent thump of a helicopter. They did not bother to stop and look for it. Whether it was a police helo or television station's traffic chopper, it did not matter. They had to get off the roof.

Finally they skittered to the end of the flat part of a two-angle mansard roof. Beyond that they found themselves looking down, five stories down, on to the Rue Quentin Bauchart, a two-lane street that signified the end of the block. There was no obvious way down, no well-anch.o.r.ed drainpipe, no easy way to descend the architectural flourish on the facade. Only a large bay window ten feet below them that jutted out of the steeply angled roof.

They were trapped. The shouts from behind grew in volume.

The three men knelt on the edge of the roof. The squawking of sirens back on the Avenue George V was unreal. There had to have been fifty emergency vehicles in the area now. There didn't seem to be a police presence directly below them on the street, yet anyway, as the Rue Quentin Bauchart was not really the back of the hotel itself, rather the Americans had managed to reach this position only by clawing their way over part.i.tions between buildings and along small access walls that connected the buildings of the block together. Still, with so many vehicles and men it certainly would not take the French police much more time to branch out at ground level as well, and once that happened, this street would be locked down by the authorities.

"What's below us, Ding?" John asked, as Chavez had the best look over the edge.

"Looks residential. Could be civilians under the roof, there's no way to know."

Caruso and Clark knew what he meant. They did have small explosives in Dom's bag. They could blow a hole in the roof and climb down into the building, then use the stairs to get out. But they wouldn't blow the roof without knowing for certain that there wasn't an occupied apartment, a day care, or an old-folks' home directly below them. And there was only one way they could find out.

Dom stood quickly. "I've got it. John, get back behind that chimney." Caruso took his HK from around his neck and unfastened the ballistic nylon sling attached to it. He took a moment to pull on the sling to bring it to its full length, and he wrapped his right hand several times around one end, then he gave the other end to Ding. Chavez took a firm hold, then grabbed the iron railing with his other hand. Clark moved back, and when Ding knelt down at the edge of the roof, Dom Caruso climbed over the side, slid down the steep roof, his shoes scuffing the masonry as Chavez lowered him. He did get just low enough to make it to the bay window. As he hung from his sling, the men still on the roof heard a cracking of window gla.s.s as Caruso used his rifle to shatter the pane. Ding struggled with the sling, it dug into his hand and wrist and forearm, but he held tight. After a few more crashes, he felt the sling move hard to the left. And then, suddenly, the weight left the strap.

Caruso was in the apartment below them. This was progress, but it didn't really help Clark or Chavez, as far as they were concerned. Caruso had not taken time to explain what he was doing, and this confused the two men on the roof for a moment, but within ten seconds of his disappearance from the side of the building, the Campus operators on the roof heard Dom in their earpieces.

"Okay, I'm in the attic. It's empty. Gonna use these charges to make you guys a hole. Ding, get over there with John and both of you keep your heads down."

Clark nodded appreciatively even as he looked back over his shoulder. He heard voices on the roof; the police had made their way through the smoke and were closing fast, likely while following a trail of broken masonry and cracked roofing tiles. They were still on the Art Nouveau building next door, but they would find their way here within a minute.

Seconds later a loud explosion blew smoke, roofing material, and wood into the air on the other side of the brick chimney. While the last of the bits of debris rained back down, Clark and Chavez ran across the roof to the fresh opening and looked in. As soon as the smoke cleared, they saw Caruso pushing a chest of drawers across a wooden attic floor below them. When he had it below the hole, Clark helped Domingo down on top of it. Chavez quickly turned back to help his partner down.

A crack from a pistol fifty feet behind Clark caused Chavez to duck instinctively as he took hold of Clark's arm. He felt a jolt go through the other man's body, and John Clark spun around, then fell into the hole in the roof. Chavez and Clark fell off of the chest of drawers and onto Dominic Caruso.

"s.h.i.t!" shouted Chavez. "Where you hit, John?"

Clark was already struggling to his feet. He winced in pain, raised a forearm to show that his dirty sport coat was covered in blood. "It's not bad. I'm fine," he said, but both Caruso and Chavez had been around firearms long enough to recognize Clark was in no position to know how badly he'd been hurt.

Even with this, Caruso had the presence of mind to worry about the cops above them on the roof. Quickly he reached into his backpack and pulled out a flash-bang grenade, he pulled the pin and lobbed it out into the direction of the men approaching. He thought it likely that French police officers would not recognize the device, at least not instantly, and they would have to entertain the possibility that they were being fired on by the fleeing gunmen.

The Americans needed to buy a few seconds' time to make their way downstairs, and the grenade did just that. It exploded next to the chimney with an earsplitting boom.

Clark led the way out of the attic, down a flight of stairs, and onto a circular staircase that spiraled down to ground level.

Chavez spoke tersely into his mike: "Jack, we're coming out, ground floor of an apartment building, about one hundred yards northwest of the Hotel de Sers. Thirty seconds."

"Roger that. I'll be there. Sirens approaching from the Avenue Marceau behind me, and George V is full of heat."

"Whatever," Chavez said as he and his two colleagues rushed down the stairs. That was a problem for sixty seconds from now; he couldn't worry about it just yet.

All three Americans flew out of the door of the apartment and onto the street. Jack and Sam were there in the maroon Galaxy with the side door open. The three fell inside just as the first police cars skidded around the corner and into the street from behind them. Driscoll helped Clark into a seat and immediately began a.s.sessing his b.l.o.o.d.y arm.

Even though the police were fifty yards back, Ryan didn't floor it; he had the presence of mind to drive normally as he headed toward Avenue George V. They pa.s.sed a language school and a restaurant where the waiters were just setting up bistro tables on the pavement for the lunch service. Several men and women on the sidewalk stared at their car as they pa.s.sed; perhaps they'd come outside to investigate the origin of the sirens, then heard or saw the ruckus on the roof and then the men pouring out of the apartment. But so far, no one on the street had raised an alarm.

Jack knew he couldn't drive onto Avenue George V in front of him; it was crawling with police and a roadblock had likely already been set up. Instead he drove slowly toward it, watched his rearview mirror until the police cars behind him began stopping on the street in front of the apartment, and only when he could wait no longer, he jacked the wheel to the left and turned into the one-way traffic pouring off of the Rue Magellan.

Certain that at least some of the parked police cars had seen him, he punched the accelerator now as he leaned toward the windshield to take in as much of the road in front of him as possible. The cars on the street shot toward him; he wove left and then right to avoid the oncoming traffic. Within seconds he made a right on the Rue de Ba.s.sano, found himself on a second street traveling in the wrong direction, but he kept going, faster and faster. A last-second reaction to avoid a taxi sent Ryan and the rest of the team up onto the narrow sidewalk; they sc.r.a.ped a pair of parked cars as they shot through pa.s.sersby diving into doorways or out into the street to avoid the dented minivan. At an intersection Ryan avoided a group of employees standing in front of their Russian restaurant, and he pulled back onto the street, crashed through a neat line of bicycles for rent, then pa.s.sed the Louis Vuitton flagship store as he pulled out onto the wide Champs-elysees.

For the first time in a minute and a half he found himself driving in the same direction as traffic. Also, for the first time in several minutes, the men did not hear the shrill squawking of police sirens right behind them.

Jack reached up to wipe sweat from his forehead, but his rubber mask got in the way. His hairline was soaked with perspiration, so he slicked back his dark hair to get it out of his face.

"Where to now?" Ryan asked the men behind him.

Clark's voice was gravel, broadcasting to the vehicle the pain the exNavy SEAL was in at the moment, but his voice remained strong. "Safe house," he said. "We're going to need a new ride. Can't pull into the airport driving the most wanted vehicle in France."

"Roger that," said Ryan, and he punched a b.u.t.ton on the GPS that would lead him to the safe house. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," said Clark.

But Sam Driscoll had been checking Clark. He applied pressure to the wound as he leaned forward into the front seat. "Get there as fast as you can."

Adara Sherman stood inside the doorway of the Gulfstream with an HK UMP .45-caliber submachine gun held in one hand behind her back. She watched a four-door sedan pull to a stop on the tarmac, saw the five men climb out and approach. Four of them carried backpacks, but John Clark had his arm in a makeshift sling under his blue sport coat. Even from a distance she could see his face was ashen.

Quickly she'd scanned the airport grounds, determined the coast to be clear, then rushed back inside the aircraft to grab medical supplies.

On board she bandaged Clark quickly, knowing that a customs official would be on his way out to see them off. While she helped him get a clean jacket on, the other men changed into clean suits and ties that had been ready for them in the Gulfstream's coat closet, but only after stowing their clothing and gear in the stash compartment below an inspection panel in the floor.

Within minutes a female customs agent climbed aboard. She opened two of the businessmen's briefcases and glanced inside and then asked the bearded gentleman if he wouldn't mind opening his suitcase. This he did, but she didn't look past the socks and gym clothes. The older gentleman reclining on the couch in the back was not feeling well, so she did not disturb him other than to see that his face matched the pa.s.sport handed to her by one of his younger employees.

The female customs official finally checked the pilot's paperwork, thanked everyone, and was seen out the door by the flight attendant. The door shut behind her, and within seconds the aircraft was taxiing out of the yellow customs square on the ramp.

Captain Reid and First Officer Hicks had the wheels up in five minutes. While they were still on their takeoff climb out of Paris airs.p.a.ce, Sherman had stopped the bleeding from Clark's arm. Before the aircraft reached ten thousand feet she had an IV line in the top of his hand and an antibiotics drip moving slowly into his bloodstream to stave off any infection.

As soon as Country turned off the seat-belt light in the cabin, Chavez rushed back to check on his friend. "How is he?" Chavez asked, a worried tone in his voice.

Sherman poured antiseptic into the wound now, examining the holes as the clear liquid cleaned the blood away. "He's lost a fair amount of blood, he needs to lie flat for the flight, but the round went through and through and he's moving his hand okay." She looked up at her patient. "You'll be fine, Mr. Clark."

John Clark smiled at her. With a weak voice he said, "I had a feeling Gerry didn't hire you to pa.s.s out peanuts."

Sherman laughed. "Naval corpsman, nine years."

"That's a tough job. You were deployed with the Marines?"

"Four years in the sandbox. I saw a lot of wounds worse than yours."

"I bet you did," John said with a nod of understanding.

Caruso had headed alone up to the galley. He returned, stood over everyone who was kneeling over Clark. In his hand was a crystal highball of Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch. He addressed Sherman. "What do you think, doc? Can I give him a dose of this?"

She looked Clark over and nodded. "In my professional opinion, Mr. C. looks like he needs a drink."

The Gulfstream flew over the English Channel, leaving French airs.p.a.ce just after eleven a.m. at a cruising alt.i.tude of thirty-six thousand feet.

Even though he looked every second of his sixty-nine years, Nigel Embling was no pushover. At six feet, four inches and two hundred fifty pounds, he retained considerable brawn to go with his fertile brain. Still, within one second of opening his eyes, he recognized his predicament and raised his hands to indicate he would put up no fight.

He'd awoken to guns in his face, flashlight beams in his eyes, and shouts in his ears. Though startled and worried, he did not panic. As a resident of Peshawar, Pakistan, he knew well that he lived in a city rife with crime, terrorism, and government and law enforcement thuggery, so even before he'd forced the cobwebs of sleep out of his mind he was already wondering which of these three he was waking up to this morning.

Clothes were thrown to him, and he struggled out of his nightshirt and into the ensemble offered by the gunmen, and then he was shoved to his staircase, down the stairs, and toward the front door.

Mahmood, Embling's young orphaned houseboy, knelt on the floor with his face against the wall. He'd made the mistake of rushing one of the armed men who'd kicked in the front door. For his bravery Mahmood received a boot in his chin and a rifle's b.u.t.t in the back. He was then ordered to kneel and face the wall while Embling was collected from his bedroom and allowed to dress. In Urdu tinged with a phony Dutch accent, Embling shouted at the young gunners, admonishing them like children for their treatment of the boy. In the next breath, in soothing words, he told Mahmood to run along to a neighbor's to have his bruises and sc.r.a.pes seen after, and he promised the terrified boy that there was nothing to be alarmed about and that he would return straightaway.

Once outside in the dark street, he had a better idea about what was going on. Two black SUVs of the same make and model common with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate agents sat parked on the curb, and four more plain-clothed men stood in the street carrying big HK G3 rifles, a standard military-issue weapon of the Pakistani Defense Force.