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  “On it,” said Chavez. “How many new mutts?”

  “Ryan says five, plus a driver still in the vehicle up the street. I’m heading over now, my ETA is three minutes.”

  Chavez said, “We’re gonna need four mikes. Five, tops.”

  Sam came over the net now. His voice was strained. Right now he would be hanging from a harness four stories over the courtyard of the Four Seasons, some fifteen feet away from his balcony, with no way to get back into his room without climbing back along the wall with his fingertips. “John, it’s going to take me some time to—”

  “I know, Sam. Just make your way off the wall and sanitize both rooms. Get all the gear down to the van.”

  “Roger,” Sam said. There was nothing he could do about it, but surely he felt as if he was letting his team down. After a heartbeat’s pause, he said, “Good luck.”

  Chavez and Caruso carefully placed their rubber masks on their faces, reattached their earpieces, and then moved in a silent blur as they slung over their heads coils of ropes that hung down on one side of their bodies and then slung over their heads their Heckler & Koch MP7 rifles that hung down the other way. Over this gear each man threw on a rain parka; donned a messenger bag with extra ammo, a handgun, and smoke and frag grenades; and then rushed out of the room.

  The bed in the room was covered with more equipment, and Driscoll’s taut rope still led out onto and then over the balcony, but there was no time to worry about that now. They had mere moments to get down four flights of stairs, c s ofer ross the street, and get back up four flights to the DCRI’s suite on the third floor of the hotel.

  They left the room, ran up the empty hallway, and then moved as quickly as possible down the stairs without raising suspicion.

  Chavez said, “En route.”

  14

  Ryan was back inside the Hôtel de Sers. The five terrorists had spoken to the manager, and now they were being led through an employee access door. Ryan passed close to them as he headed for the main stairwell. He took the stairs at an even pace until he rounded the first landing and was shielded from the lobby. Then he began sprinting to the third floor, which was, in the European system, four flights of stairs up from ground level.

  As he climbed he spoke into his headset: “John… you want me to call the local cops?”

  Clark’s voice came right back; he sounded like he was in the lobby of the Four Seasons now. “There won’t be time to get a SWAT team together, which means the first few beat cops that make the scene are going to get slaughtered, as well as any passersby if the fight dumps out into the lobby.”

  “Right,” Ryan said as he passed the second floor in a sprint, heading to the third.

  Ryan pulled his Glock from the waistband under his jacket as he arrived at the third floor. He screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel of his pistol and then cracked open the door from the stairwell to the hallway. The hall was dimly lit and narrower than he’d expected. He took a full step out to check the room number closest to him. 312.

  Shit.

  He whispered, “I have eyes on the hallway. The service elevator is directly ahead about one hundred feet. DCRI’s room is all the way down the hall by the elevator. No sign of them. I’m going to alert DCRI.”

  “Negative, Ryan,” said Clark. “You get caught out in that hallway and you’re dead.”

  “I’ll make it quick.”

  “Listen to me, Jack. You are not to engage al Qahtani and his men. Stay right where you are.”

  Ryan did not reply.

  “Ryan, confirm my last transmission.”

  “John, DCRI doesn’t carry weapons. I’m not going to just let al Qahtani kill everyone in that room.”

  Now Caruso’s voice came over the net. From the sound of it, he was down on the sidewalk and walking quickly. He kept his voice low. “Listen to Clark, cuz. Five against one is not going to end well for you. Your Glock is going to feel like a squirt gun if those fucks come out of the elevator with assault rifles. Just stay in the stairwell and wait for the cavalry.”

  But in the stairwell, Ryan’s nostrils flared as he readied himself for action. He couldn’t just stand there and watch a massacre unfold before him.

  The elevator chime clanged at the far end of the hall.

  Inside room 301, six officers of the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur were positioned in two teams. Three men lounged on the two beds, reading the morning paper, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes. And three more stood or sat around a desk that had been moved in fron v ofer

  This wasn’t a perfect surveillance operation by any stretch of the imagination. Since the curtains were closed on Omar 8’s window, they could not see into the suite, and they could pick up only faint voices intermittently. But the device did confirm that Omar 8 and his associates were still in there, and that was important. As soon as they left, one of the three-man DCRI teams would head over to the Four Seasons and plant several more effective bugs while the other monitored from this overwatch position.

  In the meantime, they all drank coffee and smoked and complained about the American government. A few years ago, they would have received support for an op like this from the CIA. Omar 8 was allegedly URC; the United States was undeniably interested in URC operators, especially when they were moving through Western capitals with fighting-aged associates and a hundred pounds or so of baggage. Sure, the URC had made many threats against the French, one just the week before. But they had never attacked France, whereas they had attacked the United States multiple times, killing hundreds there and abroad. The damn American consulate was just a mile away — why weren’t les américains here right now, providing intelligence and equipment and manpower for this operation?

  Les américains, mumbled the DCRI detail as they monitored the corner suite next door. They all agreed they certainly weren’t what they used to be.

  * * *

  The elevator door slid open on the third floor of the Hôtel de Sers. One hundred feet away, concealed by much of the stairwell door and dim lights behind him, Jack Ryan Jr. leveled his suppressed Glock at the movement.

  A single housekeeper pushed a rolling cart full of towels and trash bins out of the service elevator and onto the floor. There was no one behind her. Jack lowered the pistol before she saw it, or even him, and he quietly shut the staircase door until only the tip of his shoe held it open.

  He breathed a muted sigh of relief. The housekeeper had delayed the arrival of the terrorists, but only by a minute or so. They would be here soon enough. She and her cart continued up the hallway slowly, completely oblivious to any danger.

  Just then, the sound of running up the stairs below Ryan caused him to turn. Before he had time to do much more than register that he was hearing the footfalls of two men, Chavez transmitted on the net. “We’re coming to you, Ryan. Hold fire.”

  “Roger.”

  Clark transmitted next. “Ding, I’m in the main elevator. ETA sixty seconds. Can you and Dom make entry on 301’s balcony via 401?”

  Chavez and Dom ran past Ryan at a full sprint, their faces distorted and unrecognizable due to their rubber masks. Chavez spoke as he climbed: “I like it. We’ll do a rush-job version of what we {on rec’d planned next door.”

  “You’re gonna have to make it quick,” Ryan said.

  Clark replied, “Ryan. I need you down in the lobby.”

  Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What?”

  “You have to be ready to get the van and bring it around. Sam doesn’t have the keys. You do. We can’t wait around when this is over. Plus, we have a tango still on the street. If he comes in, I want you ready to stop him.”

  Ryan started to protest; he had to whisper because the maid was only a few feet away. She opened the door to a room after knocking, and disappeared inside. “John, you’ve got to be kidding. I’ve got eyes on the hall, I can cover—”

  “Ryan, I’m not going to argue with you! Go down to the lobby!”

  “
Yes, sir,” Jack said, and he spun away from the door and began heading down the stairs. “God damn it.”

  Ding Chavez got slightly ahead of Dominic as they sprinted up the fourth-floor hallway. Both men doffed their rain parkas and let them fall as they ran on, got their hands on their sub-guns, and unslung the ropes from their necks. When he arrived at the door to room 401, Chavez just shouldered right through it, smashing the bolt out of the doorjamb and sending the door flying in. He fell to the ground, and Caruso leapt over him with his HK trained toward movement on the bed.

  A middle-aged couple were eating their room-service breakfast on their bed and watching television.

  “What the bloody hell?” shouted the man in a thick English accent.

  The woman screamed.

  Caruso ignored the couple; instead, he just ran toward the balcony and slid the door open. Chavez was back with him now; together they hurriedly dropped their ropes, took the metal carabiners fixed to one end of them, and then hooked the carabineers on the heavy iron railing of the balcony.

  Right then Clark transmitted in a whisper. His voice sounded pleasant and happy, and he spoke in a British accent. “Got delayed a bit heading up, darling. I’ll be there in half a minute. Feel free to start breakfast without me.”

  The men on the balcony knew they were on their own. Clark was still in the elevator. Obviously surrounded by civilians. They had no time to wait on him.

  Dom and Domingo climbed over the fourth-floor railing, holding onto their HK sub-guns with one hand and their ropes with the other. They turned to face the hotel room and noticed the English couple had already hustled out the front door, no doubt terrorized by what they had just witnessed.

  With a quick look between them and a nod from Chavez, both he and Dom leaned back, away from the railing of the balcony. Five stories down was the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie; traffic rolled by without a care. The two Americans high above the traffic pushed off with their legs. They spent just over a second in the air before swinging down to the balcony below.

  Directly in front of them now, behind the glare of the sun’s reflection on balcony doors that were just slightly cracked open, they could see three of the six DCRI men in the room. One stood right on the other side of the glass, six feet from the Americans’ noses; in his hand was a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Two more sat behind a table in the center of the room. Ahead and to the left of Chavez and Caruso were the bed and ba {he ttethroom, wide of the balcony. And behind the desk with the surveillance equipment was a narrow entryway in front of the door.

  Needless to say, the three Frenchmen reacted with shock to the armed men rappelling onto their balcony. Even more so when the two men released their ropes and brought the short butt stocks of their weapons to their shoulders.

  Caruso and Chavez each took a step forward into a half-crouch firing stance. Chavez screamed, “Dégagez!”—Move! — just as, directly behind the wide-eyed Frenchmen, the door to their room flew open behind the shoulder of one of the Middle Eastern assassins.

  15

  John Clark had been forced to physically push two Chinese businessmen out of the elevator on the second floor. They had ignored him when he asked them to take another car, they’d yelled back at him angrily when he demanded they get out, and even when he resorted to pulling his pistol on them they just stared at it in confusion. Finally he shoved them out and pushed the close door button before continuing on up alone.

  Now he was arriving at the third floor; his SIG pistol was out and ready, the silencer in place. He knew al Qahtani and his men would be in the hall by now, if they were not already in room 301, and he also knew his own arrival on the floor would be announced in advance with a ringing bell and a flash of light above the elevator doors.

  Not exactly a covert dynamic entry.

  When the doors opened, he leaned out and to the right with his pistol at eye level. Immediately he ducked back into the elevator. No sooner had he pulled his head out of the hallway when unsuppressed fully automatic machine-pistol fire tore into his elevator car. He flattened himself on the floor, then reached up with the tip of his silencer and pressed the door hold button, locking open the doors here in range of the enemies.

  He’d seen the gunmen right as they kicked at the door to 301. They were carrying Škorpion machine pistols, a small weapon that fired a.32-caliber bullet at a rate of 850 rounds per minute. Only one man was looking back in Clark’s direction, but that tango had been ready to gun down whoever the hell exited the elevator. John had felt the overpressure of the supersonic rounds and they missed his face by inches, and now he was effectively pinned down inside the elevator.

  Another burst of fire tore through the aluminum car as he pressed his face flat on the cold floor, the sound in the hallway like the ripping of paper into a microphone attached to the amp stacks of a heavy-metal band.

  Al Qahtani and his men fired first; Ding heard the sound of automatic weapons fire just as he got his finger to the trigger of his HK. The Frenchmen in the hotel room reacted surprisingly quickly. The two men at the desk dove for the floor, and the man standing with the coffee and cigarette spun away from the gunmen on the balcony and ducked upon hearing the door smash and the gunfire behind him. Ding got a snap sight picture on an armed tango in the doorway and squeezed off a double-tap through the glass of the sliding balcony doors, hitting the chest of the first terrorist. The man spun 180 degrees, his Škorpion flew from his hands, whipped by the sling around his neck as he landed on his back.

  The glass of the balcony door shattered with the impacts. Dominic Caruso fired a pair of double-taps at the threats across the room, then kicked a remaining crotch-high glass shard free from the doorframe as ~st the stepped through it. The second terrorist through the door had sighted his machine pistol on the first DCRI operative, but Dom took him out with a double-tap to the forehead.

  The man’s skull exploded; blood drenched the wall of the entryway.

  Both Dom and Ding had entered the room now; the third assassin dove to the floor of the hallway, using the slumped bodies of his two dead compatriots for cover. The Frenchmen in the bedroom scrambled to get themselves out of the line of fire. They dove to the floor next to the bed or crawled into the bathroom. Not one of them had a firm grasp on what was happening right in front of them, but the two men who’d rappelled to the balcony had made it clear with their shouts and actions that they were there to help.

  A long uncontrolled spray by the third gunman at the door emptied his Škorpion. He rolled onto his side to reload it, and his partners in the hall covered for him by firing into the room indiscriminately. Both Dom and Ding had advanced farther into the room to get out of the line of fire. Chavez shepherded the six Frenchmen into the bathroom; one of the men had been shot through the hand. With the bathroom door shut, Caruso lay on the floor in front of the bed, rolled out onto his right shoulder to get a narrow field of fire on the tangos. He fired short, controlled bursts from his HK, hitting one of the men in the hallway in both legs, dropping him into the entryway.

  Dom then shot the wounded man in the face with his last bullet.

  “Reloading!” he shouted to Chavez. Ding stepped over him, leaned around the corner toward the entryway, and fired 4.6-millimeter rounds at the opposing force. Three of his bullets tore through the face and throat of the terrorist on the floor of the entryway, sending the man tumbling backward and causing arterial blood to jet into the air like a sprinkler.

  There was one more tango, but he was out in the hall. Chavez couldn’t hit him unless the man stuck his head back into the doorway.

  Dom had reloaded, and he covered the entryway while Chavez took a moment to put a fresh magazine into the grip of his weapon. As Chavez worked his HK’s action to chamber another round, he spoke into his headset. “There’s one out there with you, John.”

  “John?”

  * * *

  John Clark did not answer Chavez, careful not to make a sound as he peered around the open door of the elevator
car. He looked down the hallway toward the source of all the gunfire. Still in a low crouch, he held his SIG Sauer pistol at the end of his extended arms at eye level.

  Other than two dead bodies half in and half out of room 301, the hallway was empty. Where the fuck did the last guy go?

  The door to the suite immediately on Clark’s right opened, and an Asian man peered out. Clark swiveled his weapon toward the movement, but he recognized quickly this was no threat. He took his left hand off his pistol to motion for the guest to go back inside and shut the door, and the Asian man was all too happy to comply with this request.

  But when John turned his attention back to the hall in front of him he did see movement, and it came from a doorway on the left, on the opposite side and just closer than the DCRI’s room. The door was open, and a blond-haired woman stepped out slowly. The forearm of a man was wrapped tightly around her neck.

  She came all the way into the hallway now, and she was not alone. Ho no malding her from behind was Abdul bin Mohammed al Qahtani, operational commander of the Umayyad Revolutionary Council. He held a black Škorpion machine pistol in his right hand, and the tip of his barrel was pressed tight under the woman’s chin.

  The lady was in her fifties. Clark guessed she might have been Swedish, but he had no way to know for sure. She sobbed, and mascara dripped down her cheeks as she slammed her eyes shut.

  Clark stepped out into the hallway fully now, keeping his weapon pointed at the threat ahead of him and his eyes on his target through his notch and post sights. Calmly he spoke softly into his earpiece microphone. “Stay in the room and get ready to leave. I’ll be right there.”