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  It, too, was clear of police.

  “Three minutes,” said Clark. “All units check in at ninety seconds.”

  Ryan started to turn his eyes back to the rearview. Wait. He turned back to the driver’s-side mirror. A second later, he swiveled around and looked out the back window of the minivan.

  The big black Mercedes truck that had passed him a minute ago was still there by the hair salon, but its side door was open, and several men had climbed out.

  Three, four … five guys, all dark-haired and all possessing dark complexions. One of them slid the door shut, and the van pulled away from the curb, made a quick U-turn during a break in the traffic, and turned left on the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie.

  The five men on the pavement wore dark blue coveralls and carried small tool bags; they looked like they could be window washers or plumbers or some other type of laborer. Together they crossed the street at the intersection. At first Jack thought they were heading to the front door of the Four Seasons behind him, but instead, once they’d crossed the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, they turned in the opposite direction. There, just out of Ryan’s field of vision, was the employee entrance to the Four Seasons.

  Jack knew he couldn’t let a crew of unknown subjects enter the hotel without making sure they weren’t up to anything nefarious. He leapt out of the minivan, raced around the side, and looked up the street. He just saw the back of the last man as he disappeared … not into the employee entrance of the Four Seasons but rather into the front entrance of the Hôtel de Sers.

  This was the hotel where the French internal security surveillance team had set up shop to monitor Rokki’s suite in the hotel next door.

  “Ninety seconds,” Clark said through the comms, and then the other operators began checking in.

  “Sam is in position. I’ll swing out over the courtyard at fifteen.”

  “Domingo and Dominic are in position.”

  Ryan began crossing the Avenue George V. He wanted to see where the men in blue coveralls were heading. Something was off about them, their appearance, their purposeful strides, the actions of the driver of their vehicle.

  Clark’s voice came through his earpiece. “You with us, Ryan?”

  “Uh … yes. Ryan is in position.” He wasn’t really, but he was not going to shut down the hit at the Four Seasons because he was checking out something at the hotel next door.

  “Clark in position.”

  Ryan all but ran to the Hôtel de Sers through the throngs of pedestrians on the sidewalk. When he arrived he stepped through the doorway, looked into the dim lobby, and saw the five men waiting in a group by the reception desk, their tool bags over their shoulders. They were being handed some sort of badges, which they clipped onto their coveralls.

  Shit, Ryan thought. Maybe they were okay. Just here to clean the windows?

  “Forty-five seconds.” Clark’s clipped countdown came through his earpiece.

  Ryan started to head back outside, but he stopped in mid-turn.

  His leather shoes squeaked on the marble floor as he turned back around.

  He looked again at the five men. Focused on one in particular.

  His eyes widened. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly to himself.

  Slowly, Jack Ryan Jr. turned away again and headed through the door, back into the street. He grabbed his mobile from his jacket pocket, and he changed the transmit channel so his words would go only to Clark.

  “Thirty seconds,” Clark whispered on the open net. Right now he’d be in the hallway outside Rokki’s room.

  “John.”

  “Yeah?” Clark whispered to Ryan, alone now.

  “Abdul al Qahtani is here.”

  There was a brief tense pause, before, “Here where?”

  “Hôtel de Sers. He’s with four other men in the lobby. They have bags and they are getting employee badges.” Ryan looked across the street now. He saw the big Mercedes Sprinter double-parked thirty meters west of the hotel, the driver behind the wheel. “One more in a van outside.”

  “They’re going after the DCRI unit?” Clark asked.

  “I … I don’t know,” answered Ryan. He wanted to sit down and think about it, to analyze the situation like he was at his desk in the office. But he wasn’t in his office, he was out in the field, and here he had no time to do anything more than act on nothing more substantial than his best guess. “Yes,” he said now. What else could they be doing?

  Clark did not hesitate. When Ryan received his next transmission, it was broadcast on all channels. John spoke quickly but calmly, the consummate professional, even under extreme stress. “All units abort. I need Dom and Ding to double-time it to the Hôtel de Sers around the corner. Ryan has eyes on al Qahtani himself with a possible wet team that are heading to the third floor, targeting the DCRI team in room 301. Grab whatever you can and get over there fast. Ryan has eyes on tangos.”

  “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, cross 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 front of the balcony doors, though it was back from the balcony.

  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 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 bathroom, 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 tw
o 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.