Chapter 17
On The Scent
“You’re not thinking clearly.”
He hadn’t actually said it, but Emily heard as much in his voice… and maybe he was right. Perhaps it would have been better to wait with Perry and Andie for Hassan’s men, and then regroup for a final assault on the mercenaries. Running away from her mom, just when she’d gotten her away from them, was a jarring sensation. Yet her thighs kept pumping, surging her forward down the dark passage.
She clutched the Sig in one hand, and a knife in the other, and tried to bring her mind to focus on what might lie around the next bend. Some number of armed men, and one frightened woman, the mother of two little boys. She already knew how to launch herself at a pack of enemies, to play on their disorientation in the dim light, and their inevitable underestimation of the threat she posed.
Bile rose in the back of her throat, that burning green taste, and she recognized the truth. She’d made this snap decision, not merely on the basis of a tactical reflection, but also because some little bit of her was ashamed to meet Andie’s eyes again. She’d revealed the truth about herself, the ugly spirit of violence that lurked at the bottom of her cavernous heart. The sight of her mother’s face was too painful, when a bloodlust still burned inside, and trying to comfort her in the midst of the carnage she’d wrought had begun to suffocate her. If there was any relief to be found, it could only be in following those men, hunting them down like a vengeful spirit, letting her talons tear at their flesh until nothing remained to regret.
In a more sober mood, she might have recognized the incoherence of this strain of ideas, and passions that passed for thinking. But at the moment, all she had ears for was the pounding in her chest and the light pressure of her feet on the dusty floor. Even this threatened to fail her, when she felt her knees buckle. She slowed her pace until she was standing with one arm propped against the wall. More bile, and she felt her stomach rising, until she leaned over, dizzy, and tried to vomit. It passed in a moment, and she paused to breathe through it.
A face hovered before her eyes, a knife protruding from his throat, and that look of puzzlement as his life began to slip away. Eyes still wide, he reached out, not an attack as she’d thought in the moment, but a plea for sympathy, as if holding onto her might keep him in the world a little longer. She’d brushed his hand aside and slipped the knife out and slashed across his throat, nicking the artery. He drowned in his own blood a few seconds later, but not before she felt his heart struggling to beat, and his breath laboring to reach out to her.
The others, too – she couldn’t have seen their eyes in the darkness, but now she couldn’t prevent her imagination from reconstructing the expressions they might have had. But these men hadn’t cared about her, or Andie, or Marie Roussel, for that matter. Why was it so necessary for her to take on their cares? This had always been her burden, to usher the men who found themselves arrayed against her into another world, and in so doing to free them of the flawed choices and extravagant passions that had brought them to her. Where else could those passions go, if they couldn’t accompany the dead on their journey?
“Enough,” she growled, and pulled herself off the wall. “No time for this.”
On the move again, she felt her resolve harden as she ran, voices echoing up ahead, tantalizingly around the next bend, or the one after that. The accents of some Slavic tongue, they seemed upset, one man wailing out a complaint, and more than one other voice responding in urgent tones. If only she’d learned Russian… Ethan had offered to tutor her on more than one occasion. But there just hadn’t been time for everything over the years.
She turned the next corner, crouching and squinting, trying to see and not be seen. Two men were waiting, posted to head off any pursuit. This wasn’t a good sign – it meant they had the numbers to set up pickets. The Mini-14s rattled and boomed, enormously loud in such a narrow space, and rounds ricocheted off the walls. She tumbled to one side, dust and stone fragments showering down, and emptied half the Sig’s magazine into one man’s legs and the other’s belly. She paused to put the first man out of his misery. No rush, now the element of surprise was gone. The only thing they might not know is how many people were rolling up their team from behind.
“Attendez! Ne tirez pas,” Hassan shouted, and Perry lowered his weapon. Lights flickered around the passageway as his men ran towards him. Hassan’s lieutenant took an inventory of the dead, while he paid his respects to Andie. “C’est notre tres grand plaisir à vous trouver ici, madame.”
“It is very good to see you as well, monsieur,” Andie replied in a shaky voice.
“You caught up with them, I see,” he said to Perry. His lieutenant pulled him aside, holding a rifle he’d taken off one of the mercenaries.
“Oui, Colonel. C’est l’un de nos armes.”
“It appears you were right, monsieur… about the guns used at the Louvre,” Hassan said. “We find them wherever they go.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Perry said, tugging on his shirt to cover his wound. “This isn’t all of them, and they still have one hostage.”
“Where is your fiancée?”
“In pursuit.” Perry said. “Send some of your men to watch the river from above, and we can pursue from this end with the rest. But we have to hurry… before she finds them.”
Hassan barked out orders to his men, and turned to Andie. “Mes officiers vont vous garder en sécurité, madame. Ne vous inquiètez pas.” Two men led her off the way they came, but not before she threw her arms around Perry.
“Help her,” she whispered, and he nodded.
“Let’s go,” he said to Hassan, and they charged off with two officers down the last passageway.
Their body armor slapped and rattled, and the ordinance Hassan’s men carried slowed their pace, and Perry was reminded of how quickly Emily could move at such moments. Of course, stealth might not be as much a priority as speed, and he could have kicked himself for letting her go on without him, even with his wound. What to do with Andie had posed an insoluble problem, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
Except for the flashlights, the way was pitch dark and silent, but for their own noise echoing off the stone. All they could do was press on and hope for the best. They found two more bodies, as if she were leaving a trail for them.
Along the walls, the lights occasionally picked out graffiti in Latin, and some of the stones appeared to have been worked with chisels. There was no time to look more closely, but in a few places Perry thought some of the scratchings he glimpsed resembled the simple fish symbol used by early Christians. This must be one of those Roman catacombs Emily mentioned when they first got to Paris. It had to be a network of caves, natural and artificial, used to bury people in secret, with the appropriate religious inscriptions to secure a place in the afterlife, and still protect their families from persecution.
The silence was worrisome, especially in the darkness. No signs of life, however indirect, offered hope. How far ahead could she have gotten in this time? Perry saw his dreams of a future with her quake in his imagination, the glassy veneer showing the first tiny cracks that would soon bring the entire edifice down. Her body, those lithe limbs and fingers that caused him such pain, and such pleasure, and that face, so charming in its round innocence softening the eyes that occasionally burned. He saw it all tremble before him as he ran… and then the lights caught a lumpen heap of clothes in the dusty distance – another body.
“It’s not her,” he shouted, relieved at least for a moment of a world crushing fear. Perry took a moment to steady himself against a wall while the others crowded around to inspect the body. It was another Russian, to judge from his hair and eyes, and the line of his brow and cheekbones. Blank eyes stared back at them, and it seemed easy to gauge his final terror from their emptiness. Hassan’s lieutenant tried to close them, but they were already fixed.
He stooped to examine the wound pattern, a puncture through one thigh, a
slash across the belly – something peeked out, perhaps a bit of intestine seeking release – and a deep gash on the side of the neck. He’d have bled out from the first or the last in a few seconds. Did he have time to cry out? Probably not.
“La jolie fille,” one said. “Elle a fait tout-ça?”
Another man shivered reflexively, and Hassan turned to Perry. “Votre fiancée, she has done all of this? This man… and the two back there?”
Perry nodded, a mixture of pride and fear in his chest. “She has many talents… but she can make mistakes. That’s why we need to keep moving.”
“Attendez. The radio is no good, but we have mobile reception. Les mystères des cavernes.” He punched in a number, and barked a command into his phone. After a moment, he ended the connection. “The helicopters are gone. Levautrin and Rémy heard of our activities, and ordered them back to base. My men have reached the cliffs, and have a view of the river.”
Perry opened the burner phone Emily had left with him, and selected the cached number. A moment later, Michael picked up. “You heard? Yes, Andie is safe… but Emily has gone after the others.”
“Your signal is sketchy.” Michael replied. “Who’s with you?”
“A detachment of gendarmes… operating without orders, or permission.”
“You mean Hassan and his men? Yes, there’s a bit of French traffic about that, and there’s sure to be a few noses out of joint when this is all over.”
“We need to lock down the river, and we lost our air support.”
“Hold on.” Michael yelled at someone elsewhere in his office, and the noises of drawers and doors slamming came across. A moment later, he came back on, and rattled off his thoughts. “It will take too long to retask another in theater satellite. The Israelis have a new bird over the Med, and I’m contacting them now. Strike Group twelve just transited the Suez from the Persian Gulf. I’ll see if I can persuade them to send an F18 to do a flyover, but SECNAV may block it… Let me talk to Hassan.”
Perry handed Hassan the phone. “You wanted to call that number in her phone… well, here it is, the Director of Clandestine Services at CIA. He wants a word.”
Hassan stared at the object in his hand as if it were something only just fallen to Earth. Perry gestured, and he placed it against his ear. Even if the voice was familiar, one he’d spoken to earlier today, now he would experience the full official burden of direct communication with the American DCS.
As soon as Hassan was engaged, Perry gestured to the two lieutenants to follow, and then set off down the passageway, running as fast as he could in his depleted state, and urging them on.
Emily had begun to think leaving Perry behind was a significant tactical error. From a stationary post, he might have laid down covering fire, or at least provided a significant diversion. Now she was on the verge of catching up to them, however many they might turn out to be – and where exactly were they leading her? – but the danger of her finding them could turn out to be illimitable. She’d pursued them before, not out of anger or vainglory, but for her mother’s sake. Even if Andie was not really her mother, she still felt like one, and filial duty would not be put off. But her mind kept turning to her own future.
What if a new life were even now forming inside her? – and even if it weren’t, what about any other life that might eventually enter this world through her? – what responsibility did she bear to her? It took Emily a moment to consider the significance, that she’d assumed her child would be a girl. What else should she be?
She also felt another burden of responsibility, and her thoughts returned again to Hassan, to Nassim and Akram. If she’d stayed with Andie and left Marie Roussel to her fate, Hassan’s decision to back her play would look foolish, perhaps even despicable. If all she did was rescue her own, Hassan would be blamed for anything that might happen to the French woman, and the press and public opinion would destroy him for it. But if she could bring her back alive, too, his position would be retrieved as well.
Emily pushed herself off the limestone wall, and moved toward the brightness that grew with each step. This was not electric, or the green glow of a chemical reaction. No, it was too rich with tints and gradients; it had to be daylight, or at least the last rays before sunset. They must be near the cliffs now, perhaps perched on some rocky overlook, awaiting the arrival of whatever boat would pull them out of reach of their pursuers. The air was lighter, too, and fresher.
Around the next corner, the passage way opened out into one last chamber, and Emily glimpsed her, Marie Roussel. The green necklace was dim in the light that slanted in from the left, and the expression on her face was ambiguous. Fear, of course – and why not, she must be terrified – but also sympathy. She wanted to scream something, but a hand covered her mouth before any sound could come out, a man’s hand, and yanked her away. This was a trap, and they were ready for her, that much was obvious now. But it was too late to pull back and seek a safer approach.
Her leg felt the trip wire, and she went down, and before she could right herself, or even tumble across the dirt floor, something heavy struck the back of her neck, and pain radiated across her shoulders and around one ear. The cave shimmered, and the world seemed to shake, before she lost track of the light in a growing darkness. Growling, vaunting voices, male voices, reached her awareness and them spun off into an infinite distance.
Chapter 18
The Motor Launch
“Shit,” Perry said. Standing on a ledge protruding from the cave opening, he watched as two men settled into a motorboat idling some hundred meters distant. One of them held a limp figure over one shoulder until he could lay her out on the deck, under the cabin canopy. The boat bobbed for a brief moment, until a third man revved the motor and pulled away from the rocks and into the main current. Even partially concealed, he knew it was Emily, her clothes, her general dimensions.
He tried to find a shot through the scope of the Mini-14 he’d stripped from one of the dead she’d left in her wake. No way this rifle would be accurate at this distance, especially with his trembling hands, and if he struck a fuel tank… He turned to Hassan, who was attending to the French woman. The mercs must have left her behind once they had Emily, though why they’d bothered even to take her with them was hard to figure. Why not just slip away?
“Your men on the cliff, do they have a shot,” he shouted, and Hassan turned to look. “Do they have a long barrel?”
Hassan left Mme Roussel in the hands of his lieutenants, and approached the ledge. Once out in the open, his grunted into his radio, and got a quick response, now that the reception was clear.
“No, no, no,” Perry groaned, when Hassan gave him the bad news. “We have to do something. They have her.”
“How far can they get, my friend? We’ll notify tous les capitaines des ports from here to Nice. They cannot get far in such a small boat.”
“They don’t have to get far,” Perry growled. “A rendezvous with a larger yacht, and there’s like hundreds of those across the Med.”
Hassan made a call, probably to the Marseilles harbor master, and then growled orders into his radio handset. Still, Perry couldn’t help thinking that now he had his hostage rescue, and the pressure was off, Hassan’s interest in taking any risks for Emily’s sake – like requesting helicopter support – was a diminishing quantity. He flipped open Emily’s burner phone and called Michael back.
“Do we have a flyover?”
“Yes,” Michael replied. “Should be coming into view any second now.” He paused to respond to a question from someone else in his office. “What are they looking for?”
“A motor launch departing the Rhone river delta, a few miles west of Marseilles. They have Emily… she’s…”
“We need more than a flyover,” Michael said. “An F/18 doesn’t have enough on station capacity. The Abraham Lincoln has drone capability. Let me see what I can do.”
“That’ll take too long.”
Meanwhile, in the background,
Hassan made a few more calls, and though each time he mainly seemed keen on announcing the rescue, perhaps this was necessary to gain the cooperation of his colleagues. After all, as a rogue officer, who would risk supporting him? But as the commander who’d acted on a tip to pull off a stunning rescue, who wouldn’t want to link his career to him?
“I have two helicopters en route from Aix-en-Provence.”
“How long?” Perry asked.
“Thirty minutes from Marseilles, an hour from Nice.”
“Shit, that’s still too long.”
Emily found her way back to the world of the living with a shake and a shiver, her head throbbing and a mouth full of cotton. Both arms pulled back, stretched by the strong hands of two men, she squinted into the light pointed in her face, which turned out to be a console lamp in the wheelhouse of a substantial yacht. It rolled gently in the swells, in the way only really sizable boats do. The lights of a large town shimmered in the distance, amplified by restless reflections across the waves.
A third man, much larger than the two pinioning her arms, gestured to bring her outside onto an upper deck. Her feet partially dangled, scraping the teak woodwork here and there. The three of them made a few remarks in Russian, vaunting over her, she supposed. How many more crew would she find if she managed to escape them? Three? Five? A dozen? A large hand patted the side of her face, taunting and menacing. Then a backhanded slap snapped her head back.
“So, American, you are the one who has pursued us since Paris? We heard there was another. Your boyfriend… perhaps others, too?” He sneered through stubbly, pork pie cheeks, and turned to his men. “She is so tiny. What happened to her partner? She could never have killed Yuri and Vassily without help. The ‘hedgehog’ must have betrayed us.”
Girl Stalks the Ruins Page 19