Krystal Scent (Krystal Vibration Series Book 2)

by Richard Corrigan

  Lamboise came over and sniffed. “I don’t smell anything. But if you’re right, the almond smell could be British plastic explosives from World War II. I’ve smelled it before. It does have an almond smell.”

  “It must be a separate detonation device of some sort that would be activated when the power of the batteries drops or disappears altogether.”

  Karen shone her light behind and traced the wires. “If the main power is cut, the batteries would take over. Disconnecting the batteries…” Karen thought for a moment and then said, “and that box would ignite the plastic explosives, blow up the control panel and that would cause each bomb to explode using its own battery.”

  “The terrorists thought of everything.”

  “There’s a timer attached to the front of the control panel. It’s counting down the time.”

  “How much time is left?”

  “It’s set to go off at midnight. We’ve got to stop it,” Karen said, inspecting the control panel.

  “What happens if we just unplug it?”

  Karen shone her light so she could look at the back of the panel. “It’s just like the Louvre. If we clip the wires, all the bombs will go off in response. If we unplug this unit, it looks like the wires in the back will be fused together completing the connection.”

  Lamboise’s cellphone rang. He listened, hung up, and said, “Durran has confirmed that the terrorists are below Paris in the underground mines and carrières de Paris.”

  “Look at this,” Karen said, pointing and shining her flashlight.

  “It’s a power switch of some sort.”

  Karen followed the wires and said, “It’s a manual switch to set off the bombs.”

  “If we can somehow disable the timer, someone would have to be here to set it off. And that could buy us some time before the batteries take over.”

  “Not that easy,” Karen said, pointing.

  “It looks like a receiver.”

  “That means they could set it off remotely at any time while Lillia’s in the Louvre. She could be killed any minute. Call Durran and let him know that we found the control room.”

  Lamboise began dialing a number on his phone. He brought it to his ear.

  Karen quickly grabbed it and disconnected.

  “What’d you do that for?”

  “It sounded like someone was on the line before it began ringing.”

  “You could hear that?”

  “It might have been my imagination. I’m trying to adjust to my new sensitivities. But, we’d better wait to tell him. Someone’s been after me ever since this mission began. They seem to know where I am and what I’m about to do.”

  “Then we’ll have to communicate with Durran another way. Maybe my phone’s tapped,” Lamboise said and narrowed his eyes. “What do you suggest we do now?”

  “We have to go into the tunnels and see if we can locate the transmitter and disable it.”

  “But that’s only half the problem. We then have to find a way to prevent the bombs from going off. How do you suggest we do that?”

  “I’m working on it. In the meantime, we need to get underground. When we get back to the car, call Durran and tell him we found the central control of the bombs, and we’re out of the metro tunnels so he can resume the trains.”

  Lamboise agreed.

  They were about to exit the cave when Karen spotted a generator in the corner near the entrance. She walked over and unscrewed the gas cap.

  “The tank’s full,” she said. “They must have decided not to use it, figuring it might run out of gas.”

  “How many volts is it?”

  Karen lifted off the cable that had two bare wires and said, “Two-twenty.”

  Lamboise went back to look at the control panel and said, “That would deliver quite a kick since all the devices on this board look like they’re operated by one-ten.”

  Karen dropped the wire. They left the generator and the control panel and climbed up the ladder. Lamboise set the lock loosely on the door. They then headed for the catacomb entrance.

  ***

  The Louvre

  John and Brianna Martin kept looking at the clock. John was becoming increasingly annoyed with the lack of activity to free his daughter exercised by the Paris police and the federal agents.

  Lillia was high up on the scaffolding on the upper floor of the Sully wing lying beneath the tarp. If the bombs exploded, she would be severely wounded and probably die from the radiation; or minimally, burned and physically handicapped.

  “I can’t wait any longer,” John said and bolted for the door.

  The guards jumped on him and wrestled him to the floor. They had to restrain him and fasten him to a chair so that he wouldn’t harm himself or anyone else.

  The captain said, “Mr. Martin, I know what you’re feeling. But if you go into the museum, you’ll trip either the wires or the lasers and the bombs will explode. Right now, our best defense is to let French Intelligence try to work this out.”

  John didn’t respond but wrestled to work himself free from his bonds. Brianna tried to comfort him.

  ***

  The streets of Paris

  Karen and Lamboise took a taxi from the Paris Opera House back to their car in front of the Palais Royal metro station. Lamboise used the car phone to call the French Intelligence office and was immediately connected with Durran.

  Durran said, “We have military and intelligence personnel at almost every exit from the underworld. We’re going to begin closing in on them.”

  “You can’t do that,” Lamboise said. “We found the control room for the bombs. It’s beneath the Opera House. It’s on a timer set to go off at midnight, but they also have a receiver there to accept a remote-controlled signal.”

  “Why didn’t you disconnect it?”

  “It’s booby-trapped. If we disconnect anything, all the bombs in the Louvre will go off.”

  “We’ll send a squad down there to disarm the mechanisms,” Durran said.

  Karen heard Durran. She spoke up, “Remember, there’s a little girl in the Louvre. If the bombs go off, she’ll be ripped to shreds or die a miserable death from radiation exposure. Her parents are there in the guard’s room keeping her company, trying to keep her calm and stationary.”

  Durran thought for a moment and then asked, “What do you plan to do?”

  Karen said, “We have to find the person who has the remote. That’ll eliminate the possibility of an early detonation. And that may give us time to find a way to stop the bombs from exploding.”

  Durran said, “We can stop them if we find the terrorists in the tunnels.”

  “And, you can also cause them to explode the bombs prematurely,” Karen said with severe inflection.

  “They’re not going to leave Paris alive,” Durran said.

  “And you may also kill us,” Karen said.

  “I’ve already given the order. You’d better stop talking to me. You don’t have much time,” Durran said and disconnected.

  Lamboise turned off the phone.

  Karen said, “He’s no different than Etheridge. He doesn’t care that innocent people are sacrificed so long as he accomplishes his goal.”

  ***

  Lamboise parked on the street alongside the letters painted on the sidewalk: “ENTREE DES CATACOMBES.”

  The entrance looked like an old ticket booth for the RER or a storage shack in a state park that was long overdue for replacement. The forest-green paint made it look like it had been covered to hide dry rot. Lamboise showed his ID to the military guard Durran had posted at the entrance.

  Karen and Lamboise entered the enclosure. He drew his gun and led the way down the spiral staircase that dropped them sixty-five feet below the surface to the tunnels that led to the catacombs. Karen readied her weapon. The guards had already turned on the catacomb museum lights.

  CHAPTER 35

  “Well, we’re a ways from the Louvre,” Lamboise said, reaching the bottom of the spiral stai
rcase and taking out the map of the Paris underground and spreading it on a boulder.

  This was the first time Karen had ever seen a representation of the web of catacombs and tunnels that snaked beneath the streets, buildings and alleys of Paris.

  “We should have looked at this prior to descending,” Karen said.

  “I know the routes.”

  “It smells like sewage down here.”

  “The sewers run nearby.”

  They began their trek through the museum portion of the tunnels, whispering and listening to every sound, aware of the shadows.

  Lamboise whispered, “You’ve been to Notre Dame?”

  “Yes,” Karen whispered.

  “The stone for the cathedral came from here. Also, the Romans mined the stone and built the city of Lutetia south of the Seine for their soldiers. They also used the stone for the amphitheater that’s been recently uncovered in the center of Paris and for their baths. The stone can be found all over Paris, especially as foundations for the Roman network of roads.”

  “How many ways are there to enter the catacombs?”

  “There are a number of side tunnels, blocked off, marked forbidden. This is considered to be the main entrance.”

  “Why am I seeing empty beer cans and bottles?”

  “People are always breaking into the tunnels. There really isn’t that much security.”

  “You’d think there’d be more of an effort to protect this place.”

  They continued walking deeper into the passageways, and Lamboise carried on as tour guide, whispering as he went.

  “Most of the catacombs, or more properly called the underground mines and carrières de Paris, can be found in the fifth, sixth, twelfth, thirteenth, and fifteenth arrondissements,” he said.

  “Why not catacombs? Why don’t you refer to them as catacombs?” Karen whispered.

  “No one was buried here right after they died. Not even a year after.”

  Lamboise stopped.

  Karen whispered, “What’s the matter?”

  “For everything you see above the ground in Paris, there’s ten percent below the surface.”

  Karen waited for Lamboise to come back to the present.

  He shrugged and continued walking.

  Karen whispered, “I know the tunnels have gone through numerous uses. I know they served as a place for Christians to meet secretly, a brewery was built down here somewhere because of the cool temperatures below the surface and mushrooms were grown in the tunnels and are still grown down here by some.

  “The Nazis built a bunker beneath St. Michele, and right next to them, about nine feet away was an underground shelter that housed the resistance. All throughout World War II, they never knew each other existed.”

  “You know quite a lot about the underground,” Lamboise said, continuing to lead the way.

  They moved quietly past the sign that indicated Avenue du Montsouris.

  Then Karen stopped, audibly gasped, and said, “I’ve read about these sculptures. They were done by a man named Decure. He was a quarryman. Archeologists determined that these carvings are of places where he was stationed during the war.”

  Karen marveled at the aqueducts and columns and a castle carved out of the stone.

  Lamboise continued walking and then stopped in front of an entrance with a black and white sign written in French above the doorway. “Can you read what it says?” he asked.

  Karen looked up and said, “Stop! This is the empire of the dead.”

  “Through this gateway is the place where over six million Parisians are laid to rest.”

  They moved quietly into the ossuary.

  Karen said, “In college, I learned that by the 1700s, because of the plague, the cemeteries became overcrowded. It was so bad, that some of the skeletons were breaking though basement walls of homes. The bodies had to be exhumed. It was determined that they could be placed in the mines.

  “I’ve always wanted to know, did they keep them separated by class or economics, ethnicity?”

  “No, they’re all mixed together.”

  Karen whispered with an even softer tone, “Each skull represents a human being with a mind, body and soul. And now, here they are in obscurity. All walks of life, thieves, murderers, priests, artists, writers, poets, scientists, teachers, laborers, vagrants, and homeless. All thrown together. All beliefs, all religions, all equal. All the same. No better, no worse.”

  Lamboise stopped and looked back at Karen. “You’re quite the philosopher.”

  Karen’s face became hot.

  Lamboise didn’t react, turned back around, and they moved on. “You’re walking past Paris’s history,” he said.

  Karen grabbed hold of Lamboise’s arm and whispered, “Quiet.”

  “What?” Lamboise whispered.

  “I hear something.”

  The tunnel erupted with eardrum-shattering noise. Karen and Lamboise dropped to the floor.

  Lamboise yelled, “A gun’s magazine being emptied!”

  The walls exploded around them. Bone fragments burst into the cave. The tunnel filled with white shards of calcium from the neatly stacked skeletons. The supports collapsed spilling femurs, tibias, skulls, clavicles, ribs, scapulas, jaws, teeth, pelvises, atop Karen and Lamboise, threatening to bury them alive. A powdery mist of pulverized remains began clouding the air.

  Lamboise returned the fire.

  Karen yelled, “They’re using an assault rifle. They make a lot of noise but aren’t all that accurate. They’ll be out of ammunition soon and have to reload.”

  “Where are they?”

  The firing stopped. Lamboise shone is light. Another barrage of bullets shattered the walls and strafed the tunnel floor. A bullet shattered the lens of the flashlight, knocking it from his hand.

  “I think the firing’s coming from the left. We’ve got to get better cover. We’re too exposed here,” Karen said.

  “Follow me,” Lamboise said and darted off to the right.

  Karen chased after him and dove through an opening in the tunnel wall, landing alongside him.

  Lamboise grabbed her arm as she rolled and his hand clasped her weapon. He whispered, “You didn’t even fire your gun—the barrel’s cold.”

  Karen whispered, “There was no clear target. I don’t want to waste ammunition.

  “What are you carrying?”

  “A Glock seventeen.”

  “You’ve been trained?” Lamboise whispered.

  “You can read. I’ve seen you read things. But yet you show you haven’t read my file. Yes, I’ve been trained.”

  Lamboise chose to ignore Karen’s reprimand and asked, “Where?”

  Karen whispered, “The Israeli Counter-Terrorism Training School in Nevada.”

  “I’ve read about it. It’s supposed to be one of the best. Run by an Israeli.”

  Karen was done talking about her training. “Where do we go from here?”

  Lamboise whispered, “Come on, I think we can get around them this way. We should have recruited a cataphile.”

  Lamboise moved off using an app on his cellphone to light the way.

  Karen followed. Soon the only noises they heard were their own footfalls. Karen whispered, “I’ve heard of cataphiles. They drop down into the tunnels and travel throughout, hiding from the police who continually patrol some of the sections.”

  Lamboise whispered, “They even paint murals, put on shows, run movies, and other demonstrations.”

  “Where do you find one? I’ve read that they stay pretty much hidden from the rest of society, using code names.”

  “I used to be a cataphile.”

  “You? How did you get into that?”

  “I was frustrated with waiting to get into the Secret Service. Every step of the way, it seemed that there was another hurdle I had to jump through. I finally gave up and began spending my evenings wandering beneath the city. But I gave that up before I could learn everything about the tunnels and caves.

&
nbsp; “But I have an old friend who can help us.” Lamboise dialed his phone. He held it to his ear for a little while and then dropped his hand down to his side. “I forgot.”

  “What?” Karen asked, still whispering, “That your phone could be bugged?”

  “We’re too far beneath the surface for any cellphone reception. Let’s go.”

  “Wait. Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Not really, but the only other choice is to go back the way we came.”

  The silence suddenly exploded in gunfire again. Karen dropped to the ground and covered her ears. Lamboise crouched down and tried to see where the flashes were coming from. They stopped.

  Karen whispered, “If we don’t have a map, and you don’t know your way, we could get lost down here.”

  “Yeah. We could,” Lamboise whispered.

  “Has anyone ever gotten lost and never survived?”

  “Yes. A number of people have. And one person died only a few feet from an exit, and he didn’t know it.”

  “Let me lead,” Karen said.

  “You? What do you—?”

  “I can hear the slightest sounds, and I can smell the gunpowder. I know which way north is, and off in the distance… I can hear more gunfire.”

  Lamboise strained to hear, but he couldn’t hear anything. “It’s probably the military and French Intelligence closing in from other entrances.”

  “I told Durran that there was a risk in doing that. He’s no different than Etheridge. They’re no different than the U.S. Government. Storm the troops.”

  Lamboise moved aside and let Karen lead.

  She listened. She smelled. She watched. And then crouching low, she and Lamboise moved slowly to the left along the tunnel.

  Karen continued listening and smelling the air, looking deep into the darkness and leading their way through the catacombs. She came to a crossroads and stopped.

  “Which way?” Lamboise asked.

  Karen pointed straight ahead and said, “I smell fuel of some sort coming from that tunnel. And north is directly behind us.”

  Lamboise said, “I know where we are. There’re couple of arches down that way and the fuel smell is from an old injection. We need to go this way to get out,” Lamboise said pointing to the side.