The Loch Ness Legacy

by Boyd Morrison

  Tyler shrugged. ‘They’ll assume I’m one of the French.’

  ‘It would help if you spoke any.’

  ‘Oui, oui, monsieur.’

  ‘That’s the worst accent I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Hey,’ Tyler said in mock defensiveness, ‘the only words you know how to say are all food-related.’

  ‘What else do I need to know besides croissant, chateaubriand, and beignet?’

  ‘We’ll get you some of each when we’re done here. Is the DeadEye still scanning?’

  Grant checked his smartphone and nodded. ‘No unusual activity.’

  ‘Good. Maybe this was all a false alarm.’ Tyler spotted a slinky red cocktail dress flash by. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  Grant followed his eyes. ‘I have to say, she does look good in that number.’

  Tyler couldn’t agree more. ‘I’m going to check on her progress.’

  ‘Sure. Oh, and grab me one of those little salmon things on your way back. Better yet, send the waiter over with the tray when you see him. I’m starving.’

  ‘The tuxedo isn’t tight enough for you?’

  Grant looked at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘Just because you’re scrawny doesn’t mean you need to feel jealous.’

  Tyler chuckled. At somewhere over two hundred pounds and a couple of inches taller than Grant, few people would call him scrawny. But compared to his friend, almost anyone would look puny.

  ‘I’d better eat some myself, then,’ Tyler said. ‘Give me a shout if you spot anything unusual.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Tyler navigated his way through the crowd toward the bar, which was understandably vacant since most of the attendees abstained from drinking alcohol because of their Muslim faith. The lone person getting a drink was Brielle Cohen, resplendent in a scarlet silk evening gown that demurely covered her top and draped to the floor, but clung to her shape like it was vacuum-sealed. Many of the guests stole glances at her curvaceous figure and long hair the color of burnt sienna, unused to such displays in their countries. Tyler followed suit, noticing that she’d been able to cover up the bruises that had speckled her arms that morning.

  The two of them had met when Brielle requested his engineering expertise on an investigation. Her specialty as a private detective was hunting down items lost or stolen during the Holocaust, and her client was in search of a missing artifact. Tyler had been brought in to analyze the wreckage of a structure deliberately obliterated to disguise its original form, and their week together since then had shown him that she was a formidable woman.

  As Brielle reached for a glass of wine, Tyler placed his hand on the small of her back and leaned in.

  ‘Any luck?’

  She drank half of the wine in three gulps and shook her head. ‘Why do you think I need this?’ Her British lilt was tinged with exasperation.

  ‘What did the minister of the interior say?’

  ‘The French don’t think it’s a credible threat. He assured me that his forces have taken every precaution necessary. In his words, the outcome of this summit is too important to interrupt on the hunches of two US Army retirees and a private investigator.’

  Tyler was amused at being called a ‘retiree’. Both he and Grant were still in their thirties.

  Brielle took another drink. ‘He also said I shouldn’t even be here.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him one Jew wouldn’t wreck the bloody summit.’

  Tyler smirked. ‘What did you really say?’

  ‘I told him to take it up with the Turkish ambassador.’

  At least they hadn’t been thrown out, but Minister Jacques Fournier had been their last hope of cancelling the event. With the little they had to go on, Tyler couldn’t blame the organizers for going forward with the party in spite of their warnings. In Brielle’s latest case, her investigative partner Wade Plymouth had sent her a cryptic message that the artifact might have fallen into the hands of a white supremacist group, leading her to a deserted compound outside Oslo, Norway. There she found the destroyed metal framework, at which time she brought in Tyler and Grant to analyze it. What they discovered was much more than they expected. The evidence suggested an impending terrorist event, but Plymouth subsequently went missing, leaving the three of them to follow gut feelings and a thin thread of clues to the Eiffel Tower.

  One name from Plymouth, however, convinced Tyler that the threat was real. He had been stunned to learn that the leader of the supposed terrorist group was Carl Zim, a vicious white supremacist focusing his ire on Muslim immigrants. Tyler had testified at the trial that put his brother in prison for murder of a Pakistani five years before, perhaps stoking the flames of Zim’s hatred. With a background that engendered an intense fear and loathing toward the spread of Islam, Zim had great motive to kill as many Muslims as possible – the higher profile the better. The Eiffel Tower gathering was the perfect target, and because of his role in provoking Zim, Tyler felt some responsibility for preventing a tragedy. He just hadn’t been able to convince anyone in authority that the danger was imminent.

  Brielle’s eyes locked onto his. ‘No matter how this ends up, I’ve had fun with you this past week.’

  ‘Fun? We almost got killed twice already.’ The week with her had entailed a shipyard firefight with Zim’s men in Copenhagen and a bar brawl in Amsterdam, during which Brielle had displayed her skill with a weapon. The training she’d received while serving as a Mahal foreign volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces was something Tyler hadn’t shared with the Turkish ambassador.

  She took a leisurely sip from her glass, then said, ‘Don’t you find that the “almost” part is what makes it exhilarating?’

  ‘It does make me think about taking a rest when this is over.’

  ‘Where are you thinking of doing your resting?’

  Tyler grinned and leaned closer. ‘Do you have any suggestions?’

  ‘I know a nice hotel on Majorca.’

  ‘I thought your parents wouldn’t approve, me not being one of the chosen people.’

  ‘They only care about who I marry. I don’t share my flings with them.’

  ‘So I’d be a fling?’

  Brielle’s lips parted deliciously. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘I don’t mind being flung once in a while.’

  Brielle looked as though she were going to get even naughtier when her gaze slipped past Tyler and the smile faded.

  ‘What is it?’ Tyler asked and turned to see what she was watching. Fournier was being escorted out of the party by a young man with a military bearing.

  ‘He just whispered something to him,’ Brielle said. ‘It didn’t look like good news.’

  Tyler took her drink and set it on the bar. ‘Let’s find out what the hubbub is about.’

  Tyler caught Grant’s eye and signed to him using the American Sign Language they both knew.

  There might be trouble. Stay frosty.

  Grant nodded, took the smartphone from his pocket, and turned back toward the window.

  Brielle held his elbow and they walked toward the door as if they wanted to get some fresh air.

  Once they were outside, they spotted Fournier speaking with five policemen in riot gear who were gesturing at the east leg of the tower.

  He and Brielle wandered closer until they were in earshot. Brielle translated for him.

  ‘There’s something wrong with this lift,’ she said after listening for a moment. ‘A maintenance crew is on the way up to fix it.’

  With only one passenger elevator to the first floor working that day, any malfunction would require the guests to make the long walk down the stairs at the end of the evening.

  ‘That’s how they’re getting onto the tower,’ Tyler said. ‘Come on.’

  They raced over to the minister, who startled at their sudden appearance.

  ‘You have to stop them,’ Tyler said.

  ‘Please go back inside,’ the minister said in fluent, accented Engli
sh. ‘This doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘Those maintenance men are here as part of a ruse. There’s going to be an attack.’

  The minister shook his head in annoyance. He already knew Tyler’s background – that he was a mechanical engineer with a Ph.D. from Stanford and a former US Army demolitions expert – but calling off the party would be a black eye for the French, so his credentials were overshadowed by more political concerns.

  Fournier’s eyes narrowed at Brielle. ‘Did she put you up to this?’

  ‘Minister,’ Brielle said, ‘this is a matter of life and death. I suggest you search the maintenance men thoroughly. I think you’ll find they aren’t who they say they are.’

  ‘You think? They’ve already been searched. Carefully. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gotten on this tower.’

  ‘They must have concealed their weapons.’

  ‘C’est incroyable,’ the minister said to the policemen, who shook their heads in disbelief.

  ‘Do you want to take the chance that they aren’t who they say they are? Or that they might be carrying a bomb?’

  Fournier frowned at the mention of explosives, but said nothing.

  At that moment four men dressed in blue overalls appeared, coming out of the small maintenance lift in the south pillar.

  ‘I’ll prove they’re not lift experts,’ Tyler said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘If they are in fact maintenance workers, they’ll know details about how the elevator operates, right?’

  Fournier looked at both of them for a moment and then must have decided caution was better than getting caught with his pants down.

  He said something in French, and the squad of policemen raised their weapons and surrounded the maintenance workers. The four men immediately dropped their equipment bags and put their hands up with shocked looks on their faces.

  ‘Can you interpret for me?’ Tyler asked the minister. He took out his smartphone and tapped on the screen to bring up a web page with the Eiffel Tower’s schematics that he had researched the day before.

  He nodded. ‘What do you want to ask them?’

  ‘Just one question. What’s the capacity of the lift in kilograms?’ It was a simple question that had a very specific and unguessable answer, but an elevator maintenance worker should have known the number without hesitation.

  The minister translated, and the lead worker paused at hearing the odd question. Fingers tightened on triggers.

  Then the man blurted out a response.

  The minister turned to Tyler. ‘He wants to know which lift. There are nine throughout the tower.’

  Tyler frowned. He was expecting bluster or even a made-up figure.

  ‘The lift in the east pillar that they are supposedly fixing,’ Tyler said.

  The minister translated, and this time the response was immediate.

  ‘He says it’s 9,240 kilograms.’

  Tyler looked down at his phone and clenched his jaw when he saw the screen. That was the correct figure.

  ‘Is that right?’ the minister asked.

  Tyler glanced at Brielle, who tilted her head in frustration. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘He’s correct,’ Tyler said with surprise. He had been so confident this was part of the attack plan.

  The minister stared at Tyler, then gestured to the maintenance men as he spoke. They picked up their bags and began to move toward the east pillar.

  ‘Dr Locke, Ms Cohen,’ Fournier said, ‘you are no longer welcome at this party. Please leave. Now.’

  Tyler wheeled around. He couldn’t shake the intuition that something wasn’t right about this situation. Before he had time to complete that thought, he spotted movement inside the closed gift shop pavilion across from the Salle Gustave Eiffel and realized what was happening.

  The maintenance workers had been sent up as a distraction. All of the police officers now had their backs to the gift shop.

  ‘Down!’ Tyler shouted, grabbing Brielle with one hand and tackling Fournier with the other arm.

  Automatic weapon fire split the air, killing one of the policemen instantly. The minister was hit in the leg as they fell.

  Brielle scrambled behind a metal girder and Tyler dragged the minister with him to join her.

  Fournier’s eyes were wide with shock. ‘What’s happening?’

  Rounds pinged off the iron around them. Another policeman went down, and the rest were pinned by the withering assault.

  Now Tyler realized why the elevator had been disabled. It would take several minutes for the police at the base to climb the tower. By then the attack would be over.

  The gunmen didn’t have enough manpower to wipe out the guests, but they could keep them inside the reception hall, which Tyler now believed was the real objective. That conclusion was reinforced when he heard the first explosion.

  TWO

  As Grant picked himself off the floor, shards of shattered glass tumbled down his tuxedo. If he hadn’t seen the shadowy shape careening toward the window two seconds before it exploded, he would have caught the glass full in the face.

  Panicked party-goers, some of them bloodied, screamed past Grant as they searched for an escape, but between the gunfire on the tower’s deck and the explosion outside the window, there was nowhere to find safety. Grant was relieved to see no bodies lying on the floor. The blast must have been timed to blow out the window, leaving an open space for the next bomb to fly through.

  Cool air streamed into the room through the gaping hole where the window used to be. Grant blinked and looked for the source of the airborne explosive, but there was no way to see where the attack had been launched from. A rocket-propelled grenade would have left a telltale streak of flame as it rocketed toward its target, but the attackers were using stealthier quadcopters for the assault. The sophisticated flying bombs weren’t much bigger than a large garbage can lid and were painted black, making them incredibly difficult to see in the night sky. The quadcopters’ bare bones design consisted of nothing more than a central pod carrying the control mechanism and high explosive, with a propeller on each of its four articulated arms.

  The only reason Grant had gotten a warning at all that a bomb had been on its way was because of the preventive measures he and Tyler set up in the hotel room they had rented near the Eiffel Tower. They’d left the multi-paned window open so that their proprietary motion-tracking system would have a clear view of the tower.

  The portable DeadEye targeting system was a product of Gordian Engineering, the firm the two of them worked for and that Tyler had founded. DeadEye had been developed for the military to help infantry units spot snipers. It took a snapshot image of a scene and then constantly checked that image against new high-definition video coming into the unit. If anything changed, it would alert the soldier monitoring it. Although it was constrained to stationary use due to the limitations of the computer’s processing power, it was a powerful tool that could be used even at night.

  The DeadEye in the hotel room, a prototype Grant had borrowed from the Gordian labs, was now pointed directly at the Eiffel Tower. When it detected movement in the air around the tower, it would send an alert to Grant’s smartphone, and he’d see a visual of the target on his screen.

  Two previous warnings had come in, but they were only birds, and Grant had to decrease the sensitivity of the unit. The third warning came eight seconds before he spotted the quadcopter directly, leaving him just moments to duck.

  Now that Grant knew the attack was underway, it was time to fight back. He tapped his phone and launched his own quadcopter, this one built by Gordian for a civilian project called Mayfly. It was an unmanned aerial vehicle developed for hazardous search and rescue missions, like the inspection of the Fukushima nuclear plant that melted down after being flooded by the Japan tsunami. The view on his smartphone was from the camera mounted on the front of the Mayfly drone they’d set up in the hotel room in case of emergency. Grant figured the blown-out window and gunshots outside cou
nted as an emergency.

  Normally the camera was the only accessory on the UAV, but Tyler and Grant had spent the past two days weaponizing the Mayfly. They’d given it a stinger. Now Grant would put the jury-rigged contraption to its first test in a combat scenario.

  Using the simplified onscreen controls on his smartphone, Grant directed the Mayfly to take off. The screen showed the hotel room as it rose above the bed and threaded its way through the open window. Once it was outside, Grant dialed up the speed to full throttle. The electric motors whisked the UAV up and the Eiffel Tower filled the screen’s view.

  The DeadEye targeting system was linked to the camera on the Mayfly, superimposing the two images. A new white crosshair appeared on his smartphone screen, which meant another bomb was on the way. Grant directed the Mayfly to intercept.

  He sat with his back to the exterior wall. There was no need to try to get a visual on the quadcopter from here. Standing would only reduce his level of control.

  The approaching copter was moving so quickly he’d only have one pass to try to disable it. The Mayfly homed in on the target. Grant’s finger hovered over the FIRE button. When the target crosshair filled the screen, the Mayfly would be close enough to attack.

  This was going to be close. The first floor of the Eiffel Tower, the very spot where he sat, was getting awfully big in the background.

  The dot grew larger. Larger. Only seconds now until it reached the Salle Gustave Eiffel and flew right through the shattered window to explode amongst the panicked crowd.

  Grant couldn’t wait any longer. The target engulfed the screen.

  He fired.

  Two prongs of a Taser mounted on the Mayfly lanced forward. The prongs latched onto the enemy quadcopter and sent fifty thousand volts through it.

  As he’d hoped, the shock from the Taser short-circuited the copter’s control mechanism. The quadcopter plummeted to the ground, automatically pulling the leads free from the Mayfly.