Stuffing the rifles under my arms, I pointed both hands at the two nearby men and held a mental image of their heads smashing against each other.
“Klunk!” came the sound of the two butting their heads against each other.
But their hands were moving to their coat pockets. Were there knives in them?
The square steel pillar of a viewing telescope just beyond the men gave me my answer. I could not mentally toss them over the platform railing since the steel wire webbing reached from the platform’s rail up to the edge of the roof that jutted out over this floor. The pillar would work.
“Head butt that pillar” I thought and pushed with my hands at the right side jihadist.
Mind power sent him flying across four feet head first. He hit the pillar with a loud clank and fell to the platform’s metal floor, unmoving.
Thoughts are fast.
The left side jihadist also hit the telescope pillar hard, falling to lie across his buddy. He didn’t move either.
“Non!” screamed jihadist three from beyond the cluster of hostages, many of whom had now looked away from the copter and toward me, thanks to the noise of the two men hitting the scope pillar.
Jihadist three pulled a pistol from his pocket and aimed it at the hostages.
“Come to me,” I thought as soon as the pistol appeared in his hand.
Dropping the three rifles to the floor, I reached up and caught the pistol as it flew across fifty feet and into my left hand.
Three was still a problem.
“Come to me,” I thought, mentally visualizing him flying through the air.
I held up my right fist.
His flight through the air ended with a hard impact on my fist.
“Ouch,” I muttered, then visualized jihadist three hitting his head against the scope pillar.
Three flew away from me and hit the pillar, collapsing atop his two buddies.
Dropping the pistol to join the rifles, I walked toward the crowd of hostages, my hands raised and open to show I had no weapon.
“Attendez moi!” I said in my high school French. “Je suis un Americain. Vous etes libre! Venez a moi. Venez!” I said, telling the people who were French that they were liberated and should come to me. I repeated it in English on the assumption there were some Brits or Canadians or Americans in the group. Which seemed likely as half the hostages wore brightly colored clothes that were out of fashion among most Parisians. Years ago I’d learned that lots of French natives dressed in dark, gray, black or dour clothes, for some strange reason. My Hawaiian shirt would have stood out here like a display of Fourth of July fireworks. I noticed three people, two women and a guy, were aiming smartphones at me.
The hostages began shuffling toward me, their faces a mix of shock, hope, surprise and suspicion.
“Qui et vous?” called a woman in her twenties who was dressed in a gold lame gown.
She wanted my name.
“I am the guy called Green Mask, from America. I’m here to help free you,” I said, then repeated it in French.
That seemed to satisfy her. She joined the crowd.
I looked down at the pile of three AK-47 rifles and a semi-automatic pistol that looked to be a Sig Sauer 9 mm brand. What to do with them?
“Americain!”
I looked up and saw a new man dressed in a black overcoat and carrying an AK-47, which he pointed at me and the hostages.
Thought is fast.
Teleporting is as fast as thought.
In less than a second I stood between jihadist four and the crowd of hostages behind me. I held up both hands, my palms facing him.
“Drop your rifle,” I said in English, then in French.
The man, whose face was bearded and swarthy in color, grimaced angrily.
“Non! Tous et mort!”
Before I could levitate the rifle from him, he pulled the trigger. Which was clearly set on full automatic.
A blur of black bullets swept toward me and the hostages.
“Rise up,” I thought at the bullets. “Rise up.”
They did just that, rising up and exiting through the wire mesh above my head. Rather, almost all of them did that.
Two hit me in my chest, slamming against my vest.
They hurt.
In my mind I thought of a ball of flame. The biggest ball of flame that I had ever seen, similar to the one I’d seen one night on the UNM campus as a post football game celebration was held before a large bonfire.
Between me and the jihadist the air filled with yellow-orange flame.
The ball of flame was half as big as the man standing before me. I pushed at it with my right hand.
“Move away from me,” I thought, then visualized jihadist three as the end spot for the flame ball. “Go there.”
The ball of flame enveloped the chest and head of the man who had shot me with his rifle.
“Mon dieu!” I heard someone call from behind me.
The eyes of jihadist four grew wide as the flame ball enveloped him. He opened his mouth to scream. Flame went down his throat. He staggered, his hands rising to his neck. But the hands and arms were also aflame. In fact, his entire body from waist up was surrounded by my ball of fire.
Clothes burn pretty easily.
Whether made from cotton or nylon or something else, clothing burns.
No sound came from the man as he collapsed onto the platform floor.
The ball of flame followed him down, enveloping his legs and lower body.
What nerves remained within the dying body of jihadist four now made his limbs jerk and twist and stretch out.
Then there was no motion.
Just a pile of blackened flesh.
“Goodbye,” I said to the giant flame ball.
It vanished.
I turned back to the crowd of 21 hostages. People who were alive and unharmed by the bullets fired by jihadist four.
Too many of them looked at me with fear. One elderly man, tall and rangy in body shape, moved to the front of the crowd. He was half bald but his face was not lined the way the faces of people in their 80s are lined.
“I’m Richard Hoffman, from Arlington, Virginia. Thank you for saving me and my wife and all these other people,” he said, his tone almost casual. “What now?”
I looked above him and saw the roof security camera aimed at me. It had clearly seen my final encounter with jihadist four. I pointed up at the camera.
“Well, I suspect the gendarmerie cops will be here soon, along with the French Army people. They’ll come up the emergency stairwell, then get up here from the floor below.” I looked to one side as a yellow spotlight fixed on me. It was after sunset and the TV copter was obviously broadcasting me and the freed hostages. Plus the pile of three jihadists who had not moved since I’d slammed their heads into the scope pillar. I pointed at the three. “You and other folks might want to use your belts or neckties to tie the hands of those three behind their backs. Or sit on them. Or both, until the gendarmerie arrive. Time for me to take care of those rifles and pistol, and leave.”
In my mind I thought of where I had stood behind the first two jihadists. I thought “I wish to be there.”
And I was.
Bending down I gathered up the rifles and pistol, then thought of a smaller flame ball. Pointing my hand at the wire mesh that ran up the railing on my right, I used mind power to make it cut a large arc into the wire. With a wave of my hand and a thought, the melted wire fell away.
“Wow!” said a young man who looked to be high school age.
He had been at the back of the hostage crowd, along with other young people and a few elderly women. Clearly the older adults had moved to the front of the crowd when jihadist four had appeared. They had obeyed the human impulse to shelter women and children. Also obeying that impulse were four women in addition to a dozen men of various ages.
I put the Sig Sauer pistol into a pocket of my hoodie, then hugged the rifles to my chest.
“I wish
to fly through there,” I thought, keeping my eyes on the large hole I’d opened in the wire mesh.
My body lifted up. I tilted forward. Moving head first I flew through the mesh hole.
“Hey!” yelled a woman from the crowd. “What’s your name?”
Coming to a hover just outside the railing, I ignored the copter’s yellow spotlight that now fixed on me as I floated in midair. The woman who’d yelled was at the edge of the railing. Behind her stood the elderly man who’d first spoken and nearly all the other hostages. Their faces were mostly happy looking. A few looked surprised. Two teenagers were pointing at me and talking on their cell phones. The two women and a guy who’d earlier pulled out their smartphones were now aiming them at me, clearly doing a live streaming of my midair hover to YouTube or Snapchat or similar online chat venue.
“My name is American,” I called back. “I’m a friend of France. I’m a friend of every person who is targeted by evil people who use their religion to slaughter other people.” With a thought I moved to one side as the copter came closer to me. In my mind I felt the arrival of a crowd of minds into the lower floor of the Top level. The minds were very orderly and focused on getting to the hostages. Cops. And a few FBI agents. Which surprised me until I recalled the FBI had an arrangement for data sharing with Interpol, the international police agency. And I had read there were FBI agents on duty in Paris for terrorist coordination. “Go home. Be good to your neighbors. And do anything you can to help a person in need.”
“Are you a prophet?” yelled an older woman.
I grinned. “Not on your life! I’m just lucky to have abilities that let me help out when civilians are put in harm’s way. Now, I have to go. The air space here is getting crowded.”
Turning away from the gathered crowd, I moved my body away from the Top level of the Eiffel Tower. Once I saw I was over the Champ de Mars green area, I opened my arms and let the rifles fall down. For sure the ground level cops would grab the rifles before any curious kid tried to play with one of them.
Yellow light illuminated me.
The copter was moving toward me.
I waved at the copter, then put one arm in front of me, made a fist, looked down and dived toward the Seine River, far below.
Gravity took me down fast as I let go of my levitation impulse.
Briefly I wondered if I resembled the Hollywood version of Superman.
Then I recalled my bathroom mirror image.
No way did a guy dressed in a blue hoodie, bluejeans, tennis shoes and a green bandana match the muscle-bound image of Hollywood. More likely I resembled some street kid or a gang guy. No matter. I’d done what I knew my Mom wanted me to do. I’d helped people in need and I’d saved lives.
It felt good.
Just before I hit the water I recalled the image of my apartment and thought “I wish to be there”.
And I was.
Face down, that is. With a thump the rest of me fell to the carpeted floor of my living room. I grunted as the air rushed out of my lungs. Breathing deep, I stood up. Then I gave thanks that Sunday was my day off.
I knew I needed time to recover from being shot in the chest. And I needed time to adjust to being a focus of international TV and cable shows. Bummer.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Amazing,” muttered Richardson from across the SIOC room.
Andrew could not help but agree. Looking around he saw there were no empty chairs in a room filled with 27 agents, more TV screens than that, and walls full of images transmitted by the French 24 helicopter and from the YouTube livestreaming of two women and a guy who had been hostages at the top of the Eiffel Tower. So be it. The boss would stand. He leaned back against the room’s wall and watched the people he had come to know very well during the hours he’d been there, from the start of the hostage taking to their liberation by Green Mask.
Agent Yamaguchi was busy at her desk, just feet away from Richardson, busily talking to someone on her neck phone. Beyond her sat agent Chase, who had shown remarkable insight in her work with chief Jackson in tracking down the free-ranging jihadists in Miami and New Orleans. Thanks to her work and the efforts of the Terrorist Screening Center, local agents and police had rounded up three men in Miami and four in New Orleans. With no loss of life. True, there had been a flood of called in tips once the images and names of the seven had shown up on local and national TV in those cities. Still, Chase and Jackson had gone without sleep in order to develop digital imagery leads on the jihadist cells in Miami and New Orleans.
Not far from where he stood Jacob Whitson of the NCTC looked to him and gave him a thumbs-up. Watching Andrew were chief Ramsay of CIRG and agent Lowenstein of BAU One. Turning his attention away from the CNN commentary on one of the video walls, he focused on her.
“Special Agent Lowenstein, what will this Green Mask guy do next?”
The gray-haired woman faced him, her expression professional. And thoughtful.
“Deputy director, I suspect this young man will continue to do what you just heard him say to the hostages at the railing. He will intervene in future events where the lives of civilians are threatened by religious fanatics.”
He thought the same. “But why does he show up and make such a public display of his unique abilities? He is not trying to get rich since he is hiding his face and identity.”
“Sir,” Lowenstein said, her tone musing. “Our various BAU units put a lot of time into evaluating the psychology of violent criminals like serial killers, and also the mindsets of bank robbers and kidnappers. My Quantico instructor was Jungian-trained rather than Freud-focused in her psych research. She emphasized the commonality of archetypes across all human cultures.” She paused, saw that Andrew was not impatient with her comments, and continued. “My guess is this young man is acting out one aspect of Joseph Campbell’s Hero Of A Thousand Faces view of human mythic archetypes. But the motivation for why he is an anonymous hero is likely to be personal. Perhaps related to his family and how he was raised. Just my guess, sir.”
That was interesting. He was familiar with Jungian psychology and had taken some refresher courses in dynamic psychology a few years ago. Now, here was a young man, labeled by the media as the “reluctant superhero”, who did what many people wished they could do. Rescue people in deadly peril. His need to help in that kind of rescue was one reason he’d joined the agency, thirty years ago. Just how similar were this young man’s motivations with those held by him and other members of the FBI?
“Thank you, Agent Lowenstein.” He looked to the man in charge of SIOC operations. “Agent Richardson, have you and the TSC team turned up any results from the review of the 141 young men who showed up in retail videos from the Four Corners states? And are there any other candidates from second hand stores and church refuges for the homeless?”
The broad-shouldered man, still standing beside his own desk, gave a nod.
“Deputy director, we’ve ruled out 93 of the 141 candidates based on verification of their presence at other locations during the rescues in New York and in St. Louis. But we gained 57 more candidates from Agent Chase’s review of video records from church and second hand store sources.” The agent gestured toward the black woman. “Chase will transmit to you our revised list. She advises me that seven of the candidates who were not ruled out are now present in northern New Mexico. She says Special Agent Janet Van Groot, from the Counterintelligence Division, is visiting the towns of Santa Fe and Los Alamos on a field assignment given her by chief Lederberg. Agent Van Groot could do interview these seven, while agents in the Albuquerque field office interview suspects located elsewhere in New Mexico.”
That seemed useful. “Sounds good. Have Agent Van Groot work with Chase and the rest of the TSC team.” Andrew gave a nod to Carlos Jackson, since TSC was his baby. “What about suspects in Arizona, Utah and Colorado?”
“I will request assistance from the field offices in Phoenix, Salt Lake and Denver in interviewing the subjects in those stat
es,” Richardson said.
It was too bad that Green Mask had not hugged or come into personal contact with any of the Eiffel Tower hostages. While the French intelligence agents were good, and would be doing one-on-one interviews of the hostages, while also tracking down the residences of the four jihadists, he doubted they would turn up any data on the identity of Green Mask. That mystery was up to his people. But he would ask his Paris agents to forward the investigative files of their French colleagues, once the field work was done. Maybe the cell phone and computer records of these four whackos would provide a link to the whereabouts of the jihadists in Houston. There had been no sighting of the five men and one woman who were part of the sleeper cell in Houston. That meant they were lying low in some non-public location. He suspected they were planning their attack. Which was surely going to happen sooner rather than later.
“Richardson, during the field interviews with the suspect young men, have your agents find out which ones of them have visited Paris, at any time in the past.” He gestured at the copter’s view of nighttime Paris. “To me it is obvious this Green Mask has visited Paris. He clearly knew his way around the top of the tower. We saw that on the platform cameras. So let us establish which suspects have traveled to St. Louis, New York City and Paris, and who were not in public view elsewhere during the rescues at those locations. That data should reduce our universe of probables.”
Richardson blinked. “Will do, deputy director.”
Andrew turned away and headed for the room’s exit.
He had plenty to think about, after this Paris rescue. While it was nice how Green Mask had said he was an American who was a friend of France, the youth’s appearance in France made the mystery of him an international diplomatic incident. That was a development he knew the director and the president would not welcome. He tapped the elevator button, ignoring how a few nearby agents gave way for him to be first to enter. He stepped into the elevator and touched the button for the seventh floor. Stepping back against the elevator wall, he ignored the curious looks of the few agents who joined him. Perhaps they were headed up to the restaurant on the eighth floor. Food did not interest him. The mystery of Green Mask did. And solve it he would, he vowed to himself.
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