The Paris Protection

by Bryan Devore

  FEARING THAT REBECCA MIGHT SHOOT them, John made sure to announce himself loudly as he and David rounded the last turn before the small chamber in the cul-de-sac. And he was glad he did, because the first thing he saw in his light beam after rounding the last bend was Rebecca’s gun muzzle, aimed at his forehead. She was in front of the president, who was tucked into a ball against the solid limestone bed at the end of the tunnel.

  “David?” she yelled.

  “Right here,” he said. “I brought you something.” He tossed her one of the attackers’ headlamps.

  “What’s happening?” the president asked.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” John said, “We’re trapped. Two men came down the tunnel. David took them out, but more will come. We’re out of options. David and I will take position just outside this chamber to hold them off as long as we can. Rebecca will stay here to protect you if they break through us.”

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Dozens.”

  “There are no other options?” the president asked. “We can’t fight through them?”

  “The tunnel’s too long, ma’am. We’re cut off. Back here, we at least have some protection from the bends in the passage to form a defense.”

  “We don’t have long,” David said.

  “Can you hold them back?” the president asked.

  John wanted to lie to her. He wanted to tell her that they would prevail, that their training alone was enough to make up for how outnumbered and outgunned they were. He wanted to tell her that he would protect her, just as every detail had protected every president since that tragic day in late November 1963. But he knew that in this dark hour, he should tell her the truth.

  “Can you hold them back?” the president repeated.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, saddened by his admission of the truth. “Not with their numbers and weapons, not in a place like this. Eventually, they’ll break through.”

  Neither David nor Rebecca said a word. They seemed to have already sensed what John had just described. It was the president who seemed surprised. Her unwavering faith in the Secret Service shone in her eyes as she looked back at John with the determination of an executive officer trying to exert control amid chaos.

  “You have my faith to the end, John,” she said. “You and Rebecca and David.”

  “Thank you, Madam President. We’ll do everything we can to protect you.”

  Turning from her, he looked at David. “Take position over there,” he said, nodding toward the right side of the chamber entrance. To Rebecca, he said, “Take her to the back wall on the left side. It should provide some cover if David and I can’t hold the entrance. You’ll be the last line of defense.”

  Rebecca nodded, then moved the president toward the back.

  David stood behind jutting outcrop, just out of sight of the tunnel, submachine gun barrel all but hidden from the entrance. John stepped to the far side of the entrance and knelt.

  “David?” he hissed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shoot at anything with a light. Any sound in the darkness. Don’t hesitate.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Rebecca, get her covered,” he said over his shoulder.

  “She’s covered.”

  He took a few deep breaths, trying to think of anything else they might do to increase their odds. But at this point, their options were limited. They were backed into a corner with the enemy approaching, and all they could do now was face their attackers and rely on training and luck and prayer to protect the president.

  “Okay, everyone,” he said. “We’re going to have to fight them in the dark. So lights out.”

  The lights blinked out, and they waited.

  65

  REBECCA KNELT BESIDE THE TREMBLING president, worried that her charge was slipping into a state of shock. For nearly two hours now, ever since the Crash POTUS alert, they had been on the run and in constant peril—not something a chief of state was trained for. Anyone in the president’s situation would be terrified of dying, of letting down her country, of never again seeing her loved ones.

  Rebecca turned on her new headlamp to give the president something to focus on in the darkness and to help her, if she could, by looking into her eyes and saying a few calming words. To tell her that the three of them would somehow find a way to hold back these killers, that the US military and the remaining Secret Service units would soon discover that she wasn’t in the fire, and would begin a thorough sweep of the tunnels. That even though they hadn’t been able to see it, help was on the way.

  “Turn the light off,” John said.

  “Just for a second,” Rebecca replied. “The president’s not doing well.” She slid her light toward the president. “Ma’am, it’s going to be okay. Just breathe slowly. We have the better position for a defensive hold. And David can shoot the wings off a fly in the dark just by the sound of its buzzing. We train for things like this all the time.”

  “Things like this?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ve even got our own French tunnel system below our facilities in Beltsville, just for this type of drill.”

  “You’re not supposed to lie to the president,” Clarke said. But the weak joke seemed to help bring her back to a less shaken state of mind.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, ma’am, but we lie to you all the time. That’s also part of our training.”

  The president smiled. “I always suspected it,” she said, coughing. “It’s the ‘Secret’ in ‘Secret Service’ that tipped me off.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We’re not getting out of here, are we?”

  “We’re in a bit of a spot, ma’am. But we’ll do everything we can to protect you.”

  “Need to give me a gun again?” the president asked.

  Rebecca smiled somberly. “No, ma’am, you’ve done your shooting for the day. Now it’s up to us to protect you from these bastards.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Agent Reid,” the president said. “Your father’s still a police captain?”

  “Retired now.”

  “Well, he would be very proud of what you’ve done tonight.”

  Rebecca was moved. She had always wanted to believe that she could have even a slight personal effect on a protectee, but she was never sure how much they really knew about her. It seemed strange, hanging on to that thought at this moment, but she felt honored that the barriers between protectee and protector were lowered, even if only for a moment.

  As she pulled the light away from the president and moved her hand to her forehead to turn it off, she noticed something strange on the wall.

  “Turn the light off,” John repeated.

  Her mouth opened slightly as she focused on the details of the old stone bricks, firmly set in even courses and bonded with mortar. The stone wall was gray from centuries in these dark, damp tunnels. She looked around at the walls of this enclosed chamber at the end of the tunnel. At the sides, they were solid limestone, cut from the surrounding bedrock, but the far wall, the end of the cul-de-sac, was gray stone.

  “Reid! Turn off the light!” John hissed.

  “Wait,” she said. “I think we were wrong.”

  “What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

  She trained her light back on the gray square-cut stones. “I think this is one of the IGC walls built centuries ago.”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t think this chamber is a dead end. I don’t even think it’s a chamber. I think it’s still part of a tunnel that keeps going.”

  “What?”

  “The IGC built walls to seal off parts of the tunnel. I think it continues on the other side of this wall.”

  The president placed her hand on the rocks. “Can we break through it?”

  “We don’t have anything to break through it with,” David said. “We have no explosives or tools.”

  “And no time,” John hissed.

&nbs
p; “These walls are centuries old,” Rebecca said. “Many are decrepit and falling apart. There have been stories of people pushing through them and falling into hidden, forgotten sections of the underground.” She looked at David. “You might even be able to use your flash grenade to collapse it.”

  “You think a flash grenade could knock it down?” he asked.

  “If you blew it right at the center of the base, and the wall was weak enough, the small shock wave might be enough to vibrate it out of place—loosen it enough to make it collapse. These things are more than two hundred years old.”

  “No one’s using a flash grenade,” John said, standing up from his post against the wall. “It would be too loud and would only bring them to us faster. And it would blind and disorient us—not what we need.” He examined the wall that, up until this moment, had seemed no different from any other part of the chamber. “Looks strong to me,” he said.

  “It’s two hundred years old,” Rebecca repeated.

  The bright white center of the amber pool from his flashlight moved along the wall. “Is it a supporting structure?”

  “No,” Rebecca said. “Columns were erected for support structures. Reinforcement walls were built along the sides of some tunnels, but other walls were built merely to seal off sections.”

  “How do you know it’s not just a reinforcement wall? What if there’s nothing on the other side of this but unstable limestone that crumbles inward and crushes us?”

  “Reinforcements were used mostly just for the sides. This is at the end of the passageway, so it seems more likely they were sealing off the rest of the tunnel.”

  John looked back at David. “Stay there and keep watch.” Then he released the magazine from the submachine gun and set it on the floor. Then, raising the weapon, he slammed the butt into the mortar joint between two bricks in the wall. It made a loud clatter, but nothing moved. He did it again. Then again.

  The clamor was loud, which lent their situation even more urgency than before. Now that they had decided on this course of action, they had to get through. Rebecca leaned into the wall and pushed as hard as she could, next to where John was pounding. The president followed her lead on the other side of John. As he kept pounding at the joint between the stones, the mortar began to flake away from the wall.

  Rebecca felt the wall bend slightly as she pushed. “It’s going to break through,” she said.

  “Push harder,” John said, slamming harder and faster with the rifle butt.

  Rebecca wedged her feet against a lip in the stone floor and pushed with all her strength. The president, too, was grunting from her exertions. The wall bent some more, but just when she thought it would fall and collapse outward, it seemed to tighten up again and held steady.

  “We almost had it,” she said.

  John dropped the rifle and pushed with them. Again the wall bucked and bent, but it wouldn’t break.

  “We’re right there,” he said. “Push harder.”

  “We can’t,” Rebecca said.

  “David,” John called. “We need your help.”

  Slinging the automatic rifle over his shoulder, David wedged himself between John and Rebecca, and together all four pushed with all their might.

  Finally, Rebecca felt it get a little easier. The wall had bent farther than before. And then, as if in answer to their grunts of exertion, it let out a groan of its own. And the wall gave way, falling away from them, into open space. And as it crumbled, Rebecca fell all the way through to the other side. Heavy stones landed around her. She heard John and the president gasp in relief, and then David yelped in pain.

  66

  JOHN HEAVED AGAINST THE WALL, encouraged by how it was starting to bow. He was desperate to give the president a chance to escape. Then, as if in answer to his prayers, a large area in the center of the wall folded as if hinged in the middle. Rebecca was closest to the breach and pitched forward through the wall, into the darkness on the other side. Large rocks fell from above, and for a second he was terrified that the ceiling was caving in. He stepped back and hauled the president away from the falling stones. David wasn’t as quick and screamed out in pain when a large stone fell on his foot.

  After a few seconds, John realized with relief that the ceiling was not going to fall in on them. The large fallen stones had been part of the wall. Rebecca had been right: they were in the middle of a solid limestone bed that would erode gradually over the millennia, perhaps even form a sinkhole, but knocking down the barrier wall wasn’t going to collapse anything. Through the gaping hole, he could see Rebecca—standing up, so she was okay. David was gasping in pain, and from the protrusion near his shin, it looked as if he had broken the tibia.

  But the wall had been broken through, revealing a long, dark passageway—a continuation of the tunnel, as Rebecca had predicted.

  Turning to the president, he reached out to pull her toward the hole. But before he could reach her, a burst of automatic gunfire erupted behind him. The sound, echoing off the hard limestone walls, with the president so open and vulnerable, was the most terrifying thing he had ever heard in his life.

  Bullets pinged off the rocks, moving in an uneven line toward the president. John lunged toward her, but not before bullets found her right arm and chest. With his back to the gunman, he managed to lunge between the president and the firing.

  The president went reeling back against the rock wall with a stunned expression. Blood spattered across her and John. He tried to grab her and pull her to the ground, but his movement was stopped by the sudden stab of bullets now hitting him instead, cutting through muscle and organs and overwhelming the nervous system, making it impossible for the body to react, or the mind to comprehend exactly what was happening to it.

  He couldn’t return fire or even hope to fight the gunman. His back was to the attacker, and all he could do was pull the president down and do his best to shield her. Bullets continued to chip off the rock wall behind them, and they continued to cut into his body, but no more shots seemed to have hit the president since he intervened. He shook from the force of each bullet hitting him. The pain was strong, but the knowledge that his body was being irreparably damaged and destroyed was more painful still. Tears flooded his eyes as his jaw clenched from the sharp, endless pain. Now on his knees, he was staring into the president’s horrified eyes, hoping that the blood spattered across her face was his.

  Everything moved in slow motion. He felt pain everywhere, but all he could think of was the president’s face. She was looking at him so deeply, as if shocked to find him here in front of her, doing what he could to protect her. But the bullets kept coming, kept bouncing around them, kept hitting him in the back. He fought as hard as he could to keep himself upright on his knees, to keep giving her cover. And just when he didn’t think he could take any more, he heard another loud chatter of automatic fire, this time from beside him. In the corner of his eye, he saw the muzzle flashes from David, lying on the ground and firing bursts at whatever was behind John. A few seconds passed. David had stopped firing. And then John realized that the attacker, too, had stopped. Unable to turn and see behind him, he just had to assume that David had killed whoever was firing on them.

  His body felt strange, and breathing was difficult. His first thought, after processing his unusual weakness and imposing some concentration on his cloudy mind, was for the president’s safety. How many times had she been hit? Her eyes were wide open and gazing intently at him, and for the briefest instant he had the horrifying thought that she was dead. But then she opened her mouth and moved it slightly, as if trying to say something.

  “Ma’am?” he whispered. He had a whole string of questions he wanted to ask. Procedural questions to establish where she had been shot, where she was hurting most—something to get an initial sense of her condition before checking her vitals. But he hadn’t the strength to say more.

  “John,” she replied softly. “Oh, dear God . . . oh, no.” She w
as now looking down at him, studying his injuries.

  He couldn’t see what she was seeing, because he felt too weak to move or even to look down, but the pain and sadness in her expression told him everything he needed to know. Nothing felt right, and he knew that he must be a terrible mess. But the thought of dying, if that was what this was, seemed strangely unimportant. It was exactly as he had always hoped: that death would be kind enough to find him in a moment of courage instead of fear and cowardice. There were times near the end of Desert Storm when he had felt the fear of dying before he could see his wife again, and times during the last stage of her cancer when he felt cowardly about facing life without her. But most of his life, he had been brave, proud of a life spent serving his country, honored to have been given the opportunity to protect the president, and blessed to have found his wife and lived ten wonderful years with her before death took her from him. And now, perhaps, the colder, lonelier existence since she was taken was now coming to an end. This time, death would take him and give him a chance to find her once again.

  Mustering his strength, he forced himself to look down and examine the president, just as she had examined him. Her right arm was bleeding badly. The shots that had hit her in the torso all showed holes in the outer fabric. But her bulletproof jacket had covered her, so she probably hadn’t been hit in any vital organs, for which he was grateful. But all that blood running down the inside of her arm worried him.

  “John, can you hear me?” Rebecca asked as she crawled her way back through the hole in the wall.

  He didn’t understand why she was worried about him. The president was hurt bad. They needed to focus on her.

  David grunted and hissed as he tried to prop himself up against the remaining section of wall. Putting all his weight on his left leg, he growled like a wounded animal and pointed his submachine gun in the direction of the attack.

  “John?” Rebecca repeated.

  “The president needs help,” he said weakly.

  “I’m fine,” the president said. “Don't worry, John. We’ll get you out of here.”