All that remained was for them to hold their ground, to wait it out. Weather the storm.
“What is the latest from General Darroussin?” she demanded, referencing GIGN’s commander.
“Response teams are still eight minutes out,” came the response from an officer standing a few feet away, monitoring activity on the screens. “The Police Nationale have a QRF less than a kilometer away, but they’re struggling to make their way through the crowd.”
As would GIGN, when they arrived. Eight minutes. Such a short time, on any normal day.
Such an eternity, now.
GSPR officers were posted by each door—more without, setting up tactical positions, barricades—file cabinets and office furniture, dragged out into the corridors leading to the hub.
She glanced over to where the president sat, a few feet away, collapsed in a rolling office chair—a half-empty bottle of water held in his trembling hands.
He looked shrunken, somehow—huddled there in the chair, the armpits of his suit stained dark with sweat.
“I really. . .I really didn’t think it would—that it could—happen,” Albéric stammered, his voice hushed, seeming to speak to everyone and no one at the same time. His eyes darting fearfully around the room. “I didn’t think. . .”
“Madame commissaire,” one of her officers announced, looking up from the workstation as he removed his comms headset, “we’ve just received word from the Police Nationale of a strange van, along the Rue de l’Olympisme. The driver is identified by bystanders as a young Arab male, and was apparently trying to drive in closer to the stadium after the explosions when another driver trying to get out rammed into him in a head-on collision. Officers have not yet made an approach, but—”
“Are they armed?”
A quick nod. “Oui.”
“Tell them to secure a perimeter and take it down,” Leseur replied brusquely, her tone brooking no disagreement. As head of the GSPR, she was not, technically, in the police officers’ chain of command, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, right now—except preventing another bombing. “Immédiatement.”
She saw the hesitation in the man’s eyes, saw him pause before relaying the order. “If they do not secure the van, and it turns out to be full of explosives, hundreds in that crowd will die. Do it now.”
9:39 P.M.
Rue de l’Olympisme
Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis
It felt as though he had run a marathon in the last ten minutes, the scant two blocks back toward the van turned into a writhing sea of thousands upon thousands of people, a tide of humanity, sweeping out toward the river.
Offering no mercy for the fallen, Harry thought, remembering the face of one woman who had lost her footing, barely ten yards in front of him. The anguished look of terror on her face as she’d gone down, trampled beneath the feet of the crowd—her cry for help washed away in the clamor of voices. She’d been dead by the time he reached her—that same look of terror still fixed on her bruised face.
You can’t save the world. A hard truth, he’d had to learn so very long ago. Perhaps he’d learned it too well.
He pushed his way past a middle-aged man in a football jersey, hearing him call out desperately in French for his young son, lost somewhere in the mob. The anguish in the man’s voice, driving a dagger into Harry’s heart.
You did this to him. The voice, echoing again and again in his mind. Relentless. Unsparing.
And this time he recognized it—knew the sound. Knew to which of his demons it belonged. Marwan.
“I could have stopped them,” the voice continued, remorselessly. “Could have prevented. . .all of this. But you stopped me, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
Harry shook his head, struggling to clear his thoughts—to keep his focus as he stepped over a knee-high concrete vehicle barrier, put in place before the event to mark the security perimeter. The van had to be close now, it had to be—
He moved to his right, onto the sidewalk, pushing through the crowd past a silver SUV parked up against the curb. He felt people move back against him, as if repelled by some invisible force—the sharp point of someone’s elbow slamming inadvertently into his side.
Pain. Lights flashing through his brain as he collapsed back against the side of the vehicle—struggling to keep his feet, nausea overwhelming him.
It felt for a moment as though he might black out, but he pushed himself aright, staggering to the back of the SUV—his right hand pressed against his side, his left supporting himself against the vehicle.
And then he saw it—the thin line of gendarmes with riot shields—struggling to turn back the crowd, to form a frail perimeter. Around the van.
Even from this distance—nearly fifty meters away—he could guess what had happened. A driver, attempting to escape the area around the Stade, ramming into Aryn as he pulled out of his parking space—the van swerving in an effort to get out of the way at the last moment, taking the impact nearly head-on, crumpling in the front—the driver’s side door. Deploying the airbags.
No sign of the driver.
He forced his way through the crowd, ignoring the pain—the exhaustion pervading his body. Moving forward until he found himself in the front—pressed against the line of police, his hand on a gendarme’s shield.
“The driver,” Harry shouted, a warning in his voice as he stared across the shield into the young officer’s eyes, “he has a bomb! I saw him arm it, I—”
He saw the look of incomprehension on the gendarme’s face, his words swept away in the roar of voices around them. Started to repeat them, to push in closer, heedless of his own danger.
And then he heard it, from somewhere up the street, the crowd’s panic reaching new heights. The familiar crackle of a rifle on full-automatic. . .
9:41 P.M.
Stade de France
“We have a shooter,” the officer by the screens of the security hub announced suddenly, drawing Marion Leseur’s attention to the cameras covering the Rue d’Olympisme—picking out in the semi-darkness a masked figure kneeling before one of the storefronts, a rifle in his hand—shooting indiscriminately into the crowd.
The GSPR commissaire swore loudly, adjusting her headset radio and keying the microphone. “Perimeter teams, we need a twenty on the gunman. Does anyone have the solution?”
A moment passed, her radio crackling with static as one by one the GSPR snipers checked in. Their answers, coming as one—a curious finality in the words.
“Non.”
9:42 P.M.
Ambassade d’Auvergne
Paris
“. . .and your daughter? How is she enjoying university?” Daniel Vukovic heard his wife ask, daubing his lips with his napkin as he leaned back into his chair, glancing around the crowded restaurant.
The woman across from him beamed in reply. “Very well—she wants to be a journalist.”
Vukovic cleared his throat, casting an ironic glance at her husband. “Going over to the dark side? Come, Phillip. . .how you could allow such a thing?”
Phillip Blake, the British Secret Intelligence Service’s chief of station in Paris, just shook his head, smiling. “‘Allow’? You don’t have daughters, do you, Daniel?”
“You have me there,” the CIA station chief replied, returning the smile as he took another sip of his pinot noir.
This had been a good night—a rare moment of relaxation, for both he and Blake. Their final dinner together, before Blake rotated out of Paris—back to Vauxhall Cross after two years in France. Two years in which Vukovic could have asked for no better ally, their partnership unusually strong, even by Anglo-American standards.
“To faithful friends, and a job well done,” he said, saluting Blake with his glass. “It’s been an honor.”
“Here, here,” the SIS man replied, raising his own glass in the toast. “Another few years, Daniel, and you might have even convinced me that you Americans weren’t half bad.”
That brought a laugh, a
nd Vukovic returned his attention briefly to his plate, taking another bite of the minced duck. “I truly regret losing you here, Phillip. It has been—”
He broke off in mid-sentence as the phone within the pocket of his jacket began to vibrate insistently, taking it out to glance at the screen. Paris Station.
“Excuse me, Phillip, I have to take this. I—”
And it was only then that he realized that his counterpart was likewise glancing at his phone—their eyes locking across the table with the mutual, unspoken recognition of just what that meant.
This was bad.
9:43 P.M.
Rue de l’Olympisme
Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis
Chaos. Harry leaned back, pressing himself flat against the wall of the building on the left side of the street, watching the seething mass of humanity before him—caught between the fragile, wavering line of gendarmes and the gunman.
Yassin.
Some people had sought cover when the shooting started, others simply tried to run, finding themselves hemmed in by the police—their desire to keep people away from the potential VBIED inadvertently aiding the shooter. Turning the street into a slaughterhouse. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
He knew where he was now, though, scarce ten meters up the street—tucked into the alcove of the building Harry was himself now pressed against.
A good position, Harry had to concede—the compact CZ out in his hand, tucked against his thigh as he worked his way up along the wall—out of the line of sight of almost any of the nearby roofs, and any snipers the French might have pre-positioned as part of their security preparations in advance of the game.
Another ragged burst of fire struck his ears, followed by more screams. And then a pause. Yassin—no, the gunman, he had to think of him as the gunman, nothing more—had to be on his second magazine by now, maybe third. He couldn’t have had more than five with him, could he? But there was no use in waiting to find out.
Harry’s head came up above the concrete wall as he edged his way forward—catching a distorted view of the masked gunman through the spider-veined glass of the storefront. Down on one knee, in a stable firing position. The cut-down AK in his hands, clearly visible, silhouetted in the embers of the dying sun.
Reloading.
There was no time to hesitate, and yet he felt as if rooted to the spot—overcome, in these final moments, by a strange reluctance. Do it. Do it now.
And he could see Nora’s face before his eyes—the way she had looked in those final moments before her death, the bewilderment still playing across her features.
The venom in Faouzi’s voice, as he’d spat out the words—damning him as a traitor.
Faiths betrayed.
He pushed those thoughts away with an effort, slipping off the CZ’s safety as he rounded the corner, hammer back on a full chamber—catching Yassin in the act of rocking a mag back into the AK-103’s well, pulling back the charging handle.
He saw the surprise at his sudden appearance, the rifle’s barrel coming up instinctively.
A smile crossing his own face, as he hailed his young friend, lifting his voice above the chaos of the street surrounding them. “Brother!”
The Kalashnikov’s barrel wavered, lowering almost imperceptibly—confusion there in Yassin’s eyes, behind the balaclava mask. “Ibrahim, what’s. . .I mean, why, I—”
9:45 P.M.
It felt as if someone was beating on his skull with a hammer, Aryn thought, pushing himself aright on the floor of the van—a hand clasped to the back of his head as he fumbled with the airbags billowing above him.
What had happened? And then he remembered, turning out into the street, still struggling to process what had happened to the drones—seeing the oncoming car, a moment too late. An impact which had thrown him from his seat, thrown the detonator. . .where was it?
He reached out, his hand groping in the darkness beneath the seat. And then he heard the voices—barking out orders of authority. Moving closer. . .
9:46 P.M.
The opening was there, and he took it—the compact CZ coming up in his outstretched hand, recognition entering the young man’s eyes for a brief, terrifying second before the trigger broke beneath Harry’s finger, fire blossoming from the pistol’s muzzle.
Once, twice. Double-tap. The rifle falling from Yassin’s hands, clattering against the concrete as he reeled backward, struggling to stay aright even as Harry shot him a third time, high in the chest.
He went down hard, crumpling to the ground in a half-sitting position against the storefront—staring up at the eaves above, desperation and fear in his eyes, visible in the dim light. Clawing desperately at something in his pocket. The detonator.
Harry kicked the AK further out of his reach, stooping down on one knee by the body of his young friend—seizing his wrist in an iron grasp.
“It wouldn’t do you any good,” he said gently, looking down into the eyes of the man who had once saved his life, “even if you could reach it. You remember when we embraced there in the park at Montmorency, saying farewell?”
Remember? It seemed a lifetime ago. An eternity. Scarce an hour.
“I pulled the wires then,” he continued, watching the disbelief fill Yassin’s eyes—anger distorting the face behind the mask. It had been simple enough to do—a snapped wire, perhaps two, the connection broken with a quick jerk. “You were never going to be able to trigger that vest.”
The lips of the mask parted in a bitter curse, eyes filled with bewilderment and hatred gazing back into his own as he knelt there, the pistol still leveled in his hand. Harry reached up, his fingers twisting in the fabric of the balaclava and pulling it off with a rough gesture.
Forcing himself to look into the face of the man with whom he’d shared so many meals, spent so many mornings in prayer. Bread and salt. The man he had betrayed, in the end. Along with all the rest.
Yassin’s head lolled back with the forceful motion, his strength clearly spent, not even the Captagon serving to keep him in the fight—the front of his jacket stained dark with blood. A fit of coughing seizing hold of him as he tried to respond—nearly collapsing if Harry hadn’t caught him, supporting him against the wall. Holding him aright.
“You were one of them,” he spat weakly, coughing up flecks of blood—clearly shot through the lung. “All along, you were one of them.”
Harry nodded, not sure himself if it was even true. Any of it. “From the very beginning.”
Another curse, impotent rage flaring in the young man’s eyes—but even now, it seemed impossible for him to pull the trigger. To finish the job.
He was no threat now—it would be so simple to just walk away. Leave him. To die, to be found. . .as God willed.
Out of his hands.
Just take the vest and go, he thought, reaching within Yassin’s jacket with his free hand, beginning to undo the clasps of the explosive vest.
The explosion came without warning, a massive detonation, lighting up the night sky, the shockwave washing around the corner of the building and over both Harry and Yassin. And Harry knew, before he even lifted his eyes to see the flames rising from the pyre in the middle of the Rue de l’Olympisme, what had happened.
The van. Somehow, some way, the gendarmes had failed. Their failure, a reflection of his own. A consequence of his own.
Marwan’s face, flashing before his eyes—the way he had looked, in those final moments of his life, the blade tight against his throat.
The demon’s voice, once again, murmuring its taunting, reproachful refrain. “I could have stopped them. Could have saved, all these lives. But you stopped me. You stopped me. You stopped. . .”
And he knew then, in a moment of soul-rending clarity, what he must do. Walking away wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
He wrapped an arm around Yassin’s shoulders, drawing him close—hot tears running down Harry’s face as he jammed the muzzle of the CZ into the young man’s ribs.
&
nbsp; And he pulled the trigger, again and again—the shots muffled by their bodies—feeling as though his own heart was being ripped out with each muted report, until finally the CZ’s slide locked back and all fell silent once more.
Yassin’s head resting on Harry’s shoulder as the light slowly faded from his eyes, the two of them huddled there in the semi-darkness—the dying man. . .and the man already dead.
Chapter 40
3:48 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
The apartment
Washington, D.C.
“Are you watching this, Barney?”
“I am,” Kranemeyer replied simply, the phone pressed to his ear as he stared at the television screen, the news breaking from France having dominated CNN’s coverage for the last ten minutes.
“It’s horrific. . .over seventy thousand people in that stadium at the time of attack, according to the BBC. God only knows how many were trampled in the attempt to get out.”
“Too many,” came Kranemeyer’s answer, his voice heavy. “I’ve already placed a call to Langley. Likely headed in, after a shower and a shave.”
“No rest for the wicked?” he heard Coftey ask, irony in the senator’s voice.
Never. And the war goes on, the DCS thought, a distant look in his coal-black eyes. The cold, unmelodic refrain of his life. No end to it in sight.
“We need to talk, Roy. About where this all goes from here.”
There was a long moment’s silence, then, “I know. We do. Name the time and the place.”
“It’ll have to be another time,” Kranemeyer said, watching as the CNN ticker ran an updated death toll from the bombings in Paris. Seventy-nine. Almost certainly far too low. “And another place. Today just got busy."
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