by Mark Greaney
He did see one vehicle almost immediately, but he did not caution his mates. A black work van with its lights extinguished rolled slowly into view on the far side of the Madeleine church to the south, some hundred meters away, and it stopped there.
Into his phone the lookout whispered, “Je te vois.” I see you.
Behind him, he heard a soft click as the lock picker finished his work. The man pushed down on the latch slowly and softly, so as to avoid any echoes in the cobblestoned forecourt on the other side of the arched passage just beyond the door.
Then the kneeling man whispered, “We’re in.”
With that, the lookout delivered an urgent whisper into the phone. “Aller! Aller!”
The van began racing forward, closing on 7 Rue Tronchet, as all three men at the door pulled submachine guns from inside their coats.
CHAPTER 5
Court decided he had to get on with it, because his legs were cramping, and he had a funny feeling he was going to need to be able to walk, or more likely to run, in order to survive the next few minutes. He’d aim for stealth for as long as possible, but he’d be ready to go loud the instant gunfire was required. He pulled his suppressed Glock with his right hand and slowly pushed the linen closet door open with his knee. He climbed out, stood on aching legs, then began sliding slowly to his left, along the farthest edges of the room, moving away from the balcony and away from the bed.
His first objective was the door that divided the master bedroom from the rest of the suite. As he inched along the wall in the dark, he kept one eye on the sentry, who was still facing the woman on the bed, slightly away from Court’s position here at the man’s nine o’clock. With his other eye Court kept checking Medina herself to make sure she did not awaken, because her eyes were pointed in his direction.
When he arrived at the bedroom door, Court stopped and leaned back against it, still facing the open room. He reached into the cargo pocket on his left leg and pulled a device from it. It was a TacWedge door jammer, a light plastic chock that could be slid under a door and forced into position, making the door nearly impossible to open from the other side. He knelt down slowly, still checking the two forms across the room, making sure the guard remained outside on the balcony and facing the woman, and the woman was still asleep, or at least unaware there was an armed man in black forty feet away.
As he reached out with the wedge, preparing to make it impossible for the four men in the suite to gain access to their protectee, he was surprised to hear a man’s shout, somewhere downstairs outside the building.
It seemed to echo up from the cobblestoned forecourt. Court saw the bodyguard on the balcony spin away quickly and rush to the railing to look down.
And almost immediately Court heard the thundering boom of a rifle in the forecourt below.
The bodyguard ducked back away from the edge and pulled his weapon from inside his jacket.
What the fuck?
The first gunshot was followed one second later by a string of automatic gunfire; Court could hear shouts now in the living room of the suite, on the other side of the door behind him, as Bianca’s bodyguards became aware of the threat. The American dropped the rest of the way to his knees, held his pistol up towards the balcony, and reached behind him to jam the TacWedge under the door. Then he stood and heel-kicked it hard into place.
The sound of his actions was drowned out by an explosion outside that set off car alarms and broke glass all over the neighborhood. As soon as the echoes of the boom died out, another intense volley of fire kicked off. The shouts of men—the rhythmic and repetitive cadence of “Allahu akhbar”—made it all the way four stories up and through the closed balcony doors of the bedroom.
Court was surprised that this attack was happening now, but he wasn’t surprised it was happening, because he knew something about the threats his target faced. These assholes below were ISIS, they were coming for her at the same time he was, and he’d been assured by his client that they would not hit until tomorrow.
Courtland Gentry was a man trained against believing in coincidence, and he had a sinking impression that he had been set up, or at least willfully misinformed about his mission. And this pissed him off. Even in the chaos of this moment, the myriad new and imminent dangers he now faced at his objective, Court still had the presence of mind to tell himself that he was going to beat the living shit out of the people who’d hired him for this operation when this was all over.
But first he had to deal with the woman.
At the same instant that Bianca Medina spun out of bed in her warm-ups and sweatshirt, panic-stricken by the gunfire outside, the bodyguard on the balcony flung open the French doors, on his way to put his hands on his protectee and lead her to safety. The man hadn’t yet seen Court, but since the American was in the middle of the large room and advancing on the same objective the guard was, Court knew he wasn’t going to be invisible for much longer.
Behind Court someone tried to open the bedroom door, then shouted and slammed against it when he found it braced shut. The bodyguard looked up towards the sound, saw Court there in the darkness, and swung his weapon up to fire.
Court’s weapon was already on target, so he fired first, sending a 9-millimeter hollow-point round across the room and into the Syrian’s throat. The bodyguard lurched back with a cry of shock. He grabbed at his wound, but Court shot him again, this time through the solar plexus, and the man fell flat on his back, his arms wide, half inside and half outside the balcony doors.
Bianca Medina screamed in utter terror.
The sound of the suppressed gunshots had been all but hidden by the thunder of several weapons firing at once in the stone forecourt and the lobby of the property below, so the men slamming their shoulders into the door of the bedroom wouldn’t have heard them, but Bianca Medina did hear the noise, and she saw the flash of the weapon held by the masked apparition running at her, just five meters from her bed. She dove back onto the king-sized bed and rolled over to the other side. Here she launched off and hoisted the lead crystal decanter that had held the brandy, swinging it over her head like a bat.
Court himself leapt onto the bed, in pursuit of his fleeing target. He holstered his weapon as he did so, and by the time he landed on the other side, both his hands were free.
“I’m on your side, Bianca.”
She swung the lead crystal decanter at the man in black, but he ducked back and away easily.
In French she shouted, “Take my money! Don’t hurt me!”
Court closed on her again, and the decanter whipped by his face once more, but this time Court swept it from her hand, knocking it across the bed and onto the floor. Then he took the woman by both wrists and spun her around and up to the wall. Leaning against her body with his own to control her, Court pinned her hands behind her back.
“Listen to me! Calm down! I won’t hurt you, but everyone else around here will. We need to go, and I’ll need your help.”
In English she shouted into the wall, “What is happening?”
New gunfire snapped inside the building now. The attackers were clearly making progress on their way up the two sets of stairs on opposite sides of the property. For all Court knew, others were in the elevator and could be here on the top floor in seconds. Bianca’s bodyguards in the suite banged on the door of the master bedroom and slammed into it with ferocious tenacity, desperate to get to their protectee.
“What is happening?” she shouted again.
Court said, “You and I are checking out. As for the rest of that racket, my guess is hotel security and your bodyguards are fighting it out with the Islamic State.”
She looked back to him, eyes wide. “ISIS? What does ISIS want with me?”
Court didn’t look at her now; he just spun her around as he held on to her arm. He looked around the room, trying to figure out how the hell to get both himself and the woman to
safety. While doing this he said, “Lady, we both know the answer to that question.”
Bianca did know the answer, but Court imagined she had been hoping her rescuer did not.
To her credit, Bianca Medina seemed to realize quickly that she was in serious trouble, and this man in black was her only lifeline. “What do you want me to do?”
Court looked around the big room. Men banged frantically on the door. “Give me a second.”
With a panic-stricken voice she said, “You just told me we had to go now!”
His original plan had been to use the climbing rope and rappelling equipment stored in his pack to simply hook her onto him with a harness, and then use the harness on his own body to lower them one story down to the balcony below her suite before heading to the hotel stairs to make a stealthy escape through a back exit. But a gun battle of this magnitude raging in central Paris was going to bring a lot of law enforcement, and Court knew he didn’t have time to make it down the stairs inside the hotel, through security and terrorists, before the police arrived and cordoned off the property at ground level.
He told himself he needed to somehow get all the way down into the forecourt and out an alleyway to a neighboring property, in the next minute or two, to have any chance of avoiding getting caught in a massive police cordon.
Court could climb down the outside of the building on his own in that amount of time, but he sure as hell couldn’t do it while attached to this terrified woman. He looked around the suite a moment more, and formulated a hasty plan. His eyes darted to the dead body, then to the door of the room, and then to the balcony railing.
“Hey!” she shouted. “What are we going to—”
Court came up with a solution for the equation in front of him. He raced over to the body of the dead Syrian lying on the balcony threshold, grabbed the man by the underarms, then dragged him hurriedly across the hardwood floor, all the way to the door of the suite on the opposite side of the room. A gunfight had begun raging just outside; the men who, seconds earlier, had been banging on the door were now shooting it out with someone near the exterior door to the suite, and no one was trying to get into the bedroom for the time being.
Court pulled the end of a spooled climbing rope from his bag, wrapped it under the dead man’s body at the underarms, then tied it off quickly and securely with a bowline knot that would tighten the more tension it was put under.
“What are you doing?” Medina asked.
He stepped up to her now, playing the rope out of the pack and tossing it in coils on the floor as he did so. “I need you to trust me.”
“I . . . I don’t trust you at all!”
“Then fear me, lady. That’ll work.” He drew his Benchmade Infidel; the blade fired out and glowed in the dim moonlight, and with it he cut the rope where it went into his bag. He took this end and tied it onto a clasp already attached to a single-point nylon-and-elastic harness, which he also yanked from the bag.
Bianca’s terror was giving in to confusion. “What is . . .”
Court reached behind Bianca’s torso and wrapped the harness under her arms, brought both ends around and above her breasts, and fastened them together with the metal locking clasp.
She tried to pull away, but he was too strong, too fast. Too sure of himself.
“Why the fuck are you tying me to Mohammed?”
“I’m trying to make Mohammed useful.” He turned the woman to the balcony, then pushed her along through the open French doors.
Bianca quickly figured out that the man in black wanted her to climb out over the railing to be lowered down, and this stopped her in her tracks. “No!”
The gunfire stopped in the suite so suddenly that both Court and Bianca spun back to the new quiet, but Court returned to his work quickly, and soon he tightened his hand on Bianca’s shoulder, turning her back around to the railing. “We have to hurry. You’ll be fine. I promise. Just close your eyes.”
Someone banged on the door now, fifty feet away.
“I can’t do it!”
Court snapped his switchblade closed and threaded the device’s belt hook inside the harness around Bianca’s torso. “I’m going to lower you down very gently. When you get to the ground, cut yourself loose. Find cover behind one of the stone planters in the forecourt. I’ll free-climb down. Wait for me.”
“No! I cannot! I’m scared.”
Court lifted the woman off the ground now, cradling her in his arms. He jerked his head towards the door to the suite. “Whatever is about to come through that door will be a lot scarier than this.”
Court’s plan was to use the dead guard as a counterweight and the friction of the body along the fifty feet of travertine bedroom floor and stone balcony tile as a means to control Bianca’s descent more easily than lowering her himself. Since the dead bodyguard weighed more than the Spanish fashion model, Court knew he would have to assist her descent by pulling the rope along, but this would be easier and faster for him than slowly lowering the 110-pound woman four floors down to the cobblestones.
Court stepped up to the balcony railing, and the woman squeezed her eyes shut.
“Please, monsieur . . . I just—”
“I’ll be gentle, and I’ll go as slow as I can. It will be a nice, smooth ride as long as you—”
An explosion behind caused them both to spin their heads around again. The door to the living room had been blown in with some sort of charge, and debris tore through the room. As the two on the balcony watched, a pair of figures began rushing into the bedroom through the smoke and dust. Behind them in the living room, three more apparitions appeared. All the men held weapons and wore black tactical gear, and they seemed to float around in the haze like danger itself.
Court stood with Bianca fifty feet away, directly in the line of fire of five submachine guns.
The Gray Man whirled back away from the danger, and with all the momentum of his spin, he heaved the woman over the balcony railing, throwing her out into the night air.
Court spun back and drew his Glock, while behind him Bianca Medina screamed as she dropped like a stone.
CHAPTER 6
The slack rope tightened, and in the bedroom by the shattered living room door the body of the Syrian guard lurched and began rocketing across the travertine floor, many times faster than Court had planned.
Court knew his only option had been to toss the girl and engage the attackers, but he also knew that throwing her over the side like that was going to give her too much momentum, more than enough to send her to her death if he couldn’t arrest her descent before she hit the hard stone tiles of the forecourt.
But he couldn’t even address that problem yet. The first burst of incoming rounds screamed high over Court’s head, and he raced forward on the balcony, then dove headfirst, launching himself to the right of the French doors, rolling on his right shoulder under the spraying gunfire and up onto his kneepads in a firing stance. He came to a stop upright, still in view of the enemy through the sidelight next to the doors. His Glock was out in front of him, his front sight lining up on a target, a man moving laterally in the bedroom from right to left, trying to get his own sight picture on Court.
But the American saw the terrorist first, aimed his weapon first, and fired first, and he hit the man just under the right collarbone. A second shot sparked off the man’s MP5 rifle, ricocheted up into his face, and sent him tumbling back against the far wall of the bedroom and down to the floor, covering his eyes and screaming.
Court felt the compression in the air from a shrieking round missing the left side of his head by less than a foot, and he saw the muzzle flash ahead, pinpointing his target kneeling near the linen closet, still obscured by smoke and darkness in the recesses of the bedroom. Court fired a string of four rounds in his target’s direction, over the dead man tied to Bianca and sliding along facedown on the floor.
&nbs
p; Behind Court on his left, the rope whined and burned as it ran over the iron railing.
He knew if he grabbed the thin rope with his bare hands it would rip his hands to shreds, and Bianca would continue falling too fast to survive the impact. And even if he grabbed the corpse as it passed he would probably dislocate an arm and still fail to stop Medina from hitting the cobblestones hard.
His only chance to prevent Bianca’s impact with the ground was to dive flat on top of the dead-body counterweight before she hit.
Court fired three more rounds through the sidelight again, towards the doorway to the living room, then rolled out from behind concealment, launching himself to the left with all the power in his legs.
He landed on the bodyguard fifteen feet from the railing, then went flat, emptying his Glock at the terrorists in the doorway as he glided along on top of the corpse.
He stopped just six feet from the edge of the balcony as his pistol locked open.
Bianca would be dangling just a few feet off the alley pavement now . . . if Court’s calculations had been correct. But if he had made an error in his math, then she would probably be lying dead on the cobblestones of the forecourt behind and below him.
A massive, sustained volley of gunfire erupted now, and the balcony was riddled with lead. Court rolled off the body, then again went to his right, outside the view of the shooters but not out of danger, as their bullets threatened to rip apart the stone masonry of the outer wall of the bedroom. All around him on the balcony, planters cracked and spilled their contents, glass shattered, and bullets ricocheted up into the night with a high-pitched whine.
This was not a sustainable fight for him, Court knew, but he also knew he could not simply climb down the outside of the building without these men making their way to the balcony and easily picking off Medina as she hung there by the rope.
Either he had to defeat the attackers up here totally, or else he had to find a faster way down to the forecourt.