The Catacombs Scene from TO KILL IS NOT ENOUGH: Crusader
Wolfe couldn’t sleep, so he walked the evening streets of Paris. Orani and Lufti were asleep in the bedroom, and there were a dozen INTERPOL agents around them. That freed him up for the night. He fiddled with Anwar’s phone; after downloading the pertinent data from its memory, Brueget gave it to Wolfe so that the Company could take a look at it.
He was curious.
Under the navigation menu, in “favorite places,” there was a location labeled, “Oasis.” He brought it up. It was barely half a mile from his hotel. He followed the prompting of the phone until he arrived in the center of the plaza before Notre Dame. To his consternation, the phone showed that he was fifty feet from his destination, but every time he moved from that spot, the arrow sent him back.
“The destination’s not fifty feet left, right, back, or forward. Where in blazes is it?”
He searched the plaza for five minutes, and then he heard a voice in English coming from behind him.
“And now, if you’ll follow me, ladies and gentlemen, this is the last part of today’s tour, and my personal favorite: the Catacombs of Notre Dame. Situated fifty feet below the streets of Paris, they are a labyrinth of passages, chambers, halls, and tombs that date back to the Middle Ages!”
Flint watched the tour group pass him and head toward the doors of the cathedral. He melted in with the three dozen or so people following the lantern of the guide. They filed through the door, and the guide gave each one a flashlight.
“Now stay close and follow me,” the guide told them. “If you get lost, it might take us days to find you. There are literally hundreds of miles of tunnels.”
A girl turned to Flint, who stood at the end of the party, and said, “Isn’t this exciting? I wonder if we’ll find any rats down there.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it!” he replied, and he fell into step behind everyone else. They entered a small door to the left of the cathedral’s huge entry doors and descended a winding stone stair. Flint heard a door open. A breath of cool, moist air welled up from below.
“Stay close now; we’re entering the catacombs.”
Flint followed the party, watching their progress on the cell phone’s map. After about fifty meters, it was apparent they were going the wrong way. He turned off his flashlight and stopped. The party continued without him. Soon, they were out of earshot. Flint turned his flashlight back on and turned around. Quickly, he worked his way back.
The tunnels of the catacombs were lined with brick and slick with moisture. In places, the water gathered into puddles. It was a dank, musty place, with passages going every which way. He worried about losing his signal but every time it grew weak, he ran into an air vent to the surface and it got stronger. Flint walked carefully along slippery passages, his flashlight stabbing through the thick darkness. When he got within fifty feet of the destination, he heard voices. He switched off the flashlight and listened.
The voices were so soft and bounced around the tunnels so many times, he couldn’t catch the words, but they were definitely speaking in Arabic. Flint crept forward through the darkness. After ten steps, he started to notice the darkness in front of him wasn’t quite as dark as that behind him. After another few steps, there could be no doubt—there was a light in front of him. He came to a branching passage where it appeared the catacomb passage emptied into a wide brick sewer. The smell was old, but it was obviously not a heavily used sewer—probably an abandoned line. Water flowed down the center of the sewer line toward the Seine. On either side of the tunnel were stone catwalks. The light came from the right, and Flint peered carefully around the corner.
Fifteen feet down the line was an old iron hatch. Standing in front of the hatch were two men and a lantern. Although he couldn’t make out their features, it was plain that they had AK-47s over their shoulders.
Flint tucked away Anwar’s cell phone and drew his gun. Quietly, he screwed the silencer in place. He took a deep breath and stepped halfway around the corner.
Ping-ping! Ping-ping!
One of the guards slumped against the wall of the sewer and slid down to a sitting position. The other fell back, his arms hanging over the edge of the catwalk.
Flint hurried through the swift-moving, knee-deep water and climbed up to the catwalk. He stripped the guards of their rifles and took a green military jacket and burnoose off the closest man. Then he pushed the bodies over the side. They hit the water with soft splashes and floated slowly out toward the Seine.
Wolfe turned back to the hatch. They kept it closed, but not all the way. Some of the light in the sewer came from a half-inch crack. Peering through, Flint could see shadows moving in the distance, but not much else. He could hear voices speaking in Arabic, however. Slowly, gun ready, he opened the hatch another few inches. It was a large, well-lit chamber maybe twenty feet high and twice that wide. Someone went to an awful lot of time and trouble to transform it into a command center. At the far end of the room, there were a dozen large LCD-screen TVs displaying maps, data, al Jazeera, and NBC. Beneath them were rows of desks and computers. Each desk had a laptop, and most of the desks had at least one operator. Other jihadists wandered around the room, talking on phones and going about their business. Many of them wore their burnooses over the lower parts of their faces. Whether this was a comforting connection to their homelands or because the room was cold, he didn’t know, but it helped him out.
Their business was obvious. On either side of the workstations were banners of jihad. On the left of the chamber, closest to where Wolfe spied on them, was a veritable armory of weapons. He saw racks of AK-47s, rocket launchers, boxes of rockets, and hand grenades.
Wolfe looked longingly at the grenades, and then a face caught his attention. Two men were speaking. Their backs were toward him, but one turned, gesturing to the other as he talked on the cell phone. It was Hamdi.
“If the secret to those nukes is anywhere, it has to be here,” he told himself. “Orani is right; I can’t just blow it up. Not yet, at least.” Seeing that everyone was dressed like the guards, he shrugged on the jacket and fitted the burnoose over his head. He covered his face with the burnoose and slung one of the AK-47s over his shoulder. Then he tucked his pistol inside the jacket, set his shoulder against the hatch, and entered the jihadi command center.
Thirty pairs of dark eyes glanced his way.
Fortunately, he was but one of many wearing a burnoose and a green field jacket.
He muttered, “God be with you” in Arabic and went to a section of vacant desks to the left of the chamber, moving purposefully, as if he knew where he was going. Several of the desks had family photos taped to the surface, as if to remind the jihadists whom they were betraying. It seemed especially sick when he saw pictures of smiling women, wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers. Did they realize what kind of world their loved ones could expect under a Taliban-type rule? Chances were that the jihadi’s brave new world would execute many of the women pictured for straying from the most obscenely restrictive laws on personal dignity ever devised by twisted human brains.
Wolfe saw a station with a European family photo and sat down. The jihadists went back to work. He moved the mouse and a sign-in page appeared. As he expected, it came up in Arabic. He put on his reading glasses with the camera and OCR projection program, thinking, Now we’ll see if they work in the field. They did. He had a clear view of the bright green screen with the pseudo-Saudi flag and writing, which read, “Allah is the one Great God.” Below was the standard entry for a personal ID and password.
He slipped this key fob into his left hand and plugged it into the left side USB port, being careful to hide it with his hand. A small icon appeared in the lower left of the window. It was in English, but easily overlooked.
Someone was moving over to see what he was working on. Wolfe moved the mouse to the login prompt, typed in his personal ID and password, and pressed enter. The computer whirred and clicked and logged him on. He quickly went to the start page and opened the most recent application.
“What are you working on today, brother?” asked the jihadi, or something similar to that, laying a dark hand on his shoulder. Wolfe tried to stifle a sneeze after the sudden assault of perfume and unwashed body. He coughed and cleared his throat.
The application opened, and Wolfe simply pointed to the first image that came up. It was self-explanatory. There was no mistaking the “Chunnel,” or what the jihadists had in mind. It was typically despicable.
“Ah, yes, didn’t you just leave two days ago?”
He needed an audio translator, his Arabic was so bad, but he caught the just of it. Wolfe took out his cell phone and tapped the camera. “The train made it simple, by Allah’s will,” he replied, not really knowing whether he said what he meant, or something more like, “The trains are simpletons, by Allah’s will.”
The jihadi laughed and patted him on the shoulder, perhaps amused by his imperfect Arabic—expected amongst homegrown foreign recruits. The jihadi moved away.
Wolfe had the moment he needed.
The USB key fob was like many of the memory devices you could buy off the shelf, but the Company made various improvements. It carried software on it allowing Wolfe to crack the security firewall, and it provided storage capacity. It had an interesting feature in that it was automatically smart. When plugged into a computer, the fob had three jobs: one) get in; two) copy everything on the computer; and three) it would data link everything to the Company via Wolfe’s cell phone. The fob immediately started to download the computer’s hard drive without any visible indication it was working, while at the same time transmitting the information to Wolfe’s cell phone. The only limitation of the system was the satellite signal. Still, the phone would retransmit any data collected as soon as it got a signal. It was a pretty slick system.
Wolfe allowed the system to do its job. To keep up appearances, he took out the cell phone and acted as if he were downloading pictures to the laptop, doing everything except actually plugging it into the USB port. The illusion set, he went surfing. As he expected, the computer linked to a network with firewalls. He suspected that his laptop had information about this terrorist operation alone. That concerned him. If that were true, the fob would get everything from this computer before moving on to the firewalls, and then on to the other computers of the network. It could well run out of memory before he got what he wanted.
Wolfe thought furiously. He found a dozen network connections—one carried the name “Oasis.” He clicked it. A new access page appeared on the screen. He couldn’t get in it without interrupting the fob’s operation.
The “Chunnel” will have to wait, he decided. Pressing the escape key stopped the operation. As soon as he typed in his ID and password, the fob tackled the new pathway. The entire process started over again.
Wolfe growled to himself. He could’ve been out by now; the masquerade would only work for so long.
He hit another firewall. This time, a list of two dozen paths opened up, and each had its own access code. Which one? He scanned them with increasing agitation. There was the “Chunnel,” fortunately labeled, “Chunnel.” The other operations were self-explanatory, except for one that translated into roughly, “Wave of Allah.”
It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else, but it did to Wolfe. He clicked on it. The fob started to download the data.
Someone came up behind him and said something about a vest. It caught him off guard, and he automatically asked the jihadi to repeat his request, turning as he did so. It was Hamdi. Fortunately, he had the burnoose over the lower part of his face, and he had sense enough to stop short of facing the terrorist.
“Where is your vest?” Hamdi asked again.
Wolfe minimized the screen and selected a “Chunnel” picture, hoping Hamdi hadn’t noticed where he was on their network. “My vest?” he asked sheepishly, as if surprised by the question, which he was.
“Your vest,” Hamdi said earnestly, thumping his own.
Wolfe saw what he meant. Hamdi and everyone else wore an explosive vest. They were serious. If INTERPOL raided this place, they’d find only body parts and smashed equipment. He glanced around and saw the vests along the left wall by the grenades.
To Hamdi, he mumbled simply, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and leapt up to get a vest. He was picking one up when he heard a curse behind him. He turned to see Hamdi looking at his laptop, his black eyes seething. He said something unintelligible in Arabic and snatched the fob out of the computer. Hamdi held it up and turned toward Wolfe.
The stunned recognition was plain to see.
“You!”
Wolfe flung the vest at Hamdi and drew his pistol, firing at the jihadi in one smooth motion.
The vest struck Hamdi in the face and he fell back, tripping over a jihadi behind him. Two bullets meant for the bomb maker struck the terrorist in the chest, and he fell back with a piercing cry.
The fob flew out of Hamdi’s hand and clattered to the floor.
Wolfe took a step toward it, but the rattle of an AK-47 against the brick wall stopped him. He hit the floor as a spray of bullets ricocheted off the wall dangerously close to an open box of grenades. Wolfe grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the far end of the chamber.
Boom!
Screams, smoke, and debris—the command center erupted into pandemonium. Wounded jihadists cried out in pain, wailing like little children. A fire started at the far end of the room behind the three smashed LCD screens. Someone fired an AK-47 blindly into the gloom, and someone else was shouting for it all to stop.
Wolfe had only a moment. He saw the fob in the smoke and snatched it up. Grabbing a grenade with the other hand, he got up and ran to the hatch.
“Stop, Wolfe, don’t move!” ordered the voice of Hamdi.
He ignored the order, until a stream of bullets hit the floor in front of him. Wolfe came to an abrupt halt. He turned around. Hamdi had an AK-47 on him. He was only four yards away.
“You’re bold, Mr. Wolfe, to come here in the heart of the jihad. Was the information worth your life?”
“Is it worth yours?” Wolfe asked, holding up the grenade with the pin pulled. “Shoot me, and you become a martyr—you may not give a damn, but your ‘Wave of Allah’ scheme dies with you. Tell me how you plan on getting the nukes, or we both die.”
Hamdi laughed. “Our societies have different views on death, Mr. Wolfe. Although I’d like to be the one to trigger Allah’s wave of wrath, I will be content to see it from heaven if I must. You Westerners, however, cling to life at all costs.”
“Tell that to the Spartans at Thermopylae,” Wolfe replied.
“Dog! You would rather subvert the will of Allah and life a single extra day than to follow the path of the prophet and live in everlasting bliss,” Hamdi spat angrily. Then he calmed down and laughed. “I’ve lived in the West. I understand that. You have kids and a beautiful wife. You will see them again. Now, give me that device and I promise to let you live. After the operation, I will release you into a new world. You’re an intelligent man. I’m certain you’ll see the light after all you hold dear washes away. Give me that memory chip, and I give you life; you have my word on that.”
“Your word isn’t worth a boatload of camel dung,” Wolfe told him evenly.
“Then I’ll take my chances, but you die, Mr. Wolfe,” Hamdi said with a broad, yellow grin, and Wolfe saw his finger tighten on the AK-47’s trigger.
Wolfe gathered for a desperate leap, but there was no avoiding the AK-47’s lethal fire, not at that range. As Hamdi squeezed the trigger, one of his wounded jihadists, apparently wanting to fulfill his vow of self-destruction, triggered his vest. The explosion sent body parts flying everywhere amidst a rain of warm blood. The explosion blew Hamdi off his feet. He flew past Wolfe and onto the boxes of grenades.
Wolfe tossed his grenade between Hamdi’s outstretched legs and ran for the hatch. He squeezed outside as a hail of gunfire rattled against the iron door. Without hesitation, he dove into the water at the bottom of the sewer.
As the water closed over his head, Wolfe heard a huge, rumbling boom. The hatch flew off its hinges, bounced off the far wall, and landed in the oily water next to him. The tunnel filled with smoke and Wolfe couldn’t see anything. He struck out, half-crawling and half-swimming through the debris-strewn waters. Here and there, he ran into a soft, yielding body in the fetid stream, but he ignored it, fighting his way to cleaner air.
A light appeared in the tunnel ahead. It was dim, followed by the acrid smell of smoke. Voices followed it, shouting voices speaking in Arabic. Flashlights cut into the darkness, searching the turbid water all around him. Wolfe caught sight of at least three men with AK-47s on the catwalk. The lights were getting closer. He ducked into the inky water just as a flashlight swept over him. He thought he escaped, but the sound of automatic rifle fire corrected him. The bubble trails of several rounds swirled around him, and he felt the dull thud of one hitting him on the hip. His hand instinctively went to his hip, but there was no pain, and no bullet hole—he was lucky.
He stayed on the bottom, listening to the scattered bubble trails of more bullets. None came close, but it was only a matter of time. Then his right hand, which was trailing along the rounded bottom of the sewer, felt the bricks disappear. In their place was a sluggish current coming from his right. It must be a branch of the sewer joining the main way. Without waiting, he struck out into the darkness. Swimming blind, using the walls to guide his course, Wolfe didn’t stop until his lungs burned for air; then he carefully stuck his head out. There were flashes like lightning back in the main tunnel. The sound of automatic gunfire echoed endlessly, blurring one shot into the last, so that all he could hear was a long, rolling blast.
Wolfe swam on another twenty yards and then climbed onto the catwalk. It was nice to get out of the cold water, but the air in the sewers wasn’t much better. Now that he was wet, the cool air turned frigid. He sloshed along the catwalk, breaking into a trot to keep warm and to put as much distance between himself and the jihadists as he could. A ladder to the surface was what he needed, but it was dark, almost pitch black. The only illumination was from the sporadic gunfire behind him, and it was fading. So with his right hand on the sewer wall, he made his way farther and farther from the jihadists, or so he thought. After a few hundred yards, he got the impression that the tunnel was making a loop back whence it came. A sickening sensation gripped his stomach. Of course! Notre Dame was on an island. The sewers didn’t connect to the city sewers. As if to confirm his suspicions, he smelled smoke in front of him. The darkness brightened perceptibly. He’d come almost full circle.
The sound of shuffling feet attracted his attention. Up ahead and to the right, flashlights cut the thick air, bouncing off the sewer walls from a side tunnel. Wolfe was about to get back in the water when he noticed the smaller, rectangular catacomb to his left. He splashed into the water and crossed the sewer line, pulling himself into the tunnel. He ducked inside just in time, as automatic fire ricocheted off the brick behind him, showering him with clay splinters.
“Where the Hell is the Paris police? Didn’t my explosion attract anyone’s attention?” he cursed to himself. “It’s a helluva step backward when terrorists can shoot AK-47s whenever they want!”
He ran down the catacombs. Arabic shouting followed close behind. He didn’t worry about his direction but simply tried to lose his pursuers in the dark, winding way. Wolfe ran along more by feel than sight. That changed when he heard voices and saw flashlights ahead of him. It was the tour group. The Arabic shouting closed in. A dozen faces turned toward him in alarm.
He waved his gun in the air, shouting, “Get out of here and get to the surface, now!”
They seemed to freeze at the unexpected interruption and just stared at him.
The sound of running feet grew louder and Wolfe turned around to see two jihadists run around the dark corner, flashlights in one hand, AK-47s in the other. They saw him and skidded to a halt. Wolfe raised his gun and fired four shots, two for each. The jihadists fell back against the wall. He ran to the closest one, scooped up the AK-47, and fired at the flashlights in the tunnel behind.
That was apparently enough.
The tourists screamed and tried to catch up to the terrified guides.
Wolfe, having momentarily stopped the jihadi advance, followed them. The tour group, despite their terror, was none too quick. The jihadists soon caught up again, this time from several tunnels. How many rats do they have in this maze? he thought, ducking into a side tunnel. He waited in the darkness, and a group of jihadists rushed by the opening. With cold, ruthless efficiency, Wolfe stepped out and sprayed automatic fire into their backs. He heard their cries and the sound of bodies thudding to the wet brick floor, but the barking from his AK-47 stopped. He was out of ammo.
He was about to retrieve another weapon, but a number of jihadists were following. He ducked back into the tunnel, hoping he’d given the tour group the time they needed. Wolfe didn’t really have any idea where he was or where he was heading. He guessed that the tour group was heading back toward the cathedral, and that would put him somewhere under the broad, paved plaza in front of Notre Dame.
He trotted along after them until his right hand ran into the rusted rungs of a ladder climbing the side of the passage. Wolfe took it, and after fifteen or twenty feet, he bumped into a concrete roof. He took out his waterproof Company-issue cell phone and flipped it open. The small LCD screen gave him enough light to make out his surroundings. He was in a hollow concrete box. A metal plate with a push-button latch was directly in front of him. He pressed the button and a two-foot-by-two-foot door swung open. Wolfe climbed out and swung the doorway shut, only then noticing that the door was actually a plaque. Looking around, he saw he was in the plaza before Notre Dame. He’d emerged from the base of the statue of Charlemagne.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” he said, sheathing his gun and dusting his jacket off.
He looked around at the beehive of activity that was the cathedral grounds. Gendarmes had indeed arrived, and they tried to maintain order, but the plaza was crammed with people. Everyone on the district it seemed to have congregated at the cathedral, and no wonder. There was a gaping hole in the plaza. Flames illuminated the cathedral in a flickering red light. It looked as though Lucifer was assaulting Notre Dame from a fissure leading directly to Hell.
Wolfe dialed up Orani on his cell phone and worked his way at the edge of the crowd toward the bridge. All he wanted to do was get back to the hotel and data link the data in his key fob to the Company. He might even be able to catch some sleep before his flight tomorrow.
“Wolfe, what is it? It’s 2:00 am. Where are you?” announced her irritated voice.
“I’m at Notre Dame, where I’ve just blown up what appears to be the Al-Qaeda rat hole in Paris,” he explained. “I was just taking a walk and getting some air when, well, you can guess the rest.
He was curious.
Under the navigation menu, in “favorite places,” there was a location labeled, “Oasis.” He brought it up. It was barely half a mile from his hotel. He followed the prompting of the phone until he arrived in the center of the plaza before Notre Dame. To his consternation, the phone showed that he was fifty feet from his destination, but every time he moved from that spot, the arrow sent him back.
“The destination’s not fifty feet left, right, back, or forward. Where in blazes is it?”
He searched the plaza for five minutes, and then he heard a voice in English coming from behind him.
“And now, if you’ll follow me, ladies and gentlemen, this is the last part of today’s tour, and my personal favorite: the Catacombs of Notre Dame. Situated fifty feet below the streets of Paris, they are a labyrinth of passages, chambers, halls, and tombs that date back to the Middle Ages!”
Flint watched the tour group pass him and head toward the doors of the cathedral. He melted in with the three dozen or so people following the lantern of the guide. They filed through the door, and the guide gave each one a flashlight.
“Now stay close and follow me,” the guide told them. “If you get lost, it might take us days to find you. There are literally hundreds of miles of tunnels.”
A girl turned to Flint, who stood at the end of the party, and said, “Isn’t this exciting? I wonder if we’ll find any rats down there.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it!” he replied, and he fell into step behind everyone else. They entered a small door to the left of the cathedral’s huge entry doors and descended a winding stone stair. Flint heard a door open. A breath of cool, moist air welled up from below.
“Stay close now; we’re entering the catacombs.”
Flint followed the party, watching their progress on the cell phone’s map. After about fifty meters, it was apparent they were going the wrong way. He turned off his flashlight and stopped. The party continued without him. Soon, they were out of earshot. Flint turned his flashlight back on and turned around. Quickly, he worked his way back.
The tunnels of the catacombs were lined with brick and slick with moisture. In places, the water gathered into puddles. It was a dank, musty place, with passages going every which way. He worried about losing his signal but every time it grew weak, he ran into an air vent to the surface and it got stronger. Flint walked carefully along slippery passages, his flashlight stabbing through the thick darkness. When he got within fifty feet of the destination, he heard voices. He switched off the flashlight and listened.
The voices were so soft and bounced around the tunnels so many times, he couldn’t catch the words, but they were definitely speaking in Arabic. Flint crept forward through the darkness. After ten steps, he started to notice the darkness in front of him wasn’t quite as dark as that behind him. After another few steps, there could be no doubt—there was a light in front of him. He came to a branching passage where it appeared the catacomb passage emptied into a wide brick sewer. The smell was old, but it was obviously not a heavily used sewer—probably an abandoned line. Water flowed down the center of the sewer line toward the Seine. On either side of the tunnel were stone catwalks. The light came from the right, and Flint peered carefully around the corner.
Fifteen feet down the line was an old iron hatch. Standing in front of the hatch were two men and a lantern. Although he couldn’t make out their features, it was plain that they had AK-47s over their shoulders.
Flint tucked away Anwar’s cell phone and drew his gun. Quietly, he screwed the silencer in place. He took a deep breath and stepped halfway around the corner.
Ping-ping! Ping-ping!
One of the guards slumped against the wall of the sewer and slid down to a sitting position. The other fell back, his arms hanging over the edge of the catwalk.
Flint hurried through the swift-moving, knee-deep water and climbed up to the catwalk. He stripped the guards of their rifles and took a green military jacket and burnoose off the closest man. Then he pushed the bodies over the side. They hit the water with soft splashes and floated slowly out toward the Seine.
Wolfe turned back to the hatch. They kept it closed, but not all the way. Some of the light in the sewer came from a half-inch crack. Peering through, Flint could see shadows moving in the distance, but not much else. He could hear voices speaking in Arabic, however. Slowly, gun ready, he opened the hatch another few inches. It was a large, well-lit chamber maybe twenty feet high and twice that wide. Someone went to an awful lot of time and trouble to transform it into a command center. At the far end of the room, there were a dozen large LCD-screen TVs displaying maps, data, al Jazeera, and NBC. Beneath them were rows of desks and computers. Each desk had a laptop, and most of the desks had at least one operator. Other jihadists wandered around the room, talking on phones and going about their business. Many of them wore their burnooses over the lower parts of their faces. Whether this was a comforting connection to their homelands or because the room was cold, he didn’t know, but it helped him out.
Their business was obvious. On either side of the workstations were banners of jihad. On the left of the chamber, closest to where Wolfe spied on them, was a veritable armory of weapons. He saw racks of AK-47s, rocket launchers, boxes of rockets, and hand grenades.
Wolfe looked longingly at the grenades, and then a face caught his attention. Two men were speaking. Their backs were toward him, but one turned, gesturing to the other as he talked on the cell phone. It was Hamdi.
“If the secret to those nukes is anywhere, it has to be here,” he told himself. “Orani is right; I can’t just blow it up. Not yet, at least.” Seeing that everyone was dressed like the guards, he shrugged on the jacket and fitted the burnoose over his head. He covered his face with the burnoose and slung one of the AK-47s over his shoulder. Then he tucked his pistol inside the jacket, set his shoulder against the hatch, and entered the jihadi command center.
Thirty pairs of dark eyes glanced his way.
Fortunately, he was but one of many wearing a burnoose and a green field jacket.
He muttered, “God be with you” in Arabic and went to a section of vacant desks to the left of the chamber, moving purposefully, as if he knew where he was going. Several of the desks had family photos taped to the surface, as if to remind the jihadists whom they were betraying. It seemed especially sick when he saw pictures of smiling women, wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers. Did they realize what kind of world their loved ones could expect under a Taliban-type rule? Chances were that the jihadi’s brave new world would execute many of the women pictured for straying from the most obscenely restrictive laws on personal dignity ever devised by twisted human brains.
Wolfe saw a station with a European family photo and sat down. The jihadists went back to work. He moved the mouse and a sign-in page appeared. As he expected, it came up in Arabic. He put on his reading glasses with the camera and OCR projection program, thinking, Now we’ll see if they work in the field. They did. He had a clear view of the bright green screen with the pseudo-Saudi flag and writing, which read, “Allah is the one Great God.” Below was the standard entry for a personal ID and password.
He slipped this key fob into his left hand and plugged it into the left side USB port, being careful to hide it with his hand. A small icon appeared in the lower left of the window. It was in English, but easily overlooked.
Someone was moving over to see what he was working on. Wolfe moved the mouse to the login prompt, typed in his personal ID and password, and pressed enter. The computer whirred and clicked and logged him on. He quickly went to the start page and opened the most recent application.
“What are you working on today, brother?” asked the jihadi, or something similar to that, laying a dark hand on his shoulder. Wolfe tried to stifle a sneeze after the sudden assault of perfume and unwashed body. He coughed and cleared his throat.
The application opened, and Wolfe simply pointed to the first image that came up. It was self-explanatory. There was no mistaking the “Chunnel,” or what the jihadists had in mind. It was typically despicable.
“Ah, yes, didn’t you just leave two days ago?”
He needed an audio translator, his Arabic was so bad, but he caught the just of it. Wolfe took out his cell phone and tapped the camera. “The train made it simple, by Allah’s will,” he replied, not really knowing whether he said what he meant, or something more like, “The trains are simpletons, by Allah’s will.”
The jihadi laughed and patted him on the shoulder, perhaps amused by his imperfect Arabic—expected amongst homegrown foreign recruits. The jihadi moved away.
Wolfe had the moment he needed.
The USB key fob was like many of the memory devices you could buy off the shelf, but the Company made various improvements. It carried software on it allowing Wolfe to crack the security firewall, and it provided storage capacity. It had an interesting feature in that it was automatically smart. When plugged into a computer, the fob had three jobs: one) get in; two) copy everything on the computer; and three) it would data link everything to the Company via Wolfe’s cell phone. The fob immediately started to download the computer’s hard drive without any visible indication it was working, while at the same time transmitting the information to Wolfe’s cell phone. The only limitation of the system was the satellite signal. Still, the phone would retransmit any data collected as soon as it got a signal. It was a pretty slick system.
Wolfe allowed the system to do its job. To keep up appearances, he took out the cell phone and acted as if he were downloading pictures to the laptop, doing everything except actually plugging it into the USB port. The illusion set, he went surfing. As he expected, the computer linked to a network with firewalls. He suspected that his laptop had information about this terrorist operation alone. That concerned him. If that were true, the fob would get everything from this computer before moving on to the firewalls, and then on to the other computers of the network. It could well run out of memory before he got what he wanted.
Wolfe thought furiously. He found a dozen network connections—one carried the name “Oasis.” He clicked it. A new access page appeared on the screen. He couldn’t get in it without interrupting the fob’s operation.
The “Chunnel” will have to wait, he decided. Pressing the escape key stopped the operation. As soon as he typed in his ID and password, the fob tackled the new pathway. The entire process started over again.
Wolfe growled to himself. He could’ve been out by now; the masquerade would only work for so long.
He hit another firewall. This time, a list of two dozen paths opened up, and each had its own access code. Which one? He scanned them with increasing agitation. There was the “Chunnel,” fortunately labeled, “Chunnel.” The other operations were self-explanatory, except for one that translated into roughly, “Wave of Allah.”
It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else, but it did to Wolfe. He clicked on it. The fob started to download the data.
Someone came up behind him and said something about a vest. It caught him off guard, and he automatically asked the jihadi to repeat his request, turning as he did so. It was Hamdi. Fortunately, he had the burnoose over the lower part of his face, and he had sense enough to stop short of facing the terrorist.
“Where is your vest?” Hamdi asked again.
Wolfe minimized the screen and selected a “Chunnel” picture, hoping Hamdi hadn’t noticed where he was on their network. “My vest?” he asked sheepishly, as if surprised by the question, which he was.
“Your vest,” Hamdi said earnestly, thumping his own.
Wolfe saw what he meant. Hamdi and everyone else wore an explosive vest. They were serious. If INTERPOL raided this place, they’d find only body parts and smashed equipment. He glanced around and saw the vests along the left wall by the grenades.
To Hamdi, he mumbled simply, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and leapt up to get a vest. He was picking one up when he heard a curse behind him. He turned to see Hamdi looking at his laptop, his black eyes seething. He said something unintelligible in Arabic and snatched the fob out of the computer. Hamdi held it up and turned toward Wolfe.
The stunned recognition was plain to see.
“You!”
Wolfe flung the vest at Hamdi and drew his pistol, firing at the jihadi in one smooth motion.
The vest struck Hamdi in the face and he fell back, tripping over a jihadi behind him. Two bullets meant for the bomb maker struck the terrorist in the chest, and he fell back with a piercing cry.
The fob flew out of Hamdi’s hand and clattered to the floor.
Wolfe took a step toward it, but the rattle of an AK-47 against the brick wall stopped him. He hit the floor as a spray of bullets ricocheted off the wall dangerously close to an open box of grenades. Wolfe grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the far end of the chamber.
Boom!
Screams, smoke, and debris—the command center erupted into pandemonium. Wounded jihadists cried out in pain, wailing like little children. A fire started at the far end of the room behind the three smashed LCD screens. Someone fired an AK-47 blindly into the gloom, and someone else was shouting for it all to stop.
Wolfe had only a moment. He saw the fob in the smoke and snatched it up. Grabbing a grenade with the other hand, he got up and ran to the hatch.
“Stop, Wolfe, don’t move!” ordered the voice of Hamdi.
He ignored the order, until a stream of bullets hit the floor in front of him. Wolfe came to an abrupt halt. He turned around. Hamdi had an AK-47 on him. He was only four yards away.
“You’re bold, Mr. Wolfe, to come here in the heart of the jihad. Was the information worth your life?”
“Is it worth yours?” Wolfe asked, holding up the grenade with the pin pulled. “Shoot me, and you become a martyr—you may not give a damn, but your ‘Wave of Allah’ scheme dies with you. Tell me how you plan on getting the nukes, or we both die.”
Hamdi laughed. “Our societies have different views on death, Mr. Wolfe. Although I’d like to be the one to trigger Allah’s wave of wrath, I will be content to see it from heaven if I must. You Westerners, however, cling to life at all costs.”
“Tell that to the Spartans at Thermopylae,” Wolfe replied.
“Dog! You would rather subvert the will of Allah and life a single extra day than to follow the path of the prophet and live in everlasting bliss,” Hamdi spat angrily. Then he calmed down and laughed. “I’ve lived in the West. I understand that. You have kids and a beautiful wife. You will see them again. Now, give me that device and I promise to let you live. After the operation, I will release you into a new world. You’re an intelligent man. I’m certain you’ll see the light after all you hold dear washes away. Give me that memory chip, and I give you life; you have my word on that.”
“Your word isn’t worth a boatload of camel dung,” Wolfe told him evenly.
“Then I’ll take my chances, but you die, Mr. Wolfe,” Hamdi said with a broad, yellow grin, and Wolfe saw his finger tighten on the AK-47’s trigger.
Wolfe gathered for a desperate leap, but there was no avoiding the AK-47’s lethal fire, not at that range. As Hamdi squeezed the trigger, one of his wounded jihadists, apparently wanting to fulfill his vow of self-destruction, triggered his vest. The explosion sent body parts flying everywhere amidst a rain of warm blood. The explosion blew Hamdi off his feet. He flew past Wolfe and onto the boxes of grenades.
Wolfe tossed his grenade between Hamdi’s outstretched legs and ran for the hatch. He squeezed outside as a hail of gunfire rattled against the iron door. Without hesitation, he dove into the water at the bottom of the sewer.
As the water closed over his head, Wolfe heard a huge, rumbling boom. The hatch flew off its hinges, bounced off the far wall, and landed in the oily water next to him. The tunnel filled with smoke and Wolfe couldn’t see anything. He struck out, half-crawling and half-swimming through the debris-strewn waters. Here and there, he ran into a soft, yielding body in the fetid stream, but he ignored it, fighting his way to cleaner air.
A light appeared in the tunnel ahead. It was dim, followed by the acrid smell of smoke. Voices followed it, shouting voices speaking in Arabic. Flashlights cut into the darkness, searching the turbid water all around him. Wolfe caught sight of at least three men with AK-47s on the catwalk. The lights were getting closer. He ducked into the inky water just as a flashlight swept over him. He thought he escaped, but the sound of automatic rifle fire corrected him. The bubble trails of several rounds swirled around him, and he felt the dull thud of one hitting him on the hip. His hand instinctively went to his hip, but there was no pain, and no bullet hole—he was lucky.
He stayed on the bottom, listening to the scattered bubble trails of more bullets. None came close, but it was only a matter of time. Then his right hand, which was trailing along the rounded bottom of the sewer, felt the bricks disappear. In their place was a sluggish current coming from his right. It must be a branch of the sewer joining the main way. Without waiting, he struck out into the darkness. Swimming blind, using the walls to guide his course, Wolfe didn’t stop until his lungs burned for air; then he carefully stuck his head out. There were flashes like lightning back in the main tunnel. The sound of automatic gunfire echoed endlessly, blurring one shot into the last, so that all he could hear was a long, rolling blast.
Wolfe swam on another twenty yards and then climbed onto the catwalk. It was nice to get out of the cold water, but the air in the sewers wasn’t much better. Now that he was wet, the cool air turned frigid. He sloshed along the catwalk, breaking into a trot to keep warm and to put as much distance between himself and the jihadists as he could. A ladder to the surface was what he needed, but it was dark, almost pitch black. The only illumination was from the sporadic gunfire behind him, and it was fading. So with his right hand on the sewer wall, he made his way farther and farther from the jihadists, or so he thought. After a few hundred yards, he got the impression that the tunnel was making a loop back whence it came. A sickening sensation gripped his stomach. Of course! Notre Dame was on an island. The sewers didn’t connect to the city sewers. As if to confirm his suspicions, he smelled smoke in front of him. The darkness brightened perceptibly. He’d come almost full circle.
The sound of shuffling feet attracted his attention. Up ahead and to the right, flashlights cut the thick air, bouncing off the sewer walls from a side tunnel. Wolfe was about to get back in the water when he noticed the smaller, rectangular catacomb to his left. He splashed into the water and crossed the sewer line, pulling himself into the tunnel. He ducked inside just in time, as automatic fire ricocheted off the brick behind him, showering him with clay splinters.
“Where the Hell is the Paris police? Didn’t my explosion attract anyone’s attention?” he cursed to himself. “It’s a helluva step backward when terrorists can shoot AK-47s whenever they want!”
He ran down the catacombs. Arabic shouting followed close behind. He didn’t worry about his direction but simply tried to lose his pursuers in the dark, winding way. Wolfe ran along more by feel than sight. That changed when he heard voices and saw flashlights ahead of him. It was the tour group. The Arabic shouting closed in. A dozen faces turned toward him in alarm.
He waved his gun in the air, shouting, “Get out of here and get to the surface, now!”
They seemed to freeze at the unexpected interruption and just stared at him.
The sound of running feet grew louder and Wolfe turned around to see two jihadists run around the dark corner, flashlights in one hand, AK-47s in the other. They saw him and skidded to a halt. Wolfe raised his gun and fired four shots, two for each. The jihadists fell back against the wall. He ran to the closest one, scooped up the AK-47, and fired at the flashlights in the tunnel behind.
That was apparently enough.
The tourists screamed and tried to catch up to the terrified guides.
Wolfe, having momentarily stopped the jihadi advance, followed them. The tour group, despite their terror, was none too quick. The jihadists soon caught up again, this time from several tunnels. How many rats do they have in this maze? he thought, ducking into a side tunnel. He waited in the darkness, and a group of jihadists rushed by the opening. With cold, ruthless efficiency, Wolfe stepped out and sprayed automatic fire into their backs. He heard their cries and the sound of bodies thudding to the wet brick floor, but the barking from his AK-47 stopped. He was out of ammo.
He was about to retrieve another weapon, but a number of jihadists were following. He ducked back into the tunnel, hoping he’d given the tour group the time they needed. Wolfe didn’t really have any idea where he was or where he was heading. He guessed that the tour group was heading back toward the cathedral, and that would put him somewhere under the broad, paved plaza in front of Notre Dame.
He trotted along after them until his right hand ran into the rusted rungs of a ladder climbing the side of the passage. Wolfe took it, and after fifteen or twenty feet, he bumped into a concrete roof. He took out his waterproof Company-issue cell phone and flipped it open. The small LCD screen gave him enough light to make out his surroundings. He was in a hollow concrete box. A metal plate with a push-button latch was directly in front of him. He pressed the button and a two-foot-by-two-foot door swung open. Wolfe climbed out and swung the doorway shut, only then noticing that the door was actually a plaque. Looking around, he saw he was in the plaza before Notre Dame. He’d emerged from the base of the statue of Charlemagne.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” he said, sheathing his gun and dusting his jacket off.
He looked around at the beehive of activity that was the cathedral grounds. Gendarmes had indeed arrived, and they tried to maintain order, but the plaza was crammed with people. Everyone on the district it seemed to have congregated at the cathedral, and no wonder. There was a gaping hole in the plaza. Flames illuminated the cathedral in a flickering red light. It looked as though Lucifer was assaulting Notre Dame from a fissure leading directly to Hell.
Wolfe dialed up Orani on his cell phone and worked his way at the edge of the crowd toward the bridge. All he wanted to do was get back to the hotel and data link the data in his key fob to the Company. He might even be able to catch some sleep before his flight tomorrow.
“Wolfe, what is it? It’s 2:00 am. Where are you?” announced her irritated voice.
“I’m at Notre Dame, where I’ve just blown up what appears to be the Al-Qaeda rat hole in Paris,” he explained. “I was just taking a walk and getting some air when, well, you can guess the rest.