At eight-thirty a.m. Ryan sat behind the wheel of the Ford Galaxy. He was alone in the vehicle now; he’d parked in a space on the Avenue George V across the wide boulevard from the Four Seasons hotel. He faced away from the hotel, but all three of his mirrors were positioned to cover the front entrance and the street and sidewalks approaching the entrance from either direction.
It was a bright and clear morning, and for this reason his dark sunglasses would not seem so out of place if he had to get out of the car. He also wore a light zip-up parka and his black ski mask high on his head like a knit watch cap so he could pull it over his eyes in moments if he had to.
The rest of the team had exited the vehicle five minutes earlier. Clark was on the street now, a block north of Ryan’s location. He wore his sunglasses, a mobile phone earpiece, and a charcoal gray suit, and he carried a briefcase. He looked like any other late-middle-aged man heading to or from a breakfast meeting in the Eighth Arrondissement.
But he wasn’t anyone else. His briefcase contained a lightweight camel-colored sport coat and a dark wig that he could change into in seconds. In his right rear pants pocket he carried his facial-distortion mask and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. The tiny earpiece in his right ear was linked to an encrypted mobile phone in his right front pocket, and the system was set in a voice-activated mode that allowed him to transmit without pressing a button. He also could, by pressing buttons on the front of the mobile phone, either speak to individual members of his team or broadcast on all channels simultaneously.
In the inside pocket of his jacket he carried a propellant-powered injector that contained enough ketamine to render an adult male unconscious in mere seconds.
And in a small leather holster secreted in the waistband of his charcoal gray slacks he carried a SIG Sauer P22 °Compact SAS model.45-caliber pistol. The gun possessed a threaded barrel to allow for the addition of the suppressor that he carried in his left front pocket.
No, John Clark was not an ordinary man strolling the Eighth Arrondissement this morning.
Not by a long shot.
“Ding for John,” Chavez’s voice came through Clark’s earpiece.
“Go, Ding.”
“Dom and I are in the suite above Rokki’s, no trouble getting in. We’ll be ready in five mikes.”
“Good.”
“Sam for John.”
“Go, Sam.”
“I’m in position in the room next to the target. I’ll hook up once Chavez swings the rope down.”
“Roger.”
fgs "3">“Jack for John.”
“Go, Jack.”
“All clear in front. Negative police on the sidewalk or patrol cars in the street. We’re looking good.”
“Okay.”
Jack checked his mirrors again and made himself blow out a long, calming breath. He had done this sort of thing just enough to know that the next five minutes would feel like an eternity. He kept the back of his head on the headrest of his driver’s seat, tried to appear relaxed, but he kept scanning his mirrors with eyes that moved a mile a minute. He knew the Galaxy’s windows were tinted, so he wasn’t terribly worried about being noticed, but he wanted to avoid any furtive movements that would telegraph his intentions, just on the off chance that someone was paying close attention to him.
A small white French Prefect Police patrol car passed by. Jack avoided the impulse to alert Clark; he knew the police would patrol around here as a matter of course, and although it made his heart pound even harder, he knew there was nothing to worry about.
The patrol drove on, followed the heavy morning traffic to the north. Ryan tracked the police car until it disappeared from view.
Jack looked to his left just as a big black Mercedes Sprinter van passed across from him, blocking his view of the front of the Four Seasons. The truck passed on a moment later, and then drove through the intersection of Avenue George V and Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie. The truck pulled out of traffic and stopped alongside a hair salon on the corner, and Ryan turned away to check the opposite sidewalk. He could see John Clark on the far side of the street now, moving along with a large group of pedestrians as he headed toward the entrance to the Four Seasons.
Ryan listened to transmissions among the other men on his team as he kept scanning with his three mirrors, and then out the windows of the Galaxy. Clark announced that Gavin Biery had confirmed that the cameras in the hotel were down, and then, seconds later, Jack watched the older man disappear into the luxurious lobby of the hotel.
Ryan wished he was inside with the others, but he understood his role here. Someone had to drive; someone had to be on the lookout for both enemies and friendlies that could get in the way of this op.
But it was hard to know what, exactly, he was on the lookout for. Certainly any police arriving at the hotel. He and Clark had discussed the slim possibility that French police might come to make an arrest of Rokki at just exactly the wrong time. And also he had to keep an eye out for any obvious URC goons. Jack had memorized dozens and dozens of faces of terrorists from their photos in the Rogues Gallery he kept on his computer, though at this distance he’d be hard-pressed to ID any terrorist who didn’t have a Kalashnikov in his hand and a bomb vest strapped to him.
Still, he knew his role was vital, even if it felt like he was just the bus driver for this op.
For the twentieth time in the past few minutes, Jack checked the driver’s-side mirror for any police on the sidewalk approaching the hotel from the south. Nope. Then he repeated the drill with the passenger-side mirror; it had been adjusted to give him a look at the sidewalk on the far side of the intersection.
It, too, was clear of police.
“Three minutes,” said Clark. “All unit s. 3">s check in at ninety seconds.”
Ryan started to turn his eyes back to the rearview. Wait. He turned back to the driver’s-side mirror. A second later, he swiveled around and looked out the back window of the minivan.
The big black Mercedes truck that had passed him a minute ago was still there by the hair salon, but its side door was open, and several men had climbed out.
Three, four… five guys, all dark-haired and all possessing dark complexions. One of them slid the door shut, and the van pulled away from the curb, made a quick U-turn during a break in the traffic, and turned left on the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie.
The five men on the pavement wore dark blue coveralls and carried small tool bags; they looked like they could be window washers or plumbers or some other type of laborer. Together they crossed the street at the intersection. At first Jack thought they were heading to the front door of the Four Seasons behind him, but instead, once they’d crossed the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, they turned in the opposite direction. There, just out of Ryan’s field of vision, was the employee entrance to the Four Seasons.
Jack knew he couldn’t let a crew of unknown subjects enter the hotel without making sure they weren’t up to anything nefarious. He leapt out of the minivan, raced around the side, and looked up the street. He just saw the back of the last man as he disappeared… not into the employee entrance of the Four Seasons but rather into the front entrance of the Hôtel de Sers.
This was the hotel where the French internal security surveillance team had set up shop to monitor Rokki’s suite in the hotel next door.
“Ninety seconds,” Clark said through the comms, and then the other operators began checking in.
“Sam is in position. I’ll swing out over the courtyard at fifteen.”
“Domingo and Dominic are in position.”
Ryan began crossing the Avenue George V. He wanted to see where the men in blue coveralls were heading. Something was off about them, their appearance, their purposeful strides, the actions of the driver of their vehicle.
Clark’s voice came through his earpiece. “You with us, Ryan?”
“Uh… yes. Ryan is in position.” He wasn’t really, but he was not going to shut down the hit at the Four Seasons because he was checking out something at the hotel next door.
“Clark in position.”
Ryan all but ran to the Hôtel de Sers through the throngs of pedestrians on the sidewalk. When he arrived he stepped through the doorway, looked into the dim lobby, and saw the five men waiting in a group by the reception desk, their tool bags over their shoulders. They were being handed some sort of badges, which they clipped onto their coveralls.
Shit, Ryan thought. Maybe they were okay. Just here to clean the windows?
“Forty-five seconds.” Clark’s clipped countdown came through his earpiece.
Ryan started to head back outside, but he stopped in mid-turn.
His leather shoes squeaked on the marble floor as he turned back around.
He looked again at the five men. Focused on one in particular.
His eyes widened. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly to himself.
Slowly, Jack Ryan Jr. turned away again and headed through the door, back into the street. He grabbed his mobile from his jacket pocket, and he changed the transmit channel so his words would go only to Clark.
“Thirty seconds,” Clark whispered on the open net. Right now he’d be in the hallway outside Rokki’s room.
“John.”
“Yeah?” Clark whispered to Ryan, alone now.
“Abdul al Qahtani is here.”
There was a brief tense pause, before, “Here where?”
“Hôtel de Sers. He’s with four other men in the lobby. They have bags and they are getting employee badges.” Ryan looked across the street now. He saw the big Mercedes Sprinter double-parked thirty meters west of the hotel, the driver behind the wheel. “One more in a van outside.”
“They’re going after the DCRI unit?” Clark asked.
“I… I don’t know,” answered Ryan. He wanted to sit down and think about it, to analyze the situation like he was at his desk in the office. But he wasn’t in his office, he was out in the field, and here he had no time to do anything more than act on nothing more substantial than his best guess. “Yes,” he said now. What else could they be doing?
Clark did not hesitate. When Ryan received his next transmission, it was broadcast on all channels. John spoke quickly but calmly, the consummate professional, even under extreme stress. “All units abort. I need Dom and Ding to double-time it to the Hôtel de Sers around the corner. Ryan has eyes on al Qahtani himself with a possible wet team that are heading to the third floor, targeting the DCRI team in room 301. Grab whatever you can and get over there fast. Ryan has eyes on tangos.”
“On it,” said Chavez. “How many new mutts?”
“Ryan says five, plus a driver still in the vehicle up the street. I’m heading over now, my ETA is three minutes.”
Chavez said, “We’re gonna need four mikes. Five, tops.”
Sam came over the net now. His voice was strained. Right now he would be hanging from a harness four stories over the courtyard of the Four Seasons, some fifteen feet away from his balcony, with no way to get back into his room without climbing back along the wall with his fingertips. “John, it’s going to take me some time to—”
“I know, Sam. Just make your way off the wall and sanitize both rooms. Get all the gear down to the van.”
“Roger,” Sam said. There was nothing he could do about it, but surely he felt as if he was letting his team down. After a heartbeat’s pause, he said, “Good luck.”
Chavez and Caruso carefully placed their rubber masks on their faces, reattached their earpieces, and then moved in a silent blur as they slung over their heads coils of ropes that hung down on one side of their bodies and then slung over their heads their Heckler & Koch MP7 rifles that hung down the other way. Over this gear each man threw on a rain parka; donned a messenger bag with extra ammo, a handgun, and smoke and frag grenades; and then rushed out of the room.
The bed in the room was covered with more equipment, and Driscoll’s taut rope still led out onto and then over the balcony, but there was no time to worry about that now. They had mere moments to get down four flights of stairs, c s ofer ross the street, and get back up four flights to the DCRI’s suite on the third floor of the hotel.
They left the room, ran up the empty hallway, and then moved as quickly as possible down the stairs without raising suspicion.
Chavez said, “En route.”