by Kenneth Eade
“Recognize any of them?”
Robert looked casually at the photographs of the dead Adnan Khalil and Fahd Naifeh and shook his head. “Should I?”
“Look closely.”
Robert looked again, devoid of emotion or interest. He shrugged his shoulders. Soussier peered at him, intently.
“What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
“I don’t know. That these guys must have a hell of a migraine?”
“Very funny. You can see why I think these were both professional hits, and both by the same killer.”
“Not really. I’m not the cop, you are.”
Soussier ignored the comment and kept barreling. “Both were shot at close range and both with a .22 caliber weapon, we figure with sound suppressor.”
Robert acted like it was the first time he had heard the terms. “We can feel safer with you on the job, Inspector.”
“So then, nothing?”
Robert shook his head.
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I took a look around?”
“Where, here?”
Robert held his hands palms up, questioning him. “Am I a suspect?”
“Let’s just say you’re a person of interest, but you knew that, didn’t you?”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“So I can take a look?”
“Sure, just show me your warrant and you can have at it.”
Soussier frowned. “You know I don’t have one.”
Robert shrugged and the Inspector scooped up his photographs, slipped them back in the case and zipped it up. He stood and faced Robert.
“Next time, call so you can be sure to catch me at home.”
Soussier grinned slyly. “Oh, we will catch you, Mr. Garcia. Don’t worry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Robert sped up his readiness process, aware there were probably extra men placed on his surveillance and he would have to be not only vigilant, but clever to avoid them. He poured a couple cups of coffee and took them and the dog outside. When they stopped at the unmarked police vehicle, Butthead hiked his leg and peed on the front wheel as Robert knocked on the window with his elbow. One of the cops rolled it down.
“Oui?”
“Coffee, for you.” Robert held the Styrofoam cups out to the officer. “It’s going to be a long day.”
The cop took the cups from his outstretched hand, instinctively, and, also out of instinct, said “Merci.”
“Mai, je vous en prie.” Robert saluted to the cops and he and the dog took off in a jog down the street toward the forest. The policeman put the cups on the dashboard and followed Robert with his eyes until he turned the corner. Then he stumbled out of the car and picked up his pace to keep in sight of his subject.
Robert and the dog crossed the multi-street intersection and broke into a brisk run toward the forest, disappearing into a trail hidden by a clump of trees. The cop reached the intersection and his head spun around, as if he was confused. Making a decision, he trotted across the street.
Robert finally ended his walk, making sure he had not been seen, at the home of his dog sitter, who was only too happy to take the dog in on no notice. He thanked her and then slipped down the street to the nearest metro station and down into it. He rode the metro to his garage, picked up his bike, and, given the hour, headed straight for St. Denis without stopping.
***
Mahmud Shamoun and his men were already seated in a corner of the third café Robert visited. He walked in and took a seat. From his peripherals, he could see they had a larger crowd than usual. A couple of his goons looked pretty nervous.
Something’s going down. I can feel it.
Shamoun stood up first, threw some euros on the table, and the rest followed him outside as if they had been sucked out by a vacuum. Robert trailed not far behind as he watched them pile into a white van across the street. He was now glad he had taken the bike all the way to St. Denis instead of the metro. He mounted the seat, started it up and pulled out into traffic about five cars behind the van.
Twenty minutes later, the van was zig-zagging between the 17th and 18th Arrondissements of Paris and then barreled down Boulevard Haussmann. Robert could feel that something was happening and the adrenaline was surging through his veins, making his head tingle. Suddenly, the van pulled over to a stop a half-block from Galeries Lafayette and the sliding door opened, pouring out masked men like cockroaches coming out of a crack in the wall.
Robert quickly ditched his motorcycle and broke into a trot as he heard the clack of AK-47 fire and saw a cop fall down in the street. He approached the van first, popping two rounds into the passenger’s head, and shooting the driver before he could react. He ripped open the door, using the passenger’s body as a shield, and looked inside. Shamoun was backing away with one hand on the back door handle and the other on the trigger of his gun, which was pointed at Robert. In a split second, Robert dispatched him with a shot to the head and chest as Shamoun’s gun went off, shattering the windshield. Technically that ended the assignment, but not for Robert. He was in combat mode. He grabbed an AK 47 from the floorboard of the van and took off toward the mall. The terrorists had to be stopped.
A uniformed police officer jumped in front of Robert on the sidewalk and raised his gun.
“Halt!”
Robert dispatched him with a shot to the head. As the officer fell to the ground like a lifeless rag doll, Robert ran around him and into the gallery, where he could hear screaming and shots being fired. He quickly bounded up the stairs, where he had a vantage of the entire sales floor, which had turned into a battlefield. Terrorists were shooting shoppers left and right, bodies crashing into glass sales counters as dozens of terrified people hit the floor in fear. Several in the crowd gave in to their flight impulses and ran. As they did, they were mowed down by machine gun fire.
Crouching low at the edge of the mezzanine, which was open to the main floor like a theater, Robert scanned the room for terrorist targets, one by one, counting them quickly and then carefully taking aim and shooting them like ducks in a shooting gallery.
“That’s one,” he called out to himself as he aimed, fired and a masked jihadist hit the floor. “Two!” He fired a spray of automatic fire at another masked man, downing him.
“Seven more to go.”
Robert moved along the perimeter of the floor, changing positions and taking the terrorists by surprise, confusing them and making them believe there could be more than one shooter. He shot at them from one position, and then, crouching low, out of their sight, moved to another position around the circular floor, shooting and taking return fire from the terrorists.
He crawled backwards, taking cover behind a sales counter in women’s wear as the object of the terrorists’ wrath turned on him instead of the innocent shoppers, whom they were now taking as human shields instead of shooting them. This was not part of his assignment and every second he stayed on the scene increased his chances of getting caught. He took aim carefully and fired at the head of a terrorist wielding a woman shopper, and watched the shot connect as the jihadi fell, spraying random gunfire, and the woman scrambled away.
Bullets were exploding all around him, reminding him of his days in Iraq and later, in Syria. He stayed flat to the floor and crawled backwards as the bullets pocked and shredded the edge of the mezzanine and pinged against the wrought iron railing, creating clouds of white dust as they chipped away at the floor like a buzz saw. Mannequins riddled with bullets disintegrated into clouds of white powder as the clothes hanging on them fell. Display racks fell apart in a heap of dresses, pants and jackets as if they had been hit by wild gusts of wind.
Robert regrouped quickly, as he knew the terrorists would be fast approaching him from both sides. The mezzanine was round, like the rotunda itself, so there would be no escaping them. Whether he went left or right, he would still have to cross their path, and was sandwiched between them. He would have to make his stand. The element of surpris
e was with him because, since they were on their way up the staircase, the terrorists would not know his exact position. He heard them firing wildly on automatic as they bounded the steps.
He scooted into a changing booth, broke open the false ceiling, and perched himself on top of the structure, breaking out more ceiling tiles with a sweep of his weapon so he could see on both sides. From his hiding place inside the false ceiling, Robert took the approaching group on the right by surprise with a sweep of automatic fire. Two of them fell and the third took cover, firing back at him. He felt a singe of pain in his leg and then a feeling like it was on fire. He had been hit.
He couldn’t afford to concentrate on the shooter because the group to his left probably already knew his position, so he turned his attention to them, spraying them with fire, scattering them as two dropped to the ground and Robert took another hit in the shoulder. He jumped down from his perch, his one leg numb and the other bending so he could lay flat and crawled toward his aggressor on the right, from whom he was still taking fire. As the bullets whizzed past him, Robert took aim at the jihadi’s head, fired and watched it explode.
He turned and fired in the direction of the others on the left. They remained still as he crawled toward them. He saw that two were dead and a third man was moaning. He shot him in the head and saw the fourth man limping away and attempted to shoot him as well, but wasn’t sure if he had connected or not. Through the commotion downstairs, he could hear sirens in the distance. That meant the whole mess would be someone else’s problem now. He crept out through the causeway to the men’s store and dragged his body away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Chaos reigned on Boulevard Haussmann as dozens of police cars and heavy equipment rolled up to the scene where frantic shoppers escaping were thrust into throngs of lookers-on. Dozens of armored cops poured out of a SWAT van and ran into the store in formation as shoppers fled. Already, the Twittersphere was full of smartphone videos posted by hip shot journalists. As the videos piled up on Instagram and Facebook and the tweets multiplied, social media was recreating a monster, bringing a legend back to life. The #Paladine hashtag resurfaced, referring to the lone shooter as a super hero, a savior.
Robert had first come to the public light when he had shot a terrorist at a McDonalds in the States, thereby saving dozens of lives. That is how he had picked up the “Paladine” moniker. Now, with the hundreds that had been saved from terrorists by the mysterious sniper in Galeries Lafayette, the new pundits of social media were recalling the event and declaring that France now had its own “Paladine,” a hero who was dedicated to saving the world from terrorism.
Nobody called Inspector Nicolas Soussier to the scene. He was alerted by one of his men who had seen the news on Twitter and thought he may be interested in the “Paladine” angle. He was.
“You think it was our guy?”
“Too close not to check it out. Keep two men on the apartment and meet me at the crime scene.”
They rolled out one unit to join the Inspector and the other one remained in surveillance of Robert’s apartment.
Triage centers had already been set up on the sidewalk to evaluate the wounded and they were already in operation with dozens of casualties. There was no official death count yet, but the news was reporting hundreds saved rather than dozens killed. The Islamic State’s brilliant terrorist attack on the infidels had been foiled.
Gregory Manizek’s people were denying all knowledge of the incident to the French government while at the same time he was sending encrypted messages to Washington. Even he didn’t know what was going on.
Two blocks from the violent scene, Robert collapsed in an alley, and crawled behind some debris as a cover. The blood had soaked through the makeshift tourniquets he had fashioned for his femur and shoulder. He had lost a lot of blood and his heart was pumping overtime to distribute what was left to his brain, shutting down the supply to the muscles that had propelled him this far, and despite his adrenaline-charged flight instinct, he could no longer walk. He dialed a number from his burner phone.
“Need help.”
“Can you make it to the safe house?”
“Negative, I need, need…” Robert coughed. “Extraction. And don’t fuck it up this time.”
“What’s your location?”
Robert looked up. The universe was spinning around his head. The voice on the phone became a distant echo. His sight was converging into blackness like the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon.
“GPS it.”
“Hold on, we’ll send someone right out.”
He couldn’t hold on. He was cold and shivering. There was a ringing in his ears. His limp hand fell to the ground and the phone clattered out to his side.
***
Arriving on the scene, Inspector Soussier flashed his badge, stepped through the yellow crime scene tape and entered the store. Bodies of shoppers lay on the ground all over the first floor. The copper scent of blood hung thick in the stuffy air, along with an alcoholic smell of perfume from the bursted bottles. He choked, almost gagged. Glass lay scattered all over the floor from the shattered jewelry and perfume counters, cases and windows. He approached a Sergeant on duty.
“Do you have a body count?”
“Yes, sir. 16 dead plus nine terrorist suspects.”
“Nine terrorists?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Show me.”
Soussier toured the scene, mounting the stairs where Robert had made his last stand with the remaining terrorists.
“From the videos, it appears the shooter was up there.”
The Sergeant pointed to the fitting room, on the floor of which was an ample pool of blood.
“When the crime lab gets here, I want them to test the DNA samplings of this blood against all the other victims – terrorists too.”
“Yes, sir.”
Soussier climbed the stairs, and stood next to the shredded changing booth, looking out into what had been Robert’s theater.
***
The aide wiped his brow as he rushed to Nathan Anderson’s office with the report, hoping he could get there before Anderson spotted the news. In the era of social media reporting, there was no need to wait for newspapers or broadcasts. News was in real-time and it was playing out on telephones and iPads all over the world almost immediately as it happened. When the aide opened the door, Anderson was sitting there with a frown. The aide held the binder out to his boss.
“I suppose this is a report on PAL?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Gordon Allen, sir.”
“Allen, who has the most sophisticated data gathering facility in the world, that’s open 24 hours a day?”
Gordon shifted his weight on one foot. He looked puzzled. “We do, sir.”
“That’s right. So why am I reading about PAL on my phone instead of a report which should have been on my desk twenty minutes ago?”
“My apologies, sir.”
Anderson held out his hand and Gordon put the folder into it. Anderson opened it, ignoring Gordon, who backed out of the office slowly.
“Wait a minute?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I want a full briefing on what Ted Barnard is given and what his next move is with PAL. The president will want to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
Soussier made notes and sketched in his pad as he walked the scene of the attack. He studied the videos that had been posted on the Internet. None were clear enough to positively identify Robert as the mysterious shooter. Yet, all the evidence, taken as a whole, was tearing at his gut. He didn’t just suspect – he knew Garcia was Paladine. The challenge was convincing a judge to issue a warrant. He just had to rip this place apart and find something to connect him to these crimes.
You’re pretty clever, aren’t you, Paladine? Well I’m going to get you, and that’s a promise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
An
unmarked white van appeared at the entrance of the alley and slowed beside a street bum lying next to a pile of garbage. The sliding door opened and two men stepped out, scooped up the seemingly lifeless homeless man and lifted him into the van. A third popped out of the passenger side door and swept up the garbage, the phone, and anything else that was in the immediate vicinity of his body into a black plastic trash bag and took it away.
Inside the van, the two attendants began working on Robert Garcia. They lifted him onto a backboard, cut away his clothes and the tourniquets he had made to locate the entrance and exit wounds, and applied pressure bandages. One attendant hooked up monitors to take Robert’s vital signs, and the machine beeped to life, pumping out a weak pulse and a dangerously low blood pressure. Another put an oxygen mask to his face, opened up his eyelids and shone a light into his eyes. They moved quickly inside the rolling vehicle as it sped away, locating a vein and punching in a stint for the IV, which they hooked to the plastic flask of fluid swinging above the gurney.
***
Inspector Soussier pounded loudly on the door to Robert’s apartment. Convinced there would be no answer, he completed the protocol nevertheless. Soussier was a man who always played the game by the book. Finally, after three token efforts, he gave a nod to the locksmith, who opened the door with a modicum of effort. Following Soussier, the search team scrambled inside the apartment like a colony of intruding ants.
At Soussier’s direction, they pulled up the mattress in the bedroom, turned pockets inside out in all of Robert’s pants and jackets, and emptied all his drawers to examine all of the contents.
“The bedroom is clean, sir. There’s nothing here.”
“Check the closet for secret panels.”
One of the officers shone his flashlight inside the closet, examining every part of it carefully.
“Nothing.”
