He took a deep breath before continuing. “As for looking at our shooting positions, have you not thought of what they will be doing? Do you think they don’t know what our target is? They will do the same analysis we have done of where to place ourselves. And today, this afternoon, during the practice flight, did it not occur to you that they might expect us to check out positions and get ready, and that they would be there in force?”
“I know all that.”
“And you still question my decision?”
“I am . . . sorry,” he said, not meaning a word of it.
Khalida came to Madani’s defense. “When the French security police see your missile and come running toward you, will you die with honor, or will you cry and beg them not to hurt you?”
“They will not take me. I will fire at them as soon as I see them.”
“You will, will you?” Khalida asked.
Ismael stared into his face inches away. “Yes, I will. Will you?”
Madani turned to Hafiz, who was smoking in the corner, disinterested in the details of the planning, more interested in bemused watching of the others in the room. “What of you? You said you thought you had made progress. What is happening?”
“I don’t know,” Hafiz said. “I thought . . . I don’t know. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night.”
“We need that distraction.”
Hafiz bowed in such a way that it could be interpreted as respect or contempt.
Madani decided to let it pass. “Tomorrow at midnight. Stay out of sight and out of touch until then.”
* * *
Rat watched from the darkness of their Peugeot van as Stovic stepped out of the Police Nationale car. The French police had balked when he told them he was going out. They had initially said he couldn’t go anywhere. He had insisted, and they agreed, but only if they took him.
Rat almost hadn’t invited him. He certainly didn’t need him, but he knew Stovic was growing more and more frustrated by his inability to face the threat that surrounded him. “Let’s go,” Rat said to Groomer, who started the van. They pulled up next to Stovic at the curb, and one of the other men slid the door back.
Rat climbed out and spoke to the edgy policemen in French. Stovic had no idea what he said, but it satisfied them and they left smiling.
“Rat!” he said, extending his hand. “How the hell are you?”
“Okay, so far,” Rat replied. “Come on. Get in the van.”
Stovic looked at the banks of electronic equipment in the van. There were small television screens, radio dials, other things he couldn’t identify at all, and wiry men operating all of it. “Who the hell are these people?”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re with me.”
“They your employees?” Stovic asked with concern.
“Yeah. Minimum wage guys.”
“Did you find him?” Stovic asked.
“We’re getting closer. I just don’t know if we’ll have time. I have a lot of friends here, and they’ve been helping me. But these are some elusive mothers—”
“Rat,” one of the men at the console said, “check this out.”
Rat turned and looked quickly at the screen. It was a small but clear image of some men walking carefully up some stairs with small machine pistols. “Holy shit,” Rat said, giving the screen his full attention. He slid over and looked at the other screens. “They’re at the hotel! Somebody set us up.” His head spun one direction, then the other.
“What?” Stovic asked, concerned.
“These cameras are in my hotel. My room, the stairs, in the back—which is what that is,” he said pointing.
Rat spoke to the driver. “That’s the GIGN. The big boys. Only they’re being used. Boy are they going to be pissed.” He thought for a minute. “Take us over there. Whoever set this up won’t be able to resist watching.”
The driver looked at the GPS navigation screen. The van’s position was overlaid on a Paris map. He selected the hotel’s location, and the computer showed him the most direct route back. The driver turned down an alley between two stone buildings and went back in the direction from which it had come.
“Go to the front of the hotel,” Rat ordered. He slipped the thumb safety off on the Para Ordnance handgun in the holster on his belt. The others checked weapons Stovic had never seen. He noticed they were all wearing black trousers and rubber-soled shoes with lightweight black sweaters. They could pass for normal clothes if they had to, but they also reflected no light.
“What are we doing?”
“A lot of information is being traded in Paris these days. Somebody has bought some bad stuff, and they’re about to find that out. Somebody told them about my room and is going to be very happy to see the French counterterrorism boys go in there to take care of me. I should have figured it was them. Somebody was in my room yesterday—”
“How do you know that?”
“Sensors.” He looked at Stovic. “I have motion detectors. They not only show someone was there, but where in the room they were. A maid has a particular pattern. Others would look different. And these sensors have memories. Yesterday they were different. Turn here!” he yelled to the driver, who had driven by the street. “Back up!”
The driver apologized, backed up in the deserted street, and turned right up a hill toward Rat’s hotel.
Rat watched the screen. “That’s the GIGN all right. I think that’s Jean Marcel. Damn it.” He turned to the man next to him. “Give me their frequencies. Set the encryption codes.” The man complied. Rat listened on several radio frequencies until he heard them. He nodded, then spoke into a small boom mike attached to an earpiece. “Jean! That’s my hotel room!”
Rat watched as the French officer stopped. “Rat? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you here?”
“No. I’m remote. But I can see you. I’ve got some cameras there. You bought some bad information. Stay there. I think whoever set this up will be watching. Give me a minute to find him.”
Marcel was disgusted. He told his men to stand in place. “One minute,” he said.
When the hotel was half a block away, they slowed even more as they headed up the street. Rat looked through the tinted window out the left side of the van and saw a man sitting on the sidewalk leaning against a doorpost with a bottle in a brown bag.
“Stop,” Rat whispered to the driver. “There’s that sack-of-shit we marked,” he said. “Groomer, come with me. Bring your tool.” Rat grabbed a black silk scarf out of his pocket as he opened the door quietly. He wrapped it around each hand as he walked swiftly across the street. The man was trying hard not to look to his right, where he sensed a van had stopped and someone had gotten out. If he was to maintain his drunken state, he couldn’t be looking around, and Rat knew it.
Rat was on him in two seconds. He threw the scarf over the man’s head, wrapped it tightly around the man’s neck, and pulled him up off the sidewalk. The man grabbed for the scarf and tried to yell, but both attempts were useless. The scarf had cut off his air, and Rat was too big and strong. Groomer slammed his brass knuckles into the man’s solar plexus, knocking all the wind out
of him.
Rat pulled the scarf over his shoulder until the man’s head hung over his right shoulder and his legs flailed in vain behind him. He walked back to the van carrying the man, with Groomer right behind him.
Rat went around to the back of the van where others had prepared a place for their visitor. It was separated from the rest of the van by a curtain. Rat moved the curtain aside, pulled the man off his shoulder, and threw him on the deck of the van. Groomer followed Rat into the back of the van. As the door was closed quietly, the van pulled away from the curb.
Stovic breathed heavily as he watched the entire thing. He had no idea what was going on and no idea how to help. He wondered whether he should ask to be let out of the van and go back to his hotel, but he was too fascinated, and too determined to do something himself. He couldn�
�t just let others do things for him.
He leaned toward the curtain and listened. He heard struggling. He heard low tones, insistent, in a language that was clearly not English. He listened for the distinctive sounds of French, but it sounded different. He couldn’t tell if it was Rat’s voice or Groomer’s. It was frightening to Stovic just to hear the tone. He couldn’t imagine the terror of the man to whom it was being directed.
He heard Rat’s voice loudly from behind the curtain. “To the shop!”
Stovic turned and watched the driver nod and take the next corner. They drove in complete silence as the others in the van watched the French walk slowly into Rat’s room, having lost their motivation.
The van pulled up in front of an automotive repair shop with a steel door. One of the men jumped out and opened the door. The van pulled in, and the man pulled the steel door closed behind them. Groomer came out from behind the curtain with the man whose head was now covered with a thick black canvas bag. The drawstring was pulled tightly around his neck. His hands were bound behind him, and Groomer was pushing him ahead by raising and lowering the man’s hands behind his back.
Stovic got out of the way. The man was filthy and smelly. He reeked of alcohol. Stovic couldn’t imagine why Rat had grabbed some homeless alcoholic, but he was sure Rat knew what he was doing; more sure now than he had ever been.
The van disappeared, and the rest of the men came into the dark auto shop next to Rat, who was standing over the homeless man on the concrete floor. One of them turned on a lamp, the kind that hooked on the inside of the hood of a car.
Rat turned and looked at those around him. “Okay, Animal,” he said to Stovic. “You wanted to be part of this.” He pulled a small knife out of his pocket, a Smith and Wesson HRT. Stovic had never seen anything like it. The blade wasn’t any longer than two or three inches, but it was curved and serrated, and there was a small handle with a large loop at the base of the blade. Rat slid his index finger through the loop, making the razor-sharp blade an extension of his hand and impossible to get out of his possession. He cut through the plastic cuffs binding the man’s hands and turned him over. “Come on, Animal, get over here.”
Stovic hadn’t moved, but now inched his way toward Rat.
“Pin his arm,” Rat said looking at him. He could see Stovic’s revulsion and fear.
Stovic knelt down on the hard concrete and held the man’s arm. One of the others got on the other side and put his knee directly on the meat of the man’s upper arm, causing him to cry out.
“Kneel on his arm!” Rat said to Stovic harshly.
Stovic reluctantly put his thick knee on the man’s arm as the other man had done. He knew from wrestling that the ulnar nerve ran through that very area. Prolonged pressure could cause permanent nerve damage. Stovic’s breath came faster as the man began to cry out in pain. One of the other men pinned the man’s legs to the concrete.
Rat spoke in a low tone near the man’s face. The blade passed close enough to the man that he could feel it cutting the hood. Rat didn’t need to cut the hood; he wanted the man to sense the blade and its sharpness without first seeing it.
The man’s face was full of terror and pain. He spoke in French as he begged for an explanation.
Stovic watched with amazement as Rat answered him in French, then switched to another language, one Stovic didn’t recognize but guessed was Arabic. How did Rat know how to speak Arabic?
Rat leaned close to the man and asked him a question. There was no answer as the man tried to turn his head away. Rat suddenly stuck the curved point of the knife into Hafiz’s nose, a full inch up into a nostril. Hafiz froze at the feeling of steel inside his nose. “So,” Rat said in Arabic, “you told the GIGN about us.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” Hafiz protested.
Rat leaned on the knife harder, and put his knee in the man’s gut. “You thought that would be funny? Get us going after each other? Well, you are stupid. You saw me on the street. You could tell I’m not stupid, right?”
“I never saw you!”
“You liar! I saw you! Our eyes met, liar! You deny it?”
“I don’t remember,” Hafiz said desperately.
“Where is Ismael?”
“I don’t know him. They’re breaking my arms!”
“You won’t be needing them. You don’t know anyone named Ismael?”
“Yes, but no one who has done anything,” he said trying to control the terror in his heart.
“Ismael Nezzar. From Algeria. The one who has come to shoot down the Blue Angels. That Ismael.”
Hafiz was shocked. “The what? The blue what?”
Rat quickly pulled the knife outward, slicing through the side of Hafiz’s nose from the inside. Blood spurted down his face and onto the concrete as Hafiz screamed. “Where is Ismael Nezzar? The brother of that worthless Algerian pilot?”
Hafiz felt the blood running down the side of his face. He tried to move his hand to feel his nose, but his numb arms were still immobilized. “I don’t know anyone!” he cried.
“That’s too bad for you. Now I am going to have to cut off your nose. Do you know how hard it is to look normal without a nose? Just a big cavity in the middle of your face? You know how easy it will be for others to identify you when you have no nose?” Rat put his blade against the bottom of Hafiz’s nose and began to apply pressure.
“I don’t know where he is!”
“You have seen him?”
“Yes. He is here. I don’t know where he is! I don’t know!”
“When did you last see him?”
“A few days ago. He was with men I don’t know.”
“The one thing that disappoints me,” Rat said quietly, continuing in Arabic, “is that you would lie to me. After all this, for you to lie makes it unlikely that I will find it worth my time to keep you alive. We have seen you together,” Rat lied. “I am sorry—”
“No! Wait! I saw him yesterday, but I don’t know where he is. They have scattered.”
“They who?”
“All the ones. The ones who came here together. All of them.”
“How many?”
“Four or five. I’m not sure.”
“How many missiles do they have?”
Hafiz hesitated. “I don’t know, they didn’t—”
“Liar!” Rat screamed with a frighteningly red face as he quickly flashed his blade against the man’s head and sliced his ear. Hafiz screamed. “You must tell me the truth. I know when you don’t.” He put the knife tip against the middle of Hafiz’s lower eyelid, just hard enough for him to feel the steel against his eyeball. “How many missiles?”
“I think four, but maybe five.”
“Are they to shoot on Sunday?”
“Yes, Sunday. My arms . . . could they move . . . they will be ruined.” He started to panic.
“They’re not moving until we’re done. If your arms are ruined, it is your fault, not mine. How many shooters?”
“Four or five. I don’t know. I haven’t been in the planning.”
“Russian missiles?”
“Yes.”
“Any Stingers?”
He hesitated. “No. They tried. They couldn’t.”
“Where are the missiles?”
“They wouldn’t take me. Somewhere out north.”
“Where did you see Ismael yesterday?”
“At a restaurant.”
“Did they have any maps? Any charts, mock-ups? Did you see any of the planning?’
“There is a model,” Hafiz said, knowing that if he told them of it he might live to see it.
“Of what?”
“Le Bourget.”
“Where?”
“I can show you.”
Rat decided instantly. He pulled Hafiz up to his feet by his hair. The blood ran down his chest from his nose and ear.
One of the other Americans grabbed a rag and some duct tape from a table and taped the rag around the middle of his he
ad to stop the bleeding. Rat took the black silk scarf out of his pocket and put it over Hafiz’s eyes. Rat said to him, “If I don’t like the looks of where we’re going, I will simply drive my knife into your heart and drop you on the sidewalk. You understand?”
Hafiz nodded.
Rat nodded to two of the men, who bound Hafiz’s hands behind him and led him to the van.
Stovic stood staring at the Americans in shock. He had never seen anything so horrifying. He didn’t want any part of it, yet he knew at a deep level that it was all for him, to defend him, to “help” him. Especially Rat. It was like a cat killing a bird and laying it at his feet to please him.
The man who had been on Hafiz’s other arm said to Rat, “Could be a trap. He might be taking us into a beehive.”
Rat nodded. “We’re getting about eighty percent truth from him. But I don’t think he’d make up the model. And he knows if we get to wherever we’re going and there isn’t one there, he’s finished.”
“What if there’s a roomful of mad Algerians with AKs?”
Rat nodded as he wiped the blade of his knife and slipped it back inside the hard plastic case hanging from a chain around his neck. “Chance we have to take.” He looked at Stovic. “Let’s get to the van.”
Stovic followed him. “Did you have to cut him up?”
Rat hesitated, then looked at his friend. “You said you wanted to kill Ismael yourself. With your bare hands, I think you said. I don’t think you appreciate what that means. I think you’re starting to, though. Maybe you’ll still get the chance tonight. But only if this guy gives us more. We don’t have anything else to go on.” He turned to Stovic as the van started. “We can drop you off if you want. This could get very ugly.”
The Shadows of Power Page 28
