The Paris Protection

by Bryan Devore

  THE PARIS PROTECTION

  BRYAN DEVORE

  Copyright © 2015 Bryan Devore

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-9852413-6-0

  Copyright © 2015 Bryan Devore

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  ISBN-10: 0-9852413-6-5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9852413-6-0

  I do the very best I know how—the very best I can;

  and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

  —Abraham Lincoln

  1

  MAXIMILIAN WOLFF CRACKED OPEN THE silver locket in his palm and gazed at the little oval photos of his wife and son. As he thought of them, he vaguely heard the rustling of the two hundred men standing below him on the floor of a big, old Parisian warehouse. He tried to look inside the two innocent faces in the tiny pictures: Naomi’s radiant eyes and long, dark hair; his little Eli’s wide, happy smile. Recalling the joy that had once been in his life, he felt a brimming tear and blinked it away. This was perhaps the last time he would see their faces before the world erupted in fire. He took a moment longer, then closed the locket and tucked it back under his shirt. Then he stepped out onto the platform, raised his fists in the air, and yelled, “In less than an hour, we will kill the president of the United States!”

  The room exploded in cheers. In their black tactical clothing, some of the men raised their Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns in the air like championship trophies. The surge of violent energy helped Maximilian move past the bittersweet memories and focus on the rhetoric of his battle cry. This would likely be the last night of his life, and he was determined to live every minute with the courage and control of the paramilitary general he had become over the past decade.

  Patting the air with both hands, he quieted the men enough to continue.

  “For too long, America has poisoned the world. For too long, they have plundered its natural resources so that they may live in wealth and luxury while so many others suffer in poverty and sickness and starvation and war.” He raised his arm. “But in less than an hour, we will sever the head of the demonic nation.” He swiped his hand through the air as if delivering a death blow.

  More cheers erupted from the floor.

  “We will wound their people as never before. Their corrupt society shall witness our moment of triumph! We will rise up from below this city like resurrected warriors and descend on the American president like a tidal wave.”

  More fervent cheering.

  “For we are that tidal wave of change!” Maximilian yelled. “To bring the world back closer to equality and end the imperialism that strong, corrupt nations impose on the vulnerable and weak.”

  As he fired up his men, he saw that they had already grouped together in their units. The two in the demolition team stood next to the engineer with the packed diamond-toothed industrial chainsaw. Beside them stood four other men with large tanks strapped to their backs. His advanced elite made up most of the group, with early first-wave pawns behind them. The dozen dark-skinned men from his personal guard were closest to the platform. And Kazim Aslan, his second in command, stood to the right with his elite dozen warriors waiting patiently for the start of the assault.

  “What we do in the next hour, we do for all those whom America has harmed!” he continued. “We do it for those who cannot claim their revenge in person! And we do it for our children, so they have some hope for a future without America trying to control the world that God has given us all!”

  The men yelled like berserkers spoiling for a fight.

  Maximilian paced slowly back and forward on the steel platform as the hardened faces stared up at him.

  “Men,” he continued in a deep, gravelly voice, “let there be no doubt, this will be a Herculean task. To attack such a powerful enemy will cost us many lives tonight. But we must remember the importance of our task: one that will be chronicled in history for thousands of years after tonight. We are not the first to face impossible odds in conquering our enemy. More than two thousand years ago, Rome had defeated Carthage in the First Punic War. Afterward, a great Carthaginian general from that war raised a son named Hannibal Barca, who would grow to become perhaps the greatest military general of antiquity, matched only by Alexander the Great.”

  Maximilian stopped and looked down on his men with pride. He had been planning this moment for three years, and he felt more alive in this moment than at any other time since his wife and son were taken from him. He had taken a long, dark path, abandoning his nation and his faith to arrive at this point in his life. But the energy he felt right now only confirmed that he was exactly where he needed to be, exactly on course to meet his destiny.

  Again he spoke to the men. “Hannibal would eventually lead the next generation’s Carthaginian army into Roman territory, fighting the Romans in their own lands, conquering Roman legions on Italian soil, burning Roman cities that would not join his alliance, and striking fear into the hearts of Roman citizens for the first time in centuries. His army was always outnumbered on the battlefield, but through courage, clever deception, and brilliant strategic maneuvering, he won battle after battle. History remembers them all.”

  He turned to Kazim, standing slightly below him, beside the metal platform. His second in command, a tall Turk with a mop of black shoulder-length hair, had heard him give speeches like this many times over the past few years. But there was now a look of concern on Kazim’s face, as if he had something to say.

  Turning back to the men, Maximilian continued. “But before Hannibal ever fought a single battle on Italian soil, he achieved what is still considered one of the greatest feats of any army in history. He crossed the rugged, snowy Alps with an army of nearly forty thousand men and a few hundred elephants. No one thought it possible. Even Scipio, leader of the Roman army dispatched to intercept him in Spain and Gaul, never imagined that Hannibal would take his army through the high mountains instead of the lower coastal lands. But the Carthaginian had planned his invasion of northern Italy with careful calculations and a bold strategy. For fifteen long, cold days, he marched his army through the treacherous mountains. Many of his men froze. Others fell to their deaths. Before he reached the foothills leading down to the plains of northern Italy, he had lost nearly half his men and most of his elephants. But this secret crossing of the Alps had allowed his army to arrive in Italy—to the Romans’ horrified amazement—with a remaining army much stronger than if he had battled Scipio all along the coastal lands.”

  He paused and listened to the silence in the vast room.

  “And just as he used the snowy Alps to surprise Rome, we will use the Paris catacombs to surprise the president of the United States.”

  The men gave a loud, savage roar. To Maximilian’s ears, it sounded like the barbarians from ancient tribes—Goths and Huns and Vandals—whose anger at all dominant powers had been faithfully passed, whether through genes or through spoken lore, down the centuries to the present.

  After allowing the men to build their energy with their battle cries, he raised his hands to speak again. When the roaring at last subsided, he recited the words he had memorized from the historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge’s writings on Hannibal after crossing the Alps into Italy.


  “Hannibal had reached his goal. He had with him a force of twenty-six thousand men . . . What was the purpose of this reckless army? To attack on its own soil a people capable of raising three quarters of a million of men; a people which, in the last conflict, but a generation since, had utterly overthrown—all but exterminated—the Carthaginian power and nationality . . . To dare this and any other danger for the chance of bringing to his feet the cruel, rapacious power of Rome, which had inflicted such injustice and degradation on his beloved country . . . The man whose courage cannot be daunted, whose mind and body are incapable of fatigue, whose soul burns with the divine spark of genius, may always confront the impossible. And Hannibal had faced all this with a full knowledge of what he was about to do. To him there was no impossible. To him, with his honest cause and unconquerable purpose, there must be a way. It is, indeed, when such a hero looks the all but impossible in the face that he is at his greatest. It is here that he shines forth, clad in all his virtue. Be it that the palm of the victor awaits him, be it that he is destined to sink beneath the weight of his herculean task, at such a time he is no longer man. He is a demigod!”

  The men roared in wild jubilation.

  “So follow me, men! Follow me into the darkness under this city so that we may rise up and free the world of this evil. And afterwards, as we are all taken into the brilliant light of eternity, as servants to God and proud patriots of our native lands, I shall forever know each of you as my brother! For tonight, we will achieve a victory that history will never forget!”

  Maximilian’s eyes shone, reflecting the excitement he had stirred within the men. Turning to Kazim, he said, “Is everything ready?”

  Kazim nodded. “The equipment is packed and waiting at the entrance to the tunnels . . . But there is a small matter you need to know about.”

  “We don’t have time! We have to go now!”

  Kazim leaned in and whispered, “Julian arrived with some men a few minutes ago.”

  A wave of fury washed over Maximilian. “Right before we leave!” he snarled. “How did he know our schedule?”

  “Someone from the syndicates informed him, I suppose.”

  “You think they’re changing their plans?” Maximilian asked his trusted friend and adviser.

  “They could be hedging. They have billions of euros riding on tonight.”

  “It’s ironic,” Maximilian said.

  “What is?”

  “History—people like to say it repeats itself. Do you know why it often repeats itself?”

  “Why?” Kazim said. He flexed his neck as if impatient to get moving.

  “Because human nature is the same in every time. Passion, loyalty, love, honor, pride, ambition, stupidity, fear, hatred, betrayal, shame . . . Human nature seems the only thing in nature that doesn’t know how to evolve. Do you know the main reason Hannibal ultimately failed to destroy Rome?”

  “No.”

  “It was because the Carthaginian senate failed to support him at a critical time during his campaign in Italy. He had just beaten the Roman army at Cannae, in the single greatest defeat the empire ever suffered in its entire eight-hundred-year existence, before or after that single day. But the politicians of Carthage—the country Hannibal was fighting for—were too foolish and fearful in their senate chamber to send the support he needed to win the war in Rome. They failed him, and it eventually cost him—and Carthage—everything.”

  Maximilian paused before continuing.

  “We will not let Julian and the syndicates fail us. We will not let their cowardice stop us. We will not let that species of flaw in human nature once again allow history to repeat itself. Dominik Kalmár has entrusted us with this operation, and we will triumph for him as well as for ourselves. Tonight, we will do what Hannibal ultimately failed to do: we will succeed in our decapitation strike against our greatest enemy.”

  Moving away from the platform, he clomped down the grated metal steps, with Kazim in tow. They must leave the warehouse soon. He had little time to deal with Julian.

  2

  REBECCA REID SWUNG THE PILLOW as hard as she could, catching the side of his head and knocking him off the bed. Twisting her body sideways, she pulled the ruffled beige sheet up to cover her naked body. The man, having recovered from the fall to the hardwood floor, scrambled back to the side of the bed, where he stayed on his knees as if to pray or ask for clemency.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Too late,” she replied. “I don’t care.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “Never,” Rebecca said. “You just made the biggest mistake of your life.”

  David Stone smiled. It was a big, happy smile that lit up his eyes, temporarily relieving his habitually serious demeanor. Rebecca was the only one in the United States Secret Service who ever saw this side of him. It was one of the reasons she had let him break down her usually strong defenses and—against her better judgment—risk her reputation on his decency as a man. But she was smart enough never to reveal her vulnerability to him.

  David walked his elbows a few inches forward on the bed, leaning closer. His dress clothes and hers were strewn in a crooked line from the door. His pale, muscular chest pressed against the rumpled sheets, his arms reaching out toward her.

  She swung the pillow at him again. This time, he blocked it and sprang off the floor to pounce on the bed. But as he leaned in to kiss her neck, he made the mistake of keeping his weight forward. She threw an arm up under his right arm while twisting her hips and knocking his left arm out from under him, throwing him off balance as his momentum carried him across the bed and down to the floor on the other side.

  She laughed as he tumbled back to the floor.

  “This is ridiculous,” he groaned, sitting up. “We don’t have much time.”

  “You’re out of time, buster. POTUS will be here soon, and you need to save your energy.”

  “Oh, I have plenty.”

  “No way,” she said, grinning as she slipped out of bed. “I’m going to take a really fast shower and dash downstairs.”

  “Perfect! I’ll join you.”

  “You’d better get back to your own room and clean up before she gets here.” She motioned with her eyes toward the nightstand. “And don’t forget your gun.”

  “You really don’t want it?” he asked. “It was an expensive gift.”

  Rebecca pointed at the small nickel-plated subcompact semiautomatic, still in the wooden box on the bed, near the nightstand. The box was surrounded by torn red wrapping paper. The box’s purple felt lining seemed to accentuate the fine craftsmanship of the pistol, which was only slightly larger than the palm of her hand.

  “It’s a prostitute’s gun.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s a Model Fifty-two Special, right? That’s for prostitutes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes! Look, it even came with a harness that straps high on the leg and can attach to a garter belt.”

  “No—I mean yes, but no. That’s not what I meant.”

  “You’re supposed to get a woman chocolates or roses or diamonds, not a gun—and especially not a gun favored by ladies of the evening. That’s how you think of me? As your prostitute? Is that it?”

  “No, of course not! I just thought . . . I like guns and saw it at a trade show in Philly last month, and my instincts told me to buy it for you. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s stupid, but I’ve been looking forward to the right moment to give it to you. I’ve never bought anything this expensive for anyone before. And honestly, if you reject it, it’ll feel like you’re rejecting my instincts towards you.”

  She thought about what her father and three older brothers would think of this. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t accept it.”

  “Becky . . .”

  She shook her head. “Nope, sorry. I can’t.”

  She walked naked across the wood floor, past the palatial white curtains
and into the bathroom. Closing the door, she pulled the thick towel off the hook and slung it over the shower rod.

  From the other side of the door came David’s muffled voice. “I’m sorry.”

  She ignored him and stepped into the shower. Just before she turned it on, she heard “I love you,” accompanied by soft scratching on the door.

  She picked up the hotel’s complimentary bathroom slippers and tossed them hard against the door. “You’d better hurry,” she said. “You don’t want to be late for the shift change.”

  She heard a muttered “Damn.” She unhooked the Parisian-style hose nozzle from the shower to avoid getting her hair wet. The hotel room’s door thudded shut—David had left.

  Two minutes later, she jumped out, dried and dressed, brushed her hair, and put on her array of weapons and equipment: collapsible baton, loaded P229 with two extra magazines, belt with plastic hand ties, mace, and a flash-bang grenade for emergency crowd control. She attached her Thales P25 Digital Encryption radio to the back of her belt, ran the wire up inside her suit jacket and down the sleeve, and clipped the microphone to her wrist, and the earpiece up the back of her neck and over and into her ear.

  She had so rushed when getting ready that it wasn’t until she moved around the bed that she saw the box still resting on the stand. She sighed. Why hadn’t he taken it, as she asked? Opening the box, she looked at the diminutive weapon, gleaming in the room’s sharp canned lighting. It did look nice. But she couldn’t accept it. The only daughter of a Colorado sheriff, and the baby sister of three Denver police detectives, she had spent her entire life fighting to prove that women could be just as strong in law enforcement as men. Being accepted into the Secret Service was still one of the proudest days of her life. And she just couldn’t play into the roles that women had historically been forced to tolerate. A small gun would have been bad enough, but the make and style used by prostitutes of the early twentieth century—that was unacceptable.