The Paris Protection

by Bryan Devore

  It was now up to Kazim and his special team to finish the mission. They were within minutes of their victory. And he could think of no man more motivated to give the American people a lasting visual nightmare that would break their hearts, crush their arrogance, and forever blind them with impotent rage.

  25

  KAZIM RACED BEHIND HIS MEN up the north stairwell, shouting, urging them to greater speed. He had twelve men with him, but four were carrying two large cases, which slowed the ascent of the entire team. If he could just get to the roof with at least seven men and the cases within the next two minutes, he could keep Maximilian’s plan on track.

  They had just passed the twenty-first floor—only seven more flights between them and their destiny. Maximilian had been brilliant in convincing the men that they would need to sacrifice their lives in order to hit the American government with a decapitation strike. It was a lie, but the other men needn’t know the truth. The only thing that mattered was killing the president. It wasn’t even guaranteed that the president would be taken to the roof, but Maximilian had been adamant: they must take the roof out of the equation either way if their plan was to have any chance for success.

  But then, just as he was feeling that nothing could stop them, someone shouted something strange down at them. A faint shadow, cast down from the stairwell above, moved along the wall in front of him. The shout of “White knight!” came again, this time more audibly. It bounced and echoed off the hard concrete and sounded a little high pitched.

  Another agent, hiding, waiting to ambush his group.

  He motioned to one of his men, and together they darted up the last few steps to the midlevel landing and fired up toward the agent. The figure above had ducked down below the upper banister so fast that Kazim never got a look at them. And just as fast, the agent returned fire from a crouched position above.

  Dropping to his chest on the hard concrete steps, Kazim cursed as bullets ricocheted off the steel banister and slammed into the walls. As he rolled to his back, he saw the agent’s muzzle flashes light up the underside of the stairs above.

  The agent was very close to him and his men—maybe eight feet away.

  He waved for the rest of his men to crawl up toward him. Together, they would cut this agent to pieces in a hail of bullets.

  26

  REBECCA HEARD THE COMMUNICATION from SAIC Alexander that the direct PPD team couldn’t get the president to the lower floors, because of the fire. He had alerted all agents that they were taking POTUS up twelve flights to the roof, where the White Top was en route to meet and extract her. Three Secret Service countersnipers were stationed on the roof, but most of the agents in the building had been directed to the lower floors during the first attempt to rush the president safely out to the armored limousine. Between the gunfights and the spreading fire on the first few floors, it was difficult to gauge how many agents would make it back up toward the new escape route for the president. Alexander and the bubble team were bringing POTUS up the south staircase, so Rebecca needed to help secure the north staircase until the team could get President Clarke on the roof for a Marine One exec lift.

  With her SIG Sauer P229 drawn, she used her shoulder to push the handle, opening the twenty-second-floor stairway door. Almost immediately, a thundering of footsteps came around the stairs just one floor below.

  “Stop!” she yelled. “White knight!” The response she needed to hear back was “red knight,” but she wasn’t hearing it.

  “White knight!” she yelled again, stopping her descent and leveling her gun at the swarm of shadows coming into view. She raised her wrist microphone to warn the rest of the team of possible hostiles coming up the north staircase, but before she had a chance, the men appeared below and she had to fire shots. Bullets were soon coming at her and ricocheting all around the enclosed concrete stairwell. She returned more fire down at them while falling backward onto the top step of her floor. She fell hard, slapping the floor with her free arm to absorb some of the shock, and rolled back toward the door. All agents were trained to stand tall and advance toward gunfire because it was the best tactic for shielding a protectee. But despite the responses conditioned into her through training, she resisted the automatic reaction to engage the group of men. She could tell she was outnumbered and that this was a threat to the president, so her focus was on warning Alexander of the attackers’ presence.

  Rolling toward the door, she wanted only to avoid the bullets long enough to give a situational warning to the PPD team. But when she yelled into her wrist microphone, she couldn’t hear her own relay in her earpiece. Feeling the ache in her lower back, she realized that the encrypted radio clipped to the back of her belt must have gotten crunched when she fell backward to the floor. Now she couldn’t warn the team of this threat that was clearly heading for the roof.

  She heard the men shouting to each other in a foreign language. They tried to move around the corner to ascend the stairs. She fired five more shots until her magazine emptied. Yanking her one standard-issue flash-bang grenade off her belt, she tossed it over the railing and covered her ears as she turned away with eyes closed. Hearing the loud pop and seeing the bright flash even through her eyelids, she then jumped to her feet. She heard men below, groaning from the noise and flash of the crowd-control grenade, but someone very strong was still on his feet, and shooting at her. A bullet whined off the steel banister near her. Knowing she couldn’t risk being killed before she could warn the protection team around the president, she snapped one of the last twelve-round magazines into her gun, fired a few shots down the stairs, and then took off running up to the next floor. She had to reach the roof and warn John and the rest of the team.

  One of the men behind her was moving very fast, and it felt like only a matter of time before she would be hit. She opened the hallway door to the twenty-third floor and closed it from inside just as bullets hit all around it. Pulling out her telescoping metal baton, she snapped her wrist down, opening the baton to its full eighteen-inch length. She then wedged it downward and lodged it into the door handle and outside frame. It would prevent the men from opening the door if they tried to follow her.

  Then she turned and sprinted down the hallway. She had to warn the president’s team before it was too late.

  27

  KAZIM SHOOK HIS HEAD. He was rattled from the shock explosion. Rising to his knees, he took stock of the space around him. Two of his twelve men were dead of gunshots. The other ten were groggy from the flash grenade and getting up more slowly than he. Their weapons were scattered; some had fallen down the stairs to the floor below. But many of their weapons were still with them. And most importantly, they still had the two large black cases at the corner of the stairwell, and these looked unharmed.

  He sprang to his feet while the other men were still trying to regain their wits and equilibrium. Having a good idea of what must have happened, he was grateful that the explosive device the agent had thrown down at them hadn’t been a real fragmentation grenade, like those in the Iraq war. Raising his automatic rifle, he pointed it up the stairs where the agent had been, and fired a short burst. Everything had moved so fast, he had seen only a silhouette, but now it seemed to be gone. With his gun pointed at the landing above, he fired three more shots and then raced up to the next floor.

  No one was there or at the next level up. And he couldn’t hear any movement above on higher flights. Grabbing the door to the hallway, he pulled, but it wouldn’t open. He pulled harder, but it was jammed by something on the other side. Looking through the small window in the door, he saw the agent moving away from him fast, down the hallway. He raised his gun and stepped back from the door a few feet so that the shattering glass wouldn’t cut him when he fired. The glass would alter the first bullet’s course, but then he would have a clear shot. The agent was moving fast, sprinting down the hallway, undoubtedly toward the far stairwell. He had put up an impressive fight against Kazim’s superior numbers, but it wou
ldn’t be enough to save him. A real soldier would have stayed and fought as long as he could before dying honorably in battle.

  Narrowing his eyes, Kazim leveled the assault rifle at ninety degrees to the glass, to make sure of a direct shot. He would not miss. The agent was in a dark suit, running fast, arms pounding. He aimed at the center of his back. It was hard to see through the haze of the window, but he could still make the shot. He had it now. Target locked . . . finger on the trigger. A slight pull . . . then he stopped in astonishment at the sight of long dark hair swinging to either side as the agent ran. Everything had moved so fast in the stairway confrontation, he hadn’t realized he was fighting a woman. A woman had just now killed two of his soldiers. A woman had met his group in a stairwell and been able to push them back enough to kill some and delay the others before escaping. She had even barricaded this door, and all in a few seconds. He watched her run, admiring her speed and strength and passion. And even though she was the enemy, his instincts made him pause. He couldn’t shoot her in the back—not at a distance, not after the fight she had just put up.

  He could hear his men staggering to their feet below. Lowering his gun slightly so that it was still pointing at the window but was now off target, he watched as the young woman ran down the hall, hit the door hard on the other end, and disappeared into the opposite stairwell.

  He didn’t understand what had just happened to him. He should have killed her, but instead he had just watched her disappear down the corridor. No matter, he told himself. She couldn’t make any difference to their plans. They would be on the roof in less than a minute—a little later than planned, perhaps, but still early enough.

  Part of him believed it had been more surprise than empathy that stayed his finger on the trigger. He wasn’t sure that he could have made the shot anyway. The glass complicated things, he told himself. His shots would likely have missed, so it felt more honorable to let her go. To choose to release her from death, rather than risk a difficult shot. He could think of many reasons why he hadn’t taken the shot, but deep down, he knew the disconcerting truth: for some mysterious reason, he hadn’t wanted to shoot. He had felt that she somehow deserved to live. He hoped she had gone down in the stairwell, not up. Gone down through the spreading fire, somehow gotten past Maximilian’s men and, miraculously, to the safety of the Paris streets. Gone down to the rest of whatever life she had in front of her. For to go up would be to find the death he had spared her. If they met again, he couldn’t grant her that kindness a second time. He hoped she hadn’t turned to go up the stairs. For he was going up. And death was with him.

  28

  REBECCA DARTED THROUGH THE HALLWAY door into the far stairwell, pulled herself around the banister, and raced up the stairs. She tried her wrist communicator again.

  “Reid to Alexander!” she yelled. “Do you copy?”

  Nothing. She pulled the encrypted radio off her belt, yanked out the cord, and pressed it to her mouth with the talk button held hard.

  “Alexander . . . E-comm. Do you copy?” she yelled, identifying her emergency communication message.

  Again nothing.

  As she feared, her radio was smashed and useless.

  “Alexander! If you can hear me, there are hostiles ascending the north stairwell. They have heavy equipment—likely heavy weapons. They may be heading for the roof. I repeat, the roof may be compromised. Keep Firefly off the roof! Alexander, if you can hear me, keep Firefly off the roof!”

  Still nothing.

  She raced on, sprinting up the stairs two at a time, quads burning as she drove her body upward. Pulling around the metal banister post at each landing, pounding up the next flight. The president was up there somewhere, with Alexander and other PPD agents. And at any moment, the attackers from the other stairwell could reach the rooftop. With no way to warn the president other than in person, she continued her frantic climb.

  * * *

  David and another agent propelled President Clarke up the last flights. They had passed the twenty-seventh floor and were now climbing the service stairs to the roof. She was trying to run with them, but she felt her weight in her shoulders instead of her feet. She tried to catch the steps with the balls of her feet or even just her toes, but the two agents still had her clamped under the arms, carrying her even as they climbed the stairs.

  John was in front of her with a dozen other agents, and others had joined them in the past thirty seconds. Behind her were her personal physician, the military aide with the football, and another nine PPD special agents. As their entourage gradually grew in size and strength, her fear lost a bit of its edge. They were only a few steps from the steel door leading to the hotel roof.

  Everything had moved so fast, she barely had time to process what was happening. But she trusted the men around her, even though their complete physical dominance over her body terrified her. She had never seen the Secret Service move with such fierceness and speed, and she tried not to imagine what danger must be rushing up toward them.

  29

  COL. JOSEPH MAZURSKY GLANCED AT the White Hawk’s instruments to determine their distance from the landing zone on top of the hotel. Major Parker flipped through various controls on the cockpit dashboard, lit by dark green and red underlights as if this were a Christmas-themed flight. They should reach the hotel roof in less than two minutes.

  Approaching from the north, Mazursky looked out the bubble windshield at the lights of Paris through the falling snow. The Eiffel Tower was faintly visible. The lights seemed dimmed, as if he were seeing a lantern-lit Paris of long ago.

  Glancing back over his right shoulder, out the small side window, he saw the hulking King Stallion helicopter flying with them at four o’clock.

  “Ninety seconds, sir,” Parker said.

  “Where are the backup White Tops?” Mazursky asked, knowing they might well need the two other HMX-1 White Hawks from the Paris lift package if the exec lift got hairy.

  “Crew chief has ’em out,” Parker said. “Pilots firing ’em up. At least twenty minutes behind us.”

  “Where’s POTUS?”

  “PPD’s bringing her to the roof. She’s there in sixty seconds.”

  “Okay. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

  The White Hawk’s great mass lowered a hundred feet, its pounding roar no doubt attracting the attention of anyone out on the streets. They were moving over the cluster of five-story apartment buildings and narrow streets of St. Germain and would soon pass the closed, darkened patch of Jardin du Luxembourg. It wasn’t every day that Parisians saw a giant green and white helicopter with an American flag painted on its side, gliding low over their city, followed closely by an even bigger, all-black helicopter.

  Mazursky knew that somewhere back at the Paris airport, a US military commander was talking fast with the Pentagon and in contact with the French government, getting authorization for the flight activity over Paris. But it was an approval that, in this emergency, no one was going to sit around and wait for.

  “Touching down in forty-five seconds, gents,” Mazursky said into his headset. “POTUS will be on the roof with a few dozen from the PPD. Ten seconds down and up! SS chop provides cover during evac! Building’s on fire and hostiles reported on ground levels! Neither fire nor hostiles are near the rooftop, but we’re not going to wait around for either. Ten seconds to save POTUS. Touching down in thirty seconds. Lights out, guns up. Let’s get her safe, everyone.”

  Thirty seconds. With over ten thousand hours’ flight time in military helicopters, this was the most important minute of his life.

  30

  SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE JOHN Alexander stood in front of the group of men surrounding President Clarke on the roof. They were close to the south-side roof access door from the stairs they had just raced up. He had tried to get in touch with Rebecca about the arrival of Marine One, but he couldn’t raise her on the comm channel.

  In the past sixty seconds, an enormous amount of
controlled information had come across the PPD encrypted channel. The fire had spread to nearly the entire ground floor of the hotel and was quickly climbing up through the building. There had been numerous explosions in the garage, with no explanation or contact from the agents protecting the backup motorcade. The president’s limo had made it out but was now taking assault rifle fire from the third-floor windows. The command center had been broken down and would be dark for another few minutes.

  Additional Secret Service CAT agents had crashed the building on all sides and were fighting the attackers, but the fire was making any counterassault difficult, and there were disturbing reports that the hostiles were much more numerous than initially thought. But John was confident of the CAT unit, which he saw as the missing link between SWAT and the Navy Seals. John had been rotated to PPD fifteen years ago, after spending his first five years in the CAT division, so he knew firsthand how good those agents were.

  He did another quick check, glancing around to make sure everyone was in the best protection position. Tucked in close to the president were her personal physician and the military aide with the football. Then, in a tight two-ring huddle, were a dozen agents, including David Stone. Another dozen agents were spread across the roof. The three USSS countersnipers stationed on the roof were holding their positions on the far edges, to help cover the area. He had received reports that another two special agents were in the stairwell between the doorway and the next level down. He had relayed everyone’s position into his wrist communicator so the half-dozen USSS countersnipers on surrounding rooftops could also help cover them.