by Bryan Devore
“No.”
“Can we break it?”
“Maybe. I’ll need a rock—a big one.”
She looked for anything that had been knocked loose from the limestone wall. During the past fifteen minutes, they had run across countless chunks of stone, some the size of a blacksmith’s anvil. But now she couldn’t find anything bigger than a golf ball. Then, at the base of the gate, she spied a crack in the concrete footing. A large corner of the placement holding the bars had broken free from the rest. She squatted and picked up the heavy piece of concrete, roughly the size of a gallon jug, and lugged it over to John.
“Will this work?”
He looked at the heavy slab. “Good job! If that doesn’t work, then nothing down here will.”
He took it from her, lifted it high, and brought it down hard on the lock. A loud metallic pop echoed through the tunnel. In the dark silence, it sounded as loud as a gunshot.
The loud crack of concrete on iron made the president jump back against the limestone wall. Even Rebecca, who had watched John’s movements and had every reason to expect the sharp bang, was startled by the noise.
He raised the heavy block again for another strike. This time, she covered her ears. She heard the muffled crash and saw the spark fly from the lock when it was hit.
And still it did not break.
50
MAXIMILIAN DARTED THROUGH THE JAGGED crack in the hotel’s basement wall, with two dozen men in tow, including Tomas and Asghar: the Merchants of Death. From the scramble radio, he knew that Kazim was already in the tunnels with another dozen men, pursuing the target. His soldiers still in the building had to fight off the Secret Service emergency response teams trying to push their way in. If the president was still somewhere inside, it would give his remaining men a chance to kill her. But if she had escaped into the tunnels, holding the perimeter would delay the response teams from realizing that the chase had moved underground.
He had hoped to burn the president alive in the hotel, so that the horrors of such a death would live forever in the collective American consciousness. But even if she had escaped into the Paris underground, she would never make it out alive. He and his men had studied the tunnel maps and knew them well; the president and her protectors did not. And the dark underground labyrinth would confound and trap them in its grasp until his men could close in and finish the job they had set out to do.
While tracking their target, Kazim had dropped mini flares in the tunnels for him to follow. And with each little hissing orange sparkler that he passed, he felt his eagerness quicken. Like Hannibal, he wanted to be with his men during the battle. Unafraid to take bold chances with his own life or those of his men, he could almost taste the sweet moment of conquest as he closed in on the smaller force cowardly fleeing the battlefield.
Rounding the third fork in the tunnel, he saw no flares indicating which direction to take. He stopped. Unsure which direction Kazim’s team had gone, he sent two scout teams, one led by Tomas, the other by Asghar, out in different directions to find the next tracking flare. He rarely separated the Merchants of Death, but they were both smart on their feet and could maneuver through dangerous situations.
As Maximilian waited, he reached for the clasp under his shirt. Pulling it out, he held it with his thumb on the small latch. But he couldn’t will himself to open it. He had thought he wanted to see Naomi’s and Eli’s faces one last time, but after all the violence of the past hour, he couldn’t look into their eyes. Right now he didn’t need to be reminded of the love lost by death. To finish his mission, he had to remain strong. He had to focus on hate. So he replaced the clasp under his shirt and turned his thoughts to Dominik Kalmár.
He recalled their first meeting, in a glass tower overlooking Hong Kong, and their second, the next evening, in a Macau casino. He had listened to Kalmár talk about a world that had lost its moral compass. Kalmár was a man on a personal mission so important, he was willing to break ties with the other syndicates. And he was a man of power, inviting others of superior skill and dedication to join his fight. Much of what Kalmár said made sense to Maximilian—especially the need to cut the United States out of the struggles in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Maximilian had spent his entire life surrounded by hate and violence and suffering. He had long ago given up on the notion of a peaceful world. Life was a constant bloody fight. The bold and visionary ideas that Dominik Kalmár had presented for changing the world were exactly what Maximilian needed to hear. And the strategy to realize those goals was as brilliant as any ruse ever devised by Hannibal.
The noise of a returning scout team brought him back to the present. Tomas appeared and shook his head.
A minute later, Asghar rushed out of the darkness. “We found the path,” he gasped. His sharp voice bounced off the rock walls. “The next flare is this way.”
Maximilian waved his men forward. He would soon catch up with Kazim, and together they would run down their fleeing prey.
51
JOHN LIFTED THE CONCRETE SLAB again and swung it down, but the heavy iron lock held. “I need more force,” he said. “Help me.”
Rebecca helped him raise the slab to shoulder height, and together they slammed it down as hard as they could. Still it did not break.
“I hear something,” David hissed back at them from his lookout around the corner.
Setting the slab down, John listened as Rebecca darted back to the president and drew her pistol. Then she heard it, too: whispers bouncing off the rock walls and carrying through the moist air. They were no longer alone.
John grabbed David’s shoulder and pulled him back toward the gate. To Rebecca, he said, “You have to hold them off while we get this open. They’re in this tunnel and coming at us. Our noise will only make them come faster, but we don't have a choice.”
“How many?” she asked.
“It sounds like a lot.”
Rebecca jumped up and lifted the president to her feet. “Madam President, I’m going to need your help!” Looking at David, she said, “Gun!”
David took his pistol by the barrel and handed it to Rebecca. With both guns in hand, she hurried back to the president and moved her to the left wall.
“Ma’am, you really haven’t ever fired a gun before?”
The president looked at her with a horrified expression. “Once, on a hunting trip with my husband and some of his friends.”
“Just once?”
“It was during the campaign—more of a photo op, really.”
“I see . . . Well, that’s okay. It’s not hard at all.” She held out David’s extra pistol, keeping it pointed down the tunnel, in the direction they had come. “Bottom line is, keep it pointed away from you and any of us at all times. Fire two shots; then pause to make sure your aim is still level. You’ll feel a slight kick, but that’s natural and won’t affect where the shot goes. I’m flipping the safety off. I’ll do the shoot-to-kills. I don’t want you to try to hit anything, but it will really help if they see shots coming at them from both sides of the tunnel. Stick your hand out only to this rock here so it’s still protected, and fire at that side of the tunnel, just before where it gets too dark to see. It’ll help keep them back, but your shooting hand will stay out of their line of fire. Do it with your arms out like this. Don’t try to peek out at them or see where you’re aiming. Just fire down the tunnel. I’ll do the rest.”
“What if one of my bullets hits someone?”
“Then that’s a bonus.”
“But what if these aren’t hostile? What if it’s just a group of Parisians exploring the tunnels, like you said?”
“Ma’am, we’re being hunted. Men are trying to kill you. If anyone comes down that tunnel, I’m going to kill as many of them as I can. I just need you to help make them think we have a stronger force than we really have. They don’t know how many we are. John and David will be trying to break through the gate, and I’m not sure I can hold them off o
n my own. I need your help with this, but I need you to make sure you stay behind these rocks the entire time.” She pointed with her chin at the jagged wall where the tunnel began to curve.
The president gave a doubtful nod. “Yes . . . got it.”
“You can do this, ma’am. We just need to buy enough time for John and David to break through the gate.”
“What if they can’t?”
“They have to, ma’am, and they know it.”
The president took the gun. “You said the safety’s off?”
“Yes, ma’am. Just point and pull the trigger. It’ll go off. Don’t waste ammo. Shoot twice; then pause. Stay calm and focused. I’ll be on the other side, making sure they don’t get close enough to have a shot at you. If I get hit and go down, fire two more shots and then run back to John and David. They’ll protect you.”
“Don’t you dare get hit,” the president said.
“I won’t, ma’am. But just in case.”
“Okay.”
“And one last thing, ma’am.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t ever tell anyone I let you do this.”
The president cracked the first subtle hint of a smile since the attack had started. “I won’t. It’s our secret.”
“Thank you, ma’am. We’re going to be fine.”
Then Rebecca darted back across and knelt behind the jagged rocks protruding from the right wall. She glanced back to see John and David raising the concrete slab together and slamming it down onto the lock with all their combined strength. In the enclosed space, it sounded like a car crash. They did it again . . . then again.
The loud bang of concrete on iron rattled her nerves, making it difficult to focus on any sounds coming from the other direction. Glancing across, she was surprised to see the president looking alert and ready for a fight. Maybe the aggressive world of national politics had made her a scrapper after all.
Rebecca raised her pistol and pointed it into the darkness. The extra P229 she had kept was on the ground beside her. She breathed deeply and waited.
A sliver of pink light appeared on the ceiling far down the tunnel. It grew brighter, then turned orange.
Waiting until the shadows moved and coalesced into figures, she fired a few targeted shots at a small outcrop halfway between herself and the movement. There was still a chance that these were just some French cataphiles poking around. Then all doubt vanished in a spray of automatic gunfire.
She squeezed three quick shots at the muzzle flashes blazing like fireworks in the blackness. Men were shouting in a language she didn’t know. John and David were still banging away at the lock. The president fired twice, paused a few seconds, then fired again, just as instructed. It was time for Rebecca to show these assassins some force before they made it too far down the tunnel.
She shot the last rounds in her magazine. The men still appeared as moving shadows, but now some of the shadows screamed in agony while new ones rushed forward to take their place. The attackers’ submachine guns outmatched the PPD agents’ pistols, though. She popped out the spent magazine and slapped in a fresh one from her belt, then started firing again.
The assailants returned with even more fire than before, as if their numbers were multiplying there in the darkness. A bullet sent limestone dust into her face, stinging her eyes.
She fell back to the ground, blind and terrified.
Rubbing her eyes and blinking to get back her sight, she hadn’t fired a shot since going down. The attackers would soon sense that she was vulnerable. Still trying to clear her eyes, she crawled back toward the wall. Something hard smacked into her forehead.
Too much time was passing. She had to warn John and David that she couldn’t hold back the shooters.
Suddenly, gunfire erupted from much closer. But these shots popped instead of hissed—they were not directed toward her; they were going away.
Blinking frantically and wiping her eyes on her jacket sleeve, she opened them, and the dark world came back into painful focus. Bullets were still smacking into the walls above and around her. Looking across the tunnel, she saw the president, still protected behind the rock edge, sticking her pistol around the corner and firing away.
“Ma’am! Pull your hand back!”
But the president seemed consumed by adrenaline and the desire to protect Rebecca and strike back at the men who had killed so many of her people.
“Ma’am!” Rebecca screamed. “PULL YOUR HAND BACK!”
The president kept firing. With only twelve .357 SIG hollow-points in the gun’s magazine, she had to be close to empty.
A dozen headlamp beams sliced and jerked in the darkness ahead. In the three or four seconds since she fell, the gunmen had closed the distance by half. But apparently, the president’s shots had kept them from overrunning the position. Now it was Rebecca’s turn. Unlike David, she hadn’t gotten a perfect score in the firearms training program in Beltsville, but 270 out of 300 on the P229 certification wasn’t bad.
Moving her aim in a four-point spread count to cover multiple targets, she squeezed off four shots and saw four men fall. But almost immediately, others advanced to take their place in the crowded tunnel. Emptying a magazine, she ejected it, slapped in one of her nine remaining magazines, and fired in another four-point spread. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold them off.
“Go back!” she yelled at the president.
The president, having emptied her magazine, didn’t hesitate. She scampered back toward the gate, hunkering low as if a stray bullet might somehow find an impossible angle around the corner and hit her.
Rebecca burned through two more magazines, but the attackers were still closing, working their way forward before ducking behind supporting columns or protrusions from the walls.
With three rounds left in her fourth magazine and fearing that they might charge all the way on the next push, she saw a small, dark object fly past her from behind. Realizing what it was, she dropped her gun, closed her eyes, and covered both ears.
The sun-bright flash beamed through her closed eyelids, giving her a dreamlike glimpse of tiny branching blood vessels. After the deafening boom came screams and groans. The flash-bang grenade hadn’t hurt anyone, but it would disorient them and hold their sight hostage for the moment.
A strong arm grabbed her shoulder and lifted her to her feet.
“We broke the lock,” she heard John say. “Time to move.”
With her sight slowly returning, she holstered her gun, picked up the spare from beside her, and rushed back to the gate with him. The grenade might buy them a couple of minutes. David was already leading the president into the next tunnel before stopping to wait for them. After passing through the gate, John stopped Rebecca and took the three plastic hand ties from her belt. Adding them to the six in his hand, he cinched each around the gate, where the lock had once been.
“Even assuming they have tactical knives, this will slow them down another minute,” he said.
As they raced away from the gate, Rebecca sensed something wrong with the path they were taking. It felt unstable. A scent in the air reminded her of industrial cleaning chemicals, but she couldn’t place it exactly. And a haze of limestone dust floated in the air, as if this place had been disturbed not so long ago.
David, in front, was the first to cough. John gave the president a handkerchief to cover her mouth. The others breathed through their sleeves as they moved through the dust sparkling in their light.
The tunnel never ran straight for more than thirty feet before curving left or right into the darkness before them. The passageway was mostly narrow, but occasionally it passed through larger quarry chambers. Crudely stacked rock pillars rose here and there, supporting the ceilings of the wider caverns, and brick reinforcement walls lined some sections. Every fifty feet or so, pitch-black passageways led off from the main tunnel, carved by stonecutters over the centuries.
The scr
eams and shouts from the attackers were now muted in the distance behind them, but the tied gate wouldn’t delay them for long.
They entered a much larger cavern than anything they had yet seen. Nearly the size of a basketball court, it had a low ceiling, and small stone monuments like tombstones scattered throughout. Remnants of melted wax candles splotched the rock floor like bird droppings. The debris from religious rituals, perhaps.
Baseball-size chunks of rock were strewn along the sides of the path. Her flashlight beam caught the thick haze of limestone particles drifting in the air. The area had been recently disturbed. Something was definitely wrong.
In another dozen paces, a concrete slab blocked the path. And just beyond the slab’s edge was a narrow opening, wide enough for a person to sidle through. David shined his light into it, then disappeared inside.
After a few seconds, they heard him yell back, “It goes through to another tunnel.”
Rebecca placed her hand on the president’s shoulder and helped her through the gap. The rock on either side of the gap showed scrapes and fragmentation. And suddenly, it occurred to her where they now were. And when she saw David standing in a wider tunnel, beside a large slab like a tombstone, engraved with French verse, she had no doubt.
“We’re inside the Empire of the Dead,” she said.
“I thought you said it was sealed off from the tunnel system,” John said.
“It was. Apparently, the terrorists unsealed it. They must have blown the hole we just passed through.”
“My God. They did that just tonight?”
“Must have. It goes right into the tour path.”
“So they came from this way?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Using the catacomb tour path, they could cover a lot of ground without getting lost.” She looked left and saw a thick pile of rock and rubble piled up to the ceiling, blocking the path. The right fork was still open. “Can we get through this way?” she asked David, gesturing toward the packed pile.
