The Paris Protection

by Bryan Devore

  “Listen,” he whispered.

  Only silence hung in the air. And then, somewhere far beyond the reach of their lights, came a shuffling of loose rock on the path. Someone slipping . . . someone running . . . the sound growing louder.

  “You’re right,” the president whispered. “They’re coming. We won’t make it.”

  “I can hold them back,” David said. “Keep going.”

  “Not even that will give us enough time,” John said.

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “We could hide in a smaller side tunnel,” Rebecca said. “They might pass right by.”

  “Isn’t there a higher chance of getting trapped in a smaller tunnel?” David asked.

  “Maybe,” she replied, “but it could also buy us time.”

  “If we stay down here too long, they’ll find us eventually,” David hissed. “We have to keep running straight. The more distance we cover, the harder it’ll be for them to keep choosing the right direction.”

  “I think they’ll keep going straight,” Rebecca said.

  “I agree,” John said. “We can’t keep running this way. Not when they’re gaining on us like this. They’ll catch us, believe me.”

  “It’s our only hope of escaping,” David said.

  “One of the side tunnels might have a way out,” Rebecca offered. “Our chances are better now that we’re around the main catacomb section.”

  “It’s too risky,” David insisted. “We can’t even tell if the smaller tunnel goes anywhere.”

  “We can’t tell if this main tunnel goes anywhere, either,” John said, “but it’s the one I think they’ll follow.” The sounds of pursuit were growing louder. The time for debate was over. “Rebecca, pick the next side tunnel you think gives us the best chance to hide until they pass.”

  “Okay,” she said, jogging forward and pulling the president with her. John and David followed. “If we found a small tunnel near the aqueducts, we might just find a service shaft leading out.”

  “The water runs through the tunnels?” the president asked.

  “In some places it runs waist deep. Some lower levels of the underground are completely submerged, which is why the IGC hasn’t been able to map everything. Cataphiles sometimes explore them with diving gear.”

  “How will we know when we’re close to them?” David asked.

  “We’ll hear ’em through the walls,” she said. “They’re big—and loud.”

  At times it was difficult for John to envision that Paris—the City of Lights—was humming along less than a hundred feet above them. Only a week before Christmas, he imagined the snowy streets would be filled with the nighttime holiday shoppers and people on the way to workplace Christmas parties and dinners with friends. Up there, life went merrily along, with no idea of the desperate struggle going on here below. If he could just somehow get word out above, the French would come to their aid. After all, the French had been the United States’ first true ally. It had been the French who gave their support to America during the Revolutionary War, fighting the British at sea while the Americans fought them on land. Without the French to help them, the colonists would never have broken free of the British Empire. The Founding Fathers knew this, which was why Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin had spent so many months in Paris, getting France’s support. Even to this day, the Statue of Liberty stood as a reminder of the great friendship between the two nations.

  He could hear the terrorists surging through the tunnels. They must be less than a hundred yards away and closing fast. He kept looking back as he ran, expecting to see men emerge from the shadows at any moment. And this time, they would have no gate to slow them down. This time, if the attackers caught up, there was little more that he and David and Rebecca could do than to stand and fight.

  “We have to get away from this tunnel,” he hissed at Rebecca. “They’ll be on us any minute! We have to find a place to hide—a place we can defend.”

  The next sharp turn revealed a side tunnel. Rebecca shined her flashlight down it and saw a dark rock wall that curved left near the end. “Let me take a look,” she said.

  “Quick!” John said. He turned to David. “Go back twenty feet and watch the rear.”

  “I think I hear water,” the president said, leaning closer to the rock wall opposite the side tunnel entrance.

  John watched Rebecca’s flashlight beam bounce down the small, dark tunnel until a bright spot grew brighter and more concentrated, as if she was nearing a dead end. Then, without warning, her light blinked out.

  John’s danger receptors spiked, telling him to take off running with the president and call for David to catch up with them—never mind taking the time to investigate what had happened to Rebecca. Any of a number of possible dangers could have occurred: a deep pitfall, a plunge into an underground river of the aqueducts. Whatever it was, he didn’t have time to save Rebecca and the president, too—not with their pursuers bearing down on them. But something in him told him to wait a moment.

  Give her a chance, he thought. Just a few more seconds.

  Then, just when he had nearly given up hope and was ready to start moving with the president, he saw Rebecca’s light appear again. It cut back and forward, left and right, down the tunnel, rapidly bounding toward him. She was rushing back out of the darkness. She whistled, which brought David back from his dark hideaway around the corner.

  “It goes far,” Rebecca said, arriving back to the group.

  “How far?” John asked.

  “I don’t know. Farther than I went.”

  “I thought I heard water,” the president said again.

  “Yes ma’am,” Rebecca said. “It’s even louder down there. We’re definitely close to the aqueducts.”

  “Then it’ll have to do,” John said.

  At that moment, David raised his hand to silence the others, then stepped back around the corner, into the darkness behind them.

  He was out of sight for maybe two seconds. Then he came scrambling back. “Crunching gravel,” he gasped. “They’re very close!”

  Without a word, John reached his arm around the president’s back, hooking his hand under her arm, and pulled her to him as if she were a wayward toddler, into the side tunnel. Rebecca, already in front, sprinted forward with her flashlight pointed at the wall, to light the way for both her and John. David held back a few seconds, giving them time to rush the president ahead.

  The growing racket of the pursuing force bounced off the hard walls. John’s eyes were locked on the ground, searching for holes or large rocks that the president might trip over. His peripheral vision followed Rebecca’s movements, and his ears kept track of David’s running footsteps behind them.

  Soon, they rounded a sharp corner, and he saw the reason for Rebecca’s light vanishing a minute earlier. The tunnel curved back straight after a dozen feet, explaining how it had been so hard to see her light from the entrance. She had made the right call: this side tunnel was as perfect a concealment as they could hope to find in the short time they had.

  “Slow down—stop,” he said after they rounded the bend. “Lights off! Hurry—off! If we’re lucky, they’ll keep to the main tunnel.”

  As their lights blinked out, he felt as if he were standing on a rock while floating in a thick, dark void. President Clarke leaned hard against him as if she was fighting off vertigo. The sound of men shouting and rushing down the main tunnel echoed from somewhere in the surrounding void—impossible to tell whether they were coming closer or going away.

  And the only nearby sounds were the breathing of those huddled with him in the darkness.

  56

  MAXIMILIAN RUSHED THROUGH THE TUNNELS with the rest of his group behind him. He had begun the night letting his men lead the charge while he remained back to avoid the first onslaught of Secret Service resistance. But now, with the initial barrage over, he felt the rush of the moment. He thought of all the great generals he a
dmired—their courage and their brilliant strategy. All those who had died fighting for love or hatred or desperation or ambition. And he thought once again of the one who stood above them all: Hannibal Barca.

  Even though many powers in the world detested America, few had the courage to act on that hatred. Just as during Punic Wars, the world again needed to force the hands of great nations. For had it not been for Hannibal’s provocation of Rome in Spain, and his siege of Saguntum, the two great world powers at that time in history might not have fought the Second Punic War—a war that, by all rights, Hannibal should have won against the Roman armies.

  And so now, once again, the world needed someone to throw his weight into the teetering, unbalanced power of the international stage, beginning the bold shift against the dominant power. And so, like Hannibal, Maximilian charged ahead, leading his men to the one target that would make them all live forever in history.

  The thrill of battle rushed through his veins as he ran past skeletons stacked in disjointed, unholy symmetry like the remains of an ancient plague. Although he had hoped to burn the president to death in the hotel inferno, he found some consolation that she would die in a place as dark and damned as this, where her soul would drift for all eternity, lost and confused, among six million others.

  They moved past the last ricks of bones, and the walls were once again dark, gleaming with the flickering reflections of bouncing headlamp beams.

  Nearing the last few turns before the long tunnel that would end at the first blockade his men had built, he slowed. Whatever agents were still protecting the president would likely be some of the best in the Secret Service. He sent a few men forward to check the rock barrier. Arriving behind them, he looked at the undisturbed rubble. He hadn’t been able to track footprints at the other blockade, because it was along the tour path. And although this also lay along the hard path traveled by a thousand tourists each day, there was a way for him to verify that the president hadn’t climbed through the rubble.

  Shining his headlamp into the blast tunnel his demolition team had made, he smiled when the evidence appeared before his eyes. At least a few pairs of flat-soled shoes had made footprints heading in the opposite direction. And he knew for certain that all his men wore military boots with lugged soles. These prints were more recent and had been made by dress shoes.

  “They followed our blast tunnel,” he said to Tomas and Asghar.

  Leaving the main catacombs, he found the passageway, extending in a seemingly infinite maze of twists and turns, with side tunnels jutting in uneven intervals from the main route. It all was familiar to him. He saw where the demolition team had set up the first blast zone and where he had waited during the explosion. Some of the columns were thick, solid limestone, carved from the original quarry centuries ago and sturdy enough to keep the ceiling from collapsing. Other columns were of roughly stacked rocks, broken away from some ancient dig and looking more like a child’s construction than something designed by engineers.

  Even though he believed that the president’s protectors would keep her in the widest passageway, he couldn’t ignore the many side tunnels splitting off into other areas of the underground. The Secret Service men may attempt to hide in them along the way, to ambush or distract his fighters. Kazim had said only a handful of men could have been with her by the gate, so Maximilian’s small army surely outnumbered whatever agents remained with her.

  “They may not have stayed on this path,” he said. “We need to search and clear side tunnels as we move.” Splitting the group in half with his hand, he pointed to those on his left. “Follow me, but break off as we advance. Two men go down each side tunnel. Asghar, Tomas, take the first side tunnel and catch back up with us once it’s cleared. We need to spread out our search. Everyone use the code words, ‘Hamilcar’ and ‘Barca,’ to prevent friendly fire.”

  He paused to give weight to his next words. “If you find the agents, make sure to fire at least one shot. Even if you don’t have a good shot, fire one anyway. A single gunshot will rip through these long, winding tunnels, sending a signal to the rest of us that you’ve found them. And then all of us will come crashing down onto the cowering American president!”

  The soldiers fell into formation at once, ready to follow his lead. With his gun in both hands, he stepped around them and through the narrow opening.

  57

  ROUNDING THE LAST TURN OF the tunnel, Kazim stopped dead when he saw the grated metal door still sealed. This marked the end of the Empire of the Dead section of the catacombs tour, although the tour path continued on the other side of the door for a tenth a mile before reaching the narrow stone staircase that spiraled tightly upward to the surface exit nearly a hundred feet above. The tour staff closed and locked both ends of the Empire of the Dead each night, when the catacombs were closed. This was the same type of door that Maximilian had broken through earlier tonight, near the entrance. And no one had broken through this door. It was still locked and sturdy as ever. And there was no indication that the nearby emergency call box beside the door had been triggered.

  No, the president had not come this way.

  Kazim turned to the dozen men with him. “Back toward the catacomb entrance,” he said. “They must have gone north from the breach. They’ll be trapped. We’ll have to hurry, or Maximilian may kill the president without us.”

  He took off at a fast lope, back the way they had come—a predator closing on his prey.

  58

  JOHN COULD SEE THAT THE president’s strength was fading fast. No one could have expected her to keep up the pace with conditioned agents—up and down the hotel stairs, through the firefight on the rooftop, down the ladder in the elevator shaft, racing around the hotel basement, and now running around half lost in the Paris underground. It was a miracle she had stood up to the intense exertion for this long.

  He had an arm around her, his hand hooked under the armpit, half carrying her fatigued body.

  “How are you holding up, ma’am?” he asked without breaking stride.

  “I’m okay,” she said weakly. “I can make it.”

  But he could tell from her voice that she wouldn’t hold up much longer. Not moving at this pace.

  He saw Rebecca rush around the next sharp curve in the tunnel. The moment she vanished from his light, he heard her hiss, “No . . .”

  Alarmed, he pulled the president back behind him and motioned for David to stop. “Kneel down,” he whispered. Then, with his gun drawn, he moved around the turn, leaving David to protect her. There, caught in his light, was Rebecca, facing away from him, staring with what must be utter frustration and despair at the solid limestone rock marking the end of the tunnel.

  “My God,” John whispered. “We’re trapped.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rebecca said. “We have to go back toward the larger tunnel.”

  “No. We’ve lost so much time now, they’ll be all over it. We can’t go back.”

  “There’s nowhere else to go,” she said.

  “We have to stay here. Maybe they won’t find us. Maybe we can hide here and protect the president until someone figures out we’re in the tunnels, and comes to help.”

  “You know that won’t happen,” she said. “Not in time.”

  “It’s too dangerous to go back,” he said. “They were already on us. We’d be walking the president right into their hands. At least, hidden back here, we have a chance of protecting her.”

  “We won’t have much chance if they find us,” she said. “Not back here. Not with their numbers—and not against their submachine guns.”

  He knew that Rebecca was right. The tunnel curved sharply and had uneven, jagged walls in many places, making the terrain much easier to defend than elsewhere. So they would stay and defend the president as long as possible.

  “David,” he whispered, “go back down the tunnel. Slow and quiet, with your light out. Scout for any men coming down it. If you don’t hear any, see if you can
make it all the way back out into the larger tunnel. If you make it that far, listen and try to determine if anyone’s around.”

  “What’s happening?” the president asked.

  “This is a dead end, ma’am,” John said. “We can’t get you out of the underground this way, but this is a good place to hide you, and we can protect it as well as anywhere down here.” He paused, seeing the worried expression on the president’s face. “I’m sending David back down the tunnel to see if it might be safer. It’s possible they passed by this side tunnel and aren’t in the area anymore. It’s possible they missed us. Eventually, they could come back, but there are other side tunnels near the entrance, so if David thinks the attackers are gone, we can try to move all the way back out of this cul-de-sac and find another side tunnel—maybe one that has a way back up to the Paris streets—before they come back.”

  The president’s concerned look turned to David.

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” he said. “They can’t touch me. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Then the president, in a complete breach of protocol, reached up and hugged David as if saying good-bye to a loved one. Releasing him, she put her hand on his shoulder. David looked surprised and unsure how to respond to such an unexpected gesture.

  “You be careful, son,” she said. “You’ve made me and your country proud—all three of you. This night will be remembered forever in American history, and it is my great honor to have been here with the three of you to witness firsthand the kind of heroism that can still exist in this world. And make no mistake, no matter what happens, all three of you are heroes.” She paused, visibly choked up. With tears and strength showing in her eyes, she whispered again, “It has been my honor.”

  All three nodded to her without knowing what to say.

  David then looked at John, who gestured with his eyes toward the dark corridor leading back from the dead end where they now stood.