Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  Or he hoped it had. There hadn’t been time for anything else. He shifted from the seat as they passed, his breathing still ragged and heavy, into the back of the van—stooping down by Faouzi’s body to pick up the laptop. Seeing the blank stare of the man he had murdered, the man who had spoken so passionately about his crippled son. Who had—he closed his eyes briefly, shoving away those thoughts with an effort, forcing himself to focus. He had to.

  Three minutes, he thought, glancing at his watch. He was running out of time—the case slick with blood, one hinge of the laptop’s screen hanging drunkenly loose as he lifted it, a broken piece of plastic falling to the metal floor of the van.

  Damaged in the fall. A knot formed briefly in his stomach at the thought that it could have been damaged beyond repair, but the computer came back to life as his fingers moved over the touchpad—picking up the controller as he brought the UAV control program up on-screen.

  There. He could see the camera feed, the view over Paris in the darkening sky. . .the UAVs’ positions marked in the split-screen Map View as they moved in from the north. But something was wrong.

  It took him a moment, his brain still fogged with pain, to sort out what had gone wrong. Perhaps a control had been jammed during the fight, perhaps the software had malfunctioned, somehow.

  But the drone he controlled—his only hope of catching up to the other one, of stopping it—was lagging nearly half a kilometer behind.

  9:25 P.M.

  The rooftop

  Maybe it was going to be a quiet night after all, Sergeant Jobert thought, the fiery red glow of the dying sun bathing the rooftop in light as she raised her gloved arm toward the heavens—Glatigny’s wings sweeping across her face as the golden eagle sprung once more into the sky, rocketing upward.

  The sudden roar of the crowd from the Stade clearly audible across the street, an unearthly, swelling sound, tens of thousands of voices raised as one—as if in applause for the raptor’s flight.

  She watched him go, soaring into the western sky—out toward those towering clouds tinted blood-red by the setting sun. There was something ominous in the sight, a sudden chill running through her body—but she was at a loss to account for the feeling, bringing up the binoculars to track the eagle’s flight.

  Another few minutes, and the twilight which had already enfolded the lower streets would enclose them as well, she thought—rendering the binoculars useless.

  She swept them around right from where she stood at the edge of the roof, aiming them north, across the Seine. And then she saw it, in the fading twilight. . .a pair of small dots, one a fair distance back from the other, moving in across the sky.

  Moving fast.

  9:26 P.M.

  Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis

  Harry’s thumb rocked forward against the control lever, the quadcopter tilting forward, once again picking up airspeed. 98Km/h. He spared a momentary glance at the map display, marking the distance between the drones. Two hundred meters and closing.

  And just out from the Seine, he realized, noting the body of water below, at the very edge of the camera lens. He could just see the other UAV now, its black, metallic fuselage glinting in the fading sunlight as it crossed the river, heading toward the stadium.

  One-twenty. One-fifteen. . .

  “Come on,” he whispered, more of a prayer than anything—as close to a prayer as he could bring himself to come. He just needed to close the gap, ensure that both drones would be caught within the blast radius when he triggered the device. Forty meters would be optimal, to ensure that the lead UAV would be shredded by the explosion, not merely knocked from the sky.

  And with it, their dreams of jihad—their hopes of assassinating the President of France. . .

  In his mind’s eye, he could see Aryn, hunched over a similar laptop in a van not half-a-kilometer distant, only now taking over manual control of the drone, preparing to guide it in on its final run.

  Seventy-five meters. Sixty. Just a few seconds more, just—

  The impact came without warning, so suddenly that Harry felt it almost as a physical blow, the video feed from the UAV’s camera blurring as the heavy quadcopter careened sideways, its gyros fighting to stabilize itself—to prevent it from falling out of the sky.

  And then he saw it, out of the corner of the camera’s lens. The flash of feathered wings. . .

  The rooftop

  “Oui. Certainement,” Sergeant Jobert replied over her headset radio, hearing Leseur’s voice in her ear—her heart in her throat as she stared up into the sky, unable to do anything now but watch it unfold. Fate.

  Glatigny had engaged the UAVs, just as he’d been trained, but both quadcopters were large, nearly twice the size of those they had used in the golden eagle’s training. And he had gone after the rearmost drone, leaving the lead vehicle to continue, unimpeded.

  “They’re still inbound,” she spat into the radio, a tinge of fear coloring her voice as she watched the second drone level out, perhaps four hundred feet off the deck. Hearing Leseur relay an order to her snipers over the earpiece. Weapons-free.

  The Stade de France

  “. . .as you can understand, messieurs, your support is vital,” President Denis Albéric said, a champagne flute poised delicately between his fingers as he glanced around into the faces of the small knot of men surrounding him, “if this policy is to be a success. If—”

  A hand on his shoulder cut him off, as he looked back into the face of a bodyguard—one of Leseur’s GSPR officers.

  “Excusez-moi, mon presidente,” the man began, an urgency in his voice, barely veiled by the apology, “but I need you to come with me. Immédiatement.”

  Not again. Leseur was truly elevating what his American counterpart had once called “security theater”, to an art form. He attempted to shake off the man’s hand with an impatient gesture, but found its grip on his shoulder was like iron.

  “What do you think—”

  “Immédiatement,” the man repeated, and behind him, toward the door, he could see Leseur—a pistol drawn in her hand, beckoning toward them both.

  “Mon presidente!”

  9:28 P.M.

  Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis

  Seventy-five meters, Harry noted, a leaden weight seeming to settle on his chest as he pressed the controller’s joystick all the way forward with his thumb—glimpsing the other UAV, still out in front, just beginning to sweep out over the massive elliptical roof of the Stade itself.

  He had fallen back when knocked off course by the eagle’s attack, but made up much of the time difference in the lost altitude—Aryn’s drone only just then beginning its own descent.

  It was still possible, he thought, his eyes glued to the screen, the palms of his hands sweaty as the UAV responded to his controls, pushing the upper limits of its speed. 101Km/h. Knowing that both vehicles had to be near the end of their battery life, that the increased strain he was putting it under would only sap that faster.

  But there were only seconds left. The roof beneath his own quadcopter now, the Presidential skybox just visible across the pitch. Fifty meters.

  He felt the turbulence just then, the camera shaking ever so slightly—his left thumb jamming the stick hard up and to the left, sweeping the quadcopter into a sharp vertical ascent even as the eagle passed by beneath, missing the UAV by scant inches.

  And they were both out over the pitch now, within sight of the spectators—if anyone was looking up. Forty-five meters.

  The lead UAV looming large in his camera now as the gap narrowed. Forty meters.

  Thirty-five. No more time. His finger reached out, depressing the button.

  And the screen went white. . .

  The rooftop

  A curse broke from Jobert’s lips as an explosion erupted from within the stadium, a violent flash of fiery light, visible through the glass of the massive roof.

  Failure. All the months, the years of training—and they had failed. Her eyes searching the sky i
n vain for any sign of Glatigny, hoping against hope, but knowing the truth—having seen him in those last moments, in a final dive toward his targets.

  That the eagle had been consumed in the explosion. . .along with how many others?

  The Stade

  Out on the pitch, players froze in shock as the sky lit up above them with the fire of the noonday sun, debris and shards of broken glass from the roof raining down, pelting player and spectator alike.

  There was a moment’s unearthly silence as the shockwaves of the explosion died away—and then the screams began. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children, pushing and shoving their way out of their seats, through the stands. Without order, without reason—without purpose, save one. Get out.

  The skybox

  The bullet-resistant glass of the skybox buckled under the force of the explosion, barely fifty meters out from its face, but it refused to break—holding firm. The only internal damage appearing to be a table of refreshments, overturned when a heavyset Republican senator from Provence had attempted to throw himself behind it.

  Marion Leseur raised herself up on one knee, looking over to where the president lay, pinned under the body of the GSPR officer who had thrown him to the floor at the moment of detonation, sheltering him with his body—Albéric’s eyes visible over the man’s shoulder, wide and filled with fear. Terror.

  “Get him up and let’s move,” she spat, raising her voice to carry above the rising panic. Fifty, nearly sixty people in the room—the powerful, a few moments before. All of them now helpless, frightened, seeking a way out, looking for salvation. But she was responsible for one.

  And she needed to get him out, before it was too late. Before another attack came.

  She brass-checked her Sig-Sauer SP 2022 briefly as her officers lifted Albéric to his feet—forming a protective formation around him as they hustled him to the door, other officers fanned out, keeping the rest of the dignitaries at bay. Beyond practice, she hadn’t had to so much as draw her weapon in years, but its bulk felt comforting in her hand as she pushed the door open—gesturing for the officers without to take point down the long corridor, their FN P90 submachine guns already unslung.

  Move.

  The hurried phalanx of officers were perhaps twenty meters down the corridor, almost to the stairs, when the phone in Leseur’s pocket began to pulse, a familiar number displayed on-screen.

  The DGSE.

  “Allô?”

  It was Anaïs Brunet’s voice on the other end, as terse as ever. Urgent. No greeting, no preamble. “We’ve just come into possession of new intelligence, Marion. The Stade is the target. Tonight. You—”

  Leseur shook her head, overcome by the irony of it all. Pausing as she began to descend the stairs to cast another glance back down the long, empty corridor toward the skybox they had so recently evacuated.

  “We know.”

  9:30 P.M.

  Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis

  Harry stared at the screen for a long moment, the controller fallen to the floor of the van—his hands trembling, all the energy seeming to have drained from his body in the last few moments since the explosion. He had succeeded. . .or had he?

  It had been so close. . .

  Another question without an answer, and he knew he couldn’t afford to wait for one. Not with so much still hanging in the balance.

  He rose, stripping off his outer jacket and the explosive vest in quick, frenzied movements—the fabric of the undershirt beneath soaked with sweat, a sharp, searing pain shooting through his abdomen as he pulled the shirt from the waistband of his pants, down over the holstered CZ in an attempt to conceal it.

  Another moment to collect himself, and he took a crouching step toward the door, realizing only then that his shoes were soaked in Faouzi’s blood, the viscous fluid seeping into his socks—the Algerian’s body still lying there, barely a foot away, that same reproachful, contemptuous look still visible on the dead man’s face as he gazed up sightlessly at his murderer.

  But there was no time to consider any of that, not now. Later. When the demons came in the night. With a new face.

  He pushed open the back door of the van as he stepped out, leaving it open—blood dripping to the pavement. Knowing the hardest part of this was yet ahead.

  They would know they had failed, would already be moving into position for the second phase. And he had to be there, to stop them.

  The end of the road.

  Chapter 39

  9:33 P.M.

  DGSE Headquarters

  Paris, France

  Anaïs Brunet’s face seemed to be drained of color by the time she set down the phone—the television on the far wall of her office already changed to breaking news of the attack on the Stade, with live replay of the stadium in the moments leading up to the blast, and hosts openly speculating about Albéric’s status.

  They had failed. That was the truth of it, pure and simple. Their—her—plan to infiltrate the Islamist networks of Molenbeek, to bring them down before they could strike. . .couldn’t possibly have failed more spectacularly.

  Ending in an attack in the suburbs of Paris itself, targeting the President of France. It was incomprehensible.

  Albéric’s salvation—if he was, in fact, saved—due to little more than a freak accident, a premature detonation of the explosives. But he wasn’t out of the area yet—and GIGN’s response team was another fifteen minutes out, the gendarmes tasked to perimeter security, overwhelmed by the crowd now pouring, uncontrolled, from the Stade into the streets.

  It was the perfect scenario for a double-tap strike, Brunet thought, as everyone involved—likely including the terrorists—knew. But there was so little she could do, her hands tied by the limits of the DGSE’s remit.

  Unless there might be chatter they could access—some warning of further attacks. She reached for the phone on her desk, lifting it from its cradle, even as some movement—something—drew her eyes back to the screen.

  And that was when she saw the second explosion, rising from somewhere along the Avenue Jules Rimet. . .

  9:34 P.M.

  Avenue Jules Rimet

  Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis

  Harry knew what the sound was the moment it struck his ears, the familiar muffled crump of high explosives audible above the thousand voices surrounding him as he passed the Stade’s Gate B—pushing his way through the swelling crowd. The briefest of flashes, lighting up the twilight.

  Someone had detonated their vest. Already. Before he could get to them. Had it been Belkaïd’s young enforcer, Abdelatif?

  Yassin?

  It bothered him just how much he hoped not—hoped, despite all this—despite everything he knew, despite reason itself, that his young friend was still alive. Hope against hope, hope against the knowledge of what was still to come. Damnation.

  He ducked under the yellow awnings of La 3ème Mi-temps brasserie, picking his way among toppled, broken chairs as the mob continued to flood past—the screams of panic and fear growing louder in the wake of the explosion.

  How many, already dead? he wondered, pain throbbing through his stomach as a man was shoved into him in the press. He had witnessed scenes like this before, in Iraq—an s-vest detonated in the middle of a crowded market.

  Seen the aftermath. . .men and women torn to shreds by the blast. Children. He remembered the body of one little girl, no more than seven, lying in the dirt of the market—eyes wide as she stared up at the sky, her face perfect, unscarred.

  Everything below the waist. . .mangled meat, scarce even recognizable as part of a human body. She would have bled out in seconds.

  And that was going to happen here—had already happened—if he didn’t get to them first. If he didn’t kill them.

  Van first. The VBIED had to be taken out of play before Aryn could bring it in any closer to the Stade. Before he could detonate it, and himself with it.

  Both of them had to be stopped, no, killed—killed, a voice in Har
ry’s brain repeated, as if trying to convince himself of its truth. Of a reality he’d spent far too long avoiding.

  He shoved a middle-aged man aside, the man’s shout of protest lost in the cacophony as he waded back out into the street, crossing the Rue Tournoi des 5 Nations—pushing against the flow of the crowd, seeing the desperation, the fear in every passing face. One more city block—just one more.

  Fear you could have prevented, the voice said, distracting him, a hollow sound, echoing in the dark recesses of his mind. You brought this on them. You. No one else.

  Madness. His world, narrowing to a singular focus. A single word, repeating itself over and over again through his brain as he forced his way along, struggling to make headway, to even stay aright in the press.

  Kill. Kill. Kill. . .

  9:37 P.M.

  The Stade de France

  Chaos. That’s all she was seeing, Marion Leseur thought, glancing at the screens in the security hub of the Stade, buried deep in the basement of the stadium. Cameras covering the streets without, tens of thousands of blurred images in the darkness—pushing, fighting and clawing their way back toward the Seine.

  And they were trapped—helpless. Taking the president out into that chaos would be insane, one suicide bomber having already detonated a vest outside the E Gate. God only knew how many more of them, out there somewhere.

  And with the UAV threat, an air evac—a helicopter setting down on the football pitch to take Albéric on-board—was equally out of the question. A single such drone, coming within range as the helicopter took off. . .devastation.