There were only three of them.
“Where’s the other one?” he asked Brielle.
“The other what?”
“The fourth maintenance worker.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” she said, firing another round. “I’ve been a tad busy.”
“Ask them where he went.”
After she spoke, the three men pointed in the direction of the east pillar.
“They say he went downstairs.”
“Why?”
“They thought he ran off because he was scared.”
Tyler looked where they were pointing. To make it over there, the maintenance worker would have had to cover open space, exposing himself to a bullet storm. Staying where he was would have been far safer.
Unless he knew no one would be firing at him.
Tyler suddenly realized what the actual target could be.
The elevator.
“Brielle,” Tyler said, “ask these guys if they know what was wrong with the lift.”
She gave him a questioning look and then translated. The three of them shook their heads.
If the workmen could fix the elevator easily, the guests would certainly use it to go back down once this was over. A bomb set next to it might be what the attackers were planning all along. No one would think to look during the chaos of an evacuation. Whoever was sending the quadcopters could watch the elevator windows with a telescope to see who got on and then blow up the bomb as the lift passed.
“How long has the missing man been working with them?” Tyler asked Brielle.
The answer came back, “Two weeks. They don’t know much about him, though they mentioned that his accent sounds odd.”
“He must be an impostor. Did you recognize him?”
Brielle shook her head. “I couldn’t see his face very well under the hardhat, but he had glasses, a mustache, and beard.”
A disguise. Tyler was so focused on the lead worker that he hadn’t paid much attention to the others.
“We need to lay down suppressing fire so I can make it to the stairway.”
“But I—”
“No time to argue. One. Two. Three!”
Tyler sprinted for the stairs, unloading his entire magazine in the direction of the pavilion as he ran. Brielle did the same with her weapon. Bullets zinged off the metal around him. His luck held out until he was within a few feet of the stairwell.
That’s when the bullet hit him in the left arm. Whether it was a direct hit or a ricochet he couldn’t tell, but the jolt of pain caused him to drop the submachine gun.
Tyler stumbled against the safety grating and tumbled down the first flight of stairs. He shook his head and held his arm. Given the blood streaming from both sides of his bicep, it seemed like the bullet had passed through his muscle, missing the bone. The only saving grace was that they had been firing relatively small 9mm rounds. His arm wasn’t useless, but every time he moved it, agony radiated from the wound like a beacon.
He picked himself up and staggered down the stairs. As he walked he looked for any sign of movement. When he’d gone down five flights and cleared the bottom of the first level, he saw someone crouched on a catwalk directly underneath the Salle Gustave Eiffel. The shadowy figure would have been invisible to anyone not actively searching for him.
The man hadn’t spotted him yet, so Tyler had a chance at sneaking up on him. Without the MP-5, surprise would be his only weapon.
He thought he could make the climb over the safety grating encapsulating the stairs. The gunfire and screams would cover any noise he made. But he realized his chance of success was still small. He needed a backup plan.
He took out his phone and tapped quickly, starting a text to Grant.
I’m going to need your help.
FOUR
Tyler’s tuxedo was a mess. Ripping his cuff as he climbed over the safety fence was just the latest indignity. The left sleeve of his jacket was saturated with blood. Stains mottled the fabric as if it were black and brown tie-dye. The knees on his pants were torn from crawling around on the deck of the tower while he was under fire. He wondered if James Bond’s tuxes had been made of Teflon.
The only reason he was even thinking about the state of his clothes was to keep his mind off his throbbing arm. Several times he had to bite his lip from crying out as he lowered himself gently to the catwalk, careful to minimize both noise and vibration.
He settled into a crouch, putting pressure on his arm to stanch some of the blood flow. In addition to the pain, he was beginning to feel woozy, either from shock or blood loss.
Tyler crept forward, more afraid of losing his balance and falling over the side than he was of the man in front of him. His quarry was still hunched over, intent on some unseen task, wearing black now instead of the gray overalls he’d had on earlier.
Tyler considered what to do, but he didn’t have much of a choice. His injury meant a fight wouldn’t last long and might end up with him splattered on the pavement below. At this point his best option was simply to get close enough to charge the guy and push him over the side while he wasn’t looking. Not a sporting plan, but the one likeliest to keep himself alive.
Although the tower was illuminated by so many lights it could practically be seen from space, shadows from the ironwork played across the catwalk. Every time he took a step, Tyler went from dark to light and then back again, which only added to the disorientation felt as the blood drained out of him. If the bullet had nicked an artery, he wouldn’t last much longer.
Tyler shook off the feeling and kept edging forward. He’d launch himself when he was within two body lengths. Any closer and the man might hear him.
He got within twice that distance when another explosion went off up above them. Grant must have intercepted another drone. Or missed. Tyler couldn’t tell. But the shockwave created enough of a tremor that the man in black leaned back to catch himself and turned slightly in the process so that Tyler was now in his peripheral vision.
The man froze. Then his head inched around until he was looking Tyler in the eye. He smiled.
Without the glasses, beard, and mustache, he was now recognizable as Carl Zim. Tyler had only seen a grainy photo of him, never in person. Zim’s wavy blond hair and angular nose lent the Aryan look he worshipped.
“Dr. Tyler Locke,” he said. “You’re late.”
“Actually, it looks like I’m right on time.”
Zim nodded at the bullet wound. “Did Gabrielle Cohen give you that? Jews are so unpredictable.”
“No, it was one of your friends. I see you managed to talk your way onto the maintenance crew even though you’re American.” Stalling was Tyler’s best tactical play at the moment.
“Mon français est excellent. One good thing about having a Parisian mother.”
Tyler rose and Zim did the same. The black he was wearing wasn’t a ninja outfit, but rather a tuxedo, stained and torn to make him look like one of the patrons escaping from the party. In the chaos below, he would be escorted to a safe position where he could slip away quietly before anyone realized who he was.
Zim was shorter than Tyler, but wiry and built for speed. Tyler could see cords of muscle flexing along his neck. Tyler’s gun was long gone, and Zim couldn’t have smuggled a weapon past the security screen. Fists and gravity were all they had to fight each other. Not good odds for Tyler.
“Grant will be here any second now,” Tyler said, “so you might as well—”
The words had the opposite effect from what he intended. Instead of hesitating or looking behind him, Zim threw himself at Tyler.
Without the ability to sidestep the attack, Tyler planted his feet and twisted his body so that his good arm would take the brunt of the impact. He planned to use Zim’s momentum against him and graze him enough to toss him off the catwalk.
Zim didn’t play along. He pulled up short and launched a roundhouse punch at Tyler’s injured bicep. Tyler ducked to protect his arm, but that put his ear in the path o
f Zim’s fist.
The jarring impact nearly ended the fight right then, but Tyler was able to grab Zim’s arm, throwing them both off-balance. They locked together, each of them grasping the other’s lapels to keep from going over the side.
Tyler used the only weapon he had left and head-butted Zim in the face, breaking the man’s nose. Blood gushed out, but Zim just grinned, the scarlet sheen coating his teeth. Tyler guessed it wasn’t his first broken nose.
Zim kneed Tyler in the gut and then loosened his right hand to sink his fingers into Tyler’s arm. Tyler let out a feral scream and nearly blacked out from the pain. He keeled over and fell to the grating of the catwalk. His head cracked into the metal and buzzed from the collision.
Zim spat a mouthful of blood. “Now you’re going to make yourself useful and cause an even bigger distraction when I get to ground level. See you down there.”
He placed a foot on Tyler’s chest and pushed. Tyler grabbed Zim’s ankle, but he had no leverage. He felt himself sliding over the side.
The buzz grew even louder. At first Tyler thought he was about to pass out, but he realized that the sound was not in his head. A shadow fell across his eye.
It was the Mayfly. Grant had gotten his text message and made the decision to pull it off protective duty.
Zim braced himself to beat back the quadcopter, which weighed only a few pounds. A hefty swat as it swooped toward him would be enough to send it careening into a girder.
But the Mayfly just hovered there. Zim looked at it in confusion, then shrugged and put his entire effort into one last shove.
Instead, his body went rigid as Tyler heard a new sound: the crackle of electricity. Two shiny metal leads protruded from Zim’s neck.
Zim’s face contorted in agony and disbelief. With all the strength he had left, Tyler pushed against Zim’s foot. Zim tilted back as if he were a mannequin and fell off the catwalk.
Tyler watched Zim’s descent. His head hit a girder as he tumbled, sending his body spinning to the ground. A thump was followed by shrieks from an unseen woman. The blood pooling under Zim’s head suggested that the impact was lethal.
Tyler lay flat for a few moments while he caught his breath. Then he remembered about Zim’s mission. Something he’d been hunched over. Tyler had to check it out and assess whether it presented any danger.
With supreme effort, he pushed himself up. He lurched to his feet and steadied himself before trying to walk forward along the narrow catwalk.
A bright light flashed directly in front of him. Before his brain could even process the sound of the explosion, he was thrown backward.
Tyler’s last thought before his mind went blank was that, just like Zim, he was falling.
FIVE
Brielle stretched as she stepped out of the shower, the sudden burst of steam fogging the mirrors in the suite’s bathroom. She toweled off, not bothering to wipe the glass. She didn’t want to see the bruises that were just starting to fade. She took a sip from the flute resting on the counter. The hot soaks and fine champagne were doing wonders in helping her sore muscles recover.
She’d never stayed in such an expensive hotel room before. Not that she had anything against it; she simply never had been able to afford it. The sumptuous accommodations at L’Hotel in the chic Saint-Germain-des-Prés section of Paris were a thanks from the French government for her part in averting disaster at the Eiffel Tower, and she hadn’t protested at all when the gesture was made. She didn’t mind a bit of luxury while she planned her next move.
Nearly a week after the assault, the investigation was still ongoing. Only minutes after Tyler went searching for the missing maintenance man, snipers in a French Air Force helicopter took out the gunmen inside the gift shop pavilion, ending the attack. Five security officers had been killed, but Fournier survived, as did all of the guests at the party, though some of those who were caught in the blasts were still recuperating in hospital.
There were strange aspects of the event that continued to puzzle Brielle. Grant Westfield, an explosives expert in his own right, reported that none of the bombs would have been powerful enough to kill more than a few of the guests. Even if they’d all gone off inside the reception hall, at best the attackers would have killed several dozen partygoers, with no hope of targeting a specific guest. The person who had been controlling the quadcopters from the ground was still at large.
Another unsolved mystery was the segment of the operation on the catwalk under the Salle Gustave Eiffel, where Tyler had fought with Carl Zim. The bomb that had gone off there was just powerful enough to destroy a portion of the tower’s utilities, nothing more. The preliminary assessment was that the attack had been meant to disrupt the summit, but that it made little sense as all of the meetings had been concluded before that evening.
No group had yet claimed responsibility, but fingers had started to point. As they’d suspected, Zim had been the leader of the attack, but they weren’t going to get much vital info from him since his body lay in the Paris morgue. The rest of the gunmen were identified as members of a French right-wing extremist group who had sympathies with the neo-Nazi movement. It seemed like a clear case of fanatics attacking their new sworn enemies: representatives of the Muslim world that was encroaching on Europe and America.
And then they found out how the gunmen had lain in wait inside the pavilion.
A special exhibit showing rare photographs of the tower’s construction had been set up inside the second story of the pavilion, above the gift shop. Three hidden walls had been built into the design. The day before the attack, the five gunmen hid themselves and their weapons inside the display, going as far as using plastic bottles to collect their urine while they waited to emerge after the gift shop closed. Then at the prearranged signal, most likely the appearance of the maintenance men, they opened fire.
Of course, the investigators’ first priority was to discover who was responsible for the tower’s clever infiltration, and that’s where the situation got sticky. Following the money, they discovered that the display had been paid for and the photos supplied by a company based in Tel Aviv. The authorities were trying to sift through the documentation to find out who actually owned the company, information obscured by a series of shell corporations.
With the discovery of a potential Israeli connection, the recriminations in the Middle East were fast approaching a fever pitch. The Muslim nations claimed it was a conspiracy dreamed up by the Mossad as a means of punishing them for attacks against Israel. Tensions had escalated quickly, and armies on both sides were now poised on the brink of war, with planes, tanks, and soldiers massing along the Israeli borders. It would take only a spark to ignite a full-scale attack in either direction, and with rumors of nuclear weapons on both sides, the Western nations, Russia, and China could be drawn into a conflict that would result in the start of World War III.
That’s why Brielle drained her glass. No sense in letting it go to waste if nobody would be left to enjoy it next week.
She put on the silver Star of David necklace her grandfather had given her, dropped the towel on the floor, and tiptoed into the suite’s bedroom. She slipped under the covers and rested her head on Tyler’s chest.
He stroked her damp hair. “I ordered breakfast for us while you were showering.”
“Croissants?”
“And marmalade, although I never have understood the Brits’ fondness for orange jelly.”
“And I never understood how you Americans can eat cold pizza in the morning. It’s disgusting.”
“What else can you find to eat in a college dorm at six a.m.?”
“At the University of Edinburgh we had what is called a dining hall. Didn’t you have those at MIT?”
“Sure. But they frowned on going down to meals in your underwear.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
Brielle inadvertently ran her hand across the stitches in his arm. Tyler didn’t flinch, but she could feel him tense.
�
��Sorry. Does it still hurt?”
“I’m only glad it wasn’t my pitching arm. As it is, the doctors say I won’t be taking the Mariner’s mound for a few weeks.”
She supposed that was some American baseball metaphor. Just like a man to play down a gunshot wound and concussion requiring a hospital stay. The blast that Zim set off had thrown Tyler backwards, but through sheer luck he landed on the catwalk instead of going over the side. Three days of nursing in the suite made him feel well enough for more strenuous activities. He recovered quickly and thanked her well for the pampering.
“Grant made it home all right, I expect,” Brielle said as she ran her fingers along the channels between each of Tyler’s abdominal muscles. “He seemed reluctant to leave you until I told him I’d take care of you.”
“Yeah, he got the message after that. He’s back in Seattle now. I’m going there myself in a couple of days. When my sister heard I’d been shot, she insisted on meeting me there to make sure my recuperation goes smoothly.”
“Do you see her much?”
“No. Most of the time she’s traveling the world doing research into endangered species. She’s a zoologist. In fact, we don’t get to see each other that often because of our schedules, so it’ll be nice to spend time with her. Why don’t you come back and meet her?”
Brielle withdrew her hand abruptly, and Tyler stopped stroking her hair.
“We’ve talked about this,” she said. “I may not be a strict orthodox Jew, but this isn’t something that can be long-term. My parents wouldn’t understand. Family is very important to me.”
“It is to me, too.”
“So is my religion. Unless you plan to convert, let’s just enjoy our time here together.”
Tyler let out a tiny sigh, but he went back to caressing her hair. “Absolutely.”
Brielle didn’t mention that she would soon be near enough to Seattle to drive there. Wade Plymouth, who had called with the tip that led them to Zim, was the only other employee at Brielle’s boutique investigation firm. Her latest information revealed that his last known location was at a bar in a small town south of the Canadian border in Washington state. If she were going to track down her missing friend and colleague, that was the best place to start, and it wasn’t Tyler’s job to help her. She could tell that spending any more time with him would make it that much harder to tear herself away. A visit to his home would be a bad idea. Better to bask in one last day with him and leave it at that.
The Loch Ness Legacy tl-4 Page 3
