The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  If he could get free, and if he waited to attack just before landing, the helicopter would be low to the ground. He might survive without immobilizing injuries and be able to escape during the confusion. It was a long shot, but he saw no other option.

  As the Sikorsky continued to descend, Jon worked frantically on the ropes, but there was no more give. Abruptly, at the front of the helicopter, Abu Auda said something angrily in Arabic. Others joined in, and the talk grew louder. Jon figured there were more than a dozen terrorists on board. Soon everyone in the craft seemed to be arguing and comparing ideas about something they saw on the ground. Alarmed, they consulted in their many languages.

  One of the voices demanded in English, “What’s wrong?”

  Above the noise of the rotors, Abu Auda shouted the bad news in French, with an occasional English word for those who did not understand that language: “Mauritania and the others aren’t waiting for us at the chalet as planned. He isn’t answering his radio either. There’s an empty pickup near the chalet, but the scout helicopter’s gone. Yes, there’s someone lying in the clearing.” He paused.

  Jon felt tension rush through the vibrating craft as it continued its circling descent.

  “Who is it?” someone called out.

  “I can see him through my binoculars,” Abu Auda told them. “It’s Mohammed. There’s blood on his chest.” He hesitated. “He looks dead.”

  There was a furious outburst in Arabic, French, and all the other tongues. As Abu Auda shouted, trying to keep them under control, Jon continued to listen carefully. It became clear that Abu Auda had expected to find not only Mauritania but Dr. Chambord, Captain Bonnard, and Thérèse Chambord. The chalet was where Abu Auda was supposed to rendezvous with them, where Chambord would build another DNA computer.

  A new voice raged, “You see what comes of trusting infidels, Fulani?”

  “We told M. Mauritania not to work with them!”

  Abu Auda sneered in his powerful basso voice, “You trusted their money, Abdullah. Our goal is a great one, and for that we needed the Frenchman’s machine.”

  “So what do we have now? Nothing!”

  An older voice asked, “Do you think it’s a trap, Abu Auda?”

  “I don’t know what the devil it is. Get your weapons. Be ready to jump out the moment we touch down.”

  Jon was getting nowhere with the ropes around his wrists. But this could be his chance to escape, a better chance than risking death by crashing the aircraft. When it landed, Abu Auda and his men would have a great deal more on their minds than him. From the front, he appeared motionless. Only his twitching shoulder muscles hinted at the activity behind his back, where his hands and wrists continued their desperate struggle.

  The helicopter shuddered and stood still in the air, rocking gently from side to side. He kept pulling and twisting his ropes. His skin burned from the abrasion, but he ignored it. The chopper settled into a straight but slow vertical descent. Abruptly, the whole craft pitched violently to the side. Jon lost his balance and toppled over, his shoulder thudding hard against the seat. Something sharp bit into his back. He heard shouts as the first few men jumped to the ground. More followed, and the chopper found its balance and touched down safely.

  As the rotors slowed, Jon searched frantically for the sharp protrusion from the helicopter wall. He rubbed his back against the wall until again he felt the pain, and then a hot spot of blood on his back told him he had found it. Still lying on his side, he wiggled back against the wall, searching until his hands found the spot. He touched it gingerly. The wall’s padding had separated, and a piece of sharp metal from the chopper’s body was exposed when pressure was applied at the separating crack. Encouraged, he worked the ropes against it. As the engines cut back, a strange quietness settled into the craft and he felt the rope beginning to fray.

  He continued rubbing against the knifelike metal until the rope abruptly split apart. He could feel blood on his hands where he had nicked himself. He unwound the rope from his wrists and lay quietly, his ears aching with the strain of listening. How many terrorists were left? They had been so eager to rush out that it seemed most had gone before the chopper actually landed.

  Outside, there were more violent bellows and curses. Abu Auda shouted, “Spread out. Look for them. Search everywhere!”

  “Here’s a map of France!” someone yelled. “I found it in the chalet!”

  More bellowed reports, more loud swearing. The hubbub outside moved away.

  Jon tried to hear breathing inside the chopper, the smallest movement. Nothing. He inhaled deeply to calm his nerves, stripped off his blindfold, and dropped to the floor among the seats. He peered around. There was no one at the front. Twisting, he glanced behind and around. Again, no one. Still lying on the floor, he ripped off his gag and scanned the chopper for an extra assault rifle. A pistol. A knife someone had dropped. Anything. The stiletto he had Velcroed to his ankle had been taken when he was captured.

  But again, there was nothing. He crawled to the pilot’s and copilot’s seats at the front. That was where he spotted an ungainly-looking pistol in a rack next to the copilot’s seat. A flare gun.

  Cautiously he raised up and peered out the windows. They had landed on a sloping field at the edge of a thick pine forest, near a half-timbered chalet with a high-peaked roof. The chalet was tall and narrow, which made it less visible from the air and two sides. Pine trees crowded close to the house and stretched away back up the slope toward a low mountain behind. Farther behind were snow-mantled peaks. Someone had said France. The Alps?

  Two of the terrorist soldiers, their weapons slung, were picking up the body of Mauritania’s dead pilot. Two more were searching out into the sloping meadow, while high above on a second-story deck stood Abu Auda with two older Saudis. They were scanning the distance.

  But it was the endless forest that attracted Jon’s attention. If he could slip out of the chopper and in among the pines, he would triple his odds of escaping. He needed to make his move now, while the terrorists were distracted. Every second increased the danger that Abu Auda and the others would give up their search, regroup, and remember him.

  Low to the floor, he scuttled to the door on the copilot’s side, which faced away from the chalet. His wounds forgotten, he slid over the edge and, holding on to a landing strut, he coiled toward the ground like a snake. Lying on his belly, he gazed under the chopper at the terrorists, who remained angrily busy. Satisfied, flare gun in hand, he crawled on his forearms toward the brown grass that edged the pine forest. Spring flowers were beginning to show among the grasses. The fresh scent of the moist mountain soil rose around his head. For a moment he felt dizzy, heady with freedom. But he dared not stop.

  Crawling swiftly on, he reached the perimeter of the trees and slithered gratefully into the twilight forest, thick and hushed with fir trees. He was breathing hard. Beads of sweat had collected on his face. But he had seldom felt better. He crouched behind a tree trunk and studied the terrorists in the clearing and around the chalet. They still had not discovered he was missing. With a cold smile, he jumped up and loped off.

  The first time he heard the sound ahead, he dodged behind a tree and dropped flat. His heart pounded as he stared through the lacy forest shadows. When he saw a head emerge from behind a pine tree, his heart pounded faster. The head wore an Afghan puggaree, long cloth tail and all. He had nearly blundered into an armed Afghan, who was still searching through the woods for any sign of Chambord, Mauritania, and the others.

  The man turned slowly, his dark gaze examining the shadows. Had he heard Jon? It seemed so, since he lifted an old American M16A1 and aimed it in Jon’s general direction. Jon held his breath, the flare pistol gripped in his hand. The last thing he wanted was to fire the thing. If the flare hit the Afghan, he would scream like a banshee. If it missed, the flare would ignite brighter than a Roman candle.

  He watched the Afghan step carefully toward where he lay silent. The terrorist should ha
ve called for backup, but he had not. Perhaps he was unsure of what he had heard or whether he had heard anything at all. By the expressions playing across the man’s face, it seemed as if he were talking himself out of his alarm. He had heard nothing. A rabbit. The wind. His countenance cleared, and his guard lowered. Now that his suspicions were eased, he approached faster. By the time he reached where Jon hid, he was moving at a fast clip.

  Jon raised up and was on him before the fellow could react. Instantly, Jon swung the heavy flare pistol, knocking him to his knees. He clamped his hand over the man’s mouth and crashed the weapon down onto his head. Blood spurted. The man struggled but was obviously stunned and confused by the initial blow. Jon hit him again, and the extremist collapsed limp into the forest duff. Breathing heavily, Jon stared down. His lungs ached, and his rib cage was tight. He ripped the M16 away and found the man’s curved dagger.

  He reached down to check the terrorist’s pulse. He was dead. Jon stripped the extra M16 clips from the body, turned on his heel, and melted up through the forest again. As he settled into a distance-eating trot, thoughts flooded his mind. He tried to understand what had happened here before the helicopter had arrived. Why was the Saudi pilot murdered? From what Abu Auda had said, Chambord, Thérèse, Bonnard, and Mauritania had been at the chalet. Where had they gone now?

  What came echoing back were Chambord’s words: I’m not with them, Colonel Smith, they’re with me. It stayed in his mind, teasing him with possibilities. The mosaic of odd pieces of what he had learned since Monday began to reassemble in his thoughts until they finally added to a question: Why would Chambord and Bonnard not be waiting? After all, the Crescent Shield was supposedly working for him.

  Chambord was not part of the Crescent Shield. He had made a point of it, that they were with him.

  As he ran on, Jon continued to puzzle over it all, trying to stretch the ideas out. And then, as if a mist had cleared, it began to make a crazy kind of sense: Just as the Black Flame had been a front for the Crescent Shield, the Crescent Shield could be a front for Chambord and the French captain Bonnard.

  He could be wrong, but he did not think so. The longer he considered it, the more sense it made. He must get to Fred Klein and warn him as soon as possible. Klein and half the world’s intelligence services were looking for criminals, but the wrong ones. Klein had to know, and Jon had to uncover where Chambord and Bonnard had gone and what devastation they were planning.

  The first sign that Jon was in trouble again was explosive gunfire from the S-70A helicopter. It slashed over the treetops as Jon crossed a small clearing. Pine needles rained down, and the chopper banked steeply and climbed, turned, and came back for a second pass. By then, Jon was no longer in the open, and the chopper roared past overhead and down the slope. It was a ruse, Jon figured. They had seen him the first time and would land in another clearing lower on the slope. After that, the terrorists would spread up and out on foot and wait. If there were enough of them to cover a lot of territory, they could hope that he would come to them.

  He had spent the last two hours working his way in a wide uphill loop. When he had seen no more sign of the Crescent Shield forces, he had felt secure enough to turn downhill, where he would have better odds of running into a road. He guessed he was in southeastern France. If he were right, it could be anywhere from Mulhouse to Grenoble. Each hour that passed out of touch with civilization made time more pressing. Because he needed to reach a telephone, he had risked reversing course too soon. He had not moved far enough from the chalet, and so the chopper had spotted him.

  He must stop playing into their hands. He turned but did not go straight uphill again. Instead, he angled across the face of the slope toward the chalet, hoping to catch Abu Auda by surprise. Also, the chalet must be near some kind of road. The sudden cawing of a flock of crows taking off from the tops of nearby pines was the first hint he had made another mistake. The second was the frantic scurrying of some frightened animal a hundred yards to his left.

  He had underestimated Abu Auda. A ground force had trailed the helicopter, in case Jon did exactly what he had done. Jon dove into the crevices of a rock outcropping to his right, where he could watch the entire sweep of the forest ahead. How many men had Abu Auda assigned to the trailing force? Twelve men were all he had, unless reinforcements had arrived from somewhere. High above, the pine tops moaned in the wind. Somewhere in the distance, bees buzzed and birds sang. But no birds sang here. The woods were eerie with quiet, waiting, too. It would not be long.

  Then the shadows beneath the lofty pines appeared to vibrate, undulate like a thin fog. Out of the fog, as if floating on the shadows themselves, emerged another Afghan. This one was not alone. Another terrorist materialized some fifty yards to Jon’s right and twenty yards farther down the slope. A third was an equal distance away on the other side.

  Jon saw no others. He smiled a humorless smile. There had been no reinforcements.

  Three against one—and how many more from the helicopter coming up the slope behind? Probably six or seven. But if he acted quickly, they would not matter. This time, Abu Auda had miscalculated. He had not expected Jon to backtrack at such a sharp angle, which had brought him to the tailing threesome much sooner than they had estimated. Three against one, when the one was armed with an M16 and under cover, was not impossible.

  Jon saw the first terrorist spot the rock outcropping and signal his companions to circle while he investigated. Jon figured they must know by now that he had the M16. Because Abu Auda was a strong commander, a thinker, he would have counted heads before they left the chalet. Which meant he would have discovered that he had an armed man missing. If they found the body, Auda would also be certain the M16 was gone.

  Jon peered out carefully. The lead terrorist was advancing straight at the rocks. Jon’s main consideration was how fast he could put all of them out of action or at least drive them to ground so he could slip away before they realized he was gone. But the first shot would bring the rest running. In all probability, someone would also alert the helicopter.

  He waited until the other two were in line with the rocks, one on either side. By then, the lead man was less than twenty feet away. It was time. On edge, Jon raised up, squeezed off a quick cluster of three—two into the first terrorist and, swiftly moving the rifle, one into the man on the east. He shifted the rifle again and squeezed two more at the man on the west. Then he ran.

  He had hit the first one dead center. He would not get up. The other two had gone down, too, but he was unsure how badly he had wounded them. As he ran, he listened anxiously for clues. He heard a distant yell…and nothing more. No running feet, no crashing through the bushes, no creaking of low tree branches. None of the noises of close pursuit.

  Wary, seeking cover wherever he could, he raced on, angling downhill, until he heard the helicopter again. And dropped to a crouch beside a large pine. He watched up through small tunnels among the light-shimmering needles. Soon the chopper swept overhead, and Jon glimpsed a black face leaning out to scan below. Abu Auda.

  The Sikorsky continued on. Jon could not remain here, because Abu Auda would not rely on aerial pursuit alone. Some of his men would still be on the ground, and Jon had to make a decision. But so did Abu Auda. He would have to guess which direction Jon ran.

  As Jon listened intently for the sound of descent and landing, he tried to put himself in the killer’s mind. Finally he decided that Abu Auda would expect him to head straight from his pursuers, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. Which meant, if he were right, that the chopper would land directly south. Jon turned and raced off to the right. Then he slowed and headed west down through the forest, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  After less than an hour, the pine forest began to thin. Sweating, his wounds itching, Jon continued on across an open meadow and stopped in a fringe of trees, excited. A car was cruising past on an asphalt road below. He had heard no pursuit since turning west, and the oc
casional sound of the helicopter still searching the forest had been far off to his left, the south. He remained among the trees, hurrying north along the edge, hoping the road and the forest would meet or at least come much closer.

  When he found a stream, he stopped and hunched beside it. Panting, he untied the white sleeve that Thérèse had used to bandage his arm after the missile strike at the villa. The wound was long but shallow. He washed it and his side, where a bullet had creased the skin; his forehead, where debris from the missile strike had scratched it; and his wrists. Some of the wounds were tinged with red, indicating small infections. Still, none was serious.

  He splashed more of the cool spring water onto his hot, sweaty face, and, sighing, moved off again. The forest’s sounds were normal here, the hushed quiet one would expect from a single person’s moving through, not the utter stillness that told him many were intruding.

  And then he paused. Hope filled him. Through the trees he could see a crossroads and a road sign. He looked all around and slipped cautiously from cover onto the asphalt. He tore across the road to the sign. At last he knew where he was: grenoble 12km. Not impossibly far, and he had been there before. But if he stayed on the road, he would be conspicuous. If the helicopter searched this far, he would be seen easily.

  Making plans, he ran back into the forest and waited. When he heard the noise of a vehicle’s engine, he smiled with relief. It was going in the right direction. He watched eagerly as it came around the bend—a farm truck this time. He abandoned his M16 with all its ammunition in the pines and kicked duff over them. Then he stuck the Afghan’s curved knife into one jacket pocket and the flare gun into the other, and waved both arms.

  The farmer stopped, and Jon climbed into the cab, greeting the fellow in French. He explained that he was a stranger in the area, visiting a friend who had gone into Grenoble earlier. They were to meet for dinner, but his car refused to start so he had decided to walk and hope for a Good Samaritan. He had taken a tumble in the woods, and that was why he was so disheveled.