“Listen to me, Jack. You are not to engage al Qahtani and his men. Stay right where you are.”
Ryan did not reply.
“Ryan, confirm my last transmission.”
“John, DCRI doesn’t carry weapons. I’m not going to just let al Qahtani kill everyone in that room.”
Now Caruso’s voice came over the net. From the sound of it, he was down on the sidewalk and walking quickly. He kept his voice low. “Listen to Clark, cuz. Five against one is not going to end well for you. Your Glock is going to feel like a squirt gun if those fucks come out of the elevator with assault rifles. Just stay in the stairwell and wait for the cavalry.”
But in the stairwell, Ryan’s nostrils flared as he readied himself for action. He couldn’t just stand there and watch a massacre unfold before him.
The elevator chime clanged at the far end of the hall.
Inside room 301, six officers of the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur were positioned in two teams. Three men lounged on the two beds, reading the morning paper, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes. And three more stood or sat around a desk that had been moved in front of the balcony doors, though it was back from the balcony.
This wasn’t a perfect surveillance operation by any stretch of the imagination. Since the curtains were closed on Omar 8’s window, they could not see into the suite, and they could pick up only faint voices intermittently. But the device did confirm that Omar 8 and his associates were still in there, and that was important. As soon as they left, one of the three-man DCRI teams would head over to the Four Seasons and plant several more effective bugs while the other monitored from this overwatch position.
In the meantime, they all drank coffee and smoked and complained about the American government. A few years ago, they would have received support for an op like this from the CIA. Omar 8 was allegedly URC; the United States was undeniably interested in URC operators, especially when they were moving through Western capitals with fighting-aged associates and a hundred pounds or so of baggage. Sure, the URC had made many threats against the French, one just the week before. But they had never attacked France, whereas they had attacked the United States multiple times, killing hundreds there and abroad. The damn American consulate was just a mile away — why weren’t les américains here right now, providing intelligence and equipment and manpower for this operation?
Les américains, mumbled the DCRI detail as they monitored the corner suite next door. They all agreed they certainly weren’t what they used to be.
The elevator door slid open on the third floor of the Hôtel de Sers. One hundred feet away, concealed by much of the stairwell door and dim lights behind him, Jack Ryan Jr. leveled his suppressed Glock at the movement.
A single housekeeper pushed a rolling cart full of towels and trash bins out of the service elevator and onto the floor. There was no one behind her. Jack lowered the pistol before she saw it, or even him, and he quietly shut the staircase door until only the tip of his shoe held it open.
He breathed a muted sigh of relief. The housekeeper had delayed the arrival of the terrorists, but only by a minute or so. They would be here soon enough. She and her cart continued up the hallway slowly, completely oblivious to any danger.
Just then, the sound of running up the stairs below Ryan caused him to turn. Before he had time to do much more than register that he was hearing the footfalls of two men, Chavez transmitted on the net. “We’re coming to you, Ryan. Hold fire.”
“Roger.”
Clark transmitted next. “Ding, I’m in the main elevator. ETA sixty seconds. Can you and Dom make entry on 301’s balcony via 401?”
Chavez and Dom ran past Ryan at a full sprint, their faces distorted and unrecognizable due to their rubber masks. Chavez spoke as he climbed: “I like it. We’ll do a rush-job version of what we planned next door.”
“You’re gonna have to make it quick,” Ryan said.
Clark replied, “Ryan. I need you down in the lobby.”
Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What?”
“You have to be ready to get the van and bring it around. Sam doesn’t have the keys. You do. We can’t wait around when this is over. Plus, we have a tango still on the street. If he comes in, I want you ready to stop him.”
Ryan started to protest; he had to whisper because the maid was only a few feet away. She opened the door to a room after knocking, and disappeared inside. “John, you’ve got to be kidding. I’ve got eyes on the hall, I can cover—”
“Ryan, I’m not going to argue with you! Go down to the lobby!”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said, and he spun away from the door and began heading down the stairs. “God damn it.”
Ding Chavez got slightly ahead of Dominic as they sprinted up the fourth-floor hallway. Both men doffed their rain parkas and let them fall as they ran on, got their hands on their sub-guns, and unslung the ropes from their necks. When he arrived at the door to room 401, Chavez just shouldered right through it, smashing the bolt out of the doorjamb and sending the door flying in. He fell to the ground, and Caruso leapt over him with his HK trained toward movement on the bed.
A middle-aged couple were eating their room-service breakfast on their bed and watching television.
“What the bloody hell?” shouted the man in a thick English accent.
The woman screamed.
Caruso ignored the couple; instead, he just ran toward the balcony and slid the door open. Chavez was back with him now; together they hurriedly dropped their ropes, took the metal carabiners fixed to one end of them, and then hooked the carabineers on the heavy iron railing of the balcony.
Right then Clark transmitted in a whisper. His voice sounded pleasant and happy, and he spoke in a British accent. “Got delayed a bit heading up, darling. I’ll be there in half a minute. Feel free to start breakfast without me.”
The men on the balcony knew they were on their own. Clark was still in the elevator. Obviously surrounded by civilians. They had no time to wait on him.
Dom and Domingo climbed over the fourth-floor railing, holding onto their HK sub-guns with one hand and their ropes with the other. They turned to face the hotel room and noticed the English couple had already hustled out the front door, no doubt terrorized by what they had just witnessed.
With a quick look between them and a nod from Chavez, both he and Dom leaned back, away from the railing of the balcony. Five stories down was the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie; traffic rolled by without a care. The two Americans high above the traffic pushed off with their legs. They spent just over a second in the air before swinging down to the balcony below.
Directly in front of them now, behind the glare of the sun’s reflection on balcony doors that were just slightly cracked open, they could see three of the six DCRI men in the room. One stood right on the other side of the glass, six feet from the Americans’ noses; in his hand was a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Two more sat behind a table in the center of the room. Ahead and to the left of Chavez and Caruso were the bed and bathroom, wide of the balcony. And behind the desk with the surveillance equipment was a narrow entryway in front of the door.
Needless to say, the three Frenchmen reacted with shock to the armed men rappelling onto their balcony. Even more so when the two men released their ropes and brought the short butt stocks of their weapons to their shoulders.
Caruso and Chavez each took a step forward into a half-crouch firing stance. Chavez screamed, “Dégagez!” — Move! — just as, directly behind the wide-eyed Frenchmen, the door to their room flew open behind the shoulder of one of the Middle Eastern assassins.