Clark called back over his shoulder to Caruso, “Toss smoke to cover us.”
Dom reached into the messenger bag on his back, pulled a smoke grenade and yanked the pin from it. Bright red smoke spewed from one end, and Dom laid it down next to the vertical glass side of a sawtooth roof. He ran on. The smoke cloud fattened in the breeze on the roof, and it obstructed the Americans’ retreat.
After sliding on their backsides down the steep side of a mansard roof that ended at a partition to the next building, they climbed over the low wall and found themselves looking down five stories into a beautiful garden courtyard surrounded by a stony Art Nouveau building full of luxury office space. Faces in the windows of the offices stared at the armed men in the ski masks. Some turned quickly and ran away; others just looked on, wide-eyed, as if they were watching a police drama on television.
Chavez, Clark, and Caruso continued on to the northwest. Within another thirty seconds they began to hear the persistent thump of a helicopter. They did not bother to stop and look for it. Whether it was a police helo or television station’s traffic chopper, it did not matter. They had to get off the roof.
Finally they skittered to the end of the flat part of a two-angle mansard roof. Beyond that they found themselves looking down, five stories down, on to the Rue Quentin Bauchart, a two-lane street that signified the end of the block. There was no obvious way down, no well-anchored drainpipe, no easy way to descend the architectural flourish on the façade. Only a large bay window ten feet below them that jutted out of the steeply angled roof.
They were trapped. The shouts from behind grew in volume.
The three men knelt on the edge of the roof. The squawking of sirens back on the Avenue George V was unreal. There had to have been fifty emergency vehicles in the area now. There didn’t seem to be a police presence directly below them on the street, yet anyway, as the Rue Quentin Bauchart was not really the back of the hotel itself, rather the Americans had managed to reach this position only by clawing their way over partitions between buildings and along small access walls that connected the buildings of the block together. Still, with so many vehicles and men it certainly would not take the French police much more time to branch out at ground level as well, and once that happened, this street would be locked down by the authorities.
“What’s below us, Ding?” John asked, as Chavez had the best look over the edge.
“Looks residential. Could be civilians under the roof, there’s no way to know.”
Caruso and Clark knew what he meant. They did have small explosives in Dom’s bag. They could blow a hole in the roof and climb down into the building, then use the stairs to get out. But they wouldn’t blow the roof without knowing for certain that there wasn’t an occupied apartment, a day care, or an old-folks’ home directly below them. And there was only one way they could find out.
Dom stood quickly. “I’ve got it. John, get back behind that chimney.” Caruso took his HK from around his neck and unfastened the ballistic nylon sling attached to it. He took a moment to pull on the sling to bring it to its full length, and he wrapped his right hand several times around one end, then he gave the other end to Ding. Chavez took a firm hold, then grabbed the iron railing with his other hand. Clark moved back, and when Ding knelt down at the edge of the roof, Dom Caruso climbed over the side, slid down the steep roof, his shoes scuffing the masonry as Chavez lowered him. He did get just low enough to make it to the bay window. As he hung from his sling, the men still on the roof heard a cracking of window glass as Caruso used his rifle to shatter the pane. Ding struggled with the sling, it dug into his hand and wrist and forearm, but he held tight. After a few more crashes, he felt the sling move hard to the left. And then, suddenly, the weight left the strap.
Caruso was in the apartment below them. This was progress, but it didn’t really help Clark or Chavez, as far as they were concerned. Caruso had not taken time to explain what he was doing, and this confused the two men on the roof for a moment, but within ten seconds of his disappearance from the side of the building, the Campus operators on the roof heard Dom in their earpieces.
“Okay, I’m in the attic. It’s empty. Gonna use these charges to make you guys a hole. Ding, get over there with John and both of you keep your heads down.”
Clark nodded appreciatively even as he looked back over his shoulder. He heard voices on the roof; the police had made their way through the smoke and were closing fast, likely while following a trail of broken masonry and cracked roofing tiles. They were still on the Art Nouveau building next door, but they would find their way here within a minute.
Seconds later a loud explosion blew smoke, roofing material, and wood into the air on the other side of the brick chimney. While the last of the bits of debris rained back down, Clark and Chavez ran across the roof to the fresh opening and looked in. As soon as the smoke cleared, they saw Caruso pushing a chest of drawers across a wooden attic floor below them. When he had it below the hole, Clark helped Domingo down on top of it. Chavez quickly turned back to help his partner down.
A crack from a pistol fifty feet behind Clark caused Chavez to duck instinctively as he took hold of Clark’s arm. He felt a jolt go through the other man’s body, and John Clark spun around, then fell into the hole in the roof. Chavez and Clark fell off of the chest of drawers and onto Dominic Caruso.
“Shit!” shouted Chavez. “Where you hit, John?”
Clark was already struggling to his feet. He winced in pain, raised a forearm to show that his dirty sport coat was covered in blood. “It’s not bad. I’m fine,” he said, but both Caruso and Chavez had been around firearms long enough to recognize Clark was in no position to know how badly he’d been hurt.
Even with this, Caruso had the presence of mind to worry about the cops above them on the roof. Quickly he reached into his backpack and pulled out a flash-bang grenade, he pulled the pin and lobbed it out into the direction of the men approaching. He thought it likely that French police officers would not recognize the device, at least not instantly, and they would have to entertain the possibility that they were being fired on by the fleeing gunmen.
The Americans needed to buy a few seconds’ time to make their way downstairs, and the grenade did just that. It exploded next to the chimney with an earsplitting boom.
Clark led the way out of the attic, down a flight of stairs, and onto a circular staircase that spiraled down to ground level.
Chavez spoke tersely into his mike: “Jack, we’re coming out, ground floor of an apartment building, about one hundred yards northwest of the Hôtel de Sers. Thirty seconds.”
“Roger that. I’ll be there. Sirens approaching from the Avenue Marceau behind me, and George V is full of heat.”
“Whatever,” Chavez said as he and his two colleagues rushed down the stairs. That was a problem for sixty seconds from now; he couldn’t worry about it just yet.
All three Americans flew out of the door of the apartment and onto the street. Jack and Sam were there in the maroon Galaxy with the side door open. The three fell inside just as the first police cars skidded around the corner and into the street from behind them. Driscoll helped Clark into a seat and immediately began assessing his bloody arm.
Even though the police were fifty yards back, Ryan didn’t floor it; he had the presence of mind to drive normally as he headed toward Avenue George V. They passed a language school and a restaurant where the waiters were just setting up bistro tables on the pavement for the lunch service. Several men and women on the sidewalk stared at their car as they passed; perhaps they’d come outside to investigate the origin of the sirens, then heard or saw the ruckus on the roof and then the men pouring out of the apartment. But so far, no one on the street had raised an alarm.