Colonel,” he said at last. “All right, cooperate with Howell as closely as you can, but remember: He must never learn about Covert-One. Never. Is that understood?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die, Chief,” Smith answered.
Klein snorted. “Fair enough, Jon.” He cleared his throat. “Let me know once you're on the ground, all right?”
“Will do,” Smith replied. He leaned forward to check the navigation display, which showed their position, distance from Andrews, and current airspeed. “It looks like that should be sometime around nine P.M., your time.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The grim, soulless high-rise housing projects of the Parisian slums, the cites, rose black against the night. Their design — massive, oppressively ugly, and intentionally sterile — was a monument to the grotesque ideals of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who thought solely in cold, utilitarian terms. The projects were also a testament to the penny-pinching of French bureaucrats — who wanted only to cram as many of their nation's unwanted immigrants, most of them Muslims, into the smallest possible spaces.
Few lights shone around the graffiti-smeared concrete bulk of the Cite des Quatre Mille, the “city of four thousand,” a notorious haven for thieves, thugs, drug dealers, and Islamic radicals. The honest poor were trapped in a de facto prison essentially run by the criminals and terrorists among them. Most of the street lamps were either burned out or broken. The charred wrecks of stripped cars littered the potholed streets. The few stores in the neighborhood were either barricaded behind steel bars or else reduced to looted, blackened rubble.
Ahmed ben-Belbouk drifted through the night, a shadow among other shadows. He wore a long black raincoat against the night air and a kufi cap to cover his head. He was a little less than six feet tall, and he cultivated a full beard that masked some of the acne scars that pockmarked his round, soft face. By birth French, by heritage Algerian, and by faith a follower of radical Islam, ben-Belbouk was a recruiter for the jihad against America and the decadent West. He operated out of a backroom office in one of the local mosques, quietly and carefully screening those who heeded the call to holy war. Those he judged the most promising were given false passports, cash, and plane tickets and sent outside France for advanced training.
Now, after a long day, he was at last returning to the bleak, grimy welfare apartment graciously provided for him by the state. Counting the secret funds at his disposal, he had money enough to live someplace better, but ben-Belbouk believed it was better to live among those whose loyalty he sought. When they saw him sharing their hardships and their hopelessness, they were more willing to listen to his sermons of hatred and his calls for vengeance on their Western oppressors.
Suddenly the terrorist recruiter noticed movement along the darkened avenue ahead. He stopped. That was odd. These were the hours when the streets of this district were usually deserted. The timid and honest were already cowering at home behind their locked doors, and the criminals and drug dealers were usually either still asleep or too busy indulging their vicious habits to be out and about.
Ben-Belbouk slipped into the darkened door of a burnt-out bakery and stood watching. He slipped his right hand into the pocket of his raincoat and felt the butt of the pistol he carried, a compact Glock 19. The street gangs and other petty criminals who preyed on the residents of the Cite usually steered a wide berth around men like him, but he preferred the option of providing for his own security.
From his place of concealment he watched the activity with growing suspicion. There was a van parked near the base of one of the smashed street lamps. Two men in coveralls were outside the vehicle, holding a ladder for a third technician working on something up near the top of the dark metal pole. Was this supposed to be a crew from the state-run electricity company? Sent here on some quixotic mission to again repair the streetlights already destroyed ten times over by the local residents?
The bearded man's eyes narrowed, and he spat silently to one side. The very thought was ridiculous. Representatives of the French government were despised in this district. Policemen were mobbed on sight. BAISE LA POLICE, “screw the police,” was the single most popular graffiti. The coarse, obscene phrase was spray-painted on every building in sight. Even the firemen sent in to put out the frequent arson blazes were greeted with barrages of Molotov cocktails and rocks. They had to be escorted by armored cars. Surely no electrician in his right mind would dare to set foot in La Courneuve? Not after dark — and certainly not without a detachment of heavily armed riot police to guard him.
So who were these men, and what were they really doing? Ben-Belbouk looked more carefully. The technician on the ladder seemed to be installing a piece of equipment — a small gray rectangular plastic box of some kind.
He ran his gaze along the other street lamps in sight. To his surprise, he noticed identical gray boxes mounted on several of them at precise, regular intervals. Though it was difficult to be sure in the dim light, he thought he could make out dark round openings on the boxes. Were those camera lenses? His suspicions hardened into certainty. These cochons, these pigs, were setting up something — a new surveillance system, perhaps — that would tighten the government's grip on this lawless zone. He could not allow that to pass without resistance.
For a moment he debated whether or not to slip away and rouse the local Islamic brotherhoods. Then he thought better of it. In the inevitable delay these spies could easily finish their work and vanish. Besides, they were unarmed. It would be safer and more satisfying to handle them himself.
Ben-Belbouk drew the small Glock pistol out of his coat pocket and moved out into the open, holding the weapon unobtrusively at his side. He stopped a few paces away from the trio of technicians. “You there!” he called out. “What are you doing here?”
Startled, the two holding the ladder turned toward him. The third man, busy tightening screws on the clamps holding the box to the utility pole, kept working.
“I said, what are you doing here?” ben-Belbouk demanded again, louder this time.
One of the pair at the ladder shrugged. “Our work is none of your business, m'sieur,” he said dismissively. “Go on your way and leave us in peace.”
The bearded Islamic extremist saw red. His thin lips turned downward in a fierce scowl, and he brought the Glock out into plain sight. “This,” he snarled, jabbing the pistol at them, “makes it my business.” He moved closer. “Now answer my question, filth, before I lose my patience!”
He never heard the silenced shot that killed him.
The 7.62mm rifle round hit Ahmed ben-Belbouk behind the right ear, tore through his brain, and blew a large hole in the left side of his skull. Pieces of pulverized bone and brain matter sprayed across the pavement. The terrorist recruiter fell in a heap, already dead.
Secure in the concealing shadows of a trash-strewn alley some distance away, the tall, broad-shouldered man who called himself Nones tapped his sniper lightly on the shoulder. “That was a decent shot.”
The other man lowered his Heckler & Koch PSG-1 rifle and smiled gratefully. Words of praise from any of the Horatii were rare.
Nones keyed his radio mike, speaking to the pair of observers he had posted on nearby rooftops to watch over his technicians. “Any further sign of movement?”
“Negative,” they both replied. “Everything is quiet.”
The green-eyed man nodded to himself. The incident was unfortunate but evidently not a serious threat to his operational security. Murders and disappearances were relatively common occurrences in this part of La Courneuve. One more meant little or nothing. He switched to the technicians' frequency. “How much longer?” he demanded.
“We're almost finished,” their leader reported. “Two more minutes.” “Good.” Nones turned back to the sniper. “Stay ready. Shiro and I will dispose of the body.” Then he looked back at the much shorter man crouching behind him. “Come with me.”
About one hundred meters from the place where Ahmed ben-Belbouk now lay dead, a slender woman stayed
