behind them. The occasional pedestrian hurried along the sidewalk, and the cameras on the corner posts followed. Swanson stood motionless back in the darkness of the wide sewer, his center perfect over slightly spread legs, a position he could hold for incredible lengths of time. He emptied his mind as the minutes went by. For two hours, he remained immobile, except for an occasional stretching of his muscles. Then he changed position, moving closer to the narrow rectangular opening, leaning on the little shelf of molded concrete with his elbows, and continued to watch.
The first guard came out at 11:28 A.M., a muscular young man in pressed jeans, a white shirt, and an open sport coat. He walked out to the street, looked around, and searched the car. Unlocked it and got inside. Turned on the ignition.
Kyle put down the binos and raised the Dragunov, putting the end of the barrel onto the soft, rolled jacket at the inner edge of the sewer grate, with the Peugeot 4007 overhead hiding the opening. The ribbon moved only sluggishly, telling him the wind was not enough to change the scope. He let his breathing slow, and his heart rate, feeling the strap of the rifle dig into his left arm.
The second guard appeared, a large man in a cheap suit, also with no tie. His hand was at his back, beneath his jacket, probably grasping a pistol. This one stepped out of the courtyard and checked the street both ways. He went back to the front door and said something Kyle could not hear.
Saladin stepped into the open for the short walk to the automobile, no more than ten steps. The bodyguard moving ahead of him opened the door. Only forty meters separated Kyle from Saladin, who was talking on a cell phone as he walked, and the shot, when Swanson took it, was simple. Five steps, six steps, squeeze the trigger, and Saladin never made the seventh step. He was hurled upward by the force of the rising bullet and was tossed backward like a puppet whose strings had been cut, dead before he hit the ground. The bodyguard stared in surprise long enough for Kyle to shift the scope onto him and make a head shot.
The driver threw open his door and rolled out, with his pistol drawn but unable to see a target. Everything beyond the gate looked normal, and the tendency was to look up to find a sniper on a rooftop or in a high window. Kyle had him centered in the scope as the man searched for somebody to shoot at, and Swanson once again smoothly pulled the trigger. Since they were almost on the same level, the flat trajectory sent the bullet ripping into the guard’s shoulder, then down through the chest and rib cage before exiting at the hip. He bucked under the impact, and the round wrecked his heart and lungs.
There was no time to waste now, and Kyle pulled the Dragunov back inside and dropped it into the deep sewage channel flowing behind him. A manhole cover was just above him, and he pushed it aside, grabbed the edges, and hoisted himself up and out, staying low behind the Peugeot. He pulled the silenced Glock from his waist and ran across the street, through the gates, and into the sun-dappled courtyard. Three shots, one into the head of each of his targets, and he was on his way inside.
“YOU SEE THAT? WHO the hell is that?” asked a big man with binoculars pressed hard against his eyes. “He just shot our suspect!” Special Agent David Hunt of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was rocked back by the surprise attack and turned in disbelief to Carolyn Walker, an agent with the Department of Homeland Security. She had been seated, watching a small television set that was linked to the adjustable telescopic lens of a camera that had been recording all movements in the courtyard for the past two days. They, along with the CIA, were part of a joint task force assigned to watch the man believed to be Saladin, the person responsible for the London nerve gas assault. When word came from Washington, they would arrest him. The JTF room was on the fourth floor of an apartment building on a corner overlooking Saladin’s house, which they believed gave them a total view of the entire area.
But the assassin had come out of nowhere, unseen and with no warning. Nevertheless, Walker now had him on the camera and was recording. She adjusted the focus on Kyle’s face, and a USB connection fed the images onto a computer hard drive.
“I got him,” she said. “What the hell is he up to? Let’s go pick him up.”
Dave Hunt threw down his powerful binoculars. A total stranger had barged into their operation and it had all gone to shit, right in the heart of France. “Can’t do that, Carolyn. The French cops are going to be all over this place in ten minutes, and all hell will break loose if they find us up here.”
He stuffed their equipment into large zippered bags, and Walker radioed the joint task force office within the U.S. Embassy to warn them what was happening. As Hunt and Walker ran down the back stairs and got into their dark SUV, more telephone calls were made and agents swung into action, happy to have something to do rather than sit around the office.
JUBA WAS UP AND moving at the first loud
There was no time! It might be anybody, even the French, and the house might now be assaulted by counterterrorism agents. It did not matter how they got this address or the name of Saladin. They just had it, and now Juba had to save himself. He stuck his pistol into his waistband and moved across the Persian carpet to the living room table.
He jerked the printer and power cables from the laptop and folded the computer into its black carrying case. All of the information about the deadly weapon was in that little case, and it had to be removed from harm’s way. Outside, there was a third
The burgundy leather briefcase was beside the table, and he pulled it up and opened it, dumping out the contents except for travel documents and some passports bundled with a rubber band, along with a stack of American hundred-dollar bills that was in one corner. He put the small computer inside and closed the case.
The room was littered with documents and other computer gear that needed to be destroyed, but there was no time to individually shred or burn the items. The entire house would have to go. Juba had spent quite a bit of time planning for just such an emergency, and blocks of explosives were planted at key support points throughout the structure and wired to a detonator connected to a wall switch. He slapped the switch closed without hesitation, which gave him five minutes to leave the house before it blew up.
The noise of three soft, coughing shots came from the courtyard. Juba took the briefcase in his left hand and carried the pistol in his right. He went out, paused at the top of the landing, and snapped off some quick shots downstairs to discourage the intruder.
Juba spun around and headed down the back stairs, putting solid walls between himself and whoever was at the front of the house. In thirty more seconds, he would be clear of the area and in his car that was parked around the corner. With luck, he could make the 5:55 P.M. British Airways flight to Dulles International in Washington. He looked back over his shoulder, up the stairwell.
KYLE SWANSON PUSHED HIS pistol around the corner of the front staircase and fired blindly, twice, then charged up the stairs as he heard the pounding of running feet, retreating in another direction. He took the stairs two at a time, his weapon in front of him, searching for a target.
A door slammed in back and he went that way, noticing the pile of papers in the living room, wondering if the magic formula was among them. Saladin was dead, and that formula was the remaining part of the mission, but he first had to be certain there was no other threat. Whoever was on the run had not continued the suppressing fire, but the footsteps were growing faint. Kyle kicked open the rear door and dove onto the landing of the staircase so the fleeing man below would not have a clear view. He was on his back and then rolled onto his belly with his Glock grasped in both hands as he looked over the top step. The wrought-iron supports for a long railing hindered his view.
