When he waved it over Jack’s right wrist-over his Hamilton Gilbert-the wand began to beep. Loudly.
The entire room went quiet, heads turning in reaction to the sound. Without missing a beat, Reinhardt produced a gun and pressed it against Jack’s head.
“The watch,” he demanded. “Take it off.”
Sara just stood there looking stunned and Jack was flabbergasted.
With horror, he thought:
Swain. While I was out, he had my watch. Has he been tracking us all this time?
“Take it off!” the bulldog roared.
But before Jack could comply a radio squawked nearby. Brendan Lapworth’s frantic voice came over the airwaves “Shut her down! We’re under attack!”
As one, all eyes shifted to the computer screen showing the infrared security cameras as a team of black- suited commandos spilled from a van then crashed through the chain-link gate — and shot Ethan and Brendan down in cold blood.
27
Chaos.
That was the only word to describe it.
The room erupted in shouts and scrambling bodies. Alain quickly moved from computer to computer to shut them down, as people hurried toward windows and doors. Reinhardt’s expression was pure fury. He slammed Jack across the back of the head with his gun, then stepped back and was about to pull the trigger when Sara shouted.
“No!”
She smashed into their leader, knocking him against the white board. He went down with a crash and she grabbed Jack’s arm, pulling him toward the doorway.
“Run!”
Jack’s head was throbbing as they flew through the hallway, shouts echoing around them. The commandos were inside the building and storming up the stairs, firing indiscriminately at any movement they saw.
A bullet gouged plaster above Jack’s head and Sara steered him through a doorway into another apartment, pulling him into the bathroom.
She pointed toward the ceiling. “Up there. Open it!”
Gunfire echoed in the hall as Jack jumped onto the toilet, unlatched a square hatch above it-an air vent-and threw it open. The space was just big enough for him to fit through.
“Go!” she said.
Jack hoisted himself up and through to a slanted slate rooftop. He turned and reached back inside and Sara got onto the toilet and grabbed hold of his hands. He pulled her up, paused just long enough to drop his beloved watch through the opening, then quickly closed the hatch.
Down in the street, several more vans and French police cars screeched to a stop in front of the building, uniformed officers piling out, weapons at the ready. Whatever lie they had been told-undoubtedly by MI6-they had swallowed it whole.
The rooftops of Paris were like no place else on earth. For as far as Jack could see in the moonlight there were no flat surfaces, just a maze of slants and protrusions, gullies and pipes and television antennas- visual disorder but beautiful, as if the city had been designed by a mad genius.
Sara got to her feet and started across the slanted roof, gesturing for Jack to follow. But that was easier said than done. She seemed to have a path mapped out, grabbing onto landmarks along the way-a pipe here, a chimney there, the occasional satellite dish-and Jack could only stumble along after her, his head throbbing, trying his best not to slip and fall.
When they were halfway across, the hatch popped open behind them and they heard a shout, the voice familiar “Sara! Sara!”
Coming to a stop, they turned and saw Alain climbing from the hatch as he called to her.
“I had to wipe all the computers,” he said. “The key-tell me you still have the key!”
She patted her pocket. “Yes, yes. Now hurry!”
Alain started forward as a shot rang out behind him. His spine split in a burst of blood, the impact pitching him onto the slanted rooftop. He threw his hands out, scrambling for purchase-more twitching reflex than anything, Jack knew-but then his face went blank and his body flopped and rolled, tumbling over the side of the building into the darkness below.
Sara screamed, moonlit tears filling her eyes-genuine tears-as one of the commandos hoisted himself through the hatch.
Jack put his hands on her shoulders and gently nudged her forward.
“Go! Go! ”
Sara didn’t need further prompting. She turned and continued toward the edge of the rooftop, picking up speed. Jack did his best to keep up with her.
The adjoining building was only four stories high, but Sara didn’t let that slow her down. She leaped onto it without hesitation, grabbing a fat ventilation pipe as she landed. Jack followed, his shoes slipping from under him as he hit the second rooftop. He fell onto his side and nearly went tumbling, but managed to grab Sara’s extended hand, got hold of the pipe, and steadied himself.
Another shot cracked, the bullet ricocheting wildly. Pulling himself upright, Jack got back to his feet and hurried after Sara as she yanked open the roof-access door of the building and disappeared inside. A moment later they were on the stairs, spiraling quickly toward the ground floor. When they reached it, breathing heavily, Sara cautiously opened a squeaking door into a narrow, cobblestone alleyway. She looked, then exited. As Jack followed her outside, she stopped and turned, her eyes still full of tears.
“Give me that bloody watch,” she said, still trying to catch her breath.
“I left it in the bathroom so they couldn’t track us,” he said.
She looked at him suspiciously.
“They were shooting at me, too!” he reminded her.
“Alain was one of my dearest friends,” she said.
“I’m truly sorry,” Jack told her. “But I didn’t set you up, if that’s what you’re thinking. You think I want to see another 9/11? I was had, Sara, just like your agents who died in the bathroom, in the alley. Like you were when they killed Abdal. It happens.”
She looked at him with angry eyes but didn’t seem to have a response. She gestured toward the roof. “They’ll be across soon. There’s a garage around the corner, where Brendan left the van. Let’s hope they haven’t found it.”
She turned and hurried through the alley.
Jack followed her, unable to fathom how any religion, any philosophy, any political goal, was worth what this had already cost.
And it was still just the opening salvo.
They were blasting through the streets of Paris in the Citroen, Sara behind the wheel. She’d found the key in a small magnetic box under the rear bumper, and so far the journey had been uneventful, no sign of anyone in pursuit.
Sara was angry and heartbroken, but had that slightly shell-shocked look that Jack had gotten so used to seeing during his days in Iraq.
“They’re dead,” she said. “Probably every last one of them. All because of that bloody watch. All because I brought you there.”
“Believe me, Sara, I didn’t know about the tracker. How could I? You think they strapped me in that chair for the fun of it? You must have heard my screams.”
