and to confound any eyewitnesses to our actions.” Clark looked around the room. He chuckled. “Jack, you still look like a million bucks. Ding? Amigo, I’m sorry to say this does nothing for you.”
The men looked at one another and laughed, a light moment in what was sure to be an incredibly tense day. They then shouldered up to each other in front of a wall mirror.
Dom said, “They sure do the trick, but I’m going to need a lot of practice getting this thing on. If I have to do it on the fly for some reason, it’s not going to be pretty.”
front ofh='1em'>Clark said, “The same goes for all of us. We’ll keep these with us on the op just in case, but we’ll have regular ski masks we can use if we need to throw something on quick. If we run into trouble and need to get out of there surreptitiously, then we’ll go with these for the exfil. Also, it’s very important to use sunglasses, too. Most facial-recognition algorithms use the distance between the eyes as a key identity measurement. Shades mess up their ability to determine identity more than anything else. In fact, when you leave this house, I want you wearing shades. You can put the masks on later if you need them.”
13
At eight-thirty a.m. Ryan sat behind the wheel of the Ford Galaxy. He was alone in the vehicle now; he’d parked in a space on the Avenue George V across the wide boulevard from the Four Seasons hotel. He faced away from the hotel, but all three of his mirrors were positioned to cover the front entrance and the street and sidewalks approaching the entrance from either direction.
It was a bright and clear morning, and for this reason his dark sunglasses would not seem so out of place if he had to get out of the car. He also wore a light zip-up parka and his black ski mask high on his head like a knit watch cap so he could pull it over his eyes in moments if he had to.
The rest of the team had exited the vehicle five minutes earlier. Clark was on the street now, a block north of Ryan’s location. He wore his sunglasses, a mobile phone earpiece, and a charcoal gray suit, and he carried a briefcase. He looked like any other late-middle-aged man heading to or from a breakfast meeting in the Eighth Arrondissement.
But he wasn’t anyone else. His briefcase contained a lightweight camel-colored sport coat and a dark wig that he could change into in seconds. In his right rear pants pocket he carried his facial-distortion mask and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. The tiny earpiece in his right ear was linked to an encrypted mobile phone in his right front pocket, and the system was set in a voice-activated mode that allowed him to transmit without pressing a button. He also could, by pressing buttons on the front of the mobile phone, either speak to individual members of his team or broadcast on all channels simultaneously.
In the inside pocket of his jacket he carried a propellant-powered injector that contained enough ketamine to render an adult male unconscious in mere seconds.
And in a small leather holster secreted in the waistband of his charcoal gray slacks he carried a SIG Sauer P22 °Compact SAS model.45-caliber pistol. The gun possessed a threaded barrel to allow for the addition of the suppressor that he carried in his left front pocket.
No, John Clark was not an ordinary man strolling the Eighth Arrondissement this morning.
Not by a long shot.
“Ding for John,” Chavez’s voice came through Clark’s earpiece.
“Go, Ding.”
“Dom and I are in the suite above Rokki’s, no trouble getting in. We’ll be ready in five mikes.”
“Good.”
“Sam for John.”
“Go, Sam.”
“I’m in position in the room next to the target. I’ll hook up once Chavez swings the rope down.”
“Roger.”
fgs '3'>“Jack for John.”
“Go, Jack.”
“All clear in front. Negative police on the sidewalk or patrol cars in the street. We’re looking good.”
“Okay.”
Jack checked his mirrors again and made himself blow out a long, calming breath. He had done this sort of thing just enough to know that the next five minutes would feel like an eternity. He kept the back of his head on the headrest of his driver’s seat, tried to appear relaxed, but he kept scanning his mirrors with eyes that moved a mile a minute. He knew the Galaxy’s windows were tinted, so he wasn’t terribly worried about being noticed, but he wanted to avoid any furtive movements that would telegraph his intentions, just on the off chance that someone was paying close attention to him.
A small white French Prefect Police patrol car passed by. Jack avoided the impulse to alert Clark; he knew the police would patrol around here as a matter of course, and although it made his heart pound even harder, he knew there was nothing to worry about.
The patrol drove on, followed the heavy morning traffic to the north. Ryan tracked the police car until it disappeared from view.
Jack looked to his left just as a big black Mercedes Sprinter van passed across from him, blocking his view of the front of the Four Seasons. The truck passed on a moment later, and then drove through the intersection of Avenue George V and Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie. The truck pulled out of traffic and stopped alongside a hair salon on the corner, and Ryan turned away to check the opposite sidewalk. He could see John Clark on the far side of the street now, moving along with a large group of pedestrians as he headed toward the entrance to the Four Seasons.
Ryan listened to transmissions among the other men on his team as he kept scanning with his three mirrors, and then out the windows of the Galaxy. Clark announced that Gavin Biery had confirmed that the cameras in the hotel were down, and then, seconds later, Jack watched the older man disappear into the luxurious lobby of the hotel.
Ryan wished he was inside with the others, but he understood his role here. Someone had to drive; someone had to be on the lookout for both enemies and friendlies that could get in the way of this op.
But it was hard to know what, exactly, he was on the lookout for. Certainly any police arriving at the hotel. He and Clark had discussed the slim possibility that French police might come to make an arrest of Rokki at just exactly the wrong time. And also he had to keep an eye out for any obvious URC goons. Jack had memorized dozens and dozens of faces of terrorists from their photos in the Rogues Gallery he kept on his computer, though at this distance he’d be hard-pressed to ID any terrorist who didn’t have a Kalashnikov in his hand and a bomb vest strapped to him.
Still, he knew his role was vital, even if it felt like he was just the bus driver for this op.
For the twentieth time in the past few minutes, Jack checked the driver’s-side mirror for any police on the sidewalk approaching the hotel from the south.
It, too, was clear of police.
“Three minutes,” said Clark. “All unit s. 3'>s check in at ninety seconds.”
Ryan started to turn his eyes back to the rearview.
