Locked On

The big black Mercedes truck that had passed him a minute ago was still there by the hair salon, but its side door was open, and several men had climbed out.

Three, four… five guys, all dark-haired and all possessing dark complexions. One of them slid the door shut, and the van pulled away from the curb, made a quick U-turn during a break in the traffic, and turned left on the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie.

The five men on the pavement wore dark blue coveralls and carried small tool bags; they looked like they could be window washers or plumbers or some other type of laborer. Together they crossed the street at the intersection. At first Jack thought they were heading to the front door of the Four Seasons behind him, but instead, once they’d crossed the Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, they turned in the opposite direction. There, just out of Ryan’s field of vision, was the employee entrance to the Four Seasons.

Jack knew he couldn’t let a crew of unknown subjects enter the hotel without making sure they weren’t up to anything nefarious. He leapt out of the minivan, raced around the side, and looked up the street. He just saw the back of the last man as he disappeared… not into the employee entrance of the Four Seasons but rather into the front entrance of the Hotel de Sers.

This was the hotel where the French internal security surveillance team had set up shop to monitor Rokki’s suite in the hotel next door.

“Ninety seconds,” Clark said through the comms, and then the other operators began checking in.

“Sam is in position. I’ll swing out over the courtyard at fifteen.”

“Domingo and Dominic are in position.”

Ryan began crossing the Avenue George V. He wanted to see where the men in blue coveralls were heading. Something was off about them, their appearance, their purposeful strides, the actions of the driver of their vehicle.

Clark’s voice came through his earpiece. “You with us, Ryan?”

“Uh… yes. Ryan is in position.” He wasn’t really, but he was not going to shut down the hit at the Four Seasons because he was checking out something at the hotel next door.

“Clark in position.”

Ryan all but ran to the Hotel de Sers through the throngs of pedestrians on the sidewalk. When he arrived he stepped through the doorway, looked into the dim lobby, and saw the five men waiting in a group by the reception desk, their tool bags over their shoulders. They were being handed some sort of badges, which they clipped onto their coveralls.

Shit, Ryan thought. Maybe they were okay. Just here to clean the windows?

“Forty-five seconds.” Clark’s clipped countdown came through his earpiece.

Ryan started to head back outside, but he stopped in mid-turn.

His leather shoes squeaked on the marble floor as he turned back around.

He looked again at the five men. Focused on one in particular.

His eyes widened. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly to himself.

Slowly, Jack Ryan Jr. turned away again and headed through the door, back into the street. He grabbed his mobile from his jacket pocket, and he changed the transmit channel so his words would go only to Clark.

“Thirty seconds,” Clark whispered on the open net. Right now he’d be in the hallway outside Rokki’s room.

“John.”

“Yeah?” Clark whispered to Ryan, alone now.

“Abdul al Qahtani is here.”

There was a brief tense pause, before, “Here where?”

“Hotel de Sers. He’s with four other men in the lobby. They have bags and they are getting employee badges.” Ryan looked across the street now. He saw the big Mercedes Sprinter double-parked thirty meters west of the hotel, the driver behind the wheel. “One more in a van outside.”

“They’re going after the DCRI unit?” Clark asked.

“I… I don’t know,” answered Ryan. He wanted to sit down and think about it, to analyze the situation like he was at his desk in the office. But he wasn’t in his office, he was out in the field, and here he had no time to do anything more than act on nothing more substantial than his best guess. “Yes,” he said now. What else could they be doing?

Clark did not hesitate. When Ryan received his next transmission, it was broadcast on all channels. John spoke quickly but calmly, the consummate professional, even under extreme stress. “All units abort. I need Dom and Ding to double-time it to the Hotel de Sers around the corner. Ryan has eyes on al Qahtani himself with a possible wet team that are heading to the third floor, targeting the DCRI team in room 301. Grab whatever you can and get over there fast. Ryan has eyes on tangos.”

“On it,” said Chavez. “How many new mutts?”

“Ryan says five, plus a driver still in the vehicle up the street. I’m heading over now, my ETA is three minutes.”

Chavez said, “We’re gonna need four mikes. Five, tops.”

Sam came over the net now. His voice was strained. Right now he would be hanging from a harness four stories over the courtyard of the Four Seasons, some fifteen feet away from his balcony, with no way to get back into his room without climbing back along the wall with his fingertips. “John, it’s going to take me some time to —”

“I know, Sam. Just make your way off the wall and sanitize both rooms. Get all the gear down to the van.”

“Roger,” Sam said. There was nothing he could do about it, but surely he felt as if he was letting his team down. After a heartbeat’s pause, he said, “Good luck.”

Chavez and Caruso carefully placed their rubber masks on their faces, reattached their earpieces, and then moved in a silent blur as they slung over their heads coils of ropes that hung down on one side of their bodies and then slung over their heads their Heckler & Koch MP7 rifles that hung down the other way. Over this gear each man threw on a rain parka; donned a messenger bag with extra ammo, a handgun, and smoke and frag grenades; and then rushed out of the room.

The bed in the room was covered with more equipment, and Driscoll’s taut rope still led out onto and then over the balcony, but there was no time to worry about that now. They had mere moments to get down four flights of stairs, c s ofer ross the street, and get back up four flights to the DCRI’s suite on the third floor of the hotel.

They left the room, ran up the empty hallway, and then moved as quickly as possible down the stairs without raising suspicion.

Chavez said, “En route.”

14

Ryan was back inside the Hotel de Sers. The five terrorists had spoken to the manager, and now they were being led through an employee access door. Ryan passed close to them as he headed for the main stairwell. He took the stairs at an even pace until he rounded the first landing and was shielded from the lobby. Then he began sprinting to the third floor, which was, in the European system, four flights of stairs up from ground level.

As he climbed he spoke into his headset: “John… you want me to call the local cops?”

Clark’s voice came right back; he sounded like he was in the lobby of the Four Seasons now. “There won’t be