“Is he the target?”
“We don’t think so.”
“Where’s Tommy Karr?”
“He’s all right. We want you to keep focused on your mission. We have a list of the passengers who checked in. Your subject was in a second-class car, seat number—”
“I went through this with Rockman,” Dean told her. “There’s a kid in that seat about nine years old. I even looked at her ticket.”
He had pretended to be confused about the seat. The girl’s mother, sitting next to her, showed the proper ticket. It was possible that she’d switched with someone, but the woman didn’t seem to understand his question when he asked. In any event, McCormack was no longer nearby.
“We’re using a pattern recognition program to review the images we captured from the security cameras in the station and compare them with the ones Lia took earlier,” said Chafetz. “The first pass hasn’t shown any hits, but we’re widening the parameters. We’re going to ask the British authorities to meet the train and quarantine it. They may have to do that outside the station; we’re not sure yet. We don’t have to make a decision for a while; the train actually goes pretty slowly once it comes out of the Chunnel.”
“How good is your program?”
“Still experimental,” Chafetz admitted. “But if we get a straight-on shot or a decent profile, we can match. Once we get beyond the first pass, things get a little more problematic. We’re also looking at it ourselves.”
“You can’t just match up person for person?”
“We’re trying, Charlie. The problem is we didn’t start with a good shot in the first place and we didn’t have direct coverage inside the waiting area. The French video surveillance system is not what you would call cutting- edge, and it wasn’t set up to watch the Eurostar area. They obviously figured the security at the gates would suffice. So we have to enhance images from cameras on the far platform, and it’s not quite a piece of cake. At the same time, your subject obviously changed his appearance. Since we don’t know who he is, we have to work backward — we’re matching the people who haven’t changed. The computer program was not designed to do what we’re trying to do, so even if we had good images to start with, it wouldn’t be easy. It doesn’t mean that we won’t get it. Just that it’ll take a few minutes. OK?”
“OK. I appreciate the explanation.”
Lia came into the car and sat down across from him.
“The Eiffel Tower is under attack,” he told her.
“Where’s Tommy?”
“They won’t say.”
“Then he’s in the middle of it.”
There was a tone on the loudspeaker. The train master spoke, repeating the same message in French and English:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching the English Channel. We will be in the Chunnel for a short ride.”
“Ahead of schedule,” said Lia.
“We have six possibilities,” said Chafetz. “We’ll be able to download them to you in about three minutes. See if you can check each one out, get any additional information.”
“Can you transmit when we’re in the Chunnel?” asked Dean.
“Uh, no. All right, I’m sorry — the train is ahead of schedule. We may have to wait until you’re but. We won’t be able to transmit while you’re in the tunnel. But it won’t be long. It only takes ten minutes or so. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Just to the restroom,” said Dean, getting up.
88
“French television is just getting images of the battle at the Eiffel Tower,” Telach told Rubens.
“The surveillance network we tapped into?”
“That went out when the terrorists blew up the stairs and the elevator on the north and south legs. The news feed is all we can get.”
“Put the French news feed on the screen,” he told her.
A blurred blue image filled the screen, too shaky and distant for Rubens to make out. Then the Eiffel Tower came into view, the old grid work stark against the backdrop of the sky. Smoke curled from the side and top.
Rubens knew from Tommy’s description that the terrorists were clustered around a girder about twenty feet below the third level. There wasn’t enough detail for Rubens to make out what was going on, but he assumed that they were stitching their bomb vests together. They’d be almost done now.
“Tell the French not to let them put their bomb packs together,” Rubens told Telach.
“We already have.”
“Tell them again.”
Johnny Bib burst through the door at the side of the room, two of his analysts behind him.
“Johnny, things are chaotic here,” warned Rubens.
“I know where the old French atomic warhead is,” said Johnny Bib. “We found another simulation, this one involving a nuclear device.”
89
The first shot missed high.
The next took down the terrorist who was kneeling above the others on the girder.
After that, Karr lost track, emptying the pistol into the men perched in the grid work less than three yards away. Someone began firing back, but Karr kept shooting until he ran out of bullets. Then he slid back to the dead terrorist, hoping he’d missed another magazine of bullets before.
Two more helicopters buzzed nearby. The structure shuddered as slugs from the 12.7mm weapons hit the girders. Tommy looked up from the body and saw one of the terrorists fall. There were two men huddled on the girder across from him, working on what looked like a pile of small potatoes stacked against the X-shaped strut work.
Part of the bomb.
If the empty missile launcher had been a gun or if the dead man next to him had had more bullets, Karr could have easily picked the two men off.
He grabbed the empty tube and ran up the steps another flight, thinking there might be another rocket- propelled grenade somewhere. But there was nothing there and not on the next one, either.
Something exploded below him. The French gendarmes had gotten ropes and were climbing up from the second floor; one of the terrorists had dropped a grenade on them.
Out of other options, he flung his body onto the grid work and began climbing down in their direction.
90
Mussa waited for the passenger to pass through the doorway before locking down the wheels to the serving cart and pulling open the cabinet so he could remove the two bombs. They were Semtex, more sensitive to shock than the material in the molded cases. How much more sensitive he wasn’t sure, but he made sure not to drop
