Seven Ancient Wonders (32 page)

. . . landing with a thump on the top deck of the bus, a second before it sped away toward the River Seine.

From the moment of their daring heist at the Louvre, other forces had been launched into action.

As one would expect, a theft from the Louvre instantly shot across the Paris police airwaves—airwaves that were monitored by other forces of the state.

What Stretch didn’t know was that the Paris police had been outranked at the highest levels
and taken off this pursuit
.

The chase would be carried out by the French Army.

Just as West had anticipated.

And so, as the big red double-decker bus shot away from the Obelisk and its wrecked outer structure, the Parisian police didn’t follow. They just maintained their positions around the perimeter of the Place de la Concorde.

Moments later, five green-painted heavily-armed fast-attack reconnaissance vehicles
whooshed
past the cop cars and shot off after the great ungainly bus.

Horns honked and sirens blared as the double-decker bus roared down the Quai des Tuileries on the edge of the River Seine for the second time that day—weaving between the thin daytime traffic, blasting through red lights, causing all manner of havoc.

Behind it were the five French Army recon vehicles.

Each was a compact three-man scout car known as a Panhard VBL. Fitted with a turbo-charged four-wheel-drive diesel engine and a sleek arrow-shaped body, the Panhard was a swift and nimble all-terrain vehicle that looked like an armour-plated version of a sports 4x4.

The Panhards chasing West were fitted with every variety of gun turret: some had long-barrelled 12.7 mm machine guns, others had fearsome-looking TOW missile launchers.

Within moments of the chase beginning, they were all over the speeding bus.

They opened fire, shattering every window on the bus’s left-hand side—a second before the bus roared into a tunnel, blocking their angle of fire.

Two of the Army Panhards tried to squeeze past the bus inside the tunnel, but Stretch swerved toward them, ramming them into the wall of the tunnel, grinding them against it.

With nowhere to go, both Panhards skidded and flipped . . . and rolled . . . tumbling end over end until they crashed to twin halts on their roofs.

On the upper deck, Pooh Bear and West rocked with every swerve, tried to return fire. Pooh spied one of the TOW missile launchers on one Panhard.

‘They’ve got missiles!’ he yelled.

West called, ‘They won’t use them! They can’t risk destroying the Piece!’

‘
West!
’ Stretch’s voice came over their radios. ‘
It’s only a matter of time before they barricade off this road! What do we do?
’

‘We drive faster!’ West replied. ‘We have to get to the Charles de Gaulle Bridge—’

Shoom—!

—they blasted out of the tunnel, back into sunlight, just in time to see two French Army helicopters sweep into positions above them.

They were two very different types of chopper: one was a small Gazelle gunship, sleek and fast and bristling with guns and missile pods.

The other was bigger and much scarier: it was a Super Puma troop carrier, the French equivalent of the American Super Stallion. Big and tough, a Super Puma could carry twenty-five fully armed troops.

Which was exactly what this chopper was carrying.

As it flew low over the top of the speeding double-decker bus, along the rising-and-falling roadway on the north bank of the Seine, its side door slid open and drop-ropes were flung from within it—and the French plan became clear.

They were going to storm the bus
—
the
moving
bus!

At the same moment, three of the pursuing Panhards swept up alongside the bus, surrounding it.

‘I think we’re screwed already,’ Stretch said flatly.

But he yanked on his steering anyway—ramming hard into the Panhard to his right, forcing it clear off the roadway, right
through
the low guard-rail fence . . . where it shot high into the air, wheels spinning, and went crashing down into the river with a gigantic splash.

Up on the top deck, West tried to fire at the hovering Super Puma above him, but a withering volley from the Gazelle gunship forced
him to dive for the floor. Every single passenger seat on the top deck of the bus was ripped to shreds by the barrage of bullets.

‘Stretch! More swerving, please!’ he yelled, but it was too late.

The first two daredevil French paratroopers from the Super Puma landed with twin thumps on the open top deck of the moving double-decker bus only a few feet in front of him.

They saw West instantly, lying in the aisle between the seats: exposed, done for. They whipped up their guns and pulled the trigg—

—just as the floor beneath them erupted with holes, bullet holes from a shocking burst of fire from somewhere
underneath
them.

The two French troopers fell, dead, and a moment later, Pooh Bear’s head popped up from the stairwell.

‘Did I get them? Did I get them? Are you okay?’ he said to West.

‘I’m all right,’ West said, hurrying down the stairs to the lower deck. ‘Come on, we’ve gotta get to the Charles de Gaulle Bridge before this bus falls apart!’

The rising-and-falling riverside drive that they were speeding along would normally have been a tourist’s delight: after leaving the Louvre behind, the roadway swooped by the first of the two islands that lie in the middle of the Seine, the Ile de la Cité. Numerous bridges spanning the river rushed by on the right, giving access to the island.

If West’s team continued along the riverside road, they would soon arrive at the Arsenal precinct—the area where the Bastille once stood.

After that came two bridges: the Pont d’Austerlitz and the Pont Charles de Gaulle, the latter of which sat beside the very modern headquarters of the Ministry of Economics, Finances and Industry, which itself sat next-door to the Gare de Lyon, the large train station that serviced south-eastern France with high-speed trains.

The big red tourist bus whipped along the riverside road, weaving through traffic, ramming the pursuing Army cars with wild abandon.

It shot underneath several overpasses and over some raised intersections. At one stage the spectacular Notre Dame Cathedral whizzed by on the right, but this was perhaps the only tourist bus in the world that didn’t care for the sight.

As soon as West had abandoned the upper deck of the bus, the French troops on the Super Puma above him went for it in earnest—despite Stretch’s best efforts at evasive weaving.

And within a minute, they took it.

First, two troopers landed on the open top deck, whizzing down
the drop-ropes suspended from the chopper. They were quickly followed by two more, two more and two more.

The eight French troopers now moved to the rear stairwell of the bus, guns up, preparing to storm the lower deck. . . 

. . . just as, downstairs, West called: ‘Stretch! They’re crawling all over the roof! See that exit ramp up ahead! Roll us over it!’

Immediately ahead of them was another overpass, with an exit ramp rising to meet it on the right-hand side of the riverside drive. A low concrete guard-rail fence separated this ramp from the roadway which continued on underneath the overpass as a tunnel.

‘What?’ Stretch shouted back.

‘Just do it!’ West yelled. ‘Everybody, grab onto something! Hang on!’

They hit the exit ramp at speed, and rose up it briefly—

—at which moment Stretch yanked
left
on the steering wheel, and the bus lurched leftward, hitting the concrete guard-rail and. . . 

. . . tipped over it!

The double-decker bus overbalanced shockingly and rolled
over
the concrete fence, using the fence as a fulcrum. As such, the entire double-decker bus
rolled
, going fully upside-down—off the exit ramp,
back down
onto the roadway proper—where it
slammed
down onto its open-topped roof. . . 

. . . crushing all eight of the French troops on it!

But it wasn’t done yet.

Since it had tipped over the dividing rail from a considerable height, it still had a lot of sideways momentum.

So the big bus
continued
to roll, bouncing off its now-crushed roof and coming upright once again, commencing on a second roll—only to bang hard against the far wall of the sunken roadway, which had the incredible effect of
righting the bus
and plonking it back on its own wheels, so that now it was travelling once again on the riverside drive and heading into the tunnel having just performed a full 360-degree roll!

Inside the bus, the world rotated crazily, 360 degrees, hurling West’s team—Lily included—all around the cabin.

They tumbled and rolled, but they all survived the desperate move.

Indeed, they were all still lying on the floor when West scrambled to his feet and launched into action.

He took the wheel from Stretch as their mangled and dented bus swept out of the tunnel and into the Arsenal district. Having seen what West was prepared to do to anyone who tried to storm his bus from above, the Super Puma just flanked them now, swooping low over the river parallel to the speeding bus.

And just then, the modern glass-and-steel towers of the Economics Ministry came into view up ahead.

‘That bridge up ahead is the Pont d’Austerlitz,’ Pooh Bear said, peering over West’s shoulder. ‘The Charles de Gaulle Bridge is the one after it!’

‘Gotcha,’ West said. ‘Tell everybody to get their pony bottles and masks ready, and then get to the doors. Go!’

Pooh Bear gathered everyone together—Lily, Stretch and Big Ears—and they all clambered to the side and rear doors of the bus.

The bus swept past the Pont d’Austerlitz, roaring towards the next bridge: the Pont Charles de Gaulle. Like the Austerlitz before it, the Charles de Gaulle Bridge branched out to the right, stretching over the river; beyond it, the glass towers of the Economics Ministry stabbed into the sky.

The riverside drive rose to meet the Charles de Gaulle Bridge, providing West with a ramp of sorts.

And while every other car in Paris would have slowed as they climbed this exit ramp, West accelerated.

As such, he hit the Charles de Gaulle Bridge at phenomenal speed, whereupon the great battered double-decker tourist bus performed its last earthly feat.

It
exploded
through the low pedestrian fence on the far side of the bridge and shot out into the air above the Seine, flying in a
spectacular parabolic arc, its great rectangular mass soaring through the sky, before its nose tipped and it began to fall, and West bailed out of the driver’s compartment and the others leapt from the side and rear doors and the big bus slammed into the river.

As the bus hit the surface of the Seine, the four people on its doors went flying to the side of it, also crashing into the water, albeit with smaller splashes.

But to the shock of those in the two pursuing French helicopters, they never surfaced.

Underwater, however, things were happening.

Everyone had survived the deliberate crash, and they regrouped with West, all of them now wearing divers’ masks and breathing from pony bottles.

They swam through the murky brown water of the river, converging on the cobblestoned northern wall of the Seine, underneath the Charles de Gaulle Bridge.

Here, embedded in the medieval wall, under the surface of the river, was a rusty old gate that dated back to the 1600s.

The padlock sealing it was new and strong, but a visit earlier that morning by Pooh Bear with a boltcutter had altered it slightly. The padlock hung in place and, to the casual observer, it would have looked intact. But Pooh Bear had cut it cleanly on the rear side, so that now he just pulled it off the rusty gate by hand.

Beyond the gate, a brick-walled passageway disappeared into the murky gloom. The team swam into the passageway—with the last person in the line, Big Ears, closing the underwater gate behind them and snapping a brand-new padlock on it, identical to the one that had been sealing it before.

After about twenty yards, the underwater passageway rose into a tight sewer-like tunnel.

They all stood in the sewer-tunnel, knee-deep in foul-smelling water.

‘How very Gothic,’ Stretch said, deadpan.

‘Christian catacombs from the 17th century,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘They’re all over Paris, over 270 kilometres of tunnels and catacombs. This set of tunnels runs all the way along the Boulevard Diderot. They’ll take us past the Economics Ministry, right to the Gare de Lyon.’

West checked his watch.

It was 12:35 p.m.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a train to catch.’

The three remaining French Army Panhards descended on the Charles de Gaulle Bridge, disgorging men. The big red bus was still actually half-afloat, but in the process of sinking.

The two choppers patrolled the air above the crash-site, searching, prowling.

Curious Parisians gathered on the bridge to watch.