The Loch Ness Legacy (21 page)

“Bloody hell!” she yelled.

“Zim’s men,” Tyler said, as he crouched back to back with Apollo. “They must have seen us enter.”

“How did they know we were coming here?”

“I’m not sure, but our feline friend gave that guy away. He must have been setting up to ambush us on the way out.”

“How many men?”

“Can’t tell.”

“They’ve got us pinned,” Brielle said.

“And it’s only a matter of time before they can get into position for a kill shot.”

“Any ideas?”

He looked around the cave, his gaze settling on the bucket, then following the rope up to the top of the scaffold.

“You’re not thinking of climbing that?” Brielle said. “Those pistols may not have much accuracy at that range, but they’ll pick us off eventually.”

“I was thinking more of a Tarzan escape.” He untied the rope from the bucket. “If we get some momentum, the trajectory should take us to the other side of the scaffold, and we can duck into the woods. Once we’re out of the grove and into the open, they can’t run around with guns drawn.”

“Are you serious?”

“Unless you have a Smith and Wesson tucked in your shorts, I think this gun battle is a bit one-sided.”

Brielle almost suggested they call the police, but the next round of bullet impacts made the notion absurd. They’d be dead before anyone arrived.

“I’m in favor of not dying,” she said. “Are you sure the scaffold will hold our weight?”

“No.”

“All right then.”

He took the rope in hand and wrapped it around his wrist.

Brielle saw that there was no way for her to grab it as well. “Wait a minute—”

“Climb on.” He knelt so that his back was to her.

“You are deranged.”

“I can handle it. You’re pretty light.”

“
Pretty
light?”

She peeked through the arms of Apollo. One of the men was running to a flanking position. The other one fired. More rounds pinged off the stones.

“Very light!” Tyler shouted. “Get on!”

Brielle climbed on his back. “Ready!”

Tyler burst out of his crouch and dashed forward until the rope went taut. Brielle felt the heat of the bullets as they zinged past her. Tyler launched himself off the pedestal and the rope swung them around, the scaffold teetering on two of its legs. If it gave out or tipped over, they’d be thrown into the pond, where they’d be at the mercy of Zim’s men.

The scaffolding held. They swung in a wide arc over the water and toward the side statue.

“When we land, keep going!” Tyler shouted.

The rope completed its arc, and his feet came down on the pedestal only a few yards from the trees. Brielle dropped and had her legs moving as soon as she touched the ground. They dived into the woods, bullets clipping branches and leaves behind them.

They didn’t stop until they reached the outer fence. Tyler went first and heaved her over with him. They landed on the path in front of an elderly couple who gaped at them in astonishment.

“
Qu’est-ce que c’est
…” said the woman.

“
Bonjour
,” Tyler said, dusting the dirt from his jeans. He continued with his fractured French. “
Ou est les toilettes, s’il vous plait
?”

The man mutely pointed behind him at the chateau.

Tyler grabbed Brielle’s hand and ran in the opposite direction with her in tow. The couple called out that they were going the wrong way.

Brielle sprinted beside him. “Your first thought was to ask where the bathroom is?”

“It’s the only French I know. And I do have to go at some point. But we need to get to the fountain first.”

Two gendarmes darted around the corner. Brielle put on her best shrieking act and told them in French that two men were shooting guns in the
Bains d’Apollon
. One of the policeman got on his radio to call it in while the other drew his sidearm and approached the section of woods from which they’d emerged.

Tyler and Brielle kept running. She looked over her shoulder and saw one of the gunmen come over the fence right into the arms of the waiting policemen. The second man, his blond hair rumpled and dirty and his jacket torn, fell back over the fence but dropped his weapon on the path. One of the policemen climbed the fence to pursue him.

“Well,” Brielle said, “you’ve got your distraction.”

They jogged on, turning at the next corner. Just as they reached the end of the path that spilled into the main promenade, the blond gunman leaped over the fence in front of them and took off toward the Grand Canal, not noticing Tyler and Brielle in his haste. She expected the gendarme to appear as well, but there was no sign of him. She guessed that he’d lost sight of his prey.

When they entered the promenade, Brielle saw the Apollo Fountain a few hundred yards ahead spewing water from a dozen spots and showering the entire statue in a fine mist. The tourists seemed more curious than afraid about what was happening, possibly because the gunshots had been muffled and no one had seen anyone shooting. The gunman raced away, but she had no idea where he thought he was going.

A thrum droned from the same direction. Sunlight glinted off a silver plane flying low. Too low, as if the pilot were going to crash. Brielle blinked twice before she realized that it wasn’t an accident about to happen.

A float plane was coming in for a landing on the Grand Canal.

Passengers in their boats frantically paddled to get out of the way of the aircraft, which settled onto the smooth pool. It pivoted at the end of the canal, and the passenger door opened.

She and Tyler skidded to a halt. Standing there on the pontoon like a king surveying his realm was a grinning Victor Zim.

Tyler was astounded to see Zim hop off the pontoon and run over to the fountain.

“What’s he doing?” Brielle asked.

“Maybe the same thing we are,” Tyler replied. “I think it confirms your theory that the fountain is our target.”

An electric utility cart driven by a gardener pulled up next to them from a cross path. The gardener got out and spoke on his radio as he stared at the plane idling in the canal. Tyler nodded toward the cart, and Brielle hopped in. Tyler got in the driver’s seat and floored the accelerator as the gardener cursed at them and gave a half-hearted chase before giving up.

Tyler kept his eyes on Zim, who waded out into the pool. Tourists were pointing and taking photos of him walking into the mist, but he didn’t seem to care. He got to the center where Apollo sat on his chariot and bent over. It looked like he had something in his hand, possibly taking a photo like Tyler was planning to do.

“I’ll take Zim,” Tyler said. “You get the photo and send it to Grant. Who knows how long we’ll have before the entire place is swarming with cops.”

As if in response, the music abruptly stopped, and a voice replaced it, speaking first in French and then English.

An incident at Versailles requires evacuation. Please go to the nearest exit.

Many of the tourists simply ignored the plea and kept watching the events unfolding.

Zim finished his task and waded back toward the canal. By this time the blond gunman was at the float plane and climbed aboard.

The cart reached the front of the fountain, and Brielle jumped out and into the water. Tyler drove around, reaching the rear of the fountain as Zim pulled himself out. Tyler aimed the cart at Zim, hoping to run him down, but Zim saw him at the last moment and sidestepped the speeding vehicle.

As he passed, Tyler reached with one arm and grabbed a handful of Zim’s shirt, pulling Tyler out of the cart and both of them to the ground.

Zim reached into his jacket and drew a pistol. Tyler dived for his hand and deflected it before Zim could get a bead on Tyler’s head. The gun went off, and now tourists started running and screaming.

Tyler dug his fingers into Zim’s wrist tendons as he wrenched it sideways. The pistol went flying and slid under the cart.

“You’re a dead man, Locke,” Zim hissed. He backhanded Tyler in the temple, setting off a cacophony of bells in his head. Tyler shook it off and elbowed Zim in the face, connecting with his eye socket.

He had the upper hand until Zim punched Tyler in his healing bicep. Tyler cried out in pain and rolled off him. Zim jumped to his feet and attempted to deliver the final blow by stomping on Tyler’s head, but he rolled again, the foot missing his head by no more than an inch. It was so close that water from Zim’s boot sprayed Tyler in the face.

“Come on!” came a shout from the plane. Zim looked around, and Tyler saw policemen racing down from the palace.

“I’ll finish you next time,” Zim said as he ran off.

Brielle ran up and knelt beside him. “Are you all right?”

Tyler nodded. She thrust something at him. “I found this next to the foot of Apollo. Can you disarm it?”

He could make out a red timer counting down inside a sandwich-sized plastic baggie. It was mounted on a small block of C4 plastic explosive.

They had two minutes.

At a party once, an annoying acquaintance found out that Tyler had disposed of bombs and complained about movies, asking him why they always showed bombs with a convenient red LED timer counting down.

“If I put a bomb in your car and activated it,” Tyler had replied, “I’d want to know when it was going off.” That shut the guy up.

Disarming a bomb, however, wasn’t a simple matter. Unless you had time to examine the device so you knew exactly what you were dealing with, cutting a wire was inviting a premature boom.

The goal now was finding somewhere to place the bomb so that it wouldn’t harm anyone when it went off. Tyler saw Zim climbing onto the plane’s pontoon and had a brainstorm.

There was a nylon rope in the back of the utility cart, the kind used to cordon off areas that the gardener was working on. Tyler took one end of it.

“Tie the other end to the cart,” he instructed Brielle as he put the top of the baggie between his teeth and ran for the plane. If he couldn’t put the bomb on the plane, he could at least keep it from taking off.

Zim had already closed the door, and the plane’s engine revved up. If it got any speed, Tyler wouldn’t be able to catch it by swimming.

The plane turned and Tyler hurtled off the edge of the canal. He landed on the pontoon and promptly slipped off. With his single free hand, he grasped the rear strut connecting the pontoon to the fuselage. He pulled himself up so that he was straddling the pontoon like a saddle.

Using two half-hitches, he knotted the rope to the strut. He looked back and saw that Brielle had tied the other end to the frame of the cart.

With all of the boats and passengers now evacuated from the canal, it was wide open. The plane roared as it attempted to take off, and the rope became taut. The extra weight was enough to curb the aircraft’s acceleration, and Tyler looked for a spot to tuck the bomb in the fuselage. He saw a small access panel toward the rear and stood to open it but was pitched backward and nearly fell off when the plane began to move forward again. The pilot had compensated for the drag, and the utility cart was now rolling toward the canal.

Brielle got in and hit the brakes, but the cart was already on the grass. The tires bit but then slid along the slick surface. The back tires went off the edge, and the cart tumbled into the water with Brielle still inside.

The cart was slowing the plane so that it couldn’t take off, but Brielle was trapped as the cart was dragged through the water. If he didn’t cut the rope, she might drown before he could free her.

Tyler didn’t need to slow the plane any more. The bomb would take care of Zim. He flicked open his Leatherman tool’s knife and sliced through the rope. He used the blade to pry the access panel open and took the bomb from his teeth.

Thirty seconds left. Perfect.

He put the tool away to jam the bomb in the cubby hole, but he almost dropped the baggie when he was kicked in the leg. Tyler collapsed to the pontoon and saw the blond gunman prepare for another blow.

Tyler leaned forward and grabbed the man’s jacket before he could follow through on the kick. He realized he wouldn’t be able to hide the explosive in the access panel now. But he had a better idea. While he had a hold of the coat, Tyler pushed upward against the guy’s chin and surreptitiously slipped the bomb into the side pocket. The man shoved him back, causing Tyler’s foot to slip off the pontoon. He fell into the water and came up to see the unwitting bomb carrier smiling before he climbed back into the plane.

Tyler stood in the shallow pool with his shoulders above the surface and waved goodbye. He counted the seconds down. There couldn’t be more than five left.

The plane rose from the water five hundred yards down the canal. Just as it did so, the passenger door flew open, and the gunman tumbled out of the plane, pushed by Zim’s boot. The door closed, and the man somersaulted into the water with a splash as the plane banked hard.

A geyser of water erupted from the canal with an ear-splitting crack. The plane zoomed away low over the trees.

Tyler waded back to Brielle, who was already out of the water. She extended a hand and helped him out.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“Yes, but my plan didn’t work. Either Zim or his man must have noticed the wet bomb soaking the guy’s pocket, and Zim threw him out. How about you?”

“Fine. I got the photo off to Grant before I saw the bomb.”

“We need to warn him that they’re on to us.”

“I don’t think my phone’s any use now.”

“Mine’s soaked, too.”

Two gendarmes ran up to them with guns drawn. Tyler didn’t have to guess what they were yelling. He put his hands up, and Brielle did the same.

Tyler leaned over to her. “It’s good Minister Fournier owes us a favor. Who knew we’d be calling it in so soon?”

Once they had their library cards, Professor Ashburn left Alexa and Grant alone and went back to his lab, telling them to call when they were ready to leave. Although they now had access to the library, they wouldn’t be able to check anything out without him present.