The Paris Protection (11 page)

As Abbott ran through the enormous lobby toward one of the many wide hallways branching out from the center, he heard a flurry of rapid commands and reports through his earpiece.

“This is Command Center. PPD agents encountered a group of attackers on the basement level.”

“What level?” a voice demanded through the radio.

“B-two or B-.”

“How many hostiles?”

“A dozen reported,” the agent from the command center radioed.

“They’re moving toward the lobby from north stairs by lower ballroom,” a husky voice said, with loud snaps of gunfire in the background.

Abbott wanted to engage this enemy now before they could cause any more damage.

Another voice ripped through the encrypted frequency. “Firefly on south twenty. Holding for thirty.” 

“Abbott,” the command center agent said, “we need confirmation of threat strength and locale before a lower evac of Firefly.”

“CAT approaching threat! Stand by!” he replied.

His team dashed into the hallway leading to the basement entrance, still a half-minute away.

“Stagecoach moving!” another voice yelled through the communicators, referring to the president’s armored limousine. “Leaving garage. Rendezvous at Pont Hoc in twenty seconds.”

Abbott recognized the location code as the hotel’s east alley entrance.

“Pevear to group,” another agent announced. “Second CAT team’s locking down evac route for Firefly. Cleared for Pont Hoc.”

Halfway down the long, wide hallway to the lower ballrooms, he saw two PPD agents in dark suits firing at something around the corner. Seconds later, both agents fell in a fusillade of automatic fire. Then a few dozen men in black urban camouflage rushed around the corner, carrying what looked like old Soviet-era Kalashnikovs.

He and his men immediately knelt into firing position and hit the attackers hard with an array of overwhelming force from quick, well-placed shots from their SR-16 assault rifles.

They had cut down half the assailants within twenty seconds. The remaining men started falling back from the CAT team’s onslaught, and another twenty PPD agents joined his men to help repel the assault.

Abbott led his men forward, stopping the attackers’ advance and gradually pushing them back down the corridor. He had to secure the evac route for Agent Alexander within the next thirty seconds.

*     *     *

Maximilian led his men halfway down the first hallway before stopping and ordering most of them into several small conference rooms on the left and the large ballroom on the right. He kept back six to drag the bodies of fallen agents out of the hallway.

Then he rushed back to the top of the wide basement stairway with most of his entire remaining force, to lie in wait for the Americans. The trap was baited. 

*     *     *

Seeing that the attackers were being pushed back down the hallway, Special Agent Abbott led his men forward, moving in a three-deep wave of CAT agents, with another twenty PPD agents behind them.

“There are no other warnings of breaches in the hotel,” the agent from the command center announced through his earpiece. “The hostiles you’re engaging are the only known threat.”

“Copy that,” Abbott replied. The hostiles were coming from the direction of the large staircase leading to the basement levels, where an explosion now appeared to have occurred. “We need to hit them hard!” he yelled to his team. “We can’t let them retreat back into the basement, where they might find another way up into the hotel.”

Yelling for his men to advance cautiously toward the retreating attackers, he counted only ten hostiles still standing. Four of his own men had been hit, but he had to neutralize the threat to the president before trying to get them first aid.

Two more attackers fell to the CAT agents’ precision shooting.

They fired kill shots into the head of every fallen hostile as they rushed past, after the retreating men.

The wide corridor was lined with closed doors on the right, and large openings into the ballroom on the left. His men looked into the ballroom as they moved quickly past, to make sure none of the terrorists had run into it. When he glanced in, it looked empty. Small tables were positioned along the hallway walls to hold delicate vases and other decor, but everything was now getting shot to hell.

Then, to his surprise, the retreating hostiles suddenly stopped and held their ground at the top of the wide stairway down to the basement levels. Some even took a few steps down and lay against the top step, as if firing from a trench. It was as if they were now protecting something and wouldn’t retreat any farther.

Abbott’s men stopped and took position in the hallway. They still outnumbered the enemy and had better weapons and were almost certainly better trained. As they fired at the men, Abbott yelled into his helmet microphone, “Threat contained at north stairway to sublevel. Less than ten hostiles remain. We’re holding them. Evac Firefly to east alley exit and Stagecoach. Cleared on first floor. Repeat, threat held. Evac Firefly to Stagecoach asap!”

Then, he heard the distinct sound of a handheld foghorn: two blasts, followed by a short pause, then two more quick blasts. He didn’t know what it might mean—only that it came from down the stairway, out of sight.

Suddenly, all the doors to their right opened almost simultaneously. At the same time, he saw quick movement from the shadows in the ballroom to their left. Then, out of the darkness, gunfire from heavy, modern assault rifles roared, like a hundred jackhammers ripping into concrete.

Caught in the middle of this ambush, half his CAT agents were killed outright. Those still able returned fast, precision shots against both sides, but they had been lured into a kill zone impossible to fight out of. Abbott caught multiple rounds in his arms and legs and chest body armor. Falling to the floor, he watched with horror as most of the agents fell around him.

“Breach! Breach!” he yelled into his communicator. “Hold evac! Hold evac! Breach!”

And then something fast and hard hit his neck, and he knew that his life was over. The last thing he noticed before falling into eternity was the American flag shoulder patch on another CAT agent lying beside him.

22

MAXIMILIAN MOTIONED TOWARD THE FOUR men with the steel tanks strapped to their backs, who had been waiting at the bottom of the stairs, away from the ambush, for his command. Now they followed him, running down the hallway, hurdling the dead Secret Service agents.

He knew that this first victory was only the beginning of what he needed to accomplish. Like Hannibal after his army came down from the Dolomites and into northern Italy, Maximilian could not afford to make even one serious mistake—as the Americans had just done. If he hoped for any chance of success, his tactical strategy and execution must be far superior to theirs. The Secret Service was trained and equipped to fight off a small army, and they also had additional resources they could call in for support if given enough time. Any success he and his men had would be brief and, ultimately, pointless unless they managed to tip the scales completely in their favor.

He had sent fifty of his well-armed men down the hallway. Another fifty were spaced behind them in phalangeal order-of-reinforcement attack lines. On either side, twenty men flanked Maximilian and the four men with the tanks. This protection was necessary to prevent their being hit by surprise flanking fire as they moved out of the hallway and into the cavernous lounge area.

He could barely see the front rank of his men, but he could tell from the horrified screams that they had reached the lobby. More gunfire erupted. He thought his men might be making good progress, securing the area for him and possibly even overrunning the Secret Service’s command center, but those hopes vanished when he saw them getting pushed back by a new wave of CAT agents—twice the number he had ambushed and killed. His men couldn’t hold up in a head-to-head fight with these agents, and no doubt many more Secret Service resources were being funneled toward this location. He had to play his ace card now before the Americans wiped out his entire company.

He gave the order to the four men. Splitting off in separate directions, they raced through the lobby area that his front line had temporarily secured. 

As they moved, Maximilian yelled into his radio, “Inferno! Inferno!” 

The message was relayed to each soldier in his army. The ones engaging the Secret Service near the command center moved back toward the center of the lobby while still shooting at the agents. The soldiers still in the sublevels would be moving faster to make sure they got to ground level and the upper stairs in time.

But it was the four men with the tanks who made all the difference. Maximilian watched as they rushed through the lounge to their designated positions at the corners of the vast room. And he watched as the four men—each at least a hundred feet from the others—knelt and raised the thick black hoses attached to the tanks on their backs. Almost in unison, a stream of fire squirted thirty feet out from the nozzle of each hose. As the four men swiveled their flamethrowers about, everything around them on the hotel’s ground level was blanketed in a living, growing fire. The flames rose greedily into the air and danced over furniture, and in mere seconds, dark smoke billowed up, indicating that the fire had also entered the hotel’s walls. The entire lobby was aglow in firelight, and the air quickly filled with suffocating smoke.

Maximilian’s smile widened as he watched the fire spread. With all the technology available to government security agents, it was important to him that the thing to defeat them be a weapon as primitive as fire. By now agents on the other side of the fire would be desperately relaying messages to their command center. They would wonder why the hotel’s fire suppression system wasn’t working. It would probably take investigators days to discover that the reason the sprinklers hadn’t doused the hotel after heat broke the plastic holds on the sprinklers was because his team underground had ruptured the water main into the hotel just before igniting the fire. And thanks to the man who had martyred himself in the Montparnasse Tower only fifteen minutes ago, firefighters would be delayed getting to this hotel by just enough time to ensure that the fire spread beyond their ability to control it.

It was important to him that the world should visualize a great fire as the symbol of this night’s reckoning. There was no weapon more powerful than fear for controlling the minds of others.

Then, without warning, one of the fire starters’ tank exploded—hit by an agent’s bullet. Maximilian tensed as he saw his man on the floor, writhing in flames from his own weapon. The shot must have come from a Secret Service agent. Wherever the hell they were amid the smoke and flames and heat, they would be as determined to protect the president as his men were to kill her. The protection detail had better training and equipment and outside support on their side, but the greatest surprise was yet to come. He prayed that Kazim would make it to the roof in time to secure their victory.

23

JOHN ALEXANDER MOTIONED FOR THE agents to stop short in the stairwell at the sixteenth floor. Stone and the other two agents surrounded the president, each covering a different arc in case anyone came at them from above or below.

“Repeat that!” John said into his communicator. There was little time, but with all the commotion on the stairs, and the occasional sound of close gunfire coming through every agent’s earpiece, he needed to be certain he had heard correctly.

“Sir, I repeat, we’ve lost control of the first floor.”

“Where?” John asked. “Is any part of the evac route secure?” The words “lost control” cut through him like a knife.

“No sir. There’s a massive fire spreading fast, gunmen are scattered everywhere, and the fire suppression system isn’t working. Sir, this area is no longer secured for Firefly evac. I say again, we have lost control, sir.”

John had to think, but he had only a few seconds to make the right decision. There were risks either way. Taking the president down was the fastest way to get her out of the building—a building being swarmed by terrorists and a growing fire. Taking her up moved her away from the immediate threat, but it would mean a more complex extraction from the roof, which could ultimately prove riskier. As the SAIC of PPD, it was his call. And his instincts told him to move POTUS away from the immediate threat.

He pointed to David, then up the stairs. Speaking into his communicator, he said, “Taking Firefly to Zenith. Extract with White Top. Two minutes.”

And then, as if the ten seconds’ pause had put them hours behind schedule, they rushed the president back up the stairs. John was in front, David and one agent here again half-carrying her, and the other agents were coming up the steps behind them, covering the rear.

“Zenith snipes, confirm secure,” John said into his communicator.

“This is Agent Graves,” a voice replied in his earpiece. “Confirmed. Zenith is secure.”

John recognized the voice of the commanding agent posted on the hotel’s rooftop with two other countersnipers and spotters. With the roof secured and the White Hawk on the way, his mind jumped through all the things that needed to happen in the next thirty seconds.

“Agent Payne, where’s the military aide?”

“Twenty-third floor,” another voice answered in his earpiece.

“Get him to Zenith now. Agent Billings, where’s the doc?”

“Twenty-fifth floor, south side,” another voice replied.

“Get him up top. I want him near Firefly asap.”

“Agent Alexander, this is Command Center. We’re gonna have to break down to keep links with HQ.”

“Negative,” John replied. “I need you to stay up.”

“Sir, the fire’s right on us. We’re gonna lose comms either way. Encrypted radio will still work, but we need to break down now or we’ll lose our equipment and won’t have links with Washington for twenty minutes.”