Read The Paris Protection Online
Authors: Bryan Devore
“I’m glad you’re here, Agent Reid,” the president said. “Your father’s still a police captain?”
“Retired now.”
“Well, he would be very proud of what you’ve done tonight.”
Rebecca was moved. She had always wanted to believe that she could have even a slight personal effect on a protectee, but she was never sure how much they really knew about her. It seemed strange, hanging on to that thought at this moment, but she felt honored that the barriers between protectee and protector were lowered, even if only for a moment.
As she pulled the light away from the president and moved her hand to her forehead to turn it off, she noticed something strange on the wall.
“Turn the light off,” John repeated.
Her mouth opened slightly as she focused on the details of the old stone bricks, firmly set in even courses and bonded with mortar. The stone wall was gray from centuries in these dark, damp tunnels. She looked around at the walls of this enclosed chamber at the end of the tunnel. At the sides, they were solid limestone, cut from the surrounding bedrock, but the far wall, the end of the cul-de-sac, was gray stone.
“Reid! Turn off the light!” John hissed.
“Wait,” she said. “I think we were wrong.”
“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”
She trained her light back on the gray square-cut stones. “I think this is one of the IGC walls built centuries ago.”
“So?”
“So I don’t think this chamber is a dead end. I don’t even think it’s a chamber. I think it’s still part of a tunnel that keeps going.”
“What?”
“The IGC built walls to seal off parts of the tunnel. I think it continues on the other side of this wall.”
The president placed her hand on the rocks. “Can we break through it?”
“We don’t have anything to break through it
with,
” David said. “We have no explosives or tools.”
“And no time,” John hissed.
“These walls are centuries old,” Rebecca said. “Many are decrepit and falling apart. There have been stories of people pushing through them and falling into hidden, forgotten sections of the underground.” She looked at David. “You might even be able to use your flash grenade to collapse it.”
“You think a flash grenade could knock it down?” he asked.
“If you blew it right at the center of the base, and the wall was weak enough, the small shock wave might be enough to vibrate it out of place—loosen it enough to make it collapse. These things are more than two hundred years old.”
“No one’s using a flash grenade,” John said, standing up from his post against the wall. “It would be too loud and would only bring them to us faster. And it would blind and disorient us—not what we need.” He examined the wall that, up until this moment, had seemed no different from any other part of the chamber. “Looks strong to me,” he said.
“It’s two hundred years old,” Rebecca repeated.
The bright white center of the amber pool from his flashlight moved along the wall. “Is it a supporting structure?”
“No,” Rebecca said. “Columns were erected for support structures. Reinforcement walls were built along the sides of some tunnels, but other walls were built merely to seal off sections.”
“How do you know it’s not just a reinforcement wall? What if there’s nothing on the other side of this but unstable limestone that crumbles inward and crushes us?”
“Reinforcements were used mostly just for the sides. This is at the end of the passageway, so it seems more likely they were sealing off the rest of the tunnel.”
John looked back at David. “Stay there and keep watch.” Then he released the magazine from the submachine gun and set it on the floor. Then, raising the weapon, he slammed the butt into the mortar joint between two bricks in the wall. It made a loud clatter, but nothing moved. He did it again. Then again.
The clamor was loud, which lent their situation even more urgency than before. Now that they had decided on this course of action, they had to get through. Rebecca leaned into the wall and pushed as hard as she could, next to where John was pounding. The president followed her lead on the other side of John. As he kept pounding at the joint between the stones, the mortar began to flake away from the wall.
Rebecca felt the wall bend slightly as she pushed. “It’s going to break through,” she said.
“Push harder,” John said, slamming harder and faster with the rifle butt.
Rebecca wedged her feet against a lip in the stone floor and pushed with all her strength. The president, too, was grunting from her exertions. The wall bent some more, but just when she thought it would fall and collapse outward, it seemed to tighten up again and held steady.
“We almost had it,” she said.
John dropped the rifle and pushed with them. Again the wall bucked and bent, but it wouldn’t break.
“We’re right there,” he said. “Push harder.”
“We can’t,” Rebecca said.
“David,” John called. “We need your help.”
Slinging the automatic rifle over his shoulder, David wedged himself between John and Rebecca, and together all four pushed with all their might.
Finally, Rebecca felt it get a little easier. The wall had bent farther than before. And then, as if in answer to their grunts of exertion, it let out a groan of its own. And the wall gave way, falling away from them, into open space. And as it crumbled, Rebecca fell all the way through to the other side. Heavy stones landed around her. She heard John and the president gasp in relief, and then David yelped in pain.
66
JOHN HEAVED AGAINST THE WALL, encouraged by how it was starting to bow. He was desperate to give the president a chance to escape. Then, as if in answer to his prayers, a large area in the center of the wall folded as if hinged in the middle. Rebecca was closest to the breach and pitched forward through the wall, into the darkness on the other side. Large rocks fell from above, and for a second he was terrified that the ceiling was caving in. He stepped back and hauled the president away from the falling stones. David wasn’t as quick and screamed out in pain when a large stone fell on his foot.
After a few seconds, John realized with relief that the ceiling was not going to fall in on them. The large fallen stones had been part of the wall. Rebecca had been right: they were in the middle of a solid limestone bed that would erode gradually over the millennia, perhaps even form a sinkhole, but knocking down the barrier wall wasn’t going to collapse anything. Through the gaping hole, he could see Rebecca—standing up, so she was okay. David was gasping in pain, and from the protrusion near his shin, it looked as if he had broken the tibia.
But the wall had been broken through, revealing a long, dark passageway—a continuation of the tunnel, as Rebecca had predicted.
Turning to the president, he reached out to pull her toward the hole. But before he could reach her, a burst of automatic gunfire erupted behind him. The sound, echoing off the hard limestone walls, with the president so open and vulnerable, was the most terrifying thing he had ever heard in his life.
Bullets pinged off the rocks, moving in an uneven line toward the president. John lunged toward her, but not before bullets found her right arm and chest. With his back to the gunman, he managed to lunge between the president and the firing.
The president went reeling back against the rock wall with a stunned expression. Blood spattered across her and John. He tried to grab her and pull her to the ground, but his movement was stopped by the sudden stab of bullets now hitting him instead, cutting through muscle and organs and overwhelming the nervous system, making it impossible for the body to react, or the mind to comprehend exactly what was happening to it.
He couldn’t return fire or even hope to fight the gunman. His back was to the attacker, and all he could do was pull the president down and do his best to shield her. Bullets continued to chip off the rock wall behind them, and they continued to cut into his body, but no more shots seemed to have hit the president since he intervened. He shook from the force of each bullet hitting him. The pain was strong, but the knowledge that his body was being irreparably damaged and destroyed was more painful still. Tears flooded his eyes as his jaw clenched from the sharp, endless pain. Now on his knees, he was staring into the president’s horrified eyes, hoping that the blood spattered across her face was his.
Everything moved in slow motion. He felt pain everywhere, but all he could think of was the president’s face. She was looking at him so deeply, as if shocked to find him here in front of her, doing what he could to protect her. But the bullets kept coming, kept bouncing around them, kept hitting him in the back. He fought as hard as he could to keep himself upright on his knees, to keep giving her cover. And just when he didn’t think he could take any more, he heard another loud chatter of automatic fire, this time from beside him. In the corner of his eye, he saw the muzzle flashes from David, lying on the ground and firing bursts at whatever was behind John. A few seconds passed. David had stopped firing. And then John realized that the attacker, too, had stopped. Unable to turn and see behind him, he just had to assume that David had killed whoever was firing on them.
His body felt strange, and breathing was difficult. His first thought, after processing his unusual weakness and imposing some concentration on his cloudy mind, was for the president’s safety. How many times had she been hit? Her eyes were wide open and gazing intently at him, and for the briefest instant he had the horrifying thought that she was dead. But then she opened her mouth and moved it slightly, as if trying to say something.
“Ma’am?” he whispered. He had a whole string of questions he wanted to ask. Procedural questions to establish where she had been shot, where she was hurting most—something to get an initial sense of her condition before checking her vitals. But he hadn’t the strength to say more.
“John,” she replied softly. “Oh, dear God . . . oh, no.” She was now looking down at him, studying his injuries.
He couldn’t see what she was seeing, because he felt too weak to move or even to look down, but the pain and sadness in her expression told him everything he needed to know. Nothing felt right, and he knew that he must be a terrible mess. But the thought of dying, if that was what this was, seemed strangely unimportant. It was exactly as he had always hoped: that death would be kind enough to find him in a moment of courage instead of fear and cowardice. There were times near the end of Desert Storm when he had felt the fear of dying before he could see his wife again, and times during the last stage of her cancer when he felt cowardly about facing life without her. But most of his life, he had been brave, proud of a life spent serving his country, honored to have been given the opportunity to protect the president, and blessed to have found his wife and lived ten wonderful years with her before death took her from him. And now, perhaps, the colder, lonelier existence since she was taken was now coming to an end. This time, death would take him and give him a chance to find her once again.
Mustering his strength, he forced himself to look down and examine the president, just as she had examined him. Her right arm was bleeding badly. The shots that had hit her in the torso all showed holes in the outer fabric. But her bulletproof jacket had covered her, so she probably hadn’t been hit in any vital organs, for which he was grateful. But all that blood running down the inside of her arm worried him.
“John, can you hear me?” Rebecca asked as she crawled her way back through the hole in the wall.
He didn’t understand why she was worried about him. The president was hurt bad. They needed to focus on
her
.
David grunted and hissed as he tried to prop himself up against the remaining section of wall. Putting all his weight on his left leg, he growled like a wounded animal and pointed his submachine gun in the direction of the attack.
“John?” Rebecca repeated.
“The president needs help,” he said weakly.
“I’m fine,” the president said. “Don't worry, John. We’ll get you out of here.”
“Damn it!” David hissed.
“Hold on, John,” Rebecca said, reaching him. “We’ll take care of you.”
“Take care of the president,” John whispered. He felt himself growing weaker by the second.
“We can get you out, too,” Rebecca said.
“Her arm,” John whispered.
Rebecca paused, then turned quickly to the president. The president had seemed numb to the pain, but John could tell that Rebecca was now seeing what he had seen. It was bleeding far too badly for a flesh wound.
Rebecca jolted upright and looked frantically around the room, then picked up the machine gun that John had broken while slamming it against the wall. Her fingers moved quickly, pinching and pulling at the shoulder sling. After unbuckling it, she scrambled back to the president and began cinching the strap high on the president’s arm, close to the shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” David asked.
“She’s hit in the brachial artery,” Rebecca said. “She could bleed out right here.”
John hissed—the closest sound to a cry or moan that he could give in his worsening condition.
“We have to move,” David said, hobbling toward them. “I can hear them coming.”
Terrified, Rebecca looked at John. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Well, I do,” John whispered. “Go.”
Her eyes were wet. “It can’t end like this.”
“This is exactly how it ends,” he gasped. “Take the president and go. She has to live. She has to . . .” Pouring out all he had in one final command, he said, “Protect the president!”
The president had grown pale, and John knew that her blood loss was severe. David, with a broken leg, would be doing good just to support himself. Rebecca moved in to help lift the president, who didn’t stand up to help her but listed sideways instead. Rebecca had to catch her and prop her up again before lifting her to her feet. John gave one last look at the president as she was moved away from him, and he saw her weak face and watering eyes looking back at him. He could tell that she had little strength left and, like him, was weakening by the minute. But he also knew that the bullets now in his body would have hit her had he not shielded her. And she knew it, too. He would never know how this insane night was to end. It was not his destiny to see any parade in his honor, any medal presented to him, or any smiles from grateful fellow citizens. He would die here, in darkness under foreign soil, as the screams of the enemy ripped through the silence.