Dark Zone (36 page)

Blondie put the disk into a nearby computer. The drive began to whirl.

“This is the most interesting, this series. Look—it’s another set of formulas, an explosion simulation. It’s almost the whole thing! It’s like the Eiffel Tower, but one of much greater power. Look at all these formulas and the size of these numbers.”

“What’s being modeled?” he asked.

“A three-dimensional area affected by an explosion,” said Blondie. “These values are so high—I think it’s an earthquake of six-point-oh magnitude. Maybe it was to shake down the concept behind the formula, get the process right. They must have started here, figured out how to get the program to work, then revised it for the Eiffel Tower. Can we find somebody to try and re-create what’s missing?”

“Wait,” said Johnny Bib. “I’ve seen this before.”

Johnny Bib stared at his screen. The numbers of some of the equations would produce a Fibonacci series.

No, not precisely; no, he was wrong.

It was a progression, though. And one he’d seen recently.

It was a wave amplification.

He’d seen a similar model on the computer the French had compromised a few months before, the one the terrorists had stopped using.

“Hmmm.”

“Part of this is just like the Eiffel Tower with the modular thing,” added Blondie. “Where they had a routine to add the explosions together. But look, it’s like weird, because there are these waves being focused and stuff? I don’t get it.”

Another equation with waves, but this clearly wasn’t designed to calculate or demonstrate the effects of a tsunami. It looked more like a three-dimensional compression of some sort.

Numbers were strewn across the screen. Johnny Bib’s brain pulled them into a coherent shape—focused wave formulas.

What would you want to compress with an explosion?

“Those variables are a multiple of the values from the explosives that are used in the Eiffel Tower simulation?” asked Johnny, pointing at the screen.

“I think yes,” answered Blondie.

“They wouldn’t yield that large an explosion.”

“No way. I mean, I’d have to work through the math, but I would just about—”

“Bring the team here quickly,” said Johnny Bib, jumping up. “Bring everyone—everyone. And someone from the history department. Two people from history! Someone from special weapons—whoever worked on the French warhead that’s missing from Algeria. Hurry!”

86

Karr tried to push upward while the terrorists were still distracted by the helicopters. But his arms wouldn’t move.

The second helicopter roared toward the tower from behind him. Karr closed his eyes, sensing that he was being targeted this time. Flares shot into the air, and then gunfire. The world shook violently.

The helicopter wasn’t firing at him but at the stairway above, where the missile-wielding terrorists were. Another missile shot away from the tower and the chopper wheeled away.

A dozen smells began to choke him. The helicopter buzzed back.

A body toppled past, rebounding in the grid work until it wedged against a pair of V-shaped cross members.

More gunfire.

Another terrorist slid down the steps until Karr couldn’t see him anymore, something clattering with him.

A gun?

Karr had no idea, but he decided it was a gun and that he was going to get it.

“Rockman, if you can tell the helicopter not to shoot me, I’d appreciate it,” he said, starting to claw his way back around the mesh to the stairwell.

“Tommy, get out of there!”

A rocket-propelled grenade whipped from the cluster of terrorists working with the explosions and vests. It exploded right beneath the helicopter’s chin, and the aircraft seemed to rear up and then nose down, plunging to the earth after rebounding against the side of the tower.

Karr closed his eyes and snaked his way through the metal, diving back toward the steps in a tumble. As he was stunned, it took a moment before he could start crawling upward.

As he turned the corner onto the fourth set of steps, a large pole shot through the grid work a few feet from his head. He ducked belatedly, then turned to see where the pole had gone. It was only when he saw the object explode in the sky a hundred yards away that he realized it was a missile, launched by another helicopter.

“Tell the helicopter not to do the job for them!” Karr yelled to the Art Room.

“Tommy, get out of there. Get down!” said Telach.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I’m working on that.”

Two eyes stared down at him as he turned the next corner: the dead terrorist lay across the stairwell, head and body at different angles.

His body lay atop something. A gun.

Karr crawled to the man as fast as he could. The only thing he thought of, the only thing he saw, was the gun.

Except it wasn’t a gun. It was an empty launching tube for a rocket-propelled grenade. He pounded the dead man’s body in his rage, pounded and pounded, felt something hard against his fist.

He clawed at the man, pulling away his clothes.

A pistol.

He grabbed it, made sure it was ready to fire, and turned in the direction of the white coveralls a few feet away.

87

Lia pulled a bag of chips from the rack at the refreshment counter, then realized she had only a twenty-euro bill. The attendant sighed but dug into the register dutifully. Lia took the money and walked toward the end of the car opposite the one she’d come in through, as if she were an absent-minded passenger who’d lost her bearings. She’d already been through the train once without finding their quarry, but there was little to do now until they reached England, which wouldn’t be for more than an hour; they were still a good ten or fifteen minutes or so from the entrance to the Chunnel.

Most likely, the suspect had found some other entrance at the Eurostar terminal to sneak out of. Dean had blown it when he decided to come on the train.

About time he messed
something
up. Maybe he wouldn’t be so high-and-mighty, Mr. Perfect Ex-Marine.

She was angry at him for no good reason, just to be angry.

And she loved him.

Lia forced herself to concentrate on the job, scanning the faces in the seats as she walked through the cars. She continued through to the end, attracting a few odd stares as she pretended to hunt for her seat. As she turned around, she overheard one of the male passengers whispering to his companion something about a nice piece of meat.

She spun and unleashed a flood of French curse words at him. The man turned white and managed a meek apology as she spun away.

“What was that about?” asked Sandy Chafetz, popping onto the communications line. She’d just taken over for Rockman.

“Called me a sweet meal,” said Lia.

“You sure he meant you, not his lunch?”

“Does it matter?” snapped Lia, passing between cars.

Dean shifted in the seat, staring at the door at the end of the coach. If the suspect—now tentatively ID’d as a Mr. McCormack, birth location and place unknown—had gotten onto the train, he must have disguised himself somehow. The easiest way to do that was by changing clothes, but he must have done more or Dean would have found him by now.

“Charlie, this is Sandy Chafetz. I’ve come in to help out. I’m going to run your end of the mission. There’s a lot going on in Paris right now.”

Dean turned toward the window, cupping his hand over his face so the fact that he was talking to himself wouldn’t be so conspicuous. “Like what?”

“‘The Eiffel Tower is being attacked. And the President is still at de Gaulle.”

“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.

Just give me a gun,
Karr thought. Then, desperate to do something, he threw the empty grenade launcher at the terrorists. He missed by a mile.

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 them.