The Lost Codex (34 page)

Vail was starving so she lifted a big bite of the fish to her mouth. It did taste good—but she couldn’t enjoy it. “Unless you have a better plan, the kitchen fire’s our best shot. It’ll create a commotion, and if they don’t start heading toward the nearest port, we can jump and swim.”

DeSantos scooped up another bit of salmon and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “I could call the police and tell them I planted a bomb in the Musée d’Orsay. After what’s happened in DC, New York, and London, they’ll overreact and divert everything they’ve got to the museum.”

Vail looked at him a long moment. “You’re right. Not about this, about what you said before about why you have me on the team.”

“They
wouldn’t
overreact and divert everything they’ve got?”

“No. Because of what’s happened, they’ve got more police on the streets. They’d mobilize their bomb squad and a counterterrorism unit to handle the threat. Won’t do us any good.”

DeSantos absorbed that a moment. “Fine. But there’s a problem with your plan. A ship’s galley only has electric cooking equipment, for obvious safety reasons.”

So obvious I didn’t think of it.
“So what the hell are we gonna do?”

“I didn’t say they never use open flames. They use a torch to caramelize sugar, make crème brûlée, or a flambé dish like crêpe suzette or cherries jubilee.”

“Crêpe suzette is on the menu.”

DeSantos grinned. “Yes it is, my dear.”

“Stop saying that.”

“My guess is they’re going to do it in the living room for the spectacle—it’s very dramatic in a dimly lit interior. So once the flame crests, I’ll tip the cooking pan over. The liquid will burn anything it touches.”

“I’m worried about collateral damage.”

“I’ll set it off in a way that will minimize injury, okay?”

Vail studied his face in the candlelight. “Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Of course.”

Asshole
. Vail’s gaze roamed the interior. Despite all the predicaments she had found herself in since her unwanted affiliation with OPSIG, she never thought she would be resorting to arson to accomplish a mission. She hated to have to do this, but she could not think of another way out.

Sometimes the greater picture had to be considered, DeSantos told her. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

“Is that some sort of OPSIG mantra?”

“Nope.
Star Trek
.”

Vail shook her head. “I would’ve felt better if it was some moral principle the black ops world had developed in situations like this.”

She had already taken an inventory of the interior and determined that there were no security cameras on board. DeSantos paid with cash so there was no traceable means back to them other than public identification. And most people were focused on the windows and the sights of downtown Paris, their meals and wine—certainly not their fellow passengers.

“Let me ask you again,” he said. “Given your intimate knowledge of police procedure, how certain are you that Paris PD will be searching this boat when we get back to port?”

“Count on it. They’d have to be pretty incompetent to miss that detail. Someone’s going to think of it. This is Detective 101 stuff.”

He checked his watch then motioned to her plate. “Then I suggest you finish up. Because the crêpe suzette is next—and that means we’re going to be evacuating this boat in the next few minutes.” He pulled out his phone and consulted Google Maps, then looked out the window. “Pont de l’Alma is coming up. Now would be a good time.” He rose from the chair and looked toward the setup in the middle of the dining room where the staff was prepping the dessert. “Food was delicious,” he said, tossing his napkin aside. I think I’ll go give my compliments to the chef. She’s very hot, you know. Or—she will be in a couple of minutes.”

“Be careful.”

DeSantos winked at her. “Thanks for the concern. But I’ll be fine.”

“I was talking about the others in the dining room. No collateral damage, remember?”

After DeSantos rose from his seat, Vail pulled out her cell and saw that she had missed Uzi’s text message. She turned toward DeSantos, who had disappeared somewhere into the dimly lit interior.

She texted Uzi back, apologizing for the late response and letting him know they had to “manage a situation with LE” and that her unnamed partner would be back in a few minutes. He replied a moment later.

tim came thru
prints match doka michel
leader of islamic movement sharia law for france now
could be lead on scroll b/c michel is son of man who stole it in 1957
need gps location on that phone i hacked asap


The Eiffel Tower swung into view and all heads turned in unison, a number of people pointing at the iconic structure, brilliant amber-gold lighting enhancing its profile against the dark nightscape.

There was a loud clang as something hit the wood floor, followed by a whoosh and a draft of warm air. An alarm began ringing. The serving staff froze for a second, then rushed inward from wherever they were stationed—and seconds later Vail saw DeSantos, making his way along the periphery toward their table. When he arrived, he said, “Now we see what their emergency protocol is.”

Vail screamed, then yelled, “Fire!” DeSantos did the same, followed by a couple off to their right. People scattered away from the flames, regardless of their proximity.

An announcement blared over the ship wide intercom—first in French, then in English:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. Please move toward the stern, the back of the boat, where you boarded. We have a minor fire in the dining room and we’re working to put it out as quickly as possible. I will keep you posted.”

“Minor?” Vail asked.

“Sounds better than, ‘We’re fucked. But don’t jump overboard just yet,’ doesn’t it?”

DeSantos and Vail joined the crowd, which was moving steadily but haphazardly toward the exit—many pushing, screams and gasps coming from a variety of distraught people.

DeSantos glanced back, concern evident on his face, assessing how efficient the staff’s firefighting methods were. “In five seconds we better start moving toward Port de Suffren. It should be right there, ahead on the left.”

Vail looked, but it was hard to see because the bright light from the building fire had illuminated the interior and reversed the effect of the windows: it was now easier to see in than see out.

Add in the heat and thickening smoke and everyone was pushing toward the exit, attempting to get outside into the fresh air.

As she turned back toward the exit, the boat shifted direction.

“Mesdames et Messieurs … Ladies and Gentlemen …”

“Here we go,” DeSantos said in her left ear. “Soon as we get off, we need to put as much distance between us and the group as fast as possible. Without making it obvious.”

The staff helped corral everyone in an orderly fashion toward the exit. They continued to work the fire with extinguishers, and the ceiling sprinklers clicked on and began dispensing water, dousing the passengers—which made them push forward faster toward the stern.

As they debarked, Vail glanced over her shoulder and saw thick smoke billowing from the boat’s upper cabin into the dark gray sky. “Jesus, Hector …”

“More smoke, less fire. Looks worse than it is. And no major casualties. Thought you’d be happy.”

“I am. And since we’re off the ship and not in handcuffs, I’d say you did well. By the way, did you see Uzi’s text, about the location he needs?”

“I gave him what I had. Safe house is the same place as the address Hoshi found for Doka Michel.”

They stopped on the quay and looked in all directions, casually searching for a police presence. Seeing nothing in the immediate vicinity, they shuffled with the group toward the sidewalk, just outside an RER station. Off to their left and a hundred yards or so away, the Eiffel Tower rose into the sky.

“Everyone, please stay together,” Dominique shouted. “We’ll arrange for refunds and transportation …”

But what interested Vail more were the sirens blaring in the distance. “I think this is where we make our exit. Into the RER?”

DeSantos glanced around then said, “Yeah. Now.”

They started down the stairs when they heard a voice from behind: “You two. Just a minute!”

57

U
zi and Fahad pulled up to the apartment building in Montparnasse in the heart of Paris’s Left Bank, once the haunt of artists, writers, philosophers, and counterculture intellectuals such as Chagall, Picasso, Degas, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound.

After a postwar decline, the area had taken on a cosmopolitan character but had lost its avant-garde spark.

And now it harbored a safe house for some of the most virulent and scheming terrorists outside the Middle East.

Uzi and Fahad sat in their car on Boulevard de Vaugirard, across the street on the other side of a traffic median, the mature, though barren trees offering a modest canopy of cover from the apartment where their targets were supposedly gathering.

“Just us,” Fahad said. “Frontal assault?”

“Only if we want to get our asses handed to us. We know what Aziz and Yaseen look like but we’ve got no idea how many men they have or what kind of weapons or booby traps they’ve got. We need a covert approach.”

“Makes sense,” Fahad said with a quick nod.

“What do a group of guys want, whether they’re Islamic terrorists or bachelors getting together for poker?”

“Pizza?”

“Exactly. I’m sure they’re getting hungry plotting murder and mayhem.”

“So let me get this straight: you want to buy these assholes—who’ve killed countless numbers of people—dinner? How about some fine Bordeaux while we’re at it?”

“A bit over the top.” Uzi pulled out his phone, did a search, and found Pizza Pino a few blocks away. He ordered a large margherita pizza, then started the car. “I’ll pick it up and you’ll deliver it.”

Nineteen minutes later, they were entering the building, the aroma of mozzarella cheese, basil, and tomato sauce wafting behind them.

“Wish we had the time and equipment to do this right,” Uzi said. “A full-on SWAT team with MP5s, snaking optical cameras, flash bangs—”

“And stun grenades.” Fahad shook his head. “Instead, we’ve got a dozen slices of pizza.”

“Remember, we want these guys alive. We shoot to wound, not kill.”

Fahad balanced the box on his left outstretched hand and used his right to check the Glock, which was perched in the small of his back with a round chambered. “Ready.”

They walked up the two flights and down the corridor, then Uzi flattened himself against the wall, out of the sightline of the door. Fahad knocked, then waited. A moment later, he rapped again.

“What?” came a terse voice from inside.

“Delivery from Pizza Pino,” Fahad said in French. “Large margherita pizza, extra cheese.”

“Not ours,” the man said.

“Yeah, yeah. Some guy called it in and told me to deliver it at 7:00. I’m fifteen minutes late so the pizza’s free, along with our apologies.”

The door swung open and the man said, “Give it to me.”

Fahad moved his right hand beneath the box and took a half step forward while extending the pizza. As soon as he took it, Fahad grabbed his wrist and gave him a quick hard yank into the hallway. Uzi swung around and jammed his Glock against the perp’s head while Fahad clamped a palm over his mouth.

“Name?” Uzi asked in Arabic into his ear.

“Abdul.”

“How many others in there?”

“Four.”

Uzi did not need to ask if they were armed; he knew they were. He twisted the barrel of the Glock into the loose skin of Abdul’s temple.

“How many bedrooms?”

Abdul winced and tried to pull his head away from the handgun, but he was wedged against the wall. “One.”

“Only one?”

“It’s a small flat.”

That was all he needed to know, and all he had time to ask. He reached back and cracked Abdul across the forehead with the Glock’s handle. Abdul crumpled to his knees and Uzi hit him one more time on the base of the skull to make sure he was unconscious.

Uzi pulled a flexcuff around his wrists and quickly dragged him half a dozen feet down the hall while Fahad picked the pizza box off the floor and moved it aside.

“Yo, Abdul!” A voice from the apartment, approaching. “Where are you, man? Why do I smell pizza?”

The second man stepped into the corridor and Fahad shoved the barrel of his Glock against the man’s temple while covering his mouth and pulling him backward down the hall.

Uzi went through the same routine: three men left inside; his name was Hijaz—not one of their major targets—so Fahad likewise rendered him unconscious, followed by a flexcuff around the wrists, affixed to Abdul’s restraint. Even if they regained their wits, it would be difficult for them to get to their feet and maneuver effectively.

Three left, Uzi said to Fahad using hand signals. He hoped they were named Aziz, Yaseen, and Michel. Along with two ancient, extremely important Hebrew documents.

Two against three were odds they could manage, particularly considering the added benefit of a surprise incursion.

Uzi looked into the flat: there were no lights above the narrow wood entryway that could cast shadows and alert the tangos of their approach. He stepped inside and led the way, making no effort to quiet his Timberlands. He was considerably larger than both Abdul and Hijaz, but he doubted the other men would notice the weight differential during the course of a dozen footsteps.

He made a quick assessment of the floorplan as he went: the voices of men speaking Arabic echoed in the room at the far end of the hall, which he suspected was a den—and must lead into the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen—because there were no other doors he could see.

Uzi stopped a few feet from the end of the corridor and waited for Fahad to inch up next to him. He whispered in Uzi’s ear:

“On three. One, two, three—”

They swung into the den and instantly sized up the situation: two men, sitting on a couch huddled over a laptop, arguing. Third one not visible.

Tahir Aziz on the left. Other had to be Michel.

Kitchen clear, bathroom door open. Empty.

Aziz reached for his handgun sitting beside the PC on the coffee table.

“Don’t move,” Uzi barked in Arabic, anger permeating his voice—a “fuck you” attitude in his demeanor, his gun in line with his eyes, aimed at Aziz and clearly ready to fire. “Don’t make me splatter your goddamn guts all over the flat. Landlord would be really pissed.”

Fahad moved behind Uzi, headed for the bedroom to clear it. Since one man was missing—assuming they were given accurate information—the likelihood of Yaseen being in there was high.

Uzi stepped forward, angling away from the bedroom in case he needed to pivot and fire in that direction. “Get down on the floor, now!”

He approached carefully and stuck his boot into the back of the man he thought was Michel and ratcheted a flexcuff around his wrists. Another went around the man’s ankles. Next he secured Aziz, pat them both down, and pocketed their handguns—.22 Berettas. Easy and quiet to fire. Good for silent kills.

Uzi looked up at the bedroom. He had not heard anything and Fahad had been in there too long. “Mo! What’s going on?”

No response.

Uzi cursed under his breath.

“Come out, Yaseen.” He said this in English because he knew the man had no difficulties with the language. “You have till three. One. Two.”

“I’m not coming out. But you can come in or I will kill your friend. So now it is my turn to count. One.”

“I’m coming.”

But Uzi knew that if he approached the doorway, Yaseen would open fire. Game over. Uzi was not wearing a vest.

He also did not have any flash bangs or concussion grenades. No strobing lights to disorient him or other high-tech means to disable the tango without putting himself or Fahad in danger.

But he did have a low-tech method. Would it work?

“Two,” Yaseen yelled.

He ejected the magazine from one of the Berettas and with it in his left hand, approached the door in a crouch.

In one motion, he yelled, “Mo, get down!” and threw the loaded magazine into the room, backhanded, as hard as he could. He swung left, into the open doorway, his Glock in ready-to-fire position.

Yaseen was focused on an area a few feet away where the magazine had struck. Uzi squeezed off a round and struck the tango in the right shoulder. He jerked back and sprayed the far wall wildly with automatic rounds.

Uzi fired again, taking care to avoid striking vital organs. This time Yaseen dropped his weapon, an MP7 submachine gun.

Uzi stepped into the modest sized bedroom, which featured a folded futon bed and a dresser. Boxes were stacked along one of the walls.

Fahad was picking himself—and the MP7—up from the floor.

Uzi noted three missing fingers on Yaseen’s left hand. If there was any doubt as to the man’s profession, that helped confirm it.

“You okay?”

Fahad hit Yaseen with a right cross and sent the man backward into the corner.

“
Now
I’m okay.”

“What the hell happened?”

“He got the drop on me when I walked in. My fault.”

Fahad pulled out a flexcuff and yanked his prisoner’s arms back to fasten the restraint.

“Ahh! Son of a bitch. You did that on purpose.”

“He’s losing blood,” Uzi said. Using his knife, he sliced off a long strip from the bed sheet. With Yaseen’s arm abducted, Uzi saw that the wounds were not in the shoulder but were lodged a few inches above the elbow. He tied the tourniquet around the upper limb to stem the potential arterial bleeding. “Check on our friends, see if they’re in any mood to talk.”

“I’ll make sure they are.”

“This means nothing,” Yaseen said. “You think that by capturing us you’ve won?”

“It’s a start. But I’m not so naive to think that one victory will win the war.”

“The war’s over,” he said disdainfully, resting his head against the wall. “You people just don’t know it.”

Uzi had a hard time arguing with that—but he had an equally difficult time accepting it. He was not waving the white flag and he didn’t know any of his colleagues who were, either.

“You’re Uziel,” Yaseen said. “The Jew FBI agent.”

“In the flesh.”

“Kadir Abu Sahmoud has an order out to kill you.”

“Yeah, how’s that working out for him?” Uzi stood up and walked around the futon to the wall of corrugated boxes. He stabbed at one with his Puma and ripped open the front panel of the cardboard.

He moved to the next one, and then the next, tearing them open with angry vigor. They all contained the same item: suicide bomber vests.

Fahad walked in and surveyed the contraband. “Gotta be dozens.”

Yaseen grinned. “We’ve got a whole army waiting to die for Allah.”

“You fucking brainwash people,” Fahad said. “I should shoot you right here, put you out of our misery.”

“I believe your Constitution would prevent that. Of all our weapons, that one is maybe our most potent.”

Fahad glanced at Uzi. That comment was truer than either of them wanted to admit.

“What about those jokers out there?”

“Aziz is not talking. The other one—”

“Michel?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s not Michel. Claims his name is Noori. I sent Richard Prati and Tim Meadows his photo to see if they could run him through the database, get an ID.”

“So where’s Doka Michel?”

Yaseen’s lips broadened. “You missed him. He left twenty minutes before you got here.”

“With the Jesus Scroll?”

Yaseen laughed.

Uzi ground his jaw. “Believe him?”

Fahad shrugged. “Let’s tear the place apart. It’s small, a few minutes should do it.”

“Police are gonna be on the way. With all that gunfire—”

“You’re not going to find anything,” Yaseen said.

They ignored him and went about looking under, on top of, in the middle of, and behind everything in the flat. Other than the suicide vests, it was clean, just as Yaseen had claimed. Uzi figured the place was a secondary safe house used to store bombs, not for operational planning. When the Rue Muller location was compromised, they came here.

Understanding did not lessen the disappointment. But it was short-lived because sirens blared in the distance. Uzi ran to the window and listened. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

Fahad reached over to one of the open boxes and pulled out a vest. He unfolded it and found it fully equipped with explosives. He did a quick check, seemed satisfied, and rolled it back up. He pulled a second one from the carton and placed it with the first.

Uzi started to back out of the room. “I’ll get Abdul and Hijaz and leave them with Noori. Get Yaseen ready. We’ll take him and Aziz with us.”

They stuffed socks into the mouths of their two hostages and tied a long strip of material around their heads, keeping the gags in place. They dragged the still-unconscious bodies of Abdul and Hijaz into the living room beside Noori and headed down the stairs.

Two minutes later, with the sirens getting louder, Uzi found an unmarked, rusted fire door at the end of the hall. He pulled it open and they stepped inside, keeping the two men in front of them. Uzi turned on his phone’s flashlight to scout out the interior: a set of stairs led down to what looked like a basement, perhaps with a boiler or furnace. The building was several decades old and the room had a strong musty smell. Whatever this place was, it was likely only frequented by maintenance staff.

After descending the steps, they saw, through street-level half windows above their heads, the swirling lights of police cars. From the looks of the constellation of colors flickering off windows in the surrounding buildings, there were several of them.

“I’ll go take a look,” Fahad said.

Uzi moved the men into a corner against the far wall and explored the remainder of the room. He found another set of stairs that led to a different metal door.

When Fahad returned, Uzi showed him the exit he had discovered.

“They’re deploying tac teams. Any minute now, they’ll start infiltrating the building and setting up a perimeter.”

“My bet is your door leads up to the street,” Fahad said. “If I’m right about where it’ll let us out, we may be able to get down the block without being seen.”

“I’m sure the tac team hasn’t had time to review the building’s blueprints. They probably don’t know about this exit.”