As Peter continued the car’s circle of the castle, Randi said, “Swell. Now all we have to do is get into it.”
Jon stared up the slope. “With our equipment, we’ll be able to climb it. Pull off here, Peter.”
Peter cut the motor and coasted the car off the road into a grove of old apple trees. The car bumped along until it stopped at a spot where the steep hillside met the wall at a higher point. Jon, Peter, and Randi got out. Peter pointed silently up to where the head and shoulders of a sentry moved along the parapet in the moonlit night.
They conversed in whispers. Sound carried far in the rural night.
“Anyone see any others?” Jon asked.
After studying the wall in both directions, they both shook their heads.
“Let’s time that one,” Peter said.
They clicked the timer function on their watches and waited. More than five minutes elapsed before they saw the head of the sentry return and disappear in the other direction. They waited again, and the man passed more quickly this time. Less than two minutes.
“Okay,” Jon decided. “When he heads off to our right, we’ve got five minutes. That should be enough for at least two of us to make the top.”
Peter nodded. “Should do.”
“Unless,” Randi said, “he hears us.”
“We’ll hope he doesn’t,” Jon said.
“Look!” Peter whispered, pointing to their left.
In the distance, hunched dark shapes were moving up the incline, heading to the castle’s entry. The Crescent Shield.
Using arm and hand signals, Abu Auda urged his men through the old apple orchard and up the incline toward the wide gateway between two low towers. It had taken him most of the day since returning from Liechtenstein to assemble his reinforcements, many from other Islamic cells and even splinter groups. He had called ahead for help when he had discovered where this General La Porte and his lackey, the devious snake Bonnard, had taken the lying Dr. Chambord and his longtime comrade-in-arms, Mauritania.
Now his people numbered more than fifty rifles. He and his small cadre of veteran warriors herded the new men up toward the entrance. His scouts had counted the guards and sentries and reported only two were stationed at the gate, while fewer than five patrolled the entire rampart wall. What concerned him was his lack of information about how many French soldiers were hidden away inside the castle itself. In the end, he had decided it did not matter. His fifty fighters could defeat twicehellip;three times their number, if need be.
But that was the lesser of Abu Auda’s worries. If the battle went against them, these French renegades might murder Mauritania before he could be reached. Therefore, Abu Auda decided, it would be necessary to reach Mauritania first. For that, he would take a strong small party, scale the walls where the French sentries were thinnest, and rescue Mauritania as soon as the battle was well engaged by the bulk of his troops.
“Let’s go,” Jon said as Peter opened his trunk again.
The three readied their equipment, while Marty remained rooted inside the car. Randi shoved the climbing rig and another H&K MP5K submachine gun into an SAS fanny pack, and Peter loaded a small cube of plastique explosive, some manual fuses, and a pair of grenades into another. He saw Jon watching him. “Handy for locked doors, thick walls, the like. Are we ready?”
Marty rolled down his window. “Have a pleasant climb. I’ll guard the car.”
“Out you come, Mart,” Jon said. “You’re our secret weapon.”
Marty shook his head stubbornly. “I use doorways to enter structures, especially very high structures. In a dire emergency, I might consider a window. Ground floor, of course.”
Randi said nothing. With her climbing equipment, she scrambled quietly up the steep grade. Jon exchanged a look with Peter and nodded to the other side of the car. Peter padded around to it.
“No time to play coy, Marty,” Jon said cheerfully. “There’s the wall. You’re going up it one way or another.” He opened the door and reached in to grab Marty.
Marty recoileddirectly into the bear hug of Peter, who dragged him protesting, but not too loudly, out of the car. Randi was already at the base of the castle, preparing her climbing rigs and the harness she would use to haul Marty to the top. Jon and Peter hustled the still reluctant and complaining Marty up the slope.
Randi checked to be sure they were coming, saw they were, and nodded acknowledgment. She stepped back, ready to shoot her grappling hook over the wall. But at the base of the castle, Marty stumbled over her gear, knocking her against the wall. The grappling hook clanged in the night. They all froze.
Above them sounded the unmistakable noise of running boots.
Peter whispered, “Everyone flatten to the wall!” He drew his SAS high-power Browning 9mm pistol. He screwed on the silencer.
Above them, a face appeared, trying to see who or what had disturbed the quiet night. But they were close to the wall, in a blind, shadowed area. The sentry leaned farther and farther over until he was half beyond the parapet. He saw them at the same instant Peter, taking careful aim with both hands, fired.
There was a soft pop from the silenced weapon, and then a faint, sharp grunt. The guard spilled noiselessly over the wall and landed with a thud almost at their feet. His pistol drawn, Jon bent over the fallen man.
He looked up. “Dead. French insignia on his ring.”
“I’m going up,” Randi told them, not looking at the dead soldier.
With careful aim, she shot the mini-grappling hook up. It made a small clang as its titanium points caught in the stone and held. She swarmed up on her automatic ratchet, and seconds later she leaned over and waved the all-clear.
The harness flew down. Peter and Jon quickly buckled it around a silent Marty, who had stopped protesting, his round face pale and serious as he stared at the body.
His voice shook a little, but he tried to smile as he said, “I’d really prefer an elevator. Perhaps a cable car?”
Seconds later, the first shots shattered the night at the entryway.
“Now!” Jon said. “Up you go!”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Air Force One,
Heading West from Washington, D.C. The president’s secretary, Mrs. Estelle Pike, poked her head into the airborne conference room, her frizzy hair wilder than usual. She arched an eyebrow and said, “Blue.”
She lingered a second or two as the president swung around in his chair, away from the startled eyes of Charles Ouray, Emily Powell-Hill, the Joint Chiefs, and the DCI, who were sitting around the long conference table, to pick up the receiver of a blue radio phone that stood beside the ever-menacing red one.
“Yes?” He listened. “He’s sure? Where is he? What!” Tension filled his voice. “The whole country? All right. Keep me posted.”
President Castilla rotated back to face the eyes focused on him. They were the front line now, all of them aboard the flying White House. The Secret Service had insisted that going mobile in Air Force One was the prudent course, considering the volatile situation. The public was still in the dark. Everything possible was being done, but unless there was some kind of concrete way to warn and evacuate, the president had made the tough decision that the continuing communications problems be passed off to the media as a dangerous virus that was being corrected, and that the perpetrators would be found and the full force of the law brought down upon them.
Fully briefed and in constant touch by radio, the vice president and backups for everyone here were safely deep in bunkers in North Carolina, so that if the worst happened, the national government would go on. Spouses and children had also been evacuated to various secret underground sites. Although the president knew that there were no such provisions for the rest of the country, that it would be simply impossible, he agonized anyway. They must find a way to prevent what he feared.
He spoke calmly to his assembled advisers. “I’m informed the attack could be today or tonight. We have nothing more definite than that.” He frowned and shook his head, sorrowful, frustrated. “And we don’t know what or where.”
The president saw a question behind all those eyes staring at him: What was his source of information? To whom had he been talking? And if they did not know, how reliable could this source or sources be? He had no intention of satisfying them: Covert-One and Fred Klein would remain utterly clandestine until he passed them on to his successor with the strong recommendation to maintain both the organization and the secrecy.
Finally, Emily Powell-Hill, his NSA, asked, “Is that a confirmed fact, Mr. President?”
“It’s the most informed conclusion we have or are likely to have.” Castilla studied their bleak faces, knowing they were going to hold up. Knowing he was. “But we’re generally now aware where the DNA computer is, and that means there’s a good chance we can still destroy it in time.”