The Paris Option - Страница 30

Again the captain looked out to sea, where the retreating helicopters formed four tiny dots. Sir Arnold Moore would be handled. He smiled. There were only three more days. Just three days to control all aspects. Not long at all, but in other ways, perhaps, an eternity.

Chapter Fifteen

Toledo, Spain

As Smith watched through the barred window, Emile Chambord tenderly pressed his wrinkled cheek down onto the top of his daughter's head, closed his eyes, and murmured something, a prayer perhaps. Thérèse clung to him as if he had come back from the dead, and in a way he had. He kissed her hair and turned furious eyes onto the short, stout man who had entered the room first.

Smith could hear Chambord clearly through the window glass as he snarled, "You damned monster!"

"I'm truly hurt. Dr. Chambord," the other man said, his round face pleasant. "I thought you'd welcome your daughter's company, since you'll be with us for some time. You seemed so lonely that I feared your emotions were causing you to take your mind off your work. That'd be unfortunate for all of us."

"Get out of here, Mauritania! Have the decency at least to leave me alone with my daughter!"

So that was what Mauritania meant. It was the name of this soft-looking man, who smiled but did not mean it, who was fueled by some kind of iridescent vision.

Mauritania shrugged. "As you wish. I'm sure the lady is hungry. She's forgotten to eat tonight again." He glanced at the untouched meal on the wooden tray. "We'll have a quick dinner soon, now that our business here is finished, and you can both join us." He bowed in polite farewell and left, closing the door behind him. Smith heard it lock.

Emile Chambord threw one more angry look over his shoulder and then stepped back from Thérèse, his hands firmly on her shoulders. "Let me look at you, daughter. Are you all right? They didn't hurt you? If they did, I'll"'

He stopped as a burst of gunshots sounded. A violent fusillade by small arms somewhere outdoors, near the front of the house. Inside, running feet hammered, and doors crashed open. In the barred room, Dr. Chambord and Thérèse stared first at the door and then at each other. Thérèse's face was frightened, while Dr. Chambord appeared more concerned than scared. He frowned at the door. A tough old man.

Smith had no idea what was happening, but this was a distraction he could not lose. Now that he had found them both alive, he must get them out. They had been through enough, and without Emile Chambord, the DNA machine might be useless to the terrorists. He did not know whether Chambord had been forced to operate his molecular computer for them, or perhaps they had another expert and had kidnapped Chambord to keep him from duplicating his triumph.

Whatever the truth, Smith needed to get the Chambords out of their hands. As he pulled on the window's iron bars to see whether any were loose, Thérèse caught sight of him.

"Jon! What are you doing here?" She ran to the window and tried to raise the glass. As she struggled, she turned back to her father. "It's Dr. Jon Smith, an American. He's a friend of your new collaborator, Dr. Zellerbach." She studied the window, and her eyes grew large and appalled. "The wood part of it's nailed shut, Jon. I can't open it."

Bursts of gunfire continued to crackle in the distance as Smith gave up on the bars. They were set firmly in an iron frame. "I'll explain everything later. Thérèse. Where's the DNA computer?"

"I don't know!"

Chambord growled, "It's not here. What are you"

There was no more time for talk. "Stand back!" He held up his Sig Sauer. "I've got to shoot the frame loose."

Thérèse stared at the weapon. She looked from it to Jon's face and then back at the gun. She nodded and ran back out of the way.

But before Jon could fire, the door to the room flung open, and the short, heavy man known as Mauritania stood there. "What's all this shouting?" His gaze froze at the window. On Smith. They looked into each other's eyes. Mauritania drew a pistol, fell flat onto his belly, fired, and bellowed, "Abu Auda! I need you!"

Smith peeled away just in time. The bullet smashed through the glass. He burned to return fire, but if he shot blindly into the room, he might hit one of the Chambords. Clenching his jaw, he waited until another bullet blasted through the window, and then he quickly raised up, Sig Sauer first, one eye peering into the room, ready to shoot.

But it was empty, and the door was wide open, showing an equally empty hall. Emile and Thérèse Chambord were gone. As quickly as he had found them, they had disappeared.

Smith ran toward the third window. Perhaps they had been moved to this room. But just as he reached the window and discovered an empty office inside, the tall Fulani in the long white robes, who had patrolled earlier, appeared from around the back of the farmhouse, gun up and ready. Right behind him came three more armed men, and all had that alert look of soldiers at war.

Smith went into an instant shoulder roll as bullets thudded into the ground, following him. He returned fire through the dark night, thankful for the thickening spring cloud layer that blocked the moon. His bullet hit one of the men in the midsection. The man doubled over and fell, and in those few seconds Smith's other pursuers shifted their attention to their wounded comrade. That was when Smith leaped up and sprinted.

More bullets chased him, whining past and hitting the ground, tufts of weeds shattering up into the air. He ran a zigzag pattern, faster than he had ever run in his life. Marksmanship was more than being able to shoot straight and hit the target. It was psychology, reflexes, and being experienced enough to predict what the target was going to do next. An erratic pattern was good defense. As Smith's weary body complained, he saw he was approaching the windbreak.

With a final burst of speed, he threw himself into the growth of trees. The musky odors of decaying leaves and wet soil filled his head. Again he shoulder-rolled, came up in a tight ball on his haunches, whirled around, and pointed his Sig Sauer back at his assailants. He squeezed off a series of rounds, a hailstorm of bullets, and he did not care where they landed. His barrage was enough that the tall leader and the others fell to the ground for cover, and maybe he had hit two of them. But then, they had run straight at him, perfect marks.

Smith tore away through the woods, heading around toward the front of the house, where the initial gunfire had started. He listened. The shots were sometimes sporadic, sometimes intense. Behind him in the trees, there was no sign of pursuit.

Then he saw it: In the front of the farmyard, pandemonium had broken out. Figures lay stretched out on the ground, weapons up and pointed at the windbreak. At least twenty of them. As Smith watched, rapid muzzle flashes burst from the other side of a thick oak, while out in the yard, someone screamed in agony.

In his white burnoose, the lead extremist came running around through the open area, shouting orders. He crouched next to the corral and bawled an instruction in violent Arabic back at the house. Moments later all the house's lights went out, its windows suddenly inky black pits, and a spotlight mounted at the left corner just beneath the roof blazed to life, illuminating the yard and rotating mechanically from some remote control until it focused on the windbreak, where it homed in on the oak tree.

Now that his men were no longer back-lighted, the white-robed leader waved them forward.

In response, a furious burst of automatic fire erupted from the woods. Two attackers fell, grunting, cursing, one clutching an arm and the other a shoulder. The rest plummeted to the earth again and raised up on their elbows to return fire. Only the bedouin leader remained a target, kneeling in plain sight as he coolly shot his old British assault rifle and cursed the others in vivid Arabic. With the gunman's total attention directed at the oak bathed in merciless light, Smith dropped lower and scrambled closer to see who was firing from behind it.

He parted a cluster of Spanish broom and peered through at a single figure, who knelt behind the tree, reloading a Heckler Koch MP5K compact submachine gun with a fresh banana clip. The spotlight illuminated the front and sides of the tree, leaving the back in shadow. Still, he could see enough to be shocked a third time that night: It was the unattractive, dark-haired woman he had spotted yesterday outside the Pasteur Institute, the same woman who later walked right past where he sat in the caf but had shown no interest in him.

She was no longer wearing the dowdy, ill-fitting clothes and plain shoes of Paris. Instead, she was dressed in a slim, black jumpsuit, a black watch cap rolled up above her ears, and snug black boots. A change that revealed a far from frumpish shape, and also suited the requirements of her current activity. As Smith watched, she moved as calmly and smoothly as if she were on a firing range, releasing a series of careful bursts of three as she swept the MP5K across the semicircle in front of her. There was a precision, but at the same time a controlled carelessness to her work, as if her instincts were as well honed as her craft, which was impressive. As she released her last burst, somewhere to the left, there was another shriek of pain, and she jumped up and ran back, retreating deeper into the woods.

Smith followed, fast and low to the ground, attracted by the fact that not only were she and he fighting on the same side, but he suddenly realized there was something about her that was familiar, something that had little to do with the events of today or yesterday Her coolness and skill, the shape of her body, the intuitive risk-taking while at the same time the almost machinelike exactness. The right move at the right time.