What the hell? Court wondered. Does this guy really have orders to watch his protectee sleep?
The woman seemed to have no idea he was there, or else she was so accustomed to being watched over like this that it no longer bothered her at all.
Or else, and Court imagined this to be a distinct possibility, it did bother her, and that was why she cried herself to sleep.
Court almost felt sorry for her for a moment.
Almost.
The arrival of the close-protection agent on the balcony complicated the situation exponentially. Court had a Gemtech suppressor on his Glock pistol, but shooting this asshole was still going to make a hell of a lot of noise. The men in other parts of the suite would all hear it, and they’d come hard and fast in the protection of their client.
He decided he’d watch the guard for a few minutes to see if he’d leave, or at least turn away. But if the man remained there, focused on Bianca Medina through the glass door of the balcony, Court would just have to deal with the sentry before carrying on with his mission, because it looked like there was no way he was getting to the girl without the man seeing him.
* * *
? ? ?
There was little automobile traffic in the 8th Arrondissement at this time of night; the area was all but deserted, but a single man on a bicycle rolled along the Rue Tronchet, passing the Madeleine church. A few seconds later a second bicycle appeared from the north, and a third turned onto the street from the west just after that. All three cyclists slowed when they came to a point just south of the big red double doors closing off the forecourt of the h?tel particulier.
Two of the men climbed off their bikes and stepped up to the wall just feet from the doorway, while the third dropped his kickstand and parked directly under the security camera pointing down to the pavement in front of the doorway. He deftly climbed up onto his bike, put one foot on the top tube and another on the seat, and used the wall of the building and his left hand to balance himself there. With his right hand he pulled a can of black spray paint from the pocket of his hoodie. He shook the can a couple of times, then sprayed up from below, coating the lens of the camera black in an instant.
The two others watched him work, and as soon as he was finished they rushed forward, knelt at the door latch, and pulled out their lock-picking tools. One man centered a flashlight’s beam on the lock while the other worked, and while this was going on, the man on the bike jumped down, pulled out his phone, and speed-dialed a number. He stood there looking up and down the street, ready to warn the lock-picking team of any passersby on the sidewalks or vehicles on the road.
He did see one vehicle almost immediately, but he did not caution his mates. A black work van with its lights extinguished rolled slowly into view on the far side of the Madeleine church to the south, some hundred meters away, and it stopped there.
Into his phone the lookout whispered, “Je te vois.” I see you.
Behind him, he heard a soft click as the lock picker finished his work. The man pushed down on the latch slowly and softly, so as to avoid any echoes in the cobblestoned forecourt on the other side of the arched passage just beyond the door.
Then the kneeling man whispered, “We’re in.”
With that, the lookout delivered an urgent whisper into the phone. “Aller! Aller!”
The van began racing forward, closing on 7 Rue Tronchet, as all three men at the door pulled submachine guns from inside their coats.
CHAPTER 5
Court decided he had to get on with it, because his legs were cramping, and he had a funny feeling he was going to need to be able to walk, or more likely to run, in order to survive the next few minutes. He’d aim for stealth for as long as possible, but he’d be ready to go loud the instant gunfire was required. He pulled his suppressed Glock with his right hand and slowly pushed the linen closet door open with his knee. He climbed out, stood on aching legs, then began sliding slowly to his left, along the farthest edges of the room, moving away from the balcony and away from the bed.
His first objective was the door that divided the master bedroom from the rest of the suite. As he inched along the wall in the dark, he kept one eye on the sentry, who was still facing the woman on the bed, slightly away from Court’s position here at the man’s nine o’clock. With his other eye Court kept checking Medina herself to make sure she did not awaken, because her eyes were pointed in his direction.
When he arrived at the bedroom door, Court stopped and leaned back against it, still facing the open room. He reached into the cargo pocket on his left leg and pulled a device from it. It was a TacWedge door jammer, a light plastic chock that could be slid under a door and forced into position, making the door nearly impossible to open from the other side. He knelt down slowly, still checking the two forms across the room, making sure the guard remained outside on the balcony and facing the woman, and the woman was still asleep, or at least unaware there was an armed man in black forty feet away.
As he reached out with the wedge, preparing to make it impossible for the four men in the suite to gain access to their protectee, he was surprised to hear a man’s shout, somewhere downstairs outside the building.
It seemed to echo up from the cobblestoned forecourt. Court saw the bodyguard on the balcony spin away quickly and rush to the railing to look down.
And almost immediately Court heard the thundering boom of a rifle in the forecourt below.
The bodyguard ducked back away from the edge and pulled his weapon from inside his jacket.
What the fuck?
The first gunshot was followed one second later by a string of automatic gunfire; Court could hear shouts now in the living room of the suite, on the other side of the door behind him, as Bianca’s bodyguards became aware of the threat. The American dropped the rest of the way to his knees, held his pistol up towards the balcony, and reached behind him to jam the TacWedge under the door. Then he stood and heel-kicked it hard into place.
The sound of his actions was drowned out by an explosion outside that set off car alarms and broke glass all over the neighborhood. As soon as the echoes of the boom died out, another intense volley of fire kicked off. The shouts of men—the rhythmic and repetitive cadence of “Allahu akhbar”—made it all the way four stories up and through the closed balcony doors of the bedroom.
Court was surprised that this attack was happening now, but he wasn’t surprised it was happening, because he knew something about the threats his target faced. These assholes below were ISIS, they were coming for her at the same time he was, and he’d been assured by his client that they would not hit until tomorrow.
Courtland Gentry was a man trained against believing in coincidence, and he had a sinking impression that he had been set up, or at least willfully misinformed about his mission. And this pissed him off. Even in the chaos of this moment, the myriad new and imminent dangers he now faced at his objective, Court still had the presence of mind to tell himself that he was going to beat the living shit out of the people who’d hired him for this operation when this was all over.
But first he had to deal with the woman.
At the same instant that Bianca Medina spun out of bed in her warm-ups and sweatshirt, panic-stricken by the gunfire outside, the bodyguard on the balcony flung open the French doors, on his way to put his hands on his protectee and lead her to safety. The man hadn’t yet seen Court, but since the American was in the middle of the large room and advancing on the same objective the guard was, Court knew he wasn’t going to be invisible for much longer.