Savoring the air, he took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. The calm before the storm, he thought to himself.
Exhaling, he stepped away from the front of the hotel, lit a cigarette, and had a quick smoke.
When he was done, he returned inside.
As he was shown to his table, the dining room looked like a sea of ornate ships under crisp, white linen sails.
The ma?tre d’h?tel asked if he cared for a cocktail. Blaming jet lag, Tursunov ordered an espresso. With an understanding smile, the man disappeared to place his order.
For dinner, Tursunov began with scallops from Normandy and chose silk grain veal with smoked eel and olives for his main course. He had his eyes on the iced chestnut delight for dessert.
In his mind’s eye, he envisioned the men preparing to martyr themselves. He envisioned how they had spent their last day, ritually cleansing and preparing themselves to enter Paradise. They would have read from the Qur’an, finding courage, comfort, and strength within its passages.
They would approach from different directions, their large soccer jerseys concealing the vests they wore beneath. Each man would carry a soccer ball. Cleated shoes would be worn over a shoulder or around the neck.
As they entered the garden, they would make their way to their appointed areas—guaranteeing that the force of their explosions and the tsunamis of shrapnel would be spread as widely and as efficiently as possible.
Turning his mind back to his food, he decided that the scallops had been quite good, but they were nothing compared to his first bite of veal. It was like an exquisitely flavored butter that melted in his mouth. He had never eaten like this before. Never. For a moment, he forgot where he was.
Trimming another piece of the delicately cooked meat, he raised the fork and opened his mouth. But the second bite of veal never made it to his lips.
Outside, there was an intense explosion. Its blast wave shattered the restaurant windows and covered many diners in glass.
Tursunov was spared only by virtue of having been seated away from them, farther back in the restaurant.
Some patrons had been knocked to the floor. Those who were not, were now up and running for the door. Many of them were screaming.
None of them could have known for sure what had happened, but instinct had taken over. Get away from the danger.
Tursunov himself didn’t know what had happened. It was too early and the blast too close. Either Abdel had changed the attack, or one of the martyrs had chosen to go early. Perhaps he had been confronted by police, or by French security services.
The one thing he did know was that he couldn’t sit at his table pretending nothing had happened. Calmly, he stood and followed the other patrons out of the dining room.
In the lobby, curious guests were pressing up against the windows and pushing through the doors to get outside, in order to figure out what had happened. Tursunov headed for the stairwell.
He took the stairs two and three at a time, hoping to get to his room and out onto the balcony before anything else happened.
Halfway there, he heard a second explosion, followed by a third, and a fourth.
All of the martyrs were detonating now. It was the protocol. Even if one went early, they were to get to their targets and detonate immediately.
Taking a deep breath at his landing, he opened the stairwell door, stepped out into the hallway, and walked calmly toward his room.
Once inside, he rushed to the balcony, threw open his still-intact French doors, and stepped outside.
As he looked out over the slaughter and destruction below, he excitedly repeated one phrase under his breath.
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. ALLAHU AKBAR.
CHAPTER 54
* * *
* * *
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
“I got here as quickly as I could,” said Lydia Ryan as she entered the Director’s wood-paneled conference room. She had always been in awe of this space. It had a tremendous amount of history, not the least of which being that this was the room where the bin Laden raid had been run. All of the monitors were tuned to live feeds from Paris.
A group was seated at the end of the long conference table. Several rolling suitcases were lined up against the wall. The Director waved her over.
“We’re sending over a team?” she asked, as she removed a laptop from her briefcase.
“FBI too,” McGee replied. “They’re going to need all the help they can get.” He then turned to a young analyst and said, “Bring Deputy Director Ryan up to speed.”
The young man nodded and, picking up a remote, stated, “We got this video from French Intelligence twenty minutes ago. It was shot by one of their people, just after the bombs went off. I’ve got to warn you, it’s bad.”
All bombing aftermaths were bad, especially when civilians were involved. Either this person was new, or this really was on a different level. Taking a breath, she signaled for him to roll the footage.
As soon as the video started, she realized he had not been exaggerating. Amidst helicopters hovering overhead and the klaxons of emergency vehicles rushing to the scene, all you could hear were people screaming. The sound was horrible—like animals being slaughtered. The images were even worse.
Victims’ limbs had been sheared off. Bodies lay, missing heads. Torsos had been torn open, their internal organs spilling out. There was blood absolutely everywhere.
As the French Intelligence officer walked his camera through the carnage, Ryan noticed people at the conference table turn their eyes away. They had already viewed the video. She tried to steel herself for whatever was coming up.
In addition to ripping through people, the bombs had ripped through the carnival stalls. The destruction was unlike anything she had ever seen. But these weren’t the scenes her colleagues couldn’t bear to watch. As soon as she saw the smoldering carousel, she knew what was coming.
Ryan was reminded of how ISIS had attempted to detonate a suicide bomber inside Kidsville—the children and family camp at Burning Man.
Even though one bomber had detonated in another part of the festival, stopping the Kidsville attack had been considered the greatest win of the operation. But seeing what she now saw, none of that mattered anymore.
The tiny bodies lay everywhere. Their injuries were just as horrific as the adults’, but they were even more heart-wrenching due to their age.
The bomber had struck inside the part of the carnival geared toward the youngest attendees. Mixed with the wreckage of the carousel animals were actual ponies, some barely alive and still tethered to the rigging that allowed children to ride them in circles. Their screams of pain, mixed with those of parents and children, were unbearable.
A police officer could be seen approaching one of the animals and drawing his pistol, only to be stopped by a colleague for fear of creating a panic that a shooter was loose somewhere.