Here is where it got tricky.
Now that they were inside the walls, Mark put the Glock in his holster and picked up the improvised sack of combat goodies from the floor. It wasn’t heavy for him but it must have been staggeringly heavy for her, not that she’d complained.
Not for one second.
He remembered Evers on patrol. Evers hated carrying things. He’d have bitched endlessly about hauling around a big bulky bag over his shoulder while avoiding armed guards.
Not Harper. She was the real deal.
She didn’t complain that he’d taken the weight now, though.
Now they had three big rooms to get across between the walls and they had to do it quietly. It was early morning. Any guards who were awake would be hypersensitive to noise in the quiet of the deepest part of the night.
Mark held a finger up to his lips and she nodded. Not that she’d made any noise up until now, but still. Now it was doubly important that no one discover their existence. Hundreds of lives and maybe the very existence of the Louvre itself depended on it. Not to mention their own lives.
They were going to make their way slowly and carefully.
Mark set off, his flashlight reduced to a small point, just enough to show where the walls were and the floor in front of them. Just enough light to ensure that they didn’t trip.
Again, she held on to him. Finger curled into one of the empty pouches of his combat vest. She stepped so lightly in his wake that he could barely feel her, but felt reassured that she was there, following him step by step.
They made their way slowly around the big rooms, between the walls, until they reached the Mona Lisa room.
Mark knelt and fixed his smart phone to the USB end of the cable he’d left in place and tapped the screen. The tiny camera had night vision and infrared, which he didn’t need at the moment. The night vision gave a clear picture though the light in the room was dim. The hostages were massed in the middle of the room. Most of them were slumped in sleep, the kids in their mothers’ or fathers’ arms, a few sprawled on the floor. Several of the male hostages were upright and awake, but there was no chance of rushing the terrorists ringing the room. Some of the hostages might be waiting for an opportunity to present itself but it would never come. Even if, by some miracle, they managed to overcome the guards in the room, the patrols would come rushing in, shooting.
Sorry guys, Mark wished he could say. I know you want to kill these fuckers but you can’t. Let me take care of it.
The guards here were alert, rifles in their hands, pointed at the floor. But it would take only one second for those rifles to be shouldered. And for that matter, they could shoot from the hip. The center of the room was a target-rich area if ever there was one. Even shooting from the hip, they couldn’t miss with automatic weapons.
A baby suddenly started crying and he could hear the mother desperately trying to stifle the cries. The nearest guard raised his rifle threateningly. It was not so dark that the hostages couldn’t see the guard shouldering his rifle.
The mother was panting and moaning in terror. A man—presumably the father—scrambled inside a backpack and came out with a baby bottle, which he put in the baby’s mouth. The crying stopped instantly and after a moment, the guard let his rifle drop and stepped back.
There was an audible whoosh of relief from the hostages.
Damn! That little drama was going to make the terrorists more aware, even more alert. If Mark could, he’d wait another hour to make sure that boredom could descend on them once again, but he didn’t have an hour.
The police were massed outside on the great concourse, probably spilling out onto the avenue along the Seine. With a mole who was reporting to the terrorists. Their leader would know that no action was being taken for the moment.
Wrong.
Because Robert’s commandos were preparing to infiltrate, half through the roof and half through the bombed entrance via an underground tunnel, and they were waiting for Mark’s command. Once Mark reported that the men holding guns on the hostages were unconscious, the commandos would come rushing in with suppressed weapons, shooting their way to the Mona Lisa room. It would be up to Mark to take care of any guards who came rushing toward the hostages.
It was going to be tricky and hard keeping everyone safe. And Mark had an overriding concern—keeping Harper safe. Because he wanted to survive this mission and he wanted Harper in his life. He wanted that badly.
He lifted his gaze from the screen and looked at her. She was standing quietly, carefully watching him. Looking to him for clues as to what to do. This wasn’t her world, but she knew it was his and was willing to follow his lead.
An amazing woman.
He’d given her the flashlight to hold, the light facing up. It created a dim, suffused light reflected off the ceiling.
He bent his head, speaking directly in her ear. “I’m going to put the gas mask on you. Do you suffer from claustrophobia?”
She shook her head, then nodded. “Only in crowds.”
“Good. It’ll be really uncomfortable. Very hot. Hard to breathe, hard to see. You’ll be tempted to shift it around to make it more comfortable, but don’t touch it. There’s no peripheral vision, you’ll have to turn your head to see things to the side. It’s very isolating and it will muffle your hearing. Are we clear on that?” Some soldiers suffered from mask phobia and tore their masks off in the stress of battle.
She nodded, eyes huge in her face.
“You’ll hear your own breathing and it will sound weird. Like Darth Vader. So. This is what will happen. I’m going to gas the room, both sides. I really don’t know how long it will take to make everyone unconscious, and Robert didn’t know either. So we’ll wait. I’m going to crack open the door, this one that opens directly into the Mona Lisa room, and be ready. When I give the signal, the French Special Forces guys are going to be rushing into the building, up the grand staircase and down toward the Gallery. Some will drop down through that chimney. They’re all going to be moving as fast and as silently as possible. If things go well, they’ll be here in a few minutes. You’ll stay inside the wall.”
“Okay.” She nodded again.
“But—sometimes shit happens.” He had to prepare her for that, too. Actually, shit happened more often than not. “If the SF guys don’t get here in time, or the guards are conscious enough to start shooting, I’ll have to intervene. If that happens, I want you to stay inside. Close this door quietly and run to the next room through the walls. Run away from this room and then lie down on the floor, as flat as you can. Is that clear?”
God, if it turned into a live-fire situation, he didn’t know if these walls would provide sufficient cover. The thought of a bullet hitting her—he couldn’t go there.
“Yes.”
“Repeat what I said.”
A tenet of soldiering. In the heat of battle, sometimes people froze. They developed tunnel vision and couldn’t think straight. That’s why soldiers repeated orders twice. Pilots, too.
“After you pump gas in the room, we wait. If a situation arises where you have to go out, I run to the next room and lie flat on the floor.”
“Excellent.” He kissed her cheek. His brave soldier.
Suddenly, Harper grasped his body armor at the top and yanked hard until they were nose to nose. “Don’t go into that room unless you absolutely have to. Don’t be a hero and get yourself shot.”
She was fierce, eyes a blazing gray that shot rays of power. Her nostrils flared and there were white lines around her mouth. Power crackled from her. She was magnificent, this classy woman who cared deeply about design.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and kissed her.
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back, hard. Holding him as tightly as she could, mouth open, devouring him. And he was devouring her, the kiss rough and desperate. It wasn’t about sex, it was about connection, bonding, saying all those things that couldn’t be said in words.
Don’t get yourself killed.
I won’t.
I think I love you.
I think I love you too.
He tasted her desperation, her fear, her courage. No tears, just a tight hold on him because they both knew it might be their last kiss. It might be a kiss that had to last a lifetime.
Harper clutched at his neck, wanting to get closer, but they both had body armor on so they were touching each other where they could reach skin. He had his hands clasped around her head, soft hair falling over his wrists, soft mouth crushed under his.
He was hard as a rock, mostly desire to possess this woman once more because it might be the last time, but a small part of it was combat adrenaline, the male body wanting to celebrate life right in the moment in which life might depart the body. And maybe some thousand-year-old instinct to impregnate before death—throwing yourself into the next generation even if you wouldn’t be there yourself.
Who knew?
All he knew was that he’d give a limb for the chance to have sex with her again, right now.
But he couldn’t, and the part of his brain that was a modern warrior overcame the bigger part of his brain that was a primitive warrior. He pulled away from her mouth with a devastating feeling of loss.
Their foreheads met. Looking down, Mark could see her impossibly thick lashes concealing her eyes, a silvery track left by a tear that was no longer visible. Harper’s breath came fast and sharp, as if she’d been running.
“Gotta do it now, honey.” He kept his voice cool and even.
She swallowed, nodded.
“But first I have to fit the gas mask on you.”
“Okay.”
“You won’t like it,” he warned.
“There’s a lot of things I don’t like,” she said, lips curved slightly in a smile as she met his eyes. “But I do them anyway.”
Yeah. He was the same way.
Mark reached down for a mask and held it up so she could see it. If she freaked, he didn’t know what he’d do, because she was going to wear it, no matter what.
She was going to stay within these walls, but Mark had no idea if the gas would seep through. Had no idea of the dosage, if someone who knew what they were doing had calculated strength according to the volume of air in the room. Maybe not. The Louvre authorities would know exactly how big this room was, how big the entrance to the Gallery was, but those people wouldn’t be the people who’d put together the canisters.
This was a top-secret mission, no one on Robert’s team would have called up a Louvre administrator to query the exact measurements. Knowledge of the strength of the gas would have had to be inside the wheelhouse of Robert’s team. This entire rescue had been organized in a couple of hours by people who were experts on violence but not biochemistry.
He hated to admit it, but the carfentanyl had a strength that could kill. Carfentanyl was 10,000 times more potent than morphine. He was absolutely certain that the French Special Forces would have done their best, but…shit happens.
A big dose of carfentanyl could stop a charging rhino in its tracks.
So, Harper’s life was in the hands of people he didn’t know and couldn’t vouch for, except in the vaguest of terms.
She’d be wearing the mask and she’d keep it on until they were safe and sound.
Mark carefully fit Harper’s mask. It wasn’t sized for a woman. They’d simply thrown in two masks from military stock. It was too large for her small face and he had to tighten the straps at the back of the head in a way he knew would be uncomfortable for her, and hope to God nothing penetrated.
Once it was tightly fitted, he stepped back. Like everyone wearing a gas mask, she looked like an alien. “How is it?” he asked.
She held up her thumb.
Yeah, right.
But she wasn’t fighting it, wasn’t touching it.
Okay, now for his own. He put on the mask, making sure the rubber seal was intact. He hoped to God that France didn’t have a system where government bureaucrats awarded contracts to the lowest bidder.
The masks didn’t have night-vision capability so he had to keep the light on, but low. Harper held the flashlight, on its lowest setting and pointed to the ceiling.
She held the light steady. He pointed at the baseboard and she obediently held it there, rock steady. The area he was going to work in was lit by a dull light, barely enough to see what he was doing.
Mark walked a meter down and pulled out a silent high-speed drill, calibrated to drill a hole the size of the gas tube. The drill head was pushed against the wall and he switched it on, wincing. But Robert had come through. It was silent.
Inside a minute, he was through. The drill head was a matte black. In the darkness of the room, it wouldn’t be seen.
He pulled his cell toward him, studying the screen for several minutes. Nothing changed, no one sounded the alarm. He looked up at Harper and she nodded agreement.
So far so good.
They walked through the walls to the other side of the Mona Lisa room where he repeated the drilling sequence and fit the canister tube in. The canisters had a timer and he set the timer for three minutes and rushed Harper back to their original position.
He checked his watch for the countdown and at three minutes minus ten seconds, signaled to Harper to turn the flashlight off, then fitted the canister pipe to the hole in the wall by touch. It slid in perfectly, with no clearance around it.
“On,” he whispered through the gas mask, and she switched the light back on, barely illuminating the area.
He looked up at her, hand on the gas canister switch, hoping to God they’d given him a silent pump. If it gave off the sound of compressed air and the terrorists heard it before succumbing, he and Harper were already dead.
Now.
He turned the lever and it was silent. He breathed out, switching his attention between the screen showing the room and the gas level indicator.
When the level indicator reached one quarter, Mark tapped his ear twice and heard a muffled “Allez!” through the earbud. Robert had given the go command.
The Louvre was now under counterattack.
Ambulances had been waiting along the Seine and could now rush to the staging area. Mark could hear sirens faintly, becoming louder as they came closer. The medical personnel would have preloaded syringes full of an antidote to the carfentanyl, to be administered to kids and thin adults first. Hospitals had been told to expect incoming patients.
And right now, maybe a hundred Special Forces commandos were dropping from the roof and rushing the entrance of the Louvre with silenced weapons.
So much activity, yet here in the room itself, silence reigned.
And there—the first terrorist to fall. The terrorists ringing the walls were the closest to the gas. One of the guards rocked on his boot heels then collapsed. And another.
A very thin woman who’d been sitting cross-legged on the outer edge of the group just keeled over. Then two men facing each other toppled forward, torsos touching each other, upright but unconscious. Then a couple just sprawled to the floor as if falling asleep really fast. It was hard to tell with the kids, because most of them had been asleep on an adult’s lap. But the adults, they were succumbing.
Two more guards fell suddenly, as if they were puppets on a string and their strings had been cut.
One guard looked alarmed, bringing up his weapon, mouth open for a shout. Mark tensed, then the guard fell. He was heavy-set, the gas taking longer to put him down.
After a minute, two, everyone in the room was down. Two of the guards had fallen noisily, their guns clattering. The rest slumped to the ground.
Excellent. The whole thing had been almost soundless, except for the squawk from their internal comms units. Faint noise was coming from the corridor, the commandos doing their best to be noiseless, but battle was noise and confusion. Always had been, always would be, until battle became a battle between computers.
For now, battle was human and there was some noise.
Fuck! Two guards from the corridor were checking in. They ran, their boot heels loud in the corridor, sliding to a stop at the entrance to the Mona Lisa room.
They were quick. Both took in the situation, took in their men down, knowing this was an emergency, knowing that this was their last chance to effect a massacre.
Mark knew enough of the mindset of men like this to know that, to them, an end to the situation without more dead was a loss. He shouldered his weapon, pushing down the lever to open the door into the Mona Lisa room to go fight the next battle in the endless war of monsters vs. humans.
He was checked by a tug on his jacket.
“You’re going out there?” Harper whispered, eyes wide. Her voice had the metallic tone of a mechanical voice.
Hurry. That was a drumbeat in his head.
“Yeah,” he whispered back. “Have to, honey.”
“Dracarys,” she whispered. “Kill them all.”
“Dracarys.”
And he slipped out the door.