Agent in Place

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.

Behind Court someone tried to open the bedroom door, then shouted and slammed against it when he found it braced shut. The bodyguard looked up towards the sound, saw Court there in the darkness, and swung his weapon up to fire.

Court’s weapon was already on target, so he fired first, sending a 9-millimeter hollow-point round across the room and into the Syrian’s throat. The bodyguard lurched back with a cry of shock. He grabbed at his wound, but Court shot him again, this time through the solar plexus, and the man fell flat on his back, his arms wide, half inside and half outside the balcony doors.

Bianca Medina screamed in utter terror.

The sound of the suppressed gunshots had been all but hidden by the thunder of several weapons firing at once in the stone forecourt and the lobby of the property below, so the men slamming their shoulders into the door of the bedroom wouldn’t have heard them, but Bianca Medina did hear the noise, and she saw the flash of the weapon held by the masked apparition running at her, just five meters from her bed. She dove back onto the king-sized bed and rolled over to the other side. Here she launched off and hoisted the lead crystal decanter that had held the brandy, swinging it over her head like a bat.

Court himself leapt onto the bed, in pursuit of his fleeing target. He holstered his weapon as he did so, and by the time he landed on the other side, both his hands were free.

“I’m on your side, Bianca.”

She swung the lead crystal decanter at the man in black, but he ducked back and away easily.

In French she shouted, “Take my money! Don’t hurt me!”

Court closed on her again, and the decanter whipped by his face once more, but this time Court swept it from her hand, knocking it across the bed and onto the floor. Then he took the woman by both wrists and spun her around and up to the wall. Leaning against her body with his own to control her, Court pinned her hands behind her back.

“Listen to me! Calm down! I won’t hurt you, but everyone else around here will. We need to go, and I’ll need your help.”

In English she shouted into the wall, “What is happening?”

New gunfire snapped inside the building now. The attackers were clearly making progress on their way up the two sets of stairs on opposite sides of the property. For all Court knew, others were in the elevator and could be here on the top floor in seconds. Bianca’s bodyguards in the suite banged on the door of the master bedroom and slammed into it with ferocious tenacity, desperate to get to their protectee.

“What is happening?” she shouted again.

Court said, “You and I are checking out. As for the rest of that racket, my guess is hotel security and your bodyguards are fighting it out with the Islamic State.”

She looked back to him, eyes wide. “ISIS? What does ISIS want with me?”

Court didn’t look at her now; he just spun her around as he held on to her arm. He looked around the room, trying to figure out how the hell to get both himself and the woman to safety. While doing this he said, “Lady, we both know the answer to that question.”

Bianca did know the answer, but Court imagined she had been hoping her rescuer did not.

To her credit, Bianca Medina seemed to realize quickly that she was in serious trouble, and this man in black was her only lifeline. “What do you want me to do?”

Court looked around the big room. Men banged frantically on the door. “Give me a second.”

With a panic-stricken voice she said, “You just told me we had to go now!”

His original plan had been to use the climbing rope and rappelling equipment stored in his pack to simply hook her onto him with a harness, and then use the harness on his own body to lower them one story down to the balcony below her suite before heading to the hotel stairs to make a stealthy escape through a back exit. But a gun battle of this magnitude raging in central Paris was going to bring a lot of law enforcement, and Court knew he didn’t have time to make it down the stairs inside the hotel, through security and terrorists, before the police arrived and cordoned off the property at ground level.

He told himself he needed to somehow get all the way down into the forecourt and out an alleyway to a neighboring property, in the next minute or two, to have any chance of avoiding getting caught in a massive police cordon.

Court could climb down the outside of the building on his own in that amount of time, but he sure as hell couldn’t do it while attached to this terrified woman. He looked around the suite a moment more, and formulated a hasty plan. His eyes darted to the dead body, then to the door of the room, and then to the balcony railing.

“Hey!” she shouted. “What are we going to—”

Court came up with a solution for the equation in front of him. He raced over to the body of the dead Syrian lying on the balcony threshold, grabbed the man by the underarms, then dragged him hurriedly across the hardwood floor, all the way to the door of the suite on the opposite side of the room. A gunfight had begun raging just outside; the men who, seconds earlier, had been banging on the door were now shooting it out with someone near the exterior door to the suite, and no one was trying to get into the bedroom for the time being.

Court pulled the end of a spooled climbing rope from his bag, wrapped it under the dead man’s body at the underarms, then tied it off quickly and securely with a bowline knot that would tighten the more tension it was put under.

“What are you doing?” Medina asked.

He stepped up to her now, playing the rope out of the pack and tossing it in coils on the floor as he did so. “I need you to trust me.”

“I . . . I don’t trust you at all!”

“Then fear me, lady. That’ll work.” He drew his Benchmade Infidel; the blade fired out and glowed in the dim moonlight, and with it he cut the rope where it went into his bag. He took this end and tied it onto a clasp already attached to a single-point nylon-and-elastic harness, which he also yanked from the bag.

Bianca’s terror was giving in to confusion. “What is . . .”

Court reached behind Bianca’s torso and wrapped the harness under her arms, brought both ends around and above her breasts, and fastened them together with the metal locking clasp.

She tried to pull away, but he was too strong, too fast. Too sure of himself.

“Why the fuck are you tying me to Mohammed?”

“I’m trying to make Mohammed useful.” He turned the woman to the balcony, then pushed her along through the open French doors.

Bianca quickly figured out that the man in black wanted her to climb out over the railing to be lowered down, and this stopped her in her tracks. “No!”

The gunfire stopped in the suite so suddenly that both Court and Bianca spun back to the new quiet, but Court returned to his work quickly, and soon he tightened his hand on Bianca’s shoulder, turning her back around to the railing. “We have to hurry. You’ll be fine. I promise. Just close your eyes.”

Someone banged on the door now, fifty feet away.

“I can’t do it!”

Court snapped his switchblade closed and threaded the device’s belt hook inside the harness around Bianca’s torso. “I’m going to lower you down very gently. When you get to the ground, cut yourself loose. Find cover behind one of the stone planters in the forecourt. I’ll free-climb down. Wait for me.”

“No! I cannot! I’m scared.”

Court lifted the woman off the ground now, cradling her in his arms. He jerked his head towards the door to the suite. “Whatever is about to come through that door will be a lot scarier than this.”

Court’s plan was to use the dead guard as a counterweight and the friction of the body along the fifty feet of travertine bedroom floor and stone balcony tile as a means to control Bianca’s descent more easily than lowering her himself. Since the dead bodyguard weighed more than the Spanish fashion model, Court knew he would have to assist her descent by pulling the rope along, but this would be easier and faster for him than slowly lowering the 110-pound woman four floors down to the cobblestones.

Court stepped up to the balcony railing, and the woman squeezed her eyes shut.

“Please, monsieur . . . I just—”

“I’ll be gentle, and I’ll go as slow as I can. It will be a nice, smooth ride as long as you—”

An explosion behind caused them both to spin their heads around again. The door to the living room had been blown in with some sort of charge, and debris tore through the room. As the two on the balcony watched, a pair of figures began rushing into the bedroom through the smoke and dust. Behind them in the living room, three more apparitions appeared. All the men held weapons and wore black tactical gear, and they seemed to float around in the haze like danger itself.