Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

“I don’t care whether you’re lying or telling the truth,” she said. “That was the sexiest proposition I’ve ever heard in my life.” They started walking toward the Place des Ternes when he stopped suddenly. He had spotted the brown Peugeot parked near the corner.

She looked at him, and he pulled her close as if to kiss her, his eyes quartering the Peugeot and the street. He put his lips to her ear.

“When we get to the Place des Ternes, don’t ask questions. Run down the stairs to the Metro without me. Make sure you’re not followed home. I’ll come later if I can. What’s the address?”

“What’s going on?” she whispered back.

“We’re being followed,” he said, and kissed her so long and hard he almost forgot what he was doing.

“Mon dieu,” she said, catching her breath. “Eight rue du Terrage, au troisieme etage . It’s in the 10th Arrondissement, near the Canal St. Martin.”

“I know the canal,” he said, taking her arm, the two walking together. He had spotted a glint of metal reflected from the shadows in a parked Renault Megane half a block behind them. As they walked toward the lights of the Place des Ternes, he could feel her trembling beside him.

In the center of the square was the entrance to the Metro, and next to it a shuttered flower stall. Scorpion spotted a front tail behind a tree near the stall. He didn’t have to turn around to sense the tail behind them. They were bracketed.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” Sandrine whispered.

“Je ne sais pas comment il va etre.” I don’t know how it is going to be. “Run!” he said abruptly, pushing her toward the Metro entrance. He had a sense of her running down the stairs as he whirled and kneeled into a shooting position, pulling the Glock from the ankle holster under his trouser leg.

“Ne bougez, trouduc!” he shouted at the shadow. Don’t move, asshole!

The shadow detached from the side of the flower stall and ran toward the Avenue de Wagram. A Middle Eastern-looking man in a windbreaker. Scorpion started after him. He needed him alive, he thought, running as hard as he could, wondering why the man hadn’t fired first.

The man, wearing a windbreaker, hopped onto a motorbike parked vertically between cars. Dodging a passing red Citroen, Scorpion raced toward the curb. He needed to get out of traffic and get a clean shot. He had almost reached the curb when he got his answer about why the man in the windbreaker hadn’t fired.

A bullet pinged off the cobblestones less than two inches from his foot. Scorpion dived between two parked cars and wriggled under one of them. He peered out from beneath the car. The shot had made no sound. Whoever fired must have been using a sound suppressor.

He quartered the area looking for the source of the shot. It hadn’t come from behind, from rue du Faubourg St.-Honore. Other than the man in the windbreaker, he had spotted no one and no one had followed Sandrine down the stairs to the Metro. So where the hell did the shot come from? he wondered, pulling off his jacket.

His thoughts were broken by the sound of an engine revving. Scorpion peeked out from under the car and saw the man on the motorbike cut into traffic. He flicked his jacket out toward the sidewalk while rolling the other way to the street, looking around wildly while snapping into a kneeling shooting position. He was about to fire when something moved, a shadow or a reflection; something out of the corner of his eye made him look up, and he just had time to roll back under the car as another bullet ricocheted off the cobblestones, barely missing his head. He heard a woman scream and saw another woman, crossing the street to the Metro with a small dog, look up. He watched her, the sound of the motorbike fading up the avenue.

The shot had come from a roof or upper floor apartment building on Avenue de Wagram near the little square. The middle-age woman with the dog shouted, “Aidez-moi! Police!” -Help! Police! — scooped up her dog and ran to the Metro stairs. A couple walking across the square ran back from where they’d come.

The shot had come from above on his side of the street, Scorpion realized. It had to be a rifle because even a marksman couldn’t have come so close while shooting from above at that distance with a pistol. Also, he wouldn’t have been in an apartment, because before he and Sandrine decided to take the Metro to her place, they hadn’t known they would be walking to the Place des Ternes. The tails must have spotted them heading this way, figured out where they were going, and the sniper-part of the front tail team-went into the apartment building above the pharmacy. He would have gone up to the roof for what should have been an easy kill. It was the red Citroen that saved him, forcing him to step aside, spoiling the sniper’s first shot.

Whoever they were, they were good. He wouldn’t get lucky again.

It was about four meters from under the car to the front door of the apartment house. A ledge between the top floor and the roof would give him some protection from the sniper shooting vertically down. There would be no time to ring the bell for the concierge; it would take perhaps seven or eight seconds to bump the front door lock with his Peterson universal key. He would only be vulnerable during the two or three seconds on the open sidewalk.

It would all depend on how fast the sniper’s reaction time was, he thought. Also, a pure vertical shot was difficult; the kind people almost never fired in their lives. The bullet would not have a curved trajectory. The sniper would have to adjust the sight lower than normal to hit the desired point of impact. Scorpion knew that moving fast, at night, he would present a minimal target from above, where all the sniper would see were his head and shoulders.

They’d set it up well, he realized. The man on the motorbike had been a decoy. Another few seconds, and if he hadn’t shoved Sandrine to the Metro stairs, the sniper would have killed them both. He had told her that knowing him would be dangerous, and she’d probably wondered if he was being melodramatic. He hadn’t expected it to be proven right so quickly.

Did the sniper know about the vertical trajectory? he wondered. One way to find out. Taking a deep breath, he rolled out from under the car and sprinted to the apartment house door, a bullet drilling into the sidewalk behind him as he slammed himself flat in the doorway.

He had been right. The sniper overshot the point of impact by a few critical centimeters.

Scorpion used the Peterson universal key to open the door and enter the building. The hallway was typically Parisian: a patterned tile floor, flowered wallpaper, a staircase and narrow elevator. Gun ready, he pressed the button for the timed hall light and looked up the staircase. Nothing moved.

He pushed the button for the elevator, and using the noise as it started down to cover his footsteps, climbed the stairs, whipping around at every turn and landing, ready to fire. The timed hall light went off. He crept up to the top floor, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Reaching the landing, he hesitated, peering into the darkness.

It would be impossible to go up the stairs to the roof. The sound of the roof door opening would alert the sniper. At that distance, and as a stationary target for an instant, the shot would be fatal. He needed another way onto the roof.

Moving on tiptoe down the carpeted hallway, he put his ear to the first apartment door. Through it he could hear a television. Someone was listening to a game show, La Rue de la Fortune. Wheel of Fortune. He went to the next apartment door and thought he heard someone talking inside. The third apartment was silent. It didn’t look like it was wired for an alarm. Just to be sure, he knocked. If someone answered, he’d tell them he was l’electricien sent by the concierge to investigate a problem. But there was no answer. Using the Peterson key, he opened the lock and went inside.