Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

He screamed at the top of his lungs: “Attention! Fusil! Police!”

As the sniper swung the rifle into aiming position, some of the bystanders screamed and ran; the others stood there, frozen. Scorpion threw himself onto the platform floor in a prone position, aimed the Glock and fired at the sniper’s thigh. He needed him alive.

The sniper staggered but did not go down. He re-aimed as Scorpion fired again, hitting him in the shoulder this time. Scorpion rolled to the side as the sniper fired and barely missed, the bullet tearing a jagged scar in the concrete platform next to his ear, then came up to his feet and ran toward the sniper again.

The man was struggling to raise the Vychlop for another shot. The train was coming fast, not far behind him, the bore of the rifle’s silencer opening looking big as a tunnel to Scorpion. But the sniper was too close, and instead swung the rifle at Scorpion’s face.

Scorpion blocked it and started the Krav Maga disarm, curling his right arm around the weapon, creating torque on the forearm while smashing his left elbow into the man’s face. He twisted the rifle away then smashed the butt of the weapon into the sniper’s face, staggering him sideways. As Scorpion reached to pull him close into a choke hold, the Iranian, seeing the train almost there, suddenly lurched sideways and off the platform.

The train came with a roar of air, its brakes squealing above a woman’s high-pitched scream as the front car smashed into the Iranian, flinging the body forward onto the track like a rag doll before rolling over it.

He stood in the shadow of a doorway across the street from her building. She had said “third floor,” which in France means the fourth floor as Americans count. Her building was brick with wrought-iron window balconies with flower pots, and at the end of the street a stone arch led to the Canal St. Martin. He could smell the water from here.

There was a light in the window of what had to be her apartment. She was waiting for him and he wanted to go up, but he knew this was as close as he was going to get, and that he would remember standing in the street looking up at her window for a long time. He called her on his cell.

“Allo,” she answered. And in English: “Is it you?”

He didn’t answer. Just hearing her voice, knowing he was as close as he would ever get, was like nothing he had ever felt before.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Across the street.”

“Come up, je t’en prie, ” she whispered. Please. “We have to talk.”

“I can’t. Did you hear?”

“The death in the Metro? It was on the tele . Was it you?”

He didn’t answer. He could hear her breathing over the phone.

“Witnesses in the Metro said he was going to shoot,” she said. “You had no choice. I hate this.”

“So do I,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“You need to leave Paris now. Tonight,” he said.

“I could go back to-”

“Don’t say it! Don’t tell me where. Don’t tell anyone. Your phone could be bugged. Just call a taxi and go, now.”

“And you?” she said.

“I’m going too. I won’t be able to contact you, and don’t try to reach me. When it’s over, if I’m still alive, I’ll find you.” With a pang, he remembered those were the same words he had used with the boy, Ghedi. “You’ll probably be married with three children.”

“I wish,” she said. Then softly, “No, I don’t.”

“If you never want anything to do with me again, I’ll understand. It’ll probably be the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Who said I was smart?”

“I’m so sorry about this.”

“You’re sorry. Is that the best you can do?”

“I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said, and clicked off.

He stood in the shadow of the doorway and waited. He wanted to be sure no one would follow her when she left. A cool breeze came from the canal, and he stepped farther into the doorway, out of the wind. Looking up at the lit window, he saw her shadow moving on the curtains. He hoped to God she was packing. His eyes scanned the street again. There were no watchers at either end or on any of the roofs.

Finally, a taxi pulled up outside her building and its interior light came on. He tensed watching the driver make a call on his cell phone. The light went out in Sandrine’s apartment. A minute later she came out of the building, pulling a rolling suitcase behind her. The taxi driver put the suitcase into the trunk and then they were gone.

The street was empty. Checking his iPhone, Scorpion located a youth hostel near the Gare du Nord that catered to backpackers and college students. He walked on the quai next to the canal, where it was virtually impossible for anyone to follow without him spotting them.

Turning up a side street, he walked for blocks past shuttered shops, his footsteps echoing in the deserted street. He had never felt so alone, and all he could think about was Sandrine. How he had upended her life and how quickly she understood what she had to do, even if she didn’t understand what was really going on. There’s steel in her, he thought. A lot more going on there than just a doctor with a pretty face.

There was traffic on rue du Faubourg St.-Martin. He stepped into the lobby of a cheap hotel and had a sleepy concierge call a taxi that dropped him off at the Gare du Nord train station. Waiting till the taxi left, he walked through the terminal, doubling back to make sure he was completely clean, then walked to the youth hostel.

He spent a restless night in a bunk bed. In the morning, by offering to chip in for gas, he was able to crowd into a beat-up Ford Mondeo, joining up with three young male European backpackers and a college girl from Ohio. They were headed south on the A6 to Grenoble, where all of them except the girl were enrolled at the university.

He went as far as Lyon with them, waving goodbye to the backpackers, and found an Internet cafe in Old Lyon, a few blocks from the Rhone River. There was only one person he trusted enough to contact, he thought grimly, hoping Shaefer was still in Europe. He sent an e-mail to Shaefer’s dummy Gmail account and then used the NSA software on a plug-in drive to delete any trace that he had been on the computer or where the message was coming from, including the deleted items file and the temporary Internet files. It only took four words, but it would reach Bob Harris, whom he and Shaefer had nicknamed among themselves “Turd Face,” or “tf.” tell tf im in

Zug,

Switzerland

It was raining when Scorpion stepped off the double-decker S-Bahn from Zurich. Even before he walked out of the train station in Zug, he spotted the surveillance.

It was a classic six-box shadow detail: two fore, two aft, two bracketing on either side in the center. The center pair-a man with a buzz cut wearing a Burberry trench coat, and a pert blond woman in a sweater and a North Face jacket who looked like a teenager-didn’t even bother to pretend they weren’t watching him.

Scorpion stood under an umbrella in the Bahnhofplatz in the rain and motioned to the Burberry to come over. At first the man pretended not to see him. When Scorpion persisted, the man threw a glance at the pert blond and came over. He was a big, bulky in his trench coat, a hand in his pocket.

“This is stupid,” Scorpion said. “Let’s go see Harris.”

A minute later he was in the back of a Mercedes sedan sandwiched between the Burberry and a man in a soccer hoodie. The pert blond climbed into the front passenger seat and turned, flashing perfect teeth and a 9mm Beretta at him. Scorpion handed both his Glocks-the 9mm from the small-of-the-back holster and the small Glock 28 from his ankle holster-to the hoodie. He kept the ceramic scalpel and polymer lock pick-nonmetallic to avoid metal detectors-taped with flesh-colored tape to the sole of his foot.