Steve Berry - The Paris Vendetta

Bitter-cold air washed his body. The suit and wool face cap offered some protection, but his nose and lips began to chap in the arid air.

His feet found the wing.

The Skyhawk shivered at his violation, but quickly stabilized. He gently pushed off and motioned for more slack as he maneuvered toward the cabin door on the pilot’s side.

A gust of cold air rushed past, disrupting his equilibrium, and his body swung out on the cable.

He clung to the line and managed to swing himself back toward the plane.

He again motioned and felt the cable lengthen.

The Skyhawk was a high-wing craft, its ailerons mounted to the top of the fuselage, supported by diagonal struts. To get inside he was going to have to slip below the wing. He motioned for the chopper to fall back so he could be lowered farther. The pilot seemed to know intuitively what Malone was thinking and easily slipped down so he was level with the cabin windows.

He peered inside.

The rear seats had been removed and the newspaper-wrapped bundles were indeed stacked ceiling-to-floor. His body was being buffeted and, despite the goggles, dry air sapped the moisture from his eyes.

He motioned for more slack and, as the cable loosened, he grabbed the flap’s leading edge and maneuvered himself over to the strut, planting his feet onto the landing gear housing, wedging his body between the strut and wing. His weight disrupted the plane’s aerodynamics and he watched as elevators and flaps compensated.

The cable continued to unwind, looping down below the plane, then stopped. Apparently, the corpsman had realized that there was no longer any tension.

He pressed his face close to the cabin window and stared inside.

A small gray box lay on the passenger’s seat. Cables snaked to the instrument panel. He focused again on the wrapped packages. Toward the bottom, in the space between the two front seats, the bundles were bare, revealing a lavender-colored material.

Plastique explosives.

C-83, possibly, he figured.

Powerful stuff.

He should to get inside the Skyhawk, but before he could decide what to do, he noticed the cable slack receding. They were winching him back to the chopper and the wing blocked his ability to signal no .

He couldn’t go back now.

So before the cable yanked him from his perch, he released the D-clamp and tossed the hook out, which continued a steady climb upward.

He clung to the strut and reached for the door latch.

The door opened.

The problem was the angle. He was positioned ahead, the hinges to his left, the door opening toward the front of the plane. Air sweeping from the prop beneath the wing was working against him, forcing the door closed.

He wrapped the gloved fingers of his left hand around the door’s outer edge, his right hand still gripping the strut. At the limit of his peripheral vision he spied the chopper easing down to have a look. He managed to open the door against the wind but found that its hinges stopped at ninety degrees, which left not nearly enough space for him to slip inside.

Only one way left.

He released his grip on the strut, grabbed the door with both hands, and swung his body inward toward the cockpit. Airspeed instantly worked the door hinges closed and his parachute pounded into the fuselage, the metal panel lodging him against the open doorway. His grip held and he slowly worked his right leg inside, then folded the rest of his body into the cockpit. Luckily the pilot’s seat was fully extended.

He snapped the door shut and breathed a sigh of relief.

The plane’s yoke steadily gyrated right and left.

On the instrument panel he located the direction finder. The plane was still on a northwesterly course. A full moving map GPS, which he assumed was coupled to the autopilot, seemed to be providing flight control but, strangely, the autopilot was disengaged.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see the chopper now snuggled close to the left wing tip. In the cabin window was a sign with numbers on it. Stephanie was pointing to her headset and motioning to the numbers.

He understood.

The Skyhawk’s radio stack was to his right. He switched the unit on and found the frequency for the numbers she’d indicated. He yanked off the wool cap, snapped an ear-and-microphone set to his head, and said, “This plane is full of explosives.”

“Just what I needed to hear,” she said.

“Let’s get it on the ground,” Daniels added in his ear.

“The autopilot is off-”

Suddenly the Skyhawk angled right. Not a cursory move, but a full course change. He watched the yoke pivot forward, then back, foot pedals working on their own, controlling the rudder in a steep banked maneuver.

Another sharp turn and the GPS readout indicated that the plane’s course had altered more westerly and rose in altitude to eight thousand feet, airspeed a little under a hundred knots.

“What’s happening?” Stephanie asked.

“This thing has a mind of its own. That was a tight sixty-degree turn.”

“Cotton,” Daniels said. “The French have calculated your course. It’s straight for the Invalides.”

No way. They were wrong. He’d already determined the end point of this venture, recalling what had fallen from the Selfridges bag last night.

He stared out the windshield and spotted the true target in the distance.

“That’s not where we’re headed. This plane is going to the Eiffel Tower.”

ELIZA APPROACHED THE GLASS DOOR AND TRIED THE LATCH.

She stared down through the thick glass panel and saw that an inside lock had been engaged. No way that could have happened accidentally.

“The one on the other side is the same,” Thorvaldsen said.

She did not like the Dane’s calculated tone, which conveyed that this should be no surprise.

One of the other members turned the corner to her left. “There’s no other way down from this platform, and I saw no call box or telephone.”

Overhead, near the top of the caged enclosure, she spotted the solution to the problem. A closed-circuit television camera that angled its lens toward them. “Someone in security is surely watching. We simply have to gain their attention.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy,” Thorvaldsen said.

She faced him, afraid of what he might say, but knowing what was coming.

“Whatever Lord Ashby planned,” he said, “he surely took that into account, along with the fact that some of us would be carrying our own phones. It will take a few minutes for someone to get here. So whatever is going to happen, will happen soon.”

MALONE FELT THE PLANE DESCEND. HIS GAZE LOCKED ON THE altimeter.

7,000 feet and falling.

“What the-”

The drop halted at 5,600 feet.

“I suggest that fighter be sent this way,” he said into the headset. “This plane may need to be blown out of the sky.” He glanced down at the buildings, roads, and people. “I’m going to do what I can to change course.”

“I’m told you’ll have a fighter escort in less than three minutes,” Daniels said.

“Thought you said that wasn’t an option over populated areas?”

“The French are a bit partial to the Eiffel Tower. And they don’t really care-”

“About me?”

“You said it. I didn’t.”

He reached over to the passenger seat, grabbed the gray box, and studied its exterior. Some sort of electronic device, like a laptop that didn’t open. No control switches were visible. He yanked on a cable leading out, but it would not release. He tossed the box down and, with both hands, wrenched the connection free of the instrument panel. An electrical spark was followed by a violent buck as the plane rocked right, then left.