John Ringo: Ghost

“What do you bloody want now?” Hardesty snapped. “Sorry, sir, I’d just laid my head down. Are we up again?”

“No,” Mike said. “But in the morning, get the plane up and to a dispersal field away from Paris.”

“Might I ask why?” the pilot said curiously.

“No,” Mike replied. “But you can come to your own conclusions. At least sixty kilometers from Paris. To the south or east.”

“Very well,” Hardesty said cautiously. “Given that information, perhaps I should move it now.”

“Up to you,” Mike replied, hitting the disconnect. “I’d hate to have my wings shot off by this.”

“That wasn’t exactly the most secure conversation I’ve ever heard,” Bruce said. “You could get your ass in a sling over that.”

“You’d have to find someone with a big enough sling,” Mike said, leaning back in the seat and folding his arms.

The more Mike looked at the stadium, and the area surrounding it, the less enthusiastic he became about it being the likely target. Yes, if they hit it they would get international coverage; that was guaranteed with any nuke. But the only people they would kill would be sixty thousand or so attendees, the pope, and a few hundred thousand people in the surrounding area. And the closest dense population was high-rise “low-income housing” that was mostly populated by Muslims. They’d definitely kill more Muslims than Christians. And it wouldn’t gut the City of Light.

TV vans were already setting up, with Klieg lights running and the works. He regarded them balefully as the sedan drove past. There were dozens of the damned things, any one of which could hold the nuke. With the lead wrapped around it, there was no way that there’d be a radiation trace. There was a small particle given off by nukes, a nucleotide or somesuch. That would get through the radiation shielding. But the detectors for it were huge, giant tanks of cleaning solvent of all things. He wasn’t sure there were any that were mobile. He’d have to ask NEST. On the other hand, if there were any, he was sure they were in use.

“This isn’t it,” Mike said, shaking his head as they passed through the security cordon. “Or if it is, I’ll take the hit. Head to Notre Dame.”

By the time they got there the sun was rising and they had to fight traffic. French drivers weren’t the worst in the world — Italians had them in Europe, and the entire third world had Europeans for bad driving — but they were pretty damned bad. Bruce negotiated the traffic expertly, however, with only an occasional curse, and got him to the security cordon alive.

Security was tighter here than at the stadium, but their plates, and especially Mike’s passport, got them into the area and he had Bruce park. He looked around at the buildings and nodded. This was a much superior target.

Notre Dame was a magnificent Gothic cathedral completed in 1345 after nearly two hundred years of construction. It was built on the Ile de la Cite, an island in the Seine River near the center of Paris which joined the Right and Left Banks through a series of four bridges. But it was only the last of several religious structures on the island. In turn there had been a Druidical grove, a Roman temple to Jupiter and a Romanesque church occupying the same island over the millennia.

Notre Dame, including its nave and secondary buildings, occupied only about half of the large island, with the rest taken up by two hotels of nearly the same antiquity. The island, thus, had little in the way of parking; the multitudes of attendees were anticipated to be brought in by bus while the press were relegated to an adjoining island, Ile Saint Louis, which had a far too small parking lot for the purpose.

Security was tight, with French police wandering all over the area, most of them carrying submachine guns on friction straps. Mike regarded the press area balefully. There were, if anything, more press vans here than at the stadium.

“This is the command post over here,” Bruce said, pointing to a set of police vans as they got out of the Peugeot. “You’d probably better get a security badge if you’re going to be wandering around the area.”

He led him over to command post, Mike’s diplomatic passport getting them through another layer of security and up to the rear of one of the vans.

“I take it you are the American who thought we would let a nuclear device slip into Paris,” a woman said as they reached the rear of the van. She was a narrow-faced brunette holding a cup of coffee and wearing a very pissed-off expression.

“That would be me,” Mike said, smiling. “And you are… ?”

“This is Madame Gabrielle LaSalle-Guerinot,” Bruce said hastily. “She is the French minister of security.”

“Madame,” Mike said, bowing slightly. “A pleasure. I’m not sure I can get the whole last name. Can I call you Gabby?”

“No you may not,” Madame LaSalle-Guerinot responded angrily. “And if it wasn’t for the Cliff government making a stink of things, I would have you thrown out right now.”

“Pity,” Mike replied. “I thought we were getting on splendidly. But unless you are the clerk that hands out badges, I think we’re looking for someone else.”

Madame LaSalle-Guerinot started to reply, thought better of it and stomped off.

“You did not make a friend there, I think,” a French colonel sitting at the rear of the van said dryly.

“Well, I don’t think getting laid was in the cards, anyway,” Mike replied. “And I don’t think you are the clerk I need to see, either, Colonel… ?”

“Henri Chateauneuf,” the colonel said, languidly sliding out of the van and handing Mike a badge. “Call me Henri. And I am — I am the clerk. So Madame LaSalle-Guerinot informed me but minutes ago.”

“I suspect you don’t have a friend in the good madame either,” Mike said, taking the badge and hanging it around his neck on a lanyard.

“ C’est la vie ,” the colonel said, shrugging, then taking Mike’s arm and leading him towards the cathedral. “I doubt that I shall, as you say, get laid, either. It is a terrible world. The madame was appointed after the last election. She was an academic with copious papers to her name, explaining how the French security apparatus, including its military, oppressed the poor Muslims of our fine country. Since the Muslims are an increasing voting block, we inherited Madame LaSalle-Guerinot, a woman who has not once seen the inside of a refractary building except on carefully guided tours.”

“Refractary,” Mike said, frowning. “The low-income Muslims?”

“Indeed,” the colonel said, sighing. “She is very much against being ‘high-handed,’ as she puts it, with the refractary. Even when they riot, as they often do. May all the saints forbid that we, for example, make random sweeps for any who are holding guns or drugs. That we enforce French laws against battering women. She is a feminist, yes? But this is simply their ‘culture.’ Something that we have to learn to live with, as a multicultural society.”

“Has that interfered with this investigation?” Mike asked.

“Many of the drivers of press vans in Europe are of Middle Eastern or North African origin,” the colonel replied tightly. “Make your own conclusion.”

“Is she mad ?” Mike snarled. “We’re talking about a nuke, here.”

“Calmly, calmly,” the colonel said, stopping and turning to regard him with lidded eyes. “The item has not come here, of course. The Muslims of the world are angry at the Cliff Administration, not France. It was not we who invaded Iraq. It was not we who staged a raid on Syria, who detonated a nuke over their territory. We did not set forces in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This was all America, so naturally the Muslims are angry at America, only. France has done so much for them they would not think to attack us. We are good friends to the Muslims here in France. And the way that we will continue to be friends is to treat them gently, as we would fellow Frenchman. Better, in fact. So we have not, for example, conducted a van-to-van search for a generator that does not run. Such would be intrusive, both to our Muslim brethren and to the news media. In the latter, I agree, she has a point. If we start searching vans, one by one, if the nuke is here, they would simply detonate it.”