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There was a score of people in the little park; a young mother with an energetic toddler, an elderly man walking an elderly dog. Another man sat alone, sipping a cup of coffee and looking at his wrist watch several times, as if he was waiting, none too patiently, for someone to join him. Others walked among the trees: a young couple holding hands, two young men kicking a soccer ball back and forth as they went, people enjoying the sunny day.
Lily took a pen from her tote and drew a rough diagram of the park, marking the locations of benches, trees, shrubbery, the concrete trash receptacles, the small fountain in the middle. Then she flipped a page and did the same with the laboratory complex, marking where the doors were in relation to the gate, the windows. She would need to do the same for all four sides of the complex. This afternoon she would rent a motorbike and wait for Dr. Giordano to leave the complex, assuming he was even there, of course—she had no idea what hours he kept. She didn’t even know what model and make of car he drove. She was betting, however, that he would keep fairly regular hours, close to the national average. When he left, she would follow him home. Simple. His phone number might not be published, but old-fashioned methods still worked.
Again, she knew nothing about the man’s family life, or if he even had family here in Paris. He was her ace in the hole. He knew about the complex’s security and, as director, would have access to every part of it; what wasn’t certain was how easily he would divulge that information. She preferred not to use him, however, because once she grabbed him, she would have to move quickly, before anyone noticed he was missing. She would try to find out about the internal security methods by other means, try to get in without using Dr. Giordano. But she wanted to know where he lived sooner rather than later, just in case.
Lily was sharply aware of her shortcomings in this area. She’d never dealt with anything more than the most basic security systems. She wasn’t an expert in anything, except reading her target and getting close enough to execute the mission. The more she thought about this undertaking, the more she realized how uneven the odds were, but that didn’t lessen her determination. There was no perfect security system in the world; there was always someone who knew how to bypass it. She would find that someone, or she would learn how to do it herself.
The two young men were no longer kicking the soccer ball. Ins
tead they were talking on a mobile phone as they looked at a sheet of paper, then at her.
Alarm skittered through her. She slid the notebook and pen back into her tote, then pretended to accidentally knock the tote to the ground beside her right leg. She bent down and, using the tote to hide her movements, slid her hand inside the top of her boot and pulled out her weapon.
She used the tote to keep the weapon concealed as she got to her feet, moving at an angle away from the two men. Her heart was thumping in her chest. She was accustomed to being the hunter, but this time she was the prey.
12
Lily sprinted, her sudden burst of speed catching them by surprise. She heard a shout, and instinctively dived to the ground a split second before the sharp, deep crack of a large-caliber pistol shattered the drone of everyday business. She rolled behind one of the concrete trash receptacles and came up on one knee.
She wasn’t fool enough to stick her head up, though most people weren’t all that accurate with a pistol. Instead she took a quick peek around the side and squeezed off a shot of her own. At that distance, some thirty or thirty-five meters, she wasn’t all that accurate herself; her bullet went into the ground just in front of the two men, kicking up a spray of dirt and sending both of them diving for cover.
She heard tires squealing, people screaming as they realized the sharp sounds were those of gunfire. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the young mother swoop down on her toddler and snatch him up as if he were a football, holding him under her arm as she scrambled for safety. The little boy squealed with joy, thinking it was a game. The old man stumbled and fell, losing his hold on the leash. The old dog, however, was long past making a dash for freedom, and it sat down on the grass.
Quickly she looked around for any threat coming at her from the rear, but all she saw was people running away, not toward her. Safe from that quarter, at least for right now, she looked around the other side of the receptacle and saw two uniformed guards running from the complex gate, weapons in their hands.
She squeezed off a shot at the guards and made them dive for the pavement, though again they were too far away for accuracy. She used a modified Beretta model 87, shooting .22-caliber long rifle bullets, with a ten-round clip. She had just used two rounds, and she hadn’t brought any extra ammo with her, because she hadn’t been expecting to use it. Fool! she berated herself. She didn’t know if these two guys were Agency or some of Rodrigo’s men, but she was betting on Agency, for them to have found her so fast. She should have been better prepared, instead of underestimating them and perhaps overestimating herself.
She snapped her attention back to the two soccer players. They both had weapons, and when she peeked around again, both fired off shots; one shot missed completely, and she heard glass shatter behind her, followed by more screams and the sudden shocked cries of someone who had been wounded. The other bullet struck the trash receptacle, sending a chunk of concrete into the air and peppering her face with stinging shards. She fired a shot herself—three—and checked the guards. They had both found cover, one behind a tree and the other behind a trash receptacle like the one she crouched behind.
They weren’t changing their position, so she turned back to the soccer players. The one to her left had moved even further to her left, hampering her aim at him, since she was right-handed and the concrete that protected her was to some extent also protecting him.
This was not good. There were four weapons to her one, therefore theoretically at least four times as much ammunition as she had. They could keep her pinned here until she ran out of ammo, or until the French police arrived—which should be any minute now, because even with the ringing in her ears from the gunfire, she could hear the sirens—and took care of her themselves.
Behind her, traffic had snarled as drivers stopped their cars and jumped out to hide behind them. Her only chance was to run for the cover of the cars and use them to hide her movements; she’d have to shortcut through a shop, probably, or hope someone came by on a bicycle, so she could relieve them of it. She didn’t think she could trust her ability to run for any distance.
The old man who had fallen was trying to get up and at the same time gather his trembling pet to him. “Stay down!” Lily yelled at him. He looked at her with terrified incomprehension on his face, his white hair wildly disordered. “Stay down!” she yelled again, making a downward motion with her hand.
Thank God, he finally understood, and flattened himself on the ground. His little dog crept to him and lay down by his head, getting as close to him as it could.
For a moment, time seemed frozen, the sharp smell of cordite seeming to hang over the park despite the chill breeze. She heard the two soccer players say something to each other, but she couldn’t make out the words.
From her right came the purr of a well-tuned, powerful engine. She glanced in that direction and saw a gray Jaguar jump the curb, heading straight toward her.
Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, almost deafening her. She had only a few seconds; she had to time her jump perfectly or the car would crush her. She gathered her legs under her, preparing to spring—
The driver spun the wheel and the Jaguar slid sideways between her and the soccer players, the tires slinging clots of dirt and grass as they tried to grab traction, the rear end of the car swinging around so that it ended up facing in the same direction from which it had come. The driver leaned over and thrust open the passenger door.
“Get in!” he yelled in English, and Lily dived into the front seat. Over her head came the deep boom of a large-caliber weapon, and the spent cartridge bounced off the seat into her face. She swatted the hot shell away.
He floored the accelerator and the Jaguar leaped forward. There were more shots, several of them, the cracks and booms of different caliber weapons overlapping. The driver’s side rear window splintered, and the driver ducked as glass sprayed behind him. “Shit!” He grinned, then swerved to miss a tree.
Lily had a dizzying image of a tangle of cars as they shot forward into the street. The driver spun the wheel again and the Jaguar once more swapped ends, throwing Lily onto the floorboard. She tried to grab the seat, the door handle, anything with which to anchor herself. The driver was laughing like a maniac as the car once more leaped a curb, fishtailed, then shot through a gap and briefly went airborne before coming down on the street with a hard thump that rattled her teeth and made the chassis groan. Lily gulped for air.
He slammed on the brakes, made a hard left turn, and accelerated out of it. The G-force pressed Lily into the floorboard, preventing her from climbing into the seat. She closed her eyes as squealing brakes sounded directly beside her door, but there was no collision. Instead he made a right turn, bumping along a very uneven surface; with the buildings looming so close on each side that she thought they were going to lose the side-view mirrors, Lily knew they must be in an alley. Dear God, she’d gotten into a car with a maniac.
At the end of the alley he slowed, stopped, then smoothly pulled out into traffic and measured his speed to that of the other cars around him, driving as sedately as any grandmother on Sunday morning.
But he was grinning, and he threw back his head on a full-throated laugh. “Damn, that was fun!”
