Outside, Raul’s cell phone rang again to announce that Henri Foche and Claudette were now only two miles from the main gate of the shipyard.
That was when Mack Bedford’s door was pushed open, tentatively, and a machine gun barrel was pushed forward into the room. Mack could not see it, because the door was wide and pushed back almost to the wall. If he had not been standing there, it would have been flat against the wall. As it was, the door was flat against his chest.
The three armed guards walked into the room, and swiveled into a three-pronged attack formation, each man facing a different way, their backs toward each other. The room was by no means bright, but it was perfectly light, and each one of them scanned the shelves, the room, and its corners.
One of them called out in French, “There’s no one in here. Room’s empty.” None of them spotted the toolbox and the assembled rifle because they were pushed back into the corner shielded by the door.
“Okay, guys,” said their leader. “All clear on floor six.” Outside a sentry called down to the team, “No problem floor six. It’s empty.”
The first two guards made for the doorway, but the third man suddenly spotted the blue overalls slung up on the high shelves. “Is that anything?” he asked.
“Well, it’s not a person,” said another. “You want me to go up and check it out?”
“Go ahead,” said his colleague.
The man walked over to the shelves, put down his rifle, and started to climb, which was when he saw Mack Bedford jammed behind the door.
He let out one hell of a shout, which was only cut short when Mack’s iron hand clamped over his windpipe and dragged him bodily off the lower shelf. He then delivered one of the most brutal attacks in the entire SEAL repertoire, a crushing bone-shattering bang in the middle of the forehead, delivered with the butt of his knife handle, and then a pile driver of an uppercut, delivered with the butt of the open hand, which rammed the nose bone deep into the man’s brain.
This took five seconds, and the door swung back. The other two men had heard the strangulated yell, and came charging back into the middle of the room. Mack Bedford by now had his hands on the barrel of the dead man’s rifle, and he took the first of the other two with a baseball swing that obliterated the skull behind the right ear, smashed the nerve center, and killed him instantly. The third man swung around, on the attack, his rifle leveled as he tried to draw a bead on Mack Bedford. He almost succeeded, but Mack had his left hand on the barrel and turned it away, swiveling the third guard to the right, just about at arm’s length, just about far enough to slit the man’s throat almost in half with a slashing pinpoint-accurate swipe with the fish knife from the hardware store. No civilian can kill quite like that. This was combat, close combat, designed by SPECWARCOM to eliminate an enemy.
Mack reached the door. The landing was empty, the sentry having made his call and progressed to floor seven. Quietly, Mack closed the door. Only seventeen seconds had passed since the first intruder had stepped into the room, and now he clicked the lock shut. Even as he did so he heard the wail of the police sirens as Henri Foche’s motorcade came speeding along the main street that led to the shipyard’s entrance.
So far the three dead guards had not been missed. Everyone had heard the all-clear call from the sixth floor sentry, and everyone was busy with the rest of the warehouse search. For the moment Mack was safe behind the heavy-duty door.
He placed the toolbox and the attack board at the base of the rear wall. Then he picked up Prenjit Kumar’s sniper rifle, the precision Austrian SSG-69, and moved to the edge of the open front window. Right inside the main entrance he could now see clearly the police outriders talking to two of the men who had arrived by limousine.
The convoy was waved through, and the police car moved forward just far enough for Foche and Claudette to disembark right at the foot of the steps that led up to the podium. Right now he was not surrounded, as he would be six seconds from now. Raul stood on his left quarter, just behind. Pierre was marshaling the police to form their cordon at the back of the stage.
Mack was on his knees, the rifle rock-steady on the window ledge. Everyone was looking at Foche and his strikingly beautiful wife. And now Mack had him in the crosshairs of the telescopic sight. A clear, unimpeded, uninterrupted shot. It was never going to be better than this. For a second Mack’s heart ceased to beat, and then he squeezed the trigger.
The high-velocity bullet ripped out of the finely turned, shortened barrel, and it hit Henri Foche with fantastic force slightly left of center, almost in the middle of his forehead. Deep inside his brain, the bullet exploded, blasting a hole that blew blood and tissue out of the back of his head, through a gaping hole five inches across.
Mack snapped the bolt of the rifle back hard, and fired another. The bullet hit Henri Foche as he fell backward. It smacked into him on the left-hand side of his chest, straight through the scarlet handkerchief, and blew his heart asunder. The Gaullist leader never knew what had hit him.
“I guess that one was for you, Charlie,” gritted Mack Bedford. “From the goddamned Euphrates River to right here in Saint-Nazaire, that one was for you.”
And then he moved as fast as any human being had ever moved, dismantling the rifle, fitting it back into the toolbox, ramming down the lid. He then turned his Draeger around, fastening it tight to his chest. He stuck to his belief that an unlocked door does not attract, and he flipped back the lock, still working on the theory that if one or two men tried it and it opened, they would not sound an alarm. If it was tightly locked, a hefty steel door like this might attract thirty gun-toting guards with det-cord or even dynamite.
Meanwhile, down on the concourse, there was nothing short of total pandemonium. Only those closest to Henri Foche understood he had been hit by an assassin’s bullet and was now dead. Pierre Savary was among those. Raul Declerc thought he had other problems, and Claudette was cradling her dead husband in her arms, loyal to the bitter end.
Savary called the ambulance personally, and now the crowds began to surge around the shocking scene that had evolved at the foot of the podium steps. The body of Henri Foche was slumped backward close to the car. It was crimson with blood, and Claudette was spattered, kneeling down, holding his head, saying over and over, “Why did we come here? Will someone just tell me why we had to come here?”
Raul Declerc was staring up at the warehouse, scanning the front of the building. It took him a full minute to spot the wide-open window on the sixth floor, but 99 percent of the crowd still had no idea what had happened. Raul knew he still had men in that building, and he began dodging through the still-growing throng. It was only 4:45 when he began heading to the side door of the warehouse. Plainly, the guards at the front door had heard nothing because no one had moved, and these were trained guys.
Raul, in his former life as Reggie Fortescue, had never served in Special Forces, but he had seen combat with the Scots Guards in Iraq, and he was more highly trained than any civilian to deal with trouble. Especially if he had a submachine gun in his hand.
He entered the stairwell and began to climb, floor by floor, conscious that the guard detail he had sent to search the building was all on the higher four floors. He reached the sixth and was nearly certain this was the correct level for the open window. Nearly certain, but not quite.
Raul pulled the handle, pushed the door, and stepped into the room. At first he did not see the black-clad Mack pressed against the wall next to the rear window. Instinctively, he headed directly to the open front window and glanced out. Quickly, he turned and saw Mack, and instantly leveled his machine gun at the big frogman’s heart.
“Freeze!”
he snapped.
Mack Bedford answered calmly, in his natural voice, “Okay, buddy, you got me. No problem. I’m not armed.”
The thoughts in Raul Declerc’s mind raced. He had the assassin, right here, all on his own. If he marched him down at gunpoint, no one could deny him a very large payment for professional services. He had not stopped the killing, but he would have done what no one else could do and captured the culprit. That had to be worth big money.
He gazed across the wide room at Mack Bedford, and there was something about that voice, something in the steady timber, something about that North American accent. And something suddenly clicked in his brain.
“Morrison?” he said quietly.
“No, not me,” replied Mack, “I’m not Morrison. Morrison’s right over there.” Mack raised his arm and pointed to the far wall on his left, and then shouted suddenly, unexpectedly—
“KILL HIM, BILLY, RIGHT NOW!”
No SEAL in the entire history of SPECWARCOM would have fallen for that. At the very least, any one of them would have shot Mack Bedford dead before turning to deal with “Billy.” But Raul Declerc was not a SEAL, and he was startled, frightened, and he turned quickly, unsure which of these two desperadoes to shoot first, the unarmed one in front of his eyes or Billy, who obviously had a gun.
The split second of Raul’s hesitation earned Mack just that: a split second. It was by no means decisive, but it was crucial. Mack dived right, straight to the floor, rolled, and came up low and hard. The arc that Raul’s gun needed to travel, to re-aim away from the far wall, was much wider now. That was the split second.
Mack’s right fist slammed into Raul’s left kidney like a jackhammer. It landed with such force he dropped the gun. Mack swooped to pick it up, and Raul, who was no pushover, landed a mighty kick to the side of his head. The ex-SEAL commander took it, but still came up with the gun, which he swung at Raul’s head, a fearsome blow, slightly off-center. The force was, however, enough to fell the former Scots Guards colonel, who landed flat on his back.
This was the most dangerous opponent Mack had faced thus far. Mack knew it must be Raul. The commander of the Forces of Justice from Marseille was the only person on earth who knew the name Morrison. Raul not only knew for certain that Mack had just killed Foche but also knew about the plan, the money. Worst of all, he was the only person in France who knew precisely what Mack looked like, and what he sounded like.
Of all the security guards in all the warehouses in all the world, Raul Declerc had to go. Raul was still conscious, and Mack leaned down and with his left hand grabbed him by the yellow flak jacket right near the throat, and with his right hand grabbed the crotch of Raul’s pants.
Mack lifted, stepped back, and with astounding strength he swung the prostrate Raul back, lunged forward, and then launched him clean through the open window like a yellow torpedo. Raul never even touched the sides. He was definitely still conscious because Mack heard him scream all the way down to the concourse, where he landed with a dull, life-ending thud.
There were now more footsteps on the stairs, coming down and coming up, voices shouting and yelling. Mack locked the door, buying more seconds. Then he grabbed the toolbox, tucked his attack board under his arm, and climbed through the rear window.
He stared down at the water. It was a drop of sixty-three feet, high, damned high, but not as high as the oil rig in the Gulf. And he’d jumped from that. For the first time, Mack was scared. He straightened right up on the window ledge and summoned his courage. He could not go back. He had to jump or die. When the door gave way, they’d shoot him down.
He must have stalled for five seconds, and then there was an enormous blast right behind him. The steel door cannoned off its hinges, shot right across the room. There was smoke everywhere, and the smell of cordite. Someone bellowed,
“Right here, guys, he’s in here!”
A machine gun opened fire, a random volley in the smoke. Mack took a deep breath, pulled down his mask, and jumped, dropping through the air, ramrod straight like an Olympic diver, except he was spearing down feet first, toes pointed in his French work boots, the toolbox under one arm, the slender attack board under the other. When he hit the water, the toolbox made the only splash, and Mack was still rigid, as he knifed deep, leaving barely a ripple on the surface.
On the low wall adjacent to the warehouse a guard saw only a blur, but he could see the little whirlpool made by Mack and his toolbox on the surface of the harbor water. He pointed to the spot and blew three loud blasts on his whistle. And the guards came running.
Thirty feet down, close to the floor of the tidal basin, Mack was shaken, but hugely helped by the supreme SEAL protective wet suit, which had taken the sting right out of the entry. He opened the toolbox and let the water flood in. He dropped it and watched it descend. Then he put the Draeger line into his mouth, turned on the valve, and breathed normally, despite a heartbeat of about seven thousand revs per minute.