The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (the dot read aloud .txt) 📗

for leads. Ben found the big one. An Algerian contact in his home base of Paris hinted at an order of rare chemicals heading to a bomb maker. Ben put a hasty mission together, pulling in Giselle and the Company’s top tinker—Dylan. The Algerian’s info led them to the case, and the case led them here.

“Micro,” Ben said, laying his scope in its case. “That’s a job well done. Enjoy the flight home. Nightingale, keep tabs on the target. I’ll—”

A shadow darkened Ben’s perch. Strong arms flipped him over and slammed him down, breaking roof tiles.

A brute stood over him—bald, Arab, packing a SIG. “Enjoying the show, Mr. Calix?”

“Massir?” The Algerian—the criminal from Paris whose rumor about an order of bomb-making chemicals led Ben to the case. Ben feigned relief and exasperation and rolled onto his shoulder, hiding his hand in his coat pocket. “Did you follow me?”

He didn’t give Massir a chance to answer. In a snap motion, Ben reversed his body and used the momentum to scissor the Algerian’s legs from beneath him. The SIG flew from Massir’s hand. Scrambling over the tiles, Ben pinned him down, one knee on an arm and the other across his chest. His left hand brushed Massir’s side, leaving behind a gift.

Massir swung a knife.

Ben jerked his face back and caught the man’s wrist. He clamped a hand over the fingers, trapping the blade. “Bad idea.” A strike to the elbow bent Massir’s arm, and with both hands, Ben pressed the knife down until the tip found Massir’s Adam’s apple. “When we met in Paris, I used an alias. How do you know my real name?”

“Jupiter has been watching you. He is pleased.”

Screams hit Ben’s ears—two versions of the same scream, one live and one over the comm link. Giselle.

“Saber, this is Micro.” The echoing howl of a motorbike in a sewer pipe nearly drowned out Dylan’s voice. “Something’s wrong.”

“No kidding.”

“Should I go back?”

“And do what?” Ben knocked Massir out with a right cross. “You never carry a gun.” He launched himself over the ledge and rode the fire escape down until it clanked against its stop, leaving him dangling five feet above the pavement. He dropped to the ground in a crouch. “Go, Dylan. Get out of here.”

Ben rose and turned. The crowd before him scattered, some running for their lives.

Fifty meters away, a red-haired man the size of a small house held Giselle by the neck, dragging her backward toward a runabout bobbing against the Tiber River docks.

Ben charged.

Giselle’s attacker raised a SIG like Massir’s to her neck. “Stay back. I’ll kill her.”

Without slowing, Ben drew a Glock and leveled it. “Not a chance.”

2

With a speed Ben could never match, Giselle’s hand flashed up to her attacker’s wrist. The gun spat as she pushed it away. A single round sparked off an ancient paver, eliciting new screams and gasps from the onlookers brave enough to have hung around. Giselle elbowed him in the ribs and spun. “Now!”

Two quick trigger pulls sent the redhead reeling off the dock. His skull glanced off the hull of a runabout, and he sank like a stone. Ben advanced, keeping his weapon trained on the cold froth that remained.

Whistles blew. Shouts reached his ears from a hundred meters away. He tucked the Glock away. “Giselle?”

“I’m fine. We need to go. Contingency Alpha?”

“Yeah. See you soon.”

Giselle ran west across the bridge. Ben headed east through the piazza and into the maze of gardens and monuments comprising Villa Borghese. He scanned the walkways and trails.

The courier was gone.

Too many eyes witnessed the shooting. Bullets had flown in the streets. Ben had crossed the Italian cops’ only line, and now they’d come looking. He’d have to lose himself for a while—no time to search for the courier. Fortunately, he’d created another option to salvage the mission.

Pick up the trash, boys. The gravelly voice of Colonel Hale, the Company schoolmaster, still rang in Ben’s ears on every field op.

Field ops are like hockey. One miss doesn’t mean the play is over. When your team takes a shot and the puck glances off the post, trap the rebound and slap it home. Pick up the trash. The heart of field ops is flexibility. Missions go wrong. Deal with it. Regroup and try another angle.

Ben slipped between a pair of sculpted hollies to let a cop run by. He’d trapped this mission’s puck by placing a tracker on Massir during the rooftop scuffle. He’d lost one quarry but picked up another—one who knew way more than he should.

The smartphone in Ben’s pocket buzzed. He checked the screen. Massir had reached the limits of the tracker’s range, deeper into the park gardens. Ben broke into a jog, fallen leaves crunching under his Oxfords. A tracker allowed him to split his attention—evade the cops while following his quarry. But this one had a severely limited range.

Trackers with full satellite connectivity never got much smaller than a smartwatch—good for planting on gofers and delivery boys, but not real players with the training to spot them. For alert adversaries, Ben preferred a lighter touch. He’d placed a thumbnail-sized patch known as an echo on Massir’s coat. Nothing fancy. Just two layers of electromagnetic insulation to passively reflect a short-range signal from Ben’s phone—caveman tech by Dylan’s standards. “The oldies still have their place in the field,” Ben had told him when the Welshman scoffed at the echo earlier that morning. “Like my dad used to say when building cabinets. For some jobs, a hand tool serves better than an electric, as long as you don’t mind hard work.”

He slowed, checking behind him for cops. His gray canvas trousers and a wool coat helped him blend into most crowds, but they didn’t fit the image of a man out for a jog. On the upside, the run pulled Massir’s blip into a comfortable range, continuing south along one of the park’s gravel paths.

The park’s tree-covered path gave way to a set of worn