Willi Ridder’s plan was simple: shock and awe Stahl and the others into a clear choice: surrender or die.
He assumed they were wearing bulletproof vests – but maybe they weren’t. Maybe they were wearing suicide vests. If a bullet hit the explosives, everybody in the room, including his ESI team, would be identified by DNA.
He and his team would have to try for headshots. Almost impossible when all hell broke loose, and Ridder anticipated all hell breaking loose.
They climbed to the third floor, moved soundlessly down the hall and entered C3. Then, using the coordinated helicopter flyover noise and the roar of the crowd as cover, they inched the large armoire silently to the side.
Ridder and the team saw the door to the secret alcove. They placed location-listening devices on the wall to determine where the terrorists were positioned.
Suddenly Ridder’s earphone clicked on. The man in the Hôtel de Ville tower said, “The tall man is looking out the window. He seems puzzled about why the police are backing the crowds away from the grandstand.”
“Are the other men still behind the rocket launchers?”
“Yes, but… ”
“But what?”
“Oh shit….”
“What’s wrong?”
“People in the crowd are pointing up at Philippe’s team on the roof right above 3C window. The tall guy at the window realizes someone’s right above him. He’s very excited. Now he’s saying something to the men behind the rocket launchers. It looks like he wants them to fire the rockets now!”
Ridder feared they would fire any second and kill thousands - because they feared a roof assault through their window.
Ridder faced his team and mouthed, “One… two… three… GO!”
Instantly, they yanked open the secret door, tossed in the flash-bang grenade, covered their ears and eyes for the blinding flash, then rushed into the room.
The terrorists, disoriented, were ducking for cover.
“Hands up!” Ridder shouted.
At the window, the tall man wearing wraparound sunglasses started to put his hands up, then leaped for cover behind some wooden crates and fired off two rounds, missing Ridder’s head by inches.
The other terrorists shot their handguns as they lunged behind the rocket launchers and prepared to fire them.
But Ridder’s team unleashed a barrage of bullets that drilled them against the back wall. They slumped to the floor, firing wildly into the room.
The tall man behind the wooden crates sprang from behind the crates and reached for the rocket launcher’s pull-tab, just inches away.
His fingers grabbed the pull-tab.
Ridder and a team member fired and bullets ripped into the man’s fingers, then up through his shoulder, neck, face.
The tall man froze, then slumped beside the launcher, his mangled fingers still twitching on the pull-tab.
Ridder kicked his hand away.
* * *
Running into the room, Donovan slipped on the wall-to-wall blood and had to steady himself on a large wood crate. He smelled gunpowder and sweat.
De Waha rushed in. “Status?”
“Bad guys dead or dying!” Ridder said. “Good guys, one grazed shoulder, couple of slugs in our vests.”
The ESI team hunched over the bodies, checking for pulses, any sign of life, finding none.
Donovan walked over and checked the crumpled, bloody bodies behind the rocket launchers. They seemed too short to be Stahl. He walked over to the tall man beside the launcher. Stahl’s height and weight, and his hair was black, the color Stahl had died it last night.
Donovan looked at the man’s bloody, bullet-ravaged face. The man looked like Stahl, even though the bullets had ripped open his cheeks, mouth and forehead. Donovan studied the man’s bloodied eyes. Dead, dark, deep-set, stone-cold eyes. But too damaged to compare to the eyes in Stahl’s photo. He searched the pockets of the man’s police jacket for some ID. Nothing. As he pulled his hand out, his knuckles brushed against something stiff in the lining. He reached through a slit in the lining and pulled out a frayed Euro passport.
His heart pounding, he opened the passport – Axel Braun. Stahl’s alias!
Donovan looked at the passport picture, then at the bloody face on the floor. They matched, except where bullets had sliced and diced his face and eyebrows.
De Waha walked up to Donovan, looked at the passport and breathed out.
“Axel Braun,” de Waha said, “a.k.a. Valek Stahl!”
“a.k.a. dead!”
“Yeah… bastard got off easy!”
Donovan agreed, feeling oddly cheated. He’d wanted to look at Stahl, remind him of his cowardly slaughter of Emma, see the recognition in his eyes. But that was not to be.
At least Stahl was dead.
Donovan walked over to the rocket launchers and looked out the window at the grandstand less than one hundred feet below.
He saw the empty chairs where, in just three minutes, the eight most powerful leaders in the world were scheduled to sit.
And die.
Then Donovan felt himself tense up. He remembered something from the Mossad profile on Stahl.
Stahl always had a backup plan.