Place de la Sorbonne, Paris
“Maybe the contact isn’t coming,” Maggie said to Dara, lowering her sunglasses to check her wristwatch. “Kafka should’ve been here ten minutes ago.” She adjusted the black hijab over her head, for the anonymity that was in it.
Dara’s light-blue eyes, contrasting her Middle Eastern features but characteristic of her people, blinked in concern as she drained her demitasse, then set the cup down with a nervous clink. She brushed back her reddish-brown hair and gathered the blue-and-white polka-dotted scarf back around her head. “He must be stuck in Paris’s fabled rush-hour traffic.” Dara picked up her cell phone, tapping it on the edge of the round wrought-iron table. “He’s not answering his phone either.”
The two women sat outside in one of the crowded outdoor cafés lining the Place de la Sorbonne, early evening, waiting for the man who had promised to provide Maggie the information necessary to infiltrate the Darknet payment system of one of the largest Jihad Nation cells known. A high-ranking defector indeed. The mid-September sun had just gone down and the streets and sidewalk were bustling with commuters. There was a chill in the air, brought on by the recent rain that left the asphalt glistening.
“Maybe,” Maggie said, unconvinced. She pushed her sunglasses back up her nose. Without the shades and hijab, one would have seen deep-brown eyes, though set in a face that was more Quechua Indian than Latin American, with fine high cheekbones and skin the color of copper. She was lucky to have the face for two reasons. As a woman, she’d inherited her Indian mother’s classic beauty, and as a field operative, she could pass for many races. That was proving to be a boon for Operation Abraqa. With the smart black-leather jacket she’d picked up at La Piscine, black yoga pants, and alligator loafers, she looked the part—an upscale young Arab woman hanging out in the City of Light.
“We’re at the drop-dead time,” Maggie said. “Better try and call Kafka again.”
Dara took a deep breath, punching a single number on her speed dial, and slipped the phone under her hijab next to her ear.
“No answer,” she said after a moment, jiggling her foot as she twisted in the chair, looking around at the street and other cafés either side. “He might be stuck on the Metro—out of cell-phone range.”
“Agency protocol says bail,” Maggie said with a sigh. “We’ll have to reschedule.”
Dara clicked off her phone, tossed it on the table with a bump. “All that work!”
A gray-haired waiter in a black vest and white apron appeared, metal tray tucked under his arm. “Plus de cafés, mesdames?”
“Non, merci.” Maggie said. “L’addition, s’il vous plait.”
He gave Maggie a genial nod as he reached into the pocket of his apron, retrieved a bill holder, set it upright on the table in front of her. “Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle.”
“Well, at least I’m still a mademoiselle,” Maggie said, getting her cash out, removing the silver money clip, peeling off euros. “I thought I was on the wrong side of twenty-five for that.”
The joke didn’t fly with Dara, who grimaced and stared at nothing. For her part, half a year’s work had been invested in luring Kafka away. His defection from Jihad Nation would strike a major blow for her people, the Yazidis of northern Iraq, who were being slaughtered and kidnapped en masse by the terrorists.
“Don’t sweat it, Dara,” Maggie said. “This kind of thing happens all the time.” It didn’t, but what was the point?
“If you say so.”
Maggie understood Dara’s frustration. The opportunity to break Abraqa—the Darknet payment system—wasn’t something that came along every day. They might not get another shot. How many more people would die as a result? How many beheadings? How many women sold into sexual slavery?
It had felt so tantalizingly close.
“Tell you what,” Maggie said. “We’ll give it five more minutes. But no longer.”
Dara exhaled and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Just keep it between us.” Maggie said. “I’ve violated protocol before.” And paid the price. Was still paying the price. It was all she could do not to keep eyeing her watch. But she was keeping a silent count in her head.
One minute.
The people at the next table were having a heated discussion about the Syrian refugees.
“Ruining France!” one hefty woman said, slamming her cup down.
Two minutes.
Dara consulted her phone again, looked up with a frown. “Still nothing from Kafka.”
Three minutes. “We’re out of here in two minutes if Kafka doesn’t show,” Maggie said to Dara.
Just then, a car came roaring up in front of the restaurant, skidding to a stop at an angle on the wet tarmac by their table. A rattling blue Citroën, with one white fender and a series of dents.
“That’s him. It has to be,” Dara said brightly, turning in her chair toward the street.
But Maggie wasn’t so sure. Already she was resting her hand under the hem of her silk T-shirt, ready to draw her pistol if need be.
The car doors flew open simultaneously and two people leapt out, from the driver’s side a man with a weather-beaten face, unshaved, wearing a black watch cap and a beat-up leather jacket, a drugged look in his sunken eyes.
From the passenger side a woman emerged, dressed entirely in black—jilbāb robe, gloves, and a full niqab over her head, covering everything but her eyes, which stared out in a daze. She wore a white headband with Arabic writing across the front. Strapped on a black sash around her middle were half a dozen black canisters, fused together with white electrical wire.
“Everybody down!” Maggie yelled in French as she sprang up from her chair and reached under her T-shirt, pulling the subcompact Sig Sauer P238 from her holster bra—a procedure that took one point six seconds at the firing range.
“Allahu Akbar!” the woman in black shouted, staggering to the curb. God is the Greatest!
Her companion came around the front of the car, raising an AK-47.
Maggie brought the Sig up fast in both hands as she crouched down behind the table, flipping the safety off with her thumb.
The bar patrons shrieked. Some dove for the sidewalk; others started running.
The AK opened up, spraying the crowd indiscriminately. People screamed and fell as the street echoed with gunfire.
Maggie focused on the suicide bomber, keeping her arms straight, lining up the sight at the end of the short pistol on the woman’s chest, while the man’s machine gun filled the air with a chock-chock-chock, rattling in Maggie’s ears as she squinted in concentration.
She fired five of the six rounds, holding one back despite the urge to empty the magazine, pulling the trigger gently for each shot the way she did every Thursday at the range.
The woman’s niqab puffed out on one side as blood erupted from the eye slit, soaking the head covering before she threw her hands up in a twist and sank back to the ground, as if deflated.
The man with the machine gun stood spread-legged on the street, firing into the crowd hiding under the tables while he shouted euphoric chants in Arabic.
Kneeling, Maggie held her breath and fired the last shot at him.
He bolted sideways, hit in the shoulder.
But he wasn’t down.
He kept firing, up in the air, screaming for holy jihad.
Maggie shoved the hot gun in her pocket and racked her brains for her next move. Then, more automatic gunfire boomed to her right. She turned to see two policemen in blue military fatigues sprinting toward them, one firing a submachine pistol at waist level. The other man’s side cap flew off as he stopped, readying his weapon.
The man with the AK-47 collapsed in a hail of bullets. His head hit the street at the same time his machine gun did.
And then it was over, just the shots reverberating, subsiding, taken over by the cries of the terrified patrons and wounded victims.
“Everybody get out of here!” Maggie yelled, jumping up. There was no telling if the woman bomber was due to explode or whether Maggie had cut her mission short.
People fled in all directions.
“Come on, Dara!” Maggie shouted.
Then, on the sidewalk by the table, Maggie noticed Dara curled up and motionless.
“Dara!” she gasped, falling to her knees, pulling her friend up. Dara groaned in response, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth. She was alive! Maggie hauled her to her feet, but it would be a colossal task getting Dara out of here.
A big man with a blond crew cut came bounding over, peeling off his windbreaker. He wore a tight blue T-shirt and had the physique of a body builder. “I’ll help!”
“I’ve got her!” Maggie shouted back. She scanned the pile of blood-soaked bodies and saw the waiter rolling in agony under an old woman in a blue coat and high heels, clearly dead. “Help him!” she yelled, pointing.
The man pulled the waiter from under the dead woman, carried him off.
“Come on, Dara.” Dara was in a state of open-mouthed shock, her face streaked with blood, but she could move, albeit unsteadily and with assistance.
“Arm around me,” Maggie said, leading her out into the street. The two policemen were now on handheld radios, calling for ambulances and a bomb squad.
In the distance the whoop of sirens resounded off the stately apartment buildings, but it was Dara’s desperate gasping that filled Maggie’s ears. She was close to death. Warm blood soaked through the hip of Maggie’s pants as she clutched her friend and guided her out of bomb danger. Dara stumbled alongside in a haze, sucking in labored breaths that didn’t seem to come fast enough.