The Loch Ness Legacy (3 page)

Panicked party-goers, some of them bloodied, screamed past Grant as they searched for an escape, but between the gunfire on the tower’s deck and the explosion outside the window, there was nowhere to find safety. Grant was relieved to see no bodies lying on the floor. The blast must have been timed to blow out the window, leaving an open space for the next bomb to fly through.

Cool air streamed into the room through the gaping hole where the window used to be. Grant blinked and looked for the source of the airborne explosive, but there was no way to see where the attack had been launched from. A rocket-propelled grenade would have left a telltale streak of flame as it rocketed toward its target, but the attackers were using stealthier quadcopters for the assault. The sophisticated flying bombs weren’t much bigger than a large garbage can lid and were painted black, making them incredibly difficult to see in the night sky. The quadcopters’ bare bones design consisted of nothing more than a central pod carrying the control mechanism and high explosive, with a propeller on each of its four articulated arms.

The only reason Grant had gotten a warning at all that a bomb had been on its way was because of the preventive measures he and Tyler set up in the hotel room they had rented near the Eiffel Tower. They’d left the multi-paned window open so that their proprietary motion-tracking system would have a clear view of the tower.

The portable DeadEye targeting system was a product of Gordian Engineering, the firm the two of them worked for and that Tyler had founded. DeadEye had been developed for the military to help infantry units spot snipers. It took a snapshot image of a scene and then constantly checked that image against new high-definition video coming into the unit. If anything changed, it would alert the soldier monitoring it. Although it was constrained to stationary use due to the limitations of the computer’s processing power, it was a powerful tool that could be used even at night.

The DeadEye in the hotel room, a prototype Grant had borrowed from the Gordian labs, was now pointed directly at the Eiffel Tower. When it detected movement in the air around the tower, it would send an alert to Grant’s smartphone, and he’d see a visual of the target on his screen.

Two previous warnings had come in, but they were only birds, and Grant had to decrease the sensitivity of the unit. The third warning came eight seconds before he spotted the quadcopter directly, leaving him just moments to duck.

Now that Grant knew the attack was underway, it was time to fight back. He tapped his phone and launched his own quadcopter, this one built by Gordian for a civilian project called Mayfly. It was an unmanned aerial vehicle developed for hazardous search and rescue missions, like the inspection of the Fukushima nuclear plant that melted down after being flooded by the Japan tsunami. The view on his smartphone was from the camera mounted on the front of the Mayfly drone they’d set up in the hotel room in case of emergency. Grant figured the blown-out window and gunshots outside counted as an emergency.

Normally the camera was the only accessory on the UAV, but Tyler and Grant had spent the past two days weaponizing the Mayfly. They’d given it a stinger. Now Grant would put the jury-rigged contraption to its first test in a combat scenario.

Using the simplified onscreen controls on his smartphone, Grant directed the Mayfly to take off. The screen showed the hotel room as it rose above the bed and threaded its way through the open window. Once it was outside, Grant dialed up the speed to full throttle. The electric motors whisked the UAV up and the Eiffel Tower filled the screen’s view.

The DeadEye targeting system was linked to the camera on the Mayfly, superimposing the two images. A new white crosshair appeared on his smartphone screen, which meant another bomb was on the way. Grant directed the Mayfly to intercept.

He sat with his back to the exterior wall. There was no need to try to get a visual on the quadcopter from here. Standing would only reduce his level of control.

The approaching copter was moving so quickly he’d only have one pass to try to disable it. The Mayfly homed in on the target. Grant’s finger hovered over the FIRE button. When the target crosshair filled the screen, the Mayfly would be close enough to attack.

This was going to be close. The first floor of the Eiffel Tower, the very spot where he sat, was getting awfully big in the background.

The dot grew larger. Larger. Only seconds now until it reached the Salle Gustave Eiffel and flew right through the shattered window to explode amongst the panicked crowd.

Grant couldn’t wait any longer. The target engulfed the screen.

He fired.

Two prongs of a Taser mounted on the Mayfly lanced forward. The prongs latched onto the enemy quadcopter and sent fifty thousand volts through it.

As he’d hoped, the shock from the Taser short-circuited the copter’s control mechanism. The quadcopter plummeted to the ground, automatically pulling the leads free from the Mayfly.

They didn’t know how many quadcopters were coming, but if the number exceeded three more, they were in real trouble because the Mayfly had only three Taser shots left.

Another crosshair bloomed on Grant’s smartphone. He angled the Mayfly toward it. The two copters converged at high speed.

This time the crosshair grew exponentially. Grant timed it to when he thought the quadcopter would be in range. The crosshair filled the screen and he fired.

Nothing. The Taser prongs missed, and the enemy quadcopter zoomed by. It would be there in seconds.

Grant looked up and saw a red dot playing across the ceiling directly overhead. That was how the quadcopters were being aimed at their target. Someone on the ground had a laser, like the Army used for guiding smart bombs.

And this bomb was going to hit right above where he was sitting.

There were a few other people prone on the floor. He bellowed for them to move, and his deep voice was enough to get them to scramble whether they understood him or not.

Grant sprinted across the room and dived behind the bar.

For a moment he heard the whine of the quadcopter’s rotor blades, and then the bomb exploded as it hit the ceiling.

Shrapnel flew across the room, taking three people down with the blast. Casualties wailed like banshees. Shielded by the bar, Grant had escaped injury.

The explosion didn’t start any fires, but the smoke was enough to activate the sprinkler system, which doused the entire room.

Grant left the bar’s cozy confines to see if he could spot the laser again, shielding his smartphone from the water with his coat as he walked.

The bright red dot was still dancing across the ceiling. There was at least one more bomb to intercept.

Tyler reloaded the MP-5 submachine gun he’d commandeered from one of the dead security officers.

“Last mag!” he yelled to Brielle.

“Mine too!” she shouted back, unloading another three-round burst at the attackers, who were well-covered inside the gift shop pavilion. “I think I’ve hit one, but we’re sitting ducks here. We need a better position.”

“The stairs. If we can get to high ground, we can end this.”

There was no reason for the gunmen to leave their positions. Tyler knew their purpose was to keep the guests inside the reception hall so that the explosives could finish the job. They also had a superior position over anyone ascending the stairs. The police would be cut to pieces if they tried storming their way up.

But something about the situation wasn’t making sense to him. Tyler’s company, Gordian, was well-known for disaster analysis—airplane crashes, oil-rig explosions, building collapses—so he had been Brielle’s first choice for reconstructing the steel framework from Oslo. Gordian’s advanced computer analysis tools indicated that the structure could be a section of the Eiffel Tower. Small pieces of quadcopter remains had been found amongst the wreckage, so Tyler and Grant had theorized that it could have been some kind of attack preparation against Paris’s most famous landmark, the summit event being the most likely target.

But the terrorists couldn’t be planning to bring down the entire tower. If that’s what they intended, the gunmen and the quadcopters would be superfluous. In addition, collapsing the tower would require a huge quantity of explosives placed in just the right locations, and it would have been noticed by the advance security teams.

Tyler knew he was missing something, but what?

He fired another round and ducked again, turning his head as he did so and catching a glimpse of the maintenance men cowering behind him.

There were only three of them.

“Where’s the other one?” he asked Brielle.

“The other what?”

“The fourth maintenance worker.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said, firing another round. “I’ve been a tad busy.”

“Ask them where he went.”

After she spoke, the three men pointed in the direction of the east pillar.

“They say he went downstairs.”

“Why?”

“They thought he ran off because he was scared.”

Tyler looked where they were pointing. To make it over there, the maintenance worker would have had to cover open space, exposing himself to a bullet storm. Staying where he was would have been far safer.

Unless he knew no one would be firing at him.

Tyler suddenly realized what the actual target could be.

The elevator.

“Brielle,” Tyler said, “ask these guys if they know what was wrong with the lift.”

She gave him a questioning look and then translated. The three of them shook their heads.

If the workmen could fix the elevator easily, the guests would certainly use it to go back down once this was over. A bomb set next to it might be what the attackers were planning all along. No one would think to look during the chaos of an evacuation. Whoever was sending the quadcopters could watch the elevator windows with a telescope to see who got on and then blow up the bomb as the lift passed.

“How long has the missing man been working with them?” Tyler asked Brielle.

The answer came back, “Two weeks. They don’t know much about him, though they mentioned that his accent sounds odd.”

“He must be an impostor. Did you recognize him?”

Brielle shook her head. “I couldn’t see his face very well under the hardhat, but he had glasses, a mustache, and beard.”

A disguise. Tyler was so focused on the lead worker that he hadn’t paid much attention to the others.

“We need to lay down suppressing fire so I can make it to the stairway.”

“But I—”

“No time to argue. One. Two. Three!”

Tyler sprinted for the stairs, unloading his entire magazine in the direction of the pavilion as he ran. Brielle did the same with her weapon. Bullets zinged off the metal around him. His luck held out until he was within a few feet of the stairwell.

That’s when the bullet hit him in the left arm. Whether it was a direct hit or a ricochet he couldn’t tell, but the jolt of pain caused him to drop the submachine gun.

Tyler stumbled against the safety grating and tumbled down the first flight of stairs. He shook his head and held his arm. Given the blood streaming from both sides of his bicep, it seemed like the bullet had passed through his muscle, missing the bone. The only saving grace was that they had been firing relatively small 9mm rounds. His arm wasn’t useless, but every time he moved it, agony radiated from the wound like a beacon.

He picked himself up and staggered down the stairs. As he walked he looked for any sign of movement. When he’d gone down five flights and cleared the bottom of the first level, he saw someone crouched on a catwalk directly underneath the Salle Gustave Eiffel. The shadowy figure would have been invisible to anyone not actively searching for him.

The man hadn’t spotted him yet, so Tyler had a chance at sneaking up on him. Without the MP-5, surprise would be his only weapon.

He thought he could make the climb over the safety grating encapsulating the stairs. The gunfire and screams would cover any noise he made. But he realized his chance of success was still small. He needed a backup plan.

He took out his phone and tapped quickly, starting a text to Grant.

I’m going to need your help
.

Tyler’s tuxedo was a mess. Ripping his cuff as he climbed over the safety fence was just the latest indignity. The left sleeve of his jacket was saturated with blood. Stains mottled the fabric as if it were black and brown tie-dye. The knees on his pants were torn from crawling around on the deck of the tower while he was under fire. He wondered if James Bond’s tuxes had been made of Teflon.

The only reason he was even thinking about the state of his clothes was to keep his mind off his throbbing arm. Several times he had to bite his lip from crying out as he lowered himself gently to the catwalk, careful to minimize both noise and vibration.

He settled into a crouch, putting pressure on his arm to stanch some of the blood flow. In addition to the pain, he was beginning to feel woozy, either from shock or blood loss.

Tyler crept forward, more afraid of losing his balance and falling over the side than he was of the man in front of him. His quarry was still hunched over, intent on some unseen task, wearing black now instead of the gray overalls he’d had on earlier.

Tyler considered what to do, but he didn’t have much of a choice. His injury meant a fight wouldn’t last long and might end up with him splattered on the pavement below. At this point his best option was simply to get close enough to charge the guy and push him over the side while he wasn’t looking. Not a sporting plan, but the one likeliest to keep himself alive.

Although the tower was illuminated by so many lights it could practically be seen from space, shadows from the ironwork played across the catwalk. Every time he took a step, Tyler went from dark to light and then back again, which only added to the disorientation felt as the blood drained out of him. If the bullet had nicked an artery, he wouldn’t last much longer.