Authors: Arno Joubert
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Military, #Spies & Politics, #Conspiracies, #Political, #Thrillers
Ultimate Power
CHAPTER ONE
“Also, you'll find a pair of safety glasses and some earplugs under your seats.
Please feel free to use them.”
MAX FISCHER:
Introducing his play, Heaven and Hell.
Paris, France
6:01 PM
“One more time, please daddy," Franky begged. He swopped the melting ice cream cone to the other hand, licking his sticky fingers.
Pete Ricco smiled and fed another Euro into the coin-operated telescope. His boy handed him the ice cream and plastered two tacky hands to the sides of the scope.
Kids.
Pete licked the ice cream as he absorbed the sights and sounds of a warm Parisian afternoon. A balmy breeze wafted over the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower, and people mulled around excitedly, babbling and pointing to the various landmarks they recognized from their travel guides.
The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower looked spectacular. The grey River Seine meandered a sluggish path through the heart of Paris. A variety of brightly painted vessels churned this way and that along the river, like confused ants. Pete leaned forward on the handrail as he admired the architectural intricacies of the Chaillot Palace and the lush greenery of the Bois de Boulogne, which separated the old city from the new.
He stood up straight and paged through his travel guide, trying to decide what to do next. The damn thing kept referring to the popular landmarks to the left side of Seine and to the right side of the Seine.
“How the hell do you know which side was the left and which side was right?” he had asked the pretty girl manning the reception desk at the hotel.
She nodded knowingly. Pretty simple, really, if you looked downstream, left was left and right was right. Which didn't work either until he remembered not to assume that all boats were traveling downstream. Sometimes he could be such an idiot.
He fished his cell phone from his pocket as he felt it vibrate for probably the tenth time that morning. He read the message and cursed under his breath before slipping it back. It was a message from the bank, a transaction for a thousand five hundred Euro had been cleared on his card. His wife, Carmen, running around somewhere in Paris shopping, maxing out his credit. Paris wasn't the cheapest city in the world to take your impulsive wife on a damn spending spree, that was for sure.
He sighed. Suck it up Pete, his new wife was pretty and young and Franky seems to have accepted her.
He would do anything for Carmen. A lovely face without any blemishes or wrinkles. Body toned to perfection, she spent hours in the gym. He scratched his balls without thinking. Damn, that girl was a handful in bed.
Financially, he was doing just dandy although he had to start over twice. First was 911, when he saw his entire empire that he had spent ten years building go up in smoke and dust, literally.
Then that bastard Madoff took him and his clients for everything they had back in 2008. But he had slowly built up his base and relied on his contacts to get back on his feet. In his previous life he had been an investment broker, dealing with venture capitalists, but now penny shares were his bread and butter.
He knew it was risky business, but he would research the companies meticulously, if they had solid financials, a good product and paid regular dividends, he would advise his clients to invest in them. The commissions were excellent. He never risked any of his own money on the smaller shares. Blue chips were his thing. Solid companies, Google, Apple, Anglo American. Companies with large market caps and double digit growth.
He sighed and slapped the handrail with the guidebook. Nothing taxed a relationship more than financial strain. When the market crashed, that bitch Tina - Franky’s mom - left him stranded, taking him for every last penny he had. All he had were his clothes, a bed and Franky. And a massive amount of credit card debt, the two-timing bitch.
But he couldn't complain, third time lucky, he guessed.
“Look, dad, a plane,” Franky shouted excitedly, pointing at the sky.
Pete looked up as the Airbus A-300 made a wide arc in the sky. It flew awfully low, the trees of the Boulogne forest flitting and swaying in its jet stream like an inflatable arm flailing tube man. The engines whined as it banked to the side on its slow, wide turn, the flaps engaged as it tried to reduce its speed. Pete had heard that sound once before. The only difference between then and now was that he had stood on the ground on the corner of West Broadway and Park in New York City, watching in awestruck disbelief as the scene unfolded before his eyes. He swallowed at the lump in his throat. Surely not again?
The plane straightened out its flight path.
And headed straight their way.
He grabbed Franky by the arm and pulled him onto his hip as he ran. Shit. The crowd panicked and surged towards the lifts. Which would be suicide, he didn’t want to be stuck in a metal cage when the tower went down. He headed for the stairs.
A siren sounded from somewhere, like those that they rang during the second world war bombings. People hustled and shoved and jostled for position. He slipped and fell, pushing himself up as he looked back.
The plane approached, fast, less than a hundred yards away, the whine of the jet engines becoming an insistent and deafening tone that he could literally feel in his head. He closed his eyes and sucked in a raspy breath as the people mulled around him. This was futile.
He turned to face the roaring monster swooping down on him. People bumped into him, trying to shove him out of the way. Franky grabbed his waist and whimpered.
"It's useless," he whispered, patting the boy’s head. He looked down at his son.
Franky's eyes were squeezed shut, his fingers in his ears.
People screamed as the plane thundered towards them. Then time and place became one, as if watching a movie in slow motion, frame by frame, although it only lasted for two seconds. He could smell the vanilla and chocolate cone on Franky's hands. The wind jerked at the shirt plastered to his back as the sweaty rivulets oozed from his hyper-sensitized skin.
He saw a young couple leap into the lift-shaft. They were holding hands. If the fall didn't kill them, the explosion would, Pete thought. The flying jet-fuel bomb screeched and Pete stood frozen as he watched the plane's nosecone grow larger and larger.
And then it hit. The Tower shook as the plane plowed into the lower observation deck below them. The impact jolted him off his feet. Everything went ghostly quiet as his eardrums popped, like watching a silent movie.
Pete screamed as the high propane jet fuel exploded and engulfed his body in flames. He didn't scream because he was in pain, the explosion had severed all the nerve endings in his skin as it was scorched off his flesh.
He screamed because he was still alive as the Tower started to topple over, he screamed because he couldn't believe that this was happening again and he screamed because he didn't want his son to die yet. Not like this.
He lived for one more second, saw his boy's arms and face turn black and then become a sickening red oozing mass of boiling flesh and tissue. He screamed again and then the world went black.