Templar's Quest

37

‘Christ!’

His reflexes honed from three wars, Finn roughly shoved Cædmon Aisquith in the shoulder, knocking the other man off-centre. The bullet, intended for the Brit’s heart, ploughed into a maple tree instead, a chunk of sheared bark blasted into the air.

The next instant, seeing a red laser light bounce in Kate’s direction, Finn spun on his booted heel and dived straight at her, lifting her up and over the retaining wall. The two of them crash landed in the narrow gully behind the concrete barrier – just as another piece of bark chipped off the tree trunk.

Finn clamped a hand over Kate’s mouth, muffling her in mid-scream.

‘We’re under fire!’ he hissed. ‘I need you to stay calm. Got it?’

Grey-blue eyes wide with fear, Kate nodded. Finn removed his hand from her mouth.

‘Where’s Cædmon? And why didn’t I hear any gunfire?’

Her questions were asked with the rat-a-tat-tat rapidity of automatic weapons fire.

‘The shooter’s got a silenced weapon.’ Finn raised up slightly and peered over the top of the retaining wall. Aisquith was nowhere in sight, the man smart enough to turn tail and run. He also didn’t see anyone who looked like a cold-blooded killer on the prowl. In fact, none of the milling masses was even aware that there was a gunman in their midst.

Fuck.

He slammed shut the upended laptop computer. Then, snaking his hand over the top of the retaining wall, he snatched Kate’s knapsack and dragged it down into the gully.

‘Quick! Stick this inside the knapsack.’ He shoved both items at Kate.

No time to lose, he scoped out their position – hunkered behind the three-foot-high retaining wall, with a four-foot-high hedgerow to the other side of them, they didn’t have a whole helluva lot of options. Just the one, actually. Seeing a narrow gap in the hedgerow, he looped his left arm around Kate’s torso.

‘Carpe diem,’ he muttered, dragging her through the leafy breach, branches snapping in his broad-shouldered wake. While the thick bushes wouldn’t stop a bullet, they’d camouflage their whereabouts. An expert marksman, he knew that you gotta be able to see the target in order to shoot at it.

Aisquith, crawling on all fours, came barrelling through the bushes about ten feet away. Moving surprisingly fast for a tall man, he scurried over to their position.

He removed the Montségur Medallion from his jacket pocket and handed it to Finn. ‘You left your trinket behind. Tad close for comfort. My heart is still racing.’ Obviously, the Brit referred to the fact that he’d narrowly escaped the grim reaper and his laser-guided pistol. ‘Unless I’m greatly mistaken, our gunman is a bald bloke in a black jacket. He’s positioned approximately sixty-five metres away, standing behind the statuary just south of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. I saw him dash in that direction after he fired his weapon.’

‘I think I know the dude that you’re talking about,’ Finn said, quickly searching his memory bank. ‘I saw a bald-headed guy earlier, staring at his iPod or cell phone or something. A big-ass cue ball who didn’t strike me as the artsy-fartsy let’s-do-lunch-at-the-Louvre type. I’d peg him at six two, two twenty.’

Aisquith nodded tersely. ‘That’s our man.’

Unzipping his Go Bag, Finn deposited the gold medallion. He then pulled out a pair of Bushnell binoculars, aiming them at the statue on the other side of the Arc de Triomphe. ‘Got him. The bastard hasn’t moved to a new position.’ He handed the binocs to Aisquith.

‘Which tells me that our shooter is a rank amateur.’

Finn didn’t bother informing Aisquith that even a rank amateur could pull a trigger and kill a man. ‘I’m guessing he’s packing a forty-five outfitted with laser-aiming device and a sound suppressor.’

‘That or an invisible ray gun,’ Aisquith deadpanned, returning the Bushnells to him.

‘Since you know the lay of the land better than I do, what are our escape options?’ Finn already knew they could rule out the Citroën; it was in the museum’s underground car park, the Ruger locked in the glove box.

Using the tip of his finger, Aisquith drew an open-ended rectangle in the dirt. ‘The Cour Napoléon is enclosed on three sides by the Louvre which is shaped like a massive horseshoe. Our position is here.’ He tapped a spot centred near the open end of the horseshoe. ‘There are three escape routes. The first option: we can dash seventy metres to the open end of the horseshoe and flag a passing motorist on the Avenue du Général Lemonnier.’

Finn impatiently made a rolling motion with his left index finger. ‘Next option,’ he ordered, figuring that Door Number One would get them mowed down the fastest with the hedgerow the only cover in those seventy metres.

The Brit pointed to the two long sides of the horseshoe. ‘On the north and south wings of the Louvre, there are guichets –’

‘What?’

‘Wickets,’ the other man translated.

Finn shook his head, still in the dark. ‘Try again.’

‘Archways,’ Kate said. ‘Actually, they’re huge portals cut into each wing of the Louvre, enabling traffic to pass through the Cour Napoléon.’

Finn raised the Bushnells and took a gander, first at the gunman, still hunkered behind the statue, then at the arched portals. He’d earlier noticed the archways when they crossed the thoroughfare that passed between the Louvre’s inner courtyard and the Arc de Triomphe plaza. From their current position, the two sets of archways were equidistant, each about two hundred metres away. On the plus side, there were trees, shrubs and statues to give them cover. In the minus column, there were hundreds of tourists strolling about.

‘Okay, here’s the plan,’ he announced, stuffing the Bushnells in his Go Bag. ‘I’m going to make the first prison break through the archway on the southern wing. That will draw the shooter in my direction. Before I reach the archway, I’m going to create a loud commotion. That’ll be your signal to haul ass towards the opposite archway on the north wing.’

‘What sort of commotion?’ Aisquith enquired.

‘I haven’t thought that far in advance. Don’t worry. I’ll devise something.’

‘Finn, have you lost your mind?’ Kate hissed, frantically grabbing him by the forearm. ‘You can’t go out there! You don’t have a weapon.’ Because of tight security inside the Louvre, he’d had to leave his KA-BAR knife locked inside the Citroën.

Finn held up his two hands. ‘Kingdom Come or the fiery pits of hell. I can send the bastard to either locale with these two babies.’

‘This is no time for do-or-die theatrics. What if –’

‘Kate! Leave be!’ the Brit interjected in a lowered voice. ‘The man is a trained commando. He knows what he’s doing.’

‘I’ll meet you two jailbirds at the Eiffel Tower in thirty minutes.’ Finn purposefully picked that location because it was the one spot in Paris that he didn’t need a map to find, the damned thing visible from just about everywhere.

‘There’s a café on the corner, one block due east of the tower,’ Aisquith said, jutting his chin towards the famous landmark on the other side of the Seine. ‘We’ll wait for you there.’

‘Gotcha.’ Swinging his Go Bag behind him, Finn went into a sprinter’s stance. ‘Time to do or die.’