Two short, one long.
He took a deep breath, slowly exhaled. Then, reluctantly, he squeezed the trigger.
Bari felt a slight recoil, less than a rifle’s, actually.
The launch engine inside the weapon ignited. The first-stage engine propelled the missile only about twenty to thirty feet, at which point it was safe for the secondary propulsion system to engage.
His eyes followed a vapor trail of solid rocket-fuel exhaust. The Stinger was on its way to the target. He heard a low roar as the missile accelerated to 1,500 miles per hour.
Be safe, Jeri.
The Stinger struck the estate broadside—a near perfect hit.
He was already reloading for the next shot.
Chapter 110
THERE WERE LOUD whooshing noises, and then fiery, hellish explosions everywhere I looked. Chaos reigned everywhere. And death as well.
French police and army personnel were frantically running for cover. A rocket or missile had struck the northern roofs of the villa, tossing slate, wood, and bricks from a chimney high into the air. Then a second missile struck. A third was only seconds behind.
I had started racing back toward the main house when I got another surprise out of nowhere.
A side door of the boathouse flew open and a dark blue Mercedes sedan roared up a gravel path toward the main road. I ran to a police sedan parked on the grass, started it up, and gave chase.
There wasn’t time to tell anybody what I was doing. Not even Sandy. I wondered how a police car was going to keep up with a souped-up Mercedes. Probably not too well. No, probably not at all.
I stayed with the powerful CL55 out of Cap-Ferrat, all the way to the Basse Corniche. I nearly killed myself, and maybe a few others, on the twisty road, but I didn’t lose whoever was speeding in front of me.
Who the hell was in the car? Why was somebody running? Could it be the Wolf?
Traffic toward Monaco was moving, but it was heavy. The lights from a tow truck up ahead indicated that some poor driver had jackknifed on this winding road. That was my one long-shot hope. The traffic was slowing down the Benz. But suddenly the Mercedes swung around and headed west.
The sports sedan was moving very fast past an endless array of billboards and restaurant signs. And so was I.
I rounded a curve, and the whole of the bay of Villefranche-sur-Mer appeared in all its inimitable beauty and splendor, the moon large and full in the sky. The city rose above the bay, which was filled with sailboats and yachts, like a rich kid’s bathtub. The Mercedes spun down a slick, sloping hill, sometimes at a speed of a hundred miles per hour. I thought I remembered from somewhere that the car had close to five hundred horsepower. It sure seemed like it.
Then we were entering the old port of Nice, and I began to close the gap behind the sedan. The narrow streets were surprisingly crowded, especially around the bars and nightclubs, which seemed everywhere now, thank God.
The Mercedes barely avoided a drunken group coming out of the Etoile Filante nightclub.
And then, horn blaring, I roared through the same crowd, the pedestrians cursing and shaking fists at me.
The Mercedes made a sharp right—onto the N7, the Moyenne Corniche, a higher road.
I followed as best I could, knowing that I would probably lose him now. Lose who, though? Who was in the blue Mercedes?
The way up was incredibly steep and winding. We were headed back toward Monaco, but the traffic was light this way, and the Mercedes was effortlessly picking up speed. The driver had known to go backward in order to go forward—much faster—at a speed the police sedan couldn’t possibly match.
After about two kilometers I was pretty sure I would lose him. We were back in Villefranche, but the highest part of town. The view down onto Cap-Ferrat and Beaulieu was breathtaking, and I couldn’t avoid looking; even at this speed it filled my eyes like a painting.
I couldn’t let him get away, and I pushed the police car up close to a hundred again. How long could I possibly keep up?
There was a tunnel, dimness, then almost total darkness—and at the end of the tunnel the astonishing sight of a medieval village perched high on a hillside.
EZE read a sign, and I wished I could go easy.
Just past the village, the road became even more dangerous. It was as if the Moyenne Corniche were taped onto the side of the cliffs. Down below, the color of the sea seemed to be changing from azure to opal to silver-gray.