The Paris Protection Read Online Free

off the line even if the driver should gun its powerful 450-cubic-inch engine. In addition to the heavy armor, the vehicle also had seven-layered bulletproof glass, run-flat tires, and a sealed interior with oxygen supply pumped into the inside cabin from tanks secured in the trunk, making the vehicle proof against even a chemical attack. The inside of the presidential limo was so protected and cut off from the outside that speakers inside the cabin were needed to pump in sounds from the small microphones on the vehicle’s exterior so the president could hear the outside crowds.
    They drove along the length of the Louvre Museum, catching only a brief glimpse of the giant glass pyramid in its courtyard. Crossing the Seine on one of the many bridges infested with small padlocks of love, he saw the illuminated towers of Notre-Dame on the other side of the Palais de Justice. The upper half of the Eiffel Tower was visible much farther away to the right, lit in bright yellow, its two spotlight beams spinning across the night sky from its top level as if it were a lighthouse.
    Once the motorcade rolled onto the Left Bank, low buildings blocked the view of the tower. They continued through St. Germain and the Latin Quarter. When they were only four blocks from the hotel, John raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke into the small microphone clipped to the cuff of his shirtsleeve. The encrypted radio was linked to all two hundred agents on PPD in Paris for the president’s trip.
    “Firefly approaching Shield One,” John said into his wrist communicator. “Sixty seconds.”
    The motorcade was right on schedule, to the minute.
    The small American flag and the presidential seal flag flapped from the front corners of the limousine. The black suburban in front of them had its backseat windows half lowered and the rear window flipped up. He could see the Secret Service CAT agents sitting hunched near the windows, in their black tactical gear with helmets and submachine guns, peering out and ready for anything. He needed CAT agents, the Secret Service equivalent of a SWAT unit, anytime he was transporting the president. They were so well trained and armed, they could take on a small army, and he would rely on them if there was an attack on the motorcade.
    As they passed the next street, he caught another glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, less than two miles away now, through the falling snow. Looking at its ghostly outlines, he could tell that the snowfall was getting heavier. This, too, was good, because the low visibility would make it tougher for a sniper to get a shot at the president. Countersnipers from his team were paired with the watchers on the rooftop of the president’s hotel and many of the surrounding buildings, and they were prepared to make precise shots in any kind of weather.
    He was anxious to get back inside the hotel. The safest place for the president was either the White House or Air Force One. After that, it was Camp David and a few other of the president’s favorite locations that the Secret Service had fortified after the election last year. Then came private meeting locations and small events with foreign diplomats, or large fund-raisers on US soil. Ground transportation was always riskier, and large events open to the public gave most special agents sleepless nights as their thoughts cycled through endless nightmare scenarios. But nothing was more complex and difficult than planning and coordinating a president’s protection on foreign soil.
    At least, the hotel gave them better odds for limiting the president’s exposure. The advance team of a hundred special agents had been in Paris, working around the clock for two weeks with the police to ensure that nothing went wrong during the visit. They had covered every inch of the planned site visits, and every minute on the two-day itinerary. All routes and vantage points had been mapped and covered with ground teams. Agents had taken bomb-sniffing Belgian Malinois