Chapter 25: Damsels in Distress - Missy

Nice, 11 AM, July 1

I followed Michelle as she dashed into the water and we swam out to shore. We swam, ran around, and splashed each other with water for a couple hours, and Michelle seemed like a happy teenager for awhile. She snuck up on an unsuspecting Cindy who was chatting with Jess in waist deep water and dunked her, causing an all out water fight. Cindy was about to get her back when she was swamped by a unusually large wave, and it all degenerated from there. After an hour or so of swimming, we were all tired and returned to the suite to clean up, as we were switching hotels today.

When we got back to the suite, we took turns taking showers. I let Michelle go first, and when I was heading back to my room, I saw Jess following Cindy into the bathroom and I raised an eyebrow at her. She turned to me and innocently said that she wanted to "save water". I just rolled my eyes. While they were showering, I fired up my laptop and worked on my webpage for a bit. I had some pretty cool pictures that I'd taken the last couple days, and just for fun, I set the picture of Jess and Cindy sleeping in each other's arms as my desktop. It was a really cute picture and although they were naked, you couldn't really tell from the picture as it only showed them from the shoulders up. "Oh my God!" I heard from behind me.

Jess and Cindy had finished their shower and had entered the room, and saw my picture, and Cindy looked surprised while Jess just had a smile on her face. "When did you take that, Missy?" she asked.

"This morning," I replied. "You two just looked too cute and I couldn't resist,"

"It is a cute picture," Michelle said, as she appeared behind us, wrapped in a big fluffy towel. That girl was really quiet. "Don't you guys wear clothes?" she teased, looking at Cindy and Jess. Cindy blushed, and Jess laughed again.

"Not if we can help it," Jess said, looking at Michelle without a shred of embarrassment. Michelle stared at Jess' luscious body, and I grinned, snapping my fingers in front of her face. "Wha... Oh!" she said, going into a pretty blush. I led her to my room and she picked out some clothes to wear. Michelle selected a short denim miniskirt and a white tank top. It seemed her style of dress might be closer to Jess' than my own. I smiled, and headed to the shower to clean up. Half an hour later, we were all congregated in the living room of the suite, having finished our packing. I was dressed casually in khaki capris and a blue tank top, while Cindy had a similar outfit, khaki shorts and a white bush shirt. Jess, as usual, looked like she was ready for a movie premiere, wearing a nearly blinding white linen pantsuit with matching white leather Dior handbag and white rimmed Dior visor-like shades with a light gray gradient effect. She flipped her light brown hair over her shoulder. "Shall we?" she said. We followed her out of the suite, leaving our luggage. It would be transported to the Hotel de Paris by the Negresco staff.

We piled into the Mercedes, and headed out towards Monaco. Jess drove, and Dave sat in front, with Michelle between Cindy and me in the backseat. The Benz was easily big enough for five, and the spacious butter-soft leather seats were a relief from the cramped back seat of the Vanquish. Jess smoothly pulled out onto the main avenue, and seeing noone there, stomped on the gas. The Mercedes' 18" wheels struggled to grip the pavement, and the car rocketed off, accelerating to sixty miles per hour in just about four seconds. "Sweet!" she said. "You were right big bro, this car is pretty fun to drive." The rest of the drive to Monaco was fast, but anticlimactic. It was under twenty miles to Monte Carlo, and Jess must have thought she was driving in the Monaco Grand Prix as she wove through traffic at well over 100 mph. We reached the Hotel de Paris without incident, and as usual, valets were on hand to collect the Mercedes as we made our way into the historic hotel. Sheathed in white marble, the Hotel de Paris was a landmark of Monte Carlo and one of the most famous hotels in the world.

Dave and Jess led the way as we passed through huge embossed doors, opened by doormen wearing white gloves, and entered the cavernous reception area, which dominated by an enormous chandelier, and looked up at the gilded ceilings. The décor was ridiculously rich. As we entered the lobby, an aristocratic man wearing a tuxedo with white gloves approached and bowed. "Monsieur and Mademoiselles, if you will please follow me," he said. He led us to an elevator which took us to the foyer of the Presidential Suite. With a flourish, he produced a key card and opened the doors of the suite, as if he was opening Ali Baba's cave. Michelle gasped as we entered the enormous room, which was composed of two separate suites with three total bedrooms. It overlooked the Mediterranean on one side, and had a panoramic view of Monte Carlo on the other, and had easily the most spectacular view I had seen from a hotel room.

The décor was French provincial, and tapestries and old masters hung on the gilded walls of the richly decorated room, while thick rugs covered the floor. "This is like living in a museum!" Cindy said, taking everything in with wide eyes. Michelle was spinning in circles around the room like a ballerina and giggling. I smiled. The manager handed Dave an envelope with key cards and took his leave.

I led Michelle to her room, and she gasped again when she entered. An enormous four poster bed with canopy dominated the room, which had mahogany cabinets and dressers, as well as gold-trimmed azure wallpaper. It was magnificent and had a wonderful view of the sea. "I don't have anything to put away," she said with a sad smile, and I told her she would have plenty to put away after this afternoon, drawing a smile. Dave, Cindy, and Jess were amazed to see that their luggage was already in their rooms and stowed away, which was amazing considering the speed of Jess' travel to the hotel. I guess they must have just beat us here, although you wouldn't have been able to tell by the condition of the room. We decided to take a few minutes to get settled in and freshened up before heading out to shop. Dave handed us each a stapled document and pen. "What's this?" I asked.

"It's a survey with some questions that I would like you to answer," he said. "I won't tell you why, but trust me, you'll like the result," he said, and we sat down and looked at the questionnaire. The questions were quite strange. The first page had to do completely with smells and sensations that I liked, while the rest of the questionnaire asked questions about feelings, emotions, and places that I had experienced and which ones I liked, while the last page asked my opinions about a variety of different products, some common, some uncommon, and had me write a one page essay describing my favorite moment. I finished the questionnaire and handed it back to Dave, a very curious look on my face, but he shrugged, collecting the documents from Cindy, Michelle, and Jess, and leaving the room for a few minutes.

Marseilles, France, Noon, July 1

Spencer Ross, dressed in grey coveralls that identified him as a worker of EDF, the French national power company, made his way into an old, run-down apartment building that was across the street from the location of Ashley Maxwell. His white van had the markings of an EDF vehicle, and he parked it directly in front of the building that she was in. Ross made his way to the fourth floor of the building, and knocked on a door. There was no answer, and as he knocked again, the door pushed open, clearly unlocked. The apartment was a ruin, and Ross could see the remnants of police tape that had gone across the doorway. Inside, clothes were strewn about and flies buzzed near an overturned trash can. Clearly, noone lived here, at least not anymore. Ross made his way to the bedroom, which had direct line of sight to the apartment where Ashley was located. Pulling out his laptop, he activated the satellite uplink and accessed a KH-13 satellite owned by Concierge. In orbit one hundred kilometers above the earth, the KH-13 satellite responded to the uplink and quickly focused on the apartment in question which was located on the top floor of the tenement building across the street. Ross picked out three infrared images that had normal body heat.

He pulled out a portable infrared imager and looked through the window at the apartment. One of the targets was stationary and apparently in a seated position, isolated from the other two. Ross figured it was Ashley and that she was tied up. The other two were moving around, and one was seated while the other was standing. From the pattern of movements, Ross figured one of them was cooking while the other was seated at a kitchen table. He stowed his gear, and made his way out of the apartment into the hallway, and headed down the stairs to street level. While on the way, he made a quick phone call to Daniels updating him on the situation, and after receiving word to proceed, he made his way into the tenement building.

The building was filthy, the reek of human waste and sweet, acrid odor of exotic spices hung in the air, as Ross made his way quietly to the staircase. The loud, insistent tones of a baby crying and constant yelping of a dog were heard as he continued up to the fifth floor. Debris and trash cluttered the stairwell, and Ross walked around a mound of feces and a pool of vomit on one of the landings. This apartment building was occupied mostly by poor Algerian laborers, and services were not very constant here. The few people he did see in the hallways were apparently happy to see a repairman as parts of the building had been without electricity for a day or two, and in the blazing heat of summer, things weren't going well.

Ross found his way in front of the apartment in question, and soundlessly went to his knees, inserting a miniature telescoping lens under the door, a periscope that had a TV camera built in, looking at the portable screen that he carried to check out the room. As he thought, one of the kidnappers was in the kitchen, holding a pan, while the other was seated at the kitchen table, reading a newspaper. Both men looked vaguely Islamic, and Arabic music blared from a radio on the kitchen table, and the seated kidnapper was tapping his fingers to the rhythm, a pistol clearly sitting on the table a foot away from his hand. Ross withdrew the probe, and reached into his bag for a lockpick gun, as the music would clearly hide the sounds of the lock, and he wanted to alert as few of the neighbors as possible.

He defeated the simple lock in less than five seconds, and withdrew the lockpick, put on a pair of rubber gloves, and reached behind his back for a pair of H&K USP 45 compacts, screwing on dual sound suppressors. Most of his former SAS colleagues preferred the Sig-Sauer P228, but Ross liked the feel and action of a 45, and since he was ambidextrous and preferred to handle two guns, the lightweight but powerful USP compact was his gun of choice.

Using his left hand, he triggered the door action, then quickly opened it with his leg. The door flew open, and Ross entered. He quickly sighted on the seated kidnapper with his left hand, firing a single aimed round that hit the terrorist just above the bridge of his nose. The 45 ACP Hydra Shock round ballooned upon impact and a cloud of pink mist sprayed from the victim, who slumped in his chair, dead before he even hit the floor. Ross had registered the lethal headshot in milliseconds and had switched targets, his right hand tracking on the standing kidnapper in the kitchen. As the target was moving slightly upon hearing the door open and slightly farther away, Ross didn't have quite as clear a shot, and he played it safe, firing two quick rounds into the target's center of mass, and a third, aimed round, at the head from a range of about fifteen feet. All three connected. The first round hit the target dead center in the sternum and as it expanded, a jagged piece of bone penetrated the target's heart, a fatal wound. However, the second bullet was about two inches to the right, going directly through the target's heart, and the third, aimed shot was dead center between the target's eyes. He dropped to the ground like a marionette with cut strings.