They stopped for a traffic light. Stone was perspiring and wiping his face with a handkerchief.
“You don’t look well,” Holly said.
“I’ll be all right when we’re across the bridge.”
The light changed, and they entered the intersection with the other traffic and headed for the bridge. Stone quickly looked both ways.
“All clear,” Holly said. “I checked, and we’re safe on the bridge.”
“Thank God,” Stone said. “I thought I was going to throw up.”
The van left the Pont Royal and started across the wide intersection where the Quai Voltaire met the Quai Anatole France. Stone heard an engine revving, and he looked up to see a large mass emblazoned with the name “Aveco” rushing at the van. Then there was an incredibly loud noise and his world turned upside down, then right-side up again, and the van was sliding sideways toward the parapet between the street and the Seine while the vehicle seemed to be peppered with silent fire. The truck was still revving, and the now upright van traveled across the sidewalk, struck the parapet, breaking it, and when it finally came to rest, Stone was staring forward through the windshield into the River Seine, perhaps twenty feet below.
Holly had been thrown onto the van’s floor, and she struggled back to her feet with a Glock in her hand. “So much for déjà vu!” she shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”
“No!” came a shout from the driver. “If you get out we’ll go into the river!”
“Then you get out first!” Holly shouted back. “And be quick about it!”
The two men up front struggled with their doors. “They’re jammed!” one of them yelled.
“Then come back here!” Stone shouted.
The two men climbed uphill into the passenger compartment and Stone began yanking on the sliding door. “Need some help, here!”
One of the men started kicking the door, and it flew open. The four of them spilled out of the van into a sea of gravel, on the opposite side from the well-aimed truck. Three of them had weapons in their hands and were pointing them in all directions. There was the sound of running boots striking the pavement, away from them, then the sound of approaching sirens. All this seemed to Stone to have happened in seconds.
“Let’s get out of here,” the driver said, sticking his submachine gun under his coat. “I don’t want to have to explain this to the police.”
“Which way?” Holly asked.
“Back across the bridge, away from this mess. Don’t run, walk. Try not to attract attention.”
“Maybe you should return the Glock to wherever it came from,” Stone suggested.
Holly shoved it back into her handbag but kept looking around for hostiles. They hurried across the bridge as a group, looking in all directions, while the driver muttered into a handheld radio. He took it away from his lips for a moment. “Check yourselves. Anybody hurt? Any blood? Any broken limbs?”
“All right here,” Holly said, and Stone said the same.
“We’ve got a car five minutes out,” the driver said. “Let’s stand behind that bus shelter.” They crossed the Quai des Tuileries and huddled behind the shelter.
“What’s happening across the river?” Holly asked. “I can’t see a thing.”
“It was a big dump truck loaded with gravel. That was the noise like bullets striking the van—there’s gravel everywhere.”