‘Let’s not forget what we know about them,’ he said. ‘The
Niqab
was in the paras, until invalided out after a jumping accident. He’s trained in French fighting technique, just like us. The tactics and solutions he’ll go for are those we’d probably
choose ourselves. And I was told the
Caïd
was a
sous-off
, again trained, but I don’t know in whose army.’ He turned to the Brigadier. ‘Can you get me that info, and phone through anything you have on the strong man, and whether any of them went through a sniper course?’
He looked at the lieutenant and his three men, all that could be fitted into the light Fennec chopper. ‘We’ve all been trained the same way, so if I say anything that seems unlikely to you, speak out.’
‘In their shoes, I’d worry about being able to stop a car that big unless they set up a pretty powerful barricade,’ he went on. ‘They might try with the RPG but I think the most rational military probability is that they’ll look for a sniping point by the Vieux Logis or an ambush point on the road from Bergerac. Probably both, one sniper in place and two for the ambush.’
Bruno’s mind went back to the scene in the woods where Rafiq had been murdered.
‘One guy, I think his name’s Mustaf, is as strong as a horse, and he used logs to block another car at a previous ambush.’ He pointed at the map. ‘The main road from Bergerac to Trémolat goes through Mouleydier and Lalinde. The obvious route is to cross the river at Lalinde then turn off left, where the road is signposted to Trémolat and joins the D31 road to cross the river into Trémolat at this bridge. It’s by the place where the river widens out to make the water-ski lagoon.’
Bruno moved his finger to the bridge. ‘I wouldn’t mount an ambush after the Trémolat bridge, too many houses, too much chance of being seen. I’d rather try it either here, where the D31 makes this dog-leg curve, or here, at the sharp left turn just before the bridge. Either one makes sense, but if they
disable the Rolls and block the bridge, then they can’t get to the Vieux Logis to pick up the sniper, if they’ve left him there. They could leave their car on the far side of the bridge or they might just abandon him. Any comments?’
The lieutenant spoke first, to ask where the helicopter should wait to fly in support if those were the two likely ambush points. It would have to be behind some high ground to muffle sound that might alert the jihadis. He pointed to the two likely spots, one behind the village of Cales and the other by the campsite of La Pénitie.
His sergeant objected that the first one was too close to the car’s route, which wouldn’t matter, but the contour lines didn’t look helpful, which would.
‘La Pénitie it is,’ said Bruno. ‘You’re a bit more than three clicks from the ambush sites, say one minute flying time, a bit more to gain altitude and pick up speed. You can be hitting them from the rear in less than ninety seconds after we call you in, or after you hear gunfire.’
‘Is this Rolls car armoured?’ the sergeant asked.
‘No, but it’s so heavy it might as well be. Why?’
‘I was thinking of the window glass,’ the sergeant said. ‘If these guys want to stick together rather than separate, and that’s how they train us, then I’d use the sniper to take out the driver at one of these two turns where the car has to slow, probably the sharper of the two turns. Once the driver’s hit, it will be easy to stop the car and kill the woman, or grab her as a hostage. It gives them options.’
Bruno nodded. ‘I’m glad you’re with us. That’s the best thought yet. What’s your name?’
‘Duclaud, Sir, Gilbert Duclaud,
Sergent-chef
. Do we know
if any of these guys were trained as snipers? And whether they only have that FN-F2 sniper’s rifle you spoke about, or might they have the big bastard, the Hécate, the one that fires the 12.7 round? In the right hands, that’s a killer at over a kilometre.’
‘Not as far as we know. And since they haven’t used it on us here, when they might have been able to reach a target, we’ll have to assume not.’ Bruno smiled at him;
sergent-chef
had been his own rank. ‘Right, we’re running out of time,’ Bruno went on. ‘The sooner you guys are in place, the better. We’ll test the radio link when we’re on the road and if that fails we have the mobile phones.’ He turned to Nancy. ‘Got everything you need? Sorry there’s no M-16.’
‘I feel like something out of
Star Wars
,’ she laughed, brandishing the FAMAS at him. The standard French infantry assault rifle, it was known to the troops as
le clairon
, the bugle, from its strikingly modernistic shape. ‘But now I’ve shot off a couple of magazines, we’ll get along fine.’
Bruno was also taking a FAMAS, and the guns were short enough to fit into the sports bag they’d use to conceal them when changing cars.
‘We’ve only got the one size of flak vest,’ the sergeant said apologetically, bringing them up from the bag at his feet. ‘But they’ve got the Kevlar plates, they’ll stop most rounds.’
Without hesitation, Nancy stripped off her shirt and jacket, down to her bra. The other men turned their heads away to give her privacy. Taking off his own gear, Bruno didn’t notice until he began shrugging on the heavy vest and suddenly saw her eyes on him and taking her time before she pulled the vest over her head and her black bra. He caught his breath as
his eyes lingered and he felt himself flush, knowing the sight would stay in his memory. And then her head poked out of the neck and she was grinning at him cheekily. He laughed and ducked his own head into his vest and began to adjust the straps. This was a remarkable woman.
‘Roll up your right trouser leg, mademoiselle, if you please,’ the sergeant said, and knelt to strap the black velcro scabbard around her ankle and shin. Bruno was already fitting his own when the sergeant handed her a blackened commando knife, serrated down one side. Bruno checked the blade against the hairs on the back of his forearm and nodded, thinking if it came down to that, they were in real trouble.
‘One more thing,’ the sergeant said, and pushed forward a short soldier with a Red Cross armband and a wide grin on his coal-black face.
‘Field dressings, just in case,’ he said. ‘If either of you gets hit, I’m in the chopper and I’ll be with you very fast. Count on it. And there’s a morphine ampoule wrapped inside each dressing. There’s a carbon pencil attached and remember to write M on the forehead if you have to use it.’
They climbed into Bruno’s Land Rover, checked their equipment, and he told her to duck down as he drove past the small media encampment of satellite vans on the access road. He headed for Bergerac, seeing the helicopter dip over them in salute before wheeling and heading off toward Trémolat. Nancy began checking their radios. Standard French infantry kit, they were clipped to the flak vests and covered by the civilian jackets. Hers was the same red that Maya had been wearing on her visit to the school, the colour the jihadis would be expecting from monitoring the
Sud Ouest
news site. Bruno
was certain now that they would be; every time he came on the radio Philippe gave a plug for his newspaper story.
‘Comms are good,’ she said. ‘Let me check the cellphones, if we can hear anything over the rotor blades.’ He felt her hand snake under his civilian jacket, feeling for the pouch on his belt. He caught his breath. She gave his thigh a friendly pat once she’d extracted the phone.
‘There,’ she said. ‘That didn’t hurt a bit, did it? First contact, Bruno, and don’t tell me you weren’t counting.’
Not sure what to say, he said nothing as she began punching the speed-dial buttons they had programmed into the phones.
‘OK, they work, not great, but if all else fails they’ll probably hear me scream for help.’ She sat back, watching the road. ‘Trémolat is over to the right, west of here, if I recall the map.’
‘You do, and if this works out, you’re my guest for dinner at the Vieux Logis at your convenience. It’s my favourite restaurant.’
‘Done, but tonight we’ll be busy whether this works or not, and tomorrow I may be on a plane to Washington. So you’re saying I’m welcome to come back.’
‘Any time you want. I imagine you’ll be back in France some day. And I’ll always be in St Denis.’
‘Isabelle said that was the trouble. She could never compete with St Denis.’
‘I’m not inviting you to move here, I’m inviting you to dinner.’
‘And I’m accepting with pleasure, but you have to pick the menu.’
‘It will be a surprise, their
menu du marché
. It’s about all I can afford.’
‘Better still. I like surprises.’ She paused. ‘Talking of surprises, what do you plan to do if the sniper’s first shot is a good one?’
‘You mean if it hits me?’
‘Of course.’ She looked at him oddly.
‘We stop at a friend of mine in Lalinde. He’s a hunter, but he runs a clothes shop. We’ll be there in a few minutes.’ He gestured to his right. ‘That’s the turnoff we’ll take to Trémolat.’
She mulled over his answer for a long moment, then said with delight, ‘Clothes shop – you’re going to borrow a mannequin.’
‘Very good, but it’s a bit more tricky than that, you’ll see.’
In Lalinde, he parked opposite the small lake, darted from the car and was back within minutes carrying the top half of a mannequin. He put it down on the back seat.
‘It’s a she,’ Nancy said. ‘Won’t they be able to tell the difference?’
‘I’ve got a baseball cap to put on her, and a jacket. And they won’t be seeing too well; we’re coming from the west, from the setting sun.’
She began to sing what sounded like a country song about some dam in the American West and Bruno picked out the words Grand Coulee.
‘Is that Bob Dylan?’ he asked.
‘A good try, but it’s Woody Guthrie. Dylan did a cover version.’
‘I like your voice,’ he said. ‘You can keep a tune.’
‘Ah, a dangerous man, one who knows how women really like to be flattered.’
‘If only I’d known it was so easy … We’re coming into
Mouleydier, where Maya Halévy and her brother were almost killed in the war. They ran into a battle.’
‘Sounds a bit like us, which reminds me, what do we do when the shooting starts? Do you have a plan?’
‘Napoleon said no plan ever survives contact with the enemy,’ Bruno said. ‘But this is what I think. If it goes as we expect, they shoot and hit the mannequin, I spin the car to give some cover and we both roll out of the blind side with our weapons. By then I’m hoping you’ll have called in the seventh cavalry. That’s why there’s a second bag, so we can each strap one round our shoulders and don’t lose the weapons when we bale out.
‘Once on the ground I go forward to shelter behind the front wheel and toss a smoke grenade, red to mark us for the chopper and to give us some cover. You go to the rear,’ he went on. ‘Then I throw a grenade to where I think the shooter was, you lay down some fire and then move. I’ll try to move right, you move left. That will widen their angle and give us a chance of crossfire. But we have to take out their machine gun. And start counting. If the chopper takes more than ninety seconds, or if I go down, you need to start pulling back and finding cover. There are hedgerows and copses and a barn as you head away from the road.’
‘Three-round bursts?’ she asked.
‘Three-round bursts, unless you get a clear target for single shots. We’re not short of magazines and they’ll be stunned to hear us with guns. That’s our margin of surprise, that and the mannequin. Once they hear us shoot, they’ll panic and rethink, they may start to run. I imagine they’ll have their car somewhere near. If you see it, immobilize it.’
‘And if it doesn’t go according to plan?’
‘We still follow our own plan as far as we can. Unless West Point taught you something different.’
‘The West Point rule is always apply more firepower.’ He could hear the tension in her voice, a slight rise in the register as this started to become real for her.
‘That’s why I’m more worried about RPGs and the Minimi than I am about the sniper,’ he said. ‘That’s a lot of firepower, and it’s why I’m carrying smoke grenades along with the frags. And we’ll have an advantage if we move. The
Niqab
was hurt in a jumping accident. That means his back. He won’t be sprinting. Big Mustaf has got a wrecked knee, I hit him pretty hard and I was surprised he could even walk. But he certainly won’t be running. They’ll only have one agile unit, the
Caïd
.’
‘But we’re both agile.’
‘Right, they have the firepower, until the chopper turns up. We have surprise, smoke, grenades and movement. Whatever you do, don’t stay in one place for more than a couple of bursts. And change your height of fire, don’t always fire from a ditch. Stand behind a tree, get some higher ground. Force them to keep shifting their points of aim.’
‘I was thinking what the sergeant said, that maybe they’d want to take Maya hostage.’
‘It’s possible, and it could mean they won’t use the RPG. But don’t count on it, don’t count on anything.’
‘One thing, Bruno, take this and read it when you want but only act on it if I’m out of commission, you understand?’
She handed him an envelope. He said OK and tucked it into an inside pocket, suddenly flooded with memories of doing it for other comrades in arms before going into action. He’d
never had anyone to leave an envelope for. He supposed he had, these days, for Pamela, for the Mayor and in spite of everything for Isabelle. It had never crossed his mind to write a farewell note.
‘It wasn’t Napoleon who said no plan survives meeting the enemy,’ Nancy said suddenly. ‘It was a German, von Moltke. Napoleon’s version was that first he engaged the enemy and then he’d see what to do.’
Bruno glanced at her, amused. ‘Correction noted, but I think we’d better do it Napoleon’s way.’
They had reached Bergerac and he drove straight to the centre, to Place Gambetta, and turned into the parking lot of the Hôtel de Bordeaux. The Rolls was there and Bruno parked in front of it to shield the exchange of cars, although there was no one in sight. He heard a door close and Yacov was there, Maya a small shadow following behind.
‘Key is in the ignition,’ Bruno said. ‘Give us a moment to shift the equipment. You drive back the way I told you, the long way round through Sainte Alvère. When you get to Pamela’s place there’ll be some soldiers to take you on to the château. You have your mobile phone? And the Brigadier’s numbers? And mine? Read them back to me.’