Yacov complied, a man accustomed to taking orders. But then chivalry intervened and he said, ‘You can’t take a woman on this job, take me instead.’
‘It has to be a woman in the back of the car, obviously. And Nancy’s a better shot than I am and she went through West Point. She comes with me, you don’t.’
‘He’s right, Yacov,’ said Maya, pushing him toward the Land Rover. ‘You just do what you’re told.’
‘I won’t forget this, Bruno,’ Maya said, and reached up to embrace him. He gave her a smacking kiss on the lips and a hug to the waiflike frame and pushed her to the car.
‘We’re all loaded,’ Nancy said, from the side of the Rolls. ‘Your bag’s on the front seat, mine is with me. Long guns and handguns both loaded. We are both carrying sidearms. All safeties are checked and on. Your mannequin has got her jacket and cap on and she’s strapped in. I think I’ll call her Maya.’
‘And don’t forget to call the Brigadier when you get close to St Denis,’ Bruno told Yacov, closed the Land Rover door behind him and watched it drive away. When he turned back, Nancy was still standing by the side of the door.
‘For my first time in a Rolls, I think a man ought to open the door for me and steward me inside,’ she said, giving him that cheeky grin once more.
He opened the door, gave her his arm, and suddenly her face was against his.
‘If all this goes wrong, I don’t want your last kiss to come from an eighty-year-old woman,’ she murmured, put a hand to the back of his neck and placed her lips softly, and then very firmly against his. For a brief moment, her tongue teased at his lips and her teeth gave the gentlest of nips to his lower lip.
She pulled back, pressed her cheek against his, and whispered into his ear, ‘And if it’s to be my last kiss, I’m glad it’s you.’ Then, trailing her hand across his neck and cheek, she sank into the back of the car and pulled the door shut behind her with a sound as discreet and as rich as it was final.
They drove in silence out of Bergerac, ignoring the pedestrians who stopped and pointed and some of them waved at the stately Rolls-Royce. Cars slowed and pulled aside to give the huge car room as they cruised around roundabouts and took the road that ran along the north bank of the river Dordogne.
‘I was trying to work out what’s wrong and suddenly I get it,’ she said. ‘This is a British car, right-hand drive, but they don’t know that. The mannequin is in what the French think is the driver’s seat. You’re expecting the sniper to aim for that side.’
He nodded and raised his left hand in a vague salute. ‘It gives us an edge, perhaps just a second, but that’s all we’ll need if you shoot like you did before.’
‘What were you saluting?’
‘A vineyard, Château de Tiregand. The château is on top of that slope and in a moment you’ll see a stone pavilion against the skyline. It’s given me a lot of pleasure over the years.’
‘Sometimes I think you’re slightly mad.’ She spoke softly, almost to herself. ‘Maybe we both are, doing this. I want you to know, if I get hit, don’t come for me. Leave me, keep fighting, it will give me cover.’
Bruno didn’t reply, running through the usual checklist, rules of engagement, objective, weapons, ammo, support. He
kept swallowing, the tension making his saliva glands work. Some men became dry-mouthed before action, he’d always been the reverse.
He knew he was not in the least mad. There was a cold but deeply personal logic to this mission. These men had come to his town and tortured and killed Rafiq. For that, he had vowed to bring them to justice. Then they had attacked him, hurt and humiliated him in a college full of schoolchildren he knew, kids he had taught to have respect and trust in the police and in the law. For that, these men would face his own justice. And now they were back to kill again and he would stop them. It was his job, his town, his duty.
Bruno wondered what Nancy was going through. Her kiss had surprised him, unsettled him, triggering dreams and fantasies that lingered seductively in his mind, a distraction at a time when he needed to focus. Perhaps it had been a sign of her own nervousness. He didn’t know if she’d ever seen action, and known the difference between shooting on a range and doing it when somebody was firing back.
‘I know you went through West Point,’ he said. ‘But that Iraq tour you mentioned, was that with the military or with the FBI?’
‘The military, tail-end of the war and then ten more months, I was running a communications platoon, a geek in uniform trying to keep the radios and computers running when dust got into everything and the troops sweated into their handsets. It didn’t really get hairy when I was there and I saw more motherboards than action. Biggest priority was keeping the phone and emails open for the troops to stay in touch with home.’
‘Any combat?’
‘Just a bit, Baghdad airport at the very end, and then we were trying to fix shot-off aerials on some of our tanks when orders came through for a Thunder Run, did you hear about that?’
‘Tanks columns racing though the city and out again, it sounded crazy to me.’
‘It would have been, if they’d been organized or had any modern anti-tank weapons. It was certainly noisy but I don’t think it was too dangerous. So, yes, technically I’ve been under fire, but for most of it I was on the inside of a Bradley, that’s an armoured vehicle.’
‘Well, you’re in another one now, or very nearly. There must be a ton of metal in front of us.’
‘I meant to ask, how does it drive?’
‘Apart from the way I can’t feel the road, can’t feel the steering and think I’m riding on an air cushion, it’s a pretty nice way to travel as long as you don’t think of it as driving. If it’s still on the road when we’re done, you can drive her back.’
‘It’s a deal. This bridge we’re crossing, that’s Lalinde, so we turn off soon. I’ll check the comms again.’
‘Happy to know we have a comms expert on the strength.’
‘I’m glad I’m here,’ she said. ‘I’m trained to do this.’
He heard her check the radios one by one, then her mobile phone. He took his own from his belt pouch and handed it back to her.
‘All good, chopper in place, and the Brigadier wants you to know the
Caïd
was a
sous-off
in the Algerian army, left as a sergeant in a motorized infantry unit. That was sixteen years ago so they have his age as forty-six. That’s it. The Algerians
were vague about his postings and he suspects the guy deserted and went into GIA.’
She handed him back his phone and Bruno was struck by the symmetry of it all. The
Groupe Islamique Armée
were the ones who had killed Sami’s family before the boy’s eyes and triggered the whole chain of events that had led to this day, to this mission. It would end here, he told himself.
‘OK, thanks, time to keep the secure channel open,’ Bruno replied. ‘Tell them we’re turning off the main road now, estimated arrival at first likely ambush point about six, seven minutes.’
‘Times like this I wish we had a nice discreet drone searching ahead. Do you want me to release your safety catches?’
‘No thanks, leave them on. When we roll out of the car I want to make sure the weapons only fire when I want to.’
‘In the States, before you go on stage or into something, we say “Break a leg,” so break a leg, Bruno. What do you say in France?’
‘We just say
merde
, whether in the theatre or in sports or in combat. So
merde
and break another leg.’
‘But you’re always saying
merde
. Don’t you save it for something important?’
‘Whenever we say it, it feels important.’ The chatter was a sign that she was nervous. That was fine. So was he. If it helped, he was happy to chatter back. ‘OK, tell the chopper we’re into the valley and onto the flat land, if they’re watching they may be able to see us coming.’
He settled the sports bag onto his lap and tightened the shoulder strap. He removed his seat belt and began settling lower into his seat, watching the road ahead through the
narrow gap between the top of the steering wheel and the dashboard. It was like trying to drive through the slit of a postbox, but he wanted the only head they’d see to be the mannequin’s.
‘How’s the sun?’ he asked. His pulse was fast but steady and he was swallowing almost constantly now.
‘Low and bright, a few scattered clouds, it should be shining into their eyes as you planned.’
‘OK, here we go, turning point in sight, get ready … slowing for the bend and turning now.’
At first it seemed clear but then the windscreen to his left shattered, the mannequin’s head exploded and he saw a bright flash from the left front. He yelled ‘RPG’ and braked as he turned the car toward it to put the engine between him and the explosion.
‘Out now and call the chopper,’ he called, opening his driver’s-side door and rolling out, eyes closed against glare when the RPG hit and still rolling as he landed on a grass verge and then dived for a shallow ditch as the grenade hit the car somewhere in front. The Rolls was still moving but slower and he saw Nancy’s door was open. He pulled the smoke grenade from his chest pocket, jerked the ignition cord and tossed it ahead of the car then ripped open the sports bag, pulled out his weapon and released the safety. Another RPG round hit the Rolls and it rocked as the explosion flared and the car stopped, lopsided and sagging now. It must have got the wheel.
He cast a quick glance behind and saw Nancy was out of the car and had moved with it, sheltered behind the rear wheels. A third RPG hit the Rolls and he saw her stagger and
fall back, but she waved at him to signal she was still functional. She leopard-crawled into the slight cover of a roadside hedge.
He was belly-crawling along the ditch to get a field of fire when he heard the ripping sound of the Minimi opening up, long bursts, three seconds for the first one, four for the second. That was almost a full belt. They’d have to change. That gave him four seconds, maybe five.
He felt old skills come to life, awakening from a long sleep, and his vision narrowed to a single cone where he could see clearly and he felt time slowing so that he could think as well as fight. He popped his head up and saw two shapes bending together through drifting red smoke. That would be the guys on the Minimi, he thought, and gave them three aimed bursts. He pulled out a fragmentation grenade, released the pin, counted to three and still lying prone, rolled and threw. He followed it with another smoke grenade and another burst of automatic fire before rolling back into the ditch.
Bruno changed magazines and considered. The RPG had come from left front. The sniper round had almost certainly come from straight ahead, roughly where the Minimi had been. So the sniper was doubling as machine gunner, which put the RPG man on Nancy’s side of the action. The Minimi’s firepower was now the main threat.
He looked around, keeping his head low, and heard Nancy’s weapon firing short, controlled bursts. There was an open field to his right, the hedge behind him where Nancy was, and about thirty metres ahead he saw the start of a stone wall. It was too far to reach and the Minimi would chew up the stone into lethal shards. Where in hell was that chopper?
Bruno squirmed backwards along the ditch as the Minimi opened up again, short bursts this time, searching the terrain through the red smoke, looking for the spot where he had been. He kept squirming back toward the stalled Rolls, which was now pumping out its own black smoke. The risk now was that the petrol tank would blow, but he saw no flames and all the smoke was coming from the front of the vehicle.
He might get a clear shot from beneath the car. The smoke was thick so he risked a quick crouching run and dive and saw the fire from the Minimi smashing into the stone wall to his right. He selected single-shot mode, threw another frag grenade over the top of the Rolls toward the gun, and then he had a narrow window of sight between the car and the road. It gave him a clear shot at the Minimi and he aimed and took it.
The man feeding the belt jerked, half-rose as if trying to stand and then fell against the gun. Bruno’s grenade exploded uselessly, too far to the left. He fired again, trying for the man behind, but the bulk of the fallen man was shielding him. This time he took his time with the frag grenade, counted to three before he threw it and then rolled back into the familiar ditch, so shallow here it barely gave cover.
Nancy’s weapon fired again, two short bursts and then another that went on and on, too long to be controlled fire. Had she been hit?
Bruno knew he would have to change position and they’d expect him to come from the right again so he began crawling left, hoping that Nancy had kept moving so they wouldn’t bunch together. Using his elbows and knees to crawl, his weapon cradled in his arms, he suddenly saw his left hand
bright with blood. It wasn’t his. Nancy must have been hit. There was a trail of blood ahead, not much, but enough to follow. He couldn’t see her.
And then came the sound of rotor blades and more automatic fire from a new direction as the men on board fired from the swooping helicopter.
Bruno was clear of the Rolls now and the chopper’s blades were clearing the smoke that had sheltered him so well. He fired three more short bursts at the point where the Minimi had been and changed magazines. He peered ahead and slightly left, where he assumed the RPG man had taken position. Surely he’d have moved by now? Or put another grenade into the back of the car to explode the petrol tank and force Bruno out of cover?
And then he saw him, camouflage gear and a headscarf, coming from the brush and scrubland on the far side of the road and onto the road itself. Bruno knew that face well, remembered its bland look as the
Caïd
had walked toward him in the corridor of the
collège
readying his electric stick. The
Caïd
was firing from the hip but aiming high, going for the helicopter. It was a doomed attempt but it might buy time for the others to get away. Even before the thought was formed, Bruno’s weapon was in his hands and firing. But it gave him just one round and then it jammed.
There was no time to clear it. Bruno opened his holster and pulled out the PAMAS, released the de-cocking lever and took double-handed aim from his position outstretched on the ground. The first double tap hit the man in the trunk and spun him round and before Bruno had time to shift to a head shot he saw the man jerk like a marionette, puffs of red mist and
cloth stitching their way up his body as the helicopter guns cut him down.