The Children Return

by Martin Walker

  The lieutenant cleared his throat. “My men have been listening to the local radio. They’ve got a reporter following this woman and her car around like she’s a film star and sending in regular bulletins. She was in Mouleydier early this afternoon; apparently she was there in the war when it was destroyed. Now she’s in Bergerac. She went to the Protestant temple, another place she remembered.

  “Should we call the radio station and tell them to stop?” the lieutenant went on. “They don’t know it, but they’re putting her life in danger.”

  “No,” said Bruno firmly. “We can use this. I know the reporter.”

  He took out his phone and called Philippe Delaron.

  “Philippe, it’s Bruno. You owe me a lot of favors already, but here’s a big one. You’re in Bergerac with Maya now. You know where she’s heading? No? She’s having dinner at the Vieux Logis. Yes, I’m told she’s staying there, hardly a surprise. Anyway, if you want an interview, Trémolat is the place to be. You should be able to get an interview with her on the doorstep.”

  He closed his phone. “Let’s work on the assumption that they’re listening to the radio. They’ll have at least one car, maybe two or even three. They have one good sniper rifle and I don’t know what else. Do we have any intel on their available weapons?” he asked the brigadier.

  “According to Rafiq, in the mosque they had small arms, grenades, explosives, a couple of Minimi machine guns with two-hundred-round belts and some RPGs. We have no idea what they took with them when they left the mosque, but we’d better assume they brought all the weapons they could.”

  Bruno pursed his lips. Rocket-propelled grenades were as good as light artillery at close quarters. And a Minimi could spew out a full belt in just over ten seconds, laying down a terrifying amount of fire.

  “Let’s not forget what we know about them,” he said. “The Niqab was a paratrooper until he had 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 is a trained soldier, though 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, the maximum 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 without 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 left to Trémolat on the D31 road and cross the river into Trémolat at this bridge. It’s by the place where the river widens out, where the water-ski lagoon is.”

  Bruno moved his finger along the map to the bridge. “I wouldn’t mount an ambush after the Trémolat bridge, too many houses there, too big a chance of being seen. I’d try it either here, where the D31 makes this dogleg 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.

  A 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’ll be about one-minute flying time from the ambush sites, a bit more time 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 armored?” the sergeant asked.

  “No, but it’s so heavy it might as well be. Why?”

  “I was thinking of the windows,” 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. “Good thinking. I’m glad you’re with us. What’s your name?”

  “Duclaud, 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 kilometer.”

  “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.

  “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 cell phones.” He turned to Nancy. “Got everything you need? Sorry there’s no M-16.”

  “I feel like something out of Star Wars,” she said, 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 that I’ve shot off a couple of magazines, we’ll get along fine.”

  Bruno was also taking a FAMAS. Luckily, the guns were short enough to fit into the sports bag they’d use to conceal them when changing cars.

  “We’ve only got 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 which will stop most rounds.”

  Without hesitation, Nancy stripped off her shirt and jacket, down to her black bra. 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 chest. He caught his breath as his eyes lingered, and he felt himself flush. 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 a black Velcro scabbard around her ankle and shin. Bruno was already fitting his own when the sergeant handed her a blackened commando knife, serrated on 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. He pushed forward a short soldier with a Red Cross armband and a wide grin on his coal-black face.

  “Field dressings, just in case,” the medic 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 felt pen attached—remember to write M on the forehead if you have to use it.”

  They climbed into Bruno’s Land Rover and checked their equipment. Bruno told Nancy to duck down as h
e 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. They were standard French-infantry equipment, clipped to the flak vests and covered by their civilian jackets. Hers was the same red that Maya had been wearing on her visit to the school, the color the jihadis would be expecting from monitoring the Sud Ouest news site. Bruno was certain now that they would be; every time Philippe came on the radio he gave a plug for his newspaper story.

  “Radios are good,” she said. “Let me check the cell phones, 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 on it.”

  Not sure what to say, he said nothing as she began punching the speed-dial buttons they had programmed into the phones.

  “Okay, 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, right?”

  “Yes, and if this works out, you’re my guest for dinner at the Vieux Logis at your convenience. It’s my favorite 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.”

  “Anytime you want. I imagine you’ll be back in France someday. 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.” She paused. “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 female mannequin. He put it down on the backseat.

  “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 my own jacket. And they won’t be seeing too well; we’re coming from the west, from the setting sun.”

  “I get it,” she said. “The Rolls is a British car, right-hand drive, but they don’t know that. The mannequin will be in what the French think is the driver’s seat. You’re expecting the sniper to aim for that side.”

  He nodded. “It gives us an edge, perhaps just a second, but that’s all we’ll need if you shoot like you did before.”

  Nancy fell silent, watching the road and the wide river alongside it until they reached a small town.

  “We’re coming into Mouleydier, where Maya Halévy and her brother were almost killed in the war,” Bruno said. “They ran into a battle.”

  “Sounds a bit like us. What do we do if the shooting starts? Do you have a plan?”

  “Napoléon said no plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” Bruno said. “But this is what I think. If it goes as I 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 cavalry. That’s why there’s a second bag; we can each strap one around our shoulders and won’t lose the weapons when we bail out.

  “Once on the ground I go forward to shelter behind the front wheel and toss a smoke grenade, both to mark us for the chopper and to give us some cover. You go to the rear,” he went on. “Then I throw a fragmentation grenade to where I think the shooter is. 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 cross fire. 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 a single shot. We’re not short of magazines, and they’ll be stunned to discover we have guns. That’s our element of surprise, that and the mannequin. Once they hear us shoot, they’ll rethink, maybe panic and start to run. I imagine they’ll have their car somewhere nearby. 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 the confrontation approached.

  “Listen,” he said. “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 along with the fragmentation grenades. And we’ll have an advantage if we move. The Niqab was hurt in a jumping accident. That probably means he’s got a bad 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. 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 about what the sergeant said, that maybe they’d want to take Maya hostage,” Nancy said.

  “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 okay and tucked it into an inside pocket, remembering how he’d done the same for other comrades in arms before going into action. He’d never had anyone to leave an envelope for. Now he supposed he had, for Pamela, for the mayor and, in spite of everything, for Isabelle. But it had never crossed his mind to write a farewell note.

  “It wasn’t Napoléon who said no plan survives meeting the enemy,” Nancy said suddenly. “It was a German, von Moltke. Napoléon’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 Napoléon’s way.”

  They had reached Bergerac, and he drove straight to the center, to Place Gambetta, and turned into the parking lot of the Hôtel de Bordeaux. The Rolls was there, and Bruno parked in such a way as to shield the exchange of cars that would now take place, although there was nobody in sight. He heard a door close and Yacov appeared, Maya following behind.

  “The key is in the ignition,” Bruno said. “Give us a minute to put our equipment in your car. You drive back the way I told you, the long way through Ste. Alvère. When you get to Pamela’s place, there’ll be some soldiers to take you on to the château. You have your cell phone? And the brigadier’s numbers? And mine? Read them back to me.”

  Yacov complied, then chivalry intervened. “You can’t take a woma
n on this job, take me instead,” he said.

  “It has to be a woman in the back of the car,” Bruno said patiently. “And Nancy’s a better shot than I am; she went through West Point. She comes with me, you don’t.”

  “He’s right, Yacov,” said Maya, urging him toward the Land Rover.

  “I won’t forget this, Bruno,” Maya said, and reached up to embrace him. He gave her a smacking kiss on the lips and hugged her waiflike frame and nudged her toward the Land Rover.

  “We’re all loaded,” Nancy said, from the side of the Rolls. “Your bag’s on the front seat, mine is in back with me. The long guns and handguns are all loaded. We are both carrying sidearms. All safeties are checked and on. Your mannequin is strapped in.”

  “And don’t forget to call the brigadier when you get close to St. Denis,” Bruno told Yacov, closed the Land Rover door and watched it drive away. When he turned back, Nancy was still standing by the side of the door.

  “If all this goes wrong, I don’t want your last kiss to come from an eighty-year-old woman,” she said, cradling the back of his neck with one hand and kissing him softly. 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.

  28

  They drove in silence out of Bergerac, ignoring the pedestrians who stopped and pointed or 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 Dordogne River.