CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The explosion came the moment the man landed. Rocco felt the shockwave brush his cheek, followed by a flash, then a billowing gust of debris burst upwards, shaking the leaves and branches high in the trees and raining down again with a rattle. It was like being caught in a monsoon, the vegetation trembling under the onslaught and drowning out nearly all other sounds.

Except for the man screaming.

It began as a long, high-pitched cry, cutting through the trees and sending shivers down Rocco’s back. Amid the screaming was a gabble of words, distorted and meaningless, and he knew by the choking noises which followed that the man had taken the force of the blast in his belly and legs. He was again taken back to the jungles of South-East Asia and other explosions, other damaged men in similar circumstances.

Then came a single gunshot. The screaming stopped.

Didier. Two to go.

Rocco heard movement to the right of where the man had fallen, and a branch snapped. A sapling swayed, drawing an immediate shot from the left, followed by a shout of triumph. He knew what that signified, too: Didier was play-acting the inept fugitive, waiting for the men to come to him and drawing them across dangerous terrain.

The two remaining followers called out from their respective positions, and Rocco saw one of them move from behind a tree. After the fate of his colleague, the man stepped forward with a new awareness, checking the ground carefully in front of him. Every now and then, he whispered the fallen man’s name. ‘Marc! You OK? Marc!’

For a second, as the man moved steadily closer towards the scene of the explosion, Rocco wanted to tell him not to bother. That his colleague was dead. But he knew it was futile. If Didier was waiting, then he already had the man in his sights and nothing Rocco could do would save him.

Then the last man appeared higher up the slope. He glanced down and located his colleague, signalling his presence with a faint whistle before turning to check the area around him.

Rocco froze, aware that he was out of cover. All the man had to do was look his way and he would certainly see him. Even as the thought occurred, the gunman’s gaze swept across Rocco’s position before moving on. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the man’s head snapped back, processing the image he had seen. With startling speed, he turned and opened fire.

Rocco was already sliding sideways into cover, praying he didn’t trigger an explosion. He felt the first shot brush his cheek. Another clipped a branch close to his shoulder, showering him with splinters. He swore and landed in a briar, feeling the thorns slicing his face. Something sharp dug hard into his ribs and he continued rolling, knowing that the man lower down the slope would have seen the movement and would be tracking him.

He couldn’t stay here. He forced himself upright and brought up his gun, counting on the element of surprise. He ignored the stinging in his face and the stabbing pain in his side, and saw the nearest man turning towards him. His colleague was a shadow in the background, also moving round to get his own sighting.

Rocco fired first, triggering shots as fast as he could, then threw himself towards a patch of clear ground behind a tree. As he did so, he heard a scream of pain, and looked up to see the man he’d fired at staring down at his leg. Instead of a bullet wound, however, a sharpened stake was protruding from his thigh and blood was pumping from the wound.

A Didier Marthe booby trap.

Two shots crashed out. The wounded man was punched sideways into the undergrowth, his jacket shredded. His colleague, realising his danger, turned and fired blindly into the trees before throwing himself into a patch of sweet nettles.

A split second after he landed, a huge explosion shook the ground, stripping the nearest trees and showering Rocco with debris. It set off another explosion, then a third and fourth, each one crawling across the slope like some malevolent being.

It was a deadly chain reaction. All Rocco could do was cover his head and hug the ground, aware that the course of the explosions would have no pattern, no rhyme or reason. Whatever horrors lay mouldering beneath this part of the wood from the Great War over forty years before were evidently delicate enough to have been set off by the violent movement of the earth and the battering shockwaves of the first blast.

He heard a tree coming down, followed by another, the crash of their fall preceded by a tearing noise as their upper foliage ripped through the trees around them, the fractured roots unable to hold them upright. It was as if nature itself had decided to join in the fight. The ground shook with the concussion, then a heavy branch landed just a hand’s reach from Rocco’s head, and a shower of leaves and small branches carpeted his back.

Then utter silence fell. Or had he gone deaf?

Rocco shook his head and spat out leaves and dirt. He looked up cautiously and lifted his gun. A few leaves fluttered gently to the ground, a faint ‘tick’ marking each landing, and a distant drone of car engines being driven hard drifted across the landscape.

The cavalry. Lights, but no sirens. Someone, he thought vaguely, knew what he was doing. Sirens often spooked criminals into precipitate action, doing things they hadn’t planned. A restrained but obvious approach in force, however, looked far more sinister and inevitable.

He breathed a sigh of relief and rested his head on his forearms. Then he heard the rustle of someone moving away through the trees.

Didier.

He slid out from his position and moved up the slope towards the man he’d shot at, and found him covered by a fallen tree. His upper body was shredded and bloody, and it was impossible to tell if any of Rocco’s shots had hit home first. The sharpened stake had pierced his inner thigh, although it hadn’t killed him. What had done the damage was the enormous shotgun wound in his side, exposing ribs and belly, where Didier had caught him side-on. He moved past the body to check on the other man.

The last gunman was staring up at him from the edge of a crater in the bed of sweet nettles, eyes wide in shock. His lips moved soundlessly, the words unformed. Both legs were gone just below the knees and he was losing blood fast from the femoral arteries. Rocco knelt by his side, careful not to put too much weight on any one spot. He used the tip of his gun barrel to flick the man’s jacket open and check for secondary weapons. There were none. As he dropped the jacket back, the man whispered something.

‘Help … me!’

It was Berbier’s driver.

Down the track, the approaching vehicles switched on their sirens to muddy the air and intimidate. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ moment, some cop drivers called it. They must have seen or heard the explosions and decided that the time for subtlety was past.

Rocco hadn’t got much time. Even if this man didn’t die of shock in the next few minutes, he would soon be beyond reach of anyone, sheltered by a screen of medical and judicial barriers. Either that or he would simply disappear, spirited away where he wouldn’t be able to answer awkward questions.

‘We need to talk,’ said Rocco, and slapped the man twice on the cheek to draw him out of his shock. It wasn’t likely to meet any approved police interrogation standards, but if the man had had his way, Rocco would now be dead or dying in his place. He needed answers. And this was the only man who could provide them.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

A trolley clanked somewhere along the corridor of Amiens central hospital, and footsteps squeaked as a nurse hurried by in rubber-soled shoes. A telephone rang and a man’s voice rose in query followed by laughter. Someone coughed noisily.