Chapter 33
Armand stared at the map and the red circle.
Mirabel.
Mirabel.
The wrong airport. They’d headed to the wrong one.
And it was his fault. He’d chosen to tell only one of them where to go. Where the firebombs would be. The airport named in the dossier Marie Lauzon found in the files of the Minister of Defense.
He hoped and prayed Isabelle was on her way there. He didn’t dare write to distract her. Or alert anyone.
He checked his phone again. Still nothing from either Isabelle or Jean-Guy. He paced, then stopped. And listened, cocking his head.
The remaining cicadas were now playing an especially nasty trick on him. It was as though the few that were left were seeking revenge, determined to do as much damage as possible before leaving.
Now they sounded less like screaming insects and more like the drone of bombers approaching.
He walked to the door and, opening it, looked into the late-afternoon sky. The sun was low on the horizon, and he thought he could just make out Venus rising.
A careful man, he stood there a few moments, to make sure Venus wasn’t, in fact, moving. Toward the village.
But it was stable.
Armand closed the door and looked at his phone again.
A message had come in from Bert Whitehead’s wife. He climbed the stairs, and in the demi-darkness of the church, he called her.
The blow that dropped Isabelle Lacoste had not been pulled at the last minute. This one struck her hard in the abdomen, breaking a rib and winding her.
She lay on the ground, gasping for breath, inhaling dirt and leaves. Tasting blood and trying to cough but without enough air in her lungs to do more than wheeze.
“How did you know to come here?” demanded Ferguson.
When Isabelle said nothing, the Minister of Public Safety nodded, and the soldier kicked her, hard.
Isabelle threw up.
“Stop it,” shouted Shona. “I’ll tell you.”
“Non,” groaned Isabelle.
“It was Gamache,” said Shona, kneeling beside Isabelle and trying to protect her. “He told us to come here.”
“How did he know?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Shona. “All I know is that he sent a text. I can show you.”
Shona reached for her phone and looked at Ferguson for permission to turn it on. He nodded.
“It’s back,” said Workman.
“Are you recording?”
“Of course I’m recording!” Still, he double-checked.
“Where are they?” the Reuters woman asked.
Workman studied what little they could see of the background. But it looked like everywhere else in Northern Québec. Trees. Just trees. And a single bird in the sky.
“I don’t know.”
“No, no,” said Shona, replacing the phone on the ground. “Merde. It wasn’t to me. Of course it wasn’t. I’m sorry, I’m not thinking straight.” Her voice was high and panicked. “He sent it to her. All he wrote was Mont-Laurier.”
The two journalists looked at each other. Then leaped on their phones to find an airport in Mont-Laurier, Québec.
“Got it,” they said in unison.
“We need to call the closest S?reté detachment,” said Workman, looking it up.
“Stop, wait. They might be in on it.”
“And if they are, alerting them will make it worse?” said Workman, his phone to his ear now. “Oui? Bonjour.”
He quickly explained who he was and what was happening, and what they needed to do.
“Non, non!” he shouted, then lowered the phone. “They hung up on me.”
“We need to get the planes in the air. Now.”
“Yessir.”
Ferguson turned to the two women. “Get up. You’re coming with me. Hurry up!”
Shona helped Isabelle to her feet, and with slow steps they followed the Minister, prodded by the soldiers behind them.
Two CF-18 jets were at the end of the runway, with technicians making final checks on their payload of bombs.
At least twenty heavily armed military personnel were scattered around the area, taking up defensive positions. Trained soldiers, Canadian soldiers, not mercenaries, not Moretti’s band of thugs.
Sitting off to the side was a military helicopter. That was how the Minister got there so quickly.
“Get in.”
A soldier cross-checked Shona, shoving her toward the helicopter. The force of it made her stumble and fall, dropping Lacoste in the process. The soldier cocked his rifle and pointed, on the verge of shooting.
“No,” commanded Ferguson. “We drop them into the fire. Get their phones. No evidence, no remains. Nothing that can be traced back here. To us.”
“Oh, God,” whispered Workman.
Shona’s phone was still working. He was still recording what would now be their murders.
He turned to his Reuters colleague, who, like him, had seen terrible things. And this was right up there with the worst. Normally they came upon atrocities after the fact. Mass graves. Evidence of executions.
Neither had actually watched, helpless, as it happened. And, in Paul’s case, to someone he cared about.
Robert Ferguson climbed in and nodded to the pilot.
“You know where to go.” Then he turned to the officer in charge, standing on the tarmac. “As soon as we’re airborne, send off the planes. We’ll follow.”
“Yessir.”
The door slammed shut, and the Minister tapped the pilot’s shoulder. He gave a thumbs-up and the blades began to turn slowly.
Shona lay on the floor. Unable to accept that this was really happening.
Someone would save them at the last minute.
The helicopter would not be allowed to take off.
But the rotors picked up speed, their thud, thud, thud mimicking, mocking, the pounding of her heart.
She was about to plead, to beg for her life. But the words died on her lips. It was useless. She was going to die. Nothing now would stop that. She was damned if her last act was begging. Still, a small “Please” escaped. Unheard over the rotors.
Shona looked around the cabin. There must be something she could use, to fight back.
Something. Anything. But there was nothing.
The helicopter lifted off, wavered for a moment, then tipped forward. On its way.
Isabelle lay on the metal floor. Shona reached out and held her hand.
Out the window, she could see the mauve of the early-evening sky and the forest below. Its canopy of autumn leaves, red and yellow and amber, undulated with the current created by the rotors making it look as though the woods were alive.
Then the helicopter banked sharply.