I Kill (59 page)

He raises the volume to the maximum with an almost angry gesture and imagines the musical impulse generated by the laser coursing through the plug and socket, running along the cables, as in a
cartoon, reaching the Tannoy speakers that are unnaturally powerful for the tiny room, and climbing up to the tweeter and woofer . . .

Suddenly, the room explodes. The rhythmic fury of the heavy-metal guitars seems to glue itself to the steel walls that resonate and vibrate at their command. The thunder that the music is
imitating blocks out the other voices. The man leans his hands on the wooden surface and listens to the beating of his heart. It pulses so hard that he feels that it, too, is about to explode in
the amplified throb of white noise.

There is only one thing left to do. Now.

The man opens a drawer under the wooden surface and puts his hand inside without looking. When he takes it out, he is holding a gun.

‘Got it!’

Gachot, the bomb specialist, a tall well-built man with a dark moustache, got up from the ground with surprising agility. Frank could see that his Special Corps uniform was stretched over solid
muscle; this man didn’t spend his time sitting at a desk exercising his jaws.

Gachot backed away from the metal door. Taped over the lock was a box the size of a cordless phone with a small antenna and two wires, one yellow and one red. The wires went from the device to a
hole in the door under the wheel.

Frank looked at the plain and simple detonator. He thought of all the idiotic things you see in movies, in which the device to set off an atomic bomb that can destroy an entire city and kill
millions of people always had a red display that counted down the seconds to the final boom. Of course, the hero always managed to defuse the device with only one second left, after agonizing
endlessly, along with the audience, over whether he should cut the red wire or the green. Those scenes always made Frank smile. The lives of millions of people depended on whether or not the hero
was colour-blind.

The reality was different. There was no need to visualize the countdown with a detonator linked to a timer, simply because there would be no one watching when the bomb exploded. And if someone
actually had to be present, he couldn’t care less about the timer.

Gachot went up to Gavin. ‘I’m ready. Maybe you should have the men clear out.’

‘Is there a risk?’

‘There shouldn’t be a problem. I just used a little C4 and that’s manageable. It’s enough for what we need to do, I think. The effects of the blast should be limited. The
only risk is with the door: it’s lined with lead. If I made any miscalculations and used too much C4, there might be some splinters flying. I’d say it’s better if everyone goes
into the garage.’

Frank admired the caution of the bomb specialist, trained to defuse bombs as well as make them. He had the natural modesty of someone who knew how to do his job, although Gavin said he was
smarter than the Devil.

Smarter than the man on the other side of this door,
thought Frank.

‘And is the room upstairs safe?’

Gachot shook his head. ‘No problem, if they keep away from the stairway into the laundry room. The rush of air will be limited, but it will come out through the front windows.’

Gavin turned to his men.

‘Okay, you heard him. We’re going for fireworks. We’ll wait outside but right after the explosion, we rush in through the hall door and down the stairs to keep the shelter door
under our control. We have no idea what will happen. He’ll probably be a little stunned by the explosive, but he’ll have a number of options.’ The sergeant counted them off on the
fingers of his right hand. ‘Number one, for the optimists among you, he throws away his weapon and comes out with his hands up. Frankly, knowing what we do, I’m not expecting that
scenario. Number two, he comes out armed, planning to take down as many men with him as he can. We don’t want any casualties or even wounded. If that’s the case, we shoot to kill,
whatever he’s carrying, even if it’s a pencil sharpener.’

He looked at his men one by one to see if they had absorbed what he had just said. ‘Number three, he doesn’t come out. Then we teargas him out. And if he comes out fighting, we do
the same as in number two. Okay?’

The men all nodded.

‘Good, now divide into two groups. Half of you go upstairs with Toureau. The others come with me, to the garage.’

The commandos walked away with the silent step that was their way of life. Frank was impressed by the efficiency and professionalism of Gavin and his men. Now that he was absolutely in his
element, the lieutenant moved easily and rapidly. Frank imagined them sitting in the van, transported back and forth, the butts of their M-16s on the floor, chatting about nothing and waiting. Now
the wait was over. They were about to go into action and each now had the chance to give some meaning to all the time spent in training.

When all the men were gone, Gavin turned to Morelli and Roberts. ‘You’d better keep your men outside. If we have to move, I don’t want too many people down here getting in each
other’s way. All we need is for one of your men to get hit in the head by one of my men’s bullets, or vice versa. That wouldn’t be good for anyone. And who’d help them then,
the desk boys?’

‘Got it.’

The two policemen went to tell their men the situation and give instructions. Frank smiled to himself at Gavin’s sarcasm. He had plenty of experience of FBI people giving orders without
ever being in the firing line.

Now only Gavin, Gachot and Frank were left in the room. The bomb specialist was holding a remote control, slightly bigger than a matchbox, with an antenna just like the one on the detonator
hanging from the door.

‘Whenever you’re ready. Just give the word,’ said Gavin.

Frank stood in silence, mulling it over. He stared at the small gadget Gachot was holding. It looked even smaller in his huge hand and Frank wondered how he managed to handle that kind of object
with its tiny parts.

Brigadier Gachot had got there quickly, as Gavin had instructed, in a blue van just like the others with his team of two men plus the driver. When they had told him the situation, his dark face
had turned even darker at the words
bomb shelter.
The men had unloaded their gear and gone down to the laundry room. Frank was well aware that one of those hard black-plastic briefcases with
aluminium edges resembling a flight case contained explosives. While he knew that it was completely harmless without special conditions and a detonator, he was still a little uneasy. The case
probably held enough explosives to reduce the house and everyone inside to shreds.

When he had come to the armoured door, Gachot had studied it for a long time in silence. He had run his hand across the surface as if touching it could tell him something that the metal did not
want to reveal. Then he had done something that seemed absurd to Frank. He had pulled a stethoscope from his bag and listened with it to the gears of the mechanism, turning the wheel from one side
to another to see which way it rotated.

Frank had been standing with the others, quivering like eggs in a frying pan. They resembled the family of a sick man, waiting for the doctor to tell them how serious the illness was. Gachot had
turned around and, luckily for them, cut Gavin’s pessimistic predictions down to size. ‘We might be able to do it.’

The general sigh of relief had seemed to raise the floor two or three inches higher. ‘The door is armoured to protect against radiation and structural damage, but it’s not a safe. I
mean, it wasn’t built to protect valuables, just the physical safety of the occupants. So the lock is fairly simple, partly because it’s pretty old. The only risk is that it might block
completely instead of opening.’

‘What if that happens?’ Gavin had asked.

‘Then we’re fucked. We’d really have to open it with an atomic bomb, and I didn’t bring one along.’

With that joke, pronounced in all seriousness, Gachot had put a damper on the general enthusiasm. He had gone over to check the briefcases that his men had put near the door with the other
equipment, and he had pulled out a drill that looked like something out of a sci-fi film. One of the men had fixed a drill-bit made of a kind of metal with an unpronounceable name, but which Gachot
had described as hard enough to drill a hole through the armour of Fort Knox.

In fact the drill-bit had penetrated the door with relative ease, at least to a certain depth, producing thin spirals of metal that had fallen at the feet of the man holding the drill. Finally
he had raised his goggles and moved over to make room for Gachot. The brigadier had knelt down in front of the hole and slipped in a fibre optic cable with a micro camera on one end and a visor
that looked like a scuba mask on the other. He had put it on in order to guide the camera inside the lock.

Finally, he had opened the briefcase with the goods, revealing bricks of plastic explosive wrapped in silver foil. Gachot had opened one of them and cut off a sliver of explosive that looked
like greyish clay. The bomb specialist had handled it offhandedly, but from the looks on everyone’s faces, Frank suspected that they were feeling the same knot in the stomach that he had felt
earlier.

Using a wooden stick, Gachot had pushed a bit of C4 into the hole and then linked the wires that led to the detonator hanging next to the wheel.

Now they were ready. Still, Frank could not decide to give the order. He was afraid that something would go wrong and that they would, for some reason, find a corpse on the other side. That,
too, might be an answer, but Frank wanted to catch No One alive, if only to see the psychopath handcuffed and taken away.

‘Just a second.’

He went up to the door, practically leaning his cheek on the surface of the lead. He wanted to try one last time to talk to the man inside and, if he was listening, ask him once more to come out
unarmed with his hands up. He had tried before the bomb unit had arrived, but to no avail.

Frank banged his fist on the metal door, hoping that the deep thudding echo could be heard inside.

‘Jean-Loup, can you hear me? We’re going to blow the door open. Don’t force us, it might be dangerous. You’d be better off coming out. You won’t be hurt, I promise.
I’ll give you a minute to decide and then we’re going to blow open this door.’

Frank stepped back, bent his right arm, and showed everyone his watch. He pressed the button of the chronograph. It marked the seconds one after another, like bad memories.

‘Time’s up!’

Frank stopped the watch. Those sixty seconds, the last chance he had given the killer, had felt like a moment of silence owed to the victims out of respect.

‘Let’s open this fucking door.’

The three men went through the laundry room, reached the hallway, and turned left to join the others waiting in the garage. They were kneeling against the wall furthest from where the explosion
would take place. Morelli and Roberts were standing in the courtyard. Frank motioned to them and they stepped away from the garage door for safety.

Gavin adjusted the microphone with the earpiece connecting him to his men via radio.

‘Okay boys, here we go.’

He joined the others against the wall. Lieutenant Gavin nodded to Gachot and, without any emotion, the bomb specialist raised the remote in his hand and pressed the button.

The explosion, perfectly positioned, was contained. They felt it more as a vibration than a blow. The rush of air, if there was any, was limited to the laundry room. The echo was still
reverberating when the soldiers leapt towards the door, immediately followed by Frank and Gavin.

They found the men who entered from the garage and from upstairs standing in formation with their rifles pointed. There was no significant damage. Only the wooden bookcase that hid the entrance
to the shelter was ripped off one of the upper hinges and leaning to one side. The little bit of smoke from the explosion was drifting out the windows, pushed open by the force of the blow.

The massive shelter door was ajar. The explosion had only knocked it open a few inches, as if someone had gone inside without closing it behind him. Incredibly loud music was pouring through the
open door.

They waited a few seconds. Nothing happened. Nobody came out. The explosives had left an acrid smell in the air. Gavin barked an order into his two-way radio.

‘Tear gas.’

The commandos immediately pulled their gas masks out of their bags. They removed their Kevlar helmets, put on the masks, and replaced the helmets. Frank felt a pat on his shoulder and found
Gavin handing him one.

‘You’d better put this on if you want to stay here. Know how to use it?’ In answer, Frank had the mask on in an instant. ‘Good,’ said Gavin, pleased. ‘I see
they taught you something useful in the FBI.’

After putting on his own helmet, he waved to one of his men. The soldier leaned his rifle against the wall and inched his way along the door until he was next to the wheel, still attached to the
door despite the explosion.