James Barrington - Overkill

As soon as the floodlights switched on, Fouad ran swiftly up the staircase and crouched in front of the locked door of the small back bedroom, looking down the stairs and into the blackness of the hall over the barrel of his Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Abbas had briefed Fouad and the others very thoroughly. He didn’t expect that the house would ever be assaulted, simply because of the security surrounding Podstava and El Sikkiyn , and he had always believed that if the French authorities ever tried to gain entrance to the house they would simply be dealing with a small group of gendarmes, effective enough at controlling traffic and handling normal French criminals, but hopelessly unprepared for the level of training, weaponry and dedication that his men possessed.

As the M79 fin-stabilized high-explosive grenade smashed into the stone wall immediately beside the door frame and virtually vaporized the front door of Le Moulin au Pouchon with a roar that shook the house to its foundations and showered him with debris, Fouad suddenly realized that in this matter Abbas had miscalculated, and very badly. Moments later he heard the flat crack as the plastic explosive around the doorframe detonated, the explosion precipitated by a section of the ruined door which had snagged on a tripwire, and flattened himself on the floor as the air filled with flying steel.

‘Arwens, now,’ Dekker called, and immediately two almost simultaneous explosions ripped through the night, tearing the rear door of Le Moulin off its hinges. As the door toppled outwards and crashed to the ground, the first troopers rushed inside the property, weapons at the ready, alert for the Arab terrorists they expected to find.

But the danger wasn’t in front of them, it was behind. The home-made booby-trap placed by Abbas and his colleagues exploded less than a second after the first five men had dashed into the kitchen. Small but lethal steel missiles flew everywhere, bouncing off walls and ceiling, ripping into flesh, and all five men fell.

‘Stop,’ Dekker yelled, as his remaining troopers rushed forward. ‘Second team – regroup outside. Cover the exits. Nobody goes in.’ As his men scrambled into what cover they could find and sighted their weapons at the windows and the opening where the door had been, Dekker spoke again into his microphone. ‘Ross, Dekker. The rear door was booby-trapped. I’ve five men down, injuries unknown. I’m going in alone.’

Seconds after the front door booby-trap detonated, Saadi Fouad heard another explosion at the back of the house, and realized that a second group of attackers must have smashed their way in through the rear door. Two stun grenades bounced into the hall and Fouad barely had time to close his eyes and cover his ears before they detonated. Then dark shapes poured through the oblong hole where the front door had been, diving left and right into the shadows. Fouad scrambled to his knees and squeezed the trigger of his assault rifle. He poured a lethal stream of 7.62mm shells down the stairs at a rate of six hundred rounds a minute.

The problem he had was that he was by himself, and when the Kalashnikov fell silent as the thirtieth and last round was fired, he took over three seconds to unclip the empty magazine and snap on a full one. But by that time two of the dark shapes were halfway up the stairs, and less than one tenth of a second after that he was dead.

Dekker eased his way over the threshold of the kitchen door with exaggerated care, feeling with his feet and left hand for any tripwire or other actuating device. In his right hand he held his Hockler, and he was looking everywhere for any sign of the opposition. The faded carpet covering most of the kitchen floor was dark with blood, but he didn’t look at that.

The door through to what Dekker guessed was the hallway was closed. He approached it cautiously, turned the handle and eased it open a crack, and peered out. By the dim light of the moon which was shining through the hole where the front door of the house had been, he realized he was looking straight down the muzzles of two Hocklers.

‘Dekker,’ he said with relief, and pushed the door wide. ‘Where’s the opposition?’

One of the troopers shrugged. ‘There was one upstairs, but he’s dead. Apart from him, the place seems deserted.’

‘OK. I’ve got five men down in there,’ Dekker said, gesturing back into the kitchen. ‘Second team, this is Dekker. Target appears cleared. Enter with caution and render first aid. Establish a perimeter watch – there may be opposition players in the grounds.’ He turned back to the troopers. ‘Where’s Beatty?’

‘Upstairs, with the boss.’

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Hassan Abbas and his two companions had barely reached the security of the derelict outhouse when the M79 grenade took out the front door of the old mill. The sounds of the plastic explosive and the stun grenades detonating were almost as loud, and then the staccato beat of the Kalashnikov carried clearly up the hill. Seconds later the weapon fell silent, and Abbas knew that they would not be seeing Saadi Fouad again, at least not alive.

Jaafar Badri moved a length of wood carefully to one side, making sure he made no noise, to clear a space for Abbas to sit on the floor. Then he and Ibrahim took up station in positions looking down the slope towards the mill, weapons at the ready.

Abbas opened up the Samsonite bag, pulled out the laptop computer and switched it on. It seemed to take an age to load the start-up programs, but he barely noticed because he had other things to do.

He opened the bag again and removed the mobile phone, which he switched on. Then he connected a data cable between it and the laptop and put the computer and phone on the bag, clear of the floor. He pulled the Glock out of his shoulder holster, removed the magazine and swiftly ejected each round on to the stone floor in front of him. Abbas reloaded the magazine, rammed it home into the pistol and worked the slide to chamber the first round, pulled out the magazine again and added a single round from his pocket to replace the one he’d just chambered.

The last thing he needed was a weapon jam, and past experience had taught him that a freshly loaded magazine was always more reliable than one in which the bullets had been sitting for days or weeks. He had two spare magazines attached to the webbing of his shoulder holster, and he swiftly unloaded and reloaded both of them as well. He left the pistol on the ground within easy reach of his right hand, then looked down at the laptop screen where the Windows ME desktop had just appeared.

Abbas smiled, placed his forefinger on the touchpad, slid the cursor across the screen to the Internet Explorer icon and double-clicked the left-hand mouse button. The program loaded almost instantly and the ‘Connect to’ dialog box appeared on the screen as the Dial-Up Networking utility accessed the mobile phone and began dialling Wanadoo. Abbas knew that within two or three minutes at the most he could begin the detonation sequence.

Le Moulin au Pouchon , St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

‘So where the fuck are they?’ Dekker demanded.

‘You’re sure there would have been more than one terrorist?’ Ross asked.

‘Absolutely.’ Richter was positive. ‘There are four beds in this house, four prayer mats down in the living room, but only one dead Arab up here on the landing. An Arab’s prayer mat is like his comfort blanket – he never goes anywhere without it. Somewhere there are three more of these bastards, and we’ve got to find them.’

The rear bedroom door had yielded to a round from an Arwen but, apart from the glowing screen of the desktop computer, had revealed nothing of interest. No doubt Baker, when he got his hands on the machine, would have a lot more to say.