Chapter 107
BULLETS SMASHED OFF the wall five feet from me and sent me into an all-out sprint to get away.
Even with one eye patched, I’d seen it all, from Sauvage’s Sherpa cutting off the rioters to them dropping their weapons and throwing up their hands. I saw the major open fire. I saw him slaughter ten young men, many of them teenagers, unarmed and in surrender.
It had unfolded so surreally that I had just stood there in shock and disbelief, shoeless and with mud dripping off my pants, watching Sauvage jump down, pick up the gun, and shoot his driver in cold blood.
Nothing had prepared me for that. Nothing could have.
My will to survive kicked in then. I’d started running in my muddy stocking feet, and Sauvage had tried to kill me. Safely behind the building, I kept running, not toward the wetland I’d used to access the housing project but toward the main entrance. As I ran, I dug in my pocket for the cell Louis had given me not fifteen minutes before.
I hit send, then speaker, and dodged out into another common area, this one with children’s jungle gyms and swings in it. I took a quick look right, expecting to find Sauvage flanking me. But there was no one, and I ran on. The phone started to jangle weirdly. It wasn’t working for some reason.
I had to get back to the street. I had to get to protection. I had to tell someone what I’d seen.
Breaking out from behind the building closest to the street, I cut toward a sparse grove of trees that separated me from the entrance. I reached the narrow road that divided the housing project and was forty yards from the exit when Sauvage stepped out from the shadows to my right, his cheek welded to the stock of the assault rifle.
I skidded to a stop, threw up my good hand, and said loudly, “I’m unarmed, Major.”
“Don’t know what you think you saw back there,” Sauvage said quietly. “But I just can’t let you go telling any lies about-”
“I am unarmed, Major!” I bellowed.
“I don’t care.”
Chapter 108
MAJOR SAUVAGE WAS going to love this moment.
I could see it in his expression as his finger began to squeeze the-
“Stand down, Major!” a man shouted through a bullhorn. “Stand down and drop your weapon!”
Multiple headlights flashed on from out on the road, catching us in profile, Sauvage ready and willing to end my life and me just frozen there, wondering if this was the end of everything.
The major began to swing the gun toward the blinding lights, as if he meant to snuff them out along with whoever was demanding his surrender.
“This is General Anton Georges. I order you to drop that gun, Major. Now!”
Sauvage took that like a slap. He glanced at me, but then calmly set down the gun on the pavement. He stepped back, stood there. Engines started. Three sets of headlights came toward us, and stopped.
The lights dimmed, revealing General Georges climbing out of another Sherpa while soldiers on foot came in behind him, their weapons at the ready. Then Louis Langlois limped up out of the shadows behind Sauvage.
I nodded to him that I was okay.
“Pistol on the ground too, Major,” the general said.
“Sir,” Sauvage replied, calmly removing the pistol and setting it down. “This man was inside my perimeter without authorization, abetting the enemy.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said.
General Georges glared at me, and in surprisingly good English said, “You, sir, defied my direct orders.”
I said, “General, you can put me in chains and you’d be right to do it, but I witnessed an atrocity here just a few minutes ago.”
“He witnessed ten armed members of AB-16 confronting me,” Sauvage said. “They killed my driver and were trying to kill me when I opened fire.”
“They had dropped their weapons and surrendered,” I said. “All ten of them. He gunned them down in cold blood, and then took that rifle there from one of the dead guys and used it to shoot his own man, again in cold blood.”
“He’s delusional, General!” Sauvage cried. “This American fool has no understanding of war, of combat, of la pagaille and what the chaos of battle can do to your perceptions. Either that, or he is an AB-16 sympathizer.”
“General Georges,” I said. “I was honorably discharged with the rank of captain from the United States Marine Corps. I did two full tours in Afghanistan as a combat helicopter pilot. I know an atrocity when I see one.”
Before Sauvage could respond, I kept right on going, poking my finger at the major. “AB-16 is a charade, General, just like I told you. I’m betting AB-16 was his idea from the start. I’m betting he orchestrated the entire-”
“This is a fucking outrage!” Sauvage roared. “I will not have my unblemished reputation destroyed by-”
Two soldiers dragged Captain Mfune onto the scene, his wrists cuffed behind his back. He stared at Sauvage as if he were his only hope now.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking, Major,” Mfune said.
“What have you done, General?” Sauvage demanded. “Captain Mfune is an outstanding, decorated, and battle-tested officer who-”
General Georges held up his hand and said, “Investigateur Hoskins? Juge Fromme?”
Several soldiers stood aside, and the police detective and the magistrate stepped forward. Hoskins held a cell phone up in the air and pressed her thumb against it.
In one of Major Sauvage’s pants pockets, a phone began to buzz and ring.
“Answer it,” Hoskins said. “I’m looking for Chloe.”
Chapter 109
IN MY LIFE I have encountered men and women whose dark stories were written in every line of twisted emotion that squirmed across their faces. But I had never seen a reaction that spoke novels before.
Disbelief. Defeat. Dread. Honor. Conviction. Anger.
All those feelings flickered on Sauvage’s face before he went stoic.
“Why do you have my phone number?” he asked.
“That’s not your cell,” Juge Fromme said. “We checked. It’s a disposable.”
I said, “After your accomplice Haja Hamid busted her burn phone, she tossed the pieces out her bedroom window. Two pieces landed in a Dumpster. But the SIM card hit the scaffolding and landed in a flower box a story below. Hoskins called the last number Haja called, and we got you. I recognized that phrase you like to use-that some person is ‘either stupid or nuts.’”
“This proves nothing,” Sauvage said firmly. “Since I have owned this phone, I have gotten many wrong numbers. As if the number had been used many times. The fact that this Haja person called me is pure coincidence.”
I laughed in disbelief. “Major, you are without a doubt the most cold-blooded, conniving, lying bastard I have ever met. You, Haja, and Captain Mfune here murdered five of France’s finest people to try to set off a war against Islam.”
“Why in God’s name would I do that?” he said calmly, though the muscles on his neck were stretched as taut as piano wire.
“Because for whatever reason you and Captain Mfune hate Muslims as much as Haja does,” Louis said.
“And because,” I said, “starting a war against them would give you the opportunity to engage in the kind of atrocity I just witnessed. We’ve read up on you. We know you were investigated for brutality in Afghanistan.”
“General,” Sauvage said, “this is slanderous and un-”
“Enough!” General Georges bellowed. “Major Sauvage, Captain Mfune: you are under arrest for murder, conspiracy, and treason against France, a nation you were both sworn to protect.”
The captain hung his head. But not Sauvage. He laughed scornfully. “Treason?” he said, and thumped his chest. “Against France? The country that we love more than life?
“No, General. If anything, the captain and I are France’s greatest patriots. We are the only ones willing to see the obvious: that this nation is already at war, and has been since we started letting Muslim immigrants come here in the sixties. Look at the massacre at Charlie Hebdo last year. They want our culture erased, and their numbers are growing faster than ours. Unless people like Captain Mfune and me and Haja Hamid act, France as we know it will be destroyed, and-”