Final impact

Harry pounded down the sidewalk and barged through the scrum of panic-stricken prostitutes, one of them trying to grab at his arm as she cried out something about “Le Boche.” The two Resistance men, Alain and Pietr, had pulled ahead of him and were approaching the corner. Ronsard was at his right. Claudel, his left. The other woman, Veronique, was a few feet ahead and carrying what looked like an enormous old Webley pistol in both hands. He had no idea where she’d kept the thing hidden. It looked like a bazooka against her small frame.

The few people on the street were hurrying to get out of their way. Even onlookers on the far side scurried into doorways or made for whatever cover they could find. Gunfire had been a constant and growing background noise throughout Paris for days, but the Place Pigalle had apparently been spared any overt violence until now.

Then a volley of small-arms fire broke out, cutting down Alain and Pietr as they swung into the alleyway. Pietr, a big man, a white Russian йmigrй, disappeared as momentum carried him forward and out of view, but Alain spun like a child’s top and crashed to the ground, his light blue shirt pockmarked with bullet holes and discolored with spreading bloodstains. Harry stopped without thinking and turned, training the muzzle of his weapon back up the street. The German who’d been bartering outside the hotel was standing at the open door of the Kubelwagen, his arms full of heavy-looking white sacks. He was too far away for Harry to make out the expression on his face, but he assumed it was one of surprise. The SAS officer keyed up a three-round burst on the 24’s selector and linked its laser designator to the targeting chip in his sunglasses.

The German seemed to leap toward him with dizzying swiftness as the Ray-Bans’ nano-optics refocused. Now he could see the man’s face as though it were just a few feet away. Three small red dots moved in tight, jumpy circles on his chest, just above the sacks. Harry squeezed the trigger and sent three ceramic bullets downrange. The 24 employed a multitube barrel arrangement, with three separate muzzles opening at the mouth of the gun. All three projectiles thus impacted at the same time. They were flechette rounds, engineered to penetrate the target mass and unfold themselves inside, like small tumbleweeds composed of razor wire.

Half of the man’s upper torso disintegrated as the kinetic energy flipped him back into the open-topped car.

Harry spun back and ran toward the alleyway. A window with a top-down view of the contested alley appeared in the lower quadrant of his visual field as the voice of the Trident’s sysop spoke in his earpiece.

“Nine hostiles confirmed, Colonel Windsor. Four have entered the building. Five remain outside to guard the exit.”

Flashing red triangles marked the position of the Germans in the pop-up window. Two had hunkered down behind a sandbag barricade, in front of which lay a dead man and woman in civilian clothes. Another had taken up position inside a doorway to the building. The last two hugged the wall just around the dogleg corner of the alleyway. They were probably the ones who had killed the Resistance fighters.

Just in front of him Veronique sprinted across the mouth of the back street and pressed herself up against the corner of the building on the other side. A couple of bullets whistled past as she did so. Ronsard and Anjela held position at the corresponding corner on his side. They were all waiting on him, knowing that he could call on any number of views from the Big Eye drone humming far above.

Harry slipped off the Ray-Bans, passing them to Ronsard so he could have a quick look at the drone feed. The Frenchman, who’d trained with the system in Scotland even though he was never likely to have access to his own Combat Optics, nodded and took a look. Then he handed them off to Claudel, who seemed to take a few moments to understand what she was looking at, but she quickly worked it out.

Harry used the brief interlude to remove a strip of ammunition from his handgun, replacing it with another from the breast pocket of the rather threadbare civilian jacket he was wearing. The regiment still had a reasonable supply of reloads for the 24s, having hoarded their own stocks and having benefited from the generosity of Captain Halabi, who’d turned over the contents of the Trident’s armory to them. He took the glasses back and fitted them again just as Veronique banged off a few rounds from her antique pistol to keep the Boche in their place.

A clatter of concentrated small-arms fire came from within the building, followed by a hollow boom that shook the whole place and dislodged a sprinkling of masonry dust. His earpiece crackled into life again.

“Major General Brasch requests immediate extraction, Colonel.”