Through the holes blasted in the side of the bar I could see the gunman in Rue Basfroi leaning around the cover the parked car afforded him, engaging the shooters by the bakery with sustained, aimed fire. Then his left arm snapped forward, sending a grenade up and over the twenty metres between them. I heard the distinctive ping of the detonation lever flying free even over the crack and thump of the AKs it was sailing towards. I got my head between my knees. The blast bounced back off the concrete pier by the doorway, which made it sound louder than it really was. I snatched a glimpse over the bar top. Two men lay motionless in the road, heads wrapped in bloodstained keffiyehs. Smoke seeped from the doorway of the bakery. The third man made a break towards La Fée Verte, AK at his hip, black and white scarf across his face. He was floored instantly by a sniper round from above.

The grenade-throwing gunman on Rue Basfroi wasn’t taking any chances. He walked forward slowly at a crouch, alternating his shots between my position – which went high above my head – and the gang by the bakery. No one returned fire. No one shot at him from above – though whether that was because they were on the same side, or because the sniper was relocating to a fall-back position, I couldn’t tell. He stepped out of the street and into the restaurant. I sat still, back braced against the wall, knees drawn up to my chest. Through the gunshot spy hole in the bar I watched him fire a double-tap into Lukov’s body, then stop and sniff the air. I could hear someone whining and the scuffle of shoes on tiles as the surviving customers squirmed under the tables. The gunman cradled his M4 and produced another grenade from under his coat. The wooden bar was too thick for me to shoot through accurately with the Glock, and his rifle rounds would shred it. I was only going to get one chance.

I looked to either side of me, and then up. Tendrils of ivy hung above the gunman’s head, twisting down from a hanging basket suspended over the dining area. As I shifted my weight a patch of blasted plaster fell free of the wall behind me, crashing into what remained of the bottles behind the bar. He swept the M4 around towards me single-handed. I braced my forearms on my knees, the Glock’s rear sight six inches from my face – and fired. The 9mm ball cut the chain of the hanging basket where it joined the ceiling. Damocles ducked but didn’t dive. It was all I needed. In the second he was distracted, I came up firing.

Boom. Boom. Boom.