‘POLICE!’ The shout came from down the street. It was too soon for the emergency response units to have turned up. Two gendarmes who must have been on patrol when they heard the shots were running towards the scene, pistols drawn. They locked eyes on the gunman clutching the hostage and pointed their weapons, but like Ben they couldn’t open fire in case they hit the woman. They were both screaming at him to drop the gun and let her go. He swung the pistol their way, then back at Ben, as though panicky with indecision. Then aimed it back at the cops and fired, screaming ‘DAESH! ALLAHU AKBAR!’ and one of them spun around and corkscrewed to the pavement clutching his hip. The other one still couldn’t shoot, and threw himself behind a car as the gunman kept on blasting at him, blowing holes in bodywork and sending up sprays of exploding glass. Ben’s sights were hovering right on him, but it was too dangerous to risk a shot. The gunman ducked low and kept himself hidden behind his hostage as he hauled her kicking and screaming up the street towards a black Mercedes that was parked a few cars behind Ben’s own BMW. As he raced the last few yards, he dumped the woman and let her sprawl to the pavement, then ripped open the driver’s door and leaped inside.

With the hostage out of the field of fire, Ben had the green light to pump bullets into the Mercedes. Nine-millimetre holes perforated the bonnet and turned the windscreen into a mass of white cobwebs. The Mercedes roared into life, screeched out of its parking space and came veering right towards him where he stood in the road, forcing him to leap aside.

He kept firing as it sped by him. He couldn’t tell what he was hitting inside. The side windows blew out, then the rear screen. The back end of the Mercedes was fishtailing all over the road. Ben aimed for the tyres and was about to try to take them out when the second cop came up from behind his cover with his gun raised. His eyes were flashing and he was all keyed up with adrenalin, and Ben could see the guy was ready to shoot anything that moved. As far as the cop was concerned, he’d stumbled into the middle of some kind of turf war shootout between rival criminal gangs, and Ben was just as much a target as the escaping gunman.

Ben lowered his pistol and ripped out his wallet, flipping it open to show the fake police ID inside and holding it up high for the gendarme to see. The cop blinked in total confusion, but held his fire. Ben yelled, ‘Detective Jacques Dardenne, Police Nationale. Stand down, Officer. I’m in pursuit of a terror suspect.’