To their astonishment, as the pickup trucks hurtled down the track in pursuit, they saw there was a whole boatload of the bastards on the shore. The four killers had just got there, joining a group of at least another ten who were all similarly toting automatic weapons. There was no other possible explanation: this was surely the vanguard of the long-awaited invasion force, the one they’d been reading about on various websites, set to sweep through Europe and spread death and destruction. And the Pasquinel boys were the thin line of resistance.

Neither the brothers nor their cousins were the kind of people who were inclined to call the police at such moments of crisis. For generations the Pasquinel family, stretching back in time from their late father to his father to his father before him, had been used to sorting out their own problems. And the way France was going now, nobody trusted the authorities any more. Acquaintances in Paris had been shot at, batoned, tear-gassed, hospitalised and jailed in the riots. The Pasquinels and their cousins all harboured the same grievances against the police and the state as the protesters. No goddamned way were they going to call for help. Not to mention there was the fact that Axel stood to be arrested if the law caught up with him.

‘Lock and load, boys,’ Jean-Luc said, cocking his hunting rifle. ‘These motherfuckers are going down.’

It was 8.24 a.m. and the cool, misty October morning was about to warm up considerably.

Chapter 55

The Alpina blasted out of Le Havre and stormed up the D940 coastal highway at blistering speed. It was a route Ben knew well and had travelled often in the past, because the road would take them within a rifle shot of Étretat where he sometimes went kayaking and climbing the sheer white cliffs. He was so close to home, and yet he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this far from his objective.

Next to him in the passenger seat Roth was playing it cool and lounging in silence with his feet up on the dash. Ben had left the port without asking the American any more questions, but plenty of them were swirling around his head as he drove and he couldn’t hold them back any longer.

‘I’m going to need some answers, Tyler. Who were you talking to back there? Where are you getting fed this information?’

‘Now ain’t the time to go into all that,’ Roth said dismissively. ‘Oh, and don’t even thank me for getting you out of a hole just now. Didn’t your momma teach you not to bite the hand that feeds you?’

‘She also taught me not to trust people who keep too many secrets. You seem to make a habit of it. And get your feet off the dashboard.’