Two hours after setting out from their landing point on the coast, Nazim al-Kassar and his terrorist gang were about to arrive, too.

As intended, they had paused en route to switch vehicles, in case the two pickups had been reported stolen to the police who must now be swarming all over Vaucottes. Nazim found the perfect replacement transportation at a quiet little truck stop soon after leaving the motorway. The articulated haulage lorry with some generic company name emblazoned along its trailer was sitting on its own in a weedy layby. While Nazim and his men descended quietly from the pickups and stalked up to the lorry with their weapons in their hands they could see the fleshy, round-shouldered shape of the driver sitting in his cab. He didn’t seem to notice them approaching; the brightening morning sunshine reflecting off the glass made it hard to see what was distracting his attention. Nazim signalled to Zahran to take the passenger door while he strode up to the driver’s side. He quickly hoisted himself up the cab steps, wrenched open the door and jabbed his AK-47 in the face of the shocked and terrified driver. Zahran simultaneously did the same thing on the other side.

The piercing woman’s scream that sounded from the cab solved the mystery of what had been preoccupying the driver before he was interrupted. Not that Nazim or any of his gang would ever know or care, but the lorry driver’s name was Henri Boudin, he was forty-seven years of age, still lived with his mother and had never had a girlfriend. He was kind of hoping that the nineteen-year-old hitch-hiker named Roxane, whom he’d picked up eighty kilometres ago and had spent every moment since trying to impress with his scintillating personality, might consent to becoming the first. He’d pulled into the layby as a last-ditch attempt to work his seductive charms on the poor girl, who had been on the verge of giving him the finger, jumping out of the cab and making her escape when the doors were unexpectedly yanked open and Roxane and Henri each found themselves staring into the barrel of an automatic weapon.

Nazim was pleased. Not only had they just procured themselves the ideal form of transport to carry them and their cargo the last few kilometres to their destination, they’d also acquired the hostage he’d been looking for. Such serendipity was a sure sign that Allah was indeed looking over them.

By contrast, Nazim had no interest in the lorry driver, who was dragged screaming from his cab, beaten to the ground and had his throat swiftly and bloodily cut. After they’d transferred the fourteen drums of fentanyl from the pickups to the artic trailer they hefted his body into the back of the Toyota.