"All right," Nikitin said then. "I can do that. I'll make all of you believers."

Chapter 86

As soon as I arrived back at the Préfecture, Martin Lodge caught up with me. "Let's go!" He started to pull me along.

"What? Go where?" I looked at my watch—something I seemed to be doing every couple of minutes now. It was 10:25.

"A raid is going down in a few minutes. The hideout that the Russian gave you—it's real."

Martin and I hurried upstairs to the crisis room at police headquarters. My old pal Etienne Marteau met us and guided us to a row of monitors set up to view the raid. Everything was happening incredibly fast for a change. Too fast maybe, but what choice did we have?

Marteau said, "They're confident, Alex. They coordinated with the power authority, EDF-GDF. The power grid in the area goes down and then they go in."

I nodded at what he was saying and watched the screens in front of us. It was strange to be once removed from the action. Then it was happening! French soldiers appeared out of nowhere, dozens of them. They wore RAID jackets: Recherche, assistance, intervention et dissuasion. They carried assault rifles.

The soldiers rushed toward a small town house that looked harmless enough. They broke down the front door. It happened in seconds.

A UBL, a French version of the Hummer, appeared and crashed through a wooden gate in the rear. Soldiers jumped from the UBL.

"We'll see soon enough," I said to Martin. "RAID is good at what they do?"

"Yes, they are skillful at destruction and death."

A couple of the French police were miked and carried cameras, so we got to see and hear much of the raid as it happened. A door was thrown open, a gun fired from inside, then a blaze of return fire.

Someone's shrill scream, the sound of a body thumping against the floorboards.

Two gunmen ran out into a narrow hallway. Both in their underwear. Shot down before they knew what hit them.

A half-naked female with a handgun—shot in the throat.

"Don't kill them all," I muttered at the monitor.

A Cougar helicopter swooped down and more commandos appeared. Inside the house, soldiers swarmed into a bedroom, then fell on a man lying on a cot. They took him alive, thank God.

Other terrorists were surrendering, their hands held high.

Then more rapid gunshots, off camera this time.

A suspect was marched down the hall with a gun held to his head. An older man. The Wolf? Was it possible they had captured him? The policeman with the gun was smiling as if he had scored something big. The raid was certainly fast and efficient. At least four of the terrorists had been captured alive.

Then we waited impatiently for news. The cameras at the raid site were shut down. We waited some more.