Gamache lunged.
Everyone else in the bistro, including Anton, including the head of the American cartel, was distracted by Lacoste. For just that instant.
That was all Gamache needed.
He couldn’t see what Beauvoir was doing. Or Lacoste, though he had seen her brace, and knew what she was about to do.
All his focus now was on the nearest bodyguard, who was just turning, just noticing what Gamache was doing. A look of surprise just coming onto his face.
He had not expected an older, complacent, beer-swilling man to act so quickly. And so decisively.
The guard had just time enough to move his hand to his weapon when Gamache smashed into him, pushing him on top of Anton. Knocking them off their feet.
All three fell to the floor, a grunt escaping Anton as they landed on top of him.
Gamache brought his forearm to the throat of the first man, pushing his head back, and without hesitation he pulled the hunting knife from his pocket. Flicked it open. And plunged it in.
Gunshots were going off.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Deafening. Not the pops of a handgun but the explosions of an assault rifle. And automatic weapons. Wood was splintering, people were screaming. Chairs and tables overturned. Glass shattered.
Gamache scrambled over the dying guard trying to get at his gun, still in the holster beneath the man. Anton was struggling, writhing, trying to get out from under the heavy body.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir crashed into the table, scattering glass and china, krokodil and traffickers.
Within moments there was chaos. Screaming, shouting. Gunfire.
He couldn’t see Gamache anymore, but he did see, as though in the flash of a strobe light, Lacoste crumple.
And then everything moved so quickly, it was as though frames were skipping. Unlike the chief, Beauvoir wasn’t a large man, but like the chief, he had the momentary element of surprise. And he used it.
He hit and rolled, and bringing out his weapon, he shot the second guard in the chest just as the man leveled his own gun at Beauvoir.
“What’s that?” asked Annie, her face white.
“Gunshots,” said Myrna. “From the bistro.”
They looked at each other for a moment, an eternity. And then Reine-Marie got up and hustled Annie, who was feeding Honoré, from the back terrace into the house.
Myrna and Clara ran in with them.
“Call 911,” Reine-Marie said to her daughter. “Lock the door after us.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“You’re looking after Ray-Ray,” said her mother.
“Does Armand have a gun?” asked Clara, her eyes wide and hands trembling, but her voice strong.
“Non.” Reine-Marie looked around and grabbed the fireplace poker. Myrna and Clara did the same thing. Myrna came away with a hatchet-like thing, and Clara was left with a fireplace brush.
“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath.
The gunfire was continuing, and the dogs were barking. Annie was shouting into the phone to the 911 dispatcher. And their hearts were pounding as they left the house and ran down the path to the road.
“Oh, Christ,” said Myrna.
Half a dozen children were lying on the ground. Apparently dead.
But then they started to stir, to stand. Staring at the bistro. Arms at their sides, mouths open.
“Come here,” Clara screamed at them, waving for them to come to her. She ran over as they began to run to her. Some crying, some confused. All understanding that the safest place in the world was not safe after all.
Clara herded them down the path to where Annie was standing at the open door, frantically waving them in, just as the windows of the bistro shattered with gunfire.
Without hesitation, Reine-Marie, Myrna and Clara ran all out. Toward it.
Ruth crawled across the floor to Rosa, who was sitting, looking more stunned than usual, under an overturned table.
The air was almost unbreathable, with fieldstone and brick and plaster exploded into dust.
She reached Rosa and curled her body around the duck.
Only then did she see Isabelle Lacoste, lying on the ground, her eyes open and staring.
Gamache gripped the handle of the gun in the dying man’s holster, but before he could yank it out, a boot landed in his face, stunning him.
The world went white and his vision blurred. Another blow landed.
Anton was striking out wildly. Viciously, desperately, kicking Gamache’s head, his shoulders, his arms.
Anton writhed and twisted and kicked with his one free leg. Hammering away at Gamache, who hunched his shoulders against the blows, his only focus the gun in the holster.
Then his grip tightened around the handle and he yanked the gun free.
Bringing it around, he rolled and fired, bang, bang, bang. Point-blank into Marchand, who was steps away, Lacoste’s assault rifle raised. Marchand looked shocked. And then was propelled backward, hitting the floor. Dead.
Gamache swung back around just in time to see Anton disappearing out the back door of the bistro.
“Patron,” said Jean-Guy as Gamache gripped his arm and hauled himself to his feet.
“Anton got away,” said Gamache, staggering a bit as he moved toward the open back door of the bistro.
“Oui. The American and his lieutenant took off after him,” said Beauvoir.
The turmoil in the bistro burst over Gamache.
Lacoste was on the floor, Ruth by her side. Holding her hand. Whispering.
Gabri was kneeling over Olivier.
Patrons, sipping drinks moments earlier, were crying and huddling and hugging and shouting. For help.
But he couldn’t stop.
“Armand,” Reine-Marie shouted, as she and Myrna and Clara arrived in the mayhem.
But it was too late. He was gone.
“You get Anton,” said Gamache. “I’ll get the American.”
“There’re two of them,” Beauvoir shouted after him.
He didn’t know if Gamache had heard, and there was no time to make sure.
The cartels had the advantage of a head start. But Gamache and Beauvoir had the advantage of familiarity.
They knew the woods, and the paths, and the route to the border. Partly because they’d walked the trails, in preparation. Partly because they’d spent hours and hours, in the Gamache home, poring over the detailed topographical maps.
They’d talked to hunters and hikers. To geologists and campers. To those who cut wood, and those who fished in the rivers.
In the past eight months, since finding the hidden door in the root cellar, and the oiled hinge, and understanding the significance, they’d been sure to learn every inch of the terrain.
The drug smugglers had not. They’d found the most direct route through the forest, from the Prohibition bolt-hole to the border. And they’d stuck to it.
“We’re studying the situation,” Gamache would reply with equanimity bordering on the dim-witted when microphones and cameras were thrust in his face. And sharp questions were asked about the rising level of crime.
Oddly enough, it was the truth. Though not the entirety of it.
He was studying the situation, just not the one the reporters were talking about.
Gamache had ordered a quiet investigation into all the cabins, barns, schools, and churches used by bootleggers almost a hundred years earlier along the long border with the United States.
There were holes that had never been plugged. All along the watchtower. His tower now. His watch now.
And then he’d ordered surveillance on them all.
And what they saw was that one by one, the Québec syndicate had used all the bolt-holes. But none more than St. Thomas’s, in the quiet, pretty, forgotten little village of Three Pines.