Free Detonator by Andy McNab

popped by for dinner last night.
    She’d gone.
    Was that why Stefan’s face had fallen when I asked him where his mum was?
    I caught sight of myself in the mirror above one of the basins. A scab had formed on my forehead, starting a couple of centimetres below my hairline and running back across my scalp. There was a smear of blood on each side. It was ugly enough to make me open the medicine cabinet, where I found shelves of Factor 60, Deep Heat, and all the things you might need to patch yourself up after a fuck-up on the
piste
.
    I dampened one of Frank’s designer face flannels and cleaned myself up as much as possible, then applied three butterfly strips and a dressing to the crusty bit. It would stop it going septic, and made the whole thing look a bit tidier.
    I rinsed the flannel under the cold tap, wrung it out and tucked it into my bomber pocket, along with some spare dressings and sticking plasters, and a blister pack of ibuprofen, a crêpe bandage and Tubigrip for Stefan. He appeared at the door in the same instant I heard the sirens whooping up the road from the centre of town.
    I flicked off the light and took Frank’s triumph of Italian design and German engineering double quick down to his study. I wasn’t about to stick my head out of an upstairs window to see if we had a drama on our hands. I already knew that we did.

11
     
    I got back to his monitor in time to see four Toyota Land Cruisers screech to a halt outside the front of the chalet. GENDARMERIE was emblazoned across their bonnets and door panels and their anti-riot grilles were tilted back. It was too dark to tell what colour the carriers were, but I knew they were midnight blue, like the Kevlar assault suits of the lads in helmets who started spilling out of them.
    These guys weren’t just our friendly neighbourhood bobbies. I couldn’t see their shoulder flashes, but I could picture them: a blue circle with an open parachute, a telescopic sight, flames and a steel karabiner.
    GIGN.
    A special-ops outfit bridging the gap between the police and the military. Whoever thought the French were cheese-eating surrender monkeys had never seen the Intervention Group up close. I had. We’d served together, back in the day. They specialized in anti-terrorist and hostage-rescue tasks. Which meant they were taking whatever they thought was happening here very seriously indeed.
    They normally operated as twenty-man troops, and it looked like today was no exception. Four of them stayed out front, SIG 550 assault rifles in the aim. They’d have Manurhin MR73s – a 357 Magnum revolver that Dirty Harry wouldn’t have sneered at – in their holsters. I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of either. Or the GIAT FR-F2 sniper rifles that would have peeled off earlier, aiming for the high ground. They could throw a 7.62 round 800 metres.
    While it was all very well being able to dredge up this shit, I was beginning to regret not having spent more time planning my exit routes.
    The rest of the squad spread out around the sides and back. They didn’t have the pass code, but that didn’t seem to slow them down. A couple swung themselves up over the rear wall and took cover where I’d put Stefan, behind the Jacuzzi. So nipping out the way we’d come in was no longer an option.
    Blasting through the garage doors and up the front drive in the Range Rover wasn’t either.
    I wondered about climbing out on to the roof and launching myself at the next-door chalet.
    I’d be quicker on my own.
    It would mean leaving the boy.
    The GIGN would guarantee him a place of safety …
    But I’d be fucked.
    They were top of the heap when it came to hostage rescue, but wouldn’t just give him a kiss and a cuddle. It’d take less than thirty seconds for the little fucker to tell them I was alive, put me in the same zone as the killing, and give them a full description.
    I scanned the monitors. They confirmed what I already knew. Every option was going to end in a