The Rift by Rachel Lynch (good book recommendations txt) 📕

powers of persuasion were what defined them. With Khalil on board, surveillance had been set up quickly but had there been a gap between when Helen and Grant left and what the surveillance teams witnessed? Had the lorry in fact left or, more importantly, had the goods inside been somehow unloaded and taken out of the garage, for example, through the roof or via the rear?

Helen couldn’t sit still and she stood with her hands on her hips. Sylvia sat before the control centre that linked them to all six screens. All she had to do was flick a switch to denote which feed she wanted access to. She checked in with each of the teams preparing to enter the addresses around the Le Croix-Rousse, but Helen kept her sight on the warehouse.

The operation downtown was trickier because of the nature of the urbanisation. Houses had been built on the hill since the sixteenth century and it showed. The crooked arrangement of tenements, stone houses and apartments looked, in places, as though it might fall down. The tiny passageways, so useful to the resistance fighters during the war, were any gendarme’s nightmare. However, the officers were in place, as far as they could be, and the first mission of Operation Tradewind was about to begin.

Local residents had been told to stay indoors. The streets thrummed with activity as the gendarme gently requested people go inside and await further instruction. Some complained, but, by and large, they did as they were told. The personnel of the Police Gendarmerie Nationale had a fitness level suited to clambering upon garages and roofs joined together with washing lines and terraces. They were also heavily armed. Residents poked their heads out of windows to watch the unfolding drama. Sylvia and Helen could see clearly from body cameras that they were in position and ready to go.

Meanwhile, Sylvia flicked her mic back to the warehouse and gave the signal to advance on the storage facility, and Helen watched keenly, listening for any orders or events that might give them the answers they so wanted. After all, it was she and Grant who’d led them there. They heard bangs and foot stomping. The camera on screen with the best view was the chef d’escadron himself who had been tasked with running the mission.

They were inside. The lorry was there, but reports came in simultaneously from all over the building that no persons were present. Helen didn’t like it.

‘Check for explosive devices,’ she said.

They watched as a careful sweep of the garage and the lorry itself was performed. Officers were trained to spot improvised explosive devices in wheel arches, engine parts, door handles and other parts of the vehicle. They used long-armed mirrors, fingertip searches as well as handheld vapour and molecular detectors.

‘Clear.’

The lorry was opened, and Sylvia and Helen could see that there were intact boxes loaded into it. Had the guardians of the precious load been spooked and left their cargo?

Sylvia gave the command to open the boxes, one by one.

Sylvia pushed herself away from the table.

‘Let’s go back to the city,’ Helen said. She couldn’t bear to wait around doing nothing as the boxes were unpacked.

In Le Croix-Rousse, in the heart of les traboules, five separate teams were in position and ready to enter the addresses, by force if necessary. Sylvia and Helen watched as some doors were opened by terrified occupants, but others had to be smashed in. They listened carefully to all the commands and reports, staying on top of each search. At the top of each screen, an address reel allowed them to follow along. For a moment, the noise of simultaneous raids took over, and to a bystander, it might look like chaos, but Helen and Sylvia knew exactly which addresses were yielding results, and which ones weren’t. Rooms were cleared, suspects found inside were lined up on the floor and cuffed, and arrests were made. All five properties were to be made secure and forensic teams sent in. Body-cam images were streamed back to the office, and Helen and Sylvia both stood now, leaning over the desk, adrenalin rushing through their bodies, making them unable to be still. Sylvia tapped her foot and Helen grabbed the desk harder. They were looking for familiar faces.

‘Wait!’ Helen said. ‘There.’

‘Which screen?’ Sylvia asked.

‘Five. I want to see the two suspects on the ground, on the blue carpet… that one!’ she pointed. Sylvia communicated this to the capitaine leading the raid on that particular property. Helen looked at the notes in front of them and linked the screen to an address overlooking the Rhône, high up on the hill. The capitaine went back to the suspects lying on the ground and made the two men face the camera. Helen tried to concentrate on managing the barrage of reports coming in to her audio, but couldn’t take her eyes off the men.

‘We’ve found two automatic weapons and four pistols,’ said the capitaine.

‘Any sign of the target?’ Helen asked, as she surveyed the room from the vantage point of the capitaine’s chest camera. It was sparse, vacant almost, and the men were putting up no resistance.

‘We’re still searching.’

‘Check balcony exits, underfloor hatches, loft spaces and chimneys – the bath panel if they have one. He’s most likely gagged.’

Helen stared at the two men, in particular the one looking directly into the chest camera of the capitaine, as if he could see her, and he said something in Arabic. The capitaine swiped him over his head and Helen silently thanked him. The suspect had called her ‘beyra’.

Helen’s tiny hairs on her arms stood up. The Arabic word was used to describe barren land that no one wanted because it couldn’t be farmed. But it was also used to shame women who weren’t married as washed up and undesirable. Helen had heard it plenty of times in Afghanistan, where she’d studied the language. It was highly offensive, but what Helen couldn’t understand was how he knew that the