Turning Point(33)

“That’s what I’ve heard.” As Perliot spoke to the shooter, SWAT teams were exploring the building for points of entry, had found two they wanted to use, and were entering through the basement. “Fran?ois, I don’t think she would want you to hurt the children. She loved them.” The captain was stalling him, trying to buy time, while they frantically planned their entry into the school.

“I know she did. And they fired her anyway, and killed her. Now my daughter has no mother and I have no wife.” He cried audibly for a few minutes, and then a volley of shots rang out again.

    News of the school hostage situation had leaked out by then, and the TV news trucks had arrived on the scene, with reporters everywhere being told by police to stand back. The press were waiting for the dramatic scenes at the end, but there was nothing for them to show now. A small cluster of parents was standing in the street, clutching each other and crying, waiting for news of their children. Someone had called them, most of the parents didn’t know yet. A special area had been cordoned off for them, with two policemen in charge. Valérie had gone out to see the parents briefly, and was back on the bus minutes later, in time to listen to the call with the hostage taker. She was standing by with an intent expression, listening to every word he said. The captain was handling it masterfully. Ideally, they would have liked the gunman to give himself up, but the likelihood of that happening was slim to none. He had already gone too far. As they watched, both Stephanie and Bill were thinking of their children, and how they would feel if this happened to them. Their hearts went out to the agonized parents, as one of the riot police handed out police armbands to the four Americans, to identify them as part of the official police operation if things got crazy and rough later on. They slipped them on over their jackets as the drama continued to play out. It had just been on the news that a crazed gunman was shooting children and teachers at the lycée, in retaliation for the death of his wife. The police knew that more frantic parents would begin to arrive.

Five minutes later, one of the policemen approached the captain and whispered that Blanchet’s daughter was calling in on the main police line, or someone who had claimed to be her. She said her name was Solange Blanchet. The captain pointed to Valérie to take the call, which she did, on a phone someone handed her, and she walked away a little distance so as not to interfere with the captain’s conversation with the gunman.

    Solange said that the hostage taker was her father, and he was very sick. He had been that way since her mother got cancer. She hadn’t seen him since the funeral and didn’t know where he’d been, but she told Valérie that they had to take him to a hospital and not kill him, just stop him from hurting the children at the lycée. She was crying and sounded desperate.

“How fast can you get here?” Valérie asked her.

“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes. My grandmother can drive me.”

“It would help if you could talk to your father,” Valérie said on her own initiative, but she had done things like it before, sometimes with success. It brought a sick shooter’s mind back to reality to speak to his child, or wife, or mother. Sometimes they could do the job better. Valérie knew it would be traumatic for the girl, and she would deal with that later, but for now it was all they had. Bruno was establishing a rapport with Blanchet, but they could already sense that he wasn’t going to be able to convince him to put down his gun and come out. And shots continued to pepper the conversation. They could hear the screams from inside the gym. Sometimes he shot in the air to demand silence, and at other times he was shooting victims.

Students who had them were using cellphones to call out of the building by then, lying under the chairs from the assembly. They weren’t supposed to use cellphones in school, but some had them in their pockets, and the police were talking to them, as the students answered in whispers. They said that at least fifty students were dead in the gym, a lot of teachers, and they didn’t know how many were in the halls, and Blanchet was still shooting. One of the teachers in the gym said that he had a sack of loaded Kalashnikovs, and was using them. Blanchet had told them he had enough ammunition to kill them all.

    There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that they had to go in. The question was when. There were snipers poised to shoot through the windows, but they didn’t have a clear shot at him because the windows were too high. Ladders had been set up along the side of the building, but they were waiting for the order to open fire, and the SWAT teams already in the basement had been told not to advance farther, but to be ready at a second’s notice. Their best marksmen were already in the building. And there were at least two hundred police in various uniforms on the street. Ambulances had arrived, and teams of doctors and paramedics were standing by.

Valérie handed the captain a note that Blanchet’s daughter would be there in fifteen minutes. She had already left her school, and her grandmother was on the way to her. Bruno decided to wait until she got to them. What he didn’t want was another hundred victims while the SWAT teams entered the room and took him down. If they could get him to give up peacefully, it was worth the wait. And meanwhile they were still studying the best access to the building and the gym.

Bruno went on talking to Blanchet, while he sobbed about his wife, but he had stopped shooting for a few minutes. And it seemed like an eternity until a slim young girl with her blond hair in a braid climbed onto the bus looking terrified. Her maternal grandmother, with whom she lived, was waiting outside. Solange was fifteen, had already lost her mother, and now her father had gone insane and was killing children. She wanted to help the police, and Valérie explained to her in a quiet corner what they wanted her to say. Just hearing Solange’s voice might subdue him, and bring him back to earth, before more people got hurt. They handed her a phone connected to the same line the captain was on, so he didn’t have to give his up and he could listen to the conversation.