Turning Point(34)

    “Papa,” she said softly, in a tremulous voice, her eyes brimming with tears, “Maman wouldn’t want you to do this. You have to stop now. I love you. Maman loved you.” She and her father were both sobbing as she spoke.

“They killed her, Solange. You don’t understand, you were too young. She got cancer because of them. They deserve to die for it.”

“I don’t want you to die too…or the children…” she begged him.

“It’s the only way they’ll pay attention. There was no other way. I’m avenging your mother,” he said, sounding aggressive again. “It’s only right. And the children didn’t suffer. I shot them in the head.” Everyone on the bus felt sick as they listened, and Solange choked on a sob. Even she understood that her father was never going to come out of this alive. The police wouldn’t let that happen. All they could hope was that no more children would die, but Fran?ois Blanchet was a marked man. And he knew it too. “I want you to go home now, Solange,” he said firmly, for an instant sounding like any parent of a teenage girl. “You shouldn’t be here, you should be in school.”

“I wanted to be here with you. Can I come in and see you, Papa?” It might be her last chance to see him alive.

    “No, go back to school. Maman wouldn’t want you here.”

“I love you, Papa.”

“I love you too. I have to work now, go home,” he said sternly. Valérie was both listening to the conversation and texting her assistants to send in the post-trauma teams. Some had already come, but she had a feeling they had underestimated the numbers of victims.

The captain was shaking his head as he listened to the exchange between father and daughter. Blanchet wasn’t coming out, and he sounded like he was about to continue his rampage when he said he had work to do. Captain Perliot indicated to Valérie to take Solange off the bus and she escorted her outside. Once the girl was gone, he gave the order in code to go in. The plan was set. Four teams were going to attack simultaneously to break down the gym doors and free the hostages. Marksmen were already halfway up the ladders, poised just below the windows to shoot Blanchet as quickly as they could. Everything was in place and waiting. They had been there for less than two hours, but it felt like two hundred years. And Bruno Perliot wouldn’t have felt responsible going in any sooner. He wanted everything perfectly set up for the best protection he could get for the students, and so the SWAT teams could act as quickly as possible.

He gave the final code word with a grim expression, which went through the earpiece of every member of the SWAT teams, and within a split second, the marksmen were up the ladders, the doors exploded into the gym, windows were shattered, bullets flew, children were screaming and Fran?ois Blanchet lay dead on the stage with six bullets in his head and four in his chest, which had come from all directions. Police and SWAT teams were running and carrying injured children out of the building to paramedics and ambulances, and another detail of police had the grim task of counting the bodies as they moved systematically through the school, also making sure that Blanchet had committed the assault alone, which appeared to be the case.

    Outside, parents were frantic and sobbing, rushing toward ambulances trying to identify their children, and the police couldn’t stop them. Children were clutched, others were missing, people were shouting, and Solange stood sobbing in her grandmother’s arms. She was the daughter of a murderer and her father’s death had been confirmed. Both her parents were dead now, and her father was a monster.

It was a scene of slaughter and desperation, terror and tragedy that tore at the most hardened policeman’s heart. Some of the parents tried to rush into the building and were stopped. Unharmed children were brought out in groups by the SWAT teams, looking dazed, some screaming, some carried. Valérie was among the first in line to see them as they went by, speaking a word here and there, and she looked up to see a burly member of one of the SWAT teams carrying a five-year-old covered in blood, and she saw someone run past her like a shot. It was Tom Wylie, who took the child in his arms, and ran toward the nearest medical truck. He could see that the child was dying. She had been shot in the chest and was bleeding out. In minutes she’d be dead. A doctor on the scene joined him, saw that Tom knew what he was doing and had noticed his police armband, and together they got an IV line into her, administered a transfusion, and applied pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding. Tom signed to him that he would go with the ambulance, and the doctor nodded and shouted to the ambulance driver to get to Necker Hospital as fast as he could. The ambulance doors closed and they were gone. The child’s parents had never even seen her, although a lone photographer had caught the moment when Tom ran up and took her to save her.

    Tom talked to her in English all the way to the hospital, as her eyes fluttered, her pulse was thready but she was alive. Two paramedics had ridden with him. The three worked on the child together in perfect unison to keep pressure on the wound. Tom was covered in blood and when they got to the hospital she was still alive. A team from the trauma unit rushed her away and Tom prayed they could save her. She was too young to die. He rode back in the ambulance with the EMTs, and when he got to the school, Wendy was on her knees on the concrete holding a boy whose arm had been nearly shot off and who was in shock. He was an upper class student and bigger than she was, and she helped get him on a gurney and they rushed him away.