OPERATION TOUCHDOWN

THE SLOW, PULSATING DRONE OF an army helicopter’s rotors shook Gode out of his sleepy trance shortly after noon. It was Thursday. He found Ben at the window, binoculars held up to his eyes, watching the low-altitude flyover of the large bi-rotor chopper that had just lifted off from the nearby airbase. A little later, Hercules airplanes landed on the strip and unloaded columns of armed soldiers, gear and all. René noted that many of them wore green gear covered in darker patches meant to look like greenery. Camo gear . . . He lowered his binoculars to his chest, completely stunned.

That night, they heard the Quebec government’s final response to their demands. Vézina, in a communiqué, refused to consider freeing every single political prisoner, but agreed to look at at least five cases. As for the rest, the authorities simply repeated their offer of safe conduct: a plane would await the hostage-takers, ready to take off to a country of their choosing. They had six hours left to make a decision.

“That gives us to three in the morning,” René calculated, disgusted.

Gode punched his fist through the gyproc wall in anger.

A bit later, while Ben was keeping an eye on the hostage, Gode and René took the secret passage and ended up sitting in the Chevrolet, René at the wheel and Gode in the passenger’s seat. Between the car and the hole dug through the wall, among the distorted, disproportionate shadows heightened by the poor lighting, stood the oil tank, all four hundred gallons of it. In front of the Chevrolet there was a wall, nothing else.

They looked at each other a moment in total silence. Gode felt the road beckoning to him. The great plains of Kansas, with its oil derricks hammered into the ground, tall rusted birds. Very early morning in Oklahoma — a pheasant just standing there on the median strip of the highway.

He lit a cigarette, then gave one to René.

“What did your brother tell you? I mean, what did Jean-Paul really tell you, over the phone?”

“He said to start thinking about the measures we need to put in place to terminate the operation.”

“Terminate the operation . . .”

“His words.”

“Let’s say we let him go. What’s to stop us from disappearing, afterward? To just go and make a new life for ourselves in some lost corner of the Gaspésie? To wait to be forgotten?”

“We can’t let him go.”

“Why not? What do you mean we can’t?”

“What, just open the door? Oh, sorry, our mistake . . . It’s not possible.”

“Okay, but we can’t kill him . . .”

“Why not?”

“Because. Not like this. I don’t even want to think about it . . .”

“Me neither.”

“We can’t do something like that. I mean, how would we even do it?”

“I don’t know. I really have no idea.”

They each lit another cigarette, and then another, and contemplated the wall through the windshield. Gode thought about people who killed themselves just sitting in their car, waiting for the fumes to do their work. It would be so easy, so simple to just open the garage door, back out, and leave.

René was trying to think. He nervously pressed the accelerator with his foot. Or it might have been the brake, he wasn’t sure.

Gode tossed the still-lit butt of his cigarette through the window and watched it roll under the oil tank.

“I think I might have an idea.”