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She got there first, coming up behind the mafia boss, who clearly felt he was perfectly safe.

She placed her gun at the base of his skull. “Joseph Moretti. Agent Nichol of the Sûreté du Québec. You’re under arrest.”

“What the fuck?” He whipped around and reached out for her.

She pulled the trigger.

All activity on the airstrip stopped, the moment frozen in time. Then, quick like lightning, everyone turned and looked toward where the shot had been fired.

Everyone except Beauvoir. He’d been trained well enough, by the best, to just keep going.

“Don’t look back,” Gamache had always warned them. “You need to keep your eyes on the target. That must be your priority. Keep moving forward, no matter what happens.”

And Beauvoir did. That moment’s pause gave him time to reach the first man and drop him with a sideswipe. Then he turned and fired, just as another pulled a gun and was about to shoot.

The man dropped. But now two others closed in on Jean-Guy. He could never get both.

“Arrêtez!” It was Nichol’s voice, commanding.

And then another sound. A man screaming in pain; then his voice, strangled but recognizable: “Stop.”

It was Moretti. He was kneeling on the ground and bleeding from a bullet wound to his shoulder. Nichol had him in a headlock and was pressing her fingers into his wound. He was writhing.

“Do as he says,” she commanded, “or—” Without hesitation she dug her fingers in deeper and he screamed.

There was a hesitation, then they dropped their weapons.

Beauvoir scooped them up.

“Open it.” He pointed to a canister.

The man looked to Moretti, who gasped in pain and nodded.

First one, then another, then another, until all the drums had been opened.

“What?” said Nichol, still holding up a now semiconscious Moretti. “Napalm?”

“Sand.”

“Can’t be.”

“All of them. Just sand.”

Moretti, eyes closed, managed a chuckle. “Damn Caron. She’s fucked us all.”

Beauvoir stared in disbelief at the sand. It was the wrong airfield. They were in the wrong place. The bombs were somewhere else.

“You’re American,” shouted Jeanne Caron. “You have no jurisdiction here.”

She backed away and bumped into Gamache, who didn’t move, except to point to the floor. And a thick black line.

He was on one side, and she on the other.

“I’m Chief Petty Officer Oscar Flores. You’ve crossed illegally into the United States, ma’am. I can and will arrest you.”

Once again Jeanne Caron looked around, searching the balcony, the stage, the entrances and exits for Moretti’s people. And there were men and women standing there. In Canadian uniforms on one side and American uniforms on the other.

She turned to Gamache, who looked anything but triumphant.