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She lay on the ground, gasping for breath, inhaling dirt and leaves. Tasting blood and trying to cough but without enough air in her lungs to do more than wheeze.

“How did you know to come here?” demanded Ferguson.

When Isabelle said nothing, the Minister of Public Safety nodded, and the soldier kicked her, hard.

Isabelle threw up.

“Stop it,” shouted Shona. “I’ll tell you.”

“Non,” groaned Isabelle.

“It was Gamache,” said Shona, kneeling beside Isabelle and trying to protect her. “He told us to come here.”

“How did he know?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Shona. “All I know is that he sent a text. I can show you.”

Shona reached for her phone and looked at Ferguson for permission to turn it on. He nodded.

“It’s back,” said Workman.

“Are you recording?”

“Of course I’m recording!” Still, he double-checked.

“Where are they?” the Reuters woman asked.

Workman studied what little they could see of the background. But it looked like everywhere else in Northern Québec. Trees. Just trees. And a single bird in the sky.

“I don’t know.”

“No, no,” said Shona, replacing the phone on the ground. “Merde. It wasn’t to me. Of course it wasn’t. I’m sorry, I’m not thinking straight.” Her voice was high and panicked. “He sent it to her. All he wrote was Mont-Laurier.”

The two journalists looked at each other. Then leaped on their phones to find an airport in Mont-Laurier, Québec.

“Got it,” they said in unison.

“We need to call the closest Sûreté detachment,” said Workman, looking it up.

“Stop, wait. They might be in on it.”

“And if they are, alerting them will make it worse?” said Workman, his phone to his ear now. “Oui? Bonjour.”

He quickly explained who he was and what was happening, and what they needed to do.

“Non, non!” he shouted, then lowered the phone. “They hung up on me.”

“We need to get the planes in the air. Now.”

“Yessir.”

Ferguson turned to the two women. “Get up. You’re coming with me. Hurry up!”

Shona helped Isabelle to her feet, and with slow steps they followed the Minister, prodded by the soldiers behind them.

Two CF-18 jets were at the end of the runway, with technicians making final checks on their payload of bombs.

At least twenty heavily armed military personnel were scattered around the area, taking up defensive positions. Trained soldiers, Canadian soldiers, not mercenaries, not Moretti’s band of thugs.