Liberation Day by Andy McNab

first of many high-risk activities my team was going to undertake in the next few days. I had no idea who this woman was; for all I knew, the French, or even al-Qaeda, might already be onto her, and I’d be caught up in a total gang fuck on day one.
    The café had large, clear windows, unobstructed by posters or blinds, which was something else I didn’t like. It was too easy for people to see in, especially people with telephoto lenses. A red canvas awning protected some of the outside tables for those who wanted to keep out of the sun. Two customers sat at different tables reading newspapers under it, and a couple of women seemed to be comparing the hairstyles of their little puffed-up poodles. The Riviera’s morning routine was just generally ambling along.
    A few of the women had to be Italian. They didn’t so much walk as glide in their minks, but maybe they were simply steering clear of the poodle shit. Everyone in Cannes seemed to own one of the heavily coiffed little shitters, and trotted them along on their fancy leads, or looked on lovingly as they took a dump in the middle of the sidewalk. I’d already had to scrape three loads off my Timberlands since arriving, and had now become a bit of an expert at the Cannes Shuffle, dodging and weaving as I walked.
    To my right, the boulevard headed gently uphill, getting steeper as it passed two or three miles of car dealerships and unattractive apartment buildings before hitting Autoroute 8, which took you either to Nice and Italy, about an hour away, or down to Marseille and the Spanish border.
    To my left, and about five minutes’ walk downhill, lay the train station, the beach, and the main Cannes tourist traps. But the only part of town I was interested in today was where I was right now. In about fifteen minutes the source should be turning up wearing a red pashmina shawl and a pair of jeans; she was going to sit at a table and read a month-old copy of Paris-Match, one with a picture of Julia Roberts on the cover.
    I didn’t like the physical setup for this meet. I’d had a coffee and croissant inside the café yesterday for a recce and could see no escape route. It wasn’t looking good: large, unobstructed windows letting the world see what was happening inside, and an exposed sidewalk outside. I couldn’t leap off a fire escape at the back, or go to the bathroom and climb out the window if anyone came barging through the main door. I would have to go for the virgin ground of the kitchen. I had no choice: I had to make contact with the source.
    The dryer door behind me opened onto a batch of very flowery patterned sheets. I shifted my weight onto my left buttock and adjusted my fanny pack, which hung over the fly of my jeans and contained my passport and wallet. The pack never left me, and to help make sure it stayed that way I’d threaded a wire through the belt. Pickpockets in the crowds down here used Stanley knives to slit belts and straps, but they’d have had a tough job with this one.
    The old woman was still mumbling away to herself, then raised her voice to me, looking for my agreement on the crap state of the machines. I turned and did my bit, “Oui, oui,” smiled, and turned my eyes back toward the target.
    Tucked down the front of my jeans was a worn-out 1980s Browning 9mm with a thirteen-round mag. It was a French black-market job, which, like all the team’s weapons, had been supplied by a contact I had yet to see, whom I’d nicknamed Thackery. I hadn’t laid eyes on him; I just had this picture in my head of a clean-shaven thirty-something with short black hair. The serial number had been ground out, and if the Browning had to be used, ballistics would link it to local Italian gangs. There were enough of them around here, with the border so close. And, of course, I had bought myself a Leatherman. I’d never leave home without one.
    As I checked up and down the road and across once more at the café, the world was buzzing around me and