There were 26 of them. They showed up in the middle of the day—a warm afternoon with clear skies, where couples young and old took leisurely promenades in the square. Where ladies walked in pairs, chatting, carrying their shopping. While the two trams stood paralyzed on the south side of the city, a playful dog was cooling off in a fountain, and high schoolers on the bench surrounding it were eating ice cream. Mothers and daughters were having coffee. The four brasseries sat half-full, several customers taking a late lunch.
It was Saturday in La Place du Ralliement, and, despite the sustained heat, many were dressed in their Sunday best for a time of relaxation with family, with friends. A gentleman in his early thirties drifted by—in conversation with his mom, while his dad trailed silently behind. A nine year old boy dutifully led his blind mother by the arm. Two gray-headed fat men sat talking on a concrete bench in the shade, one gesticulating to the air. The whole community of Angers had come to life right there in the sunny plaza.
During the week, everyone who had passed through had noticed the construction—and especially the repeating noise of the jackhammer. Yet, most of them seemed only mildly disturbed by it. Customers at the Ralliement brasseries may have been a little more put out. A few ended their long coffee-and-smoke breaks prematurely. One couple joked with their waiter about the disturbance, and perhaps its effect on lunch traffic. An short, elderly woman actually stopped by to check on the progress of the work, to see what was being done. The men chatted with her politely, making the obligatory small talk as naturally as possible.
The construction workers appeared rather industrious and focused to the denizens of the square—not idling or gregarious at all. They were a well-organized team: one man on the bulldozer jack, making big holes in the ground, one man working the hand-held pneumatic, and another behind him operating the shovel. They worked perilously close together, but without giving the sense that they would ever get in each other’s way.
That Saturday, a persistent noise could yet be heard in the square. But, it was the organic, refreshing sound of the three fountains of La Place. And in the burning midday, they were drawing a fair bit of attention. A fit bald man in a tank top rubbed cool water over his head, face and arms, and then reseated his Yankees cap and sauntered off. Two girlfriends reached into the fountain and splashed a third playfully. The third looked back and smiled, searching for where the water had hit her. A young girl and a four year old boy both bathed their arms—the girl leaning over into the fountain, lifting her feet; and the boy carefully mounting the bench to approach the upper part, where even with his short reach, he could touch the falling water.
It was almost time to start.
They had already cut the power to the tracks—that was simple enough. It would take Irigo at least three-and-a-half hours to get the trams moving again. Blockading the passages would take a little more ingenuity. There were eight routes leading into and out of the square. One side was almost a entire wall of cafés: three of the four, plus a bank and a shoe store. Those were probably the most difficult areas to secure, so they would enter there first, emerging on scooters and taking up their positions quickly.
They ultimately decided on two men per route, one with a mini-gun on a tripod, another with an assault rifle and rpg attachment, for police deterrence. They also locked the vehicle barricades in place. But the two outside entrances to the parking lot would have to be blown. And a team in a maintenance truck would already be on site with the mini-guns. Once the passages were secured, the remaining eight man squad would sweep the square, with two men reserved for special duty.
There was also the bomb. The city had provided the necessary cover: the installation of a new traffic pylon. It hadn’t been difficult to get the contract. What had been difficult was the waiting, and the pretending. But the three men from Paris finished the work, erected the pylon, sealed up the ground, and signed the necessary documents. Then they had a Leffe with some locals to celebrate. No snags in the plan thus far.
15h30. They rolled up brandishing assault rifles. One of them immediately kicked over a small table, knocking three chairs out of the way. The waiter looked extremely miffed and started cursing, until the short, thin man with beady eyes put a rifle in his face. The waiter had just spent the last 12 minutes carefully rearranging things for dinner service, with a meticulous and exacting (yet casual) sense of where everything belonged.
The team quickly made its way into position, covering the exits, while the leader, a stocky man with a patchy beard, fired a volley of warning shots into the air. Most of the other waiters were stoic, handling the situation much like a customer who argued with them over the bill. They either reticently put their hands in the air, or found a place on the ground, cold annoyance painted on their faces. Some people screamed and ran for the passages, only to find their way blocked. Some ran down the stairs into the underground parking garage.
Some ducked under tables and lit up fresh cigarettes, fumbling blindly to retrieve their coffees from above. One man even attempted to pay the waiter under the table next to him. He kept whispering “here” insistently and proffering the small plastic disc. Finally, the waiter took it, only to see that the customer needed change. He looked up, and the man had an expectant gaze in his eyes. The waiter muttered “shit” under his breath and reached into his pocket to retrieve a one euro piece.
Plumes of tobacco smoke wafted up around the square. Couples continued to make out, some more intensely. Women chatted in low voices, giggling. “Boom.” The ground shook, jarring knees and knocking people flat on their asses. Large chunks of paving stone leapt into the air, almost as if by magic. Then again “boom,” on the other side of the square. A patient man with a bald crown and dark blue jacket had been standing with his hands crossed in the small of his back. A fist-sized corner of jagged rock smashed into his right temple, killing him instantly.
Men, women, and children were all in various stages of disrepair: scraped hands and kneecaps, sprained wrists and ankles—especially the many ladies in heels. A few people were unconscious, a few strollers knocked over on their sides, babies locked in fathers’ arms. Sounds of screaming, moaning, running, crying. Dust in the air, shopping bags spilled over, cups and saucers and plates in fractured pieces.
Clusters of people began charging back up the stairs from the parking garage, chased up by the dust plumes emerging from underground. One young guy with headphones finally took notice of what was going on and started running around frantically, only to find no way out. He sat down on the stairs in front of the theater, chin perched in his hands, headphones still in place.
A woman in her mid 40s, who had kept her seat through all of this, finished her long cigarette, took a sip of her coffee, and got up slowly, deliberately—as if it were simply time to leave. She put on her linen jacket one arm at a time, and shrugged her shoulders forward to get a perfect fit. She tied the jacket at the front, fashionably ignoring the buttons, and began to make her way down one side of the square. Not thirty minutes earlier, that jacket had fallen off of her chair, and a neighboring diner had stopped his lunch conversation with his girlfriend to recover it for her. They had exchanged pleasantries.
The woman in linen made it within 50 feet of one of the passages, the sound of her three inch heels echoing in the near silence. One gunman fired a warning shot in the air. She paused only momentarily, and then resumed her striding gait, but without adding any speed or indicating in any other way that she even took notice of the threat. “The woman,” the one with the patchy beard said into his radio. She fell, and the sound of the splashing water was all that was left. They put her body in the fountain, which took on a slightly pinkish tinge, like a rosé. The jacket was ruined.
As the police approached, the diatonic signature of their sirens began to trumpet into Ralliement, bouncing back and forth madly off of the surfaces of the buildings. The team was ready for them. From 300 feet, one car was blasted over onto its side. Two others had their hoods blown open and caught fire. Another car stopped in its approach, the driver pointing through the windshield at a mini-gun that was cycling up its barrel. The two cops jumped out and scattered just as a torrent of bullets streamed forth, chewing their sedan into a tattered mess.
Many people in the upper floors of the plaza buildings were on the phone with the police, giving details of the positions of the terrorists, reporting injuries, and describing the situation in alternating tones of calm and shouts of frightened profanity. One gentleman, ex-military, was able to provide more specific details about their armaments and strategy. He did as well as he could from his vantage point in a corner of the square.
Ten minutes passed in a muddled stalemate. The police had stopped attempting to break into the square. One of the terrorists could be seen having a heated phone conversation, waving his free arm and shouting the words “bomb” and “hostages” into the receiver. But no demands were made—and no instructions were given—to the hostages trapped in Ralliement. The team maintained their positions, and no one else tried to leave.
Instead, the citizens of Angers were tending to the injured, calming their children, and hatching a plan. They were not going to let their beloved square be destroyed, and neither would they be taken by siege. Some began to talk about the legacy of La Place du Ralliement, where troops had once gathered and heads had rolled. For a few, this inspired even more fear. But for others, it began to strengthen their resolve. They thought to themselves, in one fashion or another, that the weight of their history stood in their favor.
PS – Once, I have been asked if this actually happened. Twice, I have been told I needed a disclaimer. I still don’t get it, but I won’t be stubborn about it. This is a work of fiction.
The Replanted Writer 