Ben Hope 05 - The Shadow Project (37 page)

?I should come home early from holiday more often,? he said laconically. ?There I was, sunshine and sand and beautiful girls everywhere, and all I could think about was this place. Couldn?t rest for a second. If I?d known you were having a party I?d have come back even sooner.?

?Glad you showed up,? Ben said.

?Not sorry I kept this old twelve-bore in the toolshed, either. Thought it might come in handy for rats. I hate bloody rats.? Jeff used the shotgun barrels to point at the corpses. ?So what?s the story on these guys??

?Two more in the house,? Ben said. ?No idea who they are.?

?I don?t suppose they?ll tell us much now.?

Ben was walking over to Ruth when the bullet came out of nowhere and caught him in the chest. Somewhere through the bursting white flash of pain, he heard Brooke?s distant scream. He staggered back two steps and keeled over in the dirt.

Chapter Fifty-One

Ben felt his body hit the ground, felt the breath burst out of his lungs with the impact. The pain in his chest was crippling. He fought for air, and sounds became a dull booming in his ears. As if from some remote place, he watched the others scatter in slow motion and dive for cover as gunfire blasted across from the Dutch barn next to the house. Bullets raked the ground near him, kicking up sprays of dust.

This is no time to die
, he thought as he lay there. But for some reason that his mind couldn?t grasp, he wasn?t dead. He?d been down just a couple of seconds when he realised that his senses were already bouncing back, sharpening, focusing. He willed his body to move, and it did. Ignoring the pain that stabbed through his upper body, he rolled over and wedged himself in the gap between the bungalow and the lean-to.

A moment?s silence as the shooters across the way reloaded, then another ripping rasp of silenced full-auto fire came from the barn and bullets sang off the wall right by his head.

He put his hand to where he?d been hit, felt the wetness seeping into his shirt. But it was cold, not warm, and when he looked at his hand there was no blood and the moisture on his fingers smelled like petrol.

He understood then what had happened.
Another life gone
, he thought grimly.

He risked a glance around the corner of the lean-to and saw a movement inside the shadows of the barn. Two men, same black tactical gear and ski masks. They were using the parked Mini Cooper as cover, scanning left and right across the yard with their weapons. Burst, reload, burst. It was a good vantage point, giving them an open view of the whole place. Jeff and the women were pinned down in the alley beside the bungalow a few yards away. Anywhere they tried to move, they?d be out in the open.

?Shotgun,? Ben called out to Jeff. An instant later, the weapon slid along the ground to within two feet of his reach. He stretched out a hand, then jerked it back as bullets ripped up the dirt. One of them whacked into the shotgun?s stock, splinters flying.

He said a prayer and then threw himself out into the open. Hit the ground with his chest, and the pain seared through him again. His fingers closed on the shotgun and he snatched it up as he rolled out of the way of another spray of bullets that chewed up the spot where he?d been a millisecond earlier. He fired as he moved. Forty yards or so was a long shot for a double-barrelled shotgun, but he saw the window of the Mini vaporise into a cloud of glass fragments and one of the shooters spin away with a shout. Ben rolled again, let off the second barrel upside down on his back.

The Mini exploded violently with a deafening ?BLAM?, its back end kicking upwards with the force as the steel shot pellets ripped into its fuel tank and sparks ignited the petrol. An orange fireball blasted out of the barn, bits of torn planking tumbled across the yard. The blast caught one of the shooters and just about tore him in half before he was lost in the thick black smoke that belched from the blazing car. The other was on fire as he came staggering out into the open. He dropped his weapon, went down on his knees and collapsed and started thrashing about desperately to put out the flames that were licking up his legs.

Ben scrambled to his feet and sprinted across the yard to the fallen man. Able to see him clearly for the first time, he noticed the secondary weapon the assassin was carrying strapped to his back ? a high-performance crossbow with a mounted quiver full of murderous razor-tipped bolts.

Jeff got there a second later, and stared at Ben with an expression that said ?Why are you alive?? Ben reached into his breast pocket and showed him. The Zippo lighter was dented in the middle, squashed almost flat from the impact of the bullet. Jeff grinned.

Ben started stamping out the flames that were licking around the intruder?s clothing.

?Let the bastard burn,? Jeff said.

?I want to talk to him.? Ben kicked a few more times, rolling the man over to quell the flames. He tore away the crossbow and looped its strap over his own shoulder, then pulled off the guy?s smouldering combat vest and tossed it away. He started searching him roughly, not caring how much he hurt him in the process.

In a pouch on his belt he found a digital Nikon. He activated the camera and quickly found what he was looking for. An image came up on the screen. It was him and Ruth as they?d sat in the ruined church in the woods talking. He touched a button and saw another shot of the two of them walking back to the house. Now he understood what Storm had been growling for back there. The intruders had been casing the place before the attack, hiding in the woods.

He tossed the camera away and rifled again through the guy?s belt pouch. The only other items in it were a phone and two photographs. One shot of himself, lifted from the Le Val website, and one of a slightly younger Ruth with a smile and long hair.

?So you came here to kill the two of us,? he said. The man?s eyes looked up at him through the slots in the ski mask.

Brooke ran past them towards the barn, carrying a fire extinguisher to kill the blaze before it took over the whole building. She waded in through the smoke, dousing the flames with foam. The Mini stopped burning, thick foam dripping from blackened metal. Then, as Ben was about to start questioning the prisoner, she let out a cry of horror and threw down the extinguisher. She?d seen something in the barn. Ruth ran over and saw it too, putting her hands to her mouth.

?The dogs. They?ve shot the dogs.?

Ben ran over and felt sick at the sight. Four German Shepherds were piled in a lifeless heap in the corner of the barn, their bloodied bodies pierced through with crossbow bolts. Lying slumped over the top of the pile was Storm. Drops of blood plopped from the aluminium shaft that was protruding from his shoulder, splashing down into the red pool on the concrete floor.

Ben could hear Ruth sobbing behind him as he put his hand on the dog?s body. Just the tiniest flicker of movement. He checked the animal?s pulse. It was there, but it was weak. Storm?s eyes half-opened and looked right into his, as if he were saying ?Don?t worry about me.? He tried to raise his shaggy head, but the effort was too much. He licked Ben?s hand, then his eyes closed and he fell unconscious.

?Will he make it?? Brooke asked.

?I don?t know.? Ben turned and walked back towards the prisoner. Crouched down beside him and whipped off his mask. ?You speak English?? he asked him quietly.

The man nodded, squinting up with his teeth bared and his eyes glazed over with pain.

?Who sent you?? Ben asked. He spoke quietly, calmly. The rage was turning from hot red to a steady, controlled white.

No response.

?Ever been on a farm before?? Ben asked him.

Another nod, confused this time.

?Then maybe you?ve seen those machines they use to shred up sawn branches? Big whirring blades, chew through anything??

The guy just stared. His eyes bulged. Sweat was pouring down his face.

?I have one of those machines,? Ben said to him. ?Right over there in the toolshed. If you don?t tell me who sent you here I?m going to lower you slowly into it, feet first. You have three seconds to reply. One.?

?Fuck you,? the guy said through clenched, bloodied teeth.

?Two.?

The look of defiance melted a little, but not that much. ?I don?t know!?

?You don?t think I mean it, do you? Three.? Ben stood, grabbed the guy?s ankle and jerked his body round brutally and started dragging him across the ground towards the toolshed. The guy kicked and struggled, yelling ?No! No!?

?Fire her up, Jeff,? Ben said. Jeff trotted ahead to the shed, yanked the tarp off the shredder, stooped down to prime the carburettor and then pulled the starter cord. The engine spluttered into life. As Ben was dragging the guy inside the toolshed, Jeff grabbed a coil of rope from a nail on the wall and flung one end over a beam. Ben took a fistful of the guy?s hair, jerked him into sitting position on the concrete floor and looped the other end of the rope roughly around his chest. The machine whirred away next to them, blades gnashing like teeth, ready to devour anything that was thrown into its rusty maw and spew it out in little chunks from the outlet pipe underneath. Ben tugged the end of the rope and it went taut across the beam. Pulled a little harder, and the guy was lifted a few inches off the floor. Then a few more.

That must have been when he realised they were absolutely serious about feeding him to the shredder. ?OK! OK!? he shouted in panic.

Ben let go of the rope and let him slump back down. He unslung the crossbow. Bracing it between his chest and the floor, he yanked the bowstring all the way back with a click. Felt like a hundred and fifty pounds of pull. That probably gave the bow a velocity of over three hundred feet per second. He fitted one of the razor-tipped bolts and pointed the ungainly rifle-like weapon at the guy?s face.

?Talk,? he said.

There was no hesitation now. The man spoke a single name. ?Steiner.?

Ben felt his mouth go dry.

His finger hovered over the crossbow trigger.

?Let me go now,? the man pleaded. ?I swear I?ll never come back here again. I?ll tell them you?re dead. You and the girl, the way it was meant to be.?

?The girl in the photo. Steiner ordered her dead??

The guy nodded. Ben looked in his eyes and believed him.

?Just let me go. I swear.?

?You shouldn?t have hurt my dogs,? Ben said.

And fired the bow. The weapon recoiled in his arms as it launched the bolt with a
thwack
.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Rory looked up from the corner of his cell where he was sitting when he heard the tinkle of the key in the lock. When he saw it was Ivan, his fear ebbed away as quickly as it had mounted.

This time Ivan had one of the guards with him, one of the most surly and taciturn ones, but said something to him that made him stay out in the corridor while he came into the cell and half-closed the door behind him.

?I brought you something to read,? Ivan whispered with a nervous glance behind him to make sure the guard couldn?t see. He reached into his jacket and brought out a tattered comic book.

Rory took it, grateful to have something to while away the hours with. He?d been here so long now, and the way day merged into night, he was losing all track of time and going slowly crazy. Ivan stood over him, smiling benevolently.

?Something else for you,? he murmured, handing the boy another chocolate bar.

Rory quickly hid the chocolate and the comic under his mattress, the way Ivan had told him to. Then he turned to the man, looking up at him with big, inquisitive eyes.

?Do you know where my dad is?? he asked him.

?I have not been able to find out much,? Ivan whispered. ?That man Pelham??

?Shh.?

Rory spoke more quietly. ?That man Pelham said he was coming.?

Ivan lowered his voice a notch further. ?Pelham cannot be trusted,? he said. ?Don?t believe him.?

?I don?t understand,? Rory whimpered. There were times when he felt near the edge of hysteria, and that mood had welled up inside him more and more readily since the torture. It was as though some vital part of his inner core had been ripped out, leaving him as fragile as a sickly kitten.

?If Dad?s not coming,? he sobbed, ?why am I here? What do they want with us anyway? When am I going home?? Tears streamed down his face.

Ivan laid a hand on his shoulder and looked earnestly into his eyes. ?Do not be so scared. I promised I would take care of you. And I will.?

Rory sniffed and smeared the tears away with his grimy sleeve. ?Are you in contact with the other special agents??

Ivan looked back at the door, then nodded, smiled and put a finger to his lips. ?When it is time,? he whispered, barely audible, ?I will give the signal and they will come for us.?

?Can?t it be now??

?I still have work to do,? Ivan said. ?It?s not over. But soon.? He cleared his throat, gesturing at the door. In his normal voice he said, ?You are to come with me. Time for your shower.?

Rory jumped up. The trips to the shower block were the only times he got out of the cell. In a world so limited and confined as his new environment, even something as simple as walking a few hundred yards through the dingy corridors to stand on cracked ancient tiles and get doused with lukewarm water from a rusty tank was something to look forward to.