Frank, the first guy, said, ‘It’s not fucking here!’
‘What’s not fucking here?’
‘His fucking computer. It’s missing. And someone’s been here before us. A desk drawer’s been jimmied. Whatever was in there is gone, too.’
Ben and Wolf exchanged glances. Wolf raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Oh-oh.’
Ken’s voice said, ‘What about discs, hard drives, other places he might’ve stored the file?’
So the file on Abbott’s laptop was definitely what they were looking for.
‘Can’t see anything in there,’ Frank’s voice replied. ‘Same bastard as took the computer could’ve removed them, too.’
‘Shit. We gotta find that computer or it’s our arses on the block.’
Frank paused for a moment, then made a decision. It seemed as though he was in charge. He instructed Ken, ‘You and Terry carry on downstairs for a bit. I’m going to search the rest of the upstairs. Maybe Abbott stashed the gear somewhere.’
Ben and Wolf heard Ken thundering back down below. The banging and crashing downstairs resumed in force. Meanwhile Frank would be ransacking the rest of the study, but it wouldn’t be long before he gave up and started trying other upstairs rooms. Just a matter of time before he came through the bedroom door.
Wolf tapped Ben on the arm and pointed at an internal door at the far side of the bedroom. He beckoned Ben over, opened it, and Ben saw that it was a walk-in wardrobe, like a small room in its own right. There were racks of inbuilt shelves and a row of suits hanging on a rail, wrapped in protective plastic. Ben and Wolf slipped inside and eased the door closed after them. It was dark in there, with just thin slits of light shining around the edges of the door. Listening. Waiting. Barely breathing. Ben’s skin was crawling with agitation, as if ants were swarming all over his body. It felt all wrong to be hiding like this. Normally, a bunch of rent-a-thugs like Frank and his colleagues crossing paths with a pair of SAS-trained pros would have been dead before they even knew it. Ben and Wolf would have breezed through them like two hungry foxes in a chicken run. But here they were, cowering in a wardrobe for fear of being discovered.
Ben could hardly stand feeling so powerless. All he could think of was Grace, and the absolute need to protect her the only way he could. Doubts began to creep into his mind. Had he played it right? Should he have done it differently?
That was when Frank came into the bedroom. Ben heard the door swing open hard and judder against the wall. The tread of footsteps clumping about the room. The crash of a bedside cabinet being violently tipped over and its contents spilling out. A lamp falling over. The angry muttering of a man frustrated by not being able to find what he was looking for.
Any moment now, Frank would head for the walk-in wardrobe. Ben realised it was virtually impossible that he wouldn’t think of searching among Abbott’s things in there. Ben’s plan to remain undetected was unravelling by the second. He and Wolf shrank back behind the row of hanging suits. Trying not to let the plastic covers rustle. He felt his palm becoming moist against the butt of the Browning.
And as he stood there listening to the man searching the bedroom, new thoughts were coming into Ben’s head. Because even though the confrontation he’d so badly wanted to avoid was now virtually inevitable, maybe the disaster could be turned to his advantage. The information Ben had hoped to gain from Abbott had died with him, but now a new option existed to find out who the killers were – more importantly, who they worked for. And if it could be done without their employers finding out too soon, then the time window for saving Grace could be kept open just a little longer.
To make that happen, Ben and Wolf needed to keep just one of the crew alive. A man with a gun pointed at his head could be made to report back to base as though everything was okay. He could also be persuaded to lead them straight back to his bosses.
Maybe this situation could offer Ben and Wolf a faster track to taking down the enemy than they’d anticipated. That thought filled Ben with a fierce, burning energy, like a supernova of pure white light.
He slipped Abbott’s laptop onto a shelf covered in neatly folded clothes. Started to move towards the wardrobe door. In the darkness, Wolf flashed him a look of alarm. What the fuck are you doing? But Ben could see in Wolf’s grim expression that he was getting ready for the inevitable fight, too.
Slowly, silently, Ben cracked open the wardrobe door. An inch, then two, then six more. He peeked out. Frank was standing just a few feet away across the room, with his back turned to Ben as he dragged the mattress off Abbott’s bed, hoping to find the missing laptop or a set of data drives hidden underneath. Ben could see the butt of a Glock 19 sticking out of the back of Frank’s jeans waistband.
If it had to be done, it needed to be done fast. Ben took a deep breath and felt his heartbeat settle into that state of calm stillness that he always entered before battle.
And then he launched himself from the wardrobe door and was on the man in two steps.
Chapter 33
Ben hit him hard behind the ear with the steel of the Browning. A blow intended to stun and disorientate, not to kill. Ben had other uses for Frank before things got to that stage.
Frank was a hard nut and not about to be taken out of action so easily. As he toppled sideways to the bedroom floor with a grunt of pain and shock he tried to claw out his pistol, but Ben captured his hand, bent his arm tight up behind his back and rode him down to the carpet with the muzzle of the Browning jammed tight against the base of his skull. Before he could cry out Ben hit him two more sharp blows and clamped the guy’s mouth shut, using a knee to keep the trapped arm pinned at breaking point behind his back.
Wolf had emerged from the wardrobe right behind Ben. He deftly plucked the Glock from Frank’s waistband and danced back two steps, speed-checking the loaded chamber and then training the gun towards the doorway in case the two men downstairs might have become alerted to what was happening.
They hadn’t. The sounds of vandalism and fake burglary continued as before.
Frank was dazed but still struggling against Ben’s iron grip, snorting and breathing like a trapped pig and trying to bite the hand Ben had clasped over his mouth. Ben held him down tighter and pressed the gun harder against the back of his head, angled so that a through-and-through gunshot wouldn’t blow off his own fingers if he had to pull the trigger. He didn’t want to, but Frank didn’t know that.
In a soft, calm voice close to Frank’s ear Ben said, ‘Listen very carefully and make no mistake. Resist me, and I will kill you. Any tricks, I will kill you. I’m going to loosen my grip a little, so you can nod to tell me that you understand, Frank.’
Ben relaxed his hold slightly and felt some of the tension go out of Frank’s muscles, the guy resigning himself to being beaten. Frank nodded once. Ben said, ‘Good. Now I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, and you’re going to answer truthfully or I will kill you. You don’t want to die, do you, Frank?’
Without hesitation, Frank shook his head no.
‘Of course you don’t. So tell me. Is there anyone else coming here?’
No.
Ben asked, ‘Is there anyone else in the car?’
No.
Experience had taught Ben to trust what men told him when they truly believed that their life depended on their response. He said, ‘All right. No more questions. Now there’s something I need you to do for me. Think you can manage that?’
Nod.
‘Okay, Frank. Here’s what you’re going to do. I’m going to get you up on your feet and walk you to the door. Then you’re going to call down to your friends Ken and Terry. Get their attention. Tell them to come up here fast because you’ve got something to show them. You do that for me, and you’ll make it through this.’
Ben threw Wolf a glance and nodded towards the French window. Wolf had spent so much time in combat training with Ben that he could read his tactical thinking as well as if Ben had shown him a diagrammatic plan. SAS co
mrades were like that, because they often found themselves in situations where instant, intuitive, improvised tactics were the only thing between them and violent death. He understood that Ben’s strategy was to draw the other two men into the narrow funnel of the stairway, where they would have little cover and even less chance of escape. Ben would have the high ground at the top of the stairs. Wolf needed no instruction to know that his job was to mount a surprise attack from the rear.
Wolf moved towards the French window. It wasn’t locked. He opened it and stepped out onto the balcony, scanning the garden left and right. He peered down at the sloping gables of the orangery roof below the bedroom window, gauging the drop and the angle of impact that would break his fall and allow him to slide to the ground. His touchdown would be like a hard parachute landing fall. Nothing he hadn’t done a thousand times before. He grabbed a handful of the ivy growing around the balcony wall and gave it a tug, testing to see how well it would bear his weight and help slow down his descent. Then he hopped athletically over the edge of the balcony and was gone, with only a slight rustle of leaves and a faint thud as he hit the orangery roof and went sliding down it to the ground.
At the same time Ben was hauling Frank to his feet and marching him roughly to the bedroom door. ‘Don’t let me down, Frank. What’s about to happen to your friends won’t happen to you.’
Ben pushed open the door and walked Frank out onto the landing with the gun jammed against his neck. The sounds from below had stopped abruptly. Ken and Terry had no doubt heard the thump of Wolf’s rapid descent to the orangery roof and sensed something was up. But now Ben had a new distraction with which to draw their attention. ‘Go.’ He shoved Frank hard towards the head of the stairs and ducked back out of sight behind the corner of the landing wall.
Frank yelled hoarsely down the stairway, ‘Oy! Guys! Get a load of this!’
Moments later Frank’s associates emerged from the dining room and living room and came together in the hallway, standing either side of Abbott’s body and staring up the stairs. The big guy was clutching the shotgun, while the other had drawn a pistol. They were ready for anything and taking no chances. The one with the pistol yelled, ‘What’s up?’
‘Gotta check this out!’ Frank shouted, waving his arms for them to come up.
‘You find it?’
‘Come and see.’
So far Frank was sticking to the script. His associate with the pistol started up the stairs. The big man with the shotgun hesitated, then clumped up the stairs after him. But then Frank suddenly yelled, ‘Watch out, boys! It’s a—’
Evidently, Frank wasn’t that attached to life after all. His last word was drowned out by the BOOM as Ben stepped out from behind the corner of the landing wall and fired at the first guy on the stairs. The guy crumpled and fell backwards as the bullet took him in the chest, and his buddy behind him had to duck out of the way of his falling body to avoid being knocked down the stairs with him.
Frank made a lunge at Ben and tried to grab his gun arm. Ben smacked the butt of the pistol hard into Frank’s teeth and he went down. Through the stairwell window Ben caught a flash of Wolf sprinting fast around the side of the house towards the front door, the Glock in his hand. The man Ben had shot was bumping and rolling all the way down to the bottom of the stairs. The one with the shotgun recovered his balance and was bringing the short-barrelled weapon to bear at the same moment that Ben swivelled the sights of his Browning in his direction. In the race to fire first, Ben was a good half-second ahead – but then Frank, blood all over his mouth and still sprawled out on the floor at Ben’s feet, lashed out a desperate kick at Ben’s knee. Ben dodged the kick but the distraction and the movement cost him his time advantage and the guy with the shotgun squeezed his trigger.
A twelve-gauge is a very loud weapon. In the confined space of the stairwell it sounded like a fragmentation grenade. But a twelve-gauge with its barrel sawn off to little more than twelve inches in length is also a wildly inaccurate tool, good for little more than across-the-room close combat. Its two-ounce payload of buckshot spread out in a cone of lead that missed Ben entirely and took a large bite-shaped chunk out of the corner wall and turned several of the landing rails into matchwood.
Ben hit the floor rattling off a fast string of shots at the same instant that Wolf crashed in through the front door, leaped over Abbott’s body and blasted three, four, five gunshots up the stairwell. The big guy was caught in the middle of their combined field of fire. His body jerked and twitched as bullets struck him front and back. As his muscles went into spasm he jerked the trigger of the shotgun a second time and the deafening blast ripped away most of the top step. Splinters and bits of carpet and stair rod flew. Ben fired again and a nine-millimetre red spot appeared in the centre of the big guy’s forehead.
At that point, the firefight was over. The big guy dropped the shotgun, slumped sideways in the stairwell and rolled over twice before he came to a rest with his leg jammed in the banister railing.
Wolf checked the other body that had tumbled to the bottom of the stairs. ‘He’s dead.’
Ben clambered to his feet. Frank was lying sprawled out across the landing. His face was bloody from where Ben had hit him, his eyes were blinking and he was trying to speak. Ben went to haul him to his feet, ready to beat the hell out of the guy for having almost succeeded in getting him killed. But then he saw the bright blood spreading quickly across Frank’s tattered shirt, and he realised that the second shotgun blast had done more than rip up the top step. Several buckshot pellets had penetrated his midsection. Stomach, kidneys, liver, spleen, it was anyone’s guess where all the blood was pumping from. One thing was for sure. Frank didn’t have a lot of time to live. As he moved his lips to speak a red bubble appeared from his mouth, swelled and popped. A wheezing gasp came from deep in his throat.
Ben knelt beside him and grasped him by both shoulders, shaking him. ‘Talk to me, Frank. You do that, I’ll see you get to a hospital. You still have time. Frank? Do you hear me?’ It was a lie. Frank was losing it fast and the best surgeon in the world couldn’t stop it from happening.
The dying man coughed, spraying more red down his chin. His eyes rolled and tried to focus on Ben, then went glazed.
Ben couldn’t let him go. He wouldn’t let him go. ‘Tell me who you work for, Frank. Tell me where I can find them.’
‘He’s done, Ben,’ Wolf said from the bottom of the stairs.
Ben ignored him. He shook the dying man harder. ‘It doesn’t have to end this way. You can still save your own life, and others. Give me names. Places. Anything. Speak to me!’
But Wolf was right, and Ben’s efforts were in vain. Frank sucked in a rasping final breath, then went limp and his eyes dulled into orbs of lifeless porcelain.
Ben let him go. He stared at Frank’s corpse and felt a sharp sense of loss. It wasn’t that he gave a damn about this idiot. With Abbott dead, Frank had been his only possible ticket to tracking down Saunders and the rest of them. Now that was gone, too.
Wolf stepped over the body at the bottom of the stairs and went up to check on the big guy. Crouched over him, took one look at the gunshot wound that Ben had drilled through his skull, and shook his head. ‘Not gonna get much out of this one, either. Sorry, mate.’
Ben said nothing. He sighed. Wondering what the hell he was going to do next.
Then Wolf said, ‘Oh shit.’
Ben looked across at him. Wolf had been examining the big guy’s corpse for ID when he’d found something else, something more worrying. He held up the bullet-shattered remains of a small black box that looked like a miniature remote control.
‘Bad news, buddy. He was wearing a body cam. Live and transmitting, until the moment you punched his ticket. Someone just watched the whole show happening.’
Chapter 34
Kinlochardaich, Scotland
Five hours earlier
It had been a frustrating half-hour for Jeff and Tuesday, but they’d had no ch
oice but to hold back a while before setting off in pursuit of Grace and the men who’d followed her from her home that morning. With only the black Range Rover tailing her, the plumber’s van up the street was still in position. Jeff and Tuesday couldn’t afford to blow their cover. They sat in Reaper’s Ford Transit and bided their time.
At 7.21 a.m., when they could stand the waiting no longer, Jeff exited the Transit via the rear doors, using the back of the vehicle to shield him from view of the watchers up the street. A few yards along the pavement, taking care not to be seen he ducked down an alley between two houses, which led around the rear to a row of back yards separated by flimsy wooden fences. Jeff hopped one of them and jogged across someone’s garden, working his way back around in a loop. The windows of the house were curtained. He guessed the occupants were still in bed. A dog barked from behind the back door as he crept by, but the curtains didn’t twitch and nobody came out of the house to challenge him.
Seconds later he re-emerged back out onto the street as though he’d come from the house. If the watchers noticed him, they’d assume he was a villager leaving home for work. Jeff wanted them to see him. He ambled casually back up the street to where the Transit was parked, paused a second to check his bootlace before getting in, then climbed up behind the wheel.
They set off, passing Grace’s house and then the plumber’s van. The day was going to be a waiting game, so before leaving Kinlochardaich Jeff stopped off to buy some basic provisions from the village store. Then they sped the thirty miles southwards towards Fort William, going on the assumption that Grace would have headed straight for the police station and that her followers had no reason to accost her en route.
Tuesday was concerned that they’d left too much to chance. ‘I hope we’ve played this right, Jeff.’
The Demon Club Page 18
