The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  His finger caressed the smooth, curved face of the trigger. His eyes were fixed on Glass’s. He let the sights blur out.

  A bullet in answer for Oliver. Another for Leigh. And he had fifteen more in the magazine. He wouldn’t stop until the last spent case was tinkling across the floor and the hot gun was locked back in his hands and Glass and Kroll were lying broken and twisted and sprawled in a lake of their mixed blood. His heart quickened at the thought. He felt his eyes burn. He saw Leigh’s smile in his mind. His throat ached.

  ‘Ben,’ said a voice to his left. He darted a glance sideways, still aiming the gun at Glass.

  Aragon was looking hard at him. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said.

  Ben shook his head. His fingertip ran down the trigger blade. One pull.

  ‘This wasn’t what we agreed,’ Aragon said softly. ‘We’re not murderers.’

  One pull. The gun began to shake in Ben’s hand.

  ‘They’ll be arrested and spend the rest of their lives in jail,’ Aragon said. ‘That’s what you promised me. A bullet in the head is not the same thing as justice.’

  Ben let out a long sigh. He took his finger out of the trigger guard and flipped on the safety. He let the pistol down.

  Glass smiled. Kroll was still staring at Ben in disbelief, his wrinkled mouth half open as if the words were stuck.

  Kroll’s associates stood frozen as the four team members moved forwards out of the shadows, weapons shouldered. The old men’s faces were drawn and pale, eyes wide, foreheads thick with sweat.

  Emil Ziegler suddenly staggered. His face was twisted in agony as he clapped a hand to his left shoulder. He collapsed, convulsing. Heart attack.

  Cook was a trained medic. Slinging his MP-5 behind him, he ran to the stricken man’s side and dropped down to his knees.

  Ziegler’s arm lashed out. Cook fell back, the last expression on his face one of complete surprise. Then the blood started spurting from his slashed throat. Ziegler’s chubby fist was still clutching the stiletto knife.

  Suddenly the air was filled with yelling and panic. O’Neill and Lambert looked ready to empty their MP-5s into Ziegler. Aragon was commanding them to hold fire, hold your fire.

  In the corner of Ben’s vision, the edge of a tapestry fluttered in the shadows. He looked away from Cook’s body.

  Glass and Kroll weren’t there any more.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Ben leapt down from the platform and tore the gold-threaded tapestry away from the wall. He saw the entrance to a small hidden archway, dark against the shadowy stone. A cold breeze wafted from it. He stepped inside the dimly lit stone stairway and saw that it spiralled upwards. He could hear the sound of running footsteps echoing off the walls above him.

  He threw a glance over his shoulder. The crypt was secure. There was nothing anyone could do for Cook. Aragon was propped wearily against a pillar, pressing numbers into a phone. The other three team members had the old men firmly cornered. They were Philippe Aragon’s responsibility now.

  Ben had other business. He started up the spiral steps, two at a time. The staircase wound round and round. Over the sound of his own rapid footsteps he thought he could hear the two men running ahead of him. He was gaining.

  A second later he heard the flat report of a pistol. Followed by another. They were just up ahead.

  * * *

  The moment she’d recognized Ben Hope in the ballroom, she’d known that her moment was approaching fast. It was the endgame, the culmination of all these years of fear and duplicity and self-loathing that Werner Kroll had put her through. She didn’t care any more. It had to stop here. Whatever happened.

  She hadn’t lived as Werner’s prisoner all this time without finding out a few of his secret routes. The enormous rambling house was riddled with them, enabling him to slip unnoticed from one place to another. Even though he’d always kept the private crypt locked to her, she knew about the hidden stair and had thought he’d come that way. He always had a surprise card to play. He was like that. Too clever to let anyone catch him so easily.

  Now it was time for her to surprise him. She’d gone to her room, changed out of the party dress into jeans and an old sweater, taken that detested wig off for the last time and fetched her purse. Then she’d come here to this dark, dusty part of the old house to wait for him, crouching in the shadows of the passage, staring at the iron-studded door that she knew he was going to emerge from sooner or later. Through a dark passage to her right, the stairway wound right up to the top of the house. She wasn’t going to let Kroll up there.

  As she heard the footsteps and the rattle of keys in the lock of the old door, she slipped the Black Widow out of her purse and firmly snicked back the hammer with her thumb. The door creaked open, and she stepped out of the gloom to meet them.

  Kroll stopped in the entrance and stared at her. Glass was with him. Kroll’s eyes flicked from hers to the muzzle of the little pistol and back up again. ‘Eve—’ he began, raising a hand.

  She’d never pointed a gun at a living person before. But she didn’t hesitate. The rubber grip filled her palm. Her finger curled around the little spur trigger and squeezed.

  The .22 Magnum fired a very small bullet at a very high velocity. The report of the supersonic round was vicious in the enclosed space and she almost cried out at the lancing pain in her ears.

  Glass twisted and clutched at his neck. He swore and staggered back two steps. There was a spray of blood on the stonework behind him.

  But he didn’t go down. He swayed on his feet and for an instant Eve thought he was going to come at her. She struggled with the little gun. Her hands had started to shake violently and she couldn’t get the hammer cocked for a second shot.

  Glass staggered across the landing towards the next flight of stairs. She was still fumbling with the gun as he disappeared round the corner. She heard his footsteps racing unevenly up the wooden steps.

  Kroll stood still in the middle of the landing. His eyes were wide.

  The Black Widow’s hammer clicked back into place and she brought it to bear on him. ‘Eve,’ he said again, raising his eyebrows. ‘Think what you’re doing.’

  ‘It’s over, Werner,’ she said. ‘I can’t let you go on with it any more.’

  His eyes pleaded. ‘Look into your heart, Eve.’ He took a step towards her. ‘You know that you don’t want to kill me.’

  She saw the stubby little automatic in his hand an instant too late. His face tightened. He fired from the hip, without aiming. His first shot went through her hand. The .22 spun out of her grip. She screamed.

  He fired again and caught her in the shoulder. The searing agony sliced through her. She fell back, slumped against the wall and slid down slowly to the floor.

  Kroll smiled as he stood over her, his legs planted either side of her body. He aimed the little Colt auto between her eyes. ‘Goodbye, Eve,’ he said.

  Then he went tumbling forward with a spasm.

  Ben Hope was in the doorway. Through the pain and the ringing in her ears, Eve heard the muffled cough of his gun repeating in a rapid staccato as he emptied it into Kroll. The old man crumpled bloodily onto his face with nine bullets in him and lay half on top of her.

  Ben grabbed Kroll’s dead body by the collar and rolled it aside. He knelt down beside Eve. He could see that not all the blood on her was Kroll’s. He ripped the neck of her sweater, searching for the gunshot wound.

  The bullet had hit high on the right shoulder, between the collarbone and the upper chest muscle. He probed gently, fingers slick with blood. She was near to fainting as he ran his fingers over the back of her shoulder and found the small-calibre bullet lodged under the skin. It had passed through the shoulder without fragmenting. He breathed more easily. It wasn’t as bad as it looked.

  The hand was worse, quite a bit worse. He winced when he saw the jagged bits of bone protruding whitely through the flesh. Her fingers were twisted in a way they shouldn’t be. She might never recover the fu
ll use of that right hand.

  But she’d live. She’d been lucky. Kroll had been a bad shot. The sign of a man who had always paid others to pull the trigger for him. Or maybe just a sadist who wanted to take his time and cause as much pain and peripheral damage as he could before he killed her. Either way, it was over now.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You’ll be taken care of.’

  ‘Thank you’, she mouthed weakly. She tried to smile, and then passed out.

  He looked at her for a moment, and reached out and caressed her cheek, leaving a smear of blood.

  He stood up and looked down at Kroll. The old man lay twisted like a broken doll. The von Adler line had just ended, and with it two centuries of murder and corruption. Werner Kroll’s lifeless eyes were staring like oily porcelain. The thin wrinkled lips seemed to smile mockingly at him. For an instant Ben wanted to shoot him again.

  But he had other things to worry about. Where was Jack Glass?

  There was a spatter of blood on the wall. Splashes of it across the floor. They led towards the stairs. A slick red footprint on the first step. A big red splash on the second. Another footprint on the third. A bloody handprint on the banister rail. The blood led all the way up. But it was just a trail. Glass himself was nowhere.

  Ben’s mind suddenly filled with a single thought.

  Clara.

  Chapter Sixty

  Jack Glass had been shot before, plenty of times. As long as he was still functional and on his feet, he was still in the game. It was going to take more than a bullet from a woman’s gun to stop him. He knew his collarbone was broken, but he was prepared to ignore the pain if he could do what he wanted to do now.

  He pounded up the stairs, his hand pressed hard against his shoulder to stem the blood. He reached the third floor, leaned against the banister rail and looked down. He could see a dark shape two floors below, moving fast up the winding staircase. Hope was after him again. Fucking blood trail was giving him away. Nothing he could do about that. He had to keep moving. Forget the pain.

  He grinned. Him and Hope in the running together. It was like SAS selection all over again. But this time he had an edge, and he meant to use it. The old man was fucked, the ship was going down. But there was no way Jack Glass was going down with it.

  He made it to the top floor and thundered stiffly along the corridor, soaked in sweat and blood. The doors to the garret rooms were on his left. Paper was peeling off the walls and the carpets were threadbare. It was cold up here, cooling the sweat that was pouring off him. He ripped open one of the doors to his right and staggered into the room. He found what he was looking for and tucked the small leather case under his arm.

  ‘Boss, you OK?’

  It was the Swede. His dull face registered mild alarm as he saw the blood on Glass’s shirt.

  Glass turned. ‘Never better,’ he grunted painfully.

  He had to look down at most men. But the Swede, Björkmann, towered over him by nearly three inches. That made him a very big man indeed. His neck was wider than his head, as thick as Glass’s thigh. Three hundred pounds of solid muscle with an arrowhead haircut and very little brains. The kind of man Glass loved to have on his team. The big Ruger revolver was dwarfed in his meaty fist.

  ‘Everybody’s going apeshit down there,’ Björkmann said in his broken German. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Somebody crashed the party,’ Glass replied. He wiped the cold sweat out of his eyes and felt the ends of his broken collarbone grate. He clenched his teeth. ‘I need you to watch my back, Christian. There’s a guy on his way up here. You know what to do. I’ll come back for you. OK?’

  The gigantic man nodded slowly. ‘Sure, boss.’

  Glass watched Björkmann lumber down the corridor. He grinned and left the outline of a bloody hand on Clara Kinski’s door as he shoved it open.

  The child was crouched in the corner, pressed against the wall, looking up at him with terror in her eyes. Glass took the syringe out of the leather case. He plucked the cork off the end of the long needle and fired a squirt of the lethal poison into the air. ‘Your Uncle Jack’s going to take care of you now,’ he said.

  Clara started to scream as he walked into the room.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Ben’s eyes were on the blood trail as he sprinted up another flight of stairs. His left hand grasped the polished banister rail as he climbed, his right holding the pistol ready.

  The splashes of bright blood on the stairs were frequent. Glass was badly hurt, but he was running like a maniac and he was still extremely dangerous. He was heading for the top floor.

  Ben cleared the final flight, his heart hammering in his chest. The blood trail led onwards down the corridor. He followed it, sweeping the gun left and right.

  At the end of the long passage, a door was banging open. Through the doorway he could see curtains fluttering in the cold wind and snow blowing in through an open French window. He went into the room. All his senses were blazing. Over the thudding of his heart he heard an unmistakable sound. As he crept into the room it got louder.

  It was the high-pitched whine of a powerful engine, revs building to a roar. It was coming from outside, on the roof. Someone was firing up the helicopter. He moved towards the window.

  His vision exploded white and suddenly he was on his face. The gun slid away across the bare floorboards. He felt fingers curl around his collar and he was yanked to his feet with brutal force. He had a glimpse of a broad forehead and two small, fierce eyes staring down at him, and then a massive fist slammed into his jaw and sent him reeling backwards as though he weighed nothing. He crashed into a desk, sprawling over the top of it and sending papers and files, an ashtray and a telephone flying.

  One of the biggest men he’d ever seen walked calmly towards him around the edge of the desk. ‘You are dead,’ the giant said simply. His English was heavily accented. In his hand was a stainless-steel Ruger .44 Redhawk with an eight-inch barrel. He tucked it into the back of his belt. ‘I no need this,’ he said. He raised his fists.

  Ben staggered to his feet. The whine of the helicopter outside was getting louder. There was blood on his lips from the punch. His head was spinning. But even the biggest bastard could be brought down. He moved in fast and aimed a heavy blow at the solar plexus. He put all his strength into it and pain lanced up his arm as it impacted. It was a good punch. It would have crippled most men.

  The giant barely seemed to feel it. A fist the size of a pineapple flew at Ben’s head and only just missed. If it had landed, it would have killed him.

  This was getting serious. Ben aimed a kick to the groin. The giant blocked it. He jabbed at the throat. Another block. Ben retreated, aware that he was running out of space in the room. Through the open window he heard another sound, the high, keening, terrified sound of a child’s scream. He followed the sound with his eyes. The windows opened out onto a wide, flat expanse of rooftop. The helipad was surrounded by sloping gables and towering chimneys. Snow flurried on the rising wind. Thirty yards away, the lights of the Bell chopper cut a white beam through the drifting snowflakes, its rotors turning faster now. Jack Glass had Clara by the arm and was trying to bundle her into the open door of the helicopter. She was struggling and kicking. His teeth were gritted in pain and the front of his shirt was dark and clinging with blood.

  Ben looked a fraction of a second too long. A heavy boot caught his ribs and he felt something crack. He cried out, rolled to the floor, clutched his side. He crawled under the desk. The giant grabbed the edge of the desk with one hand and hurled it over. He ripped out a drawer and crashed it down over Ben’s head. It shattered into pieces, showering him with bits of office equipment. Something glinted on the carpet. It was a letter-opener in the shape of a dagger. His fingers closed over it, and as the giant came on again Ben plunged the blade downwards into the man’s boot.

  It was a solid heavy-grain leather boot. The blade was blunt. But Ben stabbed it so hard that it went through
the leather into the foot inside. Through the foot into the sole. Through the sole into the wooden floor. It pinned him like an insect to a board.

  The big man threw his head back and howled in pain. Ben struggled to his feet and lashed a foot into his groin. That had an effect. The man doubled up. Ben grabbed the giant’s tiny ears and slammed a knee into his face.

  Outside, Clara broke away from Glass. Her hair streaming in the blast from the spinning rotor blades, she ran towards the windows. She slipped on the snow and fell, then scrabbled back to her feet. Glass went after her and grabbed her by the hair. He yanked her back and she screamed.

  The giant was teetering, moaning, trying to stagger away from his pinned foot. Ben tore a fire-extinguisher off the wall and rammed the heavy metal cylinder down on his head. The man crashed to the floor and rolled on his back. Ben brought the base of the extinguisher down on his face and almost vomited as the man’s skull caved in. The giant convulsed and twitched for a second and then lay still.

  Bloody and hurt, Ben ripped the .44 Ruger from the dead man’s belt. The cylinder was loaded with six fat magnum cartridges. He staggered towards the open French window. Glass was dragging Clara back towards the helicopter. He picked her up and stuck her under his arm. Her little legs kicked wildly.

  Ben ran out onto the roof, ignoring the pain from his cracked rib. He aimed the heavy revolver and yelled Glass’s name over the roar.

  Glass jerked Clara’s body round in front of his. He pressed something against her neck. His thumb was on the plunger of the syringe. ‘I’ll kill her,’ he screamed. ‘Put the gun down.’

  Ben dropped the revolver and kicked it away from him. Glass grinned through his pain and dragged the child inside the helicopter. Still holding the syringe to her neck, he handcuffed her to the frame of the seat. Ben watched helplessly. Glass slid behind the controls. He’d learnt to fly in Africa and he was a good pilot. Crazy enough to take off in the snow, but then Jack Glass had always been crazy. He was proud of that.