The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  He figured he was on the ground floor. Where would they be keeping Zoë? Upstairs in one of the rooms? It was only a guess, and a vague one, but it was all he had. At least he was close now. Only about a dozen guns in his way. He could worry about that when he started meeting them.

  He snapped off the safety on the pistol and crept silently out of the barroom door, sweeping the muzzle left and right, surveying the scene through the sights as he moved cautiously down the murky corridor. He kept in the shadows, tight against the wall, senses fully alert, the gun in front of him, drawing on the ability for complete silence and stealth that had made him legendary among his old regiment. He could hear running footsteps and voices from the lobby. They’d have broken up to hunt for him. Maybe two, three men per team, and probably at least two teams with whoever was left over allocated to guard Zoë’s room.

  Up ahead, the corridor was L-shaped and opened up into a wider hallway with doors either side. One was ajar, dusty light streaming out of what must once have been a TV room.

  He froze. Someone was coming the other way. Three men running. He shrank back into the shadow, the light from the open door creating enough contrast to mask him. He could have reached out and touched them as they ran by. He let them pass. Quietly snicked off the safety on the pistol.

  When the third man was two yards past him he stepped out into the corridor, raised the gun and shot him in the back of the head. The man collapsed, hit the floor and squeaked along the linoleum under his own momentum. Before the other two could register what had happened, Ben fired two more shots in such quick succession that the report of the silenced gun sounded more like one prolonged muted bark than two separate shots. The men’s bodies jerked and they stumbled against each other and went down. A gun slithered across the dusty floor.

  Ben gathered up their weapons. More Berettas, all the same model. He ejected the mags out of the three pistols and slipped them in his pockets. Then he stepped over to the three bodies and looked down at them.

  He’d never enjoyed the cautionary head-shot. It was something that had been schooled into him a long time ago. He’d never wanted to do this again. But every military tactician since ancient times said it was the right thing to do to make sure your enemy never got up once he was down. It was slaughterhouse-brutal but it made immaculate sense.

  Three head-shots at point-blank range with a high-powered handgun is a lot messier than in the movies. Shielding his face against the blood splatter, he did the job fast, stepping from one inert body to the next. The 147-grain semi-jacketed hollowpoint bullets split the men’s skulls apart and blasted brains up the wall. The corridor filled with the ripe stink of blood and death.

  There’d be more of it to come. He moved on.

  Chapter Forty

  Jones dashed along the corridor, stabbing the pistol out in front of him at every turn and doorway. Many of the lights were flickering or dead, casting long black pools of shadow everywhere. He stumbled cursing over a pile of old cardboard boxes and paint cans. Snatched up his radio. ‘Kimble. Talk to me.’

  Silence.

  ‘Shit,’ Jones said. ‘Jorgensen. You still there?’

  ‘Copy. We’re still up here. No sign of him yet. You?’

  ‘Nothing. The fucker’s like a ghost. OK. Out.’

  Jones rounded a corner. The coppery tang of fresh blood hovered in the air, mingling with the smell of damp and rot. He saw three dark shapes lying in the shadows up ahead. He signalled to Bender and Simmons behind him to halt. They stared at the three dead agents on the floor.

  ‘That makes five of us he’s taken out, just like that,’ said Bender. ‘He’s just playing with us.’

  ‘I don’t think splitting up was such a great idea,’ Simmons muttered at his shoulder.

  Jones gritted his teeth and nearly screamed at the pain. He wiped sweat out of his eyes. ‘We need more people. A lot more people.’

  ‘We don’t have any more people,’ Bender said.

  ‘I can get a hundred men in here and nail that motherfucker,’ Jones spat. ‘I just need to make one call.’ He thought for a moment. It would take a few hours to get reinforcements in place. He’d have a lot of favours to call in first, and the kind of manpower he was thinking of took time to organise.

  A fresh idea occurred to him. ‘All right, listen, fuck this. We’re going up to the top floor and join up with the others there. That makes seven. I don’t care how good this guy is, no way can he get past seven of us.’ He grinned. ‘Then we’re going to stick that little bitch Bradbury with the syringe. Right now. I’m tired of waiting games. Let’s find out what she knows.’

  ‘Slater isn’t going to like it.’

  ‘To hell with that cowardly bastard. He wants to play leader, he should stick around more.’

  They stepped over the dead men and ran on up the corridor. Jones reached the lift first and hammered the button for first floor. They said nothing, faces downcast, as the lift whooshed upwards. Then the doors glided open and Jones was dashing towards his office door.

  It was open, lying an inch or so ajar.

  He fought to remember. No. He hadn’t left it open. He’d locked it.

  He drew his gun. Cold fear began to knot his intestines, and the gun shook in his hand. Control yourself. He held the weapon out in front of him and prodded the door tentatively open with his left hand. It creaked. He pushed it open a little further. He stepped inside the room, heart thumping.

  The office was empty.

  So was the desk. And the canvas bag had gone.

  ‘Hope,’ he breathed. ‘Hope was here.’

  Simmons was behind him, staring with big eyes.

  ‘He took it,’ Jones gasped. ‘He fucking took the bottle.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  There was a cry from outside the office. Simmons and Jones locked eyes for half a second, then Jones grabbed the door handle and they burst out into the corridor. Night was falling outside, and the shadows in the building were deepening. Jones flipped a light switch. Nothing happened. Cursing, he peered into the darkness. ‘Bender?’ he called out softly.

  There was no reply.

  The whites of Simmons’ eyes glistened in the murk. ‘Where’d he –’

  He never finished the sentence. Jones felt the wet spray of blood hit his face almost before he’d registered the muffled cough of the gunshot. Simmons fell against him, making a terrible gurgling sound from his throat, clawing at his arm, and then slumped to the floor. He kicked a few times, then the gurgle became a deathly rattle and he stopped moving.

  ‘I’ll kill you!’ Jones screamed. He punched his gun out to arm’s length and kept firing wildly until the magazine was empty. He ejected it, slammed in a fresh one and let another fifteen shots loose down the corridor, as fast as he could work the trigger.

  Then the hot gun was empty again. He stood there, gasping, panting. The corridor was darkening fast. Other than a shaft of dull grey light coming from one of the cobwebbed windows, he was in blackness. He turned, groping his way in the dark. He desperately reached for the light switch again. Nothing.

  That was when he felt the cold blade of the knife against his throat. He froze, hand still on the switch.

  ‘I knew you’d come back here,’ said a voice close behind him. ‘That’s why I took out all the bulbs from this corridor.’

  Jones wanted to gulp but he could feel the edge of the steel pressing lightly against his trachea. ‘Hope?’ he whispered.

  ‘Tip for you,’ Ben said. ‘If you’re going to keep a man locked in a kitchen, don’t leave sharp knives lying around. Someone might get cut.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Jones quavered.

  ‘I’m going to slice your head off.’

  Jones rocked dizzily on his feet with terror.

  ‘Unless you take me to Zoë,’ Ben said.

  ‘She’s guarded,’ Jones said in a strangled voice.

  ‘Maybe I can convince you to have your people stand down,’ Ben said. ‘Then I�
��m going to take her out of here, and you’re going to come with us so you can tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I just follow orders. Slater’s the guy you want.’

  ‘I’ll get to him in good time,’ Ben said. ‘But I think you know plenty. Maybe we’ll get to try out that truth serum on you.’

  ‘You are so fucking dead, Hope.’

  ‘Not before you. Now move.’ Ben shoved him down the corridor.

  In the lift, Jones pressed the button for the second floor. Ben slipped the kitchen knife into his bag and kept one of the Berettas aimed steadily at the agent’s head.

  The doors whirred open. Ben grabbed Jones’s wrist and bent it up sharply behind his back. He shoved him out of the gap, keeping the gun on him. They stepped out into the white corridor. The smell of fresh paint lingered in the air. The whole upper floor had been redecorated, but in a hurry.

  ‘What’s up here?’

  ‘Just the girl,’ Jones said. ‘And twenty agents. You haven’t a chance in hell.’

  ‘I’ve been taking chances in hell most of my life,’ Ben said. ‘Shut up and walk.’

  Jones walked slowly, breathing hard and sweating from the pain in his arm as Ben kept it within half an inch of breaking. Up ahead, the corridor bent round to the left. Ben quietly thumbed off the safety on his pistol, every muscle tight, watching everything. He felt Jones tense, and he knew they were close. He let go of Jones and drew the second Beretta.

  They rounded the corner. Ten yards away the corridor came to a dead end at room thirty-six. Between them and the door stood three agents, two men, one woman. They saw him standing there with Jones and pulled their guns. Suddenly the corridor was filled with yelling.

  Ben remembered them from before, especially the woman. Her auburn hair was tied back under a baseball cap. The 9mm she was holding looked oversized in her small hands, but she knew what she was doing with it. Her blue eyes were locked hard on to his. He tried to read the look on her face.

  He moved towards them, using Jones’s body as a shield, his left pistol hard up against the base of the man’s skull and his right aimed down the corridor at the three guns pointing back at him.

  ‘I just want Zoë,’ he yelled. ‘Then it’s over.’

  He moved closer. Five yards. He felt the blood pulsing through his temples. The agents’ faces were tense, nerves frazzling. Fingers on triggers, muzzles steady. One slip, one shot, and nobody would escape the frenetic exchange of bullets at such close range.

  ‘Step away from him and lay down the weapon!’ one of the men shouted.

  Ben saw the flicker in his eyes at the same instant he sensed the sudden movement behind him. He reacted a fraction too late. It all happened at once. A powerful hand grabbed his left arm and jerked his gun away from Jones’s head. At the same time a fist slammed sideways into his ear, and his vision exploded in a flash of white light. Jones scrabbled out of his grasp. A volley of silenced gunfire, bullets tearing down the corridor all around him. A searing impact to his left shoulder as he felt a 9mm round punch deep into the deltoid muscle.

  Something to worry about later. He fired point-blank at the agent who’d attacked from the rear. The guy crumpled. Ben caught him as he fell, spun him around and felt the impact as bullets thwacked into the man’s body. But he was caught off balance and the dead agent crashed to the floor on top of him, knocking the pistol out of his left hand. As he struggled to kick the corpse off him he glimpsed Jones running away back down the corridor, heading for the lift.

  The three agents were moving forward, guns extended, aiming right at him. The woman’s face was steely.

  Impossible odds. Three guns against one. There was no way he could bring them all down before they got him. Lying on his back he punched out the Beretta one-handed and fired, taking down the man on the left. Swivelled his sights across in a blur.

  Too late. He could see the other man’s finger already taking up the slack on the trigger. Their bullets would cross in the air. He was dead.

  Then everything changed.

  The woman stepped back, twisted to one side and put a bullet between the shoulder blades of the agent next to her. His mouth burst open. The gun dropped from his hands. He went down on his face.

  Then silence. Just the two of them left alive in the corridor.

  Ben got to his feet, eyeing her warily. His shoulder was on fire, his heart racing. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes and raised his weapon one-handed at the same instant she trained hers back on him.

  They circled each other for a few moments in a silent standoff, pistol muzzles almost kissing. He was aware of the blood running freely down his left arm and dripping fast from his fingertips, the soft plop of the drops splashing onto the floor the only sound in the smoky corridor.

  ‘Put it down,’ he said.

  ‘You put yours down,’ she replied in a tight voice.

  ‘Everyone’s dead. It’s just you and Jones.’

  ‘Who the hell are you, Ben Hope?’

  ‘Just someone looking for Zoë Bradbury.’

  ‘You want to get her out of here? So do I.’

  ‘Show me.’

  She bent down, very slowly, and laid the gun on the floor. Then stepped back and watched him. ‘See? I’m on your side,’ she said. ‘Trust me.’

  He kept the gun on her, frowning and confused. ‘Who are you? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘I’m Alex Fiorante, CIA. I’m not one of them.’

  ‘Could have fooled me, Alex.’

  ‘These people aren’t regular Agency. They’re some kind of rogue unit.’

  He was quiet for a moment, breathing hard, still aiming the gun at her. ‘Where’s Zoë?’

  She pointed. ‘Right behind that door. You want to get her out? Then let’s do it. We don’t have a lot of time.’

  ‘I want to know what’s going on,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything I know. After.’

  He squatted down and scooped up her fallen pistol. Every movement of his left arm was agonising.

  She watched him tuck her pistol in his belt. ‘You can trust me, I swear.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we’re there yet. Open the door.’

  Alex kneeled down next to one of the dead agents and rolled the heavy corpse over with a grunt. She reached into his inside pocket and came out with a key, her fingers stained with the man’s blood. She wiped the blood on his clothes, walked the two steps to the door and unlocked it.

  ‘You first,’ he said. She stepped inside and he followed her, holding the gun to her back and looking around him at Zoë’s prison.

  It was empty.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Then he heard the whimper from under the bed. He pushed Alex against the wall. ‘Don’t move.’ He squatted down and peered under the bed.

  For the first time in nearly twenty years he was finally face to face with Zoë Bradbury. Unlike the happy, smiling young woman in her photo, her face was pale and thin from nearly two weeks of incarceration. She shrank away from him with a look of terror.

  ‘Zoë, I’m a friend.’ With the rising agony in his shoulder it was a struggle to keep his tone soft and reassuring. ‘My name’s Ben Hope. I’ve come to rescue you. Your parents sent me.’

  She shrank further away, back against the wall.

  ‘Come on out,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home. It’s over.’

  She wouldn’t come out. He had no time to mess about like this. Jones was still in the building. Ben grabbed the steel bed-frame and slid it away from the wall on its castors. He reached down and grasped her arm. She squealed with fright.

  ‘Look, I know you’ve been through a lot,’ he said. ‘I know how you’re feeling. But you need to co-operate with me.’ He jerked her to her feet, and she stared at him in bewilderment. Then she caught sight of Alex Fiorante across the room and started wriggling to get free of his grip. ‘She’s one of them!’

  ‘Zoë, it’s all right,’ Alex said gently. �
�Ben and I are going to get you out.’

  ‘No! No! She’s one of them!’ Zoë struggled harder, her voice rising into a scream.

  Ben hit her with a straight jab to the jaw.

  She went down without a sound. He gathered her up and slung her over his right shoulder. The pain was excruciating.

  ‘That’s one way of doing it,’ Alex said.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Ben pushed open the door and surveyed the corridor. No sign of Jones. They paced cautiously down the corridor, stepping over the dead bodies. Blood was dripping fast from his left arm, leaving a trail as he walked down the corridor. His shirt was soaked with it.

  The lift had gone. Ben pressed the wall button and heard it lurch into motion down below. ‘Stand back.’ He aimed his gun at the doors, bracing himself.

  The lift was empty. They rode it down to the ground floor and crept out into the deserted lobby. Zoë’s limp body was becoming a dead weight. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes, fighting to stay alert.

  Alex pointed. ‘The entrance is this way.’ They hurried outside. He suddenly felt chilled to the bone as the cool night air hit the sweat on his body. He glanced all around him, taking in his surroundings for the first time since they’d caught him and brought him here.

  The derelict hotel was perched high up on a rocky mound, with a narrow road snaking down through the trees and disappearing into the distance. The dying sunset was an explosive panorama of red and gold behind the rugged line of mountains. On the other side of the sky the moon was rising. Vast plains and forests stretched out for miles all around them.

  He turned to Alex. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘About fifty miles south of Chinook, Montana. One road in, one road out. A million acres of nothing all around us.’

  ‘What the hell are we doing in Montana?’