The Lost Relic

by Scott Mariani

  He pulled away and drove calmly through the empty night streets. Not fast, not slow, attracting no attention, observing the rules of the road. Over the wheeze of the Renault’s engine he could hear the rhythmic thud of the police helicopter and a chorus of sirens that sounded as if every police vehicle in the region was heading for the vicinity of Segura’s house.

  Ben stopped for a red light at the mouth of a wide T-junction, indicating right to follow the signs out of town and toeing the gas to help the Renault maintain its idle speed. The junction ahead was deserted. After a few seconds, the lights changed and he pulled out.

  A massive impact tore the steering wheel from his grip and threw him sideways as the Renault was sent spinning sideways, mounted the kerb and hit a wall.

  For a few moments, Ben was stunned. His vision floated unsteadily, his hearing muffled. Seconds passed before he understood that the dazzling light shining through the cracked windscreen was the remaining headlight of the car that had been speeding across the junction and hit him. It was stationary at an angle a few metres away in the road, its nearside wing badly crumpled and a smashed mirror dangling like a half-severed ear.

  Two figures got out of the car, moving towards Ben’s Renault. As his senses cleared, he realised they were wearing uniforms – and that their car was a dark blue Citroën C4 with a light bar on the roof and POLICIA written across its side.

  One of the cops was an older man, mid-fifties. There was a smear of blood on his mouth where the airbag had punched his lip into a tooth. The other was maybe late twenties, already on his radio reporting the accident. Ben tried to open his car door, but it was jammed. He turned sideways in the driver’s seat and kicked out with both feet together. The door burst open with a grinding of buckled metal. As he clambered out, the two cops met him with humble and apologetic looks, and the older one launched into an explanation in rapid Spanish.

  Then stopped. He frowned at Ben, peering at him closely under the streetlights. He turned to his colleague, who was staring too. A rapid nod, a heartbeat’s silence, and both cops went for their pistols.

  The younger cop’s SIG was the first to clear its holster, but it never made it to aiming position. Ben was on him in one step and about half a second. He slapped the pistol downwards and twisted it out of the guy’s hand, throwing a solid elbow in his face. At the same time his left foot lashed out in a straight low kick that connected with the older cop’s knee and sent him tumbling on his back. Before the younger cop had hit the ground, Ben had stepped over to his colleague and knocked him out with a kick to the head.

  Neither of them would have any permanent damage. Ben shoved the younger cop’s SIG in his waistband, scooped up his partner’s weapon and ejected the mag and pocketed it. The pistol was quick and easy to dismantle. With the slide off the frame rails, the barrel fell out and Ben dropped it through the slots of a nearby iron drain cover. He tossed the other useless pieces into the shadows, then picked up the cops’ radios and smashed them on the road.

  The Renault was undriveable, but the police Citroën still had the keys in it. As he took off, Ben knew that it was tactically a bad move and that he’d have to ditch the car within the short time it would take for the alarm to be raised.

  Only a few seconds passed before he knew it was already too late. As he rounded a bend, there were suddenly two more police C4s right behind him. They weren’t after him – not yet. He could either stay with them and gamble on their not spotting him behind the wheel, or he could take evasive action before fifty more of them joined the party, together with air support and the whole of Spain’s rapid response firearms units combined. That was a little more trouble than he needed right now.

  It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. He floored the gas and threw the Citroën into a screeching hard left turn. The two following cars seemed to hesitate, then turned in after him. His in-car radio began to shout at him. He ignored it. No point pretending any more. He hammered the car up onto the kerb and the revs soared as he sent it over the top of a flight of concrete steps that descended steeply down to a pedestrianised street below. The Citroën bucked and juddered down the steps. There was a loud whang and a shower of sparks as he hit the bottom. As Ben took off again he glanced in the mirror and saw that his pursuers hadn’t dared risk the steps. Four cops were out of their vehicles. He heard a ragged series of popping pistol shots. His rear window shattered. There was a junction twenty metres ahead. Ben threw the Citroën into a skidding right-hander out of pistol range and then redlined it. He was heading away from the old city, into the modern urban sprawl that had grown up around its edges.

  He was scanning left and right for a good spot to pull over and ditch the police car when he heard the thud of the chopper overhead. An instant later, he was caught in the strong circle of white light it was throwing down over the street. He pressed harder on the gas, leaving the chopper behind momentarily as the speedometer climbed past a hundred and twenty and buildings and parked vehicles zipped past on both sides in a blur. Pedal to the floor, his stomach rose into his ribcage as the road dropped down through a flyover tunnel. The chopper banked steeply to clear the bridge, then it was on him again as he zipped by signs for an industrial estate. Tall warehouse buildings loomed against the night sky. The chopper dropped down low, keeping pace just thirty metres to his left. Its side hatch slid open and a police shooter in a black tactical vest hung out with one foot on the skid and a large shotgun in his gloved hands. He was aiming for the front of the car.

  BOOM. Ben felt the heavy buckshot load punch into the front wing, sending the car skittering to one side. The shooter was going for the tyres. At this speed, a blowout could send him into a spin, flip and roll that would turn him into corned beef. He hit the brakes and skidded around another bend. He was heading deeper into the industrial estate.

  A scream of sirens tore his eyes from the road to the mirror. Police cars were joining the chase from all directions, converging into a fleet that filled the road in an ocean of swirling blue lights.

  Not good. But the chopper worried him more. It was swinging back parallel to him, closer now, and the shooter was lining up for another shot. Ben could see the guy’s black-gloved hand tighten on the weapon’s pistol grip. Quarter of a second before he heard the shot, he stabbed the brakes and the blast of pellets passed in front of the Citroën’s nose.

  But braking meant he’d lost precious speed, and now the pursuing cars were coming up fast behind him. More shots rang out. Ben felt the impact as bullets punched into the bodywork of the car.

  The shotgunner fired again from the chopper. This time he scored. The front corner of the C4 dipped hard as the tyre exploded into flying ribbons of rubber. Ben sawed at the wheel and just about managed to control the skid that sent him screaming into a narrow alley between warehouse buildings. The helicopter pilot pulled up into a violent climb.

  Ben’s car was lurching and bumping wildly as he gunned it down the alley as fast as it could go. There were extensive building works going on up ahead – a yellow JCB, a concrete mixer and a giant dumper truck with its flatbed elevated to tip a load of gravel by the roadside. The chopper’s lights were reflected in the windows of another tall warehouse directly opposite the exit of the alley.

  Another police C4 was right on Ben’s tail. As he wrestled with the erratic steering, it nipped past his right flank and overtook him, trying to block his path. The alley was narrowing for the building works. As the car in front braked heavily, Ben realised with a shock that he was running out of road.

  With half the Spanish police behind him, there was no way he was about to slow down. He flattened the pedal to the floor and aimed the speeding car at the heap of gravel behind the dumper truck.

  If this didn’t kill him, it might even work.

  Fuck it. Ben braced himself for the impact.

  As the car raced towards the gravel pile at almost a hundred and sixty kilometres an hour, more shots rang out over the scream of the engine and his windscreen su
ddenly turned into an opaque web of cracks. Something thumped his upper left arm hard, but his senses barely had time to register it before the car crashed into the gravel pile with massive force and the airbag exploded in his face. He felt the crunching shock through the steering wheel as most of the front suspension and the underside of the Citroën’s chassis were sheared away. The car’s nose jerked brutally skywards as it hit the uptilted flatbed of the dumper truck and sailed up it, tearing through the wire mesh barrier at its end and flying upwards through the air like an F-16 fighter launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

  For a snatched moment in time that seemed to linger for an eternity, everything was almost peaceful. Ben thought of summer breezes and wildflower meadows. He thought about Brooke. Heard her laughter echo in his mind.

  Then he was engulfed in a maelstrom of deafening noise and pain and chaos and bone-crunching destructive forces as the airborne car hit the building opposite. A dozen metres above the street, the Citroën went smashing through the plate-glass warehouse windows. It careened into the building in a storm of flying glass and spinning masonry and timber. There was a massive shower of sparks as it ploughed across the concrete floor. Stacks of wooden pallets and crates cannoned off the shattered windscreen. The car spun across the warehouse and buried itself in one of the brick pillars holding up the roof.

  Suddenly, all was still and quiet again, just the ticking of hot metal from the wrecked car. The police sirens sounded muffled and a long way away.

  Ben groaned, stirred and painfully released his seatbelt. There was no need to open the driver’s door, because it wasn’t there any more. He stumbled out of the Citroën and stared at the devastation around him illuminated by the flashing blue lights from down below. A moment earlier, the place had obviously been some kind of furniture warehouse. Now it looked like the ruins of Dresden, February 1945.

  It was only then that Ben felt the burning agony in his upper left arm and remembered the impact he’d felt. He couldn’t move it properly. Touching it, his fingertips came away dripping red. He could feel blood trickling down inside his sleeve. A cold wave of nausea gushed through his body and his heart began to hammer at the base of his throat. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, willed himself to keep moving.

  Stepping over the wreckage to the shattered warehouse window, he could see the police piling out of their vehicles down below, pulling guns and scattering into teams searching for an entrance to the warehouse. The police helicopter that had chased him was still hovering over the industrial estate.

  Then, as Ben watched, a second chopper came thudding in out of the night sky and settled beyond the cluster of police vehicles. Before it had fully touched down, its hatch flew open and a figure in black jumped out.

  Her black hair flew loose in the wind from the rotor blades. Even at this distance, Ben could see the look of ferocious determination on her face.

  Darcey Kane.

  Ben almost smiled. He’d known he’d see her again. What was it with this woman?

  Behind her came a tall, bald man whom Ben instantly recognised as the man who’d been with her in the catacomb in Rome. The two of them were quickly briefed by uniformed officers and some of the paramilitary tactical firearms team who had rolled up in an unmarked black van. Darcey Kane looked up at the warehouse, then drew her weapon and started striding fast towards the wrecked building.

  Ben moved away from the window and looked around him for a way out.

  Darcey led the tactical firearms squad into the warehouse. Weapons cocked and ready and darting torch beams left and right, they covered each other as they climbed from level to level up clattering iron stairs.

  Emerging onto the third floor, the sharp odour of spilled motor fluids and hot metal reached their nostrils, and they shone their torches on the car wreck.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Buitoni murmured. ‘He can’t have walked away from this.’

  Darcey was already approaching the vehicle, her weapon out in front of her.

  The car was empty. There was no sign of Hope anywhere. Then she saw the trail of blood spots that led away from the car and followed it with her Maglite across the concrete floor to the window, where it pooled in a gleaming puddle.

  ‘He’s hurt,’ Buitoni said.

  ‘Not that badly,’ she said. ‘He was watching us from here.’ A further blood trail led back in the opposite direction. ‘This way,’ she called, and Buitoni and the team followed.

  The blood spots ended below a round ceiling hatch that was accessed by a metal ladder. Some of the rungs were smeared red and there was a red handprint on the trapdoor overhead. Darcey hauled herself up the ladder, pushed through the trapdoor and stepped out onto the flat roof. She cast her torchbeam through the darkness, and saw the row of warehouses whose rooftops stood close enough together for Hope to have made his escape that way.

  Darcey felt the first heavy patter of rain on her cheek. Then a second. She looked up at the sky.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said.

  And the gathering rain clouds opened up. In seconds, everyone except Darcey was taking cover from the deluge and the warehouse roof was running slick with water.

  She could only stare as the blood trail washed away, and with it her chances of catching Ben Hope that night.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said again.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The rain was pounding down like warm hail as Ben staggered away from the industrial area. The pain in his arm was intensifying, and he tucked his wrist through his belt to keep the limb supported as he ran. He made for the side of a tin building where old pallets were stacked in five-metre-high piles. Ducking in among them, he stripped off his shirt and examined his wound. The blood was oozing out as fast as the rain could wash it away. The bullet was still in there, lodged somewhere up against the triceps muscle. He didn’t think it had struck bone. He tore the right sleeve off the shirt and tied it as tightly as he could around his arm to stem the bleeding. Not much of a field dressing, but it would have to do for now.

  He bundled the rest of the shirt out of sight into a gap between the pallets, then peered through the hammering rain to get his bearings. The other side of a wire fence, two hundred metres across a piece of wasteground, was a road. He ran to the fence and scaled it using just his good hand. Dropping down the other side, he crossed the wasteground and walked along the road for a couple of hundred metres, glancing back frequently for the police cars he kept expecting to see bearing down on him at any moment.

  None had appeared by the time Ben heard the diesel rumble of a big articulated truck coming his way. He cleared the rain out of his eyes, stuck out his thumb.

  The truck slowed and pulled up at the side of the road with a hiss of airbrakes. Ben clambered up into the cab, thanking the driver for stopping and doing his best to hide the bloody bandage with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  ‘Travellin’ light, mate,’ the driver said in English with a grin and a strange look as he pulled away and the truck picked up speed. His accent was strongly South African.

  Ben looked at the guy in the dim cab lights. Early-tomid-forties, scraggy, hollow-cheeked and unshaven, with greasy sandy hair tied back under a flat cap.

  ‘Name’s Jan,’ the driver said, putting out his hand. ‘Jan the man.’

  ‘No comprendo Inglese,’ Ben said. He didn’t take the hand. Jan shrugged and withdrew his hand, then gave another knowing grin and winked exaggeratedly. ‘That’s all right, mate. No hard feelings. You don’t have to pretend with me, know what I mean?’ He laughed, flicked the windscreen wiper lever and the wipers stepped up a notch, batting away the pouring rain.

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘I recognised you right away,’ Jan said. ‘Never forget a face, that’s me.’ He tapped a finger against his temple. The grin was etched on his lips as if someone had carved it with a blade. Maybe somebody had, Ben thought. He wondered whether he could break the guy’s neck and take over at the wheel without needing to stop the truck to do it.
/>   ‘Hey, I’m not gonna report you, man,’ Jan said, wrinkling his nose as if this was the most distasteful idea imaginable.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Ha! You do speak English. Gave yourself away there, mate. Nah, I’d never shop you to the fuckin’ pigs.’ Jan spat somewhere onto the cab floor. ‘We’re cool, you know? Not enough of us around. See?’ He jerked up the sleeve of his grimy T-shirt and Ben saw the faded, crudely tattooed compass rose insignia on his withered arm. It was the emblem of the South African Special Forces Brigade. It looked fake to Ben. In his experience, the guys who really had been in Special Forces were those who didn’t talk about it.

  ‘We fear naught but God,’ Jan said, quoting the SASFB official motto. ‘Angola, ’82. I was there, man. We kicked some kaffir arse, let me tell you.’ The laugh again. ‘Those were the days, man. I left South Africa after the fuckin’ kaffirs took over in ’94. Now I have to drive these fuckin’ tractors for a living.’ He gave a loud snort. ‘But hey, man. Imagine you gettin’ in my truck.’ He thumped his fist on the horn, twice. ‘Unbe-fuckin-lievable, eh? Must be fate, or what? You know, what you did back there in Rome was sweet. You ask me, we ought to be droppin’ the hammer on a lot more of these politician bastards. If we’d had more guys like you, guys with bollocks, we’d still have a country back home instead of a fuckin’ zoo, know what I mean? Jesus fuckin’ H Christ.’

  Ben sank back in his seat. Maybe tearing Jan’s windpipe out through his mouth would have to wait until he felt a little stronger. ‘You have a first aid kit on board this thing?’

  ‘I can abso-fuckin-lutely do better than that,’ Jan said, reaching down between his knees for a green moulded plastic case. ‘You catch one back there, yeah? I saw the fuckin’ lights, man. What the fuck?’