Who else was there? Ben reflected on the idea of calling Jeff Dekker. The two of them had been through many scrapes together and Ben knew that his old friend and business partner wouldn’t hesitate for a single second to jump on a plane and come out to join him. But Ben also knew that the powers of international law enforcement would be watching Jeff, and their base in France, like hawks for just that very reason. The instant Jeff set foot on US soil, alarm bells would be sounding, the game would step up to the next level and it would be virtually impossible for Ben to hook up with him without the pair of them getting caught, this time not by local hick cops but by federal agents.
Ben was still mulling over his very limited options when his phone rang.
He took it out. It had to be Carl, calling back. Maybe he’d remembered that his cousin the funeral director also had a friend in the Navy SEALs or US Army Rangers who happened to have a personal pick against Jayce and Seth Garrett and would be happy to offer assistance with a truckload of battle-hardened tough guys and automatic weapons.
Ben answered. But it wasn’t Carl.
He recognised the voice right away as Tyler Hebert’s. And right away, knew something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
‘Tyler, calm down. Talk slowly. What’s happened?’
Tyler managed to control his flurry of words enough for Ben to understand what he was trying to say. ‘They snatched them, Ben. They got my family!’
Something took an icy two-handed grip on Ben’s guts and twisted hard.
‘Who got them, Tyler? What happened?’
‘This mornin’ … I hadda go into town … I was on my way home when I passed this police patrol car goin’ the other way, and I looked, and there’s Keisha and the kids in the back. Jesus, they looked so scared. I turned right around and tried to follow, but my old truck just couldn’t keep up. I lost ’em.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Ben said. ‘The cops have nothing to connect you with any of this. Why would they have arrested Keisha?’
‘This wasn’t an arrest, Ben,’ Tyler said breathlessly. ‘This is a kidnap.’
‘Hang on, Tyler. How can you know that?’
‘It was Mason Redbone drivin’ the patrol car. He was all by himself, too. Came to the house and kidnapped my family.’ Tyler sounded as if he was going berserk with anxiety.
The instant Ben heard the deputy’s name he thought, shit. ‘Try to stay calm, Tyler. That still doesn’t prove anything. It looks bad but we don’t know for sure whether—’
‘Oh, we know for sure, all right,’ Tyler interrupted him. ‘’Bout an hour later I got a call from Jayce Garrett.’
Now Ben’s blood was turning very cold and his grip on the phone was making the plastic casing creak with strain.
‘What did he say, Tyler?’
‘He said they had Keisha and the kids, where nobody’d ever find ’em and nobody could save ’em. Then he told me what he and his brother and their guys were gonna do to ’em if—’ Tyler’s voice cracked up and his frantic flow of words dissolved into sobbing.
‘If what? Tyler, talk to me. If what?’
It was as though Tyler couldn’t bring himself to answer. In a tortured moan he said, ‘They’re gonna rape my wife in front of my kids. Then they’re gonna make her watch while they feed the kids alive to the alligators. Trinity, then Noah, then Caleb. Then he said they’re gonna do the same to Keisha … and I believed every word he told me, Ben. I’m sorry.’
Ben said more firmly, ‘If what, Tyler? What does Jayce want?’ He already knew what was coming.
‘He wants you, Ben. He wants to trade. My family for you.’ Tyler’s voice sounded ghastly. ‘Gave me a rendezvous location. The Big Q Motel. It’s—’
‘I know where it is,’ Ben said.
‘They’ll have their men waitin’ there for you. Said if you ain’t there by nightfall …’ Tyler started weeping. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he repeated through his tears. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
Ben felt a strange calm come over him. His grip relaxed on the phone and the coldness in his body began to dissipate. He almost smiled. He said, ‘Listen to me, Tyler. Tyler. Listen.’
‘I’m listenin’ …’
‘Do not worry about this. I will make this all right. Do you understand? Your family are going to be fine.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing. Jayce Garrett wants me, he can have me. We’ll trade. Me for them, just like he said. You’ll get Keisha and the kids back safe, I promise.’
‘What do I need to do?’
‘Sit tight and wait. Are you at home?’
‘I can’t go back there. Whole place is crawlin’ with cops. I’m scared they’re gonna arrest me. They must know somethin’, right?’
Ben agreed. He was picturing the whole thing in his head. Somehow, someone must have found out that the Heberts were helping him, and reported it to the police. Most likely just by chance, the Garretts’ inside man Mason Redbone must have got to the scene first, abducted Keisha and the children and snatched them from the scene before the rest of the police got there. Sheriff Roque must be wondering where the hell his deputy had disappeared to.
Ben was silent for a long moment. His mind felt as focused as a laser as he understood exactly what it was he had to do next.
Tyler’s hoarse voice said, ‘Ben? You still there, buddy?’
‘I’m still here,’ Ben said. ‘Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go back to your place right now and let the cops arrest you.’
‘Are you crazy? How’s that gonna help my family?’
Ben said, ‘Do you trust me?’
‘You know I do.’
‘Good. Now listen and do exactly as I say.’
And Ben told Tyler the plan that had formed in his mind.
Chapter 49
Ben had worked solo as a private hostage rescue operator for many years. He’d fallen into it soon after quitting the army, putting the skills that the SAS had honed to a razor’s edge in him to good use. Instead of fighting other people’s wars and serving hidden, usually duplicitous and often shady agendas in the name of Queen and Country, he’d become a protector and saviour of innocent people and a ruthless pursuer of those who exploited them for gain.
K&R was the name of the business. It sounded like a shipping line, but in fact the kidnap and ransom racket was one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative criminal enterprises on the planet. Easy money, if your moral compass was screwed enough. There was no shortage of crooks willing to get into the game, and certainly no shortage of potential victims just waiting to be plucked like sweet, ripe fruit off the money tree.
During that phase in Ben’s career he’d called himself a crisis response consultant, because no worse crisis could befall any family than for one of their loved ones to be taken by pitiless men demanding large sums of cash in exchange for their lives. Sometimes in these situations, the kidnappers were true to their word and released the hostages more or less unharmed once they got paid off. In most cases, however, release was never the intention, and kidnap victims were doomed to a bad end whether the ransom was paid or not. Which was where Ben came in. No negotiations. No money. Just a swift intervention that generally ended the same way for the kidnappers as they’d intended for their victims.
Ben had been extremely successful at what he did. One of the reasons he’d been so effective in his role was that he went by certain rules. One of which was that he worked strictly alone, allowing him to move fast, strike explosively and get the hostages out unscathed and away to safety before the kidnappers knew what had hit them. Another of his golden rules was to do all he could to avoid letting the police get involved in a rescue mission. Too many times, he’d seen things turn ugly when the swinging dicks of law enforcement came rolling up on the scene, tried to muscle in and ended up getting everybody killed. Ben could trace his uncomfortable relationship with police officers everywhere – one or two notable exceptions notwithstanding – to those bad and oft
en tragic experiences.
But his years with Special Forces had also taught him flexibility. There were occasions when you had to throw out the rule book, adapt to ever-changing situations in the field, accept that you couldn’t be in full control all of the time, and learn to compromise.
This was one of those occasions.
By the time Ben had finished telling Tyler his plan, he was already speeding towards his destination: the Heberts’ homestead. His instructions to Tyler had been clear. The former lawyer was to give himself up peacefully and voluntarily and offer no resistance as the police slapped on the handcuffs. He was to say nothing about Keisha and the kids being kidnapped. Instead, he was to tell the cops all about how the fugitive had threatened the family to coerce them into giving him shelter. That Hope had been using their remote farm as a base all along, against their will. And that he was due to return there that afternoon.
The pieces would soon fall into place. The cops would encircle the homestead with a dozen snipers and scores of hidden officers ready to pounce when the fugitive made his appearance. They’d drop their air support units, partly as they no longer needed eyes in the sky to locate their man, and partly because even the police would realise that the presence of hovering helicopters might just give away the ambush. Likewise the K9 units, for the same reason. Meanwhile, Waylon Roque would have to be crazy to miss the opportunity to lead the operation and personally apprehend the most wanted desperado of his whole career as sheriff of Clovis Parish. He could retire tomorrow and live as a hero for the rest of his days.
And all of that was exactly what Ben wanted. But it wasn’t going to happen the way Roque and his troops were expecting.
It was early afternoon by the time Ben was entering the vicinity of the Heberts’ place. The closer he got, the more intently he kept watch for any sign of police activity. The fact that he saw none almost certainly meant that the cops had already laid their trap for him and wanted the coast to look clear.
When he’d got as near as he dared approach he abandoned the Taurus for the last time on a narrow deserted backroad shaded by overhanging trees. He didn’t bother to wipe the car down for prints. The next stage of his plan didn’t require anonymity. He gathered his bag, bow and remaining arrows and stood for a moment, listening to the emptiness and silence broken only by the cawing of birds.
If his calculations were correct, about three-quarters of a mile of woods separated him from the Heberts’ homestead almost exactly due west. That put him just a little over thirteen hundred yards from his target. Well outside of the police cordon, which would form a circle not much over one hundred yards in radius because of the close tree cover surrounding the homestead and limited visibility for the snipers. By that reckoning, then, Ben was some twelve hundred yards from the outer circle and first contact with the enemy.
It was time.
Ben headed west. The woodlands croaked and chittered and hummed with their constant living chorus. The fierceness of the sunlight was broken and dappled by the dense green canopy overhead, which trapped the moisture in the air. If the humidity had been any higher, he’d have been swimming. Sweat dripped from his hair and eyebrows as he moved silently over the mossy, wet terrain, watching every shadow for hidden threats, skirting cautiously around patches of bog and swamp and clambering over rotting tree trunks that lay in his path.
Ben’s estimations had been dead right. Twelve hundred yards deep into the woods, he stopped in his tracks and sniffed the air. If the tell-tale aroma of cigarette smoke was something they warned against in the Louisiana state police SWAT school, someone hadn’t been paying attention in class. It was coming from nearby, right up ahead.
Ben moved on a few silent steps and caught a glimpse of the Hebert house peeking through the trees a hundred yards or so away. But that didn’t draw his eye for long.
What did, though, was the shape of the man hunkered down prone nearby in the moss and dirt, clad in green camo with a black rifle resting on a bipod in front of him. Smoking a cigarette.
First contact.
Ben thought, Got you.
Chapter 50
The police marksman had his rifle set up over the top of a fallen tree, and was using bush cover to hide him from the front, making the assumption that his target would come into play from that direction and not sneak up from the rear.
Assumptions like that were never a good thing in a tactical situation. Nor was setting up your sniper’s nest with no more than a thirty-degree view of your possible field of fire and every chance of hitting one of your own people in the heat of the action. And as for taking off your tactical helmet and resting your weapon on its butt while sneaking a quick smoke on duty …
Ben shook his head. Amateurs.
He stalked closer.
The guy didn’t sense the presence behind him until it was too late. Ben grabbed his collar and cracked his head against the hard shell of his helmet to stun him, then pinned him in a choke hold from which he had no possibility of escaping. Eight seconds, the guy’s frontal cortex was beginning to shut down. Nine, and he was fully unconscious. While he was out for the count, Ben tore off two strips from his camouflage jacket. He balled up the first and stuffed it in the guy’s mouth, then wrapped the second around his face as a gag. He removed the guy’s duty belt, kept the extending baton for himself and unsnapped the handcuffs from their pouch.
Twenty seconds later, as the unconscious sniper was beginning to wake up, he found himself trussed by the wrists and ankles with his own belt and cuffs, and going nowhere fast. The guy’s eyes bugged out and veins bulged purple in his forehead as he helplessly watched Ben pick up his rifle. It was the latest model of RSASS, short for Remington Semi-Automatic Sniper System. Based on the AR15, with a twenty-round magazine, unavailable to civilians. Ben dropped the mag, thumbed out the rounds and tossed them into the bushes. Then, risking a little noise, he swung the rifle hard against the nearest tree so that the barrel was reshaped like a banana.
‘Now you can shoot around corners with it,’ he said softly to the sniper, who could only grunt furiously in reply.
Ben left him lying there struggling and rolling in the dirt, and moved on. Using the Heberts’ house as the centre of a circle with an area of about thirty-one thousand square yards and a radius of a hundred, he tracked around an imaginary circumference line clockwise through the trees and bushes. He reckoned on three or four snipers being set up around the perimeter of the field of fire, positioned with enough strategic common sense to at least not catch one another in a crossfire.
Like before, his estimate was correct. If the first sniper position was at zero degrees, Ben came across the second at sixty degrees and the third at a hundred and fifty. Neither of them were smoking cigarettes and they were fully intent on their job, but that didn’t save each one in turn from suffering the same fate as his predecessor. Ben stalked up from the rear and used the extending baton on them, then followed up the stunning blow with the exact same choke and trussing-up technique as he’d used on the first guy.
Ben almost felt sorry for them. There would be a lot of red faces later. Maybe they would learn something from the experience, he thought. Probably not.
He checked out the rest of the circle, as far as the edge of the Heberts’ driveway track, before he was satisfied that he’d got them all. Three for three.
He doubled back on his tracks to the point where he’d left the third sniper bundled up in the weeds. The last RSASS Ben had left loaded and undamaged. Proning himself in the dirt he scanned the Heberts’ house and yard through its scope. The only sign of movement he could make out was the strutting and scratching of chickens in their enclosure. He wondered how many troops Sheriff Roque had brought to play with.
Time to find out.
Ben laid down the rifle while he quickly unstrapped his bag and made a few last-minute preparations. Then he picked the weapon up again. He had no intention of shooting anyone. He hadn’t come here to do battle. He pointed the rifle’s muz
zle straight up in the air, at a patch of clear blue sky far above the tree canopy. Flipped off the safety catch. Now let the fun begin, he thought, and pressed the trigger.
The deafening blast of the high-velocity rifle shattered the silence. As fast as he could flick his right index finger, Ben emptied the entire twenty-round magazine into the sky. All at once the quiet, peaceful setting of Kadohadacho Creek sounded like a war zone. Birds erupted from the treetops. The Heberts’ chickens scattered, flapping and squawking.
And the police officers lurking out of sight about the homestead, waiting in readiness to spring their trap on the fugitive, were flushed panic-stricken from their hiding places. A couple came sprinting from the big hay barn. Three more jumped out from behind the shed where Tyler kept his truck. Two more pairs emerged from both ends of the house. Pistols and shotguns were waving in all directions and there was a lot of discoordinated yelling going on. Louisiana’s finest, springing into action like the well-oiled machine they were.
At the same moment two marked state police Dodge Chargers came roaring down the track into the Heberts’ yard with their sirens whooping and blue lights flashing. Behind them came a black paramilitary vehicle with six huge knobbled tyres, a massive ramming bar and winch on the front and SHERIFF emblazoned on its armoured flanks. The monster truck skidded to a halt in the middle of the yard with the police cars either side of it.
Ben had already thrown down the empty sniper rifle and snatched up the bow. His last three arrows were fitted to its quiver. His last-minute preparations had been to doctor each one with a taped-on wad of steel wool. What had worked for the Garretts’ moonshine plant would work just fine here, too.
As the police vehicles roared into the yard, he quickly loaded an arrow and tugged the bowstring back to full draw. The steel wool wadding touched the battery terminals and burst into flame. He aimed at the rear quarter of a police Dodge and let fly, and watched as his fire arrow streaked straight and true towards its mark. The hunting tip lanced through the car’s flimsy bodyshell. He was disappointed by his accuracy. He’d been aiming for the fuel tank lid. He was maybe two inches off.
The Rebel's Revenge Page 25
