by James Becker
The shot may have missed him, but Bronson had taken an extra half-second to make sure he didn’t miss his target. The man gave a shriek of pain and fell backwards, clutching at his shoulder while his weapon cartwheeled uselessly from his hand to clatter on to the stone floor.
One down, but eleven men were still facing him in the room. The second man fired, but Bronson was already moving. He ducked down and took a few steps over to his right, moving deeper into the shadows that danced around the far end of the cellar. He heard the impact of the bullet somewhere in the darkness behind him, took rapid aim at the armed man and squeezed the trigger.
His shot missed, and his target dived off to one side, finding cover behind the stone wall that marked the end of one of the cells built along the side of the cellar.
Then Bronson heard a sharp command, and almost immediately all the candles were extinguished.
For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the moaning of the man Bronson had shot. Angela, after her one yell of recognition, had said nothing else, and even the girl on the stone table had fallen silent.
The blackness was Stygian, impenetrable. Bronson took two silent steps to one side, so that he was no longer in the same spot where he’d been standing when the candles were put out. He slid out of the heavy robe and tossed it to one side, a few feet away from him, the garment landing with a muffled sound on the stone floor. Instantly, another shot crashed out, the bullet slamming into the rear wall of the cellar several feet away from him.
OK, Bronson thought. His assailants would fire at any sound they heard because he was a single vulnerable target: if he made a noise, he would die. The only advantage he had was that the men were probably still clustered near the stone table, so at least he knew where they were. But he couldn’t fire at them, not in the darkness without any point of reference — the risk of hitting the girl on the table was too high.
For the moment, it was a stalemate.
Making no sound at all, Bronson stood up and started to ease his way along the wall beside him, touching it with his left hand — he needed to feel the old stones to ensure that he was going in the right direction. All he hoped to do was put a little more distance between himself and the other men. And if he could get as far as the back wall of the room, he could try to work his way across to the cell where Angela was being held and try to free her.
There was another sharp command from the other end of the room. The voice was quiet and he couldn’t make out the words, but the effect was immediate. Bronson heard the sound of movement — someone was cautiously crossing the floor towards him, their robes rustling and their leather sandals slapping faintly on the old stones. He guessed that two of the men, both no doubt armed with pistols, had been ordered to move apart so that they could catch him in the crossfire.
Still he daren’t fire blind. He might hit the girl. He could even hit Angela. And if he did shoot, the muzzle flash from his pistol would instantly give away his position, and he knew exactly what would happen if he did that.
He moved infinitely slowly, backing away from the sound of movement. Then he stopped and crouched down with his back to the wall, making himself as small a target as possible. He held the Browning ready in his right hand, his left pressed against the wall behind him, prepared to move or to shoot as events dictated, listening hard and desperately trying to make sense of what he was hearing.
Then, through the darkness, he heard another muttered command, and almost immediately two shots blasted out from opposite sides of the cellar, the bullets smashing into the wall where he’d been standing just moments earlier, then ricocheting away. The muzzle flashes illuminated the shooters for a split second, just long enough for Bronson to see where they were.
He fired once, at the figure on his right, then dived sideways, changing his own position.
Two more shots deafened him, and he knew immediately that his own bullet had missed.
Then the man spoke again, and this time he was close enough for Bronson to hear exactly what he said.
‘Stop. That’s far enough,’ he said in Italian.
Then another man spoke from the opposite end of the cellar.
‘Drop your weapon, Bronson.’ The voice was familiar, and Bronson immediately recognized the hostile tones of Inspector Bianchi. ‘You have no chance. Give up, and we’ll kill you quickly. But if you don’t surrender, I can promise that you’ll take a very long time to die, though probably not as long as your interfering wife. We’ll make sure she dies first, and we’ll make you watch.’
Bronson didn’t move or respond, figuring the angles. It’s a basic rule of close combat that you never, ever, surrender your weapon. He knew that as well as anyone who’d ever served in the military of any nation, and he also knew that if he spoke, if he responded in any way at all, the men in front of him would open fire immediately.
But there was one thing he could do. He pressed the button on the left side of the Browning and slid out the magazine. Then he extracted a full one from the carrier on his belt and slid it into place in the weapon, the faintest of clicks confirming it was locked home. He replaced the half-empty magazine in the carrier.
‘Very well, Bronson. It is your choice,’ Bianchi said.
Then the sound of loud, angry shouts filled the air, followed by the clattering of shoes on the stones of the spiral staircase. Dancing torch beams illuminated that end of the cellar.
At the moment, Bronson knew he’d reached the end of his rope. Reinforcements had obviously been summoned from the house; they would pick him out in an instant with their torches and, no matter what he did then, he would die. The best he could hope to do was take a few of them with him.
Then, from somewhere over to his left, he heard a sudden movement. There was a faint snap, like the sound of a distant whip-crack, and a flare of dim blue light so transient Bronson wasn’t sure he’d actually seen it. It was followed, an instant later, by a dull sound, like something heavy dropping on to the floor, from that side of the cellar. And then someone started to scream.
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Reacting instinctively to the screams, Bronson took a couple of steps to his left. Then he stopped. The danger was right in front of him, the men still coming down the stone staircase. He stood up, raised the pistol in his right hand and braced his wrist with his left, waiting until he could identify a target. He would make every shot count. That was all he could do.
But something was wrong. The men in the cellar weren’t reacting the way they should be, the way he expected.
In the flickering torchlight he could see that the men around him were moving quickly back towards the stone table and the foot of the staircase, the only exit from the room. And then he finally understood what the people coming down the stairs were shouting.
A dark figure appeared in the opening to the staircase, a powerful torch attached to his weapon illuminating the scene in front of him. But the moment he stepped into the cellar, a shot rang out, and he fell backwards out of sight. A second man took his place, and immediately opened fire, a burst of three shots from his sub-machine gun taking out two of the hooded figures, who tumbled to the ground screaming.
But another shot from one of the men in the cellar threw the man to the ground before he could fire again.
Another figure appeared, clad in dark combat clothing like the first two, and Bronson realized that — somehow — the Italian police were here. What he was witnessing was an assault by the Italian equivalent of a SWAT team.
The problem the police had was getting into the cellar. Normally, an assault would be mounted through multiple entrances and using the maximum possible number of officers. But the only way into this room was down the staircase, which put the assault team at a tremendous disadvantage. And the men in the cellar obviously had nothing to lose.
The third police officer had clearly seen what had happened to his two companions and tried a different tack: he aimed his sub-machine gun around the end of the wall, the beam of the attached torch s
eeking a target. But the hooded figures had scattered, some taking refuge behind the stone table, others in the cell nearest the staircase.
Bronson ran over to the wall on his right, getting as far away as possible from both the police and their targets. No bullets followed him as he moved.
The girl lashed down on the table screamed in terror. Bronson stared through the gloom, and what he saw spurred him into immediate action.
One of the hooded men down at that end of the stone table had reached up, a blade in his hand, feeling for her neck, presumably so that he could permanently remove one witness to their activities. Bronson took a couple of steps forward to shorten the range, raised his pistol and aimed at the centre of the dark shape, squeezing the trigger as he did so. The Browning kicked in his hand, and the man tumbled sideways, his knife clattering to the floor.
Then more shots crashed out as the armed men in the cellar fired at the police officer. He replied with two short bursts from his weapon, the bullets striking stone. One hit the ancient skull sitting on the small stone table, sending shards of old bone flying as it disintegrated.
The cellar filled with the smell of cordite, and the stabbing beams of the torches attached to the sub-machine guns of the two men sheltering in the stairwell — another officer had just appeared there — erratically illuminated different parts of the room as the officers looked for targets.
Bronson shrank down, trying to make himself as small and insignificant as possible. He knew there was only one way this was going to end, because the hooded men were ludicrously outgunned, but the fight wasn’t over yet. And he really didn’t want to get taken out by a bullet from either side.
Suddenly, in the flickering light from the torches, he saw a round object hit the floor just to one side of the stone table, and knew exactly what it was. Immediately, he placed the Browning on the ground, shut his eyes and pressed his hands over his ears as hard as he could.
Half a second later, the stun grenade exploded, the blast obscenely loud in the confined space. Bronson opened his eyes; then closed them again as another stun grenade rolled across the floor. Once again, the cellar rocked with the massive blast. And then there seemed to be torches everywhere, as the rest of the assault team ran into the chamber.
Most of the hooded men were still in a state of shock after the two blasts, and offered no resistance. One of them, who’d been carrying a pistol but had dropped it on the floor, made a grab for it. But one of the assault team reached him before he could pick it up and smashed the butt of his sub-machine gun into the side of his head, instantly knocking him unconscious.
Bronson stood up, leaned back against the wall and raised both his hands high in the air. Frantically, he looked about him. Where was Angela? He guessed she’d dived for cover at the back of her cell as soon as the bullets started flying, and if she hadn’t covered her ears when the stun grenades went off, she was probably still disoriented. She had to be somewhere near, but right then he couldn’t see her.
Two members of the assault team walked over to him, their weapons pointing steadily at his stomach.
‘Are you Bronson?’ one of them asked him in Italian.
That was pretty much the last thing he expected them to say. Once he’d realized the men coming down the stairs were police officers, Bronson had presumed that he would be arrested with all the other people in the building and taken back to Venice.
He nodded. ‘Yes. How did you-’
‘Passport,’ the second officer snapped. ‘Now.’
Bronson reached around with his left hand, pulled the document from the hip pocket of his jeans and passed it over. One of the Italian policemen flicked it open, looked at the photograph inside it, then raised his weapon so that the beam from the attached torch shone straight into Bronson’s face. He nodded, handed back the document and lowered his sub-machine gun.
Bronson tried again. ‘How did you know who I was?’
Another figure, still wearing his black robe, strode over to the three men and pushed back his hood.
‘They knew,’ Inspector Bianchi said, ‘because I told them.’
‘But I thought-’
‘I know exactly what you thought. You almost managed to wreck our operation. It’s taken me nearly six months to get close enough to this group so that they would trust me. I only found out tonight, when they brought me here, to this island, where they were based.’
‘So how did the assault team know where to come?’
‘There’s a tracking chip in my mobile phone. As backup, I had six police boats out in the lagoon watching where I was taken. If you’d just done what I told you, and left this operation to us, we might have managed to take them all alive. As it is, now I’ve got corpses to identify as well.’
‘I saw two of your men shot when they tried to get in here. Are they OK?’
‘Yes. They’re just bruised. They both took chest shots, but they were wearing Kevlar jackets.’ Bianchi smiled for the first time since he’d walked across to Bronson. ‘Now, I have to get this situation tidied up. Don’t leave the island until you’ve made a full written statement, and keep your diary clear. We’ll probably want you to come back out here as a witness when these bastards go on trial.’
Sighing with relief, Bronson picked up the Browning pistol, clicked the safety catch on, and slid it into his belt holster. Nobody had asked him to hand it over, so he thought he might as well hang on to it. Then he walked across to the cell where Angela had been imprisoned.
She was nowhere to be seen. Bronson rubbed his eyes as he took in the roughly fashioned bed and mattress, and the chain and handcuff that had secured her to the wall. The handcuff was open, so he knew somebody — one of the policemen, perhaps — must have freed her. He stepped back into the middle of the cellar and looked round.
The injured members of the cult were sitting with their backs to the wall opposite the cells, their wrists handcuffed behind them. Some were receiving basic medical treatment, but there was little the assault team members could do for them. Bronson assumed that an ambulance boat was on its way. The dead men were still lying where they’d fallen, waiting for the arrival of a forensics team.
The girl who’d been strapped down on the stone table had been released. She was wrapped in a blanket and was clinging to one of the Italian police officers as if she never wanted to let him go. Bronson could only imagine the turmoil of emotions that were coursing through her body.
But he still couldn’t see Angela. Perhaps she’d already been taken up to ground level. Perhaps. But a knot of anxiety was forming in Bronson’s chest. He strode across the room to where Bianchi stood, issuing orders and directing his men.
‘Where’s Angela?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s my wife?’
Bianchi pointed back towards the other end of the cellar. ‘She’s in the last cell.’
Bronson shook his head. ‘No, she isn’t. Are you sure none of your men took her upstairs?’
‘Nobody has left here apart from some of my officers. She must be here.’
Then Bronson noticed something else. ‘One of them is missing,’ he said, pointing to the robed men.
‘Who?’ Bianchi demanded.
The cult members had had the hoods pulled clear of their faces. And as Bronson stared at each one in turn, he realized that the man who’d been directing operations wasn’t there.
‘The leader,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’
Bianchi snapped an order and two of his men immediately started to search the cellar.
Bronson stood there, thinking furiously. If Bianchi was right, and nobody had left the cellar up the spiral staircase, then there had to be another way out.
Somehow, the leader had managed to slip past everyone in the confusion of the police assault, and had grabbed Angela as he left.
Bronson groaned. He’d been so close, so sure that he’d managed to save her. But again she’d disappeared. And this time he had only the haziest idea where to start looking for her.
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Bronson leaned against the wall of the cellar as he replayed the events that had just taken place. He’d seen Angela, seen exactly where she was, standing at the opening of the end cell. He’d heard her calling out his name.
Nobody had gone anywhere near her from that moment on. The attention of the hooded men had been entirely concentrated on the girl who’d been lashed down on the stone table. Then the shooting had started, and people had been moving all around the cellar, trying to take cover from the bullets, or firing themselves.
As Bronson recalled each of these events, he remembered something else: just before the screaming started, there’d been a noise like something heavy falling to the ground. But could it have been something else? Could it have been the sound of a stone door closing?
‘I think there’s another way out of here,’ Bronson said to Bianchi.
Bianchi looked doubtful. ‘An underground chamber is rare enough in the Laguna Veneta, and this is quite a big room on a small island. It’s very unlikely there are any other spaces down here.’
Bronson reached out and grabbed a torch from the assault vest of a police officer who was standing next to Bianchi. The officer tried to take it back, but the inspector stopped him.
‘Very well,’ he said, sighing. ‘But if you find a door, call me, and then we’ll assess the situation.’
Bronson ran over to the cell where Angela had been imprisoned. That was the obvious — in fact the only — starting point. But all that was there was the crudely made wooden bed, a thin mattress and a single pillow. Under the bed was a rusty metal bucket and a partially used roll of toilet paper. The only other object he could see was the steel chain lying across the mattress, one end attached to a large eyebolt screwed into the stone wall, the other end dangling down, the open handcuff resting on the floor.
Bronson turned to his right, towards the opposite end of the cellar from the stone table. If there was a hidden door — and this was the only explanation that made sense — it had to be somewhere beyond the line of cells.
