Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  And now it was clear to Ben what kind of party had been going on up here on the top floor before the lights went out.

  Chapter 36

  Haani was in the shower. But he hadn’t gone there to get cleaned up before the journey that night. He was stripped to his underwear and hanging by his tethered wrists from the shower curtain rail. His knees had buckled under him, so that all his weight hung from the rail and threatened to rip it down from its mountings on the mouldy bathroom wall. The floor pan of the shower cubicle was a mess of blood and urine.

  Haani had been eviscerated with a large, sharp blade. His intestines were hanging out. The bare end of an electrical wire torn from the bathroom light fixture lay at his feet. His killers had amused themselves by treating him to some shock therapy before they’d put the knife in. Haani’s chest, arms and legs were covered in ugly blackened burns and blisters. That pretty much explained the power cut, Ben thought. And the burnt cooking smell, which now turned out to be sizzled human flesh.

  It had probably been lights out for Haani himself soon afterwards, but only after a good deal of suffering. His face was a mass of blood and swellings and his teeth were all smashed and splintered. Whoever had gone to work on him had done a thorough job, no mistake about that. But they hadn’t tortured him for the pure entertainment of it. They’d intended to make him talk. Which meant the bad guys had known Haani knew something, and had paid him a visit in order to extract it from the poor guy.

  So his paranoia had been justified after all. Except, like Kabir before him, he obviously hadn’t had his weapon close to hand when he most needed it. Wherever Haani might have left the Browning before he was caught unawares, it was gone now.

  Ben heard a sudden movement behind him and turned quickly, swivelling the torch beam towards its source to see a figure inside the apartment. Brooke, looking anxious and tense. She blinked in the light, and he lowered the beam from her face. ‘Stay back,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want you in here.’

  ‘Let me see,’ she said tersely.

  ‘Not a good idea.’

  ‘Let me see, Ben.’

  Stubborn to the last. He relented and flashed the light back on Haani in the shower, just long enough for her to get a good glimpse. Brooke wasn’t the kind of woman to start screaming or having fainting fits. She’d been in nasty situations and seen nasty sights before, and let out only a muted gasp. ‘Jesus Christ. Who did this?’

  Then, as though the reply to her own question had flashed through her mind half a second later and she realised the implications, she gave an involuntary shudder of horror and fear. Because the answer was: beyond any doubt, the people responsible for this were the same people responsible for taking Amal. And were therefore perfectly capable of doing the same thing to him. And maybe already had done. Maybe the grisly sight of Haani’s body was an exact duplicate of what Amal might have looked like, sometime in the last few days.

  Brooke turned away and walked quickly out of the room. Ben closed the bathroom door, came after her and found her in the darkness of the living area leaning against Haani’s armchair, breathing hard. He asked, ‘You okay?’ Wishing she hadn’t seen that. Wishing she’d stayed in her comfortable safe haven at the hotel.

  ‘We should call the police,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Someone else’s job,’ Ben replied. ‘We’re out of here.’

  ‘We can’t leave him like this.’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference to him. He’s dead.’

  Privately, Ben felt bad for Haani. He partly blamed himself, since he’d been the one who’d compromised the guy’s safety by rendering his door incapable of locking. The killers could have easily smashed it in themselves nonetheless, but maybe Haani would have been alerted to the sound and been able to get to his gun in time to save himself.

  On top of his remorse Ben was confused, too. What did these people want? They already had the map, and the location, and Amal, if he was still alive. And why had they targeted Haani now, at this particular moment, in between Ben’s visits to him? The timing was uncomfortable. It felt too close to be coincidental.

  Whatever the case, danger was closing in. That wasn’t good. And worse, Brooke was exposed to it. But there was nothing he could do about that now. And other things that he could do to make a bad situation better.

  He carried his bag into Haani’s bedroom, walked around the side of the bed and crouched down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. He shone the torch on the little bedside cupboard and opened it to reveal the hidden gun safe. With his free hand he punched the combination number onto the button panel on its front. 1-9-7-2. The year of the Battle of Mirbat. A lot of battles had been fought since then, big and small. And another one was about to begin.

  The safe door swung open. Ben reached inside and took out the two handguns and laid them on the bed like before. Haani had wrapped them back up in their oily cloths. He’d also taken the precaution of loading them both in readiness for the journey. Ben stuck the big revolver in his belt and dropped the smaller .32 automatic into his bag. Then reached back inside the safe and pulled out the boxes of ammo. There were seven in all, heavy oblong blocks still in the manufacturers’ original packaging, which in the case of the antique .455 Webley made the two cartons of cartridges for it collectors’ items. Fifty rounds in one, fifty minus six in the other. He dumped them in his bag too, together with the single box of ammo for the automatic. He hesitated over grabbing the boxes of 9mm military surplus stuff too, because he had nothing to fire them with. Then he took them anyway. As Rudyard Kipling had once said, a man can never have too much red wine, too many books or too much ammunition. The wine and reading would have to wait until later.

  Good to go. Ben stood up and slung his load over his shoulder, now somewhat heavier than before, and hurried back out of the bedroom to where Brooke was waiting anxiously and clutching her handbag. He took her hand and said, ‘Come on, let’s hit the road.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Anywhere but here,’ he said. ‘Before any more unwanted visitors show up.’

  But it was too late for that.

  Because they were already here.

  Chapter 37

  Ben and Brooke made their way back along the landing, passed the four closed doors, reached the top of the stairs and started heading downwards, Ben leading the way in the darkness with his torch, Brooke following close behind. The building was still very quiet. The only sound was the creak of their footsteps on the stairs. Then, as he reached the fourth one down, Ben heard something else, coming from behind and above them on the landing they’d just left.

  He turned in the direction of the sound. The door next to Haani’s was opening. A dazzling light emerged from behind it, bobbing at chest level. A powerful torch beam. Ben paused mid-step and shone his own back, and could see the figures of two large men behind the light as they stepped out onto the landing and approached the top of the stairs.

  Under different circumstances Ben’s first thought might have been that these were residents coming out of their apartment, equipped with a torch to see what was going on and perhaps politely enquire about the status of the power cut repair. But such domesticated and mundane assumptions were furthest from his mind at this moment. He was trained to recognise threats – and he knew instantly that this was one.

  In the next instant, the threat doubled. The bright glare from the landing illuminated the descending stairway enough to show another pair of large, dark figures of men slowly and purposefully climbing the stairs towards them, shoulder to shoulder, very deliberately blocking the way. Two had just become four, and Ben and Brooke were sandwiched between them.

  The trap was simple and neat, and well thought out. The bad guys could have sprung their ambush while their intended targets were still inside Haani’s apartment, but they had probably reasoned that the presence of so many doors, potential obstacles and improvised weapons could easily complicate matters. Whereas holding back and waiting for t
he targets to come out and position themselves on the stairs put the attackers at a significant strategic advantage. Take the high ground, block the only escape route, and pin the enemy down into a narrow space offering no cover and very hard to defend.

  Ten out of ten for forward planning, Ben thought. Now what?

  Nobody had spoken yet. The two men on the landing walked slowly towards the top step, the one with the torch still shining it down the stairwell. The beam was very white and strong, much brighter than Ben’s compact flashlight. Maybe a six-cell Maglite or similar, equipped with LEDs. As useful as a blunt impact weapon as it was to light up a dark space. Its dazzle was filling the whole stairwell, so that Ben could see the two men coming up the stairs in his peripheral vision without having to shine his torch on them. He kept it pointed upwards at the two men on the edge of the landing. They were the immediate threat. And advancing, whereas the two below seemed to have stopped and were hovering in position.

  Which told Ben that they were the B team, their job for the moment being simply to block the escape route, while staying safely out of range.

  But out of range of what? Logic dictated that at least one of the four was packing a firearm, the one they’d taken from Haani. Ben’s guess that the gun was being carried by one of the two on the upper landing, the A team, but he couldn’t be sure of that. Either way, so far it didn’t look as though opening fire was their plan. Not yet. Whatever their intention was, Ben knew he was about to find out. Behind the glare he could make out the smiles of anticipation on the men’s faces.

  In a blur of thoughts, calculating strategy like the world’s fastest chess computer, Ben evaluated his options. He doubted whether the attackers knew he was armed. That gave him an excellent element of surprise, but such tactical advantages were easily wasted. If he opened fire on the two guys on the higher ground, he couldn’t be sure that the pair on the lower ground wouldn’t start shooting before he could turn the gun on them next. He was fast. Very fast, in his own modest opinion. But not that fast. And he couldn’t risk it with Brooke standing right next to him in the open. His only option was to let the bad guys make their opening gambit, reveal their tactical plan, then respond accordingly.

  The move came soon enough, as the man not holding the torch took something from his pocket. Handling it carefully. A weapon, but neither a gun nor a knife. A fat plastic syringe. Filled with some kind of clear liquid that looked briny and viscous in the torchlight. Then the guy with the torch used his free hand to reach into his own pocket and take out an identical syringe. Each one held between forefingers and middle fingers, like a couple of fat cigars. Thumbs on plungers. Nozzles aimed in a parallel trajectory down the stairwell.

  Ben’s mind stepped up into overdrive. For about an eighth of a second after seeing the syringes he was thinking needles, sedatives, abduction. Thinking that the bad guys had come to add him and Brooke to their collection of captives. Another fraction of a second later he realised he was wrong. You can’t administer kidnap drugs without a needle. Syringes that big would be fitted with one the size of a lance. Long and thick enough to gleam and glitter in the light. But that wasn’t happening. Because the syringes had no needles attached at all.

  Now one of them spoke. It was the one with the torch, and he said in English, ‘Poke your nose in where it’s not wanted, fuckhead, and you’ll lose it.’

  That was when Ben understood what was in the syringes. Acid, one of India’s most popular cheap and effective means of inflicting sadistic, irreversible harm on people. Most likely nitric or sulphuric, highly concentrated, just a squirt capable of burning through skin and flesh and bone in an instant and producing the most grotesque and horrific injuries. One dose for him, one for Brooke. It was why the two guys on the stairs below them weren’t coming any closer, not wanting to get splashed with the stuff.

  It also helped Ben understand the whole strategy here. Just like with Haani, the bad guys wanted to find out what he and Brooke knew, but they didn’t have electrical voltages to play around with any more. The chemical option was an effective alternative. Blinded, disfigured, incapacitated and utterly helpless victims writhing in agony are easy to make blab their secrets before you spill their guts all over the floor. Probably more fun that way too, from a psychotic killer’s point of view. But much less fun for the victim.

  And Ben had no intention whatsoever of letting that happen.

  And so he moved. Fast. Very fast.

  Chapter 38

  It all happened in the next two seconds.

  At the same instant that the muscles in the attackers’ hands were contracting to compress the syringe plungers into their tubes between fingers and thumbs to launch their payload of corrosive liquid through the air, Ben was letting his torch fall from his grip and grabbing Brooke and whirling her bodily around and behind him and simultaneously reaching inside the opening of her handbag and ripping out the extendable travel umbrella and thrusting it outwards and upwards and activating the release catch. In the blinding light beam he saw the twin jets of acid leave the nozzles of the syringes, arcing through the air under pressure, expanding into fine scintillating sprays of droplets, glittering like diamonds in the strong light as they headed straight for their targets.

  But in the same instant the spring-loaded mechanism of the umbrella was doing its work, and he felt the kickback as it leapt forwards on its metal shaft and the canopy expanded with a rustling crackle, like an ultrafast time lapse replay of a flower opening its petals. The twin sprays both hit at the same time and spattered harmlessly against the shield of the umbrella. Powerful acid that could burn almost instantly through skin, flesh and bone was almost totally ineffective against a thin membrane of waterproof fabric.

  By contrast a lead-alloy flat-nosed bullet weighing about 16 grams and launched from a six-inch pistol barrel at around 700 feet per second had no problem penetrating the flimsy cloth. Even as the last tiny droplets of acid were bouncing off the umbrella canopy Ben was yanking the Webley service revolver from his belt and firing blind through his shield in the general direction of their attackers, yanking the heavy trigger four times as hard and fast as he could work his index finger and feeling the recoil of the weapon hammer backwards into his palm. BLAM; BLAM; BLAM; BLAM. The blast filled the stairwell. The torchlight vanished into sudden total blackness as one of his bullets smashed its lens, but Ben knew the other three shots had hit their mark.

  Now he had to worry about the two guys below him opening fire, because they could get lucky even in zero light conditions. As the bigger and heavier of the two guys on the landing crumpled and started toppling over the edge of the top step Ben caught his arm and whirled him around and sent him crashing down past Brooke and straight towards the two others on the stairs. Like playing with giant skittles in the dark. He heard a muffled grunt and the smack of the impact as the dead man’s weight, assisted by gravity, cannoned into his still-living comrades and flattened them both, followed by the second dead guy an instant later. An avalanche of bodies tumbled and bounced down towards the landing below.

  Ben had a rule about getting angry in combat. It generally wasn’t a good idea to let personal emotions seize the moment. But now he was ready to break that rule, because the idea of Brooke getting hurt by acid didn’t make him merely angry, it unleashed a torrent of lethal violence from inside him. He went bounding blindly down the stairs after them, trampling whatever dead flesh was underfoot. He snatched up his fallen flashlight and saw one of the two surviving guys lying sprawled out on his back head-first diagonally across the stairwell, trying to struggle up to his feet and clawing a gun from his jacket. Haani’s Browning. Ben shot him in the face at close range and blood hit the walls and his head slammed back against the stairs. The last guy had managed to slither down to the level footing of the landing below and was staggering upright with a small snubby .38 revolver in his fist, which he was bringing up to point at Ben. The guy’s aim was so wild that he was liable to miss, but just as likely to hit Brook
e by mistake, which he probably intended to do anyway after neutralising Ben. Which Ben found hard to accept, so he used the sixth and last round in his Webley to plant one squarely between the guy’s eyes. The guy’s pistol hit the floor unfired. The guy himself crashed across the landing like a sack of mail immediately afterwards.

  Then there was silence in the stairwell, except for the high-pitched whine in Ben’s ear’s. Tinnitus was always the price of victory in close-quarter gunfights. He raced back up the stairs to check on Brooke.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m okay. I think.’

  Her eyes were wide with shock, but she was unhurt. His relief flushed the anger from his system as fast as it had flared up. He flashed his torch on the umbrella, which was lying on the stairs, crushed flat by one of the falling bodies and still gleaming with wet acid. ‘You’re right. Those things are very practical.’

  She shook her head in amazement. ‘I can’t believe how fast you moved. What am I saying? Of course I can. You’re still the same old Ben I knew.’

  They’d made a lot of noise and it wouldn’t be long before the building’s residents called the police. Ben wanted to be long gone by the time they turned up.

  ‘But the question is, who are these idiots?’ he said.

  He walked back down the stairs and stepped over a body to crouch down beside another, the corpse of the guy who’d been holding the torch. The six-cell Maglite was lying beside him with a bullet hole through its lens. Ben shone his own light over the guy’s body and saw that the other bullet had gone through his heart. He frisked the corpse for any kind of ID, and wasn’t surprised not to find any. Then shone the light in the guy’s face and asked Brooke, ‘Look familiar to you?’

  There was a reason why Ben had singled him out. Because of what he’d noticed about the guy’s face, in the moments before the fight. As Brooke came down the stairs, treading carefully to avoid stepping on dead body parts, she saw it too. The bullet wound that had blown out his chest cavity wasn’t his only recent injury. Not many days had passed since the guy had suffered a nasty blow to the mouth that had bruised up his lips and knocked out a front tooth.