The Pandemic Plot

by Scott Mariani

  The track leading to Black Rock Farm lay to the east side of the property, and the smaller outbuildings and abandoned animal pens were clustered at the far end, to the west side, with most of the fields and paddocks extending northwards beyond the back of the old farmhouse, which was partly hidden from view by a hulking domed metal shed that was the largest of the barns. There was no sign of movement within the farm, except for a rusty bit of corrugated iron that hung loose from the side wall of the big barn and flapped in the wind.

  As they got closer, Clarkson and Hogan slowed their pace and hung back, letting the armed men move ahead. Obeying their orders the five spread out so that they could approach the house from multiple angles. Two of the men, Reynolds and Webster, worked their way around the west side of the farm while two more, Nelson and Shaw, curved around towards the east side, forming a pincer movement. The fifth man, the ex-military pilot whose name was Pearce, took the middle line straight towards the house. Their eyes were sharp and their weapons were cocked and ready.

  Everyone was certain that Hope would be expecting an assault. He might start shooting at any moment, a prospect that made Hogan cringe and hold his breath. Even Clarkson seemed to have lost some of his steely composure, the nervousness beginning to show. But no rattle of gunfire sounded from the farm as the five men reached the fence and clambered over its hanging barbed wire strands into the property. Nothing. Just the clank-clank of the flapping loose iron sheet, the dwindling whip-whip of the helicopter rotors behind them and the moan of the rising wind. A weather front was racing in from the west; the sky that had been so clear and blue just minutes earlier was now darkening as a solid mass of pendulous, gravid storm clouds gathered overhead.

  Pearce, the ex-military pilot, was the first over the fence. Check the barns, the boss had said, and Pearce was inclined to agree that was where Hope was most likely to be lurking in wait for them. The big metal barn was closest. Pearce stalked towards it, and got there just as the clouds opened. The raindrops began slowly but in moments had intensified into a deluge, water streaming down the curve of the barn’s roof. Pearce moved quickly, cautiously around the side of the building to a sheet metal doorway that hung open a few inches, swaying in the wind.

  He paused, then stepped inside with his weapon raised, swinging the muzzle from side to side. Safety off, ready to rock’n’roll. It was just like the old days for him. Pearce had served for seven inglorious years with the British Army before getting kicked out for dealing in stolen weapons. He was very sure of his capabilities and certainly wasn’t intimidated by going up against some pumped-up ex-Special Forces prick. Those guys weren’t all they were hyped up to be.

  Pearce didn’t have a very high opinion of his teammates, either. He was the only real soldier of the five – in his own estimation by far the most proficient and skilled killer, with some highly accomplished jobs under his belt – and he was itching to get at the arsehole who’d taken out several of his associates, two in particular who were his old pals from back in the day and had never returned from the Emily Bowman hit. Pearce was going to take particular pleasure in dragging Hope’s dead body out to present like a trophy to the boss. Not to mention the £10,000 extra bounty on offer to the man who nailed the bastard. For Pearce, there was no doubt about who would get the prize.

  It was dark and murky inside the big barn. The hammering rain sounded like machine-gun fire against the tall domed metal roof. Pearce trod carefully to avoid the bits of junk and old bottles that littered the compacted-earth floor. At the far end was a kind of makeshift wooden stage, covered in a mess of big black boxes that he identified as music amplifiers and PA speakers. Looked like a bunch of wannabe rock stars hung out in this place. Losers.

  He moved deeper into the building, listening and watching for the slightest movement. His high-velocity bullets would punch through the thin metal walls like hot needles through butter, and he needed to be sure of his target lest he accidentally shoot one of his team – or, much worse, shoot the man who was paying him. Pearce’s finger rested lightly on the trigger and his right eye was pressed to the ACOG optical sight on his weapon. Moments like this were what he lived for. He was pumping with excitement at the prospect of flushing Ben Hope from his hiding place. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  In fact Pearce was so excited that while he was on full alert to detect and destroy any enemy that might suddenly appear in front of him, he’d forgotten his training and neglected to look up at the thick, strong rafters overhead.

  The massive blow hit him from above. Something very heavy but quite soft came crashing down on his head and flattened him to the floor with a muffled thud that was all but lost over the sound of the hammering rain. The big hessian bag of organic fertiliser that had been dropped on him from a height of twenty feet split open with the impact, and Pearce was covered in mouldy, powdery pellets as he lay there groaning and dazed. He was barely conscious of the second light thud of someone jumping down from the rafters to land next to him. Or of the knee that pressed against his carotid artery, cutting off the oxygen to his brain. Once fully unconscious, he couldn’t possibly have been aware of being dragged away across the barn floor, rolled into the shadows and quickly, expertly tethered up with a length of electric guitar cable and gagged with a piece of sacking material. He’d be out of action for several minutes before he came to, writhing and struggling against his bonds. By then, it would all be over.

  Across to the west side of Black Rock Farm, Reynolds and Webster were much less concerned about their team colleagues than with their own personal safety as they crept towards a rickety, ancient milking shed that looked like the kind of place a crafty and dangerous opponent might hide. The pounding rain soaked through their hair and ran into their eyes. The dirt of the yard was rapidly getting churned up into slippery mud by the deluge. They flanked the doorway of the milking shed, nodded to one another and then slipped quickly through, Reynolds first, Webster following right behind. They covered each other well as they burst into the shadowy interior. The windows were streaked with green filth and very little light penetrated inside. The shed stank of damp straw and there was moss growing on the concrete stall dividers where now long-dead cattle would once upon a time have been set in rows to be hooked up to the milking machinery. Disused farm equipment and old windows and stacks of crates and pallets, broken tools and bits of timber were piled up here and there, offering lots of hiding places where their enemy could be lurking in wait, ready to attack. They trained their weapons left and right, covering every inch, willing him to come out. If Hope was hiding in here, he was a dead man for sure.

  Reynolds froze, thinking that he’d heard something. A tiny rustle among the straw, barely audible over the steady roar of the rain pounding the shed roof. He couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to have come from the shadows behind a heap of mouldy old timber. He signalled to Webster, who paused mid-step and followed the line of Reynolds’ pointing finger in the direction of the sound. The two of them stood very still, barely breathing, listening hard with their guns clasped tight against their shoulders and aiming blind into the darkness. Reynolds could hear nothing but the storm outside and the flutter of his own heart. What he’d heard was probably just a rodent, he thought. The place must be crawling with them. He signalled again to Webster and shook his head. False alarm. They moved on a few steps, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  Now it was Webster’s turn to stop and motion to his colleague, thinking he’d seen something. He was pointing at some corrugated sheets that had been propped at an angle against a wall to form a triangular nook, into which a man could have wedged himself. Reynolds nodded. He trained his sights on the dark triangle, ready to start blasting, as Webster tiptoed through the shadows up to the sheets, reached tentatively out to grasp the edge of the nearest, and quickly yanked it away from the wall to reveal … nothing but a patch of cobwebbed brickwork and some startled woodlice that scuttled away in panic.

  Reynolds heaved a sigh
. Bollocks. They’d obviously drawn a blank with the milking shed. He turned to Webster and was just about to say, ‘Let’s go, he ain’t in here’ when Webster suddenly toppled forward and crashed down onto his face.

  For the first brief fraction of a second Reynolds thought his companion had tripped over some object hidden in the matted straw. Before he could react, a dark shape appeared at his side and something hit him extremely hard across the side of the head, and his lights went out.

  Chapter 47

  Ben stepped out of the shadows and stood over the limp bodies. They weren’t moving, but all the same he gave each of them another hefty whack of the axe handle to make sure they were definitively out for the count. Reasonable force; nothing like it in the world.

  He quickly trussed their wrists and ankles with some lengths of baling twine he’d found in the milking shed. The thin nylon cord might have been bright pink and not very macho stuff, but it was immensely strong and no man alive could break it with his hands. The knots were almost impossible to pick, too. When his work was done, he dragged them between a couple of stall dividers where they’d be reasonably protected from what was about to happen next.

  The rainstorm seemed to be hammering down even harder. Anything that cut noise and visibility were fine by Ben. He checked his watch, the diver’s illuminated face glowing green in the gloom, and counted down the last seconds before another five-minute interval was up. Right on cue he thumbed the talk key on his radio and reported to McAllister, in a whisper, ‘Still here. Stand by for some fireworks. Over.’

  McAllister came back an instant later, ‘Copy that. Watch your back, pal.’

  Ben picked up one of the fallen weapons. It was a nice enough piece of kit, identical to the one his first victim had been carrying, now stripped and scattered into pieces: an IWI Galil Ace, the latest Israeli variant on the time-tested Kalashnikov assault rifle design, straight out of the box, fully loaded up with a thirty-round magazine. Clarkson must have some pretty hot contacts within the UK to get hold of these toys. Ben set the fire selector to full-auto, flipped off the safety, pointed the muzzle towards the floor away from his feet and squeezed off a short blast. Bits of shredded straw flew up and a stream of spent brass flew from the ejector port. The rattle of gunfire was massively loud inside the shed and would be plenty audible outside it. Which, at this point in the execution of his plan, was just what Ben wanted.

  The expected commotion from outside came moments later: Ben heard the running footsteps and raised voices as the fourth and fifth of Clarkson’s men came dashing across the yard from wherever they’d been hunting for him, suddenly alerted to the sound of the rifle shots. Ben let off another deafening burst for good measure to leave them in no doubt where he was. If they’d known that their comrades were down and trussed like turkeys on the floor, they’d have opened fire on the milking shed and he’d have been caught inside like a rat in a trap. But they didn’t know that – in the confusion it was just as possible that at least one of their guys was standing and it was Ben on the ground, full of holes.

  As the two came charging inside the milking shed to find out what the hell was happening, Ben stepped quickly across to the piece of sturdy four-by-three wooden post that was the only thing holding up the cowshed roof. He’d sawn through enough of its original supports earlier to have made the entire structure dangerously weak. He lashed a hard kick at the base of the wooden post and dived under cover between the concrete stall dividers as the roof buckled and then collapsed inwards with a groan and a rending crash.

  Through the falling wreckage Ben caught a brief glimpse of Clarkson’s men: one of them staring upwards in paralysed horror as a ton of cobwebbed dry-rotted timbers and asbestos sheeting came down on top of him, the other trying to bolt back towards the doorway but not making it before he, too, was buried and pinned to the floor.

  Ben was blinded for a few seconds by the swirling dust. Deliberately collapsing a building onto his own head was something he’d never done before. Maybe I am mad, said a fleeting voice in his head. But he didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it. As the clouds of dust began to subside he saw the gaping hole where a collapsing beam had taken down part of the wall. Coughing, eyes stinging, he pulled himself out from under his sheltering place still clutching the Galil rifle, shouldered aside a broken asbestos roof sheet that blocked his exit, and crawled out over the debris into the pounding rain.

  He looked back at the flattened ruin of the milking shed and doubted whether any of Clarkson’s four men trapped inside had been crushed to death. One thing was for sure, they wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry.

  Five men down, no permanent casualties. It was time to move on. Clarkson and his company associate were Ben’s main concern now.

  He glanced all around him, blinking as the rainwater washed the dust out of his eyes. The farmyard was a deserted sea of mud. Past the side of the big barn and beyond the fence he could see the Galliard helicopter sitting empty on the wet ground, its rotor blades static and drooping.

  He shouldered the Galil, took aim through its optical battle sight, centred the dot reticle on the area of the chopper’s fuel tank hatch, and fired. The ripping report wasn’t as loud as inside the shed, but still damn loud. Bullet holes appeared in the side of the aircraft’s fuselage, drawn in a ragged vertical line by the climb of the recoil. It was no target rifle. Ben adjusted his aim and fired another sustained blast, and this time the chopper did what he wanted it to do, and exploded in a great mushrooming fireball that sent a tower of black smoke rising up to be dispersed by the wind. The boom of the explosion rolled across the barren landscape.

  Ben lowered the rifle and gazed with satisfaction at the blazing shell of the helicopter. Just in case Clarkson and his man decided to try their luck at escaping by air. If they wanted to get away, they’d have to hoof it. Ben had no intention of letting that happen. He scanned the surrounding moors for two little running figures, but could see nothing. He ran back to the big barn in case they might have slipped in there. The only living soul inside was the bound and gagged gunman he’d left there earlier, now awake and struggling in vain to get free.

  Ben hunted through more of the various smaller sheds and outbuildings. They weren’t hiding under the lean-to where Jude had moved the motorbike, with its spark plugs removed in case anyone got ideas about riding off on it. They weren’t lurking inside the disused henhouse or the woodshed, either.

  Ben could think of just two remaining options. Clarkson and his companion must have either totally dematerialised and vanished into the aether, or else they’d skulked inside the farmhouse.

  Minutes had ticked by. As he raced for the house Ben radioed McAllister again. ‘Still here.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it, pal.’

  Ben reached the house and pushed through the door with the Galil rifle to his shoulder. His plan had been to start checking each ground floor room in turn and work his way upwards, but he didn’t get that far. Because standing there in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, boggling at him in terror and holding up his hands, was Clarkson’s corporate associate. His shoes were caked in mud, his suit was rumpled and the rain had plastered his hair over his pasty brow. He looked as though he’d been about to bolt upstairs when Ben burst in.

  ‘Stay right where you are,’ Ben told him. He aimed the rifle at his chest. Point-blank range. Unmissable. If Ben had pulled the trigger he’d have splattered the guy’s heart and lungs all over the stairway.

  ‘P-please d-don’t shoot me,’ he quavered, almost fainting at the sight of the gun.

  ‘Where’s Clarkson?’

  The man’s mouth opened and closed like a landed fish’s. He looked as though he was on the verge of fainting from fear. ‘I … I …’

  ‘I said, where is he?’ Ben demanded.

  ‘Right behind you,’ said a voice.

  Then Gregory Clarkson stepped out of the kitchen doorway. He was smiling. He was holding a big black semi-automatic pistol. And he was pointin
g it straight at Ben’s head.

  Chapter 48

  There was no way that Ben could get turned around fast enough with the rifle to avoid being shot. He’d have had to swivel its barrel through a whole hundred and sixty degrees from where it was pointing at the guy by the stairs and fix his new target in less time than it would take Clarkson’s trigger finger to give a tiny twitch and his bullet to cross the six feet of air between the pistol’s muzzle and Ben’s skull.

  Certain death. Zero chance of survival.

  ‘Whoops,’ Clarkson said. ‘The great SAS warrior, caught napping. Looks as though the shoe’s on the other foot now, doesn’t it? Now, let’s be a good fellow and turn that weapon over to my associate, Mr Hogan. Then maybe I won’t put a bullet in your head. At least, not right away. I want to savour this moment.’

  Clarkson was standing just too far away for Ben to attempt any kind of disarming move. A lot of amateurs would have thrust the pistol out at arm’s length, which was almost the same thing as letting Ben have it. But Clarkson was holding it low, tight against his side. And that gave Ben no choice but to do what he was told.

  Ben put the rifle on safe, flipped it over and handed it to the man called Hogan. Hogan took it as though he was almost as afraid of the gun as he’d been of its business end moments ago. His hands were shaking and sweat was pouring down his cheeks.

  Clarkson grinned. Triumph was flashing in his eyes. ‘Excellent. You see, Hogan? I was right as usual. It was worth making this journey after all. Now, Major Hope, put your hands up. Lace your fingers over the top of your head, so I can be sure you won’t get up to any more of your tricks.’

  Ben slowly raised his hands. Laced them together over his head. On the way up, he was able to get a glance at his watch. Exactly four and a half minutes had gone by since he’d checked in with McAllister.