The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (210 page)

Chapter Sixty-Two

With the doors shut, the inside of the prison van quickly turned into an airless sweatbox under the Rome sun. It was a jarring, jolting ride, and Ben steadied himself as best he could against the bare metal wall, trying to keep his mind blank of thoughts of where they were taking him and the fate that awaited him.

Nobody had even mentioned a lawyer yet. No phone calls, no contact with the outside world. Jeff Dekker at Le Val must be tearing the world apart trying to find out what was going on.

And Brooke . . . she’d know, too. She’d know that Ben had been caught just a few kilometres from her place in Portugal. Would she guess that he knew her secret? That he’d seen her there with . . . with whoever this guy was?

What am I going to do
, Ben asked himself. If he ever got out of this mess, could he even bear to see her again? Did he want to hear what she had to tell him? Should he just try to forget that the last few months had ever happened? He had no answers. He felt lost, and so very alone.

The prison van must have been on the road for some twenty minutes when a sudden violent swerve sent Ben and his travelling companion sprawling across the bare metal seats. Ben was about to say something when he heard the sound of gunfire outside – a ragged string of single shots cracking off somewhere behind the van, followed by a long sustained burst. The two of them dived for the floor as a flurry of percussive impacts clanged against the flank of the vehicle. But Ben quickly sensed that the prison van wasn’t the principal target of whoever was doing the shooting.

The van was suddenly rocked in the shockwave of a huge explosion that was deafening even from inside. Something other than bullets cannoned off its side: flying pieces of whatever it was that had just been blown apart nearby. The van went into a skid, its tyres shrieking as the wheels locked, then hit something solid. With nothing to hold on to, Ben and his companion were hurled forwards, hit the sheet metal partition separating them from the cab, and sprawled to the floor.

A second explosion boomed out. Ben smelled the acrid stink of burning fuel and plastic. They heard the front doors of the van opening, the sounds of men yelling. Then more shots, and yells turned into screams.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shooting stopped. Ben turned towards the van’s rear doors as he heard running footsteps and more voices. They weren’t Italian.

He hadn’t heard the sound of the Russian language since that day in the art gallery.

The voices were drowned out by a final blast of gunfire from right behind the van, a ripping flurry of bullets chewing through the locks. The doors flew open. Sunlight flooded into the back of the van.

Two men stood framed in the open door, holding stubby black submachine guns. From the cold efficiency in the guy’s eyes, Ben could tell that the one on the left had done this kind of thing before. Ex-military, a gun for hire.

The one on the right, with the buzz-cut hair, who looked as if he’d had his face torn off and stitched back together with a nail and string – he was different. This wasn’t just a job for him. If a shark could smile, it would have contemplated its next meal the way the guy was looking at Ben right now. He jerked the barrel of his SMG. ‘Get out,’ he said in guttural English.

Ben guessed it was meant for him. Big surprise. He stood up, keeping his head ducked low, stepped towards the back door and jumped out.

The guy with the scar shouldered his weapon, and before Ben could react, he fired a single shot into the back of the van. The second prisoner’s head exploded in a red mist and he slumped to the metal floor. The scarred guy’s companion unholstered a pistol and aimed it at Ben’s heart. There wasn’t much Ben could do but stare at the scene around him.

What must have been a normal street on the edge of Rome just moments earlier now resembled a scene from Kosovo at the height of the Bosnian war. The two police Alfas that had been escorting the prison van were burning wrecks. One car was lying roofless and twisted on its side, flames pouring out. A charred arm sticking out of the driver’s window was all that remained of the cops inside. The other car was buried under the front of the van, crumpled and blackened like a Coke can tossed in a fire. The bodies of the van driver and prison guards were littered bloodily across the road.

They weren’t alone. Through the smoke, Ben could see at least half a dozen dead passers-by strewn about the pavements, cut down as they went about their business. A taxi was stopped in the road, its horn stuck and blaring. The inside of its shattered windscreen was smeared with blood.

One of the Carabinieri had obviously managed to leap clear of his car before it exploded. Not clear enough. He was crawling pitifully away from the burning wreckage, dragging himself with bloody fingers. His legs were ablaze.

Six men had done all this in under a minute. Four of them were heading back in a group towards a big black Mitsubishi SUV nearby, carrying automatic weapons and a couple of ex-Soviet rocket-propelled grenade launchers. As they passed the burning cop, the tallest of the men casually shot him in the back of the head. It wasn’t meant as an act of kindness. One of the others let out a laugh.

The badly-scarred Russian shoved Ben roughly towards the Mitsubishi. ‘Walk,’ he said.

Ben walked. The hijackers didn’t even seem to be in a hurry as they climbed aboard the seven-seater SUV. Ben was bundled in the middle of the centre row with the pistol still aimed at his heart. The man with the scar sat beside him. He gave a command to the driver in Russian, and the Mitsubishi took off.

Chapter Sixty-Three

The Mitsubishi’s driver was fast and skilful. Ben sat quietly among his captors with his cuffed hands in his lap as the car sped away from the scene of the hijack and headed for the city’s outskirts. A couple of Carabinieri vehicles flashed by in the opposite direction, but nobody came after them.

Beyond Rome’s outer fringe of suburbs and used car lots, furniture superstores and discount warehouses, the Mitsubishi passed through a dilapidated iron gateway, crossed the weed-strewn concrete forecourt of a dingy industrial building that looked like a disused factory or packing plant, and drove inside. The SUV’s engine boomed in the empty building, then died. The six men climbed down from the vehicle and hauled Ben out at gunpoint.

The abandoned building smelled of urine and decay. The place was scattered with empty bottles and other debris left behind by itinerant homeless people. Rays of sunlight shone in through tall, grimed windows. A pair of pigeons flapped about among the rusty iron roof girders, their wing-beats echoing in the huge, empty space. The only furniture in the building was a cracked plastic office chair that sat alone in the middle of the concrete floor. The scarred man shoved Ben over to it. ‘Sit.’

Ben figured that unless he was going to try and take down six heavily-armed men with his wrists cuffed together, he might as well sit down.

The scarred man motioned to one of his crew, the tall one who’d executed the burning cop earlier. The tall guy approached Ben with a grin and crouched down. He grabbed one of Ben’s feet and yanked off one of his laceless shoes, then the other, and tossed them over to his boss.

‘First place we look,’ the scarred man said in his guttural English. ‘Then we look other places.’ He propped his weapon against a concrete pillar. Holding Ben’s left shoe by its toecap, he smashed the heel hard against the pillar’s edge, two, three, four times, until the shoe’s heel broke apart. He inspected it, then did the same with the other. Ben watched, confused, as the right heel fell off to reveal a hollow compartment inside. The man dug his fingers inside, pulled out a small black device, and the mass of scar tissue crinkled into a mirthless smile.

Ben stared at the thing that had been in his shoe. How long had he been walking around with a GPS tracker attached to him?

‘They are not so smart,’ the scarred man said, tossing it away. ‘We have jammer.’

They
, Ben thought. Whoever
they
were.

The man walked up to him. ‘Nobody can find you here, Mister Ben Hope. Now we have business.’

Ben knew there wasn’t much point in playing the ‘you’ve got the wrong man’ card. Not when he was Italy’s most overexposed celebrity of the moment.

‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘You’ve just found out the Goya you and your boys stole is a fake, and you want to know where the real one is.’

The man snorted. ‘We do not care about the Goya. The Goya is shit.’

‘But you still thought it was worth killing for.’

‘You know nothing. You are ignorant man. You know who I am?’

‘Someone who stuck his face in a combine harvester.’

The scarred man slapped Ben hard across the face. ‘My name is Spartak Gourko. Spetsnaz, Russian Special Forces. Now private contractor.’

Ben had a feeling he knew what was coming next. Anatoly Shikov hadn’t bought that Spetsnaz ballistic knife from a mail-order catalogue.

‘And I was friend of someone you kill,’ Gourko said. ‘I know Anatoly for many years. Now he is gone. This makes me very sad.’

Ben’s cheek was burning fiercely from the slap. ‘I’m glad I killed him. He was a piece of shit and he had it coming.’

Gourko’s face hardened, the patchwork of gristle across his jaw pulling tight. ‘For this you must die. You die slow and in lot of pain. I wanted you to know this. But you will not die now. I must let you live.’

‘That’s considerate of you,’ Ben said. ‘You think you are tough guy?’

‘I’ve known tougher.’

‘You will not be so tough when my boss is going to work on you. Grigori Shikov is not gentle man like me.’

‘I take it we’re going on a trip, then,’ Ben said. ‘I’m guessing east.’

Gourko nodded. ‘First there is matter to take care of. You have taken away the son of Grigori Shikov, and for this he will take away your life. But you have also hurt me. You have taken away my friend. And so now I will hurt you.’ He shrugged, as though this were the most straightforward and reasonable thing in the world.

The men were grinning. Ben ran his eye along the row of gun muzzles, wondering if there was some way to disarm five men and shoot them all without getting pumped full of bullets himself. Nothing leaped immediately to mind.

Gourko went on. ‘You will be . . .’ He paused, searching for the right term. ‘Mutilated.’ He seemed to enjoy the sound of it. ‘You understand this word, “mutilated”?’

‘I only have to look at you,’ Ben said.

Gourko pointed at the tall guy who had removed Ben’s shoes. ‘But Maxim will keep you alive for Grigori. Maxim is expert medic. He put my face back together after grenade. Make me pretty again.’ He laughed, then signalled to another of the men. The guy lowered his weapon and walked over to the SUV. Opened the rear hatch, reached inside and came out with a pickaxe.

Ben stared at the axe. It looked like it had just been bought from the local hardware store. The shaft was orange fibre-glass. The blade was painted blue steel. A long, slightly curved spike on one side. A chopping edge on the other. The guy hefted the heavy tool in both fists, slung it across his shoulder, then reached back inside the Mitsubishi. This time he came out with a blowtorch. It was a heavy-duty industrial model, with a long butane canister hooked up to its pistol grip and a blackened heat shield around its flame nozzle.

‘I am not animal,’ Gourko said to Ben. ‘I let you choose.’ He spread his hands. ‘Which you choose?’

Ben said nothing.

‘I put spike through your body,’ Gourko said. ‘I pin you to floor like insect and make you wish for death. Or maybe we do some cooking together. You like make barbecue? I roast your balls, your toes, your hands, your face. I only leave enough so that Grigori recognises man he is killing. Maybe you prefer. What you choose, Mister Ben Hope?’

Ben wasn’t going to give this man the satisfaction of a reply.

‘You cannot choose? Then I choose.’ Gourko grabbed the pickaxe from his colleague. ‘I choose this.’

It took five of the men to pull Ben out of the chair and get him down on the concrete. His cuffed hands were yanked up over his head. His legs were held out apart.

Gourko walked up to him, taking his time, flipping the axe shaft round in his hands. He paused to set the pickaxe down for a moment to take off his jacket, hung it neatly on the back of the plastic chair. Then his eyes glinted, and he raised the tool above his head. The sharp point of the hardened steel spike paused high in the air for a moment, and then Gourko gave a grunt and brought it down with all his strength. Ben saw it descending towards his body. He struggled desperately to twist out of the way, but strong hands were holding him tight.

The heavy spike came down and hit the concrete with a resonating clang just a few inches from Ben’s hip, sending concrete chips flying.

‘I miss,’ Gourko said with a smile. Another theatrical pause to flick a speck of dust off the end of the spike. Then he raised the pickaxe a second time.

This was the one. Ben watched helplessly as it rose up into the air. He had about three-quarters of a second to come up with a pretty damn good plan.

Chapter Sixty-Four

The pickaxe blade was just beginning its downward arc when a spattering halo of red erupted from the side of Spartak Gourko’s head. He twisted away with a scream of pain and rage. The pickaxe dropped from his hands and hit the concrete with a clang that echoed through the empty building.

As Gourko clasped a hand to the fleshy tatters where his right ear had been, another silenced shot caught him in the chest, spun him and slammed him into the concrete pillar. His knees buckled and he collapsed into a heap.

The tall man called Maxim gaped down at his fallen leader, raised his gun and then was sent sprawling down on his back as a third shot punched through his body.

The men holding Ben down scattered. Ben twisted to see where the shots were coming from. He couldn’t see anyone – but the hidden shooter could certainly see them. Switching from single shots to burst fire, the sniper took down another of Gourko’s crew as the man went for his weapon. A triple burst hammered into the front of the parked Mitsubishi and blew out its lights and windscreen. Then another, and the bonnet lid popped open and water and coolant showered the concrete floor.

Gourko’s body lay inert. As his men fled for the exit, one of them spun round, returning fire – then jerked and fell back with a third eye-socket punched through the middle of his forehead.

Ben was up on his feet. Hearing soft footsteps behind him, he whirled around to see the shooter walking towards him across the factory floor, holding a large black assault rifle in gloved hands. The Heckler & Koch G36 rifle was a weapon Ben would have expected to see in a military battle-zone, not in the suburbs of Rome. It had a hundred-round drum magazine, laser sights and a folding bipod. A highly formidable tool – and it was pretty clear from what had just happened that the shooter knew exactly how to handle it.

The shooter approached a few more steps, the gun held tight to his shoulder, sweeping its muzzle cautiously from side to side. He was wearing a black motorcycle jacket, jeans and high-lace combat boots. The visor of his black baseball cap was pulled down low, obscuring his face. Then their eyes met, and the shooter gave a dry smile.

Ben blinked. It wasn’t a he. It was Darcey Kane.

‘Glad I stopped by?’ she said, stepping over Gourko’s body. Ben hid his amazement. ‘I had everything under control.’

‘Oh, I could see you were right on top of things. Sorry for messing up your plans. Now, we’re a little rushed, so if you’d like to come with me—’

‘Where?’ Ben said. ‘Back to jail? No, thanks.’

She pointed the assault rifle at him. Her gloved finger was on the trigger. ‘Let’s move, Major.’

‘You can call me Ben,’ he said, looking down the barrel. ‘That’s nice, but maybe we can have this conversation in the car?’

‘Hold on.’ Ben stepped over to the plastic chair over which Gourko’s jacket was draped. He fished in the side pocket, slowly drew out a phone and held it between forefinger and thumb so she could see it wasn’t a gun or a grenade. He dropped it in the pocket of his blue prison overalls. ‘Seeing as you chased them away before I could find out much.’

‘They’ll be back,’ she said. ‘Move it.’

With the weapon trained closely on him, Darcey led him quickly back across the factory space, past an old delivery lorry and out through a rear entrance. Hidden among a tangle of bushes and nettles at the other side of the building was a battered Ford saloon van. Darcey tossed Ben the keys. ‘You drive. So I can keep an eye on you.’

‘What, in my socks?’

‘Just cope.’

Pistol shots rang out across the overgrown factory fore-court. A bullet whanged off the wall nearby. Gourko’s remaining men had regrouped. They were moving from cover to cover, shooting as they advanced. Ben climbed in behind the wheel of the Ford and fired up the engine. Darcey swung her rifle towards the Russians and drove them into retreat with a long, rattling blast before diving into the back seat.

‘Go!’ she shouted, but Ben was already there. The van’s wheels spun as it took off out of the bushes and went skidding across the cracked concrete. More pistol shots popped in their wake as Ben tore through the gates and sped away.

After a couple of kilometres, Darcey said, ‘You can slow down now. Keep it at the limit.’

Ben glanced in the mirror. She was holding the HK steady. ‘You’re taking a chance,’ he said. ‘I could crash this thing.’

‘Yeah, I’ve seen your driving. Maybe I’ll just have to shoot you.’

‘Funny,’ Ben said. ‘I was just thinking the same about you.’

‘You had your chance. Fluffed it.’

‘There’s always a next time.’

‘Dream on.’

‘Where are we going?’ he asked her.

‘Somewhere we can get you out of those overalls. Anyone would think you were an escaped prisoner.’

She directed him for another few kilometres, then said, ‘OK, turn in here.’

They were out of the city now, and coming into thickly wooded countryside. The track she was taking them onto led to a secluded picnic area, with a small car park and some wooden tables and benches. The place was empty. Ben parked up in the shade of the trees, turned off the engine and slowly got out of the van. Darcey climbed out with the rifle dangling loosely at her side.

‘It’s peaceful here,’ Ben said, looking around him. ‘My kind of place. Somehow I thought you were taking me somewhere with bars in the windows.’

Darcey nodded. ‘I could have. But I thought we should consider other options.’

‘Like what?’

Darcey jerked open the van’s back door, reached inside and hauled out a military black canvas holdall. She tossed it down at his feet, motioned for him to open it.

‘Boonzie sends his regards,’ she said.

He said nothing, just stared at her for a moment; then dropped into a crouch and drew back the holdall’s zipper.

The bag was empty apart from a spare hundred-round drum magazine for Darcey’s G36 rifle and a military holster containing a well-worn, well-maintained and fully loaded 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistol. ‘Take it,’ she said.

Ben looked up at Darcey in confusion. ‘What is this?’ was all he could say.

‘Peace of mind,’ she said simply.

Ben thought back to the afternoon he’d spent with the Scotsman, putting up the greenhouse. It seemed a lifetime ago.
I have my peace of mind, if you know what I mean
, Boonzie had said. Ben glanced at the assault rifle in Darcey’s hands, and back down at the Browning. Peace of mind, indeed. He wasn’t even going to ask where the Scotsman had got hold of a piece of front-line kit like the G36.

‘Came in handy, didn’t it?’ Darcey said.

Ben picked up the pistol and stuffed it into the pocket of his prison overalls, at a loss for words.

‘Confused?’ She smiled, laid the rifle across the Ford’s scuffed bonnet, leaned against the wing and took off her shooting gloves.

‘Pretty much.’

‘I wasn’t always with SOCA. I used to be in CO19.’

Ben began to get it. ‘That means you did some training in Hereford.’

‘And Boonzie McCulloch was my instructor,’ Darcey said. ‘He was the best. I never forgot him. So imagine my surprise when it turned out he was the reason you were in Italy in the first place. I took a little trip out to his place in Campo Basso yesterday. When I told him I was assigned to bring you in, he nearly blew my head off. But then I told him some other things I’d found out more recently. After that, he couldn’t do enough to help me.’

‘Things like what?’ Ben asked.

‘Like the fact that I know you didn’t shoot Urbano Tassoni.’