He stepped inside. ‘I know, and I’m sorry to bother you, but you might be able to help me. Do you have a moment?’
He gave her the same story that he was looking for his brother. She leaned on her broom handle while she gazed at the photo, then shook her head no. Ben thanked her anyway and was about to take the photo back when a middle-aged guy emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel, and she called him over. They related like husband and wife. ‘Tomás, this gentleman is looking for his brother.’ She showed him. Tomás peered at Wolf’s picture, frowned at Ben and said, ‘Your brother?’
Ben said, ‘Technically my half-brother. We don’t look much alike, I know.’
Tomás touched a finger to his own lips. He asked, ‘Does he have—?’
Ben felt a little electric current whirr in his chest. ‘Gold teeth?’ he replied, beating Tomás to the punch. ‘That’s him. He had an accident when he was younger.’
‘His name is … Jack? Jack Cullen?’
Ben was glad he hadn’t said it was Mike. ‘That’s right, Jack. So when was he in here?’
‘Oh, two, three days ago. I remember that he asked me about the Moncayo family.’
Ben nodded. ‘He was friends with their daughter Sofia.’
‘They’re gone now. Living in Zaragoza.’
The buzz of excitement in Ben’s chest became a momentary stab of worry. ‘Did Jack say he was going there too?’
‘No, no, he said he was staying here in Albarracín. Waiting for you, maybe, no?’
‘That’s what we’d planned.’
‘He said he loves it here.’
‘It’s a beautiful town,’ Ben said. ‘Did Jack happen to say where he was staying?’
‘No, he just said he would come back to our restaurant sometime soon. He loved Maria’s cooking.’ Tomás touched his wife’s shoulder. ‘Everyone does.’
Ben smiled. ‘I’ll have to try it myself. Sorry I missed out tonight.’
Tomás said with a grin, ‘Never mind. Come back tomorrow and we’ll feed you a great meal.’
‘Sounds great. Maybe I’ll have caught up with Jack by then.’
Ben thanked Tomás and Maria for their help, and went on his way.
So there it was. Brother Jack, aka Jaden Wolf, one of the most capable military operators Ben had known back in the day, a man he had liked and admired and now must kill to save the life of the woman he cared for, was definitely here in Albarracín. The easy part was over. All Ben had to do now was narrow down his search and finish the job.
He reflected on the challenge ahead as he slowly walked back to the edge of town where he’d left the car. He decided to kip for a couple of hours in the Alpina’s back seat before his hunt began in earnest. Pausing for a moment to light a cigarette before getting into the car, he looked up at the sky and took a long, deep breath of the cooling night air. The heavens were filled with stars, a vivid and breathtaking display. Against the diamond-glitter backdrop the tall blackness of the surrounding mountains circled the horizon. Closer to the east, a tall rocky escarpment overlooked the town. Ben thought that if he were Jaden Wolf, the escarpment might be somewhere he’d choose to make camp.
Ben finished the cigarette and was about to toss away the stub when, from up in the hills he’d been gazing at just a moment earlier, a distant sound caught his attention and he stiffened, listening hard. From this far away it was just a random POP … POP-POP … POP, carried on the soft breeze and easy to miss. Maybe someone out in the sticks was having a fireworks celebration, but Ben didn’t think so. He could see no pyrotechnics lighting up the night sky. And to his experienced ear the crackle of sporadic gunfire was unmistakable.
This time of night, Ben doubted that anyone was out hunting. Not for animal quarry. It was the sound of violence. It had drawn him a thousand times in the past, and like a magnet it drew him again now.
He got into the car, rolled down the windows and set off in the direction of the shots.
Chapter 13
Ben sped out of Albarracín, heading into the hills on a narrow, winding road with his windows cranked all the way down so he could maintain his bearing on the source of the gunfire. As he left the town behind him and the rocky escarpment rose tall against the night sky he killed his headlamps. The moon was bright enough to drive by its light alone, and he didn’t want his approach to be seen by whoever was doing all the shooting up there.
The road became a track. The lights of the town receded into the distance behind him. Loose gravel and stone pattered under the Alpina’s wheels and rattled against its underbody. Over the engine note he could hear the reports growing closer. POPPOPPOP … POP-POP. Whatever was happening up there on the escarpment it was still in full swing, and it no longer sounded like distant fireworks.
Spotting the dark shape of a stationary van up ahead on the track, Ben took his foot off the gas and let the Alpina roll to a halt a few yards behind. It was an ancient Peugeot J7 utility commercial from way back sometime in the seventies with battered, dirty bodywork and rusty skirts. Its lights were off and both its front doors and the side sliding door were open, and it appeared to be empty. He waited a few seconds to make sure, then got out of the car with his Browning in his hand and walked towards it.
There had been a pause in the shooting. Ben stepped around the driver’s side of the van and looked in the open door. The keys were still in the ignition, as though its occupants had got out in a hurry. The bonnet was warm and the engine ticking as it cooled.
Ben stepped back from the van and looked around him. It appeared as though whoever had left the vehicle here had headed on foot up a pathway that led off the main track, too narrow and steep and rocky to drive up. He knelt and examined the ground by the moonlight, and soon found fresh footprints in the dry, dusty dirt. He reckoned on at least five sets of prints, maybe six. Stones were dislodged and blades of coarse, sun-yellowed grass were snapped and bent where they’d hurried by.
Ben rose to his feet and moved up the track. Just as he was wondering what it meant that the shooting had stopped, now it suddenly started up again with a fusillade of reports that sounded much closer by, no more than a few hundred metres away beyond a rocky mound further up the path. It sounded to Ben as though the action up there was moving across the terrain, a running battle. He kept moving quickly up the track, chasing the sound. The going was steep and treacherous in places. In less than a minute he’d climbed a long way. Glancing back over his shoulder he could see the lights of the town far in the distance, and his car and the van like miniature models below. The rocky mound was just up ahead of him, overhanging the slope and surrounded by scrubby bushes. He stuck the Browning in his belt so he could use both hands to scramble up around it; and now he had a clear view of the escarpment above him.
Craggy rocks cast long, dark shadows everywhere in the darkness. As he scanned left to right, watching for movement, the momentary white blossom of muzzle flash lit up a patch of rocks at eleven o’clock from Ben’s position. A millisecond later, the blast of a rifle shot shattered the silence and the crashing echo rolled out across the valley. Ben redrew his weapon and kept moving towards the source of the gunshot, staying low, keeping to the shadows, not taking his eyes off the spot where the muzzle flash came from. Now he spotted the running figure of a man break from cover and dart across a gap between the rocks, just fifty or sixty yards ahead. The man was a silhouette, half swallowed by shadow and too dark to make out any detail except that he was clutching what was unmistakably a scoped hunting rifle. Ben froze. Kept watching as the figure paused in his stride and seemed to be looking around him, as though searching, hesitant, unsure of himself. Ben wondered what was happening.
That was when one of the patches of impenetrable shadow that lay all around the figure of the man seemed to flicker. It was the briefest movement, so barely noticeable that Ben couldn’t even be sure he hadn’t imagined it. But the man with the rifle must have sensed something too, because Ben saw him turn abruptly around and r
aise his rifle as though startled.
And then the man with the rifle disappeared. He was there; and then he wasn’t. As if the shadows had simply reached out and taken him, without a sound or a struggle. From the rocks where Ben had seen the muzzle flash before came a hoarse yell in Spanish. ‘¡Diego! ¿Dónde estás?’
Diego must be the man with the rifle. One of the men from the van. Diego’s cronies hidden back there among the rocks sounded anxious, even frightened. Ben had no doubt that they were armed like their comrade – but they held their fire, no doubt worried about hitting the vanished Diego in the darkness. Nobody came out.
Ben could guess why that was. These hunters who had come here tonight, seeking to do violence against someone, were beginning to realise that they should have brought more men. They were not the predators in this scenario. They were losing their confidence and growing fearful of what was out there waiting for them.
Ben wanted to know who the hunters had come after. Wanted to know if his guess was right.
Keeping low to the ground, he ran up the slope to where Diego had vanished. It took him half a minute to get there, bush to bush, rock to rock, fast and stealthy and unseen. He covered the last few yards with extreme caution, pistol ready, watching the shadows, watching everything. Diego’s pals could open fire if they spotted him. But Ben sensed that Diego’s pals weren’t the greatest danger up here on the escarpment.
As for Diego himself, he was no longer a threat to anyone. As Ben crept like a panther through the shadows he saw the body slumped among the rocks. Diego was a rough-looking character, or had been, with a mess of curly black hair and a bristly moustache. He lay on his back and stared up at the stars with bulging eyes that were unblinking, unseeing. Something dark and wet oozed from his neck and pooled on the ground. His throat had been slashed, straight and surgical, from ear to ear. The scoped hunting rifle was gone.
Only one kind of person could have sneaked up on an armed opponent from close quarters and taken him down so fast and efficiently. That was a trained professional like Jaden Wolf.
Ben flinched and ducked behind the rocks as another shot rang out. At first he thought Diego’s friends had spotted him and opened fire, mistaking him for the man they’d come here to kill. But then another shot crashed and echoed across the escarpment and this time he spotted the yellow-white muzzle flash coming from a V-shaped cleft further up the slope. The sparking impact of a bullet strike told him that the shooter was aiming down towards the rocks where Diego’s friends were taking cover. Whoever he was, he had an excellent position and an open field of fire.
His third shot found its mark. There was a short, sharp scream and a dark figure staggered out from behind cover, tottered, spun around and then tumbled down the slope to come to a sprawled-out stop against a boulder in a pool of moonlight. Ben could see the body clearly from his hiding place. The man was lying face-down with his arms and legs outflung. He wore jeans and a denim jacket. Tattoos laced the sides of his neck and his skull was shaved smooth, showing the gaping exit wound of a perfect headshot glistening in the moon’s glow.
Ben looked back up towards the cleft and thought that he saw a slinking shadow dart from cover and down the slope towards the rocks. Seconds later, he knew that his eyes hadn’t cheated him. There was a brief, furious exchange of gunfire. Four, five, six detonations of rifle shots. A scream. Two more loud reports. Another strangled cry. A man stumbled from the rocks, dropping a rifle and clutching at his chest, then jerked backwards to the boom of another gunshot that caught him in the head and sent him rolling down the slope like his dead buddy before him.
Then silence. The shooting stopped. With two bodies on the ground that Ben could see, and by his conservative estimate at least one more dead man lying out of sight behind the rocks, or maybe two or three, he sensed that the battle must be all but done. He saw the same flitting shadow slip away and thread a path back up the escarpment and out of sight over a ledge. By now there remained little doubt in Ben’s mind as to the identity of the skilled operator he’d just witnessed eliminating the last of the men who, for reasons as yet unknown, had come here to hunt him down.
It seemed that Jaden Wolf had wasted little time since his arrival in Albarracín to make some unwanted new acquaintances. Ben very much doubted that Diego and his unlucky cronies were killers sent by Saunders. First, because hiring a bunch of rough-arsed thugs didn’t seem to be Saunders’ style. Second, because only Ben knew who and where he was.
And that was something Wolf was about to find out.
Chapter 14
Ben made his way towards the ledge. As careful as he was not to be seen, he couldn’t be completely certain that he wasn’t being watched every step of the way, and every muscle was clenched tight in expectation of a bullet.
Just then, a bank of cloud passing over the face of the moon plunged the slope of the escarpment into murky darkness and gave Ben the cover he needed to reach the ledge without getting shot. He peered over its lip and spied a rocky hollow partially shaded by thick shrubs and sheltered by an overhanging rock shelf. In the hollow sat Jaden Wolf, just twenty-five yards away, his outline clearly visible among the shadows.
Ben watched him. His former comrade looked a little older, but if anything he appeared leaner and stronger than in his SAS days. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground and looked perfectly calm and relaxed, as though the experience he’d just come through had barely touched him. To his left lay the scoped hunting rifle that he’d taken from Diego. To his right was a black holdall. A small stone circle showed where he’d been lighting fires, and nearby was a stack of cut wood. This was Wolf’s temporary base camp, and he’d chosen an excellent spot. Ben couldn’t have picked better. The lights of Albarracín twinkled warmly in the distance, maybe a mile and a half away, within easy hiking distance.
Wolf had found his heaven, all right. Until trouble came to visit.
Now the clouds passed away from the face of the moon and the rocky hollow was filled with light. Ben inched forwards until he dared venture no further. He drew his pistol from his belt. Loaded and cocked. Fourteen deadly rounds of 9mm Parabellum. If he did his job right, he would need only one. He slowly, slowly eased the weapon into position. The slightest wrong move, the tiniest scrape of steel against rock, and he risked alerting Wolf’s sharp senses to his presence.
Ben aligned the blade of his front sight between the notches of the rear sight and drew a bead on Wolf. At this range the Browning would hit right on the point of aim. He squared the sights on Wolf’s head. Finger on the trigger.
Wolf didn’t move.
Ben took in a breath, let half of it out. Achieving perfect stillness for the most flawless trigger release. For an accomplished pistol marksman like Ben, it was an easy enough shot to make. Or it should have been. But as he began to mount his finger’s pressure on the trigger, pictures began to flood through his mind. He visualised the young trooper as he’d been that day in Afghanistan when he’d talked so passionately about his love of this place. From that recollection Ben’s memory cut to the image of Wolf turning up for duty with his leg in plaster, the time when Ben had intervened on his behalf. He remembered all the meals and laughs they’d shared with their comrades in the mess room, and all the close experiences of combat that make brothers out of strangers.
Then Ben’s mind came back to the present moment. The prospect of this confrontation had been tormenting his thoughts every moment since his encounter with Saunders. Now that the time had come, it was as though he’d been asked to turn the gun on himself. Like stepping over the edge of a cliff, both eyes open and staring into the thousand-foot void below.
Get a grip on yourself. Think straight. He summoned up a mental picture of Grace in danger from Saunders’ spooks. Forced himself to imagine in graphic detail what they’d do to her if he failed in his mission. Saunders would get his wish. Grace would be safe. And Ben could go back to his life. Such a simple task, in theory. But some things were never meant to be so simp
le.
Wolf still didn’t move. Just sitting there, immobile as a statue, as though he was meditating or deep in reflection. Clearly illuminated in the moonlight. Ben had seldom been presented with such a perfect target, and he knew that this window of opportunity wouldn’t remain open much longer.
Shoot, you damned fool. His Browning had been worked on by an expert gunsmith and given a light, crisp trigger that broke at just four pounds of pressure. All he had to do was exert four measly pounds to drop the hammer on the primer and let the shot go, and this would be over. But the trigger felt like it was welded solid into the frame of the pistol, and no amount of force could make it break. The weapon began to shake in his hands. He blinked. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
Can’t do it.
Ben lowered the gun. Breathing hard.
And suddenly, everything changed.
Ben spotted a movement on the rocky shelf that overhung the hollow. He realised that both he and Wolf had made the same mistake earlier, in thinking that the hunters were all eliminated. There was one opponent left in the game. A large, swarthy man with a sawn-off shotgun was very quietly, very slowly creeping up the rock shelf above Wolf’s camp, making his way towards the edge. Wolf had not noticed the approaching presence, and neither was the man with the shotgun aware of Ben’s. He inched forward on his belly, moving like a big fat snake, clutching the pistol grip of his weapon in his right hand and supporting its stubby forend in something that was not a hand, but a curved shiny hook that glittered in the moonlight. He was almost at the edge. Canting the short double barrel of his weapon downwards to get a killer shot. Two rounds of twelve-gauge directed at the top of Wolf’s head. Unsurvivable.
The Demon Club Page 8