The Babylon Idol

by Scott Mariani

  Diya boggled at him. ‘They said to bring you here. That’s all I know. Said it was for a surprise.’

  ‘You’re an idiot, Diya. The biggest surprise would’ve been when they put a bullet in you and took the money back. And if you thought packing a rifle as insurance was going to save your worthless skin, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. When did they call you? Yesterday?’

  ‘Last night,’ Diya admitted.

  ‘And they didn’t wire you that cash through the bank. They paid it to you in person. Which means they’re here, in Harran. Who did you meet?’

  ‘I don’t know his name. I don’t know anything, I swear.’

  ‘The last bloke who swore to me he knew nothing died pretty soon afterwards.’

  ‘Okay, chief, okay. One was in charge. Older than the rest, with white hair, maybe in his sixties. A big man, spoke with a foreign accent. Italian, sounded like. He had three others with him. Heavy-looking guys. Two who spoke, one who didn’t. Just kinda looked at me.’

  ‘Bozza,’ Anna breathed.

  Ben asked Diya, ‘They came to your place?’

  Diya nodded reluctantly. ‘Told me to expect your call in the morning. Gave me the money. Half now, half when the job was done.’

  ‘The job being to cart us out into the middle of nowhere like two lambs to the slaughter,’ Ben said. ‘And you knew just the spot to bring us. So far, the only thing you haven’t lied to us about is that you know this area like the back of your hand. You probably even gave them the GPS coordinates, which is why you kept checking your sat nav as we got closer. And my guess is that you called them just before we set off, which is why you kept checking your watch, too. Because they’re up ahead, waiting for us.’

  Diya nodded. He pointed mutely deeper into the rocky canyon, about five hundred yards further on. ‘Where I was taking you.’

  ‘That’s all I need to know,’ Ben said. ‘You’re a very lucky man, Diya. A less nice person than me would have blown your brains out and left you where you dropped, for the jackals and lynxes and whatever other hungry things live out here. I’m just going to make you walk home. You’ll have to pray you make it back alive.’

  But Diya wasn’t going to make it back alive, and Ben might as well have shot him anyway.

  Because in the next instant, his brains burst all over the side of the truck.

  Chapter 47

  The bullet that spattered Diya’s brains was travelling about three thousand feet per second, more than double the speed of sound. So the crack of the shot reached Ben’s ears almost exactly half a second after it hit. Diya was stone dead but still standing, his knees crumpling under him, beginning to drop. Anna’s cry was still forming in her mouth.

  But by then Ben already knew exactly where the hidden sniper was positioned among the rocks some five hundred yards away. And he was already spurred into action, leaping behind the truck and yelling at Anna to get down, Down! Through the rear cab window, all grimed with dirt and dust, he saw her duck between the seats. Out of sight, not out of danger.

  The truck lurched on its suspension and went down at the front left corner. Quarter of a second later, another boom sounded from the distant rocks and echoed up and down the canyon.

  The sniper fired again. Same result, second front tyre. He was immobilising the truck. Once he’d contented himself with that, he might very well start shooting at them. Using the big Dodge as cover wasn’t an option. A high-velocity rifle would zip through vehicle metal like paper.

  Ben had no intention of hanging around for whatever might come next. Jumping up onto the cluttered pickup bed he yelled to Anna to turn her face away. Military Mauser bolt-action rifles were made with a thick steel butt plate, ideal for smacking down onto the concrete of the parade ground, or for staving in an enemy’s teeth, or for smashing windows. He jabbed it hard against the dirty glass, felt the splintering crunch, whacked it again and kept hammering at it until the entire rear window was in pieces over the back seat. He reached an arm inside. She clasped his hand and he half helped, half hauled her out through the glassless frame. At the same moment she scrambled onto the pickup bed, the truck’s windscreen dissolved into a mass of fissures with a round hole punched cleanly through its middle. Ben ran for the tailgate, leaping over the junk and tools, dragging her behind him. They jumped. Hit the stony ground at the rear of the truck. Anna was wild with terror. Ben pushed her down into a crouch behind the tow-hitch.

  It was time to give the sniper back a dose of his own medicine. Ben brought up the Mauser and used the side of the pickup bed as a rest to steady his aim. The hidden shooter was almost certainly using a modern rifle with a telescopic sight, surgically accurate enough to pick off flies at long range. Ben had only crude iron battle sights, through which even a relatively close target looked tiny. He couldn’t expect to pick flies off at this distance.

  But a man is a much bigger target than a fly.

  Then he saw what he was looking for: the briefest flash of reflected sunlight glinting off steel and glass, just long enough to give away the sniper’s position. He was hunkered in tight to the rocky slope of the canyon, about thirty feet up and about ten degrees left. Ben estimated the range at around 485 yards. He sighted on the spot where he’d seen the flash. Took up the first pressure on the trigger, drew in a breath, let half of it out, felt his body go still and pressed the trigger the rest of the way. The Mauser was loud. Its recoil jolted the steel butt plate against his shoulder. The bullet was in flight; a fraction of a second later he thought he saw the puff of dust as it struck the rocks. Close enough to the sniper’s position to get him worried.

  Ben worked the bolt, ejected the smoking spent cartridge case, slammed another in the chamber. He wondered how many Wehrmacht soldiers back in the day had shared the same worry he was having now, which was the limited magazine capacity of their standard infantry rifle. One gone, only four to go.

  Then he would just have to make them count.

  He scanned the rocks through the sights. A tiny movement caught his eye. He fired again. The same loud crash, the same hard-kicking punch to his right shoulder, the same split-second interval as the bullet flew. There was no puff of dust this time. He thought he saw a dark shape flit past a gap in the rocks. Had he hit his mark?

  The return shot that cracked off the side of the truck an instant later told him he hadn’t. Now the sniper had his position. Not good. And sheltering behind the flimsy-skinned truck was no kind of shelter at all. Ben glanced at a pile of landslide debris ten yards to their left, where a large boulder had broken loose of the canyon wall at some time in its history and come tumbling down to the foot of the slope to provide perfect cover for a moment like this. The sniper could blast away all day and never put a crack in it.

  ‘I’m going to count three,’ Ben said to Anna. ‘Watch my fingers. Take my other hand and don’t let go. On three, we’re going to run for that rock there, quick as we can. Ready? One – two – go.’

  They burst out from behind the truck and raced over the stony ground, threw themselves behind the safety of the big boulder and crouched there. Ben re-cocked the Mauser. The empty case flipped out and rolled in the dirt. Two rounds gone, three to go. Less than ideal, considering the sniper probably had a ten-shot magazine and a whole box of ammo resting at his elbow.

  Anna was gaping at him. ‘Ben, how are we going to get out of this?’

  ‘Same way we always do,’ he replied. ‘I’ll do something crazy, you’ll tell me I’m a lunatic, and we’ll live to find more trouble another day.’

  ‘I don’t care what you do, as long as you do something.’

  ‘I’ll quote you on that.’

  ‘Is it Usberti?’

  ‘Not in person,’ Ben said. ‘The archbishop never was a trigger puller and I doubt whether he’d risk himself in a gunfight. Like a good general, he’ll be leading his troops from the rear.’

  ‘Bozza?’

  Ben smiled grimly, nodded. ‘I don’t know if he’s the one snip
ing at us, but he’s here, all right. I can smell him.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  Ben said nothing. Because the fact was, with only one gun and just three rounds, they weren’t exactly option-rich right now.

  A third bullet cracked off the rocks nearby, ricocheting with a cloud of dust and stone chips and a howl that blended with the boom of the shot.

  ‘He can’t see us,’ Anna said. ‘As long as we stay here, we’re safe.’

  She was right, as far as it went. The problem was that it didn’t go far, because Anna was new to the tactics of war. Ben wasn’t. He was all too aware that they were being deliberately pinned down. That was one of the key functions of a sniper, to keep the enemy distracted and unable to shift position while the rest of the unit split up and work their way around in a flanking manoeuvre. That was exactly what he’d have been doing, in Bozza’s shoes.

  In which case, the rest of them could appear at any moment.

  Another shot cracked and boomed. The truck’s rear right tyre exploded and the vehicle sagged down at the corner. Another key function of a sniper, in anti-materiel mode to neutralise the enemy’s transport. This was getting better and better.

  ‘Ben? What do we do now?’

  Chapter 48

  ‘The only thing we can do,’ Ben told her. ‘Get out of here, and fast.’

  ‘How?’

  He nodded in the direction of the truck. ‘In that, while there’s anything left of it.’

  ‘But the tyres—’

  ‘I’ll drive it on its rims if I have to. Won’t be the first time.’

  ‘I can believe that.’

  He gripped her shoulder. ‘Now listen to me. Stay tight, keep your eyes peeled and don’t move. If I’m not back in two minutes, run like hell. Okay?’

  She nodded, eyes huge and moist. ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘Being frightened is good. Helps you run faster.’

  ‘Come back quick.’

  ‘Quicker than you can say “precipitev‌olissimevolmente”.’

  ‘I’ll say it slowly.’

  Ben winked, then snatched up his rifle and broke cover. The sniper had been waiting, poised to shoot, and his reflexes were sharp. Ben was halfway to the truck when a bullet zipped much too close for comfort behind him. Still running, he sacrificed another bullet with a snap shot intended more to cover himself than hit anything. He reached the truck and ducked behind it. He glanced back at the rock. Anna was out of sight.

  Ben inched his way up the left side of the truck. The angle at which it sat meant that if he kept pressed against its flank, he was shielded from view. Diya Sharifi’s body lay sprawled with one arm outflung under the rocker panel. His blood had soaked into the dirt to make a dark, almost purple patch on the ground. Ben stepped over him. He worked the rifle bolt one more time. Shlick-shlack. Chambered the fourth round. Just two cartridges left. He was almost at the open driver’s door. He could see the bunch of keys dangling from the ignition. If he could scramble inside the cab without getting shot, fire up the engine and slam the truck into reverse and hit the gas as hard and fast as he could while locking the steering all the way right, he had a fair chance of getting the vehicle backed up close to where Anna was hiding behind the big boulder. A lot of things could go wrong. But it was a plan.

  Then the plan fell apart even before it began. Ben was so focused on getting to the door that he almost didn’t notice the movement sixty yards the other side of the truck, halfway up the right-side bank of the canyon. A man in a dark jacket, carrying a submachine gun.

  It was just as Ben had feared. They were closing in around their flanks.

  He and the man both saw each other at the same instant. And now the slow, exploratory exchange of fire erupted into a full-on gun battle. The guy swivelled his weapon and fired, but he was in too much of a hurry and his footing was bad on the rough slope. Bullets thunked into the truck and blew out the passenger window. Ben swung the Mauser up, caught his target in his sights, and let loose his precious fourth and penultimate shot.

  The bullet took the guy right in the head. The pink mist caught the wind. He crumpled at the knees, then dropped straight down like a sack of washing. His weapon went clattering down the slope.

  Ben worked the rifle bolt. Shlick-shlack. One guy down. And one round left. Like a pauper’s last penny in the world, with a stack of debts and bills to pay and bailiffs beating on the door.

  Which meant the last thing Ben wanted at this moment was to be forced to use it. But in war, just as in life, what you want is seldom what you get. A second later, another figure of a man appeared – on the left this time, high on the canyon bank, clutching a black rifle with a compact ACOG scope. He was directly above Anna and tracing a zigzag path down towards her. From the way he was peering down the slope, Ben realised that he had a line of sight to her. He was raising his gun to his shoulder. Watching her through his scope. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger, unless Ben did it first.

  Ben did. The perfectly timed and balanced reflexive aim-fire. The ultimate synthesis of man and machine, as though the battle rifle had been an extension of his mind and body.

  But then it went horribly wrong. At the exact moment that Ben pressed the trigger, the sniper fired again, punching a hole through the open door of the truck next to him. It missed Ben, but it also caused him to jerk his shot. The last bullet from the Mauser vanished somewhere beyond the empty horizon. The figure on the slope quickly scurried for a cluster of rocks and ducked under cover. He needn’t have worried. Ben was now clutching a steel and wood club.

  But the sniper was still happily in business – and let off another shot to prove it. The truck shuddered from the impact. The tell-tale ping of a pointed copper-jacketed bullet penetrating deep into metal, carving a channel of destruction through the vehicle’s vital innards. The sniper followed that one up with another that blasted out the driver’s side window and showered Ben with broken glass.

  And then it got worse.

  The cry that rent the air was full of pain and fear. Anna’s voice. Ben felt the blood freeze in his heart and wheeled around.

  Bozza had her.

  Chapter 49

  He’d found his way down the slope unseen, and had come up behind her. He had jerked her upright, dragged her out from the shelter of the boulder behind which she’d been hiding and was clutching her tightly in front of him, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other holding a pistol against her head. Her eyes were rolling and she was struggling in his grip, but he was too strong for her. It was a replay of Olympia, except this time Ben was unarmed and helpless to do anything about it.

  Anything except a strategy that had worked well for him in the past, and saved his life a couple of times. Pure brazen bluff.

  Ben wasn’t thinking about the sniper as he walked towards Bozza and Anna. Let the bastard shoot, he thought. If he allowed this woman to be killed on his watch, it was what he deserved anyway. He pointed the rifle at Bozza and worked the bolt one last time, ejecting the fifth and last spent case and making a big show of slamming a non-existent sixth into the empty chamber.

  ‘Put it down, Bozza,’ he said as calmly as he could make his voice work. He saw the tiniest narrowing of the man’s eyes at the mention of the name.

  ‘It is Bozza, isn’t it? Franco was what, your elder brother?’

  The man gave a slow nod. His expression didn’t change. The eyes stayed narrowed, piercing into Ben’s with a blaze of hatred.

  Ben took another step closer. ‘Tell me, are you trying to uphold some kind of family tradition?’ he said. ‘Dying in the line of duty, to serve a nutcase like Usberti? Or did you just take this job to get back at me?’

  The man said nothing. He screwed the gun muzzle harder against Anna’s head. A muffled whimper of pain squeaked through his black-gloved fingers. She tried to bite him, but he just gripped her more tightly.

  Ben took another step closer, holding the rifle steady. He said, ‘I’ll bet you always wondered how
Franco died. I was there, so I’ll tell you. He was shot with a small-calibre pistol. Not much more than an antique one, at that. Once in the throat and once in the head. The second shot damn near took the whole top of his skull off. You should have seen it. But that was nothing next to what this rifle will do. At this range it’ll peel you like a banana. The question I’d be asking myself in your position is: is she worth it? And then I’d let her go, right sharpish. I’d advise you to do the same.’

  Bozza still didn’t speak. The cold burning light in his eyes flickered downwards for a few moments and he looked at the rifle in Ben’s hands. Running up and down its length, taking in the detail of form and dimension as if he was digitally scanning it with his brain. Then his eyes flicked back up to lock Ben’s once more, and a ghost of a knowing smile twitched one corner of his lips. He took his left hand away from Anna’s mouth. Ignoring the torrent of furious Italian that poured out of it, he kept his eyes on Ben. He held up his left thumb, then his forefinger, then the other three. Counting, one, two, three, four, five. Then he pointed at the rifle and the smile spread into a twisted kind of smirk that said, ‘I can count, my friend. You fired five, that’s a 98k you’re holding there, and you’re clean out of ammo.’

  ‘Shoot him, Ben!’ Anna yelled.

  But Ben knew what Bozza knew: that if he was going to use the rifle, he’d have to cover the remaining distance between them faster than the pull of a trigger, and beat his enemy’s brains out with it. That steel butt plate was good for all kinds of uses. If it had been just him and Bozza, he might have chanced it, even if it risked taking a bullet. But the added element in this equation was Anna. One move, and Bozza would kill her before Ben was even halfway there. Ben could read that clearly in his eyes.