‘Hold on tight.’
The remaining man inside the hangar had leapt away from the helicopter in a panic and snatched his rifle from the metal table when the shockwave of the explosion knocked him off his feet. Now he was scrambling back upright and going for his fallen rifle when Ben stepped out from behind the carport wall and shot him twice in the chest and he went back down.
Ben flipped his M16 to burst fire and sent a couple of bursts into the fuel pipe and drum of Jet-B. The punctured pipe ripped apart and the end still connected to the pump began writhing and leaping like an injured cobra, spraying fuel all over the hangar floor, the dead man and the helicopter. Arcs of Jet-B spouted from the holes in the drums. The flames from the burning storeroom were already licking at the inner wall of the hangar. It took only moments for the spreading rivulets of leaking fuel to reach the blaze.
In those same moments, through the smoke, Ben saw the figures of men emerging from the block building beyond the hangar, and more running from the direction of the house. He heard shouts and snapping gunfire. Then the approaching figures disappeared behind a huge curtain of flame that leaped twenty metres into the air as the jet fuel ignited and the whole hangar and everything around it burst alight. The helicopter was swallowed in the raging fire. Then it exploded, bringing half of the burning hangar down around it.
Out of the wall of flames came a human torch, one of the guards who had been too close when the fuel went up. His face and most of his body were invisible behind the flames that were eating him alive. He was staggering like a drunkard, pawing the air in desperation. Ben could feel sorry for a man’s suffering, even when that man would have seen him tortured to death and laughed at the sight. A single round from Ben’s rifle ended the pain for the man and he fell back and quietly burned.
More shapes were flitting and darting behind the smoke as Kožul’s men spread out to counterattack. Sporadic bursts of gunfire crackled out over the roar of the blaze. Ben and Madison fell back to the cover of the carport and returned fire.
With all hell breaking loose, Madison Cahill was ice-cool. She was hunkered down behind the tailgate of a crew-cab Ford Ranger, using the heavy pickup truck for cover as she picked out her targets left, right and centre and engaged them efficiently, methodically, calmly. The old combat shooting instructors had a saying: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Madison was all three.
But the enemy were plentiful and they were determined. The muzzle flashes behind the dense black smoke drifting from the burning hangar looked like galaxies of twinkling stars on a dark night. Ben remembered what Husein Osmanović had told him. ‘You kill five of his, he will only send ten more to take their places.’
So be it. Then they’d just have to keep killing them until nobody was left.
The carport was drawing such heavy fire that the vehicles inside were beginning to come apart. Shattered glass covered the concrete floor like snow. Ricochets were pinging all over the place like angry bees. Bullets splatted the bodywork of the Ford Ranger and forced Madison to slither away from the tailgate and crawl to a safer position behind the wheels of a truck trailer.
Ben kept shooting until his rifle ran dry. Lightning fast, he switched magazines and kept up his steady fire. BAPBAPBAP; BAPBAPBAP. This way, that way. Another shadowy figure went down behind the smoke. Then another.
With typically black military humour Ben’s SAS comrades had used to joke that if they ever found Major Hope dead on the field of battle, he would be sitting in a great big pile of spent cartridge cases. It was getting to be that way now, as fired shells spewed from his weapon’s sooty ejector port and heaped up all around where he was crouching. He could feel the hot brass rolling around underneath his legs and burning him painfully through his trousers. Better than a bullet burning through your flesh. Or a petrol bomb going off in your face. With so many bullets incoming, it was only a question of time before one of them holed the fuel tank of one of the vehicles in the carport. One unlucky spark, and Ben and Madison might suddenly become the main course at the barbecue.
But then the enemy fire was slackening. Ben could see the flitting figures, far fewer of them now, retreating behind the smoke. He reached out and touched Madison’s shoulder, and she tore her gaze away from her rifle sights to look at him with huge intense battle eyes. Her cheeks were blacked with gunsmoke.
He said, ‘Let’s go,’ and pointed ahead, and they advanced from their position to press forward the attack, firing as they went. A couple of Kožul’s men turned to direct retreating fire their way and were cut down. The rest had had enough and were fleeing for the gates. Ben and Madison moved on across the compound, jumping over bodies. His rifle was empty. He dumped it and snatched up a pistol from one of the dead men. Madison did the same. The fight would be close-quarters from here on in.
The smoke from the still-burning hangar and shattered fuel store had thinned and dissipated to become a drifting grey mist over the entire compound, through which they could see the bright red house looming towards them like a surreal apparition as they approached. No more guards emerged from the house to open fire on them. The compound was now silent and empty, just the crackle of the flames and the moan of the wind. The first phase of the attack was over. But unless they’d managed to make their escape during the confusion, Zarko Kožul and Dragan Vuković were still somewhere inside the house. Hiding, or waiting.
This wasn’t over yet.
Chapter 56
‘The manuscript,’ Madison hissed at Ben. ‘It’s what I came here for and I’m not leaving without it. If that sonofabitch Kožul’s still in there, he might try to slip out the back way with it.’
Ben could see the determination in her eyes. ‘Split up. You take the back, I’ll take the front.’
Madison nodded and broke away from him at a fast trot with her pistol pointed out in front of her, keeping her head down just in case anyone fired on them from the windows. She darted through the row of SUVs parked in front of the house and skirted the low wall running alongside it and then disappeared around the corner and was gone.
Ben felt her sudden absence like a strange hollow sensation inside his chest, and it struck him that he was worried about her. He pushed that feeling to the back of his mind and moved cautiously to the front entrance. Stray bullets had knocked away bits of rendering from the masonry and drilled holes in the red-painted woodwork. He pressed his shoulder to the door and leaned against it. Not locked. It swung inwards, smooth and silent. Solid hardwood, three inches thick, on heavy brass hinges. The carpet inside the entrance hall was deep and soft underfoot. Bright red, like the inside walls, the skirting, even the ceilings. It was as if every square inch of Zarko Kožul’s inner sanctum was saturated with so much blood it couldn’t absorb another drop. Except there would always be more blood. Ben knew that. And more would surely be coming soon.
His battlefield capture was a heavy Colt 1911. The workhorse sidearm of every major war the US Army had fought throughout the twentieth century. Fully loaded it carried only eight rounds, but those .45-calibre bullets were decisive fight stoppers.
The entrance passage was long and wide, with glossy red doors set a few metres apart on both sides. Ben eased open the first door, ready to blast anyone hiding the other side of it. An empty cupboard, containing a few mops and cleaning products. Ben wondered who did the domestic chores around here. The gang lord as homemaker. He shut that door and opened the next. It was a lavatory, all in red – red bowl, red cistern, red sink; even the toilet paper was red. Thorough.
Ben kept moving. The sights and smells around him seemed strangely enhanced, like the effect of some drug on his system. That was because, with his ears still ringing badly from the battle, his other senses were kicking into overdrive to compensate until his hearing recovered. And it was his sense of smell that saved his life, exactly two seconds later as he reached the third door up the passage and started reaching for the handle.
The whiff of perfume reached Ben’s nose and triggered an in
stant memory. It wasn’t perfume, like a woman’s scent. It was aftershave. The expensive stuff. He’d smelled the same smell only last night and now it was jangling critical danger warnings.
The glossy red paintwork of the door exploded into splinters as a storm of bullets ripped through from inside. But Ben had already seen it coming and ducked sideways out of their path. The door burst open and through it came Alek, the Skorpion submachine gun in his hands spitting fire. The door led up from a basement, a flight of stone steps leading downwards. Ben kicked the door hard back into Alek’s face. The impact knocked the gun sideways in Alek’s grip and he staggered backwards through the half-open doorway, still firing, bullets raking the opposite wall. Ben kicked the door again, harder, and caught Alek’s gun arm in it as Alek tried to press through the gap. Ben put his weight against the door, trapping the arm hard against the edge of the doorway. Alek let out a roar of pain and rage, but he wouldn’t drop the gun and was trying to twist it round towards Ben. Ben whipped out his knife and stabbed it deep through Alek’s writhing arm and pinned it to the doorframe, and Alek’s roar became a scream. Ben jammed the muzzle of the Colt against his side of the door and fired twice. The screaming stopped. The arm went limp. The Skorpion clattered to the floor.
Ben opened the door. Alek had slumped into a crouch, hanging from his pinned arm. The two .45-calibre holes in his chest had blown out his heart and lungs and he was wheezing his last few breaths, eyes trying to roll up at Ben and rapidly losing their focus. Ben might have been tempted to finish him off with a mercy shot to the head – then again, why waste the ammunition. He plucked out the knife to release the arm, then gave Alek a nudge with his foot and the dying man went bumping and rolling down the basement steps like a bin-liner full of dirty washing.
Ben closed the basement door. His ears were ringing worse now. Up ahead, the entrance passage ended at a wide archway with double doors. He stood still and listened hard, but all he could hear was the whining in his ears. There might be empty space behind the door. Alternatively, Zarko Kožul might be lying in wait there with a bazooka. Only one way to find out. Ben took a deep breath, then booted the double doors open.
The other side of them was a reception room, wider than the hallway. Ben glimpsed the figure standing there pointing a pistol at him and instinctively dropped into a combat aim-fire stance. His trigger was maybe half an ounce away from breaking when he realised it was Madison. She lowered her own weapon at the same instant and puffed her cheeks at him. ‘Hey, don’t be sneaking up on me like that.’
He asked her, ‘Come up against any trouble, your end?’
She shook her head. ‘All clear, from the back. I checked the rear grounds, pool house, nobody. You okay? I heard shots.’
‘I’m okay. The other guy isn’t.’
‘Kožul?’ She looked hopeful.
‘One of his lieutenants.’
‘Let’s search the rest of the house. The others can’t be far away.’
The reception area had more doors radiating off it. One led to an enormous kitchen that looked as though it had never been used. The next one they tried opened up into an even bigger living room, opulently decked out from top to bottom in Kožul’s trademark red with enough large heavy leather furniture to stock a small warehouse. The room was deserted. Ben and Madison stepped inside.
‘Jesus Christ, what is it with this red colour scheme? It’s like freakin’ vampires live here,’ Madison muttered, gazing around her with a frown.
‘Worse,’ Ben said.
He was getting a sinking feeling as the conviction dawned on him that the house was now empty and both Zarko Kožul and Dragan Vuković had made their escape, along with Lena and the mysterious bald man in the linen suit. If Alek had taken refuge in the basement, it was easy to see how the rest of them could have fled without him. They could have taken off in one or more of the SUVs parked outside the house, their exit screened from view by the smoke of the burning helicopter hangar. Even if they’d escaped on foot, they could be far away by now. They’d be impossible to find in the wilderness.
Either way, not good.
Either way, mission failed.
‘Come on,’ Ben said. He motioned towards the door.
‘Wait,’ Madison said, holding up a hand to halt him. She seemed to have seen something. Ben watched as she hurried over to a table at the far side of the huge room. A black leather attaché case sat open on the tabletop. Even as Ben noticed it, he recognised the case as the one the bald man had carried inside the house earlier. Its contents had been laid out on the table next to it, some peculiar-looking instruments whose function Ben could only have guessed at.
But something else had drawn Madison’s attention as she stood frozen at the edge of the table, gaping down in utter amazement at whatever she’d spotted there. She let out a little cry that sounded more like a little girl’s voice than her own. Slipped her pistol into the back pocket of her jeans and reached down with shaking hands to pick up the yellowed, curly-edged, tattered, stained document that rested on the polished surface.
Madison turned to look at Ben with tears in her eyes, and held it out for him to see.
No mistake about it. In her hands was the same age-worn music manuscript Ben had seen inside the glass display cabinet in Nick Hawthorne’s apartment that day.
‘We found it. This is it. It’s unbelievable. It’s incredible. It’s—’ Madison shook her head, as though words had failed her.
‘It’s yours,’ Ben said. ‘You came a long way to find it. Now take it.’
Handling it as though it were one of the lost Dead Sea Scrolls, Madison edged the manuscript into an internal pocket of the attaché case. She closed the lid and snapped the catches. She stood staring for a moment at the shut case. Caressed the smooth leather, then reached up and wiped the back of her hand over her face. She sniffed. In the short time Ben had known her, he’d never seen her look so emotional. She murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Now let’s get out of here,’ Ben said.
She looked at him. Her eyes were wet. ‘What about Kožul? What about Vuković?’
‘Long gone by now,’ Ben said. ‘If they’ve got any sense. That’s what we’re going to do too.’ He stuck the heavy Colt into his belt.
‘You wanted to get that guy so bad.’
‘And I will,’ Ben said. ‘Some other time.’
‘You helped me. I want to help you.’
‘No chance. This time, you’re going to do what I say and go straight home with that damn thing before more harm comes to it. Or to you.’
They left the living room and crossed the big reception room, Ben retracing his steps towards the exit the way he’d come. The double doors were right in front of them, leading to the entrance hall and the front door. A half-hour trek back to their vehicle, and they could be in Belgrade before dark. He would see her safely to the airport, get her booked on the first available flight out of Serbia and wait for her to be safely in the air before he resumed his hunt for Dragan Vuković. It was a small world. Ben would find him.
At any rate, that was the plan taking shape in Ben’s mind.
But it was all about to change.
They were three-quarters across the reception area when one of the other doors radiating off it suddenly swung open and a harsh voice behind them said, ‘You fucking motherfuckers think you can get away so fucking easy?’
Chapter 57
Ben turned sharply round to see Zarko Kožul stepping out of the doorway towards them. All five feet nothing of him, built like a miniature bull and almost as broadly muscular as he was tall, still clad from head to toe in bright crimson that made him blend into his surroundings. His face was flushed dark with pulsating fury and his eyes were bloodshot. The only thing about him that wasn’t red was the little gold-plated .380 Walther PPK automatic clenched in his muscular right hand. Gaudy but deadly, and pointed right at Ben’s heart.
Ben’s reflex was to reach for his own weapon, but he checked himse
lf. Pure survival instinct, because the Colt was tucked in his belt with the safety on. The fastest quick-draw pistoleros in the world could clear the leather and hit two balloons eight feet apart in a tenth of a second. Ben wasn’t too much slower than that. But balloons don’t shoot back, and a .380 slug would travel the ten feet between Kožul’s gun and himself and Madison in a hundredth of a second.
The maths weren’t in Ben’s favour. He stilled his gun hand. Madison’s own weapon was still in her jeans pocket. She had probably come to the same conclusions Ben had.
Kožul was not alone. Dragan Vuković emerged from the doorway after him and stood at his mentor’s shoulder, which was barely higher than Dragan’s midriff. They looked like a comedy duo together, but Ben didn’t suppose that was the reason Dragan looked so amused.
‘You got them, boss,’ Dragan said in Serbian. He had a big black nine-millimetre in his own hand, loose at his side. ‘Blow them both away. Do it, boss, before the bastards cause you any more trouble.’
‘Dragan is impatient,’ Kožul said in English. ‘Young and dumb and impulsive, like I used to be.’
‘Maturity can bring such wisdom to the enlightened few,’ Ben said.
Kožul wagged the gold Walther. ‘Enough bull. Pistols on the floor. Finger and thumb, nice and slow. Any tricks and I’ll put one in your eye. I’m a real good shot with this.’
Ben hesitated, then slowly reached down to the butt of the Colt. Inched the weapon out of his belt between thumb and forefinger, dangled it in front of him and let it drop to the carpet with a soft thud. Madison did the same with hers.
‘Blades too,’ Kožul said. Next the matching pair of survival knives joined the pistols on the red carpet.
‘Now the case,’ Kožul said. ‘What’s inside it belongs to me.’
Madison paused, as though she might actually be considering bolting with the attaché case and its precious contents. Then she let out a sigh and set the case down at her feet and slid it towards Kožul.
The Bach Manuscript Page 31