It was a hive of industry down there. In a broad dirt yard maybe fifty yards across between rundown buildings, three large trucks, several miscellaneous 4×4 vehicles and a whole team of men were gathered around what looked at first glance like a dug-out hole for an Olympic-sized swimming pool, only much deeper. The hole was lined with concrete and until very recently had been covered with an enormous iron sheet that was now attached by chains to the back end of a tractor and had been dragged aside, leaving scrape marks in the dirt. It was probably half-inch steel plate, weighing several tons.
Inside the hole, Ben could see stack upon stack of crates. Some were square, some oblong, some plain white wood and others painted military green with white stencilled lettering on their sides and lids. A crane lorry like the kind used in builders’ yards to shift tons of sand and stone was parked up by the edge of the hole. A guy stood beside it working a remote control panel and guiding the big yellow steel arm downwards. Powerful claws clamped around another crate and the crane lifted it out, swivelled its dangling, swaying cargo across to the rear of one of the trucks and deposited it on a hydraulic lift where two men jacked it up onto a cart and wheeled it into the bowels of the truck’s loading bay.
Meanwhile, more men were descending into the hole on ladders and hauling out some of the lighter crates to be passed along in a line for stacking inside the truck. They were working hard. Even at this range Ben could see the sweat and dust on their faces. They’d been at it for some time, because the first truck was already loaded and had been moved back from the arsenal store, where two guys were securing the straps holding the sides in place. With the second truck half loaded and the third waiting in line, they were halfway through their job.
Scanning back and forth, Ben counted eighteen men. All were carrying sidearms in belt or hip holsters. They’d propped their rifles untidily against the side of the nearest building, the way criminal rabble or the worst kind of crappy guerrilla soldiers would do. He couldn’t see McCrory, which was no surprise or disappointment. Ben wasn’t here for him – not yet.
No sign of Ritter or Moon, either, but they might have been supervising things from inside one of the buildings. Nearly all the focus was on the truck that was being loaded. Just one guard was standing by the one that was already full, nursing a Benelli twelve-gauge auto and looking quietly relieved that he’d been given such light duty.
Ben put away the binocs and slipped away from his vantage point. It took less than three minutes for him to thread his way down among the buildings and reach the truck unnoticed. He drew the knife again as he crept silently up behind the second guard. Same routine. Same horrible sensation of the cold steel blade puncturing flesh and slipping deep inside. Same muted cry of shock and surprise as Ben eased the wriggling body gently to the ground behind the wheel of the truck and kept his hand clamped over the guy’s mouth until he was still.
Ben peered around the side of the vehicle. Nobody had seen him or noticed the guard’s sudden disappearance. A quick glance through the truck’s cab window told him that it was empty and the key was in the ignition. He moved back down the side of the truck and quickly undid two of the side straps before clambering up into the loading bay. There was little room to move among the stacks of crates. He used the knife to slash the straps holding the cargo in transit, and then to prise open the lid of the first crate. He dug into the packing material to reveal a neat row of brand-new KRISS Vectors. Ten of them; at a quick count there were maybe forty more crates of the same type inside the truck. Between three trucks, some hundred and twenty crates. Over a thousand weapons, all destined for the trigger-happy little hands of the Los Locos cartel.
The next crate he checked was bigger. It was full of rotary grenade launchers, like the one he’d watched Ritter use to lay waste to the lakeside cabin. There were about twenty of the damn things, enough to take on an army division. A whole stack of crates nearby was marked HIGH EXPLOSIVE; Ben levered it open with the tip of the blade and pulled away the lid. He gave a low whistle. He was looking at more forty-millimetre grenades than he’d seen together in one place for a very long time. And that was just one crate out of over a dozen he could see at a glance.
How US army quartermasters could fail to sound the alarm over the disappearance of this much ordnance was beyond him. But there was no time to dwell on such questions. He could hear the crane and the voices of the men outside. He grabbed two of the rotary launchers from one crate. Loaded five grenades into each, snapped them shut and slipped out of the cargo bay with a launcher in each hand. Quickly, quietly, he moved towards the cab door and opened it. He tossed the launchers inside, then climbed in after them and swung himself up behind the wheel.
‘Here we go,’ he muttered.
And twisted the ignition key.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Erin paced her comfortable room in the Hyatt Regency until the restlessness building up inside her like steam pressure made her feel as if something was going to pop inside her mind if she didn’t get out of this place and do something. Part of her resented that Ben had left her stranded here in this gilded cage while he went off on his own. Another part of her was deeply concerned about him and wanted to help. She shouldn’t have let him go, damn it.
She stalked out of the room, took the lift down to the lobby and after asking at the desk was directed to a business centre with superfast broadband access for hotel guests. Settling in behind a free terminal, she ran the search phrase BIG BEAR TULSA through Google to see what came up. It was what Ben had written down after talking to Kurzweil. It had to mean something.
After some hunting around, the search led her to a website called www.Abandoned-Oklahoma.com, which gave listings of ghost towns and settlements classed as barren, neglected, abandoned and semi-abandoned. She’d never realised there were so many. From the site, she learned that the town of Adonis in neighbouring Muskogee County, de-established in 1949, had once been the nearest community to the old Big Bear farmstead, a wheat-growing concern that had gone bust some time in the fifties and fallen into rack and ruin.
‘Bingo,’ she murmured.
Google Maps helped her to quickly pinpoint the farm. The satellite image zoomed in close enough to get a blurry view of a scatter of agricultural buildings. She blinked. Was this where McCrory had kept his arsenal hidden from the FBI all this time?
‘I’m going,’ she said out loud, drawing a couple of looks from other computer users in the room. She had no idea what she was going to find when she got out there, or even how she could get to such a remote and distant place without a car. Public transport was minimal in these parts. She only knew she desperately wanted to be involved, and that every minute lost was time that Ben was on his own without a soul to help him.
Erin returned to her room to collect her things, then headed quickly out into the street. A cab was her best chance. If she had to, she’d get the driver to take her all the way to Adonis, and worry about paying the fare later.
The sun was beating down hard, and the paving was blinding white in the glare. Erin crossed East 2nd Street and hurried along in the shade of the tree-lined sidewalk in the direction of the towering Bank of Oklahoma high-rise. Please God let there be a taxi, she prayed. Please God let a taxi appear right this moment.
Her heart leapt as, moments later, precisely that happened. The yellow checker cab slowed as she hailed it, cut out of the traffic and pulled into the kerb twenty yards up the street near the entrance to the bank. Erin broke into a jog, amazed at her good fortune. But before she could get to the waiting car, an obese man in a drumskin-tight business suit carrying an attaché case came striding out of the bank, eyes front and talking on a phone, and barged in ahead of her.
‘Too bad Conroy is upset, Artie,’ he was saying in a piping voice, loud enough for the whole street to hear. ‘I want the goddamn Radisson deal closed today. We’re bleeding money on this.’
‘Excuse me,’ Erin said, catching up. ‘But that cab’s mine.’
He jerked around and stared at her in indignation. ‘Hold on, Artie. What?’
‘I said, this cab’s mine,’ she said levelly. ‘I need it.’
He shrugged, and gave her an alligator smile. ‘I just made it mine.’
‘I saw it first,’ she said.
‘What are you, twelve years old? Shit happens. Get another.’
She moved between him and the taxi door, laid a hand on his arm and gave him what she hoped was her best pleading look. ‘I have important business. Please. You don’t realise how important—’
‘Kiss my ass, lady.’ He used his bulk to push past her, almost knocking her down, then opened the taxi door and started wedging himself inside as he resumed his phone call. ‘Nah, just some stupid skank. Like I was saying, Artie. Fuck Conroy.’
Erin stared at this insolent sonofabitch stealing her taxi right out from under her nose. That was when the pressure finally went pop inside her mind.
She took her pistol out of her bag and aimed it in his face.
‘Okay, you asked for it, cheesehog. Out of the damn cab. I said, get out of the taxi, now!’
A few bystanders scattered in alarm. Someone yelled, ‘Whoa, holy shit!’
The fat guy dropped his phone and his case and put up his hands. ‘Jesus Christ. Okay! Okay! Whatever you say, ma’am.’ He plucked his bulk out of the taxi door and stepped away in a hurry, his chins wobbling. The cab driver craned his neck from behind the wheel and gaped at Erin, too stunned to move.
‘POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPON!’
Erin froze. She hadn’t noticed the two beat cops approaching. They were just ten yards away, Glocks drawn and trained right on her.
She let her pistol clatter from her fingers and put her hands up. One cop covered his partner as he darted across to pick up her gun. ‘Against the car!’ Erin did what they said.
The arrest didn’t take long. Within what seemed like just seconds, a police cruiser screeched up with lights flashing, and in front of the gathering crowd of onlookers Erin was bundled into the back and read her rights through a wire mesh.
She was too shocked to register where the patrol car was taking her. A hand pressed to the top of her head as she got out; she was walked inside a building, handed over, processed, fingerprinted and finally banged up inside a cell. She slumped on a fixed metal bench and put her head in her hands, feeling ready to throw up out of self-disgust and anger.
Minutes went by. Then the cell door rattled and she looked up to see a craggy face leering at her through the bars.
‘Well, what have we here?’ Chief O’Rourke growled. ‘Look what the cat brought in.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
The commotion Ben had been expecting kicked off one startled beat after the truck engine roared into life. McCrory’s men dropped what they were doing and began yelling and running towards the truck, grappling for their pistols, leaping to grab their rifles.
Ben crunched the gearstick into first, stamped on the gas and the truck lurched violently forwards, bouncing over the uneven ground. He could feel the sheer weight of the cargo of weaponry and munitions in the back. There was no way he could have tried to use it as a getaway vehicle and outrun the 4×4s belonging to the crew. That was fine by him, because theft wasn’t his intention.
His purpose was simple: to inflict maximum damage. Hit McCrory where it hurt most, hit him hard and whittle down his forces with all the speed, aggression and surprise the SAS had taught Ben to deploy.
He drove the loaded truck straight towards the half-loaded one, revving the diesel to a scream and bracing himself for the impact that bounced his ribcage off the steering wheel amid a rending crash of heavy metal. Men hurled themselves out of the way as the half-loaded truck was rammed sideways into the crane lorry. The crane toppled over the edge like a falling tree, crushing its operator who hadn’t been able to get out of the way in time. As if in slow motion it went smashing down into the concrete pit, crushing ladders and equipment and crates, followed by the truck which tumbled over on end, shedding its cargo everywhere.
By then, bullets were thwacking into the bodywork of Ben’s truck, which had ploughed to a halt at a crazy angle at the edge of the pit. With the shotgun still slung around his shoulder, he grabbed the two grenade launchers, kicked open the driver’s door and hurled himself out. He hadn’t hit the ground before he squeezed off the first grenade. It sailed into the side of one of the 4×4s and the vehicle was lifted off the ground and flipped like a toy in a rolling ball of fire. Shrapnel cut down the three men who’d been too slow to escape the range of the explosion. Another managed to dive clear. He fired at Ben. Ben fired another grenade that caught the guy square in the chest, carried him off his feet and backwards into the pit before it went off, setting off a chain explosion of the spilled munitions down there that rocked the earth like a volcanic eruption and sent up a spout of flame bigger than the blazing oil-wells of Kuwait.
Ben felt the skin-peeling heatwave gush by him like dragon’s breath as he ducked around the side of a building. One of the big barns was instantly engulfed in the conflagration, its flimsy wooden structure collapsing, buckled and blackened sheet metal raining down to bury several more of the 4×4s while McCrory’s crew ran like ants.
Never let your enemy get up once he’s down. Tacticians from Napoleon Bonaparte to General George Patton had said it, and with eight grenades to go, it was wisdom Ben intended to honour. He didn’t stop squeezing off shots until both launchers were empty and both trucks and two more farm buildings were blazing skeletons. The fireworks shooting up from the arsenal pit were lighting up the sky with one massive mushrooming blast after another that melted into a rising skyscraper of black smoke they could probably see in Oklahoma City.
Ben threw down the launchers and unslung the shotgun. The first round was already in the chamber. He fired a round of buckshot at a guy who was aiming a pistol his way from behind an old trailer. The shotgun kicked against Ben’s shoulder. The guy’s head dropped out of sight. Ben racked the shotgun lightning-fast. Ker-chunk. Fired again, swept the man’s legs out from under him with the second shot and racked it again and blew out his heart and lungs with the third as he went down.
A bullet skipped off the ground near Ben’s feet and he danced away between the buildings, topping up the shotgun’s magazine from the loose cartridges in his pockets. He kept moving, running back in the direction of the higher ground where he’d stashed the dead sentry’s rifle. Hastily aimed gunfire followed him as he went. He whirled round and fired back from the hip, saw a bite-shaped chunk of masonry disappear from the corner of a building and the guy leaning out from behind it go down with a red flower spreading over his white T-shirt.
Ben kept running. He reached the tree stumps, threw himself down prone behind them in the tall yellow grass and switched weapons. The blunt instrument of a sawn-off shotgun was out of its depth at this distance, but the rifle was a scalpel. Scanning left to right with the ten-times magnification scope, with the gun mounted in the V of the tree stumps, he picked out running figures through the smoke. Still no sign of Ritter or Moon. He wondered where they were, and why not here. What was left of the loading crew was a disorganised rabble. Ben smoothly tracked the rifle after one of them, crucified him in the scope’s fine cross hairs and squeezed the trigger. The .308 punched his shoulder and his eardrums; Ben saw the red-pink mist of blood spray from his target and instantly moved on to acquire another in his sights. Fired again. Same result. Then the wind changed, and a sweeping pall of black smoke engulfed the battlefield that had been Big Bear Farm, obscuring everything from view.
Ben took his eye from the scope. Time to leave. Enough damage had been done.
For now.
Turning his back on the burning farm, he returned un-noticed to the place he’d hidden the car. As he walked down the track he checked through the wallet he’d taken from the sentry. Two hundred and eighty dollars cash, driver’s licence and assorted cards. This guy was the kind of rent-a-thug who actually ca
rried ID on a job. His name had been Dwayne S. Gulick. Next Ben did a quick inspection of Gulick’s phone. There might be one or two contacts on there that could be useful to him.
On the way back through Adonis, he tried calling Erin. There was no reply, and her phone was turned off. He left a brief message asking her to call him. But something didn’t feel right. He pulled over at the side of the road, got the Hyatt Regency front desk number from Google and called them to ask to be put through to Miss Lang in room 421. After a few moments, the receptionist informed him that Miss Lang had gone out.
A tingle of worry began to grow inside him, and he drove on more quickly.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Finn McCrory was alone at home, gnawing on a cold meat sandwich at the bar in the kitchen and still avoiding the office, even avoiding his campaign manager Theo Walsh, when he got the call that spoiled his lunch.
‘I told you how it’d go down,’ Ritter said. ‘Hate to say it, but you shoulda listened to me.’
‘You told me what?’
‘You’d best sit, boss.’
‘I am sitting. Spill it, goddamnit.’
‘It’s not good news, boss. I just got a call from Meagher up at Big Bear. Or what’s left of it. Ain’t much.’
Oh no. It couldn’t be true. Finn plunged his head into his hand. His guts began to churn.
‘Hope?’ he said in a small voice.
‘Who else? You got me and Moon sitting on our asses in fucking Crosbie Heights while he’s doing exactly what I warned you he’d do.’
The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) Page 30