The Forgotten Holocaust

by Scott Mariani

  ‘I know who you are, shitbird. I know all about you.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Ben said. ‘I’m the stone in your shoe. The guy who keeps getting in the way. Did your pal O’Rourke give you a hard time over the little incident at the shopping mall today? You might have to increase his retainer.’

  ‘What do you want, Hope?’ McCrory demanded.

  ‘It’s more a question of what you want, Mr Mayor. More precisely, what you’re willing to give in return.’

  ‘Oh, you called me up at one in the morning to talk business, asshole?’

  ‘I’ve heard you’re a pretty sharp operator when it comes to making deals,’ Ben said. ‘I think this is one you’ll be eager to make.’

  ‘Go on,’ McCrory said warily.

  ‘I have in my possession some items of interest to you. A set of books. Private journals of historical importance. Need I elaborate?’

  ‘I know what books you mean.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Now, what do I want with a pile of dusty old diaries? They’re of no use to me.’

  ‘I see. So you’re looking to sell them, is that right?’

  ‘To the highest bidder. The guide price is five million dollars.’

  McCrory gave a snort. ‘You’ve got this all figured out, huh, smartass?’

  ‘Think about the alternative, Mr Mayor. It won’t be pretty. A lot of people will get hurt. I’m sure we’ve all had enough of violence. Except maybe your psycho buddy Moon.’

  ‘All right, fuckhead, let’s say we do business. But five million for a bunch of old books? A little more than their auction value, isn’t it?’

  Ben took another drag on his cigarette. ‘It’s a seller’s market. You know how that goes.’

  ‘All the same, you tell me why I’d consider paying even half that much.’

  ‘Because you stand to lose so much more if they should fall into the wrong hands,’ Ben said. ‘You know what I’m talking about, and you know this is a bargain price I’m offering here. I’m betting Kristen Hall was trying to shake you down for a lot more. Am I right?’

  McCrory said nothing.

  ‘And just to show you how generous I am, I’ll even throw in something extra to sweeten the deal. Five million, and you can have Erin Hayes too. She’s of no use to me either. Nor is the remaining copy of the little home video she made of you, Matt Ritter and Billy Bob Moon murdering one soon-to-be snitch by the name of Kirk Blaylock.’

  McCrory remained very silent on the other end. Ben smiled. ‘Hello? Are you there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ McCrory said in a tight voice.

  ‘Now, I want the money in cash, and I want it tonight. We make the exchange, then you’ll never hear from me again.’

  ‘You’re crazy. I don’t have that kind of cash just laying around, you know. It’ll take me at least two days.’

  ‘Don’t give me that. Your kind of clients pay by cheque, do they? It’s cash, or else wave bye-bye to the journals.’

  McCrory thought for a few moments. ‘All right, all right. You have your money. But you mess with me, you’re just another dead scumbag.’

  ‘You know a good deal when you see one,’ Ben said. ‘Now here are my instructions. Meet me at the lake cabin at three thirty sharp. You come alone, with the money packed in two large holdalls. I’ll be there with the goods. And the woman, too.’

  ‘How’m I supposed to handle her, if I’m alone? Think I’m going to drive around with some screaming bitch in the back of my nice green Mercedes?’

  ‘That’s not going to be a problem,’ Ben said. ‘She’ll be heavily sedated. I’ll even help you stick her in the trunk, okay? Then she’s all yours to do what you want with. Let the boys play with her a while first. Then grind her up into dog meat, for all I care. Makes no difference to me.’

  ‘Real piece of work, ain’t you, Hope?’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  ‘Maybe you should come work for me.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that, with your five million in my pocket?’ Ben looked at his watch. ‘Best get moving, Mr Mayor. You have just a little over two hours. See you at the cabin.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  It was hot and sultry down by the lakeside, only the slightest of breezes from the north whispering over the water. An owl hooted from somewhere in the dark fringe of trees that hugged the shore. Clouds of moths danced in the glow of the cabin’s veranda lanterns and the warm light that pooled out from its curtained windows. The front door was slightly ajar, as if to welcome the expected visitors. Music was playing softly inside the cabin: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, Andante, the only thing Ben had liked from the McCrorys’ CD collection. It was good music for waiting to.

  At three fifteen, quarter of an hour ahead of schedule, headlights appeared on the single track that led towards the cabin. They weren’t those of Finn McCrory’s Mercedes, but of a van. The lights bobbed and jerked as it came lurching down the track. Another white GMC commercial panel van, just like the other. It drove up close to the cabin and pulled up next to the car that was parked there, with the engine running and the headlamps flooding the entrance on full beam.

  As expected, McCrory hadn’t come alone.

  He hadn’t come at all.

  At the same moment that Matt Ritter and Billy Bob Moon jumped down from the cab, ready for war, the van’s side and rear doors opened and another six of their accomplices clambered out. They all knew the plan. There was no talking, just the clacking of automatic weapons being cocked. They’d come extremely prepared. Every team member was equipped with a brand-new KRISS Vector, and between them these good ol’ boys were carrying enough ammunition to spark off a rematch of the Civil War, one the Union would have lost for sure this time.

  The men positioned themselves in a line facing the cabin, casting tall, bent shadows under the glare of the lights. There was a crackle of nervousness in the air. Despite Ritter and Moon’s best efforts to stifle it, a certain amount of talk had been circulating among them about this badass mofo they were going after tonight. How he’d taken three of the gang down like skittles at the mall parking lot shoot-out and blown the crap out of a dozen cars, maybe even more; how he’d cut off Quincy’s arm to take his gun. How sick and twisted was that? The man had even managed to evade Ritter and Moon not twice, but three times: a feat that nobody had ever, ever pulled off before. But if this Hope guy was swiftly becoming a legend, it would be a short-lived one after what was in store tonight.

  Still, they were nervous.

  Ritter walked a few steps towards the veranda, holding a megaphone that he’d brought from the van. His amplified voice cut through the stillness.

  ‘All right, Hope. You know what we’ve come for. Toss out the goods. Then come out with the woman. Nice and easy. Hands on your heads where we can see ’em. No tricks. We get what we want, then nobody else gets hurt.’ Nobody else, apart from Erin Hayes. That had been the deal.

  There was silence from the cabin. The half-open front door creaked slightly in the breeze. The piano concerto tinkled faintly from inside.

  ‘Hear me, Hope?’ Ritter said into the megaphone. ‘No messing around. You got five seconds.’

  There was still no response from the cabin.

  ‘What the hell’s he doin’ in there?’ muttered Kurzweil on the far right of the line, nursing his gun.

  Another of them, Meagher, laughed uneasily. ‘Guess we caught’m screwin’ the merchandise.’

  ‘That is one hardcore dude,’ said someone else.

  Ritter silenced the chatter with a hard look, then exchanged glances with Moon. ‘I don’t think the sumbitch’s comin’ out,’ Moon whispered.

  Ritter gave a shrug. ‘Fine. Wouldn’t’ve done him any good anyway.’ He tossed down the megaphone. He didn’t show it, but he was a little disappointed in the boss’s orders. He’d really wanted to kill this guy face-to-face. Moon was thinking along the same lines, but about the woman. Shame. But you had to do what you had to do. This wa
s the second time they’d been sent to wipe out all trace of Hope and the evidence. Ritter was determined that there wouldn’t be a third.

  ‘All right, boys,’ Ritter said to the lined-up team, unslinging his KRISS Vector. ‘Let’s rock and roll.’

  Safeties were set to FIRE. Weapons were shouldered, fingers twitched on triggers. Then the tranquil night air erupted into a wall of noise, sending a panicked explosion of night birds flapping from the trees. The concentrated mass of firepower hammered into the front of the cabin, the pretty varnished oak planking shredded into splinters as more than a hundred and thirty rounds a second punched and tore through the wood. The porch railing blew apart. Windows shattered and fell in. The traditional-style lanterns Angela McCrory had gone all the way to Houston to buy for the entrance were blasted into a thousand pieces.

  The shooters reloaded their guns and kept up a continual fire as they spread out around the cabin, peppering it from a wider angle. Now the outer walls were beginning to disintegrate as over sixty kilos of copper-jacketed lead per minute poured into the building, destroying anything in its path. The music stopped abruptly as a bullet found the CD player. Bits of planking reduced to shredded tatters fell away from the structure. One by one, the interior lights went dark, until the cabin was illuminated only by the headlamps of the van. Nothing inside could possibly survive. Wherever Hope and the woman were desperately trying to take cover right now, they simply stood no chance against such a relentless unleashing of brute force.

  Ritter ceased fire and held up his hand for the rest of the men to do the same. In the sudden heavy silence, something was fizzling from inside the shattered wreck in front of them. A bullet-riddled length of guttering swung loose and then dropped down onto the veranda, in the very spot where Kirk Blaylock had died crawling on his knees for mercy. After tonight, there’d be no more killing here. Because there was virtually nothing left of the place to kill anyone in.

  Soon, there’d be nothing left at all. It was time to finish the job and go home.

  Ritter turned and walked quickly back to the van, where a steel-lined box four feet long by two wide lay in the back. He flipped open the lid and took out one of his latest acquisitions, another toy that came courtesy of his special connections in the military. It was the new lightweight version of the M-32 forty-millimetre rotary grenade launcher, exclusively designed for the US Army Special Ops Command and capable of firing anything from non-lethal riot control rounds to chemical warfare munitions to high-explosive stuff, pumping out six shots in under four seconds. This would be a good opportunity to test it out before the first batch was sold on to their eager clients south of the border.

  Ritter worked the trigger as fast as it would go. All six grenades slammed into the ruins of the cabin and detonated together in a fiery blast that lit up the sky and made the ground tremble. The force of the explosion lifted off the roof. Remnants of wooden walls and fragments of furniture and household fittings and wiring and pipes were blown upwards and outwards, raining down in a flaming circle that made several of the men step back; then the disintegrated roof collapsed into the furious blaze.

  Ritter didn’t need to reload. The destruction was total, the cabin’s remains almost completely razed to the ground. Building demolition was getting to be a habit.

  ‘Yeah!’ Moon crowed, punching a gleeful fist in the air and forgetting all about his previous designs on Erin Hayes, now reduced to a smouldering corpse somewhere under all that wreckage, along with a certain Ben Hope who truly wasn’t going to be a problem any more.

  ‘That oughta do it,’ Ritter said in satisfaction, his straight-faced composure slipping for just a moment. ‘You know what, those trigger-happy beaners are sure as shit gonna love this baby.’ Just the thing for taking out entire convoys of DEA agents. Oh, to be properly at war again. His grin vanished as quickly as it had appeared. ‘All right, boys, party’s over. Let’s get out of here.’

  A few looks and nods of relief were exchanged as the men gathered by the van, clutching their warm weapons, faces lit by the glow of the fire. Mission accomplished, and not a shot fired at them in return.

  ‘That was something, huh?’ Meagher said.

  ‘Hey, where’s Kurzweil?’ someone asked suddenly.

  Ritter turned to look around. Kurzweil had been on the end of the firing line and Ritter had last seen him moving around the right-hand flank as they’d all spread out. He scanned the group, counting five excluding himself and Moon. Eight men had got out of the van. Now it was only seven. No Kurzweil.

  ‘Anyone see him?’

  Shaking of heads.

  ‘He was standing right by me, coupla moments ago,’ said Torres.

  ‘Well, where’d he go?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘Probably takin’ a piss,’ Moon said, peering towards the trees. ‘Yo! Kurzweil!’ he hollered, cupping a hand around his mouth. ‘Get your retarded ass back over here now, you hear?’

  Ritter looked hard into the shadows, but all he could see was the flickering outline of branches and leaves in the glow of the flames. ‘Kurzweil!’ he shouted. ‘You wanna be left behind?’

  But Kurzweil wasn’t there. He was already several hundred yards away, totally unconscious and being carried off through the darkness of the forest.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Back in the olden days, the military brass had occasionally thought it worthwhile to pit small SAS units against superior numbers of regular British troops in tactical exercises, to test the training of both sides and practise covert operations and resistance-to-interrogation skills in realistic conditions. Ben and his team had used those exercises to become highly proficient at sneaking up on regular units in total darkness and in ghostlike silence and magicking one of them away, bound, hooded and utterly bewildered, to some secret location before his comrades had even noticed him gone. After a little roughing up, the thoroughly humiliated and slightly bruised squaddie would be stuffed in a Land Rover and dumped back on his unit, the butt of jokes for the rest of his life. It had all been a bit of innocent fun.

  Fun wasn’t what Lars Kurzweil was having as dawn broke over Tulsa. One moment he’d been carrying out his job along with the guys, the next, something had come up behind him out of the shadows and hit him so hard and fast he was down before he could make a sound. He’d felt a hand clamp over his mouth and then a sharp pain as a bent needle stabbed deep into the side of his neck. He’d lost consciousness too quickly to see his attacker’s face or even to feel himself being dragged away into the trees.

  As the drug’s effects began to wear off, his eyelids fluttered open and he lifted his chin off his chest. His vision was watery and blurred, but he could tell he was in a darkened room. Something about it made him think it wasn’t a normal room, but he was too fuzzy to figure out what, and so he tried to concentrate on his immediate situation. He was sitting upright on what felt like a wooden chair, unable to move his arms or legs. Slowly, he realised that he wasn’t paralysed, but that he was tightly trussed to the chair with his hands tied behind its back and his ankles bound to its wooden legs. He struggled weakly, tried to speak but couldn’t for the gag around his mouth. His head was pounding and awful nausea was washing over him in waves. He blinked to clear the wetness from his eyes.

  The first thing Lars Kurzweil saw when his vision focused was the large black O of the sawn-off shotgun muzzle that was resting very still over the backrest of another chair in front of him, just a couple of feet from his face. His drugged brain was still lagging behind the rest of his senses, so it took a few seconds before he registered it for what it was and his eyes shot wide open.

  Pant-wetting fear was a very appropriate reaction for someone awakening to the sight of a twelve-gauge in their face. A moan burst from his gagged mouth and he rocked in the chair, trying to recoil from the business end of the gun. The man pointing it was sitting backwards astride the chair opposite him.

  ‘Welcome back to the world of the living,’ Ben said. Three ho
urs had passed since he’d carried his inert prisoner through the woods to where he’d hidden the Barracuda, far enough away for the rest of the men not to hear the throaty burble of the V8 Hemi as he made his escape. He could easily have put Kurzweil to sleep simply by compressing his carotid artery, cutting off the oxygen to his brain to knock him out almost instantly – but he’d needed the man to remain unconscious for longer, so he’d pumped about two-thirds of the syringe into him. That had allowed plenty of time to drive back to the Perryman Inn, pick up Erin and bring her and their captive here. The lock-up was proving useful in more ways than one.

  The wide-eyed prisoner mumbled something through the gag that might have been, ‘Where the fuck am I?’

  ‘Where you are is up shit creek, without a paddle. I’m Ben. This is Erin. I think you already knew our names. I heard your buddies calling for you, so I know yours, too, Kurzweil. I know a lot of things, about Ritter and Moon, and your boss McCrory. When I take this gag off, you’re going to be an obliging fellow and fill me in on the rest.’ Gripping the shotgun butt in his right hand, Ben reached forwards with his left and yanked the dirty rag from the man’s face. Kurzweil spat bits of fluff mixed with blood where the gag had chafed the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Now let’s get down to business,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t need to tell a bad boy gangster like you that nothing says “instant brain death” like a twelve-gauge Brenneke slug at point-blank range. That’s only if you act stupid and don’t tell me what I want to know. Quick, concise answers. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Or I will carve out a river valley through the middle of your skull. Are we clear?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Kurzweil said, even though he looked no less terrified than before.

  Ben leaned closer. ‘I didn’t quite catch that, Kurzweil. Do you want to start again and have another go? This time, think about what I just said.’