The Martyr’s Curse (Ben Hope, Book 11)

by Scott Mariani

  ‘We’re close,’ Silvie said, bent over the map she had opened out over the centre console and tracing a route along it with her finger. ‘Should be coming up on the place any moment now.’

  Two kilometres on, the entrance to the organic dairy farm was pretty much as Donath had described it. The Hummer rattled over a cattle grid and bumped along a track that carried them perpendicular to the road until they glimpsed the farmhouse and the cluster of neat wooden outbuildings that circled the yard. Well-tended farmland stretched out beyond, overlooked by the sunlit mountains. A bright red tractor was ambling over the fields, tiny in the distance, like a ladybird crawling across a giant rippled sheet of green felt.

  Silvie shook her head, bemused. ‘Some terrorist stronghold. It’s like a scene from a calendar.’

  ‘Would you have preferred fortified defences, razor wire and men with machine guns?’

  ‘At least we’d know for sure, then.’

  ‘He’s here,’ Ben said.

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘I have to believe it,’ he said.

  A little further up the track, they came to a side gate that opened on to a field of tall grass bordered along its western edge by a strip of woodland. Taking a chance that nobody was watching from the farmhouse, they passed through the gate and crossed the field, the Hummer bumping and lurching over the rough ground and leaving wide flattened tracks in its wake. They reached the trees, and Ben rolled it as deep under cover as he could and then shut off the engine. ‘This is it.’

  ‘If Donath was jerking our chain, I’m going back there to kill him,’ Silvie said.

  ‘One way or the other, we’ll soon find out,’ Ben replied. ‘Grab your stuff. We walk from here.’

  Neither of them spoke as they equipped themselves from the kitbags in the back of the Hummer. Ben slipped three of the fully loaded FAMAS magazines into his pockets and clicked a fourth into the rifle’s receiver. Worked the bolt and felt the well-oiled action carry the top round snugly into the chamber. He set the three-way fire selector to single shots. Forget full-automatic. Even three-shot bursts would chew through ammo too quickly, and he worried about things like running out of bullets. Especially when he had no idea how many opponents he was going up against. If Streicher had called in extra muscle, it could be fifty. If Donath had played Ben and Silvie for fools, it could be none. Then they’d have all kinds of other problems, not least of which would be knowing where to pick up the thread again.

  Ben checked his pistol and loaded a couple of spare mags into his pockets for that too, then fitted the SOG knife in its sheath to his belt. Took one of the radios and handed the other to Silvie. He gave the handcuffs a miss. Whatever might happen today, one thing was for certain: Streicher wouldn’t be needing them.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked her.

  ‘Ready.’ Silvie slung her loaded rifle over her shoulder, then quickly stepped close and put her hand against his cheek. She kissed him once, briefly but warmly, on the lips.

  ‘For luck,’ she said.

  They slipped through the trees and emerged on the other side of the strip of woodland. The sun was still bright but a fresh breeze coming down from the mountains felt cool on their faces. Ahead of them was a wide expanse of fields dotted with grazing cattle. Beyond it, right off in the distance, due west across the gently waving grass, a larger, thicker section of forest stood fenced off from the pasture. It looked just the way Miki Donath had described it. If he’d told them everything he knew, then the ten-acre compound the other side of those pines was where Streicher had his hideout.

  It was a quarter-hour hike across the fields. They walked in silence, single-file. A couple of big, placid-looking cows with swaying haunches and clunking bells around their necks wandered across to check them out, then quickly lost interest and moved off again.

  Ben reached the wooded perimeter and turned round to scan the horizon. The farmhouse and buildings were well out of sight and a long way off. Silvie joined him. Up close, the forest looked like an enormous green fortress wall, curving round in a lazy circle to surround whatever lay behind the trees. ‘This has got to be it,’ Silvie said.

  They padded single-file through the shadowy thicket, like a two-man jungle patrol. The ground was spongy with moss. The tall trunks creaked and swayed gently in the breeze.

  They didn’t have far to walk. After fifty metres, Ben held up a closed fist and whispered, ‘Stop.’ Up ahead, the dense screen of foliage ended abruptly at a high wire-mesh fence suspended from metal posts concreted into the ground. Ben moved cautiously to the fence and peered through the mesh. From where he stood, he could see the barrier stretched for about half a mile, with galvanised steel-framed mesh gates set into it at intervals of every four posts, padlocked shut. On the other side of the fence, the forest had been completely levelled and cleared in a circular plot about ten acres in size. But it wasn’t the huge clearing that interested him. It was what stood at its centre.

  He drew the SOG knife and, clutching it by its rubber handle, touched the blade against the wire. No flash, no spark. He brushed his fingers against it. It wasn’t electrified. One less obstacle to worry about. He slipped the knife back in its sheath and whistled softly for Silvie to join him.

  ‘Shit,’ she breathed as she peered through the fence and saw what he’d seen. A straight concrete road marked the radius of the circle from a main gateway thirty degrees anticlockwise around the inside perimeter from where they stood. The road led to the single building inside the vast clearing. It was the size of a large square house, clad in dark wood, with white windows and a pitched roof and a huge steel shutter door, standing on a concrete apron roughly as large as a football field.

  Streicher’s hangar.

  ‘Exactly as Donath described it,’ Silvie whispered. She turned to Ben, her face full of expectation, as if to say, Let’s go for it.

  Ben gazed up at the fence, then around him at the trees, then back at the building. His instinct and training both told him to hang back and wait for nightfall before climbing the wire. If Streicher made a move before then, they’d be ready to make theirs.

  ‘Not now,’ he whispered. ‘Better under cover of darkness.’

  ‘How do we find a way in?’ she breathed.

  His smile was dry and without any trace of humour. ‘There’s always a way in.’

  They backed away from the fence and settled in the shadows of the trees, and waited, and watched.

  Without knowing that, from almost the moment they’d got here, they themselves were being observed.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  ‘Lindquist!’ Streicher yelled as he flung open the laboratory door. In his hand was the nine-millimetre Beretta he’d personally used to execute the suspected spy in their midst, Dexter Nicholls. He fully intended to do the same to Anton Lindquist, if the man let him down. He could be replaced. Anyone could be, except Udo Streicher.

  The inner containment chamber was empty. No sign of Lindquist. ‘Fine,’ Streicher said. He racked the slide on the Beretta, clicked off the safety and went looking for him.

  Lindquist wasn’t far away. Streicher found him next door, in the adjacent lab where the test animals were housed. Still wearing his PPPS suit, the Swede was standing watching a black-and-white monkey in a cage. The animal was resting on its haunches, munching on a slice of apple. At the sight of Streicher, it threw down the food and gripped the bars of its cage, screeching loudly. Lindquist turned in surprise. He was pale with exhaustion, both from lack of sleep and the prolonged terror of his ordeal, but he was suddenly very much awake and his eyes opened wide at the sight of the gun in Streicher’s hand.

  ‘A man’s trust is a precious thing, Anton,’ Streicher said. ‘Especially mine, as your life happens to depend on it. You promised to deliver. Your time is up.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, you can’t come in here without protection,’ Lindquist rasped behind the suit visor. ‘The monkey – it’s infected.’

  Streicher took a step
back, whipped a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it over his nose and mouth. He gazed at the table near the cage, on which was a small amber-coloured bottle and a pack of disposable syringes. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘The antitoxin,’ Lindquist said. ‘I finished it sooner than expected. But the test isn’t complete. I only administered the drug to the monkey ninety minutes ago, alongside the live bacteria.’

  The monkey was still screeching wildly inside the cage. Streicher hated monkeys, mainly because they were too similar to humans. He pointed the gun at it. ‘Make it shut the hell up.’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Is it sick?’

  ‘It’s just afraid of you,’ Lindquist said. ‘These aren’t disease symptoms.’

  A surge of elation stabbed through Streicher’s heart. ‘Then the antitoxin’s working. It’s been ninety minutes. You said the first symptoms appear within an hour.’

  ‘Generally. But ninety minutes isn’t long enough to be certain.’

  Streicher considered, but only for a second. Triumph was blazing through him like a river of fire. He couldn’t wait any longer. ‘It’s good enough,’ he said, grabbing the bottle and syringes from the table. ‘Will this provide doses for everyone?’

  ‘Plenty,’ Lindquist said. ‘But—’

  Streicher pointed the pistol at him. ‘Take off your suit.’

  ‘What?’

  Streicher aimed the gun carefully at Lindquist’s side, where the silvery material hung loose and baggy. He squeezed the trigger. The gunshot was deafening in the hard-surfaced lab. A nine-millimetre hole appeared in the loose folds of the PPPS suit. Passing straight through with no resistance, the bullet smashed a computer screen on a bench behind where Lindquist was standing. The monkey screamed even louder, and shook hysterically at its bars. Streicher swung the gun and fired again, and the monkey was blown against the back of the cage, crumpled and silenced, its fur bloody.

  ‘Take off your suit,’ Streicher repeated. ‘It’s useless to you now, anyway.’

  Lindquist gaped at the hole in the material where the bullet had passed within two inches of his flesh, then turned and gaped again at the dead monkey. He clawed at the neck fastening of his headgear and removed it, pale and shaking. Then undid the fastenings of the rest of the suit and let it slip to the floor. He was mouthing the words he didn’t dare speak out loud. ‘You’re fucking insane.’

  Streicher tossed him the antitoxin bottle, then the syringes. ‘Do you trust it?’ he said.

  ‘I-I did everything right. I know I did.’

  ‘Then take a shot. The test is over. The operation starts here.’

  Lindquist’s hands were fluttering so badly that he could barely get the needle into his arm. He winced as he pressed the plunger.

  ‘Good,’ Streicher said. ‘Now my turn.’ Drawing a fresh needle from the pack, he administered his own dose without a flinch. Lindquist was staring at him, unable to speak. ‘You did good work, Anton,’ Streicher told him with a smile. He sounded like a benevolent schoolteacher after scoring a breakthrough with a recalcitrant pupil. ‘Your contribution will go down in history. It won’t be forgotten.’

  Streicher left the lab and went striding rapidly down the corridor. Suddenly remembering what the Swede had said about the nausea and headaches that might come on as side effects of the antitoxin, he took a detour through the bunker and went to his personal office. He knew what would fix the side effects. Couldn’t be seen throwing up and acting all weak and pathetic in front of the others. Not even in front of Hannah. It wouldn’t become a man of his stature.

  The office was a large room, with an oriental rug and leather chairs and a fine teak desk at which he often sat to gaze at the bank of security monitors mounted in a double row on the wall above a control panel, showing constantly switching high-definition images from inside the bunker and various points along the perimeter. He ignored them at this moment, because he had more pressing business on his mind.

  Laying the antitoxin and needles on the desk, he opened a drawer and took out a plastic sachet of cocaine, a credit card and a short straw. Scattered fine white powder on the desktop, shaped it into three generous lines with the credit card, then bent over the desk and snorted them up in quick succession.

  He straightened up, gasping at the sudden heady rush and dropping the straw. Coloured lights spangled in front of his eyes. His whole being tingled with a champagne fizz and a grin wider than a piano keyboard spread over his face. He breathed out with deep satisfaction and felt as if he was already king of the world. Which he already was, of course. His destiny was assured now. Nothing was going to—

  That was when he happened to glance at the security monitors and something caught his eye that wiped the grin off his face.

  The pair of intruders were standing at the fence and peering through the wire into the compound, filmed from above and to the side, clearly unaware of the miniature camera concealed overhead in the branches of a tree. Both carried automatic weapons. The man was blond and lean, about forty. Looked tough and able to handle himself. Streicher had never seen him before, but he knew the woman, all right. He’d have known her anywhere.

  Michelle Faban.

  Fury rose up inside Udo Streicher with volcanic intensity, fuelled by the cocaine rush.

  The bitch.

  The traitorous, treacherous, lying piece of shit bitch!

  He stared enraged at the monitor for nearly two full minutes. The intruders were talking to one another, making him wish he’d installed microphones into his surveillance system. They seemed to be conferring. They seemed to be alone. As he watched, they drew back from the fence, but he could still see them lingering among the trees, on the edge of his screen. He reached to the control panel and nudged a stubby lever below the monitor that looked like a miniature joystick. The hidden camera panned a few degrees, bringing the concealed figures back to the centre of the screen. The bastards were obviously planning something.

  Streicher tore at his pocket and snatched out the radio handset. He barked into it in a furious gabble.

  ‘Wolf, we have a security breach in progress near Perimeter Gate Seventeen. The Faban woman is out there with some guy. I know why they’re here, and they have to be stopped. Do you hear me, Wolf? I want you to take a four-man team out there and deal with it, right this very minute. I’ll be watching from the monitors. I want them dead. I want that bitch’s head personally delivered to me on a plate, five minutes from now. Understand? Over and out.’

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Wolf Schilling dropped his radio and ran along the corridor to the rec room where Dominik Baiza, Riccardo Cazzitti, Silvain Chavanne and Stefan Ringler were stretched out on sofas and armchairs watching a favourite post-apocalyptic thriller movie on the fifty-inch Panasonic.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Schilling said, standing in the doorway.

  Baiza looked up from the sofa. ‘Zwart’s taking a shit. Lindquist’s still in the lab. As for Wokalek, he was working out in the gym last time I saw him. Hannah’s off somewhere, doing what Hannah does. What’s up?’

  ‘Situation. I’m picking a four-man team to join me out there. You guys are elected. C’mon, on your feet. Work to do.’

  ‘Watching the movie, man,’ Ringler groaned.

  Wolf Schilling clapped his hands. ‘Shift your arses, people. Go, go, go. Cazzitti, run to the armoury and break out the MP5s. You should be pleased, Ringler. Faban’s back and you get to do what you want with her. Let’s move it!’

  Once they were fully tooled up, the hit squad raced through the tunnels in three electric buggies and came out through the hangar. The boss had reset the six-digit bunker entry/exit code again that morning. It was hard to keep up with all his frequent changes.

  Inside the hangar, the five jumped out of the buggies. Wolf Schilling activated the control to lock down the bunker, then aimed the remote towards the steel shutters and stabbed the green button. With a jerk of steel cables followed by
an electric whirr, the lower sill of the shutter rolled up just far enough for them to slide under, scraping their weapons as they went. The shutter whirred down behind them.

  Keeping close to the building, they darted around to the far side to cut across the grass unseen from Perimeter Gate 17. They ran to the fence and Schilling undid the padlock on the nearest gate, allowing them access to the surrounding ring of woodland. The intruders were nearly a quarter of a mile away on the far side of the perimeter, so they had to move fast.

  Wolf Schilling unslung his Heckler & Koch MP5SD submachine gun. It was the sound-suppressed version with the fat silencer that completely shrouded the barrel, one of the specialised military items provided for the Parati by their old pal Miki Donath. The four other men were carrying the same model, all fully bombed up with EOTech red dot optics and C-Mag hundred-round magazines, enough to start and finish a small war. They moved through the trees at a loping stride, their footsteps silent on the mossy ground, and covered the quarter mile in just under four minutes.

  As they approached Perimeter Gate 17, they spread out. Riccardo Cazzitti had learned more than just chopper mechanic skills in the Italian Parachute Infantry Brigade. He prided himself on being able to sneak up on anything that lived and breathed. Taking the outside flank, his alert gaze darted to left and right, the fat muzzle of the H&K moving instinctively wherever he looked and his trigger finger optically connected to his brain, so that all he had to do was lock eyes on his target and it would go down in a silenced purr of machine-gun fire. Fifteen metres to his left crept Dominik Baiza, who was strictly more of a vehicles man and less comfortable on combat detail. Fanning out from Baiza’s left, Schilling and Ringler and Chavanne spanned the remaining woodland. Nothing could escape them as they combed through the trees.