House of War

by Scott Mariani

  The whole time they’d been talking, the busy boulevard the other side of the window was an endless two-way sea of cars and trucks and bikes and bodies and faces of all colours and varieties, constant and monotonous and far less absorbing than the conversation they were deep into. Ben had tuned out completely from what was going on outside, or he might have noticed the three men who crossed the road from the black Mercedes parked down the street, approached the café and paused outside like regular prospective customers checking the place out.

  Françoise Schell was looking at him with a half-smile, part amused, part surprised. ‘Are you hiring me?’

  ‘Maybe we can work together,’ Ben said.

  And that was when he glanced sideways out of the café window and saw the three men standing outside. All three of them staring at him. Black hair, dark eyes, olive faces, serious expressions. The one in the middle clean shaven and in his late twenties or thereabouts, the other two a few years older and both heavily bearded. Each of the three was wearing a thin black strap around his neck and shoulder, from each of which dangled a black metallic item that was not a camera. The trio were just standing there in plain sight, making no attempt to hide what they had. Pedestrians were walking by and paying no notice, serenely lost in their thoughts, their phones, their everyday lives.

  But that was all about to change.

  Ben lunged across the table and grabbed Françoise Schell roughly by the arm, and the two of them tumbled out of their seats as he knocked the table sideways and dragged her to the floor with him, pinning her body under his. The three mobile phones that had been lying on the table between them hit the floor. Cups flew. Coffee splashed. She screamed. A nearby waiter dropped his tray. People turned in sudden shock at the sight of the man attacking the woman at the window table.

  And then the café window blew apart in a storm of gunfire from the street.

  Chapter 26

  The Czech Škorpion submachine gun carries a magazine payload of twenty rounds and pumps them out of its short barrel at a cyclic rate of eight hundred a minute. Multiplied by three, that made for sixty rounds firing through the café window in the space of one-point-four seconds. Just the blink of an eye, but as all hell broke loose and glass rained down and bullets raked the inside of the café and thudded into walls and tables and bodies and people cried out in terror and Ben tried to drag Françoise Schell out of the field of fire, it was the longest one-point-four seconds anyone would ever live through.

  Or not live through.

  And then it was all over. The last pieces of jagged glass fell from the shattered window frame. Gunsmoke swirled around the interior of the café. Ben heard people groaning and shrieking around him. He was lying on the floor beside the capsized table they’d been sitting at moments earlier, with Françoise Schell under him, and broken glass and spilled coffee everywhere. And blood. He could smell its coppery tang and feel its warmth. It was all over him.

  It wasn’t all his blood. He’d been quick enough to pull Françoise down out of her seat to escape the worst of the point-blank gunfire directed at them through the window, but he’d been too slow to save her from all of it. A bullet had ploughed a hole in the side of the head and gone straight through. She was dead.

  Then Ben felt the pain, and knew that he was injured too. How badly, he wouldn’t have time to think about until later. If later ever came. He rolled off Françoise Schell’s body and scrambled for cover behind the fallen table. The face of a dead waiter stared at him from inches away, covered in blood. The gunmen had stepped over the lower edge of the window frame and were striding into the café. Crunching broken glass underfoot. Smoke trickling from the hot receivers of their machine guns. All three Škorpions were empty. The shooters let them dangle loose on their slings, reached inside their jackets and drew out pistols. One of the older, heavily-bearded ones stepped over Françoise Schell’s body, glanced down and spotted the three mobile phones on the floor among the glass and the blood. His eyes lit up. He bent down to scoop them up with his free hand.

  That was when Ben knew that this wasn’t just any old terrorist attack on a bunch of Parisians enjoying their afternoon coffee. This was a targeted hit aimed specifically at eliminating him and recovering the evidence that someone up the food chain had obviously known, or guessed, was contained inside the phone memories.

  Either way, he wasn’t going to stand there and let them do it.

  The gunmen began firing as they came. The snap of pistol shots filled the café and more people screamed. Ben’s capsized table offered little in the way of protection. Two bullets punched through the flimsy wood and a third passed over the top of him. He was suddenly very conscious of the hard, angular shape pressing against the back of his right hip, inside his waistband, hidden under the hem of his leather jacket. The Glock he’d captured from the Corsicans and pointed in Michel Yassa’s face. He’d almost decided to leave it in the car. Which would have been a fatal decision.

  Ben drew out the pistol. The butt fitted into his hand like an extension of his arm. He thrust it up and over the edge of the table and fired back at the gunmen, BLAM BLAM BLAM. The one who’d picked up the phones now dropped them again, along with his pistol, and clapped a hand over his chest and fell back among the blood and the broken glass. The other two kept on coming, focusing their fire Ben’s way. The remaining bearded one was maniacally yelling the war cry ‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’ as he squeezed off shots as fast as he could. Ben caught him square in his gunsights and took him down with a triple-tap to the chest, three holes almost touching, like a clover leaf. As number two went down to meet with the seventy-two virgins of jannah, the last gunman suddenly seemed to realise that he was about to become the third, and wasn’t ready for such a fate. He faltered, squeezed off two more shots that smacked into the tabletop in front of Ben, then turned and began to bolt towards the shattered window through which he’d come.

  Ben had no problems with shooting him in the back as he tried to escape. But as he levelled his sights and pressed the trigger, nothing happened.

  Even the ultra-reliable mechanism of a Glock could jam sometimes. Ben was trained and ready for it, and he cleared the jam and punched the gun back up to find its target, who was now leaping wildly through the shattered window and racing across the pavement, pistol in hand, his empty submachine gun swinging about on its sling, running for all that he was worth.

  Out in the street, pedestrians were fleeing in terror. Others had thrown themselves to the pavement or huddled behind parked cars, trying to make themselves as small and invisible as possible. Some were simply rooted to the spot, paralysed with fear and shock. Ben was about to open fire on the fleeing shooter when he saw the group of frightened women and children right in his field of fire behind the target. He swore, lowered the gun and gave chase.

  Sprinting across the street, the gunman almost collided with a car whose driver was desperately trying to get away from the scene. Ben headed after him in pursuit. He jumped over the dead body of the bearded terrorist who’d tried to take the phones. The guy was lying with his arms outflung, eyes staring up at the ceiling, already enjoying the promised rewards of the afterlife. All three phones were lying next to his body. Ben grabbed them and stuffed them into his pocket and kept running. He reached the shattered window and leaped through. Hit the pavement running and sprinted after the fleeing gunman, trying to get a shot at him, but the guy had reached the opposite side of the street and was ducking behind parked cars for cover.

  As Ben ran into the street he was aware of the blood running down his side and wetting his shirt. His own, not Françoise Schell’s. A strange chill was coming over him. But he’d been injured before, and lived to tell the tale; and at this moment his focus was too intensely locked on his target to dwell too much on his own wellbeing. Catching a glimpse of movement through the parked car windows, he debated whether or not to shoot. Innocent bystanders as well as the gunman were taking cover back there. There’d been enough collateral damage from this th
ing already.

  Then the shooter came up again, this time with his left arm clutched in a stranglehold around the neck of a young Nigerian woman who’d taken cover in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Her face was tight with fear and she was clawing at his arm to escape his choking grip, but he was hanging on tight as he swung her body in front of his, using her as a human shield while he aimed past her shoulder and fired at Ben. A shop window shattered to Ben’s rear, showering glass over the pavement. He ducked as more bullets whistled past him. Couldn’t shoot back for fear of hitting the shooter’s hostage.

  ‘POLICE!’ The shout came from down the street. It was too soon for the emergency response units to have turned up. Two gendarmes who must have been on patrol when they heard the shots were running towards the scene, pistols drawn. They locked eyes on the gunman clutching the hostage and pointed their weapons, but like Ben they couldn’t open fire in case they hit the woman. They were both screaming at him to drop the gun and let her go. He swung the pistol their way, then back at Ben, as though panicky with indecision. Then aimed it back at the cops and fired, screaming ‘DAESH! ALLAHU AKBAR!’ and one of them spun around and corkscrewed to the pavement clutching his hip. The other one still couldn’t shoot, and threw himself behind a car as the gunman kept on blasting at him, blowing holes in bodywork and sending up sprays of exploding glass. Ben’s sights were hovering right on him, but it was too dangerous to risk a shot. The gunman ducked low and kept himself hidden behind his hostage as he hauled her kicking and screaming up the street towards a black Mercedes that was parked a few cars behind Ben’s own BMW. As he raced the last few yards, he dumped the woman and let her sprawl to the pavement, then ripped open the driver’s door and leaped inside.

  With the hostage out of the field of fire, Ben had the green light to pump bullets into the Mercedes. Nine-millimetre holes perforated the bonnet and turned the windscreen into a mass of white cobwebs. The Mercedes roared into life, screeched out of its parking space and came veering right towards him where he stood in the road, forcing him to leap aside.

  He kept firing as it sped by him. He couldn’t tell what he was hitting inside. The side windows blew out, then the rear screen. The back end of the Mercedes was fishtailing all over the road. Ben aimed for the tyres and was about to try to take them out when the second cop came up from behind his cover with his gun raised. His eyes were flashing and he was all keyed up with adrenalin, and Ben could see the guy was ready to shoot anything that moved. As far as the cop was concerned, he’d stumbled into the middle of some kind of turf war shootout between rival criminal gangs, and Ben was just as much a target as the escaping gunman.

  Ben lowered his pistol and ripped out his wallet, flipping it open to show the fake police ID inside and holding it up high for the gendarme to see. The cop blinked in total confusion, but held his fire. Ben yelled, ‘Detective Jacques Dardenne, Police Nationale. Stand down, Officer. I’m in pursuit of a terror suspect.’

  The Mercedes was speeding off fast down Boulevard du Montparnasse. Ben ran for his car, blipping the locks as he went. The gendarme was still just standing there alone. But he wouldn’t be alone for long, because half the Parisian police would soon be screaming to the scene. Ben yelled, ‘Multiple casualties inside the café, including two dead terrorists. Hold the fort, Officer. Backup’s on its way.’ Then he was behind the wheel of the Alpina and firing it up in a throaty blast of quad exhausts and stamping his foot on the gas, slamming into the car in front to knock it out of his way as he took off after the disappearing Mercedes.

  This bastard wasn’t getting away so easily.

  Chapter 27

  Ben’s foot was hard to the floor as the revs mounted in a soaring howl and the acceleration pressed him back into his seat. The Mercedes had a seventy-yard lead on him but the Alpina could hit 100 kilometres per hour from a standstill in under four seconds. The boulevard became a tunnel blurred at the edges. All he could see was his prey ahead, its flaring brake lights getting closer now as the Mercedes was forced to slow for the confusion of stalled traffic further down the street. Drivers were honking horns, or getting out and craning their necks wondering what was happening, or else abandoning their vehicles and escaping on foot as they began to realise that an incident was taking place. The Mercedes ploughed a wild course between the stopped cars, hitting everything it came near and turning the confusion to panic and chaos.

  Ben followed with gritted teeth, refusing to let up his speed. He intended to catch this guy and make him talk, no matter what.

  The gap between him and the Mercedes had halved already. Now it closed to thirty yards. The fleeing gunman was on the edge of losing control. Suddenly a stretch bus lumbered out of a side street and slammed on the brakes as its driver saw the Mercedes rocketing straight for him. The Mercedes flew into a squealing skid, mounted the central reservation sideways, pulverised an empty bus stop and a railing and almost overturned before it somehow righted itself and kept on going.

  Just twenty-five yards behind, Ben swerved around the front of the stopped bus, knocked aside the wreckage in the Mercedes’ wake, and kept on chasing. Next the gunman took a violent turn to the left, off Montparnasse and into Boulevard Raspail, screaming so wide through the junction that he almost overshot and smashed through the entrance of a corner patisserie. Ben dived into the turn right on his tail and accelerated hard after him.

  Ahead, Boulevard Raspail split into a fork, with one-way warning signs flanking the entrance to the street to the right. The gunman could probably hardly see a thing through the opaque spider’s web of his shattered windscreen. He sped through the signs and the wrong way up the street, and Ben had to follow. The street was narrow and shady, lined with parked cars and motorcycles, fine apartment buildings with fancy balcony railings looming high on both sides, like a canyon against whose walls the roaring engines of the two cars echoed as they sped up the middle. At the end of the street was a T-junction with a big office building directly opposite. The Mercedes was halfway there when a colourful sports bike turned into the junction at an acute angle of lean and accelerated briskly, the rider obviously too focused on his racing skills to notice the two cars speeding straight towards him the wrong way up the street.

  By the time the motorcyclist saw the Mercedes coming it was already too late to swerve out of the way. The parked vehicles on both sides made it too narrow to pass. He was hard on the brakes and his suspension was compressed deep into its fork tubes. No way to stop in time, let alone get out of there. The Mercedes wasn’t slowing down. The gunman clearly thought he could run straight over the top of the oncoming bike. Instants before the inevitable collision the rider threw himself off his machine and went tumbling. The riderless motorcycle stayed upright on its wheels for the last couple of yards before it collided smack into the middle of the front end of the Mercedes.

  The impact lifted the car’s rear into the air. The bike somersaulted violently over the bonnet and came slamming down on the road behind the car. Ben braked hard to avoid running over the wreckage. Now totally out of control, the Mercedes veered straight into a row of parked cars along the kerbside, ploughing a trail of carnage before it came to a crunching halt against a solid iron bollard.

  That was the end of the road for the gunman.

  Ben threw open his driver’s door and stepped out of the Alpina. The road was covered in spilled fuel and oil from the smashed sportsbike. Nearby, its rider, still stunned, was getting to his feet and pulling off his helmet. He was a young guy, maybe twenty. Ben called out to him, ‘You okay?’, to which the young guy gave a dazed kind of nod, and Ben replied, ‘Good. Now beat it,’ flashing the police ID. The rider nodded again and stumbled off, with just a glance at the twisted ruin that was all that was left of his bike.

  Ben could hear the wail of sirens tearing up through Montparnasse and approaching fast. In minutes, this whole place would be swarming with real police. But for the moment he was alone with the last of the three gunmen who’d just tried to k
ill him, and succeeded in killing a lot of innocent people in the attempt. Ben felt a pang of deep sadness for Françoise Schell. She was dead because he’d persuaded her to meet with him, no other reason.

  And somebody was going to pay for that.

  The Mercedes was a wreck, its front end crushed like a concertina against the thick iron bollard. The engine was dead and hot metal was ticking and a wisp of smoke was rising from under the crumpled, bullet-holed bonnet. There was no movement from inside. Ben walked towards it. He winced as a lance of pain shot through him. He could feel the blood trickling warm down his left side. He kept walking, eyes fixed on the Mercedes, gun in hand, ready for the driver’s door to fly open and the gunman to come jumping out, firing as he came.

  But the gunman wasn’t going anywhere. Ben cautiously approached the side of the wrecked car and grasped the door handle with his free hand, and tugged it open with the gun ready.

  The body of the terrorist slumped sideways out of the opened door, bloody and staring. His forehead and the top of his skull were caved in like an eggshell where they’d punched through the windscreen on impact. That might have finished him off, but the two bullets that Ben had plugged him with as he’d driven off earlier would have done for him before too long. The inside of the Mercedes looked like a butcher’s slab.

  Ben crouched beside the slumped corpse and frisked him. The guy was wearing a gold identity bracelet that was engraved in Arabic with the name ‘Sarfaraz’, but aside from that he was carrying no identification, not even a phone. Too much to hope for. His slim leather wallet contained only a thick wad of banknotes. Ben took them for himself as spoils of war, since he’d given all his paper money to Michel Yassa.

  He stood up. The pain was worsening now as the adrenalin of the chase was beginning to wear off. The blood was leaking mostly from his chest, as well as various parts of his upper body. If he’d taken a bullet anywhere serious, he didn’t think he’d have made it this far. Then again, he’d known men fatally shot who didn’t realise it until afterwards, when they suddenly collapsed.