Ben left her side and limped over to where Usberti lay. After a moment he called back, ‘He’s not dead.’
Usberti wasn’t unconscious, either. But something was wrong with him. His open eyes were glazed and strangely unfocused. His lips were moving as he muttered inaudibly to himself. In one curled hand he was clutching a small pill bottle, from whose unscrewed top what remained of its contents had spilled on the ground.
It was only when Ben reached down to take the pill bottle from his limp fingers that the old man seemed to register his presence. The glazed eyes rolled dolefully up at him, but nothing else moved. Ben read the medical brand name printed on the label to see what the yellow pills on the ground were, and then tossed it away. The patient wouldn’t be needing them any more anyhow.
‘What’s happened to him?’ Anna said.
‘He’s had a heart attack,’ Ben told her. ‘Or a massive stroke. Either way, it’s all over for him.’
‘I’ve seen him popping more and more of those pills lately,’ Janssens said. ‘He didn’t think anyone noticed. Seen him clutching his heart once or twice, too. All this digging must’ve brought on the attack. He’s got to have shifted three tons of sand here, at least.’
‘Or maybe it was the shock of finding what was under it,’ Ben said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a shame.’
Janssens looked surprised to hear Ben say such a thing. ‘A shame that there was no gold after all, or a shame that this poor, dear, once-great leader of men is now reduced to a drooling vegetable? I can’t believe either would bother you that much.’
‘Neither does,’ Ben said. ‘I mean, I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see the look on his face when all his sick little dreams fell apart. The moment he realised that hurting my friends, murder and torture, all of it, was for nothing, and that he was never going to live to find his precious gold, and that he was going to die alone and miserable.’ He bent closer to Usberti, saw the eyes roll up at him again. ‘Isn’t that right, Archbishop? You can hear everything I’m saying, can’t you?’
Usberti’s lips moved and he whispered something. Ben leaned closer still, so he could hear.
‘Shoot me … Don’t … don’t leave me like this … Please.’
‘I’d shoot a dog,’ Ben said, ‘if I thought it was suffering. I’d put any innocent creature out of its misery. But I’d make an exception for you. You don’t merit it.’
‘I … beg … you … Finish it.’
‘You should shoot him,’ Anna said.
‘He’s already in hell,’ Ben said. ‘Why waste the bullet?’
‘Because it’s the humane thing to do.’
‘Does he deserve humanity?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’ she said. ‘Give me the gun. I’ll do it, if you won’t.’
‘Will it make you feel better?’ Ben asked her.
‘No. It won’t. It will make me feel sick for the rest of my life. I’ll never be able to close my eyes again without remembering what it felt like to take a life. Even one like his.’
‘Then I’ll do it,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not like you, Anna. When I go to bed every night, this bastard’s brains all over the ground will be the last thing I picture before I drop off to sleep with a big cheesy smile on my face.’
He put the Glock to Usberti’s head.
‘This is for Father Pascal,’ he said. ‘For Luc Simon, for Jeff Dekker. For every life you ever reached out and destroyed. And for all the rest of the people in the world who’ll be that little bit safer once you’re gone, even if they’ll never know it. Say hello to the Devil for me, Usberti, because you’ll be with him in about one second from now.’
The shot rang out across the desert. Its echo rolled and boomed for miles. Ben stood up. A jolt of pain ran through him. He felt dizzy and weak, and infinitely sad. Not for what he’d just done. But for the fact that he hadn’t done it years sooner.
‘And that’s that,’ Janssens said. ‘May the best man win, just like he said.’
Ben was about to reply when a triple stitch of red holes blew out of Janssens’ chest and he went straight down on his back, dead before he even started toppling.
Ben seized Anna’s good arm and sent her spinning over the edge of the trench, then dived in after her as Ugo Bozza loosed off another burst from the submachine gun that Janssens had left in the truck. For a man with a bullet in him, he’d sneaked up on them with incredible stealth.
Ben poked the Glock over the edge of the trench and snapped back two double-taps in quick succession. He saw the snow skip at Bozza’s feet, heard the clank of a copper-jacketed 9mm bullet perforating the truck. Bozza jumped over its side and disappeared behind it. From Ben’s low angle he could see the man’s feet under the truck’s wheelbase. He took aim and fired again, and this time he heard a sharp yell as his bullet punched into the heel of Bozza’s boot.
Bozza went down on one knee, but before Ben could fire again he rattled off another stream from under the truck that made the fresh sand at the edge of the trench dance and sent Ben slithering down for cover. Anna had managed to crawl over to the wooden statue and was cowering behind it. ‘Stay there and don’t move!’ he yelled at her.
‘I won’t,’ she yelled in reply.
Ben fired. Bozza fired back. Ben fired back again. The gunshots boomed and rattled and echoed over the desert. They could go on like this all day, except for one crucial issue. Trench warfare, with both belligerents hunkered down under cover either side of no-man’s land, was a war of attrition whose outcome basically came down to whichever side’s ammunition supply could outlast the other’s. Ben had started with a near-full Glock, and a Glock was a high-capacity weapon with a thrifty one-at-a-time appetite for bullets. You could load it on a Sunday and shoot all week long. Whereas Bozza’s submachine gun was to ammo what a supercharged V12 Chevrolet engine was to fuel, and with no spare magazine the odds were long against him.
Bozza knew that.
And so, he shortened them.
When Ben heard the truck engine starting up, he thought for a second that Bozza was beating an escape. When he saw it racing straight towards him, he knew he couldn’t have been more wrong.
The truck came roaring over the edge in a storm of dirt and snow. Its nose tipped forwards and its spinning front wheels slammed into the loose sand and it bounced and careered down the sloping bank of the trench to slam hard into the wooden hulk at the bottom, making Anna crawl frantically out of the way to avoid being crushed to death.
Bozza came piling out of the driver’s side, teeth clenched in a look of manic hatred.
Ben was there to meet him.
The close-quarter battle was virtually toe to toe. Ben shot Bozza in the chest. Bozza flinched. Ben shot him again. Bozza twisted. The submachine gun snorted out a three-round burst. Two of them missed Ben.
The third one did not miss.
Ben felt its impact rock him on his feet, but he didn’t take his eyes off the pistol’s sights or the target behind them. He fired again. A third eye opened up at the exact centre of Bozza’s forehead. He seemed to hang in mid-air for a split second, and then dropped soundlessly into the sand and was dead.
Ben stood there looking over Bozza’s corpse. Then he sensed the ground falling out from under him, and suddenly he was looking up at the pale sky with Anna’s anguished cry echoing in his ears from somewhere far away.
Chapter 65
Anna came scrabbling over to him, crying out his name, shaking him. Ben blinked. His vision swirled, then drifted into focus. He rolled his head to one side and saw Bozza lying nearby, staring lifelessly into his eyes with a thin red trickle oozing from the hole in his brow. Then Ben turned his head back upwards and saw Anna kneeling over him, her long black hair dishevelled and hanging down past her tear-streaked face.
‘That guy Bozza takes a lot of killing, doesn’t he?’ he said.
‘So do you, Ben Hope. You hear me? More than anyone!’
‘I don’t know about that,’ he replied. He smiled at his feeble joke, but Anna di
dn’t seem to find it amusing. He lifted his head and peered down the length of his body, seeing it as though it belonged to someone else. Then saw the blood pouring from the gunshot wound in his side, and understood why she wasn’t laughing.
‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed. ‘You’re so badly hurt. It’s all because of me.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘I do this kind of thing all the time.’
‘We have to get out of here.’
‘Can’t you just let me lie here a while? I’m feeling a little tired.’
She wiped away her tears. ‘No! Put your arm around my neck. Let me help you. We have to go.’
Anna helped him get to his feet, but he couldn’t stand properly without her support. Blood seemed to be everywhere. ‘Fine. But I’m driving,’ he said, and collapsed again.
When he woke up, he was in the truck. They were tearing across the desert, bucking and bouncing crazily, Anna driving with one hand. He couldn’t see straight. The seat under him felt wet. He was so cold.
‘Don’t move,’ she yelled over the engine noise.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a doctor.’
‘There are no doctors,’ he said. ‘Give me some more of that morphine, and I’ll be right as rain.’ The idea was an appealing one. He could kill himself with an opiate overdose or just sit here and bleed to death. An easy choice.
‘We’ll find help,’ she said, staring intently ahead as she hammered the truck over the rough terrain. ‘If it’s the last thing I do.’ Then she looked down at the dash instruments and her mouth fell open. ‘No! No!’
‘What is it?’ he asked drowsily. He soon understood. The truck began to judder, then to slow, then stalled and coasted to a complete halt.
‘We can’t be out of fuel!’ Anna yelled. She thumped the wheel with her good hand. ‘We can’t be!’ She kicked open her door and clambered out. Ben heard her cry of frustration from outside.
‘Let me guess,’ he said as she ran around the truck and opened his door. ‘Some idiot shot a hole in the fuel tank. It happens all the time.’
She nodded, ashen and distraught. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Not your fault,’ he said. He managed to haul himself out of his seat and lean against the side of the truck. His legs wouldn’t hold him up. He slowly sank down to the cold, hard ground. The desert was huge and empty and still and quiet all around.
‘There must be something,’ she said. ‘I have to think of a way to help us.’
‘You can help yourself,’ he said. ‘Take the pistol and start walking.’
‘I don’t have the pistol,’ she said.
‘Then start walking without it. Someone will find you. You’ll be fine. Go home to Italy. Get that hand seen to. Finish the bloody book. Tell the world all about the great golden Babylon idol.’
‘And you?’
‘Who gives a damn? Not me.’
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work that way. Do you remember what you told me?’
‘Whatever it was, it was probably wrong.’
‘You told me that you wouldn’t leave my side until this was over. And now I’m telling you, Ben Hope, that I won’t leave yours.’
‘That’s a hell of a responsibility to lay on me,’ he said.
‘That’s the way it is,’ she replied.
‘Then we either stay here together, or we walk out of here together,’ he said. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes. What are you doing?’
‘What does it look like? I’m getting up. See? I’m fine.’
But he wasn’t fine. Not remotely. He wobbled on his feet for a second, then his knees buckled and he was down again. ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. He battled upright again. He wouldn’t give up. If he died, he’d die standing. He put an arm around her shoulders.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
The two of them struggled away from the dead truck. Apart from the desert wind that whistled and crackled and peppered them with flurries of snow, they were the only things moving on the whole massive, barren landscape. Two tiny insects crawling over a vast plateau of white nothingness.
‘That rise ahead,’ Anna said. ‘If we can get to the top of it, we might be able to see a village or a town where we can get help.’
Ben would have told her there were no villages or towns for miles and miles, but he had little energy left for speaking. Or for much else. The dark was clawing at him, beckoning to him, whispering in his ears.
Come down to us, it said in a silky voice.
Come on down.
‘I’m not dead yet,’ he mumbled.
They were halfway up the rise when the loud rumble of an engine came out of nowhere and a vehicle suddenly came roaring over the top. It came lurching and bouncing their way, and pulled up. Under the film of grime and slush that caked its bodywork, the jeep was painted up in desert camouflage. It had spare tyres and fuel cans and weaponry slung from everywhere. There were four guys inside.
Soldiers. Swathed in desert winter clothes. Their eyes hidden by wraparound dark glasses that reflected the pale sunlight, faces shielded from the cold wind by bandanas. All four stepped out. Automatic rifles in their gloved hands.
Ben blinked. His vision was hazy from blood loss, and he couldn’t make them out too well. Turkish soldiers, maybe, he thought. Or Syrian ones. Or rebel fighters. Or just about anybody else. Whoever they were, they didn’t look friendly.
Ben said, ‘Come on, you bastards. If you’re going to shoot us, get it over with.’
One of the soldiers stepped forward. He lowered his weapon. Peeled off his dark glasses and stripped the bandana away from his face, and peered at Ben with piercing, steely grey eyes.
‘Jesus Christ. Don’t I fucking know you?’ said the soldier. ‘Bloody hell, it’s a small world.’
Ben focused on the man’s grizzled, bristly, weather-beaten face. Muttered, ‘Tinker?’ Then went whirling into a black void that tunnelled through the centre of the Earth and carried him to the stars.
Chapter 66
SAS, SBS, US Navy SEALs, French GIGN, Israeli Sayeret Maktal and a dozen others: the sphere of Special Forces meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people across the globe.
For some, whether they chose to pit themselves against the challenge and seriously aspire to be all they could be, or whether they just dreamed about it and stuck posters on their bedroom wall, it was the epitome of warrior cool. For others of a different political bent, the shadowy military elites represented the ultimate embodiment of the dark, sinister forces that ruled the world.
But of all the many things that Special Forces might have been or seemed, to those chosen few within the circle it was, above all else, a family. Once you were in, you were in for life. Loyalty was all, the bonds of brotherhood sacred. Guys would do anything, break any rule, take any risk, to protect their own. It didn’t matter if you were still in, or if you’d been out for decades. All that mattered was to have paid your dues as part of that tight-knit community – to have lived with them, trained with them, broken bread with them, fought and bled with them, shared in the sorrow of fallen comrades or the elation of victory. Together, as one.
And Ben Hope had been an integral part of that family for many years. Almost the same span of time had passed since he’d eventually quit and walked away; but in that period of his life he’d done things that, whether he liked it or not, had earned him the reputation of a legend in the eyes of young warriors like Tuesday Fletcher and a hundred others. His name was mentioned with awe and reverence by a generation of Special Air Service soldiers who’d never met him. And it was remembered with fierce pride by those who’d had the experience of serving alongside him.
Soldiers like veteran trooper Rab ‘Tinker’ Taylor, currently engaged on his fourth tour of duty as a platoon commander in the savage, blood-drenched nightmare that the apparently never-ending civil war had made of the beautiful land of Syria.
Small world, indeed.
The four-man SA
S unit had tended to the two injured travellers while waiting for an emergency CASEVAC chopper to whisk them to safety. Ben’s identity had been formally confirmed via the Ministry of Defence while he was unconscious on the operating table at the US Army Unit Base Camp’s military hospital in Damascus, before being flown to the UK for further treatment. The close-knit SF network had quickly cranked into action, doing what it did best. Strings had been pulled, corners cut, the usual authorities neatly left out of the loop, the usual complications associated with two Western travellers found wandering and mysteriously injured with neither passports nor ID in the middle of a foreign war zone studiously avoided.
As for the matter of the bodies of various known members of the Italian crime fraternity, together with a now twice-dead former Vatican archbishop and an off-the-radar Europol agent, scattered in their wake, the report Ben would later submit to the SAS chiefs in Hereford would be filed away in the deepest recess of classified military records, never to be seen again.
That was that – and this time, it really was.
Twelve days after leaving Syria, and two days after Ben was released from hospital, Anna Manzini was flown home to Italy. Ben last saw her as she boarded the military transport plane at RAF Lakenheath.
‘Now I’ll always have something to remind me of our time together,’ she said, holding up her bandaged left hand.
‘How is it?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t hurt so much any more. It feels a little strange, a little lighter. Perhaps not the ideal way to lose weight. But I’ll get used to it. What about you?’
‘Hardly much pain,’ he lied. ‘Just stiffness, really. I’ll soon be able to ditch the walking stick.’
‘We were lucky,’ she said. ‘If you can call it that. I’ve learned my lesson. No more adventures for me.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say it.’
‘Writing books is safer. And I can still do that with nine fingers, from the comfort of my villa. It’s a good thing I didn’t make my career as a concert violinist.’ She paused, looking at him, knowing she wouldn’t see him again for a long time, if ever. ‘Are you going home too?’ she asked.