‘You stay, I stay.’
He shook his head again. ‘I want you somewhere safe,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear …’ His voice trailed off.
‘I couldn’t bear if anything happened to you either,’ she whispered.
‘Trust me. Nothing will happen.’
‘You don’t know what you’ll be up against.’
‘I have a pretty good idea,’ he said.
She sighed. There was a catch in her breath. She stroked his hand. A tear hung on her eyelash, and he smiled and wiped it away. She laughed through the tears. ‘This is crazy,’ she sniffed. ‘I never thought anything like this could happen to me.’ She gazed into his eyes for a second, then held him tight. He could feel the urgency, the yearning, in the way her arms were wrapped around him.
For a brief instant he lost himself, feeling her against him, the scent of her hair. He closed his eyes. Part of him wished so desperately that he could freeze that moment. That this could be simple, and that his options were open.
But they weren’t, and it was anything but simple. It never could be.
He gripped her arms and gently pushed her away from him. ‘Now you have to go,’ he said.
She nodded regretfully. ‘All right. I’ll go.’
They drove the truck round to the front of the house, checked the oil and the tyres and the fan belt. Everything seemed fine. Ben went to fetch Zoë from her room, and explained to her that she was leaving. She nodded quietly and followed him back downstairs, climbed in the truck and sat quietly.
It was hard to watch Alex leave, but Ben was glad that she and Zoë were escaping to safety. He tried not to let his feelings show on his face as she started up the engine and pulled away with a last wave. He shielded his eyes from the sun and watched the truck lurch away down the uneven lane towards the gate.
Then it ground to a halt. The driver’s door flew open, and Alex jumped out. She ran back to him, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. ‘You take care, Ben Hope. That’s an order.’
‘This isn’t goodbye,’ he said. ‘Now go. Get out of here.’
She ran back to the truck, tears in her eyes. She threw herself back in the driver’s seat and put her foot down, wheels spinning on the gravel.
This time, she kept driving. Ben stood and watched the truck bounce over the open ground until it reached the winding country track that snaked away towards the ridge in the distance.
Then Alex and Zoë were gone.
Now he had work to do.
The next hour was a time of sweat and dust as he made his preparations. He studied the layout of the farm, thought about the line of attack, considered how he would do it.
It would be one man against many. They would come heavily armed, and they were professionals who’d hit hard and fast. But it was possible. Just about possible. He had an edge. The biggest edge of all.
He found the things he needed and stacked everything up against the side of the barn. Some of it was heavy, and he dusted off an old sack-cart to shift things around with. Riley was too fragile to join in, but Ira was a quick and willing helper.
As he and Ben were loading up the sack-cart the young guy stopped and looked up. ‘There’s going to be a bunch of them, right?’ He seemed to relish the idea.
‘They won’t take any chances this time,’ Ben said. ‘They want to finish it here. But I want you and Riley out of the way, understand?’
‘I’m Blackfoot Indian.’ Ira’s voice was soft but full of pride. ‘The way I see it, these people are the descendants of the men who took my people off our land and dumped us on the reservation. They took away our sacred birthright.’ He nodded solemnly. ‘If now’s the time to take something back from them, man, you couldn’t drag me away with ten wild mustangs.’ Then he grinned. ‘Anyway, I want to see this.’
Ben looked at him. ‘Don’t romanticise war. What you’re going to see today will be the worst thing you’ve ever witnessed in your life.’
When things were in place, Ben helped Ira herd the horses away to the safety of the far paddocks, a quarter of a mile away across the rolling grassland. The sun was beating down savagely and his shoulder throbbed. When the last horse trotted in through the paddock gate and went off to join the others among the lush grazing, Ben checked his watch. It was just after four in the afternoon.
Just about time.
And as he looked up to the blue sky above the mountain peaks, he could see his instinct was right.
They were coming.
Chapter Fifty-Three
There were three of them, black dots against the sky, flying in V-formation, the thump of their rotors building in volume as they rapidly approached.
Ben told Ira to head fast for the farmhouse basement and to make sure Riley stayed there with him until the fight was over. Ira hesitated for only a second or two before he ran for the house, and Ben made for the block-built storeroom where he had the BAR set up on its bipod at one of the upper floor windows. He bolted the door behind him, climbed the rickety stairs and settled in behind the weapon. Beside him on the floor was his bag, bulging with spare magazines for the rifle and a Beretta pistol.
The choppers closed in fast and hovered over the farm, their thudding beat deafening, flattening the grass with the wind blast and frightening the horses in the distant paddocks.
From his hidden vantage point in the storeroom, Ben peered through the sights of the rifle and watched as the helicopters descended, maintaining their formation, one in front and two behind. Men in black burst from the open sides of the lead chopper and slithered rapidly down abseil ropes, like spiders on silk threads, dropping towards the ground. Six of them, three on each side, clad in tactical body armour, goggles, helmets, armed with automatic rifles. A slick display of intimidating power that was guaranteed to strike fear into most hearts.
Now it was time for Ben to make use of his edge. It wasn’t so much the BAR, now loaded and cocked and ready to lay down a wide field of fire across the farmyard. It wasn’t so much his years of extensive battle training. It was an innate thing, something that had helped him become the soldier he’d once been.
He didn’t like killing. But he knew he had a gift for it. His instinct, right from the start of his military career, had been to go right at them. Hit them with everything. Speed. Aggression. Surprise. Maximum impact. If these people had come looking for war, he was going to give them a war like they’d never seen before. If he didn’t get out of this, he’d at least make a hell of a mark.
So before the six troopers had even touched the ground he was already flipping off the safety on the BAR and opening up on the chopper above them. He went for the fuel tanks. Where a flimsy pistol round had no chance of penetrating, nine hundred rounds a minute of high-velocity.308 full metal jackets sliced like a hot razor through a pat of butter. The tanks ruptured with a screech of ripping metal and fibre-glass and a deafening explosion as the chopper erupted into flame and crashed to the ground, a spreading fireball engulfing the troopers. They had no chance.
No quarter, no pity. You don’t give it, because you don’t get it from the enemy. Ben fired into the flames, the BAR bucking like a pneumatic road drill in his arms, spent cases rolling across the floor at his feet and the smell of cordite filling the air. He saw burning men struggling to get to their feet, arms waving, staggering back, collapsing into the inferno.
A second explosion ripped the chopper apart. A massive unfolding mushroom of flame blossomed upwards. Black smoke rose in a huge column. Flaming debris showered across the farmyard.
One down.
The two remaining aircraft pulled back, their pilots hauling them up into a steep escape climb. They roared over the farm and banked in a swooping parallel arc. Then they streaked back towards the buildings. Men in black tactical gear were hanging out of their sides, bringing their weapons to bear.
Ben tracked the leading one through the sky. Spent cartridges streamed from the hot breech of the BAR as he launched round after round into the fuse
lage. A ragged string of holes punched through its body. A fleeting glimpse of the spray of pink mist as someone inside was hit. Perspex shattering and crumpling under the heavy fire.
The chopper veered at a crazy angle, lost altitude and nosedived. The beat of its rotors became a lopsided whumph-whumph-whumph, throwing up billows of dust as it gyrated out of control. For an instant it looked as though it was going to plough straight into the ground right in front of the house – but then the blades caught the edge of the old cowshed roof and the aircraft tore through the old wooden structure, planks and splinters and pieces of corrugated iron spinning in all directions.
Two down, one to go.
The third chopper thudded overhead, climbing to avoid the flying, bouncing wreckage.
Seconds later, what remained of the black-clad troopers from the crashed second chopper were spilling out of the cowshed door, weapons poised. Ben caught them in his sights and hammered them down in a bloody swathe from left to right.
This was too easy.
Then suddenly it wasn’t.
Modern military longarms were fitted with muzzle flash suppressors to conceal the telltale blast of flame from enemy spotters. The BAR belonged to a generation before those kinds of refinements. So when the torrent of gunfire tore through the storeroom roof and sliced down through the building all around him, Ben knew the bright yellow-white flash that pulsed from the barrel of the heavy rifle had given away his position to the pilot of the third chopper.
Fragments of tiles and torn roof beams rained down on him. Windows exploded and chunks of masonry flew as the third chopper hovered over the building and poured down the combined fire of at least two or three assault rifles.
Ben rolled, grabbing the big Browning, dragging his bag with the spare magazines across the floor after him. He hefted the weapon up vertically and fired back up through the roof at the belly of the chopper. Dust showered down into his face.
The craft veered away, spinning towards the house. Ben leaped to his feet, looped the bag over his shoulder, scrambled down the creaking steps to the ground and burst outside into the blinding sunlight.
He was in the junk-strewn alleyway between the storeroom and the ruins of the cowshed. Thirty yards to his left was the gutted-out shell of a dead tractor. Fifteen yards closer, sitting up against the walls of the buildings either side, were two shapeless heaps covered with tarpaulins. Various farm debris was piled up around them.
To his right, beyond the gap between the buildings, the third chopper was hovering steady above the farmyard. As Ben watched, six men streamed down from its sides and hit the ground. He flattened himself against the wall. The men didn’t see him as they dispersed among the buildings, signalling to one another.
But the pilot had spotted him. The machine’s nose dipped and it came on, tracking up between the buildings, gaining speed, the front tips of its skids almost raking the ground.
Ben sprinted away from it, heading towards the cover of the wrecked tractor. Gunfire crackled behind him as he sprinted between the two tarp-covered heaps either side of the alley. He ran faster. Threw himself behind the tractor as bullets whipped up a snake of dirt and dust in his wake.
He raised the rifle. The helicopter was bearing down on him, just a few yards away, sending up a violent dust storm.
Now it was right between the tarp-covered heaps.
Right where he wanted it.
He fired. Not at the chopper but into the heap on the left. Then the one on the right. He emptied the magazine into them, in a scything arc of fire. Then he dropped the empty rifle and hurled himself flat on the ground behind the old tractor.
The blinding flash of light obliterated everything.
He’d found the tall propane gas cylinders in the barn earlier, spares for the old kitchen stove. Next to them he’d found the sacks of four-inch nails that he’d bound to them with rolls of duct tape, wrapping each one up tightly in turn as Ira held the cylinder steady. Hidden under the dirty tarps, they were a crude, giant version of a nail bomb.
Just one problem: he hadn’t intended to be this close when they went off.
In the closed space between the buildings the effect was devastating. The massive explosion took the chopper straight in the face.
It was as though it had hit a wall. It was flung down to the ground like a child’s toy, buckling and crumpling. The windows burst inwards. The rotor blades flew into shards. Then the fireball from the gas cylinders touched off the petrol bombs and jerrycans he’d set up along the sides of the walls, hidden behind farm junk. A sheet of flame closed in on the chopper, rolling in through its open sides like liquid, rinsing it out, incinerating everything that lived in there. Burning men tumbled out, screaming, flailing, falling, dying.
Ben kept his face to the dirt as the spreading fireball rolled over him. Its heat seared his back and for one terrifying instant he thought he was going to burn. But then the hot breath of the flames drew away from him and he staggered to his feet.
Everything around him was destroyed. The shattered buildings were on fire. Bodies lay strewn across the ground, and the stench of charred flesh filled the air. The chopper was a blazing skeleton.
Ben stepped out from behind the tractor. The rifle was lying in the dirt a few yards away. He went to snatch it up, then saw that a piece of flying shrapnel had crushed the receiver. He swore, grabbed the pistol from his bag and emptied out the useless BAR magazines.
Then suddenly, the troopers that had landed from the third chopper were back. All six of them, darting between the shell of the burning aircraft and the wrecked buildings. Weapons raised, fire reflected on their goggles.
And now Ben realised with an icy shock that he was in trouble. More men were coming down the other way. Their leader’s face split into a wide grin.
Jones. He must have landed a fourth chopper somewhere behind the trees, using the first three as a distraction. There were five troopers with him, all clad in tactical battle gear, all aiming the same M-16 assault rifles.
A dozen men in all. Maybe three hundred and fifty rounds of high-velocity rifle ammunition, all for him. And he was trapped right in the middle, with no time to get back behind cover.
‘Got you now,’ Jones yelled. ‘You’re all alone.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
When Ben heard the next gunshot his body involuntarily tensed up solid like a boxer tightening up to take a punch. In that suspended-animation breath of time that is all a man has to ready himself for sudden death, he waited for the impact of the bullet that would kill him.
What happened instead was that one of the troopers was suddenly jerked off his feet as though someone had hooked him up with a cable to a speeding train. He landed spreadeagled in the dust, his rifle clattering to his side. The boom of the gunshot echoed across the farm.
‘Not quite alone,’ a voice shouted.
Suddenly there was chaos. Shots seemed to be coming from all directions. The snap of a small-calibre rifle and another trooper went down, clutching his head. The rest scattered, flinging themselves down behind whatever bits of discarded farm machinery, rusted-out drums, stacked tractor tyres, offered them shelter.
Whoever was shooting was moving from cover to cover. It had to be someone who knew the layout of the farm blindfolded. Another rolling boom, and a trooper screamed as his thigh burst open with a spatter of blood. Another snappy report and the man next to Jones fell forward without a sound.
Two shooters. The.22 Marlin and the Ithaca shotgun. Riley and Ira had joined the party.
Ben dived back behind the tractor. To his left, four troopers were pinned down under cover near the burning chopper. To his right were Jones and his team, crouched behind a pile of firewood logs. They were firing sporadically at nothing, panic showing in their movements. Ben punched the pistol up and shot one. Return fire ricocheted off the tractor’s fender. He fired again. Hit another.
But then he saw something that made his heart stop. At the end of the alleyway between the wreck
ed and now blazing cowshed and the storeroom building, ten yards from Jones and his remaining men, Ira was stepping out into the open with the .22 Marlin in his hands. His chin was high and there was a glint of pride in his eyes. Old Riley Tarson hobbled out behind him, the shotgun clamped in his fists, thunder in his face. ‘You people have no right to be here,’ he yelled.
Jones whipped his rifle round towards the two men. Ben let off four rapid rounds from across the alley and Jones flung himself back down in the dirt behind the log pile.
Then it was mayhem, shots rattling back and forth across a wild V of fire. Ira went down, grimacing in pain. Riley stood his ground, working the pump on his old Ithaca, loosing off blast after blast. The Beretta kicked and boomed in Ben’s hands until it was empty.
The gun battle was over as quickly as it had begun. A strange silence hung over the farm. The alleyway was littered with dead men.
Jones was the only intruder left alive. He burst from cover, threw down his empty rifle and ran for all he was worth, shielding his face with his arm as he stumbled through the flames of the burning chopper and disappeared among the buildings.
Riley dropped the shotgun and crouched down beside the fallen Ira. The young Indian was clutching his leg, groaning in agony, blood seeping between his fingers.
Riley looked up as Ben approached. ‘Figured you might want a little help,’ the old farmer said.
Ben nodded. ‘I owe you one.’
Ira grinned weakly up at him. ‘Whipped ’em good, didn’t we?’
Ben crouched and examined the wound. ‘It’s just a graze,’ he said. ‘Riley, you’d better get him out of here. There might be more of them coming.’
‘Where are you going?’ Riley said.
‘To get Jones.’ Ben turned and started walking fast. Ejected the empty magazine from the pistol and let it drop down into the dust as he slammed in another.