Scott Mariani - The Sacred Sword

Because the hallway was suddenly filled with masked men in black. Six of them. Six automatic weapons pointed right at him.

Wesley Holland’s island refuge hadn’t been safe at all. The enemy had wasted very little time in catching up with them, and now Ben was in real trouble.

The six gunmen were almost certainly a pair of three-man teams who’d approached the house by stealth from different angles and entered by different routes to converge in the middle. Ben didn’t say a word. There was nothing to say, no point asking ‘Who are you?’ or ‘What do you want?’ He let the phone drop from his hand and raised his arms shoulder-high as he backed away a step.

His mind was trained to work fast in these situations, and he already had a plan. The lamp he’d turned on a moment earlier was the only light in the hallway. The sideboard on which it stood was just two steps to his right. One swift movement, and he could smash the lamp to the floor, plunging the hallway into darkness. The couple of seconds’ confusion might buy him enough time to disarm one of the team and let loose four or five rounds before tumbling out of the door onto the terrace. He’d have to move fast, but if he didn’t take a bullet in the process it was just about feasible.

But even some of the best plans didn’t survive long in a real-life confrontation. The men immediately circled Ben as he backed away, two of them slipping around his right flank to block off his access to the lamp. The eyes in the ski masks all watched him intently, as if the men all knew exactly who he was and had been instructed to take no chances. Fingers were on triggers, safeties set to ‘FIRE’. Ben was pretty certain that if he made a single abrupt move, they’d gun him down where he stood.

‘Grab him and cuff him,’ said one. Every team had a leader. He was it. Two men stepped closer, one from the left, one from the right, still keeping their pistols trained on him.

The team leader spoke into a tiny radio mike on his collar. ‘Target acquired. Move in.’ Almost instantly, Ben heard the thump of a helicopter approaching.

The man on Ben’s left produced a thick plastic cable tie, the kind that police and military forces used to secure prisoners’ wrists behind their backs. He pressed the muzzle of his pistol against Ben’s head and took a hold of Ben’s arm. His movements were slick and practised. The operation was being executed with perfect efficiency and control.

Then, suddenly, it wasn’t. Ben had seen a hundred military exercises fall apart in the blink of an eye when an unplanned-for factor seemed to leap out of nowhere and blew everything to hell. Control could evaporate into chaos within a second, and it was when tensions were running at their highest that even the smallest surprise incident could set it off.

That factor was Wesley Holland. He came bursting out from the darkness at the top of the stairs, in slippers and a dressing gown. ‘What the hell’s going on down here?’ He was clutching the ancient sword, as if he’d half expected trouble and had been keeping it by the side of the bed. He froze at the sight of the armed intruders in the hallway.

Several weapons spun around to point up the stairwell towards the billionaire, who gaped down the stairs at them for a split second and then turned to bolt back the other way.

A lot of things happened in the next few instants.

The man at Ben’s left was momentarily distracted — long enough that he didn’t see the elbow coming for his face. Ben cupped his left fist in the palm of his right hand and drove back hard, using the rotation of his legs, back and abdominal muscles to put every ounce of savage power he could into the strike. The point of his elbow delivered a windpipe-crushing blow to the base of the guy’s throat. Even before he’d slammed against the wall, his face already turning blue, Ben had twisted the pistol out of his hand and was bringing it to bear on the others.

Meanwhile, the hallway erupted with gunfire as three of the gunmen opened fire on the escaping Wesley. One bullet splintered the banister rail next to him; one passed by his ear; the third passed through the muscle of his left calf. He cried out and fell backwards.

Holding his pistol in a rigid two-handed grip, Ben swivelled it to point at the nearest man standing and let off a double-tap to the chest. The rule in close-quarter pistol combat was to aim for centre of mass and never let the gun stay still. Before the man had crumpled to the floor, Ben’s sights were already moving on, instinctively picking out the target that was the greatest threat to him.

Wesley Holland had lost his balance as his injured leg gave way under him, and now came tumbling backwards down the stairs, still clutching the sword.

The four remaining guns were turning back towards Ben. It was the quickest mover that Ben homed in on. His trigger finger flicked twice and rattled off two more rapid rounds. A scream. Blood sprayed vertically up the wall and the guy’s weapon dropped out of his hands.

The thick of the gunfight lasted only a short instant, but with his heart and brain running on pure adrenaline it felt to Ben like a full minute. The exchange of shots was almost a continual deafening roar in the confined space. Empty shell cases spilled and bounced across the floor. The stink of cordite filled the air. In the chaos Ben saw the team leader’s pistol muzzle line up on his head and knew he couldn’t react fast enough. But before the man could shoot, Wesley Holland’s tumbling body had crashed to the bottom step and hit him from behind in the legs, knocking him off-line and sending the shot wide.

A bullet from another gun seared past Ben’s face and plaster exploded from the wall. He returned fire. The pistol he’d taken was a high-capacity Walther, good for at least another eight shots before he ran dry. But he’d no intention of holding his ground in a protracted stand-up gunfight against three determined assailants.

He wasn’t that eager to find out if there really was a heaven up there.

He crashed the front door open with his shoulder. Threw himself out of the doorway and rolled on his back onto the dark terrace, firing wildly as he flipped up on his feet and ducked away from the doorway.

The helicopter was coming in fast, hovering fifty feet above the beach, The white-blue glare of its halogen spotlamps was blinding, forcing Ben to shield his eyes as he ran along the terrace parallel with the wall of the house; he stumbled in the glare and almost fell on his face, and it probably saved his life. A blast of automatic fire rang out from the chopper and raked the house where his head had been an instant earlier. Splinters of white wood flew. A window burst apart, raining glass everywhere.

Ben hurdled the terrace railing with high-velocity bullets zipping overhead and smacking into the wall right behind him. He landed with a grunt on soft sand, fell to his knees, scrambled up again and began to sprint hard towards the dunes at the side of the house. The chopper descended closer towards the beach, its downdraught whipping up a sandstorm.

Then Ben was among the dunes, leaping from one to another, trying to escape the glaring beam of the chopper’s spotlight and find cover among the long, black shadows that it threw for a hundred yards across the beach. His heart was pounding. He wondered what was happening to Wesley, and felt bad that he couldn’t go back to help the guy. Then he wondered where Jude was, and hoped he was far away by now.

The team leader and his remaining gunmen had emerged from the front of the house and were running across the beach. Voices shouted. Several more men leaped down from the landing chopper to join them. Ben halted for a second in the reedy gully between two high dunes, to check his pistol. Just four rounds left in the magazine, plus the one still in the chamber. Not enough against so many men.