Scott Mariani - The Doomsday Prophecy

The gun was two feet away. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 19. There were two ways to fire it. With the action cocked, it took only a light flick of the finger to drop the hammer. The alternative was the double-action mode, simply pulling the trigger to rotate the cylinder and bring the hammer back to fire. But that required a heavy tug, and Ben knew that unless the cop’s pistol had been specially worked on by a gunsmith, the Model 19 had quite a tough action. More effort meant more time needed to shoot.

The gun wasn’t cocked. What that told Ben was that he had about half a second longer to step in, disable the cop and take his gun away. Then about another half a second to turn it on the one with the shotgun. He wouldn’t hurt them badly, just take them out of circulation for a while.

But that would lead to all kinds of trouble that he didn’t want. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said quietly instead.

The cop flicked his gun at the car. ‘Up against the vehicle. Hands on the hood.’

Ben sighed in exasperation and spread his hands on the warm metal of the Chrysler. The one with the shotgun covered him from three yards away. The other walked back to the police car and started talking into his radio, looking nervous and fidgety.

Ben heard the sound of tyres on the dirt and the low rumble of V8 engines. Keeping his hands planted on the car he craned his neck to look. Two big black muscular Chevrolet SUVs were pulling up behind the police cruiser. Clouds of dust rose and settled. Sunlight reflected off the tinted windows of the vehicles.

The doors opened. Ben counted five people, two men and a woman from one car and two more men from the other. They were all smartly dressed in dark suits. The oldest was the guy stepping forward with the craggy face, slicked-back hair and the dark glasses. He was about fifty, lean and rangy. He was smiling, showing uneven teeth. The youngest was the woman. She might have been about thirty-five, with sharp features and a scowl on her face. Her auburn hair was tied back, gently ruffled by the warm breeze.

The lead guy flashed a badge at the two cops. ‘Special Agent Jones. We can take it from here, Officers.’

The cops stared at the badge like they’d never seen one before. They lowered their weapons.

Jones motioned to one of the agents, who walked round to Ben’s passenger door, yanked it open and grabbed the canvas bag from the seat. Jones took a pair of surgical rubber gloves from his jacket pocket and slipped them on before taking the bag from the other agent and reaching inside.

‘Well, now, look what we found,’ Jones chuckled as he drew out the.475 Linebaugh. He dropped the bag on the ground at his feet and turned the big revolver over in his gloved hands, admiring it. Flipped open the loading port, spun the cylinder. Then he twirled it around his finger, cowboy-style, and one of the other agents laughed. Jones turned to Ben with a ragged smile. ‘Now that is a nice gun.’

Ben didn’t reply. He was thinking hard and fast.

The agents all stepped closer. The woman’s eyes were fixed on Ben, and as he watched her he thought for a second he could sense some kind of doubtful hesitation on her face. The scowl was gone.

Jones took out his phone and dialled. ‘It’s me. Good news. Got your Mr Hope right here. OK.’

Ben frowned. This was weird procedure.

Jones snapped the phone shut and turned to the two cops. ‘I don’t think we’ll be needing you any more, Officers,’ he said, dismissing them with a gesture.

The cops glanced at one another and started walking back to their cruiser. They had their hands on the door handles and were about to climb inside when Jones seemed to have an afterthought and called them. ‘Hold on a minute, Officers. Just one thing.’

The younger cop narrowed his eyes at him. ‘What?’

Jones smiled again, a knowing kind of smile that made his whole face crease up and his eyes become slits. He glanced at the.475 revolver in his hand.

Then he thumbed back the hammer, raised the revolver out to arm’s length and shot the younger guy right through the face from ten feet away.

The Richmond House

Montana

With a whirr of pulleys and thick steel cables, the cable car glided smoothly out across the abyss. The cold mountain wind whistled around it, buffeting the metal capsule and making the floor judder under the feet of the two men inside.

Irving Slater loved it up here. Suspended high over the rocky valley, he could see for miles all around and it gave him a feeling of invulnerability. He felt like an eagle perched on his mountain vantage point. That’s what predators did – take the high ground, survey their territory from a position of complete control. Nobody could touch him up here, and nobody could listen in on sensitive conversations. The howling wind would kill the signal from even the most sophisticated listening device. Slater was fanatical about surveillance and even though he’d had the Richmond House swept for bugs a hundred times and never found a thing, this was the one place he was truly comfortable when it came to talking serious business.

The cable was five hundred yards long and stretched from the boarding platform near the Richmond House to a landing bay on the other side of the valley. He’d had a remote device rigged up that allowed him to guide the car from inside, move it out as far as he wanted and then let it hang over the thousand-foot drop like the last apple on the tree.

Nobody else ever came here any more. Dirk Richmond, Bud’s father, had installed the cable car system at great cost many years ago, soon after he’d bought the thousand-acre range on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, to allow the family to access the ski slope on the mountain across the valley. But neither Bud’s mother nor the indolent jackass himself had ever shown much interest in healthy outdoor pursuits, and old Dirk had gone to his grave a long time ago now, a vastly wealthy but embittered and disappointed man, largely thanks to his indolent waster of a son.

Slater aimed his remote at the control booth and stabbed the red button in the middle. There was a muted clunk of linkages and pulleys from overhead, and the cable car juddered to a halt. Slater dropped the remote in his coat pocket and stared out through the Perspex window across the valley for a few moments, hands on the rail, letting his body move to the gentle swing of the cable car as the wind whipped all around it.

Then he turned to face his associate, and smiled at the sweaty anxiety on the man’s face. ‘You should be used to it by now.’

‘This place gives me the creeps.’

Slater’s smile melted abruptly. ‘Progress report,’ he demanded.

The associate gave a nervous shrug. ‘Bradbury isn’t saying much yet. We’re still working on it.’

‘That’s what you said last time. Why are we even keeping her alive? And I don’t suppose you’ve located the lawyer either.’

‘McClusky?’

‘You guys let any other lawyers slip through your fingers who might know where Bradbury hid the evidence and be totally able to sink us?’

‘We’re still looking.’

Slater’s eyes bored into him. ‘You do that. How hard can it be? What about Kaplan and Hudson? Go on, surprise me. Tell me they turned up.’

‘Not yet. And I have a feeling they’re not coming back.’

Slater made a dismissive gesture and frowned out across the mountain valley. ‘So you have nothing whatsoever good to tell me?’ He pulled a chocolate bar out of his pocket and tore the wrapper off. ‘Want some?’

The associate shook his head and coughed nervously. ‘There’s been a development.’ He reached into the briefcase propped between his feet. Handed Slater a slim card folder.