Scott Mariani - The Babylon Idol

‘Thanks, mate.’ Jeff smiled, then pointed through the windscreen, obviously keen to change the subject. ‘Look at this frigging snow.’ It was thickening by the minute, blown about in sheets by the increasing wind.

‘No point waiting for it to stop,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s get on.’

The chainsaw buzzed and snorted and kicked in Ben’s hands as he sliced the tree into sections, bending over the prone trunk, with Jeff standing at his shoulder waiting to grab each piece as it came loose and toss it into the pile. Ten minutes later, the top half of the tree was next year’s firewood logs ready to be loaded on a trailer and split and stacked in the barn.

Two minutes after that, it happened.

There was a strong gust of wind, followed immediately by a strange whizzing crack that was only faintly audible over the noise of the saw. At almost the same instant, Ben heard Jeff’s strangled cry of shock and pain. He looked quickly around, just in time to see the blood fly. As if in slow motion, like a scarlet ribbon fluttering from Jeff’s body, twisting in the air. Jeff doubling up. Falling against him. Collapsing into the trampled grass. Mud and snow and sawdust and more blood. Lots of it, spilling everywhere. Ben yelling Jeff’s name. Getting no response. The sudden fear twisting his guts like a pair of icy gripping hands.

In those first confused instants, Ben thought that the chain had broken and gone spinning off the bar of the saw, hitting Jeff in some kind of freakish accident. In a panic he hit the engine kill switch. The saw instantly stopped, and Ben realised the chain was still intact.

He threw the saw down and fell on his knees by Jeff’s slumped body. Jeff wasn’t moving. The snow was turning red in a spreading stain under him. Ben yelled his friend’s name. Tried to shake him, to roll him over, to understand what was happening. Blood slicked his hands and bubbled up between his fingers. So much blood.

Now Ben was thinking that the spinning chainsaw might have dislodged an old nail or fencing staple buried deep in the tree trunk from long ago, and sent it flying through the air like a deadly piece of shrapnel.

‘Jeff!’

Jeff’s eyes were closed. His face was white, except where it was spattered red. His jacket and shirt were black and oily with blood. Ben ripped at the material.

And then he saw the gaping bullet wound in Jeff’s chest.

You didn’t need to be a forensic pathologist to recognise the devastating effect that a high-velocity rifle bullet could have on the human body. And Ben was no stranger to gunshot wounds.

This one was bad. It was very bad.

A gust of wind slapped a fresh flurry of snowflakes over them, and suddenly it was blizzarding. Ben crouched in the mud and the blood and the snow, bending over his friend’s inert body, blinking away the flakes that swirled into his eyes. His hands shook so violently that he could barely control them enough to check Jeff’s pulse. Inside the Land Rover, Storm was howling and barking and scrabbling at the window to get out.

There was no pulse. The shock of the impact had stopped Jeff’s heart. He wasn’t breathing. Red froth was bubbling at his lips.

Ben closed his mind to the panic that rushed up inside him, and dived into action with artificial respiration to try to force Jeff’s lungs to start working. His own face was soon slick with blood. He could taste the coppery saltiness of it on his lips. He spat and kept trying.

After ten breaths there was still no response. No breath. No pulse.

Using the edge of his hand Ben gave a sharp rap to the lower part of Jeff’s breastbone in the desperate hope that the cardiac compression would jar his heart back into life. That was, if the bullet hadn’t carved it into butcher meat.

No pulse.

Jeff was dead.

But Ben couldn’t allow that to happen. He yelled, ‘No!’ And hit him again, terrified of doing further damage to the wound but not knowing what other choice he had. Blood sprayed from the impact. Jeff’s flesh felt cold and lifeless to the touch.

One more time, Ben resorted to the mouth-to-mouth to try to force oxygen into Jeff’s inert lungs.

And this time, Ben’s own heart soared as he suddenly felt a pulse, as ragged and delicate as a damaged butterfly’s wingbeats. ‘You’re not dead yet, Dekker!’ Ben yelled, wanting to shake him, slap him. Jeff’s body convulsed and a spout of blood burst out of him with a rattling gasp. He was alive, though Ben knew he could slip back down at any moment and not come back up again.

There had been no more shots. In his near-panic, Ben struggled to think straight. He remembered that Tuesday was out with the trainees on the long rifle range. Could a bullet have gone astray somehow? Impossible. Not on Tuesday’s watch. And in any case, the shot that had hit Jeff had very clearly come from the opposite direction.

Beyond the fence. Outside the boundaries of Le Val. Logic dictated that the shooter had hidden himself among the wooded hills somewhere between here and Saint-Acaire. He could have been half a mile away. Waiting, watching through his scope, biding his time for the perfect moment to pull the trigger.

But who was he? And why had he done this?

The landscape was rapidly turning white, visibility suddenly diminished to not much better than a hundred yards. There was no sign of anyone. Nothing moved or made a sound, except for the whistle of the gusting wind and the swirl and patter of the falling snow. Ben didn’t want to leave Jeff, but it haunted him that the faceless shooter was still out there, somewhere, perhaps hundreds of yards distant, or maybe moving in closer to finish what he’d started. Ben ran to the Land Rover, wrenched open the tailgate and grabbed the old shotgun that kicked about in the back among the shovels and other tools. A rustic twelve-bore against a long-range rifle was no match, but it was better than being unarmed. He rummaged inside the vehicle for the green plastic first-aid box and shoved it under his arm.

‘Storm, go find Tuesday!’ Ben told the German Shepherd. ‘Fetch!’ The dog was trained to know the names of everyone at Le Val, and to locate and alert them on command. Storm cocked his head, understood what Ben was asking him to do, bounded out of the Land Rover and streaked away through the snow like a heat-seeking missile.

As he ran back to Jeff, Ben tore out his phone and dialled 15, the emergency SAMU number for urgent medical assistance. He forced himself to speak clearly and slowly as he explained what had happened. ‘Please hurry.’

The nearest hospitals were in Valognes and Cherbourg, both miles away. Jeff was going to need everything Ben could do to keep him alive until someone got here. He was still losing blood much too fast. The bullet had passed right through his body, making an exit hole between his shoulder blades that Ben could have poked three fingers inside. More blood was leaking from that hole than the entry wound, but he’d have to stem the bleeding from both before Jeff lost a fatal amount.

Ben pulled open a bandage pack from the first-aid kit and tore it in half. Struggling to get Jeff’s dead weight rolled over a little he wedged one knee under his friend’s back with a wad of bandage pressed tightly between it and the exit wound, and used both hands to maintain pressure on the entry wound with the other wad. He squeezed with all his might to staunch the deadly haemorrhages. It could take ten or fifteen minutes of steady pressure to stem the flow – by which time it could all be over. Blood quickly soaked through the bandages until they were saturated.

It wasn’t long before Storm came pounding back through the snow. Tuesday was sprinting after him, still clutching the scoped rifle they’d been using for their training session. The dog was barking frantically and running circles around Tuesday to guide him on. In their wake came the eight SDAT guys. Tuesday’s jaw dropped in horror at the sight of Ben crouching over Jeff’s bloody form in the snow.