Scott Mariani - The Babylon Idol

‘He’s been shot,’ Ben said tersely. ‘Don’t ask me more, because I don’t know. Just help me. I’ve called for the ambulance but I need more bandages from the kit. Quickly. And keep your head down. The shot came from that way, eleven o’clock. The shooter could still be around.’

Tuesday nodded dumbly, dropped the rifle and set about tearing open more bandage packs. He knew better than to ask questions. Once a soldier, always a soldier; like Ben he was no stranger to dealing with gravely injured comrades in the field. The SDAT guys were good at what they did, and they were experts in looking tough and intimidating in the black balaclavas and tactical armour they wore on the job, but they had about as much real-life battlefield experience as any other cops, and in those first shocked instants they could do little but watch grimly as Ben discarded the blood-soaked pressure pads and replaced them with the fresh ones Tuesday quickly handed him.

The SDAT team leader was a tough, gruff Frenchman called Roman Vidal. He took out a phone and urgently, efficiently called in police reinforcements, then picked up the rifle and the shotgun and began delegating orders to his men, marshalling them as though they were dealing with a terrorist attack.

Which maybe they were. Ben had no idea what was happening, and right now it was the last thing on his mind. Jeff’s pulse was vacillating wildly, sometimes barely there at all. The blood kept coming, though now the flow seemed to be easing a little.

With Tuesday’s help Ben laid Jeff out flat on the ground with his legs elevated to make it easier for his weak heartbeat to pump blood to the head. Ben had taken off his bloody jacket and laid it over Jeff to keep him warm. That was all they could do, except hope they could get their friend out of here as soon as possible.

The SDAT guys fanned out along the perimeter, keeping low and scanning the terrain beyond the fence for any sign of the shooter. The falling snow wasn’t helping. It was becoming hard to tell where the horizon ended and the sky began. Tuesday stayed close by Ben and Jeff, biting his lip in agonised worry and holding in the thousand questions that were bursting to come out.

‘Hang in there, Jeff,’ Ben kept saying in his ear. ‘Help’s on its way. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be fine.’

He didn’t even know if Jeff could hear him.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Ben caught the sound of an approaching helicopter. He looked up and saw the aircraft thudding towards them out of the grey clouds.

Ben would never know the pilot’s name, but he would forever bless the guy’s heroism for having flown out in such bad weather. The white SAMU air ambulance landed just inside the perimeter, whipping up powdery snow from the ground by the blast of its rotors. Two paramedics jumped out and hurried over.

It took a monumental effort for Ben to stand back and let them take charge of the situation. Within minutes, Jeff was being stretchered aboard the chopper. Ben kept his hand from shaking as he scribbled out a few details on a form: Jeff’s name, address, blood type and next of kin, which Ben wrote down as Lynne Dekker. Jeff’s father had walked out when he was eight. His mother Lynne had emigrated from the UK to Australia’s Northern Territory a few years back, where she and her new man, an outbacker called Kip Malloy, ran a crocodile farm supplying leather to the cowboy boot industry. Ben couldn’t remember the name of the place.

As he handed the form back to the paramedics, blood smeared all over the paper from his fingers, he asked if there was room for one more on board the chopper and was told, without hesitation, no chance.

Ben said, ‘At least tell me where you’re taking him.’ The paramedic replied that Jeff would be flown direct to the Centre Hospitalier Louis Pasteur, the big hospital in Cherbourg, being the nearest facility equipped to deal with major trauma. Ben thanked him and let him go. He stood back, and he and Tuesday watched in silence as the hatch slammed shut and the chopper took off.

Both thinking the same terrible thought.

That they might never see Jeff Dekker alive again.

The distance from Le Val to Cherbourg was almost exactly thirty-five kilometres by road. Ben couldn’t get there as fast as a chopper, but he was damned well going to try.

‘I’m coming too,’ Tuesday declared as Ben clambered into Jeff’s truck. It was faster than the Land Rover, not that Ben intended to make the drive in either.

Ben shook his head. ‘Someone’s got to hold the fort, Tues. In a few minutes this place will be crawling with police. In the meantime, kennel the dogs, lock the weapons up in the armoury and get ready for a lot of questions. If they want me, they know where to find me.’

Tuesday just nodded. He looked as ashen and pallid as it was possible for a healthy twenty-four-year-old Jamaican guy to look. Ben briefly laid a hand on his shoulder. He wanted to give him some kind of reassuring smile, but he couldn’t. He slammed the truck door, fired up the engine and took off over the bumpy ground, wipers slapping, lights burning twin beams through the drifting snow. Tuesday, Vidal and the others shrank in the rear-view mirror until the white veil swallowed them up.

Ben hammered the truck back towards the house. Less than a minute later he was skidding to a halt in the yard, piling out without shutting the door and sprinting past the big stone farmhouse towards the lean-to garage where he stored his personal car.

The old BMW Alpina turbo was neglected and dirty, but its 4.4-litre V8 motor could get Ben where he wanted to be just about as fast as anything else on the road, especially when he was the one behind the wheel. He punched it out of the yard and down the rutted track to the security gates that shut Le Val off from the big, bad world. He left those open, too, for the contingent of gendarmerie vehicles that would soon be descending on them in force. Then he was off, heading north, shifting as aggressively as the untreated and slippery rural roads would let him.

His mind was empty, numb. There was no point in trying to make sense of what had happened. That would come later. And when he figured out who had done this …

He gripped the steering wheel. He couldn’t afford to let his grief and rage take him over. That would come later, too.

Traffic grew steadily thicker as he left the countryside behind him and joined the N13 heading towards the city. The sudden snowfall had caught a lot of people unprepared, and the road was heavily congested with sluggish bumper-to-bumper lines of vehicles. Twice he veered off onto the verge to roar by the dawdling drivers blocking his way, and forced past them with his horn blaring to warn them of his approach. People gawked at him from their car windows. He didn’t care.

A few minutes later, he left the nationale and carved his way into Cherbourg-Octeville. The hospital was located in the north of the city, not far from the port. He screeched through slippery, twisty streets, attracting more stares from drivers and pedestrians, burning through red lights and ignoring one-way systems and not giving a damn about police, until he spotted the sign with a red cross and the words ‘HÔPITAL PASTEUR URGENCES’. Moments later he swerved into the hospital car park, skidded into a space, burst out of the BMW and ran for the entrance without bothering to lock the car.

It wasn’t until Ben shoved through the doors into the hospital emergency-room reception area that he realised that his hands, face and clothes were still covered in blood and he looked like someone who’d just been dragged out of a train wreck. That probably accounted for some of the looks he’d been getting on the way here. The same expressions were on the faces of the hospital staff as they came rushing to meet him, intent on grabbing him and shoving him onto a gurney before he collapsed on the floor.