Scott Mariani - Ben Hope

But it wasn’t a dwelling in which anybody would have wanted to live. Not even the mice that inhabited the remote compound’s various other sheds and outbuildings would have been tempted to make their nests in its walls. Not considering the activities that went on there.

Yet, the building wasn’t empty that autumn afternoon. At the end of a narrow corridor was the main room; and in the middle of that room sat a woman on a wooden chair. She wasn’t moving. Her wrists and ankles were lashed tight and her head hung towards her knees, so that her straggly blond hair covered her face. To her right, a kidnapper in torn jeans reclined on a tattered sofa with a shotgun cradled across his lap. To her left, another of the woman’s captors stood in a corner.

Nobody spoke. As though waiting for something to happen.

The waiting didn’t go on long.

The stunning boom of an explosion shattered the silence and shook the building. Heavy footsteps pounded up the corridor towards the main room. Then its door crashed violently inwards and two men burst inside. One man was slightly taller than the other, but otherwise they were indistinguishable in appearance. They were dressed from head to foot in black, bulked out by their body armour and tactical vests, and their faces were hidden behind masks and goggles. Each carried a semiautomatic pistol, same make, model and calibre, both weapons drawn from their tactical holsters, loaded and ready for action.

The two-man assault team moved with blinding speed as they invaded the room. They ignored the hostage for the moment. Her safety was their priority, which meant dealing with her captors quickly and efficiently before either one could harm her. The taller man unhesitatingly thrust out his weapon to aim at the kidnapper in the corner and engaged him with a double-tap to the chest and a third bullet to the head, the three snapping gunshots coming so fast that they sounded like a burst from a machine gun. No human being alive could have responded, or even flinched, in time to avoid being fatally shot.

The other man in black moved across the room to engage the kidnapper on the sofa. Shouting DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON!

The kidnapper made no move to toss the shotgun. The second assault shooter went to engage him. His finger was on the trigger. Then the room suddenly lit up with a blinding white flash and an explosion twice as loud as the munitions they’d used to breach the door blew the shooter off his feet. He sprawled on his back, unharmed but momentarily stunned. His unfired pistol went sliding across the floor.

The room was full of acrid smoke. The kidnapper in the corner had slumped to the floor, but neither the bound hostage nor her captor on the sofa had moved at all. That was because they were the latest type of life-size, high-density foam 3D humanoid targets that were being used for live-fire hostage rescue and combat training simulations here at the Le Val Tactical Training Centre in Normandy, France. The ‘kidnappers’ had already been shot more full of holes than French Gruyère in the course of a hundred similar entry drills performed inside the killing house. So had the hostage, more than her fair share. But they’d survive to go through the whole experience another day, and many more.

The taller of the two assault shooters made his weapon safe and clipped it back into its holster, then pulled off his mask and goggles and brushed back the thick blond lock that fell across his brow. His haircut definitely wouldn’t have passed muster, back in his SAS days. He walked over to his colleague, who was still trying to scramble to his feet.

Ben Hope held out a gloved hand to help him up. He said, ‘Congratulations. You’re dead, your team are dead, your hostage is dead. Let’s review and start over.’

The second man’s name was Yannick Ferreira and he was a counter-terror unit commander with the elite Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale or GIGN, here on a refresher course. He’d wanted to hone his skills with the best, and there were none better to train with than the guys at Le Val: Ben himself, his business partner Jeff Dekker, their associate Tuesday Fletcher and their hand-picked team of instructors, all ex-military, all top of their game. Ferreira was pretty good at his job too, but even skilled operators, like world-class athletes, could lose their edge now and then. It was Ben’s job to keep them on their toes.

Ferreira said, ‘What the hell just happened?’

Ben replied, ‘That happened.’ He pointed at the floor, where a length of thin wire lay limp across the rough boards where Ferreira had snagged it with his boot.

‘A tripwire?’

‘You must have missed it, in all the excitement,’ Ben said.

The wire was connected to a hidden circuit behind the wall, which when broken activated the non-lethal explosive device right beneath Ferreira’s feet. Seven million candlepower and 170 decibels of stunning noise weren’t quite the same as being blown apart by a Semtex booby trap, but it certainly got its message across.

‘Devil’s in the detail, Yannick,’ Ben said. ‘As we all know, our terrorist friends have no problem blowing themselves to smithereens in order to take us out with them. It can get just a little messy.’

Ferreira shook his head sourly. ‘I can’t believe you caught me out with a damned flashbang. That was a dirty rotten trick, Ben.’

‘Dirty rotten tricks are what you’re paying us for,’ Ben said. ‘How about we stroll back to the house for a coffee, then we can come back and run through it again?’

‘Keep pouring,’ Jeff said grimly, holding out his wine glass until Ben had filled it to the brim. Jeff downed half the glass in a single gulp like a man on a mission, and smacked his lips.

‘I think I’ll get rat-arsed tonight,’ he declared.

‘Sounds like a brilliant plan,’ Tuesday said dryly. ‘Don’t expect me to carry you back to your hole after you collapse in a heap, though.’

Another busy work day had ended, evening had fallen and the three of them were gathered around the big oak table in the farmhouse kitchen, preparing to demolish a pot of beef and carrot stew that could have fed the French Army and was simmering on the stove. Ben was seated in his usual place by the window, feeling not much less morose than Jeff despite the glass of wine at his elbow, his loyal German shepherd dog Storm curled up at his feet and one of his favourite Gauloises cigarettes between his lips.

While he’d been working with Yannick Ferreira, Jeff and Tuesday had been putting two more of the GIGN guys through their paces on Le Val’s firing ranges. Tuesday had been a top-class military sniper before he’d come to join the gang in Normandy. His idea of fun was popping rows of cherry tomatoes at six hundred yards with his custom Remington 700 rifle, which generally upstaged and occasionally cheesed off their clients. Especially the ones with a tough-guy attitude, who for some reason didn’t expect a skinny Jamaican kid who was forever smiling and ebullient to be so deadly once he got behind a rifle.

Ben had warned Tuesday in the past about the showing off. ‘We’re here to teach them, not embarrass them.’ Still, Ferreira’s guys hadn’t taken it too badly. After class the three trainees had driven off to the nearest town, Valognes, in search of beer and fast food to help soothe their wounded pride and prepare them for another day of humiliation ahead.

Even Tuesday’s spirits were dampened by the gloomy atmosphere around the kitchen table. But the glumness of the three friends had nothing to do with the tribulations of their work. The theme of the dinnertime conversation had been women troubles. Tuesday, who appeared to enjoy a stress-free and uncomplicated love life largely because he was always between girlfriends, had nothing to complain about. For both Ben and Jeff, however, it was a different story.