The Babylon Idol

Chapter 34

Trapped inside a strange house, on unfamiliar ground with little sense of the lie of the land, unarmed except for a kitchen knife, with four heavily tooled-up professional thugs about to attack at any moment and a matter of seconds in which to figure out a contingency plan. Ben had been in similar scrapes before now, and survived. But it wasn’t something to make a habit of.

Then again, Ercan Kavur’s home was not the typical middle-class suburban residence.

Ben jumped over to the desk and turned off the lamp, plunging the study into darkness. Too late. The attackers already knew which room their targets were in. Through the window he saw the lithe figure of the team leader signal to the one with the grenade launcher, who planted himself on the patch of lawn in front of the house, braced himself and fired straight at the study window with a loud report that Kavur’s thick security glass muffled to a WHOOMPH.

Ben instinctively dived away from the window, grabbing Anna and yanking her down to the floor. If the grenade was high explosive, they were both dead anyway; but if his guess was right and the assault team were using tear gas, he’d have to try to get to the study door in time to escape the worst of it.

The juddering impact seemed to shake the whole house as the grenade whacked into the glass. A normal window would have shattered into a million fragments that would have covered Ben and Anna’s prone bodies like an ice storm, but Ercan Kavur’s home improvements paid off. Instead of smashing through the window the missile just bounced off.

Once, while training on a pistol shooting range, Ben had been hit square in the chest by a forty-calibre slug that had bounced straight back at him from a steel plate target and left him shaken and bruised. These things happened, time to time. Up on his feet instantly, still clutching Anna’s arm, Ben saw the grenade rebound towards the shooter who had launched it, catch him right in the face and knock him off his feet with his visor cracked. The grenade dropped to the ground next to him, blowing out a pressurised stream of CS gas that billowed and dispersed into the night air. The team leader quickly kicked the grenade away and it rolled harmlessly into the bushes. The fallen guy jumped back up, ripped off his damaged mask and threw it away in disgust.

The assault hadn’t started well, but the team now wasted no time to move on with the next phase of the attack, to get inside. That was when the fun would begin.

‘Time to leave,’ Ben said. He snatched up his bag and slung it over his shoulder, reached down and pulled Anna sharply to her feet.

‘The papers—’ she began.

‘Leave them.’ He hauled her towards the study door. There was no time to grab her coat or handbag, either. The electrified perimeter might deter a casual burglar but it wasn’t going to be an obstacle to these guys. As Ben wrenched open the door he heard the explosive BLAM of the breaching shotgun taking out the lock on the front entrance.

Then they were in.

At the instant that Ben emerged from the study and bounded into the corridor, knife in one hand and Anna’s arm clutched in the other, the front door crashed open. Through the reinforced glass of the security door separating them he saw the four men burst into the hallway. Their boots were rimed with snow. Weapons pointing. The leader was first in, carbine at the hip, finger on trigger, eyes glinting behind his visor, moving with a fluid violence that looked as if he lived for these moments.

Next, three things happened. First, the alarm system activated a whooping, shrilling siren that filled the house. Second, as the invaders charged into the breached hallway, they were met with streams of vapour that shot like smoke from the wall vents either side of them, instantly engulfing them in thick fog. Third, the overhead nozzles built into the light fittings went into action, scooshing jets of red fluid downwards into the impenetrable mist. It looked like blood, or brake fluid, but it was neither.

With gas masks on, the three men still wearing them were protected from the pepper blasters that would have reduced any normal intruders into an incapacitated jelly, and they pushed on blindly through the fog to make it to the first glass door a few paces in front of them. The guy who had torn off his damaged mask didn’t fare as well. From the muffled scream that Ben heard through the security glass, it was obvious that Ercan Kavur’s pepper spray must be the proper undiluted tactical capsaicin agent that would put the most determined attacker out of action for a good half-hour, and not the attenuated dilution for sale to civilians in those few countries where governments still trusted citizens to defend life and property. The guy wouldn’t be much of a threat for a while.

Ben had to smile. Round two to Kavur and his home improvements.

The leader never even glanced back at his fallen man. First to reach the security door, he shouldered and kicked and beat it with his gloved fist, but the alarm system had sent it into lockdown mode. In a fury he motioned to the breacher to take out the lock. The breacher stepped forward, jacked another round into the chamber of his shotgun, jammed the jagged muzzle tight up below the door handle, pulled the trigger, and BOOM, they were through. First came the leader, then the breacher, then the third guy dragging their incapacitated comrade out of the smoke and dumping him on the floor, where he lay writhing and rubbing his eyes as if they were on fire.

By then, Ben and Anna were already through the second glass door, Anna frantically punching in the four-digit code from memory to override the lockdown mode long enough for them to dart through and slam it shut behind them. The electronic lock reactivated on closing with a solid clunk, audible over the screech of the alarm siren.

The leader sprinted towards them and slid to a halt as the second door blocked his way. He ripped off his goggles and respirator.

Ben had been about to hurry on, but he held back. He and the man were just feet apart, almost close enough to reach out and touch if the security glass hadn’t separated them.

The man’s eyes seemed to bore into Ben’s.

Ben stared back.