The Babylon Idol

Chapter 35

Ben was good with faces. Never forgot one, and certainly wouldn’t have forgotten this one. He was certain he’d never met, or seen, this guy before in his life. Yet, as he lingered for a moment that seemed suspended in time, he experienced the strangest feeling of semi-recognition. It wasn’t the facial features themselves — the shaven head, the solid cheekbones, the square heavy jaw behind the goatee beard.

No, it was the eyes. They were like the eyes of a shark watching him. Dull, lifeless, yet filled with such an intensity of inhuman hatred that Ben had only ever seen once before on a man’s face.

That man was dead. Ben had seen him die. And yet—

Then the moment was over. The man’s lips curled into a kind of snarl and he raised his weapon and loosed a fully automatic burst of gunfire at his side of the security door. He disappeared from sight as the reinforced glass became an opaque web of cracks.

Ben turned away from the door, took Anna’s hand and they ran away down the corridor.

‘That man—’ Anna gasped as they hurried on. It seemed to Ben that she had more to say, but there was no time for conversation. The attackers would be through the second door in moments.

Ben and Anna sprinted for the kitchen. Her shoes weren’t made for running and she stumbled and almost fell. They burst inside the kitchen, past the table and chair, and to the back door.

‘I hope you know this combination too,’ Ben said, pointing at the panel on the wall. ‘Or this is going to be a very short escape.’ She nodded and started tapping in a number with a shaking hand. Just as she finished entering the code there was a muffled blast behind them as the breaching shotgun took out the second security door.

‘There,’ she said.

Ben kicked open the back door and the cold night air rushed in. The temperature outside seemed to have dropped several more degrees. He pushed Anna out of the door, then followed, slamming the door behind him. There were two steps down to a path that wound back around the side of the house towards the front. The flagstones were covered in two inches of fresh snow over a layer of ice. Anna slipped and went down on her side with a cry. Ben scooped her up and got her back on her feet. Her flimsy blouse was wet and clinging to her skin where she’d fallen. No time to stop and ask her if she was hurt. A security light flashed on as they ran, illuminating them like a floodlamp shining on a pair of escaping prison inmates. Their pursuers would be out of the house in seconds.

Now Ben and Anna were racing around the corner to the front of the property, down the driveway, towards the gate, slithering on the ice, their breath fogging in huge clouds. Lights were coming on in neighbouring houses as residents became alarmed at the commotion. Faces were peeking through curtains. Nobody would dare venture outside, but someone would be bound to have called the cops. The police might already be on their way, a complication that Ben pushed to the back of his mind as he ran through the gate and into the empty street.

Slabs of fresh snow had layered the roofs and bonnets and windscreens of the Volvo and the Audi. Ben’s eye landed on the big SUV and he thought, Kavur. It was the kind of car in which a drugged-up kidnap victim could be bundled in the back. He let go of Anna and wrenched open the tailgate, but the cavernous boot was empty.

Big it might be, and built like a Sherman tank, but the Volvo was the slower car compared to the Audi, and speed was what Ben wanted. He ran to the saloon. The driver’s door was open. No key dangling from the ignition. His guts gave a twist of panic, but then he noticed the keyless start button and the fob lying in a moulded recess in the centre console. He shoved a foot inside the footwell, pressed the brake and touched the button and the engine instantly powered into life. He hurled his bag onto the back seats. Flicked on the lights and wipers. The frozen blades juddered, then sprang free and sliced away the brittle layer of snow on the glass.

Anna hovered uncertainly nearby, as if paralysed by the bitter cold. Ben pointed at the passenger side and ordered her to get in, and his sharp command spurred her back into life. As she scurried to the passenger side, she was looking fearfully at him as if to say, What are you doing?

Ben leaped back towards the Volvo. The dirty tyre tracks in the snow were already beginning to freeze over into hard ruts. He knelt behind the big boxy rear of the car. Clumps of snow were clinging to its wheels. He planted the tip of the carving knife horizontally against the sidewall of a rear tyre, and used the heel of his left hand on the handle to punch the blade through the rubber. When they did it in the movies, the tyre burst in a spectacular explosion. In real life it just gasped a loud hiss of bad-smelling air and the Volvo sank down at one corner.

Ben was about to do the same with the other rear wheel when he heard Anna’s panicked voice from the Audi, screaming his name. He looked up and saw the three armed men charging around the corner, sprinting across the garden for the gate. The leader was in front, his boots pounding the frozen ground as he ran like a madman, his gun raised to the shoulder, eyes darting from side to side, hunting for his escaping targets.

Ben leaped to his feet. Head low, he covered the few steps to the Audi in two leaps. The leader saw him and opened fire. The sharp rat-a-rat-tat cut through the silence of the empty street. Bullets chittered off the Audi’s bodywork. Ben reached the driver’s door, ripped it open and threw himself inside. Anna was saying something, but her words were coming out in a terrified gargle.

The men were racing closer. More gunshots raked across the Audi’s windscreen. The left side-door mirror burst apart as a bullet smashed into it. Anna screamed. Ben pressed a hand against her shoulder and forced her roughly down into the passenger footwell. He rammed the stick into drive and stamped down hard on the gas, and the Audi’s wheels spun with a tortured scream as it leaped forwards.

Steering with one hand and pressing Anna down with the other he aimed the nose of the car at the oncoming attackers and hammered the wheels up onto the snowy kerb straight at them. The Audi absorbed a dozen more snapping gunshots before the three men scattered out of his path. One slipped on the ice and went down in his haste to avoid being run over. Ben swerved away from the gateway and accelerated along the pavement, scraping past the parked Volvo. Swerved again, bumping down off the kerb and onto the road and booting as much power as he could force from the Audi’s screaming engine as the wheels bit down on the slippery surface and he sped fishtailing away from the scene. A glance in his remaining mirror told him the three men were piling into the Volvo. The leader was getting behind the wheel. Its headlights flared into life and it took off in pursuit.

The chase had only just begun.