The Babylon Idol

Chapter 47

The bullet that spattered Diya’s brains was travelling about three thousand feet per second, more than double the speed of sound. So the crack of the shot reached Ben’s ears almost exactly half a second after it hit. Diya was stone dead but still standing, his knees crumpling under him, beginning to drop. Anna’s cry was still forming in her mouth.

But by then Ben already knew exactly where the hidden sniper was positioned among the rocks some five hundred yards away. And he was already spurred into action, leaping behind the truck and yelling at Anna to get down, Down! Through the rear cab window, all grimed with dirt and dust, he saw her duck between the seats. Out of sight, not out of danger.

The truck lurched on its suspension and went down at the front left corner. Quarter of a second later, another boom sounded from the distant rocks and echoed up and down the canyon.

The sniper fired again. Same result, second front tyre. He was immobilising the truck. Once he’d contented himself with that, he might very well start shooting at them. Using the big Dodge as cover wasn’t an option. A high-velocity rifle would zip through vehicle metal like paper.

Ben had no intention of hanging around for whatever might come next. Jumping up onto the cluttered pickup bed he yelled to Anna to turn her face away. Military Mauser bolt-action rifles were made with a thick steel butt plate, ideal for smacking down onto the concrete of the parade ground, or for staving in an enemy’s teeth, or for smashing windows. He jabbed it hard against the dirty glass, felt the splintering crunch, whacked it again and kept hammering at it until the entire rear window was in pieces over the back seat. He reached an arm inside. She clasped his hand and he half helped, half hauled her out through the glassless frame. At the same moment she scrambled onto the pickup bed, the truck’s windscreen dissolved into a mass of fissures with a round hole punched cleanly through its middle. Ben ran for the tailgate, leaping over the junk and tools, dragging her behind him. They jumped. Hit the stony ground at the rear of the truck. Anna was wild with terror. Ben pushed her down into a crouch behind the tow-hitch.

It was time to give the sniper back a dose of his own medicine. Ben brought up the Mauser and used the side of the pickup bed as a rest to steady his aim. The hidden shooter was almost certainly using a modern rifle with a telescopic sight, surgically accurate enough to pick off flies at long range. Ben had only crude iron battle sights, through which even a relatively close target looked tiny. He couldn’t expect to pick flies off at this distance.

But a man is a much bigger target than a fly.

Then he saw what he was looking for: the briefest flash of reflected sunlight glinting off steel and glass, just long enough to give away the sniper’s position. He was hunkered in tight to the rocky slope of the canyon, about thirty feet up and about ten degrees left. Ben estimated the range at around 485 yards. He sighted on the spot where he’d seen the flash. Took up the first pressure on the trigger, drew in a breath, let half of it out, felt his body go still and pressed the trigger the rest of the way. The Mauser was loud. Its recoil jolted the steel butt plate against his shoulder. The bullet was in flight; a fraction of a second later he thought he saw the puff of dust as it struck the rocks. Close enough to the sniper’s position to get him worried.

Ben worked the bolt, ejected the smoking spent cartridge case, slammed another in the chamber. He wondered how many Wehrmacht soldiers back in the day had shared the same worry he was having now, which was the limited magazine capacity of their standard infantry rifle. One gone, only four to go.

Then he would just have to make them count.

He scanned the rocks through the sights. A tiny movement caught his eye. He fired again. The same loud crash, the same hard-kicking punch to his right shoulder, the same split-second interval as the bullet flew. There was no puff of dust this time. He thought he saw a dark shape flit past a gap in the rocks. Had he hit his mark?

The return shot that cracked off the side of the truck an instant later told him he hadn’t. Now the sniper had his position. Not good. And sheltering behind the flimsy-skinned truck was no kind of shelter at all. Ben glanced at a pile of landslide debris ten yards to their left, where a large boulder had broken loose of the canyon wall at some time in its history and come tumbling down to the foot of the slope to provide perfect cover for a moment like this. The sniper could blast away all day and never put a crack in it.

‘I’m going to count three,’ Ben said to Anna. ‘Watch my fingers. Take my other hand and don’t let go. On three, we’re going to run for that rock there, quick as we can. Ready? One — two — go.’

They burst out from behind the truck and raced over the stony ground, threw themselves behind the safety of the big boulder and crouched there. Ben re-cocked the Mauser. The empty case flipped out and rolled in the dirt. Two rounds gone, three to go. Less than ideal, considering the sniper probably had a ten-shot magazine and a whole box of ammo resting at his elbow.

Anna was gaping at him. ‘Ben, how are we going to get out of this?’

‘Same way we always do,’ he replied. ‘I’ll do something crazy, you’ll tell me I’m a lunatic, and we’ll live to find more trouble another day.’

‘I don’t care what you do, as long as you do something.’

‘I’ll quote you on that.’

‘Is it Usberti?’

‘Not in person,’ Ben said. ‘The archbishop never was a trigger puller and I doubt whether he’d risk himself in a gunfight. Like a good general, he’ll be leading his troops from the rear.’

‘Bozza?’

Ben smiled grimly, nodded. ‘I don’t know if he’s the one sniping at us, but he’s here, all right. I can smell him.’

‘What can we do?’

Ben said nothing. Because the fact was, with only one gun and just three rounds, they weren’t exactly option-rich right now.

A third bullet cracked off the rocks nearby, ricocheting with a cloud of dust and stone chips and a howl that blended with the boom of the shot.

‘He can’t see us,’ Anna said. ‘As long as we stay here, we’re safe.’

She was right, as far as it went. The problem was that it didn’t go far, because Anna was new to the tactics of war. Ben wasn’t. He was all too aware that they were being deliberately pinned down. That was one of the key functions of a sniper, to keep the enemy distracted and unable to shift position while the rest of the unit split up and work their way around in a flanking manoeuvre. That was exactly what he’d have been doing, in Bozza’s shoes.

In which case, the rest of them could appear at any moment.

Another shot cracked and boomed. The truck’s rear right tyre exploded and the vehicle sagged down at the corner. Another key function of a sniper, in anti-materiel mode to neutralise the enemy’s transport. This was getting better and better.

‘Ben? What do we do now?’