The Babylon Idol

Chapter 48

‘The only thing we can do,’ Ben told her. ‘Get out of here, and fast.’

‘How?’

He nodded in the direction of the truck. ‘In that, while there’s anything left of it.’

‘But the tyres—’

‘I’ll drive it on its rims if I have to. Won’t be the first time.’

‘I can believe that.’

He gripped her shoulder. ‘Now listen to me. Stay tight, keep your eyes peeled and don’t move. If I’m not back in two minutes, run like hell. Okay?’

She nodded, eyes huge and moist. ‘I’m frightened.’

‘Being frightened is good. Helps you run faster.’

‘Come back quick.’

‘Quicker than you can say “precipitev‌olissimevolmente”.’

‘I’ll say it slowly.’

Ben winked, then snatched up his rifle and broke cover. The sniper had been waiting, poised to shoot, and his reflexes were sharp. Ben was halfway to the truck when a bullet zipped much too close for comfort behind him. Still running, he sacrificed another bullet with a snap shot intended more to cover himself than hit anything. He reached the truck and ducked behind it. He glanced back at the rock. Anna was out of sight.

Ben inched his way up the left side of the truck. The angle at which it sat meant that if he kept pressed against its flank, he was shielded from view. Diya Sharifi’s body lay sprawled with one arm outflung under the rocker panel. His blood had soaked into the dirt to make a dark, almost purple patch on the ground. Ben stepped over him. He worked the rifle bolt one more time. Shlick-shlack. Chambered the fourth round. Just two cartridges left. He was almost at the open driver’s door. He could see the bunch of keys dangling from the ignition. If he could scramble inside the cab without getting shot, fire up the engine and slam the truck into reverse and hit the gas as hard and fast as he could while locking the steering all the way right, he had a fair chance of getting the vehicle backed up close to where Anna was hiding behind the big boulder. A lot of things could go wrong. But it was a plan.

Then the plan fell apart even before it began. Ben was so focused on getting to the door that he almost didn’t notice the movement sixty yards the other side of the truck, halfway up the right-side bank of the canyon. A man in a dark jacket, carrying a submachine gun.

It was just as Ben had feared. They were closing in around their flanks.

He and the man both saw each other at the same instant. And now the slow, exploratory exchange of fire erupted into a full-on gun battle. The guy swivelled his weapon and fired, but he was in too much of a hurry and his footing was bad on the rough slope. Bullets thunked into the truck and blew out the passenger window. Ben swung the Mauser up, caught his target in his sights, and let loose his precious fourth and penultimate shot.

The bullet took the guy right in the head. The pink mist caught the wind. He crumpled at the knees, then dropped straight down like a sack of washing. His weapon went clattering down the slope.

Ben worked the rifle bolt. Shlick-shlack. One guy down. And one round left. Like a pauper’s last penny in the world, with a stack of debts and bills to pay and bailiffs beating on the door.

Which meant the last thing Ben wanted at this moment was to be forced to use it. But in war, just as in life, what you want is seldom what you get. A second later, another figure of a man appeared — on the left this time, high on the canyon bank, clutching a black rifle with a compact ACOG scope. He was directly above Anna and tracing a zigzag path down towards her. From the way he was peering down the slope, Ben realised that he had a line of sight to her. He was raising his gun to his shoulder. Watching her through his scope. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger, unless Ben did it first.

Ben did. The perfectly timed and balanced reflexive aim-fire. The ultimate synthesis of man and machine, as though the battle rifle had been an extension of his mind and body.

But then it went horribly wrong. At the exact moment that Ben pressed the trigger, the sniper fired again, punching a hole through the open door of the truck next to him. It missed Ben, but it also caused him to jerk his shot. The last bullet from the Mauser vanished somewhere beyond the empty horizon. The figure on the slope quickly scurried for a cluster of rocks and ducked under cover. He needn’t have worried. Ben was now clutching a steel and wood club.

But the sniper was still happily in business — and let off another shot to prove it. The truck shuddered from the impact. The tell-tale ping of a pointed copper-jacketed bullet penetrating deep into metal, carving a channel of destruction through the vehicle’s vital innards. The sniper followed that one up with another that blasted out the driver’s side window and showered Ben with broken glass.

And then it got worse.

The cry that rent the air was full of pain and fear. Anna’s voice. Ben felt the blood freeze in his heart and wheeled around.

Bozza had her.