The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Twenty-One

The air was acrid with gunsmoke and the stink of cordite. Ben crushed empty cartridge cases underfoot as he hurried over to Kazem, thinking he’d have to carry the injured man over his shoulder.

But Kazem was already dead. His eyes were a glassy stare and the hole in his neck had stopped sucking air.

‘Leave him,’ Ben said to Raul, who was gaping at the dead man who’d been his sister’s assistant and possibly the last person to speak to her. Ben grabbed Raul’s arm and shoved him towards the spiral steps.

Behind them, the door crashed in and tore off its second hinge and came apart as it hit the floor. One, two, three men in black ski-masks burst through the doorway.

Ben shoved Raul’s back, urging him to go faster. Their racing steps clattered on the metal staircase. Shots cracked out. A bullet whanged off the steel pillar a few inches from Ben’s head. Another sparked off the metalwork at his feet. Raul stumbled and for an instant Ben thought he’d been shot. Raul’s gun fell from his hand as he grabbed the rail to steady himself. The weapon clattered and bounced past Ben on its way down the steps. No time to try to go back for it. He pushed Raul harder. Raul kept moving. He plunged up through the hatch. Ben was right behind.

Now they were inside the dark, shady interior of the astronomical dome, and Ben knew that his tactical retreat had turned into a bad mistake. They were trapped in a dead end. You could defend it, if you had enough ammunition. Which they didn’t have. But either way, with the enemy occupying the only exit, you couldn’t escape from it.

Already, he could hear the voices below as the gunmen took control of the room beneath them. One of them sounded as if he was talking into a radio or phone. Ben caught the words ‘They’re in the tower’.

Speaking English. London accent.

Ben didn’t have time to wonder why. He checked his weapon. Three rounds in the magazine, plus one in the chamber. Not good. Not good at all.

The darkness inside the dome was their only friend. Ben found the light switch on the wall near the hatch, but he didn’t turn it on. He hit it hard with the butt of the submachine gun, felt the plastic crunch and hit it twice more until the switch was in pieces and dangling uselessly from its wires. He grabbed Raul’s arm again and urged him into the shadows.

Now there were footsteps ringing on the staircase as the three men headed up towards them. Ben and Raul drew back behind the hulking forms of the telescopes. Ben wondered why the attackers didn’t just fire up through the floor with twelve-gauge slug rounds, or just pop a grenade or two up through the hatch. It was what he’d have done. And these people didn’t seem short of hardware. It wouldn’t take much more firepower than they’d already demonstrated to blast the whole dome and everything in it to pieces. But there was something reticent about their tactics. Almost as if… The first man emerged through the hatchway. Just a dark outline, dimly illuminated by the daylight shining up from below. Followed by the second, then the third. In turn, each vanished into the shadows. Ben could no longer see them, but he could sense them splitting up and circling the dome, guns ready. He could picture their relative positions from the tread of their footsteps on the spongy rubber floor. He didn’t dare fire, because the muzzle flash would only give away his position and invite an overwhelming reply of superior force. He quietly transferred the gun to his left hand and drew the knife from his belt. Nudged Raul as if to say, ‘Stay close to me.’

Ben listened hard in the dark, visualising what his ears told him. One man had moved to the left, one to the right, stalking around the circumference of the dome in opposite directions to flush out their prey. The third man was cutting across the middle, stealthily approaching the telescope mounting in the centre of the floor. Not stealthily enough. His rubber soles creaking on the rubber floor, under the weight of a large man weighed down with body armour and weaponry and ammunition. He stepped forward another metre, then another. He was close now, close enough that Ben could hear him breathing.

Ben waited, perfectly immobile in the shadow of the telescopes. He silently placed the gun down by his feet. Laid a hand on Raul’s arm, telling him to hold steady. Three more seconds. Then five. Creak. Creak. He could smell the guy’s sweat.

Then Ben struck, with the speed and surprise of an attacking leopard when it explodes out of deep cover to take down an unsuspecting gazelle.

Except that Ben’s enemy was no gazelle. He was a dangerous predator in his own right, and Ben had to put him down hard and fast. He knocked him sprawling backwards into the operator’s chair attached to the rear of the twin telescope mounting, and used the knife. It was brutal, and it was merciless, and it was exactly what Ben had been trained to do many years earlier.

As the man twitched his last in the chair, Ben was already retreating back into the depth of the shadows, clutching the bloodied blade. He picked up his near-empty weapon. There hadn’t been time to snatch the man’s gun. The other two, fanned out at opposite sides of the dome, had heard the muffled commotion and come rushing to the centre to investigate, and he’d had to withdraw quickly. Ben heard the rustle of clothing as one of them crouched down to check their fallen companion. It didn’t take them long to tell there was nothing they could do for him. They quickly split up again.

Ben and Raul pulled deeper into the darkness. Ben felt the edge of one of the racks of high-tech astronomical equipment against his elbow and slowly, silently moved around the back of it.

A mechanical click caught his ear. Followed by the hum and whirr of an electric motor, the taut jerk of a steel cable taking up slack, the sound of wheels turning, pulleys rolling.

One of the men had found the controls for the dome. The whole upper section was rotating on its base, like some kind of gigantic artillery emplacement or a missile silo bearing towards the direction of its target. There was a muted rumble that resonated through the whole dome as the huge fibreglass construction swivelled around on roller tracks inset into the rim of the perimeter. The rumbling continued for several seconds, then it stopped.

What was he doing?

Then Ben heard another click, and he knew the answer.

Shit.

The man had activated the control to open the roof. The electric motor kicked in again, and this time the mechanical sounds came from directly overhead as the cables and pulleys bore on the sliding section of ceiling that could be pulled right back for observing the sky. A bright crack of daylight appeared, three metres in length and growing quickly wider. The pale afternoon sunlight flooded the inside of the dome, dazzling in its suddenness.

The cover of darkness was suddenly gone. Ben blinked, feeling as naked and exposed as a fugitive caught in a search beam.

Then it got worse.