The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Twenty-Two

Cook had listened to the whole thing unfolding through his headset, but he hadn’t moved from his vantage point in the rocks overlooking the front of the house.

Their opponent, this Hope guy, had proved even tougher to kill than they’d anticipated. The Boss was tearing his hair out and ready for an apoplexy on the other end of the phone. Hope had first taken out Ruddock, then Nicholson. Now, as the dome opened like the top of a giant egg and filled with light, Cook could see through his rifle scope the bloodied corpse of Phil Dean sprawled in a chair that was part of the astronomical telescope mounting. Three men down. Half their force. But now the show was over, because nothing could compete with what he was about to bring to the deal. His field of fire was laid wide open. A sniper’s delight.

Cook panned the rifle to the left and his crosshairs picked out the fleeting shape of a man who wasn’t one of his team, and wasn’t Raul Fuentes. Hope.

Cook didn’t need to call it in this time. As fast as he locked his sights on target, he squeezed the trigger.

Ben felt the shockwave of the incoming rifle bullet before he heard the thunderous crack of its report. It missed him, but not by much as it slammed past and punched a clean round hole through the fibreglass wall behind him. Ben caught a momentary glimpse of the sniper eighty metres away among the rocks, about level with the roof of the house and angling his rifle up at the dome.

As another shot cracked out, Ben was already diving out of the line of fire. Moments ago, he’d been groping about in darkness. Now every detail of the dome was lit up bright and clear. He retreated behind a metal table covered in computer equipment. He had lost sight of Raul, and that worried him. What worried him even more were the sniper outside, and the two enemies still in the house. Four rounds left. He could afford a single miss. The rest had to count, one for one.

A deafening blast came from inside the dome. A spread of twelve-gauge buckshot blew the computers on the table to pieces and showered Ben with debris. The masked man holding the shotgun was hunkered down behind the telescope mounting, and Ben didn’t have a clear shot at him. He inched around the side of the table. Too late, he saw that the sniper in the rocks had moved position, climbing higher so he could command a better view into the dome.

There was nothing reticent about their tactics now. Ben scrambled away as the sniper opened up with fully automatic fire and the high-velocity rounds chewed through the metal table as if it were made of cheese. Whatever kind of battle rifle the guy was equipped with, it could shred the whole dome apart in no time.

But the sniper could only climb so high, and the bottom sill of the dome’s aperture was higher. Which meant that as long as Ben stayed pressed down close enough to the floor, he couldn’t be seen. That couldn’t prevent him from being seen by the two heavily armed men left inside the dome, though. He wedged himself as far as he could into the side of the observatory, behind a latticework of metal struts that supported the weight of the roof. He was pinned, and he couldn’t move, and he still couldn’t see Raul.

Ben heard a harsh voice say, ‘We got your mate here. Lose the weapon and come on out.’

Ben peered out from his hiding place, and saw them. In the middle of the floor, one masked man was standing behind Raul with a pistol to his temple. The other had a shotgun.

‘Three seconds, Hope. Then we kill’m. Give yourself up, it’s over.’

Ben gritted his teeth. He had only one alternative. It was down to the wire now, kill or be killed.

Four rounds left.

He broke cover. Keeping his head down so the sniper couldn’t get him and moving too fast for the guy with the shotgun, he dived across the floor and landed on his shoulder and rolled and fired all at once. The guy with the shotgun staggered back and went down.

Three rounds left.

The other guy still had his pistol pressed hard up against Raul’s head, but he didn’t shoot. He aimed at Ben instead, but Ben came out of his roll in a low crouch and fired first, and the guy’s face burst red and he fell away from Raul and collapsed sideways.

Two rounds left.

Raul swayed on his feet. One side of his face was misted with blood. He gazed down at the body of the man who’d been holding the gun to his head.

Now Ben knew why the guy hadn’t shot Raul. It was for the same reason the sniper eighty metres away in the rocks didn’t blow Raul’s brains all over the inside of the observatory when he was standing there in full view.

Ben sprang up out of his low crouch and ran straight at Raul. He spun him around towards the opening in the dome with one arm clamped around his chest, pinning Raul’s body tightly against his own. Raul struggled with surprising strength, but Ben clamped him harder.

Eighty metres away, the sniper shifted his aim and then went very still. Ready to fire the instant he got a clear shot at Ben.

Ben pointed the MP5 single-handed over Raul’s shoulder. The submachine gun was no target pistol, and eighty metres was a very long shot with a nine-millimetre even if Ben hadn’t been trying to hold still a struggling man who was nearly as strong as he was. Ben fired and saw his shot skip off the rocks with a puff of dust eighteen inches from the sniper’s position.

The magazine was empty now. All he had left was that one round in the chamber.

Before Ben could pull the trigger, the sniper fired back. Maybe he’d rushed the shot, or maybe he was being over careful not to hit the wrong man. The bullet whipped past him and perforated the polished aluminium tube of the solar telescope. More than twice the velocity of Ben’s gun in metres per second. Nearly four times the muzzle energy in foot pounds. Capable of punching through a concrete block at ten times this distance. And Ben was guessing the guy had a lot more than a single round left.

Ben shoved Raul aside, leaned on the edge of the dome, held his breath and lined up his sights, said his prayer and squeezed off his last shot.

The gun cracked and jolted in his hand, and the bolt locked back empty.

He was off to the right, but it wasn’t a miss. The right side of the sniper’s head dissolved into a pink mist and he slumped across his rifle.

Ben lowered the gun, able to breathe again.

Then his vision exploded in a white flash and he felt himself falling.