The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Twenty-Six

A broadsword against two Glocks. It wasn’t an evenly matched fight, but Ben couldn’t do a lot about that. He wasn’t about to let these guys walk away. He still had surprise on his side — and doorways offered advantages for combat that helped even the odds in ways that an open space never could.

As the first black-clad figure stepped out of the room and into the dark passage, Ben closed in on him fast, smelling the mint on the guy’s breath.

He didn’t want to kill them both, not yet, not until he found out who they were working for and why. Mint-stinker would be kept alive for now. Gripping the sheathed blade with both hands, Ben smashed the steel basket and pommel of the broadsword into the back of his ponytailed head. The blow sounded like a hammer hitting a cabbage.

The man fell forwards into the passage with a cry of pain, twisting as he went down, his hand going to his weapon as quick as a striking cobra. Ben lashed out a first kick that sent the pistol clattering from his hand and a follow-up that caught him under the chin and bounced his head against the floor. The other man was still in the doorway, his eyes wide in the holes of his mask. That split-second of hesitation was all Ben needed to rip the sword blade out of its scabbard and lunge at him.

This one he could kill.

With fast footwork and a powerful thrust, the tip of a sword could accelerate towards its target as fast as a thrown javelin and with enough forward momentum for even the heaviest, broadest blade to penetrate right through an enemy’s ribcage. And Ben was fast. But the man was faster, dangerously faster. He threw himself backwards into Brennan’s bedroom, drawing himself out of range of the lethal stab. Ben propelled himself towards the doorway, lunging the sword at him again with even greater force. The man grabbed the edge of the door, slammed it and drove it shut with a powerful kick. Ben had put too much energy into his sword strike to pull the blow. The sharp point of the sword sheared into one of the wooden panels, eighteen inches of blade passing right through. Ben yanked on the hilt to pull it out for another strike, but the fibres of the wood gripped it tight. It wouldn’t budge.

He’d just lost his primary weapon. But there was another behind him on the floor. Abandoning the trapped sword, he dived away from the doorway to scoop up the Glock he’d struck from Mint-stinker’s hand.

He’d hit the guy pretty hard, though evidently not hard enough. He was struggling to heave himself up from the floor and roll across to grab the weapon at the same time Ben went for it. Ben drove a knee into his chest and punched him in the face, felt his knuckles connect solidly against bone. It was a disabling punch, but this guy seemed able to absorb them with uncanny ease. Ben hit him again, blood smearing his fist. This time Mint-stinker flopped back down, but he looked as if he might pop right up again. Ben was losing precious seconds.

Too many precious seconds. The bedroom door burst open, the hilt of the trapped sword crashing against the wall. The second man reappeared in the doorway, his Glock with the bulky-looking twin-drum magazine thrust out in a two-handed grip and the sights rapidly acquiring a bead on Ben.

Ben’s reaching hand was still a metre away from the fallen gun.

The second man took a step forward. As if in slow motion, Ben saw the well-practised flick of his thumb against his weapon’s fire selector switch. He smiled. As if to say, Gotcha, asshole.

And in that fleeting fraction of an instant, Ben knew he was in more serious trouble than he’d bargained for.

Because pistols didn’t normally have fire selector switches.

With a shock, Ben understood what was about to be unleashed on him. Getting shot at with a handgun was never good news, but now Ben was realising why these particular weapons were loaded up with twin-drum magazines. It was because they were Glock 18s, outwardly almost identical to standard pistols but officially classed as submachine guns. At the flip of a lever, they could be switched from normal semi-auto mode to spew out a constant stream of bullets at a rate of twelve hundred a minute.

Ben scarcely had time to think Uh-oh before he had to duck back through the dark passage, abandoning all notion of grabbing the fallen Glock. He kept his head down, weaving desperately as a zigzagging line of bullet holes churned up into the wall and chased him like a swarm of attacking hornets. Masonry chippings flew. Paintings dropped from their hooks, glass exploding. He dived, rolled, felt bullets zing past and flying bits of plaster sting his face. Twelve hundred rounds cycled per minute. One every five hundredths of a second. The air was thick with copper-jacketed lead alloy.

Ben reached the top of the stairs but knew that he’d never make it down without getting shot to pieces. He flipped himself over the landing rail as rounds sparked and ricocheted off its bars, and dropped into space.

For a moment he felt himself falling; then his shoulder and ribs exploded with pain as he hit the stairs ten or fifteen below. There was no time to worry about damage, as long as it wasn’t crippling. He rolled down a few steps, then found his feet and went bounding towards the bottom.

The shooter appeared at the top of the stairs behind him, ejecting his empty drum magazine and slamming in a fresh one. His colleague was right behind him, hobbling slightly and holding his pistol in one gloved hand, with the other clamped to the back of his head.

Ben launched himself from the eighth step and hit the mosaic floor of the entrance hall running, heading for the front door. Nothing seemed to be broken, and if it was, he’d worry about it on the other side of that door. He could be there in six racing strides which, as long as the shooter fumbled his reload, might just be possible.

But the shooter didn’t. He knew exactly what he was doing.

‘Let’s torch this place,’ the guy had said. And as gunfire erupted around him again, Ben realised they weren’t thinking of using matches. The stairway filled with bursts of white light as the rounds from the fresh drum mag ignited into flame like miniature Greek fire.

Incendiary explosive ammunition. Used in warfare to burn out vehicles and buildings and dispatch any and all enemy personnel inside them with the extra edge of efficiency that modern small arms munitions technology allowed. Ben had fired off more than a few crates of blue-tipped stuff in his military days, seen it light up tactical targets faster than rocket grenades.

And now he knew he had about a chance in a thousand of not getting lit up by one himself before he got to the door. He felt a bullet rake the left shoulder of his leather jacket, bursting into a flash that burned his ear. He dived flat on his front and slid painfully across the floor as another burst zipped past him like tracer and shredded one of the drapes hanging over the high windows, instantly setting it alight. The hallway was filling with smoke and flame. The shooter kept his finger on the trigger, spraying bullets wildly. Bullets thunked into the door, exploding on impact and sending burning chunks of wood spinning through the smoke.

Ben knew he’d never make it to the door. Scrambling for a grip on the polished floor, he leapt to his feet. Changed course and sprinted up the corridor in the direction of Brennan’s study. The shooters reached the bottom of the stairs and trained their weapons on him, both firing now. One of the ornamental plant pots exploded into fiery fragments of ceramic. Ben reached the bend in the corridor. His sore shoulder cannoned off the opposite wall. He staggered, kept running. Behind him, the whole corridor was a tunnel of fire. The flames licked and danced up to the ceiling, spreading fast and blocking the way for his pursuers.

Ben’s mind darted back and forth between two options as he ran. He needed to get out of here, and fast, because if a bullet didn’t take him down, the rapidly spreading fire surely would. But the volumes of the Stamford journal were still lying where he’d left them, on the bed in the guest annexe. If there was even a chance that the diaries could solve the unanswered questions that filled his head, he owed it to Kristen to rescue them from the fire. He hesitated, but only for an instant. He’d come this far. There couldn’t be any turning back.

Half blinded by smoke, he kept moving.