The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘Hold your fire,’ said the one whose name was Matt Ritter. He lowered his own weapon and put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. The corridor the running man had disappeared into was a wall of flames.

Billy Bob Moon turned to him with a look of disgust. ‘Tell me that wasn’t the same prick we ran into in fuckin’ Ireland.’

‘Can’t tell you he wasn’t,’ Ritter replied.

Moon spat out a chewed-up ball of nicotine gum. It was red with blood. ‘Sonofabitch damn near stove my brains in. I don’t care what he’s doing here. All I know is, I’m gonna kill him.’

‘You MARSOC pussies are all the same,’ Ritter said. ‘Quit your whining and let’s move.’

The front door was burning fiercely from the incendiary rounds that had punched into it. Ritter crunched through it with his combat boot. After five kicks there was a ragged hole big enough for a man to pass. He burst through the blazing wood and outside, followed by Moon. They turned back to face the villa and emptied another fifty rounds apiece into the doorway and windows, until fire and smoke were pouring out of them. Ritter holstered his weapon, grabbed an incendiary grenade from his belt and lobbed it through a shattered window. The two of them averted their faces from the hot explosion that shook the villa.

‘I love it,’ Moon said, unclipping one of his own grenades and tossing it in after the first. Another blinding flash and deafening boom. When they turned back to face the house, the whole front of it was a raging inferno.

Sometimes Plan B is just plain more fun. In this case their orders were to burn the place to the ground if Brennan didn’t give up the books the boss wanted. Neither man was much concerned with what exactly they contained or why the boss had such ants in his pants about them. They were just some bunch of old books. Paper and card and leather. They were combustible, and they needed to be disposed of. And that was good enough for them.

Ritter turned away from the burning house and stepped over to shine a torch through the window of the VW Touareg parked in the courtyard nearby. He could see paperwork lying on the front passenger seat. It was a car rental agreement. He used the solid aluminium head of the torch to smash the window. Reached in and grabbed the rental agreement and ran his eye down to where the name of the customer was printed, then to the box underneath containing the guy’s signature. Ben Hope. Who the hell was Ben Hope?

He flicked the sheet of paper back inside the broken car window and said to Moon, ‘Let’s finish this. You go that way. You see him, you take him down.’

‘You bet your ass I will,’ Moon said fiercely. He was still smarting from the punches to the face and the blow to the back of his head. They split up, skirting the sides of the burning house in opposite directions. As Moon ran, he could see no sign of anyone trying to get out of the place. He must still be inside. Suffering, Moon hoped.

Flame and smoke were belching from most of the downstairs windows by now. Moon detached an incendiary grenade from his belt and hurled it at one of the dark windows on the upper floor. His arm was strong, and his aim was true. The grenade sailed up through the darkness and hit the window with a tinkle of breaking glass, followed by a wall-shattering boom and the breathy whumph of a fireball spreading through the villa’s upstairs. Grinning, he shielded his eyes at the dazzling flash and ran on, ready to gun down anything that dared try to escape the burning house. Still no sign of life.

Moon stopped as he came to what looked like the back of a kitchen with the vent for an extractor fan and a wooden housing for two large butane bottles. Excellent. He skipped back a few metres and then hosed a short burst from his Glock into them. The blazing incendiary bullets punched through the steel.

The explosion almost knocked him off his feet. Shrapnel shattered windows and tore up the wall. A gigantic sheet of flame from the erupting gas threatened to set him alight as it mushroomed up as tall as the house, lighting up the whole night sky. Moon staggered back, whooping, ‘Whoa, motherfucker!’ Now there were flames rolling and licking out of almost every window of the villa. He’d burned out enough buildings in his time to know the chances of anything emerging alive from an inferno like that.

Four years out of MARSOC, the US Marines Special Operations Command, former gunnery sergeant Billy Bob Moon had never enjoyed his work so much. Who said civilian life had to be a drag? He ran on again, lobbing two more grenades into the house as he went, just for good measure. He’d covered the entire perimeter of the burning building by the time he met up with Ritter on the other side.

Ritter didn’t look amused. ‘What the hell was that explosion?’

‘Someone getting the job done,’ Moon told him. ‘They not teach you boys anything at Fort Campbell?’

‘Fuckin’ shrap came right over the house. You trying to get us killed?’

‘Now who’s the pussy?’ Moon said with a grin. His last words were drowned out as a chunk of wreckage broke away from the house in a surge of flames and tumbled down with a crash onto the roof and windscreen of the parked VW Touareg. The flames quickly got a purchase on the vehicle and in seconds fire was licking all over the bodywork.

‘Come on, man,’ Moon said. ‘Job’s done. Let’s get back to the truck.’

Ritter was looking intently at what was left of the villa. ‘Who the hell was that guy?’

‘Who gives a shit any more?’ Moon said. ‘Fucker’s barbeque.’

Ritter hesitated, still looking at the burning house. Then he did a double take and pointed. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that, bro. There he is.’