The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Sixty

‘I’m the only one,’ Silvie said as he drove. ‘I’ll bet I am.’

‘The only what?’

‘The only woman who ever drummed any sense into that thick skull of yours.’

Ben looked at her. She was giving him that knowing smile again, the one she’d been giving him ever since she’d won the argument back at the railway station. ‘Don’t get all smug on me, just because I let you tag along,’ he said.

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Tag along?’

‘I could have insisted,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you here. Now you are. So keep your eye on the map and don’t distract me.’

‘Yessir,’ she grunted, smiling even more.

It had been a long, fast drive. Donath’s directions had taken them west, back past Geneva and into picture-perfect rolling green hills to the north. The Hummer was a useful motorway tool and its intimidating size and looks were the best thing for bludgeoning through city traffic, but it was at the limits of its handling abilities as Ben gunned it mercilessly along the narrow country lanes.

It was after five by now. The late-afternoon sun glittered over the ever-present mountain backdrop and shone golden light across undulating pastureland that was broken here and there by patches of serrated dark green pine forest. Cattle grazed peacefully in fields bordered by neat white picket fences, cowbells dangling from their necks. Isolated farmhouses appeared in the distance. Nothing that looked remotely like the hideout of a terrorist group intent on destroying civilisation. Ben ground his teeth and kept driving, trying to block out the nagging thought that Donath could have tricked them.

‘We’re close,’ Silvie said, bent over the map she had opened out over the centre console and tracing a route along it with her finger. ‘Should be coming up on the place any moment now.’

Two kilometres on, the entrance to the organic dairy farm was pretty much as Donath had described it. The Hummer rattled over a cattle grid and bumped along a track that carried them perpendicular to the road until they glimpsed the farmhouse and the cluster of neat wooden outbuildings that circled the yard. Well-tended farmland stretched out beyond, overlooked by the sunlit mountains. A bright red tractor was ambling over the fields, tiny in the distance, like a ladybird crawling across a giant rippled sheet of green felt.

Silvie shook her head, bemused. ‘Some terrorist stronghold. It’s like a scene from a calendar.’

‘Would you have preferred fortified defences, razor wire and men with machine guns?’

‘At least we’d know for sure, then.’

‘He’s here,’ Ben said.

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘I have to believe it,’ he said.

A little further up the track, they came to a side gate that opened on to a field of tall grass bordered along its western edge by a strip of woodland. Taking a chance that nobody was watching from the farmhouse, they passed through the gate and crossed the field, the Hummer bumping and lurching over the rough ground and leaving wide flattened tracks in its wake. They reached the trees, and Ben rolled it as deep under cover as he could and then shut off the engine. ‘This is it.’

‘If Donath was jerking our chain, I’m going back there to kill him,’ Silvie said.

‘One way or the other, we’ll soon find out,’ Ben replied. ‘Grab your stuff. We walk from here.’

Neither of them spoke as they equipped themselves from the kitbags in the back of the Hummer. Ben slipped three of the fully loaded FAMAS magazines into his pockets and clicked a fourth into the rifle’s receiver. Worked the bolt and felt the well-oiled action carry the top round snugly into the chamber. He set the three-way fire selector to single shots. Forget full-automatic. Even three-shot bursts would chew through ammo too quickly, and he worried about things like running out of bullets. Especially when he had no idea how many opponents he was going up against. If Streicher had called in extra muscle, it could be fifty. If Donath had played Ben and Silvie for fools, it could be none. Then they’d have all kinds of other problems, not least of which would be knowing where to pick up the thread again.

Ben checked his pistol and loaded a couple of spare mags into his pockets for that too, then fitted the SOG knife in its sheath to his belt. Took one of the radios and handed the other to Silvie. He gave the handcuffs a miss. Whatever might happen today, one thing was for certain: Streicher wouldn’t be needing them.

‘Ready?’ he asked her.

‘Ready.’ Silvie slung her loaded rifle over her shoulder, then quickly stepped close and put her hand against his cheek. She kissed him once, briefly but warmly, on the lips.

‘For luck,’ she said.

They slipped through the trees and emerged on the other side of the strip of woodland. The sun was still bright but a fresh breeze coming down from the mountains felt cool on their faces. Ahead of them was a wide expanse of fields dotted with grazing cattle. Beyond it, right off in the distance, due west across the gently waving grass, a larger, thicker section of forest stood fenced off from the pasture. It looked just the way Miki Donath had described it. If he’d told them everything he knew, then the ten-acre compound the other side of those pines was where Streicher had his hideout.

It was a quarter-hour hike across the fields. They walked in silence, single-file. A couple of big, placid-looking cows with swaying haunches and clunking bells around their necks wandered across to check them out, then quickly lost interest and moved off again.

Ben reached the wooded perimeter and turned round to scan the horizon. The farmhouse and buildings were well out of sight and a long way off. Silvie joined him. Up close, the forest looked like an enormous green fortress wall, curving round in a lazy circle to surround whatever lay behind the trees. ‘This has got to be it,’ Silvie said.

They padded single-file through the shadowy thicket, like a two-man jungle patrol. The ground was spongy with moss. The tall trunks creaked and swayed gently in the breeze.

They didn’t have far to walk. After fifty metres, Ben held up a closed fist and whispered, ‘Stop.’ Up ahead, the dense screen of foliage ended abruptly at a high wire-mesh fence suspended from metal posts concreted into the ground. Ben moved cautiously to the fence and peered through the mesh. From where he stood, he could see the barrier stretched for about half a mile, with galvanised steel-framed mesh gates set into it at intervals of every four posts, padlocked shut. On the other side of the fence, the forest had been completely levelled and cleared in a circular plot about ten acres in size. But it wasn’t the huge clearing that interested him. It was what stood at its centre.

He drew the SOG knife and, clutching it by its rubber handle, touched the blade against the wire. No flash, no spark. He brushed his fingers against it. It wasn’t electrified. One less obstacle to worry about. He slipped the knife back in its sheath and whistled softly for Silvie to join him.

‘Shit,’ she breathed as she peered through the fence and saw what he’d seen. A straight concrete road marked the radius of the circle from a main gateway thirty degrees anticlockwise around the inside perimeter from where they stood. The road led to the single building inside the vast clearing. It was the size of a large square house, clad in dark wood, with white windows and a pitched roof and a huge steel shutter door, standing on a concrete apron roughly as large as a football field.

Streicher’s hangar.

‘Exactly as Donath described it,’ Silvie whispered. She turned to Ben, her face full of expectation, as if to say, Let’s go for it.

Ben gazed up at the fence, then around him at the trees, then back at the building. His instinct and training both told him to hang back and wait for nightfall before climbing the wire. If Streicher made a move before then, they’d be ready to make theirs.

‘Not now,’ he whispered. ‘Better under cover of darkness.’

‘How do we find a way in?’ she breathed.

His smile was dry and without any trace of humour. ‘There’s always a way in.’

They backed away from the fence and settled in the shadows of the trees, and waited, and watched.

Without knowing that, from almost the moment they’d got here, they themselves were being observed.