The Sacred Sword

Chapter Fifty-Nine

There was no point in trying to resist any longer as they fastened his wrists and marched him roughly across the sand to the idling chopper.

In minutes, the whole section of beach in front of the house had come alive with activity. It looked like the aftermath of a military operation. The gunmen who’d come from the sea returned to the boats, started up their motors and churned the water white as they roared away. The team leader and the remaining members of the assault team were at the chopper, talking with the air crew as the pilot readied for takeoff. They were all still wearing their ski masks. The team leader carried a large, translucent Ziploc bag, through which Ben could make out the lustre of bronze and steel.

Wesley Holland’s sword of Christ. So now the enemy had what they’d been looking for all along.

Ben could see something else, too. The sword’s blade was smeared with blood. He frowned. How had that happened? As he was led closer, he was able to pick snatches of the men’s conversation over the noise of the turbine.

‘-about the Yank?’

The team leader shook his head and motioned to the bag in his hand, and Ben heard him say, ‘He fell on it.’

Then the blood was Holland’s. Ben felt sorry. The way he saw it, the team leader had no reason to lie to one of his own people. The American must have impaled himself on the blade as he’d come tumbling down the stairs.

Poor Wesley hadn’t deserved that. But then, Ben was pretty sure these people would have killed him anyway. Maybe falling on a sword was a better death than being made to kneel and having to spend your final moments waiting for a bullet in the head. The Samurai would have agreed with that one.

Thinking about it led Ben to ponder another question, one that haunted him. Now that they had the sword, why did they want him alive?

‘Load him up,’ the team leader commanded, waving at the chopper. Ben was shoved towards it. The helicopter was a standard U.S. Army Bell UH-1 Iroquois with the military markings removed and painted matt black. It still retained its side-mounted pair of M240 general purpose machine guns.

As Ben was pushed into the open hatch, the turbine note began to rise to a howl. The team leader and remaining assault team members clambered aboard and took their positions, watching him with hostility. Moments later, the aircraft lifted off from the beach in a whipping tornado of sand.

As they climbed into the air, Ben looked out of the window. Down below on the dark beach, the first orange-red flames were flickering in the windows of Wesley’s house. They were going to burn it to the ground, erasing every trace that he’d ever been there. The case of the billionaire who’d vanished off the face of the earth would keep the media buzzing for months and go on intriguing the public for years. Ben wondered if anyone would ever find the vault underneath, and the valuable collections inside.

The chopper banked steeply and headed out to sea, flying roughly southwest. Ben craned his neck back at the dark stretch of beach and the lights of houses that speckled the island’s coastline, and thought of Jude. He was down there somewhere. Somehow, he’d make it home.

Ben turned to face the team leader. ‘You can take your masks off,’ he said over the roar of the prop. ‘I won’t laugh.’

‘Shut him up,’ the team leader ordered one of his men, who got up and approached Ben with a fiendish grin and a roll of duct tape.

‘Anyone want to tell me what this is all about?’ Ben said before a length of tape was slapped over his mouth and a hood yanked roughly over his head. That effectively ended the conversation.

Impossible to tell where they might be taking him. Ben knew that the operational range of a Bell UH-1 was around three hundred miles, which meant their destination could lie anywhere within a radius half that distance; in his mind he traced a circle on the map, and it covered a whole wedge of the U.S. mainland from New York City to the south all the way up into New Hampshire in the north.

After about an hour, Ben sensed the aircraft settling down to land. As they touched down there was noise and activity all around him. The hatch opened and lights shone through the material of his hood. He was grabbed by the arms, hauled out of the chopper and marched across hard ground. Cold wind pierced him for a few moments, then stopped as he was led inside a building where voices echoed in empty space.

‘This way, dickhead,’ someone said gruffly close to his ear, jerking his arm. He could almost feel the presence of any number of guns pointing at him as he was marched along. Doors opened ahead and were slammed behind them, leading deeper into the building. Then he was shoved roughly down a short flight of steps. The hood was yanked off his head, and he blinked as torchlight flashed in his face. An unseen hand ripped the tape painfully from his lips while the blade of a knife passed between his tethered wrists and cut away the plastic tie.

‘Sweet dreams, fucker,’ said the same gruff voice, and then something hit him hard from behind and he blacked out.