Ben almost pitied the two dead men. Whoever they were used to dealing with, they’d been too slow. They just hadn’t seen it coming.

He’d left them where they dropped; found the key in the big one’s pocket and taken both of the silenced Berettas they were packing. Both fully loaded. He nodded to himself, tucked one pistol in his right hip pocket and the other in his back pocket. Glanced quickly around the kitchen. Yanked the knife out of the old chopping board. The stainless-steel blade was serrated and still sharp. He stuck it carefully in his belt.

He’d already figured out his escape route. He strode over to a square hatch on the kitchen wall and yanked up the sliding metal door to reveal the dumb waiter. Next to the three-foot-square hole was a dusty old wall panel with three plastic buttons, two arrow-shaped, one pointing up and the other down, the middle one marked ‘STOP’ in faded writing.

He hit the up button with his palm, hoping the thing still worked after all these years. There was a dull clunk, and the dumb waiter jerked up an inch before he hit the ‘STOP’ button.

Good enough, he thought. The space was just about large enough to cram himself in. It stank of old grease, damp and mouse shit. He reached out from inside, felt for the ‘UP’ arrow and hit it. Felt the dumb waiter jolt under him, and the sensation of rising upwards. He withdrew his arm quickly inside as the wall came down. A glimpse of brickwork and then blackness. The dumb waiter rose up, grinding and vibrating. In the darkness he took one of the pistols and checked it again. There was no telling what he was going to meet up there.

From somewhere over his head there was a screech as though the cables were about to snap. He braced himself but nothing happened. The dumb waiter gave a judder and then stopped. He reached out and pushed gently, opening a pair of double doors three feet square. His guess had been right. He was in the hotel bar, in a little serving area behind the bar itself. He lowered himself out of the hatch, thankful to be out of the claustrophobic space, and crouched down in the dust behind the old bar.

He figured he was on the ground floor. Where would they be keeping Zoë? Upstairs in one of the rooms? It was only a guess, and a vague one, but it was all he had. At least he was close now. Only about a dozen guns in his way. He could worry about that when he started meeting them.

He snapped off the safety on the pistol and crept silently out of the barroom door, sweeping the muzzle left and right, surveying the scene through the sights as he moved cautiously down the murky corridor. He kept in the shadows, tight against the wall, senses fully alert, the gun in front of him, drawing on the ability for complete silence and stealth that had made him legendary among his old regiment. He could hear running footsteps and voices from the lobby. They’d have broken up to hunt for him. Maybe two, three men per team, and probably at least two teams with whoever was left over allocated to guard Zoë’s room.

Up ahead, the corridor was L-shaped and opened up into a wider hallway with doors either side. One was ajar, dusty light streaming out of what must once have been a TV room.

He froze. Someone was coming the other way. Three men running. He shrank back into the shadow, the light from the open door creating enough contrast to mask him. He could have reached out and touched them as they ran by. He let them pass. Quietly snicked off the safety on the pistol.

When the third man was two yards past him he stepped out into the corridor, raised the gun and shot him in the back of the head. The man collapsed, hit the floor and squeaked along the linoleum under his own momentum. Before the other two could register what had happened, Ben fired two more shots in such quick succession that the report of the silenced gun sounded more like one prolonged muted bark than two separate shots. The men’s bodies jerked and they stumbled against each other and went down. A gun slithered across the dusty floor.

Ben gathered up their weapons. More Berettas, all the same model. He ejected the mags out of the three pistols and slipped them in his pockets. Then he stepped over to the three bodies and looked down at them.

He’d never enjoyed the cautionary head-shot. It was something that had been schooled into him a long time ago. He’d never wanted to do this again. But every military tactician since ancient times said it was the right thing to do to make sure your enemy never got up once he was down. It was slaughterhouse-brutal but it made immaculate sense.

Three head-shots at point-blank range with a high-powered handgun is a lot messier than in the movies. Shielding his face against the blood splatter, he did the job fast, stepping from one inert body to the next. The 147-grain semi-jacketed hollowpoint bullets split the men’s skulls apart and blasted brains up the wall. The corridor filled with the ripe stink of blood and death.

There’d be more of it to come. He moved on.