CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The team leader waited until the cottage windows had been dark long enough for the target to fall asleep. He carried out a final, silently efficient check of his machine carbine and then muttered the command into his throat mike that his two colleagues hidden among the trees had been waiting to hear.

Without the least sound, not the crack of a twig, the three-man team stalked out into the long grass of the meadow and converged on the cottage, virtually invisible in their black assault vests and ski-masks. The infra-red night vision goggles they wore were the latest military issue. They were professionals at what they did, were thoroughly familiar with the nature of the target and would take no chances – but the observation of his behaviour since re-entering the country showed that he was entirely off his guard. The three men had been watching him earlier that day from leafy cover as he wandered unsuspecting through the woods, and they might have picked him off if it hadn’t been for the proximity of the public footpath and the risk of being seen.

Now, under cover of night, was the time.

The team reached the fence at the rear of the cottage and silently climbed over into the garden. Without a word they split up: the team leader skirted around the stone wall to the front entrance; the second man crept towards the back door, and the third leaped, cat-like, up the grassy bank at the side of the house, where the corner of the thatched roof dipped low enough to jump across to. He landed lightly on the thatch, signalled to his colleagues and made his way stealthily towards the point their careful planning had told them was directly above the target’s bedroom.

The back door snicked open with the barest sound and a black-clad figure stepped inside the hallway. The assassin paused a moment, listening keenly for any sound. The cottage was utterly silent. Through his goggles, its pitch-dark interior was lit up green and as clear as day.

He sniffed the air, caught the scent of tobacco smoke and whisky, and smiled to himself. They’d all seen the way the target had been knocking back the booze that evening. He’d be fast asleep now, dead to the world.

The assassin padded across the hallway towards the stairs. Raised the toe of his combat boot to the bottom tread, gently testing it with his weight in case it creaked. But the staircase was solid oak, soundly built, and didn’t make a squeak. He climbed the next step, then the next. Halfway up the staircase, he could see the bedroom door through the turned oak banister rails. He silently pushed off the safety catch of his weapon with a gloved finger. Climbed another step.

And crashed downwards feet-first through the staircase, letting out a grunt of shock and surprise as it gave way under him with a crackling rending of wood. He dropped his weapon and lashed out with both hands to save himself, but there was nothing he could do to avoid falling straight down into the space below. He landed heavily on his back, whacking his head against something solid. He was in an under-stairs cupboard.

The door was bolted from the outside.

And the cupboard was filled with coils of barbed wire.

* * *

At the sounds of confusion and panic in his radio earpiece, the second assassin reacted instantly without trying to guess what had happened to his team member. That could wait until later. Slashing though the last layer of thatch with his combat dagger he kicked his way through to the inside. His boots connected with the thick bedroom ceiling beam. He leaped quickly down to the floor, and before the huddled shape of the man under the bedclothes ten feet away had had any chance to awaken or make a move, he’d emptied half a magazine of 9mm copper-jacketed bullets into it, filling the bedroom with the muffled chatter of the machine carbine and the tinkle of spent shell cases on the bare floorboards. The bullets ripped through the thin sheets. Blood spattered green in the night-vision goggles.

The sleeper hadn’t stood a chance. Maybe if the silly bastard had laid off the whisky, the killer thought as he stepped quickly through the drifting gunsmoke and whisked away the bedcovers to put a final three-shot burst through Ben Hope’s brain.

In the half-second that it took him to register the large, bleeding lump of raw beef and the cushions arranged under the sheets to look like the shape of a man, the wardrobe door had burst open behind him. The assassin whirled around – straight into the chopping double-handed swing of the cricket bat. It caught him across the temple with a resounding crunch of well-seasoned willow against bone, and he hit the floor in a coma.

Ben tossed the bat away and snatched up the fallen MP5. With a hard stamp of his heel he crushed the assassin’s windpipe. Then he was across the room, through the bedroom door and out on the dark landing. He flew down the stairs, avoiding the gaping hole where he’d half-sawn through the oak treads earlier that day.

The man trapped inside the under-stairs cupboard was struggling furiously and crying out in panic. Ben unbolted the door and shone the tactical light beam of the MP5 in the guy’s face. He was helplessly enmeshed in the barbed wire, thrashing to get free, the black combat clothing lacerated and bloody. Ben flipped the select-fire switch on his weapon to single shots. Put two in the man’s chest and a third between his eyes. The thrashing stopped instantly.

Ben turned away.

If he’d done so a fraction of a second later, he’d have been dead. A line of bullet holes punched through the cupboard door right next to him. Ben felt the sting of splinters and a jarring bullet strike that knocked the machine carbine out of his hand and sent it spinning to the floor.

No time to go after it. Gunfire ripped a line of holes in the wall after him as he dived across the hallway and crashed through into the living room. The third shooter had come in via the front door and now gave chase, flame bursting from the muzzle of his gun. He had the advantage of being able to see almost perfectly in the near-total darkness, but Ben was more familiar with the terrain. Darting into the kitchen he kicked over the sturdy table. Antique pine, knotty and age-hardened and more than two inches thick: Ben hurled himself behind it and felt the high-speed hammering impacts churning up the tabletop as the shooter released another flurry of full-auto fire.

Then, suddenly, the room fell silent – the gunman’s weapon had shot itself empty. Ben didn’t intend to give him time to drop his spent magazine and slam in another from his belt pouch. He leaped out from behind the pockmarked table, reached down to his belt and drew out the slim carving knife he’d taken upstairs earlier that day and hidden in the wardrobe. When you knew you were expecting these kinds of visitors, you wanted to be as prepared as possible. His right hand was tingling violently from where the bullet had impacted against his weapon’s trigger guard, but he could flex his fingers and he knew he hadn’t been hurt.

That could change at any moment, though.

The shooter slung the empty gun behind him and ripped his combat dagger from his leg sheath. The two of them squared up to one other. All Ben could see was a moving patch of deeper black against the darkness of the room.

The black shape suddenly rushed towards him. Ben sensed, rather than saw, the blade come slashing towards his throat, and dodged it at the last instant. The killer advanced two steps, waving his blade this way and that. Ben retreated.

But now Ben had manoeuvred himself into exactly the position he wanted – right beside the double light switch on the wall. He flipped both switches on together.

The sudden glare of light made the assassin’s night-vision goggles wash out and rendered him temporarily blind. Ben darted in, aiming the knife at the gap between the ski-mask and the bullet-proof, stab-proof vest he knew the guy would be wearing under his clothes. The assassin managed to tear off his goggles just in time to evade Ben’s thrust and counter with one of his own. The blades clashed. A brief furious exchange of strikes and blocks, and they backed off. Blood dripped from the assassin’s forearm, but not a lot of blood.

The two men circled one another under the glare of the lights, each trying to anticipate the other’s next move. In a knife fight, cold steel against soft skin and flesh, there was no margin for error. Even a non-lethal cut to a major body part could produce enough of a sudden shock response to incapacitate you for a few critical moments. Then it was all over very quickly.

Ben readied himself. The assassin’s blade came flashing towards him.