The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (59 page)

Jack Glass had been shot before, plenty of times. As long as he was still functional and on his feet, he was still in the game. It was going to take more than a bullet from a woman’s gun to stop him. He knew his collarbone was broken, but he was prepared to ignore the pain if he could do what he wanted to do now.

He pounded up the stairs, his hand pressed hard against his shoulder to stem the blood. He reached the third floor, leaned against the banister rail and looked down. He could see a dark shape two floors below, moving fast up the winding staircase. Hope was after him again. Fucking blood trail was giving him away. Nothing he could do about that. He had to keep moving. Forget the pain.

He grinned. Him and Hope in the running together. It was like SAS selection all over again. But this time he had an edge, and he meant to use it. The old man was fucked, the ship was going down. But there was no way Jack Glass was going down with it.

He made it to the top floor and thundered stiffly along the corridor, soaked in sweat and blood. The
doors to the garret rooms were on his left. Paper was peeling off the walls and the carpets were threadbare. It was cold up here, cooling the sweat that was pouring off him. He ripped open one of the doors to his right and staggered into the room. He found what he was looking for and tucked the small leather case under his arm.

‘Boss, you OK?’

It was the Swede. His dull face registered mild alarm as he saw the blood on Glass’s shirt.

Glass turned. ‘Never better,’ he grunted painfully.

He had to look down at most men. But the Swede, Björkmann, towered over him by nearly three inches. That made him a very big man indeed. His neck was wider than his head, as thick as Glass’s thigh. Three hundred pounds of solid muscle with an arrowhead haircut and very little brains. The kind of man Glass loved to have on his team. The big Ruger revolver was dwarfed in his meaty fist.

‘Everybody’s going apeshit down there,’ Björkmann said in his broken German. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Somebody crashed the party,’ Glass replied. He wiped the cold sweat out of his eyes and felt the ends of his broken collarbone grate. He clenched his teeth. ‘I need you to watch my back, Christian. There’s a guy on his way up here. You know what to do. I’ll come back for you. OK?’

The gigantic man nodded slowly. ‘Sure, boss.’

Glass watched Björkmann lumber down the corridor. He grinned and left the outline of a bloody hand on Clara Kinski’s door as he shoved it open.

The child was crouched in the corner, pressed against the wall, looking up at him with terror in her eyes. Glass took the syringe out of the leather case. He plucked the cork off the end of the long needle and fired a squirt of the lethal poison into the air. ‘Your Uncle Jack’s going to take care of you now,’ he said.

Clara started to scream as he walked into the room.

Ben’s eyes were on the blood trail as he sprinted up another flight of stairs. His left hand grasped the polished banister rail as he climbed, his right holding the pistol ready.

The splashes of bright blood on the stairs were frequent. Glass was badly hurt, but he was running like a maniac and he was still extremely dangerous. He was heading for the top floor.

Ben cleared the final flight, his heart hammering in his chest. The blood trail led onwards down the corridor. He followed it, sweeping the gun left and right.

At the end of the long passage, a door was banging open. Through the doorway he could see curtains fluttering in the cold wind and snow blowing in through an open French window. He went into the room. All his senses were blazing. Over the thudding of his heart he heard an unmistakable sound. As he crept into the room it got louder.

It was the high-pitched whine of a powerful engine, revs building to a roar. It was coming from outside,
on the roof. Someone was firing up the helicopter. He moved towards the window.

His vision exploded white and suddenly he was on his face. The gun slid away across the bare floorboards. He felt fingers curl around his collar and he was yanked to his feet with brutal force. He had a glimpse of a broad forehead and two small, fierce eyes staring down at him, and then a massive fist slammed into his jaw and sent him reeling backwards as though he weighed nothing. He crashed into a desk, sprawling over the top of it and sending papers and files, an ashtray and a telephone flying.

One of the biggest men he’d ever seen walked calmly towards him around the edge of the desk. ‘You are dead,’ the giant said simply. His English was heavily accented. In his hand was a stainless-steel Ruger .44 Redhawk with an eight-inch barrel. He tucked it into the back of his belt. ‘I no need this,’ he said. He raised his fists.

Ben staggered to his feet. The whine of the helicopter outside was getting louder. There was blood on his lips from the punch. His head was spinning. But even the biggest bastard could be brought down. He moved in fast and aimed a heavy blow at the solar plexus. He put all his strength into it and pain lanced up his arm as it impacted. It was a good punch. It would have crippled most men.

The giant barely seemed to feel it. A fist the size of a pineapple flew at Ben’s head and only just missed. If it had landed, it would have killed him.

This was getting serious. Ben aimed a kick to the
groin. The giant blocked it. He jabbed at the throat. Another block. Ben retreated, aware that he was running out of space in the room. Through the open window he heard another sound, the high, keening, terrified sound of a child’s scream. He followed the sound with his eyes. The windows opened out onto a wide, flat expanse of rooftop. The helipad was surrounded by sloping gables and towering chimneys. Snow flurried on the rising wind. Thirty yards away, the lights of the Bell chopper cut a white beam through the drifting snowflakes, its rotors turning faster now. Jack Glass had Clara by the arm and was trying to bundle her into the open door of the helicopter. She was struggling and kicking. His teeth were gritted in pain and the front of his shirt was dark and clinging with blood.

Ben looked a fraction of a second too long. A heavy boot caught his ribs and he felt something crack. He cried out, rolled to the floor, clutched his side. He crawled under the desk. The giant grabbed the edge of the desk with one hand and hurled it over. He ripped out a drawer and crashed it down over Ben’s head. It shattered into pieces, showering him with bits of office equipment. Something glinted on the carpet. It was a letter-opener in the shape of a dagger. His fingers closed over it, and as the giant came on again Ben plunged the blade downwards into the man’s boot.

It was a solid heavy-grain leather boot. The blade was blunt. But Ben stabbed it so hard that it went through the leather into the foot inside. Through the
foot into the sole. Through the sole into the wooden floor. It pinned him like an insect to a board.

The big man threw his head back and howled in pain. Ben struggled to his feet and lashed a foot into his groin. That had an effect. The man doubled up. Ben grabbed the giant’s tiny ears and slammed a knee into his face.

Outside, Clara broke away from Glass. Her hair streaming in the blast from the spinning rotor blades, she ran towards the windows. She slipped on the snow and fell, then scrabbled back to her feet. Glass went after her and grabbed her by the hair. He yanked her back and she screamed.

The giant was teetering, moaning, trying to stagger away from his pinned foot. Ben tore a fire-extinguisher off the wall and rammed the heavy metal cylinder down on his head. The man crashed to the floor and rolled on his back. Ben brought the base of the extinguisher down on his face and almost vomited as the man’s skull caved in. The giant convulsed and twitched for a second and then lay still.

Bloody and hurt, Ben ripped the .44 Ruger from the dead man’s belt. The cylinder was loaded with six fat magnum cartridges. He staggered towards the open French window. Glass was dragging Clara back towards the helicopter. He picked her up and stuck her under his arm. Her little legs kicked wildly.

Ben ran out onto the roof, ignoring the pain from his cracked rib. He aimed the heavy revolver and yelled Glass’s name over the roar.

Glass jerked Clara’s body round in front of his. He
pressed something against her neck. His thumb was on the plunger of the syringe. ‘I’ll kill her,’ he screamed. ‘Put the gun down.’

Ben dropped the revolver and kicked it away from him. Glass grinned through his pain and dragged the child inside the helicopter. Still holding the syringe to her neck, he handcuffed her to the frame of the seat. Ben watched helplessly. Glass slid behind the controls. He’d learnt to fly in Africa and he was a good pilot. Crazy enough to take off in the snow, but then Jack Glass had always been crazy. He was proud of that.

The helicopter began to lift off. Ben could see Clara’s pallid face through the perspex window. Her mouth was open in a scream that was drowned out by the huge noise and the wind.

He ran across the helipad. The chopper was in the air, driving the snow into a storm of flakes that stung Ben’s eyes. He picked up the fallen .44 but didn’t dare to fire.

He looked around him in desperation as the hovering chopper spun slowly round on itself. Along the edge of the roof was a stone parapet, about four feet high. He ran to it and leapt up on top of it. He shoved the long barrel of the revolver through his belt and steadied himself with his hands. It was a long way down. The chopper dipped its nose as Glass hit the throttle.

Ben launched himself. For an instant he was weightless. The floodlit grounds of the mansion were below him. He saw the flashing lights of police cars swarming down the driveway. The party was in chaos.

He began to fall. Then his flailing hand clasped the cold metal of one of the chopper’s skids. The craft veered to the right, moving away from the house. The thudding wind tore at Ben’s hair and clothes as he dangled in space. He reached up and clapped his other hand onto the skid, kicking with his legs to haul himself up. Below him, the ground spun dizzily.

Glass felt the chopper unbalanced with Ben’s weight. From the cockpit he could see him hanging there, desperately trying to climb up to the side door. He smiled and turned the chopper towards the house. He couldn’t shake him off, but he could scrape the bastard off.

In the darkness a chimney stack loomed large. Glass banked hard towards it. Ben had a glimpse of brickwork rushing towards him. He raised his legs clear and the chopper roared over the roof. Glass brought it round again, the G-forces stretching Ben’s arms as he hung on to the skid.

Glass headed for the roofs again. Ben’s flailing legs raked violently up an incline of tiles, some of them coming loose and tumbling down to the ground below. Glass banked the chopper another time, laughing. One more pass and he’d leave Hope smeared like a bug across twenty feet of stonework.

But he banked too early. The tail rotor caught the side of the roof with a crashing shower of sparks and twisted metal. The helicopter juddered. The controls went crazy as the craft began to spin away from the house and towards the trees.

Ben had a foot on the skid now. Reaching out with
an effort he clasped the handle of the side door and ripped it open. He threw himself inside the cockpit as the chopper gyrated out of control over the treetops, its lights tracing a wild circle over the snowy green pines and the naked branches of oaks and beeches.

Glass lunged at him with the lethal syringe. Ben dodged the stab and drove Glass’s wrist against the controls. The needle clattered to the floor. The two men wrestled over the seats, gouging and punching. Ben dug his fingers into Glass’s cropped hair and slammed his face against the dials, and again, and again, until Glass’s forehead was streaming with blood.

The helicopter was going down, spinning faster and faster. Glass’s fingers clawed at his face. Ben hammered him against the door, punched him in the teeth, slammed his head against the controls again. Glass flopped limply in his seat as the chopper banked violently to one side and twisted downwards towards the treetops.

Ben heaved on the controls but there was nothing he could do. The chopper spun wildly for another hundred yards before it hit. The rotors disintegrated and flew apart as they sliced into the treetops. They tumbled down, snapping branches raking and tearing at the fuselage, engine stalled, pieces of twisted rotor crashing down with them. Ben was hurled against the floor and the roof as the craft flipped over and over.

Thirty feet from the ground, the Bell tore free of the lower branches. Through shattered perspex Ben glimpsed the snowy forest floor rushing up to meet them. The impact flung him hard against the instruments.
The chopper buried its nose in a snowdrift. Splintered branches and pieces of aircraft rained down.

Glass was lying slumped across the control console. Sparks crackled from somewhere behind the dials and the strong scent of aviation fuel reached Ben’s nostrils.

He hauled himself painfully upwards through the dark, smashed cockpit. Above him, Clara was wedged on the back of the front seats. Her lip was bleeding. She desperately tugged at the chain that connected her wrist to the steel tubing of her seat.

Ben heard the crackle and
whoomph
and looked over his shoulder. Flames licked at the inside of the glass, searing across the controls and the front seats. In seconds the helicopter was going to blow.

He yanked at the handcuff chain, glinting in the flames. It held fast. Clara’s eyes were bulging, her hair plastered over her face. She strained to tear her little wrist out of the steel bracelet, but it was tight against the skin.

The flames were catching. Ben clambered down towards Glass’s slumped body and felt in the pocket of his bloody tuxedo for the key to the cuffs. It wasn’t there. The heat was unbearable. A tongue of fire licked Ben’s back, scorching his jacket. There wasn’t time. The chopper was going to explode.

Over his pain and fear he remembered.
The gun.
He jerked it out of his belt and pressed the muzzle against the handcuff bracelet that was locked around the seat tube. Fire seared his sleeve. He squeezed the trigger.

The stunning noise of the .44 revolver cut away all sound. For an instant Ben was disorientated, lost in a
surreal world of silence with the high-pitched whine in his ears filling his head.

Another rolling wave of liquid flame poured across the blackened interior of the chopper and he came to his senses. Clara was free, the broken chain dangling from the cuff around her wrist. They struggled across the cockpit. Ben kicked against the door with all his remaining strength. The door buckled open and he grasped the little girl’s arm and somehow they crawled through the gap just before the fire engulfed the whole cockpit.

He dragged her stumbling across the snow. Before they’d staggered twenty yards, the forest behind them was suddenly filled with white light. Ben dived behind the trunk of an oak tree, shielding Clara’s little body with his as the fuel tanks ruptured with the heat and the chopper exploded into a massive ball of searing flame. The whole night sky was lit up. Trees burst alight. Burning wreckage spewed in all directions. Clara screamed and he held her tight.