The Rebel’s Revenge

Pain lanced through him as his body slammed against the back of the car, but it would have been a lot worse if they hadn’t both been travelling in the same direction. His fingers latched on to the horizontal blade of the wing and held on with an iron grip. He was being dragged now, the toes of his boots scraping the road, clinging on for all he was worth with his chest pressed hard against the rear panel of its boot lid. Chrome lettering wide-spaced across the rear bodywork that spelled out the word M-U-S-T-A-N-G digging into his flesh through his shirt. Burning red tail-lights either side of him. Hot exhaust from its twin pipes searing his legs like dragon’s breath.

He held on. The car gained more speed. They were already a long way down the street. On the outside it felt like eighty miles an hour. In reality the car was probably just hitting forty. But soon it would be fifty, then sixty.

If he could somehow drag himself up onto the big, wide boot lid, maybe he could kick through the back window and scramble inside. It wasn’t much of a plan, but he was angry and upset and didn’t have time to think. All he knew right now was that he couldn’t let these two men get away.

But Ben also knew that all tactical plans had a way of going to hell the moment bullets start to fly. That was what was about to happen to his, as Lottie’s attacker suddenly leaned out from the passenger window. They must have spotted Ben in the rear-view mirror, or sensed from the car’s handling that someone was clinging wildly to the back. The guy hung out as far as possible, clutching tightly on to the roof sill with one hand while pointing something back at Ben with the other. Something small and black that glinted in the peripheral glare of the headlights. The guy’s aim wavered, swaying this way and that with the gyrating motion of the car. Not great conditions for target shooting. But Ben was just a few feet away. A sitting duck. He tried to shrink away behind the bodywork but there wasn’t anywhere to take cover.

Two gunshots snapped out, muted by the roar of the engine and the rush of wind in Ben’s ears. But no less deadly for it. One round punched through the metal of the rear wing a couple of inches from his hand. The other passed over his right shoulder with just a hair’s breadth to spare.

Yet more choices. He had only two, and little time to decide between them.

Hold on, get shot.

Let go, take your chances with the road.

He let go.

Chapter 13

The car was gaining more speed every instant, its wheels no longer spinning and the back end under control. It was accelerating down the street under full power.

Parachute training couldn’t teach you how to land on a fast-moving road surface. Jumping from a moving vehicle was more like parachuting onto a whirling belt sander. Ben knew that it was going to hurt. And it did.

The impact knocked the air from his lungs. All at once he was slithering and sliding down the road on his back. Like coming off a motorcycle, without the benefit of helmet, leathers or gloves. He tried to keep his head and hands raised off the ground and his arms and legs spread-eagled to minimise the chance of rolling. That would do the worst damage, his own momentum breaking bones and flailing him to pieces against the road surface.

He slid for maybe twenty feet, but it felt like a mile before he came to a stop, dazed and bleeding in the middle of the road. The taillights of the car were a long way off now, shrinking to angry red pinpoints in the darkness. He craned his neck to watch as it rounded a corner at the top of the street; then it was out of sight and the roar of its engine was dying away to nothing.

Ben sprang to his feet. His elbows were torn up pretty badly and his back would be a mess of abrasions. It was still better than getting shot. Either way he had no time to take inventory of his injuries. The pain could wait. He shelved it to the rear of his mind and started sprinting back towards the guesthouse. Some lights were coming on in neighbouring upstairs windows as residents, alerted by the commotion and the sound of gunshots, rushed from their cosy beds to see what was going on. Ben ignored them and ran on. The car had dragged him halfway up the street and it was half a minute before he reached the guesthouse. It was definitely too late to give chase in the Tahoe. That chance had been and gone.

Now all that mattered was Lottie.

She hadn’t moved. The dark stain around her had spread almost wall to wall. Ben knelt beside her. The pressure of his knees on the carpet squeezed blood up out of its saturated pile like wringing out a sponge. It was everywhere. He felt its warm wetness soaking through the denim of his torn, abraded jeans.

Ben felt for her pulse and detected only a weak flutter. At his touch she lolled her head to try to focus on him. Her eyes were glassing over. Her mouth opened and she tried to speak, but all that came out was a low rasping moan and a bubble of blood that swelled and then burst, flecking her lips. Now he could see the terrible slash that the sword had cut across her face and neck before her attacker had knocked her over and thrust the long curved blade right through her body to pin her to the floorboards.

Ben stared at the weapon. If he’d been interested in semantics right now he’d have called it a sabre and not a sword. The kind of implement issued to cavalry troops right up until the early decades of the twentieth century, when military minds finally began to realise that mounted charges were little match for heavy machine gunnery. This sabre was older still. The length of blade that wasn’t buried deep inside Lottie’s body was speckled with over a century’s worth of black rust. Its handle was wrapped with sharkskin and bound with gold wire, and encased within a fancy brass basket hilt designed to protect the hand during combat. The brass was tarnished and dulled with age, and bore all the nicks and scars of a weapon that had seen use in anger, a very long time ago. Basically, an antique. Probably worth money.

The question was, what kind of murderer would break into a house to attack someone with a valuable antique sword, when common implements like kitchen knives and hammers could be obtained easily and cheaply and were just as lethal? It made even less sense for the killer to leave the weapon behind.

Lottie began to cough and retch blood. More of it welled from the gaping wound where the blade was stuck through her. Her robe and nightdress were black with it. Out of desperation Ben reached up and grasped the hilt, then on second thoughts took his hand away. Pulling out the blade, whether a knife’s or anything else’s, could kill a stab victim just as fast as pushing it in. Blood vessels that were constricted or blocked off by the pressure of the blade could suddenly start gushing so fast that their life would ebb away in moments. But he had to do something. He looked around him and spotted the little stand across the hallway where the landline phone rested on its base unit.

‘I’m going to get help, Lottie. Hold on.’

He started to get to his feet to reach for the phone. Before he could stand up, Lottie raised a bloody hand off the floor and, with what must have cost her last reserves of energy, gripped his sleeve.

At first he thought she was attempting to struggle upright. But she was too far gone for that. These were her last moments, and she knew it as well as he did. He realised she was trying to pull him down closer, so that she could whisper something in his ear before she died.

Ben put his hand on hers and leaned down and said, ‘What is it, Lottie?’

‘I … I always …’ It took a monumental effort for her to speak. She coughed, and the act of coughing made her abdominal muscles clench around the sabre blade, and she let out a terrible shuddering gasp of pain and closed her eyes. For an instant she seemed to fade away and he thought she was gone. Then her eyes reopened, bloodshot and full of agony and focused on his own with all the urgency of a person frantically holding on to consciousness, slipping away and fighting it every inch and losing.

She whispered, ‘I knowed it was comin’, Ben. I knowed it.’

Ben understood that she was talking about the secret she’d alluded to earlier that evening. Whatever it was, she’d held on to it for most of her life out of fear. Now that death was so close, she seemed to want to let it out like making a confession.

‘What did you know? Lottie, talk to me. What did you know?’

She was sinking fast. Her breath was coming in fluttering gasps. Her eyes were glazed. The grasp of her bloody fingers on his shirt sleeve tightened in a last moment of panic before the darkness swallowed her, then became slack. Barely audibly, she murmured, ‘They was … they was bound to get me in the end. Like they done … to … Peggy Iron Bar.’

Ben laid his hand on hers and squeezed it. ‘Who did it, Lottie? If you know who hurt you, you have to tell me. I’ll find them. I swear. Who did it?’

But Lottie had given all she had to give. A last sigh hissed from her lips and her eyes closed, her body relaxed and Ben held her as he felt the life leave her.

He remained kneeling on the blood-soaked carpet next to her for some time, still clasping her hand in his, his head bowed with sadness for this woman he’d only just met and knew so little about. Wishing he could remove the sabre pinning her to the floor and let her lie there with a little dignity, if it wouldn’t have been messing with a murder scene.

And wondering, who in God’s name was Peggy Iron Bar?

Chapter 14

Ben was so lost in that moment that he barely registered the sound of the approaching siren until the police cruiser screeched to a halt outside the guesthouse and the open doorway behind him was lit up with flashing blue. It was no big surprise that one of the local residents must have called the cops. If they hadn’t, he’d have had to call them himself.

He laid Lottie’s limp hand down to rest on her chest and stood up. He glanced down at himself and saw that he was a mess. The parts of his clothing that weren’t torn and tattered from sliding down the road were covered in bloodstains. Anyone who saw him would think he’d been attacked by something wild. It was how he felt, too. The abrasions on his back were hurting. But he had more important things to deal with.

He turned towards the doorway to see the solitary cop from the cruiser running up the path towards the guesthouse’s front entrance. The cop was hatless, in a tan deputy’s uniform shirt and black trousers, a drawn pistol in his hand. It struck Ben as a little odd to send just one officer to attend to the scene of a violent crime, but he supposed that the fact that they’d managed to send anyone at all so quickly was fairly impressive, given that this was the rural Deep South. The UK was no better, at the best of times. There were enough accounts of residents in the middle of London waiting twelve hours for a response to a 999 call.

As the cop approached the house Ben recognised his face. Fleshy, pasty features burned red by the sun. Brown hair, spiky on top and shaved up the sides like a Marine. It was the deputy called Mason, one of the pair who’d accompanied Sheriff Waylon Roque to the scene of the liquor store holdup in Villeneuve. The one Roque had said was as sharp as a bowling ball. Better than nothing, Ben thought, and ran through in his mind what he needed to tell the guy.

But Ben never got the chance to say much at all. As Mason hurried up the steps and entered the hallway, he saw Ben standing there and raised his drawn weapon to aim at him. The cop’s finger was on the trigger, which definitely wasn’t correct protocol for dealing with a nonthreatening civilian. Ben noticed that the gun wasn’t Mason’s issue sidearm, either. His Glock was still tucked and clipped into his duty holster, next to his cuff pouch, baton holder, Taser and CS canister. What he was aiming in Ben’s face, with a little more aggression than Ben felt was warranted, was a big black revolver. Probably a forty-four, going by the size of the bore and the chamber holes in the cylinder.

Ben put his hands up at shoulder height, palms facing the cop to show they were empty. ‘Easy, Officer. I’m a witness to a murder. If you wanted to shoot someone, you should’ve been here when the bad guys were still around.’

The deputy made no move to lower the weapon. He came closer. Ben retreated a couple of paces, carefully stepping back around Lottie’s body, slow and easy, no sudden moves, keeping his hands raised and in plain view. Mason came on another step, still keeping the big revolver pointed squarely at Ben’s face.

He was standing on the bloodstained area of the floor. His weight was pressing blood up from the carpet pile, so that it welled and bubbled up around the soles of his large, black police issue shoes. Lottie’s body was between him and Ben, right there in the middle of the hall, a large mound of dead flesh with an antique sabre sticking up grotesquely from its highest point, like a banner raised on some conquered hilltop. It wasn’t a sight that was easily missed. And yet Mason hadn’t given Lottie’s body even a single glance from the moment he’d entered the house. His focus was fixed totally and intently on Ben.

Hands still raised, Ben wagged a finger towards the floor and said, ‘Watch you don’t trip, Officer. There’s a body on the floor.’ Sharp as a bowling ball. Maybe it was true.

The deputy gave a grunt and shook his head, still holding the gun steady. ‘Boy, y’all sure know where to go lookin’ for trouble. Reckon you found more’n you bargained for, this time.’

Which struck Ben as a curious thing to say, under the circumstances. Very calmly he replied, ‘Maybe you should lower the weapon so we can have a conversation about what happened here.’

Mason didn’t lower the weapon. Ben could see his fingertip whitening against the blade of the trigger. Properly speaking a .44-calibre handgun was really a .43, firing a bullet of .429 of an inch diameter. But it was still plenty big enough to blow a fist-sized hole right through the middle of a man’s chest. Hunters used them for killing grizzly bears. And the way Mason was pointing it at Ben, he seemed pretty serious about killing him with it too.

Ben considered his appearance, and it flashed through his mind that someone all covered in blood the way he was might, in a cop’s way of seeing things, look exactly like the kind of person who’d just smashed their way into an innocent woman’s house wielding a sabre and turned her entrance hall into a slaughterhouse. From that point of view it was fairly understandable that Mason was wary of him.

But none of that explained what happened next.

Mason fired. The BOOM of the big revolver in the confines of the hallway was stunningly loud and its muzzle flash was a tongue of white flame that spouted a foot from its muzzle.

If Ben hadn’t seen it coming, there would have been two corpses on the hallway floor and a lot more blood. Even as Mason’s finger tightened all the way on the trigger and the hammer was released and the firing pin began its short arc of travel, Ben was in motion. Superfast, he crossed the space between himself and the gun and deflected the barrel sideways and upwards from its point of aim, hard and brutal, so that the gunshot discharged into the ceiling.

The blast and shockwave from the revolver were tremendous. He would have tinnitus for days, but a little ringing in the ears is preferable to fifteen grams of hardcast lead alloy entering your skull at over a thousand miles an hour.

Ben’s training, and the way he taught his students, was to first take control of the weapon and then neutralise the assailant. In the same single continuous fluid movement that had been rehearsed a zillion times and saved his life for a percentage of that number, he twisted the revolver out of Mason’s hand and kept hold of his wrist as he sidestepped in towards him and used his own body as a fulcrum to yank Mason off his feet and dump him hard on the floor.

Ben could have finished his disarming move with a stamp to the neck or an arm-breaking twist, or beaten the guy’s brains out with his own ASP expandable baton. Instead, not wanting to hurt him any more than was strictly necessary, he just reached down to where Mason lay half-stunned on the floor and snatched his badge wallet, then removed his duty belt and tossed it away across the room.

In retrospect, Ben could come to see that as his first mistake.

Relieved of Glock, cuffs, tear gas and baton, Mason wriggled away across the floor like a beaten dog. His uniform was all bloodied from the mess on the carpet, his face mottled with anger. Ben quickly examined the revolver, then shoved it into his own belt behind the right hip. Pointing at Lottie’s body he said to Mason, ‘That there is a murder victim. I’m a witness to said murder. You’re a cop. Remember how this goes? Are you going to behave now?’

‘You’re in deep shit, Hope,’ Mason rasped. ‘You just assaulted a police officer.’

Ben flipped open the badge wallet. It had the deputy’s six-pointed Clovis Parish gold star on one side and a police ID card on the other, giving his full name as Mason F. Redbone. Ben tossed the wallet away and shook his head.

‘Wrong, Deputy Redbone. You’re guilty of discharging a firearm without provocation at an innocent member of the public. All I did was protect myself in such a way that avoided using undue force. There isn’t a mark on you. Which any police misconduct investigation panel in the country would agree puts me right in the clear. They might have a few questions for you, though. Such as what you’re doing in possession of a non-issue weapon that’s had its serial number filed off. And why you attempted to kill me with it just now. I’d kind of like answers to all those questions myself, so you’d better start talking.’

Mason muttered something that Ben didn’t catch. He leaned closer. ‘Speak up, Mason. Thanks to you I’ve got ringing in my ears.’

Leaning closer was Ben’s second mistake.

Mason was lying on the bloodstained carpet, his head and shoulders propped against the skirting board, his feet drawn up under him, knees bent, his body quite still except for the deep rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. His eyes were full of fear and hatred. Then his right hand suddenly darted down the length of his right leg, whipped something hidden from inside his right boot and flashed towards Ben.

Ben twisted away to avoid the knife, but he’d been leaning too close and he reacted half a second too late. He felt the razor-sharp steel puncture his flesh, below the ribs on his right side. The pain shot through him.

Mason lunged up at Ben, to stab him again. Ben was ready for him this time. He palmed the incoming knife aside and rammed a savage upward blow with the heel of his hand into Mason’s philtrum.

The space between the nose and upper lip is one of the most vital points of the human body. Done hard enough, the strike would drive a man’s nose bone backwards into his brain and kill him instantly. Ben knew that, because he’d inflicted the same technique on plenty of enemies, with lethal results. He didn’t want Mason dead. Just totally incapacitated.

Mason dropped without a sound, unconscious before he hit the floor. He lay on his back side by side with Lottie, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish.

Ben reeled backwards a couple of steps. He pressed both hands to his belly and saw the blood leaking out between his fingers.

And that was when two more police cruisers screeched up outside and a bunch more cops came running into the guesthouse.

Chapter 15

There were four of them, clad in blue uniforms with gold piping and dimpled campaign hats with gold badges and silver cords and acorns. The insignia on their arms said LOUISIANA STATE POLICE. A sergeant and three troopers, two with pump shotguns and two with Glocks. The sight that greeted them as they swarmed inside the hallway was what they took to be a dead fellow officer lying prone beside the body of a female murder victim, along with one man still on his feet who had a gun in his belt, blood all over his clothes, and could more or less be assumed to be the perpetrator of both assaults.

If Ben had been inclined to think about it, he couldn’t have blamed them for jumping to conclusions. They had much better reason than Mason had for supposing that he was the threat here.

The hallway filled with the sound of hoarse urgent yelling as the troopers fixed him in their sights and all began screaming and bellowing at him at once. DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON!

As he stood there reeling from the stab wound his options flew through his mind at lightning speed. If he didn’t respond one way or another in the next two seconds, the chances were they would all open fire at once and take him down. He could try to calmly explain the situation to them, which he wasn’t too sure he could do with blood pouring out of him. Or he could whip the revolver from his belt and start shooting before they did. Five rounds, four targets. Maybe just shoot them in the legs, to avoid causing unnecessary harm.

Alternatively, he could throw down his gun and surrender. But he didn’t fancy his chances of receiving fair treatment. Not after he’d already taken down one of their own. By the time the ambulance arrived the five state troopers would have beaten Ben to a pulp.

So Ben took the only realistic option open to him. He ran. Ignoring the agony in his belly and the tremors of shock jangling every nerve in his body.

Shots rang out and bullets cracked into the wall and splintered the banister rail as he charged up the stairs three at a time. He made it halfway up the staircase to the switchback, then flew up the second half heading towards the first floor landing. Three troopers thundered after him while the fourth stayed below, yelling into a radio that they had an officer down and needed assistance.

Ben raced past the open door of Lottie’s bedroom and reached the drop-down staircase just as the police sergeant appeared on the landing behind him. The sergeant racked his shotgun and repeated his command to stop and throw down the weapon.

Ben pounded up the drop-down staircase, up through the hatch to the attic floor, turned and crouched at the edge of the hatch and grabbed the rope loop that worked the pulley mechanism and tugged it hard. The staircase folded in half, and the whole assembly slid upwards on smooth runners to retract through the hatch. Ben hauled up the length of rope that dangled down to enable it to be opened from below, then closed off the hatch with the stair panel that acted like a trapdoor. Definitely a fine piece of carpentry, and just the job when you were being pursued through the house by multiple armed opponents.

He’d bought himself a little time, but it wouldn’t be long before they figured out a way to reach him. Nor would it be long before the whole street and surrounding area was swarming with every state trooper they could muster, along with SWAT teams and K9 units. He could hear the sound of frantic voices and crackling radios from beneath his feet as he ran into his bedroom. His legs were feeling like jelly. He had to grit his teeth and close his mind resolutely to the knowledge that he was badly hurt. He had to keep going.

He snatched up his bag from where it lay at the foot of the bed, crammed in the few items that he’d unpacked earlier, then pulled on his leather jacket and looped the bag over his shoulder. He went over to the dormer window and yanked it open. With an effort that felt like a halberd tearing out his guts he gripped the window frame and hauled himself up and through, scrambling out onto the slope of the roof.

The night sky was ink-black and starry. The air was warm, but felt like ice on his skin as the sweat poured from his brow. He felt woozy for an instant and almost lost his footing and went tumbling into space, then managed to regain his balance.