among the buildings.
Riley dropped the shotgun and crouched down beside the fallen Ira. The young Indian was clutching his leg, groaning in agony, blood seeping between his fingers.
Riley looked up as Ben approached. ‘Figured you might want a little help,’ the old farmer said.
Ben nodded. ‘I owe you one.’
Ira grinned weakly up at him. ‘Whipped ’em good, didn’t we?’
Ben crouched and examined the wound. ‘It’s just a graze,’ he said. ‘Riley, you’d better get him out of here. There might be more of them coming.’
‘Where are you going?’ Riley said.
‘To get Jones.’ Ben turned and started walking fast. Ejected the empty magazine from the pistol and let it drop down into the dust as he slammed in another.
Fire was crackling up the side of the cowshed, blocking his way. He ducked inside the wrecked storeroom, battled through the flames and ran out through the front entrance into the yard just in time to see Jones stumbling over to the big barn. He was moving clumsily in his tactical gear. Ben crossed the yard after him and walked inside the barn. It was one of the few buildings that hadn’t caught fire.
It was dark and cool inside. Ben looked about him.
Then Jones was bursting out of the shadows and the prongs of a pitchfork were flying at Ben’s chest.
Ben sidestepped the thrust, and the fork embedded itself in the timber wall.
Jones staggered away, hatred in his eyes. He reached down and ripped away the Velcro strap holding his tactical combat knife in its leg sheath. He whipped the blade out and crouched low, like an animal about to pounce.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ Ben said quietly. ‘Big mistake.’
Jones let out a wild scream and charged at him. He swung the knife at Ben’s throat. Ben stepped into the arc of the swing, caught the wrist and twisted it hard. The knife spun out of Jones’s grip.
The CIA man cried out in pain. He writhed away and backed further into the shadows of the barn, moving towards the ladder that led up to the hayloft, glancing wildly around him for anything he could use as a weapon. He stumbled over an empty drum and knocked over a stack of fencing poles. Grabbed one of the poles. It was five feet long, thick pine, sharpened to a crude point. He tried to throw it like a spear, but it was too heavy and crashed against the rusted housing of a large circular saw with its point sticking upwards at an angle.
Ben kept coming. Jones had nowhere to run to now.
‘You’re in my world now,’ Ben said. ‘You’re weak and you’re unarmed, and you’re finished. You should never have got in my way.’
Jones let out a strangled noise and scrambled up the rickety ladder. Ben followed him up to the raised platform thirty feet above, where cobwebbed bales were stacked up in the dusty shaft of light streaming from a gable window. He raised the pistol and aimed it at Jones’s head.
Jones dropped down on his knees in the hay, his face contorted. ‘Don’t kill me. Please.’
Ben lowered the gun and thrust it in his belt.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to kill you.’ He reached into his bag.
Jones screamed in horror as Ben took out the bottle and syringe. He unslung the bag, let it fall and stepped towards the CIA man. Jabbed the needle into the bottle and pulled back the plunger. Jones tried to scrabble away. He was blubbering with terror now. Ben grabbed him, threw him down in the hay and jabbed the needle deep into his neck. He pushed the plunger home.
Jones screamed again, broken teeth bared in gibbering fear. ‘What have you done to me?’
Ben stood back. He tossed the empty syringe into the shadows.
Then Jones went to pieces in front of his eyes. He battered his head against the floor. Tore out his hair. Stuffed his fingers down his throat in a desperate attempt to vomit the drug from his system. Tears poured down his face.
‘Tell me how it feels, Jones,’ Ben said. ‘Knowing that in a few hours you’ll be as insane as the poor bastard on the video.’
‘Kill me,’ Jones sobbed, bits of hay stuck to his wet face. ‘Please just kill me.’
‘No chance,’ Ben said. ‘You’re going to tell me everything.’ He leaned back against the hay bales and watched as the drug circulated through the man’s veins. After a minute or so, Jones’s frenzy diminished and he seemed to relax. He slumped down in the hay.
The transformation was weird to watch. It took a few more minutes for the man to start loosening up. His face hung expressionless, as though the muscles had been anaesthetised. His eyes rolled back in his head. Then he began to talk, in a mumbling voice.
Ben knew what he had to do. He was at the end of a thousand-mile trail of dead government agents and police. That added up to some of the worst trouble he’d ever been in, and it was going to take a lot of very persuasive evidence to get him out. He only hoped that Jones was about to provide just that.
He reached back into his bag and found the oblong shape of his phone. He took it out, turned it on and activated the video camera function. Pointed the phone at Jones.
He spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Tell the camera who you are.’
The agent’s eyelids fluttered. ‘My name is Alban Hainsworth Jones,’ he muttered without hesitation. ‘I work for the CIA.’
Ben nodded. Looked like the stuff was working. Now to press on. ‘Tell the camera the name of the person who was kidnapped on Corfu by former Government agents Kaplan and Hudson, with the collusion of active members of the CIA.’
Jones’s eyes darted back and forth. His fingers were twitching and clawing, as though there was some desperate internal struggle going on to hold in the truth despite the chemical signals flooding his brain. ‘Zoe Bradbury,’ he mumbled. ‘Zoe Bradbury was kidnapped by US agents and brought to an unauthorised secure facility in rural Montana for questioning.’
‘What was your part in this, Agent Jones?’
‘To extract the information from her using brutality and torture if needed,’ Jones said. ‘And to eliminate any opposition, which is why I murdered Dr Joshua Greenberg and two Georgia police officers.’ Sweat was pouring off his brow. His face was contorting, veins standing out in a livid Y-shape on his forehead. The conflict inside him seemed to be tearing him apart.
Ben held the camera closer. ‘Why was Zoe Bradbury’s information so important?’
‘Because of Jerusalem.’
‘Explain that.’
Jones’s eyes rolled back in his head, so that just the whites showed. His lips peeled back to show his jagged teeth. He looked like a zombie. It sent a shiver down Ben’s spine.
‘Too late to stop it now,’ Jones muttered. ‘It’s in motion. It’s inevitable. It’s going to happen in less than twenty-four hours.’
‘Too late to stop what?’
‘It was never about the girl. It was about war.’
‘What war?’
Jones’s eyes rolled back down and focused on him. He smiled weirdly. ‘The war in the Bible,’ he said.
Ben processed the words. They were like a slap in the face. They wouldn’t sink in. ‘Keep talking.’
Sweat dripped down the man’s nose. It was pouring off him faster than anything Ben had ever seen. Pooling in the hollow at the base of his throat, soaking rapidly through his clothes. He seemed to be on fire. His eyes were rolling and darting alarmingly. ‘The end of the world,’ he croaked. ‘The End Times. Armageddon. They’re starting it. They’re going to make it happen. Starting in Jerusalem.’
‘What are they going to do?’
‘Something massive,’ Jones said. ‘And there’s nothing you or anyone can do to stop it.’
Ben was stunned, hardly able to think straight as his mind raced to make sense of this. ‘Slater’s in charge of all this? Who is he?’
Jones’s grin was frozen and wild. He was beginning to shake violently. He mumbled something incomprehensible.
‘Speak clearly,’ Ben said.
