‘You go first,’ he murmured. ‘Give her something to scream about.’
74
Bronson knew that he was the focus of everyone’s attention. He assumed that there was some kind of sick prestige in being the first one chosen to violate the girl strapped down on the stone table, the girl whose desperate screams and moans were still echoing around the underground room. He had hoped that as soon as this part of the ritual began, he would be able to step further back, away from the group, and use the nine-millimetre persuasion afforded by the Browning to stop the action even before it started.
Clearly, that wasn’t going to work. He had to act immediately.
He had just started to pull apart the seam of his robe when the man who had been assisting the leader raised his hand and spoke to him.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘You are eager enough, brother, but don’t forget there is one more step we have to complete.’
Bronson relaxed a little and eased his grip on the material.
The assistant gestured behind him, and two of the men left the circle and stepped across to the end wall of the cellar, returning in moments with a small jug and a funnel. As soon as he saw these two utensils, Bronson guessed what they were going to do, and knew he had a few more minutes.
The two black-clad figures walked across to the girl. One of them pulled down on her chin to force her mouth open, then pushed the end of the funnel between her teeth. He held it in position and nodded to his companion, who began dribbling a white fluid into the top of the funnel, forcing the girl to swallow it. She choked and coughed, but to no avail; the two men continued with their actions until the jug was empty.
As soon as Bronson could see that they’d finished force-feeding her the milk, he stepped slightly away from the circle, as if he was preparing to remove his robe and carry out the rape as he’d been instructed by the leader of the group.
The assistant saw that he was moving out of the circle, and called across the table to him: ‘Now we can begin. Prepare yourself, brother, for your appointed task, so that we may release the lifeblood from this willing subject – the blood that will allow us to fulfil our destiny.’
Bronson nodded, the movement barely perceptible because of his all-enveloping hood, and turned away from the table. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out the shadowy form of Angela climbing slowly to her feet as she recovered from the assault by the taser.
His plan was simple enough. He had to get out of the robe, because the garment was heavy and would restrict his movements, just as the robes would hamper the other men in the cellar. Being told to rape the girl actually provided him with an opportunity to dump the robe without arousing the suspicions of the rest of the group. Once he’d done that, he had the Browning and the spare magazines to control and, if it came to it, shoot down, the other men.
75
But before he could remove the robe, there was a sudden bang from somewhere behind him, and a hoarse shout echoed down the stone spiral staircase, followed immediately by the staircase lights coming on and the sound of somebody pounding down the steps. Then the single electric bulb over the stone table snapped on, flooding that end of the room with light. Seconds later, one of the two men Bronson had seen outside the church ran into the cellar, his face flushed and his breath coming in short gasps.
He blurted out something that Bronson didn’t catch, though he did make the words ‘naked’ and ‘robe’, and in that instant he knew they’d found the man he’d attacked in the church.
Immediately, all the men standing around the stone table looked at Bronson, identifying him as the impostor.
In a single movement, Bronson pulled open the front of his robe, pushed the hood back off his head and grabbed for his Browning.
In that instant, Angela called out his name, a single shrill syllable that echoed around the room. But two of the hooded men were already reaching for their own weapons, and Bronson knew he’d be out-gunned in seconds.
There was only one thing he could do to save the situation and buy himself some time. Taking rapid aim, he pulled the trigger. But his target wasn’t one of the menacing hooded men advancing towards him. Despite the circumstances, Bronson still wasn’t prepared to shoot down a man in cold blood – at least, not until he had absolutely no alternative. Instead, he raised the pistol higher, aiming it towards the ceiling, and the single lamp dangling there, and squeezed the trigger.
The sound of the nine-millimetre cartridge firing in the confined space of the cellar was deafening, the noise of the explosion echoing from the walls. The copper-jacketed bullet missed the light bulb, smashed into the concrete ceiling and ricocheted on to the back wall. Still carrying a lot of kinetic energy, it then bounced off the stone and hit one of the robed figures. Bronson heard a man call out in pain and fall to the ground.
He fired again, and again, the crashing blast of each shot deafeningly loud, the bullets ricocheting off the walls and ceiling, fragments of stone and red-hot copper from the bullet flying everywhere.
The last bullet hit either the light bulb itself or, more likely, the lamp holder, because as well as extinguishing the single light in the cellar, there was a sudden flash and the staircase lights went out. Bronson guessed that the bullet’s impact had blown a fuse somewhere.
Instantly, the cellar was plunged into darkness, the only illumination being the candles held by the hooded figures, several of which had already been blown out.
But there was still enough light to see the men around the stone table, and two of them were already aiming pistols directly at Bronson. He shifted his aim, bringing down his weapon until the sights lined up with one of the two men. As he squeezed the trigger, the other man fired, and Bronson felt a tug on the left-hand side of the heavy robe he was wearing as the bullet ploughed through the material.
The shot may have missed him, but Bronson had taken an extra half-second to make sure he didn’t miss his target. The man gave a shriek of pain and fell backwards, clutching at his shoulder while his weapon cartwheeled uselessly from his hand to clatter on to the stone floor.
One down, but eleven men were still facing him in the room. The second man fired, but Bronson was already moving. He ducked down and took a few steps over to his right, moving deeper into the shadows that danced around the far end of the cellar. He heard the impact of the bullet somewhere in the darkness behind him, took rapid aim at the armed man and squeezed the trigger.
His shot missed, and his target dived off to one side, finding cover behind the stone wall that marked the end of one of the cells built along the side of the cellar.
Then Bronson heard a sharp command, and almost immediately all the candles were extinguished.
For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the moaning of the man Bronson had shot. Angela, after her one yell of recognition, had said nothing else, and even the girl on the stone table had fallen silent.
The blackness was Stygian, impenetrable. Bronson took two silent steps to one side, so that he was no longer in the same spot where he’d been standing when the candles were put out. He slid out of the heavy robe and tossed it to one side, a few feet away from him, the garment landing with a muffled sound on the stone floor. Instantly, another shot crashed out, the bullet slamming into the rear wall of the cellar several feet away from him.
OK, Bronson thought. His assailants would fire at any sound they heard because he was a single vulnerable target: if he made a noise, he would die. The only advantage he had was that the men were probably still clustered near the stone table, so at least he knew where they were. But he couldn’t fire at them, not in the darkness without any point of reference – the risk of hitting the girl on the table was too high.
For the moment, it was a stalemate.
