Making no sound at all, Bronson stood up and started to ease his way along the wall beside him, touching it with his left hand – he needed to feel the old stones to ensure that he was going in the right direction. All he hoped to do was put a little more distance between himself and the other men. And if he could get as far as the back wall of the room, he could try to work his way across to the cell where Angela was being held and try to free her.
There was another sharp command from the other end of the room. The voice was quiet and he couldn’t make out the words, but the effect was immediate. Bronson heard the sound of movement – someone was cautiously crossing the floor towards him, their robes rustling and their leather sandals slapping faintly on the old stones. He guessed that two of the men, both no doubt armed with pistols, had been ordered to move apart so that they could catch him in the crossfire.
Still he daren’t fire blind. He might hit the girl. He could even hit Angela. And if he did shoot, the muzzle flash from his pistol would instantly give away his position, and he knew exactly what would happen if he did that.
He moved infinitely slowly, backing away from the sound of movement. Then he stopped and crouched down with his back to the wall, making himself as small a target as possible. He held the Browning ready in his right hand, his left pressed against the wall behind him, prepared to move or to shoot as events dictated, listening hard and desperately trying to make sense of what he was hearing.
Then, through the darkness, he heard another muttered command, and almost immediately two shots blasted out from opposite sides of the cellar, the bullets smashing into the wall where he’d been standing just moments earlier, then ricocheting away. The muzzle flashes illuminated the shooters for a split second, just long enough for Bronson to see where they were.
He fired once, at the figure on his right, then dived sideways, changing his own position.
Two more shots deafened him, and he knew immediately that his own bullet had missed.
Then the man spoke again, and this time he was close enough for Bronson to hear exactly what he said.
‘Stop. That’s far enough,’ he said in Italian.
Then another man spoke from the opposite end of the cellar.
‘Drop your weapon, Bronson.’ The voice was familiar, and Bronson immediately recognized the hostile tones of Inspector Bianchi. ‘You have no chance. Give up, and we’ll kill you quickly. But if you don’t surrender, I can promise that you’ll take a very long time to die, though probably not as long as your interfering wife. We’ll make sure she dies first, and we’ll make you watch.’
Bronson didn’t move or respond, figuring the angles. It’s a basic rule of close combat that you never, ever, surrender your weapon. He knew that as well as anyone who’d ever served in the military of any nation, and he also knew that if he spoke, if he responded in any way at all, the men in front of him would open fire immediately.
But there was one thing he could do. He pressed the button on the left side of the Browning and slid out the magazine. Then he extracted a full one from the carrier on his belt and slid it into place in the weapon, the faintest of clicks confirming it was locked home. He replaced the half-empty magazine in the carrier.
‘Very well, Bronson. It is your choice,’ Bianchi said.
Then the sound of loud, angry shouts filled the air, followed by the clattering of shoes on the stones of the spiral staircase. Dancing torch beams illuminated that end of the cellar.
At the moment, Bronson knew he’d reached the end of his rope. Reinforcements had obviously been summoned from the house; they would pick him out in an instant with their torches and, no matter what he did then, he would die. The best he could hope to do was take a few of them with him.
Then, from somewhere over to his left, he heard a sudden movement. There was a faint snap, like the sound of a distant whip-crack, and a flare of dim blue light so transient Bronson wasn’t sure he’d actually seen it. It was followed, an instant later, by a dull sound, like something heavy dropping on to the floor, from that side of the cellar. And then someone started to scream.
76
Reacting instinctively to the screams, Bronson took a couple of steps to his left. Then he stopped. The danger was right in front of him, the men still coming down the stone staircase. He stood up, raised the pistol in his right hand and braced his wrist with his left, waiting until he could identify a target. He would make every shot count. That was all he could do.
But something was wrong. The men in the cellar weren’t reacting the way they should be, the way he expected.
In the flickering torchlight he could see that the men around him were moving quickly back towards the stone table and the foot of the staircase, the only exit from the room. And then he finally understood what the people coming down the stairs were shouting.
A dark figure appeared in the opening to the staircase, a powerful torch attached to his weapon illuminating the scene in front of him. But the moment he stepped into the cellar, a shot rang out, and he fell backwards out of sight. A second man took his place, and immediately opened fire, a burst of three shots from his sub-machine gun taking out two of the hooded figures, who tumbled to the ground screaming.
But another shot from one of the men in the cellar threw the man to the ground before he could fire again.
Another figure appeared, clad in dark combat clothing like the first two, and Bronson realized that – somehow – the Italian police were here. What he was witnessing was an assault by the Italian equivalent of a SWAT team.
The problem the police had was getting into the cellar. Normally, an assault would be mounted through multiple entrances and using the maximum possible number of officers. But the only way into this room was down the staircase, which put the assault team at a tremendous disadvantage. And the men in the cellar obviously had nothing to lose.
The third police officer had clearly seen what had happened to his two companions and tried a different tack: he aimed his sub-machine gun around the end of the wall, the beam of the attached torch seeking a target. But the hooded figures had scattered, some taking refuge behind the stone table, others in the cell nearest the staircase.
Bronson ran over to the wall on his right, getting as far away as possible from both the police and their targets. No bullets followed him as he moved.
The girl lashed down on the table screamed in terror. Bronson stared through the gloom, and what he saw spurred him into immediate action.
One of the hooded men down at that end of the stone table had reached up, a blade in his hand, feeling for her neck, presumably so that he could permanently remove one witness to their activities. Bronson took a couple of steps forward to shorten the range, raised his pistol and aimed at the centre of the dark shape, squeezing the trigger as he did so. The Browning kicked in his hand, and the man tumbled sideways, his knife clattering to the floor.
Then more shots crashed out as the armed men in the cellar fired at the police officer. He replied with two short bursts from his weapon, the bullets striking stone. One hit the ancient skull sitting on the small stone table, sending shards of old bone flying as it disintegrated.
The cellar filled with the smell of cordite, and the stabbing beams of the torches attached to the sub-machine guns of the two men sheltering in the stairwell – another officer had just appeared there – erratically illuminated different parts of the room as the officers looked for targets.
Bronson shrank down, trying to make himself as small and insignificant as possible. He knew there was only one way this was going to end, because the hooded men were ludicrously outgunned, but the fight wasn’t over yet. And he really didn’t want to get taken out by a bullet from either side.
Suddenly, in the flickering light from the torches, he saw a round object hit the floor just to one side of the stone table, and knew exactly what it was. Immediately, he placed the Browning on the ground, shut his eyes and pressed his hands over his ears as hard as he could.
Half a second later, the stun grenade exploded, the blast obscenely loud in the confined space. Bronson opened his eyes; then closed them again as another stun grenade rolled across the floor. Once again, the cellar rocked with the massive blast. And then there seemed to be torches everywhere, as the rest of the assault team
