Scott Mariani 2-book Collection: Star of Africa, The Devil’s Kingdom. Scott Mariani

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       Chapter 10

      The young woman’s eyes were wide with terror and pleading as she tried to scream out from behind the tape that covered her mouth. Her bleached hair was all awry, her hands tied, her blue chequered shop assistant’s uniform ripped at the neck from the struggle with her attacker who, presumably, had already wiped out the rest of her colleagues in his murderous spree.

      The hostage taker stood half-concealed behind her, using her body as a shield with one arm clamped tightly around her neck. Was he a terrorist, or just another crazy on the loose? It didn’t matter either way. He was the threat, and he had to be neutralised. He was wearing a black sweatshirt and his eyes were hidden by dark glasses that glinted in the morning sun. He was clutching a stubby pistol that was aimed over the woman’s shoulder and pointing at the hostage rescue team who had come to save her.

      Milliseconds counted. At any instant, a desperate man like this, all out of options and wild with panic, might turn the gun on her at point-blank range and blow her brains out.

      Brrrpp … Brrrpp. The ripping snort of two short bursts from the silenced submachine gun, punctuated by the clackclackclack of the weapon’s bolt and the tinkle of spent cartridge cases hitting the ground. The hostage’s left eye disappeared as the nine-millimetre bullets punched a jagged line from her throat up to her temple.

      Then silence. The smell of cordite drifted on the cold morning air. A small trickle of smoke oozed from each of the bullet holes. The hostage taker’s pistol was still pointing at the assembled HRT operators fifteen metres away.

      ‘Cease fire,’ Jeff Dekker said. ‘Make your weapon safe.’

      The shooter flicked on his safety catch and frowned at the woman he’d just killed.

      ‘Shit.’

      ‘Okay,’ Jeff said. ‘Your hostage is dead, and so are you, or maybe one of your teammates.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Tell that to her kids.’ Jeff stepped up to the firing line and took the smoking subgun out of the shooter’s hands. ‘Ben? You want to give us a demonstration?’

      The shooter stepped aside, angry with himself and shaking his head. Without a word, Ben took the gun from Jeff, walked up to the line and waited for the buzzer. Jeff pressed the remote button. At the signal, almost too fast for the eye to follow, Ben had the weapon up to his shoulder and on target with a single burst.

       Brrrpp.

      The hostage taker’s sunglasses shattered into fragments. Shreds of high-density polyurethane foam flew from the back of his head and littered the grass like confetti. Less than three-quarters of a second from the buzzer, he wasn’t going to be harming any more innocents.

      Ben lowered the gun, made it safe and handed it back to Jeff, keeping the muzzle pointed downrange. ‘Something like that,’ he said to the first shooter, who was still shaking his head and staring in amazement at the tight grouping of holes between the bad guy’s eyes.

      It was just another morning at Le Val. The class were a group of twelve French police SWAT trainees who’d been sent out on a three-day instruction course in close-quarter shooting and hostage rescue tactics. The highly realistic, lifesize 3-D self-healing foam targets were a recent innovation Jeff had come up with, in conjunction with a Normandy plastic mouldings firm who couldn’t manufacture them fast enough to meet the demand from law enforcement and military training units all over Europe.

      ‘You want to break down for the group how you just did that?’ Jeff asked Ben.

      ‘We need to look beyond the accepted principles of combat shooting in order to become really fast and accurate,’ Ben told the class. ‘Forget what you’ve been taught about focusing on the sights of the weapon. And don’t СКАЧАТЬ