The Crusader's Cross by Scott Mariani

Author:Scott Mariani [Mariani, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-09-27T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

It was a few minutes later that Serge found him knocking back a glass of Laphroaig in the farmhouse kitchen. ‘You should let me take a look at that shoulder,’ Serge said, eyeing Ben’s bloody shirt with concern. ‘It might need a few stitches.’ Serge had had medical training in the French military, and he’d already demonstrated he was a dab hand with a needle when Jeff had gashed himself while putting up razor wire.

‘I’m fine,’ Ben said, pouring more whisky and knocking that one back, too. He could have finished the whole bottle and it wouldn’t have touched the way he was feeling. ‘I’ll see to it later.’

‘Then get some rest, for Christ’s sake. You look exhausted.’

Ben drained his drink and set down the empty glass. ‘Something I have to do first. You want to come with me to the kennel block?’

‘I’d be glad to, if it’s to blow those five pieces of shit straight to hell with a shotgun.’

As much as they might have deserved that, Ben’s intention was in fact to offer some humane relief to the worst injured of their captives. Ángel Leoni was in a bad state, alternating between near-comatose fainting spells and fits of screaming agony. Ben didn’t have Serge’s medical expertise, but as an SAS trooper he’d been taught the essentials of effecting field repairs on broken soldiers. With bandages from the Le Val first-aid box and bits of wood from the barn, the pair of them splinted the fractured leg up good and tight, and then heavily dosed the suffering patient with the last of the painkillers Ben had bought in Valognes for his ankle.

‘You’re a much better man than I am, Ben,’ Serge said to him as they worked. ‘After what they’ve done? That takes some kind of saintly virtue.’

‘I’m no saint,’ Ben said.

‘Then I don’t know what that makes me. I’d want to strangle this fucker with my bare hands.’

They closed Ángel Leoni in his cell, and Ben limped along the row of mesh cage doors to where César Casta lay bound up, now wide awake and glaring at him. Behind the cell door to Casta’s right was Raul Ramolino, to his left the one with the broken nose, and at the end of the row was the one Ben had lured inside the killing house.

The only one of the gang who could speak English well enough was Casta, so Ben spoke to them in Italian. ‘The police are on their way. What your associate Petru Navarro did here tonight puts a murder charge on all six of you. Which means you five will be going to jail for many, many more years than you would have just for stealing a bunch of guns.’

‘We didn’t kill anyone,’ protested the broken-nosed one in an indistinct, nasally voice. ‘Our job was just to get the gear and get out of here. Nobody was supposed to die!’

‘Just my dogs,’ Ben said.

‘Dogs are filthy animals that don’t have the right to live,’ Casta muttered.

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