Scott Mariani
THE TUNNEL: A Ben Hope Story
1
Just before the last crimson-purple glow of the falling sun dipped behind the mountains and nightfall spread over the glen, the stag appeared suddenly, silently, at the top of the rise. He stood there for a long moment, as still and poised as a statue, his head held nobly aloft and his magnificent twelve-point rack of antlers silhouetted against the streaks of fire in the sky.
The stag surveyed the wintry, bleak wilderness that stretched for miles in all directions. Two centuries since the last Scottish wolf had been hunted to extinction, this was his sanctuary, his only remaining natural predator being man. He was an old male, veteran of countless rutting conquests and fights, and age and experience had made him wily enough to avoid the few human beings who ventured up here into the wilderness. Confident that all was well, the stag gave a snort or two and moved on, in his unhurried way. He paused to nibble at a shrub, then disappeared over the next rise and was gone.
The man concealed in the gorse bushes watched the animal stride away over the brow of the hill. The old monarch of the glen had come within eight feet of him without sensing a human presence.
Ben Hope stood up and slowly emerged from his cover, careful not to leave a single broken twig as evidence he’d ever been here. For the last twenty minutes, the thicket of gorse had served him as an observation point from which he, too, had been surveying the unspoilt panorama that seemed to go on forever in all directions.
Unlike the deer, Ben Hope wasn’t scanning for predators. Because he was the predator.
But his hunt wasn’t for wild quarry. He was here today to stalk a very different and far more dangerous kind of prey. His prey was a man. A man he’d known for a long, long time, whom he’d thought he could count as a loyal comrade, if not a friend. A man who was one of the remote few he’d encountered in his life whom he considered possibly more accomplished in their chosen profession, more skilled, hence more lethal, than Ben himself.
Whether that was still true, time would soon tell.
A chill wind was blowing from the mountains as darkness fell, numbing his face. The icy rain that had lashed the glen all day long had finally cleared, and the moon was bright, dimmed every now and then by dull clouds that threatened to fill the sky and, if the conditions changed and the wind dropped, could signal possible heavy snowfall over the next few hours.
Ben frowned up at the sky and hoped that wouldn’t happen. It wasn’t the cold that concerned him, or the possibility of getting stranded out here in the middle of nowhere. Rather, it was the near-impossible challenge of moving over snowy terrain without leaving tracks. If tonight’s operation went as he thought — and feared — it might, then the repercussions would be swift, harsh and rigorous. The kind of men who would be sent out to scour every inch of ground for miles to search for evidence wouldn’t be easy to deceive. They’d be professional trackers with years of experience and exactly the same level of training as his own. Which was the highest level available anywhere on the planet. Ben was all too aware of the resources the opposition could unleash to catch him.
He tightened up the straps of his pack and kept moving. Night came fast this far north and so late in the year. He welcomed the darkness. It was his element and he felt protected by it.
He’d long ago learned to navigate by the stars, but in these conditions of alternating cloud and bright moonlight he opted for the handheld GPS tracking and digital compass unit he carried on his belt. To avoid the single road that cut through the valley, he had selected a route that would fishhook around the objective for about four miles and take him onto high ground to the northeast, where he would mount his final OP before moving in. Route selection was the first requirement of tactical movement. Night work was slower, but safer. You avoided pre-existing tracks, footpaths and human habitation at all cost. You made maximum use of natural cover, crossed open ground at its narrowest point, and then only after a careful scrutiny of the terrain. Hills were to be contoured some two-thirds up their slopes, in order to keep to the high ground wherever possible and at the same time minimise the risk of being silhouetted against the sky, should the cloud cover suddenly break.
These things had all been instilled so deeply in him that they came as naturally as walking and breathing. But never once, not even in his most sombre dreams, had he ever thought he’d one day find himself using such skills against the very same people who had taught them to him.
He was dressed in black from head to foot. Below the hem of his beanie hat, his face was camouflaged with burnt cork. When the clouds passed over the moon he was nothing more than a moving patch of black on black, invisible even to a fox. From time to time, when the cloud cover parted and the landscape glowed with the moonlight, he instinctively paused to check his background and ensure that he wasn’t outlined against the sky or casting a long, moving shadow that would be a giveaway to any potential spotter.
Only by constant vigilance was it possible to move totally undetected, and it was a skill at which he’d excelled since the earliest days of his SAS training. Nobody could see, hear or even smell him coming — literally. He’d left the cigarettes untouched for several days, so that the scent of tobacco smoke and aromatic tar couldn’t be carried on the wind to be picked up by a sensitive nose as much as quarter of a mile away. Before setting out he’d washed himself carefully with a neutral and odourless soap, for the same reason. Overcaution wasn’t in the SAS vocabulary. On covert missions into hostile enemy territory, where the smallest mistake could spell fatal disaster, even spicy foods had to be avoided for up to a week beforehand, to avoid telltale scents leaking out in your sweat.
And a mission into enemy territory was exactly what Ben was engaged in at this moment. A mission sanctioned, planned and carried out by him alone, and for which he would bear the sole responsibility if he failed, or was taken captive, or was killed. Any of which, when going up against an opponent like this one, was a very possible outcome.
With that in mind, he’d equipped himself as thoroughly as if he were on an official military operation. As carefully, too. The van in which he’d driven up through Scotland could never be traced to his name. The lightweight infra-red binoculars with laser rangefinder were the same model he’d carried on active duty. So were the silenced Browning nine-millimetre semiautomatic pistol strapped to his right thigh and the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun with integral sound suppressor slung around his shoulder. Needless to say, he’d acquired the hardware without leaving any trails. The firepower was no kind of an overcaution, either. Ben would have been surprised if his target wasn’t similarly armed. Whatever happened tonight, if blood was spilled it would be done swiftly and quietly.
His preparations hadn’t stopped there. The soles of his boots were covered with rough, grippy leather pads that he had taped into place over the rubber to avoid leaving tread marks. The CTT combat tracker team would be able to tell from even the faintest partial print exactly what kind of boot the intruder had been wearing, and he wished to give them not even the smallest shred of evidence. For the same reason, the leather pads would prevent mud from getting into the treads, which might easily get scuffed against a rock and leave a telltale smear. SAS soldiers were taught that nothing could be allowed to leave a trace of their passing whilst on patrol behind enemy lines. If you had to piss, you did it in a special sealed container. If you had to do the other, you carried it with you in a bag inside your pack for the duration of the mission.