The Heretic’s Treasure. Scott Mariani

team leader was the first to reach the old peeling door. It was locked, but he’d expected that. He backed off two steps and covered the entrance with his pistol while the guy to his left flipped the safety off his cut-down Remington shotgun and blasted the lock apart. The deafening gunshot was absorbed by the electronic earpieces the men were all wearing. The shattered door crashed inwards.

      The team leader went through first. As the entry man, he’d been taught that he could expect to take a hit, or at least get shot at, as he went in. He’d also been taught that, in the heat of the surprise assault, the kidnappers’ fire would be rushed and inaccurate. He trusted his body armour to take the hits while he returned fire and took the shooters down.

      But there was nothing. The hallway was empty, apart from the ragged splinters of door that the shotgun blast had blown across the floor. The team split into pairs, covering each other at every turn through the bare corridors. They moved slickly, weapons poised.

      A door suddenly crashed open to the left and the team leader whipped around to see a man lumber out of the doorway. There was a stubby shotgun in his hands, the muzzle slung low at his hip. He worked the slide with a sharp snick-snack.

      The team leader reacted instantly. He brought his Glock 9mm around to bear, relying on instinct and muscle memory more than a conscious aim. He fired twice. The kidnapper fell back, dropping the shotgun and clutching his chest.

      The team moved on. At the end of the corridor was another door. The team leader booted it in as the others covered him. He burst into the room and the first thing his eyes locked onto was the old armchair in one corner with the stuffing hanging out of it. He glanced around him, adrenaline screaming through his veins.

      In the other corner of the half-lit room was a dingy mattress, and on it were the two children.

      The little boy and girl were strapped together, back to back. There were hoods over their heads, the girl’s long blonde hair sticking out from under the rough sacking cloth. Their clothes were torn and grimy.

      The six men quickly covered the room with their weapons. There was no sign of the rest of the kidnappers. The silence in the place was total. Just the wind in the naked branches outside, and the cawing of a crow in the distance.

      The team leader strode up to the children, holstering his weapon.

      He was just three steps away from them when he saw it. By the time his brain had registered the device attached to the girl, it was too late.

      The flash was blinding. The team members instinctively covered their faces, mouths dropping open in shock.

      The incendiary device was small but potent. The children burst alight, their bodies twisting and tumbling, the flames curling around them, melting their clothes. Beneath the flaming hoods, their hair burned and shrivelled. The sackcloth dropped away to show the white, staring eyes in the blackening faces.

      The room was filled with smoke and the acrid stench of melting plastic as the burning mannequins collapsed onto the mattress. Fire pooled all around them.

      A door flew open, and a blond-haired man walked into the room. He was tall, just under six feet, dressed in black combat trousers and a black T-shirt with the word ‘INSTRUCTOR’ spelt out in white lettering across his chest.

      His name was Ben Hope. He’d been watching the trainee hostage rescue team on a monitor as they’d approached the purpose-built killing house he used for tactical exercises.

      The team lowered their weapons and instinctively flipped on their safety catches, even though every pistol in the room was loaded with blanks. One of the men stifled a cough.

      Behind Ben, another man came into the smoky room carrying a fire extinguisher. He was the simulated kidnapper the team leader had shot earlier. His name was Jeff Dekker, and he’d been a captain with the Special Boat Service regiment of the British Army before coming to work as Ben’s assistant at the tactical training facility.

      Jeff walked over to the burning mattress and the two half-melted dummies and doused the flames with a hissing jet of white foam. He looked up and grinned at Ben.

      ‘Thanks, Jeff.’ Ben reached into the pocket of his combat trousers and took out a crumpled pack of Gauloises and his battered old Zippo lighter. He flipped the lighter open, thumbed the wheel. Lit a cigarette and clanged the lighter shut.

      Then he turned to the team. ‘Now let me show you where you went wrong.’

       Chapter Three

      Two hours later the session was over and the weary trainees filed back along the dirt track through the woods to the main buildings. The rain had stopped, and the sun was coming out.

      Ben glanced at his watch. ‘I’d better get moving. Brooke’s plane will be coming in.’ It was a twenty-minute drive to the airport. He reached for the Land Rover key in his pocket.

      ‘I can go pick her up, if you want,’ Jeff offered.

      ‘Thanks. But I’ve got to go and fetch some crates of wine on the way back. We’re getting low.’

      Jeff grinned. ‘And we can’t be having that.’

      As the trainees wandered off to get a shower and a change of clothes, Ben left Jeff at the squat block-built office and walked across the cobbled yard to the battered green Land Rover. Storm, his favourite of the guard dogs, came running over from his kennel. Ben opened the back for him, and the big German Shepherd leaped inside, claws scrabbling on the metal floor. Then Ben swung up inside the cab, fired up the engine and steered the Land Rover off down the bumpy track through the gates, turning out onto the main road.

      As he drove down the winding country lanes, he thought about the last few months, and how much they’d changed his life.

      He could barely remember the young man he’d once been, the youth who’d given up his theology studies to join the British army at the age of twenty. He’d had the devil in him in those days. His relentless pursuit of perfect physical and mental fitness, his torturous determination, had seen him qualify for the super-elite 22 SAS regiment while still in his early twenties. He’d seen bloody conflict in theatres of war around the globe. Over the eight years that followed, he’d battled, sweated and bled his way up to the rank of Major.

      But by then he already knew that his time fighting dirty wars for the benefit of shadowy figures in the corridors of power was over. When he’d finally run out of illusions, he walked away from the regiment forever and turned his skills to a higher purpose.

      Crisis response consultant. That was a neat euphemism for the freelance work he’d become involved in for the next few years. The type of crisis he responded to was the havoc caused by a criminal industry that continued to grow worldwide at an alarming rate. From South America to Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia-wherever there were people and money, the kidnap and ransom business was booming more than ever before.

      Ben hated it. He loathed nothing more than the kind of men who exploited the emotional bonds between innocent people to create suffering and hard cash. He knew their ways and how they thought. He understood the hardness of their hearts, that they regarded human lives as nothing more than a commodity to be traded on.

      And in the modern world, everyone was at risk. The predators out there had their pick, and you didn’t have to be rich and privileged to get the call informing you that your loved one had been taken. The trade was so lucrative and so easy to operate that in many countries it had become bigger than drugs. In some cities, even moderately affluent families were foolish not to take precautions to protect their children from the grasp of the kidnappers. The problem was, the payouts available from insurance companies helped only to fuel the flames. It was a situation spiralling out of control. Everyone knew it, but as long as the kidnappers and the insurance companies kept raking in the money, there was little protection for the people that really mattered-the victims.

      That