Free The Martyr's Curse by Scott Mariani Page B

Ben’s fragmented memory was beginning to slot miserably back together.
    ‘Hey, big man,’ his host chuckled in French, rising to greet his guest. Maybe he was being modest. Six-six at the very least, with skin the colour of burnished ebony, he wasn’t the smallest Nigerian guy Ben had ever seen. He made the muscle-bound oaf Ben had beaten up the day before look like a dwarf. He was somewhere in his late forties, his hair grizzled at the temples. A tattered Gold’s Gym T-shirt showed off his weightlifter’s shoulders and powerful, vein-laced arms.
    Ben stared at him, struggling to recall the name. ‘Omar,’ he said at last.
    The dazzling grin widened. ‘Brother, I’m surprised you remember a fucking thing.’
    Ben slumped in a wooden chair. ‘That’s about all I do remember.’ But the rest was slowly coming back. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to.
    Omar filled in the missing pieces with obvious amusement. How he and his bar-room buddies had found a new drinking companion the previous evening when this already toasted English guy had wandered into their regular haunt clutching the remains of a bottle of scotch. It had turned into quite a night.
    ‘Did I say anything?’
    ‘Just kept rambling on about some woman. You got it bad, my friend. I know how that goes, believe me.’
    ‘Nobody got hit, did they?’ Ben dared to ask. He looked at his knuckles. No sign of fresh bruising, and they didn’t hurt. Still, that didn’t prove anything.
    ‘Didn’t get that far,’ Omar told him with a booming laugh. ‘Not quite. Shit, I never saw anyone put away that much whisky before. Me and the boys were taking bets on when you’d drop, man. Incredible.’
    ‘Yeah, it’s a real talent,’ Ben muttered. ‘I hope you won your bet.’
    Omar shook his head, still beaming. ‘Nah. You cost me big time.’
    ‘Sorry to hear it. Did you bring me back here?’
    ‘Wasn’t going to leave you lying in the gutter for the cops to scrape up, now was I?’
    ‘I appreciate that, Omar.’
    ‘Hey, no worries. How’d you like the room?’
    ‘Interesting,’ Ben said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Especially the wall decorations. I don’t mean the posters.’
    ‘Oh, that,’ Omar replied dismissively. ‘Just a few souvenirs.’
    ‘That’s a G2 FAMAS. You won’t exactly find one in the local gun shop.’
    The bright grin again. Ben was going to need sunglasses for the glare. Omar said, ‘That one came home with me from a little spree called Opération Daguet.’
    ‘You fought with the French Army in the Gulf?’
    Omar shrugged it off. ‘Long time ago.’
    ‘1991,’ Ben said. ‘Around the time I joined up.’
    ‘I knew there was something about you.’
    ‘British Army. Special Air Service. Long time ago, too.’
    ‘Want a coffee, bro? Look like you could do with it.’
    ‘And a favour,’ Ben said, nodding and then wincing at the pain the movement cost him. ‘I need a lift. Have you got a car?’
    Omar looked at him. ‘Shit. Have I got a car?’

Chapter Eleven
    Omar’s pride and joy was a H1 Hummer, the civilian version of the M998 US Army Humvee, the nickname that was the nearest anyone could pronounce to HMMWV or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle.
    The last time Ben had been inside a real one had been on a classified SAS mission in the Middle East. The demilitarised version might not have been bristling with heavy armament, but it was still a monster of a truck that dominated the road by sheer force of intimidation. Painted a deep, gleaming metallic gunmetal that was halfway between charcoal grey and black and all tricked out with mirror-tinted glass and oversized wheels and crash bars and enough auxiliary lighting to fry an egg at thirty paces, it could have been custom-built to suit Omar’s own huge frame.
    ‘Won it in a poker game,’ he explained loudly over the roar as they muscled their way across Briançon with all the noise and presence of a tank battalion, scattering lesser traffic into the verges. ‘I