The Rebel’s Revenge. Scott Mariani

out to see what was happening. Old Mr Clapp across the street had ventured into his front yard to spectate.

      Ben kept low and stayed in the shadows as he padded along the slope of the roof to the point where the gap between Lottie’s house and that of her neighbour was at its narrowest. He could see no lights in the next-door windows. Either the neighbours were sleeping through all the excitement, or the house was empty. He eased himself down as close as possible to the edge and readied himself to jump, visualising it in his mind’s eye before he committed himself, and knowing it was going to hurt like hell. It was a long way to fall if he fluffed it. He took a couple of deep breaths, counted to three and then launched himself into space.

      He cleared the gap easily, but his landing on the neighbour’s roof almost made him cry out in pain. He knew he must be leaving a fine trail of blood spots as he moved on, keeping low so that the roof’s ridge hid him from the street side. He ran with light fast steps along its length towards where he could see a big old hickory tree standing in the garden close to the far end wall.

      This was going to hurt even more. And it did. Ben reached the edge and leaped into space. He dropped ten feet and then the foliage was ripping and clawing and scraping at his face and body as he went crashing downward through the branches. His fingers locked on to a thicker limb and he managed to arrest his fall. He scrambled down the tree as far as the lower branches, until his legs dangled free. It was maybe an eight-foot drop to the patchy grass of the back garden. He steeled himself and let go. The agony as he hit the ground went through him like a spear, but he didn’t make a sound.

      The neighbour’s garden was all in shadow. Ben remained in a still crouch at the foot of the tree for a few moments, catching his breath and listening hard until he was sure his escape from the guesthouse hadn’t been observed. Then he picked himself up and ran for the back fence and scrambled over it into the next garden, hoping he wouldn’t drop down the other side into the waiting jaws of someone’s pit bull. He landed in the bushes and kept running.

      A tumult of sirens was growing steadily louder. It sounded as if every cop in Louisiana was racing to the scene. Probably a couple of ambulances, too, one for Lottie and one for Sheriff’s Deputy Mason F. Redbone, who would soon be enjoying a little holiday in hospital. It was less than he deserved.

      Ben crossed that garden, and the next, and then pushed through a hedge over a low wall and found himself in an adjacent street, maybe a couple of hundred yards from the guesthouse as the crow flew. The homes at this end of the neighbourhood were all in darkness, as if the residents here didn’t care what kinds of major emergency situations took place up the road. That suited Ben just fine.

      He kept going. A blind man could follow the trail of glistening spots and spatters that marked his route, but there was nothing he could do about that. The best he could achieve was to get away from here before he passed out from pain and shock and blood loss and collapsed in the street for the cops to find.

      Quarter of a mile away, in a quiet little avenue on the edge of Chitimacha far away from the hubbub and excitement, he came across an old Ford pickup truck parked under the shadow of a spreading oak tree.

      The SAS had taught him how to steal cars to make him an efficient operator behind enemy lines, when you sometimes had to improvise modes of transportation. He’d had a lot of practice at it since those days. Old vehicles were the best to steal. The older the better, as long as they were driveable. No alarms, no immobilisers, no on-board GPS trackers. Thirty-nine seconds later he was inside the Ford’s cab, bleeding all over the cheap vinyl seats as he got to work hotwiring the ignition. Another half minute after that, he was gone and disappearing into the night.