Chapters (37)
- Cover
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Chris Ryan Readers’ Club?
- Letter from Author
- About the Author
He snuck out of the salon and paced back down the silk-wallpapered corridor. He started pushing open doors, searching for a toilet. One door led into a gym. The second led into a dining room. He got lucky with the third door on the left. Entered a bathroom with more gold in it than a Swiss bank. The toilet seat was gold-plated; so were the taps and the toilet roll holder. Bowman locked the door, propped his rifle against the tiled wall, tipped two pills into the palm of his hand and ground them up in the crusher. He figured it would take Loader several minutes to work his way through the mansion. He’d want to scope out the first floor, the rest of the ground floor rooms, the basement. The guy would be checking for entry and exit points, looking at the security of the doors and windows, the proximity to likely firing positions.
I’ve got time. A minute to get my head right, before things go noisy. That’s all I need.
He snorted up the finely ground opiate dust and felt a sharp searing pain in his nostrils, as if he’d inhaled broken glass. In another few minutes he’d get the electric buzz, the warm fuzzy feeling would flood through his body and the pain would fade away. For a brief while, at least. That was why he’d first got hooked on the pills. People assumed you took drugs to get high, but that wasn’t the point, not really. Bowman wasn’t looking for euphoria. He wasn’t looking to feel anything at all. The opioids gave him that. They took him to a place beyond pain. A place where he didn’t care about anything. Where the grief couldn’t hurt him.
Bowman tucked the pill container back into his trouser pocket. He ran the cold tap and splashed freezing water on his face, shocking himself out of his lethargy.
Then he heard a woman scream.
The echoing boom of gunfire.
Bowman snatched up his Colt rifle, flung open the door and sprinted back down the hallway to the bar. He heard two more gunshots, a chorus of demented cries, muffled by the sound of the blood rushing in his ears, the hammering of his heart against his breastbone. The fatigue melted away as he charged into the bar, weapon raised, and then his eyes locked on the rebel.