Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
He pulled up in a lay-by and walked the last two hundred metres, hunched against the drizzle with the long beige canvas bag slung over his shoulder. He found them all standing around in a huddle, some distance from the solitary figure and the pathetic mound of dead fur on the ground beside it. They had been waiting for instructions.
‘Anyone come past yet?’ he asked.
‘No, boss.’
‘And no one’s phoned for an ambulance?’
‘No, boss. You told us not to.’
‘That’s right.’ He patted the nearest man on the shoulder. ‘Good boy.’ He looked beyond him, selected two others and sent them down the road to make sure no traffic was coming. Couldn’t afford to have anyone see what was about to happen. Then he picked out one more, a man in his late twenties with a goatee and a faded tattoo on his neck, and whispered instructions in his ear. The man nodded and went off to address the rest of the group. Within minutes they had all dispersed, moving back some two hundred metres and out of sight behind a hedge. Now there was just the beleaguered lad, still standing over the dead macaque some distance away, and him, the big man with the long canvas bag. The lad had his back to him.
He chose his position carefully – had to get this right first time, couldn’t afford any more cock-ups. With a grunt he got down on his belly just behind a damp tussock of grass, reached beside him and carefully unsheathed the hunting rifle, a Remington 700 with a scratched-off serial number and a folding bipod beneath the stock. Designed to take down a stag at a range of half a mile, it was rather more powerful than was needed today, but still, it would do the job. The big man didn’t know the lad who had got himself into this mess but, frankly, it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had. He chambered a round, brought the butt up into the shoulder, closed one eye and steadied his breathing. The lad still had his back to him, just standing there in the drizzle, smoking a cigarette. He was pleased to see that, because he had no reason to want to make him suffer: this was strictly business, nothing personal.
‘Cheerio, old son,’ the big man said to himself, as his right index finger very gently increased its pressure on the trigger. There was a single crack as the 7mm projectile left the barrel, flying through the air at 756 metres a second. At a range of just 150 metres he was hardly going to miss. He watched through the telescopic sight as the young man pitched violently forward, as if punched from behind by a giant invisible hand. He waited a full thirty seconds, watching for any movement. There was none.
The problem had been dealt with; Cambridge could be notified. Everything was back on track.