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Back The Counterfeit Candidate Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Prologue
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Chapter Four
  6. Chapter Five
  7. Chapter Six
  8. Chapter Seven
  9. Chapter Eight
  10. Chapter Nine
  11. Chapter Ten
  12. Chapter Eleven
  13. Chapter Twelve
  14. Chapter Thirteen
  15. Chapter Fourteen
  16. Chapter Fifteen
  17. Chapter Sixteen
  18. Chapter Seventeen
  19. Chapter Eighteen
  20. Chapter Nineteen
  21. Chapter Twenty
  22. Chapter Twenty-One
  23. Chapter Twenty-Two
  24. Chapter Twenty-Three
  25. Chapter Twenty-Four
  26. Chapter Twenty-Five
  27. Chapter Twenty-Six
  28. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  29. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  30. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  31. Chapter Thirty
  32. Chapter Thirty-One
  33. Chapter Thirty-Two
  34. Chapter Thirty-Three
  35. Chapter Thirty-Four
  36. Chapter Thirty-Five
  37. Chapter Thirty-Six
  38. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  39. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  40. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  41. Chapter Forty
  42. Chapter Forty-One
  43. Chapter Forty-Two
  44. Chapter Forty-Three
  45. Chapter Forty-Four
  46. Chapter Forty-Five
  47. Chapter Forty-Six
  48. Chapter Forty-Seven
  49. Chapter Forty-Eight
  50. Chapter Forty-Nine
  51. Chapter Fifty
  52. Chapter Fifty-One
  53. Chapter Fifty-Two
  54. Chapter Fifty-Three
  55. Chapter Fifty-Four
  56. Chapter Fifty-Five
  57. Chapter Fifty-Six
  58. Epilogue
  59. Author’s Note
  60. Acknowledgements
  61. About the Author

Vargas glanced at his watch, then grabbed his mobile and scrolled through his contacts. “There’s no time to head back, but there may be another way. One of my team commutes every day on a very fast BMW bike. It’s only six forty-five, so he’ll still be at home, and he only lives a few minutes from the temporary station where I’ve left a spare set of keys. With luck, he could have time to pick them up, get to my apartment, collect the laptop and then weave his way through the gridlock before we take off. It’s the best I can offer.”

“Cheers, Nic. If he doesn’t make it, you gain a new Mac.”

Vargas briefed Detective Alex Martin, who relished the challenge, and within seconds of ending the call was donning his black leathers.

* * *

The black Mercedes Sprinter parked up on the Avenida Santa Fe at precisely 7.15 a.m. Hakim and Ahmed Saadi sat in the back and ran through their final checks of the complex military-grade equipment they were about to operate in one of Buenos Aires’ busiest districts. The two Algerian brothers had served in the People’s National Army before becoming independent assassins. They owned a huge warehouse in Morocco, crammed full of armaments capable of starting a small war. The two C90 RPGs in the back of the van were designed to take out heavily fortified tanks and a single round could penetrate twenty-four-inch-thick concrete from a range of one thousand yards. The target they were about to attack was no more than fifty feet away. It was the apartment block directly across the road from where they were parked. Hakim and Ahmed secured their respective fibreglass launch tubes into place and adjusted the leather shoulder straps.

Detective Martin pulled up outside the front of Vargas’s eight-storey apartment block and switched off the engine of his blue BMW 1200 GS bike. He ran through the glass-fronted entrance and opted for the stairs rather than the lift to reach his chief’s third-floor apartment. At the same moment, Hakim opened the sliding door on the side of the van and Ahmed moved into position alongside him. They already knew they had a perfect sight line to the kitchen and bedroom areas of their target’s apartment and were aiming at both. The brothers made final tweaks to their optical sights and prepared to fire.