Armageddon Heights (a thriller) Read Online Free PDF

thing, Wade thought. Nothing.
    They said it shouldn’t have happened – couldn’t have happened – but they were all proved wrong. And all because of what? A lapse in concentration, they were told. It was their fault – his comrades had contributed to what happened to Travers. Wade could have prevented it.
    Okay, so no one actually came forward and said it, but he read it in their eyes, their cold-shouldered avoidance. You should have prevented it. You should have had his back. Where were you?
    And it haunted Wade to this day.
    They were moving from filthy, dusty mud-brick house to filthy mud-brick house, an urgent tip-off provoking a hurriedly cobbled-together patrol designed to flush the insurgents out, their unexpected excursion into the town an incursion too far. Get in there, nip it in the bud.
    Bewildered and angry women and children either standing staring at them as the patrol crushed itself against walls and secured street after street, or ran away terrified, ducking into doorways little more than holes covered with ragged strips of cloth and plastic sheeting. Wade remembered trying to read the thoughts behind their eyes and failed. Any one of them could be an enemy or collaborating with them, willingly or otherwise. The tension was so palpable he swore he could hear it creak. Sweat doused his body, more than just a product of the intense heat of the day.
    The order to split the patrol up had been debated ever since and there were no clear answers, no matter how they dissected the patrol in debrief, looked for the reason why it went wrong. And Lieutenant Solway wasn’t about to enlighten anyone either, because he was dead. But the order was given, and in spite of the frowns and puzzled glances at the time, orders are orders, so Travers, Wade and Peterson were sent off to secure a filth-covered alley and attendant mud-brick buildings, while two other larger groups went scuttling in other directions, the objective to sweep their areas clean and meet up at a predetermined point three hundred yards due north before deciding the next set of objectives. All very textbook otherwise. Nothing out of the ordinary, if you could call this ordinary.
    But that day would be different. What happened that day would eventually result in his wife and child being murdered. But he was powerless to stop the memory of it. As he saw a young woman gather her child in her arms and make a dash for it down the street, he wanted to alter the memory, to turn back, call an end to it all. Yet he was being dragged through it like a river takes a leaf, knowing full well his family were being wiped out with every step he took towards the house, its open doorway looking like the maw of a yawning beast waiting to devour them. Through there, lurking in the darkness, lay the bleak future he could not change.
    A loud explosion caused Samuel Wade to snap open his eyes, the memories to dissolve instantly, his heart crashing wildly inside his chest, his body tense, his hand flying instinctively to the pocket where he kept the pistol.
    Thunder.
    Rolling loudly overhead, accompanied by the stark flash of lightning. The storm directly above them, he thought. The rain was pelting the windows of the coach so hard it sounded as if someone was throwing handfuls of grit at them. It was dark. A darkness so complete he couldn’t make anything out. Where was the city, the car headlights, the shop windows and streetlamps? Had he been asleep?
    He checked his watch. Yes. An hour or so. The doomed patrol simply a part of his dream. The same nightmare again.
    Gradually his breathing eased and he wiped away the sweat which began to chill his forehead. He looked over in the youth’s direction. He appeared to be asleep, the headphones still doling out the irritating noise, a packet of half-eaten crisps on the pull-down table in front of him, spilling out onto it with the steady vibrations of the coach, as if they were trying to make a covert break for it, sneaking away