Bolt Action Read Online Free PDF

technique. No. These guys wanted to test for killer instinct. So the contests were Male vs Female: was the male tough enough to punch a female. Really put her down. Conversely could the female give as good as she got.
    The test was known then, as it still is today, by the acronym GLF. Go Like Fuck.
    ‘He wouldn’t stop looking at my breasts. He was never going to win.’
    She thought she saw a smile ease across Ferret’s chapped lips. He reached for a water bottle and sucked on the plastic feed pipe.
    ‘Have they breathalysed you yet?’
    ‘They tried, Captain, but the nurse shooed them away. Said they would be back within the next half an hour.’
    Tristie looked at her watch.
    By the way he was holding himself, Tristie could tell that the policeman waiting to breathalyse Ferret was ex-military. A proud man, with a heavily lined face and broad shoulders. He had looked tired and tense that morning. Perhaps Ferret’s case mirrored something in his own life: the world biting you in the backside when you least deserve it.
    The two of them exchanged a few polite words after she had left Ferret’s bed. Then Tristie played her one card: Corporal,she said, my army-issue car seems to have been scratched up the side, and the tyres slashed. Who should I report this to? Her eyes had pleaded Can I buy this kid some time? She could say nothing more. It either happened, or it didn’t.
    The policeman sucked at the back of his teeth for a moment, but she sensed just the smallest glint of complicity. Thrilled to be personally putting a finger on the scales of injustice. He turned and walked away, tut-tutting as he strode down the corridor. He didn’t come back to Ferret for almost five hours while he fussed in the car park, tooled about with the CCTV images, poked around some broken fences and hassled some kids on bikes who should have been at school.
    That was how Ferret passed his test. But only by a tenth of a milligram. Sufficient for it not to affect the terms on which he had to leave the army.
    Nobody would say anything either about the matter with Shifty, back in Basra. Because instead of taking out the kid, from almost nine hundred yards, Ferret had drilled a shot through Shifty’s crotch. Bad news on so many levels.
    You’ve got to understand the politics most of all: the hopes and dreams of the Coalition lay in the new Iraqi Army, especially their officer corps. In many eyes Shifty was the future of the country. Indeed, he was who we were fighting for. But then real soldiers are notoriously poor at playing politics. Ferret had not only emasculated him, but worse. While Shifty was kicking around in the dust holding what was left of his reproductive organs, Ferret had taken out both knees as well. ‘Remarkable marksmanship,’ the line officer had noted in his file. ‘Sadly, not welcome back in this operational theatre.’
    Two months later, when Ferret left the army, he joined Tristie Merritt. Gladly becoming the first recruit into Ward 13. Obviously she had passed some basic test of his; some gut-check sense of whether this female, former army officer was on the level or not. And through Ferret they had linked up with Piglet, who would be the linguistic expert, as well. Others would come on boardonce they had their hands on some of Sir Dale Malham’s ill-gotten gains.
    The deed was fixed for a Friday. Late afternoon. In November. There was the usual darkness, blustery rain and endless gloom.
    Ferret was sat in the Concorde Lounge of British Airways Terminal 5, dressed as expensively as they could afford in a navy tuxedo suit. Playing the City gent. Tie already undone. Jacket and cufflinks off. Sleeves rolled up.
    Likewise Malham, who was on the couch opposite, un winding after a hectic week picking the pockets of the MoD. A double Scotch on the rocks rested on his stomach as he sprawled out, feeding himself cashews, and watching lazy-eyed the business of Heathrow through the towering height of windows before him. Malham