False Friends Read Online Free PDF

mattresses.
    ‘Come on guys, the clock is ticking, mover it!’ he shouted before hurrying down the stairs to the ground floor, with Seal Bravo hard on his heels.
    Shepherd stood and watched as four Seals brought half a dozen children out of the compound. They were al barefoot and wearing shabby nightgowns and their hands had been tied behind their backs with flex cuffs. Two of the children were girls who couldn’t have been more than six years old and they were crying uncontrol ably. ‘They’re just kids,’ said Shepherd.
    ‘Kids are as dangerous as adults in this part of the world,’ said Henderson. ‘We have to make sure they’re not a threat.’
    The Seals pushed the kids along the perimeter wal to where a group of women and children were sitting. One of the women tried to get up but a Seal pushed her back down with the barrel of his weapon. ‘Stay on the ground!’ he yel ed.
    The woman screamed at him in Arabic and the Seal prodded her again.
    The children ran towards her and sat down around her. The younger ones were crying but one of the boys, barely a teenager, glared sul enly at the Seals. Even though he was standing fifty feet away Shepherd could feel the hatred pouring out of the boy.
    Off in the distance, to the west, Shepherd heard the twin rotors of a Chinook helicopter. ‘Cavalry’s on the way,’ he said.
    He pul ed his night-vision goggles back over his eyes and scanned the night sky. The Chinook was half a mile away, flying low. It was a much bigger helicopter than the Black Hawk and able to carry four times as many troops. It was only slightly slower than the Black Hawk but it didn’t have the Black Hawk’s stealth capabilities and was an easy target, hence the pilot’s decision to fly as low as possible.
    The Chinook transitioned into a hover and came in to land about a hundred feet away from the compound. Immediately six Seals jumped out and took up position around the helicopter, guns at the ready.
    Four Seals came out of the compound, carrying a white body bag. They were jogging and breathing heavily from the exertion, their faces glistening with sweat.
    As they headed towards the Chinook, Croft appeared, fol owed by half a dozen of his men. They were al carrying black bags stuffed with whatever they’d taken from the building.
    The Seals with the body bag dumped it on the ground at the rear of the Chinook as the ramp slowly descended and banged on to the ground.
    A medic ran down the ramp and hurried over to the body bag. He unzipped it and then took out a medical kit from a pouch on his belt. He rol ed the body over and pul ed up the shirt, then stabbed a hypodermic into the base of the spine and careful y extracted more than fifty centilitres of spinal fluid. He put the hypodermic into a plastic case and handed it to a Seal, who jogged over to the Chinook and climbed on board.
    Croft and his men hurried up the ramp with their black bags as the medic took another hypodermic and withdrew a second sample of bone marrow, which he put into a plastic case before hurrying back into the rear of the helicopter. The two Seals zipped up the body bag and carried it up the ramp after him. Croft came out of the Chinook and headed back to the entrance of the compound, looking at his watch.
    ‘Why the two samples?’ asked Shepherd.
    ‘We’re not home and dry yet,’ said Henderson. ‘Taking two samples gives us twice the chance of getting the DNA back home.’
    ‘Did you know this was a kil mission, Guy?’ asked Shepherd. Henderson ignored him. ‘What, are you deaf as wel as blind?’ said Shepherd.
    Henderson shook his head and sighed. ‘You just won’t let it go, wil you?’
    ‘Let it go? We’ve just assassinated five people, and from what I’ve seen only one of them was holding a gun and that gun wasn’t fired. We kil ed an unarmed woman and shot another in the leg.’
    ‘You’re just an observer, remember? No one here wanted you to come in the first place.’
    ‘Yeah, wel , if my