Kill Zone: A Sniper Novel Read Online Free PDF

to her, have you? And you can’t have a grandson by us because we’re not related.”
    “I was speaking in general terms. A granddaughter would be just as welcome. No, we haven’t spoken with her about it, although Pat has been planning the wedding for some time, something terribly romantic and worthy of a pop diva. You may not have reached the point yet where you want to make the change to private enterprise, but you will, my friend. When you do, I promise you a soft landing. We just want you to hurry up.”
    “You’ll be the first to know.”
    Tim gave him his unsmiling commando look. “Maybe we have a competitor for your highly marketable skill? Has one of those dreadful PSCs come a-knocking on your door, offering some big money to the super sniper?” He was talking about private security companies, the modern mercenaries.
    “Oh, hell, no. I would never be a merc. There are a ton of those jobs out there, but you can never trust them because you don’t know where their loyalties really lie. They’re like Doctor Frankenstein’s monster, and could just as easily spin out of control. Anyway, if I kill somebody while I wear the uniform, it’s okay. I don’t know how that would play out if the mercs take part in combat ops.”
    Gladden laughed. “Oh, Kyle, you are so naïve. They’re already running combat missions. Have been for years. Some PSCs have armored vehicles, choppers, and even some old jet fighters now. Bleedin’ private armies, they are, for sale to the highest bidder. And with the U.S. military heading toward privatization, it’s only a matter of time before they are authorized and paid to fight an entire war by themselves. It just plays better to the public if some South African merc is lost in action for a noble cause rather than the boy next door.”
    “If it’s so great, why aren’t you two in on it?” It wasn’t like Jeff to pass up a good business opportunity. There were hundreds of millions of dollars in the PSC game.
    Jeff shrugged. “Like you, chum. We were professional soldiers for much too long. I’m more than satisfied with my company and its products, and I’m old-fashioned enough to enjoy being in the service of my queen and country.”
    “So, as you Marines would say, ‘Fuck the Frankensteins,’” said Tim Gladden, holding his beer aloft.
    Jeff raised his bottle, too. “Fuck the Frankensteins.”
    Kyle Swanson touched theirs with his own. “Fuck the Frankensteins.”

CHAPTER 6
    THE IMMACULATE PILATES , a Swiss single-engine private aircraft painted midnight blue with gold trim, lifted smoothly away from a dry riverbed, its powerful turboprop engine leaving a triangle of sand hovering momentarily in the air behind it. By the time the dust settled back onto the desert, the beautiful plane was gone, building to a cruising speed of two hundred knots while skimming no more than two hundred feet above the sand to avoid radar. In the two and a half hours since taking off from a crude airstrip, it had flown northeast from Dhahran, and then dashed out of Saudi Arabia and into Jordanian airspace without being spotted by the air defense commands of either country. It was just another private executive plane in a region that had fleets of them belonging to rich and powerful princes and sheikhs. Even if it had been seen, no one would have questioned it, nor paid it any mind. The color scheme was recognized as that of a powerful Iraqi, Ali Shalal Rassad, the Rebel Sheikh of Basra, and it was best not to be too curious about him.
    A dirty truck was waiting when the Pilates landed on a macadam road outside a village, and the unconscious General Bradley Middleton was carried off the plane by his two American captors and stuffed into the rear seat of a waiting car for a ten-minute drive to a specific address. Vic Logan pulled another hypodermic needle from his kit and injected Middleton to start bringing him up from the blackness.
    Dull colors, garbled words, and a sense of awkward,