Masters of War Read Online Free PDF

two. Twenty metres. Fifteen metres. Ten.
    Hector slipped his left hand into the pocket of his trousers and felt for its contents: a simple switch, fitted to a radio transmitter and a battery, the whole device no bigger than an ordinary house key. He continued to hurry along rue Berger, and to estimate the distance between Hakim and the target.
    Seven metres.
    Five.
    Three.
    Suddenly the elderly man stopped and looked at Hakim with alarm. With surprising vigour, he grabbed his young companion and manhandled her in between himself and Hakim.
    Hakim stopped too. He looked around wildly as he raised his gun. He held it inexpertly with two hands and Hector could tell, even from this distance, that his chances of nailing the guy with that kind of technique were close to zero.
    Not that it mattered, of course, because the Browning wasn’t loaded.
    There was just enough time, before the cleaning truck obscured Hector’s line of sight, for him to see Hakim pull the trigger. When nothing happened, the look of astonishment on the faces of both the would-be assassin and his target was almost comical. The truck edged closer. Hector could no longer see them. He braced himself and flicked the switch.
    The sound of the rucksack exploding was immense. Even Hector, who had been expecting it, felt an electric jolt through his body and winced at the pain in his eardrums. He heard glass shatter and the thunder of shrapnel and body parts hammering on the side of the truck. Even before the remaining shrapnel had settled, several car alarms burst into life. He could hear screaming too. Having packed the explosives into the rucksack himself, he knew it couldn’t be Hakim, the young woman or the old man. They were already dead. Probably just one of the street cleaners. Wrong place at the wrong time. Bad luck, son.
    He picked up his pace and, having reached the end of rue Berger, turned right before taking out his phone, dialling a number and holding the phone to his ear as he walked. It rang just twice before Skinner answered.
    ‘Done?’
    ‘Done,’ Hector confirmed. ‘Fucking muppet didn’t even try to check the money. We could have saved ourselves a few euros on a cheaper copying machine to do the notes and pocketed the difference.’ A pause. ‘Everything OK at your end, mucker? What the hell’s that banging noise?’
    A pause. Long enough to make Hector uneasy.
    ‘Nothing,’ Skinner said. ‘I’m leaving now.’ He hung up.
    Hector stopped and looked at the screen of his phone for a moment. Then he heard the sound of sirens. He removed the battery from the phone, ripped out the SIM card and bent it in two, then stuffed both down a drain. With the phone dealt with, he put his head down and headed to Châtelet–Les Halles Métro station. An hour from now he’d be on a train out of Paris, and on to the next job, wherever that might take him.
     
    Skinner shoved his phone into his pocket and looked around the room. What a fucking dump, he thought to himself. At least the brats were silent. He’d ripped a dirty dishcloth in two and shoved one half in each of their mouths. Shame he couldn’t say the same for their bitch of a mother. She was whimpering like a child despite the scouring pad he’d shoved in her mouth to shut her up. He looked at her. She was naked and tied face down to the table, her thighs and torso bound so tightly with the sturdy duct tape he had brought with him that the flesh around the indentations was already swollen. Skinner’s eyes passed over the area around her anus and genitals, bleeding from where he had violated her, and looked with contempt at her head, which she was rhythmically banging against the table as she wept.
    That fucking banging. It got on his nerves. ‘Shut up!’ he told her. He couldn’t speak French, but that was her problem, not his. ‘ Shut . . . the fuck . . . up . . . ’
    The whimpering became more desperate. The banging a little faster.
    Skinner spat. Then he grabbed his suppressed