Solomon's Keepers Read Online Free PDF

renamed as American Airborne Liaison, AAL, an acronym which came back from the pub as American Arse Lickers.
    To keep the secrecy, their small team was moved from headquarters out of the way to a small barracks over the Welsh border in the Brecon Beacons. Nothing was certain. Six dwindled to four.
    Rees was in limbo but he told himself he still had the promise of a role elsewhere. It dragged on. That’s why he met Eva.
    There were no titles, just first names. They didn’t use rank, and they called nobody Sir. They were encouraged not to look or act like regulars or even as a unit – and they didn’t. Piers was a public school type, he said yuh a lot and swore exquisitely. He was pink with a wave of blonde hair. He had detoured from officer track and more than anyone else underlined how serious a career gambit Solomon could be.
    René was tall and black and spoke with a Midlands twang and hard Gs that baffled the Rangers they trained with. He was handsome, dressy, talked about clubbing and women. He read classical books that he left lying around and showed off talking about philosophy and opera.
    Lee was amphetamine made human. Compact and twitchy, he even grew stubble at double time. He spoke Scouse on fast forward with pointy gestures. He was frightening, clever and took money from everyone in bets on anything.
     
    One evening, after a long away day of classrooms and psychological tests, Tyler, the ranger looking after them, agreed to a stop off. The Black Lamb was a pub in the middle of nowhere where they could drink with indifferent regulars and forget themselves. Sometimes Rees would run there from the base, seven miles or so over stone-shouldered hills, and return in darkness, drunk, with the team singing their hearts out in the battered Land Rover.
    It was already late and Rees was aching to get some air. Lee was trying to convince Tyler to make a night of it and then someone said Rees had missed his run and a whip round had two sides arguing on how much he’d lag behind them if he ran the return. The money eventually went down on three minutes for each pint he drank before he left.
    Irritated by Lee’s look of confidence, Rees made it to six. The last one was poured in while his arms were held out and with Piers scrawling on his forehead with lipstick borrowed from the barmaid. He posed for a photo in his shorts and tee shirt and set off into the dark at the first revs of the Land Rover.
    For a few moments he could still hear swerving shouts and screaming gear changes tracing the contours of the single track road down the valley but then they were gone over a brow and the whomp of his boots on grass took over.
    Within a mile he stopped to douse his head in a stream and wash his face in clear cold water. He followed the path he remembered downhill and made a wide turn across the valley bottom where the last of the light might find him. The worst part of running is the first; we are natural lopers and stopping and starting is what does us. By the second mile he felt stronger and had found his rhythm. We’re designed for this; it’s all you need.
    He crested the next hill with a song on his lips. The air was damp with dew and he imagined he could see the path ahead of him shining a little, maybe more than a little.
    Out across the flat of the valley bottom there was something glowing, a bright square hanging like a dispossessed window. He pulled up and walked a few paces. If he stared at it his vision tunnelled to a brilliant blob but when he looked away he could make out a figure reaching and stretching in the light in a mime or a strange slow motion dance.
    He halted for a much-needed piss, breathing, sweating and then just standing there watching over the stone wall and listening to the puddle fizzing and the white noise of insects. When he looked up the figure had gone but the light remained. Curious, he clambered over the wall and set out towards it at a jog.
    At twenty paces he could see it was a white sheet