STOP AT NOTHING: 'Mark Cole is Bond's US cousin mixed with the balls out action and killing edge of Jason Bourne' Parmenion Books Read Online Free PDF

balance on his flexed abdomen.
    As the tip of his nose touched the floor, he let his eyes close as he relaxed into the position fully.
    A sudden piercing shriek from the television made him open his eyes just instants later, but the screen was now eerily blank and silent.
    ‘Ben, where’s the remote?’ he asked his six year old son.
    ‘We don’t have the remote, Daddy,’ said Cole’s daughter defensively, instinctively defending her older brother.
    ‘Okay, okay, get off,’ their father cajoled, levering himself upright as they jumped off onto a large Persian rug. The rug had been a personal gift from General Abbadid of Pakistan, given to him only months before his capture and imprisonment in that same country. He kept it as an ironic reminder of the fickle nature of fate, and the priceless memento now stretched over a large portion of the gleaming wooden floor in the huge, open-plan living area of Cole’s home.
    Cole spied the remote control on a nearby leather sofa, and reached to get it. As Cole turned to change the channel, the picture suddenly came back on of its own accord. But instead of a live feed from Stockholm, there was a shot of Bill Taylor, one of the regular CNN newsreaders, back in the studio in New York. A look of shock was written plainly across his face; despite his experience, something had badly shaken him.
    ‘I’m sorry for the interruption to our live broadcast,’ he began hesitantly. ‘We’ve … lost communication with our field crew. It seems there’s been an explosion of some kind and –’
    ‘Dad, what’s going on?’ Ben asked, seeing the strange look of concern, curiosity and, perhaps, a hint of excitement in his father’s eyes.
    ‘Ben, I’m going to have to listen a bit more first, but we can talk about it later. Why don’t you and Amy go and help Mommy in the kitchen?’
    Reluctantly, Ben took Amy by the hand. ‘Okay, Daddy,’ he said, before turning to his sister. ‘Come on, Amy.’ Smiling back, she skipped away with him to the kitchen, leaving their father transfixed to the television screen.

4
    A bead of sweat trickled down Lao Shin-Yang’s temple.
What now?
he asked himself in despair. He’d watched the whole thing on television in his room at the Stura Masta, the small but centrally-located hotel from where he had monitored the whole operation.
    And what a disaster it had turned out to be. First the missiles had missed their target – and Shin-Yang had no idea whatsoever how
that
could have happened – then Kang and his team were all killed, live on TV. And now he’d learned that not only had the yacht been obliterated, killing six more of his men, but that the drivers at the two emergency rendezvous points had also been spotted by police, and were also now dead after a short but fatal fire-fight.
    He was the only one left. His entire team was gone. Was there a leak? Surely not. Security was watertight. But what else could it be? Could it be that the European intelligence services were that good? He thought not.
Am I even safe in this hotel?
he asked himself fearfully for the first time.
    Frantic, he had used the secure radio to contact his Control; he would know what to do. His Control, surprisingly, had not been shocked, and Shin-Yang found this somewhat impressive, yet at the same time disconcerting.
    He had been told to wait in the hotel room, and had been assured that there were no leaks; he would be safe until someone came to get him.
    That had been twenty minutes ago, which was twenty minutes too long in Shin-Yang’s opinion. Should he radio his Control again? No. The man had been quite firm on that; with the massive security crackdown that had commenced after the attack, even a secure radio link could not be trusted entirely.
    Should he try to escape on his own? In his nervous state, this was highly tempting, but he knew it would be fruitless – any person who appeared to be of even slight Oriental appearance would be rounded up and interrogated,