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 Page B

and the Human Rights Act be damned.
    Nobody at the hotel had seen him; the room was registered to a Jake Dolman of Canada, and he’d picked up the key from a safety deposit box at the train station the day before. No, his Control was right. He was better off where he was, riding out the storm until –
    A knock on the door pierced his reverie, as short and sharp as the crack of a bullet. His heart rate increased in an instant, adrenaline flooding his body. He’d served as a Captain in the People’s Republic Army, which was why he’d been chosen to act as the coordinator for this particular mission; all the other members of the team had been enlisted men. But that had been different. He’d trained for open warfare, not the clandestine, nerve-wracking uncertainty of small-unit covert operations. He and his team
had
undergone a good deal of specific preparation and training for this mission, but this was the first time he had been truly tested in the field. His team had so far failed; how would he measure up? he wondered anxiously.
    Moving to the door, his sweaty hand gripped around his pistol, cocked and ready to fire, he bent forwards to look through the eye-piece in the door’s centre. Looking through with one eye, Shin-Yang stifled a gasp of surprise.
    The man on the other side of the door was his Control, in person, here in Stockholm. He had obviously wanted to monitor the operation more closely than Shin-Yang had been led to believe.
Doesn’t he trust me?
he thought uneasily.
Does he blame me for the failure?
    ‘Who is it?’ asked Shin-Yang reluctantly, starting the code.
    ‘Fred Sizemore,’ answered the man on the other side of the door. Shin-Yang had tried to place the man’s accent before, but couldn’t. Still, all Westerners sounded the same to him.
    ‘Our meeting’s not ’til three,’ he continued.
    ‘Sorry, I thought it was one. Can I come in anyway?’
    ‘Of course.’ The code complete, Shin-Yang unbolted the door. He decocked his pistol, but didn’t holster it.
    As the man calling himself Fred Sizemore entered the room, closing the door behind him, Shin-Yang started to instinctively defend himself and distance himself from the mission, a skill honed whilst serving in the highly politicized atmosphere of the PRA. The best method of defence was attack, and Shin-Yang reasoned that if his Control was going to try and lay the blame for the mission’s failure on him, then he was going to go down fighting.
    ‘Sir, there
must
be a leak somewhere, I can’t explain it, perhaps one of our own men – ’
    Shin-Yang’s Control cut him off with a raise of the hand. ‘Don’t worry, Lao,’ he said in perfect Mandarin. ‘Don’t worry. These things happen. Missions don’t always go to plan. Now we need to get out of here, but we need to take this gear with us.’ He gestured at the electronic communications equipment sprawled over the room’s small living area.
    Shin-Yang nodded vigorously, happy that he wasn’t being blamed as he’d feared, and newly confident in their chances of escape. He even started to dare think that, despite the mission’s failure, his Control might yet keep the promises he had made about the future of Shin-Yang and his family.
    Finally relaxing, he turned round to start getting his kit together, the pistol going back into his belt. As ‘Sizemore’ was presented with Shin-Yang’s back, he withdrew a Chinese-made Tokarev semi-automatic pistol from his own belt, a large and sinister Hakker silencer already in place.
    Shin-Yang was still thinking about his family when his brains were blown out across the hotel room’s cheap beige carpet.

5
    Cole was stymied by what he saw on the television. He had changed channels from the bemused CNN presenter to a live feed from Fox News.
    The scene was one of devastation; a huge crater scarred the roadside, emergency crews tended to the dozens of injured people, and there was a trail of dead bodies scattered around the area, unattended