The Protector Read Online Free PDF Page B

helicopter to land on and where he could establish communications and activate his beacon. From what he could remember of the terrain, a mile or so should see him well north of the town and in farmland. The moon had not yet shown itself and there was a slight breeze.The temperature had dropped, making conditions as good as he could expect, for which he was thankful. If he needed to run he would have to dump the money but that was part of the deal he had made with himself.
    Ten minutes later, moving carefully and then only after frequent pauses to look and listen, Mallory came to a low wall and went to ground as much to rest as to check the route ahead. An inspection over the wall revealed that he was at the boundary of a cemetery. It was difficult to tell how large it was: the awkward, tilted headstones and ragged flags moving gently on poles filled the view.
    Mallory lifted the box over the wall and crouched on the other side. The box was a complete pain, not just its weight and awkwardness but the metallic noise it made every time it touched something solid, a sound that carried a long way on the night air.
    The cemetery seemed an ideal place to cross as the odds on meeting anyone there at such a late hour were slim. However, there was a risk of being silhouetted due to the lack of background and tall structures: the majority of the graves were bordered by low concrete rectangular frames, and he would have to keep low.
    Mallory set off among the graves at a crouch but after several metres he lost his footing and the box scraped loudly against a gravestone. He lay flat and took a moment to listen, worried not only that he had been heard but also that the accident had every chance of being repeated. The graves were close together and it was so dark that stumbling as he walked in such an awkward way was unavoidable.
    Then Mallory had a thought. The cemetery could be the ideal location to hide his booty. He had originally planned to bury the box somewhere near his pick-up point simply because if it was quiet enough to serve that purpose it would also be an ideal spot to dig a hole. But the bigger problem at the moment was getting to that location undetected.
    He put down the box and sat on the edge of a grave to give the matter some serious thought. Burying the money inside a grave might work - but then, there was a chance that it could be visited in the near future and the freshly turned earth would attract suspicion. Mallory looked down at the narrow path he had been following between the graves and it struck him as actually a highly unlikely place to dig a new grave. Therefore it just might be the perfect place to bury something so that it would not be discovered.
    Mallory pushed a finger into the earth. It wasn’t too firm. He placed the ammunition box on a grave, set his rifle against it, removed his penknife from its pouch, opened it and shoved the blade into the soil. It sank in easily. He carved out a rectangle slightly larger than the box and began to scrape away the topsoil, placing it in a pile to one side.
    Mallory was soon frustrated with the small amount of earth he was shifting and he searched around for a better digging implement. A can with a couple of plastic flowers in it was resting on a nearby headstone. He put the flowers to one side and used the tin as a shovel. Several minutes later he’d dug a substantial hole. He compared its depth with the height of the box. Ideally the top needed to be at least a foot below the surface. After a pause to look around and listen he pressed on.
    A minute later Mallory had dug a considerably deeper hole, although now stones began to obstruct his efforts. He discarded the can and pulled the stones out by hand, decided he’d gone deep enough, picked up the box and lowered it inside. It lay at a slant, its highest point nine inches from the top, which Mallory reckoned was good enough. He dragged the loose soil back into the hole with his hands.When he had created a slight