Read Online Callsign: King II- Underworld by Jeremy Robinson - Free Book Online
Authors: Jeremy Robinson
Ads: Link
now. You can get up.”
“Nina.”
“Right.” King grinned. In the military, everyone except enlisted personnel in uniform was either a “sir” or “ma’am,” until you were told otherwise. It was a habit that sometimes persisted, even though he was now in the super-secret, autonomous Chess Team, where military traditions did not apply.
“Uh, Jack?” Pierce said, from just behind him. “We have a problem.”
King turned and found his old friend staring back down the trail. He also saw the ‘problem’ of which Pierce had spoken. Two figures, wearing digital pattern camouflage, from the tops of their desert boots to the cloth covers on their Kevlar tactical helmets, stood a few yards away. Another similarly dressed figure was covering them from about a hundred yards up on the hillside. Each weapon was equipped with a PAC-4 infrared laser targeting emitter. The laser beams were invisible to the naked eye but bright as day in the ocular of a night vision device like the Viper or the much more advance PVS-7s that each of the newcomers wore. The lasers reached out from the carbines to show where the bullets would eventually go: right into King’s and Pierce’s hearts.
Soldiers. They’d been caught by an army patrol.
One of the pair from below took a step forward and gestured with his carbine. “Face down. Hands where I can see them.”
“What’s going on?” Nina asked, unable to make out anything more than silhouettes.
“Shut up,” snarled the soldier. “You’re all in a shitload of trouble. Do as I say, or you leave here in a body bag.”
With a sigh, King sank to his knees and remembered that there was, after all, an exception to the military “sir or ma’am” rule; it didn’t apply when dealing with prisoners.
12.
From almost a hundred yards away, Ivan Sokoloff watched King’s capture play out through his own PVS-7 device. This time, he didn’t give voice to his rage, but inwardly he was seething. He had stalked King and Pierce across the desert for hours now, eschewing the trail for a hard scrabble across the slopes of the mountain, just waiting for an opportunity to take the shot and fulfill the contract. When King had doubled back to help the woman—an unexpected player in the drama that Sokoloff had spotted early on—the hitman had thought that his chance had finally come.
Although the desert trek represented a physical manifestation of his relentless pursuit, it was only the culmination of several hours of activity that had begun just a few minutes after he had delivered news of his failure in New York to his employer. He had no sooner arrived back at his hotel room when another text message had arrived, informing him of King’s next destination: Phoenix, Arizona.
His mysterious employer seemed to know everything about King’s itinerary, and had already booked Sokoloff a seat on the same plane. There was a subtle hint of urgency about the communiqué. Sokoloff could tell that there was something in Arizona that his employer didn’t want King discovering before his death. Unfortunately, the rigid enforcement of transportation safety rules made it impossible for him to get a weapon on the plane. The new body scanning technology now made it impossible to bring even a ceramic knife aboard a plane.
Not that Sokoloff would have made the attempt in so public a fashion. Even though he had sat only thirty feet away from the man whose death would net him more money than he could possibly ever spend, and even though he had walked right past the unsuspecting King on three different occasions during the course of the flight to Denver, and once more on the way to Phoenix, the thought of a quick strike—perhaps a knife-hand blow across the windpipe, or a rigid finger, stabbed through the man’s eye and into his brain—had never been more than an idle daydream. The problem with not being able to transport any weapons meant that, before he could go after King upon
“Nina.”
“Right.” King grinned. In the military, everyone except enlisted personnel in uniform was either a “sir” or “ma’am,” until you were told otherwise. It was a habit that sometimes persisted, even though he was now in the super-secret, autonomous Chess Team, where military traditions did not apply.
“Uh, Jack?” Pierce said, from just behind him. “We have a problem.”
King turned and found his old friend staring back down the trail. He also saw the ‘problem’ of which Pierce had spoken. Two figures, wearing digital pattern camouflage, from the tops of their desert boots to the cloth covers on their Kevlar tactical helmets, stood a few yards away. Another similarly dressed figure was covering them from about a hundred yards up on the hillside. Each weapon was equipped with a PAC-4 infrared laser targeting emitter. The laser beams were invisible to the naked eye but bright as day in the ocular of a night vision device like the Viper or the much more advance PVS-7s that each of the newcomers wore. The lasers reached out from the carbines to show where the bullets would eventually go: right into King’s and Pierce’s hearts.
Soldiers. They’d been caught by an army patrol.
One of the pair from below took a step forward and gestured with his carbine. “Face down. Hands where I can see them.”
“What’s going on?” Nina asked, unable to make out anything more than silhouettes.
“Shut up,” snarled the soldier. “You’re all in a shitload of trouble. Do as I say, or you leave here in a body bag.”
With a sigh, King sank to his knees and remembered that there was, after all, an exception to the military “sir or ma’am” rule; it didn’t apply when dealing with prisoners.
12.
From almost a hundred yards away, Ivan Sokoloff watched King’s capture play out through his own PVS-7 device. This time, he didn’t give voice to his rage, but inwardly he was seething. He had stalked King and Pierce across the desert for hours now, eschewing the trail for a hard scrabble across the slopes of the mountain, just waiting for an opportunity to take the shot and fulfill the contract. When King had doubled back to help the woman—an unexpected player in the drama that Sokoloff had spotted early on—the hitman had thought that his chance had finally come.
Although the desert trek represented a physical manifestation of his relentless pursuit, it was only the culmination of several hours of activity that had begun just a few minutes after he had delivered news of his failure in New York to his employer. He had no sooner arrived back at his hotel room when another text message had arrived, informing him of King’s next destination: Phoenix, Arizona.
His mysterious employer seemed to know everything about King’s itinerary, and had already booked Sokoloff a seat on the same plane. There was a subtle hint of urgency about the communiqué. Sokoloff could tell that there was something in Arizona that his employer didn’t want King discovering before his death. Unfortunately, the rigid enforcement of transportation safety rules made it impossible for him to get a weapon on the plane. The new body scanning technology now made it impossible to bring even a ceramic knife aboard a plane.
Not that Sokoloff would have made the attempt in so public a fashion. Even though he had sat only thirty feet away from the man whose death would net him more money than he could possibly ever spend, and even though he had walked right past the unsuspecting King on three different occasions during the course of the flight to Denver, and once more on the way to Phoenix, the thought of a quick strike—perhaps a knife-hand blow across the windpipe, or a rigid finger, stabbed through the man’s eye and into his brain—had never been more than an idle daydream. The problem with not being able to transport any weapons meant that, before he could go after King upon
Similar Books
