Read Online WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller by J.T. Brannan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: J.T. Brannan
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could see dozens – perhaps hundreds – of people diving for cover, hands over their heads. Cole didn’t even bother to look – he knew it was Khat’s tent which had blown up, having set the timers on his plastic explosives for thirty seconds.
Even from so far away, he could feel the heat on his back; and then he could hear the sound of thousands of rounds of ammunition firing at all angles, the heat from the explosives having cooked them off. As he ran awkwardly towards the edge of the clearing, he hoped he wouldn’t be shot by one of the uncontrolled stray rounds.
He had almost reached the jungle when he heard the shouts, only now audible above the roaring explosions and the cooked-off ammunition.
There was a mixture of Khmer, Thai and Vietnamese, but the raised voices all seemed to be shouting the same thing.
Over there! He’s escaping! Catch him!
Kill him!
7
The room was stark and bare, empty except for the form of a hooded man, kneeling on the dirt floor with his hands tied behind his back.
He was wearing a torn shirt and what looked like the trousers from a suit, almost as if he had been wrenched from his daily life and normal routine and been dragged kicking and screaming to this dank, evil cell.
Perhaps he had.
Another form entered the room then, tall and slim. This form, too, was hooded, but this hood was far more menacing than the simple rice sack placed over the man’s head; it was pure white with the end pointed, eye-holes cut out from the cloth, black nothingness beyond them. Eyes steeped in shadow; soulless, merciless.
The figure was cloaked in the robes of an Islamic cleric, and a hand shot out quickly from the robe, yanking the hood from the prostrate man. He looked up, and some people would have recognized him as Brad Butler, a war correspondent with CNN.
The same hand dropped the hood to the floor and took hold of the man’s hair, pulling back sharply to expose the throat, even as the other hand withdrew a long, curved, ivory-handled knife.
Butler’s screams stopped just as soon as they’d started as the figure started sawing – back and forth, back and forth – until the man’s head came off entirely, blood spraying in a bright crimson shower over the robes, the hood.
And hidden within the hood, those black pools that should have been eyes still betrayed no shred of emotion at all.
Within the hour, Abd Al-Aziz Quraishi was back in his office within the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior in downtown Riyadh, his bloodstained robes now replaced by a clean set, ready for the day ahead.
A minor and distant member of the House of Saud, Quraishi was Assistant Minister for Security Affairs, a role which suited his needs to absolute perfection.
Although he was a devout Muslim – and indeed believed that not many people across the whole of Islamic history could rival his religious zeal – he was also much more widely educated than most fundamentalist radicals.
As such, he very much believed in Sun Tzu’s advice in The Art of War , written five thousand years before – know your enemy.
It was a mistake many of his brethren had made over the years – their strict upbringing, their blinkered approach, their ignorance of the world outside their narrow perceptions, had made them fail in their jihad time and time again.
But not Quraishi; he knew his enemies all too well. He had been born into one of them, the horrifically corrupt House of Saud; and he had travelled to the United States to learn more about the other, the Great Satan itself.
After joining the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment while still in his teens, Quraishi had volunteered to go to America for officer training at West Point.
And so he had willingly entered the belly of the beast, examining his foe from within; learning American military tactics firsthand, but more importantly, developing an understanding of her people.
And what he had found disgusted him. Yes, they were pleasant enough, but it was all on the surface;
Even from so far away, he could feel the heat on his back; and then he could hear the sound of thousands of rounds of ammunition firing at all angles, the heat from the explosives having cooked them off. As he ran awkwardly towards the edge of the clearing, he hoped he wouldn’t be shot by one of the uncontrolled stray rounds.
He had almost reached the jungle when he heard the shouts, only now audible above the roaring explosions and the cooked-off ammunition.
There was a mixture of Khmer, Thai and Vietnamese, but the raised voices all seemed to be shouting the same thing.
Over there! He’s escaping! Catch him!
Kill him!
7
The room was stark and bare, empty except for the form of a hooded man, kneeling on the dirt floor with his hands tied behind his back.
He was wearing a torn shirt and what looked like the trousers from a suit, almost as if he had been wrenched from his daily life and normal routine and been dragged kicking and screaming to this dank, evil cell.
Perhaps he had.
Another form entered the room then, tall and slim. This form, too, was hooded, but this hood was far more menacing than the simple rice sack placed over the man’s head; it was pure white with the end pointed, eye-holes cut out from the cloth, black nothingness beyond them. Eyes steeped in shadow; soulless, merciless.
The figure was cloaked in the robes of an Islamic cleric, and a hand shot out quickly from the robe, yanking the hood from the prostrate man. He looked up, and some people would have recognized him as Brad Butler, a war correspondent with CNN.
The same hand dropped the hood to the floor and took hold of the man’s hair, pulling back sharply to expose the throat, even as the other hand withdrew a long, curved, ivory-handled knife.
Butler’s screams stopped just as soon as they’d started as the figure started sawing – back and forth, back and forth – until the man’s head came off entirely, blood spraying in a bright crimson shower over the robes, the hood.
And hidden within the hood, those black pools that should have been eyes still betrayed no shred of emotion at all.
Within the hour, Abd Al-Aziz Quraishi was back in his office within the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior in downtown Riyadh, his bloodstained robes now replaced by a clean set, ready for the day ahead.
A minor and distant member of the House of Saud, Quraishi was Assistant Minister for Security Affairs, a role which suited his needs to absolute perfection.
Although he was a devout Muslim – and indeed believed that not many people across the whole of Islamic history could rival his religious zeal – he was also much more widely educated than most fundamentalist radicals.
As such, he very much believed in Sun Tzu’s advice in The Art of War , written five thousand years before – know your enemy.
It was a mistake many of his brethren had made over the years – their strict upbringing, their blinkered approach, their ignorance of the world outside their narrow perceptions, had made them fail in their jihad time and time again.
But not Quraishi; he knew his enemies all too well. He had been born into one of them, the horrifically corrupt House of Saud; and he had travelled to the United States to learn more about the other, the Great Satan itself.
After joining the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment while still in his teens, Quraishi had volunteered to go to America for officer training at West Point.
And so he had willingly entered the belly of the beast, examining his foe from within; learning American military tactics firsthand, but more importantly, developing an understanding of her people.
And what he had found disgusted him. Yes, they were pleasant enough, but it was all on the surface;
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