Today Chris Allen stops by to share an excerpt from his book, Hunter.
Excerpt from Hunter
CORFU
This final phase was always going to be tricky. Morgan knew as much before he went in, although he had hoped to at least make it past the second guard before the others became aware of his presence. But to ensure that the plan to conduct a covert capture of Šerifović remained absolutely top secret, it was imperative that Intrepid took full carriage of the arrest and, as a result, participation by outsiders had been kept to a minimum. At this point even the Interpol liaison officer had been kept at arm’s length, only aware that a high-risk arrest was being made and that he – along with members of EKAM, the Hellenic Police Anti-Terrorist Unit – was responsible for cleaning up the underlings. As far as the local Greek police currently on standby in helicopters at Corfu airport were concerned, it was just another drug bust. Exactly who was being arrested and why had not been disclosed beyond the walls of General Davenport’s office.
Morgan knew that Milivoj Šerifović was not afraid to kill, his record in the Balkans vouched for that, and right now he was a caged animal. With his third bodyguard for backup, he would be ready to kill to extend his tenuous freedom, no matter what. Worst of all, Šerifović was now alerted to Morgan’s incursion and would be ready.
So it was that Alex Morgan found himself solo, again, penetrating deep into the lair of a fugitive war criminal, mass murderer and rapist. Quite a CV, he noted wryly. In theory, flying solo on a job like this had its benefits in terms of ensuring operational security, but fuck, it had knobs on when it came time to actually be on the ground, especially when the intelligence pencil necks failed to identify that one of the three, quote, “lazy, poorly trained, shouldn’t be a problem”, unquote, bodyguards was built like an Abrams tank. “Thank you, intel,” he whispered while reflexively massaging his neck.
Having tagged the second bodyguard with a GPS tracking device – and pilfered a couple of items he thought might come in handy – Morgan exited the corridor through a smashed window and made his way toward the main villa via an alternate, less obvious, route. Approaching through the darkness to the side of the villa, he became aware of shouting, just audible above the blustery din of the wind. Male voices at first, aggressive and demanding. One voice was dominating the other when the exchange was joined by a woman’s voice. She sounded young. Whatever was going on, whoever she was, she was desperate, shouting in terror and panic.
Moving quickly, Morgan pushed through an assortment of wild herbs growing up against the house and the smells of rosemary, mint and garlic enveloped him. He found a discreet window nestled in a dark corner and peered inside. The small, ornate window gave him a clear, albeit angled, view of a long, luxuriously appointed room. From the artworks to the furniture, fittings and features, the interior of the villa was dripping with cash. The stench of far too much money and not enough taste permeated the scene, all paid for from the proceeds of a life of crime, violence and death. Jesus! Morgan thought with incredulity. I sure chose the wrong side of the trade. He edged closer and carefully pressed his face up against the glass. Yep, there they were. Target confirmed. Older and thinner and with much less hair, but definitely him. Morgan let out a tight hiss through clenched teeth. The man Morgan knew to be Šerifović was standing over a girl who looked like a tourist. Young, lithe and dressed to impress, she’d obviously been coaxed up into the mountains on the promise of a good time. The girl had no idea who she was dealing with. Flashing lots of cash and drugs, it wouldn’t have been too hard for Šerifović to entice her enough to overlook the fact that he was in his sixties. But now the party was over. She was cowering helplessly on the floor and Šerifović was rough-handling her, slapping her and yelling at her to be quiet, while barking orders at the other man, the third bodyguard, to cover the door that led to the corridor. Morgan’s blood boiled.
They were expecting him from entirely the wrong direction. Good news for Morgan. Not so good for Šerifović.
Urgently, Morgan surveyed the scene to ensure that he was absolutely clear on where each of them was positioned in relation to everything else in the room. He would not have time to become embroiled in another hand-to-hand confrontation with either Šerifović or his bodyguard – he would end up with a bullet in his back within seconds. Taking one last moment to scan the room, Morgan saw his opportunity. He knew what had to be done.
Despite the modern restoration of the villa, local builders had made use of the original tiles. They were of the classic terracotta, convex design, loosely stacked in columns and regimented rows across the pitched roof. The strong winds of the looming storm were screaming through the huddle of buildings now and rustling the ancient tiles like canvas sails upon rough seas. The entire surface of the roof was an enormous, vociferous wind charm.
Clambering across the roof of the villa, his movements covered by the volume of noise, Alex Morgan reached the spot he knew would provide the most direct access to his target inside. Extracting the still-bloodied SOG Force SE38 knife from his belt, he made quick work of a number of tiles, levering them off steadily before throwing them clear of the house. Then he took to the waterproof membrane and insulation beneath the tiles, making a hole just large enough to squeeze through.
Inside the roof, with the aid of his SureFire tactical flashlight, Morgan made his way cautiously across the roof trusses, listening for voices and activity below him. He did not have far to go before he reached the service access panel in the plasterboard ceiling he’d noted from the window. The muffled voices from the living area below became clearer. He could hear heightened levels of uncertainty and anxiety in the voices of the men. The girl was relatively silent, only now and then offering a whimper or cry of fear. Poor thing. “I’ll get you out of this mess shortly, darlin’,” he whispered. “Sit tight.”
Steadying himself across the top of the access panel, Morgan bent his ear to the crack in the joinery and listened intently. His Serbian was scant, but he recognized enough to know they were perplexed and more than a little agitated. They’d expected him to come blundering in from the corridor minutes ago, but there’d been nothing and now, they had no idea.
It’s now or never, he thought.
Just as Morgan prepared to assault, he shifted his weight across carefully to his left foot and the change in his balance caused a rippling creak along the latticework of trusses. The sound was a thunderclap in the confined space of the ceiling and the room below. It was too loud even for the wind to mask it.
Pinpricks of light instantly appeared in radical patterns through the ceiling plaster as a barrage of 9mm rounds peppered every square inch around him, pelting the layer of insulation above his head with the force and frequency of heavy rain upon a tin roof. The narrow space was filled with the fine powder of shattered plaster, splintered wood and ricochets. Morgan had no time. He was seconds away from being riddled by bullets from the submachine guns and falling dead, or worse, fatally wounded to the floor.
Alex Morgan jumped straight through the access panel, splintering the square of plaster while simultaneously hurling the M84 stun grenade he’d taken as a souvenir from the second guard. The flashbang landed perfectly in the center of the three of them. The shock of his appearance and the sight of the grenade at their feet stunned the two men and sent the girl into hysterics. Morgan dropped behind a natural barricade of lavish furniture – hands to ears, mouth open and eyes clamped shut – allowing the detonation to do its thing.
The instantaneous combination of the one million candela flash and 170 decibel bang of the 84’s eruption brought the room under Morgan’s power. Without hesitation, he was in action, leaping across the furniture and heading first for the bodyguard.
Once again, Morgan resorted to the baton. His targeted first strike of the telescopic high carbon steel blade at the side of the man’s neck missed, but the baton still struck hard, crashing down upon the collar bone and shattering it. The guard screamed in agony. He teetered forward, grabbing for his shoulder, and Morgan followed through determinedly with a pulverizing knee strike to the face. The impact and pain of it all reduced the man to blithering semiconsciousness and Morgan immediately carried out the plasti-cuffs, duct tape and tracking device routine again.
Three down.
Morgan flashed across the room, responding to the sudden, but dazed, recovery of Šerifović. Beside him the girl lay silent – she’d fainted. For her it was a blessing; for Morgan it was one less thing to worry about. The Interpol liaison officer would ensure that she was identified and properly taken care of. Then Morgan saw clearly the bruising around her eyes and the splits and swelling of her lips, the results of being worked over by her host. The cold objectivity of his profession morphed into a primal revulsion of the coward – any coward – who would take to a woman with his fists.
Morgan’s anger turned upon Šerifović but he forced himself to refrain from beating the man senseless. The disturbing strength and menace captured by those grainy file images that had become so familiar to Morgan back in London had all but left the Serb. The file pictures, the only official record of his appearance, dated back to the early 1990s. Seventeen years later, all that remained was a gray, emaciated-looking wretch. The old man was finally beaten.
Morgan kicked an MP5 far away from Šerifović’s reach and hoisted him unceremoniously to his feet. He was groggy, a mix of the alcohol he’d consumed, the effects of the flashbang and shock, but he was coming around.
“Who are you?” he asked in Greek, finally looking into Morgan’s eyes.
“Turn around,” Morgan demanded in English, spinning the man on his axis.
“Not Greek police then,” Šerifović said. “Interpol? No, you are no policeman. I can see that in your eyes. You are a soldier – a mercenary after the bounty on my head?”
“Consider me a facilitator. Nothing more,” Morgan answered bluntly, as he pulled the man’s arms behind his back and applied plasti-cuffs. “And you are to consider yourself officially under arrest. Move,” he barked and frogmarched Šerifović hurriedly toward the door. Šerifović did not attempt to escape or resist but he was committed to making the task of removing him hard work, constantly tripping and stumbling as the Intrepid agent hurled him outside into the middle of the wind storm.
“Where are you taking me?” he yelled. “You know, wherever it is, they will come and get me. My friends. They will come for me and when I am free again, they will come for you. And they will find you. You should think about that before?”
Šerifović’s taunts were abruptly ended by a punishing blow from Morgan, an expertly placed blunt trauma punch to the solar plexus. He crumpled to his knees, gasping horribly for air while his diaphragm went into spasm. Morgan stood over him, unemotionally, waiting for the man’s breathing to recommence while he scanned their immediate surrounds. Even in the darkness he was vulnerable. Morgan was not about to assume he was home and clear. There could still be some other layer to Šerifović’s protection that intel had missed. That was why Morgan had decided upon a completely unexpected form of extraction.
Finally, Šerifović regained his composure. He took in a series of long breaths, underscored by the smoker’s phlegmy rattle, and then retched vilely before rolling onto his back. Morgan dropped to a knee beside his prisoner. In the darkness the man’s features looked ghoulishly stricken. Calmly, authoritatively, the menace of his words chillingly discernible through the screaming winds, Morgan said, “Old man, if you think you’re going to fuck with me all the way out of here, think again. You were right before – I’m not a cop. You should remember that. And where I’m taking you, no-one will ever find you.”
With that, Morgan heaved him to his feet and dragged him to the cliff’s edge. Manhandling him and cutting him from the plasti-cuffs, it took only minutes to wrestle the utterly perplexed war criminal into the equipment Morgan had stashed earlier.
“What the fuck is this?” Šerifović cried. “What are you doing? Is this a parachute? I’m just an old man, you can’t do this to me! Who are you? I demand to know!”
The fear and uncertainty spilling from him in every word and gesture found no solace in Morgan’s stoic silence. Šerifović grabbed at the buckles and zips, trying desperately to work out what it was that Morgan had strapped him into and what was about to happen. The bravado and arrogance of the man who had eluded international authorities for a decade and a half, living a life of absolute luxury financed entirely by crime, had evaporated. Milivoj Šerifović, the former Serbian colonel of intelligence, was no more. All that remained was Šerifović, the 62 year-old man suffering the onset of lung cancer, who had been stripped of his money, his power, his privilege and influence and, above all, his protection in a few minutes. Now, he was just a frail and scared old man, as vulnerable as every one of the hundreds of poor souls over whose deaths he had presided in his glory days. Glory days. Christ! Morgan’s loathing surged.
In one swift, deftly executed maneuver, Morgan had Šerifović flat on his face on the ground. Placing a foot across the back of the man’s neck, Morgan prepared himself for the extraction. In less than a minute he, too, was ready. Once again, he pulled the other man to his feet.
“You are wearing a Freedivers Recovery Vest,” Morgan snapped coldly. “Designed to inflate once you are in the water. Yours is already set.”
“Set? Water? What the hell do you mean? Are you crazy?” The whites of Šerifović’s eyes showed clearly all the way around his irises. His breath was shallow and strained. Panic had consumed him, but he knew that there was no way out. Not with this man. “What am I to do? What if something goes wrong? Tell me! Tell me something! You can’t just?”
“OK, I’ll tell you something.” Morgan’s hands suddenly locked on his prisoner: one onto the collar at the back of his neck and one onto the waistband of his trousers. “Mind the step.”
Alex Morgan hurled the man from the cliff and off into the darkness.
About Hunter (2012)Alex Morgan – policeman, soldier and spy for Intrepid, the black ops division of Interpol – is on the hunt for Serbian war criminals. But these guys were never going to let it be that simple. An assassination attempt is made on the presiding judge of the international tribunal. Days later, the judge’s daughter, the famous and beautiful classical pianist Charlotte Rose, vanishes in mysterious circumstances.
The girl is not just a pretty face and the daughter of a judge, however. She’s also the goddaughter of Intrepid’s veteran commander, General Davenport. It’s up to Morgan and the Intrepid team to track the kidnappers and the missing woman before the very fabric of international justice is picked apart at its fraying edges.
Part James Bond and part Jason Bourne, Alex Morgan must walk the line between doing the right thing and getting the job done. And this time he’s got permission to make it personal.
Amazon USAmazon UKGoodreads About Chris AllenChris blogs about all things thriller as well as indulging his love of cult TV shows and movies from his youth on his blog.
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I was born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England and have always been a bookworm and enjoyed creative writing at school. In 1999 I created the Elencheran Chronicles and have been writing ever since. My first novel, Fezariu's Epiphany, was published in May 2011. When not writing I'm a lover of films, games, books and blogging. I now live in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, with my wife, Donna, and our six cats - Kain, Razz, Buggles, Charlie, Bilbo and Frodo.
David M. Brown – who has written 852 posts on Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave.