Murray McDonald - Assassin

He looked around the cabin. All his men were still alive. Most were beginning to come round but they were all tied up and gagged. His pain was intense. His right hand would never be the same again, it hung limply from his wrist. He really should have dropped the knife. His knee was also gone. He remembered now. One second she was on the other side of the cabin. He went to throw the knife but before he had even had a chance to let it go, she was next to him, had his knife hand gripped like a vice and wrenched it back. The bone had shattered at the same time as she had crashed her foot into his knee snapping it cleanly in two. And as his useless hand dropped the knife, she uttered the words ‘I don’t like knives’. The next thing he remembered was a flash of light as she shattered his nose with the back of her fist. The lights, mercifully, went out.

Jones heard people coming. From the floor of the cabin, he could see the top of sail masts through the porthole. She must have sailed them back into The Academy’s marina. He could not allow his men to be tortured, if they talked, too much was as stake. He looked around, others had also realised what needed to be done. The unconscious men were nudged until they came around. When every man was conscious, on the count of three, they bit down hard on a small cyanide canister concealed in their mouths to ensure a very quick death.

“They’re in here,” said Lela. “I’ve got them all tied up nicely,” she announced as she stepped onto the boat. Papa grabbed her, he could smell death. He went in ahead of her and his suspicion was confirmed.

“They’re all dead, by the looks of it, cyanide,” he announced when he came back out.

“Oh God, I killed them all, ten men!” exclaimed Lela.

“No, they took cyanide capsules, they killed themselves,” assured Papa.

“What are we up against?” asked Kisho. “This is getting scary now.”

“Getting scary?” asked Tom. “Where the hell have you been for the last month!”

“OK, we’ve got their phone and we know about Operations Sandy and David and that Sandy is before David,” said Lela changing the subject. She wanted to get off the boat and go back to her room.

“But it could be anything. Sandy and David are probably just code words for their operations. You’ll probably find every one of them had a first name designation.”

“So I risked life and limb for nothing?”

Tom looked back to the boat, he wondered whose life and limbs she had really risked but with ten bodies behind him he thought better of asking.

McDonald, Murray

Assassin (The Billionaire Series)

What the hell could Beaumont do now? The Chairman was going to kill him. He couldn’t run, there was nowhere on the planet he could hide, nowhere. How could it have gone so badly wrong? They had Lela, everything had gone perfectly and then wham, she was there. It just wasn’t conceivable, it was impossible. He only hoped that Jones had done the right thing. He didn’t know enough to expose The Committee but he knew too much about the Committee’s army. The men were very well paid and there was an expectation that they were capable of the ultimate sacrifice if they risked exposing their unit or their colleagues.

He still had another twenty four hours to try and pull something out of the bag. The Chairman didn’t need to know yet. Beaumont knew that the hole he was in was very deep and its sides very slippery.

Williams had his men in place, he was delighted with the promotion to number one spot in the Committee’s army. He now worked directly for the boss and had no intention of letting The Chairman down. It was a fairly simple operation, only two targets and from their first reconnaissance, fairly light security.

Williams looked around again, acting like a tourist, soaking in the scenery and his surroundings. It really was a beautiful spot, perfect beach, beautiful hotel and the most spectacular yachts anchored just offshore. One yacht in particular had caught his eye, Williams had never seen a yacht so aptly named, she really was a Beautiful Lady.

Kisho and Kano took the boat out to sea and after searching them, dumped the bodies. Unsurprisingly they didn’t find anything, every man was clean. Tattoos had been removed or covered over, teeth had been removed and replaced with caps, fingerprints removed by acid. It was as though the men did not exist and as far as Papa was concerned, they didn’t anymore. Afterall, these were the men who had intended to kill his beloved Lela.

Tom and Lela eventually went to bed at 4.30 a.m. and decided an extra hour in bed was probably deserved. Unfortunately, they didn’t tell anybody else and both woke up to their doors being thumped by Tristan, checking they were OK and explaining that they were waiting for them to start the meeting. They quickly got dressed and rushed down to Conference Room One.

The group sat in complete silence as the events of earlier that morning were explained. Even after they had finished. nobody had a clue what to say. This wasn’t something happening to other people, this was now at their school. Ten men had killed themselves to keep their identity from them. These were not two-bit mercenaries, these were highly motivated operatives.

“Sandy and David,” mulled Daniel. “I’ll get my guys on it and see if they can come up with anything. I doubt it though, using first names is very clever. They’ll be spoken millions of times every second all over the world and 99.99999 % of it will be completely innocent.” He didn’t hold out any hope whatsoever.

“Did you get anything while you were going through the stuff last night?”

“No. But there’s something there. I can feel it, we’re getting closer,” said Tom, as he began to pace.

He cleared a whiteboard and put his hand in his pocket to get a pen. He had changed jeans and didn’t find a pen but found the business card they had pulled out of Alan’s sofa. He had forgotten all about it. He quickly dialled the number, it was dead, the recruitment consultant had obviously given up on recruitment.

“What’s that?” asked Daniel.

Tom explained where they had got it.

“I’ll do some checking on it, you never know what we might get,” offered Daniel, already dialling a contact.

Tom took a pen, found a quiet spot and began to write down everything he knew and had to date. He went back a year to the very first assassination and considered the circumstances of each. He then overlaid each of the new heads of government and studied the circumstances of each of those.

The day flew past and before they knew it, it was 6.00 p.m., nobody had even stopped for lunch. Tristan was the first to notice and panicked.

“Oh my God, it’s 6.00 p.m. What’s the time in Barbados?”

“Hmm, 10 a.m., why?” answered Tom.

“I promised I’d call my dad before his conference starts at 11.00 a.m.”

“Very nice, sounds like a nice little junket, Barbados in October, lovely!”

“Not quite it’s the Heads of Government meeting for the Commonwealth Nations.”

“Don’t you believe it for a second, I’m sure they’ll be living it up, staying in a lovely hotel.”

“Not sure about living it up but certainly lovely hotel, the Sandy Lane, nothing less don’t you know,” joked Tristan.

“Where did you say?” Tom couldn’t believe it, it couldn’t be that simple.

“Sandy Lane,” repeated Tristan, realising the significance.

Tom checked the board again. He was now also certain he knew who the targets would be, why had he not seen it earlier? The G20, the twenty most powerful leaders in the world.

“Sofie, Jin, I need a copy of your mother and grandfather’s itinerary for the next month. Lela, call Papa and tell him to meet us at the plane. Tristan, Zach you’d better come with us. Daniel can you run things from here? We need to find out who’s behind this and what or where David is.”