Read The Watchman Online

Authors: Adrian Magson

The Watchman

BOOK: The Watchman
12.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Table of Contents

Cover

A Selection of Recent Titles by Adrian Magson

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

A Selection of Recent Titles by Adrian Magson

The Marc Portman Thrillers

THE WATCHMAN *

 

The Harry Tate Thrillers

RED STATION *

TRACERS *

DECEPTION *

RETRIBUTION *

EXECUTION *

 

The Riley Gavin and Frank Palmer Series

NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED

NO HELP FOR THE DYING

NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD

NO TEARS FOR THE LOST

NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL

 

*
available from Severn House

THE WATCHMAN
A Marc Portman Thriller
Adrian Magson

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

 

This first world edition published 2014
in Great Britain and the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2014 by Adrian Magson.

The right of Adrian Magson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Magson, Adrian author.

The watchman. – (A Mark Portman thriller; 1)

1. Great Britain. MI6–Fiction.

2. Hostages–Somalia–

Fiction. 3. Spy stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8370-4 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-507-9 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

As always, this is for Ann, with cosmic gratitude and love; my alpha reader, fan, supporter and spotter of the patently bleedin' obvious.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With grateful thanks to Geoff Weighell, pilot and CEO of the British Microlight Aircraft Association (BMAA), for his patience and clarity. Without it, Portman's role in this book would have been short, sharp and painful.

One
Bogotá, Colombia

I
know the sound of a semi-automatic weapon being cocked. Some might mistake it for a briefcase lock mechanism or a workman slapping a power unit into a high-speed drill. It's similar but not the same.

And I'd just heard it in the corridor outside my hotel room.

I stepped over to the door and listened, heard the brush of footsteps on the carpet, a hushed cough and heavy, nasal breathing. The movement stopped outside the next door along and I was guessing it wasn't the room maid.

Wary of getting my eyeball blown out, I took a quick look through the peephole.

Three guys, heads in close like they were having a team talk. Their features were blown out of shape by the fish-eye lens, but I made out dark, unshaven faces and the standard Colombian attire of crumpled jackets and pants.

And guns.

Two of the men were holding semi-automatics with big macho can suppressors, while the third, who was gesturing a lot and therefore the leader, was holding a machine pistol. It looked like a Steyr TMP, a nasty weapon capable of spitting out 900 rounds a minute. Lucky you can't get a magazine that big. The men looked jumpy, turning to watch both ends of the corridor, like they had no business being there.

Definitely not cops.

FARC, at a guess. That's
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
– the national guerrilla group with a brutal reputation for high-profile kidnappings and killings. If not them, it would be one of the drugs cartels in town looking for an easy ransom. Whoever they were, I was thinking the man next door had been selected as their next source of income.

It was none of my business.

I'd heard my neighbour in the bar the previous evening. He was an American mining engineer, middle-aged and well dressed, head of a minerals company. He'd been friendly and chatty and everyone within earshot knew he was in the country talking business with the government. Careless of him. What the two guys he'd hired as security clearly hadn't told him was that here in Colombia, you don't go round pushing that kind of detail about yourself. It's asking for trouble.

Worse, he'd dismissed his two minders saying he'd got some shopping to do before heading home and could handle that all by himself.

I watched the man with the Steyr lean across and knock on the door. He called out in accented English, ‘Sir? Room service.'

Like I say, it was none of my business. I could wait right here and let it blow on by; let it be somebody else's bad-hair day. No point inviting trouble.

I picked up my overnight bag, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

For a second nobody moved. The nearest gunman, short, heavy in the gut and sporting a large moustache, rolled his eyes at me in surprise. The other two were busy waiting for my neighbour's door to open. None of them were expecting any interference from the hotel staff or guests.

Moustache was the first to move. He made an ‘O' of his mouth and began to haul his gun round at me.

I threw my bag at the other two to distract them, then stepped forward and kicked Moustache into the opposite wall. He bounced back with an
ooff
and dropped his semi-automatic right into my hand. I smacked him across the head with it and turned to face the others.

The man with the Steyr was already looking up in surprise from the bag at his feet, and his colleague was only marginally slower. There was no time for niceties; if the Steyr began firing, I'd be mincemeat. I shot them both, Steyr first, then his friend, the suppressed shots sounding flat in the confines of the corridor, a round each to the head to reduce the chance of a reflex firing.

‘Hey! What the—?' The engineer was standing in the doorway, a bag in one hand, briefcase in the other, white around the eyes as he saw the blood and bodies lying right where he usually picked up his
Herald Tribune
.

I reached forward and grabbed his collar, dragging him out into the corridor, then picked up my bag. ‘Express check out,' I said, and hustled him towards the emergency stairs. We had to get out of here
now
.

Not that he came easily. ‘What the hell is this –
who are you
?' he demanded, trying to break free. He was pretty strong and wasn't making it easy to save his skin.

‘Those men were here to snatch you,' I told him. I kneed the emergency door open and pushed him towards the stairs. ‘If you'd argued or fought back, they'd have cut their losses and killed you where you stood. They'll have friends who still might. The choice is yours: you haul your ass and come with me and do exactly as I say … or you stay here and die.'

He complied but I had to nudge him all the way down the stairs and out through a narrow door close to the kitchens. I was hoping we didn't bump into hotel security along the way. They'd just be doing their job, but I didn't want to take a chance that they were in on the set-up and have to start taking them out.

I opened the door and we stepped outside into a blanket of warm, spicy air and the rasp and clatter of city traffic in downtown Bogotá.

And more trouble.

Two

A
large black 4×4 with blacked-out windows was waiting outside, engine ticking over and adding to the polluted atmosphere. The driver was doing his bit, too, blowing smoke through a narrow gap at the top of the window and nodding his head to a
currulao
beat of drums, marimba and some sort of shaker instrument whose name I'd forgotten. He was trying to be the cool, bad dude, but his eyes were too freaky, constantly flicking to the mirrors then back along the street on the look out for cops.

When he saw us appear, his jaw dropped. Then he did the wrong thing: he tossed the cigarette aside and tried to get out of the car.

I waited until the door was half open, then kicked it hard, slamming him back inside the vehicle. He tried to get out again, this time reaching for a semi-automatic in his waistband, so I opened the door and dropped him with a chop to the throat. He fell out and rolled choking into the gutter with the other debris.

‘Get in,' I said.

The American looked shocked. ‘Where are we going?'

‘The airport. You're leaving the country, aren't you?'

‘Yes, but how did you know?'

‘I heard you discussing it in the bar last night. My guess is, so did these men, which is why they marked you down for a ransom.'

He gestured back at the hotel. ‘But I haven't paid the bill … and we should call the police, tell them what happened.'

‘Nothing happened. Remember that.' I pulled out my cell phone as he placed his bags in the back and slid into the passenger seat. ‘What's your name?' I threw my bag in and got behind the wheel, stuffing the semi-automatic from the man upstairs under my thigh, where I could get at it. I threw the one dropped by the driver under the seat.

BOOK: The Watchman
12.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Archer's Sin by Amy Raby
A Taste for Blood by Erin Lark
Zod Wallop by William Browning Spencer
McCloud's Woman by Patricia Rice
Choices by Federici, Teresa
Stranglehold by Robert Rotenberg
All Hallows' Moon by S.M. Reine