Slingshot

by Matthew Dunn

  So, I’d been busy. Secretly busy.

  Travelling to different parts of the world; obtaining weapons, and other equipment, and secreting them in dead letter boxes within the major cities; meeting my foreign assets and telling them that one day I might still have a use for them; and tying up loose ends. Only two people knew what I’d been up to: my former bosses Alistair McCulloch and Patrick Bolte from MI6 and the CIA, respectively. They’d helped me where they could with cash, and information, and covered my ass when needed. But even they didn’t know that tonight I wasn’t propping up a bar in London and instead was in Hong Kong walking through the Temple Street Night Market.

  It was a tying-up-loose-ends evening.

  I was observing a Chinese woman who’s a highly prized intelligence operative who’d spent her entire career combating the West. I was behind her, disguised as a seaman on shore for a night out after twelve months on a tanker. She was unaware of me, and the threat I posed. Around us were hundreds of tourists and locals, haggling with the multitude of vendors who’d crammed central Kowloon’s most popular bazaar with stalls selling counterfeit goods, clothes, noodles, and still-twitching bottom-feeding sea life. People were shouting, calling out to each other, opera was being sung by troupes busking for a few dollars outside stinking public toilets, and junkies were arguing with old men as they faced each other over games of Chinese chess. Few people would hear a woman scream in pain if someone killed her on the street, and no one would care if they heard such a noise. There was too much sensory overload to notice anything odd in this bustling and bruising place: people banging into each other; a heavy rain descending from the late summer night sky; vast banners with Cantonese characters overhanging the street and flapping loudly in the wind; glowing Chinese lanterns suspended in the air; the smell of crustaceans, soy sauce and burning incense; and swathes of dazzling neon light around each stall.

  But there were also big chunks of darkness in the street and that’s where most people moved, their eyes transfixed by the areas of brilliant glow, like flies that were attracted to illuminated and electrified death traps.

  Street-canny prostitutes chose to work the low-rise tenements behind the stalls. This was a place where they could do their business and where men could come and pay them and go without being noticed.

  It was also an excellent place to ply death on unwitting victims.

  I increased speed as the woman picked up her pace, then stopped as my target perused a stall containing fake silks that were cotton and powdered rhino horn that was actually a lethal combination of ground stone, fiberglass, and bamboo root. I watched the target to see if this was a deliberate stop to catch sight of me.

  Woman moved; I moved.

  I had a knife on me. It was the best weapon for tonight because my target would be taking no chances, and would almost certainly be carrying a silenced pistol or blade.

  We were getting close to my kill zone.

  The woman checked her watch, gave a physical gesture of annoyance, and turned toward me.

  Shit!

  I was a mere ten feet away from her, alongside lots of men, women, kids, and crack heads. Maybe if the woman looked at me she’d think I had a blood lust. I didn’t. I had a job to do and right now it was one that would take the woman completely by surprise.

  But she didn’t spot me amid the throngs of people ahead of her. She was preoccupied, had clearly lost track of time, and used her cell phone to call her husband. Her partner took the brunt of her annoyance as she instructed him to get his car started and pick her up in five minutes or she’d stick something sharp in his gullet.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  Not if another man had his way.

  For he wanted to stick his knife into her gullet.

  And I was here to stop him dead.

  My target walked fast toward the woman, his blade exposed. I rushed at the large Chinese man, grabbed his chin from behind, and plunged my blade into his throat. As he slumped to the ground, the Chinese woman’s shock was amplified when she saw my face.

  I walked past her, muttering, “Your cover’s blown. Get out of China. Time to retire to somewhere safe.”

  The Chinese intelligence officer knew me well. Years ago, I’d turned her into an MI6 asset so that she could spy on her countrymen. Recently, I’d learned that her colleagues had discovered her treachery and tonight were deploying one of their best assassins to punish her. No way was I going to let that happen to such a courageous woman.

  She opened her mouth to speak to me.

  I didn’t stop and within seconds had vanished into the night.

  And in ninety minutes I’d use an alias passport to fly back to London.

  No one would know that tonight an English killer had been in China and that his real name was Will Cochrane.

  The reason Admiral Tobias Mason no longer wore a naval uniform was because five years ago he’d reached a stage in his career where he’d felt embarrassed by how he looked. He’d spent thirty four years on water, half of which captaining U.S. warships of mass destruction, and frequently being the ultimate power in several thousand square miles of ocean. The problem with this was it gave him too many medals on his uniform. While inspecting his massed naval ranks on a sunny parade ground five years ago, the medals made him think he looked like a throwback military dictator.

  Mason hated the idea of looking like a dictator because he was by nature a non-conformist individual who didn’t like uniforms. In many ways he was the antithesis of a military man; the only reason he’d ran away to sea as an adolescent was because his brain craved adventure. Nevertheless, his superiors in the navy quickly recognized his superb intellect and passion for unconventional tactics. They promoted him, and kept telling him that one day he’d be an admiral. Mason didn’t like the flattery because he could never jettison his non-conformist mindset and nor did he wish to. His idol was the nineteenth century British admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane; a man who’d been a maverick throughout his career yet could conjure naval strategies that were brilliant and often improvised. Cochrane tore the rule book up and won. But, he was still made to dress like a clown.

  Three years ago, the navy had asked Mason if he’d like a job on dry land that didn’t require him to wear a uniform.

  As he took a seat at the long rectangular boardroom table in the subterranean White House Situation Room, the diminutive silver-haired admiral wondered not for the first time whether he’d made the right decision to leave the sea. Dry land sometimes felt like it had too many captains trying to sail the same ship. It seemed that way now as America’s political elite took seats around the table. They all knew Mason, though none of them really understood what he did for a living. Given he was by nature a private man, it pleased him they didn’t know he’d been singled out by the president for a very discrete role that required him to be the premier’s confidant and to think through solutions that were beyond the intellectual capabilities of the president’s other advisors. It was a role that on paper didn’t exist.

  The president walked into the room and sat at the head of the table. His chief of staff was close behind him and turned on three wall-mounted TV monitors. Each screen showed a video link to the premiers of Britain, France, and Israel.

  After formal introductions and greetings were exchanged, the Israeli premier dominated the first fifteen minutes of the meeting. He told everyone that a week ago a senior Hamas official had been killed by an Israeli missile strike in Gaza. Nobody in the room seemed particularly interested because Israel had made public the strike and kill, hours after it had happened. But as the Israeli premier moved on to the reason why this meeting had been summoned at such short notice, he made no attempt to hide his anger. His voice shook as he spoke about yesterday’s assassination of Israel’s ambassador to France. He spoke about how they’d gone to school together, served in the army as young men, had attended each other’s weddings, and on more than one occasion had shared a drink while watching the sun go down over Tel A
viv.

  Mason wasn’t watching him. Instead he was observing his American colleagues and the premiers of France and Britain. Did any of them know why they were here? Even the U.S. president hadn’t been given a clear agenda for the meeting by the Israeli premier, beyond it was to discuss what happened in Paris. But Mason was sure he knew where this was headed.

  He checked his watch and estimated the Israeli would drop that bombshell in three minutes. In fact he was fifteen seconds wide of the mark. And that’s when the room became a chaotic cacophony of people trying to talk over each other, some trying to do so with insincere smiles on the faces, others looking hostile and slapping their hands on the table. During the following hour, the chief of staff had to call for order seven times. The room seemed evenly split between those who were for Israel’s bombshell and those who were against. Mason was the only person who was silent throughout this unproductive period of too many generals and chiefs and secretaries of this and that all trying to take control of the ship and drive it in the wrong direction. He wanted to sigh, but maintained his composed and professional demeanor while his mind raced.

  The chief of staff called for order again and this time he did so with the look of a man who’d rip anyone’s head of if they didn’t comply.

  The president began asking people individually for not only their calm assessment but also whether there was a solution to this problem. All of them gave their views, and none of them had the slightest idea what to do about them. The president turned to the head of the CIA, the one man who technically would have some answers. He did of sorts but they were unsubstantial and certainly not enough to placate the Israeli premier.

  Finally, the U.S. president locked his gaze on Mason from the far end of the room. He asked the admiral if he had a solution.

  All eyes were on Mason.

  He didn’t yet speak.

  Didn’t need to.

  Instead he gave the tiniest of nods.

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  About the Author

  As an MI6 field officer, MATTHEW DUNN recruited and ran agents, coordinated and participated in special operations, and acted in deep-cover roles throughout the world. He operated in environments where, if captured, he would have been executed. Dunn was trained in all aspects of intelligence collection, covert deployment, small arms, explosives, military unarmed combat, surveillance, and infiltration.

  Medals are never awarded to modern MI6 officers, but Dunn was the recipient of a rare personal commendation from the secretary of state for work he did on one mission, which was deemed so significant that it directly influenced the success of a major international incident.

  During his time in MI6, Dunn conducted approximately seventy missions. All of them were successful. He lives in England, where he is at work on the fourth Spycatcher novel.

  www.MatthewDunnBooks.com

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  Also by Matthew Dunn

  Sentinel

  Spycatcher

  Credits

  Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

  Cover photograph © by Tim Robinson/Arcangel

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  SLINGSHOT. Copyright © 2013 by Matthew Dunn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-203802-9

  EPub Edition JULY 2013 ISBN 9780062038081

  Version 12062013

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