The Terminate Code: A gripping, page-turning, action adventure revenge thriller, with a fast pace, and a terrifying twist in its tail ! (Hedge & Cole Book 2)
Page 18
Maddie was pleased that Cole and Alice had been reunited. She was glad to have maybe helped in some small way, but wasn’t sure that she had really. Life in England for her and for her brother had settled back to normal. She hadn’t had any more strange feelings or premonitions, and she was happy about that. She wanted to feel as normal as possible.
Hedge decided that he would never again attempt a parachute jump. It wasn’t a difficult decision for him to make. He hadn’t seen his friend Cole since he had returned from the cruise with his wife. That was a few months ago now. He hoped Cole was alright and back to his normal self.
He wondered if he would ever see him again.
He would.
THE END
(but not quite ... see next page)
There’s Another Chapter!
For the original version of this book I wrote another chapter which involved more exploits of the Siamese Twins, Li and Cho.
As you will already know they were very keen to please Solomon.
After much consideration, I removed this chapter from the book, as it was quite sexually explicit, and went into areas that some readers might have found uncomfortable.
The good news is that I still have that original chapter.
If you would like me to forward to you the Siamese Twins Chapter, then simply email me and I will send it directly back to you.
kevbradley999@gmail.com
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
Kevin Bradley
Look out for these books by Kevin Bradley
The Palindrome Cult
(Hedge & Cole / Book 1)
“A cracking good read, fast and furious, unputdownable”
The Terminate Code
(Hedge & Cole / Book 2)
“A fantastic story, breathtaking and full of intrigue, unforgettable”
The Transamerica Cell
(Hedge & Cole / Book 3)
“A gripping, tense thriller, you’ll be on the edge of your seat”
The Cuba Cage
(Hedge & Cole / Book 4)
Due December 2017
A Poem!
I hope you will enjoy this thrilling story
And you find it entertaining too
If you can spare a little of your time
Then please leave a good review!
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Thank you
Free Book!
If you would like a Free copy of the eBook –
The Palindrome Cult
(Hedge & Cole / Book 1)
Then please email me at - kevbradley999@gmail.com
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This book is dedicated to my dear old Mum, Doreen Ada Cutting.
Without her, of course, this book would never have been written – and after reading it, she may well wish that it hadn’t!
Text copyright © 2017 Kevin Bradley
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The following are the opening three chapters of the 1st book in the Hedge & Cole series.
The Palindrome Cult by Kevin Bradley
Chapter One
The man holding the cut-throat razor was known simply as The Shaver. The blade he held was sharp. It had to be. There was a lot of work to be done.
He didn’t know who the young woman standing in front of him was. That wasn’t important though. He had his instructions, and he was being well paid for the job. The location had shocked him, but he had quickly recovered his composure. That was essential. A steady hand was needed for the delicate work that was required.
He slowly approached the naked woman. She was young. Maybe nineteen or twenty years old, he guessed. She was attractive, about medium height, and with very pale skin. She was standing on a thick, plastic sheet. That was good, he thought to himself. The carpet in the office looked expensive. It would be a shame to spoil it.
He picked up a large tube, and squeezed out some shaving foam onto his hands. Then he coated her head with it. She didn’t have much hair to shave off, as most of it had already been cut off with scissors. He carefully ran the blade over her head until it was completely smooth.
Next, he told her to hold up her arms, and he shaved underneath them. He then rubbed the shaving foam over the surface of her arms, legs, and back, and shaved these areas in turn. He had been working for thirty minutes already, and his hand was aching.
The girl stood silent and still. Her face showed no expression. Like him, she was being well paid. What was required of her had been fully explained.
The Shaver asked her to part her legs, and he knelt down and shaved the area covered by her pubic hair. He took his time. Being a perfectionist was something he was proud of.
Finally, he stood back to admire his work.
His face suddenly showed a look of horror. How could he have forgotten? Moving back towards the girl, he put a small amount of foam on each of her eyebrows, and shaved them off.
He nodded to himself. His work was done. Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he quickly made a call.
‘All finished,’ he said.
A few moments later the door of the office opened. A slim looking woman walked confidently in to the room. She was older than the girl, maybe ten years older. The Shaver tried not to look at her for too long. The only thing he noticed about her was that her eyes looked slightly oriental. She walked over to where the girl was standing on the plastic sheet, and studied her carefully.
‘That’s good work,’ she said. ‘Lift your arms please.’
The girl obeyed.
The older woman nodded.
‘Would you bend over for me? That’s it. See if you can touch your toes.’
The girl didn’t offer any resistance. She leaned forward, her fingers almost reaching the plastic sheet.
The older woman ran her middle finger up the back of the girl’s right thigh. She carried on towards the region in between her legs, and then stroked the area along her backside, passing her finger across the girl’s anus.
‘That’s very good work indeed. I don’t think we’ll get any complaints.’
She reflected on the specific requirements of her customer. There must be no bodily hair at all. That was critical. She didn’t want to let the man down. They didn’t come any more important than him.
The woman turned to the girl. ‘Go and shower. Please be back here in ten minutes.’
The Watcher couldn’t believe his eyes.
He had started to record what was going on in the room as soon as the naked girl had shown up on his screen.
‘Oh my god,’ he whispered to himself.
He had continued to follow the events as they unfolded before his eyes. The man with the razor had left the office. The young girl had showered and returned. The older woman had come back. She was followed closely by a middle aged man. He was formally dressed but without a jacket. He turned and locked the door of the office. The Watcher recognised him instantly. The older woman sat down on an easy chair in a corner of the room.
The middle aged man walked over and stood next to the girl. He ran his hands slowly down her arms, across her back, and then between her legs. Next, he turned her around and leant her over his glass-topped
desk. He carried on touching her, slowly and deliberately.
After a short while, he undid his trousers, and let them fall around his ankles. Then he pulled down his underwear.
The Watcher carried on staring at the screen for the next three minutes, and then it was all over. The two people near the desk were clearly visible on the screen. He would have liked to have had a better view of the older woman’s face, but the camera in the room was miniature and so had limited capability. It wasn’t able to zoom in. Therefore, it couldn’t make out what the four words were tattooed on the older woman’s forearm.
He pressed a button on the keyboard in front of him and the words ‘Recording Saved’ appeared in the middle of the screen.
The Watcher picked up the telephone on his desk and pressed a button on the handset.
After a few seconds he spoke into it. ‘You won’t believe what I have just seen, and in his own office.’
There was a pause as the person on the other end spoke.
‘Yes I have,’ said the Watcher, ‘all safely saved to the master drive, with full encryption. It will make interesting viewing for whoever sees it next.’
He clicked a button on the telephone and placed it back on the desk.
He didn’t know it at the time, but the piece of film he had just recorded would never be seen by anyone else.
Chapter Two
Blood was pouring down the side of the young boy’s face. It was coming from a deep gash on the top of his head. It looked like someone was tipping raspberry sauce over him, and the crimson liquid was staining the upper parts of his shirt.
The boy’s face was scrunched up in agony, and he was crying.
He would have been screaming if he were able to. But he wasn’t. In fact, he couldn’t even breathe.
He was panic stricken.
If he had been older, he might have realised how close to death he was. But he was just a small boy. He didn’t understand these things.
Just a few minutes earlier, Hedge had started to eat his lunch. He looked up from his meal and noticed the lady enter the cafe and sit down at the table to the left of his. She was accompanied by two young boys, presumably her children. She ordered a coffee and the boys ordered milkshakes. They also requested a large ham and mushroom pizza to share between them. The food and drinks arrived shortly after, and the boys started to demolish the pizza with surprising speed. They were both laughing, and the mother was kept busy trying to keep them under control.
The two boys had started racing to see who could eat a whole slice of pizza in the shortest possible time. The eldest son, who Hedge thought might be around six years old, had pushed a large piece into his mouth and was seemingly trying to swallow it straight down. The mother and youngest boy were laughing at him, but as Hedge was watching them, he suddenly realised that the older boy appeared to be in some distress. He was desperately trying to cough up the food but couldn’t get it out of his throat. He was attempting to get the attention of his mother, but she still thought he was playing. The boy now had tears in his eyes and was clearly struggling for breath. The mother’s mood changed instantly as she realised what was happening.
‘Spit it out,’ she shouted to him, as she jumped from her seat to help him.
The boy suddenly fell off his chair and cracked his head on the floor. Blood was streaming down his face and tears were flooding from his eyes. He had his hands around his neck and was desperately trying to cough out the food, but seemingly it was lodged firmly in his throat.
The mother picked him up and turned him around. She slapped her hand hard on his back to try and dislodge what was blocking his airway. She repeated this action several times but to no avail. The boy had now gone quiet and was hanging limply in her arms. The younger son was crying and had a scared look on his face. He sat in his seat, not moving, watching what was happening to his older brother.
Several people in the cafe had now become aware of the young boys distress. The mother was screaming for help and an elderly man with greying hair rushed over to her table. He tried to open the boy’s mouth and attempted to get some of the food out from the back of the youngster’s throat using his fingers, but he was unsuccessful - it was lodged in tight.
‘We need to apply pressure around his chest, like a bear hug,’ he said.
With that, the elderly man grabbed hold of the boy and turned the child’s body to face away from him. The man squeezed the boy tightly and applied pressure in quick violent movements. He did this several times but the youngster still hung limp. His throat remained blocked and he was still not breathing.
Even to this day Hedge couldn’t quite explain what happened next. It seemed so out of character for him. Some people would say he was a bit quiet, even shy. He was not generally a confident person, and he would avoid being the centre of attention if he possibly could. He certainly wasn’t someone who would walk away from danger, but he typically kept himself to himself and so rarely got involved in other people’s problems.
This day however, Hedge did get involved and he jumped from his seat with a sense of urgency.
‘Someone phone for an ambulance’, he shouted. ‘Tell them a young boy is choking and needs immediate help. They need to get here in the next few minutes otherwise it will be too late.’
Several of the cafe customers reached for their cell phones.
Hedge was already grabbing hold of the boy and laying him across the table. He was still not breathing and his face had started to turn a pale shade of blue. Hedge estimated that it was now around one minute since the boy had fallen off the chair.
He turned to a man in the crowd, who had been watching the scene with a scared look on his face. ‘Hey, I want you to call out the time. Start from one minute and call out every fifteen seconds. I need to know how long the lad has not been breathing for.’
The man took off his watch and stared at it intently.
‘Ok, one minute,’ he said.
Hedge pushed everything else off the table and looked closely at the boy. He wiped some of the blood away from the boy’s face, and then tilted his head back and tried to see what was stuck in the child’s throat. He couldn’t see anything, as the light in the cafe wasn’t very good. He probed the back of the boy’s throat with his fingers. He could feel a blockage but it felt solid, and he was worried in case he pushed it further down making things worse. He removed his fingers quickly.
‘One minute and fifteen seconds,’ shouted the man with the watch.
The other diners in the cafe had started to gather close to the table. They all had concerned looks on their faces. A few of them had covered their mouths with their hands. Some of them were still making calls on their phones. One man had his cell phone held in front of him and he looked like he was filming the scene.
‘Hey you! Stop taking pictures. Turn that camera off now,’ Hedge screamed at him.
The man looked embarrassed by his actions and put his phone back in his coat pocket.
Hedge looked around the room. ‘Are there any doctors or medical people here?’ he asked hopefully.
No one responded, so Hedge shouted for someone to ring for an ambulance again.
‘We have a slowly dying boy here,’ he said, ‘make sure the emergency operator is aware of that.’
The mother sobbed loudly and put her head close to the boy’s mouth.
‘He’s not breathing. He needs help. Please someone, help him,’ she cried.
‘One minute and thirty seconds.’
Hedge knew something had to be done, something drastic, and it needed doing now. He had seen on television how people had been saved when their throats were blocked, but the process was usually carried out by qualified medical staff who knew what they were doing. Hedge certainly didn’t fall into that category.
Hedge shouted over to Antonio, the cafe manager. ‘I need your sharpest knife, some clean towels and a small plastic tube. It needs to be something bigger than a straw, maybe the size of a hosepipe, and around six inches
long. Have you got anything like that?’
Antonio spun around without a word and headed off quickly towards the kitchen.
‘One minute and forty five seconds.’
Hedge turned to the mother. He spoke bluntly but he didn’t have a choice. She had to know the facts and she needed to understand the risks.
‘Your son hasn’t been breathing now for nearly two minutes. I am not sure but I believe that if you don’t breathe for around four minutes then you are effectively brain dead. We have no medical people here and the ambulance will be a while yet. We have run out of time. I can try to cut open his throat to see if we can get air into him, but I will be honest with you, I have no idea how to do it. If I get it wrong and cut his main artery, then he will probably die from blood loss.’
‘Two minutes.’
The mother was ashen faced. She looked at Hedge but didn’t know what to say. What sort of choice was that? Her son was suffocating and would die soon due to lack of air. She looked at her beloved child lying motionless on the table.
‘You have to save him,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him die.’
‘Is there any more news on that ambulance?’ Hedge shouted to no one in particular.