Shadow Tag by Steve Berry, Raymond Khoury Read Free Book Online Page B

right?”
    The Audi was still rocketing ahead.
    “Seriously, dude,” Reilly added. “We’ll get him. He’s got to land somewhere.”
    The revs kept rising.
    The chopper was just lifting off the tarmac.
    “Don’t worry,” Khoury said. “I’ve researched this.”
    And just as he reached the chopper, he turned the wheel slightly and the Audi banked left, and instead of crashing into the chopper’s main body, the Audi’s right front wing clipped its tail rotor. The spinning propeller ate into the car’s bodywork, slicing it up in a scream of grinding metal—but it was enough to break the blades, which flew off in pieces.
    Khoury piled on the brakes, hit reverse and floored the gas.
    The Audi pulled back just as the chopper, now without a tail rotor, started spinning around its own vertical axis, out of control. The chopper banked right, then left, going around like a spinning top, before it angled left, clipped the edge of the tarmac, and flipped over—crashing into the Thames in a huge white plume.
    The four men dashed out of the Audi and rushed to the river’s edge just as its dark water swallowed the chopper.
    They stared down as the last bits of its fuselage disappeared under the surface.
    “Shouldn’t someone dive in to try to rescue them?” Berry asked.
    Reilly looked at Malone, then they nodded grudgingly.
    “I guess,” Reilly said, as he started pulling his clothes off.
    Berry and Khoury walked off.
    “Wait,” Reilly called out after them. “You can’t just leave. We’re going to need your statements about what happened.”
    “We haven’t had lunch,” Berry shouted back. “We’ll be in touch.”
    “We’ll call the London field office tomorrow,” Khoury said. “I think we could both use some rest. Who should we ask for? What’s your name?”
    “Reilly,” the agent said. “Sean Reilly. And he’s Cotton Malone.”
    Khoury stopped dead in his tracks. Glanced over at Berry.
    Berry looked back at the two men, turned to Khoury, then shook his head. “They’re just messing with us. They must know who we are.”
    The two authors chuckled and walked away as the agents dove from the bank and into the murky river.
     
    THE END
    (or is it?)
     
    KEEP READING
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Raymond Khoury’s next Sean Reilly novel
THE END GAME
and
Steve Berry’s next Cotton Malone novel
THE 14th COLONY

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    THE END GAME
    Available for Kindle on March 10, 2016
     
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    Copyright © 2016 by Raymond Khoury



1
     
    Allentown, New Jersey
    I really didn’t want to be here. Then again, who would?
    Three o’clock in the morning, me and my partner Nick Aparo, in our unmarked SUV, parked on a dark street in the middle of nowhere with the engine off, freezing our nuts off, watching, waiting for the go signal, making sure our target didn’t vaporize before we nabbed him.
    Don’t get me wrong. This is my job. I do it by choice. I do it because I believe in it, because I think what we do, as special agents of the FBI, is important. And the guy in our crosshairs on this particular night deserved our full attention, no question.
    It’s just that I had bigger fish to fry. But more on that later.
    Right now, all I can tell you is that we’d spent countless hours staring through the condensation-clouded windscreen and the snow flurries outside at the single-story house up and across the street, the one with the hypnotic, mind-numbing Christmas lights twinkling along the edge of its roof, and I was exhausted. We’d been at it for days.
    I watched my breath billowing out in front of my eyes as I zipped up my FBI parka, the cold metal of the zip reaching its endpoint against my nose. Any more coffee and there was zero chance of sleep when I finally made it home—in time to watch the sun rise as I zoned out against a deeply asleep Tess.
    Nick, on the other hand, had no such concerns. He was pouring himself