The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 by Mark Dawson Read Free Book Online Page A

the way beneath the seats.
    “Here,” he said to Su-Yung. “Give me a hand.”
    He reached down and withdrew the items that had been hidden inside the compartment: the rifle, an M-4 carbine, a Sig Sauer 9mm, half a dozen fragmentation grenades, a pair of high-powered Zeiss Classic 60mm binoculars and a miniature tracking device.
    The rifle was the most important; he picked it up and examined it carefully. A Barrett M82, recoil-operated, semi-automatic, finished with an American walnut stock and a heavy premium barrel. The weapon system that the American snipers preferred, Milton had become accustomed to it during his time with them in the sandpit. The gun had been broken down into pieces, and Milton quickly reassembled it, checking that it had not been damaged in transit. It had not. The Group’s quartermaster had arranged the weapon for him to his specific order, and he had reacquainted himself with it on the long ranges on Salisbury Plain. It was an impressive piece of machinery, every bit as well-crafted as the car in which it had been hidden.
    “Is it satisfactory?” Su-Yung asked anxiously.
    “Yes.”
    Milton opened the magazine and checked the big bullets. Its ten-shot box magazine was chambered for .50 calibre ammunition, and it was loaded with Raufoss Mk 211 anti-materiél projectiles, his favourite cartridge for this purpose. Each bullet was almost as long as his hand, jacketed in copper with an armour-piercing tungsten core that carried explosive and incendiary components. The ammunition was designed to take out light armour at distance. There had been some suggestion that it should be banned against human targets, but Milton had no view about that; all he knew was that it was excellent at long range and that it made an almighty mess when it hit something soft.
    Su-Yung watched him slot the magazine into the breech. “This operation,” she said, “we would do it ourselves, but it would be too difficult. The task you have set yourself is not an easy thing, Mr Milton. The distance will be very great. Perhaps half a mile.”
    Milton slotted the sniper scope to the top of the rifle. It had a 30mm tube, external windage and elevation turrets, parallax adjustment and a fast-focus eyepiece with a bullet-drop compensating reticule. “It won’t be a problem,” Milton replied, raising the rifle and peering into the scope. “With this, it’ll be like they’re just in the next room.”

Chapter Thirteen
    “AND YOU have learned nothing from him, Yun? Still nothing?”
    The earlier confidence that Kim had tried to invest in his voice was gone. A distant memory. Now his tone was impatient and ragged with fear. He was pacing his office while Yun sat nervously in the chair before his desk. Yun had left the basement only minutes earlier, right after the man that they had collected that morning had slipped again into unconsciousness.
    The truck driver had been very helpful; his assistance was about the only thing that had gone in their favour since this whole mess had unfolded. He had provided a likeness for the man that he had seen at the yard, and this had been cross-checked with the Department’s files on suspected dissidents and traitors. The exercise had turned up three possible matches. Each of these three men had been detained and delivered to the basement, where, after a little light persuasion—merely an hors d’oeuvre for what was to follow—it had quickly been determined that, of the three, the man they wanted was the second they had collected: Kun Jong-nam, a janitor from Sunan-guyok.
    “He is stubborn, Comrade Major.”
    “I don’t care how stubborn he is! We must have what he knows!”
    Kim was angry. The interrogation had been unsuccessful. His preferred technique was more considered, a slow escalation that would give the subject plenty of time to consider how much worse things would get for him if he did not divulge the information that the state required. There had been no time for such niceties