Special Forces Cadets 6 by Chris Ryan

Author:Chris Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781471407918
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2020-09-21T13:06:52.140000+00:00

12

Brave

They had no weapons. At least, not in the traditional sense. But the Watchers had taught the cadets that almost anything could be used as a weapon. Some ski poles leaned against a pile of equipment. Max and Lukas moved silently over and each grabbed a pole. Max felt it for balance. The best place to hold it, he decided, was three-quarters of the way up. It would give him the right combination of heft and swing, should he need it.

He could hear Abby’s voice down below, though he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He wanted to shout at her to keep quiet. Not the right call. If he made a noise, he would identify his and Lukas’s position to anybody hiding up here. Instead, he tuned out the sound of their friends and focused on the closed door. He and Lukas approached it, stepping silently around the gear and boxes, gripping their ski poles. When they reached it, Lukas put one hand on the handle and prepared to yank it open. Max stood by the door frame and held his ski pole over his right shoulder, ready to swing it. His palms were sweating despite the cold. The pole felt less substantial than he’d hoped. Hardly a match for a killer with a gun. If there was anyone behind that door, he would have to strike hard and fast …

Lukas mouthed a countdown.

Three.

Two.

One.

He yanked the door open.

Silence.

There was a changing room beyond the door. Shower and toilet cubicles. Sinks. White ceramic tiles on the floor and walls that made it even icier than the rest of the hut. Max and Lukas entered gingerly. They checked each cubicle. Nobody was there. Max was feeling the cold again. He shivered. ‘Back downstairs,’ he mouthed, and Lukas nodded.

They avoided looking at the corpse as they passed it again. It occurred to Max that it didn’t smell. The cold must be preserving the body. They hurried down the stairs to the ground floor. Abby was still talking. When she saw that they were carrying ski poles as weapons, she said: ‘What the –’

Lukas hushed her with one finger to his lips. A chilly silence descended on the whole hut. Max pointed to each of the windows. Darius looked confused, but the cadets understood what he meant: check them. They followed his instruction, peering carefully out to look for any threats. Only when they had checked all the windows did Max speak.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said.

‘You don’t say,’ Abby muttered.

‘We’ve got a bigger problem. There’s a corpse upstairs. He looks like a regular snowboarding dude, but –’ He put two fingers to his forehead to describe what they’d seen. ‘Not pretty,’ he added. ‘The guys chasing us are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way.’

‘It doesn’t look like the assassins are still here,’ Lukas said. ‘We think he was shot yesterday, and we’ve searched both rooms upstairs.’

‘But it means they know about this refuge hut,’ Lili said. ‘They might have walked straight past us when we were in the snow hole.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.