The Jungle - John Milton #9 (John Milton Thrillers)
Page 26
“Milton.”
“My guards?”
“Dead, Ali.” The man stood and indicated the room with a flick of the pistol. “This is a very nice place. It must have been very expensive.”
Ali’s throat was suddenly very dry. He swallowed.
“How much did it cost?”
He found that he couldn’t answer.
“You can’t remember?”
His hand was at the edge of the mattress. “Yes. It was expensive.”
The man gestured down at him. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Your gun’s over there.”
Ali looked. His pistol and the box of ammunition that he kept with it were on the table next to the armchair.
The breeze died down and the curtains closed. The light disappeared. The man was a shadow now, a darker shape amid the gloom. Ali could feel his presence, close, but he dared not move.
“How many people had to die so you could have a house like this?”
He tried to swallow. “I run a business. I help people. I give them a chance to find a better life.”
“No, you don’t. You profit from the pain and misery of desperate men and women. Men and women and children. I’ve seen how you do business. I’ve been on one of your boats. I’ve seen the others that didn’t make it to port because they were unfit for the voyage. You are a parasite. You’re worse than a parasite. Did you really think that there would never be a reckoning for what you’ve done?”
The shadow was at the foot of the bed. The curtains parted again and the light glinted off the barrel of a pistol that had been raised and aimed at him.
“Please. What do you want? Money? Please. I give you more money than you have ever seen before.”
“Your money can’t help you now.”
The bullet hit him in the forehead. He was dead before he could hear the sound of the gun.
#
MILTON LEFT THE SPENT round on the floor of the bedroom. He was armed with a Beretta 92FS 9x19mm pistol, the sidearm favoured by the COMSUBIN—the Comando Subacquei ed Incursori—the special forces unit of the Italian navy. The weapons were reasonably exotic, and Hicks had secured them from a dealer who asked no questions in exchange for a significant mark-up on the purchase price. He had purchased their ammunition from Fiocchi Munizioni, the manufacturer from Lecco that had long been favoured by the Italian military. Milton had no idea how vigorous the investigation into the murders at Ali Tessema’s property would be, but, in the event that it was thorough, it would be a simple enough thing to track the rounds that had killed the men back to Italy, and then to connect the murders with the COMSUBIN’s previous assassinations of smugglers in Tripoli and Zuwara. The dots would be easy to join. The investigation would be shelved.
He went back through the house. It was a large place on the outskirts of Tripoli that Ali had been given by the militia that had confiscated it after the fall of Gaddafi. It had belonged to one of the colonel’s playboy sons and still bore the signs of the opulence that was once a family trademark. The main reception room was a mess, with smashed bottles of Moet and Dom Perignon on the floor and a large pile of cocaine on a white Pearl River baby grand. Milton’s boots crunched fragments of a shattered vodka bottle into the thick carpet. There were six men and two women in the room. All of them were still asleep. Milton had passed through the room without disturbing them, and none of them had stirred while he had attended to his business. His Beretta had been fitted with a silencer, and the cylinder had flattened the noise of the gunshot. The revellers would wake up in the morning none the wiser to the execution that had happened just a few feet from where they had been sleeping off the excesses of the night before. Then they would find Ali’s body, and they would realise how lucky they had been.
Death had passed among them, and they had been spared.
There was a sliding door into the garden. Hicks was waiting for him outside. He was wearing the same gear as Milton, but he was armed with a Beretta ARX 160, the modular assault rifle that the Italians preferred. He was standing by in the event that the drunken partygoers awoke. There had been no need to use it.
Milton exchanged a nod of affirmation with Hicks and descended the steps into the garden. The house was built in a style that would have been more at home in Malibu, minimalist in design, painted white and erected on stilts. They passed bamboo garden furniture and a hot tub installed on a veranda that overlooked the sea. Milton retraced their steps to the guardhouse and glanced in to see the bodies of the two guards that he had shot before they had even had the chance to take out their weapons. He kept on, passing the infinity pool and the body of the first guard; Milton had killed him with a silenced headshot from ten metres that had seen the man’s lifeless body topple into the water.
The guards had been slow and lazy, as if the very thought of an attack on their patron was preposterous.
Milton led the way through the exit and onto the path that overlooked the ocean.
“All done?” Hicks asked in a tight, quiet voice as they calmly walked away.
“All done.”
Milton looked down at the jetty at the foot of the cliff. The jet skis they had used to approach the property were tied up, bobbing up and down on the moonlight-flecked swells. He gazed out beyond them, into the infinite darkness of the sea and the sky, and wondered how many more Ali Tessemas there were, and how many of them had sent out overloaded boats on dangerous voyages that night.
“Let’s go.”
A WORD FROM MARK
Thank you for reading THE JUNGLE. I hope you enjoyed it.
Milton’s story begins in a series of fast paced thrillers that take him (and you) all around the world.
The first story, THE CLEANER, tells how Milton left Group Fifteen.
The next story, SAINT DEATH, sees Milton resurface on the Mexican side of the US border, in a thrilling confrontation with an international drug cartel.
THE DRIVER finds Milton in San Francisco, investigating a series of murders for which he is the prime suspect.
And 1000 YARDS is a dip into his case files. Milton is sent into the most dangerous failed state in the world – North Korea – with orders to assassinate a key military target.
The books are available individually. But you can save 25% by downloading the Box Set (containing all four thrillers).
GET THE FIRST JOHN MILTON BOX SET (UK | US)
GET EXCLUSIVE JOHN MILTON MATERIAL
Building a relationship with my readers is the very best thing about writing. I occasionally send newsletters with details on new releases, special offers and other bits of news relating to the John Milton, Beatrix and Isabella Rose and Soho Noir series.
And if you sign up to the mailing list I’ll send you this free Milton content:
1. A free copy of the John Milton novella, Tarantula.
2. A copy of the highly classified background check on John Milton before he was admitted to Group 15. Exclusive to my mailing list – you can’t get this anywhere else.
You can get the novella and the background check for free, by signing up at http://eepurl.com/b1T_NT
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But I do have something much more powerful and effective than that, and it's something that those publishers would kill to get their hands on.
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Thank you very much.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the members of Team Milton for techn
ical advice and support. Thanks to Pauline Nolet and Jennifer McIntyre for editorial assistance. And thanks to you for investing your time in reading this story. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
John Milton will be back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Dawson is the author of the breakout John Milton, Beatrix Rose and Soho Noir series. He makes his online home at www.markjdawson.com. You can connect with Mark on Twitter at @pbackwriter, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/markdawsonauthor and you should send him an email at mark@markjdawson.com if the mood strikes you.
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DEDICATION
To Mrs D, FD and SD.
COPYRIGHT
AN UNPUTDOWNABLE ebook.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by UNPUTDOWNABLE LIMITED
Ebook first published in 2016 by UNPUTDOWNABLE LIMITED
This ebook published in 2016 by UNPUTDOWNABLE LIMITED
Copyright © UNPUTDOWNABLE LIMITED 2016
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
The moral right of Mark Dawson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.