Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021) by A BATEMAN (mind reading books .txt) 📕

King moved quickly, grabbing the pistol, and pushing it back towards the man as he kicked him in the shin with all the force he could muster. Not to cause pain – which it invariably did – but to shove him backwards in the ice formed from the tea he had intentionally spilt. The man had pulled the trigger, but King’s grip had eased the slide of the weapon back just enough to disengage the striker and as long as he kept up the pressure, the weapon was useless. The man slipped and tried to regain his balance, but King kicked out again, and followed up with a headbutt onto the bridge of the man’s nose. The younger man recoiled, his eyes closed, the pain excruciating, but King gripped him by the windpipe, adding a further dimension for the man’s instincts to wrestle with – three different areas for the pain receptors to signal the brain and for the brain to become confused how to deal with each - and pushed him back against the railing. King had the weight and strength advantage, and the man was struggling for traction on the ship’s slippery deck. Then King changed tactics and instead of kicking the man’s shin again, he hooked his foot behind the man’s heel and pulled his leg towards him as he pushed hard on his throat, forcing him backwards against the railing. Momentum, inertia, and gravity came together like the independent notes of a symphony and the man pirouetted over the railing and fell silently twenty feet or so into the icy water. Not even a grunt, let alone a scream, as the man’s instincts were to take a deep breath in mid-air, nothing more.

King did not hear the splash above the monotonous thump of the engines. He had the Makarov in his hand, and he tucked it into his pocket as he walked the length of the railing and searched for him in the water. There was plenty of ice, but no yellow and red flashes of colour of the man’s ski jacket. King realised he had underestimated the ship’s speed, and he looked further out to the stern and saw the man floundering in the water. He turned around and watched the bridge. Above him he thought he saw movement on the upper deck, somebody stepping into a doorway. The light was dim and grey, and it was difficult to judge both distance and movement. But no alarm sounded and nobody else appeared. King turned and looked back at the water for his would-be killer, but the man had gone. Succumbed to the cold and the inevitability of death in such a hostile, merciless environment. Perhaps he had remembered his own hollow words and simply given up the struggle in favour of a swift end. A lungful of water and short struggle under the surface to end the searing pain of the cold. Whatever the scenario, the wake of the ship rolled on, there was no colour in the grey water and King’s mission was unimpeded.

For now.

King turned around and watched the bridge once more. Daniel was gone. Sinking to the depths. He had mentioned Moscow, and King’s suspicions had been confirmed. The man had tried to pass himself off as Polish, but there was something about him that had seemed so familiar, his mannerisms. The way they had toasted with drinks, King’s attempts to trip the man up. So, he had been proven wrong about the Northern Lights, the fact that they could occasionally be seen from the wilderness in Poland, but he’d been right about toasting that first drink. He’d used Russian, a subtle difference, but from Daniel’s later prickly attitude and the jibe about King being merely a diver, diving where people like Daniel told him too, he knew that he’d slipped up. Daniel would have corrected him, had the toast not been natural. From that moment on, King knew Daniel hadn’t been who he said he was.

King slipped the Makarov into his pocket, then bent down and picked up the tin mug, which was rolling lazily on the deck. He was cold and he needed to get back inside the hubbub of the rec-room and prepare for the inevitable charade when Daniel was eventually noticed to be missing. But he wanted to make sure he was near Madeleine when it happened.

Chapter Twenty-One

King entered the recreation room as subtly as he could, but he was an imposing man at a shade under six-foot and weighing in at just over fourteen stone, but most of that weight was in his muscular shoulders, chest, and arms and as he discarded his jacket and hung it on the only spare hook, he could see people looking at him. Although he was oblivious to the fact, he was viewed by many women with interest, while most men saw him as a threat. There was an animalistic quality to him that gave off warning signs, backed up by the coldness of his glacier-cold, blue-grey eyes.

The room was hot, the windows steamed up completely and after the stillness of the icy, clean air outside, the room had become a miasma of heat, voices, the smell of strong percolated coffee, and body odours. King eased his way through the crowd of people and reached the coffee station, where he found teabags, a flask of hot water and some milk. He made a strong mug of tea and spooned in some dark sugar, which was all he could find. He took a sip, then looked around the room at the groups of people. The conversation hadn’t changed much. He guessed he was used to a profession where one never really spoke about their work, and that even in the company of other intelligence agents, nobody talked about the job at hand. It was different within the team, and of course between