STOP AT NOTHING: 'Mark Cole is Bond's US cousin mixed with the balls out action and killing edge of Jason Bourne' Parmenion Books (38 page)

CANCUN, MEXICO

Former US Vice President and Government

Officials Killed in Fatal Accident

By Jorge Michel

An explosion rocked the beach at the Hilton Cancun Golf and Spa Resort late last night, as what is suspected to be a faulty gas pipe resulted in a fatal accident.

A group of friends – alumni from the Joint Military Intelligence College in Washington, DC, which included the former Vice President Richard Jenkins as well as various recent members of the United States government – were on their annual get-together at the famous beach resort when tragedy struck.

It is believed the gas pipe had been leaking all day, and had completely permeated the Villa Beach Suite in which the ten men and women were meeting. When a match was struck in the main living room at about 11pm, the result was catastrophic, an explosion which levelled the one storey beach suite.

‘It was one of those tragic accidents,’ said local Chief of Fire Investigation Manuel Paz. ‘The group had been drinking, partying, and just didn’t notice the smell, or chose to ignore it. The families have been informed.’

Richard Jenkins had recently been forced to step down from his position of Vice President due to ill health, and other members of the group had recently left government service after the President’s latest cabinet reshuffle.

Ellen Abrams, the President of the United States, will make a statement later today, but it is believed there will be a full state funeral for all the victims.

Mon State, Burma

Charles Hansard put the newspaper down on the trestle table by his side and sighed, before picking up his glass and finishing off the remains of the brandy.

The article had gone on to list the names of the victims, and then gave brief biographies for each. Hansard had not had to read on – he had known each individual man and woman in the room, each one a part of his glorious Alumni group, each one now dead.

What had caused them to travel to Mexico and meet up? Hansard smelled a rat, and immediately thought that it must have been a US military operation, disguised as an accident. It wasn’t enough that they had stolen the group’s money and used it to create a communist love-in with those red bastards in Russia and China; they – or rather
she
, as it was doubtless that bitch Abrams who had ordered it – also wanted the entire group dead. It might have been the sort of job Cole would have done, Hansard thought as he packed his pipe, except the fact that Cole was dead too.

It convinced Hansard that he had done the right thing in fleeing – or as he liked to think of it, engaging in a tactical retreat. Being the mastermind behind the whole thing, Hansard would have been persecuted by the US government and hung out to dry, and they would probably have convinced Hansard’s old comrades to testify against him in a closed court. Jail would have been the best he could have hoped for, with death the more likely outcome – as evidenced by the recent event in Mexico.

Hansard had therefore used a large chunk of his personal fortune – acting before the US government was able to seize any of it – to buy his way into the closed, secretive world of Burma. The ruling military junta was known for its ability to keep a secret, so long as the price was right, and Hansard had paid a handsome price. He had even been able to bring his private aide, Nicholas Stern, who would doubtless make Hansard’s own life easier by acting as the go-between for the greasy bastards who ran the country.

Thinking of Nicholas, Hansard remembered that he had been a little too long in the kitchen – the bottle was now empty on the table, and he had asked Stern to bring another.

‘Nicholas?’ he called through the house, the atmosphere thick as the wooden ceiling fans fought a losing battle against the tropical heat and humidity.

There was no answer, and so finally Hansard pushed himself out of his rattan chair, wiping his brow as he moved slowly towards the kitchen.

Burma wasn’t the worst place in the world, he thought, at least if you had money. The lush vegetation of the mountain highlands was sublime in its beauty, and the generals could get you anything you asked for.

If he was going to stay here permanently, though, he thought as he wiped his brow yet again, he was going to
have
to get some air conditioning installed in this old colonial manor.

Still thinking about putting in a request for the work, Hansard strolled into the kitchen and saw the body at his feet, lying sprawled and unconscious on the bamboo floor. It was Stern.

Hansard turned slowly back round, and saw him.

Mark Cole sat in the rattan chair, eyes burning coals in a badly scarred face.

‘Mark,’ Hansard began. ‘Well, well, this is a surprise. I thought you were dead.’

‘Not for the first time,’ Cole said through his flame-scarred lips.

‘No,’ Hansard agreed as he walked back towards him, ‘not for the first time.’

Cole stood, and now Hansard could see the full extent of his injuries, his skin ravaged by burns from the top of his left temple down the side of his face to his neck, and across the part of his chest Hansard could see under the white cotton shirt he wore.

‘You don’t look so good,’ Hansard commented.

‘My family look worse,’ Cole replied, the coals in his eyes flickering with a fire of their own. ‘I’m not even going to ask why. It doesn’t matter,’ Cole said in a flat monotone.

Hansard opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. The man had already killed the rest of Hansard’s Alumni – for since Cole was alive, surely it would have been him in Mexico – and Hansard had no wish to join them. So for now, he would do as the man said.

But suddenly, Cole reached out towards him, touching his neck, his temple, his elbow and his chest, all in rapid succession, pecking with his fingertips like the beak of a bird.

‘You’re probably thinking of how to negotiate this,’ Cole said, copying the words of Albright back in Austria. ‘The trouble is, there
is
no way.’ Cole grinned, but there was no humour, only the promise of death. ‘Punishment for destroying my family.’

And with that, Cole pushed past Hansard, walking casually towards the screen door at the far side of the room.

Hansard watched him, confused; what had just happened? But he knew he couldn’t let Cole leave alive, and so he withdrew the short-barrelled semiautomatic pistol from the shoulder holster he wore under his tropical-weight cotton jacket and raised it at Cole, centring it on the man’s back.

As Cole reached the door, Hansard’s finger tried to squeeze the trigger, but nothing happened; he tried again, but still nothing.

In fact, Hansard could not move at all, paralysed, rooted to the spot and unable to control any muscle in his body.

Of the 107 vital points of the deadly art of
marma adi
, four of Charles Hansard’s had just been struck in the pattern known as
Śiva kā śāpa
, the
curse of Shiva
.

Forbidden even within the art itself, the curse of Shiva interrupted the blood flow of the victim’s lower body and channelled it back up to the heart, where it was then forced upwards through the vital organs and up into the brain.

The pain started instantly, and Hansard’s legs shook as they drained of blood, collapsing his body to the floor. He choked and coughed as the pain continued through his core, and he felt hot liquid in his anus, and he knew it was blood.

He coughed again, the pain so intense he couldn’t even scream, even though he wanted for anything in the world to be able to let out a piercing, shrieking yell, crying with all his might at his agony.

And yet his screams had to be swallowed, and then he watched as blood leaked from his ears onto the bamboo floorboards, the pain even more intense now, causing green bile and vomit to eject from his mouth, even as his vision turned red and he felt warm blood pour from his eyes, down his face onto the floor, his head sticking to the floorboards.

It felt like every part of his body was on fire, each piece of him pierced with needles and pulled apart, and yet he still could not scream.

Hansard coughed again – once, twice, and then blood sprayed out of his mouth in a fine red mist, covering the floor in front of him.

His body convulsed – again once, twice, and then the blood being forced into the brain finally did its work and the brain haemorrhaged, expanding outwards until the skull cracked open, the dark grey matter spilling out of the tiny fissures even as his eyeballs were forced from their sockets.

And then the body stopped moving, and Vice Admiral Charles Hansard was dead.

Outside, Cole breathed the tropical jungle air into his lungs.

It was done.

About the Author

J.T. Brannan trained as a British Army officer at Sandhurst, before deciding to pursue a writing career.

A former national Karate champion, he now teaches martial arts in Harrogate, where he lives with his wife and two children.