Free The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 by Mark Dawson Page B

right. He pulled on the right oar, turning the skiff again, and made for it. He heard his own name being called, loudly, and then the wind picked up, a gust of ten or twelve knots, the sounds blown away. He pulled the oars harder, increasing his speed. The fulgid glow was extinguished and quickly replaced by a powerful spotlight.
    “I’m here,” he yelled out, his voice weak and unreal. “Over here!”
    A long, low shape, the deepest black and enormously large, formed itself from out of the mist ahead of him. He saw the raised conning tower and the sleekly curved sides of the hull where they met the crashing waves. As he grew closer, he could discern the shape of the ship: a long, fattened cigar, three hundred feet from port to stern. HMS Ambush had been positioned off the coast for a week, waiting for its twin optronic masts to detect the telltale signal of his tracker. The skiff bumped up against the side of the submarine, and a rope was tossed down. Milton fished it out of the icy sea, fastened it to the gunwale and pulled himself up. He grabbed the mittened hand that reached down for him. He could see the gold leafing on the peak of a Navy cap beneath the fur trimming of a parka hood.
    “Good evening, sir,” the man called as Milton clambered aboard the hull. “How was your trip?”
    “I’ve had better. What’s the news?”
    “It’d be fair to say you’ve created quite a stir.”
    Milton negotiated the hatch and followed the officer down into the guts of the submarine. The steady pulse of the engines started, the anchor chain roared back into the aft main ballast tank, and the Ambush started to submerge beneath the waters of the quiet bay.

The Cleaner
     
    A John Milton Novel
     
     
     
    Mark Dawson

 

“We deal in lead, friend.”
    Vin, ‘The Magnificent Seven’

PROLOGUE
     
    THE ROAD THROUGH THE FOREST was tranquil, the gentle quiet embroidered by the gurgling of a mountain rill and the chirruping of the birds in the canopy of trees overhead. The route forestière de la Combe d’Ire was potholed and narrow, often passable by just one car at a time. Evergreen pine forests clustered tightly on either side, pressing a damp gloom onto the road that was dispelled by warm sunlight wherever the trees had been chopped back. The misty slopes of the massif of the Montagne de Charbon stretched above the treeline, ribs of rock and stone running down through the vegetation. The road followed a careful route up the flank of the mountain, turning sharply to the left and right and sometimes switching back on itself as it traced the safest path upwards. The road crossed and recrossed the stream, and the humpback bridge here was constructed from ancient red bricks, held together as much by the damp lichen that clung to it as by its disintegrating putty. The bridge was next to a small enclosure signed as a car park, although that was putting it at its highest; it was little more than a lay-by hewn from the hillside, a clearing barely large enough to fit four cars side by side. Forestry reserve notices warned of “wild animals” and “hunters.”
    It was a quiet and isolated spot, the outside world excluded almost as if by the closing of a door.
    Milton had parked his Renault there, nudged against the shoulder of the mountain. It was a nondescript hire car; he had chosen it because it was unremarkable. He had reversed into the space, leaving the engine running as he stepped out and made his way around to the boot. He unlocked and opened it and looked down at the bundle nestled in the car’s small storage space. He unfolded the edges of the blanket to uncover the assault rifle that had been left at the dead drop the previous night. It was an HK53 carbine with integrated suppressor, the rifle that the SAS often used when stealth was as important as stopping power. Milton lifted the rifle from the boot and pressed a fresh twenty-five-round magazine into the breech. He opened the collapsible stock and took aim,