Free PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller by J.T. Brannan Page A

declaring her support for the United Kingdom.
    British Prime Minister Adam Gregory had declared today a national day of mourning, and the decision had been made to close all schools for the day. It was thought that many of the students would join the solidarity marches through the towns and cities of the UK, and many businesses had also chosen to close as a mark of respect.
    Cole wondered how the security services were going to cope, and hoped that nothing else would happen to make their job even harder.
    After the gym, Cole had showered and changed into a business suit, before having breakfast and taking a stroll round the corner to meet up with Travis at Thames House.
    But when he’d seen the River Thames ahead of him, he’d bought a coffee from a local vendor and crossed the busy road toward the opposite sidewalk. He had plenty of time, and wanted to familiarize himself once again with the city, as a dull sun rose gradually over the rooftops, turning the river waters from black to gunmetal gray.
    He’d been operational in Britain twice before, not including training visits with her various special forces and intelligence units. The first time had involved the assassination of a Peruvian drug lord who’d come out of his South American fortress for the first time in years, in order to attend the funeral of his youngest daughter, who’d married an Englishman and had lived in London. With bleak irony, she’d died of a cocaine overdose.
    Cole had done what he’d been trained to do and eliminated the man, getting so close to him that he had been able to manipulate three vital nerve points on his large, heavy body without him even realizing. The points had been struck in such an order and manner that – with no forewarning – the drug lord had toppled over just an hour later, dead of a suspected heart attack.
    It was what the Chinese referred to as the delayed death touch, although Cole himself had been taught the art by an Indian prisoner who’d lived in a neighboring cell during Cole’s time in a brutal Pakistani mountain prison. The Indians knew it as Marma Adi, a constituent part of Kalaripayattu which many experts believed to be the oldest martial art in the world.
    But whatever its history, it worked; and when Cole had his release secured by Admiral Charles Hansard, Director of National Intelligence and Cole’s mentor and boss, he had put his new skills to good use as a deniable operator known only as ‘the Asset’. He’d killed many times over the years for Hansard, right up until his second operational visit to London when Hansard had instead ordered Cole’s death.
    He had been asked to come to London for a covert debrief on Cole’s recent assassination of Bill Crozier, the head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service; but it quickly transpired that Hansard was a rogue element, ordering assassinations to satisfy his own agenda, and had needed Cole taking out of the picture to ensure his silence.
    But Cole hadn’t gone quietly and – pursued by the Metropolitan Police, the Security Service, and Hansard’s own kill-teams – he had been chased across the city until he’d taken a dive off the top of a double decker bus as it slowed for a roadblock on Tower Bridge, right into the dirty waters of the Thames that now lay before him once again, the wide gray river causing a flood of memories to wash over him.
    Hansard had also put out a kill order for Cole’s family, and he remembered calling his wife Sarah after dragging himself out of the Thames, warning her to move immediately, get away from their home in the Caymans and get to a safe location.
    She’d managed to get there, to the small Austrian hamlet of Kreith and the home of Stefan Steinmeier, an old friend of Cole’s and a former member of Germany’s elite GSG-9 counter-terrorist unit. But Hansard had got to Steinmeier too, offered him a suitcase full of cash to sell his old friend out. Cole had reached the hamlet, but it was too late – one