The Hit List Read Online Free

thighs.
    'Did either of you notice a maroon Cherokee passing here a minute ago?' Slater continued.
    'Why would you be concerning yourself with a maroon Cherokee, sir?'
    'It's been past at least a couple of times today. Going very slowly. Looked to me as if it was scoping the place out.'
    The second man turned his magazine through ninety degrees. Tuck me!' he said, grimacing with disbelief. 'Look at the state of that!'
    The driver glanced at the magazine and turned back to Slater. 'A slow-moving maroon Cherokee that you think you've seen before.'
    'And these have got to be silicone,' murmured the second man. 'They're all over the rucking shop.'
    'I took the number,' said Slater, ignoring him. 'You might want to get it checked out. Here, I'll put it on your pad.'
    Smirking, the driver handed Slater his pad. It was blank. Slater wrote down the number.
    'Don't worry, sir,' said the driver, returning the pad to his pocket without looking at it. 'We're professionals. But thanks for the tip.'
    'As the actress said to the bishop,' added the second man.
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    Chris Ryan
    As Slater made his way up the drive, he heard both en laugh.
    st
    pounds Cherokee was parked in a lay-by 500 yards down ie road.
    In the driver's seat, smoking nervously, was a !prenty-year-old man of Pakistani descent in an >ro tracksuit. He was good with cars, and over the course of his teenage years - five convictions taking and driving away, thirty offences taken into deration - had refined his skills to the point icre he was now considered one of the top wheel in the Gateshead area.
    the back seat sat two slightly older men, both ded, both dressed in black windcheaters, jeans and boots. They were Shi'ite Muslims from al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia's eastern province. The men were ; their mutual grandfather had emigrated from Iranian Gulf port of Basra in 1925 and, unlike their neighbours, the two had been brought up strictly tenets of their faith.
    yy were followers of a radical Shi'ite holy man d Shayk Nabil Rahmat. Rahmat was the founder revolutionary faction called al-Hizb al-Makhfi Hidden Party. Acting with the utmost secrecy, and its identity closely, the Hidden Party had out bombings in Riyadh, Jeddah, and even the set's own city of Medina.
    >fphe Hidden Party, however, had been dealt a severe Seven of its members had been convicted of
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    The Hit List
    terrorism by a religious court in Ahsa province, and condemned to death by beheading. Only the decision of a senior judge sitting on the Court of Cassation, the final court of appeal, stood between the seven party members and the execution of sentence.
    And unless extraordinary pressure was brought to bear, that decision was a foregone conclusion. The judge in question was known as one of the most conservative members of the Saudi judiciary, and vehemently opposed to everything that Rahmat and his followers stood for. His name was Shaykh Marwan al-Jubrin. He was Masoud al-Jubrin's father.
    The two men in the Cherokee had come to England in order to set in motion the applying of extreme pressure on the old judge. They had secured false Turkish passports from the intelligence services of the Islamic Republic of Iran, flown from Tehran to Rome, and then travelled across Europe by train to Denmark. In Copenhagen they had embarked on an overnight ferry to Newcastle, where they had shown their Turkish passports and been met by a local sweet manufacturer. This man, a devout Shi'ite who had once burnt an effigy of Salman Rushdie for the benefit of an ITV news crew, had placed his spare bedroom at their disposal. At dawn, having picked up the driver, the sweet-manufacturer had driven the cousins to a lock-up garage where the stolen and replated Cherokee was waiting. Concealed beneath the driver's seat were the two weapons they had requested: a loaded Smith and Wesson Model 25 revolver and a
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    Chris Ryan
    jAsheathed Gerber Patriot knife with a six-inch oxidised 1 blade.
    The trio had begun the drive south immediately and |,