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Glenn Ashton Amazon author page
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Createspace
ISBN-10: 1492270202
Type: Fiction
Pages: 251
Copyright: 2013
ISBN-13: 9781492270201
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
The banker gets a call:
"Money? Who wants money?"
There was scorn in the voice now.
"What price do you want to put on their eyes? Or their fingers? How much for their heads?" The man laughed coldly. "Go on, banker. You know the cost of things. How much for the bodies of your little Henry and Dorothy?"
In his office in the City in London, banker Keith Lawton picks up the telephone. "Listen to your son, banker." Another voice spoke into the phone, a young voice, trembling a bit. "Hello, Daddy. This is me, Henry." Keith Lawton felt a surge of hope. They were still alive ... "Daddy, you must do what they want. They say they will hurt me if you ..." the voice ended in a gasp and then there was a long scream, rising up and up and the telephone clicked in his hand and he stood, his body rigid with shock, the screams of his little son echoing in his ears. He had spoken so clearly, without the trace of a lisp. When Lawton looks at the photograph of his two children, naked in a plywood box, with targets painted on their little bodies, a fierce determination takes root in him: he will do anything to get his children back safely, and then he will hunt down those who did this and kill them. Three separate kidnappings by a terrorist group plunge banker Keith Lawton and terrorist hunter Ankar Vanske into a whirlwind that takes them to London, Paris, Italy, Germany, Canada and the USA in a desperate race to free Lawton's children and bring the deadly terrorists to justice. When it is over, Ankar Vanske visits the grave of one of his fellow-hunters, and lays one red rose on it for every hunter killed.
Excerpt
Then he had ridden around the streets as instructed, finally leaving the taxi and walking to the Old Curiosity Shop, arriving just before midnight.
In the window of the tiny Tudor shop, under the pro-truding second floor, he had looked for the envelope and found it just under the wooden beam with the gold script Antique and Modern Art. It had been taped to the bottom of the beam, and his fingers had trembled as he loosened it, the clear scotch tape tearing easily.
In the light of the lantern that hung from the steel wall bracket he had examined it carefully.
There had been no identification marks on the outside, and he had torn a jagged hole in one side of the envelope and taken out the stiff parchment inside.
A large color photograph, with a page with several short sentences typed on it, on top of the photograph.
The message, he thought, holding it up to the light of the lantern.
He read the words, and he choked, feeling the vomit rise in his throat.
The text was in capitals:
IF YOU DO NOT OBEY WE USE THEM FOR TARGET PRACTICE
FIRST THE STOMACH THEN THE HEAD
Underneath the two lines was another short sentence:
GO HOME AND WAIT FOR OUR CALL
Beneath that, in the middle of the page, was a crudely drawn red star, followed by the words: RED STAR BRIGADE
He had snatched at the photograph and a low cry came to his lips, the pain moving inside his chest again, as it had when the first phone call had come.
The photograph was a large one, eight inches by twelve, in color, the image sharp against a grey background.
Dorothy and Henry were crouched on their knees, star-ing at the camera.
Dorothy held her brother's hand in hers, his tiny fingers gripping hers. Their skulls were shaven, the skin white, with a blackish stubble at the top of the skulls. Their ears protruded from their heads, and their eyes were huge.
In the center of each forehead was a bright star, the same as the one in the note, and over their hearts was a red outer circle and a black inner one.
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