Chant

George C. Chesbro

Description

Professional assassin and martial arts master Chant is about to go from hunter to hunted in this thriller from the author of the Mongo Mysteries.
 
John “Chant” Sinclair is precise, patient, perfect. A highly trained killer with a mastery of martial arts, he’s able to slip in and out of any situation, in any disguise, all while maintaining absolute control.
 
In a former life Chant was a soldier, but now he’s the world’s most wanted criminal, working for himself and taking only the jobs he wants. Governments want to either hire him or kill him. No matter the foe, Chant’s skills have made him untouchable . . . until now.
 
Years ago, one man taught Chant to be a dealer of death, a warrior whose very name, Bai, strikes fear into the hearts of men. Now, Bai has been hired to take out his former protégé, and when master and student face off, only one will emerge victorious—and alive.
 
Chant is the 1st book in the Chant Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Sujets

• Central Intelligence Agency
• Ninja
• Thriller
• Suspense
• Black Belt
• Sensei
• Mongo
• Vétéran
• Karaté
• Adventure
• Murder
• Mercenary
• Espionage
• Vietnam veteran
• Vietnam War
• 1980s
• Travel
• Contract killing
• ACTION
• Mongo the Magnificent

Informations

• Publié par: Open Road Media
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• EAN13: 9781480476554
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Chant
George C. Chesbro

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
ONE
Vietnam, 1971
After he d learned the truth, the man others called Chant decided that this phase of his life was finished too. Past spoken pledges and unspoken loyalties had been washed away with the blood of one American and dozens of Hmong who had died in the trap set for him, and these were deaths for which Chant felt at least partially responsible. If the cost of this decision was the loss of virtually every affiliation other men held dear, that was all right. He had learned the lessons of his father and teachers well and, despite his youth, had for some years been remarkably complete unto himself. He was linked to his own unbreakable code of honor, and in the end this was the only affiliation that mattered to him.
They came after him, of course, as he d known they would, for he now possessed a terrible secret.
Combat boots laced together and slung around his neck, John Sinclair loped easily through the vivid greens and sweet rot odor of the rain forest. At the beginning of his flight he had discarded all gear and items of clothing that were not absolutely essential to survival. Even his M-16 had been thrown away; from the moment he had made the decision to erase his past, Sinclair had realized that to be in a situation where he was forced to fire a gun would probably mean that he must inevitably be killed or captured. The invisibility of silence was the one weapon he could not afford to lose. His coming long journey though space and time, across borders and oceans of the mind as well as the planet, had to be accomplished in a veil of silence as profound as that of the chiaroscuro shadow-patterns through which he ran.
If he were forced to kill, it would have to be done in silence.
Like now.
Without breaking stride, Chant leaped for an overhanging branch and effortlessly swung up into a tree, where he crouched in the V formed by the trunk and a large limb. Camouflaged by shadow and thick foliage, he waited.
They knew the direction in which he was heading-northwest, directly into enemy-held territory. A half hour before, as he had passed close to the ambush site, he d heard a helicopter flying low over the jungle canopy; he knew that the aircraft carried assassins, men whom Maheu assumed were as skilled at delivering silent death as himself. If it were a classic hunt-and-slay operation, and Chant had no reason to think otherwise, the helicopter would drop three men in a semicircle arcing across his presumed path. These men would come at him, then slowly converge in an effort to trap him themselves or force him to retreat to death at the hands of the two or three assassins sweeping the jungle behind him.
The point man in the advance press came directly down the trail, a wide-angle pump shotgun with heavy-duty choke silencer held at the ready. Although it would not have altered his course of action, Chant was glad that he did not know the man-which meant that this assassin had probably been borrowed from the Rangers, or another Special Forces Unit.
Operation Cooked Goose.
As the man passed beneath the overhanging limb, Chant dropped, twisting slightly in the air and snapping a short, powerful side kick at the man s head. His bare heel caught the man just behind the jaw, at the precise juncture where the skull cradles the top of the spinal cord. Chant hit the ground, rolled to break his fall, and was almost instantly on his feet, darting silently into the underbrush at the side of the trail. He did not even bother to look back, for he knew that the assassin had died even before his knees had begun to buckle.
He waited in the open, sitting cross-legged at the edge of a small clearing, for the second man. Within seconds, he had gone into a trance; with his iron-colored eyes slightly out of focus, he was able to see deep into his surroundings, his sight and hearing radiating out through the jungle like psychic X rays.
He saw the second assassin approach through the underbrush, then stop behind a wall of vines and stare in disbelief at Chant s exposed body.
Chant s knife flew through the air, parted vines, and pierced the assassin s heart a split second before the man s knife thudded into the tree trunk behind Chant s left ear.
Chant stalked the third man, a burly Chinese dropped by helicopter who had apparently been specially hired for the occasion, then rose from the matted jungle floor virtually in the man s face and slit his throat.
Each of the three assassins assigned to close the circle from the rear found Chant hanging from a tree limb by a rope of vines, his neck twisted at what appeared to be an impossible angle for any man who was not dead.
The first two to come upon him died as they poked suspiciously at his ribs-the first when Chant s index finger burst his right eyeball and pierced his brain, the second when a garotte lifted him off the ground and snapped his neck like a stick of dry wood.
The third assassin, overcome by terror when he came upon the hanging man with two corpses at his feet, died running away, Chant s knife blade buried to the hilt between his shoulder blades.
His pursuers eliminated, Chant loosed the harness of vines from his shoulders and chest, and dropped lightly to the ground.
At the edge of a stream, he erected a small totem to the memory of the many Hmong who had died so that he might live, and be free After an hour of silent, intense meditation, he set the totem afire, sprinkling bits of clay, dirt, and vegetation from the jungle floor over the root of the fire until the flames burned black. After a few seconds he abruptly kicked the flaming brands into the stream, smiled grimly as the fire hissed out and the blackened sticks were carried away downstream.
Then, his private ceremony of life and death and freedom completed, Chant went away.
TWO
Mordan County, Washington, 1985
Chant, disguised, stopped in a hardware store to pick up the item he wanted. Back out on the busy street, he paused for a few moments to watch the comings and goings of people getting an early start on their Christmas shopping. It was a bright, clear day in late fall, cold but still. The air was filled with an acrid smell wafting in from the huge paper mill ten miles to the east.
Although there were thousands of Hmong immigrants in the county, Chant saw none here on the streets of Sachmore City, the county seat. He wasn t surprised. To the Baldaufs, who wielded their great wealth like a sledgehammer in order to control law and economics in the county, the Laotian refugees were used exclusively for fueling the family s evil, underground empire; the Hmong were used as stock for whorehouses, slave labor in the family industries, and as drugged, unwilling subjects for pornographic films and magazines. Certainly, they were not fit to shop on the streets of Sachmore City and, when not being used by the Baldaufs for personal pleasure or business, were kept virtually imprisoned in a complex of Baldauf-controlled slum housing in a remote area of the county-out of sight, and obviously out of the other residents minds and collective conscience.
It was, Chant thought with a cruel smile, time for a few minor changes.
The huge clock on the tower over City Hall read ten minutes after one, which meant that Lester Baldauf would have sent all of his deputies out on patrol; the county sheriff would be alone in the jailhouse, drinking and conducting a training session with the latest Hmong woman or girl he had chosen to sell to one of the Baldauf-controlled prostitution rings in Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles.
Chant bought a newspaper in a drug store on the corner. He took a few minutes to rearrange it in the way he wanted, then put the rolled newspaper under his arm and headed across the street to the county sheriff s office.
The kid went dry too goddam quick, Lester Baldauf thought as he pumped away at the whimpering Hmong teenager beneath him She couldn t talk dirty convincingly, cried too easily, just went through the motions when she fucked, and wouldn t stay wet long enough for a man to enjoy a decent lay without getting blisters on his prick. He d decided that oral sex was about all this girl was good for, and he d get to that right after he finished.
Get up, Baldauf.
Wha- ?!
Lester Baldauf yanked himself out of the Hmong girl. He tried to spin around in order to see who had come up behind him, then fell off the foul-smelling bunk onto the rough concrete of the cell floor Sweat was squeezed from between the rolls of fat on his naked body as he attempted, in a panic, to scramble to his feet while at the same time reaching for his gun. He tripped over his own feet, and sat down on the floor with a loud sphut .
Baldauf watched, chest heaving and eyes wide with fear, as the big man with red hair and dark aviator glasses reached out with a rolled newspaper. The man flicked his wrist, and the flap on Baldauf s holster unsnapped with a loud pop. Still using the newspaper like a mechanical arm, the red-haired man pushed back the flap, slipped a folded end of the paper over the butt end of the Colt Special, and withdrew the weapon from the holster. Another flick of the wrist; the gun spun in the air, and the man caught it by the barrel in his paper. Then, to Baldauf s amazement, the man held the gun out to him.
Here, the stranger said in a deep, even voice. I believe you re looking for this. I assure you that you won t need it. I m here to discuss some business, and my proposal is definitely to your advantage. Get rid of the girl.
Baldauf snatched the Colt from the end of the newspaper, cocked it, then aimed it with a trembling hand at the big man s chest. How the-? There was no moisture in Baldauf s mouth or throat, and he swallowed har